This illuminating, well-researched book provides a look at a very important but neglected aspect of pre-Columbian Andean history. The re-tracing of ritual and pilgrimage in ancient times brings the reader into contact, with solid scientific basis, with native Andean spirituality, and gives essential insights into the rich and holistic Pre-Columbian Andean American Cosmo-vision. It also brings the Island of the Moon and its ancient sacred role out of undeserved obscurity.

This work is an excellent combination of archaeology and ethnohistory. The islands of the Sun and Moon in Lake Titicaca were two of the most important ritual pilgrimage sites in the Inca empire. Until now, our understanding of Inca religion has been hindered by the lack of a comprehensive study of these mysterious sacred islands. Bauer and Stanish present information from an extensive survey of the islands of the Sun and the Moon in a clear and persuasive manner. They then combine their survey results with what is known about these islands from historical sources to describe the activities of pilgrims and priests at these shrines. Anyone interested in Inca religion and politics will find this book invaluable.

If you're looking for a spectacular coffee table book that's also a great read, this is it!

C.J. and Edna Elfont - a husband-wife team of amazing talent - have combined their uniquely complementary skills to create a truly unique creation in Sand Dunes of the Great Lakes. What makes this book special is that it's a spirit-inspiring BLEND of the photographic art with the literary art. C.J. is the photographer; Edna is the writer.

The book's 144 pages contains a breath-taking photo on nearly every page. And these aren't your usual postcard pictures of sunrises and sunsets. They're truly art. Each one grabs your attention and dazzles your imagination, and makes you wonder "How in the world did they see that ... and capture it on film?"

The photography alone makes this an awesome piece. But the addition of the poetry and prose elevates it to the sublime. Amazingly, the prose explains the geo-scientific origins of the sand dunes through the eye of the artist. ("The masses of moving iced filled once green valleys, seeking the paths of least resistance. As the glaciers moved, they scraped and scoured the earth, trapping rocks, soil and anything else in their path.")

But what ultimately takes this book into a realm of its own is the poetry. I loved it. Appearing here and there are beautiful five-line poems (known as cinquain poetry). Each one pertains to an adjacent photo. I found that first I gazed at the photo, marveling at its beauty, then read the poem next to it, and, finally, went back to the photo to see it in a whole new light and appreciation. This book isn't just photos combined with prose and poems, it is - believe it or not - artistic SYNERGY!

In short, this book is a unique, awe-inspiring blending of photographic and literary art that depicts and explains an aspect of our natural, environmental heritage in a way never before done. You won't be disappointed.

It is that. The photography by CJ Elfont is technically superior, vivid and dramatic, ranging in subject from the grand vistas of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park to the intimate closeup of a Pink Lady's Slipper. The photos give a sense of the distinctness of each of the dunes and their environments all along the western coast of Michigan.

But it is more than a visually stunning book; it is also very informative. Edna Elfont's text takes the reader through the geologic history of the formation of the dunes, the forces that constantly shift the sands, and their flora and fauna. My favorite section is "Then There Was Sand," a wonderful essay on the uniqueness of the Great Lakes granite sand, and its qualities: "Unlike the qypsum sand of White Sands, New Mexico or the calcite sand in Bermuda, the sand of the Great Lakes coastal dunes slips through one's fingers like granulated silk." p. 37

It is clear that this couple has a deep love for the dunes and the nicely matched skills to articulate them verbally and visually.

This 54-page 5-chapter book tells the story of Joe Browder's successful 1969 effort to defeat the planned construction of a major airport 50 miles from Miami in the Big Cypress Swamp. As head of the Miami chapter of the U.S. National Audubon Society, Browder felt that his only chance to stop the destructive development in the swamp would be to gain support from others. He convinced both old-time alligator hunter Gator Bill and Miccosukee chief Buffalo Tiger to join his fight.

Next Browder drafted Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Douglas had written her legendary book, River of Grass, in 1947. He drove her to the site of the jetport, where some trees had already been cut and the swamp drained. She decided then and there to help. The people of Florida could have a jetport or the Everglades, but they couldn't have both. The former, if constructed, would destroy the latter.

Douglas formed the Friends of the Everglades and took the fight to Washington D.C. and then Interior Secretary Walter Hickel and Secretary of Transportation John Volpe. They ordered an environmental study, which found that the jetport would so pollute the Glades' water, its lifeblood, that all wildlife there would be threatened.

At last, Joe Browder too made it to Washington, where he met with President Richard Nixon. Transportation Secretary Volpe supported the jetport, while Interior Secretary Hickel opposed it. Nixon sent his daughter Julie to Florida to see the Everglades. When she returned to Washington, she told her the President that the Everglades were a national treasure. Nixon called a press conference and opposed the jetport.

This is a great book for children, which shows what can one person can accomplish if only he tries. And of course, it extols the virtues of one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Alyssa A. Lappen

While written as a social studies textbook for young children, Save the Everglades is the most accurate account ever published about the time so many years ago when environmentalists, Native Americans and the people who lived and hunted in the Everglades joined together to protect America's most endangered National Park.

Save the Everglades is part of a series of 28 books edited by the late historian Alex Haley (of Roots fame), written to help children understand how change in America is made by real people. Haley placed this book about a conflict between protecting nature and building an aiport in the same category with the series' book about the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott -- books about people working together, making choices about what kind of communities they want to have.

Save the Everglades tells how very different people who all shared a love of nature fought to stop political leaders and real estate developers in Miami, Florida from building what would have been the world's largest airport, just a few miles from Everglades National Park and within the Big Cypress Swamp, the wildest and richest part of the Everglades. Hunters, alligator poachers, Miccosukee Indians, school children and environmental leaders started a national campaign that convinced the President of the United States to withdraw federal money and permits for the airport project, and then to buy the Big Cypress and make it part of the Everglades protected by the National Parks System.

This book is about one of the campaigns that helped bring together the national environmental movement of the 1960s, but the book is also important for people who care about today's environmental issues, because Everglades National Park is, in the year 2000, once more threatened by another airport project sponsored by Miami political leaders and real estate developers. So people in Florida and across America are once more appealing to the President of the United States to Save the Everglades.

To make the publisher's first draft more suitable for children, the author added some false drama (fear of flying) and eliminated some true drama (death plots by real estate promoters, oddly enough referenced inaccurately in a more recent book about Florida, Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief). The writer of this review is also the principal subject of Save the Everglades, and so can personally confirm that with those exceptions, the story is accurate.

Stare at the beautiful underwater photographs. Sitback, relax and gently discover the Ocean Realm with the still images of Howard Hall and his wife Michele, images that, as Peter Benchley (Jaws, The Deep) writes in the foreword, are among the finest in the world. Dive. Wander through the Kelp forests of the northern Pacific. Get a close-up of sharks and squids in magic detail. Enjoy the vivid colors of the reef and watch lobsters and sea turtles, dolphins and whales in an exciting photographic journey! Since this book is not a reference work, you will also enjoy reading it slowly and in the direction of your choice, diving at pleasure through the light text that describes the Hall's adventures as filmmakers and marine photographers. And then you will also find some information about the sea-life captured in the images and poetic hints about scuba-diving and underwater photography. A nice dive, a pleasant reading and, at the price that Amazon.com is offering it, a real gift. Buy the book!

For those of us who read everything we can on underwater photography, this book provides an added dimension and delightful reprieve from the technical how-to's of most underwater photography books. This book is a series of fascinating stories about the adventures and mis-adventures Howard and Michelle and their staff encountered when shooting different subjects. A fascinating and stimulating book, it provides anecdotal insight into how they approach certain projects without dwelling on the technical "how to's" found in most underwater photography books. Everyone studying underwater photography or just enjoying the sport of diving should surface long enough to give themselves this present. It sure made me want to grab my fins and camera and head off to points all around the world. Thanks to Howard and Michelle for putting together such a compelling read. And of course, it has beautiful photographs.

Thourough account of shamanism in the Ojibwe society, but applicable to the phenomenon as a whole. A great researcher, Mr. Grim provides perspectives from other areas of the world such as Siberia to exhibit similarities of human experience both in the shamanic realm and in the human psyche.

The author wisely places the practices of shamanism within the cultural context. At no point does the author make the mistake of reducing the shamanic practices to deities and such but correctly emphasizes the "forces" and movements of nature of which the shaman is an "expression." Excellent read for anyone generally interested in shamanism or specifically in the Ojibwe practices of the Mide society.

"What does a woman want?" Freud famously asked. Emanuel di Pasquale approaches the question by taking on the voice of a woman who knows how to talk to a man--and usually does. No oracular Tiresias between serpents, di Pasquale's speaker addresses a less cosmic, yet no less insistent burden: what to think of her mate without thinking of him as her creator. Each of these poems reveals its moment directly, in the voice of someone who knows her reader almost intimately enough. Some have the directness of Williams' delicious plums, some the wry familiarity of the Greek anthology. Gentle rebuke, frank invitation, speculation on the long term and exhortation for the short--the writer gives himself over to his speaker's concerns, scolds himself, praises himself a little, keeps it human, extends a hand. His speaker, rather than revealing directly what a woman wants, most often watches what this man does: "your morning music / Pavarotti singing Christmas songs in May, / your bare feet / on linoleum," and reveals her evaluation of what he does: "Awful at your reading. The sadness / of sitting behind your children. / And you wanting everyone, everyone / but me." This observation and reaction, though, does not feel 'gendered,' but simply perceptive of the kinds of detail dear to lovers and to poets. What she makes of these perceptions does not harden, but grows supple, playful: "Walking along the north star / in the dark. Geese gossip. / Ice amoebas across the causeway. / Deer in vacant lot. / The moon, only half a person, / has fallen down on his back." These poems register the difficulties of relationship in both crisp imagery and in unadorned directness against a background of hope and commitment. Few men or women or readers could want more than that.

Beautiful poetry in the modernist style characterized by the overarching wholeness of a point of view which is individual, fresh, and profound. These charming and moving pages are a forceful reminder of the juxtaposition of "imagination" and "imagery." Those literary mechanics and anthropomorphoid theorists who doubt there is such a thing as genius are advised not to spend their money on this volume. It is not for them.

Like James Lee Burke, I enjoy using setting as character. My story is about wildlife rehabilitator Laurel Hastings and the guy who jilted her 15 years ago and who is coming back to her--this time hopping trains cross-country, on the run from a killer. Laurel would rather fix the paw of a snarling wolf than help this guy. But Cole claims the killer wants something that was buried around Spirit Lake by his murdered brother. Laurel hopes Cole doesn't also dig up her secrets. My story is a "contemporary gothic," set in today's Northwoods of Wisconsin in one of the big old mansions built long ago by buddies of Al Capone perhaps. It's award-winning prose and was fun to write. Enjoy.

What better summer vacation that Northern Wisconsin? This author's descriptions are so visual, you're feel you were there. Warning: you might not come back rested due to the nail-biting suspense. Great pacing, a villain you love to hate, a couple with a past, and hopefully a future--together--add up to a winning ombination. You'll remember Laurel and Cole for a long time to come.

Also recommended: Stones Throw by Linda Opdyke

I used to think that there was no strategy, per se, to fishing a lake--a big tub of water you trolled until you got an arbitrary hit.

This book takes an almost forensic view of a lake's features--water layers, vegetation, etc.--and shows how to read them and catch fish. It's much more detailed than I expected and I came away with a real sense of how to find trout as quickly as possible.

This book has many wonderful pictures of trout in their natural habitats. It tells you all you need to know about bringing in trout in lakes and ponds. I am amazed by the quality of this book. It is a wonderful book that you won't regret to buy.

My husband and I, along with our two sons, toured the Bernese Oberland following this terrific guide. The Alspach's were quite right about children, of all ages, enjoying this region. Following their well-planned excurions gave us every opportunity to explore and enjoy this wonderful section of Switzerland.

You will see the most beautiful sights following this detail-oriented guide; their step-by-step directions to each destination were very easy to follow and they thoroughly explained what we should look for along the way, the history of the area, and what you can expect when you arrive at the point of interest. The map provided for each excursion is a tremendous help and the beautiful photographs within the book invite you to continue on to another destination within this spectacular region.

This guide is a very valuable tool and our well-worn book is ready to go with us when we visit the region again this August.

Last September I visited the Bernese Oberland area for 5 days. The Alspach's book guaranteed that I got the most out of my vacation. I was able to visit the top of the Jungfrau, hike the Faulhorn trail, and visit the waterfalls. I can't wait to go back and explore the other hikes and activities that Phil and Loretta suggested.

If you plan on visiting the Bernese Oberland area, this book is essential. You will not be disappointed, it will guarantee a great time, regardless of the weather.

In Symbols Of The Soul: Discovering Your Karma Through Astrology, Gina Lake provides the reader with an in-depth interpretation of the Moon's nodes (which describe our life purpose and roadblocks to fulfilling our destiny); interprets Saturn in the houses and signs (which describes our fears, weaknesses, and past-life issues); delineates the 12th House and reading karmic debts in the astrological charts (with examples illustrating how karma works in our lives); and a step-by-step approach to finding chart themes and synthesizing the information. Symbols Of The Soul is superbly informative and recommended reading for students of astrology and those seeking resources of metaphysical insight within themselves and in behalf of others.

Gina Lake's Symbols Of The Soul provides a key to astrology and karma, providing insights on birth charts, signs, and how to interpret astrology readings.