This book is a rewarding journey into a spiritual world that I (and I think most of us) want to believe exists, yet we have trouble holding in awareness for any extended period. Robert Haynes gives us all a work that holds its fixation on this spiritualism and holds us as readers there in amazement. For this, and for this alone, the Grand Unified Theory is a wonderful work of art. Haynes skillfully carries his reader up, up, and up....and holds him/her there for the duration of an exalting read. Since there is no such thing as a Grand Unified Theory in science, there may be the inkling of one in our hearts, and this books gives us a glimpse.

Simply wonderful! The author displays a wonderful wordsmithing talent. The best poems should "take the top of your head off" and each one of these poems does just that. What a breathtaking piece of work! I am eagerly awaiting further publications by this incredible poet.

I am Public Relations Manager for GreaterGR.com, the Greater Grand Rapids area website. As such, I am often asked which publications about history and life in Grand Rapids are the best. "Greater Grand Rapids: A City that Works" tops my list! It is a unique look into life in Grand Rapids as Gerald R. Ford experienced it. You will find this book in the reception area of many businesses in the Greater Grand Rapids area, most likely because the pictures are exceptionally vivid, capturing the essence of city life. It is a great coffee table book and conversation piece!

Being new to the Grand Rapids area, this book is the most effective and efficient way to get a glimsp at the Grand Rapids business and private sector as well as a view of Grand Rapids through the eyes of Gerald Ford. This is a must buy for anyone who is looking at Grand Rapids for fun and fellowship.

The trail and access descriptions are accurate. The GPS coordinates were invaluable. I only wish the author had also provided GPS coordinates for some of the sites along the way. There are occassional small lapses in accuracy on the listings of the time it rakes to hike from one milestone to the next. It is useful to complement this guidebook with a comprehensive map such as the TrailsIllustrated series which provides mileage for some of the same routes for which Peter Tassoni provides GPS and times.

I found this excellent book at the library. I was going to Cedar Mesa for a few days the following week with a group of adults and kids from western Colorado. I was not familiar with the area, although I'd lived in Utah for 6 years in the 80's. The author has the hikes divided into car, day, and backpack hikes with ratings for difficulty and time required to complete them. Each hike has a description, as well as GPS info. He has 64 hikes listed. We did one shorter day hike (SF Mule Canyon) on arrival and spent about 3 hours exploring a "car" hike area which had many ruins tucked into the cliffs (Mule Canyon Cave Towers). The ruins were accessible beneath the cliffs, though access is not straight forward, but not dangerous either. In the book the author says there is no route down to these, but we were able to get to them, including my 9 year old daughter. Perhaps he is reluctant to encourage people to climb down to them. If I return to the area, I would purchase this book to plan and use there. I'd also purchase the topo maps. Have fun.

I am a current resident of a new subdivision that has just been built on Lawton Plantation. After reading this book, I now can visualize the history of the area. As I walk down the new sidewalks and cut through areas under construction, I try to imagine what it was like 150 years ago. I can almost see Uncle Peter as he is walking to his one room cabin. The other night I heard an owl hooting that reminded me of the past when this was a plantation with fields of cotton. Driving over the new bridge to Charleston, I can imagine the Lawton's boat transporting milk and people from the plantation to downtown Charleston. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about plantation life and how it was affected by the Civil War.

A historical story in a very personal fashion. The book recounts the Lawtons family history from before the Civil War until WWII. From the acceptance of slaves as part of plantation life, to the complete dissolution of their economy and beyond - a wonderful story depicting the dynamism and challenges of life.

This book should be in all school libraries. The excellent illustrations bring the accurate text to life in a compelling way. I give 2-3 hr presentations in French or English as a voyageur. This book certainly covers more than I can in such a way. I would recommend it whole-heartedly as background for anyone interested in the period and the characters.

Every spring in the late 1700's canoes would leave from Quebec and head for upper Lake Superior. At the same time trappers from deep in the central and Rocky Mountain regions of Canada would head for the same location with the fruits of their trapping labors over the winter. They would meet for a couple of weeks of trading and partying. Then they would laboriously paddle back to where they had come from.

Howard Silvertson captures this time with short clear descriptions and beautiful watercolors that really make the history come alive. It is a part of history that is often forgotten. It's fascinating to imagine what it was like to live in those times. This book captures the feeling. This book should be in every school library.

It is time and cost consuming to get the first nine modules individually. You have to spend 6-10 times money to get all, than you get a single B1-9 compilation. Well, it is not exactly the same as the original nine modules. In this compilation, B1 is only a deogeon map; the "unimportant" parts of B2, B4, B5, B8 have been cut; one of the 5 mini-adventures in original B9 have been omitted and two of the rest are combined into single adventure. Nevertheless, it still have three modules appear complete -- B3, B6, B7 (though with a little modification.). Another great work in this compilation is to link the 11 individual adventures (3 from B9) into a D&D campaign in Karameikos. It is a sucessful step. TSR then published Gazetteer series and brought the game into a new direction. DMs may design a campaign game in the vast Mystara world, not just play each adventure independently.

If you are really to play the old and classic edition of D&D (not 3rd ED.), you may start here.

This is one of the best products ever put out by TSR - this colossal book (160+ pages!) includes the very best of modules B1 through B9 - forming an epic campaign that will take your PCs from level 1 to at least 5, with well over 200 hours of play time! From the Keep on the Borderlands to the Lost City buried far below the deserts of Ylaruam; from the blackest alleys of Karameikos to the dark forests of Rahasia, your players will revel in a "triple trilogy" introduction to D&D they'll never forget! For casual players who will irrevocably turn into hardcore gamers, this enormous set of adventures and stories is the ultimate challenge.

As an industrial designer, I highly recommend this book, not only because it gives a broad look at history of Industrial Design, but also because it uses very sophisticated and rich in expression language. I have read this book in French, but the English version is equally well written and is one of the few excellent sources of research information about ID available nowadays.

Since I'm an Industrial Designer, I always looked for such a complete source.It's a must have for the designers, for the architects, and for anyone who's interested in.. The chapters, the layout, the graphics&pics are the best that I've ever seen. It's one of the most impressive book of my library.

Of the four books I read on the subject, this one was by far the best. It describes hikes that are "family friendly" as well as those which are more advanced and appropriate for hikers with experience in the high country. There are many hikes mentioned which are relatively unknown, and not on the popular "maintained" trails of the Tetons. Of the few which I had time to take, her directions were quite accurate. For someone visiting the Jackson Hole area who loves to hike, especially in the high country, this book is excellent.

The new edition (1999) of this book includes more hikes than before and covers the entire area surrounding Jackson. The descriptions and directions are easy to read and understand. The author also includes the elevation changes and difficulty of the hikes. I like this book because it covers a wide area and many popular and less popular hikes in and around Jackson Hole. The index also includes more place names and destinations than the table of contents, which is great. I recommend this book because, unlike many others, it includes hikes in Grand Teton National Park as well as those outside the park.

Learning languages in a classroom is hard work. Just think how many problems you had grinding through diagramming English sentences in the 8th grade, and, if you are like me, English is your primary language. Now envision yourself in college, faced with two years of French, German, Russian, or Spanish. You spend, at most, five to six hours per week going over phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms of a language at lightening speed, without any means of significant outside reinforcement. What is worse, after one year of dipping your toe into the swamp that is a foreign language, the second year instructors expect you to speak, write, and read that language. Like most people, I started out studying French with a lot of vigor, flipping through flashcards faster than a gambler drops quarters in a slot machine. By the time I got to the second year, my early efforts rarely paid off: flashcards and random reading did help me to navigate written French fairly well, but speaking and listening to the language was still an excruciating task.

Unless you are majoring in a foreign language or have the means to live in a foreign country for at least six months, it is best to accept the fact that you will not speak a foreign language. What you can focus on is learning to read that language because it is much easier to recognize words on a written page than it is to pluck them from your brain in the course of a conversation. This is where a great dictionary comes into the picture. Not only will an excellent lexicon help get you through those daunting two years, it will also help you impress people when you read Baudelaire in the original. Certainly, you can be a cheapskate and pick up a five-dollar piece of crud that will get you through an introductory class. If you are like me, however, and love to use a sledgehammer when a tack hammer will do the job, welcome to the LaRousse Grand Dictionnaire. Sure, it is pricey, and you have a better chance of fitting a corpse in your backpack then this hernia inducing book, but if you want to actually use the scraps of French you learned in class (and even improve your reading skills) this is the dictionary for you.

I love this dictionary! First off, there are some great color maps of the world in here, with every place name clearly marked in French. Then it takes countries and breaks them down into "administrative districts" (read: states) and gives you those in French as well. But that's not all! Then we get maps of "patrimoine," or national heritage. Where the heck is "Mur d'Hadrien," you ask? Why, it is Hadrian's Wall, located in England! And as we all know, the Romans built Hadrian's Wall to keep obnoxious French waiters out of the empire. LaRousse even has a map of gay old Paris included, in case you want to see where all those protestors are marching. Seriously though-this dictionary has some great stuff between its covers.

Since this is an advanced dictionary, you will find many words that cruddy little paperback dictionaries do not include. Even better, after the phonetics and definition comes many helpful phrases that word appears in. A great example is the verb savoir, meaning "to know or to be aware of." What follows is an entire page of possible uses of savoir, such as "Je sais un moyen d'y parvenir," which translates as "I know a way to do it." The entries for common French words, such as etre, avoir, and faire, are just as comprehensive.

Also included is a table of 116 conjugated French verbs, which isn't too bad, although that number falls far short of what you would need to really read the language. As an added bonus, apparently for complete incompetents, is a list of irregular English verbs. Yep, this is a great dictionary.

I cracked a few jokes in this review about the French, but this really is a great addition to your library. This "Grand Dictionnaire" will speed you on the way to reading the language of a culture that produced some of the greatest literature, art, and cuisine in the history of the world. This dictionary will not only help you translate the words in a sentence, but also helps you achieve insight into what you are reading. There is no greater joy than getting the emotion behind the words ("Hey, not only do I know what that means, but the author is being sarcastic!"). LaRousse is the way to go.

This new, top-of-the-line Advanced Dictionary has been specially developed to become the dictionary of first resort for students, teachers, and serious general users. Distinctive panel entries and highlights have been added, along with 2,000 new words and meanings from everyday life, the Internet, and technology. It is highly recommended. Buy this book first!

I just finished reading Living at the Edge of the World and now I'm getting all my friends to read it. This book was unforgetable. Tina is so honest about her fears and confusions, anyone can relate to her. The book is anything but depressing. After reading it you feel as if you know Tina and her friends. Now that I've started a new novel, I miss Tina! This a book for anyone who has ever felt hopeless or lonely, and for all us who continue to remember the homeless in our thoughts and prayers.

A wonderful read, simply stated, but by it's subject matter ... riveting. Twice as real as "the mole people." One of the best books I've read this year.