As someone from a a profession where problem solving is a core ability, I was amazed from chapter to chapter how the members of the Garbage Project went about their endeavors to successful results. They truly show how something so ubiquitous(garbage) can contain so much information about our lives and our behaviors.

The men and women involved in this research project open the bag on the realities of this human behavior to shed light on how we act as consumers and as members of society in general. Our political tendencies are also exposed in investigating how groups endeavor to address the issue of solid waste disposal, often to unbelievable results, totally contrary to the desired end goal.

I wholeheartedly agree with some other reviewers in that this should be required reading for anyone interested in environmental issues, from the simplest aluminum can collector to the most active environmentalists.

This is billed as an archaeology book, but I would call it more accurately an environmental/psycological/science read, never very technical, often entertaining and always eye-opening.

Rubbish should be required reading for anybody who things he/she cares about environmentalal issues. Until reading the book, I would have never guessed all the facts--yes, hard, cold facts--documented in its pages. Garbage disposal is the ultimate out-of-sight-out-of-mind issue in our hurried consumer culture. So much of our opinions on garbage comes from an uninformed media (i.e. the ridiculously high estimates of landfill space taken up by disposal diapers). People act, lobby and debate based on knowledge that, as the book shows, is usually false.

As wasteful as we are, the authors present interesting comparisons of American families and Mexican families. The results will surprise you, to say the least. Also well presented are rational comments on the always present issue of recycling.

In all, this is a fascinating book. Like all great book of this nature, it is scientific but an easy read. Highly recommended!

This is a remarkable book. Using a scientific approach to rubbish, a team of archaeologists from the University of Arizona dive into the layers of what we throw away and reveal more about us then we can even begin imagine.

Every page unfolds an interesting tidbit of trivia, an astouding insight into those things that divide human beings socioeconomically, and those quirky little things we do, quite often un- or sub-consciously.

Who would have imagined rubbish could be so interesting and, oddly enough, so wonderful? You'll never be able to look at your trash, or your neighbor's, the same way again.

i discovered an old, beat up early 1900's copy of this at agarage sale and have since fallen in love with it. every possiblefamous poem from any genre can be found in it...plus, it is the only anthology to contain my favorite poem of all time, "the maniac" by george monk lewis.

If you like pre-twentieth century English and American poetry you should like this volume. If you are looking for only one anthology of such poetry to buy, I would recommend this one.

William Cullen Bryant is America's foremost Romantic poet, and I am amazed to see his poetry so neglected in the America of today. Overshadowed by Whitman and the free verse followers of the twentieth century, Bryant, as well as all formal American poets of the 1800's, deserve a Renaissance. And this rebirth of formalism in poetry will be slow in coming if the poetry essential to any aspiring poet's collecion runs for 79.00 plus shipping. If you have just that much space in your virtual shopping cart, I strongly recommend this beautiful American Romantic.

my book is dated 1878 and is a hard bound I enjoy reading this to my kids...some is rather deep and dark, as he talks alot of death, but it is interesting.

I read this a few years back, and it was brutal to get through, black clouds of depression lurking on every page. This is actually by way of saying that Maggin did his job well, although it couldn't have been much fun. There is account after account of a phenonenomally gifted yet self-absorbed monster who lived in a world of rationalization and evidently felt his talent justified doing unspeakable things to people (which, of course only means doing the same to oneself). You find yourself, as reader, torn: On one hand, one feels sympathy for one of the great musicians of our time who literally grew up on the road with no parental discipline (he started out, for example, at 15 with Jack Teagarden, a great player and undoubtedly a father figure to Getz, but also a notorious lush)who had to grow up fast and couldn't quite handle it. On the other, there's the aforementioned devil that the substances either created or, more likely, merely brought out. By the time Getz sincerely tried to mend his ways (a terminal illness will do it every time)the train had long left the station leaving much emotional wreckage in its wake.

But as with Charlie Parker, also widely reported to be a less-than-admirable person, we care about the art, and want to remember that. Sadly, this is where Maggin fails. He really means well, but his musical insights and prose style on the subject are, frankly, clumsy and less than helpful. He gropes for, but does not find Getz the musician or why he is so beloved. It's really simple: Getz was a fountain of melodic beauty, even as he swung his tail off. Improvising melodically sounds easy, but is one of the hardest things to do. Plus, his sound was a miracle--a force of nature. This is what puts Getz in the rarified category of accessible musical genius that includes very few others, Parker, Armstrong, Baker, Farmer and Davis among them. Maggin also even gets musicians' names wrong, a definite no-no.

Fortunately, Getz's music speaks for itself loud and clear. Perhaps someone will write the critical work Getz's enormous corpus of work deserves. Hopefully it will be a musician (we have a bad rap for being inarticulate and illiterate for some weird reason) However, Maggin deserves credit for his unflinching portrait of a complicated, at times loathsome man who nonetheless was chosen to be a conduit for some of the most rapturous and beautiful music this world has known.

Being a recognized translator and a Stan Getz fan, I would like to translate the book to Swedish. At the same time I am aware of the fact that certain aspects concerns an important family in Sweden, i.e. Silfverskiold. Anyway, Maggins book is of too great importance to be ignored and Stan Getz is a legend...

As far back as I can recall, Stan Getz had always been my personal favorite jazz musician of all time. Blessed with an incredible musical memory - you just have to listen to the amount of quotes he would use during the course of a solo - he was able to render some of the most obscure lines from popular music to jazz lines to Jewish anthems. His personal sound was readily identifiable, pure,wholesome and wondrously beautiful and never filtered with sentimentality. When you heard a Getz solo there was never any mistake who was playing. Lester Young flowed through him and initially set the mold to this master jazz musician. Stan Getz carried the banner from Lester and ran with it.This book covers much of Stan Getz and his musical as well as personal life. Behind his playing was a torturous life hampered by drugs, alcohol, severe depression and anger. You would never have known this about the man after spending years of following and listening to the progressions of his performing art. Unlike the Chet Baker book this book chronologically follows his music as well as the events in his personal life. I found it inspiring to read about various recording sessions and all that was happening in his life at the time. All this while following it, by listening to the particular recording mentioned. He was a perfectionist and achieved it most of the time. If he felt his playing not to be at par this depressed him and would sadly result in dissonance for him and his family. He thought he needed to be stoned to play better. The irony is that he was throughout much of his life. Maggin mentions the many times when Stan would be inspired, either by another musician or a piece of music, that his playing would suddenly ignite and reach incredible levels of Art. I, for one, have on many occasions,witnessed such performances by him.This again brings up the question that has bothered me as a very devoted jazz follower: In order for the music to become a pure art, must it have flowed through the artist through suffering and artificially altering his senses with drugs and alcohol? Further, are the jazz musicians of today too antiseptic to ever achieve pure estheticism? These are troubling thoughts and often lends me to think that it may be impossible to truly create in a totally sober environment. True, the music can be technically brilliant, intricate and interesting, but would it be Getz,Parker, Monk, Baker, Davis or Coltrane?The book is very well written by Maggin and covers the career of Stan Getz thoroughly. Maggin has struck a delicate balance between the music, life and times of Getz. The nurturing, friendships and relationships of the musicians who began playing, developing and expanding with his various musical groups are clarified throughout the book. This book is an indispensable guide for anyone that has followed any of the aspects of Stan Getz the musician and the man.

I am considering getting my teaching certification in math because I've always liked math but have not had a math class since high school. This book has helped me relearn and understand the basic facts necessary for algebra and geometry. Now I'm ready for my first college course.

The book is very well organized with clear explanations and nice examples

"Picturesque America" is a collection of almost 50 wood and steel engravings that was originally issued in 1874 under the auspices of William Cullen Bryant. This collection, issued in 1974, by Oliver Jensen of American Heritage Magazine is essentially a second look at this late nineteenth century self-portrait through more modern eyes.

As Oliver Jensen states in his preface, these pictures are an idealized view of our country, and are not to be taken as representative. The engravings are by both well-known and obscure artists, and all are beautifully done. Here are pictures of various cities, rivers, mountains, and lakes from the Gilded Age, but without any of that period's cynicism. Even the cities seem to take on a pastoral quality that is both striking and impossibly sentimental. If you want to see how artists viewed the idealistic and proud hopes of late nineteenth century America, then I recommend this book. If you want to see photographs of the late nineteenth century, then I recommend "American Album" and "America's Yesterdays," both by Oliver Jensen or Michael Lesy's "Dreamland" .