I saw this book at a small party and immediately orderd six copies. Christmas gifts for my folks and a hard-to-shop-for couple. The tins and packages are beautifully shot and reproduced. As a designer I actually am finding it to be a resource for great retro design and color combinations. There you have it... some really diverse reasons to purchase this wonderful book!!!

Interesting to find that this is the first book of its kind on the history of condoms and their packaging. Not only does it contain information the average person would never have guessed, it is useful to those into the history of graphic design. The tins are miniatue works of art in themselves, regardless of what they contained! The down to earth style of the text is easy on the reader as well. All in all a great bargain - the hardcover of the book in itself is worth the price of admission!

I could not believe the quality of this hardback book. Many pricing guide books for collectibles are printed on newsprint, and they are paperback as well. This book is top class all the way! I hope these guys keep coming up with revised additions, as new and yet undiscovered condom tins and boxes surface. Bravo!!!

...after searching through a half-dozen tour books of Miami, I came across this gem. Richly decriptive and a cover to cover source of solid information. A 'must have' for anyone planning a trip to Miami or outer areas. Or really for anyone wanting to know more about the Miami scene. A+++

The term "African American" doesn't usually invoke images north of the 49th parallel, but it should. Not only because Canada was the longed for "Canaan Land" of so many spirituals and therefore, the ultimate home of many escaped slaves, nor because Nova Scotia and New France also had slaves, but because black communities have been a part of what we now call "Canada" since the beginning. George Elliott Clarke , an award winning poet, playwright, critic and scholar , is very much part of the literary map of Canada; this book gathers together a representative selection of his essays and reviews published over a decade and demonstrates that African-Canadian literature is not a recent phenomenon. His map covers vast and diverse territory , including the status of African-American culture as a "model for blackness," black and white racial metaphors in Quebecois literature, black women's search for history and more. This is a great introduction for newcomers, and a foundation for students in the field.

I'm a graduating senior and i just bought this book to get myself ready for college this year! It's an amazing book and is easy to understand.

This book has the basic foundation for a step-by-step in how to forecast. You need progs and upper air charts to make it effective and those can be found on the Internet. I reccomend this book as a requirement to every meteorology class at every level world wide. The USAF has some of the best meteorologist in the world and this book has almost every rule, technique and proceedure for a solid and sound forecast.

I would reccomend and update tho... maybe a chapter in prog bias as well as a section in skew-t analysis.

I first encountered "Whylah Falls" in my first year university English class several years ago. It has since, never left my bedside. It has since, never left my own mind as I continue to develop my own style. I was lucky enough to be attending the best university in eastern Canada, where Clarke actually visited our class and discussed the book. I asked him "How is it possible to maintain such intense expressive inspiration over 153 pages?" He replied that for him, the inspiration has never left him when writing the book, and remains with him everyday. And its true. George Elliot Clarke is Atlantic Canada's most inspired writer today. And this book is the beginning his era.

The story surrounds the Clemence family living in the fictional village of Whylah Falls, Nova Scotia, on the not quite fictional Sixhiboux River (see the actual Nova Scotian River The Sissiboo). The return of the wayward poet X to Whylah Falls triggers events the move the family and the village folk from poetic lust (Selah), romance (Pablo and Amarantha) and tragedy (the Death of Othello). A tragedy, I might add, of Sophoclean and Shakespearean proportions but without Sophoclean or Shakespearean pretentions-- which are lost within the sincere context of the character's simple and sweet rural maritime lives.

I especially enjoy "The River Pilgrim: A Letter" which is Clarke's ode to his own influences-- Ezra Pound and his bluesy rendering of Li Po's "The River-Merchant's Wife". And Clarke is able to create literary snap shots of the surrounding landscape, religious spirituals and love in pieces like "Each Moment in Magnificent", "solitude", "A Perspective of Saul", "Revelations" and "To Pablo".

Clarke tells the story through inspired poetry and prose which is bluesy, bold, and as intoxicating and compelling as the dark rum drank by he Othello. His writing speaks with a tongue that can only be understood with the heart and history of a maritimer. But for those non-Atlantic Canadians, this book puts Clarke's own past into words. He puts the frozen history of African-Canadian experience in Nova Scotia in motion for everyone to experience and know, if only for a short while.

His characters, speak not for themselves, but for the ages-- times lost in the rural life for Atlantic Canadians.

I was first introduced to this text in a college Black American Studies class, but I fell in love with the language and variety in a single volume. I find myself re-reading the poetry because of the truths it reveals about me -- a midwestern white woman -- as much as it does about black Nova Scotians. I find myself teaching the stories and essays within it to challenge my students to see that people don't fit into neat categories.

As with any anthology, some authors you love, some you like, and some you skip. What is particularly refreshing about this anthology though is that for every author you may read between three and twelve separate pieces. Sometimes the pieces are related -- such as a poem and essay on the same topic, taking two different roads to very similar ends -- or sometimes they're dissimilar -- one the tale of a slave woman watching her beloved die while another is a young girl in the '40s-'50s wishing for her mother to quit pulling her hair into braids.

I recommend this for any lover of poetry, social justice fiction or history.

"We Can Do It!" Everybody knows the biceps-flexing World War ll icon of Rosie the Riveter, but how many Americans remember what it was that Rosie and her coworkers *did*? They built the ships which helped win the War! Nearly three thousand of those were the Liberty freighters manufactured by Kaiser Steel. Cheap and fast to produce, spartan and relatively simple to operate, these were the ideal vessel for the convoys, the desperately-needed supply-line to the beleagered Allies. Unfortunately, they were also very slow. The ships described by FDR as "Ugly Ducklings" often became "sitting ducks" for wolfpacks of German U-boats and torpedo planes. The Liberty Ship earned the nickname bestowed by its valiant crews of US Merchant Marine and Naval Armed Guard: "Kaiser Coffin". Happily, the young Merchant Marine officer who authored "Liberty Ships Eastward" survived his Murmansk Run with a minimum of danger. His is a light-hearted memoir, anecdotally written, somewhat remniscent of "Mister Roberts". Like Mr. Roberts' Pacific Island run between "Tedium" and "Apathy", Mr. Elliot's Murmansk Run was distinguished by its unprecidented lack of combat action. In his words, his crew faced the more serious risk of going "berzerk with boredom" in the nearly deserted North Russian port. There are no imperiled palm trees in this sailor's yarn; his convoy's only casualties its dog and cat mascots, prey to the aging -- and hungry! -- female stevadores who populated Murmansk. This is a fun, fast-reading little book, complemented by the author's own delightful illustrations. It's a tribute to the humble, long-forgotten Liberty Ship from a seaman who remembers it with affection.

"Trudeau", by Geroge Radwanski is, for an American, twenty years after it was written, an interesting read. As a youth who had closely followed Canadian events through Radio Canada International during the Trudeau years, I found that this book provided a refresher and a deeper understanding of the events through which we lived. Although an interesting read, "Trudeau" did not live up to expectations. Initially I expected to learn, not only about Trudeau himself, but also about many of the events in Canadian affairs which occured during his first decade in power. The book starts out with a character study of Trudeau, the kind of man he is and what made him that way. Radwanski draws heavily on interviews with Trudeau and many other Canadian politicians of the day. After thoroughly explaining Trudeau's character, I expected the book to move on to a narrative of his service in government. Instead, the book drones on with quote after quote, developing the Trudeau character. Finally, in the last quarter of the book, Radwanski moves on to cover a few of the main issues, primarily dealing with Quebec, with which Trudeau dealt. The book starts out exciting, moves into a dull middle and ends with what I expected it to be. All in all, "Trudeau" is worth the reading for one who wants an insight into one of the world's most complex and interesting statesmen.