Since the early 20th century, American writers have both recorded and fictionalized the real-life activities of great athletes, as well as created original characters for sports stories. How have women fared in this literature? "Women Characters in Baseball Literature" is the first comprehensive evaluation of the women characters of baseball literature, including women's crucial roles on and off the field of play. Applying several feminist theories and examining the works in the context of both myth and psychology, the author discusses baseball fiction written by both men and women. Among the topics discussed are the literary implications of motherhood; how patterns of behavior in women characters often recall Greek goddesses; and how women characters and the feminist imagination enrich the literature of this apparently masculinized sport. Authors covered include Bernard Malamud, Mark Harris, August Wilson, Lamar Herrin, Nancy Willard, Silvia Tennenbaum, Karen Joy Fowler, and others.

This SpringerBrief uses a complexity perspective to integrate risk, finance, and ecological issues in Miami, USA. It focuses on how the modern financial system, particularly the mortgage market, perceives and manages the risk of climate change. Authors Kathleen Sealey, Ray King Burch and P.-M. Binder offer the case study of South Florida to illustrate how landscapes can be either re-purposed to function ecologically when residents relocate or rebuilt to reduce the threat of future flooding, the tools needed to make these decisions, and how financial systems view and influence them. While the need to integrate financial markets into coastal (and environmental) management is increasingly recognized, the difficulty of this task is made greater by the speed of financial innovation and the obscurity and complexity of its practices. This book will discuss the innovative Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact, and the success of public-private partnerships in planning and adapting to sea level rise, but also the broad disconnect with the cash-and-credit-driven real estate market of South Florida. The book presents an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of the coupled human (including finance) and natural systems in coastal cities, thus breaking new ground in the approach towards sustainability research and education. The final chapter introduces the social component of resilience which include pre-disaster outreach with and the potential for decision theory to help people understand and manage risk.

At the outset of summer break in 1959, Texas Tech senior Jerry Craft had no more enticing options than to stay home and help on the family ranch–so the telephoned offer to play for a semipro baseball club he'd never heard of came as a welcome surprise. But Craft was in for an even bigger surprise when he reported for tryout and discovered he'd been recruited for the West Texas Colored League. Wichita Falls/Graham Stars manager Carl Sedberry persuaded Craft to put aside his misgivings and pitch for the Stars. Despite the derision of black teammates, fans, and opponents, and his own trepidation, �that white boy� took the mound to close a rousing victory in his first game. At home and on the road in segregated Texas, Craft saw discrimination firsthand and from every side. Yet out of his two seasons with the Stars comes an unlikely story of respect, character, humor, and ultimately friendship as the teammates pulled together to succeed in a game they loved.

"Start smart" with Happy Heart, who gives children lots of counting practice and reading exposure with rhymes. This book can be enjoyed for its rhyming, counting, and coloring at home and at school. Its fun, structured activities help with small motor skill development, too.

A peaceful river shows the cycle of sun and storm. Will the river once again flow under the moon and stars? This colorful story demonstrates a never ending pattern of nature. We have included a picture pattern of the story cycle, and story words written vertically as well as horizontally include smaller pictures over important words.

Simple line and circle characters gently lead children into literacy and geometry. Their Hide and Seek game encourages visual discrimination, and the story words written both vertically and horizontally on the same page encourage an understanding that letters make words that have meaning. The characters tend to engage a child's imagination in such a playful way that learning happens easily. Hands-on tracing of the characters offers a second pathway to the brain. Most children like Limber Line and Circle O; and what we like, we tend to remember.

In this colorful rainbow book, Chapter 1 uses the sight words "I" and "see" with repetition. The colors of the rainbow are written in both large and small print to aid reading. Chapter 2 encourages coloring and reinforces the color words of the first chapter.

This color workbook introduces math (addition) terminology as it illustrates a way in which primary colors can blend. There are pages for coloring experimentation, too. We hope your child or students will enjoy combining colors.

Limber Line and Circle O help children learn six special letters in English - a, e, i, o, u, and y. They will use at least one of these letters in every word they write later on. With large printed words written vertically and smaller ones written horizontally underneath the larger ones, children also get a sense of where these letters fit into words. Simple rhymes make the story move along fast in a fun way. We hope you'll enjoy getting to know our adventuresome friends, Limber Line and Circle O

Ball-play with Circle O is a fun way to help connect a child's motor-skill pathways. Young children can also gain cognitive abilities by relating words to movement. We print words large enough to fill a page so that young eyes can see them clearly and easily.

The Rain and the River, revised edition, adds coloring engagement for children, showing nature's pattern of calm-storm-calm. This story uses beautiful colors and dramatic words to help show the excitement of thunder and lightning storms as it demonstrate how rain falls to the earth over and over. Story words include small illustrations and are written both vertically and horizontally to aid reading.