Excerpt from Report on the Island of Porto Rico: Its Population, Civil Government, Commerce, Industries, Productions, Roads, Tariff, and Currency, With Recommendations The climate is tropical, but not torrid. Though the heat is con tinuous, it is not extreme. The thermometer rarely rises to The highest monthly average on record in nine years in San Juan was 86° (in June, The hottest day in that period gave a tempera ture of but there was only one such day. The temperature is equable, and rises or falls through a very limited range. The highest point reached by the thermometer in San Juan in the period from November, 1898, to July, 1899, inclusive, was the -month of June. This was for one day only, and on no other day of that month did the temperature exceed The lowest range in the same period was The winter season extends from October or November to March, inclusive. No really Oppressive weather was seen in the capi tal during those months in 1898 - 99. Showers came frequently, but were of short duration and were mostly at night. Every day the unfailing trade winds blow from the east or southeast, making the air delightfully fresh. The nights are cool and comfortable. The sum mer season is marked by a slight increase in the average temperature, much more rain, and a great deal of humidity. The continuity of the heat and the unfavorable conditions for evaporation of perspiration make the climate somewhat enervating. San Juan has an elevation of only about 100 feet. In the mountains the higher elevations dimin ish the amount of heat, and Aibonito, Cayey, and Utuado are con sidered as remarkably cool cities. Occasionally the island is visited by a disastrous hurricane. The first record of one of these tropical terrors was in July, 1515. They come at irregular intervals and with varying degrees Of force. The most Violent storm the island ever knew, according to history, was in August, 1772, when houses were demolished, trees uprooted, planta tions flooded, and many people killed. In September, 1806, there was another visitation of less destructiveness, and still another in September, 1819. The latter was followed by a famine. The hurri cane of October, 1867, was very severe. In August, 1886, the south coast was ravaged and the coffee plantations in the southwest snfiered severely. The last furious storm occurred August 8, 1899, and was terribly destructive, particularly on the eastern and southern coasts and in the interior. Humacao was well-nigh destroyed; Yabucoa, in the beautiful valley of the same name south of Humacao, was a heap Of ruins, and but little was left of the old town and port of Arroyo. The damages at Ponce and at the port of Ponce, on the south, were extremely heavy. The streets were swept by a flood and many houses were torn from their foundations. The crops of coffee and cane were quite generally destroyed in the east, in the south, and in the interior, and orange and other fruit trees were uprooted or stripped by the vio lence of the wind. Arecibo, on the north coast, directly across the island from Ponce, also suffered great injuries. Between and persons lost their lives, and the destruction of live stock was very great. The fall of rain was enormous, amounting to inches at Juana Diaz, north of Ponce, in twenty-four hours. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

National Criminal Jusitce 208756. Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2003. 31th annual edition. Edited by Kathleen Maguire and Ann L. Pastore, et al. Brings together in a single volume nationwide data of interest to the criminal justice community. Compiles information from a variety of sources and makes it accessible to a wide audience.

From the colonial era to the present, Marcie Cohen Ferris examines the expressive power of food throughout southern Jewish history. She demonstrates with delight and detail how southern Jews reinvented culinary traditions as they adapted to the customs, landscape, and racial codes of the American South. Richly illustrated, this culinary tour of the historic Jewish South is an evocative mixture of history and foodways, including more than thirty recipes to try at home.

To many outsiders, mathematicians appear to think like computers, grimly grinding away with a strict formal logic and moving methodically--even algorithmically--from one black-and-white deduction to another. Yet mathematicians often describe their most important breakthroughs as creative, intuitive responses to ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. A unique examination of this less-familiar aspect of mathematics, How Mathematicians Think reveals that mathematics is a profoundly creative activity and not just a body of formalized rules and results. Nonlogical qualities, William Byers shows, play an essential role in mathematics. Ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes can arise when ideas developed in different contexts come into contact. Uncertainties and conflicts do not impede but rather spur the development of mathematics. Creativity often means bringing apparently incompatible perspectives together as complementary aspects of a new, more subtle theory. The secret of mathematics is not to be found only in its logical structure. The creative dimensions of mathematical work have great implications for our notions of mathematical and scientific truth, and How Mathematicians Think provides a novel approach to many fundamental questions. Is mathematics objectively true? Is it discovered or invented? And is there such a thing as a "final" scientific theory? Ultimately, How Mathematicians Think shows that the nature of mathematical thinking can teach us a great deal about the human condition itself.

Texas Jews may be only a small proportion of the state's population, but their leaders have often shone as unlikely stars in this Bible Belt state. Grounded in the culture that gave rise to Christianity and thus sharing many of the community's values, rabbis schooled outside the region brought erudition and an exotic individuality to the frontier. Furthermore, a rabbi's prophetic sense of social justice, honed through centuries of Talmudic thought, gave a Hebrew minister moral clout in a vigilante climate. Because Texas synagogues were small, rabbis served entire communities, evolving into public figures recruited for an array of roles. They blessed stock shows and rodeos. They founded hospitals, symphonies, and charities. They broadcast Sunday sermons over the radio. They challenged the Ku Klux Klan and fought for academic freedom and prison reform. Their names are etched on cornerstones and scrawled on state documents. Welcomed as leaders of the Chosen People, rabbis thrived, and many stayed their entire careers. Rabbis who accepted a call to the Lone Star State when it was still on the edge of the frontier often ventured out West as a last resort. Some were freelancers, never ordained. Others came because they had no better pulpit offers. A number had left Europe as rebels, seeking to escape traditional religious practices. These maverick rabbis were drawn to places with little Jewish history or hierarchy -- communities such as Beaumont, Galveston, Fort Worth, Lubbock, El Paso, and Tyler -- where they created their own religious blueprints. This thoroughly researched and engaging volume, covering a time span from the 1870s through the 1920s, tells the lively stories of elevenrabbis, their lives, and their Texas towns, from big cities such as Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio to the remote locales of Hempstead and Brownsville. Sit back and enjoy Texas history through rabbinical eyes.

Sverker Johansson has written an unusual book on language origins, with its emphasis on empirical evidence rather than theory-building. This is a book for the student or researcher who prefers solid data and well-supported conclusions, over speculative scenarios. Much that has been written on the origins of language is characterized by hypothesizing largely unconstrained by evidence. But empirical data do exist, and the purpose of this book is to integrate and review the available evidence from all relevant disciplines, not only linguistics but also, e.g., neurology, primatology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary biology. The evidence is then used to constrain the multitude of scenarios for language origins, demonstrating that many popular hypotheses are untenable. Among the issues covered: (1) Human evolutionary history, (2) Anatomical prerequisites for language, (3) Animal communication and ape "language", (4) Mind and language, (5) The role of gesture, (6) Innateness, (7) Selective advantage of language, (8) Proto-language.