I am very new to gardening and found this book very helpful. It is cut and dry! The plants are listed in alphabetical order explaining where to plant them and how to care for them. It also describes when and if to trim them back and if dead heading is needed. I also enjoyed how one section of the book organized plants based on color.

I have many helpful gardening books but this one is the one I always come back to. It's best for identitifying plants or finding the perfect plant for certain conditions. Great photos and lots of them!

This book is arranged like a bird-identifier book-- color plates in the front arranged by flower color with plant details referenced in the back of the book. The color plates are clear, good color quality, and provide close-ups of the flowers. Pen and ink drawings of plant profiles, leaf structures, and distinguishing features enhance the books ability to help the reader identify "what plant is this?" If you're looking for detailed growing conditions or a "how to", get another book. But if you're looking for a thorough, easy-to-carry-to- the-localgarden-nursery book, to identify plants and the flowers they will yield then this book is for you! I have tons of books on periennals, but this is the one that never fails me when I need to ID a plant or flower.

The Unborn: The Life And Teachings Of Zen Master Bankei, 1622-1693 is here presented in a significantly revised and expanded edition containing many talks and dialogues with monks and priests not included when it was first published in 1984. Ably translated for an English speaking readership by Norman Waddell, this superbly presented compendium of illuminative Buddhist wisdom is highly recommended for personal, temple, academic, and community library Buddhist studies collections and reading lists.

...and yet so difficult if fear of death keeps the river of soothing distraction (that little voice in your head) flowing. Bankei is like a cure for religion (more little voices in your head). Study for thirty years, and then take the cure (no little voices in your head).

Bankei's Zen shines through this translation. He has no time for the past, and therefore becomes contemporary. His message is clear - You are already the Unborn, Original Mind. The important thing is letting go; being totally natural and spontaneous in all you do. The self centered bad habits which we acquire as we grow up are not innate, are not of the Unborn, however. We leave the self illuminating unborn Buddha Mind and become particular identities, and then search for our original state, using this bundle of learned tendencies. His sense of freedom and colloquial expression in dealing with ultimate problems make this collection refreshing and direct, leaving us thankfully free of any belief systems or adopted religiousness, while at the same time expressing the deepest truth. A big thank you to North Point Press for re editing and re printing this fine book.

Also recommended: The Zen Teaching of Huang Po - Tr. John Blofeld Mud and Water - Bassui - Tr. Arthur Braverman Be As You Are - The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi - David Godman The Truth Is - H.W.L. Poonja

I am not a literary genius let me just clear that up, however i do know what i like...and this book i like, never have i felt so strongly for a bunch of words that i can still remember when i first set my eyes on his beautiful diction. It was the summer of 1994, i was a assistant janitor at the university of miami, ohio. i took 2 weeks of unpaid leave to attend to my mother who had recently passed away of malaria. i was staying at my mother's residence on the day of her funeral, it was a tuesday, i remember because we take our weekly baths on tuesdays and i was just about to take mine when a package was delivered to me it had my name on it. it was from my lovely wife/half-sister bobby jo. inside was bunch of my belongings from our trailer home, attached to it was a note saying that she was leaving me for her lover/cousin travis. boy howdy was i sad, but as i was searching through the stuff i found winter eel and boy howdy was my life changed. his words inspired me to move deep into the woods where i can send "packages" to those close to me. to make a long story short winter eel provided me the retribution to get back at those who hurt my life and overall it has made me a better man. So thank you for winter eel and if you could excuse me the mailman is coming up to my cabin and i must get this "package" sent out today.
Sincerely,
Ted K

while i am only 12 years of age I suffer from a terminal rare disease known as brain cancer. I don't do much seeing as how i don't have many friends seeing as how they all shun me and pick on me and call me "stupid cancer boy." That is not what matters, what does is that i found Winter Eel one day when my father was clearing out my closet, as he was preparing to rent out my room as soon as I die. I say that my life has changed for the better, these poems are amazing and uplifting in spirit. Hindley touched me more than Frost, more than Stafford, touched me even more than Dickinson or Shakespeare could, and that is a lot of touching. So as a dying little boy I wouldn't know how to thank Hindley for his amazing contribution to my life than to use my remaining strength to crawl to the computer and spend the past 2 and a half hours typing this. This book is certainly a fine piece of work. All I can say is thank you.

Norman Hindley is simply, one of America's best poets. Hindley's poems do not just sing, they scream and explode in a supurb display of fireworks. The poems are metered and structured so well that they appear easy. And that is the secret of complex poetry and a great poet, to make it appear easy. Stafford, Olson, Frost, Hindley. I find myself quoting lines and passage and entire poems from "Winter Eel." This book should be in everyone's collection. The personal history in these poems are universal.

I am 12 years old and I gave this book to my youngest brother who is 4 for Christmas. He loved the story and especially the pictures. It is his favorite book. Both of us think it is and excellent book!

The wolves howl in the darkness, but for young Matthew, their song is nature's lullaby. The singing of the wolves are magical melodies luring him into a fantastic nighttime adventure. Guided by a silvery gray wolf, Matthew joins the pack in their secret play. They paint the night sky with diamond sparkles and a curtain of swirling colors. Wolf Songs is a beautifully presented story transforming fears into songs and wolves into warm and magical friends. Combining Raye Raya-Norman's deeply engaging story text with Richard Ziehler-Martin's rich, dreamlike illustrations, Wolf Songs will entrance children ages 5 and up as it gently encourages their renewed confidence in a friendly world.

This book is wonderful. I've been a wolf-lover for as long as I can remember and now my 5 year old son is becoming fascinated with wolves too. I would recommend "Wolf Songs" for anyone, young and old, to add to their book collection.

excellent, fast-paced, interesting story that makes it difficult to put down. In Bernfrieda's oppression, she has the last laugh. Makes me want to go back in time and be a knight, and fight for what is right.

Gabriella Brooke has used her knowledge, research, and resources to enlighten the reader of a rather dark period in Western history from a woman's point of view. Excellently written, a story once started that is very hard to quit reading from the first to the last pages. My respects to Ms. Brooke as I encourage to to continue her endeavors in the composing of similar and subsequent works.

This book is very well-written and researched. The story was intruiging and the historical background added to my enjoymen of the story. I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the lives of medieval women!

At the end of this splendid autobiographical travel book, the author explains his compulsion to travel to his Brahmin companion "It's the pull of the world. I spent most of my childhood on my own, and some of it was in the mountains of Wales. I would go exploring with the idea in my head that the farther I was from home the better it would be. The next valley would always be wilder. The lake would be bottomless, and I would find a mysterious ruin, and there would be ravens instead of crows in all the trees. Now it's not just the Black Mountains of Dyfed, but the world." In this book that pull takes him to a bleak, windswept ancient fort in a bay in South West Wales where he writes; to Cuba where he meets an expatriate American official executioner, former Macy employee; to the exquisite countryside of Vietnam of the 1950's; to Bangkok and its sex industry; to Brazil and, in concert with one of the great photo-journalists in history Don McCullin, recalls their expose to the world of the genocide against tribal peoples of Brazil, and demonstrates the power of writing and the good that can come therefrom. His opinions include his opposition to the destructiveness of Protestant fundamentalist sects as missionaries and disdain for the barbarians of Essex in the 1960's riding to the local hunt willy nilly over gardens. His insights are sometimes revalatory - he analyses some speeches of Castro and finds them sprinkled with jokes and quotes from Burke, Rousseau, Juvenal, and Shakespeare and claims Castro is the greatest orator since Demosthenes. This contrasts remarkably with the impression I gained from the American press over the years who simply described his speeches as interminable and boring. What a difference an open mind can make to a perspective on the world. His travel companions included Lord Snowden who is revealed somewhat as a spoiled and moody but talented adolescent. His writing skill I would compare to Somerset Maugham but without the snobbery and sarcasm. He is one of the most graceful and skilled travel writers in the language. Pervading all is his sense of graciousness, humanity, and generosity of spirit. The World, The World is a wonderful read.

I discovered Norman Lewis through an article by that other great travel writer Pico Iyer in his "Tropical Classical" collection. "The World, the World" is an excellent introduction to an extraordinary travel writer, man whose life has to be read about to be believed. This is a man totally in tune with his times both at home and abroad (his description of his English village is as powerful as his writing on Cuba and the plight of the Amazonian Indians). There's also a great deal of humour here, particularly when Lewis describes his travels with Lord Snowden in Peru. Highly recommended.

What a treat this book was! I discovered Norman Lewis years ago --and have read most of his novels (which I will now go back and re-read). He makes travel as exciting and involving as, of course, it is and along with Pico Iyer makes everyday that I sit behind my desk or hit my computer one less day of adventure or learning. He manages to be so modest about his achievements and his innante curiousity while presenting a panorama of travel thst is as interesting as any travle writing I have ever read --and it makes you thirst for more and more detail about his experiences throughout the world..highly recommend this for anyone who has the slightest essence of wanderlust!

Mr. Schur has a gift for glibly describing the essence and etymology of obscure words. He's my favorite philologist!

This book is a "twofer" containing the last of the four "1000 Words Series." Basically, each book is a mini-dictionary targeting the weirdest and odd words. He provides the word, and pronunciation, then a brief entry explaining the etymology and use of each word. His pen shines and his tongue is blarney. I am impressed that any human being could make a dictionary entry so lively! I wish my Webster's had this spunk and vigor.

It is two books under one cover, but both follow the same format, so they flow together as if they were one text. He occasionally references the companion volume "1000 Most Important Words," and "1000 Most Practical Words." These four books are really one in concept, and each part is a fair sampling of the whole. Purchase all four books for maximum brainpower.

This book is for the English major or grad student, copy editors, or the public speaker. This book also works for your snob-ling friends, your eccentric associates who are into Crispin Glover, or for someone that is hard to shop for. Cruxverbalists will certainly underline and dog-ear this book.

The only drawback to this book is that it relies heavily on Greco-Latin words. This violates "Strunk and White's" Reminder #14: Avoid Fancy words. They assert: "Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words." Therefore, this book is great for personal edification, and the soul who loves to connect root words with their branch meanings.

This is a great book - 2000 words with lengthy definitions. A great way to expand your vocabulary.

It's actually two separate books, "Most Challenging Words" and "Most Obscure Words", so I'll review them separately.

"Most Challenging Words" is a good vocabulary book for people with already robust mental lexicons. It is not a mere dictionary and spends most of the pages discussing word's etymology and the history of their uses. Examples from this section include words like: hyperbaton, epicrisis, clowder, and adulate.

"Most Obscure Words" is not really suitable for increasing one's vocabulary, but it is an interesting discussion of words one's likely to never encounter more than once outside this book. Examples: epopt, nepenthe, humuhumunukunukuapuaa, karkia, and mytacism.

This is an excellent book for studying advanced math. Important concepts clearly explained with good matlab examples. But I was surprised to find this book titled "Engineering Math" with the miss out of some thing like probability and random variables which are of the critical importance for Electronics/Communications students.

If you are not already a superuser of MATLAB or a mathematician and want to choose one single book on MATLAB that also brings a solid math base, this is the one. The authors have chosen the subjects very well, with emphasys on the use of mathematical principles coupled with the use of the computing power offered by MATLAB.

In addition to a sound presentation of concepts - without however being extensive (or boring) on theoretical details that probably would not be relevant - this book addresses most areas of University Math (Physical Sciences undergraduate curriculum) with a wealth of good practical programming examples. I specially liked the chapters on Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues, those on Differential equations, Fourier analysis and the simple but very clear and didatic one on Discrete sytems.

In summary, although not a complete text, the subjects addressed in this book are so well presented that it can be forgiven for not covering some areas (like complex variables and calculus of variations, to name only two). There is no waste of pages in this book, but as a suggestion for future enhancement I would mention the inclusion of a chapter dedicated to exploring the graphing power available in MATLAB.

Also as a reference, for most needs you'll probably be able to start doing something productive right away after reading. Well worth its price!

This is an excellent reference book not only for matlab, also an excellent reference book for the basic concepts such as Fourier Analysis. I think any engineers who work in electric design filed must have a copy.

This is a well-written and thought-out text about the modern day symphony orchestra. It provides and analysis of every instrument in the orchestra, it's purposes, the sound it produces, and the possibilities. Norman Del Mar's book is a must for music students and professionals alike.

Anyone with a more than passing interest in Orchestral music should try this one. Especially good for young players in school or civic orchestras. It desecribes what everyone's job is, how they play different effects, hangups, foibles, etc...

Tells you why Horns don't like sitting in front of percussion. Why the tympanist won't play other percussion, but the the rest of the kitchen dept is running around playing 3 and four different instruments.

It talks a lot about keys, notes, and has many copies of the score for illustration, but if you don't read music don't despair... your enjoyment should not be diminished.

When to disagree with the conductor...

And describes the curious relations amongst all those infighting violins.

This is an elemental resources for all advanced students of composition and conducting.

As a lover of the creative, colorful and very controversial culture known as Jamaican dancehall, I received this book ecstatically, but I wasn't quite sure of what to expect. I mean, this is a world that changes so rapidly that any attempts to document it have felt outdated even before their ink dried. I thought Stolzoff would play it safe and keep his approach as superficial as possible-a nice coffee table book perhaps, filled with eye-pleasing full-color pix of scantily-dressed dancehall queens, posturing dapper dons, maybe even the occasional text paragraph with amusing tidbits like, "Whatever happened to Wayne 'Sleng Teng' Smith?" Instead, I found a meticulously researched study packed with so much detail that several times I had to "wheel back and come again" (re-read pages) in order to digest it all.

Of course, this isn't the first piece of writing to cast a critical eye on dancehall; but past discussions (helmed mostly by staunch roots reggae apologists who make no bones about expressing their view of the subject as an anti-musical ebola responsible for devouring the innards of upright, "real" reggae as exemplified by the likes of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear), irrespective of whether they have been pro- or anti-dancehall, have all revolved to varying degrees around the old dancehall "reggae" vs. "traditional" reggae issue.

Stolzoff distinguishes himself from the pack by sidestepping that stumbling block altogether: In (what I think is) a revolutionary move, he posits ALL Jamaican music, in essence, as dancehall-from the creolized drum and fiddle music of 18th century slave frolics to the thundering amplified bass blaring from contemporary Kingston sound systems. In short, he sees dancehall not as a distinct genre of music, but as an interactive method of experiencing music that might be specifically Jamaican.

Stolzoff's an anthropologist, not a rock critic, so rather than examining the music in isolation, he reconstructs the world that is dancehall's context, starting from the beginning with the sound systems, the cornerstone of the Jamaican music world.( Stolzoff scores a major coup by including extensive interviews with sound system pioneers like Hedley Jones, who provide a lot of insight into the Jamaican music experience prior to the birth of the local music industry-all other books on reggae up until this time have summed the whole era up in a sentence or two). Upon that foundation, Stolzoff layers the various social and ideological trends that have shaped the dancehall: rude boys, Rastafar-I, fashion, technology... You come to see that as chaotic as the dancehall universe appears to be, it is a well-ordered cosmology where everything has its place: sexuality, piety, violence, flamboyance, humility... They can all co-exist.

What I really, really love is the "career trajectory" Stolzoff maps out from his observation of the dancehall field. Using many of the aspiring and established dancehall stars he befriended, Stolzoff illustrates the stages of a career as a performer in the dancehall economy-which is an actual economy that employs millions of Jamaicans in various capacities.

I think this is definitely an important book and a complete must-read not only for fans of Jamaican music, but for anybody interested in the way that music and culture intersect with the daily lives of its participants.

I would like to commend Mr. Stolzoff for an in depth and enjoyable study of dancehall reggae. Being a dancehall fan for some time now, it's wonderful to see the music and culture being taken seriously. Ready first hand accounts of artists like the great Tenor Saw was an unexpected and exciting part of the book. Mr. Stolzoff goes indept as he discusses the origins of dancehall back to Africa right up to today with the top artists like Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Sizzla, etc etc. As Ricky Trooper says in the begining of the book, if you haven't been to the dancehall before, you wouldn't understand it, dancehall it something that you have to experience. Great reading!

This book is too incredible to believe. For those of us who are into dancehall, when we are in the midst of it, study and academia seem so far away. I never thought it was something that someone could record on paper and carry the true vibes of the whole thing. Stolzoff has not only captured the vibes of the dancehall itself, but also the vibes of life for the dancehall community, the economy, and the realities of Jamaica today. For anyone who ever wanted to get away from the tourist fakeries of what you think Jamaica and reggae music are all about, this book is for you. Of course there is nothing like the true experience of the dancehall itself, but outside of that, this book is the next best thing. Buy this book, you won't regret it. Even most of us Jamaicans, can learn a thing or two from it. And for my anthropologists out there, this book is the most gripping, meaningful ethnography since Bourgois' "In Search of Respect : Selling Crack in El Barrio".