Kill the Messenger

Book Description

With this new thriller, The New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag delivers her own message to suspense fans everywhere: Don't turn off the lights, and keep reading if you dare. From the gritty streets of Los Angeles to its most protected enclaves of prestige and power to the ruthless glamour of Hollywood, a killer stalks his prey. A killer so merciless no one in his way is safe—not even the innocent.

At the end of a long day battling street traffic, bike messenger Jace Damon has one last drop to make. But en route to delivering a package for one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, he's nearly run down by a car, chased through back alleys, and shot at. Only the instincts acquired while growing up on the streets of L.A. allow him to escape with his life—and with the package someone wants badly enough to kill for.

Jace returns to Lenny Lowell's office only to find the cops there, the lawyer dead, and Jace himself considered the prime suspect in the savage murder. Suddenly he's on the run from both the cops and a killer, and the key to saving himself and his ten-year-old brother is the envelope he still has—which holds a message no one wants delivered: the truth.

In a city fueled by money, celebrity, and sensationalism, the murder of a bottom-feeding mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell won't make the headlines. So when detectives from the LAPD's elite robbery/homicide division show up, homicide detective Kev Parker wants to know why. Parker is on the downhill slide of a once-promising career, and he doesn't want to be reminded that he used to be one of the hotshots, working cases that made instant celebrities of everyone involved. Like the case of fading retty-boy actor Rob Cole, accused of the brutal murder of his wife, Tricia Crowne-Cole, daughter of one of the most powerful men in the city, L.A.'s latest "crime of the century."

Robbery/Homicide has no reason to be looking at a dead small-time scumbag lawyer or chasing a bike messenger...unless there's something in it for them. Maybe Lenny Lowell had a connection to something big enough to be killed for. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer—or the end of his career. Because if there's one lesson he's learned over the years, it's that in a town built on fantasy and fame, delivering the truth can be deadly.

From the Hardcover edition.

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With this new thriller, New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag delivers her own message to suspense fans everywhere: Don't turn off the lights, and keep reading if you dare. From the gritty streets of Los Angeles to its most protected enclaves of prestige and power to the ruthless glamour of Hollywood, a killer stalks his prey. A killer so merciless no one in his way is safe—not even the innocent.

At the end of a long day battling street traffic, bike messenger Jace Damon has one last drop to make. But en route to delivering a package for one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, he's nearly run down by a car, chased through back alleys, and shot at. Only the instincts acquired while growing up on the streets of L.A. allow him to escape with his life—and with the package someone wants badly enough to kill for.

Jace returns to Lenny Lowell's office only to find the cops there, the lawyer dead, and Jace himself considered the prime suspect in the savage murder. Suddenly he's on the run from both the cops and a killer, and the key to saving himself and his ten-year-old brother is the envelope he still has—which holds a message no one wants delivered: the truth.

In a city fueled by money, celebrity, and sensationalism, the murder of a bottom-feeding mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell won't make the headlines. So when detectives from the LAPD's elite robbery/homicide division show up, homicide detective Kev Parker wants to know why. Parker is on the downhill slide of a once-promising career, and he doesn't want to be reminded that he used to be one of the hotshots, working cases that made instant celebrities of everyone involved. Like the case of fading retty-boy actor Rob Cole, accused of the brutal murder of his wife, Tricia Crowne-Cole, daughter of one of the most powerful men in the city, L.A.'s latest "crime of the century."

Robbery/Homicide has no reason to be looking at a dead small-time scumbag lawyer or chasing a bike messenger... unless there's something in it for them. Maybe Lenny Lowell had a connection to something big enough to be killed for. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer—or the end of his career. Because if there's one lesson he's learned over the years, it's that in a town built on fantasy and fame, delivering the truth can be deadly.

"In a genre overrun with self-conscious jargon, brooding descriptions and fragments masquerading as sentences, her clean, measured prose—full, balanced sentences delivered at a steady pace—doesn't so much create an ominous mood as draw the reader into the worlds of her characters."
   PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Customer Reviews:

A stellar effort from a quality mystery writer.......2007-06-04

Hoag writes a good suspense novel told from multiple points of view. The strength of this is in the fact that you get a variety of settings, making the book fuller and richer. Her characters feel authentic. They're likable but still real enough to have hard edges. The ending had an unexpected and melancholy twist and there was true resonance to the aftermath. I've been reading Hoag for some time and this is one of her best works yet.

Good read.......2007-03-10

I liked this book, listened to it on CD while commuting to work. It had a surprise ending, the characters were created nicely. I hate books I can figure out in a few chapters, this one was a surprise. I don't like what happend to ETA, but the book was good anyway.

Fast and fun.......2007-03-06

I've been a long time Hoag fan, yet I wasn't sure I was going to like this book after reading some of the reviews here. Having read and loved it, here is what I'd say to some of its critics: if you want character development don't look for it in a story that spans only three days. Character development generally implies change and especially growth--the development of character, which we probably all agree is not an overnight occurrence. I usually put a book down if the characters grow too suddenly because it doesn't ring true. So given the limitations of Hoag's timeframe, I thought she did a great job sketching out the basic personalities and motivations of the main characters, and even managed to develop Parker's character from the perspective of hindsight, though perhaps it requires a bit of reading between the lines to really see it. I actually thought he was one of the most likeable and genuine heroes I've read in a long time--not perfect, but just a decent and honorable man who came by his values the hard way.

I also like Hoag's writing style, despite the occassional cliche. Her dialog is snappy, her pace fast and her descriptions relatively sparse--perfect for a page-turner. I was even impressed (and affected!) by her handling of the emotional scenes of loss and grief between some of the characters. The only glaring weakness in this novel that I would remark on was her handling of the ten year old. His apparent inability to pronounce certain multisyllabic words seemed a little unbelievable given his level of intelligence. I have a fairly smart ten year old, though not with a 168 IQ, and she doesn't stumble over the pronunciations of words of which she understands the meaning. But that is my only real gripe.

Overall, I thought this book was worth every second and cent of my time and money. I recommend it to anyone who isn't looking for literature in pop fiction, and who enjoys police procedural suspense.

Not The Kind I Thought.......2007-02-19

I've been wanting to read this book for a while. But, unfortunately, it didn't turn out to be the knd of novel I expected it to be. I thought this was the kind of novel where there's lots of intense actions. Like a guy getting chased through out the book by a killer and keeps running away and being shot at, the kind of action that keeps your eyes on the book. Well, no, this was totally NOT the one I expected. It's just one of those guy-gets-killed-cops-come-and-investigate kind of novel. But the ending was great. It could probably raise the stars from 3 to 4 or 5, but this one I just can't do it. The title of the book pulled me in... It's suspense. Mystery novel. Not much actions.

[A Bantam book. Copyright 2004 by Indelible Ink, Inc.]

Not her usual.......2007-02-04

I'm a fan of Tami Hoag's books, but I felt a little disappointed with Kill the Messenger. It was okay, but very simply written, there were no strong characters or situations, nothing compelling except the relationship between Jace and his younger brother. Her lack of creativity in this book confused me because Hoag is normally a very rich writer, very down to earth, and admirably creative and adept in her prose. In my opinion, Kill the Messenger is an okay read if you don't have anything else better to read at the moment, but that does not deter me from reading Hoag's work altogether. I look forward to her future novels, but I hope they are not anything like Kill the Messenger.

Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

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The scary truth
Essential Reading
CIA trained and funded Contra death squads also coke dealers
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
An Honest Book About a Dishonest Reporter

Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
Nick Schou
Manufacturer: Nation Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1560259302

Book Description

Kill the Messenger tells the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 “Dark Alliance” series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media.

Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb’s stories. Drawing on exhaustive research and highly personal interviews with Webb’s family, colleagues, supporters and critics, this book argues convincingly that Webb’s editors betrayed him, despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Kill the Messenger examines the “Dark Alliance” controversy, what it says about the current state of journalism in America, and how it led Webb to ultimately take his own life.

Webb’s widow, Susan Bell, remains an ardent defender of her ex-husband. By combining her story with a probing examination of the one of the most important media scandals in recent memory, this book provides a gripping view of one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of investigative journalism.

Customer Reviews:

The scary truth.......2007-04-08

As the editor of the Applegator Newspaper, I have many books crossed my desk. I was captivated from the beginning to the end. And the story confirmed many of my fears. If one has any interest on the CIA, I highly recommend this book.

J.D. Rogers
Editor of the Applegator Newspaper

Essential Reading.......2007-02-28

This book should have received far more publicity than it's had since publication. It is essential reading for every American. Decades later, the aftereffects of crack's explosion are still with us: prisons overflowing with low-level drug operatives, destroyed inner-cities and families. Nick Schou should be commended for trying to keep this issue in the public's eye. And, Gary Webb should one day receive the accolades that eluded him in his lifetime.

CIA trained and funded Contra death squads also coke dealers.......2007-02-21

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby, former CIA Director

Kill the Messenger does a tremendous service by providing the reader with a detailed account that touches on all the issues that led to Gary Webb's downfall and ultimately his suicide. Also the book delves into the CIA/Contra cocaine smuggling that went on under the radar during the counterinsurgency war that raged in Nicaragua. Of course Webb unearthed much of the story.

One thing the mainstream press liked to do was treat the Contras as if they were a mutually exclusive entity separate from the CIA. Thus when the establishment media reported that the Contras dabbled in drug smuggling they could simultaneously report that at worst the CIA just turned a blind eye. Unfortunately for the CIA and the powers that be, the Contras were wholly trained and funded by the CIA. The CIA and the Contras were essentially one and the same. If the CIA never existed the Contras never would have even been conjured up and never would have been able to wage a bloody war against civilian targets, raping and pillaging throughout the Nicaraguan countryside and sending massive quantities of cocaine into the United States; much of which landed at the doorstep of Los Angeles and other major cities that had just started to feel the sting of Reaganite socio-economic policies.

Webb was basically the first journalist who truly blew the lid off the CIA's Contra cocaine smuggling operations that went on during the early and mid 1980s. Kid glove treatment does not one receive when exposing one of the most powerful and violent institutions in world affairs. Webb was basically vilified by the pillars of establishment journalism for having the temerity to report the truth. The Washington Post and New York Times attacked Webb's work once they realized Dark Alliance was gaining traction among the American public due to it being given extensive coverage via the Internet and black talk radio. The Post even went so far as to have a journalist who was in the pocket of the CIA write a story highly critical of Webb's findings. Being that the Post and Times more or less ignored much of the CIA skullduggery that went on during the 1980s it's not surprising to see the treatment they dealt to Webb because of his chutzpah. Kill the Messenger lays all this out for the reader to dissect. It's interesting to note that the same Post reporter who bashed Webb had decades ago written a highly critical review of Philip Agee's excellent book Inside the Company, a book which exposed CIA lawlessness and abuses.

Webb unearthed that one Contra (CIA) fundraiser, Norwin Meneses, was actually considered the "King of cocaine" in Nicaragua. Kill the Messenger provides the outline in which L.A.'s street gangs were at the end of a chain of a covert action to equip and arm the CIA's Contras. Meneses, and other thugs, play a major role in the book and in the covert action outlined therein. Of course cocaine was a primary funding source. Narcotics often play this role when money must be drummed up in a secret fashion. Of course during the 1980s was when coke was turning to crack and sweeping up the lives of much of the underdogs and poverty stricken.

One technique the mainstream media used in attacking Webb's story was to lament the fact that he often relied heavily on the testimony of criminals under oath. Apparently these sources never talked to a prosecuting attorney, since DAs often rely on such testimony in order to arrive at justice. Kill the Messenger addresses the fact that a respected French journalist who had covered Nicaragua in the 1980s, rushed to Webb's aid because he knew the core of Webb's work was genuine and true. He felt the U.S. media attacks against Webb were completely unjust. It should be remembered that in highly charged issues of this type there often is no proverbial smoking gun. What serious researchers are forced to do is put together a case based on the best available evidence in order to construct a highly probable scenario.

This book should be required reading; it exposes a dark side of American foreign policy that had obvious domestic implications as well. What went on with United States involvment in Central America 25 years ago was ostensibly a modern day extension of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. Webb was a courageous person who did the American public a great service by weaving the pieces together and providing this incredibly important story. In a just world he'd now be chilling out on the beach with a cold drink in his hand and Pulitzer at his side.

Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb.......2007-01-09

Well-written, direct and serious treatment of a personal as well as national story. It's a page turner for the armchair reader and a must for any student or teacher of journalism for its careful examination of the complex relationship between investigative reporter and editor. Its title exactly reflects the objective treatment Schou gives to a still controversial subject.

An Honest Book About a Dishonest Reporter.......2007-01-08

Gary Webb was a controversial reporter. He wrote first a series of articles and later a book under the title of "Dark Alliance" that showed that there were connections between the CIA and drug smugglers. Webb was unmercifully attacked by fellow journalists and was fired by his newspaper. Eventually, Webb committed suicide.

Nick Schou set out to portray Webb as a victim of the establishment. However, as a result of his own honest journalism, Schou wound up portraying Webb as being a rather different person than what Schou originally thought that he was.

Gary Webb was a bold reporter, but he was also guilty of serious transgressions against journalistic ethics. He engaged in cherry picking and ignored evidence that did not fit his thesis. He was not interested in fairness. Webb gave in to aggrandizement and egomania. Webb was a journalistic slacker and hypocrite. After leaving journalism, Webb gained a job in California state government where he became the stereotypical lazy bureaucrat.

Nick Schou lays out the sad and pathetic life story of Gary Webb a would be star of investigative reporting who was himself guilty of the same kind of ethical and moral lapses that he accused others of having.

This book is most heartily recommended.

Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing

Average customer rating:

You don't need to kill the messenger the intellect is already dead
The General Patton of the Testing Wars
Stunning Evidence
Is rote process really the same as an educated mind??
The Value and Importance of Standardized Testing.

Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing
Richard Phelps
Manufacturer: Transaction Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0765801787

Book Description

This work is written in defense of educational testing. It describes the debate, the players, their interests, and their positions. It explains and refutes many of the common criticisms of testing. It describes testing opponents' strategies, through case studies of Texas and the SAT.

Customer Reviews:

You don't need to kill the messenger the intellect is already dead.......2006-06-26

When you cannot understand the argument against your position and chose to then represent it-it seems obvious you can clearly count yourself successful in both stating your position and the "error" of the other side. Years ago BF Skinner(and his group) were sooooo good at this too. At one time in public education the objectification, the input, output, reinforcement model was the only game in town. Science, I believe was proposed, will lead us to a system that defines teaching, learning and all we really need to do is hook up the model and there you have it. I do not accept the notion that Standardized Tests tell us much of anything besides wealthier people's children succeed on them, all the time really, no matter what the year. That simple fact seems oddly unaddressed in this book. But a public school teacher rather than looking at all the schools and children and teachers and finger pointing at them and saying, "Well there is proof that we stink in lower income areas," thinks perhaps the test just might be a poor measure-in and of itself not doing what it proports.... I loved in those days of my training in teaching to read behavorists discuss and summarially dismiss cognitive theorists and others positions and thus state the notion they had the right of it. This is just a re-run.

When you teach entirely to "tests" with the thought they are designed by test gods who know better and more, rather than trust the judgement of individuals giving of their life to do the work with the children, when you actually vilify the teacher as liar or incompetent or someone grossing vast amounts of public money and state in essence they form groups so they can sit around on their behind and do nothing....meanwhile there are children who need us every day and need sentient beings caring about working harmoniuosly together to help them learn ...watching out for their lives and dreams and to the multiplicity of things that lie outside the realm of these poorly composed Standardized vehicles....it boggles a teacher's mind to read a book constructed as this one is. Full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Doing nothing, helping no one, meaning nada.... you lose creativity, construction and basically the rich world that occurs in classrooms with each word.I am so sorry for the life lost by the author, this life must be one filled with unhappiness and structured around the notion that all of this accountability is going to hold up the walls of the prisons schools will become for kids who are finding learning in this model absolutely awful. Ask those AP kids how much they enjoyed the year. The question is not about teaching to tests it is about whether or not these tests are even remotely representative of what classrooms, schools and teachers are able to do within children's lives. Building capacities, construction of meaning, resiliency, these things are not represented on these damn tests. It's that simple. I certainly invite the author to study within my classroom for a year. And then argue to me how that test represented that student who drew me a picture of a mommy lost to drug use with the note "My mommy thinks you r specal." I'm not a rocket designer on a NASA launch which requires accountabilty stats. I'm a teacher leading children into lives where they will be able to reach for their dreams and work to help our world and themselves.

Read BF Skinner if this book is your cup of tea....it's dated , but its the same notion. I recall in the 50's they also did tests on a monkey to prove they needed a mommy with a doll, sock, nothing to prove something. In the end all it proves to me is a bit of sciencese and jargon goes a long way. No one who actually gives or reads these tests I'm forced to give could argue they are reliable forms of anything but a way to measure how far off the mark we are.

The General Patton of the Testing Wars.......2004-03-24

A week doesn't go by, without a mainstream media story on the "horrors" of standardized testing, in which reporters tell of widespread testing error, of how testing is causing students to drop out of school, or of how testing is causing an epidemic of cheating.

The story behind the stories is that the relative prevalence of testing error is infinitesimal, that journalists stressing the dropout factor are mindlessly repeating a myth spread by radical Boston College teacher education professor Walter Haney, and that cheating is more easily prevented on standardized tests than with their alternatives.

For years, the American public has been force-fed a diet of test-bashing by the establishment media, the teachers' unions, professors of teacher education and well-financed anti-testing organizations, in which test-bashers have twisted existing data, ignored contrary data, and fabricated data outright. So reports Richard Phelps in his brilliant, new book.

As Phelps tells it, Kill the Messenger "is as much about censorship and professional arrogance as it is about testing." The author contends that the teachers and administrators who control the public education monopoly, and the teacher education professors who monopolize teacher credentialing, oppose standardized testing in order to shield themselves from public scrutiny and accountability. "... it is disturbing, because school administrators and education professors represent a group of public servants who should serve as models to our children. We pay them high salaries and give them very secure jobs. Then, we give them our children. Is just a little bit of external, objective evaluation of what they do with our money and our children really asking so much?"

Influential test-bashers include Walter Haney, Linda McNeil of Rice University, Harvard's Howard Gardner, University of California president Richard Atkinson, writers Alfie Kohn and Nicholas Lemann, and the organizations Fair Test, UCLA's CRESST (National Center for Research on Evaluations, Standards, and Student Testing), and Boston College's CSTEEP (Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy).

Phelps argues persuasively that objective, external, standardized, high-stakes testing is the best measure we have of how much students have learned, and how well teachers, curricula, and textbooks have done their respective jobs. The tests give us a tremendous amount of information on children's academic strengths and weaknesses, so that we may help them improve. "Objective" is in contrast to classroom grades, which are increasingly subjective, politicized, and inflated. "External" means that school officials with a stake in the results do not control examination grading. "Standardized" means that a test "is given in identical form and at the same time to students in more than one school, and all the results are marked in the same way." And "high stakes" means that test scores have consequences, so that the test serves as a powerful motivational tool. Alternatives such as classroom grades and "portfolios" of work lack the advantages of standardized testing, while being much more vulnerable to manipulation and cheating.

Phelps sets out test-bashers' strategies and tactics; presents case studies of campaigns against the SAT, the Texas teachers' literacy test, and the 2000 October Surprise attack on the "Texas Miracle" of educational progress under then-Gov. George W. Bush; media coverage; the "benefits of testing"; legitimate concerns about testing; and "alternatives to standardized testing." Two appended glossaries translate test-bashers' Orwellian jargon, and explain testing terms.

Richard Phelps drives through the armies of test-bashers like Patton's Third Army cutting through France in the summer of '44, cataloguing and refuting the misrepresentations they have spread.

For instance, test-bashers have for years insisted that American students are tested more than students in any other country, and that high-stakes, standardized testing causes dropout rates to increase, and educators to "teach to the test." And liberal reporters eat this stuff up!

Phelps scolds the test-bashers for being too lazy to make a couple of calls abroad, to determine that their assumption is false. "Virtually every other industrialized country in the world tests its students more, and with greater consequences riding on the results, than we do." He shows how education professor Walter Haney inflates dropout figures by stealthily employing a highly irregular definition, whereby he counts anyone who fails to graduate on time with his age group as a "dropout," and then leaps to the baseless conclusion that the fictional dropouts were caused by standardized testing. Noting that it would be irresponsible not to teach to the test, Phelps responds to that charge, "So, they should instead teach material that the test will not cover? They should `teach away from the test'?"

Kill the Messenger could have been called "Coloring Education News," since it does for education reporting what William McGowan's Coloring the News did for journalism in general. Phelps' analyses of media bias, including statistical breakdowns showing how the media let test-bashers dominate the testing debate, provide a model for media criticism. He also reports on the undisguised hostility some reporters and producers show scholars who fail to tow the party line. (Full disclosure: Phelps praises my education reporting.)

Phelps suggests that the most insidious test-bashers of all, are those who claim to support testing - just not any existing test. "Given all the variety and all the experience, anyone who cannot be satisfied by any current testing program can never be satisfied with any testing program."

Ultimately, Phelps writes, "Most of the attacks on student testing, indeed, are attacks on measurement - of any kind - or, more specifically, any measurement made by groups `external' to the group being measured." Phelps cautions the reader, however, that any test is only as good as the curriculum and instructional theory it is tied to.

Written largely in a conversational style, notwithstanding its staggering scholarship, Kill the Messenger casts much needed light on a public policy issue that affects us all, but which those holding the public's trust have kept shrouded in darkness. As Phelps argues, "the debate on testing ... is part of a war for the control of our country's schools ... The booty is our children's futures. The stakes are enormous."

Men's News Daily, March 10, 2004.

Stunning Evidence.......2003-12-08

"Kill the Messenger" presents a compelling case in favor of standardized testing. The evidence presented by Phelps is stunning. His treatment of the subject is quite thorough. We do not allow other industries to dictate their own performance measurements. Why do we allow it in education? And as we continue to trust our educators, our children are lagging sadly behind those in other countries. Obviously our current approach to education is not working and yet we allow our educators to sing the same song and dance the same dance.

Is rote process really the same as an educated mind??.......2003-11-13

Having battled my own share of standardized testing programs, I wish there was a 'zero' star option.

Confusing rote obedience with intelligence, the authors selectively ignore cases (I and many others) that could not pass our state's standardized exams (now the political vogue) yet maintain a 4.0 average, ironically the mark of excellence. This is not an accident or misprint, but reflects a calculated war against anybody labeled different.

Because schools can no longer exclude students with disabilities (and higher education institutions must admit otherwise qualified individuals) standardized testing programs prey on politicians fear and ignorance of this changed landscape, and subconscious longing to return to a supposedly more serene time when we were either barred----or allowed to attend only under the blessing of individual family connections. That this earlier arrangement also did not measure an individual's real intelligence and academic capabilities was less important than feeding stereotypes routinely confusing disability with inability.

Unlike components for the general degree plan, the 'accommodations' option (regardless of how simple the provision such as a four function calculator, colored overlays etc...) for Texas's higher education testing program is not available at every state institution, wrongfully implying that disability is an 'extra', and reinforcing the idea students with disabilities are not 'real' members of the academic community. Once we are devalued, it is easier to justify overall discrimination against people with disabilities.

If nationally revered and non-punitive tests such as the SAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT are required to provide disability testing accommodations at all of their sites, the states and their own programs have no excuse for this current arrangement. If the real focus is measuring ability, and not reinforcing a disability (including the lingering sociopolitical stigma), the same officials would not have implemented such contradictory and ill-conceived programs.

At one college, I was actually told by that school's disability testing office the state guidelines did not allow accommodations---despite my having qualified for them. Although this same standardized test was supposed to measure MY academic skills, the state of Texas saw nothing wrong with staffing a civil rights office with a woman openly incapable of comprehending the law---and hence job descriptions for which she was entrusted with. If state institutions themselves need education on their rights and responsibilities, who are they to presume we are arriving without our basic skills.

Bundled with program completion limits for all students, the many entrenched bureaucratic hurdles would make many present testing champions wake up...if they really wanted to. Standardized testing may be politically popular, but it is not moral or intelligent.

The Value and Importance of Standardized Testing........2003-10-20

"Kill the Messenger" by Richard Phelps is an effective and extensively documented defense of standardized testing and the flawed and fabricated arguments of its opponents.
As a teacher of Advanced Placement U.S. History, I "teach to the test," a national test that over 100,000 students take each May. Colleges, the military and many employers find applicants' standardized test results useful, because they can usefully predict future success.
Does anyone think that a college admissions committee can find no useful, predictive value between one student's SAT math score of 420 and and another's 620 out of a possible 800? In the real world of high schools, within one school system and even within one school building, the same year-long performance by one student might receive a grade of D or F with one teacher, while another might assign it a grade of A or B. This is the reality of American education that parents, students and teachers across the country know all too well.

By employing a common set of uniform measures, standardized tests allow a college admissions committee to see which sets of grades appear to be more reliable.

Phelps shows the contradictions in the arguments of testing opponents: "Most of us would argue that it is not fair to make high-stakes judgments of students based on the mastery of material to which they have not been exposed. Most testing opponents concur. They criticize vociferously when high stakes tests cover subject matter that students have not had an opportunity to learn. Then, sometimes in the same argument or speech, testing opponents will criticize just as vociferously the process of teaching material thatis covered on a test - that is wrong, too, that is 'teaching to the test.'"

Since public education is supported by tax dollars, the public has a right to know how its schools are performing. Standardized tests document the abject failure of many school systems to educate large numbers of students and simultaneously attest to real success, wherever it appears.

Phelps targets other evocative but baseless accusations against testing, including: "testing distorts instruction" (sad to say, the force of standardized tests often leads to the first effective teaching in a class or school!), "ignores each student's individuality," "penalizes the use of innovative curricula and teaching strategies" (could it be that these strategies, such as wasting huge amounts of instructional time on group projects and group activities, may prevent students from learning the material they are expected to know?), "unfair to women and minorities" (In reality, standardized tests reveal that many school systems are so dysfunctional that they fail to provide adequate instruction for minorities.), etc.

In a chapter that should interest all parents, Phelps examines the misleading criticisms of "The Big, Bad SAT," which almost two-thirds of U.S. colleges include in the mix of criteria for making admissions decisions. Colleges use the SAT [and AP scores] or the ACT because they are reliably predictive of a student's academic performance during his or her first year in college, which is when most drop-outs occur. Since grade inflation in many high schools masks lackluster performance and achievement, colleges need a more objective standard - and parents should be thankful that one exists. The SAT or ACT creates a common national measure that "college admissions counselors rate ... as a more reliable measure than .. high school grade point average, extracurricular activities, recommendations, essays and so on." If SAT tests had no future performance validity, colleges would not require them.

Phelps also looks at test preparation companies' claims that they they can raise SAT test scores and cites studies that show limited gains from "test coaching" - far short of the exaggerated claims. He cites one 1998 study of the recentered SAT I that found an "average effect (increase) from 21 to 34 points on the combined SAT I score scale" of coached students over those who received no coaching.

In other chapters, Phelps explains the testing systems and how and why other countries use standardized tests, looking specifically at the "testing systems of the 29 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), essentially the wealthier countries of the world, plus China, Russia and Singapore," the countries with whom US students are most frequently compared in media reports of international test results.

Phelps also examines the debates over testing in Texas and the tendency of the media to give more space to opponents of testing, while rarely subjecting their claims to critical examination.

In exposing the illogic of the arguments of testing opponents and the flawed use of evidence they cite, Phelps' work enables readers to understand some of the obstacles to improving student achievement. The next time one hears criticism of standardized testing by Alfie Kohn, FairTest, Gerald Bracey, Howard Gardner and many others, a quick check in "Kill the Messenger" might find that Richard Phelps has already examined and dissected it.

Product Description

Everything that ought to be known about Robert Kelly can be found in his books, of which this is the fortieth.

From "The Court Painter":

How can I show you the truth of

anyone witout his face you ask?

The face is the last thing I paint,

& the least important.

It is there to trick the subject

into thinking he is one,

that he has been 'represented.'

But where he is is in a fold

of cape, shadow of a label,

wrinkle between elbow & those wide

gold stripes that tell how great he is

Customer Reviews:

precise furvor.......2000-09-15

Robert Kelly is one of my very favourite poets.

Kill the Messenger/Northern Light/Murder at the B-School/The Queen of the Big Time (Reader's Digest Select Editions, Volume 3: 2005)

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Popular, if not necessarily today's top fiction--

Kill the Messenger/Northern Light/Murder at the B-School/The Queen of the Big Time (Reader's Digest Select Editions, Volume 3: 2005)
Tami Hoag , Jennifer Donnelly , Jeffrey L. Cruikshank , and Adriana Trigiani
Manufacturer: Reader's Digest Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Similar Items:

ASIN: B000B63S4I

Customer Reviews:

Popular, if not necessarily today's top fiction--.......2005-09-29

I'm sure many millions of Americans and Canadians remember fondly those little Reader's Digest Condensed Books, which held sway in mostly hardback form in millions of home libraries until fairly recently. This kind of book is now called "Select Editions," but it retains the old idea of four books condensed into one thickish (600 page) tome.

But times have changed, the public's taste has changed, and the new book adheres more closely to the modern preference for genre fiction like sleuth or "chick-lit" tellings instead of fiction that claimed -- not always successfully -- to have some claim on posterity. I notice that my parent's bookshelf holds a Condensed Book from 1960--three novels and Booker T. Washington's memoirs. That would not happen today because the Washington bio is non-fiction and because it is too serious--possibly too challenging.

The first book in Volume 279 (2005) has elements both of chick-lit and of whodunit: Tami Hoag's KILL THE MESSENGER. An innocent bicycle messenger is threatened and drawn into a conspiracy against his will. To his help come a police dept. neophyte Abby Lowell, and a grizzled detective, Kev Parker. The plot is suitably fun and jiggy, but the relationship between the two leads is a little on the routine side. Still, the Los Angeles locales are well rendered here; it's that kind of local detail that often gets left out of substantially abridged tomes like this one.

THE QUEEN OF THE BIG TIME by Adriana Trigiani is truly an epic: it follows a lonely prairie woman from 1927 to 1966, her travails, her relationships and loves. Perhaps a little more self-consciously "sprawling" than it needs to be, but the author's heartfelt admiration of her pioneering character comes through.

MURDER AT THE B-SCHOOL by Jeffrey Cruikshank was probably the most successful book of the four in its original full-length release. It is essentially a 21st-Century "cozy" set in New England. When a Harvard Business School instructor is ordered to help a family whose son was just murdered(?) on campus, he finds out the family live in baronial splendor and he isn't able to "help" the way he was ordered to. The mystery holds up pretty well, but I suspect the shape of this classic whodunit worked better in the original. There are, however, sincere attempts to capture the ambience of Harvard and of downtown Boston.

Jennifer Connely's A NORTHERN LIGHT is classic "chick-lit" if ever I saw one. Mattie, a deserving young woman from a poor background has as her chief desire in life the ability to attend college. But [here I borrow from the jacket], [W]hen tragedy strikes at the lakeside hotel where she works, Mattie discovers just how powerful words--and dreams--can be." Not really my cup of tea, but Mattie's voice remains passionate and intelligent, and she stays in character.

A discerning shopper can get some real deals from Amazon. My copy of Select Editions -- in paperback!-- cost $26.00 by the time I paid tax and S&H. By contrast, new and relatively recent examples of this series can be had on Amazon at less than half that price, perhaps a tenth for a used paperback.

Kill the Messenger: One Man's Fight Against Bigotry and Greed

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Kill The Messenger
Legacy of Apathy
More Carolina Skeletons!

Kill the Messenger: One Man's Fight Against Bigotry and Greed
Ken H. Fortenberry
Manufacturer: Peachtree Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Journalism | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Kill The Messenger.......2001-09-17

McCormick is nothing like the book says it is. My dad grew up in that small town and everybody knows everybody. It's a small friendly town. Fortenberry is a journalist that doesn't have anything better to do than ruin pople's lives. He even wanted to make a movie out of the book. I just wanted to say that this book portrays the small town of McCormick as a town that is still in the civil war and that is divided. The book is nothing like real life!

Legacy of Apathy.......2000-04-07

While I agree with a number of the comments made by the first reviewer here, I would like to add a number of further observations that I think lend extra value to Fortenberry's text. In his portrait of McCormick, Fortenberry pays particular attention to the subject of education. McCormick is rigidly divided along lines of race and this is reflected in the schools. The more affluent whites are warehoused in the lamentable Long Cane Academy, which survives on the display of teenage flesh in hopelessly outmoded 'beauty pageants' and door-to-door ticket sales for BBQ and alike. The county's majority black population attend the crumbling public school system, the appearance of which more befits a gulag than an educational facility. The County had opportunity to change this situation through a school bond referendum earlier this year, however, the aging white residents of Savannah Lakes Village - a 'Gone With the Wind' and golf themed retirement complex/special tax haven newly built on the County's lakeside border - voted against the bond and set back educational progress another 15 years. Fortenberry's book highlights the root of this apathy and spiritual corruption. His portrait of a community hopelessly divided along the colour line is spot on and little has changed in 15 years. Perhaps it is time to re-read Kill the Messenger and take some decisive action.

More Carolina Skeletons!.......2000-03-31

When McCormick, as with the state in which the town is located, South Carolina, hits the headlines its not usually for the best of reasons. In the early 1980s, after over fifty years of economic decline and a significant loss of population, McCormick was featured in US News as one of a number small towns likely to disappear. This prediction proved overly pessimistic and McCormick has survived to become a significant stop on the Palmetto state's Heritage Corridor. Ken Fortenberry's book highlights an interim period in the town's fortunes during the mid-1980s. As editor and owner of the town newspaper, the McCormick Messenger, Fortenberry found himself literally under fire when he started to print the details of some of the shadier goings-on in the local Sheriff's department. Kill the Messenger follows the Fortenberry family's fortunes throughout their brief period of residence in McCormick, in the process revealing a deep-rooted corruption in the social and political fabric of the town. The book is a quick read, written in a journalistic style aptly suited to the subject matter. In its description of the town and some the local charcaters, Fortenberry pulls no punches and the book's impact is still felt in the town. Unlike Savannah's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, you won't find this particular book featuring as the centrepiece of a literary tour and you won't find too many people willing to sit down and discuss 'the book' with either. However, Fortenberry's book does have a certain morbid fascination with the local population, as the McCormick County library can't keep a copy on the shelves - over a dozen have been stolen to date! Indeed, perhaps this acts as the strongest recommendation for Kill the Messenger.

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There'll always be an England

Kill the Messenger
Bernard Ingham
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Journalism | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

There'll always be an England.......2005-07-01

Why did I take this book from the Soi 6 Library in Pattaya, Thailand? Not because of the unflattering author photo on the cover -- what an ugly mug! Nor was I stoked by the slightly boring sentences I glanced at as I turned to several pages at random. That's my method of tasting a book before committing.

The cover quote from Nicholas Ridley of London's Sunday Times: "Essential reading for those who want to understand the phenomenon of the Thatcher revolution" intrigued me because Alan Clark's marvelously uninhibited "Diaries" got me interested in the somewhat unattractive Margaret Thatcher. Inhibited Ingham, a "Labour" sympathizer, had been drafted as the very Conservative Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary and served her well for eleven years, gaining insights into that stodgy Prime Minister.

Ingham was born into a village life that's long gone in England. At age sixteen he apprenticed to the local newspaper. He'd found his career, which involved sitting through lethally boring meetings as well as meeting fascinating newsmen and women. He's not a thrilling writer, but I'm desperate for something to read, so I'm satisfied even when Ingham misuses the subjunctive or uses another outmoded cliche like "getting the drift." I was born in Pasadena in 1934; I fondly remember that time and its mostly innocent slang and I enjoy being reminded of passe expressions.

Apparently this book was a bestseller in Jolly Olde Englande, and controversial. A sequel was even published. So go ahead and read about historical events in the late 20th Century as seen by an ordinary but extraordinarily honest man.

4 Titles By Tami Hoag : Still Waters - Dark Paradise - Night Sins - Kill the Messenger

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4 Titles By Tami Hoag : Still Waters - Dark Paradise - Night Sins - Kill the Messenger
Tami Hoag
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Product Description

multiple books ship as one item. save on shipping/handling charges.

6 Titles By Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise - Lucky's Lady - Ashes to Ashes - Kill the Messenger - Still Waters - Night Sins

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Kill the messenger

6 Titles By Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise - Lucky's Lady - Ashes to Ashes - Kill the Messenger - Still Waters - Night Sins
Tami Hoag
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

Product Description

6 massmarket paperback Titles By Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise - Lucky's Lady - Ashes to Ashes - Kill the Messenger - Still Waters - Night Sins

Customer Reviews:

Kill the messenger.......2007-07-13

Great mystery, keeps your interest till the end, I could not stop, I sat there and listen to the whole book ( all the CD's )in one sitting

8 PBs by Tami Hoag: Ashes to Ashes, Kill the Messenger, Cry Wolf +5 More

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8 PBs by Tami Hoag: Ashes to Ashes, Kill the Messenger, Cry Wolf +5 More
Tami Hoag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UX8LU8

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Paperbacks

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