The book and movie, The Da Vinci Code, are a cultural phenomenon of the early 21st Century. The book occupied bestseller lists for years and Newsweek magazine deemed the 2006 film version "movie of the year" even before its release. The main storyline smeared the Roman Catholic Church with assertions of secrecy, involvement with murder, and a centuries-long practice of misogyny. It also claimed that Mary Magdalene was the progenitor of the Catholic Church, the wife of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus was not regarded as divine during his lifetime. What may be inconsequential as "fiction" grew more serious for Christian leadership when it became clear after the 2003 book release that the work was challenging the belief system of some Christian faithful. Reactivity grew on the part of Opus Dei-- a Catholic support group depicted in the novel--and various writings appeared on the World Wide Web attempting to debunk the book. The web materials formed a tapestry of information and persuasion about the Da Vinci novel and movie. In the vein of public relations, corporations, agencies and stakeholders use techniques of "impression management" to help negotiate and define perceptions of an issue gone public. The present study employs impression management as a template for understanding how "major Christian religions online" responded, and content-analyzes the messages put forth to deal with public perceptions of The Da Vinci Code. What were the characteristics of these messages? How did they compare to Church reaction toward negative popular fiction of the past, such as 1988's The Last Temptation of Christ? How effective was the Church in addressing public opinion? What could be done more fruitfully in the arena of public relations? The results indicate a generally effective information strategy was employed.

At the beginning of World War II, the Army Air Force descended upon the college campuses across the land to enlist as many college students as possible in its Aviation Cadet program before the other branches of service could recruit them. Numerous commitments were made to the students, promising among other things that they would train together, fly in combat under the great insignia of the university, and be commissioned as officers in the new two-million-man air force. In their zealous recruiting, the Army Air Force enlisted more men than the training facilities could handle and, as it turned out, more than they needed. As a result, a surplus of pilots developed and the college men were dumped into assignments far removed from that which they had been promised. One day, they were flying airplanes and being treated with dignity and respect and the next day they were picking up cigarette butts. Instead of becoming officers with duty and position commensurate with their education and abilities, they were performing menial tasks in the enlisted ranks.

Ann Cook was an 18th-century cook and cookbook author. Her cookbook was printed in three editions and contained more than just receipts. For some reason, she had a real problem with Hannah Glasse’s cookbook, The Art of Cookery: Made Plain and Easy, which had been republished many times during the 18th century and would have been the first port of call for a puzzled cook or housekeeper. Cook’s book included vitriolic comments about a number of Glasse’s recipes. Historic cooks Clarissa F. Dillon and Deborah J. Peterson use their skills to investigate whether Cook’s remarks were valid. They prepared a number of recipes, both from Glasse and from Cook, and commented on the results. Although a number of people have written about these two women, their emphasis was on the comments, not on the validity of the criticisms. This approach makes this book unique.

The Handbook on Testing highlights major work in educational, psychological, technical, and occupational testing in public and private sectors. Theoretical issues in measurement are discussed. Standards for tests and testing professionals are described. In addition, a range of test environments, testing programs, and groups of examinees are included. A variety of suggestions for improving the use of tests for selection and classification are given. Examples of programs linking testing with training are also provided, and the use of tests to promote learning is described. Researchers in the field of testing have witnessed recent significant changes in test development and test administration procedures. The motivation for such changes lies in revised conceptions of intelligence as well as modifications in testing technologies. The Handbook on Testing is the largest treatise in testing and contains among the most important testing work, including new undertakings on a range of test administration methods, types of abilities, and measures taken from tests. Issues of test theory and standards are discussed. New work in intelligence testing is also included. In addition, the mechanisms and use of dynamic assessment and learning tests are considered. Several large-scale testing programs are reviewed, including predictor and criterion development work in the military, private sector employment testing, and testing for admission to medical school. The link between assessment and instruction is highlighted in several chapters, including coverage in special education testing.

Research aimed at developing new approaches to testing of complex intellectual processes occupies the forefront of psychology and education. Testing examines the ongoing research efforts into information processing techniques and measures by the military and academic research and development communities. Psychometricians, educational and cognitive psychologists, and personnel researchers will find this review of current testing literature a valuable and practical research tool. Leading experts and professionals from a variety of backgrounds focus on improvements in measuring broadly defined tests of aptitude and on innovations in measuring intellectual skill. Four main topics treated are: advances in testing; new methods of testing; new aptitude measures; dimensions of job performance.

Instruction highlights the ongoing research of military and academic communities--research aimed at developing new approaches in the instruction of complex intellectual processes and skills. Representative work includes learning procedural tasks and learning text comprehension processes in various environments such as computer-managed instructional settings. A variety of technological factors relevant to developing training materials for computerized environments is also presented. In addition, new domains such as learning map interpretation skills are included. This major collaborative effort was supported by the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, California.

Researchers from major military personnel research organizations and universities contributed to this volume. The essays study: student cognitive attributes and performance in a computer-based instructional setting; factors in retention of procedural tasks; experimental investigation of text comprehension in bilinguals; functional context theory; literary and electronics training; problem solving in technical domains; motivation, learning, and prescriptions for change; teaching interpretive skills; training analysis and design for complex aircrew tasks; and implementation of instructional system development in the U.S. Army. This book will be invaluable to educators in the academic and military worlds.

Italy is still preeminently a land of faith and fervour. Invasions, secret societies, revolutions, and persecutions have done their worst to make it otherwise during the past hundred years. Writers of books of travel, newspaper correspondents, and others who cater for the prevailing anti-Catholic prejudices of the majority of those who speak the English language, generally represent it as having grown at least indifferent, if not worse, under these trials. But the truth is that at no past period of its Christian history were the mass of the inhabitants of the country more attached to their religion, more firmly fixed in its principles, or more devoted to its practices than at the present moment. The writer of the following pages upon one of the most beautiful and useful manifestations of the faith of Italy, has had ample opportunity of witnessing what he here asserts. He visited that country for the first time early in the spring of the past year; and he confesses, he was prepared to see everywhere a great decay of religion in a nation where the Church had been universally plundered, where the Supreme Pontiff was dethroned and imprisoned, where the religious orders were suppressed, where the public observance of the Lord's Day and of many Christian practices had been legally abolished, where the recognition of Catholicity by the State was made a cruel farce, and where, in fine, the most formidable atheism the world has ever seen was, with supreme political power in its hands, astutely planning the eradication of Christianity from the social, political, and even individual life of the people.

Monsignor Dillon outlines how the Papacy has been attacked since the French Revolution by the Enemies of the Church, including the Freemasons and even Atheists. Dillon then describes in detail the Office for the Propagation of the Faith, also called the Propaganda and its holy work.