Planet Earth Home: The Ultimate Self-Sufficient Home for any Location in the World

Average customer rating:

A real let down!

Planet Earth Home

The BEST reference book for self-sufficient living!

Planet Earth Home

Planet Earth Home: The Ultimate Self-Sufficient Home for any Location in the World
Mel Moench
Manufacturer: Osprey Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival

ASIN: 0967371163

Customer Reviews:

A real let down!.......2007-07-21

I don't ever pay over $100 for a book. My expectations were high, maybe unrealistically so. I expected more than a short review on alternative sustainable energies and systems. I did not really need the history and so much of it. I needed a how to book. The '80's pictures and poor CAD drawings were a let down. Isn't this book an update? Wasn't all this research incorporated into a real house? But the straw that broke the camel's back were the extremely poor copies of diagrams. Sorry, I believe the author worked very hard to gather a lot of information, but the book lacked in presentation and practical content. I returned this book!

Planet Earth Home.......2007-01-09

Moench goes into excessive detail and perhaps off at a tangent. However, everything is considered and it provides a good foundation to researching the construction of your own self-sufficient home.

The BEST reference book for self-sufficient living!.......2000-06-04

I was impressed by how much information there is in this one book! It is the one book that has everything from different types of solar panels to how to filter water. The diet section was particularly interesting to me, as I have always been interested in gardening and food preparation. Because of the unbiased product information and comparison discussions, I am rethinking some purchases that I was planning to make. I found that information was very easy to find because the table of contents is logically organized by function. I would recommend this reference book to anyone with a serious interest in self-sufficient homes.

Planet Earth Home.......2000-04-18

Fantastic reference book! I have read many solar and wind power books, but this one dwarfs all of them. I can't think of a single subject having to do with alternative energy, alternative construction, recycling, and gardening that is not covered. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is into independent living-especially if they are planning on building their own home. This book can save you a lot of time and money!

Customer Reviews:

Drop-Dead Gorgeous Book.......2001-11-12

I credit this book hands-down with inspiring and introducing me to the beautiful art of glass etching. Page after page of breathtaking sophisticated etched glass carvings are interspersed with photos of smaller examples easily within reach of a beginner. The authors have had over 25 years in the business and now hold beginner through master level classes at their art studio in New Mexico.

This is a thorough book describing the various methods of etching, the materials, types of glass, types of techniques, etc. For example, etching cream - which is what I'm learning to use as a beginner is only capable of surface etching. Even so, this simple technique can make very beautiful designs on different types of glass. I've been practicing on jelly and juice jars I keep after finishing off said jelly or juice. That way, if or when I mess up it doesn't matter as much like it would had I practiced on an expensive wine glass or bowl. Soon I'll be ready to move on to the next project and type of glass to practice on. The authors discuss in particular detail surface etching, carving and shading. Applying and cutting various types of resists and etching creams, numbering patterns so you know which order to etch for a proper 3-dimensional effect, beveling, how to hold the carving/blasting wand, etc. is all here. Most of these techniques can be done now (at least on a small scale) with a small air compressor like the ones used for airbrush, portable blaster and tabletop sandblasting cabinets. Chapter 8 gives extensive advise on the various types of equipment (from hobbiest tabletop units to industrial room-sized) used for sandblast etching along with each piece of equipment's pros and cons.

I'm looking at one tabletop unit that is moderately priced (less than $270). With this one tabletop unit (which the book shows a photo of and discusses) anyone can start recreating even the most sophisticated designs and projects included in this book for beginners and beyond. Detailed step-by-step photos for each project are shown in each chapter and the patterns for each project are provided in Appendix B. The other Appendices cover a glossary of terms, suppliers of etching machines, stencil sources, sources for glass, further reading and handy reference charts covering Moh's hardness scale, volume/linear/pressure measurements and abrasive grit sizes including microgrit powders. It really presents a very broad overview of everything one needs to get started making beautiful glass etching/carvings.

And I want to stess again that page after page is a visual feast of gallery designs of what professional glass etchers can do. The cover of the book does not even begin to show how beautiful the artwork displayed inside really is. I can not stress this point enough. The artwork shown inside is truly worthy of anyone's coffee table. The fantastic thing is that I'm having a ton of fun learning this beautiful art - and all thanks to this one comprehensive book. Bravo! I want a sequel!

A BOON IN DISGUISE.......2001-03-12

It was a boon to have this book Mr. Dobbins!! I have been able to etch and carve glass successfully and beautifully just with the help of the detailed instructions in the book! Today, if I am successful it is because of this book. Thankyou Mr. Dobbins for putting in your heart and soul into this book!! Aarti Jhawar(India)

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Photography between covers: Interviews with photo-bookmakers
Thomas Dugan
Manufacturer: Light Impressions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0879920122

Average customer rating:
Photography Between Covers Interviews with Photo Bookmakers
Dugan Thomas
Manufacturer: Light Impressions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LB7M3G

Average customer rating:
Mechwarrior Dark Age Booster
Various
Manufacturer: WizKids
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Game
ASIN: 1590410637

Book Description

Do you ever feel bogged down by the seemingly endless stream of data you have to sift through to get business information? Getting more data at a faster rate will not solve your problems, but knowing how to search for information will. Information Breakthrough is about changing your mindset so you can look for and extract information pertinent to the unique characteristics of your business. The book will teach you to simplify the steps to developing a system to stay on top of your business' operations. The process is explained in non-technical terms that apply to any size or type of business. Written by a management and information technology expert, Information Breakthrough will show you how to develop and use indicators that are important to your business. The indicators are meant to keep your business operating in the most direct, efficient manner. You will learn that more data is not always better and that precision and accuracy can compete against obtaining useful information. The book will teach you how to:
* Adopt a philosophy that all reports should be focused on action.
* Learn that more is not always better.
* Recognize that despite the world's advancements in technology, the speed in which we receive information has not helped our ability to manage and use it.

Customer Reviews:

Not too much, not too little, but JUST RIGHT.......2000-09-30

Everything you ever wanted to know about management reporting but had no way to ask. The author presents clear, motivated examples of ways to do exactly what the title says: convert mountains of raw data into a few gems of useful information. He presents ways to process data to reveals trends, identify "unusual events", and to remove the effects of seasonalization from data. But more importantly, he presents approaches for formatting and organizing information so that it is clear and action-oriented. That is, so that instead of looking at a bunch of numbers and going, "Hmm", your reports are effectively "to-do" lists of things you can act on as a manager.

The book is brief, but in this case, more is less. Everything is explained with crystal clarity for both managers and IT folks. If you are designing any kind of management reporting system, either as its user or its software developer, you MUST READ THIS BOOK. Plus, it's short enough that you'll have enough time left over to read the (also short) book "One Page Management" to reinforce this book's points about exception reporting.

Back to basics.......2000-02-03

Generally speaking a great book if you are not familiar with management accounting and turning heaps of information into valuable reports for your top management group. No doubt about it: This book will provide the basic tools for keeping your boss happy, especially if you need a brush-up on moving averages, etc. Having vast experience with both advanced financial and non-financial analysis on various aspects of business (shipping and construction), this book was somewhat a let down in terms of ability to inspire and provide ways to improve personal skills to structure and present complex topics in an ordered and clear fashion. A nice bedtable-reader for the pre-MBA. MBAs should look elsewhere.

Back to basics.......2000-02-03

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Great introduction for beginners.

GREAT BOOK, TO LEARN THE ROPES.

A good real estate primer

Profitable Real Estate Investing : Making Big Money, Finding the Right Properties, Investing on a Shoestring
Roger Woodson
Manufacturer: Kaplan Business
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Real Estate | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Investments | Real Estate | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Find It, Fix It, Flip It!: Make Millions in Real Estate--One House at a Time

ASIN: 0793131804
Release Date: 1999-03-04

Customer Reviews:

Great introduction for beginners........2002-11-05

"Profitable Real Estate Investing:..." is a great book for someone who is starting out and wants to know where they fit into the big picture. Woodson obviously has experience in many different aspects of real estate investing and brokering and it shows.

I loved the little examples that are scattered throughout the book to help the reader understand different concepts. I have also read "Investing in Real Estate" and "Flipping Properties" and this is my favorite intro book so far.

I think Woodson took the right approach by not going too much into the "number crunching" that goes along with investing in real estate, he instead talks about different levels and stages of investing and what each has to offer.

I definitly recommend this book ot someone who is motivated to start investing in real estate.

GREAT BOOK, TO LEARN THE ROPES........2000-09-03

I just got done with this book, and I was satisfied with the information offered. I was in fact inspired enough to decide to take a shot in real estate investment. I just checked out a Real Estate Principles textbook from the library.

Unfortunately I had to do that because this book has very little in the line of DETAILS. Woodson does a fine job of hitting all of the main points of consideration, but leaves you with quite a few questions as to the HOW-TO of carrying out his advice. He seems very specific in the advice to get a broker, agent, professional inspector, property manager, attorney, etc. It's almost like he's trying to drum up business for real estate professionals as he is himself a broker. He even makes it sound as though the experience in the field is unattainable for most which I beleive to be untrue.

By all means, buy the book if you are new to real estate invesing. Good quality information, good readability, but a bit too much bias for 'the business'. Please vote if this helped.

A good real estate primer.......2000-02-29

This book is a fine introduction, although a bit basic, into the complex world of real estate investing. I was glad to have a no-nonsense, no-frills starter. The author wears his prejudice for a certain kind of investing on his sleeve, and explains every concept lucidly enough that even someone with no experience can understand every principle. There's a fine breadth of material covered too. I recommend it.

Customer Reviews:

Capturing the Higher Ground on Family Policy.......2002-09-23

Not long after politicians discovered opinion polling did they find that there was political capital to mine from the votes of women. This was based on the observation that more single women vote liberal and, more intriguingly, tend to vote more conservatively once they have a family and children. In 1983 sociologist Brigitte Berger wrote a prescient book about the politicization of the family entitled The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground. Her recent 2002 book The Family in the Modern Age: More than a Lifestyle Choice is an apparent sequel to her earlier work. Berger, perhaps the most apolitical of all the social scientists of the family, says in her new book that the war against the family is effectively over, as both political parties in the U.S. have tried to capture the middle ground of the "family values" issue. The family may have won the political war, but, if recent literature is any indication, the ideological battle continues to be lost in academia and in the clinics of most family therapy experts. Berger finds four distinct camps battling for the "hearts and minds" of the family: the radical, the conservative, the mainstream, and the postmodern. The radical Marxist attack on the bourgeois (i.e., affluent father-mother-child) family has lost its ideological momentum or gone underground. Perhaps Sylvia Hewitt and Cornel West's The War Against Parents (1999) can be seen as an attempt by the radical wing to co-opt the political capital to be found in the family values debate. The conservative camp can be found in such books as Cameron Lee's Beyond Family Values (1998) and James Dobson's Bringing Up Boys (1999). The mainstream view is epitomized in James Q. Wilson's more recent The Marriage Problem: How our Culture Has Weakened Families (2002). The postmodern view has found a recent voice in sociologist Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheims's advocacy for family diversity titled Reinventing the Family: In Search of New Lifestyles (2002). Berger's apolitical book is a counterpoint to Beck-Gernsheim's view that families should serve political ends. Beyond the ideological and academic debates, Berger's book contains many sound sociological postulates for family policy making. Berger's sociological postulates could even make a sound basis for "family therapists," although Berger seems to avoid any sort of prescriptive advice giving. If you believe that it is critical for the family to continue to carve out an apolitical cultural sphere in society, and if you are skeptical of any grand intellectual or therapeutic prescriptions for the family, Berger's book may be for you. On the other hand, if you are looking for a book to resonate with your political views or agendas, perhaps you should look elsewhere. For another book in the Berger genre one might also see Richard T. Gill's Posterity Lost: Progress, Ideology, and the Decline of the American Family (1999).

Customer Reviews:

Objective Reveiw by a Competent Observer from Outside the US.......2003-05-11

"The Shame of Savo: Anatomy of a Naval Disaster", by Bruce Loxton, United States Naval Inst.; (November 1994). At first, I was taken aback by the title, expecting some Anglo-American finger pointing. Despite the title, Commodore Loxton does not heap shame on the USN or even suggest that there was shame. In fact, the only shame was the shame that the USN felt at such a humiliating defeat. Loxton is clear that he regarded the entire debacle as due to lack of war time experience. It was a necessary knock on the head that got the USN out of its peace-time mind set.

The Canberra gets disproportionate coverage, but that is not a defect. After all, that is where Loxton had first hand knowledge. Loxton was at the battle as a mid-shipman on the Canberra. However, the coverage of the other ships is also informative. As a reader of naval history, I have often wondered just what went wrong on the ships of the Northern group. How could they be taken by surprise when there was obvious combat going on a few miles away? Loxton reveals that they were not taken entirely by surprise, but rather they were not drilled in quickly coming to general quarters. They were in the wrong type of watch. Damage control closed water tight doors before crewmen could get to their stations, creating huge traffic jams. The US ships were simply not prepared for the rapidly evolving type battle that would characterize the drive by shooting type of night combat in the slot.

Well researched. Somewhat biased........1998-09-30

This book is the result extensive research. It also contains an excellent bibliography. Mr. Loxton reveals his bias in favor of the RN/RAN and against VADM Frank J. Fletcher on page 17. He suggests that the reader should take seriously a joke that Fletcher detached TF-44 (Batttle of Coral Sea) in order to keep the Ausies from earning medals in the upcomming battle. However, Loxton provides a lot of detail that was news to this amature student of the PTO in 1942. Anyone interested in Operation Watchtower should read this one. John Lundstrom's next book will no doubt clear up the apparent inaccuracies.

The Shame of Savo - the Sinking of HMAS Canberra - Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

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The Shame of Savo - the Sinking of HMAS Canberra - Anatomy of a Naval Disaster
Bruce with Coulthard-Clark, Chris Loxton
Manufacturer: Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000TYYMR4

The Shame of Savo, Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

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The Shame of Savo, Anatomy of a Naval Disaster
Bruce with Chris Coulthard-Clark Loxton
Manufacturer: Naval Institute Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OLTJ02

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The Shame of Savo: Anatomy of a Naval Disaster
Bruce; Coultard-Clark, Chris; Coulthard-Clark, C. D. Loxton
Manufacturer: Naval Inst Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MBT1K2

Book Description

This attractive guide identifies the birds most likely to be seen in the backyards, streets and parks of Los Angeles. The books introduce the fascinating and popular pastime of birdwatching and include advice on building feeders and birdhouses. Color illustrations help you identify birds quickly while the text provides interesting information about each bird. These books are easy-to-use references for the urban birdwatcher.

Customer Reviews:

Birds of Los Angeles.......2007-05-12

Excellent. This is real book put together with loving care. Also useful for those who sail the coastal waters and who might wonder what kind of little warbler is hitching a ride on the sailboat in San Pedro Bay.

No better beginner's guide for Los Angeles birdwatchers!.......2005-12-23

This book easily deserves a 5 Star rating. It is, I think, the best book to get if you are beginning to get interested in birdwatching and live in the Los Angeles area. First, it is comprehensive - it covers almost all of the birds one is likely to encounter when doing basic birdwatching locally. Second, the illustrations are nicely done and large in size, making it easy for the beginning birder to identify area birds. (Although pictures may seem "better" to the beginning birdwatcher, as you gain experience birdwatching you will eventually learn that illustrations are usually better for birding field guides than photographs.) Third, it is thorough and engaging, each species' listing contains habitat and basic behavior information, (written in a short, concise way - see photos) list of similar species, "quick i.d." guides, and month to month abundance charts. This is all presented in easy to understand, non-pretentious language that is easy for anyone to read, though he also includes a glossary of difficult terms. To round out the complete effort, he includes a few birdwatching sites in Los Angeles (though this is very limited and you'll want to look up more information on each site online), as well as a list of further books you can look at and a list of birds that you can check-off as you go along. Finally, as one would expect of a field guide, the book itself is well made and durable, the spine is sturdy and the pages glossy - a good thing if you end up dropping it along trails (as I have) or read it from cover to cover several times (again, as I have). I disagree with a previous review - it is very lightweight much more manageable than most other field guides. (Amazon's estimate of 9 ounces sounds about right.)

To sum up, this is the book that got my son and I both hooked on birdwatching, and it is still the first book my son (8 years old) chooses to take with him to birdwatch around Los Angeles. It is a superb effort and, at $9.95, a great value. If you remain interested in birdwatching after this guide, you can always "upgrade" to the much more thorough and technical Sibley's Guide to Birds later on. Even though I have Sibley's, I'm looking forward to purchasing the San Diego version of this guide soon!

Usable!.......2000-07-20

I have tried identifying birds with other books before, and I usually gave up in frustration because there'd be, like, 20 birds that mine could possibly be related to, but no exact match. These were mainly books that covered all of North America, or all of the Pacific states.

With "Birds of Los Angeles," I have actually identified several birds! The pictures are big and colorful, the information (habits, habitat, etc.) enough to tell you what you casually want to know. Its dimensions are compact but it is a little heavy, because of the weight of the glossy paper, but not impossible to take along backpacking.

Cleaner air bring back the birders........1998-01-08

20 years ago Los Angeles had over one hundred bad quality days (smoggy days). During 1997 only three bad quality days were called.

I suppose the birds never left the place, but now they are more beautiful then ever, and it is a pleasure to go outside to see them.

This book is a wonderful illustrated identification tool, it will augment your enjoyment of birding through this magnificent region.

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