Expansion Books

This is a wonderful biography of Alexander the Great for children. It is clear, easy to read and facinating from page 1 right up to the end of the book. It covers the story of the great King of Macedonia from his babyhood right up to his death. Alexander was powerful and successful for 12 years but pressed on with little rhyme or reason at the end. Things just started to fall apart as easily as they had built up. The book also discusses the different ethnic groups and empires at the time. The author provide the reader with a full picture of who the Macedonian and Greeks were as well as the who the people they conquered were. Highly recommened and many young adults will enjoy it.

As a huge fan of SRV and the reason I took up guitar I was searching for the tabs to one of my favorite songs from him. Despite internet searches there was no "Guitar Hurricane" tabs that I could find. This book has them so I am happy.
The track list is: In The Open, Slide Thing, They Call Me Guitar Hurricane, All Your Love(I Miss Loving), Tin Pan Alley, Love Struck Baby, Tell Me, Shake For Me, and Live Another Day. (The back inside cover is a notation legend)
These songs are from SRV's "In The Beginning" album.
A good job in tabbing all of the songs. Worth the money.

Fabulous photographs and succinct, detailed narrative will reward the reader of this new book of the most recent and exciting museum expansion in America. This is a great book of one of the greatest architects of our time. The format, quality of photos, and general excellence as well as the work itself is stunning.

This is the second in a series of volumes on Sufism by the Nimutallahi Sufi shaikh Javad Nurbakhsh. I have read many books on sufism, including the available translations of Sufi classics, but the Nurbakhsh books are particularly useful to people who are trying to get a grasp of the sufi path. Nurbakhsh focuses on particular aspects of the sufi path in each of the volumes, using well-chosen citations from a very comprehensive group of the Sufi classics of earlier centuries. For someone who is trying to understand the sufi path without the assistance of a flesh and blood pir , murshid, or shaikh (preceptor or guide) you cannot do better than to use Nurbakhsh's books as a guide. The Sufi path, rather like Buddhism, from which it no doubt received some influences via Central Asia, is fundamentally a process of psychological self-refinement utilizing various exercises and meditative techniques. Those techniques help the "raw" individual who is still living at the mercy of his or her nafs al amarrah (soul inclining to ignorance and wrongdoing) to undergo a reorientation to a gradual merging with the qualities (ninety-nine names) of Allah. One does not become God but assimilates godlike qualities by gradually subtracting lower human tendancies governed by the nafs-al-amarrah. Finally at the end of a path of committed practice one will be rewarded with the goal of the sufi path--fana wa baqa --extinction of the lower self and persistence in the qualities of godliness. The means to this end is ma'arifat --gnosis, ie, the specialized knowledge whose goal is human enlightenment and liberation. Nurbakhsh's books show the way with the minimum of extraneous information and therefore are appropriate for people who are serious about exploring and learning from the sufi path.

This book is written in Spanish, with emphasis on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. For some English language learners, this reinforcement through reading one's native language is useful. The teacher may find that many Latino immigrants cannot read Spanish any better than they can read English. For students who can read Spanish, however, this book offers an option for delivering some content. The identical book is available in English, which will enable the students to compare content in the two languages.

When historians discuss the American westward migration and the California goldrush, they almost always concentrate on the hundreds
of thousands that travelled the Oregon-California Trail, adventurers who went up the Platt River to Southpass, then chose
either the Northwest pass over the Blue Mountains to Oregon, or the Southwest path across the Great Basin and over the Sierra Nevada to California.

This book provides an introduction to the experiences of the approximately 20,000 souls that took the Southern route, across the Southwestern deserts. While the "Northern" route is copiously documented, few written accounts of the Southern journey are available, since most of those travellers came from regions with
low literacy rates.

With this annotated bibliography, Patricia Etter has made a great beginning to redressing that imbalance.

Following an excellent historical review, the reader is introduced to more than 130 diaries, journals and reminiscences of the journeys on such Southern trails as the Gila, the Southern, the Apache Pass and the treacherous El Camino Del Diablo out of Sonora, Mexico. These precious documents come to us from men with resounding names such as Hezekiah John Crumpton, D. Lambert Fouts and Phineas Underwood Blunt.

Each citation consists of an introductory narrative, the current location of the manuscript and its publishing history, if any.

To provide contemporary photographs and to check the accuracy of the documents, Etter traced and travelled each of the trails by car, horse and foot. The work also includes historical photographs and specially commissioned maps.

A foreword, historical overview, explanation of entries, appendix, glossary, list of references cited and index provide even more material.

Patricia Etter is curator of the Labriola National American Indian Data Center and Associate Archivist for Information Services at Arizona State University, Tempe.

Please be aware if you are considering this item it is an expansion to Descent: Journeys in the Dark which is the base game and is required for the Descent: Tomb of Ice to be played.

This the fourth expansion in the Descent series and adds a new theme, game components, new rules, and new quests (6 in total) for your intrepid party of characters as they explore a dungeon in the frozen climates of the north.

Descent uses a modular board system which allows for creative scenario design as well as creating a very good sense of exploration for players as you can limit the amount of dungeon the players can see at any one time (e.g. in the case of a door blocking the view of what is beyond).

The game system requires an overlord character who controls the dungeon being aware of the overall dungeon (from prepared scenarios in the game), monster locations, traps, treasures, etc. The other individuals play as the hero characters trying to survive the dungeon and get rich and find glory in the process.

Production values of this game are amazing. The artwork and detail really add to the imagination and enhance the game experience. All monsters and characters are represented with plastic miniatures (unpainted) and map boards are very stylized and appealing to the eye.

Game play is pretty much straight forward. Move, explore, fight monsters with weapons or magic, collect treasure, and continue on. Much like any board game you have to get used to the mechanics and procedures, but once this is done the game moves very nicely. Though a quest can take quite a few hours to complete depending on number of players and size of the dungeon.

The 6 quests that come with this expansion are only a starter and you can download a large number of user created scenarios from the Fantasy Flight Games website at [...]
...or create your own scenarios!

Components that come with this boxed expansion include:
Rule book with quest guide
6 hero sheets
6 plastic heroes
21 plastic monsters
110 cards
43 double-side map pieces (on heavy cardboard)
26 prop markers
1 stomach tile (when characters are swallowed by a very large monster..an off board location the character will go and either be saved or die)
1 transparent stealth die
10 treasure markers

Michael Burgan's look at "The Trail of Tears" for the We the People series begins by bluntly confronting young readers with the cold historic fact that in 1838 the U.S. government forced the Cherokee nation from their homes and marched them 800 miles to the Indian Territory that would eventually become Oklahoma. In their own language the Cherokee who survived the march called their route "the trail where they cried," which is known today as the "Trail of Tears."

Before the march the Cherokee lands included Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and parts of Virginia, Alabama, and Kentucky. Burgan details how the Cherokee nation had developed a level of "civilization" that each the white settlers of the times would have to appreciate before telling the story of how contact between the Cherokee and the European settlers slowly worked against the Native Americans, beginning with the introduction of small pox and ending with Andrew Jackson's insistence that the Indians were "savages" and that moving them would be for their own good.

Even if young readers do not appreciate the ways in which such thoughts and actions resonate through history in terms of events such as the Bataan Death March or the Holocaust, I have to believe they will have a clear sense of how the "Trail of Tears" represents a gross injustice. Burgan sets up this dark chapter in American history by putting the Cherokee civilization in a bright light before detailing the circumstances of the march that saw maybe as many as 4,000 Cherokees die before they reached Oklahoma.

The back of this slim but informative volume includes a Glossary, interesting Did You Know? information, a timeline of Important Dates, a list of Important People, places to go if you Want to Know More?, and an index. "The Trial of Tears" is illustrated with historic drawings, paintings, etchings, and early photographs, most of which are on point for the information provided on each page. Other volumes in the We the People series will also introduce younger readers to key events in U.S. history from the Jamestown Colony and the Boston Tea Party to the Underground Railroad and the Santa Fe Trail.

For sure this expansion is a great buy - it totally makes the game that much more fun!

At first glance, a book about the mobilization of British infantry divisions in the First World War might not seem like a very interesting subject. Look again, and note that this book is written by Martin Middlebrook, one of the most readable authors on the First World War. Middlebrook initially pulled this material together as a reference guide intended only for his own purposes, but then realized that he had the essence of a viable book and decided to publish it. As with any Middlebrook effort, the result is worthwhile. The value of this book, beyond the mere enumeration of data on every British division in the war, is that it serves to explain the strengths and weakness of the British Army in the First World War - much of which was attributable to mobilization policies.

Your Country Needs You consists of eight chapters, with the first six covering the different types of infantry divisions: regulars, the New Army, the Pals, the First-Line and Second-Line Territorials. The last two chapters cover the changing army after 1916 and the final year of the war. Two appendices detail the wartime expansion of a typical British regiment and the casualties suffered by each British regiment in the war. Only infantry units from the Home Islands are covered, but Middlebrook does address other Commonwealth forces and support units when appropriate. The 200+ photographs in the volume are also excellent and many have not appeared elsewhere (e.g. a photo of a British army recruiting desk in New York City circa 1915 - apparently the "neutral" USA allowed Allied recruiting of their nationals in our country).

Middlebrook provides an entry detailing the formation, composition and deployment of each of the 65 infantry divisions that saw active service in the First World War, although the regulars receive far-less coverage than the newly-raised units. Although Middlebrook is loathe to criticize the British mobilization effort, which was able to increase the army from 6 to 65 divisions in less than two years, it is apparent that mistakes made in the program severely degraded Britain's ability to conduct sustained combat operations on the continent. Before the war, Lord Haldane had established the Territorials (similar to the US National Guard) and an Officer Training Corps (OTC) to provide for a mobilization base to backstop the tiny regular army. However, Haldane was replaced at the start of the war by Field Marshal Kitchener, who decided to improvise an ad hoc force known as "the New Army." On top of this, volunteer units known as "Pal" units were raised by various localities and Kitchener decided to incorporate them into his New Army structure. The result was three different sources of infantry divisions, all forming from different manpower sources and with varying training standards. Furthermore, there was a severe shortage of trained officers, NCOs, and support units to fully equip the new units. Most of the New Army units had to rely on over-age "Dug Out" officers who were clueless about modern combat conditions and over 100,000 direct commissions were given to create "instant" junior officers; consequently, the new units had very low quality leadership in many cases. Eventually, Kitchener was able to deploy 30 New Army divisions and 28 Territorials, but the reader will be left to ponder whether Britain's war effort might have benefited from fewer divisions of better quality. Ultimately, the hastily raised and trained nature of the New Army probably contributed to the appalling losses at the Somme and Ypres.

Another problem that Middlebrook discusses is the serious manpower mismanagement evident in the British mobilization plan. First, the British government was overly generous with exemptions and fully one-third of the available manpower sat at the war in the industrial and agricultural sectors. Second, the regional nature of British regiments caused problems when these regions could not sustain replacements to keep their regiments near full-strength; the Scottish and Irish units were particularly difficult to keep up, and many battalions were woefully under-strength by 1917. Britain initially relied on volunteers to sustain its ground combat forces but by March 1916 this pool of volunteers had dwindled and conscription was introduced. It is also interesting that the British manpower system broke down and was unable to keep units near full-strength even before the massive losses of the Somme and Passchendaele. Conscription changed the British Army by diluting regional characteristics and loyalties. Heavy losses in 1916-1917 caused the British to combine depleted units, shift many units around and further alter the character of their divisions.

Middlebrook also discusses the issue of whether Lloyd George "hid" infantry units in England to prevent Haig from squandering more British lives in futile offensives in Flanders. The short answer is no. Many accounts of the First World War suggest otherwise and claim that George's manpower parsimony contributed to the near-fatal weakness of the British Army in France in 1918, but Middlebrook's data tells a different story. In fact, the most of the 200,000 or so British troops in the UK in 1918 were mostly very low quality Second-Line Territorial units that never fully formed. On the other hand, Middlebrook makes the point that the British had over 100,000 troops in India as well as five cavalry divisions in Europe that might have made excellent replacements (Haig the cavalryman, refused to break up his beloved horsed units no matter how archaic and useless). Instead, the British muddled through their manpower mess and often had to rely on improvised solutions, like "Bantam" divisions made up of men five feet tall (or less). The story of the mobilization of the British Army is important to understanding Britain's combat role in the First World War, and Middlebrook tells the story in an exceptional manner.