In this funny story, you'll get to attent a party at Mona Rat's house. She has invited all her friends except Potter Pig who Told one of her other friends that she had big feet. But this does not stop Potter from coming to the Party. He tries to crash it in many disguises. First he mails himself to the door as a statue. Next he comes as a scottish bagpiper. Later on he pretends he's from the gas company and wants to read the meter. And Then he comes as Santa Claus. But it does not matter what he does, because Mona still refuses to let him in. Finally Potter finds out why Mona is angry with him and they make up briefly.

Party at Mona's is a delight to parent and child! I first read this almost 20 yrs. ago to my son and it quickly became our favorite!! We still read it on occasion and refer to incidents in the book regularly!! It is our all time favorite, must read, over and over. There are lessons to be learned disguised in the humor!!

The book has an excellent selection of quite shocking photographs. The graphic design and production values are exceptional. The text articles are largely very informative. Elliot Sperling presents a thoughtful analysis of the dynamic nature of Tibetan culture and identity, dispelling the rather silly historical myths of feudal hell vs. high altitude nirvana. Mickey Spiegel's reporting of the stories of individual recent Tibetan exiles brings home the concrete, human reality of how awful things are for those Tibetans unwilling to kowtow to China's colonialist and racist policies. Orville Schell's final article is a bizarre piece of writing in this context. I can only conclude that it was included for some form of "balance". His direct comments on Tibetans are that their cuisine is "inedible" to Westerners, they engage in only "the most modest kinds of personal hygiene", and they have shown themselves "capable of considerable savagery against one another". Schell's big thing is the romanticization of Tibet by others. He admits he once was so eneamoured, and his shame and anger about this seem to dominate his analyis. Its a real pity that this self-loathing makes him blind to the issues of justice and legitimacy that the Tibetan problem presents. These issues are the fundamental attraction for many if not a majority of Tibet's foreign supporters.

This book is an excellent introduction to Tibet, especially Elliot Sperling's candid and daring introduction, "Exile and Dissent". The pictures compel you to read; the reading rewards.

It is especially refreshing to see a moderate human rights organization like Human Rights Watch endorse Sperling's accurate and unrestrained discussion of Tibetan nationhood. Sperling never goes so far as to explicitly endorse statehood for Tibet--that would certainly compromise Human Rights Watch's ability to advocate for human rights from a non-partisan position--but he comes close:

"A strong case can be made that prior to 1951, Tibet was at best part one part of the empires built by the Mongol and later Manchu emperors who conquered China, but never an "integral" part of China itself" (32).

The best moment in the book, in my mind, is Sperling's paragraph on 'cultural preservation':

"Tibetan culture, like any other, is dynamic. Calling for its "preservation" automatically brings forth the need for it to be defined, which which in turn evokes a stuffed-and-mounted item fit for a museum. Tibetan culture does not need to be frozen in time, but Tibetan cultural life needs to be protected from measures that repress literary and artistic expression...The contours of dissent in Tibet and its repression by China are not shaped by calls for cultural preservation or cultural autonomy, but by calls for Tibetan independence" (36).

Tibetan dissidents, Western supporters, Western journalists, US diplomats, members of the Tibetan government: read this paragraph twice! Cultural preservation is not freedom; it is the opposite of freedom. This is why Beijing contributes money to cultural preservation efforts in Tibet: the more the culture is 'preserved', the more it is frozen, and the less threatening it becomes. Not only is the threat removed; with the threat disappears the culture's ability to sustain and give solace to its people. Culture, once preserved, becomes emasculated, of little use to anyone. I think few more important passages have been written on Tibet than this one.

Shocking and beautiful photographs, and powerful testimony, follow; by the end, any intelligent reader will be compelled to action.

Hopefully, the reader will at least be well-armed against the unfortunate note on which the book ends. Orville Schell's pusilannimous and meandering essay, the last in the book, is the worst kind of contrast to Sperling's clarity and gutsiness.

Schell's essay ranges from offensive to simply odd. What, for example, could motivate anyone to write "Of course, China's President Jiang Zemin, like many of his countrymen, tends not to romanticize Tibet as Westerners do..." (175)?

Worse is Schell's inability to distinguish Hollywood's brief fascination with Tibet from the global social justice movement which has arisen to protest China's brutal occupation. His drastically misguided assertion that "Tibet's new Western persona [was] consigned to Hollywood's custody" denies both the authenticity and strength of the freedom movement and the possiblity that celebrities are capable of sincere feeling and political work. Hollywood made two movies about Tibet. The movies mythologized it. Of course they did; that's what Hollywood does. But it is insulting to deny the work and influence of the Tibet movement by conflating it with a Hollywood trend.

And then there is Schell's weird analysis of the severity of the occupation:

"To foreigners looking on from afar, the Chinese occupation and the dismantling of traditional culture and society seemed similar ...................."(175-6).

"To foreigners"? "Seemed"? "Represented"? This is either the height of timidity (Beijing, after all, is more than capable of revoking the visas on which Schell, a Sinologist, depends for his livelihood) or simple ignorance. Given the other essays and the testimony in this book, it is difficult to believe that Schell can really be unaware of the severity of the occupation--indeed, he mentions it at various points. Why then such timidity?

Eventually, one grows tired of wondering--and returns to Sperling, and the freedom struggle.

Mainstream Christian people will be very familiar with the name, if not the writings, of Catherine Marshall. Her husband, the great Scottish orator, Rev. Peter Marshall, was Chaplain of the U. S. Senate, and a powerful man of God. He was the light of Catherine's life, and died too soon! When your heart is so broken, the grief so deep, that you cannot eat, cannot smile or stop crying, then this book is for you. I lost my father after a 7 week illness, and ONLY this book, not scripture, not friends, but ONLY this book helped me to understand that I was not alone in the depth of my anguish. My Dad was the only man in my life and today, 18 months later, I still cry daily. But Catherine, who opened up her own wounds to reach out in love and faith to help others, touched me and I began to heal just then. When I was angry at the doctors, this book helped. When I was angry at my family, this book helped. When I was angry at God, this book gave me hope again. You will want to get a copy for yourself and purchase another to have on hand for a friend. Thanks Catherine, I am sure heaven has long since erased your heartache. I look forward to that day too. God bless you dear readers, one and all.

An excellent book on the healing process of grieving after a spouse's death. Includes faith, learning to rely on others, and explains the slow healing of deep grief. Excellent on teaching children how to grieve.

This book is great it involves Brian Davis leading the Jefferson High Patriots through the Regionals and Sectionals and advances them to the State finals.

This book is great Brian Davis moves from Paintville to Indianapolis because his dad is an alcoholic and is worried that he won't be able to compete with the kids from the city. He learns that the kids from the city aren't so tough after all.

The Typhoon of War preserves important information about a people at a time that has received little attention from historians or anthropologist. For me it has opened doors I never even knew were there. As a kid living in Micronesia right after World War II, I didn't conceive that the "natives" would be anything other than eternally grateful for the American presence. I recognized differences between the people of Guam and Truk but it was mainly that some spoke better English, or were darker, and some lived in better houses. That some of them might actually look back to Japanese times as "better" was unthinkable. As I grew older, I began to perceive that perhaps we could have done a better job as saviors/colonizers than we did. Now in retirement I collect books about Micronesia and occasionally travel there. I guess I'm still trying to understand better this place I've been. The Typhoon of War is the book I've been waiting for to do just that.

And why should you read this book if you have no interest in Micronesians. It's thick, dense and won't keep you up all night. Here's why; to help you understand how we in America deal with other places (Viet Nam, Bosnia, Africa) and how we might improve our success by actually trying to understand what the people living there think.

The three authors of The Typhoon Of War, Poyer, Falgout, and Carrucci, have done an excellent job of researching and writing a wonderful piece of seamless historiography. Not only that, but they have written on a subject that has been left relatively untouched for too long, the role of Micronesians in World War II, on whose land the Japanese, the Americans, and their allies fought their war in the Pacific.

A multitude of books have been written on the subject of World War II in the Pacific, and new volumes continue to be produced every year. Yet, few of these hundreds of books have ever devoted more than a paragraph or two, if that, to what happened to the native people who have inhabited this far flung universe of islands for thousands of years. The Typhoon Of War, has corrected that oversight. For those readers, both professional and lay, who are constantly looking for new insights into the greatest and bloodiest conflict in the history of man will find more here than they might in the multitude of generic texts that have reproduced the same general chronology, ad nauseam, over the past fifty years.

I don't know any of the authors, but I am familiar with some of their individual earlier works from which I assume sprang this collective effort. Their bibliography is likewise impressive. They have bypassed little that has gone before them in what up until now has been a rather obscure area of research for all but a few academics. Having lived in the Mariana Islands for five years myself, and having done my own research in the area of World War II oral history amongst the islanders, I see that the authors have also used a variety of unpublished, yet valuable sources, such as the collection of oral histories collected in the 1980s and early 1990s by researchers at the University of Guam, Dr. Dirk Ballendorf, Dr. Don Shuster, and Wakako Higuchi.

Much of what I have read in The Typhoon Of War has confirmed what I have concluded from my own research, primarily, that the typhoon of war that swept the islands of Micronesia was the most defining experience of these people since the cataclysmic coming of the Spanish more than 350 years ago.

This book is one of the best titles I have read that applies specifically to Christian leaders. There are many works available that address leadership in general, but ones that give a uniquely Christian perspective are harder to find. Marshall has an excellent work here, and I recommend it highly to all Christian leaders. I especially recommend it to young pastors who are preparing for a life of service as a pastor.

Everything rises and falls on good Christian leadership. In twenty years of pastoral ministry, I have seen many of Marshall's principles verified through my own mistakes and shortcomings. This book will be a great help in avoiding many of the pitfalls that plague Christian leaders.

This book gives a clear and easy to understand view, as to what christian leadership really is. Its systematic and practical. I found it the best book for this topic so far.

Never in a million years would I expect to find a book about Mormon settlers in the Utah desert interesting. Yet this book was extremely interesting and informative. But, this should be no surprise because that has always been Dr. Bowen's gift. I had the pleasure of taking 3 Geography courses with him at Mary Washington College and he was as interesting in person as he is on print. Dr. Bowen could turn the most dry Geography course into the most interesting class on campus. In a country where most people do not know a thing about Geography, just watch Jay Leno, we need people like Dr. Bowen who can teach and entertain at the same time. He is the Patch Adams of Geography! Read this book and even better...go to MWC and take his class.

Marshall Bowen, a distinguished professor of geography at Mary Washington college, describes in great detail the farming settlement occuring around Wells, NV in the early 20th century. He describes factors that caused people to come to this marginal land, what led to their eventual failure and the aftermath. In particular, the author looks at people from Utah who settled here. If you have any interest in frontier settlement or the Utah/Nevada region, this book is an excellent read

I don't think I can improve on the e-mail I sent to friends and family as soon as I finished the book..... 'I just finished a book called "A War of the People" by Jane's good friend Jeff Marshall. It is a collection of letters from (and to) Civil War soldiers from Vermont. I can't say enough about this book. I feel as if I've just read a great novel, and yet it's all true. Jeff has done a brilliant job of choosing the letters, and many of the letter-writers reappear, as you're taken through the course of the war. The most emotionally wrenching aspect is that Jeff includes a brief but pithy biography of each soldier at the back of the book, listed alphabetically, so that after reading a letter, you can look up the soldier to find that he lived until 1915 and was "wounded ... at Savage Station , June 29, 1862. ... Mustered out June 19, 1865. Returned to Concord and became a farmer. Married Eliza E. Hale (to whom some of his letters are addressed) in 1867." Or that he was "Killed in action at Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864." I found myself biting my nails reading the letters, barely able to keep from turning to the bios in mid-letter to see if the soldier survived the war. These soldiers, most of whom were farm boys, were eloquent nonetheless. I guess you can tell I really, really loved this book, and I highly recommend it. (Jane's family: you know Jeff and may have already read the book, so please forgive my literary euphoria. I just finished it and went right to the computer.) Tom'

University Press of New England asked me to review Jeff Marshall's new book, "A War of the People: Vermont Civil War Letters." In the words of Private William Daniels, of Barton, one of the letters included in the book, "I will respond simply." WOW!

Over 140 letters to and from 78 soldiers, from practically every unit Vermont fielded during the course of the war! Letters from all theaters of the war, covering every period of time from the Spring of 1861 to the Spring of 1865! You'll find a governor (or at least his wife), a general or two and some Colonels. But for the most part you'll find common soldiers, their fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters, their friends. Don't expect these letters to divulge some great heretofore unsolved mystery about the war. These letters aren't about the war; they are about life, about the people, and Jeff has done a great job collecting just the right letters to show the whole gamut of emotions and attitudes the soldiers and their families expressed, and the joy and concerns and pain they endured during the course of the war.

I usually have a hard time carefully reading the introduction and commentary in a book of letters (I want to get to the letters!), but Jeff does a great job of explaining the rationale behind the soldiers' reasons for writing, and has given accurate and relevant background for each season of the war. Its a great read! I hope this is the first of a number of books like it.

Marshal Brain has created a niche for taking questions that children and adults come up with that go beyond the normal range of books. Here, he contemplates and answers questions ranging from the scientific "What if someone shot a gun off in an airplane?" to the practical "What if I had to file bankruptcy?" to the just plain strange "What if I tied 150 helium balloons to my Jack Russell terrier that weighs only 10 pounds - would she float away in the air?" Urban myths are addressed also; for example looking at what really would be the result of tossing a coin off the Empire State Building. Each question is treated matter of factly and this dry tone makes reading a few pages enjoyable, but you wouldn't really want to sit down and just read cover to cover. I suspect that this book will appear in many bathrooms, where short span reading is valued. Brain notes his favorite questions, as well as perennial favorites at his web site. It sometimes shows that he puts in more love to his favorites but works he works hard on all his questions. Overall, you may walk away having learned something as well as being entertained. Wonderful for curious children of all ages.

When I first opened it and read it i read alomost the whole thing. It is a very fun read, but dont read it all al once, it makes you get very sick of the book and you wont want to read it again.

This book is highly informative, entertaining, and (must be) the definitive guide book for visiting any or all Texas wineries.

The informative aspect is not limited to a textbook about Texas grapes, wines and wineries, though it certainly could be used that way. It is much more. The Introduction is an excellent summary for novice or seasoned wine lovers--telling us about varieties of Texas grapes, terminology people use to describe wines and wine-making, and, of course, much information about how to taste wine so you can compare one wine with another and converse with others about wines if that is something you want to do.

Marshall dishes out detail so neatly that you hardly realize how much you are learning while you are engrossed in the stories of the wine-makers, their passions, and their products. Some of the difficulties they describe make you want to cry, but most are more humorous than defeating.

It is not surprising that Robert Mondavi would be so complementary about Marshall and his book. I think it is a book that readers will want to tell their friends about before they buy Texas wine or visit the wineries. I will keep it handy when in Texas as a useful reference book.

There are many interesting things to do in Texas, but who knew visiting wineries might be one of them? I heard about this book from a friend and ordered two copies, one for me and one as a gift. Wes Marshall gives us an entertaining read, not just facts and figures. There are interesting little stories about the various wineries that make you not only want to try the wines, but visit the wine makers on your next vacation.

I highly recommend this book. You won't be disappointed.