I enjoyed the book enormously. It is the best fiction book I have read in a long time. The description of the mine in the 1920's was the best I have ever read. Having read all of Tony Hillerman's books, I also liked the Indian connection. And the surprise ending was fun. I think it is an excellent book

This is a gripping story that is hard to put down. It is about the heroes of the 1922 coal mine strike when 600,000 miners went out on a strike that turned bloody. An historical bonanza about the people who gave up so much to help create the lifestyle we take for granted today. The fictional characters in the book are so lifelike I felt like I was living the events with them.

A gripping story that is hard to put down. An historical bonanza. It honors those people who gave up so much that we might enjoy our current lifestyle we take for granted. Basically, the history is about the national coal mine strike in 1922 when 600,000 miners went out on strike and the strike turned bloody. The story is about people who are so lifelike I almost lived the events with them.

Hal Virden, Shell Knob Missouri

Even if you have other eclipse books at home, TOTALITY provides fresh information about this fascinating phenomenon. This book describes in clear language what makes a total solar eclipse so special. The authors explanation of the science behind eclipses helps to demystify the eclipse, while the chapter devoted to impressions from a group of dedicated eclipse chasers, gives a sense of the magic of a total solar eclipse. There are plenty of drawings and photographs complement the writing, with an excellent set of references in the appendix. Highly recommended, Jerry Levy ....

After being three times under the Moon's shadow, I already know very well what kind of excitement, marvel and amazement a person can feel during a total eclipse of the Sun. Reading "Totality", not only you learn, understand and comprehend better everything concerning the "most awesome sight in the heavens" (sic from the book's review), but feel again those very special sensations you only expect to find during totality. If you are not infected by the eclipse bug after the 1999 European eclipse, perhaps this book will do the work. I only miss a bit more extent on science (chapter 9) and about historical eclipses (chapter 5). Anyway, a very well-written, complete and fascinating book.

"Totality" is a superior reference providing a very comprehensive coverage of solar eclipses. I highly recommend this book for advice on understanding, enjoying, photographing, and experiencing solar eclipses, especially total solar eclipses. The information provided is easy to understand as well as practical and useful. I have about a dozen books on eclipses and this is one is the best. "Totality" is a must read for anyone preparing to experience a solar eclipse.

It's a great guide book of PENTAX screw mount lenses. If you were a collector of PENTAX Lenses, you should take this book.

If you love those beautiful, charming and charismatic cameras... This is your Bible. A lot of fun for the prospective collector. Don't think twice, this book worth every penny it costs.

Many books have been written about the little Pentax camera. Most scratch the surface of facts about the camera and lenses and come laden down with fluff material about general photography. This book is different. It concentrates on the Pentax screw-mount cameras and lenses made from 1952 to 1977 and covers nearly everything there is to know.

Both the casual user and compulsive collection curator alike will find this book riveting. Nearly every item is illustrated in quality photographs. The book is written by a very dedicated collector but still remains objective, pointing out shortcomings where appropriate, strengths and other positive attributes where they are found. Even though most screw-mount gear is compatible across a wide model range, the author cites a number of compatibility issues that may prevent an unsuspecting photographer from suffering expensive damage to camera or lens.

For the collector interested in completing an array of Pentax gear, this book provides a road-map. From the most exotic devices like the Nocta night-vision photo attachment, to the most mundane filter, it's all here. In one sitting I learned that several items in my Pentax system were less common than I would have thought; the mystery of a seemingly mismatched lens hood was solved; unaccountable differences between two lenses thought to be identical were revealed like an x-ray.

The author solicits input, a very refreshing opportunity to contribute to the vast amount of info about this very influential camera marque. As with many books in their first printing, and especially technical works translated from another languages, this book has a number of forgivable errors, mainly typographical.

If you want to learn how to make photographs with Pentax cameras you are not going to get much help here. If you have a mercenary interest in the value of Pentax gear, this book will not help - there are no dollsr-values applied to the gear - in and of itself a redeeming quality in my opinion.

Serious collectors and erstwhile dreamers will want this book in their collection. Well worth the price of admission!

Valorian is the first novel in the Dark Horse series, a prequel to the other volumes. "Five hundred years before before the time of Gabria, the mage-heroine of [the other novels], the last remnants of the once great Clans struggle to survive in the barren foothills west of the Darkhorn Mountains." They need to cross the mountains to the vast Ramtharin Plains, but the high peaks and Tarnish Empire hold them back in the Bloodiron Hills.

In this novel, the hunter Valorian has shared meat with a group of Tarnish legionnaires and overheard talk of the legion pulling back to Tarnov, leaving the Ramtharin Plains unoccupied. Also, he heard mention of a Wolfeared Pass in the mountains which is large enough for supply wagons. He begins searching for the pass, but has had no luck for three days. He has wandered up through the foothills onto a ridge crest, but rain shrouds the peaks and drives him to shelter. When the rain blows through, Valorian returns to the crest and calls upon the gods to show him a way to save his people. A bolt of pure power arcs down through his sword and helmet, his body, and his horse to the rocky ground. They are both dead before they know it.

Valorian finds himself in a vast, unutterable silence. He is standing over his own body, and that of his horse, smoke arising from the corpses. However, he is not alone, for Hunnel, his stallion, is also there in spirit, if not quite in body. The land around them is slowly fading away. The two are facing down the Harbringers, the escorts of the dead, when the goddess Amara intervenes to save them.

It seems that some gorthlings have stolen her crown, her brother Sorh thinks her requests for help are a game, and she has no power over her brother's creatures. She asks Valorian and Hunnel to retrieve the crown and gives him the power of magic to use in the quest. She then returns him to the Habringers for escort to the realm of the dead.

When Valorian returns from that realm, he is dirty, tired and has a pounding headache. Moreover, Hunnel has a wound like a brand mark on his side shaped like a lightning bolt. Wondering about his dreams, he mounts Hunnel and goes home. However, he soon learns that he can use magic just as in the dream. Was it a dream or not?

This novel is the backstory of the migration of the clans to the Plains and the occurance of magic users among them. Valorian has other tasks ahead of him, including giving Hunnel the power to mindspeak, before his time is past, but he and his people will now be accompanied by the Dark Horses, Hunnel's descendents.

Recommended for Herbert fans and anyone else who enjoys a good fantasy story about riders of the plains.

This book is a gem. I read many books when I was in middle school, and the Dark Horse Clan books are some of the few I actually remember. I suggest you read at least one of these books, and I hpe you can get your hands on them. Try your Local library.

Wicked series! if this is the only one you have heard of, check out Dark Horse, Lightening's Daughter and City of Sorcerors also done by Mary Herbert

It's entertaining and educational. I really enjoyed. Great gift idea.

I have enjoyed reading the historical and personalized view of Van Gogh's stay at the Auberge Ravoux. The recipes appear to be ones that can be enjoyed. My husband surprised me with the chocolate mousse the other night and it was the best I have ever eaten.
Compliments to Alexandra Leaf!

Van Gogh's Table At The Auberge Ravoux isn't just an art book, though Van Gogh's paintings form its foundation - it's also a survey of recipes from his last home, providing an intimate portrait of his world and culinary appreciations. Recipes are from the cafe and boarding house where the painter lived his final days, and provide intriguing views of dishes and art.

I wrote earlier in the reviews about trying locate Fred Lowery's great music. If you know how to locate them please email me at buffaloebob@aol.com. Thank you I am sorry I had to do it this way because I am completely at a dead end..

I have not read the book, but I am interested in his music. If you knew Fred Lowery, you must know how to get his albums. I have tried alot of places, but no luck. Please help me if you can.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has not read it. Everyone is familiar with this man, Fred Lowrey even if you didn't know you are. He was the original whistler for the theme song on the Andy Griffith Show back in the 1960's. This man was one who could whistle different parts all at one time or whistle a tune and even put bird sounds along with it at the same time. I knew this man personally and he was really an inspiration to many people. I hope you will read the book if you haven't. You will enjoy it!

This is a fine account of the Wright Brothers' lives and achievements. It reads easily, and sets correct some of the myths that have grown around Wilbur and Orville (such as the vignette about building the little sled).

And I really liked the line in the Preface (...) stating that this particular biography wasn't going to delve into an extensive exploration of the Wright Brothers' ancestry, that some brief information about their family history was going to be presented in the first few paragraphs, and could easily be skipped by the reader. That's definitely my kind of biographer.

There are thousands of books produced each year on history and biography that are written by people with a preeminant knowledge of their subject but whose intellect suppresses their passion or perhaps simply masks the truth that they just don't know how to write -- how to let their passion soar upon the page.

In that respect Donald Howard has done with "Wilbur and Orville" what only the greatest of biographers can do. He opens the roof on a cloistered and inscrutable family and allows you to share with two of its members the adventure of a lifetime. You bear witness to the achievement of manpowered flight, not as an Archimedean moment of "Eureka!" but as a result of a dogged pursuit of knowledge through trial and failure.

The great genius of Wilbur Wright and his brother is one of unstinting determination. Failure is not defeat but only the next small problem to solve. They knew that experimentation without failure yields only a partial truth -- that failure and success are irrevocably intertwined. Only those with the persistence not to be discouraged by the false thread will find what they seek.

As a former aeronautics librarian for the Library of Congress, Donald Howard does a tremendous job in defining precisely the nature of the Wright brothers' achievement and in defending them from later detractors who crawled from the woodwork to lay their own partial claims to invention. In truth, the Wrights leaned heavily on the experimentations of others, letting the failures of others serve as a practical classroom. What they invented was not the first machine to rise from the earth under its own power, but the first that could sustain itself and be navigated across the skies.

As we near the one hundredth anniversary of their first flight, it is an opportunity to reflect and remember those two young men whose vision opened the skies and made our world a smaller, less alien place to live.

This is THE definitive biography! If you read only one book on their lives (although there are other recent good ones), let this be it. This is the great tale of discovery -- Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" but with a spiritual quest infused with the miracle of invention. It is not just their quest, their discovery. It is mine. It is yours. Just as Kerouac lies awake thinking and dreaming of Dean Moriarty, I think and dream of Wilbur Wright.

This volume surpasses another similar effort by Tom D. Crouch that came out at roughly the same time. Both books can be read profitably but Howard is better informed technically and a good deal wittier than Crouch. Howard's description of Samuel Langley's attempt to get his contraption into the air shortly before the Wrights' is laugh-out-loud funny. Crouch also suffers from his association with the Smithsonian Institution, whose scandalous treatment of the Wrights shocks even at this distance.

The book is so well done, but the talking book is far better. You enter the jounery with them. You hear the wisdom of the spirtiually elders and long with the creaking of the doors and beatiful pow-wow/drumming in the background. You get a great opportunity to hear the calling of the eagle out of the sky at wounded knee that was prayered out of the sky by Frank Fools Crow. The best part that makes me laugh is when Steve Wall and Harvey Arden go and see one of the elders. Steve doesn't have a chance to go into his spell when the elder tells them I know why you are here you lost your orginial instructations. Also when they go and see charlie Knight and he asks them each time when Ya Leavein.

As it seems many.. many. yeasrs ago it seems the thought of me reading this book aloud in front of Chris and BJ, i thought of how this man had entered a world so special and brought it back to all of us with a carizma only Steve Wall and Harvey Arden can bring you ,A tale of watermelon and cowboy hats,sights beheld in your minds true eye and the love that we all share ...and how thankful we are to have had them share it with us on the lakes Denver.NC. Tacowa-tuks and all:)................

This is a book of incredible beauty - linguistically, visually, and spiritually. In an era which seems to skew more and more to the material and superficial, the Wisdomkeepers who are interviewed bring life and its challenges to the level of essence. Although I have walked in the daily company of Native Americans for more than fifty years, my understanding of the nobility of heritage and centered life grew immeasurably with the reading of every page. Anyone who passes this one up will be the lesser for doing so.

My grandfather was born in 1888 in the town of St. Martinville, LA and turned the century with the rest of Mr. Capuder's cast of characters. Even with that connection, in reading this book I still learned things about my ancestors that I didn't know. It is amazing how real these folks still are on the pages of Le Petit Paris, as if they'd just closed their storefront or doused their lantern for the night, not the century. I am the author of a book of Cajun poetry, Porch People, that tells the stories of these same people two generations later and it is with great respect and pleasure that I add Mr. Capuder's vast information to my own.

The book takes you back in time. The author makes you think the people are still here with us today. And he makes you feel like you're living in the past. The book is very informative, interesting, beautifully detailed with pictures, and sectioned. It's our own heritage and the way they lived. It has cross references which makes it even more interesting. But most of all it leaves you hunger for more.

This book is a small treasure of riches from the past for rural southwest Louisiana. The turn of two centuries finds us viewing our ancestors as if they still worked this land and shopped these store fronts. I learned things about my own great-grandfather that our family oral history had not documented. Mr. Capuder has done a wonderful job condensing such a vast history into such elemental beginnings.

We have several children's books about adoption and this is by far my favorite. It focuses on what it means to be a family and how families formed by adoption are just like other families. It emphasizes the importance of talking about our feelings with one another. It discusses how the adopted child may have questions about his or her adoption and that questions are okay to ask. This book is filled with photographs of adoptive families interacting in every day ways. It is much easier for my son to relate to these photos than the cute animals in some of our other adoption books. I definitely recommend this book for adoptive families with young children.

This terrific 27-page book features many photographs of adoptive families and their children, and discusses the feelings that kids have about being in their families.

"When you were born," it begins, "you were ready to live and be loved, just like every other child in the world.

"And you needed to be in a family, just like every other child in the world."

Being in a family, the book tells children, means feeling like you belong. And belonging can happen whether you are born to a family or adopted.

Photographs of several adoptive families show children who are happy, angry and sad. Their families comfort them, and love them, even when they are not at their best. "Your family is special," the reassuring message concludes, "because of all the ways you belong together."

This is a great book for even for very small children who were adopted. Alyssa A. Lappen

As an adoptive parent, I found this simple little book to provide very clear and positive explainations about adoption that are readable to a child of any age. It is a great book to begin introducing the concept of adoption to very young children. It is not very long and it is filled with photographs of many types of families.