The writing style was clear and captivating, and the ideas were well supported by a wealth of research. Be sure you understand however that the book is focused on the business of renewable energy and less on the technology and policy aspects. Most of the book is comprised of case stories which follow businesses through their struggle to make renewable energy profitable and competitive with fossil fuels. You will get an intimate portrait of the ups and downs of businesses in the industry and the personalities behind them. Unfortunately, the minutia of each step along a business's road to success or failure can become less than interesting. The book was largely a history of business dealings in the industry and I was looking for something which gave more attention to the prospect of renewables in the future and how renewables can overcome the tiresome use of fossil fuels.

A very interesting book.If you are interested in solar,wind,biomass and other clean energy sources then this is the book for you.This book takes you from past to present with insights on the people who are making this field happen.It also tells you about their business strategies and practices.It also gives detailed information about where this particular technology is headed with respects to the dropping manufacturing costs and a host of other things.If you choose only one book on this subject,MAKE SURE IT IS THIS ONE!enjoy.

I read this book in a Spanish translation and found some of the stories difficult. However the third story,"In the age of cosmonauts", is a haunting love story, with a wonderful feeling for nature, for how love appears at different ages, and for the power of unexpressed emotions. It is a story that comes back to my memory constantly, and has led me to read it over and again.

This book is part of trilogy - Pig Earth, In Europa, Lilac and Flag - depicting the erosion of traditional peasant culture and the incorporation of the children of the peasantry into modern urban life. Taken together, these books comprise a kind of fictionalized sociology of modernization. Each of these books describes a different aspect of this process. The first book, Pig Earth, describes the traditional life of poor French peasants from the Savoy region. Pig Earth is a series of stories and poems showing the seasonal routine of labor, the close relationship of other aspects of peasant life to seasonal labors, and relatively closed nature of these communities. The latter is shown to have both positive and negative aspects, a combination of social solidarity and insularity. The second book, Once In Europa, is a series of stories showing the penetration of modern industrial civilization into the life of the peasantry and recounts some of the costs, and benefits, of this process. The last book, Lilac and Flag, is set in a mythical city, called Troy, which has aspects of many modern cities. Lilac and Flag describes the life of a young couple, the descendents of poor peasants, who now live a marginal existence in the metropolis of Troy. Overall, this is a successful set of books. Berger is a very talented writer and this set of books gives a vivid sense of the important transition from peasant life on the land to modern industrial civilization. Berger's attempt to depict this important social process is really admirable. The books do vary somewhat in quality. In Europa is probably the best, containing a number of powerful stories, with Pig Earth coming a close second. Lilac and Flag is probably the least effective. The style, presumably a correlate of the urban setting, is distinctly different and the plot has surreal elements. I suspect that Lilac and Flag will strike many readers as relatively familiar and conventional where the contents of Pig Earth and In Europa are relatively novel. If I were to read just one of these books, I would pick Once In Europa.

It is important to realize that Berger is describing the tail of a process with roots in the Renaissance and that accelerated tremendously in the 19th century. The traditional life described in Pig Earth is actually a life that has been greatly affected by industrial civilization. Many men in the community described by Berger participate in seasonal labor in large cities, there is compulsory primary education, and the local church has a strong influence. Other aspects of the modern world intrude themselves. These include military service, railroads and it is likely that farm products are produced for an international market. In the early or even mid-19th century, a community like this would have been completely geographically isolated, illiterate, and probably would speak a language distinct from French. There are some other fine books devoted to this topic. Eugen Weber's excellent Peasants into Frenchman is a very interesting and readable social history of the impact of the modern world on the French peasantry. A detailed view of French peasant life can be found in Pierre Helias The Horse of Pride, a combined ethnography and memoir about a Breton peasant community written by a scholar who was the son of Breton peasants.

"Once In Europa ", is the middle portion of Mr. Berger's, "Into Their Labours Trilogy". The first volume documented the peasant life of an Alpine Village in great detail including the slaughtering of animals that would cause a migration of meat-eaters to vegetarians if we all had to prepare our food from the field through to the kitchen. The trilogy is meant to document the disappearance of the peasant culture and it is this volume where events take hold that cause permanent irretrievable change.

Until the advent of large mechanized urban centers and the factories that required masses of people, the Alpine Culture was safe if for no other reason than the alternatives were virtually nonexistent. Human nature not only gravitates to those opportunities that offer a seemingly better life, it also tends to be blind to the negatives that are a part of this perceived improvement. At the outset of the new choices the ignorance of the first to leave is understandable, benefits are advertised, the dangers the changes also hold are not spoken of. So the youth, the future of any Society leave for promises of a very short workweek compared to the round the clock life that a farm requires. Youth too is drawn to all the supposed wonders of the Metropolis with visions more grand than the reality.

And the end begins, women looking for a better future marry outside the village, men too find spouses from the cities. Those that are left behind are the most determined to maintain their way of life, or they are the damaged ones as judged by society, women who are widowed with children, men who have been horribly maimed in the factories. Mr. Berger also records a story where the invasion of change takes a physical presence with a factory all but engulfing a man who refuses to part with the family farm despite the ever-increasing money the company offers for his land. This happens even as the whole area is poisoned by the pollution the factory emits, and the social destruction that arrives in the form of imported prostitutes for the workers who now live in communal barracks as opposed to their homes.

By the end of this second work it is hard to imagine what further fall awaits what has already happened to those who once lived a difficult but not necessarily more troublesome life. This book is sad and depressing. The final chapter will be pure tragedy.

I have read all his books and keep wishing for more....

John Berger small pocket of resistance against the inhumanity of the new world economic order(whatever that is)is a beautiful book of great essays on Rembrant, Palaeolithic cave painters, Leon Kossoff, Michelangelo, Brancusi, Giogio Morandi, Frida Kahlo and a whole lot more.
Very well done and I enjoyed very much.

"The Shape of a Pocket" is perfect bedside reading: the essays are short, meditative and carefully crafted. Berger's prose is pure and airy, and only occasionally he trespasses into the contrived and nearly bombastic. That's irritating but understandable as Berger is constantly trying to get to the deeper layers of what it means to make sense of the world through the 'act' of painting. I suppose Berger, on reading these lines, would remark that conceptualising 'to paint' as an 'act' is completely besides the point. Indeed, what he tries to get across is the 'receiving' nature of being-in-the-world as a painter. Being a real artist is a balancing act: it's a state of dynamic equilibrium between 'self' and 'world', between banality and madness. I believe Berger; his writing breathes integrity and wisdom. He has seen things that many mortals only have faint intimations of. That being said I am less sure about the appropriateness of his insights spilling over into the political realm. The complexity of globalisation is, perhaps, of a different nature than the complexity of a brush stroke. I think it shows, in Berger's language: suddenly the delicacy - holographic in its suggestion of colour, depth and texture - evaporates and we are left with the dull taste of cliche and ideology.

This text starts of with some accounting techniques that are very important. The book then goes into some simple calculations of spoil piles and conversion factors of spoil. The machines takes the last two-thirds of this book. While not getting into great detail about the machinery, it covers how to calculate how much to charge per cubic yard of mterial to use or machine hour. At the end of all chapters in this text there are several questions to answer to help you get right calculations. There are several examples in the chapter demonstrating how to fiigure the problems. The book covers graders, dozers, scrapers, cranes, lifting equipment, concrete, asphalt, loaders and dump trucks. If you are looking for great detail of machines this is not the book you are looking for. I felt that the machines could of had more detail to them but this is an overall very good buy. I recommend to all.

John Berger is a critic with a real sense of decency: never too high-falutin, smart and responsible. He asks us to see beautiful objects, not in their staid isolation in the museum setting, but in the context of social history. It is obvious that Picasso was a genius. He saw and drew things that evoke wonders and passions. But is that all?

The central essay here is "The Moment of Cubism." Berger paints a general portrait of a distinct era of possibility: artistic and social and political. The explosion of Cubism is but a moment in a larger moment of real revolution. Not just "ways of seeing" but ways of living, thinking, hoping. Berger reminds us that Picasso needed the times (Europe), he also, more specifically needed friends and support. After all, there were two who brought forth cubism; moreover, there were the likes of Cezanne.

Berger asks the question that is overlooked in the constant reverence of Picasso's potency (echoing Benjamin Buchloh on the "ciphers of regression"): was Picasso genius throughout his career or was that moment (historical and aesthetic) the real genius?

(For more on Berger, read his two inspired novels: "G." and "To the Wedding.")

Since the early 1950's, John Berger has authored an almost dizzying number of works on art history, art criticism, fiction and politics, as well as a large body of writing that seems to defy categorization altogether. And that is why one can't help but feel a kind of admiration for Geoff Dyer's courage to take on, for his first full-length book, a difficult critical subject and author in Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger.

Although Dyer clearly sees Berger and his work as massively influential yet nearly always overlooked by his peers and contemporaries, it is obvious that Ways of Telling is a great deal more than a mere reaffirmation of, or a critical love letter to, an illustrious writer and his sometimes ground-breaking work. In Ways of Telling, Dyer looks carefully at the broad spectrum of Berger's career, from articles on politics and aesthetics during the early 1950's published in Socialist newspapers and magazines, to novels written in the mid-1980's. Perhaps because Dyer intended (one could plausibly surmise) Ways of Telling to be not only an academic critique but a work written for a slightly wider readership, we are invited to take a closer look at several of Berger's more universally known works. These include G, an historical novel influenced by Socialist Realism and according to Dyer, possibly inspired by the Cubist movement as well. We look at A Painter of Our Time, Berger's breakthrough novel about the struggle between the moral imperative of being true to one's creative gifts versus fidelity to one's political beliefs. Scrutiny is also given to the near-canonical Ways of Seeing, both the BBC television series and the widely-read 1972 book of the same name. Dyer is quick to acknowledge that although the polemical, class-based attack on consumer-driven capitalism and "the authority of property" by way of a beautifully written critique of Western Art is often crudely drawn in Ways of Seeing. One might miss the point entirely if one chooses to ignore the manner in which Berger's sharp sense of aesthetics and his critical eye opened the floodgates to what is now the standard method for looking at art for an ever-widening audience.

No doubt it is a tall order for any reader, or writer to separate John Berger's Democratic-Socialist and Humanist value systems from much of his work, Dyer reminds the reader that any attempt to do so is pointless and probably an unnecessary exercise. To quote Dyer " He is a great writer, but the quality of his work is important, finally, not for what it reveals of him but for what it enables us to glimpse of ourselves, of what we might become-and of the culture that might afford him the recognition that it is due."

We bought this book while vacationing at Cape Cod. Using a question and answer format, the book clearly and simply explains many facts about the ocean and ocean life -- at exactly the right level for kids. Just enough info, not too much.

My five and eight year old kids loved it and so did I.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I had many questions about reconstruction. My surgeons gave me the alternatives and left the decision to me. I needed help. Help came from the women who stepped forward to "show" the results of their reconstruction decisions and from this book with its frank and openly presented pictures, personal stories and explanations. Thank you to the authors! I found that even though I am "more than my breasts", I appreciated being presented with all the sides/choices in the reconstruction question. Information is so empowering! I have given at least a dozen of these books to friends and acquaintances with breast cancer and one major, major hospital here in town regularly gives "A Woman's Decision" to their breast cancer patients. That is how I heard about it. My friend received it from her surgeon at her hospital! I am online now because I am about to give away my last copy and need to order a few more to have on hand....... unfortunately. Will it never end!

Ways of Seeing is the book of a groundbreaking and brilliant TV series that Berger created with Mike Dibb in the 1970s. The book isn't quite as amazing as the series, but it's acquired canonical status anyway as Berger's most frequently set text on art and art criticism. Which is a pity, because while the impressive confidence of Berger's judgments was inspiring back then (Marina Warner and Michael Ondaatje have each paid tribute to it), time has passed over the last quarter of a century and the book is in danger of looking old-fashioned. The theory of desire, which Berger manages to popularise in a single succinct chapter, has been challenged, confirmed, turned upside-down and generally elaborated upon so much since the book was written that his version of it is now inadequate. Advertising is vastly more sophisticated now than it was in 1972 - the ads reproduced in the book, while perfectly representative of their time, are almost laughable in their blatant sexism and classism. (You wouldn't get away with them now, that's for sure.) But the account of the rise of oil painting is still persuasive, even if it lacks the cheek and mischievousness of the TV version. Readers expecting to find Berger's most incisive and complex criticism should look elsewhere, though, to The Sense of Sight or About Looking, because Ways of Seeing is essentially a popularisation of theories that have since become much more complex, and Berger's lapidary, no-argument tone is hardly applicable anymore. Somebody should release the series on video, then we'd get the same ideas in a more engaging and fascinating manner.

After reading Berger's book, you should be able to fill in the blanks yourself.

Berger, of course, didn't forsee the internet- and the "democritiziationn of bandwidth," but, if you've read this book, you'd be well prepared to anticipate the suppression of "pirate broadcasting."

This book changed my perception- now whenever I go into an art museum (or watch PBS or Jerry Springer for that matter)I'm always looking for who benefits financially. Of course, the book's about painting mostly, but you can see the obvious parallels to pretty much any other form of artistic media- Berger's analysis applies in spades, for example, to Mappelthorpe's photography (funded not by the NEA, but, orignally, by wealthy patrons!)

"Mobil Masterpiece Theatre?" Ha! *That's* an oxymoron!

This little book is about the dialetics of seeing. In a highly distilled and sweeping fashion, this book touches on the many issues that one should know about when it comes to looking at works of art:

(1) The relationship between what we see and what we know
(2) The ideas of establishing relationships between things and ourselves
(3) The notion of seeing and be seen
(4) Assumptions and Mystification - the idea that our (and some art historian's) interpretations could sometimes mislead us and the need to objectify.
(5) Reproduction of what we see in paintings and photographs
(6) Our fetish with "nudes" in artistic work
(7) Objects and our possession of objects
(8) Social images like advertising and their allusions as well as their effects on our psyche

This book is deceivingly short and easy to read. However, every paragraph could probably serve as a major synopsis for any lengthy research paper! Enjoy!

As usual this book gives half baked ideas to the public without considering the damages. For instance, they overlook the reason that recycled materials gennerally cost more than non-recycled materials (more energy is spent developing them than developing items from raw materials). The book is a classic proponent of emperical science wherein such things as "Humans are on the earth and it's getting warmer, so it must be humans" are passed as scientific rigor. No information is provided to explain why earth's history has endured (and even flourished within) temperatures above present levels, with C02 levels far beyond our current levels by 10-20%- and why earth's human and other populations flourished during these times, even settling the now mostly inhospitable Greenland. The writing style of the book was compelling, to the point that it takes a wary reader to realize that he/she is being fed sugar-coated statistics that tell only half the story. I came to this book expecting it to give me answers to the above questions I had in my own search for the truth. The book ignores this and instead only gives the common arguments that have repeatedly been shoved down our throats before. Blech.

The book may be well written, it may be interesting, but as there is no global warming, it is a piece of fiction.

I never cease to be amazed why so many people seem to have the need to believe in some imanent doom. Maybe they believe in incipient disaster because it gives them the chance to order people about. I suggest that we all ignore the enviro-ninnies and go on living happy lives, free from the tension and pressure that these silly people foist upon us in the mistaken belief that they are helping us, whilst in truth they are really helping themselves.

This book will teach you everything you need to know about global warming. I am a businessperson, not a scientist, and I wasn't lost in technical oblivion. Berger makes a convincing case for taking prompt action to combat global warming. His chapter on the various sources of clean energy was particularly interesting. He also outlined steps that policy makers can take to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. I found this book to be very well researched, entertaining, and easy to understand.