The book, "Beyond the Divide," is a book, portraying the life of Meribah Simon, an Amish girl from a close-knit Pennsylvanian community. Most of the plot takes place on the trail that Meribah and her father, Will Simon, are traveling on to California for the gold rush. During their long journey, the Simon's come together with other traveling families and become close friends. Between the emigrants, they shared food, labor, and supplies. Meribah meets a girl named Serena, and they become close friends. Along the trail, strange occurances happen and Serena and her mother disappear. These strange occurances caused by the cruelty exemlified by the other travelers. Finally, Meribah and her father are abandoned. During this, Will Simon, the dad, is very sick, and the first snowflakes fall. Meribah knows that only a miracle can save them. Giving this book three stars, would be offering it way too much credit. Since this book was action packed at some parts, I'm giving it two stars, but it was lacking the real experience of migration to the West. So, for future reference, don't read this book because you will be wasting your time. In conclusion, I suggest this book to no one and all the illiterates around the world.

All Alone

Have you ever had to choose between your loving father and the place you have lived for your whole life? Meribah Simon has. She lived in an Amish community her whole life, but now has left her home to search for gold with her father. On April 1,1849,Meribah and her father leave Holly Springs, Pennsylvania, to start their journey. Traveling in a covered wagon, they join the train and meet all kinds of people. Meribah becomes friends with Serena Billings, a rich girl traveling with her family. While Meribah draws, Serena paints. Not all the people are nice though. The Timm brothers are always making trouble. They meet up with some Indians but they just want to trade. One day Serena goes on a walk with Mr. Wickham. The Timm brothers go too, and something awful happens. At first no one will tell Meribah what happened and Serena will not speak to anyone. Finally Meribah realizes what happened and tries to help Serena get better. But she does not get better and one day just wanders off, never seen again. Her mother, wanting to find Serena, also leaves, never found.
In August, Meribah's father gets sick. Meribah has to do most of the work, with some help from others. Then the Whitings get sick and Meribah and her father stay behind with them while the train moves on. Then the Whitings decide not to go on, so Meribah and her father move on. Finally they catch up. Then they crash and their stronger ox, Josie, dies. They are left behind to live on their own. They make home in a cave, and Will tells Meribah how to fix the wagon. Then someone comes to the rescue. It is Mr. Goodnough, an artist Meribah met in Saint Joseph. They join his wagon train and are on their way again. After awhile, Goodnough decides to stay back with Meribah because her father cannot make it.
After a couple of weeks Goodnough decides to go get help. Soon after he leaves, Meribah's father dies. Meribah is alone.
This book is good, but spread out too long. I think True North, another book by the same author, was better. It was more compact.

"Beyond the Divde" is a great book, intended for mature readers. Will Simon has been shunned by his Amish community and is planning to go to California. His daughter Meribah travels with him and this is her story on the trip on the emigrant trail during the Gold Rush. They join a company and Meribah becomes friends with a rich girl name Serena Billings. This book is packed with emotion, information, and action. I guarentee that a mature reader, who enjoys or dosen't mind historical fiction, will love this book.

I completed a thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail this year, and I have say that these "official" guides are pretty awful.

If you want a real CDT guidebook, get the Jim Wolf guides from the Continental Divide Trail Society - they are infinitely superior to these Westcliffe guides. Wolf is better written, more detailed, has better information and data, and on and on and on.

The Westcliffe had 2 advantages for me - one was that they were written in my direction of travel (except for CO, whihc is written in a different direction than the other guidebooks??!!!), which has something to be said for it; and the second is that they are occasionally more up to date as far as recent changes go, which means that they helped out in a couple potentially iffy situations.

Other than that, though, the Westcliffe guides had me FUMING throughout the trip - they are riddled with inaccuracies, mistakes, omissions, bad writing, unclear writing, and on and on and on. Every single day, I think, almost without fail, the Westcliffe guides would blow it in at least one major place. Now I know the CDT is (at this point) still all about using a variety of maps and books and whatever else you can dredge up to find your way and not relying on one guidebook source, and we did. So in that light, you could think of the Westcliffe guides as just another piece to add or subtract. But standing on their own, the fact that they purport to be "official" is preposterous, not just because they omit some great "non-official" sections like the Gila Middle Fork, Parry Peak, and Temple Pass, but because they are sold as "guidebooks" when they are more like "lostbooks." To be honest, I think the Westcliffe guides are so bad that they border on being irresponsible.

I had been thinking for some time to do a backpacking trip on the Continental Divide Trail. I knew that I would need some assistance.

I purchased this book in the fall of 1999. I spent the next six months planning my adventure. Since I had only 7 days to spend on the trail, I decided to hike Segments 24, 25 and 26 (from Winfield to Hancock).

I planned my trip exactly form this book. When I got on the trail July 1, 2000, it was if I had my own personal trail guide with me. I knew exactly what to expect, how far I would hike each day, where the water and the good camp sites were. The driving directions were very accurate to the trailhead, the mileage and guidemarkers were also accurate.

Each night I camped at the locations I expected and found water where the author said it would be.

I finished my 7 day hike within 2 hours of my expected time! Never had I been on the CDT before!

If you have any interest in the CDT I would urge you to purchase this book. I'm now planning my adventure for next year from this book.

Last summer I hiked the CDT, through the wemmenuche wilderness in southern Colorado. This book was used every day to help us out of our 12 day expedition. The details of the trails described in the book are written so well that I often reread parts of it to put a picture in my mind of the awesome land. Tom Jones does an outstanding job. I will keep this book forever, use it on the trail again, and someday pass it to my children.

I sent a review about 10 days ago; I was wondering why you did not run it. Could you let me know? Thank you.

In Crossing the Post Modern Divide, Albert Borgman has done a fine job of describing many troubling features of modern society. The emotively vivid, often poetic language that he uses renders the book very readable. It is disappointing that his attempt to explain how we arrived at our current sorry state of affairs is not cogently argued. Rather, it is riddled with fallacies.

Take his reasoning in the concluding remarks of chapter one, which are the basis for the inquiry he pursues throughout the book. He has already convincingly shown that our modern era is in many ways "rotten" and plans to show how things got this way. So far, so good. But then things take a dramatically illogical turn. We are told that if we wish to avoid perpetuating the evils we now face, we must attend to their "initial conditions." His idea here seems to be that if our current situation is bad, then the prior situation which influenced it must be bad, too. So if we change those conditions, we will cease to perpetuate the horrid practices that followed.

This line of reasoning is nothing short of what we might term a "reverse genetic fallacy." A genetic fallacy imputes a characteristic of the origin of something to what was derived from it. If the parents are bad, then must not the child be bad, too? Of course not. Many a good person had less than exemplary parents. That's why it is an example of fallacious reasoning. The reverse is to impute to the origin of something a characteristic of what was derived from it. If the child is bad, must not the parents have been bad, too? Obviously not. Some really vile people have had morally upright parents. Again, we see the fallacy in situation is bad, then the "initial condition" in the form of ideas of Bacon, Descartes, and Locke must be bad, too. Are we to accept this, as if the mistakes might not have been a result of errors in their application? I certainly don't think so.

For instance, we are told that Francis Bacon left us a legacy of "vicious realism" in his scientific method based on the fact that he promoted the development of applied science in his New Atlantis. For have we not reaped a bitter fruit from the tree of technology in terms of environmental destruction? So the attitude that it is acceptable to exploit our environment to its detriment is laid at Bacon's door. What is overlooked is the fact that Bacon explicitly places moral strictures on the use of science insofar as it is to serve humanity for its benefit, contrary to the current abuses documented by Borgman. It would seem, then, that the reprehensible state of affairs in society's treatment of the environment is based on a misuse, rather than a use, of Baconian ideas.

Still more fallacies are found in Borgman's attacks on the idea that there are moral universals. The first occurs where we are told that Kant is guilty of "sleight of thought" for moving from premises showing that feelings are unreliable guides for conduct to the conclusion that the ground of morality must be found in a universal principle of action. This is nothing less than an ad hominem attack. Disagree though one might (and I don't) with Kant's conclusion, and fault his transcendental logic as erroneous if you will, as some have done (not including myself), and you nevertheless remain on the firm ground of critical analysis. But insinuate that Kant was being deceptive, by using a play on words based on the phrase "sleight of hand" which characterizes tricksters, and you have crossed the line that demarcates reasoning from a personal attack. Having studied moral philosophy and taught ethics courses for three decades, I have encountered a wide range of both positive and negative opinions about Kant's theories, but none have cast aspersions on his character by suggesting that he was some sort of philosophical flimflammer.

The next fallacy is contained in Borgman's allegaton that Kant "purchased universality at the expense of vacuity," meaning that Kant provided no basis for actually applying moral universals. Here, Borgman is guilty of arguing against a straw person because he is demolishing a caricature instead of a characterization of Kant's theory. The view Borgman attacks is an oversimplified version because it ignores well known and relevant qualifications contained in the work he is citing, Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. There, Kant gives two formulations of his categorical imperative in addition to the one mentioned by Borgman which address the issue of how to apply it to specific situations. For instance, in his second version, Kant presents criteria for treating people with respect for their dignity, and then in the third formulation, he provides additional guidance for acting in a moral community (see Barbara Hermann's Practice of Moral Judgment for an insightful explanation of these points and a discussion of why Kantian ethics is compatible with the insights of Carol Gilligan regarding the ethics of care). Taken together with his universal law formulation, Kant's two additional versions of the categorical imperative provide perspectives that inform the first and thereby render the theory applicable to our practical needs.

So although Crossing the Post Modern Divide initially holds out the promise of helping us to understand how we got ourselves into the post modern predicament in order to enable us to break free from its spiritually destructive grip, Borgman's treatment ultimately does not live up to the expectations raised at the outset because the author fails to provide a carefully reasoned and historically accurate treatment of the very conditions he sets out to change.

Vincent A. LaZara, Ph.D. www.odincomm.com

This is a fascinatingly interesting, endlessly provocative, and eminently worthwhile read penned by a thoughtful philosopher who seems to have one foot in the heavens and the other planted firmly in every-day life. Borgmann serves up a busman's tour of history, ranging from observations on icons such as Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, yet at the same time coldly,cautiously, and carefully illustrating how we have lost so much more than we have gained in our earnest struggle to free ourselves from tradition and its hold on us, as we have increasingly become the mindlessly individualistic souls so boldly detached from any meaningful connection to one another that we have now become both socially and spiritually bereft, strangers in a strange land indeed.

Borgmann's view of contemporary society offers us nothing that others have not written even more eloquently about elsewhere; his gift to us is rather to illustrate with uncommon verve and precision exactly how the our dance in the history of ideas as well as our enthusiastic embrace of materialism has acted to gradually bankrupt us in terms of having any real meaningful sense of who we really are and why it is we are alive. According to the author, we are now living in circumstances so far estranged from any kind of natural connection to or relationship with the environment that we seem to believe that whatever artificially created surroundings we may have are mere furniture, incidental and unconnected to us or how we experience our lives, and therefore we cannot understand the ways in which this "mere furniture" fatefully influences and determines our own possibilities, both in terms of our material well being, and for Borgmann, at least, also in terms of our waning recognition of the possibility of any substantial spiritual existence.

This is indeed a rather breath-taking vision, one that both encapsulates prior history, and also places that history in context as the meaningful prologue to what now exists. We have confidently left behind any belief in meaningful central authority, are ardently enthusiastic believers in the unalloyed superiority of the rational mode of thought, and are bravely rational progressives in the sense we take mere "material progress" to be the greatest possible good. Now at long last we awake from five centuries of striving to be free to find ourselves locked into a wide-open world of someone else's design, suddenly left in the lap of material luxury to try to cope with forces we neither understand nor fully appreciate in terms of their magnitude or consequence. Instead, we tune into the shallow commonweal of the media, where all things are hyped, and where nothing is scared, other than the stock market and the supposed spread of individual wealth. Is it any wonder we have collectively lost faith in the power of the present to satisfy us, or become suspicious that the future holds little but more of the same vacuous fare?

As another reviewer states, it seems the more we grasp for meaning, the more ghostly our existences become. Borgmann, true to his beliefs, underscores the desperate need each of us has to find meaningful connection in the community of our peers. We must strive to overcome our addiction to living lives of material inconsequentiality by devoting ore energy and resources to exploring our common humanity with others in our own habitat. For in the end, according to Borgmann, it is as simple (and as problematic) as having the good sense to establish more human connections to our colleagues, neighbors, and friends. We need a life, according to Borgmann, richer in social interaction and shared community as opposed to continue to seek material ends. This is a book I highly recommend. Enjoy!

Nice pictures, but has so little text that it can hardly be called a book. Not much discription of the trail or of New Mexico. The author must be saving that for the trail guide which has been postphoned at least twice now by the publisher. Save your money. Buy "Where Waters Divide."

I just finished reading the book "Along New Mexico's Continental Divide Trail", with text written by David Patterson. Through the well-composed description and excellent, colorful photographs, the reader can get an idea what the land along the CDT is like, and what it's like to hike it. Initially, I was captivated because I have never hiked in New Mexico. In fact, I haven't even been to the state since 1974! I just wanted to get a glimpse of the region and the trail. As it turns out, the book was so enjoyable that I have decided to hike a portion of the New Mexico CDT this spring!

Although not a detailed guidebook, David's description of his hike, the people he met and the never-ending challenges of hiking in such unforgiving terrain were more than enough to help me understand the New Mexico CDT. Having thru-hiked the PCT, I know what hiking in a desert state is like. With its unique culture, topography and ambiguous CDT route, themes that David deals in, hiking in New Mexico is a whole new ball game! I could not have imagined hiking it without first reading the book. Early on David writes, "Except for the rusty barbed wire fence that marks the border between Mexico and the United States, this land knows no boundaries, natural or artificial, as far as I can see." Hiking in an environment that not long ago was home to indigenous cultures, he adds, "It's amazing how the tools, clothing and weapons of these previous cultures are merely modifications of the natural environment: rock, wood, and bone." Well said!

Each region of David's route is written in much the same way I mentally categorize and remember my 1996 PCT hike. For example, the Gila National Forest is described as a place where mining camps little the landscape, high desert plants such as prickly pear thrive, but there's some shade provided by the pines and junipers. "Bushwacking isn't necessarily my favorite pastime, but it's what we have to do to get beyond Diamond Peak." This section of David's route through the Gila had a big fire some years ago and it presents this challenge: "It's almost as if a bulldozer piled all the trees on top of each other, but then again Mother Nature's power is awesome. When the wind howls the few standing dead snags sway, and I can hear their eerie voices shrieking from the flames that licked them not long ago." Classic!

In the end he pays homage to this wonderful area of the CDT. "Weathered ranchers, forest rangers, mountain men, and friendly strangers- it's natures own character, silently revealing herself to me in the canyons, deserts, and mountains of New Mexico, that has made my journey through the Land of Enchantment an everlasting experience." Additionally, the photographs by Tom Till and William Stone provide a great background to David Patterson's description of the New Mexico CDT.

This book is only a diery of a young man traveling the distance of the old East/West German Border. It point out several places of interest not only of that of the old border zone but of those of WWII such as the caves of the making of the V-2 rockets which is rather interesting. I was hoping for more on the Border Zone itself. I was a border guard there in the Hof and Coburg sectors and found he did not reach the true meaning of the border for both sides and what it stand for today. I also found it a poor guide to us because he did not get to all musuems and place of interest for the border. The author seem to give more detail to the people he met then what the Border Zone looks like today. There are no photographs or maps to each of the areas which could help as a guide and to keep the interest of younger people. I also found the research misleading and inaccurate for the old Border Zone such as the city of Hof and the unknown soldier of the tri-zone. For history seeker its an OK book, for History of the East/West German Border Zone I do not recommend. Sorry!

Oliver August, the son of East German parents who escaped to West Germany, drives along the route of the now-vanished Wall that separated East from West, and interviews people on both sides of the border along the way. The author is perfectly bilingual and bicultural, and thus in the ideal position to explain to the reader the peculiarities of German behavior and attitudes. The Easterners regard themselves as Germany's second-class citizens and look with nostalgia upon the old East German regime. The final chapter (of 14) is about Berlin, where the author interviews the East German general who supervised the border guards. The author writes well and tells a compelling story of how, despite reunification, the two halves of Germany are far from being able to understand one another. The book has no photos, one diagram, and (only) one map.

The author describes a number of campaigns that he was involved in developing during the course of an interesting career at a number of advertising agencies. Some are interesting, more often then not the conclusions are not conclusive. Perhaps that is reflective of the difficulties of measuring effectiveness from an agency perspective.

Not a must have, but a good light read. I blew through it on a cross country US flight.

The case studies in Divide & Conquer are without a doubt the most in depth, no holds barred, and realistic that I have ever read. If you are in advertising or marketing and want to get ahead the game you must read this book and put some of the techniques described in your day to day practice. I really enjoyed Webber's book.

Sharon Davenport

The upside is that it is a good book for someone trying to find a non-Indian, non-Pakistani version of the reasons and account of partition. The downside is that it is somewhat pro-British, which considering the fact that the author was a senior British official during the Raj, shouldn't be surprising. On the whole a good book for someone trying to find out more about partition. However, my choice for the best book in this category would still be "Freedom at Midnight".

THE BOOK EXPLAINS THE PARTITION IN GREAT DETAIL. MANY OF THE ANSWERS ABOUT THE GREATEST MIGRATION IN HUMAN HISTORY CAN BE FOUND IN THIS BOOK. A TRUE ACCOUNT OF THOSE LAST DAYS OF THE BRITISH RAJ. AN IMPARTIAL SIDE OF AN IMPORTANT EVENT OF THIS CENTURY.

First published in French in 1980 as 'Le Grand Fosse', this album was first published in English in 1981.

Chief Cleverdix sends his son Histrionix to the village by the sea, to call on the aid of Chief Vitalstatistix, to settle a dispute with his rival , Chief Majestix..
Asterix, Obelix and Getafix are as a result sent to the divided village.
This was the first book written by Uderzo alone, and is not one of the best. Much of the humour is recycled from earlier Astérix books, and the attempts at political satire are weak, unlike the superb political satire of 'Asterix and Caesar's Gift' for example. Uderzo would later prove that he could however, write, good Asterix comics, with such gems as 'Asterix and the Black Gold' and 'Asterix and The Magic Carpet'.

I love Asterix, I love French and Belgian comics. I grew up reading Tintin and Asterix and Lucky Luke and Spirou and the rest. But this adventure is terrible! Sorry M. Uderzo, I wish it was not so. Everytime I re-read this, I feel like I have read a horror story. Everything is so dark, Codfix is yucky, he is the worst character created. Of course, the death of a genius like Goscinny probably made his old friend very bitter. I give it a two because of the state of the art drawings. I put this one behind all others though. Who said Belgium was bad?

This is one of the best Asterix books. In it, Asterix, Obelix, Getafix, and Dogmatix set off to help out another village troubled by a terrible internal division and threatened by the Romans. The reader will be delighted as the heroes of the story work to drive off the Romans, bring the village together, make a romance come true, and teach the villain of the story a good lesson, by Toutatis!

This book really does, as one of the reviewers here notes, represent an all-star cast of anti-Mormons. Its poor quality is all the more striking for that very fact.

Several fundamental problems mar the book. For one thing, its authors consistently offer up the most damning possible version of Latter-day Saint belief -- often in a form that few Mormons, if any, would be willing to accept. Then it compares that caricatured version to the authors' own less-than-obviously-true understanding of the Bible or of Christianity, as if their interpretations were the only ones on the market. Moreover, the authors don't always seem to know much about their subject. (Geisler is a particular disappointment in this regard.)

And, of course, the book's relentlessly antagonistic attitude toward the Latter-day Saints and their faith shouldn't exactly inspire its readers with confidence in the fairness of its approach. But then, lack of fairness probably won't matter to a considerable proportion of the book's audience, who may well get too much pleasure out of seeing the Mormons trashed to worry much about such matters as bias, accuracy, and context.

The best chapter in this book is by Francis Beckwith, a philosophy professor who has written an academic monograph on Mormonism as well as a number of academic articles (which means, I presume, that he knows something about Mormonism). Ron Rhodes's chapter is second best, but Geisler and Roberts could use some improvement. I think a project like this is good, but it should be a little more tight. It is written clearly and intended for a wide audience. The book is worth buying just for Beckwith's well-reasoned critique of the Mormon concept of God.

My only complaint: Let's just take it a step further and say "The Counterfeit Religion of Christianity". All of Christiandom (and Islam and Buddhism and every other "other worldly" religion had the same formative processes that created Mormonism, only so long ago no one seems to muster the critical scope to take it on.

Authors don't control their jacket copy. So when the back cover says "Lena Williams does for race what Deborah Tannen did for gender," it's unfair to hold Ms. Williams responsible.

This book does not do for race what Deborah Tannen did for gender. Tannen's examples and explanations did not show one side up as long-suffering and the other as long-insulting; her books do not make me feel demeaned when I read them. They frame cross-gender communication as cross-cultural communication and provide though-provoking information for both genders. I learn from them without ever being insulted.

"It's The Little Things" does not accomplish this. Is it worth buying if you're white and want to know what one black woman thinks of you? Yes. In that regard, it's interesting to this white man. I'm also a little better informed as to why certain responses exist on the black side of some black/white conflicts.

Is it a fair assessment of cross-cultural issues? No. Not even close. In many instances, it doesn't even try to be. This is a prejudiced author trying to be fair-minded and failing. If she has an understanding of points of view besides her own, that understanding does not appear in this text. This is a book about what white people are too dumb to understand without being told.

Since there were things in it that I was too dumb to understand without being told, it was worth my time. But if you're looking for something about "Everyday Interactions That Anger, Annoy, And Divide The Races" (the book's subtitle), this isn't it. This is "Stuff Lena Williams Is Fed Up With And Thinks She Can Put Across As The Truth Despite Her Lack Of Understanding Of Other People."

Since some of the stuff Lena Williams is fed up with was enlightening to me, I don't consider this a wasted purchase. But maybe next time out, she can learn something from the woman she's compared to on her jacket, and write a book that's about cross-racial issues as they really exist, not just idealize one race and demonize the other.

It's clear, from the occasional injection of comments from white people and the occasional "he has a point," that she sincerely tried not to demonize the other. It's also clear that her best intentions are no match for the chip on her shoulder.

White people may learn something from this book about their black neighbors, if their black neighbors happen to agree with Ms. Williams. Black people will learn very little about white people; most of the depiction of whites is quite shallow.

But, according to Ms. Williams, black people already know all about whites.

If she's any indication, she's mistaken.

A single chapter, "The White Take," makes a halfhearted effort at balance, but it's obviously a token gesture. It's an interesting book; I found it worth my time. However, it's not as advertised, and the author doesn't seem to know there's much to be said about the white side of the equation. Since white people are, ostensibly, half the subject of this book, that's a problem.

I disagree with the one-star reviews: It wasn't a waste of my time; but the flaws are serious.

Ms. Williams repeats throughout the book that hers is just one opinion and that she does not represent all Blacks in America. With that in mind, I, as a white male, found it to be an intriguing glance into the minds of specific people. To be honest, I never gave thought to having hair that can be tossed with a flick of the head, or to the way some Blacks may feel about giving up space on a sidewalk.

The book is certainly no sociological breakthrough, but it opens up public discourse on something that is almost a taboo topic today. If we had multiple books like this written be people of different races/ethnicities, perhaps more people could understand each other.

I was astonished to read the other reviews, but I suppose I shouldn't have been. As a nation, I think we are all a little bit too serious sometimes. This book was a great read. I really don't think Ms. Williams was attempting to speak for every black person and condemn every white person. She was (in my mind at least) simply shedding a little light into her perception of the encounters she has with the people around her. If this book makes you think about your actions and increases your ability to have meaningful relationships with other people, what is the harm? If nothing else, she certainly instigated conversation and judging from the previous reviews, she must have hit a defensive nerve with quite a few people.