Product Description
This volume reports the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. The formal charge to the panel--a distinguished group of expert researchers in reading, language, bilingualism, research methods, and education--was to identify, assess, and synthesize research on the education of language-minority children and youth with respect to their attainment of literacy. Funding for the project was provided to the Center for Applied Linguistics and SRI International by the U.S. Department of Educations Institute of Education Sciences and the Office of English Language Acquisition, with additional funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development provided through the U.S. Department of Education. The authors review the state of knowledge on the development of literacy in language-minority children and youth, organized around five specific themes: *Development of Literacy in Second-Language Learners; *Cross-linguistic Relationships in Second-Language Learners; *Sociocultural Contexts and Literacy Development; *Educating Language-Minority Students: Instruction and Professional Development; and *Student Assessment. Each part begins with a synthesis chapter that spells out the research questions for the chapters in that part, provides background information, describes the methodology used, summarizes the empirical findings reported, addresses methodological issues, and makes recommendations for future research. The following chapters provide more detail on the individual studies reviewed for specific research questions. The volume includes two opening chapters, Introduction and Methodology and Demographic Overview, and a closing chapter that summarizes the report, identifies cross-cutting themes, and makes recommendations for future research. The audiences for this volume include researchers interested in the development of literacy in language-minority children and youth as well as those studying literacy more generally, and those concerned with improving the education of this population of students.
Book Description
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.
This collection includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1954-1964. These fascinating stories include Service Call, Stand By, The Days of Perky Pat, and many others.
"A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection" -- Kirkus
"The collected stories of Philip K. Dick is awe inspiring". -- The Washington Post
"More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds". -- Wall Street Journal
Customer Reviews:
The Unabridged Audio Collection..........2006-03-02
Keir Dullea does a great job narrating this collection of stories by Philip K Dick. Not only does it have five very good stories, FOUR of them are the basis of Dick movies. First off is "The Minority Report." The idea was the same as the movie, but the story was totally different. I definitely didn't see the end coming... it would have made an interesting movie.
Second was "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which became the movie "Total Recall." The story was pretty short, shorter than I would have liked, but it was good. The movie was similar, but a lot was changed.
Third was "Paycheck," later made into the movie with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. This was actually the most faithful adaptaton. A man wakes up with no memory, finds a bag of clues, and uses them to trace his way back to a secret project. Only the end was different, and of course the movie expanded and added characters, but I liked the story better.
Fourth was "Second Variety" made into the movie "Screamers" starring Peter Weller. Again, the two were much alike. A very good SF story set on a bleak planet where clone robots have wiped out much of civilization and have found a way to manufacture themselves.
The fifth and shortest is "The Eyes Have It," which is a brief, humorous piece where the main character takes the wording from a romance novel literally...
A strong collection and a good recommendation for anyone who wants to compare the stories and movies and wants to get almost all of them in one shot. If only it had contained the story for "Imposter."
Miss O's review.......2004-02-22
Minority Report was a very interesting book. It kept me on the edge of my seat, and it threw many unexpected twists at me. John Anderton, a respectable chief of police,is accused of a murder that hasn't even happened yet, and he will stop at nothing to prove his innocence. Leopold Kaplin (Anderton's victim) will stop at nothing to see that Anderton is detained and that the pre-crime system is proven to be a failure. Anderton suspects his wife, Lisa, and his new "co-worker" Witwar are behind the strange accusation of his murder. This book is full of lies and deceit, and in the end Anderton doesn't know whom to trust. The three pre-cogs hold the secret to Anderton's fate...does Anderton really murder Kaplin??...Or does he get the information he needs just in time? Read Minority Report to find out!
A Must for the Dick Fan. Good Intro for Dick Neophyte.......2004-01-30
It's tempting to say that these stories from 1954, 1955, 1958, and 1963 represent great periods of prolific creativity for Dick and the working out of themes and ideas that later found their way into his more famous novels. But Dick was more often than not prolific and frequently recycled motifs and themes and even character names from stories into novels. What the Dick scholar will find here is a growing emphasis, at least in the short story format, on illusion and fakery, the seeds of some of Dick's novels, and, for the first time, stories which convey the frequent despair and desperation of those novels.
But the Dick fan and scholar is going to read this collection as a matter of course. What does it offer for those just discovering Dick or his casual readers?
Of course, there is the famous title story. However, with it, Dick seems more interested in posing a logic puzzle based on the implications of precognition than making a serious political statement even though the story features much more political intrigue than the movie based on it. Indeed, with it and several Dick stories here, one gets the sense that the political struggles between various government agencies owe a lot to a study of the Soviet Union or, more probably, the Third Reich. There are other minor stories: "Stand-By" and a rare sequel, "What'll We Do With Ragland Park?". Their main attraction is Dick's weird speculation on future media -- prophecies which don't seem far from the mark 40 years later. The "news clown" of these stories doesn't seem, apart from his makeup, that different from our late night comedy hosts in America. But then the listings in _TV Guide_ often remind me of Dick. They also show Dick's fondness for theorizing odd mutations of American government. Here the President has been replaced by computer.
In "Novelty Act", the nation is ruled by a permanent First Lady who inflicts her cultural tastes on America via public tv. She's mistress, wife, and mother to the nation, many of whom long to audition their talents at the White House. Later incorporated into the novel _The Simulacra_, it is the first story of Dick's that doesn't just mention the despair and desperation of its hero but induces them in the reader as effectively as many of his novels do.
There's also some political fakery afoot in the story and that theme is echoed in "The Mold of Yancy" (reworked for _The Penultimate Truth_), which features a culture built around a doggedly anodyne Eisenhowerish everyman, and "If There Were No Benny Cemoli". The latter is one of the book's highlights and, against a background of searching for war criminals on a devastated Earth, built around the proposition that reality is what the _New York Times_ says it is. The spirit of a dead businessman haunts the mediasphere and a political convention in "What the Dead Man Say". It reminded me of some of the loas in early William Gibson.
Fakery of a forensic sort is the idea of "The Unreconstructed M". The idea of a robot built to leave clues designed to frame someone for murder was intriguing. However, because the story goes on too long and into unnecessary tangents, this is also minor Dick.
At this point in the short story part of his career, Dick seems to be less interested in mutants and berserk machines than before. Still, we get an automated command and control economy that needs reprogramming in "Autofac", and "Recall Mechanism" explores the link between precognitive mutants and certain psychological tics.
The science fiction story device used most often here is time travel. "Service Call" has some engineers getting a disturbing glimpse at the future of conformity machinery. Or, as the ad says, "Why be half loyal?". "Captive Market" has a miserly shopkeeper who only sees a profit where others see a horrifying future.
Time travel gets mixed with meta-science fiction in a couple of uncharacteristic Dick stories. In "Waterspider", time travelers come back to snatch Dick's friend Poul Anderson because, you see, all science fiction writers are unconscious precognitives, and they need his help on an experimental space project. This story drops plenty of famous names and even mentions Dick's inspiration, A. E. van Vogt. "Orpheus with Clay Feet" works a witty variation on the idea of time travelers meeting famous artists of the past. Here uncreative people like our protagonist can take solace in inspiring great works of art if not creating them. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Here the artist is the greatest science fiction writer of all time, Jack Dowland.
"Explorers We", somewhere in the middle range of quality, strikes one as a _Twilight Zone_ episode about aliens' failure to communicate. "Oh, To Be a Blobel!" is a story probably more famous then it deserves to be. Judging from Dick's notes as to his intentions, it's mostly a failure to illustrate the Nietzsche maxim about becoming a dragon when battling dragons. However, it works on other levels.
Along with "If There Were No Benny Cemoli", the gem of the collection is "The Days of Perky Pat". While children roam a landscape blighted by nuclear war and engage in useful pursuits like hunting and making knives, their parents are underground and expending their energy on making elaborate layouts for their Barbie-like Perky Pat dolls. Their infantile obsession with recreating the minutia of a vanished world is enabled by handy care packages dropped by benovelent Martians. Dick has some weirdly plausible things to say about play and the role of toys in our lives and mental health. This story also inspired Dick's _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_.
In some ways, the variety of themes here dilutes the power of Dick's typical obsessions, especially the metaphor of machine as an anti-life force. There are also fewer really exceptional stories here than in the earlier volumes of this series. However, it is still as good an introduction to Dick as some of the collections he edited himself.
Don't Start Here.......2004-01-05
It is unfortunate that the movie Minority Report will result in many readers first exposure to Dick being this book. This is nothing like the movie so viewers will be disappointed... plus he has done better as a writer.
This is a collection of short stories. You will recognise these stories as the bare bones from which numerous movie scripts have been developed. The stories show Dick's originality but also expose his weakness in terms of handling plot development and compositional devices to enhance the story line.
As we have witnessed how his stories have been manipulated, enhanced and embellished for the screen, it's obvious to see that what we're getting with this collection is a very basic treatment of each story's potential. I believe they show Dick to have a great imagination but to be only an average writer.
I greatly enjoyed "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" which shows much greater depth as a writer. If you haven't read Dick before I recommend you start there and leave this one to hard core fans.
Clever, but not great literature.......2003-07-02
Clever is a good word to sum up Philip K Dick's short stories. His plots and visions of dystopian futures are imaginative, occasionally thought provoking, and satisfying. However, his writing... isn't. He has an unfortunate tendancy to tell instead of show - to lead the reader by the hand through each twist and turn in his characters' heads, put in a lot of clumsy, not-quite-believeable dialog, and then beat you over the head with the punch line at the end. It's as if he's in such a hurry to get you to understand his point that he can't be bothered with such irrelvancies as believable characters and situations.
This is not to say that the stories aren't good: they are! I enjoyed "The Minority Report" and "We Remember it for You Wholesale" (much more of a commedy in Dick's incarnation than the movie) in particular. But what we have here is one of the few authors who is improved by being turned into a screenplay. Even "Ahnold" - never accused of over-subtlety - leant a sense of mystery and believable confusion to Total Recall almost entirely lacking in the short story that inspired it.
Customer Reviews:
Strange and Wonderful..........2006-01-22
The minority report is a great book if you like short science fiction. Phillip Dick is one of the masters of the genre. Dick also wrote the stories for Blade Runner and Total Recall in case you didn't know. The title story [made into the Tom Cruise movie] is only a small part of this collection. Frankly, the story has a slightly different ending, and in my opinion, more conceptually pleasing. What I enjoyed about this book is that there are lots of stories. Some are hits, and some are misses, but all of them illustrate Dick's ability to create worlds and characters that are flawed and believable. There are no clear-cut heroes in the stories - they often have ulterior motives. The one common thread running through all of his works is that they are strange. It is almost as if his mind worked differently than the rest of the human races. He sees things, and has ideas that are so complex and innovative that it baffles the mind that people like Dan Brown gain fame for the Da Vinci Code, and Phillip Dick died Poor, and largely unrecognized outside a small group of science fiction fans. If you want the challenge yourself, and expand your mind, buy this book and give his writings a chance.
Relic113
One of Phillip K. Dick's better collections of short stories.......2005-06-18
The Minority Report is volume four of the collected shorts of the late, and very great, Phillip K. Dick. This collection spans his writing period between 1954 and 1964, but you may be surprised at how up to date the feel of Dick's fiction is. In spite of their age, these stories have maintained a freshness that can only be found with excellent human characterizations nestled inside technical sci-fi.
Along with the short, The Minority Report, which the 2002 Spielberg movie starring Tom Cruise was based upon, there are many other strange treats in store for your science fiction palate. Here are a few of my favorites:
Autofac, where a post-war network insists on running the world for the good of the citizens. The Mold Of Yancy, a lovely yarn about a seemingly harmless autocrat on an outer colony. The Unreconstructed M, where murder comes in small, shifty boxes. Explorers We, a never-ending cycle of hopes dashed. War Game, the harmless, or not so harmless, tactics of market domination. What The Dead Men Say, exploring a world where half-life after death is expected. Oh, To Be A Blobel digests the aftereffects of infiltrating the enemy's forces by changing appearances. And my favorite, The Days Of Perky Pat, where survivors of the last great war fight their battles with dollhouses.
I believe that this is one of Dick's better collections, so if you are hankering for some good, old-fashioned sci-fi that will let you kick back into the future, pick up The Minority report, and Enjoy!
TOC:
AutoFac
Service Call
Captive Market
The Mold Of Yancy
The Minority Report
Recall Mechanism
The Unreconstructed M
Explorers We
War Game
If There Were No Benny Cemoli
Novelty Act
WaterSpider
What The Dead Men Say
Orpheus With Clay Feet
The Days Of Perky Pat
Stand-By
What'll We Do With Ragland Park?
Oh, To Be A Blobel
Enjoy the book!
Interesting--to say the least.......2003-07-16
This was my first introduction to PKD, and although all the stories aren't the best they do entertain. My biggest complaint is many of the stories overlap in odd ways, and in turn make them feel a tad repetative. An example is the pre-cog (used for full effect in 'Minority Report') is brought up in numerous other stories although these stories take place in alternate futures. Dick seems almost obsessed with a nuclear fallout future, and although some of these stories are interesting, many are just dull.
I enjoyed the stories as a whole, and recommend them to anyone who enjoys looking into the art of the short story and the mind of PKD.
Dick the Revelator.......2002-06-21
A decade ago, Philip K. Dick's complete short stories were published as a five volume series. Prospective buyers should note that this is simply a reissue of the fourth of those five volumes. It isn't a "best of" short story collection; you get the brilliant along with stories tossed off to keep bread on the table. It's still worth four stars. (The fifth volume is also particularly worth owning, and all five are still in print on backorder.)
You can't compare Philip K. Dick to any other science fiction writer. About the only other author he can be fairly compared to at all is Franz Kafka - but a workingman's Kafka, shorn of all pretension or artiness. All his heros are the same besieged everyman as K., wrestling with elusive metaphysics, impossible transformations, a cosmic bureaucracy, and a dysfunctional society - but also with overdue rent bills, insistent advertising, and messy divorces.
Precogs show up in many of Philip K. Dick's works, but Dick himself was not particularly in the prediction business. Nearly every world he created, large (in his novels) or small (in stories like these) was a future dystopia. But whereas the dystopias of other sf writers make you shudder and think, "Yes, it could be like that... If Things Go On," Dick's have a different flavor, a different kind of immediacy.
And the reason for that is, that Philip K. Dick was not so much a science fiction writer as a prophet. He showed us a future that mirrored the present so faithfully that he could convince us of what he always felt - that dystopia is already here; apocalypse is already here. All you have to do (the original meaning of apocalypse) is tear away the veils.
Many people are going to take a fresh interest in Mr. Dick's writings because of the movie Minority Report. For them, I give this advice: go first to his novels (some of the best ones are "Ubik", "A Scanner Darkly", "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). You have to immerse yourself in his world to grasp where he's coming from, and short stories don't give you room to do that. The novels do.
For those who already know his stuff, this book is a treat. Besides the great title story, you'll see the seeds of several of his novels here ("Palmer Eldritch" prefigured in "Days of Perky Pat", "Simulacrum" in "The Mold of Yancy", and "Ubik" in "What the Dead Men Say").
Unbelievable.......2002-05-27
Although these are not necessarily Philip K. Dick's best short works, they are necessary reading for every fan. As the writer in the introduction says, the reason I read PKD is because he has that oddest and most unique of all virtues in a writer - strangeness. You'll be hard-pressed to find stories stranger than this anywhere. As PKD himself says in the notes section at the end of the book, he often sold his stories to the flexible SF magazine Galaxy, as the more famous Astounding and its editor, John W. Campbell, considered his stories "nuts." Also, this notes section is very interesting for other reasons: it becomes apparent in reading them that these stories have much deeper meanings than they at first appear to have. It is quite entertaining enough to read them for their sure strangeness - you will laugh out loud often reading PKD - mostly at the dialogue, which you'll be hard-pressed to determine whether it is entirely unreal, or more real than most. However, deeper and more profound themes were always resonating at the bottom of the well of Philip K. Dick's stories. Although he was quite consistent and extremely prolific with his writings, some of his stories were definitely better than others. Still, everything the man ever wrote is worth reading. This particular collection contains some of his best - and most interesting - shorter works. Covering the period from 1954-1964, we get such classic stories as The Minority Report, an all-time classic SF story; The Unreconstructed M, a dramatic story of spine-tingling SF suspense; and many others - classic stories, profound stories, and just plain weird stories. This is some of the best science fiction published since the Golden Age of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. Essential reading for any fan of science fiction, or of off-kilter writing in general.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent, practical book for ESL writing tutors . . .
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ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors
Shanti Bruce , and
Ben Rafoth
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ASIN: 0867095806 |
Book Description
This collection will fill a huge gap in teacher preparation materials for writing center tutors. The papers in this highly practical and well balanced collection will help tutors who work with ESL writers and those who train and supervise them not only with their one-to-one conferencing techniques but also with the development of tutoring materials appropriate for L2 writers. I commend the editors and authors for their valuable contribution to the L2 writing field.
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This book offers extremely valuable insights from a variety of different voices on how tutoring ESL students can differ dramatically from working with native speakers. Of particular interest, though, is also the similarity of our tutoring practices with these two distinct populations.
- Vicki Russell, Director of the Writing Studio, Duke University
Finally, a book written for writing center tutors who assist ESL students. Combining practical tutoring advice with insights that build cultural bridges, ESL Writers helps tutors create a more meaningful and effective exchange between themselves and nonnative English speakers.
ESL Writers is divided into three parts:
- Cultural Contexts examines many of the challenges students face as they become proficient speakers and writers of English.
- The ESL Tutoring Session focuses on individual meetings with students whose primary language is not English. Packed with helpful tips and new perspectives on familiar routines, this section demonstrates strategies likely to be effective with nonnative speakers.
- A Broader View adds depth and breadth to the discussion by demonstrating how writing centers abroad operate, offering insights into the rules and conventions of English, and sharing the stories of ESL students who visit the writing center.
For tutors, this indispensable guide gives them the know-how to make better informed choices as they conduct sessions with ESL students. For writing center directors, ESL Writers is the perfect training text, and its examples and scenarios are the ideal jumping-off point for staff meetings and group problem-solving sessions.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent, practical book for ESL writing tutors . . ........2004-11-18
This collection of short essays by various writers is an excellent survey of the everyday practical issues facing college writing center directors and tutors who work with ESL writers. The editors, Bruce and Raforth, are at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where Raforth is the writing center director.
The opening chapters on culture and language acquisition open wide the subject of culture shock faced by international students from countries where assumptions about writing, learning, research, and self-expression can be vastly different from American ones. The heart of the book focuses on a variety of aspects dealing directly with tutoring itself - getting started, reading an ESL writer's text, avoiding appropriation, helping ESL writers clarify their intended meaning, looking at the whole text, editing line by line, tutoring ESL writers online, raising questions about plagiarism, and so on. The closing chapters deal with broader issues: the role of writing in higher education abroad, the difficulty of explaining English, and a look at writing centers from the point of view of ESL students.
I found this book full of thoughtful and practical reflections on the challenges of helping ESL students master academic writing in American universities. Analysis and opinions are based on research and extend a professional discourse dating back twenty years. Altogether the book is informative and highly accessible, written in plain English, unlike much theory-driven (and often politicized) scholarship on composition and rhetoric today. I recommend it to anyone affiliated with a writing center and especially to tutors who work with ESL students. It would make a fine textbook.
Customer Reviews:
A different Hitchens.......2005-10-04
Hitchens is my favourite non-fiction writer. Perhaps I am a Philistine, but I didn't really enjoy this one - Hitchens today usually writes taut, apt prose, while this book is more on the flowery side. I also wasn't particularly interested in a lot of the subject matter, but this is perhaps because I was born in 1980. I'd recommend Love, Poverty and War over this as it is both more topical and contains more cutting and interesting writing.
expose on several topics.......2003-04-04
expose on several topics
not always an easy read if you are not familiar or itnerested in the particular subject that christopher is writing about
The epicure and the moralist.......2002-05-13
I became familiar with Mr.Hitchens' work through his Vanity Fair articles where I became intrigued that a publication that devotes much of its space to the ongoings in the Hamptons and the biceps of Tom Cruise would publish such a pungent and brilliant observer of monarchy, faith, Congress and the lies of the rich and famous.
In the meantime he has become quite a household name and I'm afraid some of the exposure, the networking and the various stints on not so objective and erudite Pol talkshows have somewhat mildened his capacity to irritate with truth. But this volume and "Prepared For The Worst" are topnotch and it's a pleasure to follow him to wherever his curiosity takes him. It is a rare man who can skewer the follies of the policies towards Nicaragua, the smug "humor" of the darling of the neo-con set P.K.O'Rourke and relish in the joys of uncensored boozing, cigarette smoking as a tool for thinking and pleasure( or in the least nobody else's business) and the merits of any pleasure that is private and not available through an ad or state sponsored through the family values crowd. These essays read like the work of a strong idealist who has the brain power and nerve to back up his findings.
Best living political essayist in US/UK.......1999-05-27
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I naturally learned a contempt for journalism as it is currently practiced. The great problem with journalists today, seems to me, is not their slavish conformity, their scandal-mongering, or even their sales-and-marketing obsession with the bottom line. It is their LACK OF IDEAS. They have little or no training in logic, history, aesthetics, or any of the other arts that are necessary if one is to continually shed light on the present.
Christopher Hitchens, by contrast, has all of these things. I bought this book three years ago and have read it through more times than I can remember. It makes intelligible sense of almost every major event that occurred during the late 80s and early 90s. To boot, it is witty and entertaining. If you feel suffocated by the evening news, NPR, the New York Times, and other demographically-tailored drivel, buy this book and everything else Hitchens has published.
How to survive 3 weeks in Canberra........1999-04-12
December 1995 - I have been sent to Australia's national capitol for 3 weeks to undertake testing of some new software for my employer. Any one who has been to Canberra knows that it is like any other purpose built national capitol - some stately buildings, a certain amount of intellectual grandeur about the place but otherwise a giant surburb infected by too much narcotic abuse.
It was in this environment I read this book and it saved my sanity (if not my life). I was loaned a paperback copy by my hostess's housemate after watching Hitchens perform brilliantly as part of a panel discussing Watergate which also included G Gordon Liddy - after sitting through a 5 minute tirade by Liddy, the interviewer (Australia's Kerry O'Brien) said "Christopher Hitchens" to which Hitchens responded as if just woken from sleep with the words "Err yes? Do you want me to plug my book?"
At that point I decided I must read (if not purchase) that book.
And the book - any writer who can work PG Wodehouse into a critique of the Gennifer Flowers phenomenon gets my stamp of approval.
Hitchens's critiques and analysis are taut, energetic and yet also built upon the relaxed auro of the supremely confident without (much) arrogance. And even if he does get a bit smug, it's still highly entertaining and more informative than any comparative writing.
Most impressive (on the "quality" side of things) is the breadth of subjects he covers - all the way from George Eliot (yeah, I know that one's on the blurb) to smokin' 'n' drinkin' via Nixon's mother.
And there are no half-arsed marsupial metaphors as in his piece on Robert Hughes in Vanity Fair.
Buy this book and become a better smart arse.
Book Description
According to conventional wisdom, American public schools have suffered a terrible decline and are in need of dramatic reform. Today's high school students, it is alleged, display an ignorance of things that every elementary student knew a generation ago. American business leaders warn that rising illiteracy and "innumeracy" threaten our competitiveness in the global marketplace. Political scientists worry that poor schooling is undermining the very foundations of our democracy as American adults exercise their citizenship on the basis of dumbed-down sound-bites. But are things really that bad? What evidence are these criticisms based on, and does it hold up under examination? In this book, Richard Rothstein analyzes the statistical and anecdotal evidence and shows that public schools, by and large, are not falling down on the job of educating our children. To the contrary, by many measures they are doing better than in the past. Minority students have improved their test scores significantly, and overall dropout rates have fallen. Moreover, our schools educate more poor children, and more children whose native language is foreign, than ever before. Further improvement in American education, Rothstein argues, should be based on an accurate appraisal of strengths and weaknesses rather than on exaggeration. Rothstein shows in convincing detail how standardized tests comparing American students' performance today with that of the past, and with student performance internationally, frequently confuse apples with oranges. The nation's student population today is very different from that of decades ago and from the student population in other nations. As critics of public education promote private alternatives and politicians debate the value of standardized national testing, The Way We Were? is especially timely.
Book Description
In the world of The Minority Report, Commissioner John Anderton is the one to thank for the lack of crime. He is the originator of the Precrime System, which uses "precogs"--people with the power to see into the future--to identify criminals before they can do any harm. Unfortunately for Anderton, his precogs perceive him as the next criminal. But Anderton knows he has never contemplated such a thing, and this knowledge proves the precogs are fallible. Now, whichever way he turns, Anderton is doomed--unless he can find the precogs's "minority report"--the dissenting voice that represents his one hope of getting at the truth in time to save himself from his own system.
A film version of The Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, will be released this summer–further proof of the enduring appeal of Philip K. Dick's visionary fiction.
Customer Reviews:
Get it on bargain price.......2006-05-08
I was lucky to get this one on a bargain price. I don't mind it only focuses on 1 short story. The book design is peculiar and unique which I appreciate as a source of idea.
The story itself is lesser in action than the movie but obviously the movie managed to bring the main frame of it, Precrime System, with its 3 precogs. Aside from the action, the differences lay in the event which started the whole thing and the origin understanding of what a minority report is. Food for the mind.
Mind-boggling Short.......2006-04-21
Reading this book is like watching a short film. It takes about two hours to finish and each minute is filled with heart-thumping situations. There are so many suspects in the story that the mind works overtime in such a short span. It is very interesting and a good detection exercise. Philip K. Dick was a marvelous science fiction author and this particular tale of his is captivating. A police commissioner finds himself in trouble on the day his new assistant arrives at the office. He starts suspecting everybody due to his age and politics but eventually answers his own questions. At the end, with a little bit of twists and turns here and there, he gets what he wants. The book layout is different from a normal design. At times it is difficult to hold it and turn the pages. But, that doesn't change the beauty of the narration.
Story: 5 stars; Book Layout: 1 star; Book Price: 1 star.......2005-08-30
+++++
This short science fiction story was published in 1956 and written by Philip K. Dick (1928 to 1982).
In the future, murderers are caught before they actually commit the murder. How is this achieved? By harnessing the extraordinary power of mutant humans who have the ability of precognition (the perception of an event, a murder in the story's case, before it occurs). These mutant humans are called "precogs."
The police force utilizes these precogs (there are three) by developing a "Precrime" unit where the precogs are connected to a bank of computers that reads the precog visions and processes the future murders that will happen. The only part of the story that is dated is that punch cards are used in the computers. Otherwise, this story could have been written for the present (2005).
Police Commissioner John Anderton finds that this new Precrime system is working well until the precogs have a prevision that the commissioner himself will commit a murder. The rest of the story is about the commissioner running from the Precrime unit and trying to find proof of his innocence.
Now that you know what the story is about you might ask why it has such a strange title. When two or all three precogs agree on a prevision of murder, a "majority report" is generated. If one precog disagrees, then a "minority report" is generated. As we are told in the story:
"Unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped for but seldom-achieved phenomenon...It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant. This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures. If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future."
It is this minority report that the commissioner is after to prove his innocence.
The story is an interesting and fast read. It can be appreciated not only by science fiction fans but mystery fans as well.
The movie "Minority Report" directed by Steven Spielberg expands this short story. Spielberg and friends effectively create a futuristic society only hinted at in Dick's short story.
Finally, there are two main problems with the book. First, the layout. It flips like a legal pad when read. I found this unnatural and distracting since I'm used to book pages flipping from right to left not up and down. Second, the price. This book costs just over $10.00. And you get only one story! An anthology of Dick's works that I found sells at a higher price but has twenty-one of his short stories (including this one). The price works out to 80 cents per story.
Thus my recommendation is to not buy this book new (unless you have money to burn). Instead:
(1) Buy this book used. As of the date of this review, used copies are selling for 1 cent!!
(2) Check out a Dick anthology (that contains this short story) from the library. Then photocopy this short story.
In conclusion, this short story is a very interesting and forms the basis of a good science fiction movie. However, the book itself is laid out badly and is too expensive.
** 1/3
(book first published 2002; short story published 1956; other Philip K. Dick short stories; 10 chapters; 105 pages)
+++++
A short story turned into a book (?).......2004-09-21
This story and the Spielberg are associated by name only. And if that wasn't odd enough, this is a short story published as a book. Philip Dick had hundreds of short stories, yet this one gets published with a handbound cover? If you buy the anthology of short stories with this inside, you will see that it takes up only about 30 pages or so.
Having seen the movie first, the details of the book threw me off a great deal. I won't spoil it for you, but there are a great many things that Spielberg and company took liberties with. You are forewarned!
This is a decent product to pick up used or at your local library, but the short story collections are a much better deal.
Minority Report.......2004-05-20
John Anderton is the head of the Pre-crime system and thinks there are no flaws, that the system is perfect. However, when he learns that he is going to commit a murder he hopes and prays that there are flaws in the system. He then learns that there are flaws and that there is a minority report. The three precogs do not always agree, and there is sometimes a minority report of what might happen if the murder doesn't. There is a minority report and after he learns he is going to kill someone he tries not to. When he learns that if he doesn't murder the person he is supposed to, it will show that the system is not perfect, and that it has flaws and it will be shut down. Instead of worrying about his safety, Anderton worries more about the system and decides to kill the man for the sake of the system. He does kill the man, saves the system, and then has to escape and hide so he won't have to go to jail. I liked this book but it didn't end that well. It sort of just stopped. It's like me not finishing my sentence. I'll see you....
Average customer rating:
- Revisiting an old friend
- Excellent HLM, Just A Bit Mean Here & There!
- The Meat of Mencken
- A fix for all those addicted to contemplation.
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Minority Report (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf)
H. L. Mencken
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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ASIN: 0801885337 |
Amazon.com
The great skeptic and prose stylist H.L. Mencken had a lifelong habit of keeping notebooks that he'd plumb for ideas. He eventually collected many brief essays from his notebooks and published them as Minority Report, claiming in the book's introduction that the pieces had been selected at random. That may be true, but as Mencken's writing discipline seemed to require him to always produce elegant prose, it's fair to say that his random notebook entries are superior to the polished essays of many other writers. Mencken was simply a national treasure, and Minority Report, as it contains a great many of his observations on a wide variety of subjects, is a good place to begin to get a taste of his eccentrically intelligent style.
Book Description
With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken's death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy.
In 1956, Mencken read through his notebooks and extracted those pieces he thought truest, most pertinent, most precise, or most likely to blow the dust out of a reader's brain.
Customer Reviews:
Revisiting an old friend.......2005-09-21
This outstanding collection of pithy, sage, irreverent and frequently hilarious snippets by the master wordsmith Henry Louis Mencken were prefaced by a statement of his disappointment that he wouldn't enjoy another lifetime in which he could develop his notes into articles or books. I too share his regret. As one who was captivated by the clarity and accuracy of his writings at a tender age, it gives me great pleasure to reread a replacement copy of Minority Report. If you only read two books by the Supreme American Iconoclast, make this one of them (by the way, the other should be 'A Mencken Chrestomathy'). You'll not be sorry!
Excellent HLM, Just A Bit Mean Here & There!.......2005-08-21
This selection of HLM aphorisms appeared in his later years at the age of 68, just before his health seriously deteriorated. Basically a book of about 432 short witticisms, much like A. Bierce's DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, but with a bit too much bile a times. Obviously, he enjoys jabbing at the powerful ("Roosevelt II", among others), the New Deal, Lawyers, Politicians, Professors, just about everyone, or, all the hippocrites, idiots,morons,(standard words in the HLM lexicon) out there. Politically he seems to subscribe to the hard Victorian "Sink or Swim" philosophy, and constantly cracks those who cannot pull their own weight. Democracy? A sham for losers and loafers. Elections? Only those who have supported themselves for 5 years need apply. Mississippians and Tenneseeans? Mainly dim wits and holy rollers of inferior stock. Some of these comments get repetitive, and more than a little tasteless. But,still, at his best, he is incomparable, especially in critiqueing organized (mainly Christian) religion. In his view a total sham, completely irrational and unscientific. In fact, the world would be vastly improved if everyone took a few moments to consider his irreverent, but totally honest, religion comments.Wars? Completely without morals and really a suckers game run by incompetents with no knowledge of the horrors being unleached. So today HLM would be a far right libertarian, but would shoot his poisonous darts to all the war mongerers and phoney flag wavers. So where is today's HLM? There are a few who try, but none who can come close!
The Meat of Mencken.......2001-05-20
This is a wonderful collection of pithy Mencken writings which you may often see quoted. If you have no intention of reading his full essays, read this. This was one of the best bathroom books I have ever had. It is funny, amusing, nihilistic, and condescendingly brutal (or is it brutally condescending?). Mencken writes with the authority of a god, but one with a strong sense of humor and an honest reverence for honesty. This is one of the most original, interesting, and inspirational American writers period. So pick up a copy and see your illusions melt away.
A fix for all those addicted to contemplation........1999-07-15
Chock-full of interesting and valuable insights, Minority Report encapsulates much of the Mencken oeuvre. The author never leaves room for doubt about his meaning. Not a few of the notebook entries reveal that Mencken had an inclination towards the visionary, as when he treats of scientific subjects. Mencken means everything he says; and although his writing has a very sharp flavor, his implicit message to the reader is that he is being as honest as possible within the confines of his own talents of reasoning and understanding. Mencken offends only insofar as the reader is guilty of taking himself too seriously. As the average entry is relatively brief, Minority Report accommodates all those who love to read deep but fun literature yet who find themselves always in a hurry with little time to devote to prolonged readings. Enthusiasts of H.L. Mencken will be pleased to find his hallmark of iconoclasm stamped on every page of Minority Report. For those new to Mencken, this is a good place to start. Those who have smarted aplenty from his other writings, either from too much laughter or from having watched their cherished preconceived notions herded to the slaughterhouse, should be pleasantly surprised by the depth, range and poignancy of H.L. Mencken's notebooks.
Customer Reviews:
One of the best overviews of US monetary history.......2007-08-07
This book makes an excellent case for a return to a full gold standard. This is an idea that has been spurned by the economics mainstream, due in no small part to the influence of J.M. Keynes, who famously called gold the 'barbarous relic'. Fiat currencies, with their partner, fractional reserve banking, provide 'elasticity' to the money supply -- a sort of code word which means that they give to the government the ability to destroy the value of the currency at wil, inflating prices and causing a credit bubble which will inevitably pop, causing pain to both rich and poor.
This book is intended for the average educated reader, so do not expect a nuanced treatment of economic theory; yet what theory there is here is pretty clearly presented. If you like this book, you should also read Murray Rothbard's "The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar", "What has the government done to our money?"; also Griffin's "The Creature from Jekyll Island", and Bonner and Wiggin's recent work, "Empire of Debt".
An economic history of the United States.......2007-07-17
This book offers a well documented, detailed account of the history of money and banking in the United States. In it, Congressman Paul outlines why fractional-reserve banking, unenforced property rights and money not backed by hard assets cause inflation, and what the consequences of inflation really are. The concepts are fairly easy to grasp. Sadly, in a noble effort to achieve the greatest amount of integrity, and originally intended for an audience of higher caliber, this scholarly work is unlikely to be read by the average layperson. Albeit comprehensible by many, it combines two subjects - history and economics - that normally force all but the most steadfast inquirers of truth to avoid. I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in monetary policy and reform.
Ron Paul's Report of the U.S. Gold Comission.......2001-05-02
This book first written in the early 1980's by the honorable Congressman from Texas and Lewis Lehrman discusses the feasibility of bringing back the gold standard. Moreover, Paul makes the case for the gold standard and the case for abolishing the Federal Reserve, which has to its credit: a Great Depression, bloated government growth, skyrocketing public and private debt, stagnating economic growth, and an inflationary boom in the 1970's.
Amidst, rampant inflation of the 1970's, a skyrocketing deficit... Things didn't look so good and a number of business and political leaders seriously enterained and supported the idea of reverting back to the gold standard. Sooner or later the financial institutions and fiat money cartel will abuse its power of the press and inflate us into another depression. Perhaps then instead of migrating to a world bank and currency structure, we will kill the fiat money machine once and for all.
Lastly consider these words: "Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues... A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government spending under a gold standard is severely limited.... In the absence of a gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process..." Moreover, the author also makes it known that the gold standard wouldn't have the prolonged economic distortions and vicious boom-and-bust cycles that fiat money systems have. Who was the author? None other than Alan Greenspan in an essay called Gold and Economic Freedom. When Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chief, is face-to-face with Ron Paul... in the back of his head, he knows Paul is right and that the central bank is wrong!
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The Ku Klux Conspiracy: Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States
Report of Committee , and
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