I'll admit it -- I'm biased toward Carl Perkins. I lived several years in his hometown of Jackson, TN and met him many times. Having those experiences, I was curious how this book would portray Mr. Perkins. After reading this book, I have more respect for Mr. Perkins. True, he wasn't perfect (who is?), but he had reason to be bitter about his career and his life, instead he never gave up. He pulled himself up after each setback and kept on striving. When you think about it, what would be the alternative? He was not only a great musician, but an active humanitarian. His work with children and their causes is nearly as impressive as his musical career, yet most people don't know of this. I went to Carl Perkins' funeral, and in the little city of Jackson, TN you would have thought time stood still. This book will give you the feeling of getting to know a true American success story . . .

What a story!! This should be a must read for all of us who get to feeling sorry for ourslves. Carl Perkins came from abject poverty,a racially discriminating South,was known as "white trash",wrote one of rock n rolls seminal tunes,was on the brink of superstardom,lost it all,became a sideman to another Sun records stablemate,delved into the pit of addiction,rose again,had alot of his early work recorded by a group known as the Beatles,played with the likes of Eric Clapton,loved performing with his own family,lived his life humbly,nursed somewhat of a grudge against Sam Phillips,Jerry Lee Lewis,and Elvis,made peace with himself,and left behind the legacy of a man who had seen the beast within and had conquered it.
This is a must read for anyone who has any interest in music,or for that matter,the sociology of the South during the late 1940's and 1950's. It is also ,quite simply,one of the most inspiring books that I've ever read,Thank You, Carl Perkins!

Much has been made of the tragic events in Carl Perkins' life, but in the end his values and personal strength stood him in much better stead than most of his Sun contemporaries (see Escott and Hawkin's book on Sun Records). Pretty good for a kid who, with his brothers, were skinny from undernourishment as children. This book follows Carl from childhood until near the end (he passed away shortly after publication). The section on the Tennessee tonk scene in the 40's and 50's and "tush hogs" is especially colorful.

This is one of my favorite Christian books, and Carl Lawrence is a favorite author. The book repeats some of his earlier book, now out of print, "The Church in China." Even so, this does not detract. Lawrence details the movement of the Holy Spirit in China, while giving examples. Also, the book gives a history of Chinese missions, at least partly explaining this movement of Christianity in a hostile country. A great book!

Reading this book encouraged me greatly. The work of the Holy Spirit among Christians in China is phenomonal. The lesson of how God turns what to man seems evil into good is prominent throughout this book. I recommend this as reading for all Christians who believe that what we are about is to follow Jesus' command to go forth, make disciples, teaching what Jesus has taught us. I sincerely pray that this book will be printed again.

This book renewed me more than anything I've read in ten years. God is moving in China!

I had a dream when I was younger to be a Lawyer practicing Corporate Law or IT-based law. That dream never came true because now I'm an IT manager, but the fire was stoked when I picked up this book to review for one of my Masters courses. The book give you a clear understanding of legal terms, the trend with a focus on Internet Law, and how businesses will need to prepare themselves for the future precidence setting rulings to come. You don't have to be a legal geek to appreciate this work. Even outside of my scholastic requirement for getting this book I think I would have enjoyed it on it's own. It has indeed sparked a desire to search for more books on the subject.

This 12 chapter book is intended as a college text for business majors. However, it also deserves a place on the working professional's bookshelf, and is suited to both business and IT professionals.

Highlights: It's an up-to-date text that addresses the full range of topics from the contemporary legal environment defined and changed by the internet, to business agreements. The chapters on contract law, privacy and liability are essential reading for anyone involved in e-commerce, either as a business process owner or as an IT professional who is responsible for online content.

The first seven chapters are my favorite because they covered information that is of particular interest to business and IT professionals. Chapter 1 covers the legal landscape of e-commerce issues, then segues into three chapters on contract law, present and future issues of contract law that are specific to e-commerce, and contracting and licensing software. These chapters realistically address real issues and challenges. These chapters build the foundation for the next chapters that cover torts in general, and cyber torts in particular, and liability issues (often overlooked, but a all-too-real exposure).

Chapters 8 through 10 cover intellectual property in great detail. This topic is an inescapable reality of doing business over the internet, and is one in which the legal issues are still evolving. I recommend that anyone who focuses on this aspect of law also read Bill Zoellick's excellent book, CyberRegs: A Business Guide to Web Property, Privacy, and Patents. Chapter 11 is a brief examination of business organization that can be glossed over, but the final chapter, 12, on cyber companies and internet agreements is an essential chapter that is filled with invaluable facts and advice.

Don't let the fact that this is a college text deter you from purchasing this book. It is an excellent deskside reference that will guide you through real life issues.

A leisurely canoe trip across the North American continent. Hey honey let's take the kids. It'll be fun! X-treme eco challenge for the whole family. No one can be voted out of the boat. What are you goig to do.....leave one of the kids beside the river 1000 miles from home? They are all survivors! Did I mention they almost beat the French canoe racing team that was attempting to set a new record. Awesome! I guess they were in a hurry to get back before school started in the fall. What did you do on your summer vacation? I've canoed Texas, Washington, and Minnesota but nothing like this. I borrowed this book; Now I want my own copy. Do you want to feel alive, get closer to your wife and family, or maybe just bond a little with Mother Nature. Let the Shepardsons show you how as they take you along on The Family Canoe Trip. If you like Camping, Canoeing or Adventure I recomend you read this book.

The Shepardsons (including their children, Tina, 8, and Randy, 5) had the determination and skills not only to undertake paddling from New Hampshire to Alaska, but to succeed at it! As fellow paddlers, my husband and I enjoyed reading their story on a much shorter canoe camping trip with our son, Matt (3 1/2), in the Adirondacks. Their trip, however, covered a huge variety of terrains from relative civilization to northern mountains and tundra. This book almost makes you want to be there despite the inevitable hardships and mishaps. It is spellbinding.

Carl Sandburg's Huckabuck Family will delight and charm children of every age with a story of family pride and optimism. When the Huckabucks Nebraska barn burns down and all their popcorn pops, they decide to go on the road and wait for a sign to tell them when to come back home. Each year they move to a new town and Papa finds a new job. The Huckabucks may have good luck, or bad, but they always have each other. David Small's illustrations add just the right touch to the story and are so detailed that even the farm animals have facial expressions. So, sit down and take a trip across the country and back with the Huckabucks. I promise, you won't be disappointed. This is a wonderful book the whole family can share.

This book is a satisfying follow-up to David Small's last twobooks, The Gardener & The Library. Though this is an old story its optimistic message suits Small's whimsical style beautifully. I'm thoroughly confused by the review in Kirkus that criticizes the repetitive nature of the names--this is part of Sandburg's poetic form--as well as the "pointless" nature of the Huckabuck family's travels, which is actually the whole point of the story. One must take a change in luck in stride, go out and find one's new fortune, and you may even find yourself back home having learned a thing or two. Cheers (& 5 stars) to the Huckabucks, Sandburg, and David Small.

I'll be honest: I picked this up because I wanted a copy of _Walden_, and getting a selection of Thoreau's other writings was icing on the cake, so if all you want is to confirm that this contains the uncut text of _Walden_, I assure you that it does. For completeness, though, I'll mention everything else in the book as well, with a few quotes to let Thoreau speak for himself.

"Natural History of Massachusetts", 1842 - This isn't what the title might suggest, still less the official subject (given the usual dryness of scientific papers). Like G K Chesterton's Father Brown, Thoreau takes the view that science is a grand thing when you can get it, but that the true scientist should be able to know nature better, and to have more experience of it by noticing fine detail without losing the big picture. "I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the system."

"A Winter Walk", 1843 - Exactly that, seen through Thoreau's eyes. "There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill."

"The Maine Woods", 1848 - A year after retiring to Walden Pond, Thoreau took a trip to Maine, recorded herein. Some of the word-pictures drawn include those of the pines before logging - and afterward, when rendered down to matches. But once away from the areas near Bangor, much of the country was still wilderness. "And the whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually devoured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man be warmed by it."

"Civil Disobedience", 1849 - Very influential on Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and quite capable of making a reader squirm even today - if one isn't prepared to back up one's principles with action.

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", 1849 - Not just a travelogue; this is Thoreau, after all, so extra layers of historical discussion and a little poetry are here too. This is a revised and somewhat trimmed version from the original - Thoreau's own later text.

"A Yankee in Canada", 1853 - The beginning of Thoreau's tale of his first journey to Quebec, with a bit of culture shock at his first exposure to a Roman Catholic society.

"Walden", 1854 This would be worth reading if only for 'I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...', re-popularized in these latter days because of its prominence in the film _Dead Poets' Society_, I expect.

"Journal", 1858 - Not Thoreau's entire journal for 1858, but a selection. The complete journal was his collecting-point of raw material - everything from first drafts of letters, essays, and lectures, to a review of every natural detail the trained surveyor had seen that day.

"The Last Days of John Brown", 1860 - Thoreau didn't attend John Brown's memorial service, but wrote this essay, which was read for him. "Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also."

"Walking", 1862 - "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks..."

"Life without Principle", 1863 - "We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial - considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry."

"Cape Cod", 1864 - "The Wellfleet Oysterman" - Thoreau's chat with the elderly oysterman (being asked in after a walk) proves his observation works for human beings as well as the rest of nature - and that he has sense enough to ask somebody who ought to know about nature in the area. "I was fourteen year old at the time of Concord Fight- and where were you then?"

A miscellaneous selection of Thoreau's poems is also included, along with a chronology, bibliography, introduction and epilogue by the editor.

This is a "collected works"-type volume, which I recommend because it gives you the whole package deal, and if you enjoy *Walden* you'll probably want to read more. *Walden*, Thoreau's most famous work, is my favorite book in all the world. Though it is admittedly not for everyone, there is a virtuosity and vibrance to his prose which led one critic to call it some of the best poetry in the English language. In 1845 Henry Thoreau built a small house with his own two hands on the shore of Walden Pond, just outside Concord, Massachusetts, and proceeded to inhabit it for two years, two months, and two days with the purpose of discovering the meaning of life, of paring life down to its most basic elements through self-exploration and communion with nature. Seeing nature through Thoreau's eyes is an experience akin to that of a farsighted person donning corrective lenses for the first time and discovering the extraordinary beauty of things which had been right in front of him all his life. This should be required reading for anyone with any environmental feeling and for anyone interested in self-reliance and personal freedom (which should be all of you). You might want to read "Civil Disobedience" too: people of the ilk of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. lived by this essay on passive resistance. The introduction and epilog by Thoreau scholar Carl Bode frame the volume well and offer enlightening and apt insights into Thoreau's history and psyche

The Brakhage Lectures are a collection of avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage's reflections on the techniques and contributions to cinematic evolution of four major directors-- Georges Melies, D W Griffith, Carl Dreyer and Sergei Eisenstein. It was first published in May 1972 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where Brahkage taught and delivered these lectures (or rudimentary forms of what turned into these writings) during the fall and winter semesters of 1970-71. The book is 106 pages in length, 23 of which are taken up by reproductions of photographs and film stills. It includes a breif foreword written by the poet Robert Creeley.

Brakhage has produced a lot of writing, but most of it reflects upon own aesthetic process. Occasionally he turns his thought toward the work of his compatriots in the avant-garde-- as he does in FILM AT WIT'S END.

As a document of Brahkage's thoughts about the more tradition cinema, with which he had little to do, BRAKHAGE LECTURES is a fascinating artifact. Brakhage's Romantic construction of the genius of these filmmakers and his insistence upon finding meaning in the most minute details of their lives provides a more telling portrait of the author than of his four subjects. The various essays are also riddled with insightful obsvervations which demonstrate both Brakhage's knowledge of film history and the discourses which penetrate it. As a text on film theory, it is less relevant-- there are many better published works on all of these directors.

This book has the most complete selection of Thoreau's poetry that I have been able to find. I found it absolutely amazing. Thoreau uses such simple words to convey a deep and complex message that not many people can pull off. He brings what he has seen to life and makes the words dance, laugh, sing and weep as they flow off the page. One of my favorite quotes from this book that reminds me of Oscar Wilde is"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it." So don't take my word for it, read it and fall in love for yourself.

There are few trail maintenance books around, just lots of little pamphlets such as those put out by IMBA. This book is worth the money for the many ideas and pictures even for those thinking about designing and/or maintaining mountain bike trails.

The opening chapter, which discusses safety, should be a must-read for those needing Emergency Action Plan info for work days. The tool list is quite good for most areas where you would likely ever be constructing trails.

Although some sections (constructing steps and moving rocks around using rope sling set-ups for instance) are not relevant, I found many good ideas in here for designing mountain bike trails. The section on drainage techniques is excellent and the whole section discussing proper trail design is a must-read.

A good book and hopefully the mountain bike community will have one of its own (IMBA, are you listening?) soon.

I had to purchase this book for my english course, but after only two weeks of reading and discussion I feel such an empowerment by the selections. I wouldn't be able to choose a favorite author because each one is represented so uniquely by their stories. After my class is over, I look forward to sitting down and reading those that were not assigned and re-reading those icons of society that were picked by my professor. If you want a short introduction to various famous authors then this is definitely a book you will enjoy!