Open

Open City consistently publishes great stories, poems, essays, and artwork. I look forward to each issue, because each one is so different, and because this magazine continues to be vital and relevant, esp. because many literary magazines are so staid and dull....

This is a wonderful book. As I have worked at developing a charter school in my area to create a less oppressive atmosphere for my children's learning, this book has helped me crystalize my thinking about learning in school. It advocates an organic, realistic, and less patriarchal approach to being a teacher in a public school. It accurately describes the pitfalls of trying something different and more humane in teaching, while recognizing the difficulties inherent in changing the educational system. A true, MUST READ for teachers, parents, school board members, administrators, and students.

This book shouldn't be out of print! It gives lots of practical tips, such as: How to use ed, vi, or emacs; how to write scripts in sh, sed, perl or awk; how to handle email on UNIX; basics of programming.

Put together, it's a great lesson in the history and philosophy of UNIX. Work you way through the book, and you'll have a good grasp of the UNIX way. Then, you can still use the book as a mighty handy reference.

The book is only slightly dated in spots. For example, it doesn't cover anything to do with the World Wide Web, and it doesn't mention Linux. However, these are only minor omissions. It's still an excellent book!

THE OPEN DOOR a novel by Floyd Skloot Floyd Skloot's new family study The Open Door -- his third novel of the decade -- has the tragic vitality of an old dark hunk of a bed and boxsprings abandoned in a city street. It spans two generations of distracted, thoughtless, often deliberately hurtful loving, yet towards the end devotes its most touching moments to the partial repairs that can be achieved by the victims of such homes. And while child abuse always claims the story's heart, it sets this agony within the culturally vibrant, frequently funny backdrop of mid-century Brooklyn.

The parents in question are Myron and Faye Adler, and indeed, they're spirit-addlers, plus the adders in childhood's Eden. The couple has been slap-pasted together by societal pressures, but they remain so wrong for each other they invite comparison to some of the glaring mismatches found in Dickens. Myron, a Brooklyn poultry man, at least has known a taste of love, before his own father brought his heavy hand down on Myron's passion for a shiksa. Faye lacks even heart enough to know what she's missing. Her high talk about the arts is all empty gas, laughing gas for readers -- except that we're kept as much on edge as the two tormented sons, Richard and Danny.

These boys must navigate their home like mine-sweepers, eyes and ears pitched for the first signals of adult explosions lurking everywhere. This violence limns all the neighborhoods of '50s New York, the well-swept stoops and cavernous movie houses drenched, in lesser novels, with nostalgic syrup. Skloot, on the other hand, though he's never above a fond joke at Brooklyn's expense, knows the borough too well to serve it up oversweetened; his cameos include not only Pee Wee Reese but also the Mad Bomber.

Ultimately, every child wakes to maturity, and even damaged boys like these grow up to face the inner punches and kicks of awareness -- of knowing they might still, in spite of everything, discover love. In the book's closing attempts at that discovery, Skloot never loses his wised-up, tamped-down clarity. When one of the boys cleanses some part of the family spirit by saying Kaddish for his father, the greatest moment of transcendence occurs in the front seat of a rabbi's big late-'50s sedan, in a blizzard. And the ultimate vision of family repair, of redemption takes place -- awash in sunny, sweaty promise -- in pay-to-play batting cage.

review by John Domini

Dr Ugur's edited book on open economy macroeconomics is a long-waited and impressive textbook in many ways. It is not only a well-organized and enticing textbook for intermediate and advanced macroeconomics, but also a good example of combining knowledge with teaching experience. The book is also good in introducing the students to seminal contributions as well as current debate in open economy (international) macroeconomics. What makes the book different from the other textbooks is that it "... aims to go beyond the closed-economy framework of the open economy macroeconomics textbooks and incorporate theory into policy design and implementation rather than other way around." And it does very succesfully.

The book contains fifteen chapters organized araound nine themed parts containing almost all issues in current open economy (international) macroeconomics -except for stabilization policy issues specific to developing countries. Each of the nine themed sections contains an introduction (which lays the theoretical and historical background relevant to the issues covered), questions for discussion, suggestions for further reading, and a very extensive list of references. These editorial features enhance the book's role as a textbook and makes it an essential source for open economy macroeconomics reading.

Dr Ugur's own chapters on the Mundell-Flemming model and the theory of macroeconomic policy-making are innovative and constitute significant contributions to the debate on these issues.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this exceptional open economy macroeconomics reader as an essential source of teaching and reading, and also as a useful guide to policy-making isuues in open economies.

The emergence of electronic procurement, the UN/CEFACT BCP model and XML based transactions, have brought open EDI back into the monitor of e-business developments.

The stakes are high for those legislations that have not sufficiently embodied electronic means of B2B transactions. To those that have, though the challenges are ahead of them, since there have been no functional examples of legally binding on line negotiation models as yet that could facilitate true automated B2B transactions over open networks.

This book presents a superb overview of a subject matter that is here to stay and reviews potential solutions.

Roland Barth's book recalls a wonderful intermezzo in education, between the nuclear terror of the 1950s and 60s and the grinding pressures of education reform that took off during the 1970s in the US. We chose open classrooms in the public schools for our young children and would do so again, but the public schools are now so fearful of the testing plague that they have all but forgotten this innovation. Barth's book reflects a teacher's practical experience with a non-authoritarian approach. It would of great interest and use to many younger parents today if Barth could survey what has happened to the open education movement since he wrote this book and point out the few but notable schools that are still involved in it.

Mr. Seay's poetry is a great inspiration to poets everywhere. He has harnessed a life's work into these pages. The reader can see his transformation from young poet to seasoned writer. He is truely one of the best modern poets around.

For those who enjoy the X-FILES, TWILIGHT ZONE, and late-night radio programs about UFO's or just plain strange phenomenon, this book will become the classic collector's item! The collection of happenings in this book brings together some of the world's most intriguing mysteries and reviews the evidence. Some of these are quite talked-about cases and some I had never heard of before: the Indian Rope Trick, the Man in the Iron Mask, Wandering Stones of Death Valley, Devil's Footprints in the Snow, and Kasper Hauser -- the Nuremberg Enigma. This book is highly recommended as a 'prime text' in the library of everyone who is fascinated by the unexplained!

This collection of essays, though dated by specific focus, is far and away the most timely warning to America. Hyper-nationalism, racism, conquest, and the modes of governmental control of it's citizenry all come under fire in this book, whose authors could motivate even the most stagnant stalwart. It says triumphantly, that radicals and reformers are not dead, and will not disappear until each and every member of human society is both. Howard Zinn, both contributor and introductory speaker, is a beacon towards reconstructive, revisionary history, and this century's spokesperson for the pursuit of history as a candle in the dark. Noam Chomsky, Mike Davis, Marlene Fried and others paint a portrait of modern society, clear about it's offenses to human dignity and it's abounding folly, and offer both a critique of those people and trends responsible, and a path towards salvation. I recomend this book to anyone who believes in the courage of individual spirit over those who would silence it. Radicalism is given back its good and powerful name in Open Fire.