María de San José Salazar (1548-1603) took the veil as a Discalced ("barefoot") Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving as prioress of the Seville and Lisbon convents. Within the parameters of the strict Catholic Reformation in Spain, María fiercely defended women's rights to define their own spiritual experience and to teach, inspire, and lead other women in reforming their church. María wrote this book as a defense of the Discalced practice of setting aside two hours each day for conversation, music, and staging of religious plays. Casting the book in the form of a dialogue, María demonstrates through fictional conversations among a group of nuns during their hours of recreation how women could serve as very effective spiritual teachers for each other. The book includes one of the first biographical portraits of Teresa and Maria's personal account of the troubled founding of the Discalced convent at Seville, as well as her tribulations as an Inquisitional suspect. Rich in allusions to women's affective relationships in the early modern convent, Book for the Hour of Recreation also serves as an example of how a woman might write when relatively free of clerical censorship and expectations. A detailed introduction and notes by Alison Weber provide historical and biographical context for Amanda Powell's fluid translation.

Gaining an understanding of the recreation and parks profession is crucial to success in the field and to effective leadership within the field. Recreation and Parks: The Profession is a one-of-a-kind resource that delineates the components that make this complex field a profession. Written by well-known recreation authority Betty van der Smissen, this book -defines the marks of the recreation and parks profession and identifies the steps involved in becoming a professional in the field; -profiles 62 professional organizations within the profession; -provides a Web site that features a time line of the development of areas and organizations of the profession and the most up-to-date Web addresses for organizations detailed in the text; -outlines a comparative history of 15 categories of the recreation and parks field in the United States and Canada; and -presents a classic-to-contemporary bibliography of resources that showcases an inclusive body of knowledge on the profession. Part I describes recreation and parks as a profession and provides students with steps to lay a solid foundation to become a professional. Part II grounds readers with a comparative historical overview of the recreation and parks field from the 1500s to the present day. The author divides the field into 15 categories and offers suggestions on how to use the time line. Part III profiles 62 professional organizations. Each profile includes the organization's mission, goals, structure, history, publications, services, and professional credentialing information. In addition, it lists the organization's Web sites, contact information, and other vital information that students use in completing course work, in applying for internships, and in researching various aspects of the profession. Part IV contains a bibliography of selected resources on recreation and parks, from classic to the present. Recreation and Parks: The Profession includes a Web site that not only provides links to other current Web sites for the organizations profiled, but it also is linked to a color-coded version of the time line. The time line is ready to download, print, and use in the classroom or office. This version of the time line provides the most effective way to obtain an overall picture of the historical comparison of the categories in the recreation and parks profession. Recreation and Parks: The Profession is a unique resource for students, professors, and professionals in recreation and parks. The text brings together the important aspects of the field as a profession.

Programming Recreational Services serves as a handbook for recreational practitioners at every level. It clearly presents the methods and materials necessary for the planning, organization, and operation of recreational services. This reader friendly text addresses each of the 12 recreational program categories in detail and includes illustrations to assist with learning. It teaches students a methodology for evaluating recreational programs from the establishment of objectives to the final instrument used, to determine whether or not the program performed in the way that it was intended.

Galen Cranz surveys the rise of the park system from 1850 to the present through 4 stages - the pleasure ground, the reform park, the recreation facility and the open space system.

Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation exposes the lasting damage done to our land, water, and air from the growing plague of jet skis, quads, dirt bikes, dune buggies, snowmobiles, and other motorized recreational craft that are penetrating the last bastions of wild America. The increase in thrillcraft use is responsible for wildlife habitat fragmentation, disturbance of sensitive wildlife, soil erosion, spread of invasive weeds, loss of silence, as well as water and air pollution. With more than one hundred shocking color photographs, Thrillcraft vividly documents the destruction caused by these machines on American public lands. Essays by activists, policy experts, scientists, and others support the photographs, explain the harm done by these machines, and critique the cultural foundation of this phenomenon. Thrillcraft bears witness to the mindless destruction of our collective natural heritage and offers a vision for a future when the howl of the wind or wolf can again be heard more often than the howl of a machine.