Book Description
Previous editions of this book have helped over 100,000 students and professionals write effective proposals for dissertations and grants. Covering all aspects of the proposal process, from the most basic questions about form and style to the task of seeking funding,
Proposals That Work offers clear advice backed up with excellent examples. In the new edition, the authors have integrated a discussion of the effects of new technologies and the Internet on the proposal process with URLs listed where appropriate. In addition, there is a new chapter on funding for student research and a completely written chapter on qualitative research. As always, the authors have included a number of specimen proposals, two that are completely new to this edition, to help shed light on the important issues surrounding the writing of proposals.
Clear, straightforward, and reader-friendly,
Proposals That Work is a must-own for anyone considering writing a proposal for a thesis, a dissertation, or a grant.
Customer Reviews:
The Only Proposal Guide You Need.......2002-12-30
As any graduate student will tell you acceptance onto a Ph.D program is largely based on submitting a successful proposal. Thereafter, as long as the researcher adheres to the proposal, graduation is virtually guaranteed. I am a Ph.D student who used the book to construct my proposal, which was summarily accepted by the research committee with minor changes. This appears to be contrary to what many Ph.D hopefuls experience. The book is expensive however I would highly recommend it. The proposal hurdle is well worth overcoming professionally.
Book Description
THE SUCCESSFUL INTERNSHIP offers readers more than just a resource on how to find a position or how to interview; it addresses the concerns, emotions, needs, and unique personal challenges that are the essence of an internship or field experience. The authors describe in detail the path of change readers will find themselves embarking on and the challenges they will face along the way, and they provide clear, concrete tools that build the foundation for successful field/practicum experience. The book's five-stage model of the internship process-anticipation, disillusionment, confrontation, competence, and culmination-places the material in a meaningful framework that lends structure to understanding of the work they will be doing.
Customer Reviews:
Mandatory Reference Resource for all Internship Coordinators.......2006-04-06
Sweitzer and King have written one of the most comprehensive guides to help students make the most out of their internship experiences. They cram more than enough techniques, resources and advice to help a student problem solve through one of the strangest places on earth: an office. The book is intended to be a text for students but it will more likely be used by internship coordinators who need to develop training modules or programs to prepare students for internships. The authors effectively blend relevant components of student development, career development, experiential education and human resources within a model that predicts the typical internship experience.
From my experience, it's not uncommon for my interns to recall how the book predicted the experiences they are currently going through and returning to it when they encounter problems. Compared to students who aren't familiar with the internship stages, they are better capable of managing their anxiety and taking control of their internships.
The only downside to this book is that for some reason it's intended for students who are performing field study for clinicals, however much of the book is applicable for internships in any discipline. This book is highly recommended for interns or the career services practitioner.
The Successful Internship.......2006-02-24
I used this book to help guide me through my internship for Social Work. I found it to be a great help in how I was able to see myself working professionally throughout my internship. This text let me know that experiences I went through were normal and that I was not going crazing or doing things wrong. Things that happened were normal and expected. My supervisor was very supportive during my internship with his agency even though I was having difficulties at times and I now know this is because he already knew that I would experience them. I knew from reading the text that client interaction would at times be difficult and my feelings with them could cross over personally and I had to be aware of my professionalism. I have really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is involved in an internship. I find it vital to help one understand how they are doing in their internship and how normal things are that are happening to them during there internship.
Amazon.com
Forget the history you were taught in school; Richard Zacks's version is crueler and funnier than anything you might have learned in seventh-grade civics--and much more of a gross-out, too. Described on the book jacket as an "autodidact extraordinaire," Zacks is also the author of History Laid Bare, making him something of an expert guide through history's back alleys and side streets. There's no fact too seamy or perverse for Zacks to drag out into the light of day, from matters scatological and sexual to some of history's most truly bizarre episodes. Curious about ancient nose-blowing etiquette? What about the sexual proclivities of Catherine the Great? Throughout chapters such as "The Evolution of Underwear" and "Dentistry Before Novocaine," Zacks proves a tireless debunker of popular myths as well as a muckraker par excellence.
Book Description
The best kind of knowledge is uncommon knowledge.
Okay, so maybe you know all the stuff you're supposed to know--that there are teenier things than atoms, that Remembrance of Things Past has something to do with a perfumed cookie, that the Monroe Doctrine means we get to take over small South American countries when we feel like it. But really, is this kind of knowledge going to make you the hit of the cocktail party, or the loser spending forty-five minutes examining the host's bookshelves?
Wouldn't you rather learn things like how the invention of the bicycle affected the evolution of underwear? Or that the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to a doctor who performed lobotomies with a household ice pick? Or how Catherine the Great really died? Or that heroin was sold over the counter not too long ago?
For the truly well-rounded "intellectual," nothing fascinates so much as the subversive, the contrarian, the suppressed, and the bizarre. Richard Zacks, auto-didact extraordinaire, has unloosed his admittedly strange mind and astonishing research abilities upon the entire spectrum of human knowledge, ferreting out endlessly fascinating facts, stories, photos, and images guaranteed to make you laugh, gasp in wonder, and occasionally shudder at the depths of human depravity. The result of his labors is this fantastically illustrated quasi-encyclopedia that provides alternative takes on art, business, crime, science, medicine, sex (lots of that), and many other facets of human experience.
Immensely entertaining, and arguably enlightening, An Underground Education is the only book that explains the birth of motion pictures using photos of naked baseball players.
Richard Zacks is the author of History Laid Bare: Love, Sex and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding, which was excerpted in classy magazines like Harper's and earned the attention of the even classier New York Times, which noted that "Zacks specializes in the raunchy and perverse." The Georgia State Legislature voted on whether to ban the book from public libraries. He has studied Arabic, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Hebrew, and received the Phillips Classical Greek Award at the University of Michigan. He has also told his publisher that he made a living in Cairo cheating royalty from a certain Arab country at games of chance, although the claim remains unverified. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, The Village Voice, TV Guide, and similarly diverse publications. Zacks is married and busy warping the minds of his two children, Georgia and Ziegfield. He resides in New York City, and can be reached via e-mail at rzacks@echonyc.com.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Enjoyed this entertaining book of Trivia .......2007-06-28
I enjoyed this entertaining book. This book is not a deep educational study of history, but a book filled with interesting bits of historical information, OR funny facts & trivia!
Some facts will make you laugh, and others will puzzle you. Nothing wrong with that. When I got this book I was looking for a "light reading" book to read on a plane trip. After the trip, I lent the book to a friend and my friend enjoyed it too.... (Therefore, we both give it 5-stars).
Juvenile, at best.......2007-06-12
This could have been titled something like "One Man's Attack on the History of the Church", or "One Man's Attempt to Disparage Western Civilization", and that would've been more descriptive. Zacks spends about half the book dredging up odd and unflattering facts about the Catholic church (which doesn't exactly require a great historian) as well as blaming many of the ills of modern civilization on various popes. It is a restful page, not to mention chapter, when Zacks isn't pounding the Catholic church about something. The chapter on religion mostly beats on the Catholic church to the point where Zacks himself starts to feel guilty and points out that they are an easy target. Then without pausing to catch his breath he proceeds to go on and take some more pot shots. He spends quite a bit of the chapter talking about the crusades in such a fashion that you'd think the Muslims were just frolicking in the woods making daisy chains. And speaking of Muslims, in the entire chapter on religion there is one paragraph on Islam, and that a complimentary one from Voltaire. That was one thing I learned, I never knew Voltaire said anything complimentary about any religion.
He then goes after the Puritans and Mormons, and although by his own research the Puritans were far more tolerant than the Anglicans, he feels compelled to disparage his own conclusions. When I say "go after" I am not saying that I am disputing his facts. I am saying that it is something like reading about the Civil War as told by Jeb Stuart. You might technically be getting the facts, but you're not getting much perspective.
Zacks also keeps calling anyone who reads the Bible or talks about morality "Bible thumpers". Hilarious. He's full of little snide and juvenile comments like this that at best are whimsical, and almost always biased. He speaks of the history of political lies from most recent to oldest- and uses Nixon's "I am not a crook" as his most recent sample. I can think of one or two more recent.
A lot of the facts were not all that outrageous, either. Nobel invented dynamite? Does anyone not know that?
This isn't to say that there weren't interesting facts, or even that it was poorly written (it was not), just that it was often insulting and condescending. Imagine if he kept saying "f**got" or something like that over and over instead of "Bible thumper" and you can get the idea. As a Bible thumper I get ridiculed from time to time, and I don't usually whine about it, but I don't usually have to pay for the privilege, either. Finally, I'd say most of the same facts I got from a book I'd read earlier, "The Know it All", written with a lot more panache and without leaving me with the feeling that I had been dragged through a sewer.
Underground Education.......2007-05-12
I already had a copy of this book; i liked it so much I got another copy as
a gift for a friend, who is also an educator. The work could do with a little
more documentation, but it's a great read overall.
Disappointing read.......2006-12-26
It was my fault; I did not heed the warnings of some of the other evaluations of this book on-line. I thought that An Underground Education would be something akin to An Incomplete Education (4th ed), or at least Reader's Digest's Strange Stories and Amazing Facts (1976). An Incomplete Education is a terrific book full of tid bits of history, science, art, etc. which I thoroughly enjoyed. Strange Stories and Amazing Facts was also full of information ranging from Super Novas to the Loch Ness Monster, and I loved reading this book with my grandfather and still flip through today. Unlike An Incomplete Education or Strange Facts, An Underground Education was neither inciteful nor educational. It was basically a "history" of the sexual preferences and perversions of people throughout history, with some titillating pictures of hermaphrodites.
This is a book I would have enjoyed at age 14, but not as an adult.
Enthralling Arcana.......2006-12-04
An absolutely marvelous examination of those historical tid-bits that they never teach you in school, like the indecent forgotten parts of the Bible, the sexual side of slavery, and the evolution of underwear. Ah, but we're here to discuss the morbid side of life, and there's a lot of disturbing darkness scattered throughout the book, especially in the "Crime & Punishment" and "Medicine" chapters. An immensely fascinating and enlightening book - highly, highly recommended!
Average customer rating:
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Handbook of Multicultural Mental Health : Assessment and Treatment of Diverse Populations
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Similar Items:
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Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice
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Strategies for Building Multicultural Competence in Mental Health and Educational Settings
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Addressing Cultural Complexities in Practice: A Framework for Clinicians and Counselors
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Ethnicity and Family Therapy, Third Edition
ASIN: 0121993701 |
Book Description
Clinicians and mental health practitioners are regularly called upon to treat patients of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Not only do these patients differ from Anglos in culture and language, but also in customs, beliefs, values, and practices. Understanding these differences is vital to performing an accurate diagnosis/assessment of psychopathology as well as in determining an effective treatment regimen.
This book provides vital information to clinicians worldwide in bettering their treatment of diverse populations. Each chapter identifies relevant cultural variables specific to each racial/ethnic group, along with ethnocultural measures and their relevant psychometric properties. Part 1 presents introductory material on the definition of mental illness and pathological behavior in differing cultures, epidemiological data on the prevalence of different disorders between differing population groups, culture specific beliefs (e.g. hexes), and the influence of culture on treatment. Part 2 discusses assessment issues including how specific measures (Rorschach, MMPI, etc.) are best interpreted with different population groups, and the existence and use of ethnocultural specific measures. Part 3 discusses assessment and treatment of specific population groups (e.g., Indians, Asians, Latinos, etc.).
Book Description
This guidebook provides a handy reference for youth to the eight most important social skills and their behavioral steps. Each step includes a rationale for why it is important and hints on how it can best be applied. Eight social skills are included: following instructions, disagreeing appropriately, accepting criticism or a consequence, talking with others, showing respect, accepting "no" for an answer, introducing yourself, and showing sensitivity to others. The behavioral steps to each skill are presented, each with a rationale that youth will respond to and helpful hints on how they can accomplish the behavior.
Customer Reviews:
Fantastic for my middle school students!.......2004-12-25
During my first year teaching 6th grade, I had no idea what to do with my students. My classroom management was a disaster and I didn't have a positive culture of respect and understanding. I purchased this book from advice from a good friend and it completely turned my classroom around. It took a while to teach each social skill, but it paid off. I HIGHLY recommend this book for any parent or teacher struggling to manage a child's behavior. It's all about TEACHING those basic skills that we sometimes take for granted.
Just what the doctor ordered.......2004-06-18
If you grew up in a healthy family where appropriate behaviors were naturally reinforced, and need to teach others who have been too, this book is not for you. But if your childhood family did not reinforce appropriate behavior and you are trying to figure out how to teach it to others, this book gets the essentials very plainly. It seems to me that 90% of all misbehavior can be dealt with calmly with just the first skill, Following Instructions: 1. look at the person, 2. say okay, 3. do what you've been asked, and 4. check back.
This specific instruction has been very useful for me so that when I am trying to get my children to behave, we all have the same definition of what it means to be behaving.
The list I have for following instructions also includes "keep calm in face, voice, and body." I had a great discussion with my children on keeping a calm voice; that it doesn't include yelling, laughing, or crying, or any sound like them. I don't see that item here, but nevertheless there is a good task analysis of each behavior.
Book Description
In this concise new book, the authors describe the internship process, using the stages of anticipation, disillusionment, confrontation, competence, and culmination. Students learn to understand that an internship is an individual experience, the result of a complex interaction between the individuals and groups that make up the placement site and each individual intern.As the book progresses, the authors consider the issues and tasks that students must deal with at each stage of the internship, emphasizing the theme of self-understanding throughout. Students are encouraged to connect what they have learned about themselves with the shape and pace of their own internship experience.
Customer Reviews:
Good.......2005-09-29
Book in excellent condition! Took a little longer than expected to get here, but then I didn't pay for fast shipping. No creases or highlighting, it looks good enough to have been purchased at Barnes and Nobles but at a fantastic price.
Book Description
This comprehensive sourcebook covers every aspect of school service delivery, arming practitioners with the nuts and bolts of evidence-based practice. Each of the 114 chapters serves as a detailed intervention map, beginning with a summary of the problem area and moving directly into step-by-step instructions on how to implement an evidence-based program with distinct goals in mind and methods to measure the outcome. School-based professionals in need of ready access to information on mental health disorders, developmental disabilities, health promotion, child abuse, dropout prevention, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, group work, family interventions, culturally competent practice, policy, ethics, legal issues, community involvement, accountability, and funding can now find high-quality and easy-to-implement strategies at their fintertips. A concise, user-friendly format orients readers to each issue with a Getting Started section, then moves smoothly into What We Know, What We Can Do, Tools and Practice Examples, and Points to Remember. Quick-reference tables and charts highlight the most important information needed for daily reference, and lists of further reading and Web resources guide readers in gathering additional information to tailor their practice to suit their students' needs. Each chapter has been specifically crafted by leaders in their fields with the ultimate goal of giving school-based practitioners the tools they need to deliver the best mental health and social services possible to students, families, and communities. This is a must-have reference for all school-based social workers, psychologists, counselors, mental health professionals, and educators.
Book Description
It would be a perfect world if everyone could quit their jobs and devote themselves fully to the causes they believed in. Instead, The Better World Handbook shows caring, but busy people how to live out their progressive values and have a life! The principle behind this engaging guide is to incorporate everyday activism into even the most mundane areas of our lives-like grocery shopping, banking, eating, reading the newspaper, and working.
The book begins with a concise summary of our society's most pressing problems that lead directly to seven foundations necessary for building a better world: economic fairness, comprehensive peace, ecological sustainability, deep democracy, social justice, a culture of simplicity, and revitalized community. Subsequent chapters are organized around intuitive topics such as Food, Money, Transportation, Work, and Media, focusing on activities that support the seven foundations for a better world. A purchase can allow a locally owned business to thrive; money invested in the right bank can create opportunities for poor communities; a vacation can contribute to preserving wilderness areas; tuning-in to public and alternative media can put readers back in control of their thoughts, feelings and values that mainstream media marginalize.
Practical and extremely well researched by four university instructors who have synthesized knowledge from a wide variety of sources, The Better World Handbook provides readers with the essential information they need to take effective actions that will make a difference across the entire spectrum of the world's problems.
Marketing
National print advertising
National print, radio, and web publicity
Author events in Boulder and Denver
Co-op available
All four authors live in Boulder, Colorado where they are instructors at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Each author is deeply committed to activism.
Customer Reviews:
Great Resource for the Environmentally Conscious.......2007-01-05
I am a sponsor for an environmental club at my school and we use this book as our basic resource for information, for ideas to promote environmental awareness within the school, and as an easy buying guide for environmenally friendly products. It is an easy tool to use and I like all the useful information in one readable location.
Change your world with just 300 pages.......2006-05-07
This book has been such a great tool in getting college students motivated. I took Sociology from Ross Haenfler this semester and it was AMAZING. We used this book as one of our textbooks and this past week everyone in the class agreed that THIS is the one book that won't be returning to the book mart. It has such valuable advice to get out in the community, city, world and make a difference. If you want to make a major change or even just learn how to recycle properly .. this is the book you need to read. BUY THIS BOOK!
Practice What You Preach.......2005-02-03
I LOVED this book. It gives all kinds of good practical advice on how every day actions really CAN make a difference. It cites a lot of other great books too that you can read in further detail about the things that are mentioned in the book which i really appreciate.
When I first read this book I was a student activist who thought that i always needed to do BIG things to change the world. Some of the little things that i would do made me feel different from the rest of my friends and make me feel like i was not doing enough. This book affirmed some of my decisions and made me feel serious about doing more.
This book is a good guide to actually living to make the world a better place! There are a lot of issues in the book that can and MUST be further researched but I think that the authors do a wonderful job at encouraging you to actually do so by suggesting books and websites to get you started. Its good for what it is: a guide to how to live. And it can point you in great directions for further more academic exploration of the issues that are presented.
I will say that I have used this book as MY BIBLE to living. I would suggest this in addition to Sojourners magazine to those who want to look at these same issues from a Christian perspective
An invaluable resource.......2004-11-19
Want to make a difference but don't know where to begin? Try reading "The Better World Handbook" by Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler, Brett Johnson, and Brian Klocke. They offer a variety of actions on issues like poverty, environmental damage, and free trade that you can incorporate into your life. What's great about this book is that you can pick and choose what works for you at the moment - there are suggested actions that may not seem doable now but you can probably do later. You don't have agree with each issue the authors describe and suggest actions for, and the authors make a good attempt at avoiding a self-righteous tone. I have notes and have highlighted what actions I can manage, and will keep referring to this list (probably on the new year's eves to come).
The authors first explain our culture of cynicism and define the 7 most common traps that prevent people from taking action on issues they care about. I found this especially revealing as I have often caught myself in one or more of those traps. They then describe the seven foundations of a better world (economic fairness, comprehensive peace, ecological sustainability, deep democracy, social justice, culture of simplicity, and revitalized community) and have a list of references on each foundation. What follows are numerous actions regarding money (e.g. banking), shopping, food, personal living and relationships, community, home, work, media, politics, transportation, and travel. Some of the website links they include are not up-to-date, so I strongly recommend doing a search on the organizations mentioned and trying to find similar links and organizations.
This book is a starting point and can inspire other actions that are not included in the book. Reading "The Better World Handbook" is an invaluable first step to realizing that one person can really make a difference.
Tedious Secular Liberal Drivel.......2004-07-24
Want to Change the World (tm)? Then stick with your old Utne Readers. There's nothing in this book you won't find there, and dozens of other places. Do you really need another book to tell you to recycle and watch less TV?
The authors, although they decry the holier-than-thou attitude of some of their activist peers, fall prey to the same illness. In the first few pages, they dismiss the majority of Americans - that is, Christians - by announcing that if you believe that human nature is the cause of our troubles, you're part of the problem. (Ever hear of original sin?) They assume that their readers have unlimited money to drop on organic bok choi and shoes with hemp content, but they miss obvious healthy and frugal options like breastfeeding. They'll tell you how to be an activist in the public schools, but not about homeschooling. The shopping guide - which is available on their Web site for free, by the way - ranks corporations so that you can make the most politically correct choices. Of course, there's little to tell you what criteria were used for these judgment calls, you don't really need to think for yourself, do you? Just march in lock-step with your progressive peers and the world will be a better place.
If you really want to change the world without changing the root of our problems - the human heart - save your money and donate it to a reputable charity instead. But if you want to score a date with that vegan, World Bank-protesting hottie, this book will teach you the right noises to make.
Book Description
The world is a more dangerous place than it used to be. Organize For Disaster closes the gap between awareness to prepare and actual implementation by providing organizing tools like shopping lists of provisions; storage ideas; sample family communication, evacuation, and escape plans, checklists and tips. It is current with information about terrorism as well as natural disasters. An excellent ready-reference, Organize is also a 'good read' with first-hand accounts of disaster survivors and advice from disaster experts. Perfect for today's busy families.
Customer Reviews:
Very Basic.......2007-08-28
If you've done any research on the web about emergency preparedness, you already know much of what's in this book. It might be good for a family or individual with no prior consideration of the issue, however.
Great advice.......2007-08-23
A lot of the information is common sense, but there were many suggestions that I had not thought of before. I would definitely recommend it to everyone, and will likely give this book as gifts this Christmas to my family members.
Excellent Book But Only Does What Title Says.......2007-07-20
First - this is NOT a complete book on disaster preparedness. It is a book on how to organize your belongings and information in case of disaster - period. In that respect it is excellent. It is an essential part of a disaster preparedness library but you will need other books that cover other topics.
A Book Everyone Can Use.......2007-05-08
All of us, no matter where we live in the US or Canada, are vulnerable to some type of natural disaster - hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, floods, mudslides, tornadoes, blizzards, etc. - as well as the possibility of terrorist attacks. And now we also have to worry about the possibility of the avian flu.
In her introduction, Ms. Kolberg presents research that indicates a very large gap between our awareness of the need to be prepared for a disaster and our implementation of the steps necessary to meet that need. "What accounts for this gap between awareness and implementation? Two things: instruction and organization."
The first chapter, It Could Never Happen to Me, sets the stage for the rest of the book. As we all saw post-Katrina, first responders can be overwhelmed for days or even weeks after a disaster. It is up to each of us to not be a victim.
Each chapter of the book begins with a short If I Only Knew Then What I know Now.... story by disaster survivors and ends with a box entitled What Kids Can Do. The information Ms. Kolberg provides is concise, specific, and covers such topics as hunkering down, what to pack in a grab-n-go bag, family communication, first aid and protecting your home and its contents. An entire chapter is devoted to documents - what's important, what's essential, what to have copies of, where to store originals. There are nine forms and checklists (e.g. vital contacts, home inventory) in the appendix.
This is a book everyone should read. Even if you don't implement all of the suggestions, you will achieve a good deal of peace of mind for each item you do implement!
Disaster Preparedness Books.......2006-10-05
If you're like I was, you're looking through the various disaster preparedness books wondering which one is best. I have worked my way through 7 of the most popular books and offer a shared review of all of them here. I hope this comparison helps you make a decision.
Book 1: Crisis Preparedness by Jack A. Spigarelli
Like many of the disaster preparedness books, this one begins by answering the question, "Why bother being prepared?" It also outlines a framework for being prepared that includes accumulating supplies, getting mentally and physically prepared, and having your finances in order. One thing I particularly liked was the emphasis on the importance of knowledge. It wasn't just about what items you need, but also what skills and knowledge you should develop. But this book is mostly about food preparation for a major disaster, with emphasis on having a year's food storage, milling your own grain, growing sprouts, home canning, dehydrating, freeze-drying, etc. There are detailed tables showing the calories of various foods including their protein, fat, and carbs. The final third of the book offers advice on other topics, including weapons, hand tools, clothing, energy, medical, sanitation, transportation, communications, and home preparation. The book concludes with a list of recommended books and a brief listing of companies that sell disaster preparation items. Overall, this is a very good preparedness book. I probably should have given it 5 stars, but I thought it went a bit overboard on the food plan. That said, it is the most comprehensive of the preparedness books.
Book 2: Preparedness Now! By Aton Edwards
This is another thorough disaster preparedness book, one that focuses more on emergency situations (fire, chemical attack, etc.). It is organized into brief chapters (some only a few pages) on a variety of important topics, including: water, food, shelter, sanitation, communication, transportation, and protection. It is also filled with many packing lists detailing what you should get in preparation. It introduces the e-kit (a very lightweight kit to keep with you) and grab-n-go bag with more extensive items. Final chapters of the book discuss various possible disasters, including earthquakes, tsunami, infectious diseases, chemical and bio warfare, crime, fire, and extreme weather. Some of the commentary is a bit questionable, but the technical content is good. Note the deficiency with this book is that it does not offer any detail on food storage.
Book 3: Disaster Preparedness for Dummies
First of all, this isn't a book. It's a DVD video. I wasn't paying attention when I bought it, and was a bit surprised when it arrived. I generally like the Dummies series. They are well researched and serve as a good summary. This DVD offers a lengthy video discussing many disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, etc.), briefly outlining how you might prepare for them. It also has an overview of how you should react in case of a terrorist attack (nuclear, chemical, and biological). But the advice is all very general, and is more like what you'd expect to hear from your local weather station. For example, the video repeatedly advises you to "stay calm" and "evaucate in an orderly fashion." The videos are high quality, but don't expect detailed outdoor survival tips or food storage suggestions. Everything presented is relevant and useful, but it feels more like a FEMA public service announcement.
Book 4: Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton
This book is broken into six main sections. The first section offers decent but very incomplete summaries on preparing for short-term emergencies. The second section discusses how to store and purify water. The third part talks about the logistics of setting up a food-storage program, and has some suggestions on how to store food. The fourth section details what types of foods you should store. The fifth section has blank inventory planning pages. And finally the last section has some recipes. About half of the 285 page book is either blank planning pages or simple recipes. The first half of the book is pretty good stuff, but I found this book to be incomplete. It does however offer some good advice on food storage.
Book 5: Organize for Disaster by Judith Kolberg
This book goes an entirely different direction than the other preparedness books. Emphasis is on understanding the federal resources (i.e. FEMA, Red Cross, etc.) available, creating a personal intelligence network, organizing essential documents, maintaining insurance coverage, listing a home inventory, preparing your house for disaster, basic first aid, and having a good family communication plan. There is also a good list of necessary items to have on hand that would suit many common disaster. I recommend this book for its common-sense look at disaster preparedness. However, it is not the only book you would need, because it doesn't detail food storage, water purification, heating, etc.. That said, it covers some topics that the other books overlook.
Book 6: Making the Best of Basics, Family Preparedness Handbook by James Talmage Stevens
This book is almost completely about in-home food storage and preparation. There is little discussion outside that (except for basic water issues). Many chapters discuss food in significant detail, to include things like grains, recipes, preparing sourdough breads/biscuits, dairy products, honey, sprouting, drying of fruits/vegetables. At the end of this book is a huge compendium of preparedness resources, telling where things can be purchased in every US state.
Book 7: No Such Thing as Doomsday, by Philip L. Hoag, revised in 2001
This book offers well-researched insights into disaster preparedness. Topics include water, food, heating/cooking, light, power, communications, medical, sanitation, and security. Those subjects are well done. However, much of the book reads like a bit of doomsday prediction, with many pages devoted to scaring the heck out of the reader... focusing on missile attacks, chemical dangers, nuclear war, radiation, decontamination, communist threat, etc. For me personally, I would have like to see more pages devoted to likely threats (e.g. hurricanes, floods, earthquake, blackout, fire, etc.). Also note that Amazon may not carry the latest version (updated in 2001), so you may want to buy directly from the author.
Overall, if you can only purchase three books, I would recommend Book 5, Book 6, and either Book 1, 2 or 7. With those three, you should have a balanced look at common sense organizing, food storage, and emergency items to have on hand. If you can buy only one book, I recommend Book 1.
I've created a useful disaster preparedness list for your automobile on my Amazon author blog (just click on my name above the review).
Written by Arthur Bradley, author of "Process of Elimination" - an intense thriller in which a martial artist, a greedy corporate attorney, and a conspiracy theorist try to stop a world-class sniper out to shape the next Presidential election.
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