This book really is a gift. Once you read former Poet Laureate Robert Hass's beautiful introduction, you won't want to stop -- and you won't be disappointed. We're talking range here -- from Isabel Allende's Amazon to Lorian Hemingway's Arkansas to William Least Heat-Moon's Mississippi ... and from icy mountain torrents like the En in Switzerland to cultural main streets like the Seine in France and the Nile in Egypt and the Ganges in India, to rivers choked by industry and neglect like the Columbia in the U.S. -- honestly, you'll laugh, you'll cry.

If all of the world's rivers formed a giant continuous watershed (which in a sense they do), I'd put-in at the top and proceed to ride, glide and meander my way down the arteries of our earth. As I entered into each unique river system - Congo, Amazon, Seine, Futaleufu, Siuslaw, Mississippi, Narmada - the human and natural histories of each river would be revealed to me, uncovered, discovered like the layers of time and tide of the Grand Canyon. At the take-out I'd be changed. I'd better understand John Calderazzo's observation that a river can "turn into a state of mind, a kind of feeling." That is the gift of rivers. Of course, there is no such thing as a put-in at the top of the world's watershed, but just as good is Pamela Michael's book, "The Gift of Rivers." Turn the page, enter into river time, hear the stories, and fall in love with our watery ancestors, the world's rivers.

I feel fortunate to have had the chance to read the precious river stories contained in this collection. Some brought me and my friends to fits of laughter, others to tears and amazement- most of all they inspired us to listen more carefully to the rivers and waterways that bring nourishment and joy to all our lives.

Thank you Pamela Michael for sharing these stories from around the world with us!

It's absolutely great! You will learn everything about biology, behaviour and social interaction of the Great Whites. This is a MUST have!

I think this book is great but a bit too expensive for my liking Danielle Mullins

In recent years, public opinion on the Great White Shark has turned away from the fierce bloodlust inspired by fiction and returned to the more civilized sense of awe and wonder at the amazing size and ferocity of these giant predators common to the days before Hollywood brought us 'Jaws' in its technicolor (mostly red) splendor. With specials common to PBS and the Discovery Channel, public awareness of the GW is higher now than ever before, making the shark more and more popular to study. The results of this scrutiny are brought to light in 'Great White Sharks : The Biology of Carcharodon carcharias', a collection of scientific papers edited by A. Peter Klimley and David G. Ainley. In this fascinating work, the picture of the GW as bloodthirsty killer is erased and replaced with the image of the predator's role as king of the sea. There are papers dedicated to nearly every scientific aspect of the animal from its ancestry to its behavior to its populations in oceans around the world. Nearly every serious question about the GW is explored, if not answered. The only thing that makes this book a little inaccessible is the fact that is geared for academic use and research. It is not a book written for the masses, such as Ellis and McCosker's 'The Great White Shark', another excellent book on the subject. But if it is depth you are looking for, Klimley and Ainley & Co. provide it. This book is not to missed by serious students of the GW.

Guess Who's Coming, Jesse Bear is the latest of the Jesse Bear series, a charming set of soft-cover picturebooks about young Jesse Bear, his family, and his friends. In Guess Who's Coming, Jesse Bear, the young ursine shares a delightful week-long visit from his cousin, with outdoor excursions, playtime and happy memories. Written by Nancy White Carlstrom in simple, friendly rhyming verse, and illustrated by Bruce Degen with affectionate color drawings, Guess Who's Coming, Jesse Bear is a highly enjoyable and recommended read-aloud story.

I now have 5 Jesse Bear books, Guess who's Coming Jesse Bear
is a great book for my grandchildren. They are easy to read and my grandson who's 2 has memorized some of the words. Again there is nothing more satisfying to sit and read to my grandchildren. Knowing the knowledge they get is the best. I will be watching for more of Jesse Bear books in the future!

My preschool kids love this story, especially when they learn that even little people can have complex relationships with each other.

Really cute, whimsical designs in "I Done My Best!" Several of Ms. White's designs feature really darling angels and are very pleasing. (I like the 4th of July angel.) The author also suggests how you can create & arrange your own designs.
I ordered my copy from Amazon, without whom I would never have discovered this book.
Saundra White, please publish more designs!

There are several web sites on the Net that provide help and techniques in tea-dyeing muslin & linen, so look for those when you get ready to stitch.

If you like primitive stitcheries, you'll love this book. Excellent photos, instructions, and patterns. One of the best I've ever seen.

This is an absolutely delightful embroidery book. It contains nine different primative designs. And I must add that they are so full of humor and LOVE. Saundra White must be a special person. My Hope is that she will create more books on this style. (Put me on her mailing list! )

Our son (soon to be 2 years old)loves this book. His birthday approaches, so he is excited to hear about birthdays in general. He has also been to a number of other parties recently, which helps. All in all a very happy book.

Again this series of Jesse Bear books are wonderful to read and fun for my grandson! One of the best thing in life are opening the doors to reading to your children/grandchildren.

My 3 year old grandson loves to come in and sit on Nana's lap to read "Jesse Bear Books" They keep him occupied and also calms him down before sleep. A great book!!

With more than three hundred photographs, Herbert List: The Monograph documents for the first time all phases of List's creativity: the Fotografia Metafisica (as List's early work, with its affinity with the work of de Chirico and Magritte, has come to be known); his photographs of Classical Greek ruins and postwar Munich; his sensitive homoerotic photographs; the artist portraits spanning the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s; and his subtle and touching human-interest photo-essays. Authoritative texts by noted critics and scholars provide historical contexts and influences and detail the development of List's oeuvre. A selection of List's own writings, a comprehensive chronology, a bibliography, and records of exhibitions, collections, and published photographs and essays complete the book. The photographs and essays collected in this volume comprise the definitive presentation of this modern master.

Herbert List is one of the most impressive photographers of the 20th century. This book is a masterpiece and offers a wonderful overview of List's work. It gives the opportunity to discover a classical and refreshing approach of the world-which escapes however from classicism.

Herbert List belongs to the most impressive photographers of the 20th century, showing a simple but wonderful vision of the world while escaping from classicism... A wonderful publication for "amateurs" and a masterpiece in arts book!

James "Mac" McKee's book immediately incorporates readers into the tail of a life-long friendship and mentorship developed over many years through hiking, hunting and living. Even though I am not a hunter, I truly enjoyed each chapter and found myself very resistant to setting the book down. Mac tells a heart-warming tale which reveals a deep and meaningful side of hunting and the love of the great outdoors

This is a great book that details the bond that ties all hunters together. The true stories lend credence to the common thread that connects us all to mother nature. To anyone who has ever been in the woods, and wants to relive the experience - This is the book for you. A must rea

WONDERFUL STORIES ABOUT REAL SITUATIONS IN THE SWAMP...GREAT DESCRIPTION OF ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN EXPERIENCES. FELT AS IF I WERE THERE EXPERIENCING THE ADVENTURES. WRITTEN VERY WELL AND EASY TO READ...PHOTOS VERY HELPFU

The point of this review is to correct an error in Steven Goldstein's review of this book. McKim, Mead, & White were not involved in the construction of the Metropolitan Opera, as he states.

This is a wonderful, ravishing book, although I suppose some readers might be disappointed that the author has limited himself to surviving examples of McKim, Mead, & White's work, with current photographs ... all of them gorgeous. Vintage photographs, where available, would have been a nice addition. For example, it would be interesting, if possible, to compare the Pulitzer mansion in New York as originally built with the current photos ... it has been divided into something like 9 condominiums!

Speaking as a practicing architect and longtime admirer of the works of Stanford White, I found this book was nonetheless a revelation. Gorgeously photographed, it shows a broader spectrum of the residential work of this illustrious firm. McKim Mead and White have a well-deserved reputation for grand public buildings (Metropolitan Opera, Penn Station, Madison Square Garden to name three that have sadly been demolished) but are less known for these spectacular houses built for the robber barons of the Gilded Age among whom Stanford White circulated. What is suprising is the facility with which they moved from lavish and elegantly detailed city houses to surprisingly unpretentious inviting summer homes on Long Island and elsewhere. If you love Beaux Arts architecture, skip this book at your peril.

This book combines rich visual appeal with a serious analysis of the residential work of McKim, Mead & White. The introduction is particularly valuable for its succinct survey of the firm's development and its discussion of the collaboration of the partners.

I make commercial crab traps for a living and this book has it all. When I mention this book to commercial crabbers most already know, they own the book! This book even talks about a ropes 'scope' when you put a trap in the water. A rookie commercial crabber I knew didn't clue into this fact and 'deadheaded' a string of thirty traps! Why a trap should be round is explained. Why a traps entrances should be lined up to the current is explained. It took my father ten years of commercial crabbing before he figured those things out! What bait gets the big males dungeness is covered, and it's absolutely correct. I can tell Charlie spent a lot of time talking to commercial crabbers to write this book. A great deal!

If you want an easy and simple guide to catching crab, this is it. After reading it, I immediately started catching good sized crab. It is easy to understand and covers all the basics.

This the basic "how to" book on crab catching, but it also makes a great JOKE GIFT!! I Love the book's title, and I have given it to a ton of my friends as a joke gift. It is a good book too!

I originally picked this book up for the Akhmatova translations, but I found the interviews highly informative. Though I am not a published poet (in spite of describing myself as the most spaced out poet on the planet in a few reviews), I have been to Ann Arbor, Michigan and New Hampshire, and I was surprised with how similar some of our experiences have been. I have been to a writing workshop, so it was possible for me to follow the process by which she has shared and refined poems before attempting to have them published. I have also been to church and taken part in discussions in that context, and was not surprised that Jane Kenyon never found the courage to submit the final poem in the book, "Woman, Why Are You Weeping?" to that process. People don't usually talk about `apathy and bafflement' while "waiting/ for the bread and wine of Holy Communion" after having been to India. (pp. 205-09).

It would be awful for me to joke about the contents of this book, but I think I found a joke by Jane Kenyon in the article, "Poetry and the Mail," originally published in "The Concord Monitor," 16 August 1993. "All poets share one thing, however--a daily dependence on the mail. `It is joy, and it is pain,' as the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova once said, though not about the mail." (p. 128). The poem itself, "Like a white stone in a deep well," (p. 16) is included in this book. Memory is mentioned in the second line, and in the final line of the poem, and must be what Anna Akhmatova was thinking about, or about "how the gods turned people/ into things, not killing their consciousness." (p. 16)

Most of the poems by Kenyon in this book show up in the Interview with Bill Moyers (1993). What I find most modern is the open discussion of depression, crept up on with a question about the melancholy of winter in the poem, "February: Thinking of Flowers." (p. 151). In a poem, "Having it Out with Melancholy," the second part starts with a list of pills that takes up three lines, and I would bet that none of them ever appeared in any book that Freud read. I like the poem "Otherwise" on pages 168-69. The last one in the Moyers interview was "Let Evening Come." (pp. 170-71). I suspect that most of the readers of this book will be serious poets. It is difficult to imagine another group who would be eager to contemplate an article like "The Physics of Long Sticks." The last paragraph of that article is devoted to the question, "Why can't people be more like dogs?" (p. 103).

Jane Kenyon's poetry reawakened my muse and my love of poetry at a time in my life when I sorely needed it. I have read everything of hers I can get my hands on, and when I found this book I was thrilled. It is like sitting down in the living room with her. I always felt so close to her, like she was my friend, and this book almost makes that impossibility possible.

Jane Kenyon is sorely missed; her volumes of published poetry are cherished members of my library. How wonderful to have now a collection of her translations and her occasional prose pieces. She was as observant and trenchant in essays about gardening or hiking as she was in her best verse; this collection is another chance to hear her voice once again. For all her fans, this volume is a must. For those who don't know her work, it might be a good introduction, and it will surely lead them to her published collections which, thankfully, remain in print. A warm tribute to a much-loved writer.