He Loved to Carry the Message


Book Description

A collection of writings of Douglas Helms on topics ranging from the history of the cotton boll weevil and the soils of the South to the history of soil and water conservation programs in the United States. Helms served over a more than thirty year career as a historian in the public service at the National Archives and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service.




He Loved to Carry the Message: The Collected Writings of Douglas Helms


Book Description

This volume is a collection of the writings of Douglas Helms on topics ranging from the history of the cotton boll weevil and the soils of the South to the history of soil and water conservation programs in the United States. They were authored over a more than thirty year career as a historian in the public service at the National Archives and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service.




Self-Publishing and Collection Development


Book Description

The current publishing environment has experienced a drastic change in the way content is created, delivered, and acquired, particularly for libraries. With the increasing importance of digital publishing, more than half the titles published in the United States are self-published. With this growth in self-published materials, librarians, publishers, and vendors have been forced to rethink channels of production, distribution, and access as it applies to the new content. Self-Publishing and Collection Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Libraries will address multiple aspects of how public and academic libraries can deal with the increase in self-published titles. While both academic and public libraries have started to grapple with the burgeoning issues associated with self-published books, many difficulties remain. To develop effective policies and procedures, stakeholders must now tackle questions associated with the transformation of the publishing landscape. Obstacles to self-publishing include the lack of reviews, the absence of cataloging and bibliographic control, proprietary formats for e-books, and the difficulty for vendors in providing these works.General chapters will include information on reviewing sources, cataloging and bibliographic control, and vendor issues. Information addressing public libraries issues will highlight initiatives to make self-published materials available at the Los Gatos Public Library in California and the Kent District Library in Michigan. Chapters on academic library issues will address why self-published materials are important for academic institutions, especially those with comprehensive collecting interests. Several self-published authors focus on how they attempt to make their works more suitable for public libraries. Finally, the book concludes with a bibliographic essay on self-publishingAs the term "traditional publishing" begins to fade and new content producers join the conversation, librarians, publishers, and vendors will play an important role in facilitating and managing the shift.




Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies


Book Description

Providence Canyon State Park, also known as Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon,” preserves a network of massive erosion gullies allegedly caused by poor farming practices during the nineteenth century. It is a park that protects the scenic results of an environmental disaster. While little known today, Providence Canyon enjoyed a modicum of fame in the 1930s. During that decade, local boosters attempted to have Providence Canyon protected as a national park, insisting that it was natural. At the same time, national and international soil experts and other environmental reformers used Providence Canyon as the apotheosis of human, and particularly southern, land abuse. Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies uses the unlikely story of Providence Canyon—and the 1930s contest over its origins and meaning—to recount the larger history of dramatic human-induced soil erosion across the South and to highlight the role that the region and its erosive agricultural history played in the rise of soil science and soil conservation in America. More than that, though, the book is a meditation on the ways in which our persistent mental habit of separating nature from culture has stunted our ability to appreciate places like Providence Canyon and to understand the larger history of American conservation.







Words That Work


Book Description

The nation's premier communications expert shares his wisdom on how the words we choose can change the course of business, of politics, and of life in this country In Words That Work, Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. With chapters like "The Ten Rules of Successful Communication" and "The 21 Words and Phrases for the 21st Century," he examines how choosing the right words is essential. Nobody is in a better position to explain than Frank Luntz: He has used his knowledge of words to help more than two dozen Fortune 500 companies grow. Hell tell us why Rupert Murdoch's six-billion-dollar decision to buy DirectTV was smart because satellite was more cutting edge than "digital cable," and why pharmaceutical companies transitioned their message from "treatment" to "prevention" and "wellness." If you ever wanted to learn how to talk your way out of a traffic ticket or talk your way into a raise, this book's for you.




This Is Not Fame


Book Description

An unfiltered, unapologetic, hilarious, and sometimes obscene assemblage of tales from the down-and-dirty traveling comedy circuit Doug Stanhope has been drunkenly stumbling down the back roads and dark alleys of stand-up comedy for over a quarter of a century, roads laden with dank bars, prostitutes, cheap drugs, farm animals, evil dwarfs, public nudity, menacing third-world police, psychotic breaks, sex offenders, and some understandable suicides. You know, just for levity. While other comedians were seeking fame, Stanhope was seeking immediate gratification, dark spectacle, or sometimes just his pants. Not to say he hasn't rubbed elbows with fame. He's crashed its party, snorted its coke, and jumped into its pool naked, literally and often repeatedly -- all while artfully dodging fame himself. Doug spares no legally permissible detail, and his stories couldn't be told any other way. They're weird, uncomfortable, gross, disturbing, and fucking funny. This Is Not Fame is by no means a story of overcoming a life of excess, immorality, and reckless buffoonery. It's an outright celebration of it. For Stanhope, the party goes on.




Scorpions' Dance


Book Description

For the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in: The untold story of President Richard Nixon, CIA Director Richard Helms, and their volatile shared secrets that ended a presidency. Scorpions' Dance by intelligence expert and investigative journalist Jefferson Morley reveals the Watergate scandal in a completely new light: as the culmination of a concealed, deadly power struggle between President Richard Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms. Nixon and Helms went back decades; both were 1950s Cold Warriors, and both knew secrets about the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as well as off-the-books American government and CIA plots to remove Fidel Castro and other leaders in Latin America. Both had enough information on each other to ruin their careers. After the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972, Nixon was desperate to shut down the FBI's investigation. He sought Helms' support and asked that the CIA intervene—knowing that most of the Watergate burglars were retired CIA agents, contractors, or long-term assets with deep knowledge of the Agency's most sensitive secrets. The two now circled each other like scorpions, defending themselves with the threat of lethal attack. The loser would resign his office in disgrace; the winner, however, would face consequences for the secrets he had kept. Rigorously researched and dramatically told, Scorpions' Dance uses long-neglected evidence to reveal a new perspective on one of America's most notorious presidential scandals.




The Armed Forces Officer


Book Description

In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.




JFK and the Unspeakable


Book Description

THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, NOW IN PAPERBACK, with a reading group guide and a new afterword by the author. At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up. Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.