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Many students dread writing essays because no one has bothered to break down the process in a clear, down-to-earth fashion. Writing Matters is the remedy. This revised second edition improves on the first by presenting actual student essays for classroom discussion and by expanding the section on editing. Award-winning English Professor Peter G. Beidler offers solid advice that includes, in part: how to find a topic, what constitutes a bold thesis, how to select and organize evidence, what to include in an introduction, how to develop a voice, and how to doctor a sickly paragraph. Although originally written for first-year university students learning composition, Writing Matters has also been invaluable to ESL students and those in high school preparing for the SATs.

Childfree, childless ... these are the labels society gives to women who do not bear children, due to choice or genetics. Being Fruitful without Multiplying started as one woman''s quest to come to terms with her decision not to bear children. In conversation with Renee and Janice-two close relatives from different generations-Patricia found that they shared another, unexpected bond: each belonged to childless or childfree social networks. All three were weary of questions from well-meaning people who wondered why they had not born children. As they began to reach out to others in earnest, they found that many who belonged to their diverse online communities were eager to share their stories. Some had chosen to be childfree and some were childless because of biological factors but grew to appreciate the advantages. Some of those who chose not to reproduce still decided to become stepparents or adopt. Over sixty women and a few men added their voices to those of the three main authors. The result is this rich and varied anthology, which includes stories from many different countries, cultures and income groups.

William Cross Hazelton spent four years as a brave and devoted member of the Union cavalry in the Civil War. During that time he corresponded with Fannie Morrill, the young woman who would become his fiancée and eventually his wife. His letters describe the life of an Illinois volunteer in the Army of the Potomac, the military unit that fought Lee''s Army of Northern Virginia in most of the big battles of the Civil War: Williamsburg, Richmond, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Hazelton describes the battles from the viewpoint of an ordinary cavalryman slogging through the mud, following erratic orders, surviving for days on enemy turf eating nothing but hardtack, and wondering why the Union army, though superior in numbers and supplies, kept losing battles. After Lee surrendered and Lincoln was assassinated, Hazelton became part of the cavalry posse that chased John Wilkes Booth across the Potomac. His letters breathe new life into a war so devastating that it still scars the American psyche, while exhibiting a moral perspective far ahead of its time.

To be a writer in America, you have to bleed. Eddie Iturbi, a young car-thief obsessed with the dark magic of Beat culture in a mythic San Francisco, sets off on a spaced-out crusade to connect with the Beat gods. En route Eddie links up with living legend Leo Franchetti, the last of the Beat poets. Leo sends Eddie to the Buzzard Cult, where a mysterious mentor reveals the writer''s ritual of blood and words. Changed and invigorated and back in the City, Eddie falls in love with a snake dancer at the Feathered Serpent. She can''t save him from Scarred Wanda, jealous bad-girl of literature, whose goal is to destroy Eddie before Jack Kerouac relays all the magical secrets of the literary universe. Immortality is just a book away. Will Eddie live long enough to write it?

Must we always teach from the inside of a classroom? Do periodic exams encourage learning as well as daily quizzes do? Do you schedule individual conferences with each student at the start of the term? Is lecturing an effective way to teach? If a student falls in love with you-or vice versa-are you doing something right or something wrong? If you have a pedagogical idea that will probably fail, should you try it anyhow? How do we know when it is time to retire from a profession we love? Such questions may make readers uncomfortable, but they may also lead them to change the way they think about the profession. Teachers may reconsider their methods, causing students to reconsider their attitudes. In choosing the title Risk Teaching, Peter G. Beidler hopes to convey multiple meanings of the word "risk." "Risk" the verb, as in "take a chance on an amazing profession." "Risk" the adjective, as in "risky"-teaching that diverges from the safe and traditional path. "Risk" the noun, as in "teach students to take risks" and learn outside their comfort zones. Beidler''s book, like his teaching, is saucy, innovative, and challenging.

"Im Winter ruht der Wagen, in Sommer der Schlitten, aber nie ruht das Pferd." ("The wagon rests in winter, the sleigh in summer, but the horse, never.") This old German proverb brings home the importance of the horse to the farmer in pre-industrial America. For these hard-pressed tillers of the soil in rural Pennsylvania, a horse was a prized possession; it provided transportation, motive power, companionship, and fertilizer. Few crises on a farm were more worrisome than an ailing horse. Just as every household had a "domestic physician" book packed with home remedies for human diseases, so most farmers owned a "Pferdartz" (horse doctor book) to care for their animals. These folk medical cures involved herbs, minerals, poultices, bleeding techniques, and even mystical incantations. Some were bizarre in the extreme. How to treat a mad dog bite? Press the bloody carcass of a freshly killed pigeon into the bite to absorb the poison. How to kill bot flies? Wash the horse with a suspension of gun powder and pepper in a mixture of rum and urine. In The Nineteenth Century Horse Doctor, Heindel and Rapp, two Pennsylvania German researchers in drug development and medical botany, translate and analyze over 100 veterinary recipes in a number of popular early 19th century Pferdartz from the Moravian and the Pennsylvania Dutch traditions.

This second edition of Peter G. Beidler''s Readers Companion builds on the success of the first edition. It will be an indispensable guide for teachers, students, and general readers who want fully to appreciate Salinger''s perennial bestseller. Now six decades old, The Catcher in the Rye contains references to people, places, books, movies, and historical events that will puzzle many twenty-first century readers. This edition includes a new section on reactions to Salinger''s death in January, 2010. Beidler provides some 250 explanations to help readers make sense of the culture through which Holden Caulfield stumbles as he comes of age. He provides a map showing the various stops in Holden''s Manhattan odyssey. Of particular interest to readers whose native language is not English is his glossary of more than a hundred terms, phrases, and slang expressions. In his introductory essay, "Catching The Catcher in the Rye," Beidler discusses such topics as the three-day time line for the novel, the way the novel grew out of two earlier-published short stories, the extent to which the novel is autobiographical, what Holden looks like, and the reasons for the enduring appeal of the novel. The many photographs in the Reader''s Companion give fascinating glimpses into the world that Holden has made famous. Beidler also provides discussion of some of the issues that have engaged scholars down through the years: the meaning of Holden''s red hunting hat, whether Holden writes his novel in an insane asylum, Mr. Antolini''s troubling actions, and Holden''s close relationship with his sister and his two brothers.

A Student Guide to Chaucer''s Middle English shows where Chaucer''s English came from, when it developed, and especially how to pronounce it. The guide contains information on the International Phonetic Alphabet, iambic pentameter, and the Great Vowel Shift. It also has word lists and transcription exercises. Refined during four decades of Beidler''s own teaching, this booklet is now widely available for the first time.

Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the president we have immortalized, has always been difficult for us to understand. She could appear poised and brilliant one moment yet rude and ugly the next. Sometimes competent and strong, able to entertain dignitaries from around the world, at other times she appeared dependent and weak. At times she seemed utterly beside herself with sobbing and screaming. Historians have mostly avoided saying very much about Mary Todd Lincoln except in reference to her husband, Abraham. To many it would seem that Mary Todd Lincoln is still an embarrassment in the tragic story of her martyred husband. But Mary Todd Lincoln lived her own tragic story even before Abraham was murdered. She was an addict, addicted to the opiates she needed for her migraine headaches.

"She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her." For the first time since 1898, readers can experience Henry James's eerie The Turn of the Screw the way his original readers did, as a twelve-part weekly serial. The Coffeetown Press edition showcases the novel as it first appeared, complete with provocative illustrations by John La Farge and Eric Pape, in Collier's Weekly. This unique edition, with an analytical introduction by Peter G. Beidler, will of course be valuable to scholars. It will be particularly useful, however, for undergraduate classroom use. It allows readers to experience first-hand the suspense generated by the week-by-week grouping of chapters. It also lets them read the young governess's story of her dangerous encounter with prowling spirits as it first appeared, before James made the 500-odd changes in wording he introduced later. After reading Beidler's detailed appendix analyzing all of James's revisions, readers will see that in many ways this earliest version of The Turn of the Screw was James's best.

In the spring term of 1976, a courageous English professor at Lehigh University and fifteen trusting undergraduate students initiated a brave new course on philosophical and practical self-reliance. It was in some ways a traditional English course, with books to read and discuss, and papers to write and grade. But in other ways it was a wildly untraditional course, involving organizing the class into a for-profit corporation called Self-Reliance, Inc. Pete Beidler, the professor was corporate president of Self-Reliance, Inc. The students were all members of the board of directors. Together they borrowed money from a local bank and with it purchased for $3500 a rundown house near the university. They spent the semester practicing practical self-reliance by renovating the house from the roof on down. At the end of the semester they sold the house. Read the fascinating account, published here for the first time, of the origins and outcome of the Self-Reliance, Inc. Read about this stunningly innovative course that, years ahead of its time, broke new ground and paved the path for a new way of thinking about college education.

The Widow (La Viuda) is ninety-two years old. She lives in a house filled with photos and coins, jewels and a sable coat. Aware that her memory is failing but burning with desire to record the story of her life on paper, she hires Gabriela, a nineteen-year-old Mixteca from Mexico. Gabriela is one of the few survivors of a massacre and treacherous journey to El Norte. Gabriela and the Widow is a story of chaos, revenge, and change: death and love, love and sex, and sex and death. Gabriela seeks revenge for the destruction of her village. The Widow craves balance for the betrayals in her life. In the end, the Widow gives Gabriela the secret of immortality.

Eating Owen is a tale of mystery. What really happened to Owen Coffin, the cabin boy on the Nantucket whaling ship Essex? In the autumn of 1819, the unthinkable happened. Out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean a whale rammed into the Essex, sinking it within minutes (the event that helped inspire Melville's Moby-Dick). The crew had no refuge except to jump into the three small and very flimsy wooden boats they carried on board to help them chase the whales. During the next three months, bobbing around aimlessly on the open ocean, the men suffered terribly. They ran out of food to eat, and some of them died. And some of them ate each other. Including Owen. The few survivors returned to Nantucket with the story that Owen had been fairly elected to be executed--before he was eaten. But no one knows for sure what happened. Or do we? Eating Owen is the story of Owen Coffin and his family before the Essex tragedy. It is a story about a family, a story about surviving and not surviving. A story about a whale's revenge.

Ricky Edwards lives, works, and plays in Centerville, a small California town in the middle of the Valley. Ricky has a gift for music but he'd rather fight, drink beer, chase girls, and debeak turkeys. He debeaks turkeys because he wants a Lifters Car Club jacket with red lettering on the back. He fights because his long-time pal, Linard Polk, teaches him about violence, fast cars, and guns-which drives Teresa, Ricky's hyper-religious mother, nuts. She wants Ricky to escape the legacy of his daddy, an Okie skirt chaser who abandoned the family for a honky-tonk preacher's daughter gone bad. If Ricky can just get out of Centerville, maybe he can make his mark. Valley Boy is Book Two of Remick's California Quartet series.

A hundred years ago, the small country of Armenia within the Ottoman Empire became the site of continuous border conflict, political intrigue and sporadic wars between the Turks, the Persians and the Tsarist Russians. Early in the twentieth century, these regional conflicts erupted into bitter political and ethnic "cleansing" that decimated the country and nearly destroyed the population living there. The causes and magnitude of the ethnic killing that took place during and after World War I are still debated and disputed in Turkey and Armenia today. In times of calamity or economic distress, there is a small percentage of people (about two percent) who are willing to leave family, home, and their country of origin to set up businesses in exotic or foreign lands. The two-percenters and undocumented immigrants whose stories appear in The Gathering Place made the arduous trek across Asia to gather in the exotic city of Old Shanghai, where they joined a social club in the city''s Old International Settlement. Their travels coincide with war, economic depression, revolution, banditry and military occupation during the most turbulent period in modern history-a period that covers what some call the ''Modern Dark Age''-the first half of the twentieth century. The personal histories in The Gathering Place offer a fresh take on the immigrant experience during a time of momentous change in Asia-from the end of World War I to the exodus of Europeans from China.