Inside Havana is composed of a group of the most staggeringly beautiful and insightful photographs of Havana one could imagine. I loved this book. Andrew Moore has, with sumptuous color and exquisite sensitivity, captured this place which fills so many of us with such nostalgia, longing and frustration. Moore "gets" Havana in its complexity. His photograph of an old man in an undershirt sitting in what must have been the wide second story porch of a sumptuous Hacienda captures the former grandeur the decay and with perfect pitch. Moore doesn't preach but he does he delivers profound insights into the splendor that was and shows us how to see the beauty of this extraordinary place that no amount of squalor can completely hide. His sumptuous images in amazing color have an edge, they can make you feel other's nostalgia and bring you into the life of a people, of their present condition, of where they were, and of where they might be going. Anyone who wants to understand Cuba should buy this book- each picture is worth 1000 words. I went there as a child and I revisited a few years ago and can tell you Moore is as honest as he is artistic. He has an astonishing eye for the telling image, the revealing detail. Even if you are not interested in Cuba buy it- it has some of the most ravishing photographs you will ever see

I'm purchasing this book after seeing it in a gift shop and can't wait to study it further. A photographer myself, I appreciate the work of talented photographers such as Andrew Moore. His choice of subjects and lighting make this book a joy to view. I have referred it to other photographers and I haven't even received my copy yet! Keep up the beautiful work!

I have had the opportunity to travel in Cuba on more than one occasion and am profoundly drawn to the people and the environment. Though I often times feel that photographic books do not adequately capture the essence of "real" places, I have found this book to be descriptive beyond words. The photographs tell a story of collapse and revival -- of time lost -- of hope -- of battle -- of corrosion -- of endurance.... Havana is alluring and repulsive in the same glance. Few photographers can capture such complexity in a single image. This book is amazing.

Through his discerning eyes Roger's penetrating photographs reveal the richness of nature along the Carmel, Big Sur and Monterey Coasts and opens our eyes to our own backyards. A photographer who shows the soul of rocks, trees, leaves, caves, ocean, sand and sky. Bill's words call the soul of the world, drawing us into a fullness of life's emotions, triggering our own losses and hope and wonder...then reminds us of the gift of each moment through sound, sight and feelings. A poet with the courage to bare his soul and in so doing awakens our. These photographs and poetry bring the universe to our doorsteps. A treasure book.

Art should provoke response, should inspire action in kind. This book delivers a moving example of just that: photographer inspiring poet, poet guiding the artist's eye. Moore's captivating images are, on one level, a beautiful rendering of Monterey's allure. But like Sechrest, I see something else, something profoundly emotional, which Moore achieves straightforwardly, without artifice or manipulation. Be sure to share this book with your most insightful friends and enjoy their responses.

TIP: as the book's designer, I happen to know Moore will be publishing another remarkable book of southern Russian images in the near feature. Keep a lookout - Moore is definitely on a roll.

Roger Moore's photographic style is exquisitely unique, truly a fine-art master, and his choice of subject matter can't be beat. These elements combined along with Sechrest's magical and moving poetry take the reader on a virtual fantasy vacation to one of the world's most beautiful and unforgettable areas. The fusing of the artistry of both the photographer and poet gift the viewer/reader with the stirring of all of the senses and emotions. One feels as if they've stepped into the photograph, smelled the ocean, looked up at the trees, felt the feelings, loved as Moore and Sechrest have loved.

A very informative book. I plan to build a stripper in the near future and this book supplied me with the information that I was needing and also clear step by step instructions.
Very fast delivery time to receive the book also.

I have build the Redbird canoe. The book was almost perfect to help me building. Some minor details were left to my own fantasy. It was very hard to understand the special terminology and translate it (I talk and think in dutch). The result is great however. I can advise everybody who is thinking about building a strip canoe to read this book first. All issues , possible problems, step by step plans, measurements etc. are adequately handled in this book.

This is the first book to get before all other boatbuilding texts. Ted and Merilyn have so clearly illustrated,both in words and pictures building a stripper, someone with ten thumbs will produce a thing of beauty.

If you love basketball at it's purest form you want to read this book.A must read for anyone who call themselves basketball junkies.

The layout and slickness of the book leaves a little to be desired, but for the hardcore fan of high school basketball, this is an excellent book. If you're like me, and growing up your favorite part of Street & Smiths College Basketball Previews were the High School Seniors to watch pages hidden in the back, this is your Bible. Although it claims to list every major high school star from the last 25 years, I'd say the book is most heavily loaded for those players who graduated from 1985 to 1995 or so. Any nationally known name from those years is in here, except for maybe Tracy McGrady and a few other rare exceptions. The book was published in 2001 so it won't contain players like Lebron James or Sebastian Telfair, but those guys are overpublicized anyway and you can read about them in any magazine. This book profiles players who never lived up to their high school potential (Shawn Bradley, Damon Bailey, etc.), to those who are current NBA superstars (Jason Kidd, KG, etc.) Each player has a 2 page review, including a photo or two and some interesting quotes about them during high school. This book is highly recommended.

If you spent even a part of your childhood pouring over Street & Smith's high school All-American list, this is the perfect book for you. It answers the "whatever happened to" question for dozens of former can't miss prospects. Of course, as this book reveals, many of them did miss. The book is full of stats, insights and stories. For every Michael Jordan and Jason Kidd, there was an equally touted Tom Lewis and Jamie Brandon. I hope all of the players profiled in the book had as much fun playing basketball as I did reading about them. If there is a hoops fanatic on your shopping list, I promise they will be thrilled with this gem of a book.

I read "Strong Stuff" straight through, urged forward by the compelling diverse stories of mothers, some of whom I identified with out of my own experiences and some for whom I felt awe and humility for dealing with challenges greater than I had ever faced. Ms. Moore let the power and dignity of the individuals' voices remain strong and alive in delivering their stories to the reader. If mothering is challenging, step-mothering is even more so, I believe, and as I made up what "mothering" was "supposed to be" in parenting a lovely stepdauther, I wish I had had these stories to guide me along. I gave a copy to my goddaughter who just graduated with a degree in community development; she immediately ordered copies for her colleagues in a regional women's development program, saying it was the best resource of its kind she had seen. For studying, for savoring, for reconsidering one's own mother experience, "Strong Stuff" is not to be missed!

STRONG STUFF is to be read slowly so the stories and advice within can be savored and contemplated. In their stories mothers let slip simple but powerful nuggets of parenting wisdom. For me, the advice of Louise Callahn (Affirmation section, pg398) offers some of the best in the book..."I will never say 'no' if I can say 'yes' ". This hint may seem simple but so often we jump to 'no' without a thought. The variety of the women's backgrounds is impressive. Each of us will find some of our parenting experiences and predicaments here. I highly recommend this book for new mothers who are wondering what they got themselves into. STRONG STUFF is a wonderful source for women traveling the tricky terrain of mothering.

What a wonderful book! Though I am a man and so unable to stake a claim to mothering, I have a mother, I work with mothers, I have friends and family who are mothers, we all work to understand our own mothers and the tremendous influence they have in our lives, and mothering is more than a little like fathering. What is of greater common interest than parenting?

Moore has done a great job preserving the voice of each participant in her book. There is no fluff here, just the genuine personal stories that make for fascinating reading. Many of these stories I have read more than once, and I anticipate picking up this book again and again over time.

I highly recommend Strong Stuff to thoughtful readers. If you can't stretch and grow a bit by reading these mothers' stories, you must be mighty big already!

Lester Walker's AMERICAN SHELTER is one of the monst entertaining and enlightening books in my personal library. Each page features drawings and details of American homes from simple Earth Lodges to complex post-modern homes or all sizes and shapes. Along the way, Mr. Walker gives insight into why particular styles came to be popular and how they have influenced architectural trends. I personally purchased the book to use as an art reference, but there are as many potential uses are there are readers. Even those with only a modicum of knowledge and a passing interest in architecture can't help but be drawn in. Thank you Mr. Walker for a terrific book!

Lester Walker's "American Shelter" is one of those great reference works which is not only informative, but also fascinating and beautiful. A true illustrated encyclopedia of the American home (as the subtitle says), this book covers a vast range of styles, historical periods, and geographic regions.

Each short chapter--beginning with Native American earth lodges and ending with speculative space station housing--covers a specific type of home architecture in the United States. Walker's straightforward prose is accompanied by cutaway drawings, detailed floor plans, and superbly rendered drawings of home exteriors.

It would be impossible in a short review to name all of the various styles covered by Walker. He covers everything from such well-known styles as the A-frame and Greek Revival to styles that may be less familiar to some: the baled hay and sod homes of 1890s Nebraska, the silo and yurt homes which gained popularity in the 1970s, and more. Another fascinating part of the book is the presence of many famous homes: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, and more.

Along the way, the reader will encounter many wonderful surprises--check out, for example, the "Elephant House" designed by James Lafferty! "American Shelter" is a book that you can pick up and start reading anywhere. But if you read this from cover to cover, you will have taken a truly epic journey with a master artist-historian.

If your bookshelf only has room for one book on American architecture, this should be that book. Most of the books on architecture seem like a lot of style, but not much substance: many pages of pictures, often quite enticing, but leaving the reader with little knowledge of just what constitutes the various architecture styles so illustrated, or how styles relate to one another.

Lester Walker spent hundreds of hours researching various American architectural styles, going to such sources as the 1900's editions of Ladies Home Journal, which published plans for "A Small House With Lots of Room in it" by a young upstart named Frank Lloyd Wright. Walker gives us the first-floor house plans, along with a birds-eye view of Wright's "Small House." In this illustration Walker uses captions and arrows to innumerate the salient features of "Wrightian" architecture.

So it goes throughout American Shelter. Walker starts with the dwellings of American Indians and takes us through over 100 different styles that were popular at one time or another in our diverse history. A read through this book is a stroll through our history. The author not only points out the defining features of each style, but also tells why and how it came into vogue.

Color photos are not the only "must have" features conspicuously absent. Missing is also judgmental, cavalier, snobbery. No architectural style is treated as inferior, common, or "tiresome." Quonset Hut, Converted Train Car, and Prefabricated are given just as much respect as Victorian, International, and Prairie.

Examples of houses of various architects that typify or characterize each style are shown in line drawings with accompanying floor plans and often with illustrations on house building styles or techniques. For example, on page 71 a "method for making cedar clapboards" is illustrated. Balloon, Platform, and Post and Beam framing methods are explained with accompanying illustrations.

The book is about individual dwelling units, not apartment houses, and not commercial or industrial buildings. For what it is, and does, it is the definitive work. I have had many hours of enjoyable reading and learning from this book. My only complaint is with the bookbinder, not the author. Some of the pages of my copy are upside down! Perhaps, like the famous upside-down airplane stamp, my copy is rare and valuable? Then again: perhaps not, but right side up, or upside down, it has been well worth the purchase price.

One final piece of advise: buy the hardback copy, not the paperback. This book is a "keeper", one you will frequenly get down from the bookself to review, loan to friends (holding the friend's firstborn ransome for the book's return), and pass on in your will.

Desmond and Moore go beyond some of the "psycho-history" poularizers that seem to hang on to the fringes of evolutionary biology these days, but there is still a whiff of the analyst's couch in too much of this book. The title gives away the bias from the first, so we can't say we weren't warned, but it is odd that Desmond and Moore seem to ignore the enormous amount of evidence (often in his own words) of Darwin the Contented Naturalist, Darwin the Excited Traveller (I strongly encourage anyone really interested in Darwin to go look at Phil Darlington's delightful cartoon of "Chas" Darwin "Hanging Out" at Cambridge in Darlington's wonderful "Evolution for Naturalists") Darwin the Family Man (read Raverat's Period Piece, etc.) The chapters continue in the same vein (Paradise & Punishment, Mental Rioting, Murder, Ugly Facts, etc.) and while they draw heavily on one side of Darwin and darwiniana it is only the one side. For my money Janet Browne's biography is head and shoulders above this -if only she would finish it!

Having read a few Darwin biographies, I've decided that this one is my favorite. The account is objective enough to keep my skepticism from acting up, and I actually agree with most of the analysis that usually prompts reviewers' complaints. If you've read Desmond's biography of T. H. Huxley, then count on this biography of Darwin to present less of the analyst's perspective and more the reporting flavor for which one would hope in reading a book collaboratively produced by Mr. Desmond and James Moore, a self-proclaimed "Darwin Biographer."

The wealth of information in this book about Darwin's life lent a great deal of insight to my perception, as a student of natural science and as someone who is interested in the history of science, of Darwinism, its origins, and its large-scale effects on biological thought as a whole. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is interested in evolutionary biology and its history, and certainly to anyone who wants to better appreciate the life of a man whose work changed the way we understand life.

This is one hell of a riveting biography. I've often read biographies of really interesting people, but the writing is so turgid or lackluster, that I find myself wishing a better writer would tackle this story and do it right. Not so with this one, this is a phenomenal book.

This is one of the most creative, courageous books I've read in a long time, drawing lessons from something as essential as food to renew our hope in an era of anxiety, cynicism, and learned helplessness. Hope's Edge offers a welcome alternative to a world increasingly dominated by global capitalism, where more is often spent on processing, packaging, and promotion than on the nutritional value of the food itself and where American citizens are becoming unwary guinea pigs for GMO foods.
From their grassroots research spanning five continents, Frances and Anna Lappe bring heartening evidence that democracy is still alive, that our personal choices can add up to make a tremendous difference, and that, as Margaret Mead once said, "a small group of highly committed people can change the world." I recommend this book highly for its compelling vision of creativity, community, and positive social change.

Hope's Edge : The Next Diet for a Small Planet
by Frances Moore Lappe, Anna Lappe picks up where Diet For A Small Planetleft off than in my opinion this is what makes the authors true geniuses and part of the movers and shakers of the past and present. They are not comfortable sitting on their laurels and are instead what I would call true visionaries and brave souls when you consider what the world is like in 2002.

On page 11 I read "I still believe food has this unique power. With food as a starting point, we can choose to meet people and to encounter events so powerful that they jar us out of our ordinary way of seeing the world, and open us to new, uplifting and empowering possibilities. They call us to travel "hopes edge." Thus this is where the title comes in.

The way the writers share their journey to other lands and others states here in the U S is so interesting. Learning about the different eating styles and even in a broader sense how people often eat to deal with pain when in decades past it was a communal thing. People used to eat to live and now as the countries skyrocketing obesity rates show people not only live to eat but they eat to deal with issues that once were dealt with by talking them out. Someday I hope someone writes a book on food as a tranquilizer and how food has become the PC (politically correct) substitute for alcohol.

In the 70's and 80's when Diet for a Small Planet was so popular (and still is) we were in a period where alternative health and eating choices were the venue of the quirky, hippie, even geek world. Now in 2002 we face genetically engineered foods, disease in cattle and now poultry in Asian countries and the authors are now more of a must read than ever.

This is no longer about simply being nice to the land and the animals that are raised for food. It is about the worlds health, the world limited water, and money sources and how what we eat begins long before the food hits our plate.

And I am glad to see the whole uncomfortable subject of Americans skyrocketing obesity rates being discussed as well as the poison that is what I call fast food and junk food and how corporate dollars are the bottom line and that it is the ignorance of the stock holder who is being endangered by the very foods their stock investments produce.

One of these days I hope the Nobel Prize powers that be will start seeing what humanitarians people like Moore-Lappe, Dean Ornish and Paul McCartney are and that Peace Prize needs to go to people who are seeking to help save the world and not kill it. And for my family and I we have returned to a non meat diet. Thanks in part to these excellent examples.

Given the subject matter, one can be forgiven for expecting Hope's Edge to be a depressing read--after all we are pushing our planet to its absolute limit and hope sometimes seems a great folly. But rather than increase my sense of helplessness, the mother-daughter team of researchers and writers (Frances Moore-Lappe and Anna Lappe)have inspired me and indeed pushed the edge of hope a little further. With its documentation of individual lives and community-based solutions, the book reminds me about the importance of our individual decisions. It is easy to become complacent when I live in one of the wealthier parts of the world. It is just as easy to feel helpless and apathetic and to not see the impact I can make simply by supporting my local organic farmers and making other conscientious consumer decisions. Hope's Edge eloquently points to the power of imagination, of envisioning new ways of living and working in community. Thanks Anna and Frances for making the journey and sharing it with the world!

I used this book while enriching reading skills with spanish speaking first graders. When they listened to the cd they were immediately attracted to the book. We sung the song together and they pointed to the words in the book. I play the cd all the time at home. My Cocker Spaniel and two Jack Russell Terriers also enjoy listening to the cd during the Christmas holiday season. The pictures are very realistic.

I bought this book yesterday, thinking my daughters would like the doggie pictures. My 2-year old concentrated very hard while I was reading/singing, and after the second time through, grabbed the book and began trying to sing it to her little sister! The pictures and illustrations are funny and the song is fun to sing. I highly recommend it for this holiday season!

"The Twelve Dogs of Christmas" is a charming book for all seasons. The tune is a familiar one which you and your children will love singing with the CD and book featuring Pentastar's Sarah as "A Poodle in a Dog House". Along with Cocker Spaniels, Labs, Chihuahuas, and many more, all ages will get a kick out of the fun "The Twelve Dogs of Christmas" will bring. I promise. P.S. There's a surprise ending.

If you're a fan of Lucado, you should find each story to be a unique jewel. However, if you've read many of his other books, you may be disappointed as this book is actually a collection of stories you probably remember from his other works. However, the title of this book captures the theme so precisely; a gift. The gift of Grace, there is no greater gift. And this title explains the purpose of this book: to be a gift to others...for those who would feel comfortable with a smaller book... for those who may only have the time to ocassionally read... or where a story needs to be precise in its brevity. This is such a book. One book that sets out to be a gift, one book that succeeds.

A wonderful book, simple in its delivery but profound in meaning. The message that God loves me and wants me for his child was just the message I needed to hear today.I had read and reread several chapters many times before I finally finished this book. Mr. Lucado makes God's love for all of us truly "The Gift for all people". I will definitely purchase several copies for friends.

Simply, this small treasure is a Greatest Hits collection of Max Lucado's previous writings. Pulling the best snippets of wisdom from books such as The Great House of God and In the Grip of Grace, Lucado creates a melting pot that consists of a Reader's Digest version of all his books.

If you are swamped with his list of available titles, this is a great place to start. You will be able to decide what book to read next after spending time with The Gift for All People.

It's best to read a few stories either in the morning as part of a devotional or at night before going to sleep. The stories will help you examine you're own life and grow closer to Christ.