Two women travel about the Coral Sea painting portraits of natives and visiting plantations there in the late '30's. To us, the names of these then and now peaceful tropical places are loaded with horror and regret: Guadalcanar, Rabaul, Bougainville. Prophetically Mytinger details an incident on a British copra plantation in a world vanished away like smoke: the missus kicks a bush boy for using cocoanut husks on the fire, which burn too brightly. "Can every English clergyman's daughter kick like a kangaroo?" asks Caroline. Later the copra shed burns down mysteriously, ruining the missus. Her husband had died some time before and her thumb was infected. "It was the fact that she did not throw her head on the table and sob like any woman that undid me. I went for a walk down on the beach and did it for her."

I have the great fortune to live in the same community as Drs. Hammerschlag and Silverman, so I heard them talk about this book at a recent signing. I have always believed in the power of the human spirit in health, and the power of prayer in healing. How encouraging to find two credentialed medical doctors who embrace the whole person in the healing process. These two men have great hearts, and provide the type of compassionate care I wish everyone could find from their physician, especially those facing frightening, life threatening situations.

This book contains stories and suggestions for how you can incorporate your whole being into healing not only your body, but your heart and mind and spirit, too. These don't just apply to people having medical emergencies. I encourage everyone who believes that physical health is influenced by emotions and thoughts to read this delightfully encouraging book.

I have relations from Scarp and visit the Isle of Harris twice a year. Having been on Scarp numerous times it was very interesting to put families and people into the still standing ruins. Very informative discussing all aspects of life on a barren isle. Not romantic but factual and slightly sad, if only the Scarpachs had held on a little longer (beyound 1970) they would have gained electricity and a ferry or bridge. They could have avoided depopulation of the Isle.

Bill Henderson writes so well about his life, his belated "coming of age" into this thing called Adulthood. His writing comes across as so completely honest that I felt I was at a bar with my good friend Bill Henderson, listening to his struggles with love and religion and dead and dying parents and drinking and trying to conceive a child...and trying always to live authentically. Though this may seem an obscure memoir, Bill Henderson is in fact a highly regarded independent publisher ( Pushcart ) and the "boss" of the infamous Lead Pencil Club, of which I am a member ( irony abounds, God Knows! ). Bill edited a book called The Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club; I liked that so much that I searched Amazon for anything else he'd done - that's how I found the wonderful Her Father.

I'm a school teacher and my kids love these books. They are entertaining and educational at the same time. I would recommend this series for any parents or teachers.

This guide is extremely helpful in planning a trip to Sicily. It is also an excellent source of information for anyone interested in the beautiful island and its culture.

Many already popular attractions are covered as well as some lesser known ones. For a traveler seeking to get off the "beaten path" this guide will offer some good ideas on where to find less popular, but equally beautiful, areas of the island.

The extensive history of the island and its towns will appeal to history buffs and make the trip much more interesting.

This guide is a wonderful addition to any Sicily lover's library. Through its fascinating text and pictures, a new appreciation for this culturally rich island will be formed.

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed Venice using this guide to explore the city on our own. We highly recommend it to people who would like to visit the city on their own and learn about the history, culture, architecture, etc. in depth. The maps in this book are superior to other books of Venice we previewed.

The authoress describes life on this very small, beautiful island in the English Channel.

She manages to captivate the reader with her knowledge of the flora and fauna,her excitments and difficulties in coping with bringing up a large family, building a home and making the island profitable.

It made me want to find my own island.

Among the early products of the wonderful Library of America Series were three volumes devoted to the novels of Herman Melville. This volume consists of Melville's first three novels, Typee(1846), Omoo(1847) and Mardi (1849)

Melville's novels are based, more or less loosely, on his life at sea. The first two novels describe voyages to the Marquesas and to Tahiti. They are filled with lush descriptions of scenery, and tales of adventure. Of the two, Typee is filled with encounters with cannibals and Polynesian maidens while Omoo presents a wider canvas of characters and scenes. Both books emphasize the sexual openness and relative simplicity of Polynesian life as compared to life in the United States and both books are critical as well of attempts to Christianize the islanders. These are not unusual themes today and probably were not as radical in the 1840s as one might suppose. The stories are well told and the descriptions alluring. These books made Mellville's reputation as a young writer.

Mardi, however, is the gem of this collection. Its relationship to the earlier novels can be analogized, say, to the relationship between the young Beethoven's first symphony on the one hand and the growth of language and thought in the second and third symphonies on the other hand. Melville prefaces the book with the note that his first two books were fact-based but were received with "incredulity" while Mardi was pure romance and "might be recieved for a verity." (Little likelihood of that)

The book as in a baroque, ornate, and bravado style that Melville would bring to completion in Moby Dick. It is an allegory involving the search for Yillah, a strange, mthical maiden, through the seas of Mardi -- Polynesian for "the world". The narrator is accompanied by King Media, by the philosopher Babbalanja, the singer Yoomi, and the historian Mohi. There are many wonderfully exasperating discussions. They wander far and wide in search of Yillah and in there wandering we here many religious allegories and many depictions of the Europe and United States of Melville's own time. There are shadowy maidens, villans, long scenes in the empty wide ocean, and pages of Melvillian thought and bluster.

The book is high American romanticism and presents a religious and personal quest by the narrator that resounds of similar quests by many in our own day. For example, there is a famous unfinished novel of the religious quest called Mount Analogue by a French writer, Duhamel, which fits quite compactly into just a few chapters of Mardi. Mardi is a long, maddenlingly difficult book but worth the effort.

Americans can learn about themselves by learning about their literature and this book is a fitting place to start (or continue). For those with the patience, it is worth reading these books in order (perhaps with other reading sandwiched in between) to discover the growth of a great and troubled American writer and chronicler of the inward life, as well as of sea journeys.

I bought 4 books on the French polynesian islands and this was the best by far. I love his detail, his points of interest and his enthusiasm. After reading this book I couldn't wait to go there! This will be the one book I bring with me, it has everything. Where to stay, where to eat (like what native fruit to try), customs, phrases in polynesian and french, and much more.