I have yet to read a William-Sonoma cookbook that did not have wonderful pictures and equally wonderful tasting dishes. This book lived up to my expectations. I would recommend this as a must for anyone who cooks frequently, especially vegetarians out there or people who are looking to decrease the amount of meat they eat. You'll never miss it with this recipe!

There has never, so far as I know, been any real argument over whether biological evolution occurs. The fuss, certainly ever since 1859, has always been mainly about two things: _how_ it occurs (Does it happen solely by "natural selection"? If so, by what mechanism(s)? Or does it happen at least partly by design?), and whether it's sufficient to account for the origin of life (and, more specifically, of human life).

Not that you'd know this from most public debate on the subject. If there's one topic guaranteed to generate letters to the editor written at a grade-school level or below from people who ought to know better (on _both_ sides), this is surely it.

Well, if everything you (think you) know about this debate comes from listening to somebody denounce it from the pulpit -- or for that matter from watching "Inherit the Wind" and/or reading _The Selfish Gene_ -- then you really should educate yourself before sounding off about it. And one thing you'll want to learn is a little of the history of the subject.

William Provine's scholarly history of the science of population genetics, originally written in 1971, is a fine place to start. It covers the development of the field from the time of Darwin through the early twentieth century, the period during which the synthesis of Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics was taking place.

You'll encounter some familiar names -- of course Darwin and Mendel, but also e.g. Thomas Henry Huxley, Sir Francis Galton, and J.B.S. Haldane. You'll also encounter a number of other names that probably won't be familiar to you unless you already know something about this field (or perhaps about statistics): William Bateson, Karl Pearson, Sir Ronald A. Fisher, and Sewall Wright, for example.

And mainly, you'll get a grasp of the way Darwin's theory and the new science of genetics dovetailed and reinforced one another in the synthesis of modern population genetics. If you don't believe in evolutiuon-by-natural-selection yourself, you'll at least begin to see why other people do and what's so intellectually attractive about it. And if you _do_ believe in it yourself, you'll get a healthy sense of the fact that it hasn't ever been a uniform, monolithic theory that left no room for any sort of argument.

It would be nice if everybody who felt entitled to an opinion in the evolution debate would read this book. A couple of others that ought to be on the shortlist: John Maynard Smith's somewhat dated classic _The Theory of Evolution_ ("pro") and Michael Denton's _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_ ("con"). There are more but I won't list them here.

Of course there are also lots of readers who don't need the foregoing warning. To them I simply say that this is a readable, well-researched history of its title topic.

Safire's collections of On Language articles are always wonderful. This gem is no exception. Safire explores myriad areas of interest to word lovers. However, he does so in an enjoyable manner. Safire has a splendid sense of humor, making this book a wonderful selection, even for those who are not interested in words/english usage for their own sake. The format is also quite enjoyable, as Safire includes readers' responses to his articles, further enlightening the reader on each subject. I especially enjoy, as always, his presentation of grammatical bloopers from Madison Avenue. In short, this book is positively priceless!

"Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign" is an excellent history of the Valley Campaign of 1862. For me, the highight of this book was that it was originally written in 1880. The notes in the back of the book make frequent mention of how the author was able to contact the people who actually served with Jackson - talk about primary source material!

Speaking of notes: they are sometimes more fun to read than the main text. In addition, they contain detailed reports of battle casualties are also found in the notes section.

The one negative that I found with this book (which is a 1995 reprint of the original) is that it doesn't have any maps. The text refers to various maps (1 through 7) - but they are nowhere to be found. This isn't a big problem, but I still think the publisher should have included them.

Allen's work is one of the most unique in Mormon historiography. Instead of writing about one of the Great Men of Mormon history--Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, or Heber C. Kimball--Allen has focused his attention on a man who was an intimate of Joseph Smith's and served as his scribe. Through Clayton's eyes, we see Joseph from a slightly perspective, from the point of view of a man who was loyal to the faith and devoted to the Prophet, but who also knew Joseph and his immediate family quite well.

Through Clayton's eyes we experience life in Nauvoo, Illinois, when the city was the Mormon capital; we feel the bitter cold of the winter of 1845-46, when the Mormons evacuated the city; as well as the great hopes people had for Utah Territory.

From Clayton's journals, we also see some of the disappointments and problems people went through during this period--the change in leadership after Joseph Smith was killed; some of the confusion on the trail during the trek West; and problems caused by dissident members of the Church in Utah.

Allen's narrative style makes this book impossible to put down. He grips the reader very firmly in the first few pages and doesn't let go again until the very last page. This is the story of one man and his experiences in 19th century Illinois and in Utah, complete with all the disappointments and heartbreak.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in Mormon history.

William Rodney Allen's Walker Percy: A Southern Wayfarer is one of the finest studies of novelist Walker Percy. While most Percy criticism emphasizes Percy's theological interests--sometimes to the detriment of the works--Allen offers a complex reading that blends biographical research, psychoanalysis, and intertextuality. His readings are mostly unassailable, and he makes a fine case for Percy as not just an important Southern or Catholic author, but an important American author as well, working with and subverting some of the ideas of Twain and Hemingway. Highly recommended.

I can't believe that this book is not reveiwed. As a big band trumpet player for twenty five years it provided insight into not just Woody Herman,but the musicians that played on his band . That's what this book is really about. The life of being on the road with a big band. I could relate as I've been their and if you read this book you can live it to. The book is written by the alumni of the band as a kind of tribute to the man who created the band that played the blues. Its' more anecdotes then a actual biography.

Kerrigan and Metcalf provide a comprehensive and clear method for writing expository papers. Although geared for a college freshman writing class, using this text at the junior high and high school level could preclude its use in college. I have used this text with my gifted intermediate elementary school students with great success. The students love the straight forward approach to writing, and do not feel that their creativity has been hampered in the least. If you are having difficulty teaching written expression, check out this novel approach!

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of self-appointed critics who, in order to try to convince others of their own individuality and intellectual honesty, feel the need to let everyone know that they consider Ginsberg (and every other so-called "Beat" for that matter) to be an overrated hack and more of a celebrity than a poet and blah, blah, blah, blah. It is true that Ginsberg's style has been imitated by far too many lesser poets who, obviously, don't posess anything close to the man's talent and it is also true that there's an equal number of people who claim to love Ginsberg but have never actually bothered to sit down and really read anything beyond the first page of "Howl." Inetivably, one wishes that all of these presumed literary critics (regardless of where they stand) would just shut up, read the poems for themselves, and form their own opinions regardless of what the current trend is. For if they did, they would discover a very talented poet who, even if he occasionally seemed to be repeating and parodying himself as he got older, still created some of the strongest American poetry of the latter 20th Century. While Kaddish remains his strongest work of poetry, his much more famous poem "Howl" still carries more of a raw, exhilirating anger. Written to be read aloud, Howl is basically a cry against the conformity of 1950s America but the anger found within still reverberates almost half a century later. Certainly, his vision of a drug-abusing community of outcasts wandering along darkened city streets remains as relavent as ever. Like any apocalyptic poem, it can be credibly charges that at times, Howl is superficial and there's not much beyond shocking images. I don't necessarily disagree with this -- Howl, for instance, doesn't carry the same emotional weight as Ginsberg's more personal Kaddish. However, if Howl is all image, they're still very powerful images. Would I feel the same passion for this poem if I didn't know the much-reported stories of Ginsberg's "best minds of my generation destroyed by madness?" In short, if the beats hadn't been so celebrated by the media, would this poem have the same power? Honestly, who cares? The fact of the matter is that yes, the beats were celebrated (or hyped depending on your point of view) by the media and Howl is a powerful poem. All other considerations are simply unimportant doublespeak. As for the other poems contained with Howl, they are a mixed batch but all have their value. Some are a little too obviously based on Whitman (much as countless other poets based too much on Ginsberg) but they all have their points of interest. Its obvious that none of them were chosen to overshadow Howl but to a certain extent, that works very well. After the rage and madness of Howl, its good to have these other poems to "come down" with.

With all this talk of anger and rage, I should also mention that Ginsberg's sense of joy is a component of his poetry that too many critics either fail to mention or ignore all together. Whatever you may think of his talent, it is obvious that Ginsberg loved poetry and found his greatest happiness through the discovery of new forms of poetic expressions. For all of its apocalyptic ragings, Howl never grows shrill because one can sense the fact that Ginsberg had a lot of fun composing (and performing) the poem. A few years before his own death, I was lucky enough to attend one of Allen Ginsberg's readings. Though he read mostly from Kaddish and his shorter poems (perhaps, understandably, trying to make sure we understood he actually had written other poems beyond the one everyone kept citing), he also read a bit from Howl. He proved to be an amazing reader, going over these words he must have seen over a million times past, with an almost childlike enthusiasm and joy. As he did this, I looked out at the others in the audience and basically, I saw rows and rows of identical looking "intellectuals," all posessing the same dead-serious expression on their face, nodding at each relavent point as if to make sure everyone understood that they understood genius. Contrasting their forced seriousness with Ginsberg's uninhibited joy, I realized that there was only one true tragesy as far as Allen Ginsberg was concerned and that was the fact that his self-appointed acolytes always took him for more seriously then he did himself. To consider Howl and Ginsberg without joy is like considering language without words.

Ginsberg - The name flashes at you like some familiar face in a crowd of a thousand faces. He grasps every thread of the Beat Generation and embodies it in his work. The poem "A Supermarket in California" details a mystic journey into the thoughts of a Wandering writer who, in such a mind, asks " ...and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?" The book "Howl and other Poems" wonderfully pieces together some of the most enticing and thought-provoking works of Allen Ginsberg. This book allows you to sample poems from the reknowned "Howl", to the light airiness of"Asphodel". At one time, Ginsberg was compared to the genius mind of Walt Whitman, by using the similar style of repetition in his poetry. Now, Ginsberg is noted for his own syle of Genius, and his use of "mental tatalization" that simply cannot be compared with any other, even those in the Beat Generation

....and wrote about it. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is one of the great works of modern literature. This is poetry from the heart, but more importantly, from the gut. Ginsberg writes with such guttural, visceral venom that it's easy to see why, in the taboo-ridden 1950's, he was so controversial, not just in "Howl" but also in poems such as "America". It's not controversy-courting material, however, it's simply Ginsberg telling it like it is, or at least was. Here, poetry is taken from the sole preserve of the romantics and transported to an almost documentary-like raw social comment, yet it's accessible and supremely enjoyable, even funny in parts. An essential read.

The Yage Letters is an interesting collection of correspondance from William S Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg spanning from Jan. 15 to July 10, 1953. In addition to capturing the essence of Burroughs style and subject matter, albeit in a rather raw form, the letters tell of his search for the mythic mind-altering natural drug Yage.

Incidentally, this search took place directly after Burroughs had fled from Mexico after the accidental death of his wife at his own hand. Although there are many jewels to be found in this small book for the dedicated fan of Burroughs' work, they are spread throughout with many tedious, repetitious and confusing entries. Ginsburg's contribution, which I hoped would lend a voice of explanation to the letters, is instead a spasmolytic account of his own experience on the same drug, seemingly penned when still under the influence of it.

All in all, an interesting account of one of America's most important author's experiences traveling through Latin and South America in the early 50's--a time of great upheaval and fervor in that region. Highly recommended for Burroughs fanatics and seems to prefigure his work Cities of the Red Night. However, for those not yet familar with his revolutionary writing style I recommend Cities of the Red Night, and Junky.

The Yage Letters was a correspondence between William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Burroughs describes his ongoing search for the ancient drug, starting in Mexico, and finishing in South America. Likewise, Ginsberg finishes where Burroughs left off and the rest is history. I enjoyed reading this book, and was pleased to learn about new cultures and info on hallucinogens. The book can become overwelming in some section, especially the last bit about the cut-up process; nevertheless, it's still an interesting idea, which Burroughs had utilized in every artistic medium. Also included are a few sketches by Ginsberg himself

This is the best collection of letters I have ever read, next to The Letters of William S. Burroughs. Bill's letters to Allen really TAKE YOU THERE, as he once said about Colette. Bill rants against the U.S. Point Four agrarian bureaucracy, missionaries living "the life of Riley", Peruvian boys who roll him for his money, eyeglasses, etc.; however, Bill said to Allen that he "shared with the late Father Flanigan - he of Boys Town - the deep conviction that there is no such thing as a bad boy." Overall, good reading and a good record of South America in the early 1950's.