Frank Lloyd Wright advised in his autobiography that "no home should ever be on a hill"; instead, it should be "of the hill, belonging to it." Just as gestalt theory described the holistic connections between figures and backgrounds, Wright emphasized the interdependence of an architectural structures and their surroundings. It is said that he always decided the site before considering a building's style, its spatial orientation, or the materials with which to build it. Of all his projects, there may be no better example of that than Fallingwater (c. 1938), a small but elaborate home in the woods (commissioned by a wealthy Pittsburgh department store owner named Edgar J. Kaufmann) in which the building is embedded in the landscape, making it inseparable from the waterfall, woods, and cantilevered rock ledges of its location. While much has been written about Fallingwater as a completed structure, less has been said about its preparatory drawings, the friendship between merchant prince and master builder, and the dozen projects that Wright and the Kaufmanns intended to build (few of which were ever realized) from 1934 until the architect's death in 1959. This is the full-color catalog for an exhibition of fifty of the more than 600 Wright drawings for projects commissioned by Kaufmann, which opened on 10 April and continues through 3 October 1999 at the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, Summer 1999.)

As a member of a Pacific Northwest tribe and fishing family, I found this book to be resourceful, interesting, eye-opening, and yet hopeful. It summarized rather clearly many important points of the "fish wars," tribal treaties, government-to-government relations and tribal sovereignty, family and tribal traditions, timber and dam effects on river/fish sustainability, and much more. It is clear that the author put a tremendous amount of time and energy into the research and ideas behind this book. And it is not just a "history rewritten" book or an attempt by one cultural group to get their two cents in on the events of 30 to 150 years passed. It's about an Indian world view, and how saving the salmon and the rivers they run through is part of the Indian way.

Another aspect that I liked about this book was the lack of white bashing, and also the tremendous respect for the law of the land. This book provides many examples of the patience required to work through the American judicial system, and how the positive results of that patience can be cultural, environmental, and social... things that are impossible to measure in terms of dollars.

A hint of hope is intertwined through the chapters as various governments and cultures -- people with sometimes conflicting goals and values -- are able to successfully work together as "good neighbors."

Inspiring and even humorous at times, I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Pacific Northwest, the environment, Indian culture, and/or the law. It would be great if this book ends up in classrooms at the junior high level on up. It also includes many excellent, crisp photos.

I think that this work by Frank Tannenbaum is a good one. Not just because is one of the fisrt studies of the Mexican Revolution, but becuase is made by an American historian. Although he made a deep reaserch, I believe that thoe book lacks some important facts, being a study of the agrarian revolution, the author doesn't make a deep review on the Zapatismo and the south revolution, which was actually the agrarian one. He does explain, somehow, what was the situation of the Indians and peons before the revolution, but I think that he focuses to much on the industrial aspect. The causes he gave for the revolution are not quite clear, it appears to me that the industrailization of Mexico was the major cause. He dedicates a whole chapter to the haciendas but at the end of the book, one gets the impression that they had really little impact on the Mexican population. The book is really focus on the impact of the revolution, how did it changed Mexico and what were the conditions of the country then. I thought that the final chapters were good, because Tannenbaum makes several reflexions on the political system and how did it faced the agrarian question, some times giving it a fast answer and others taking time to face it. Nevertheless, I thought it was good and it helps anyone that has the Mexican revolution as a reaserch subject.

in the late 1700's the british sought to further subjigate the irish peasant by requiring them to divide their estates equally among their offspring. this led to smaller and smaller plots,unable to support a family. the irish responded by delaying marraige well into their fifth and sixth decades. the poem is political satire decrying the practice of "recalcitrant bachlorhood". the main character is taken and made to stand trial before the queen of the fairies, for this "crime". the last lyric poem published in the irish language. a beautiful read, full of earthy humor, and sufficiently inciting to cause the british to ban its publication.

The current crop of Y2K material suffers from the rush to make it to market before the eleventh hour. As a result many have much the same tired theme, the end of civilization as we know it. Mr. Bassett has taken a different tack and woven his tale as a James-Bondain romp complete with exotic locations, beautiful women, and plot to take over the world. In it we meet computer nerds, greedy business magnates, and gun-toting-double-crossing women who just want to have fun, the usual mix of people that one meets in a typical work day. This book is all action moving at breakneck speed from New York to the remote Chatham Islands as our unlikely heroes race to stop the evil plan before the stroke of the new millennium.

Here is a book that has all of the right ideas, but needs more flesh to tell the story. This is a first work, complete with some of the problems of first works. It is about action and lacks some of the development we might see in a mature work. The topical nature of the subject means time is short to refine a style or produce a masterpiece, as a result it shows its screenplay roots (Hollywood's loss) but is still a fun summer read. Look at it this way, unlike other summer reading books there is not a single courtroom scene and nobody gets eaten!

Dr. Franks (Dupont, retired) wrote his classic to demonstrate a systematic method of developing a (near) computer platform independent mathematical modeling library of routines to solve unsteady state chemical engineering problems. The book focuses initially on the types of models that can be readily solved, and the thought process used to create such models. Emphasis is placed on the use of engineering first principles to build deterministic systems.

Routines for solving systems of algebraic and differential equations are first developed, with others to display a time-based 'table' of the simulation results. The second half of the book develops his DYFLO routines for single, staged or distributed unit operations, with many diagrams and examples. In the later chapters, partial differential equations and process control models are developed.

Dr. Franks has been referred to as the "Father of Simulation", and after building some of his many examples, I believe that the phrase is quite appropriate. I first bought this book in 1973, but did the most work with it after the availability of personal computers. It was amazing. The simulations changed the way I thought about unit operations, engineering problem solving, and process control simulations. This thought process shaped the modeling framework that I was developing (building, and tuning interactive process control simulations).

The source code in Modeling and Simulation is provided in FORTRAN IV, which was the current engineering language 'standard'. It is quite compact, again to run on the machines of that time. I found that it was relatively straight-forward (albeit that you will need some other reference books) to convert to other languages in order to use the interpreters/compilers of choice.

I rate this book 4 stars instead of 5 because : 1) it's too expensive and, 2) the FORTRAN IV code and it's structure is dated. The programs needs to be commented and rewritten both more linearly and in a current language such as DELPHI, VB or C++ Builder (or Visual C++). You can sort it out if you are an experienced programmer, but the programs need to be restructured. This book desperately needs to provide at least a CD with the source code.

A company called QMC appears to offer a Windows 95/98 simulation framework for many of Dr. Frank's examples, and many other models and simulations.

A very good text book to learn about Earth Science

I've adopted this grammar book as well as its two exercise books for my college students of EFL and we are very happy with the results. The text is objective and the explanations quite clear. This is the kind of book that encourages its users to go on with their English studies. The only inconveniences are the cost which is a bit higher than the average for similar books in our country and the lack of further explanations about morphology which I consider crucial for foreign students.

Wallace is better known as "the other man" in the history of the discovery of the natural selection concept, and for his early studies on biogeography and tropical nature. But--and this is one of the things that makes him a fascinating figure for study--he was also an avid supporter of spiritualism. This book collects five of his essays on spiritualism (the three that went into the original edition of 1875, plus two added to a new edition published twenty years later). Wallace was a thoughtful and excellent writer, and the three main essays, at least, provide some very interesting fodder for thought--especially the one on David Hume and miracles. Unfortunately, nowhere in this collection can one find any indication of why and how Wallace's adoption of spiritualism fit into his overall worldview, natural selection and all, and why this over 100 year old work is still relevant to today's concerns.... Instead, one ends up scratching one's head and wondering, "Can any of this be true...?" Still, this is just about as good a treatment of why one should be interested in the subject as can be obtained, even now.

Although a book about any subject dealing with issues as complex as a multi-national currency can be a ponderous read, Overturf holds your attention by guiding the reader toward a pointed conclusion at each chapter's end.

His final synopsis is a lesson in skillful writing of a subject that will affect every country in the global village of international trade. This book is for those serious followers of government policy, politics and paper money.