The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top

The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top Review

A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power.

Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.

School-Age Ideas and Activities for After School Programs

School-Age Ideas and Activities for After School Programs Review

Originally published in 1990, this book has become a standard programming book for implementing quality after-school programs. Revised and expanded, this new edition contains over 125 activities, games, and recipes that are "program tested." New sections on how people learn, the significance of play, staff recruitment & retention and programming for middle school children. ALSO reproducible charts for staff training. PLUS 8 suggestions to communicate effictively with parents, 9 tips for guiding children's behavior, 8 tips for effective shared space, 6 suggestions for successful group time, 10 hints for a successful program for older children, 9 strategies for planning a summer camp program for middle school, 11 hints for successful field trips and 41 places to visit.

A Perfectly Bonkers Birthday

A Perfectly Bonkers Birthday Review

There is that one childhood birthday that you will always remember. This is a story about a little girl, Jackie, turning 7 years old. She has the perfect birthday planned. All her friends, her favorite teacher and of course Mom and Dad will be there. She wakes early on her birthday morning, ready for that perfect day. There is only one person who could ruin it, and he just woke up! This story's characters are based on a combination of many children metover the years. The actual story was inspired by her daughter's love ofa good story told over a mid-day meal.

Your Child's Weight: Helping without Harming

Your Child's Weight: Helping without Harming Review

As much about parenting as feeding, this latest release from renowned childhood feeding expert Ellyn Satter considers the overweight child issue in a new way. Combining scientific research with inspiring anecdotes from her decades of clinical practice, Satter challenges the conventional belief that parents must get overweight children to eat less and exercise more. In the long run, she says, making them go hungry and forcing them to be active makes children preoccupied with food, prone to overeating, turned off to activity, and likely to gain too much weight. Trust is a central theme here: children must be able to trust parents to provide as much food as they need to satisfy their appetites; parents must trust children to eat only as much as they need. Satter provides compelling evidence that, if parents do their jobs with respect to feeding, children are remarkably capable of knowing how much to eat.

A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland c.500-1100 (Blackwell Companions to British History)

A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland c.500-1100 (Blackwell Companions to British History) Review

Drawing on 28 original essays, A Companion to the Early Middle Ages takes an inclusive approach to the history of Britain and Ireland from c.500 to c.1100 to overcome artificial distinctions of modern national boundaries.

•  A collaborative history from leading scholars, covering the key debates and issues
  
• Surveys the building blocks of political society, and considers whether there were fundamental differences across Britain and Ireland
  
• Considers potential factors for change, including the economy, Christianisation, and the Vikings

A Concise Companion to the Romantic Age (Concise Companions to Literature and Culture)

A Concise Companion to the Romantic Age (Concise Companions to Literature and Culture) Review

A Concise Companion to the Romantic Age provides new perspectives on the relationships between literature and culture in Britain from 1780 to 1830

• Provides original essays from a variety of multi-disciplinary scholars on the Romantic era
  
• Includes fresh insights into such topics as religious controversy and politics, empire and nationalism, and the relationship of Romanticism to modernist aesthetics
  
• Ranges across the Romantic era's literary, visual, and non-fictional genres

An Iron Age Settlement outside Battlesbury Hillfort, Warminster and Sites along the Southern Range Road (Wessex Archaeology Reports)

An Iron Age Settlement outside Battlesbury Hillfort, Warminster and Sites along the Southern Range Road (Wessex Archaeology Reports) Review

Construction of a tank road through part of Salisbury Plain, from Warminster to Tilshead, has revealed archaeological remains dating from the Neolithic up to the modern use of the Plain for military training. Excavation adjacent to Battlesbury Camp hillfort has uncovered Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age settlement activity including ditches, roundhouses, four-post structures and numerous pits. Some of the pits contained human burials, and other deposits of artefacts and animal bones appear to have been formally placed. Detailed environmental investigation has provided information about both the nature of the on-site activities and the character of the surrounding landscape. Other sites investigated along the tank road included a round barrow and a multiple inhumation and cremation burial of Early Bronze Age date, a Middle Bronze Age enclosure, Late Bronze Age settlement sites, the 'Old Ditch' Wessex Linear earthwork and evidence for Romano-British settlement and land use.