Even though I know all the writers of this book, I'm still NOT biased when I say that Scotts, et al book has changed interpretation dramatically on the Little Bighorn fight. Having worked at the Little Bighorn Battlefield as an interpreter in 1985, I personally know how this interpretation changed, i.e. before the archaeological digs of 1984-85, most of us believed that Custer's men fell mostly to arrows. We now know that the U.S. soldier's were outgunned, thanks to this field work and as reported in the book. Since Scott's final report, headstones on the battlefield marking where "unknown soldier's" fell have been replaced by actual names, e.g. Mitch Bouyer. This reality came to place thanks to the forensic work of Dr. Clyde Snow (his complete report is included in this book). Finally, Scott and his team create a vivid picture of where the Indian warriors moved over the battlefield fighting for their families down the hill and across the river.

I think this book provides a fabulous overview of the indians and their tribes, culture, and time. A great, interesting, fun read!

Pictures and descriptions of many famous and not-so-famous railroad bridges abound in this beautiful hardcover book. Return to a time when things were built to last, and the iron horse was king!

Richard Bulliet's, Camel and the Wheel, is a seminal example of social history from the perspective of an animal. In the vein of the French Annales school of Marc Bloch and Ladurie, Bulliet traces the origin of the camel in North America (!), tracks how it got to the Middle East, how it came to be the favourite beast of the Arabs and how it helped to facilitate the lightening Muslim conquests in the 7th century that brought all of North Africa, Spain, the Levant, Iran, and Sind under Muslim control by 711 C.E. Bulliet lays out some surprising discoveries in the realm of camel saddles and explains why they carry the key to the Arab conquests. Significantly, Bulliet posits a brilliant counter-intuitive theory for the disappearance of the wheel from the Middle East for the better part of a millenium--a theory that is no longer even questioned. Readers will find intriguing and superbly documented responses to some of these crucial issues. A veritable historical "who-dunnit", Camel and the Wheel is an entertaining and enlightening read!

Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War, is a must have and read for those interested in the Cold War and the NATO alliance, especially their impact on each other.

This is an excellent book on the subject of Native Americans. This book is filled with beautiful photographs and significant qoutes from various Native Americans, as well as brief descriptions of Native American history up to the present day. There is a very strong emphasis on various religious ceremonies such as the Sweat Lodge and Visionquest. Certain groups, namely the Sioux, Navajo (Dine) and Pueblos, are focused in on. All in all, however, this is an excellent book, more emotional and intuitive than anything else. Hopefully you'll be as moved by it as I was.

"The fate of agriculture is intimately bound up with the fate of democracy
itself....no civilisation has ever survived the loss of its agricultural
base" concludes Dr North at the end of a most worrying, informed and
penetrating survey of the legislation that has led to the situation British
rural communities now find themselves in.

Dr North knows intimately the ways of successive bureaucracies who have
managed, by a combination of well meaning bungling and carelessly imposed
regulatory burdens, to put British farming at a disadvantage. Although known
to be an energetic and witty Eurosceptic, Dr North does not lay very much of
the blame for the plight of British agriculture at the feet of the EU
Commission. It is, to our shame, Britain itself that has so mismanaged food
scares, EU regulation, the CAP and - especially - the recent animal
diseases.

The book is both depressing and exhilarating. Dr North is under no illusions
about the many sad mistakes to have hit the farming industry but he also has
sensible suggestions for avoiding complete catastrophe. He writes in an
accessible manner which avoids any kind of sensationalism. Far from jumping
on bandwagons, he looks closely and critically at the many conspiracy
theories of recent months and debunks them, seeing much more to worry about
in the narrow self-interests of scientists, big business and empire building
government departments. Criticisms of current farming practices are looked
at very coolly, as are the complaints about unfairness from the
supermarkets. Even MAFF/DEFRA, the department who so grotesquely mishandled
disease control, is dealt with fairly - although he pulls no punches when
looking at, for example, the dirty dealing that led to the loss of so many
British slaughterhouses.

If anyone still wonders why so many thousands of concerned people in Britain
have been calling out for a proper public inquiry into the government's
handling of the foot and mouth crisis they need only read this book. They
will then see the foot and mouth crisis to have been just the latest in a
long line of tragic errors - a final straw that cannot be ignored.

This book is a treasure. Mr. Van Dyke obviously has the soul of a poet, and within his graceful prose he paints vivid and soul-stirring pictures of some of the most beautiful places on earth. He describes in fine detail observations he made on a long trip, on horseback in 1898/99, over, around, and through the lower deserts of Arizona and California. He leaves no stone unturned as he describes the magnificence and beauty of each aspect of the desert, and pulls no punches in his criticism of man's destructive intrusions. To Van Dyke, the play of light and shadow, the star-pocked night skies, the ragged and jagged ranges of mountains, the perfectly adapted plants and animals, the sometimes shifting sands, and the silent river barrier known as the Colorado are each part of the unique sum which is, in its own harsh and angular way, a paradise of color, form, and life: "The Desert."

Speaking as one who has lived on and wandered through this same desert for nearly forty years, I can attest to the accuracy of Van Dyke's physical descriptions and, perhaps more importantly, I can note that I've found here both the magic and the majesty which he so ably describes. Still, this isn't a book for everyone. Those who prefer the gleam of glass towers and the roar of jet planes to flaming sunsets and yapping coyotes, save your money. Van Dyke wrote, "Not in the spots of earth where plenty breeds indolence do we meet with the perfected type. It is in the land of adversity ... that finally emerges the highest manifestation."

He was right, and he leaves us "The Desert" as evidence.

This dictionary of the vocabulary of the Old Canaanite, Phoenician, Punic, Moabite, Ammonite, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions is a state-of-the-art tool for specialists, yet it is so extraordinarily well organized and its material is so clearly presented that even those with no more than a nodding acquaintance with Semitics will find it easy to use.

And many non-specialists _should_ use this dictionary: they will find it immensely useful. For example, rabbis and pastors will find that when used judiciously it can provide as rich a store of illustrative material for messages on the Hebrew scriptures as Moulton and Milligan's _The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament_ does for sermons from the New Testament.

The dictionary's greatest defect, in my view, is a relatively minor one: the authors' imperfect mastery of English sometimes leads them astray. For instance, the dictionary states that in Imperial Aramaic _bl'd hn_ (I use an apostrophe to represent 'ayin) means "excepted if," an expression which seems to have gone out of fashion among native speakers of English in the sixteenth century. Since the dictionary does not identify the language of an inscription when it quotes it, beginners may complain that it is often difficult for them to know just what they are looking at. But this is probably a virtue, not a defect: those beginners need to be reminded that they are, after all, using a grown-up's tool.

...this two-volume, 1300-page work is a steal. I have wept at its beauties.

A wonderful and mandatory book for any Mexican War enthusiast. The best article is from one of the two Mexican historians, Miguel A. Gonzalez Quiroga. He examines the humanity on both sides. Mostly ignoring whose fault the war was, he writes a beautiful eulogy of the dead of both sides. Wonderful! The worst article was the other historian from Mexico, Josefina Zoraida Vazguez. She beats a dead horse. Her argument has been argued by American historians since the 60's. However, Sam Haynes's article on relations between the US, Mexico, and Britain is superb. It not only discusses the almost inevitable conflict with Britain and the US prior to the fighting at the Rio Grande, but also points out the why the British were not coming in to help Mexico. Another superb article was by Michael Roth's article on Journalism in the war. Roth's work is a must for those interested in the cultural side of the American soldiers experience in Mexico. Overall and excellent collection of work.