EC Books

Two high-ranking Greek university professors have supervised this edition, so you can take for granted quite a large amount of the information given here. A must for anyone interested in Greek politics and Europe in general, as many of the problems presented here are troubling the European entity not just Greece. Anyone interested in the greco-turkish 'silent' conflict, will find this book enlightening. Finally, an absorbing book for any researcher wishing to see a practical implementation of the EC Treaty and the obstacles arising in such an effort.

This too-short book ably expands on the achievements of the Berkeley School of historical demography, while integrating Mexico with the concerns of US environmental history. The (UCal) Berkeley School---Woodrow Borah, Sherburne Cook, Lesley Simpson, and Carl Sauer---pioneered the systematic study of Indian population decline, and also explored patterns of land exploitation in New Spain. Melville extends this work with in-depth use of Mexican and Spanish archives, focusing on the Valle del Mezquital north of Mexico City. She shows how Spaniards used depopulated Indian lands for sheep raising, leading to overgrazing, degradation and vegetation change. Formerly fertile lands were colonized by mesquite scrub (thus Valle del Mezquital), making the region largely unproductive until irrigation in the 20th century. Thorough documentation makes this the most concrete study of Mexican land use history, and while the writing is not exciting, it is quite readable. An interesting chapter compares Australia with the Valle, but it distracts readers from the too-brief core of the book and ultimately seems misplaced. Since this book appeared, Melville has taken up the larger issue of capitalism's impact on Latin American environments with a chapter in T. Griffith & L. Robin eds, "Ecology and Empire." There is now a very solid study of struggles over water use in colonial Puebla, S. Lipsett-Rivera, "To Defend Our Water With the Blood of Our Veins."

When my sister-in-law, VP Operations for Messiah College, told me about this book, I just had to read it. Being a Pennsylvania native and having been educated early in grade school about the native American heritage of Pennsylvania, this book fit in. At Messiah College, before coming to campus all first-year students were expected to read a novel which would draw them together and allow them to identify with one another in the familiarity of the novel's message and themes. "The White" was the novel chosen for the class of 2010.

"The White" with its strong focus on the themes of identity, family and the security strangely found in the non-familiar, is an excellent book to bring readers together. In short, this book details the life of Mary Jemison from her capture by a Shawnee raiding party when she was sixteen to her death. Larsen's highly lyrically novel begins with the scalping deaths of Jemison's family and continues with chronicling the intense turmoil Jemison faced in the aftermath. Jemison's transition into the Seneca tribe, her resulting marriages, pregnancies and decision to remain true to her new Seneca tribe when offered the choice of returning to life as a free white woman are poetically rendered.

In her discussions of "The White", Larsen noted that "the significant amount of white space was meant not only to tie in the novel's title and themes for the reader on a subconscious level, but also to allow the reader time to fully digest the material of the novel and to reflect on the intense details of Jemison's story."

Some reviewers have inappropriately referred to this book as "junior high" level reading. Well, gee, I read "Moby Dick", "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities" in junior high. If this is the class of literature to which the reviewers referred, than, yes, by all means place "The White" in with this reading.

Deborah Larsen creates a lyrical novel based upon the life of Mary Jemison, who was abducted by a Shawnee raiding party in 1758. When she was in her 80's, Mary told her story to James Seaver who authored a book based upon Mary's life.

Larsen alternates between Mary's voice, dreamy and poetic, and details of what did and what might have happened. Even as her life as a "white" fades, she finds passages from the Bible entering her head to explain her life as a Seneca woman.

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest... For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" For me this saying of the Lord's was fulfilled in my life among the Seneca."

For a while, Mary mourns her loss of the ability to read and write and then she realizes that

"She loved the open air and the contrasts of its temperatures; earth dry and sodden, loamy and rock-like; fire and its warmth and scorch; water cleansing and flooding. The closer she came to these things the more she realized that words were not the same as the real wild onion, the actual rabbit fur, the coiled fern frond, the lightning."

Mary lives much of her life in the Genesse Valley of Pennsylvania with her husband, children, house and land. Slowly, the whites move into the area, peacefully settling nearby. The beauty of fictionalized accounts is that a fine author such as Deborah Larsen brings to us a warm, living picture to embrace and remember.

by Judith Helburn
for StorycircleBookReviews
www.storycirclebookreviewsorg
reviewing books by, for, and about women

I bought this book expecting an historical novel. What I read was something akin to what a Junior High student would read. I felt the book was misrepresented as adult reading. I did like the historical background. I especially liked the information about how much each Indian tribe warred against eachother, and their confusion about the French-English war. In rewritten history, one is given the impression that the Indians all loved eachother and the whitemen were the killers. This book dispelled that myth for me. Also, so rarely are the now nonexistent Eastern tribes described, although these tribes interacted more with the white settlers than any others, and aided our colonial survival. Although disappointed by it's flat simplicity, the facts were interesting enough to recommend for a quick read. Definitely a beach blanket book!

This brief beautifully written novel, based on the real life of Mary Jemison, reads more like a short epic poem. Written in an almost stream-of-consciousness style, the narrative follows the history of Ms. Jemison from the time she is captured by the Shawnee until her death many years later. Until the day she died, she chose to remain with the Indians, even when provided with the choice of returning to the White world. In the interim, she marries twice (and is widowed both times) and bears 6 children. Her capture is sudden and shocking and she lives while she watches her entire family die. Her silence becomes her refuge; within it she heals, and is able to adjust to her new life. She becomes a part of the Seneca tribe in trade for a brother who died fighting the whites. Thus the brutal conflict, as well as the peaceful blending, of two cultures becomes the backdrop of Mary's existence. The wonders of the natural world, as well as the cruelty of mankind, are revealed in the descriptions of the world and the people who inhabit it. The love of family and the pain and loss of war are both described in prose that works as poetry. Mary, taken in by two sisters who care for her, slowly adapts to the Seneca ways of life and ultimately finds a world she does not want to leave. The story slowly unfolds and the narration is split between third person and first person. Mary's thoughts are scattered at times, but they parallel the action and can be quite effective and moving. However, I wanted to read more, in more depth, than this brief novel provided to me. I found Mary's story fascinating and this book just gave me a taste of it. Lovely novel, far too brief.

This book is a very poetic interpretation of Mary Jemison's life.As someone who teaches history to the public I understand the challenge of constructing a story out of historic documents.
and I was pleased with Larsen's book.I think the author was highly successful in presenting the story of an individual who lived in early America.
As a woman of color, it was gratifying to finally read a historic
novel which discusses how ethnicity affected people's day-o-day lives. Larsen does a good job of presenting information in
a balanced way.

One reviewer said that she felt the novel was something a middle school student would read, and I agree, but that is another thing I enjoyed about it. Don't get me wrong the book is as complex
and subtle as Moby Dick, but it is also very accessible in part because it is a first person account of a woman whose formal education in English was aruptly cut off.

FOR TEACHERS
This book is an excellent resource to use along with
the actual account of Mary Jemison.

I think that this book was a very good study guide. I didn't find any errors in it unlike some of the other books out there. I passed my cert test the 1st time so I can't and won't complain. It was a lot more helpful than other books and especially the texes website. I think this is a good buy, both because of the price and the material.

I took the exam after studying this book.....the book address basic content whereas the test did not. The test was about application and use of appropriate curriculmn

While taking a practice test from this book, I found a question that I knew the answer, researched, and asked my published and knowledgeable professor and found out...the answer in the book is WRONG. I could no longer trust the answers given for the practice test. I returned my book because it was no longer reliable.


The question I am referring to asks about graphemes in the word "bright".
--It's 6!

I am very glad I bought this book. This was all I needed to pass the EC-4 on the first try. I don't know how it compares to other review books since this is all I had, but it helped me.

I have never taken any education related courses prior to buying this book. I am currently enrolled in an online altern program that is set to begin in the Fall.

This book helped me pass the test. Not a highly impressive score(258)but I did pass and I guess that's what matters.

Although it was helpful, I wasn't entirely impressed with the book. I am sure that there are better books out there but then again I did pass on my first try with no prior educational background.

I would recommend buying this book as a supplement to other books that you may have. I would also recommend really focusing on the English portion of the study guides.

This book is very insightful, like other reviewers I do not agree with a few things, but over all the book is filled with interesting and historical views on Angels, dreams, resurrection, and religion. I really enjoyed the section on near death experiences, and Freud's ideas of dreams were a bit strange but I am not well read on Freud's psychoanalysis work however sometimes I wonder if he was drinking a bit too much Absinthe. I am also far from anything of an expert on Judaism, Islamic Sufism or basically any other beliefs outside of Catholic or Christian, so the chance to learn a bit on all of them was a wonderful opportunity. The last section there was some part that he brought up the fact that some religions predict the end of the world, like Millerites and Jehovah's witnesses by the way how many times did they predict the world was going to end? I have to ask them the next time they come to my door. Over all I have to say what a wonderful book.

Omens of Millennium is a consistently enjoyable, delightful work. Bloom is especially insightful when discussing Freud, and in his focus on the relationship of Enoch and Metatron. I don't agree entirely with everything Bloom says, of course, but still, this has been an enormously influential, important and loved book for me. I highly recommend it.

Harold Bloom, as I imagine most everyone reading this review knows, made his mark with a work of almost unbelievable insight and genius, The Visionary Company. In it, Bloom effectively disemboweled and laid to rest the dried up "New Criticism" and "Neo-Classicism" that was in the ascendant at the time. He did no less than knock T.S. Eliot off his critical pedestal: a dragon-slayer indeed! The Visionary Company took its title from a line in a Yeats' poem referring to several poets (some, like Lionel Johnson, of exquisite merit) who shunned material success and followed their own visionary and masterful style of poetry and ended up dying young, drunk and destitute. (L. Johnson, for example was such a classical languages genius that he was offered a position at Oxford when he was barely over 20! Instead, he decided to pen his masterful poetry while drinking himself to death. He died after falling off a barstool at around the age of 30).- The full line from the Yeats' poem is "I would be one with the visionary company."-But the reader will take note that neither Yeats nor Bloom consumed himself with his genius in such a way. This, in Bloom's case, is somewhat unfortunate (I'm not going to delve into Yeats here.). After The Visionary Company, his prolific works can be graphed onto a parabolic downward swoop ending with this book...In the middle of said swoop, you can find works such as The Western Canon which, while idiosyncratic and a touch pompous and presumptuous(understatement?), still makes one catch one's breath at times at the profundity of the insights contained therein....But OK, first of all, Omens of Millenium is not truly Bloom's book at all, but a kitschy rip-off of The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas (Note how many times Jonas is mentioned in Bloom's book.). The problem is that Jonas was a painstaking scholar and wrote as such, and most readers will find him inaccessible to some extent, just as some readers found The Visionary Company. SOOO, Bloom solves everything by writing this nice little book relating Gnosticism to Western literature...Right?....Wrong!!...Bloom himself is guilty of what he dismisses the New Agers and such for: ill-informed boot-licking of the mass culture's obsession with all sorts of ridiculous things.-Sorry Harold, if you can't take it, don't dish it out.-My advice to readers is just to go back and read any of the great Romantic poets. They and the Gnostics are essentially the same on a spiritual level, and the writings of the poets are much more beautiful.-But please go ahead and check out Hans Jonas if you really are interested in the historical and technical aspects of this fascinating worldview.

While I disagree with Bloom on a great many topics, his opinions are always thoughtful and challenging. Such is the case with this book which, to me, represents an acme of such thought before the millennium. His ideas, of course, are far more refined and careful than your average streetside shaman but a proof of the point that all such thought on angels, resurrection, and magic is superfluous; the trophy of our imaginations.

In early 2000, after the roaring crashes of worldwide electronic mayhem, the second coming of Jesus, and our long awaited deliverance from the mire of this world we should reconsider the prophetic tone of this work. Just kidding. As we all know, January 1, 2000 was no different than any other day nor will there be any supernatural interventions into world history. World history has been, is, and always will be a history of geology and protoplasm engaged in the evolution of species. The quote from Durrell that opens Bloom's book is terrible and true--there is no supernature behind all this hubbub. Shall we then drift into our wildest imaginings: ancestral mythology, Christian sci-fi and the like? Or shall we create a new philosophy of man?

Find out Bloom's answer by reading this interesting book.

Omens of Millennium is a personal and erudite synthesis of Gnosticism, Hermetism, Sufism, and Jewish Kabbalah (and Emersonism). Prof. Bloom writes with the conviction of a "believer" and the rigor of a disinterested scholar. I first read this book three years ago and since then I have come back to it in many occasions. Omens of Millennium is a wake-up call to Knowledge. The book also introduced me to the extraordinary works of Hans Jonas, Mose Idel, and Henry Corbin.

I just love the new EC Archives series. The printing quality is excellent and they really give new life to these classic golden age comics. I plan to buy them all.

In April of 1950, William Gaines and his staff of writers and artists at EC Comics started publishing a line of comic books that were entirely devoted to the themes of horror and science fiction. Breaking with the convention of the superhero, the "funnies," the westerns, and the romance comic books of the day, their new format dispensed with the motif of a recurring character in a continuing storyline and, instead, offered five or six complete stories that were frequently inspired by classic genre literature like that of Bierce, Poe, Verne, and H.G. Wells. By the mid-1950s, all of EC's horror and science-fiction comics were quite popular, and the company's success with these "New Trend" titles soon inspired competitors to publish a plethora of inferior imitations.

Unfortunately for EC and its fans, the popularity of their horror titles also drew the attention of conservative parental groups, glory-seeking politicians, and an ambitious psychiatrist named Dr. Frederic Wertham. The publication in 1954 of Wertham's book SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT: THE INFLUENCE OF COMIC BOOKS ON TODAY'S YOUTH led to Congressional investigations into possible links between comic books and juvenile delinquency. Though the existence of such a link was never proved, fear of possible legislation prompted the comic-book industry to establish The Comics Code Authority (CCA), a program of standards and self-censorship, and comic books that did not comply with those standards could not get the seal of approval from the CCA. Since horror was one of the primary themes targeted by Wertham and Congress, it was therefore the primary genre frowned upon by the CCA, thereby making EC the CCA's primary target. Sadly, most comic-book distributors and dealers feared the CCA and the influence it had on parents, and subsequently they quickly agreed to carry only those comics that carried the CCA seal of approval. Since Gaines and his staff refused to compromise their artistic and literary integrity in order to comply with the draconian "guidelines" of the CCA, EC was all but finished. Only MAD magazine somehow escaped the iron fist of the CCA and kept EC from disappearing altogether.

To a large majority of the people who are today familiar with comic books and their history--from art historians and English teachers to avid and affluent comic-book collectors--the horror and science-fiction comic books that were published by EC Comics prior to the establishment of the CCA exhibit a quality in both the writing and the artwork that has yet to be surpassed. Original, pristine copies of most of those titles (which include the famous TALES FROM THE CRYPT and VAULT OF HORROR series) are highly sought-after collectors' items, and they command prices that are sometimes as high as those of masterpiece oils on the high-art market. Because of this, and also to preserve the art and writing of the great EC comics for posterity, Russ Cochran began publishing hardbound reprint volumes of EC's "New Trend" comics in the 1980s. To keep costs down and preserve the quality of the artists' original line drawings, Cochran's reprints were over-sized black-and-white reproductions. Yet, in spite of the lack of color, the reproductions were beautiful and very popular sellers, and now that they've gone out of print, they are sought-after collectors' items in their own right.

Sometime in recent years, Cochran struck a deal with Gemstone Publishing to yet again reprint the original EC greats in hardbound volumes, but this time the reprints were to be sized according to the original comics, and they would also be reproduced in full color. But now that these color volumes are being released, it appears there's been a proverbial monkey-wrench thrown into the works. The coloring process being used is similar to, if not exactly the same as, the computerized coloring process that is currently the rage in the comic-book industry. While this pseudo-airbrush technique might look great for modern comics and graphic novels that are designed with its use in mind, the technique just looks garish when applied to the fantastic artwork that was lovingly hand drawn by Gaines' bullpen of greats like Al Feldstein, George Evans, Graham Ingels, and Wally Wood.

Fans interested in collecting some great reprints of the original EC horror and SF are advised to avoid the aesthetic travesty currently being peddled by Gemstone Publishing and, instead, seek out some used copies of Russ Cochran's black-and-white reproductions. The black-and-whites might be a little pricey now that they are out of print, but they are far superior to the Gemstone reprints in terms of readability and aesthetic enjoyment. (Keep in mind that the artists who drew the original comics often executed the artwork in black-and-white anyway, and while they may have offered suggestions about the final color schemes, the coloring was actually done by another.)

NOTE: The 1-star rating of this review is for the Gemstone reprints only. The EC comics themselves are always 5-star items.

THE BLOOD, THE OOOZE, THE HORROR, FOR ALL YOUR GRAPHIC GHOST, GHOUL, VAMPIRE AND ZOMBIE REQUIREMENTS LOOK NO FURTHER. BUY BEFORE THE FLESH ROTS FROM YOUR BONES.
A VERY ENTERATINING COMIC

I guess I should have liked this book better because I did pass the test with it, or maybe it was all the material I looked at. I found that the real test differs quite a bit from this.
The questions in this book seem to be very easy compared to the real test. I expected to do better BECAUSE I used this book but not in the bilingual section. My real saver was Math which I already knew, Social Studies, and Science. (For which I had taken the classes)
Not that excited about this book.

I bought this book to take my 102 bilingual part. It has an excellent review,but it's not enough.

I found this book to be an affordable and useful review for the Bil. Generalist Exam. In fact, it had a lot more information than I needed when I took the exam but I didn't mind because it was a good refresher. I took the practice test then studied the book approximately 4 hrs/day for two weeks before I took the practice test again. This was my only study guide and I am happy to say that I passed my exam with a 290/300. I definitely recommend it.

Graham is one of the best applied economists of our generation. He was the first economist to go public about the Japanese banking crisis in the 90's and almost lost his job over it whilst working for a Japanese Securities Company. He correctly anticipated the economic consequences of the reunification of East and West Germany on the German economy. He has a long track record of highly accurate predictions. Note that this book was written substantially prior to the public meltdown of the banking system in October 2008. Graham Turner has identified the causes and anticipated the outcomes of the macro-economic trends of the last 3 decades. He goes further than most economists and addresses the political dynamics that underpin the lack of regulation in the Western banking systems.

For the purposes of full disclosure, I worked professionally with Graham for approximately 6 years in the financial markets. He is a person of great integrity. During that period of time we never once discussed politics. His analysis was always based on a highly objective independent research into the causes of the both macro and micro economic phenomenae. I have not been in touch with Graham for over ten years. It was a complete surprise for me to see Graham on a TV broadcast commenting on the current crisis, when they mentioned this book.

Any person interested in the reality of the current collapse of the banking system, the underlying causes and the likely outcome should read this book. It is the best analysis that I have seen so far, and comes from an Economist who has an exceptional track record.

I cannot recommend this book more strongly.

Graham Turner rightly blames Alan Greenspan for the current financial mess. More than anything else, Greenspans rate cutting after the bursting of the it bubble, produced the housing and credit bubbles of the US, which now are bursting and unwinding.

However, Turner blames Greenspan for his stance towards international trade for the former Fed chief main fault. According to Turner, the trouble is outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, mainly to East Asia. To compensate the unemployed and impoverished workers in the West, the Fed and other central banks have kept the rates low. Why? To create a housing bubble, from which homeowners could extract equity to spend.

This conspiracy theory just doesnt make sense to me. I am pretty sure Greenspans actions were decisive in making the bubble, but Im equally sure that Greenspan didnt think it was a bubble.

On the bright side, Turners book has some interesting parallels between Japan in the 90s and the US now. This saves him two stars. On the hole, the book is not worth reading.

In Caldor planet, immorality is assured only to the few winners of a cruel flight from a labyirinth. The protagonist partecipates to give endless live to an old rich king, but the final choice will be different.

After hundreds of books, I still remember Derai. Dumarest should find Earth eventually and destroy the Cyclan's brain bank. But of all of the lovers, I want him to come back to Derai. He can use the affinity twin to put her into the body of the Cyclan Queen. They can find a new reason to exist. Tubb is probably dead and never finished the series. But it still plays in my head.

I really loved Volume 1 but Volume 2 is very disappointing. Simple and silly Ideas stretched out on 6 to 8 pages. It was very boring to read and I had to force myself to continue to read. Absolutely no twist endings and there is nothing new even for the fifties beside the on story in which a Man gets pregnant by eating a nut from space and undergoes an operation and gave birth to an octopus monster which will be killed by TNT.
I would recommend to buy Shock Suspenstories Volume 2. There are 6 science fiction stories out of 24 stories and each story contains more ideas and suspense than the whole Weird Science Volume 2. And the art is also much better in Shock Suspenstories.

First of all, the book is not flawed in any physical way. The printing is great, the binding is great, and the color is great.

What's flawed are some of the stories. But the flaws are fascinating! For instance, in a story about going to the moon written the decade before it actually happened, we have a man, in a space suit, granted, falling back to earth through space and merely floating to the ground with a parachute. Nevermind the whole tendency to catch on fire when entering the earth's atmosphere at several hundred miles an hour.

Fabulous! I mean it. Far from being a negative thing, such a flaw really points up the refusal of writers like Feldstein to let ignorance get in the way of a good story. It's great to see him stretch a plot to make way for an effect, too. Like introducing a character called "peach pit" (because he likes to suck on peach pits of course) in order to allow for an alien seed to get into his body to be "born" in a way that anticipates Alien, once again, by decades. You would think the government would be pretty careful with such life-threatening cosmic nuts, wouldn't you? Well, I won't spoil the ending. Hilarious!

Even the flaws reveal Feldstein's wonderfully playful talent for either making up altogether or finding stories like these and adapting them to comics. He was so unafraid! For instance, what do you do with a multi-dimensional creature that appears only partially as a floating blob in the air? You theorize about it a bit before harpooning the thing and tying it to a couple of trees with some good, stout rope, that's what you do! And why? To destroy it of course. After all, it's already made the neighbor's cow go poof! That's humanity in a nutshell.

These comics are a monument to the power of the imagination to do the best it can with whatever it has to work with in order to have a little fun (or to defend the planet, presumably . . . without all the red tape). Even the flaws are fantastic!