This book answered questions I've had for years about my collection of hot rod music. There should be many people out there looking for this book. It may not be completely comprehensive, but who'd know. If it had had better distribution, maybe there'd have been revisions and second editions. Personally I'd really like to see a 1950's version of this book.

Buy this book and check it against your list. You'll be glad you did.

This book is an excellent source for understanding North American Indian customs and life style prior to the appearance of European settlers. It is very well documented with good authenticity. The journals by Nicholas Perrot are vivid and interesting.

In the 11th book in Cynthia Blair's series about identical twins, Susan & Christine Pratt, the girls travel to New Orleans for a National History contest. The twins use their super-sleuth skills to investigate the disappearance of their new friend Caroline and it leads them into the world of voodoo, black magic, and the secrets of New Orleans. This book vividly describes the city of New Orleans and the exciting drama that the twins embark upon. This is an engaging story that children will love to read and it will encourage their imaginations to go on an adventure of their own.

This book is an excellent guide for the newly married Jewish bride or groom. It is not only a cookbook, but it also explains the holidays and traditions. Besides recipes, it also provides sample menus to give you an idea what should be served at a particular holiday. I have had this book for many years and still refer to it every holiday. It would make a great shower present (along with pots and pans) to initiate the Jewish bride or groom (whoever does the cooking!) It's easy to understand and the recipes are very good!

Joseph Cornell has become a favorite of many art-lovers. His assemblage boxes of materials on topics ranging from rabbits to Lauren Bacall to the ornaments and symbols of childhood make for fascinating viewing. Cornell is a curious personality. On the one hand, he self-documented to a far greater extent than many artists, so that a relatively rich record of "what the artist was thinking" exists. On the other hand, he lived his life in a reclusive, introspective, elusive way, so that the viewer never quite feels that s/he has "gotten one's arms" around his perspective.

Lindsay Blair's "Joseph's Cornell's Vision of Spiritual Order" uses as its critical basis the foundations of Cornell's beliefs and influences, in an effort to help make the more elusive aspects of his work a bit clearer. She writes excellent passages about the way in which Cornell was influenced by, but certainly not at all co-opted by, the surrealist artists. She adroitly uses passages from Cornell's own writings, as well as analogies from his personal history, to provide cogent criticism which is less "art critic projection" and more a sincere, highly readable attempt to "get into" the mind of a man whose mind assiduously resisted such invasions.

Ms. Blair recognizes that Christian Science, Mr. Cornell's faith, has an impact on his work. In this respect, her writing is less revelatory, as her summation of the new thought ideas of Christian Science are a bit reductive. Mr. Cornell's work obviously has strong religious roots. Although Ms. Blair seems to have read up on some basic ideals of the faith, the passages in which she discusses Mr. Cornell's faith's influence on his work seem much less insightful than her discussion of the effects of other aspects of his personal life upon his work. One wonders if Mr. Cornell had been from a more "mainstream" faith if the explicitly religious motivation for some of his work (as revealed in his own writings) might have gotten a more comprehensive and detailed treatment than Ms. Blair accords here.
This is a very fine book, certainly one worth owing, but ironically, the reader is left wanting a bit more discussion of the actual "vision of a spiritual order" and perhaps a bit less traditional art criticism.

This book has wonderful photographs of Cornell's work, and functions well as criticism, as biography, and as a thought-provoking piece on Cornell's curious place in the art world. If one is familiar with Cornell's work, this is a fascinating inroad further into its meaning. If one is, as I am, less a hard-core Cornell devotee than one who has encountered his work relatively recently, this is a well-done introduction to his art and thinking. The book is relatively free of that self-serving "look how smart the critic is" art talk that besieges so much of this genre. Despite my quibbles about its "flaws", I highly recommend this book.

This true-to-life narrative gave me an insight into the early explorations of our country's vast interior. The actual people who made these journeys are well represented by the characters in this well-written novel. Reading this book made me feel a part of the great adventure -- I didn't want to put it down!

As one who has grown up in the Korean-American church, I have always been curious about the foundings of Christianity in Korea. This is an excellent, first-hand account of the work of the first Korean missionaries during the early 1900s. It also contains incredible descriptions of the sufferings endured during the Japanese occupation and the subsequent Korean War. I found it to be quite inspirational.

For any teacher of writing and rhetoric, this book is a gold mine of classroom methods and resources. It is, of course, written in a different time, but not altogether _for_ a different time. The principles of expression and clarity that it teaches still hold. It is a very practical book.

The map guide is a nice compact New Orleans-only version of the larger Let's Go guide for the USA, plus some very handy laminated maps. Its easy to carry this one around and not look like a tourist. The sights picked, often have a good local sensibility about them, in that they may not be typical touristy places.

Blair's Local Economic Development is an undergraduate level text on regional economics. In this regard, it automatically fills a need left by the now out-of-print An Introduction to Regional Economics by Edgar M. Hoover and Frank Giarratani. (Frank Giarratani tells me that no future editions are in the offing.) The title difference from the Hoover and Giarratani volume lends a more contemporary flavor to Local Economic Development. Indeed, it adds brief treatments of the following topics: housing and neighborhood development, local public finance, and planning perspectives.

Having taught (and in all academic practicality weaned) from Hoover's book, I find Blair's approach to the same subject matter refreshing. In the first chapter, he starts with a sketch of general economic principles_assumptions behind the behavior of individuals and firms; efficiency versus equity; market forces; and some causes of market inefficiencies_and moves quickly through a discussion of the notion of "region." The second chapter briefly edifies some critical economic principles in regional analysis: unemployment and low wages, externalities, and public choice. All of this is achieved in a mere 40 pages. I find such brief introductions necessary for undergraduate urban and regional studies courses, and wish that such a handy text would have been available when I first prepared my lectures. After this theoretical but pragmatic introductory material, Blair immediately hits core material to local political economics_business development. Here he draws as much from his own research experience in "industry targeting" as from the vast literature on industry location. Names like Weber and Hotelling fail to appear here but their main ideas do, however briefly. Most of the chapter is appropriately devoted to explaining such notions as "quality of life," "political climate," "business climate," and other factors thought to influence business location decisions, as well as to explaining the nature of the business location decision process itself. Chapter 4 deals with market areas and central place theory. As he does throughout much of the book, Blair discusses this material with the ultimate goal of providing a means of affecting local economic development through public policy. Hence, he focuses the chapter toward strategies for expanding a center's hinterland. In Chapters 3 and 4, Blair covers (perhaps indirectly) material on inter- and intraregional competition; in Chapter 5 "Understanding Economic Structure," he switches to a discussion of intraregional cohesive forces_agglomeration economies_and their measurement. As in previous chapters Blair does a good job on the main principles first developed by the likes of Walter Isard and as well as Edgar M. Hoover. In this case, however, I found at least one chink in the book's armor-the subject of Marshallian industrial districts (industrial complexes) are not well handled. Why did Detroit develop as a center for the world's auto industry? Why is it dispersing southward toward Birmingham, Alabama? Why are financial districts still relatively strong in major national urban centers? In summary, Blair fails to discuss the dynamics of agglomeration, specifically localization economies. He does not answer or bring up the subject of why some industries still bent on localizing while other are dispersing in an age with declining transactions and shipping costs.

In Chapters 6 and 7, Blair takes on the topics of regional development and its measurement. In these chapters he touches on export base theory, shift-share analysis, econometric modeling, and regional input-output analysis. He also discusses region importance-strength analysis, a critical component of industry targeting. Here I found that he may have missed a perfect opportunity to provide some structure via Saaty's analytical hierarchy to a method void of academic rigor. The analytical hierarchy approach is also a good lead into sensitivity analysis for students. Sensitivity of business location decisions to changes in the importance of regional characteristics would be an ideal and pragmatic application of this tool.

After returning to terse theoretical economic treatments of welfare economics and factor mobility, Local Economic Development turns to topics of land use, housing, and neighborhood development in Chapters 10 and 11. The section on housing is one of the best in the book, evenly covering all of the basic requirements in a mere 25 pages. The organization and content of the section on land use is less well developed. For a book that is oriented to practitioners, Blair gets bogged down in defining economic theories of land rent. Consequently, sharp transitions are required to and from the section entitled "The Land Development Process," most of which deals with project feasibility. In addition both the transition to and the discussion of government's potential role in development planning are left wanting.

The chapter on government is almost strictly a lesson on public taxation and the allocation of public goods, and less on ways in which government can induce local economic development. For this reason Chapter 12 was the most disappointing of the lot, despite its quality discussion of the more theoretical aspects of government finance. The most pragmatic piece in the chapter was a discussion of cost/benefit analyses.

Despite my comments on the particular contents of some chapters, I found that Local Economic Development well fills a need for a combined treatment of regional economic and planning issues at the undergraduate level. Its greater depth on topics in economics-its main strength-lends it more for use in survey courses in regional economics. The book's weakest component is its coverage of government policy and planning tools. Planners will find the book particularly wanting at times, although unlike economists they are more likely to be aware of readings that fill its main gaps.