Steps Toward a Higher Education

February 4, 2011

Based on personal experience, guest blogger Ingrid Reyes-Arias has some good advice for college-bound students.

It’s unbelievable the amount of influence money has on an individual’s pursuit of success.  Before college I had many stressful days of thinking how I would pay for my education, and there were very tough moments when the problem was not the admissions step but the finance step.  I remember when I began applying to colleges, I had a wonderful counselor that gave me all the resources I needed and, most important, helped me organize my finances.  For those that do not have the privilege of a counselor available every moment of every day. this great checklist can help.

The College Preparation Checklist (revised 2009) is a free publication provided by ED Pubs (U.S. Department of Education Publications) that prepares students for the journey of pursuing higher education.  This checklist has been created to reach students of all ages who are contemplating further education, as well as parents of children in elementary and secondary school.  This “to do” list begins by addressing elementary age students regarding how to prepare academically for higher education and how to support this opportunity financially.  The checklist has been divided into portions for students and parents, each tailored to meet their respective needs.  In addition, it suggests different resources for more information.  The checklist is broken down into “to do lists” for elementary and junior high, as well as the different high school grades.

As you may know, the Federal government contributes to higher education through Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).  This program within the U.S. Department of Education assists eligible students in getting funds to pay off the cost of attending school.  Every year a student should fill out the FAFSA application to seek financial aid, such as work-study, student loans, scholarships, or grants.  The aid goes towards expenses such as tuition, room and board, books, and supplies. The application can be found at www.fafsa.ed.gov. 

Most important decisions require time to think about, which may lead to you starting the process later than others.  Even if you get a late start, the checklist includes a “must do” list.  The first thing listed is completing the FAFSA application, followed by contacting the school you plan to attend to find out about other payment plans or scholarships.  It is always good to keep in mind that this is a process, so at times you must rely on subject matter experts, like teachers and guidance counselors, for help.

If you are at the beginning stages of planning, this publication includes a FAFSA4caster, which estimates your expected family contribution.  It will then estimate the award amount and give you an idea of the loans or grants for which you may qualify.  This estimator can be found at www.fafsa4caster.edu.gov.  Additionally, the checklist encourages you to research and apply for scholarships.  It provides many resources on scholarships, including a Department of Education database: www.FederalStudentAid.ed.gov./scholarship.

Keep in mind that knowing which steps to take will make the process go smoothly and eliminate unnecessary stress.  The college application is already stressful enough, so don’t add more! The College Preparation Checklist offers a lot more help, so take a good long look.  You can find it at the Ed Pubs website http://www.edpubs.gov/ and order a copy or two at no cost.

17 Comments | Department of Education | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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A Snapshot of the Surge in Iraq

February 2, 2011

Government publications sometimes seemed ripped from the headlines, like the oil spill and financial crisis reports I’ve blogged about recently. Even history can be amazingly contemporary, though, especially if the historian is working alongside those who make the history. The U.S. military has a tradition of embedding historians in its fighting units so they can record history as it happens. It’s a long way from academe to Iraq, but the opportunity to write “a first draft of history even as it unfolds” must be an alluring one.

Dale Andrade, who’s currently with the Army’s Center of Military History (CMH), knows all about that, I’m sure. In Surging South of Baghdad: The 3rd Infantry Division and Task Force Marne in Iraq, 2007-2008, he recounts the experience of one unit participating in its third deployment to Iraq. As CMH Chief Historian Richard W. Stewart notes in the Foreword, at this point in the Iraq War, “For better or worse, the George W. Bush administration decided to gamble on a troop increase, sending thirty thousand troops to Iraq in order to stop the bloodshed and bring stability to Baghdad and the surrounding area. By June 2007, they were all in place, and the so-called surge began.”

Surging South of Baghdad brings home the utter complexity of the political and military situation in Iraq. The Army had to be aware of a multiplicity of opponents, many of them working at cross-purposes with one another. These factions were and are political “improvised explosive devices” motivated by internal rivalries and conflicting ideologies that had to be understood to be combated effectively. But the book also portrays the human side of war: grief over dead comrades, the desire for payback, the need to understand and even empathize with civilian Iraqis who may or may not be trusted – all described in tandem with the strategic and tactical progress of the Division as part of the surge.

This book is a detailed look at how the surge was implemented from a “boots on the ground” viewpoint, enriched by the perspective that a participant with analytical skills can bring to the description of historical events – a tradition in writing military history since Thucydides. You can read it via the CMH Web site, get your own copy here, or find it at a library.

5 Comments | U.S. Army | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
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The Financial Crisis: Why?

January 28, 2011

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Lehman’s was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and its demise marked the  beginning of the global financial crisis and was a major catalyst of the  financial meltdown. President Obama is using the Lehman anniversary to put an emphasis on the economy, kicking  off a series of events with a Rose Garden speech Monday. His National Economic  Council is set to release a report detailing the economic advances.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-obama-defends-approach-financial-crisis-anniversary-lehman-brothers-collapse-article-1.1456570#ixzz2f48bm7eR

All of this creates a good opportunity to revisit blogger Jim Cameron’s review of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report from January 28th, 2011 – JET

I recently read a book about Ivar Kreuger, the famed “Match King” of the 1920s. Kreuger attempted to monopolize the match manufacturing industry on an international scale by obtaining state monopolies from national governments in exchange for large loans. His amazing financial record got him on the cover of Time magazine in October 1929, just as the stock market crash was beginning. Less than three years later, his companies teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and his crude forgeries of Italian bonds coming to light, he shot himself. Yet the author concludes that, for most of his career, his companies produced real profits and excellent returns for investors – he wasn’t simply a world-class swindler who single-handedly brought on a world crisis. It brings home the fact that great financial crises and collapses are not usually tied to a single individual or industry – the blame tends to be more widespread. It takes much more than a Kreuger or Madoff to light the fuse.

All of this comes to mind when perusing the official edition of The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, the final report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States. Note: This official edition is complete, including all 129 pages of dissenting views. I’m no economist, but it seems clear that a series of interlocking corporate and government practices and missteps, extending far beyond any one person, company or sector, caused the economy to tank.

It’s also interesting to see how quickly events recede in the mind. When was the last time you heard about the downfall of Lehman Brothers? Reading this report transports me back to those very scary weeks a little more than two years ago, when everything that had seemed so secure in the economy suddenly displayed all of the characteristics of a wooden skyscraper full of termites.

This book is no easy read, but its subject is compelling, faced as we are with the aftermath of the crisis. It’s a serious report for serious times, and the voluminous dissenting views show how uncertain root causes can be, accept them or not as you will. You can find The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report here, buy a copy of the official edition, including all of the text of the dissenting views, here: http://bookstore.gpo.gov/search/apachesolr_search/financial%20crisis, or get it at a library.

10 Comments | Financial Crisis Commission | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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A Teen Survival Guide – for Parents, Too!

January 26, 2011

Guest blogger Ingrid Reyes-Arias remembers a Government publication that has good information for teenagers and parents alike.

Sometimes growing up can be a scary thing, and rearing a child can be scary, too.  As part of my undergraduate career, I devoted a lot of my research time to family and public health issues. With the plethora of information out there, it’s difficult to discern the age-appropriate and accurate health facts.  For my part, I relied heavily on many Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publications because I knew they were trustworthy and up to date.    

During one of my research efforts, I came across an interesting document from the HHS Office of Women’s Health.  It’s called Teen Survival Guide: Health Tips for On-The-Go Girls.  I used the information in it to give a class on women’s health to several teenage girls.  This guide was extremely helpful when discussing such important topics as reproductive health.   

The first portion of the Survival Guide is “Taking care of your reproductive health,” which includes discussions about the body, sexually transmitted diseases, and advice on seeing your doctor.  The guide also provides recommendations on personal hygiene, exercise tips, tips on healthy eating habits, adverse effects of drug usage, self-esteem and relationship counseling, and advice on future planning – all of which are very important in the life of a teenager. 

This guide is very practical and includes interactive quizzes, real life questions and answers, resources related to the different topics at the end of the sections, and a glossary for many of the medical terms.  The ease of interactivity allows for successful teaching of facts to a class, or even to your own child.  As parents, this can be a tough topic with plenty of tough moments, so having a special guide will allow for a more neutral encounter with your child.

Take advantage of the Teen Survival Guide. You can also find it in a library. It will make those anxiety-provoking future discussions a lot easier!

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Russia, America, and the Lands of the Bering Strait

January 21, 2011

Sometimes a Government publication is a window into a program that you never dreamed existed. Before opening my copy of Early Art of the Northern Far East: the Stone Age, I had never heard of the National Park Service’s Shared Beringian Heritage Program. It’s not a new program, either: according to the program’s Web site, it was “created in 1991, [and] resulted from a commitment by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev to expand United States and Soviet cooperation in the field of environmental protection and the study of global change.”

Now perhaps some of you are thinking, “Hold on there, Government Book Talk, what the heck is Beringia?” Thanks to that same Web site, I can state with confidence that “Beringia is defined as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada’s British Columbia; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula.” This joint Russo-American geographic and cultural unit possesses unique natural resources and is the home of Native peoples with much in common. The program conducts research on the prehistoric Bering land bridge as well as the natural and human history of its animal and human inhabitants, informs the public about these discoveries, and translates Russian-language publications about the region.

Early Art of the Northern Far East is one of those translated works. I must admit that it’s really for specialists only – very much in the mode of such venerable series as Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology – but it is intriguing to see the variety of animal and celestial images that were sculpted or incised by Beringia’s earliest peoples. If you have a serious interest in cultural anthropology or prehistoric art, this is a valuable contribution to the study of  both. You can browse through it here, get your own copy here, or find it in a library.

4 Comments | National Park Service | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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Dams and Hydropower in the West

January 19, 2011

Although the words “Woody Guthrie” and “Federal employee” don’t usually come to mind together, in May 1941, the Government hired the great folk singer to write songs about some of its hydropower projects in the Pacific Northwest. The results included such classics as “Roll on Columbia,” “Pastures of Plenty,” and “Grand Coulee Dam.”

Woody and his songs came to mind as I started thumbing through Dams, Dynamos, and Development: The Bureau of Reclamation’s Power Program and Electrification of the West, a handsome, large-format book published for the centennial of the Bureau in 2002 and now back in print. It includes a broad array of wonderful black and white and color photos, as well as reproductions of art work (even a Norman Rockwell, left), all of which illustrate the history and activities of the Bureau in building dams and power plants to generate electricity. Many of the photos capture Woody’s “big Grand Coulee country in the land I love the best” and the other rivers and canyons of the West.

It’s not just a picture book; there’s also a lot of hard information on the history of the program, the changing views of the effects of dams and hydropower facilities on the environment – even an extensive listing and photo gallery of the 58 power plants that comprise the Bureau’s power network. It conjures up the heroic age of building America’s infrastructure while addressing such issues as alternative power sources and environmental protection.

You can get a copy of this excellent book here or find it in a library. If you want to view some of the art work, check out the Bureau’s American Artist and Water Reclamation Web page; for some of the photos, there’s the Bureau of Reclamation Photography and Engineering Drawings Collections page.

10 Comments | Bureau of Reclamation | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
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Remembering the Forgotten War

January 14, 2011

Last year marked the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, but whatever commemorations occurred were pretty low key, maintaining its reputation as “the forgotten war.” Given that many people at the time saw the war as possibly leading to World War III, it’s interesting that it’s receded so much from public consciousness.

Sometimes it’s the byways of history that tell us the most about how things really were. Two pamphlets produced by the National Security Agency’s Center for Cryptologic History on signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the Korean War do just that. The Korean War: the SIGINT Background shows how woefully understaffed and under-skilled the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) was in the run-up to war. With most of its efforts focused on the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, AFSA had neither the motivation nor the Korean language capabilities to track North Korean communications. The betrayal of American penetration of Soviet cipher systems by an NKVD mole in AFSA resulted in even more distraction.

So Power Can be Brought into Play: SIGINT and the Pusan Perimeter takes the story into combat. While recapitulating the failings of AFSA prior to the outbreak of war, it describes how quickly its staff began providing high-quality intelligence to the U.S. forces trapped in the Pusan perimeter after the massive North Korean invasion that pushed them into that pocket southeast of Seoul. Although outnumbered and outgunned, American forces held out until the risky but totally successful amphibious invasion at Inchon. The Korean War: the SIGINT Background then outlines the Chinese phase of the war, the resultant stalemate, and the detailed advance intelligence that led to victories at Hill 395 and Pork Chop Hill prior to the 1953 armistice.

So there is the Korean War in microcosm: initial surprise and near-disaster, furious improvisation, and success followed by stalemate and an indecisive finish. Perhaps that’s why we don’t remember it – hard fighting but no parades. You can read these publications or order copies here or find them in a library.

10 Comments | National Security Agency | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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Plunging into Deep Water

January 12, 2011

Although Government Book Talk tries to cover Government publications of all eras, we do like to jump on hot new titles, especially when they cover subjects of broad public interest. They don’t get any hotter than Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling. This report from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling was printed in-house here at GPO and released to the public just yesterday.

Given the proverbially slow pace at which Government supposedly moves, I’d say that this Commission got its work done very expeditiously and thoroughly. it’s fair to say that one word sums up many of its key findings – complacency – on the part of the oil industry and government. According to the report, BP, for example, was quite conscious of the need for safe practices for individuals, but not for processes, despite a recent history of major accidents: Grangemouth in Scotland (2000), North Sea (2003), and the deadly Texas City refinery explosion (2005). The Commission also found fault with BP’s contractors, Halliburton and Transocean, and the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service and other Government entities with responsibility for regulation and oversight. (In thumbing through this document, I also realized that, even though I consider myself relatively well informed about current events, I had quite forgotten the Texas City disaster, which cost more lives than the Deepwater Horizon accident.)

I also liked the Commission’s decision to add sidebars that allowed the victims of the oil spill – businesspeople, fishermen, and residents – to speak frankly and sometimes emotionally about the toll it took on their lives and livelihoods. In our culture of 24/7 news and quasi-news, it’s easy to lose track of yesterday’s victims. I think that’s why Deep Water is dedicated to the 11 men who died last April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon.

Deep Water is an exemplary Commission report – timely, clear, and comprehensive. It’s worthy of any citizen’s attention. You can view it here or get your own copy here.

11 Comments | Commission report | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
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Orientalism, Intelligence, and Empire

January 7, 2011

It took me awhile to get a handle on this one. Imperial Secrets: Remapping the Mind of Empire, published by the  National Defense Intelligence College, cites Edward Said, Francis Bacon, Jorge Luis Borges, Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham, T.E. Lawrence, and Joseph Conrad just in the Introduction, uses the intelligence experiences of the Roman, Ottoman, and British Empires as its core focus, and includes chapters  headed “Thuggee”, “Barzakh”, “Rhizomes”, and “Boukoloi.” This is a book that challenges its readers.

My take is that Edward Said is the real intellectual godfather of this book. His Orientalism was and remains a brilliant exposition of the West’s perceptions of the “mysterious East”. Although like all seminal works, Said’s work has been challenged, and in some ways refuted, it remains a starting point for anyone in the many fields it touches.

Although Imperial Secrets is too rich and complex a work to summarize here, it proposes that the United States, although not a classic empire, can be viewed as such, from the perspective of knowledge gathering, or intelligence, in the lands over which it exercises “imperial” influence. In the chapter on Thuggee in the British Raj, for example, an age-old Indian problem of robbery carried out via the strangulation of victims, was transmogrified by the British imagination into an organized cult of religious stranglers. Informers and punitive laws  then were employed to eliminate this phantom cult. Imperial Secrets uses this narrative to demonstrate the way empires, when faced with unfamiliar social and cultural environments, use an Orientalist discourse to fit those environments into their own frames of reference.

Another interesting theme is the value of informal networks of information, whether through the Sufi lodges of the Ottoman Empire or the transnational Freemasonic lodges of 19th Century Europe. Related to these networks are attempts by empires to use their own agents (T.E. Lawrence or the remarkable American Josiah Harlan, who had at least a shot at becoming an Afghan prince in the 1830s) and the emotional and psychological stresses that influence, or even distort, these agents’ perceptions however deeply they have steeped themselves in the cultures they infiltrate.

As I said earlier, Imperial Secrets is too intellectually challenging to review in a limited space. I haven’t even touched on its examination of Flavius Josephus as the kind of marginal informant that can to some extent transgress the boundary between and empire and its subjects, or the situationist travels of the 16th century Turkish traveler and official Evliya Celebi and their relevance as an example of  detecting information in the empty spaces between intelligence sources. (I’m starting to sound like the book, which may mean that I’m getting the point!)

Imperial Secrets is not a quick read, but it’s a stimulating one. Bear with it and you’re likely to  reap its rewards. You can read it here, get your own copy, or find it in a library.

2 Comments | Defense Intelligence Agency, National Defense Intelligence College | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Our year in blogging: 2010

January 5, 2011

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow!

Government Book Talk  just received some year-end data on how it’s been doing. Here’s a high- level summary of our overall blog health that we’d like to share with you:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 110,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 5 days for that many people to see it.

The busiest day of the year was March 30th with 3,197 views. The most popular post that day was Welcome!.

Where did our readers come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were links.govdelivery.com, voices.washingtonpost.com, federalnewsradio.com, gpo.gov, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for gpo style manual 2010, government book talk, charley harper posters, and gpo style manual.

We now have 1,078 subscribers.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Welcome! March 2010
25 comments

2

A Comic Book History of Printing September 2010
11 comments

3

100 GPO Years Revisited June 2010
20 comments

4

Bookstore Grand Reopening August 2010
9 comments

5

An Award-Winning Blog? October 2010
14 comments

We’d like to thank all of you who read, commented, and mentioned Government Book Talk in 2010. In 2011, we promise to do our best to keep on highlighting the almost infinite variety of Federal Government publications past and present. Let’s keep reading!

5 Comments | Government Printing Office (GPO), Uncategorized | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by govbooktalk

The Fine Art of Bookbinding

December 30, 2010

The Washington Post ran an interesting article the other day about hand binding at GPO – specifically, the finishing our Bindery does for the White House on presentation copies of the Public Papers of the President – including hand-tooled goatskin leather, marbled edges, and silk moiré endpapers. Happily, this kind of artistry is still valued by the Government, even in this digital age.

For many years, apprentice printers at GPO have studied bookbinding as one of the graphic arts. Since binding is a material rather than a digital process, reading the 1950 edition of GPO’s Theory and Practice of Bookbinding (left) still provides a pretty good introduction to the work we do today for such publications as the Public Papers and Jefferson’s Manual of parliamentary procedure, developed by Thomas Jefferson and still used by the House of Representatives (here’s a nice video on the handwork involved in binding the Manual).

Take marbling, for instance. According to Theory and Practice of Bookbinding, “marbling and gilding are complicated processes and a bookbinder who can do both well is a rarity. In fact, the majority of modern bookbinders can do neither” – and that was in 1950! As is evident in the post article and the video, we still know how to do it today.

This 60-year old guide to binding also covers even more esoteric book arts. In fore-edge painting, the top edge of a book is scraped and tied, and a watercolor picture is painted on the fanned edges (how cool is that?). Do you need some goffering? That’s a decoration produced by denting the edge after it’s gilded. I don’t know if GPO has ever done fore-edge painting, but the apprentices here had to know ALL of the terms and techniques of their craft.

When you’re in an arts and crafts mood, or if you’re like me and enjoy all kinds of obscure information about books and their making, the Theory and Practice of Bookbinding is well worth a browse. You can find copies of  various editions on used book Web sites at very reasonable prices, or in a library.

Have a Happy New Year, everyone!

24 Comments | Government Printing Office (GPO) | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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Spaniards, Insurrectos, and Boxers

December 29, 2010

It must be relatively rare for one very junior naval officer to get to participate in three separate armed conflicts within three years, but that’s what Naval Cadet (they weren’t called Midshipmen back in 1898) Joseph K. Taussig did. According to Three Splendid Little Wars: The Diary of Joseph K. Taussig, 1898-1901, published by the Naval War College, after being called away from the U.S. Naval Academy after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Taussig witnessed the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, wherein the Spanish fleet unsuccessfully attempted to outrun the American fleet. As part of the two years at sea required of Annapolis graduates prior to their commissioning exam, Taussig then sailed halfway around the world to help defeat Philippine revolutionaries in the Philippine Insurrection (mainly by embarking on an abortive hostage rescue mission).

Since I’m particularly interested in the Boxer Rebellion, I thought that the last section of Taussig’s diary was by far the most engaging. Disembarking near the Taku forts that played such a prominent role in the Opium Wars of the 19th Century, Taussig and his Navy and Marine comrades headed up the Peiho River to the city of Tientsin, where they teamed up with the British, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Italian, and Austrian contingents to form the so-called Boxer Relief Expedition. At first thinking that they would reach the besieged legations in Peking in a day or so, they spent most of their time repairing Boxer-damaged railroad tracks until the Boxers cut the tracks behind them, forcing a grueling retreat back to Tientsin.

Taussig’s impressions of the Boxer rebels and their fighting methods is interesting in itself, and his account shows how what initially seems to have been perceived as a walk-over soon became a grim contest against enemy troops, heat, and the ill-mapped Chinese terrain. It all ended for Taussig when “Although the bullets were flying thick I was never so surprised in my life when I felt a blow in my right hip that knocked me down.” He had been hit by a Boxer bullet. After long periods of being carried on a stretcher, Taussig eventually got medical help and lived long enough to become a Rear Admiral (he could well have risen further if he had not antagonized a certain Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin Roosevelt, who apparently did not forgive and forget when he became President – but that’s another story).

Three Splendid Little Wars is a valuable primary source of information on some little-known conflicts and a “you are there” portrait of the frustrations suffered by the Boxer Relief Expedition in its prolonged struggle to relieve the foreign embassies in Peking. Future historians will have to take Taussig’s diaries into account when they retell that particular story. You can browse through it here, get a printed copy here, or find it in a library.

6 Comments | U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by govbooktalk

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