I realize that this sounds overenthusiastic, but this is the best book ever written. Granted, I am exaggerating, but only slightly. I mean, it is WAY more interesting than Great Expectations, and everyone thinks THAT was a great work of literature! The Great American Bathroom Reader is the quintessential trivia book, stuffed with fascinating information which may come in handy when playing Jeopardy. Or something. Even if you don't think you need this book, you want it. Trust me.

I found this book at the library and checked it out several times over the course of a few months.

I liked the readability of the recipes...and the fact that the author gives directions for both traditional kneading methods and using an electric mixer for the same recipe.

The recipes are peppered with anecdotes from someone who loves travelling and loves breadmaking. But it is not a tedious recounting of tales and travels.

I find the book practical comforting and friendly...but it also stretches my skills as a baker. It is not trendy but one of those cookbooks that gets dog-eared and used for years.

This book is fantasic! I highly recommend it. It has loads of spectacular color photographs, and the mansions are breath taking. Being someone who has never visisted the area, this book really makes me consider a trip to New York, if only to see these mansions.

I just finished reading THE GREAT ONE'S LITTLE PEOPLE and felt that I needed to tell you what a fun and entertaining story it was. The story is full of good values for all ages and it especially made me feel good and want to pass the story onto children and adults.
The author(s) have done a great job of creating characters that make you feel good and happy. The main characters of King Ola and his band of menehunes all have such great personalities and little quirks that make you love them all. I especially enjoyed the personality of the menehunes who loved to eat, Luaui. He seemed to always have a kind word for those around him. The family that is central to the story and comes from the mainland, the Pierce's are also entertaining with their fallicies and somewhat jaded thoughts in the beginning but as you read through the story I felt that they also became enduring and a part of my enjoyment in the book. The beginning as the King remembers his other good deeds gives you a wonderful feeling that the Menehunes were also there in Hawaii during the time that they were most needed and they helped the good people of that time as well. I liked the flow of the novel and the way that the Menehunes, the Pierce's and the other characters were described in both their appearances, mannerisms and lives. I was delighted to read about the Menehune's homes and lives and the games they played. This book should become a classic of reading once the public both children and adults are aware of it. It is a little jewel of a book.

This is the most beautiful book on studio ceramics ever produced! Not only that, it focuses on a collection that dates back two generations, but which most people have never seen published anywhere else. Of course the pictures and the design of this book make it worthy of any coffee table--but it's far more than that. The photographs are wonderful, but the texts (one long and one short essay) are both readable and informative. Perhaps the most "radical" aspect of this book is its point of view. There is no judgmental hierarchy about whether one potter's work is "more art" than another's. In fact, the author purports not to be talking about art at all. But it is all about art, in spite of those protests to the contrary. It shows how the traditionalist potters of the late 1930s worked their way into being modernists--and how they took their homage to Asia with them on that journey. The great radicals of the late 1950s--Voulkos, Autio, Price--are all given their due, but this break from tradtionalist potting is not seen as something inherently "better," nor is it portrayed as the be-all and end-all of studio ceramic history. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the great Japanese studio potters, and the great Native American studio potters, are given the same sort of respect and careful consideration as the European and American potters that most collectors today are familiar with.

The book is broadly divided into three thematic sections: the Beautiful Pot, the Useful Pot, and the Wise Pot. Each of these is then subdivided, by means of an easily flowing narrative, into about a dozen smaller sections. It is a well-written and lucid account of how the humble pot came to be great art, in spite of the art world and all its prejudice.

For anyone who likes pottery--even the plain old hand-made coffee mug from the local craft fair--this book will tell a great story about why people love to work with clay, and all the ways they come to express themselves with clay.

Mark Blyth's Great Transformations may or may not be the true heir to Polanyi's Great Transformation, but it certainly comes close. Blyth provides a clear, incisive criticism of the way most political economists treat the role of ideas in the formation of economic policy. The two case studies -- the United States and Sweden -- provide plausible evidence that Blyth is correct about the multifaceted role economic ideas play in mobilizing political actors, transforming the way the economy is regulated, and even influencing market behavior. These strengths ensure the book's importance to an academic audience.

But there is much here for the non-academic. Those interested in current debates about the role of the government in the economy will find many of Blyth's arguments deeply provocative. Blyth shows how the "common sense assumptions" that currently dominate arguments about tax and fiscal policy owe their success not to the truth of their propositions but to a series of contingent synergies between external events, such as the OPEC oil embargo, and political struggles in specific countries. Ultimately, Blyth's book is a powerful call to make political values, rather than facile claims about economic inevitability, the centerpiece of debates about the future of welfare and governmental regulation. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Blyth, his history of the development, adoption, and non-adoption of economic principles in the US and Sweden should not be ignored.

The DOE plans to build a nuclear/hazardous waste incinerator directly upwind of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. What do the authors think about this recent development?

Fullerton's book is a valuable overview of Greek art. Easy to read and informative, Greek Art is an excellent introduction to the many facets of antiquity. Like many recent books from Cambridge, it is also well composed with feature books and extensive captions.

This is excellent fiction, with an historical basis. Anyone with an appetite for Arctic literature or northern sailing stories will enjoy this one. Apart from giving us some fine writing and a simple, vivid story, Adlard takes us back to the last days of sail and the hunting of whales in Greenland waters. The timbers creak on board ship and the whalers somehow engage our entire attention and sympathy, simple poor men that they are, even though in our so much more developed world, we shun the very notion of their trade. But for generations they had to do this job, leaving for months at a time, frequently falling victim to the ice. In seaport towns on both sides of the Atlantic and in parts of the Southern Hemisphere as well, there are rich traditions associated with the ghastly ritual of the harpoon. It is just as well that their stories be preserved; it is a vanished way of life and one that needs to be more carefully documented.

I don't know any more about Mark Adlard, but it is indeed a pity that he seems not to have published much other work. "The Greenlander" whether as history or as fiction, is very good quality material.

I though it was an exquisite and informative history of the organization and documentary of the state of the world's environment. My only complaint was that the typeface was too small. But I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to know more about Greenpeace or the environmental movement.