Over the years, I have thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Herriot's wonderful stories. When I found this book for my 7 year old daughter, I wasn't sure if she'd be able to follow along. What makes this book stand out is the fabulous drawings--they are full paged drawings, with not too much writing on each page. Each drawing is very detailed, perfectly matched to the accompanying text. I can't get over the talented illustrators (this book has two different ones, although the drawings are similar in appearance). I've loved re-reading these familiar stories and sharing them. This is one of the best books we've read this year, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it for a permanent library collection.

I think I have not had a more pleasant reading experience than sitting down next to a burning fire place, listening to my favorite antique clock ticking.. the patter of rain on the window panes and reading James Herriott. It is a memory of that afternoon that all these years later I have never forgotten. James Herriott is the most pleasant, relaxing, refreshing writer. Forget all the worries and cares and escape for a few minutes into a quiet world where the animals speak their own language.. A wonderful book, a wonderful writer. Thank You James Herriott for the memories.

I am a huge fan of any of James Herriott's writing. I love to read. My daughter, however, has a reading disability and the whole reading process is tedious and frustrating for her. We usually read together. This was one book that she requested to read again and again and again. James Herriott's heartwarming stories translate well into the youthful reader's world. Even if you are not an animal lover, you will find yourself falling in love with the lovable creatures and their eclectic owners!

Too long out of print, this paperback is a beauty. A compulsively readable book. Addie Pray and Long Boy take the South by storm. It's fun and fast, but also weighty and moving. The amazing movie was based just on the first third.

This is an excellent book. Having long been a fan of the movie, what a joy to discover the book that started it all. Addie Pray is a hilarious and charming narrator and her adventures pulled me happily along. A real treat. For anyone who likes stories of sassy girls growing up.

First of all, I was befuddled with everyone talking about a book titled "Addie Pray." I saw the film "Paper Moon" and later read a book with the same title and picture on its paperback cover, never realizing that Addie Pray was the original title of the book by Joe David Brown: they changed the title to coincide with the film in re-published versions of the book after the film became popular.

I love both the novel and film. As usual, the novel makes more of a social statement. If you check IMDb for the tagline to the film - "As P.T. Barnum put it, 'There's a sucker born every minute.'" - you get a sense of the difference between the point of view of the book's author as opposed to the producers of the film. The film producers are after the carnival-like novelty of a crooked bible salesman and his too cute daughter, who's also a thief at heart and, by the way, a better one than her father, who is basically a loser. The reason for this is clear: films are basically hi-faluted carnival acts. Apparently, the audience member is just another sucker.

The novel, on the other hand, carries a great deal more compassion for the human condition, particularly human frailty. Not to say that the film wasn't at all sentimental in this way. Ryan O'Neill's character, the loser father, was treated sensitively by director Peter Bogdanovich. But he (Bogdanovich) is unique, a prime example of the kind of compassionate intelligence that flourished to some extent during the Let It Be trend of the early 1970s, a trend that could do the human race well if it was allowed to continue forever. The producers/distributors reveal, with their tagline, a more Hollywood-typical ruthlessness. Like "Ha ha, people. You're all jsut a bunch of suckers ripe for the taking."

True, the overt theme of the story & film is basically about how hilarious it might be to watch such father/daughter con artists, especially when these con artists are working in 1930s territory where stupid, faithful Christian farmers etc. (middle America) dwelled. But the most important part of the story happens toward the end, when the thieves are confronted with their toughest mark: a more experienced thief (Mr. Robinson?, can't remember).

This character is far more developed in the novel. He's great fun in the film. But in the book he's downright Marxist. Indeed, one of the greatest anti-capitalist epigrams ever written, in the tradition of Wilde and Twain, is spoken by this succesfully affluent crook, in what is otherwise merely a silly/fun little dark comedy of a story (paraphrasing): "Anybody can make money. It doesn't take any great talent to do so. No, people who make money are merely people who can't do anything else. But it takes real talent to be a fine musician, or an artist..." Something like that (I don't have the book with me now). But you get the point.

Clearly, Joe David Brown, like John Steinbeck, was an author with an important, righteous opinion on the weaknesses of our capitalist system. He died a few ears after the movie was made. Too bad it wasn't Reagan who died and Mr. Brown, instead, the "great communicator" of the 1980s.

I just loved this book when I was a hooligan, I can remember Captain Kangaroo reading this one to the camera back in the day. There's many a valuable lesson lurking in here, and tricksterism galore. Coyote would be proud (as was Mr. Moose). Plus, you'll find a generic but decent recipe for vintage village stew...er, stone soup.

"Stone Soup" is a favorite folktale in our elementary school library. I just had a class of second graders beg me to read this Caldecott Honor book to them, and--of course--all our copies were immediately checked out.

I'm continually surprised--but pleased--that modern kids still enjoy these older illustrations by Marcia Brown, with their limited colors (see cover). This tale is a true classic, and this version has been around for many generations. It's part of the folk tradition in more ways than one. Let's hope we keep "sharing" this tale about sharing for generations to come!

If this book has one downfall, it's that the story is a little long. But that is overshadowed by the fact that the story is so interesting for children and parents, and the illustrations are first-rate.

Watch the hungry soldiers use their cunning and imagination to make a meal out of nothing. They entice the local towns people to share their food in the making of stone soup.

Concepts include: sharing, imagination, the will to make things happen, etc.

I chose The Threee Billy Goats Gruff by Stephen Carpenter because it was my Mom's favorite story book growing up. The day I brought it home she sat down and read it to me and my sister. My favorite characters are the three billy goats because there funny and can play tricks on the troll. The troll was foolish to let the small and middle size billy goats go across the bridge, and then have to fight with the big billy goat. He ended up falling off the bridge and all three billy goats enjoyed the grass on the other side of the bridge. Now they will be able to come and go whenever they want. There is a lesson to be learned in this book. Don't let someone influence you by saying that something is bigger and better if you wait for awhile. Overall the book is alot of fun to read. I would definitely share this story with my children.

Many of the reviews listed here are for other versions of this story. I have checked out all seven versions of Three Billy Goats Grufff available from our library just to see which was best for a three year old. This one by Stephen Carpenter has large, clever, uncluttered pictures and tells the story in simple language. The troll is not too scary and, all in all, this one seems just right for little ones. Another version, the elaborately illustrated one by Janet Stevens, uses a colorful, imaginative vocabulary and would have more appeal to adults and older children (5 or 6 and up?).

This book has brought great joy to my daughters life. She is 2 1/2 years old and she just loves this story. I highly recomend this book to any parent who enjoys seeing their children envolved with a book.

Brown's book is the finest study available on sexuality and the body in the early Church. This book sheds great light on the classical, Jewish , and Christian conceptions of the body and how important those conceptions were in early Christianity, especially for early Christian asceticism. This is a must read for anyone interested in gaining a serious appreciation of the early Church. Many histories focus primarily on the Development of Christian Doctrine and Ecclesial structures. An understanding of early Christian spirituality and asceticism illuminates early Christian doctrine and church structure even more.

This is a marvelous book and Peter Brown is a master of his field. _The Body and Society_ provides one of the best histories available of the human body and its relationship to Christianity in late antiquity. Brown traces early Christian ideas on the body and sexulity to their roots in the Classical world and Roman views of gender and sexual practice. Then, the Christian idea of sexual renunciation is explored through the ideas of major Christian theologians, dealing especially well with the complex views of Augustine of Hippo. This is a beautifully written masterpiece of historical research and is likely to be a modern classic.

This book is an introduction for those who are just approaching the ancient world of early christianity, and a guide full of insight for those who already have had a look of it. It is as important to philosophers as to historians, and to all those who are interested in the <> of Christianity and all the trouble it had before becoming one of the most expanded religions and cultures on our world. Moreover it makes an important step in linking the history of religion and of thought to the history of the human body. Mr. Brown wrote an excellent history book where any person seriuosly interested in the ancient world can find important information. Information, though, is not the only important thing in History, and in this book we can find much more: useful anecdotes are beautifully depicted in the very right place in order to make the thinking and the more practical need of our ancestors more undersandable to our western technological eyes. Also let me add, that this book is the result of some thirty years of reserch and extensive, but deep reeding of the writings and deed of the Fathers of Christianity. This book is, for us, an exceptional chance to read not only the translations of a very experienced translator of ancient literature but also his comments and crossed inquiries.

All the time people ask me about going out on their own. This is the book I make them read before I spend my time talking to them. Tells the inside story of how to make your dream real, or whether to keep on dreaming

When I made the switch from advertising account executive to poet it was intricate; the transition continues to be challenging, thought quite pleasant and rewarding. Brown's book was certainly helpful, and I especially appreciated its assessibility, as well as its creative approach to solving problems. Helpful too, was the profile of Alexs Pate, someone who left the corporate arena to pursue freelance creative writing. A wonderful, stimulating book.

Many books are inspiring, but this one goes beyond the dream stage. Brown not only tells how people really start up a home-based business, but he even gives the reader an occasional kick in the butt to get out there and do things right. Read this book before starting a business on your own, and then read portions of it again regularly to get back on track after the business has been started

This is a really excellent collection of 77 photos taken 1985-1995 across the high plains states from Montana to Texas. All are in richly captured color, and all manage to bring the panorama of this wide open country within the viewfinder of the still camera. Brown's achievement is to show the suggestive and telling details that transform these "empty" landscapes into spaces that are filled with drama and atmosphere.

A shot of winter prairie, south of Edgerton, Wyoming, reveals the contoured undulations of grasslands thick with frost, the banks of a shallow wash weaving into the distance, the horizon blending into the brightly overcast sky. The entire image seems sepia-tinted in the winter light. An early summer shot of ground water standing dark and rippled in a Nebraska Sandhills pond shows tufted grasses in the foreground leaning with the wind. A single slender fence post is echoed in the distance by a single tree in full leaf and just visible beyond it a windmill. The grass extends to the gently rolling horizon where a white thundercloud begins to pile upward into the vivid blue of a brightly sunlit sky.

Light, shadow, clouds, all seem still but are in movement, and many of the photographs heighten a sense of time's gradual passing -- the hour, the day, the season, the years. A roadside directory, indicating the distances to ranches has been weathered and sun-bleached. An old shingle-roofed elevator stands empty and overgrown with trees. There's a disused one-room school, white paint worn by wind and rain down to the bare boards. Tall weeds grow in the playground, and the setting sun casts the shadow of a swing set against a side wall.

And there are many signs of life, as well -- a general store with gas pumps and pop machines in front, a TV antenna overhead, and a gravel lot for parking; a barber shop with curving glass brick and shiny red tile facade, with an American flag on a pole at the curb; a last-picture-show cinema, the Rialto, with nothing on the marquee, but above it a wonderful mural of cowboys around the campfire and a chuckwagon with "Welcome to Brownville" on its canvas covering.

There are photographs of small town life -- a young man and little girl stand by the front door of a tiny house, the white siding bright in the late afternoon sun and a darkening sky behind them; a sign painter sits on the back of his truck under a hand-lettered sign, "Advertise Dammit Advertise Before We Both Go Under"; a floor-to-ceiling chalkboard is filled with for-sale notices for hay hauling, an early American sofa and matching swivel/rocker, a 3/4 ton Chev. 4x4, toy poodles, chow puppies, and a bird dog that "will point."

And this really only scratches the surface. The photographs reveal themselves slowly, and with a patient and inquisitive eye, there is much to see in all of them. If you have lived in or traveled through this region, as I have, you will see much that you recognize, recall its quieter pace of life, and marvel again at the great diversity of landscape, seasons, and weather.

Kathleen Norris has written an appreciative introduction to the book, and Brown has an essay at the end, describing a lifetime of fascination with this part of the world. The book includes a listing of all its photographs, noting the location of each and the year in which it was taken. For anyone who grew up on the Plains and now lives elsewhere, this book is like a return home. As a companion volume, I'd recommend Ian Frazier's book "Great Plains," which covers this same territory in words and with much the same attitude. Kathleen Norris' "Dakota" is another good one.

Photographer Peter Brown wanted this book to reflect the many jouneys he made across the Plains in his youth...''from open country to a small town, through this town, on to a larger one, and then out again into open space and sky'', he says in his Afterword. This great book of photos does just that.

Years ago I read Walter Prescott Webb's definitive study 'The Great plains' and I became fascinated by this amazing part of America (still haven't managed to get there yet) and he descibes how some of the early settlers stopped when the came up against the Plains, being used to the European countryside they just could not take the flatness, no trees, no hills and if it it was not the quietness it was the wind, blowing for days on end. These fine photos capture the flavor of what they must have seen.

The small town photos show buildings with a weather-beaten look, the Allensville, Kansas, city hall is no bigger than a simple house, the lovely aerial shot of Marfa, Texas shows a town you could drive through in a minute and after the photo of Marathon, Texas it is back to the flat landscape until the end of the book.

If you want to capture the feel of the Plains this book will do it for you...an excellent keepsake. Maybe I'll visit next year!

I found this book in the giftshop at the Sioux Falls airport in South Dakota. As a woman who grew up On the Plains, I found that Brown's photographs captured the true essence of the beauty one finds there. It's not simply a collection of "postcard" photographs of abandoned windmills, lonely pastures, and fragile pasque flowers. The photos depict the "real" plains, complete with its people and its architecture. Norris' introduction is, as I had anticipated, an enjoyable complement to the photos. This is a lovely book to share with people who appreciate the beauty of the Great Plains.

For anyone who struggled to understand why the nephron concentrates, then dilutes, then concentrates again the urine, this book will do much to ease your pain. Since medical school I've purchased Editions 1, 3, & 5, just so that I could keep up with my interns & residents. Here's how he does it:
#1: short book, (you know how intimidating those tomes can be)
#2: lots of diagrams
#3: end-of-chapter questions (with answers & explanations)

If you want to understand the Kidney, no matter where you are in your studies or practice, I wholeheartedly recommend this text.

Renal physiology can be very difficult to truly understand, and yet an understanding of it is essential to understanding so many aspects of physiology, pathology, and pharmacology. Studying diuretics for cardio pharm is nightmarish unless you understand the physiology of the loop of Henle. Vander takes this difficult yet important subject and makes it easy to understand. The book reads extremely quickly, and the flow-charts and diagrams are amazing. I never even opened Berne & Levy for renal phys--I read Vander's book (which is no longer than B&L's renal chapters) and cruised through renal phys. I am writing this review now, a year after I took physiology, because I am now studying for the USMLE Step 1. I have not looked at Vander's book in a year, but I still remember renal phys, and reviewing it now is the easiest part of my studying (the only easy part, in fact). That is because, thanks to Vander, I actually understand renal physiology. A great book!!

For any medical student that needs a comprehensive, but easily understood explanation of the structure and function of kidneys, I highly recommend Renal Physiology by Vander. It is very well written, and covers all the basic principles that you will need to know to understand pathologies associated with the kidneys.

First off, I'd like to agree with the first reviewer. This is an excellent compilation that stands by itself (although, for an intro class, it definitely requires a "discipline-oriented" text book like Kottak as a guiding force). I would recommend this book highly to my fellow anthros and to general readers alike. What follows is a brief summary of some of my favorite articles in the collection. The selections are all short and well-written, they make interesting and useful points and convey the complexity and utility of anthropology very, very well.

I've been waiting a long time to see Peggy McIntosh's wonderful essay on "White Privilege" in print somewhere. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing her give an oral version of the same talk a number of years ago and am very very pleased to see it published here for the benefit of students. The book is worth the price for that article alone.

However, this is not the only gem in this collection. Phillipe Bourgois' work on crack dealers is introduced here as is Gerald Murray's work on wood farming as a means to encourage re-forestation programs in Haiti. There are also classics such as Richard Lee's story of the !Kung San insulting of his gift of a Christmas ox ("Eating Christmas in the Kalahari") and Laura Bohannon's failure to get Tiv elders to see Hamlet as a story about incest, revenge and justice. Jared Diamond's revisionist view of the advent of agriculture is also here (perhaps an antidote for his more recent "Guns, Germs and Steel" though undoutedly similar in style).

Other personal favorites of mine include Eugene Cooper's discussion of Chinese table manners (also a must for people who want to teach a course on the anthropology of food), Richard Reed's examination of the tension between environmentalists and indigenous communities in Paraguay, Joan Cassels' excellent analysis of surgery as a male-gendered medical speciality and Paul Farmer's and Arthur Kleinman's thoughtful peice on suffering and AIDS in Haiti.

Incidentally, I would thoroughly recommend anything by Paul Farmer to readers interested in social medicine. His scholarship and humanity are both quite phenomenal and totally justify the attention he has recieved due to the MacArthur fellowship.

I only have a couple of quibbles with this book and even these are not so much criticisms as comments for the unwary: Jennifer Laab's peice on corporate anthropologists seems to have been written for a corporate audience as a selling point for anthropology. As such it plays up the notion of anthropologists as service providers for corporate interests in a way which is a little frown-inducing for an academician such as myself. Not because I don't approve of anthropology in the private sector, but because the peice itself seems to argue that anthropology is merely a set of techniques that can be workshopped (like team-building exercises)to busy executives for the greater good of the company. Again, this is a VERY worthwhile point to debate, but not one that easily stands without comment. Secondly, the article by Wade Davis (he of "Serpent and the Rainbow" fame), while again discussion-worthy, seems a little superficial, dated in language and probably replaceable (Robert Voeks'recently-published "Sacred Leaves of Candomble" is one alternative that springs to mind). Lastly, I would like to plead for the inclusion of a selection on tatooing or bodily adornment of some sort in any future editions. This is a topic of enduring interest among students and would definitely be an asset to such a nicely-balanced and valuable collection.

When I took a sophomore level anthropology class at my University, Applying Anthropology was required as a secondary reading text, in addition to Kottak's Anthropology (7th edition). Applying Anthropology contains 52 articles in the categories of Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology, Culture and Communication, Culture and Food, Culture and Race, Economy and Business, Gender and Socialization, Politics & Law & Warfare, and Social & Cultural Change. Instead of being a textbook that was something I just read for the class that required it, it turned out to be a book that I would have bought for my own personal purposes. Also, in addition to enjoying reading it, I learned a lot about anthropology. One of my favorite articles discusses what may have happened on Easter Island that resulted in the demise of an entire culture. All in all, Applying Anthropology provides an interesting approach to learning a lot about culture worldwide.

O'Reilly sets the standard by which all other technical publishers should aspire; their books are technical, dense, and personally, I love the pithy, no nonsense tone. I have never been disappointed with an O'Reilly book. This book continues the tradition of above par books and I can attest that hands down, this is the best book available on Samba.

Remarkably, the information inside is aging very well. While it doesn't cover the most current version of Samba, this book is by far the most informative and helpful on the subject available.

While the book is fortified with examples, screenshots, and an easy to read style, by far my favorite portion is on troubleshooting (complete with a "fault tree"). It is just a way of systematically approaching connectivity problems in relation to the samba server.

I mean, really, what exactly is "System error 53?" This book won't tell you outright, but it will help narrow down the problem to solvable proportions.

The included CDROM also includes a mirror to the official Samba FTP site, including sources, binaries, documentation, and utilities.

When I have Samba configuration problems, or questions pop up about Samba, this is the book I reach for. If pressed for time and pressed for answers by coworkers, I have been known to pull it off the shelf and lend it out.

Samba is one of the wonders of the Open source movement. A small bunch of guys in out of the way Canberra, Australia develop a product that emulates a Windows Server Message Block (SMB) server. They do such a good job that within a couple of years they have sponsors assisting programmers around the world in bringing out a product that does a better job than anything Microsoft offers.

I've installed Samba in a number of different environments and used it both as a server and client. I wish I'd had this book. It does a good job of explaining how to set it all up, get it running and maintain it. Nothing else does as good a job. While you can (probably) install and run Samba using just the online manuals you will find it a lot easier if you buy this book. It certainly saves me a lot of time.

It is well written, easy to read, thorough and well paced. It contains a large number of examples and goes through the almost monolithic smb.conf file till it feels like an old friend.

While it does cover some of the underlying network protocols it does not unnecessarily dwell on them, it is a good mix of explanation and getting your hands dirty examples.

The book is well structured, starting with simple configurations and proceeding through to complex ones involving printers, domain controllers and the like. A marvelous way to learn, at the same time it is easy to find particular snippets of information when you require them. I find Appendices C (a configuration option quick reference) and D (a summary of the command line options for the daemons) and the fault tree in Chapter 9 particularly useful.

I would recommend this book to everyone who wishes to integrate Samba into a Windows environment, regardless if it is a small home network or an entire office building. And yes, you can download the entire text for free - the Samba team have now adopted it as part of the official documentation thanks to the authors and O'Reilly, but call me old fashioned, I like having the paper.

Network administers will invariably face the task of integrating Windows systems with Unix or Linux ones. Samba provides an excellent solution to this problem, but for people starting out, Samba seems like a daunting task.

Not so with this book. Prior to reading this book, I had no experience with Samba whatsoever. Before long, I found myself setting up Samba on a linux server and setting up file shares to Win2k systems. The massive smb.conf configuration file no longer looks menacing, but rather, its easy to read now.

I see why this has been adopted by the Samba team. Its very easy to read, very relaxing in its pace, and very thorough in its treatment of Samba topics. I do not believe there is a more comprehensive on Samba to date. Even the reference sections in the back are very nicely organized, and very easy to use.

What really tops this book off though is its treatment of Windows networking. For those who have little or no understanding of Windows and how networks are organized, this book covers the topic very well. Unix/Linux administrators will be glad they read this chapter.

In closing, I strongly recommend this book to Network Administrators, particularly those using Unix/Linux. This book is very comprehensive, but very easy to read.