In collaboration with the Portland Chapter of the American Rhododendron Society, horticulturalist and gardener Sonja Nelson presents the reader with a profusely illustrated history of the Rhododendron (first discovered in 1792 by Menzies on the shore of Puget Sound), and the people who have a passion for growing, collecting, and hybridizing rhododendrons. The informative text is enhanced with beautifully executed color photography. The Pacific Coast Rhododendron Story is enhanced further with a list of West Coast Hybridizers, a list of the West Coast hybrids; a selected species form; a photo index, and an extensive bibliography for further study. Also available in a hardcover format (0832305375...), The Pacific Coast Rhododendron Story is a unique and very highly recommended reference for personal, professional, academic, garden club, and community library gardening and horticultural studies collections.

While driving thru Southern Oregon on Intersate 5, i stumbled upon the "Gold Hill Mystery House" and this book. If anyone has read, "The Challenge of Fate" by Dethlefson then you will be drawn to this book. At the "vortex", i was subjected to a half-dozen experiments that seemd to defy science. At the bookstore i bought this book. Read it with an open mind and it will change your life. i do NOT exaggerate this. Science can be used to prove the opposite of everyting it stands for. And it is this dichotomy that makes for on hell of a trip. The author uses documented "Bermuda Triangle" events to prove his theory, which at first glance seems irrational and insane. Then, forming a scientific theory, that seems to go nowhere when suddenly...it takes over, the author "proves" that everything we know to be true is an illusion. UFO's, Bermuda Triangle and the North and South Pole are examined. Follow the step by step logic, feel the goose-bumps on your arms and then get ready to deny the results. I guarantee a startling conclusion that not only makes sense, but it will convert you. I promise.

This book contains some records of the Paramus Reformed Dutch Church, as well as gravestone inscriptions. The Graveyard is a very old one, and lies within land owned by Magdelena Valleau, which was once subject of much controversy surrounding ownership, between Magdelenas father and the Proprietors of East Jersey. Some of the Tombstones are gone now, due to decay and corrosion, and this book contains the inscriptions of stones long ago lost to nature, and is an excellent means of reconstructing a genealogical chart of ones ancestors in this area. familiar names include Ackerman, Zabriskie, as well as a host of other Dutch names. The Church itself is a very old one, existing even prior to the Revolutionary War.

My goodness! I don't think you could ask for a more extraordinarily effective and inspiring rebuttal to the clap-trap about patriotism being bantered about by the current administration and the media.

This book contains maybe the best definition of an authentic patriotism that I have ever read. All three essays are beautiful, passionate, and powerful in completely different ways.

If you want to know what being an American is all about, please read this book!

"Peaceful Protest: The Life of Nelson Mandela" is a collaboration between folk artist Malcah Zeldis and her daughter, author Yona Zeldis McDonough. Of course Mandela is one of the most respected figures of the last twenty years, having been a "prisoner of conscience" in South Africa from 1963 to 1990 before being released and becoming the first black president of the democratic Republic of South Africa. For his dedication to a peaceful solution to the apartheid policy of his native land, Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize. This biography for younger readers covers Mandela's entire life, from the childhood when Buti Mandela was given the name "Nelson" by a schoolteacher to his retirement from public life in 1999. Arrested for his anti-apartheid beliefs and activities, Mandela was offered his freedom if he would leave the country, a condition which he refused. When Mandela became South Africa's first elected black leader he was committed to true democratic ideals rather than simply reversing his country's policy of apartheid. Throughout the book the focus on Mandela's life does reflect the title's idea of "Peaceful Protest."

The biography is both informative and respectful, although it does gloss over some of the problems in Mandela's life; his divorce is mentioned in a chronology of his life appearing in the back of the book, but there is no explanation offered. The artwork by Zeldis is quite colorful and done in the primitive style of folk art. I agree with the comment that providing the characters with different colored noses (Mandela's is orange) at the very least looks quite strange. The fact that not all of the white characters appear with different colored noses (usually reddish when they do) does bring up some troubling questions, but my concern is that this artistic distinctiveness makes the blacks in these paintings look less than human. However, that idea is most difficult to reconcile with the book's text. Then again, maybe young kids will not bat at eye at this artwork and see it as similar to something they themselves might do. In that case the worst thing that might happen is that it causes a spirited class discussion or an interesting talk between parent and child. For now I will give the artist the benefit of the doubt and resolve my judgment in favor of the text.

I liked this book. It is good for anyone interested in the United Nations history of theory for peacekeeping and to see where peacekeeping theory is headed. Contributors look to see what works and what doesn't work in Peacekeeping missions. There are some prominent contributors to this book. Including the current Secretary-General of the UN and a former Secretary-General. To me the most inspired part of the book was a special foreword by Nelson Mandela. This is a man that has fought for peace most of his life and he could be considered one of the greatest men of the 20th century.

What a great way to teach rhyming. This is every elementary teacher's "must have" book. Great for theme units and integrating science, math, and history.

Packed with color photos and botanical illustrations is this intriguing guide to penstemons, outlining a wide range of species both common and rare. Enjoy a range of choices which can be used in both dry and marshy gardens across the country, concluded by a mail order source guide.

Joyce Nelson demonstrates the connections between two of the largest mass media of modernity. A must read for any communications, philosophy, cultural studies student. You won't regret it. Nelson is a modern day Mcluhan!

Perfect Sowing arrives as a companion to A Few Reasonable Words. Like its predecessor, it consists of previously uncollected essays, reviews, and introductions that offer glimpses into the writing life and publishing life of Henry Regnery (1912-1996). It was Regnery's goal to publish serious books, particularly those that went against the temper of the times.

Contemporary literature students hear nothing about Wyndham Lewis or Roy Campbell, who we meet in these pages through Regnery's relationships with them, along with Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, Whittaker Chambers, Romano Guardini, and Karl Jaspers. My sense is that Regnery derived a great deal of pleasure from publishing, whether it meant traveling to Germany to meet a professor, to Spain to secure a translation, or at his desk in Chicago, poring through manuscripts. Whenever I read about his life, I cannot help sharing the excitement of the enterprise.

If there is a thread in all the pieces here, it is Regnery's sense of himself as a kind of intellectual archaeologist, saving what ought to be saved, dismissing what ought to be dismissed. Hence there is continuity between the early chapters, about growing up in Hinsdale, Illinois, in the early 1900s, and the later chapters, about the decline and vulgarization of publishing. All of these essays are tinged with the elegiac tone of a man who felt uncomfortable in the modern world. Much of what he valued he felt was being discarded. Yet this sense of loss, real or imagined, gave impetus to his life's work, and we are all better for it.

Although these essays are meant to highlight Regnery the writer, it is Regnery the publisher my thoughts return to, perhaps because, for him, publishing was a vocation in which he invested much of his life's meaning and purpose. In his quest to publish serious books, he had to fight the financial pressure of catering to public taste. He regretted that he was unable to make more of a profit. But those of us who have read from his catalog would agree that we have profited a great deal from his efforts. I have to agree with the publisher that there is much in Regnery's work that is worth preserving, otherwise I would not have read and reviewed the book. I have read the others - Creative Chicago, Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher, and The Cliff Dwellers - and I encourage readers to seek them out as parts of an extraordinary story.