This is an above average field guide, but the writing is sometimes so dry that while reading you may feel as if you are hiking through death valley, not Mammoth or the Ritter Range. The map that comes with it is fantastic, although, it comes from the 1920's surveys of the area.

The heroine is sent to South Africa for one year, by her father, to interrupt an unwise marriage. When in South Africa she meets another man and to complicate matters her fiance follows her to her new home. She, also, becomes unwittingly involved in diamond smuggling.

I gave this book only three stars because, while readable, it was also easily forgotten. Another thing, too, is that while at the beginning of the first chapter there is a heading that says "Southhampton-January 1899 but on the book's cover, there is a quote: "South Africa-1850". Then it goes on to say, " A dangerous land of staggering wealth and tropical beauty. On the eve of the Boer war, she meets a fearless and powerful man who ignites her deepest passions."

Go ahead and read it if you want to have a light read with no real surprises

The story starts out in Greenhill, South Dakota during the Depression-era. In this book, Carl Wilcox is a sign painter that finds work in Greenhill. Wilcox gets hired as a "unofficial" investigator of an unsolved murder. The current mayor and local businessman, whose son had dated the dead Gen, whose alibi for the night of the murder, may have been purchased. As Wilcox becomes widely known in the small little town, he asks several of the kids and adults about the murder. Wilcox began to turn up all kinds of new evidence that was never looked at.

This was an alright book, I had it a while ago, and it was somewhat helpfull then, but I wouldn't go too far out of the way to locate it.

I was dissapointed with this book. It covered a lot of material, but seemed to skim many subjects and didn't provide very helpful suggestions. Ideas were mainly things like "avoid impulse purchases" and "look for discounts and sales." I suppose if you wanted a basic guide about budgeting and an introduction to different types of investments, this book would be good. But if you are looking for something more in-depth, then keep on looking!

I have found this book to be profoundly informative. It has not only broadened my knowledge of capitalism in my community today but gave me a sense of pride for my country.

My 6 year old daughter loves dot to dots. She finished this book in one day! She did enjoy it, but it was over too quick.

A weighty tome(not one you can easily read in the bath or on the train), this book is a superb source book for the student of garden history. It is lavishly illustrated with sumptuous but relevant pictures. It has the advantage over many garden history books in that it devotes space to Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian gardens - periods usually skimped over or skipped entirely, giving the impression that academic interest begins with the gardens of the Italian Renaissance. There is an excellent bibliograpy and illustrations are fully credited.

The main problem is the text layout. Text is split on each page into two ragged edge columns, leading to visual break up of sentences and lots of hyphens! This is distracting to the eye and tiring to read. A large margin for captions compounds the problem, making the text columns even narrower. A single column of fully justified text would make the pages less fussy visually and thus easier to read.

A secondary problem, occasioned by the sheer weight of informatin, is that this book will always be (to me, at least) a reference book. There is just too much information, and the book is too heavy and cumbersome, to make it one to actually sit down and read for the pleasure of doing to.

It's possible that someone reading London • New York • Hell, the Gen 13 collection by Warren Ellis and Steve Dillon, might suspect the book of catering to readers who want an intelligent plot in their comics. Adam Warren dispels that notion with Superhuman Like You, the next collection of Gen 13 books.

Don't get me wrong, Warren knows his audience. No one subscribes to Gen 13 for awesome storytelling; that thing with Ellis was an aberration. The book is about skin, and that's why readers always come away from a Gen 13 book knowing what color Fairchild's undies are.

Osprey's Warrior series claims to provide "insights into the daily lives of history's fighting men and women, past and present, detailing their motivation, training, tactics, weaponry and experiences." David Westwood's volume, German Infantryman, succeeds only in detailing some of aspects of German infantry training, tactics, weaponry and experiences in the period 1933-1940. Westwood, who studied at Sandhurst (like the Great Gatsby "at Oxford"?), is familiar with military terminology but does not write with the insight of a military man. The author chose an excellent methodology to detail the inner workings of a German infantry unit - by focusing on a specific unit - but executes this methodology in a very peculiar and uneven manner. While the photographs and illustrations provide an excellent graphic quality to this volume, the narrative is too generic to be of much historical value.

German Infantryman consists of a short introduction that provides background on the inter-war Reichsheer, followed by a 24-page section on recruiting and training. Initially, the training section starts out well with a brief description of the Wehrkreise system, the training depots, basic training and weapons training. In some cases, the author provides good detail, like the fact that a German soldier fired over 300 rounds during basic training. However, there is surprisingly little depth provided about the 16 weeks of German basic training and much of what is provided could apply to any army's basic training. I recall other German sources mentioning significant differences in their basic training - like hand grenades and anti-tank training - that is barely touched here. There is no mention of motivation, regional differences between units or how men were selected for various operational specialties. Nor does the author even mention specialty training after basic, such as mortar school or pioneers. While the Warrior series is not designed to address organization, the author might also have made some effort to state how many infantrymen were in a platoon, company, battalion, etc (there is one skimpy line diagram, but no personnel strengths are listed). The later half of this section, covering issues such as marching, field craft and map reading, could apply to any army.

In the second section, the author decides to convey the battlefield experiences of a particular unit - the 30th Infantry Regiment in the 18th Division - in the Polish and French campaigns. The author shifts into this focus on the 30th Infantry Regiment with no explanation or introduction to the unit. In this section, the author providers a pastiche of German eyewitness accounts relating to marches, initial combat experiences, a set-piece battle, river crossings, attack on fixed defenses, fighting in urban areas and anti-tank fighting. Some accounts are interesting, some not, but most are too generic to be of much value. There is no real explanation of tactics here, such as how a German infantry platoon employed its machineguns and 50mm mortar in the attack or how a German battalion made a movement to contact, only vague reminiscences. The color plates are quite good, as usual, and these will be of benefit to model builders but the historical value of this volume is quite suspect.

There are a host of issues that the other should have at least mentioned but failed to address, like the "wave" system in which German divisions were raised and the fact that there were different types of infantry units (Jaeger, Landwehr, reserve). The issue of motivation should have been addressed, too. In the early stages of the Polish campaign, some German infantry units were very reticent to enter combat and some even performed poorly. Fear of heavy losses caused by the memory of the First World War and the legacy of defeat was not completely gone until the French victory. The author should also have made some mention of the demographics of German infantrymen, as well as more discussion on the junior leadership. While the author's bibliography seems robust enough, it does not appear that he made a full effort to address this subject in the depth it deserves.