This is one of the best books I have read.

This book was written from a series of sermons brought by the author on Matthew 5-7. This man, Martin LLoyd-Jones, was truly anointed by God in his delivery and writing on the Beatitudes. The book should be read by all in the modern Charismatic/Pentecostal Church in order to truly understand what God's anointing on a person really is, and not the unmitigated rubbish emanating today from that quarter. It is absolutely brilliant, even after a second or third reading!

What a book! Pick up your Bible and read Matthew chapters 5 through 7, then pick up this book and let God change your life! After reading this book if your life is not changed, you are not listening to that Still Small Voice; you are not hearing the Quiet Knocking on your life's door! Lloyd-Jones fully explains in simple yet complete detail the Beattitudes in particular, and the full body of Jesus' sermon in general (as he does in all his books compiled so far). Read this book, and your spirit will become poor; you will mourn sin, and will feel comfort; you will know how to be meek; you will hunger and thirst for righteousness, and know how to be filled with more; you will know how and why to be merciful, and mercy will come your way; your heart will be purified, and you will see God working in the here and now; you will understand how to make peace; and, because you're "doing the righteousness," persecution WILL come your way!

Read this book, and you just might begin living the life you were called to live when you first became a Christian!

A model of the Frolic is on display at the Cabrillo Lighthouse, Mendocino, CA. Before you visit the area, read this book. The book covers the entire history of the Frolic, those who built it, the course it took for its short 6 year life -- before sinking off Pt. Cabrillo. Its history includes its involvement with the Opium War, American incursions in China and exciting trade run with opium, Chinese ceramics and silks. A must read if you're interested in international history and the ships that created commerce and connection with the rest of the world.

Oddly enough, our book group chose Voyage of the Frolic and what great fun and an education it has been. I've always dreamed of going on an archeological expedition and here, without the dirt, pan, screens and brushes, I've discovered another layer of the past. What an eclectic history California has.

The Voyage of the Frolic is a readers dream. Bostonian History, Maritime life, Chinese trade, the Coast of California and our indigenous Indians all rolled into one well written and enjoyable read. Thank you Professor Layton for unraveling the past and placing it in a wonderful china bowl for all of us to peruse and get to know.

This is the first time I have ever purchased a Farmers almanac, and now I wonder how I ever gardened without one! It is set up in an easy to read format, and is small enought to carry around!

Being America's oldest published periodical, this fact alone assures a potential examiner or reader that it is indeed a worthwhile study. This funny and odd (perhaps one say this, I thought that odd was a good pointer, however, others might disagree over this) book has been read and studied for almost 300 years and gives weather indications for the following year. The supplemental guide to watching the weather is a funny little thing that teaches one how and what to look for whilst one is outside observing the shifting weather patterns. Highly Recommended.

This book tells it all like it is. It leaves nothing out. If you have problems figuring out what the symbols mean, there is a directory that helps you. I recommend the books to friends & family every year - which I perchase every year myself.

The story of how a few great and nimble minds knocked relentlessly at the doors of established scientific thought and were, by dint of excellent work and bold imagination, eventually admitted.
From the painstaking, earnest and underappreciated Gideon Mantell to the flamboyant and eccentric Dean Buckland. From Sir Richard Owen, perhaps the finest comparative anatomist of his time, to the poverty-stricken fossilist Mary Anning here is a tale of fortunes won and lost and discoveries celebrated and forgotten, where brilliance walks hand in hand with heartache and madness...
Best of all, its true.

An absorbing account of the pioneer 19th-century British geologists and fossil collectors. Our hero is Gideon Mantell, of a noble family long fallen on hard times. The son of a shoemaker, Mantell was smitten with fossils at an early age. Without resources but recognized as a prodigy, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and became a doctor in London. For the rest of his life he would balance his unenthusiastic practice of medicine with a passionate devotion to fossils. Enter one Mary Anning, who supported her family by gathering fossil "trinkets" from the dangerous coastal cliffs of Dorset to sell to tourists. Her keen eye led to her recognition as a prime "fossilist" among geologists and collectors, including Mantell. One of her major finds was the fossil remains of a giant sea lizard; little by little, other huge reptilian bones were unearthed by Mary and others, but not without controversy. Mantell waited years before the eminent Baron Cuvier in Paris agreed that he had found the remains of a huge herbivorous land reptile (reversing his earlier opinion that the fossil was mammalian). But the plot thickened with the appearance of the wicked Richard Owen, who rose to pinnacles of power within the Royal Society and the Geological Society, became a social lion, and was an intimate of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. At every step of the way he did his best to discredit and ridicule Mantell, at the same time claiming some of Mantell's fossils as his own. His comeuppance (and the recognition of Mantell's true worth) was the result of both his egregious behavior and his being on the wrong (creationist) side of the evolutionary debate as the scientific tide turned to Darwinian theory. "He lied for God and for malice," an Oxford don declared. "A bad case." A scholarly account infused with a rare drama and suspense: read it not only for the science, but to learn what happened to all these wonderful characters.

Deborah Cadbury does the burgeoning genre of popular science proud with this book. It has all the necessary elements. A human interest story with heroes and villians, an interesting historical setting and a good scientific foundation. The history and science revolves around the gigantic fossilized bones that were being discovered throughout southern England in the early 19th century. Paleontology and Geology were just beginning as sciences. Evolution was a concept but not yet a theory as this was pre-Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Indeed in 1812 when an uneducated and simple villager named Mary Anning found a gigantic skeleton on a beach under the Dorset cliffs, there was nothing else to call it but a monster. The word "dinosaur" didn't exist. It was coined in 1842 by Richard Owen, one of the principal characters in this story.

Mary's discovery started the great quest to identify, categorize, name and date these bones. We meet Gideon Mantell, the poor son of a shoemaker who by dint of hard work and education became a country doctor and a member of the scientific community. He is the sympathetic character this story revolves around and the author wants us to embrace him. Mantell was one of THE DINOSAUR HUNTERS which is in fact the more appropriate title used for this book's edition in Britain. Mantell was typical of these amateur paleontologists who were combing southern England in the hopes of making some great discovery. It's true that only some were eccentric but it's also fair to say they all shared an obsession for bones. Mantell filled his home with fossils, developing one of the finest private collections in England. His devotion to the world of dead creatures came at a cost. It drained all the life out of his marriage and his wife left him in 1839. Mantell did at least have some success, discovering the skeleton of what would later be named the Iguanadon. That's about the only success he had though and his life story as told here is one of disappointment and bitterness with a sad ending.

If Mantell is the sympathetic character then the opposite emotional responses should be directed towards Richard Owen. Cadbury paints a very unflattering portrait of the man (Sir Richard eventually) who founded the Natural History Museum, invented "Dinosauria", and was consulted by royalty, prime ministers, and academia on all things fossilized. The author says he was "instinctively predatory" and if Cadbury rather than her publishers chose the title for the book, then it's very appropriate as it's quite clear from her writing who she sees as the TERRIBLE LIZARD.

Mantell is reminiscent of William "Strata" Smith in THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. The same disdain as shown by the scientific elite and similar financial difficulties. Smith's story however had an ultimately redeeming end. Not so here. Mantell had to sell his fossil collection to the Natural History Museum and following a carriage accident which badly damaged his spine and left him with severe backaches he declined rapidly. He died from an ovedose of the opiates that he took to relieve the pain. Owen's success had been at the direct expense of Mantell as he had been quite willing to claim Mantell's work as his own. From his well connected position within the scientific community Owen was very effective in preventing recognition for others and garnering it for himself. A bit of poetic justice arrived by way of Thomas Huxley who discredited some of Owen's work (specifically his view on the differences between human and ape brains). In doing so Huxley did in large measure what Owen had done to Mantell. Owen had also argued that Dinosaurs were proof against evolution. He reasoned that since evolution said life progressed it was impossible then that ancient and extinct creatures should be more splendid than those living today. Since fossils proved that dinosaurs were in fact many times more magnificent that the reptiles Owen saw around him, then evolution must be wrong he said. If Huxley embarrassed him then Darwin's stunning and well reasoned theory of evolution published in 1859 pretty much put paid to Owen's arguments. He outlived Darwin but only to his chagrin as he finally accepted the reality of Darwinism and the sting of being bettered scientifically.

I knew Emily for a very short time when I lived in Boston. She and my sister were friends, along with a group of people whose lives centered around a triple decker on Wendell Street.

A new book from Emily is like a long letter. I get to catch up on her life and comings and goings. I always feel sheepish about not staying in touch when I'm through with it. She writes such beautiful and thoughtful things, I think. I really need to write her back.

Reading her prose is exactly like having a conversation with her. I can hear her light, sweet voice as if I'm at a reading, and can summon her laugh in my mind's ear too.

It's impossible for me to separate my acquaintance with Emily from her work, but I will say I'm always astounded with her descriptions and way with words. She is at once erudite and approachable, and her work is always informed by both these things. Being a poet, Emily brings thoughtful cadence to her essays, and very often I will read them outloud to myself.

For those of you who don't know Emily personally, you will after you read this book, and what's more, you'll want to know her better. You'll also learn that New England watersheds are not only interesting but epic in their own way, and that stories are told in the details.

Thanks Emily. I'm doing quite well and think of you often.

[An] enchanting new book of essays.... Many personal essayists today try to capture our interest by being confessional but run the risk of revealing, like clumsy strippers, what we'd really rather not see. Hiestand has taken the more unusual risk of writing about the quotidian, and produced a tour de force. "Oooouuuweee!" as her cousin Bill would say. What a good book this is. --Boston Sunday Globe Book Review

Angela the Upside-Down Girl is about how to live creatively, see life through an artist's eye. With a subversive sense of humor and a wicked ability to pierce convention, [Hiestand] takes us on her journey to discover a meaningful sense of place in a chaotic world. Her place turns out to be North Cambridge, which she describes with the freshness and originality of Joyce in Dublin...

Angela the Upside-Down Girl reveals Emily Hiestand's exceptional talents which include an artist's eye for color and form, a cu! ltural anthropologist's ability to get people to tell their stories, and a poet's facility to express what is felt but not seen. --Cambridge Chronicle

Rich, revealing, and often hilarious... This book travels between only two places...but it travels so deeply into each place, both their pasts and their presents, that you come away from it feeling enlightened and enticed, and ready to hop on the next train heading north or south. --Hope Magazine

...and I say, also, "What a good book this is!"

-Chuck Eisenhardt

Angela the Upside-Down Girl is a revelation. Emily Hiestand is one of Robert Frost's true poets, "one upon whom nothing is lost." As she trains an eye of the rarest perception on the world we thought we knew, we discover the heart of light within ordinary and not-so-ordinary things. I marvel at her scope: her Weltyesque Aunt Nan Dean; her eloquent witness to the power of faith and community at Union Baptist Church; her love affair with automotive neon, which manages (as Emerson never could) to be both transcendental and funny; and, of course, there's Angela, whose gravity-defying grace can be seen as a figure for the whole book. But perhaps most engaging of all is the voice of our guide--Hiestand herself--the unifying principle through the book's many travels, wise, witty, shimmering in its clarity, a wonderful companion.

While most of us give a wide berth to stinging insects, memoirist Roseanne Daryl Thomas cozies up to bees, affectionately calling them "my girls." - quite an about face for one whose prior knowledge of apian life consisted of "They buzzed. They stung. They were yellow."

Following a divorce Ms. Thomas, her then 7-year-old daughter, August, and Ruffy, a geriatric cat, sought new life in a small New England community populated by 3,000 inquisitive souls.

There she met Farmer Tom; farmer being an unlikely sobriquet for a man with clean fingernails and a business card. Another unlikelihood was Ms. Thomas's out-of-nowhere comment that she might like to keep bees. At this, her daughter smiled, and Farmer Tom offered his land.

Smitten with the idea of having a mother who was a bee keeper, August "danced jubilantly about the house, composing beekeeping songs, drawing beekeeping pictures." Not wishing to disappoint her daughter, and just a little enthralled by the idea herself, Ms. Thomas began a task about which she knew "a teaspoonful more than absolutely nothing."

She visited a master beekeeper who introduced her to a hive body or deep super where bees live. Inside the deep super would be wax covered moveable frames where honey is made. . To her chagrin these did not come ready made, but had to be assembled - a daunting task for one who was not sure she owned a hammer. She bought three unassembled hives.

Another necessity was "The Outfit," first of all, gloves, elbow length cotton covered with yellow latex. Gloves did not come in a 7 ½; the smallest size in the white beesuit was a men's 42 regular. Finally, the hat. She was hoping for something in "a pale gold closely woven straw." Instead, she was handed "a hard white plastic pith helmet with ventilation grates at the temples."

There was no time for second thoughts as she had also ordered six living pounds of Italian honeybees. (According to the Bee Master Italian honeybees had the best dispositions). After many bruised fingers, considerable help from a friend, and countless visits to True Value, the hives were ready. Named Har, Jafenhar, and Thridi for the mythic trio who guard Valhalla, they were placed on Farmer Tom's land.

Weeks passed as Ms. Thomas tended her bees, sloshing through the field in Wellingtons bearing Ball jars of sugar water and toting other necessities in a lavender Bergdorf's shopping bag. With each visit she felt a deepening affinity for that spot of earth. Her respect for the natural world grew as she observed a blue heron seeking sustenance, and heavily laden black ants climbing ant mountains.

After a year the author had survived numerous stings and slings of fortune. She harvested her first crop with the observation that she had learned much but not enough.
Readers will find that they have learned much about bee keeping but not enough about Rosanne Daryl Thomas. "Beeing" is a memoir oddly lacking in emotional intimacy. Her marriage is dismissed with several lines, and there is scant reference to personal feelings. As "Motherhood" is found in the subtitle, one wonders what August's response was to the breakup of her home, and moving to a new community. Did Ms. Thomas ever address these issues with her daughter?

Practical matters also prove puzzling. With no apparent income how does one undertake a costly hobby that requires full time attention? Questions remain unanswered.

Nonetheless, "Being" is fluidly penned, at times lyric in descriptions of the changing seasons. And, there are lessons to be learned in this memoir, not the least of which is, "If you want to get honey, you have to be prepared to get stung."

There's no question at all about that.

- Gail Cooke

I love this book!!! It is sweet, funny, touching
and completely charming. (also inspiring: makes you
want to keep bees and appreciate them more.)
This is a "keeper" for the personal favorites library.
It is the gift I want to give my favorite friends and
relatives. The only thing possibly better than reading
this story would be to see Sandra Bullock make this into
a movie!
******Sandra Bullock please make this into a movie...
it is PERFECT for you!!!!!****************************

What a great read! Thomas breezes us through a year in the life of an unstoppable single mom, as seen through the lens of a novice beekeeper. She braves the vicissitudes of her first year of beekeeping with pathos, humor, intelligence and grace. As she interweaves her care and tending of the bees and their hives with the care and tending of her daughter, herself and their memorable home, I turned page after page with an ever-widening smile. Many thanks to the author for granting me a glimpse into her personal and universal world.

Though Ms. Standish's emphasis is on the great state of Maine, cooks from all over New England will recognize the regional recipes in this book as their own. To me, "Cooking Down East" is more than just a cookbook; it is, in written form, how I learned to cook from my mother and grandmother.

When my grandmother died, I was the lucky recipient of "her "secret recipes."(Cooking Down East : Favorite Maine Recipes and Keep Cooking the Maine Way).

Everytime I make the Melt in Your Mouth Blueberry Cake, the Fish Chowder or the Lobster Newburg (the fancy one--of course!), I am momentarily returned to my childhood.

The Red Flannel Hash is pretty terrific, too.

At last count, I had 273 cookbooks in my private collection, but these two are the ones I most often return to when I wish a taste of home. Unlike many others, they seem to spend a majority of the time on my kitchen counter, permanently dusted with flour, stained forever with tiny Maine blueberries.

If you are looking for nothing fancy-schmancy, only exemplary "home-style cooking," then these are the best you will ever find.

Thanks Nanny (and thanks Ms. Standish)

My first edition of this book was given to me by my husband 26 years ago. I have many fond memories of family dinners, deserts and favourite recipes from this book. To me it is a touch of home. Gloria Legere Mainiac in Exile in Washington State.

I often purchase books thru Amazon and then resell after I've read them, but I think I'll keep this little gem. You'll get your money's worth here. At just under four-hundred pages, Ghosts of the Northeast is jampacked with entertaining stories ranging from a few paragraphs to two or three pages in length. Most are accompanied by original drawings and photos of the haunted sites. Granted, a building is a building, but some of these places look pretty spooky and it's nice to see just what the author is writing about. He includes brief background on people and structures before delving into their paranormal histories. I was particularly pleased at the contemporary feel of this book. Some books in this genre relay events which seem too dated to be relevant, but Pitkin includes many ocurrences from the 1990's thru 2001. The author is personable and very spiritual - he doesn't shy away from his beliefs in God and an afterlife. He is also responsible in warning his readers not to pursue the occult, particularly thru seances and ouija boards. I don't hold much credence in earthbound spirits. I think many entities emanate from a potentially evil realm we may never understand. Nevertheless, I enjoyed his presentations immensely.

I had a hard time putting this book down!! Well written stories that come straight from the people who witnessed the events!! It was nice to see photos of the places the stories were written about.This will definately be added to my collection of ghost books. I hope Mr.Pitkin continues to research ghost stories and pass them along to us!!

I'm sick to death of books that spend 15 pages telling you the history of a building or area-histories that are often spurious or just folklore-and then end the chapter with, "There are some who say that if you listen on a windy night..." These are not books about ghosts-they're collections of legends and they're pretty much useless to anyone who is actually interested in ghosts.
Pitkin's book is more in the style of the collections made by the early SPR-he is interested in the ghostly experiences of his subjects, not the history of the county they're in. Mr. Pitkin has spent his time wisely,interviewing witnesses instead of reading travelogues. The people in this book have seen apparitions, have watched the movement of objects when no one or thing was influencing them, etc. For some reason this is rare these days. I highly recommend this book and I hope Mr. Pitkin writes more like it.

Having encountered the Nearings in Mother Earth News in the 70's I quickly became an avid admirer as well as a sincere follower of their wisdom. Thus I was overjoyed to buy Helens book because it allowed me to see a side of both Scott and Helen I never knew that well. The man whom I had admired as a wise soul but a tad put off by people, comes across as such a loving and yes "romantic" soul which made me like him even more. And Helen sharing how she was raised and the experiences she had and how she was encouraged by Scott to spread her wings and not allow him to fence her in, is a must read for any woman who questions where she belongs in the whole life circle.

We must own a good five hundred books that we love, but this book is amongst a handful that get read and re-read over and over, with something new being learned each time. I also think the book like all their books is a must read, because it reminds us how fascists this country (united states) has been and can be and the price sincere patriots often pay. As well as the value of taking the path less traveled and not relinquishing ones personal integrity or perseverance. And that in the end the good guy can win.

In today's youth-obsessed contemporary culture, it is a rare treat to be able to find a book so full of loving wisdom written by someone so involved socially, politically, and spiritually in the events of the 20th century. Therefore, I was enthralled in reading Helen Nearing's moving, absorbing and often quite disarming recollections and reflections on her life, both as an individual and as the lifetime partner of one of the most celebrated critics, iconoclasts and individualists of our time, economist, philosopher and social critic Scott Nearing.

The two lived lives singularly devoid of apologies, half-efforts, or excuses, living it largely on their own terms, based on their own labors and ingenuity. Early in the 1930s they struck out from New York City to escape the Depression and social convention by starting a revolutionary experiment in rural Vermont. In many respects the experiment succeeded, yet they were never able to transform it from a personal adventure to one more largely social and community-based in the Vermont setting. With the coming of ski resorts and encroaching exurbia in the early 1950s, the Nearings moved once again to rural Penobscot Bay in Maine to start again.

Of course, in due time they were suddenly "discovered" by the baby boomers and the counterculture in the late 1960s, and became the elder statesmen of the 'back-to-the-land' movement of the late sixties and early seventies. In all this, Scott and Helen continued in their commitment to a socially aware, civically responsible, and environmentally sustainable way of living. By the time Scott died at age 100 in the early 1980s, thousands of curious counterculture hopefuls made the pilgrimage to visit with the Nearings at their celebrated farm in rural coastal Maine.

This is a lovely, thoughtful, and wise book, full of the almost endless love and care and compassion Helen Nearing brought to all of her endeavors for her many decades of purposeful and socially responsible living. This book is no small treasure; it looms large and lovely for those who are aware of the incredible journey the Nearings made as fellow citizens, and also of the loving and special relationship these two rugged individualists shared. I have read it several times, and love having it on my bookshelf. I suspect you will too.

I discovered Helen and Scott's books in the early 1970s and they inspired and sustained me as I planned my escape from urban California. Not long before she died, Helen reviewed my book and gave it a wonderful testimonial which I will always cherish. No other two people have had a greater influence on the back-to-the-land movement. Helen and Scott were born to privilege and rejected it to live lives that showed by example their commitment to right living. They were vegetarians, they raised most of their food, and they were remarkable in their physical and intellectual capacities. Their physical bodies are dead but their spirits live on in the lives of those now living the good life because of their example. After Scott died at the age of 100 by purposefully not eating, Helen wrote this candid book that gives insight into their private lives and reveals their deep convictions.

Great pictures and recipes that can be used in many different ways. It is a real book for real cooks

I bought this book last year,at first I did not want to try any yet because i don't see the pic how it should come out! Until couple months later, I try with the banana cake recipe which I saw the picture. And that's it, it is simple to follow the explaination and after finish---taste great. I have to try another even I don't see picture but I believe now that it will come out fine.

Desserts that come from one of the best restraunteers around. Unbelieveably delicious and satisfying.