The Bountiful Flower Garden is a beautiful, lavishly illustrated compendium for growing and showcasing cut flowers from the southern garden. Beginning with the influences of the European, Asian and American heritages. The Bountiful Flower Garden reveals how to extend the life of cut flowers in order to bring their beauty indoors. It details when, how and where to cut, as well as when and how to employ chemical extenders. The Bountiful Flower Garden offers the reader invaluable information on other plants effective in cut-flower arranging. The Bountiful Flower Garden is enhanced with lists, essays, and step-by-step instructions regarding trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals, foliage plants, and berry/fruit plants. The Bountiful Flower Garden is the definitive guide and a wonderful book for family gardeners and interior designers to simply browse through in search of ideas and possibilities for enriching the atmosphere and decor of homes and offices.

It is impossible to say anything about David Halberstam's books without first saying how influential his journalism has been to an entire generation of journalists in the United States and overseas. When I was a young news clerk at The New York Times a long time ago, I read Halberstam's masterly "The Best and The Brightest," and I wrote him a note applauding his detailed research, the flow of his narrative, and the sheer sweep of his story. To my surprise, he responded promptly; it is a note that I still treasure -- just as I treasure every book he has written since. "The Children" shows Halberstam at the peak of his writing ability. He recreates the human environment of the frenetic years of the civil rights struggles, telling the extraordinary stories of some of heralded and unheralded players in a manner that is both gripping and provocative. The reader shouldn't be daunted by the length of this book (800 pages) because there isn't a single section that flags. "The Children" is certain to become a landmark book. It deepens our understanding of a traumatic period in American history, and illustrates vividly that ultimately all social forces and causes are shaped by individual men and women -- in this case people who battled racism and the ever-present antagonism of foes determined not to yield ground. "The Children" dramatizes the triumph of goodness; it is definitely a triumph of a genre that might be called histojournalism. It is a superb book by a towering writer of great sensitivity and skill.

David Halbestam's monumental book, the children, is a hymn of praise to a remarkable group of young people who did much, perhaps most, of the heavy lifting of the civil rights movement. But it is also the story of how one man, James Lawson, influenced a movement and changed a nation. There are many heroes portrayed in Halberstam's book, but perhaps the one indispensable person in the success of the civil rights movement was not Martin Luther King, Jr., but James Lawson. This is not to diminish or belittle the contributions of King, for what more can a man give than his life. But even Halberstam doesn't seem to recognize that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 might never have come about had it not been for the remarkable acheivement of James Lawson in attracting and training the first group of young, tremendously dedicated non-violent protesters in Nashville in 1959 and 1960. This is one of the most inspirational books I have ever read, and while, as several of the reviewers have already noted, the book could have done with some paring of redundancies, if you want a story filled with heroes and heroines, with light overcoming darkness and the good guys winning, this is your book. It should be required reading for every young person in America. James Lawson, jailbird, "draft dodger" and the ultimate "outside agitator," has lived a life of consequence and significance that most of us can only dream about. The remarkable thing is that he found other young people who wished to live lives equally challenging. Human beings, if they are lucky, are given only a few rare opprotunities in their lives to make a real and great impact on their world. Lawson, Nash, LaFayette, Bevel, Powell, Brown, Johnson and the wonderous John Lewis among many others, seized their opportunity, and made life better for not only millions of Black folk held hostage to racism and ignorance, but for millions of their white oppressors as well. The great tragedy is that as the Movement entered its period of greatest success, it was, like the Russian Revolution, seized by some of the most radical elements in what had been the fringes of the movement. And we lost Martin Luther King, Jr., the most effective voice of the nation's conscience.

David Halberstam, as always, tells the whole story of events in history of which too little is known. He brilliantly details the lives and experiences of the front-line soldiers in the civil rights movement--the men and women (actually boys and girls...hence the name of the book) who had the courage to risk their lives to attain well-deserved and historically denied rights. Prior to this work, historians focused on King and his associates. I prefer the perspective and approach of Halberstam.

The reader becomes engrossed in the lives of the people. Halberstam lets us in on their organization, their disagreements, affairs, loves, families, fears, hopes, failures and successes. Most amazingly, he contrasts the children's reaction to racism with that of their parents. The younger generation's frontal assault on the segregationist strongholds is truly amazing. The stories of the freedom riders is engrossing.

Not Halberstam's best book (that would be the Fifties) but pretty darn close.

This book is one of the closest pieces of work that we have to finding out what went on in the mind of John Paul I, Pope for a mere thirty-three days. Here, written when he was Patriarch of Venice, he writes to various people in literary and church history, and also in fiction. An amusing and witty book. Albino Luciani gets to the heart of the subject in each letter, and shows that sometimes the best answers are the most simple ones.

This book contains numerous lengthy excerpts from John Paul II's writings and speeches about non-Christian religions. It also contains essays about John Paul's view of non-Christian religions by Catholic and non-Catholic writers.

The most surprising thing about JP II's theology of non-Christian religions is how favorable he is. Particularly in his addresses to non-believers, his praise seems to know no bounds. He refers to Moslems as "brothers in God" and tells Buddhists and Shintoist that "On this earth we are pilgrims to the Absolute and Eternal." This last statement is particularly strange in light of JP II's belief that "Buddhism is in large measure an 'atheistic' system." (p. 53.) At times one gets the impression that JP II thinks the problem with the world is not a lack of Christianity, but a lack of "religion." For those who think that JP II is a reactionary who is opposed to all things non-Catholic, this book comes as quite an eye-opener.

This leads to the major fault I have with the essays. While they are for the most part informative, the authors never ask the question of how someone like JP II, who is supposed to be such a conservative, orthodox Catholic, can be so favorable to non-Christian religions. Could it be that JP II is not the traditionally minded Catholic that the media and his conservative followers portray him? This question is never asked. Not surprisingly, then, the essayists fail to interact with the one book I am aware of that raises this question: Pope John Paul II's Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions at Assisi by Fr. J. Dormann. The Dormann book (actually a series of three thus far) has some flaws. He is intent upon taking much of what JP II says in the least orthodox light, and in the context of JP II's alleged universalism. Nonetheless, the book highlights important facets of JP II's theology.

All things considered, this is an important and timely collection.

This is a fascinating look at papal elections. Hebblewaithe regales us with wonderful historical and behind-the-scenes details which alone make the book worthwhile. His descriptions of the likely candidates, though likely to be outdated when the actual event arrives, are informative. Hebblewaithe's own agenda tends to permeate the book; he seems intent to replace the "intricate and highly politicized process" with an intriccate and highly politicized process of his own, to ensure the election of what he hopes will be a more "liberal" Pope. Fortunately, this partisanship doesn't spoil an otherwise engaging work.

Pope John Paul II is the most widely traveled Pope, who redefined the role of Papacy through his pilgrimages far and wide. Within a few years of his election to the Papacy, his apostolic zeal took him to every continent with the Christian message of joy and hope. This book, "A Pilgrim Pope", is a collection of the Pope's messages given out to peoples of various cultures during the course of his travels beginning in Poland in 1979, up to Romania in 1999. Cardinal Achille Silvestrini who was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, has edited this collection, giving a valuable introduction to each message from the point of view of the context and the relevance of the message. But the message itself is in the form of excerpts from the Pope's speeches. Cardinal Pio Laghi has written a forward to this collection. This book, as a whole captures the man and mission of this pilgrim Pope.

This was a very informative book for children. I plan to put in in our school's library. It has information on Pope John Paul II from his birth until it was published in 2000. It has many color pictures. It is a very nice book.

Ms. Formicola's book is worth reading because it documents the world historical impact of John Paul II in the downfall of the Soviet bloc and in numerous other regions of the world. There are some editing and minor factual problems, but, overall, the book will provide the reader with an appreciation of the papacy of John Paul II as a great positive force in world history. She has performed a needed task that will hopefully be followed by a revised and updated version in the near future.

It is impossible to stress enough the awfulness of this book. Kirsch's book reports disguised as reviews are bad enough, but these totally unidiomatic, humorless, intellectually miniscule poems are worse. He's an absurdity: he writes like a Prime Minister or owner of a fleet of Whalers. Somone stop him!

I picked this book up in a bookstore (of course I later ordered it from Amazon.com), and was overwhelmed by the virtuosity, maserty of form and technique, and emotional sophistication demonstrated by this young poet. The language is so dazzling, the moods so evocative, the point of view so unpredictable (yet always firmly established), I was just carried away. I can't recommend him enough. Can this really be his first book? I'm amazed, charmed, hooked. I notice the book has already won the New Criterion poetry prize. More, undoubtedly, to follow. I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone searching, yearning for a powerful new voice in American poetry. I think I found him.