This was a book that painted pictures with wonderful clearity. I always wondered if there was a sequel to this book. I had heard another one was in the works, DAY OF THE MINOTAUR? I loaned the book out and never got it back, but I will find it again and re-read it many times.

You wonder how many of them are out there...gnarled, twisted sci-fi savants whose pulp masterpieces have long since fallen off the radar of popular consciousness. They lionized Dick in time to throw him a few bones before he kicked the bucket, and even Ted Sturgeon appears to be undergoing a revival these days...But what about this guy, Barrington J. Bayley? Never heard of him? Neither had I, until following the goadings of B. Sterling's on-line rag Cheap Truth which praised him to the skies, I took a crawl through Berkeley's used bookstores and managed to scare up a few tattered copies of Bayley's late 70's/early 80s paperbacks, of which The Forest of Peldain is one. Ladies and gents, this is one of the great speculative fiction writers of our time. Reading one of his novels (I recommend The Grand Wheel as an introduction, if you can find it) is to take a blazing trip across the underbelly of the universe, where time, space, and chance are embedded objects vibrating in the matrix of a thoroughly-stoned Master Mechanic's head. This is imaginative sponteneity of the finest sort. Seek it out. The dude deserves a wider audience than he's getting.

Taboo is a subject that has been around in anthropology for a long long time. How can we make sense of the rules we find in almost all cultures about who one can marry and who one cannot, what one can eat and what one cannot, who one can have sex with and who one cannot? And how can we explain the fact that all of these disparate prohibitions seem intuitively to fall under a single idea - that of 'taboo'?

Forest of Taboos presents an answer to this question. By synthesizing the diverse literature on taboo (symbolic, Freudian, etc.) he creates a view of taboo which emphasizes the embodied nature of human being. "a subject symbolically constituted," he writes, "but necessarily located in the body, must be haunted by the fear of its disintegration through the body, since it constantly experiences the body's resistance to the subject's symbolic ordering of itself. The embodied subject's fear of disintegration through the body and by the body is the ultimate basis for the notion of pollution". Along the way he explains Jewish food prohibitions, love (a "controlled form of fear" according to Valeri), and pets (he doesn't like them). All of this is delivered in a powerful, eloquent, and very dense prose where personal reverie mixes with humanistic philosophy and the dense technical materials of anthropology. Although compelling and beautiful, it is not for the faint of heart.

Valeri's argument is convincing, and is backed up on several fronts. A massive literature review deals with the history of past thought on taboo. A detailed analysis of taboo amongst te Hualu, the group with which Valeri did his fieldwork, adds ethnographic bite to his theoretical argument. Finally, a meditation on the relationship of 'theory' to ethnography ties together these elements to create a book in which the habits of a particular group of people shed light on the general conditions in which all human beings live there lives. I highly recommend it.

In "Forest of the Night", we meet Hashti and a crew of loggers who are trying to establish a base on a distant planet. Unfortunately, their operation seems to be threatened by the native feathered tigers. As Hashti tries to do her job caring for the crew's horses, her boyfriend Gay is convinced that the whole operation is a business ploy that will leave the workers indebted to their financiers for life, and the tigers aren't making matters any easier. Gay and some of the loggers hatch a plan to bail themselves out by hunting the tigers and selling their feathered hides for a profit. But Hashti and a few of the others, including Ross, one of the first to arrive and scout the planet, are convinced the tigers are an intelligent, sentient race and must be dealt with accordingly.

Hashti eventually forms a close relationship with Khan, one of the tigers, and several of his comrades, and together they learn a great deal about each other's cultures. The book is a fasci!nating exploration of understanding other forms of intelligence than one's own. I thouroughly enjoyed "Forest of the Night" and would recommend it to anyone. It left me wanting to see what happens to the characters next. Stuessy's second novel, "Dreams of Dawn" (also out of print), takes place in the same universe but doesn't have any of the same characters.

Forest Patrol, written in the early 1900's describes the life of a young man thrust into the job head ranger of an entire district of land. The flowing style use in the book create images that allow you to see and experience the outdoors and to actually feel what it was to be a ranger, the title character John Belden (19y/o) Needs to trap poachers, enforce game laws, Provide raw materials for the townspeople, and most of all not get killed when Poley Harris comes huntin' for the his job. No book of this type that I have yet encountered, has captivated me so much. Through poignant descriptive detail, the author(Kjelgaard) made me feel as a ranger would, hear as a ranger would and think as a ranger would, I recommend this book to anyone who hears the call of the wild and is drawn to the unknown.

Not only does this CD-ROM contain almost all of the publications available from the USDA Forest Products Lab in .pdf format, but also included are the Commerical Kiln Drying Schedules for North American and species throughout the world. There is also a index for species name and common named woods. The CD-ROM also contains the complete Dry Kiln Operators Manual #188, and 29 other publications which were scanned in and converted to .pdf format by Global including all of the Solar Kiln publications and Kiln Drying Firewood. This CD-ROM is a must on your reference shelf.

First published in 1960, The Forest Ranger is an impressive study of the United States Forest Service. In the book, Kaufman (1960/1967) case studies the behavior of district rangers in the Forest Service and endeavors for an answer to the question of how policies formulated by policy executives are realized into integrated action by a service whose field personnel operate under varied conditions. "Even in agencies with simple, routine responsibilities, welding the behavior of field personnel into integral patterns is often a trying experience" (p. 25). In an agency which is as much dispersed and heterogeneous as the Forest Service, is it possible to secure an integrated and coherent policy implementation across a great number of the districts? If you believe it is impossible, I strongly recommend you to have a look at The Forest Ranger by Herbert Kaufman.

The readers who are familiar with Herbert Simon should remember his masterpiece "Administrative Behavior" in which the author at "theoretical level" demonstrated what takes for the leaders of administrative agencies to direct, manage, and run largely staffed and complex organizations. Simon (1947/1997) spent his intellectual energy for an inquiry into the decision-making process, and knitted his theory around it by developing an impressive understanding that helped the readers to sense that "integrated policy action" depends on the degree that the leaders can control the "environment" of decision-making so that every individual employee in the organization adjusts his/her decisions to common objectives fashioned by policy makers. Organization design, implicitly, stood out as prerequisite for integrated policy action, with "organization design" serving to bring decision premises and necessary data to the attention and use of decision-makers. Herbert Kaufman (1960/1967), in The Forest Ranger, demonstrates vividly how once a "theory" becomes a reality in the case of the United States Forest Service.

I would not want to summarize the case study with the fear that I am likely to discolor a vivid masterpiece. Suffice to say that at present times in which orthodox public administration theory is being transformed by a new body of knowledge and skills, this case study should present (sometimes poignantly) the assumptions, ideals, weaknesses and strengths of orthodox public administration in its "golden age" that has reached a final stage in our contemporary times.

This classic book is organized into seven major chapters. The first chapter gives a summary of research design, data collection and analysis procedures, and the plan of the book. The second chapter makes the reader familiar with the size and complexity of the Forest Service with accompanying challenges to integrated policy action. The third chapter elucidates the challenges to unity that emanate from internal communication problems, the potential for field officers to be captured by local populations, personal preferences of field officers, and the like. In the fourth chapter, Kaufman (1960/1967) gives detail to the procedural devices used by the service leaders in order to "preform" decisions of individual employees (controlling the environment of decision). The fifth chapter shows how the Forest Service executives detect and discourage deviation from official policies. The sixth chapter explains the means by which the Forest Service leaders develop will and capacity in their employees to conform with the policy expectations. The seventh chapter is a conclusion with final remarks on the success level of policies in the Forest Service and ethical-moral implications.

If you are not comfortable with abstract theoretical constructs and need more concrete examples, skip The Functions of the Executive by Chester Barnard (1938/1968), Administrative Behavior by Herbert Simon (1947/1997), Organizations in Action by James Thompson (1967) or Leadership in Administration by Philip Selznick (1957/1984), and read Herbert Kaufman. Once you read The Forest Ranger can you return to these masterpieces and I believe you are more likely then to digest their theories and understandings.

If you are not very interested in public administration theory, The Forest Ranger is worth reading even due to its excellence as a case study that would help the readers in designing their own case studies for research purposes.

Overall, I highly recommend this classic to the readers.

As a Westerner who has done a lot of meditation in Thailand over the last 18 years, I've been curious to know the history of meditation in Thailand. I've also wondered about the Tudong or wondering monks whom I've occasionally seen here. This book explains it all. It is also very inspirational for serious meditators and might even inspire people who are curious about meditation.

As far as I can tell (having spent about a year in Thai monasteries), Kamala is right on the button in everything she writes. My only complaint about the book is that the footnotes are in the back instead of at the bottom of the page.

This book should deserves a wide audience.

The two boys, Henry Ware, and Paul Cotter, set out to carry powder from one settlement to another. They are attacked by Indians, and Paul is captured and taken to an Indian village. One of the scouts disguises as an Indian and rescues Paul. The book ends with a great battle between the Indians and a wagon train of pioneers.

"Forest Trees of Illinois" is a an excellent source of comprehensive information about tree species in Illinois. The book is clear and concise. Each species is thoroughly defined through a text description, realistic drawing, photo and a map indicating species location. The book is especially helpful for woody identification. The IDNR Forest Resources department successfully presents a helpful format appropriate for a wide range of nature enthusiasts, from professional foresters to community members wishing to know their local forests intimately. "Forest Trees" is cost effective in light of the abundant data encompassed in the book and also offers other resources for additional information. I recommend "Forest Trees of Illinois" without reservation for every member of our Illinois community to learn the precious natural resource of trees around them!