These are the sounds and images we need from poetry, and find too seldom -- finely wrought passages of beautiful yearning, with a flat naturalism that is compelling and achingly true. Accessible on multifarious levels, these poems show us life on the inside of man -- a haunting look at times, but affirming in its struggle to survive on its own terms. "American Crawl" is fine storytelling -- and finer art.

I've seen a few of Paul Allen's poems before, and have looked forward to a collection. Finally, this volume provides us the chance to experience the range of this poet's gifts. Allen is very much a story teller in the Southern narrative poetic tradition that produced Warren, Dickey, and Bottoms. This is not, of course, to pigeon-hole Allen as a type of poet, but only to point up the fact that narrative poetry is a difficult feat, especially when the poet so effortlessly works in concrete images of such stunning power. But perhaps the most captivating quality in Allen's writing is its deep religious character, not in the ordinary sense, but in the sense that poetry is really about our desperate attempts to save our benighted souls. Allen catches those moments when we are aware of just how lost we are and just how frail are our efforts to get home. But there is hope, and that lies in the poetic sense. Allen's narrative style make his poems easy to read, but imossible to forget.

A well printed paperback facsimile of the original 1939 hardback edition of this famous book. The 112 photos, one to a page with a short headline and quote, capture the desperate times thousands of farmers and their families endured in the South and Midwest and their migration to an uncertain future in California. Nearly all of the photos were taken by Dorothea Lange and this includes forty-six that she took for the Farm Security Administration between 1935 and 1938.

In the back of the book there are two essays, one by Sam Stourdze, is an excellent explanation of how Lange and Taylor compiled the book. The sales fell well short of their expectations and Stourdze comments "the rigor of its approach, the verism of its oral testimony and the radicality of its photographs were hardly designed to have mass appeal" Quite right I think, having looked through the book many times I don't think the powerful photos are backed up by adequate captions. All the photos are anonymous, even the ones with people, and surely any reader would want to know who are these folk, what is their story? This information was available because Lange took detailed notes on all her photographic assignments. It's as if the author's thought the only way they could put their point across was in an abstract way and ignore the very human turmoil the photos clearly show. In 1937 photographer Margaret Bourke-White and writer Erskine Caldwell compiled a similar photo book about the living conditions of the desperately poor rural underclass, called 'You Have Seen Their Faces' (reissued as a paperback in 1995) but here the photos and captions blend together better.

'An American Exodus' is a book of remarkable photos and well worth having if you are interested in America during the Depression years. BTW, the book reproduces the back dust jacket of the original and the New York publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock, list other "Vital books of our Time" and for three bucks you could buy 'Mein Kampf' by Adolf Hitler, "The blueprint of the Nazi program by the man who is shaking the world. No American should miss it".

These heart-breaking black & whites were shot while Lange and her husband Paul Taylor were under contract with the Federal WPA and chronicle the exodus of dustbowl refugees of the Great Depression and the anguish of their daily struggles for survival in the 'promised land' of California. Some of these photographs are difficult to view, giving an infinite depth-of-field perspective of the arid, ruined farms and starving families of the midwest hitch-hiking or walking (sometimes barefoot) to find a better life. For it's superb detail, brutal realism, and captured raw emotion, this collection is regarded as one of the most important photographic documentaries published during the 20th century. It is criminal this masterful work has not been reissued in affordable hardback binding. Scholar, amateur photographer, and layman will surely peruse these monumental pages with pleasure for years to come.

Excerpt From the review appearing in the 1997 issue of Anais: An International Journal:

By Marion Fay

The title of this welcome and much-needed volume, Anais Nin: A Book of Mirrors, is both appropriate and provocative. The mirror concept works because this hefty book of some 420 pages does indeed reflect multiple aspects of Anais Nin as seen by its sixty-five contributors. Moreover, it not only reveals how many readers have seen themselves reflected in her work and in her person, but also the ways in which many of us have been refracted--literally opened-up--and, to use one of her favorite terms, "transmuted" by the experience.

The mirror concept, of course, also carries with it the notion of partial vision, indeed distortion, implications that underlie attacks on Anais Nin by those who despair at her omissions of facts, who focus exclusively on externally manifest behavior.

The seventy-five entries brought together by Paul Herron include essays, scholarly comment, excerpts from literary works and interviews, poems, and personal testimonials, along with photos and illustrations. Most of the contributions reflect favorably upon Anais Nin, but some raise serious questions about her love affairs, duplicities, and the professed incest with her father. Wendy DuBow, for one, who in 1994 edited a volume of interviews with her, points to weaknesses in Nin's thinking and writing, and she makes clear that her interest in Nin is scholarly and sociological, and not governed by any emotional attachment.

The list of those who responded included well-known Nin scholars, such as Sharon Spencer and Suzanne Nalbantian, contributors to this journal, psychologists, non-traditional healers, personal friends, and literary figures like Erica Jong and Allen Ginsberg.

Several early selections speak of visits to Louveciennes, the village that for many readers situates Nin in place and time because of its prominence in the first volume of The Diary of Anais Nin. Jacques G. Lay, the village's honorary deputy mayor, laments that Anais Nin has been "forgotten at home," but celebrates the fact that thousands of visitors from around the world come to Louveciennes "to imbibe the air Anais breathed, the atmosphere she loved."

Several selections in A Book of Mirrors trace the steps of researchers who examined some of the one hundred and fifty bound original diary manuscripts in the Special Collection of the Library at the University of California in Los Angeles. Elyse Lamm Pineau, a professor at Southern Illinois University, unexpectedly came across a cache of audio tapes recording Nin in action, and Elizabeth Podnieks intersperses carefully chosen passages from her own diary with excerpts from Nin's as part of an inquiry into what makes a diary "genuine."

Diane Richard-Allerdyce reveals the evolution of her attitude toward Anais Nin: from glowing adulation--combined with an unwillingness to criticize her--to a reasoned appreciation of Nin's life and work. Discoursing on the writing of her play, "A Literary Soulmate," an excerpt of which appears in the book, Richard-Allerdyce examines Nin's influence on contemporary women who take up writing. The play itself deconstructs the several versions of Nin's "Birth" story and, in doing so, comments on such topics as the conflict between pregnancy and career, which tortures so many women, and on the nature of truth.

Truth-telling, and truth-avoidance in the case of Anais Nin also occupy some other contributors, offering accusations and justifications. In a short essay, Nuria Ribera i Gorriz pushes us to think about the distinction between the intent to deceive (a form of lying) and the intent to protect the self and/or others (a form of half-truth).

The last section of A Book of Mirrors deals with Nin's final days, a sad story, unknown to many of her readers--Barbara Kraft reports on the many hours she spent with Nin as she lingered on the borderline of death. In an excerpt from her manuscript, An Edited Life, Kraft presents Nin in the guise of a character, Maite Lerin, who is experiencing but also reporting on her own dying.

In a brief review one can only suggest the wide range of views, and the variety of modes and styles of expression gathered in this so aptly titled Book of Mirrors. It is not a book to be devoured whole. Rather, it is one to browse and ponder over time. Laden with rewarding insights and warm feelings, it also occasionally asks the reader to enter supernatural zones, where dreams, spirits, and zany coincidences predominate. More than anything, perhaps, A Book of Mirrors once again provides evidence of Anais Nin's extraordinary, and seemingly perpetual, influence on vast numbers of people, no matter what her harshest critics may have to say.

Book Review by Maryanne Raphael, Writers World ANAIS NIN, A BOOK OF MIRRORS does what no biography, no single study can do. It gives us a glimpse of the thousand faces of Anais Nin. It is an exciting anthology of personal memoirs, interviews, tributes in prose and poetry, fantasies and essays. Anyone opening this book should be warned he or she may be risking their lives as they now know it. More than 60 authors share how Anais changed their lives and gave it meaning. Nin's passionate love affair with life is contagious. In his foreword, Gunther Stuhlmann called Anais, "an exemplary sensitive and complex modern woman who sought her salvation in her art." Anais used her life to create, to relate and to fascinate. Her writings help us to return to our most precious dreams. Anais has us re-evaluate everything, dig deeper into ourselves. She becomes a mirror for each of us, an opportunity for us to examine our souls and for the first time recognize who we really are. MIRRORS is a magnificent celebration of Life. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Anais or about themselves. The end

A graduate level book. It talks about the detail model and behavior of induction machine, synchronous machine and etc. The book gave me quite an idea of machinery. It was well written and explained in a detail and clear way. Since it is the first textbook I bought at USA, after reading, I cannot help wonder: that's the reason why American has advance technology, because they have good books. In my coutry, China, the authors likes to write hard, tough things in a small thin book and we can hardly understand them.

Excellent work by excellent authors. Simply the best you can find in this field!

Paul, I have to tell you: You rock!!

Thanks to your easy-to-understand-and-follow-book, I'm now way ahead of my character setup & animation class at my school (art institute of portland). Keep in mind, this was just in a matter of days I went from clueless to...well, not so clueless!!

For people wondering if this will indeed improve their character rigging and/or animating skills:

It will. If you're already comfortable in using Max 4 or 5, you can easily take Paul's walkthoughs of rigging your character of any kind with biped and using physique to attach the mesh to the biped and be well on your way to understanding how to rig any future characters you create for excellent and easy animation. Well, easy to a point, anyway. You know how it is. With Paul's excellent methods of key frame animation, as well as using mocap, you'll be able to create convincing animations that no one would scrutinize! Even Paul's short-but-sweet section on things to consider when building a mesh can even improve your modeling techniques and thought process of when designing a character for optimum animating, hence the title of the section, 'built to move.'

The one thing that makes Paul's books so nice is that you don't even have to use the packaged files to understand how to apply his methods of madness, you can just go straight from his examples and apply it to your own work and come away with the same oustanding results. I modeled my first character with Paul's book 'modeling a character in 3ds max' by just using his techniques and came away with a model better than almost everyone in my class that had previous modeling experience.

Like I said, you just plain rock Paul. Hopefully I'll gain the skills you have so graciously bestowed upon us lowly wannabe animators to reach your status in this industry as a top-notch realtime modeler/animator someday. So far, things are looking bright!

Awesome book! Anyone wanting to know how to Rig their mesh for real time games or for high poly meshes this book is a must have.
Step by step instructions and tricks on how to make your mesh ready for rigging also includes Rigging, Weighting your character using manual vertex assignment, weighting it using envelopes, things to consider before you animate, Keyframe animation(two parts), Using Motion Capture and you get to practice on the sexy Betty Bad model. You've out done yourself Paul.

This is a collection of essays by one of the best missiologist/anthropologist writers of our day. Paul Hiebert provides lucid and stimulating papers on epistemology (also see his "Missiological Implications of Epistemological Shifts" (Trinity Press, 1999) Critical Contextualization (see also "Introduction to Folk Religion" co-authored with Shaw and Tienou (Baker 1999) and other great pieces on critical issues in cross-cultural ministry -- relevant not only for the overseas missionary or development worker, but also for people working in multicultural contexts in Europe, Canada and USA.

An excellent book which has helped me to look at aspects of culture which I never noticed before. Raising new, interesting questions and providing a deep insight into them, very much focused on the bible. Also a book from which you can get loads of quotes.

This underappreciated book, written by a survivor of Soviet and Nazi oppression, plumbs the depths of human ignorance with a thorough dissection of the Anti-American fervor of the Left both here and abroad. He methodically lays out the intellectual origins of Leftist thought as it relates to the churches, higher education, the mass media, Nicaragua, the worldview of college students, the third world, western intellectuals, and Mexican and Canadian intellectuals. Including the index and references the book spans over 500 pages. At the end the reader is given pause by the strict adherence of these worshippers of the secular humanist faith to a completely discredited Marxist dogma that has been a total failure, on a worldwide basis, wherever it has been enacted into public policy.

What's so thought provoking is that even when confronted by overwhelming factual evidence refuting the initial premise's of this failed dogma, that human nature retains such a profound capacity for self-deception. Perhaps this explains man's need for religion and its attendant explanations of the intricacies of life in the hereafter? None the less the words of Saul Bellow ring true when he says, "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep".

Another apt adage is that "if a man doesn't know his limitations, or more to the point when he's ignorant of the pertinent facts, he will be misled by his knowledge". A companion read should be "the True Believer" by Eric Hoffer.

It's a shame more people haven't read this book, but looked at in the framework of the takeover of academia and the media by Leftist thinkers it's not wholly unexpected. Don't look for your average political science professor to put this book on your reading list.

This book deals with a vital problem for America. Why is it that while milllions of people all over the world dream about living in the United States, many American intellectuals believe that this is a uniquely deformed and unjust society? How did the radical beliefs of the 60s survive and become, for many Aericans, in the new conventional wisdom? How is it possible that while communist systems are colapsing and seeking market economies, critics in the United States remain convinced of the evils of capitalism? Why are there more Marxists on only a hanful of Aerican ampuses than in over Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union? While Anti-americanism abroad has been lamented, ntil now it has not been closely examined nor compared to domestic social criticsm. Paul Holader separates the justified critiques of the Uited States from Anti-Americanism which he defines as a biased attack against American soociety and its core values. It is the first systematic study of this phenomenon in its domestic and foreign aspects.It is an extremely important book. I have ordered 5 copies, to send to different friends. I wonder why it has not been translated into Spanish. I am sure it would be eagerly read all over Latin America.

I have absolutely nothing to do with science or radiologic technology, but I picked this book up at the local flea market for 5 dollars and read it from beautiful cover to cover. This remarkable book has now inspired me to go to my local community college and major in RT studies...The authors of the book leave you, with each page of glorious text, thirsting for the next page of scientific poetry and unsurpassed knowledge. The photography is another astonishing feat, rivaling DiVinci's masterpieces in his own scientific texts. If anything in this world can inspire someone into the realm of the skeletor medium of the homosapien... this book is the BIBLE...not only of science, but of literature. Wean and Laudicina are like the Lennon and McCartney of the radiologic universe. Thank you Doug and Paul.

This book changed my life. As a 40 year radiologic technician and a teacher of applied angiography, I found this text to be the ultimate resource for teaching and practicing. This is not merely a text book of superior magnitude, but a journey through the most up-to-date procedures and written without the normal boring format held by most texts. Whether browsing the subtext or gazing the beautiful pictures, this book is the key to unlocking the magic of angiography. Thank god for Paul Laudicina and Douglas Wean for their passion and love of this field. BRAVO!

This definitive text on aquatic photosynthesis reads like a good novel. It takes the reader on a scientific adventure through the fundamentals of light absorption and the biophysics of the light reactions all the way to the biogeochemistry and evolution. Interspersed throughout the book are particularly interesting anecdotes about everything from the molecular clock to hole burning. A scientific tour de force!

This is an extremely interesting and useful book for anyone working with or needing knowledge of photosynthesis in algae and other aquatic plants. The emphasis on biophysics in the first few chapters sheds a whole new light on the processes of photosynthesis at the most basic level. The information is general and does not give extensive citations to current scientific work, but rather focuses on the historical research leading to current understanding of photosynthesis.

My one criticism so far is with the number of errors, typographical and other, in some of the graphs and figures, making it quite hard to figure out just what is what. Hopefully there will be a revised edition which will correct these.

I was having a really hard time in my life, when I saw this book on Oprah. I don't watch Oprah normally, so call it fate. I read this book, and my spirits were uplifted. Mind you, my problems didn't go away, but I was able to put them in perspective.

Now, I'm lending this book to everyone I know, and making my own list of life's treasures. I felt like a little kid, seeing things in the world I had forgotten about.

Highly recommended for spiritual healing.

I have given this book as a gift three times. It is a quiet reminder of the simple good things in life that we rush by taking for granted. I loved the beautiful simplicity of this book and hope the author will write another.