If you are looking for a filed guide to the butterflies of the northeastern United States, this is THE book to get. Written for a relatively small geographical area, the book contains only those butterflies likely to be seen in the regioon...unlike other guidebooks which offer many photos of butterflies not native to the regioon you are in. Excellent photos and the reduced subject area result in quick identifications. Although written for the northeast, the book is useful over a wider range...I have even used it in Texas to great effect. Don't put too much stock in the information about flight period and abundance, though. And don't expect much info on larval hostplants, etc

Can the Poor Influence Policy? is a clear and authoritative review of experience with the major new phenomenon of Participatory Poverty Assesssments (PPAs). Caroline Robb documents the scale and depth of a quiet revolution in thinking and practice with profound implications for development professionalism and policy. She shows how participatory methods and approaches can enable poor people to analyse their realities and express their priorities, and how these can differ from those assumed by policy makers.

It should be read by all who are concerned with policy and practice to reduce poverty. It should inspire many more Governments, donors and NGOs to initiate PPAs and to disseminate and act on the results.

Can the Poor Influence Poverty?, published as it is by the World Bank, is a landmark book. It shows how PPAs have spread, and the potential they have to influence policy. After this book, things should never be the same again, for there will be less excuse than ever for ignoring the realities and priorities of those who are poor and disadvantaged.

This is a compilation of stories written by George Washington Sears (a.k.a. Nessmuk) for Forest and Stream Magazine in the years 1880-1883. He paddled different custom built ultralight Rushton canoes each year, starting south of present day Old Forge, through the Fulton Chain to Raquette and reaching as far as Long Lake, Little Tupper Lake and beyond. His chronicles are enjoyable, easily readable tales of life and travel in the wilderness of the 1880's Adirondacks. It is full of details which are interesting to the student of Adirondack history. For instance, he allowed me to pinpoint the year of construction of the Grove Hotel (later known as the Deerland Hotel) on Long Lake, and to give me background on it's original owner.

Simon & Schuster continues to lead the flag-waving wave of children's books with "Capital," the publisher's latest patriotic primer. An informative tutorial geared for older picture book readers, "Capital" is a no-nonsense mini-text book decorated with colorful illustrations, renderings and maps. With years of scholarly research behind him as an art historian, author/illustrator Lynn Curlee takes a suitably serious approach. Though not chaptered, his book is clearly and concisely structured. First, Curlee gives an overview of the five great structures at the heart of the United States capital city, the "bustling metropolis of Washington, D.C." - namely, the White House, George Washington Monument, Abraham Lincoln Memorial, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and the domed U.S. Capitol building - then proceeds to take a closer look at each one individually and chronologically. This is a fully fleshed account, with at least twice the text of the average non-fiction picture book, so no details are skimped, and the reader is never cheated with sketchy shortcuts. Amid the larger story, sections are peppered with interesting and memorable details such as the fact that future president Thomas Jefferson entered - and lost - a competition to design the original White House, then called the President's House. Curlee's bold, pristine paintings of buildings, settings and key figures architectural are highly stylized, yet accurately rendered to pay respect to the subjects, particularly the architectural details that are discussed in accompanying text. And at the very end, an author's note conveniently outlines the difference between "capitol," "Capitol" and "capital," which will surely aid conversations repeated again and again by teachers, students and most readers...including the book's editors who surely had an interesting proofreading task.

Now in an updated second edition, Capital Losses: A Cultural History Of Washington's Destroyed Buildings by Washington history expert James M. Goode is a carefully presented documentation and chronicle of the great architectural and cultural edifices of Washington, D.C., which have been lost to the endless grind of urban renewal in the years prior to 1978. That was the year in which crucial preservation legislation was passed. Packed from cover to cover with black-and-white photographs, enhancing a text which is extensive in detail, history, unique historical insights, Capital Losses is an exceptional architectural tour and a unique resource offering a kind of "window" into the architectural past of the nation's capital.

I stumbled on this book at an estate sale. It is currently out of print, but I highly recommend adding this one to your collection. The author was chef to the Governor, Booth Gardner. The recipes were served at many a dinner party and can be easily mastered for your own entertaining. Wine suggestions are also included for each receipe. All throughout the book are interesting facts about Washington State and beautiful photographs and art work. All in all, I found this book charming, entertaining, and full of great recipes.

A true pleasure of a book. I would recomend this to anyone. Fine work.

This is a very readable and extensively researched look at the trees of Washington D.C. It's an excellent field guide for identifying trees, but the thing I like most about it is that it tells the fascinating stories behind so many of the trees planted in D.C. If you live near D.C. and have even a mild interest in its history, I strongly recommend this book!

Anyone who has done research on the Civil War approaches veteran's memoirs with a degree of caution. Memoirs are always self serving to some extent and often take too much advantage of hindsight. This work is remarkably free of such justifications. Rather it is the honest work of a soldier coming to terms with his war experiences. Philip Stephenson was a mere boy from St. Louis, age 15, when he followed his brother, Hammett, to Memphis to join the Confederat army. Hammett enlisted in the 13th Ark. and the underage Philip tagged along. He served as something of a mascot to his brother's company until he enlisted in the 5th Co. Washington Artillery. Until then he seemed to be free to come and go. Stephenson was present at or near most of the actions of the Army of Tennessee. He relates what he observed in great detail particularly in the last year of the war. Through his memoirs we see what he saw on the march, on the field and in camp. His descriptions of various Arkansans from officers to enlisted men offer rare insights to the boys which can be found in no other place. His observations on the men of the 13th Ark. are somewhat condescending, but he says, "All of them made as fine fighting material as the world could produce." The first one-third of his text covers the years 61-63. The greatest part of his memoirs discuss affairs that took place from 64 to the end of the war. From the Atlanta campaign until the war ends, his writing seems much more personal, more expressive of his emotions at the time. This coincides with the period when he served in the 5th Co. of the Washington Artillery and marked the first period of the war that he was not under his older brother's wing. From the moment Sherman attacked the Rebs at Dalton in early May until the Battle of Jonesboro on Sept. 1st, the men were in constant danger. Stephenson notes the horrors of trench warfare and the stress that it put on the men. The pressure became too great for some and he describes some of those who cracked. One member of his battery horrified the other members by taking his bayonet and jabbing out the eys of a dead yankee. Another deliberately walked between the lines to relieve himself as everyone watched in disbelief and the man was killed by a sharpshooter. Clearly this campaign had pushed many of the men to the breaking point. Perhaps no other participant has been as effective and honest in telling this story. Stephenson's account of the Battle of Franklin is very moving. His unit had been guarding a bridge some 30 miles away from Franklin and by forced march had arrived on the field between 9 o'clock at night just as the battle was dying down. Stephenson's one thought was the welfare of his brother and friends in the 13th Ark and he went among the wounded crying out "Where's Govan's Brigade." He finds his 3 best friends badly wounded and there on the battlefield they break into tears to find each other still alive. If there had been any thought of winning the war, it ended there. After Franklin, surviving would replace winning as the ultimate goal. Stephenson's memoirs are very personal. Through them we see how one survivor deals with his memories of both the best times and the worst times of his life.

I had the honor to serve as Mayor Harold Washington's press secretary and speechwriter for 1000 days, from February 1985 through his death in November, 1987. While working on a memoir of those days (HAROLD WASHINGTON, THE MAYOR, THE MAN, published in 1989) I negotiated with my publisher to produce another book in time for the first anniversary of the mayor's death, which I titled CLIMBING A GREAT MOUNTAIN, quoting from his first inaugural address.

These speeches (and photographs) capture some of the spirit of that period -- what he called the "New Spirit of Chicago." I may have been his speechwriter, but his speeches were completely his own -- initially shaped by his philosophy, then massaged by his phrasings through our endless conversation, and then finally recast in his own words as he spoke, often without notes.

Paging back through those speeches ten years later, I find there a sometimes lost language of progressive politics -- an unabased defense of affirmative action, for example, and of activist governmental solutions to social problems.

Coretta Scott King was kind enough to provide a foreword, and I have briefly sketched a context for each speech. But the ideas -- and the passion for fairness and the strength to persevere against the politics of hate, and the articulate optimism about democracy -- are pure Harold.