Soldiers Delight Journal Revisited

This book re-visits, in photos and words, the 1991 natural history book, Soldiers Delight Journal.

In this journal, the author describes his year-long walking adventures at the Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area, a rare prairie remnant just seven miles northwest of Baltimore, Maryland. In his quest to make this wild place his "natural home" throughout the course of four distinct seasons, Wennerstrom examines and contemplates rocks and minerals, plants, animals, prairies, floodplains, woodlands, lakes, ponds, pastures, mines and mills, Indian artifacts, as well as local legends and folklore.

This book re-examines the case of Nadia, discovered as a child aged six, who had been drawing with phenomenal skill and visual realism from the age of three, despite having autism and severe learning difficulties. The original research was published in 1977 and caused great international interest. Nadia Revisited updates her story and reconsiders the theories that endeavour to explain her extraordinary talent. As well as summarising the central issues from the original case study and presenting her remarkable drawings, the book explains Nadia’s subsequent development and present situation in light of the recent research on autistic spectrum disorders and representational drawing in children. The book also considers the phenomenon of savant syndrome, the condition in which those with autism or other learning disabilities have areas of unusual talent that contrast dramatically with their general functioning. Lorna Selfe uses this single case study to discuss theories of developmental psychology and considers the possible links between prodigious talent and underlying neurological dysfunction. The book is especially valuable for students and teachers of developmental psychology and neuropsychology, education and special education, as well as art and art education. Parents of autistic children or those with related disorders, learning difficulties or special needs will also be interested in the discussions presented in this book.

Jack Wennerstrom's passionate and abiding interest in the Potomac makes him the ideal guide. In Leaning Sycamores, he invites us to explore the rugged beauty and rich human history of the Potomac's upper reaches. The flow and rush of the current, the leaning bankside trees, the rocks and flowers, the people, places, and wild-life - all are lovingly observed and connected in his warmly personal account. In ten gracefully written chapters, Wennerstrom describes the river's geology and natural history, its long record of human habitation, and the ecology of its plants and animals. He relates memorable encounters with people who live and work along its banks, as well as time spent alone, fishing, rafting, and hiking. He writes of the magic of moving water and its powerful effect on mind and spirit. Drifting downstream or walking the riverbanks, Wennerstrom takes particular pleasure in discovering the Potomac's hidden corners, ghostly legacies, and natural splendors. What began as a weekend diversion twenty years ago, he explains, has become a deep passion that continues to expand and evolve. Leaning Sycamores is his beautifully written account of that journey.

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

The first comprehensive biography of John McMillan, who "blew the Gospel trumpet", and spread Presbyterianism west of the Alleghenies. McMillan was a missionary, minister, politician, patriarch, and a founder of Washington and Jefferson College. The book also offers a colorful history of the Scotch-Irish pioneers who tamed a rugged and hostile region of early America.