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The Elephants Have a House: Mcgraw Hill Adventure Books (0021477493, 9780021477494). 12 Pages. Special Limited Edition. ... Read more

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Julie Summers, in her fifties, is drawn back to small-town Iowa to care for her mother, who'ss dying from bone cancer. This simple story of complex family dynamics reverberates with the dilemmas many women face in the middle of their lives. Many women in their forties and fifties now face the difficulty of their parents's declining physical and mental health. FIC000000 ... Read more

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When Astrovo, a once-splendid country estate, is turned into a finishing school, the spirits of former inhabitants seek to reenact their lives. ... Read more

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"Building Decks" is a new Spanish language book that takes readers, step-by-step, through a the process of building decks. Get expert advice on everything from what materials and tools you'll need to design help. This book is beautifully illustrated with detailed, full-color photos showing the key aspects of each project. ... Read more

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[BookStrand Contemporary Romance] After nineteen years, Aimee is back in town. The morning started like any other, but after walking into her real estate agency with long time friend, Sharon Phillips, she finds her office in turmoil. After a frantic search for one of their agents, they find her...dead. Detective Quin Martina has always been a take charge kind of guy, so why can't he get his life under control? He longed for Aimee every morning and night for the last nineteen years but still tried to avoid Aimee at all costs. It worked until he was called in to a murder scene and walked straight into Aimee. ** A BookStrand Mainstream Romance ... Read more

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One of the most exciting and popular home improvement and gardening trends comes alive in this full-color, activity-filled book.In clear, colorful pictures and easy-to-understand text, it features every construction technique, planting instruction, and care need for building backyard garden pools, ponds, fountains, streams, waterfalls, and other water features.

Each project is summarized in a detailed "recipe" list that provides beginners and intermediate gardeners a clear and concise key to building their water garden, with references to skill, equipment, and material lists, step-by-step instructions depicting technique, and a host of other useful features.

This fabulous book will dazzle you with the following features:

**Includes detailed encyclopedia of the 85 most popular aquatic plants, USDA plant hardiness maps, important on-line web resources, and an easy-to-use index.
**Chapters feature: Planning, Design, Installation, Construction, Planting, and Care of Water Gardens.
**Features 25 step-by-step projects, such as a natural stream waterfall feature and a marsh-bog garden, with photographs and detailed instructions, more than any comparable book.
**It contains more than 300 full-color photographs and clear illustrations, with colorful pictures on every page.
**Offers practical instruction for every North American Garden - U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico - with complete metric conversions and advice.Also applicable to Australia, New Zealand, England, and South Africa. ... Read more

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I suppose all the children who were born about the time of the Civil War have recollections quite unlike those of the children who are living now. Although I was but four and a half years old when Lincoln died, I distinctly remember the day when I found on our two white gateposts American flags companioned with black.Amazon.com Review
While on a trip to East London in 1883, Jane Addams witnessed a distressing scene late one night: masses of poor people were bidding on rotten vegetables that were unsalable anywhere else.

Their pale faces were dominated by that most unlovely of human expressions, the cunning and shrewdness of the bargain-hunter who starves if he cannot make a successful trade, and yet the final impression was not of ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, pathetic, nerveless, and workworn, showing white in the uncertain light of the street, and clutching forward for food which was already unfit to eat.

This scene haunted Addams for the next two years as she traveled through Europe, and she hoped to find a way to ease such suffering. Five years later, she visited Toynbee Hall, a London settlement house, and resolved to replicate the experiment in the U.S. On September 18, 1889, Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Starr moved into the second floor of a rundown mansion in Chicago's West Side. From the outset, they imagined Hull-House as a "center for a higher civic and social life" in the industrial districts of the city. Addams, Starr, and several like-minded individuals lived and worked among the poor, establishing (among other things) art classes, discussion groups, cooperatives, a kindergarten, a coffee house, a lending library, and a gymnasium. In a time when many well-to-do Americans were beginning to feel threatened by immigrants, Hull-House embraced them, showed them the true meaning of democracy, and served as a center for philanthropic efforts throughout Chicago.

Hull-House also provided an outlet for the energies of the first generation of female college graduates, who were educated for work yet prevented from doing it. In some respects, however, Addams's impressive work, often hailed by historians as "revolutionary," was nothing of the sort. She embraced the sexual stereotypes of her day, and, though she was clearly an independent woman, soothed public fears by acting primarily in the traditional roles of nurturer and caregiver. Hull-House was a rousing success, and it inspired others to follow in Addams's footsteps.

Though Twenty Years at Hull-House is meant to be an autobiography, it is Hull-House itself that stands in the spotlight. Addams devotes the first third of the book to her upbringing and influences, but the remainder focuses on the organization she built--and the benefits accruing to those who work with the poor as well as to the poor themselves. At times Addams's prose is difficult to follow, but her ideals and her actions are truly inspiring. A classic work of history--and a model for today's would-be philanthropists. --Sunny Delaney ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Spoiled rich kid seeking attention
A well written book but a littany of "look at what I did for the less fortunate" Jane Adams clearly brings out the fact that she was of the upper class and so much better than those she sought to help. Her goal it seems was to bring high society upper middle class values to the poor. She rarely talks about others who had to be involved. If it did not include her she was not interested in reporting. She also failed to show that she actually helped anyone better thier lives. She just crows about how she brought literature and art to the poor masses.

America's Secular Saint
Along with Addams herself, "Twenty Years At Hull-House" inspired generations of US social and political activists.For decades a Hull House sojourn, or at least a visit, was virtually a pilgrimage for all kinds of progressive reformers. Jane Addams came from a conventional Middle American milieu, but was radicalized by seeing the ravages of the Industrial Revolution both in Britain and Chicago.This timeless memoir of the years 1889-1909 documents her wide-ranging concerns, embracing public health, pacifism and feminism as well as philanthropy, working-class education and poverty alleviation.Nationalist hysteria damaged Addams's reputation as a result of her antiwar stance during World War I, but it recovered enough for her to win the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize.Students had mixed views of book and author. To some she is a revelation, but others see her as rather sanctimonious (a fair criticism to some extent).Her prose is accessible but a little archaic now, sometimes appearing flowery or pompous, which deters some readers.While I respect and admire Addams, I waited in vain for the epiphany felt by thousands inspired by her life's work.People who find their own way to "Hull-House" will probably appreciate her more than those required to read her book---but such unsought exposure lies at the heart of liberal education, and brings many rewards.

A true pioneer of social reform!
In 1911 Addams helped found the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, and she was its first president. She was also a leader in women's suffrage and pacifist movements. In 1915 she helped found the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She received the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize (shared with American educator Nicholas Murray Butler).

The Hull House could boast a group of about 2,000 people a week. It had facilities including: a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, a swimming pool, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor related divisions.

The Hull House also served as a women's institution of sociology and Addams was a friend and colleague to the early men of the Chicago School of Sociology influencing their social thought of the time through her work in applied sociology, which became defined as social work by academic sociologists of the time. Addams did not, however, consider herself a social worker. She co-authored the Hull-House Maps and Papers in 1893 that came to define the interests and methodologies of Chicago Sociology. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including women's rights and the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike. Addams combined the central concepts of symbolic interactionism with the theories of cultural feminism and pragmatism to form her sociological ideas.

Hull HOuse
I am doing a History Fair project on the Hull House. I thought that I would just be quickly skimming over the book, but in fact i really enjoyed it and I ended up reading with a lot of intrest.

Such a strong woman
I enjoy reading about strong women with great vision. I also enjoy this particular period in history, so this was a perfect match for me. I would love to have been part of the Plato club, or study cooking, or sewing, or heard concerts throughout the week. I sometimes think we have so much going on in our lives right now that we don't take the time to slow down and cherish the simple things. This book did that for me. It made me want to study and focus on things.I know we have tons of technology available to us, but I wish we would still discuss philosophy, and I wish more people would read - I mean, really read.Not just the top twenty things out there. But times are different... ... Read more

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Describes the lives of the children and grandchildren of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Carter. ... Read more