Houghton Mifflin

Sylvan Ventures announced yesterday that it is investing $15.9 million in a partnership with textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Co. and venture fund Inception Capital to create an online resource for teachers. The new company, to be called Classwell Learning Group, will offer Houghton Mifflin's library of educational material online to elementary and secondary-education teachers on a paid-subscription basis. Combined, the three are investing $30.4 million in cash in Classwell, with Baltimore-based Sylvan kicking in the largest amount for a 32 percent stake.

The Headmaster's Dilemma By Louis Auchincloss Houghton Mifflin / 178 pages / $25 When Louis Auchincloss describes the fictional New England private school that is the focus of his new book as "a stalwart fortress against the creeping vulgarity of the day," he might be describing his own elevated rank in American letters. At age 89, and after writing more than 60 books, the fact that Auchincloss is still producing new work may seem remarkable in itself. In 2000, the New York Landmarks Conservancy was inspired to designate him as a "Living Landmark," which suggests that Auchincloss is more like a shuttered edifice than a working writer.

"The Saskiad," by Brian Hall. Houghton Mifflin. 382 pages. $23.95.The redoubtable and richly imagined 12-year-old heroine othis novel is on the cusp between childhood and adolescence. With a difficult life, she escapes through literary fantasies that the author portrays as comic, touching and revelatory embroidering of reality.Fantasy rules the second part as well, but it becomes more frenetic as the reader discerns the darkness beneath.Pub Date: 2/02/97

Red Mutiny Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin By Neal Bascomb Houghton Mifflin / 386 pages / $26 Anyone who has seen Warren Beatty's 1981 film Reds, which dramatized the birth pangs of the Russian Revolution, may be moved by Red Mutiny, Neal Bascomb's elegiac and emotionally involving story of the revolution's dress rehearsal. It happened on a muggy June day in 1905, when 700 Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin mutinied, throwing some of their officers into the Black Sea, and set up a free-speech soviet (council)

The Baltimore County school system's decision to combine two reading series - one for phonics, one for comprehension - in the early elementary grades has drawn sharp criticism from national reading experts, who warn the strategy could prove confusing to children and teachers. "It is completely inexplicable to me why they would do that," said Louisa C. Moats, project director of the Early Interventions Project, a reading study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and administered by University of Texas.

On cue, first-graders in Simone Jordan's class at Chillum Elementary School in Prince George's County rattle off a list of "ick" words: pick, sick, trick, kick, lick, chick."

"White Rabbit," by Kate Phillips. Houghton Mifflin. 212 pages. $21.95If this first novel is any indication, you'll hear a lot more about this gifted young writer. At 28, she has taken an imaginative leap into the mind of an 88-year-old woman and emerged with a deeply affecting meditation on life. The book takes place during one long day, apparently the final day, in the life of Ruth Hubble.The prose is understated, the metaphors are quietly masterful. It's a beautiful book.

The only better first name would have been Eve. But Jane did just fine. When Jane Goodall emerged from the forest of Tanzania with her tales of life with the chimpanzees, her timing was perfect. National Geographic introduced this gentle, determined woman to the world in its August 1963 issue in an article entitled My Life with the Wild Chimpanzees. Jane Goodall: The Woman who Redefined Man Dale Peterson Houghton Mifflin / 742 pages / $35

In a move to give beginning readers a strong grounding in the mechanics of the English language, the Baltimore school board voted last night to spend $3.8 million on a phonics-based book series for kindergarten through grade two and a series rich in literature for grades three through five.The action follows weeks of drama uncharacteristic of a textbook selection, as reading authorities from Baltimore to California weighed in on how best to build this foundation skill for Baltimore's children, who lag badly behind their suburban peers and are on average two grades behind in reading by the time they reach fifth grade.

Red Mutiny Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin By Neal Bascomb Houghton Mifflin / 386 pages / $26 Anyone who has seen Warren Beatty's 1981 film Reds, which dramatized the birth pangs of the Russian Revolution, may be moved by Red Mutiny, Neal Bascomb's elegiac and emotionally involving story of the revolution's dress rehearsal. It happened on a muggy June day in 1905, when 700 Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin mutinied, throwing some of their officers into the Black Sea, and set up a free-speech soviet (council)

The Canon A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science By Natalie Angier Houghton Mifflin / 304 pages / $27 One of the few books I ever stayed up all night to read was Knowledge and Wonder: The Natural World as Man Knows It, by the late great physicist Victor Weisskopf. In clear, simple prose, it introduced me to atoms and stars, crystals and metals, cells and life. All basic stuff: no black holes, no extra dimensions, no astonishing feats of genetic engineering. Nothing, in short, new. But it was wonder enough to alter me forever, turning a mild-mannered political and cultural writer into a science freak - the kind of person who drops dinner rolls at parties to demonstrate the equivalence of gravity and inertia.

The N Word Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why By Jabari Asim Houghton Mifflin / 278 pages / $26 What's in a word? When it comes to the N-word, the better question is, what isn't? Whatever one thinks of its usage, the granddaddy of ethnic slurs is much more than a stick or stone that can be deflected with self-esteem and forgotten until the next encounter. The word is not singular and never has been. It is a social orientation, a state of mind so deeply embedded in the collective American unconscious - and the conscious - it's not perceived as a problem; it's part of who we are. It is a 400-year-old storm front that has never blown over, a forked tongue of lightning that can crash overhead without warning or welcome, breaking the fragile continuum of American conversations about race.

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball By Derek Zumsteg Houghton Mifflin / 288 pages / $13.95 Baseball-wise, I was educated in the fine arts of booing, interfering with a center fielder's catch of a fly ball and shrieking curses - even at the home team - in that Harvard for hecklers, the zoo-like "bleacher-bums" section above the ivy-covered wall of Wrigley Field, lair of the Chicago Cubs. Unlike our crosstown rivals, those knuckle-dragging White Sox fans, we usually refrained from jumping onto the diamond to slug a player or coach.

How Doctors Think By Jerome Groopman, M.D. Houghton Mifflin / 320 pages / $26 I often see undetected fear in patients' eyes as they traverse our complex medical system trying to figure out how to get their worries, aches and pains heard and cured. I work with doctors every day as they interact with various patients and families. But only after reading How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D., did I realize that I saw only their actions and reactions. Never was I privy to the reflecting, reviewing and even, at times, soul-searching that doctors do over their patients and diagnoses - the roads they mentally travel and the effect it can have on their patients.

The only better first name would have been Eve. But Jane did just fine. When Jane Goodall emerged from the forest of Tanzania with her tales of life with the chimpanzees, her timing was perfect. National Geographic introduced this gentle, determined woman to the world in its August 1963 issue in an article entitled My Life with the Wild Chimpanzees. Jane Goodall: The Woman who Redefined Man Dale Peterson Houghton Mifflin / 742 pages / $35

The Light of Evening Edna O'Brien Houghton Mifflin / 304 pages / $25 Veteran novelist Edna O'Brien, the author of 20 volumes of fiction and an Irish expatriate living in London for more than 40 years, has been called one of the greatest writers in the English-speaking world. Her latest and most complex novel yet, The Light of Evening, proves that such lavish praise is indeed justified. O'Brien is a writer whose work only gets better and richer as she ages. O'Brien's literary interests have always been far-ranging; however, the decades of her expatriation have not diminished her focus, which has remained implacably Ireland, her most defining influence.

Vivendi plans to sell all publishing assets, newspaper reports Embattled media and entertainment giant Vivendi Universal will follow up its planned sale of U.S. publisher Houghton Mifflin with the sale of the rest of its publishing assets, a French newspaper reported yesterday. The sale of Vivendi Universal Publishing and Houghton Mifflin would bring the cash-strapped conglomerate about $2 billion, Le Figaro reported. The other publishing assets include French publisher Larousse and Blizzard Entertainment, which makes video games.

There's a lot to consider when writing the math problems for a high school algebra textbook or the Spanish examples for a middle school language book. Do the examples meet state standards? Is the language easily understood by that grade level? Do the pages reflect diversity in race and ethnic background? At Baltimore-based Monotype Composition, former teachers and employees with doctorates in education look at all those criteria as they develop textbooks for some of the nation's largest publishing houses, including Houghton Mifflin and Prentice Hall.

Eggs By Michel Roux The Good Egg By Marie Simmons Houghton Mifflin / 2006 / $15 Marie Simmons won a James Beard cookbook award for The Good Egg when it was first published in 2000. Now, six years later, this comprehensive catalog of egg recipes is available in a newly released paperback version. Few books cover so much territory with one ingredient. With more than 200 recipes, the book offers the basics, such as Spaghetti Alla Carbonara, but also more complicated dishes, such as a fresh fig and prosciutto frittata with Asiago cheese.

River of No Reprieve Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny Jeffrey Tayler Houghton Mifflin / 230 pages / $24 Anyone who wants to understand Russia, the great northern empire, might as well go to the Far North to find its essence. Jeffrey Tayler did just that, traveling in a two-man rubber boat almost the entire length of Siberia's Lena River. He began in Ust-Kut in the forests near Lake Baikal at the beginning of summer and finished in mid-August in the tundra town of Tiksi on the shores of the Laptev Sea high above the Arctic Circle.