A riveting collection of the major features of Chinese culture including its ethnic groups, folk customs, traditional virtues, technology, language,... architecture, art and literature. When considering China, it is impossible to separate the culture, geography and history from one another. As a collection these books give readers a well-rounded understanding of Chinas past and present, supplying them with common knowledge of this fascinating country.

Learn how to plan, implement, and evaluate common language assessments for your English learners. With this step-by-step guide, teachers, school... leaders, and administrators will find organizing principles, lead questions, and action steps all directing you toward collaborative assessment. Yield meaningful information for and about EL learning preferences, build student self-assessment, and inform your instructional decision making based on reliable results. Benefits * Elaborates on five phases of implementing common language assessment: planning, design, refinement, inspection, and maintenance * Examines the status of language education in US schools * Defines the features of common instructional assessment * Illustrates how a standards-referenced common language assessment can be built * Describes the importance of auditing current assessment practices and emphasizes the need to balance different forms of assessment

First there was LISPcraft, a tutorial introduction to Franz LISP, the most widely available real dialect of LISP. Now Robert Wilensky introduces... students, teachers, and professionals to Common LISP.In an interactive session with the interpreter, readers of this book are introduced to the elements of the Common LISP language as well as to issues of programming style.Common LISPcraft contains:Full documentation of every Common LISP function, symbol, and character.Standardization notes highlighted in the text. These draw attention to language features that are unspecified by the definition of Common LISP, that depend on the documentation, or that may be different in other LISP dialects.Detailed exposition of special Common LISP features, including multiple-value returns, structures, packages, and Common LISP data types.Expanded treatment of recursion, plus full discussion of I/O, debugging, system functions, and compilation.Examples of a variety of programming styles, with comments on good and bad style.Exercises that provide directions for further explorations, with a Solutions Manual available upon request.Two applied examples in the final chapters, to give the flavor of large-scale programming.Appendices summarizing Common LISP functions and special characters.Detachable pocket reference card for use at the terminal.

This book should be a handy tool for teachers of mathematics as they develop plans to confront the problem of misconceptions, which are common with... students that often have their own notion of certain mathematical concepts, right or not. The onus is on the teacher to detect those misconceptions and help students remedy them. This book is written for that purpose. Teachers could emulate the presented strategies that the book has elucidated. Teachers may also devise their own strategies based on the source of the misconception as presented in the book. The research segment of each identified misconception will be helpful if teachers want to apprise themselves with what the literature says about the concept. In general, the book is meant for teachers who want to help students engage in mathematics that emphasize conceptual understanding.

Moral problems do not always come in the form of great social controversies. More often, the moral decisions we make are made quietly, constantly, and... within the context of everyday activities and quotidian dilemmas. Indeed, these smaller decisions are based on a moral foundation that few of us ever stop to think about but which guides our every action. Here distinguished philosopher Bernard Gert presents a clear and concise introduction to what he calls "common morality"--the moral system that most thoughtful people implicitly use when making everyday, common sense moral decisions and judgments. Common Morality is useful in that--while not resolving every disagreement on controversial issues--it is able to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable answers to moral problems.

A glossary of the most common terms to assist students in their study and mastery of philosophy. It contains 431 terms students are likely to encounter... in their readings of primary and secondary texts.

What is the "real Russia"? What is the relationship between national dreams and kitsch, between political and artistic utopia and everyday existence?... Commonplaces of daily living would be perfect clues for those seeking to understand a culture. But all who write big books on Russian life confess their failure to get properly inside Russia, to understand its "doublespeak." Boym is a unique guide. A member of the last Soviet Generation, the Russian equivalent of our Generation X, she grew up in Leningrad and has lived in the West for the past thirteen years. Her book provides a view of Russia that is historically informed, replete with unexpected detail, and everywhere stamped with authority. Alternating analysis with personal accounts of Russian life, Boym conveys the foreignness of Russia and examines its peculiar conceptions of private life and common good, of Culture and Trash, of sincerity and banality. Armed with a Dictionary of Untranslatable Terms, we step around Uncle Fedia asleep in the hall, surrounded by a puddle of urine, and enter the Communal Apartment, the central exhibit of the book. It is the ruin of the communal utopia and a unique institution of Soviet daily life; a model Soviet home and a breeding ground for grassroots informants. Here, privacy is forbidden; here the inhabitants defiantly treasure their bits of "domestic trash," targets of ideological campaigns for the transformation (perestroika) of everyday life. Against the Russian and Soviet myths of national destiny, the trivial, the ordinary, even the trashy, take on a utopian dimension. Boym studies Russian culture in a broad sense of the word; she ranges from nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectual thought to art and popular culture. With her we go walking in Moscow and Leningrad, eavesdrop on domestic life, and discover jokes, films, and TV programs. Boym then reflects on the 1991 coup that marked the end of the Soviet Union and evoked fin de siècle apocalyptic visions. The book ends with a poignant reflection on the nature of communal utopia and nostalgia, on homesickness and the sickness of being home.

Exploring America's material culture, Common Places reveals the history, culture, and social and class relationships that are the backdrop of the... everyday structures and environments of ordinary people. Examining America's houses and cityscapes, its rural outbuildings and landscapes from perspectives including cultural geography, decorative arts, architectural history, and folklore, these articles reflect the variety and vibrancy of the growing field of vernacular architecture.In essays that focus on buildings and spaces unique to the U.S. landscape, Clay Lancaster, Edward T. Price, John Michael Vlach, and Warren E. Roberts reconstruct the social and cultural contexts of the modern bungalow, the small-town courthouse square, the shotgun house of the South, and the log buildings of the Midwest. Surveying the buildings of America's settlement, scholars including Henry Glassie, Norman Morrison Isham, Edward A. Chappell, and Theodore H. M. Prudon trace European ethnic influences in the folk structures of Delaware and the houses of Rhode Island, in Virginia's Renish homes, and in the Dutch barn widely repeated in rural America.Ethnic, regional, and class differences have flavored the nation's vernacular architecture. Fraser D. Neiman reveals overt changes in houses and outbuildings indicative of the growing social separation and increasingly rigid relations between seventeenth-century Virginia planters and their servants. Fred B. Kniffen and Fred W. Peterson show how, following the westward expansion of the nineteenth century, the structures of the eastern elite were repeated and often rejected by frontier builders. Moving into the twentieth century, James Borchert tracks the transformation of the alley from an urban home for Washington's blacks in the first half of the century to its new status in the gentrified neighborhoods of the last decade, while Barbara Rubin's discussion of the evolution of the commercial strip counterpoints the goals of city planners and more spontaneous forms of urban expression.The illustrations that accompany each article present the artifacts of America's material past. Photographs of individual buildings, historic maps of the nation's agricultural expanse, and descriptions of the household furnishings of the Victorian middle class, the urban immigrant population, and the rural farmer's homestead complete the volume, rooting vernacular architecture to the American people, their lives, and their everyday creations.

Common Prayer helps today's diverse church pray together across traditions and denominations. With an ear to the particulars of how various liturgical... traditions pray, and using an advisory team of liturgy experts, the authors have created a tapestry of prayer that celebrates the best of each tradition. The book also includes a unique songbook composed of music and classic lyrics to over fifty songs from various traditions, including African spirituals, traditional hymns, Mennonite gathering songs, and Taize chants. Tools for prayer are scattered throughout to aid those who are unfamiliar with liturgy and to deepen the prayer life of those who are familiar with liturgical prayer. Ultimately, Common Prayer makes liturgy dance, taking the best of the old and bringing new life to it with a fresh fingerprint for the contemporary renewal of the church. Churches and individuals who desire a deeper prayer life and those familiar with Shane Claiborne and New Monasticism will enjoy the tools offered in this book as a fresh take on liturgy.

Harvey Cox, the eminent Christian theologian and scholar of religion, offers an intimate tour through the Jewish year certain to inform and enlighten... Jews and non-Jews alike. As a member of an interfaith household, Cox has had ample opportunity to reflect upon the essence of Judaism and its complex relationship to Christianity. Organized around the Jewish calendar from Rosh Hashanah to Yom ha-Atzmaíut, Common Prayers illuminates the meanings of Jewish holidays as well as traditions surrounding milestone events such as death and marriage. Describing in elegant, accessible language the holidays’ personal, historical, and spiritual significance and the lessons they offer us, Cox “is instructive and enlightening, revealing the depth and passion of his religious thought and practice” (Boston Herald). As seen through his eyes, the Jewish holidays offer a wellspring of discovery and reflection for every reader.

In her previous book, Within Our Reach, renowned Harvard social analyst Lisbeth Schorr examined pilot social programs that were successful in helping... disadvantaged youth and families. But as those cutting-edge programs were expanded, the very qualities that had made them initially successful were jettisoned, and less than half of them ultimately survived. As a result, these groundbreaking programs never made a dent on the national or statewide level.Lisbeth Schorr has spent the past seven years researching and identifying large-scale programs across the country that are promising to reduce, on a community- or citywide level, child abuse, school failure, teenage pregnancy, and welfare dependence. From reformed social service agencies in Missouri, Michigan, and Los Angeles to "idiosyncratic" public schools in New York City, she shows how private and public bureaucracies are successfully nurturing programs that are flexible and responsive to the community, that have set clear, long-term goals, and that permit staff to exercise individual judgment in helping the disadvantaged. She shows how what works in small-scale pilot social programs can be adapted on a large scale to transform whole inner-city neighborhoods and reshape America.On the heels of the federal government's dismantling of welfare guarantees, Common Purpose offers a welcome antidote to our current sense of national despair, and concrete proof that America's social institutions can be made to work to assure that all the nation's children develop the tools to share in the American dream.

In 1776, America was a hotbed of enlightenment and revolution. Thomas Paine not only spurred his fellow Americans to action but soon came to symbolize... the spirit of the Revolution. His elegantly persuasive pieces spoke to the hearts and minds of those fighting for freedom. He was later outlawed in Britain, jailed in France, and finally labeled an atheist upon his return to America."No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style; in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple unassuming language."--Thomas Jefferson