The Garden Design Sourcebook: The Essential Guide to Garden Materials and Structures

Customer Reviews:

Essential is right..........2000-08-09

I have owned this book for several years now and still use it regularly as a design reference. The examples and illustrations are pretty much all classics whether historic, traditional, or contemporary, and always seem fresh to my eye each time I pick up the book.

An excellent resource of hardscape elements for the garden!.......1999-01-23

As a landscape architect, I find this book is an excellent resource for hardscape ideas for the garden. The book is divided into the basics planes of the garden ... floors, boundaries & dividers, overhead structures, etc. The wonderful photographics are invaluable as well as the discriptions telling the history, uses and construction of the site elements. I would recommend this book to professionals and weekend gardeners for its inspiration and knowledge.

Product Description

Many books about ceramics provide technique upon technique, tool upon tool, recipe upon recipe. Mastery of gadgets and quick, tricky how-to-do-it techniques may seem the way to go. But this leaves no place for adventure. This book has good recipes, of course, but it is really for those who will ultimately create their own new recipes and forms. The motivation is in the mind. Guideposts are necessary and they must be visualized. This book is written in the belief that the motivation will find the method.

Customer Reviews:

An American Bernard Leach looks at earth and fire........1997-09-18

Willard Spence presents the technical side of ceramics as poetry. He is forthright (sp?) and non-intimidating in his presentation of the nature of clay, pottery, and man's perceptions and use of both. There are general statements about the nature of clay, but the refinements include specifics, down to glaze test methodology and glaze formulae. I bought this book as a present to my wife's lover, but so valued it's insight that I bought another copy for myself

Blindwalk to Potter's Farm: An odyssey of spirit

Average customer rating:

Blindwalk to Potter's Farm: An odyssey of spirit
Diane Brander
Manufacturer: Brander and Associates
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

Comparative Religion | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0964017784

Book Description

To capture its magic and happiness for posterity, every wedding needs a photographer--and every wedding photographer needs this invaluable source book to do the job perfectly. From pre-wedding planning to getting people in the right place at the right time, it guides you with sample photos, diagrams, and easy checklists for every stage and task. No matter the type of ceremony, the technical information on lighting, using flash or reflectors, lenses, and camera angles will come in handy, as will tips on arranging poses and coming in close for an intimate portrait. Handle unexpected situations smoothly; come up with really fun shots; enhance images digitally or with tinting and toning; and put together a beautiful album. There's even advice on charging for your work!

Customer Reviews:

This one is only okay........2003-04-15

I can't say I did not like it completely. However, I will say I wish it had more "wedding" specific detail. I just feel that one page with a large photo and the other with text is a bit of a [let down]. The text side of the page would explain some things on what to look for in the accompanying photo, but it wasn't anything you would not have learned in basic lighting, portrait photography, or other books that are more specific to what you need to know.

I can't say I recommend this book for anyone who already have other specific titles regarding photography.

I should also mention that this book is for the elegant photographer. All the pictures are of super fancy weddings. Weddings that remind you of the early twenties. Just about everyone is dressed like characters in a play (I.E. men with top hats). It would have been nice just to see your normal everyday wedding photographs too.

Average customer rating:

Popeye's Peak Period

Complete E.C. Segar Popeye, Dailies, 1935-37 (Complete E. C. Segar Popeye)
E. C. Segar
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0930193938

Customer Reviews:

Popeye's Peak Period.......1999-03-19

This was Segar at his finest.Learn about Eugene the magical jeep,find out how Popeye found his father and laugh at all the amazing stories and gags.Popeye was at his finest those years.Wimpy was at his mooching best-and you might even enjoy the goofy antics of Oscar or Toar.

Customer Reviews:

An Eye Opener with all the Facts, Evidence and Data.......2003-05-03

Paul Bernstein carefully examines the extremely slow and painful shifts in American work values taken from their European orgins to the present.

Generally speaking, the book describes how the individual has subscribed to the work ethic through the centuries under various types of conditions based on birth, education, skill, tenacity and pure luck.

The book also deals with "the debates related to work and welfare that has always been a controversy over public assistance to the deserving and undeserving poor."

One great theme that is illustrated quite well throughout the book is the persistent challenge for the individual, especially one taught to believe that hard work will be rewarded with opportunities, to delicately balance between work, pleasure, personal, and leisure activities. I keep asking myself (for the first time in my life) why can't people work smarter, not harder in America? Unfortunately, this issue must be resolved by reading other books since the author did not faithfully address this important topic.

This book has an incredible number of footnotes backed up with an exorbitant amount of pages pointing to other references. I found the book to be extremely difficult to read. I had to review chapters over and over again, to figure out what the author was trying to explain. Some very important parts were simply "glossed over." There are sections throughout the book that require proofreading for the next edition because it is repetitive and not carefully organized.

Credit must be given to the author for the extremely valuable gems that I did synthesize from the book. It was worth it. However, please condense it into fifty pages. This is a wonderful book!

Book Description

Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer (excluding skin cancer) among American men. In 1998 approximately 184,500 new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in the United States. However, if detected early, it is also among the most treatable forms of cancer, and due to advances in diagnosis and treatment, survival rates continue to rise. The five-year survival rate has increased from 50 percent in the period from 1960 to 1963 to 89 percent today.
But most men--and their families--lack the most basic information about what to do when confronted with a diagnosis of prostate cancer. This book, written by internationally respected medical experts, sets out to explain everything a man needs to know. Written, updated, and revised under the auspices of the American Cancer Society, the nation's leader in cancer research, education, and rehabilitation, it contains the most up-to-date information about the disease. Even more, it is a patient's advocacy book, offering medical, practical, psychological, social, and emotional support. Through case histories and anecdotes--and always with compassion--it addresses the full range of issues that men with the disease may face.

Customer Reviews:

Biased book .......2004-12-03

The American Cancer Society's own cookbook actually includes recipes for CHAR-BROILED BEEF! They never warn us about the cancer-causing dangers of charbroiling meat.

I would never trust anything the American Cancer Society says. They are very biased in favor of expensive pharmaceuticals with cancer-causing side-effects. They are the wealthiest "charity" in America, with cash reserves of $1 Billion.

The Role of the ACS in the War Against Cancer

The verdict is unassailable. The American Cancer Society bears a major responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer.
The launching of the 1971 War Against Cancer provided the ACS with a well-exploited opportunity to pursue it own myopic and self-interested agenda. Its strategies remain based on two lies -- that there has been dramatic progress in the treatment and cure of cancer, and that any increase in the incidence and mortality of cancer is due to aging of the population and smoking while denying any significant role for involuntary exposures to industrial carcinogens in air, water, consumer products and the workplace.

Most of the funds raised by ACS go to pay overhead, salaries, fringe benefits, and travel expenses of its national executives in Atlanta. They also go to pay Chief Executive Officers, who earn six-figure salaries in several states, and the hundreds of other employees who work out of some 3,000 regional offices nationwide. The typical ACS affiliate, which helps raise the money for the national office, spends more than 52 percent of its budget on salaries, pensions, fringe benefits, and overhead for its own employees.

Salaries and overhead for most ACS affiliates also exceeded 50 percent, although most direct community services are handled by unpaid volunteers. DiLorenzo summed up his findings by emphasizing the hoarding of funds by the ACS.

"Most contributors believe their donations are being used to fight cancer, not to accumulate financial reserves. More progress in the war against cancer would be made if they would divest some of their real estate holdings and use the proceeds -- as well as a portion of their cash reserves -- to provide more cancer services."

Aside from high salaries and overhead, most of what is left of the ACS budget goes to basic research and research into profitable, patented cancer drugs.

The current budget of the ACS is $380 million and its cash reserves approach one billion dollars. Yet its aggressive fund-raising campaign continues to plead poverty, and lament the lack of available money for cancer research, while ignoring efforts to prevent cancer by phasing out avoidable exposures to environmental and occupational carcinogens.

Meanwhile, the ACS is silent about its intricate relationships with the wealthy cancer drug industry and chemical industries.

Read more....... http://www.corporations.org/cancer/boycottacs.html

Up-to-date and personal.......2000-02-03

I bought the first edition of this book when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was struggling to decide between surgery and radiation therapies. I learned two important facts: 1. the decision as to which course of treatment to choose is not just medical; it's personal; and 2. so much is being done in this field that what any book says can be outdated quickly.

This book succeeded on both counts. Its quotations from people who had chosen alternative forms of therapy as to why they made the choices they did helped tremendously in making my own decision. And the currency of the information was better than any other book I consulted. This new, revised edition should take advantage of the research that has been published in the past year. The book deals with much more than treatment options as well, and should prove helpful to patients at various stages of therapy.

Book Description

Four years of warfare lay ahead, but the gallant stand of a small division of The British Expeditionary Force at Mons, in 1914, halted the German offensive at a crucial moment. Their fighting retreat from Mons to Le Cateau laid the groundwork for later victories. It was a matter of two weeks before this army went from the dejection of retreat to the exhilaration of victory at the Battle of the Marne-one of the more decisive battles of the world.

John Terraine, noted military historian made his debut here with this account that has become a classic. END

Customer Reviews:

Cheap trash.......2004-09-08

Seems like John Terraine had (he's deceased) that obesssion to turn every battelfied disasters and military blunders of the British into something else, and in the process had judiciously/maliciously doctored his researches to cast the best possible light on what mere mortals will call fiascos.

Read this as cheap trash fiction, as there are no references to sources, no bibiography at all. All we have is Terraine's words that the 'Old Contemptibles" were the most magnificient army in the world, that they trumphed every encounters with the Germans ( a division is supposed to be smashed by the bloody Tommies when they captured 78 prisoners!) and that every other one of those morons won a VC!

Being the first work of fiction written by Terraine, this book sets the standard for his later owrks!

Mons.......2003-12-16

An excellent study of a crucial engaement early in the war. A must read for anyone interested in the First World War.

Average customer rating:

Mons The Retreat To Victory
Terraine John
Manufacturer: B.T. Batsford
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UDJ1X4

Book Description

The initial years (126-145) of al-Mansur's reign presented several significant challenges to nascent Abbasid hegemony, and the resulting confrontations constitute the central focus of this section of Tabari's Tarikh. After Abu Jafar succeeded his brother Abu al-Abbas as caliph, the second of the Abbasid dynasty, he moved against his recalcitrant uncle, Abdallah b. Ali, and against the potential threat that he perceived in the person of the commander in Khurasan, Abu Muslim. Eliminating the latter and containing the former freed the caliph to address a series of other onslaughts and insurrections.

Starting with the year 144, however, Tabari turned to this volume's principal preoccupation, to which half of the book is devoted. Judging by the attention given to it, he clearly perceived the Hasanid rebellions of Muhammad b. Abdallah (the Pure Soul) and of his brother Ibrahim to be the most substantial attack on Abbasid authority to arise in the first years of that dynasty. Tabari's description of the prolonged search for Muhammad and Ibrahim and of the caliphal vengeance visited upon their father and family provides an extended prelude to the vivid battle and death scenes in Medina and Bakhamra. Yet, elaboration of these events does not eclipse mention of all other Abbasid activity. To bridge the account of Muhammad's defeat and that of Ibrahim's uprising, Tabari inserted a narrative interlude depicting the site selection and preliminary construction of al-Mansur's most celebrated achievement, the City of Peace, Baghdad.

Book Description

Costa Rica is world famous for the stunning diversity of its bird life. Includes bird lists by region and by season, bird specialties at specific sites, checklist for birds of Costa Rica, travel routes and tour maps, and accommodations and local guiding information.

Customer Reviews:

A very good pre-birding trip guide.......2007-04-13

This is a good little birding site guide, not a species identification field guide. This would be very helpful in planning a birding trip to Costa Rica and gives information for about 75+ sites with a good introduction to birding Costa Rica in the beginning. Here too is a table on pgs. 20-22 called "Characteristics of Major Birding Destinations". This table groups destinations with accomodations in the different sections of the country (NE, NW, SE, SW, highlands, lowlands. It details accessibility, cost, comfort, guide availability, and difficulty of birding.

The book is arranged in chapters for each region of the country with details of the birding sites including excellent maps (better than most site guides I have seen) and written directions. The birding accounts are first person and folksy and make for easy and yet absorbing reading and are enhanced with many black and white location photos. There are also bird lists for each site that tend towards the more expected commonly seen species rather than an extensive checklist for all species located at the site. Each site does have a list provided of the birds the author found when he was there including notations of their abundance and the season that he visited. Some sites have additional checklists provided by the lodges or other birders.

There are brief mentions of a few sites in neighboring Nicaragua and Panama at the end of the book and two appendices the first is a complete list of birds of Costa Rica in checklist order and grouped according to location with notes on abundance, habitat and elevation. The second is a a seven day checklist for your trip.

I enjoy sitting down in a comfortable chair and reading over books like this but you should consult the internet for updates on lodges and parks as this book is now over ten years old. Some places of course are not included, including one of my favorites Savegre Lodge also know as Cabinas Chacon in San Gerardo de Dota. Other site guides that I would recommend in addition to this would be Dennis Roger's "Site Guide for Costa Rica" and Nigel Wheatley and David Brewer's "Where to Watch Birds in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean".

Helpful site guide; not a birding field manual........1998-08-25

This is not a birding field guide, but a helpful guide to quite a few Costa Rica birding sites. Very good descriptions of sites included (including some information not available elsewhere) but many other places were not covered. The author's assessments are useful. Supplements other guides.

For serious birdwatchers. No color photos.......1998-07-28

Lots of tables and descriptions of where to go to see birds. 99% Costa Rica. A few black and white drawing of birds, plants, maps. Not good if you want color photos of birds you might see.

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