This is a wonderful book on Texas snakes. As one who recently had a (noninjurious) run-in with a western diamondback rattler, I can attest that the photography is stunning. This is almost an artwork. This book provides a wealth of information that is easily accessible to the nonspecialist on each species--range, specific habitats within that range, generalized behavior traits, likely reactions upon encountering humans, diet, mating habits, etc. The only real criticisms I have of the book are minor. It would have been nice if the color plates had been interspersed with each species covered, rather being placed all together. As it is now, one reads up on the snake and has to thumb through the book to find the picture. Also, as many of us buy this book to be able to identify snakes we are likely to encounter in normal activities, more information pertaining to where one is likely to encounter each species (e.g. in leaf litter, under rocks, inside ranch buildings) would have been helpful. This is a book that every Texan who wanders outside should have, as well as those interested in herpetology or snakes. As a librarian I have encountered numerous books on Texas snakes. This one is far and away the best.

The authors inform us in the preface that work on this book began twenty years before publication. It shows. It has all the usual sections you would expect from such a guide: a general introduction, an identification key, a note on venom, an extensive bibliography and, of course, species and subspecies accounts. But those accounts have a level of detail and thoroughness that are unmatched by any other guide, and each gives an in-depth survey of the scientific knowledge of the snake in question. The range maps are extraordinarily detailed and precise, and the 208 color photos are nothing short of exquisite.

Nitpickers will surely complain that this book does not always follow the standard common and scientific names established by Collins. Suffice to say that there is a fierce debate about taxonomy at the moment, and to dismiss a book because its authors take the other side of that debate ignores the treasure of knowledge that a book like this offers. Frankly, most readers couldn't care less one way or the other; there's more to herpetology than just taxonomy. The snakes remain the snakes no matter what they're called.

If only guides to snakes of other regions were this good. Highly recommended.

An excellent book for anyone who wants information about the Snakes of Texas & even surrounding states. Comprehensive in content: from vivid color photographs for easy identification; myths, legends and folklore, to behaviors of specific species, it has it all!

....is what the author shows you throughout this highly readable tale of Scratch Flat, a mile-square locale near Concord. The history of its geography, botany, and inhabitants unfolds here in lucid prose devoid of technical jargon. For the ecopsychology course I'm putting together I plan to make this book required reading.

A recommendation: the word "primitive" ought to be removed from future editions when used in reference to American Indians. Many regard it as derogatory, and even white readers may well wonder who is more primitive: those who inhabit the land with care or those who kill its inhabitants and "develop" it out of existence.

I have lifted whole lecture topics from this book, and passed on copies to numerous students and friends. The idea is lovely -write an ecology based on an intimate history of one square mile of land-and Mitchell delivers it up in excellent prose that keeps one reading even when the material turns a tad dry. Why only 4 stars? I am not sure if this book will have "legs" beyond the landscape and history that it celebrates. It would be great to have a few more Mitchells do something similar to the westward and southward, so that we could expand our perceptions beyond the deliberate confines that the author has set. For those of us within a day's drive however, this is definitely a book to read.

Mitchell goes far beyond "reading the landscape" of his town. He analyzes the history, anthropology, architecture, agriculture, geology, botany, and zoology of an area northwest of Littleton, Massachusetts, called "Scratch Flat." As if that's not enough, he goes one step further by investigating and uncovering the ancestral *spirit* of the place. This book is an easy, enlightening read that will not only have you looking differently at your own neighborhood but also contemplating our traditional notions of time. "[W]e are the future of the past, and the past of the future." (p. 200) Certainly food for thought.

Perlin's book is an ambitious overview of the use of wood in world civilization. Therein lies the both the book's strengths and weaknesses. Like any work that attempts to do a global history, inevitably some regions and some eras get very short shrift. Still, A Forest Journey is interesting, and well worth reading by anyone with an interest in environmental or forest history.

This book is a study on the rise and fall of civilizations, as caused by their management of wood resources, or in other words energy resources. Perlin tells a convincing tale on what makes a civilization tick. This is a very good book to read for anybody who cares about what the world is coming to, and perhaps even for those who don't. It is filled with fascinating historical material.

The limitations of the book are that Perlin is not as great a storyteller as DC Peattie (many of the stories here would make a sweeping tale in the hands of a truly gifted writer) and that the choice of civilizations treated is very much oriented towards the US.

A Forest Journey first reminds us of the absolute importance of wood to human history: how much we have depended on wood for our very existence:

"Throughout the ages trees have provided the material to make fire, the heat of which has allowed our species to reshape the earth for its use. With heat from wood fires, relatively cold climates became habitable; inedible grains were changed into a major source of food; clay could be converted into pottery, serving as useful containers to store goods; people could extract metal from stone, revolutionizing the implements used in agriculture, crafts, and warfare; the builders could make durable construction materials such as brick, cement, lime, plaster, and tile for housing and storage facilities....

"Transportation would have been unthinkable without wood. Until the nineteenth century every ship, from Bronze Age coaster to the frigate, was built with timber. Every cart, chariot, and wagon was also made primarily of wood. Early steamboats and railroad locomotives in the United States used wood as their fuel...

"Wood was also used for the beams that propped up mine shafts and formed supports for every type of building. Water wheels and windmills ­ the major means of mechanical power before electricity was harnessed ­ were built of wood. The peasant could not farm without wooden tool handles or wood plows; the soldier could not throw his spear or shoot his arrows without their wooden shafts, or hold his gun without its wooden stock. What would the archer have done lacking wood for his bow; the brewer and vintner, without wood for their barrels and casks; or the woolen industry, without wood for its looms?"

Perlin then thoroughly documents how all past nations declined once their forests were depleted. Today, with the world's forests in jeopardy, A Forest Journey provides much needed information that can help us avoid another needless repetition of history.

What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? It's an invaluable resource for both published and non-published writers alike. The only complaint I have is that I would have liked to have seen a CN designation for "Creative Non-Fiction."

I bought this book a few weeks ago from the Pen American Center. I've found over 100 sources of funding that I qualify for right now and about 50 more that I qualify for later. I am really loving this book. It is designed in such a way that it's easy to scan all listings for ones that apply to you and easy to search for specific ones as well. In the back everything is indexed several ways, making things even easier to find.

The information they provide you with is comprehensive and extensive. Kudos to the editor and researcher!

If you're a writer, be it fiction, plays, journalistic, non-fiction, whatever, this book is a great resource for you.

This book is invaluable. It provides contact information for countless sources of funding, it's easy to use, and the range of grants and awards is astounding. Writers of every discipline, and from every step of their career, I think, will find something suited to their needs.

In Suspect Terrain by John McPhee details the geology of Interstate 80 from the Delaware Water Gap to the state of Indiana. Primarily concerned with the formation of the Appalachians, the intrusion and withdrawal of vast inland seas, and the impact of widespread glaciation, the book introduces us to Anita Harris, a geologist who is less enamored of plate tectonic theory than most. Though far from discounting the theory altogether, Harris, through McPhee, displays for the reader several "tectonic" inconsistencies prevalent in the Appalachian region.

As in Basin and Range, a previous work, McPhee brings a traveler's commentary and an historian's insight to the scientific discussion making geology, perhaps, more enticing to the layman than anyone who has come before him. Indeed, were all science so artfully presented us commonfolk might have a better grasp of that which can often confuse and intimidate. I thoroughly enjoyed In Suspect Terrain and look eagerly forward to other McPhee efforts.

This is an excellent book, in which McPhee follows an original and stolid geologist on her job and records her musings and concerns with her science. It is written in absolutely luminous prose, with a clarity that can only be called perfect. As he travels with the geologist, ideas keep cropping up that are explained and examined, sometimes adding historical context, such as the long passages on Agassiz. I enjoyed the flow of the narrative and it held my interest completely, indeed I was in awe of his writing talent.

In my reading, there were two principal scientific ideas. First, McPhee lets the geologist question the pervasive acceptance of plate tectonics, that is, how it is now the first explanation that geologists seek to advance, which may mean that they do not seek alternative explanations when appropriate. More specifically, the geologist accepts the theory for oceanic plates, but not the land/continental versions. She chafes against the preference of many young geologists to create micro-plates for every new unexplained phenomenon, a kind of reductionism that may be similar to that used by proponents of "heavenly spheres" to explain the motions of the planets prior to Kepler and Newton. Second, McPhee goes over the notion of glacial ice flows and what they explain about the current landscapes. As I was quite ignorent of these theories except in the crudest outline, I learned a lot from this. What I cannot do is evaluate whether, after 20 years, this book is outdated, which it almost certainly is.

Beyond those 2 issues, the reader also gets to know how geologists work and think, which was equally fascinating and pleasurable for me. THere are long passages on a technique that the geologist developed - using the teeth of long-disappeared marine worms to date and evaluate the conditions of the sediments in which they appear - that are clearly explained. Nonetheless, the level of the reasoning and vocabulary can at times be technical and was sometimes beyond my level: those "teeth" above are called conodonts, which I happened to know about from a Gould essay; otherwise, I would have found use of that word confusing, as I did many others that are explained perhaps once. THat made the book quite dense and necessary to re-read in certain sections, which is not a criticism so much as an indication of the experience the reader should expect.

Warmly recommended.

Whatever drove John McPhee to writing of geology should be found and packaged. It would find a ready market in university science departments. This finest of American essayists produced a series of exemplary books on how North America came to be. His journeys gleaning the information he provides us, traversed the continent, chiefly along an Interstate highway, examining roadcuts, adjacent outcrops and surrounding mountains. His guides were America's foremost geologists, their work often hiding them from the public gaze. McPhee brings them into view, relating their work, their personalities, their accomplishment through unmatched descriptive prose.

In this book, McPhee teams up with geologist Anita Harris in touring the eastern mountains of North America from the coast to the southern shores of the Great Lakes. The journey is far more than the examination and cataloging of rocks. McPhee has elsewhere expressed his sense of history with peerless ability. Here, he extends history to deep time as he and Harris examine the formation of the Appalachian Mountain chains. The lithic record, as might be imagined, is hardly clear-cut. Rock formations are jumbled, twisted, folded over in a confusing testimony to the Earth's action in forming continents. McPhee, in the beginning, is as confused as the rocks - and the reader. Harris, with admirable patience, explains the rocks and what they express, helping McPhee, and us, to see their history. "I haven't worked at this level since I don't know when," she says of his novice status. Her knowledge and his prose skills manage to advance our knowledge painlessly. The rocks, however, daunt their efforts to paint a uncomplicated picture.

When the idea of plate tectonics emerged in the 1960s, McPhee explains, it was a revolutionary view of our planet. Replacing the older "drying, wrinkling apple" scenario, plate tectonics provided an elegant, sweeping picture of continental forming. Within a decade, the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate, the Eurasian Plate took places in the niches of our memories. Schools quickly adopted the new science, supported by expressively illustrated textbooks. "Continental drift" became a "buzzword" in jokes, advertising, and other memetic devices. To Anita Harris, this ready acceptance blinded even geologists to the truly complex record of the area she dubs "suspect terrain." Through McPhee she shows us that "a given place will have been at one time below fresh water, at another under brine, will have been mountainous country, a quiet plain, an equatorial desert, an arctic coast, a coal swamp, and a river delta - all in one ZIP Code." All this activity, no matter how anciently derived, requires explanation. Harris reminds him that "geology" is derived from Gaea, the daughter of Chaos. Recounting the source of Appalachian land forms remains an unfulfilled task.

Along with continental movement are the vagaries of weather. Mountain building is always associated with erosion, McPhee reminds us. He goes on to describe the effects of the greatest eroder of them all, the three kilometre thick ice sheets that pushed Canadian diamonds into Indiana. Along with gemstones, the glaciers bore a cargo of rocks and soil acquired in their journey southward. The "suspect terrain" this bears marks of ice, volcanic activity, unexplained mountain building and oceanic advances and retreats. It may not be a pretty picture, but in McPhee's descriptive hand, its fascination is endless. For learning geology or simply to bask in superior writing skills, this book is outdone by only one means - more John McPhee.

The beginning zoology student has a daunting task before them. There are at least thirty phyla of animals on earth, most with several unique ecologically important sub groups. The arthropods, for example, include almost a million species of terrestrial insects as well as countless aquatic animals ranging in size from the minute copepod to crabs over two meters in width. To get a grasp on all of these requires a good bit of effort, a well organized mind and no small amount of perseverance. While anybody who has tried is no doubt familiar with the several very good invertebrate zoology textbooks available this is the only book on the subject that can be appreciated by the mass market.

The book groups animals by the traditional phyla, and gives critical information on each. Characteristics, development, ecology and diversity are all included. There are many good black and white photographs and a few good line drawings. If I had one complaint about this book it would be unity. I would like to have seen each chapter organized along a set pattern. This would be no easy feat either. I would also have liked to seen more line illustrations. I did like the books treatment of the protozoans as well.

If you are a student of zoology, beginning or PhD, you should try and get your hands on this book. It will help you understand things better than anything single resource I have seen.

I have used the book "Animals Without Backbones" for 5 years now in my Honors Zoology class here in Maryland. This text is great - it is easy to read and understand and the photos are fabulous! The only thing is that all the pictures are black and white, unlike the "fancy" new biology books. It reads at a level lower than my students, which are honors juniors and seniors. I give them additional information to supplement their studies, but I can't say enough about the photos and the labelled diagrams! A great book!

As a new teacher of Zoology, this book has become my most valuable resource for the invertebrates. The information is easy to understand and the labeled photos are wonderful. If I could chose a textbook for my students, this would definitely be it. My students have also found it to be a great resource for their studies.

I used this book while visiting Venezuela, and I was able to identify quite a few birds. However, I found that some of the color plates are inaccurate, which made identification rather difficult at times. Several species (such as the Green Jay, some tanagers) are depicted with improper coloration- some were too pale, some too brightly colored and/or with incorrect markings. The book was very useful and I'm glad I bought it, but be aware that the bird you see may look significantly different in the book.

There are a couple of risks of misunderstanding with regard to this book that must be made clear here. Firstly it is in no way a second edition. The only things in common with the first guide to the birds of Venezuela, by Meyer de Schauensee and Phelps Jr are the familiar old plates by Guy Tudor, the title, and the publisher. In all other respects it is completely new. Secondly, the "Grand-daddy" review here, clearly refers to the original book and not this one.

Having said that, there is little one can add to Chris Sharpe's comprehensive review except to say that I have already used Hilty's book extensively for research this year, along with the other current guides for other countries, and have found it to be the best. In my opinion it sets a new standard. The only small weakness worth noting here is the plates, but has there been a guide that is perfect in this respect?

For anybody birding in Venezuela, the book is an essential item to have along.

I believe the earlier reviewers are mistakenly referring to the 1978 First Edition of this field guide (Meyer de Schauensee and Phelps 1978). As the first modern field guide to a South American avifauna, the original Birds of Venezuela is certainly now showing its age though it is still a remarkably useful field aid to the world's sixth largest national avifauna. The new edition - practically an entirely new field guide - is a very different kettle of fish. What makes this new edition different?

First of all, the new guide is twice as thick and the text is much more closely packed. The book now weighs in at over 1.8 kg (4 lbs) and is more along the lines of the field guide volume of the Birds of Ecuador (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001). Nearly a hundred new species are treated, taking the country total to 1381. Far more species are illustrated and more colour plates have been used, though eight black and white plates have been retained to depict flying raptors and swifts. We now have 67 plates compared with the previous 53 - a 25% increase. Twenty-five of the plates are entirely new with beautiful artwork primarily by John Gwynne. The new plates cover a range of taxa, with Cracids, owls, nightjars, toucans, tanagers, Fringillids, Emberizids and Icterids particularly well covered. A further four have been adapted from Birds of Panamá (Ridgely and Gwynne 1989) and one from Birds of Colombia (Hilty and Brown 1986). The remaining 37 are basically the same Guy Tudor plates (and one by John Gwynne) from the old edition with some modifications.

To my mind, though, it is the text which has really benefited from this new edition - so much so that this should really be thought of as an entirely new field guide. The format follows and improves on the standard set by Birds of Mexico (Howell and Webb 1995) and Birds of Ecuador. The type-setting and text layout have allowed far more text to be included than, say, Birds of Ecuador and Hilty has also been precise and economical with his words. This comes as no surprise to those familiar with Hilty's earlier Birds of Colombia.

The text is far more oriented towards identification than in the old edition - the main requisite for a field guide. The first section contains information specifically on identification and this is followed by a section on similar species, where further comparative text is merited. The voice section is new and seems to be very well compiled with - to my taste - excellent transliterations of songs and calls. Much natural history information and further aids to identification are included under a paragraph on behaviour. A detailed appraisal of status and habitat preference is included before the final discussion of range. The text retains the custom established by the earlier edition of separating range information by subspecies, a feature which is particularly welcome in these times of ever changing taxonomy. Range maps are another new feature and they make use of points corresponding to specimen and sight records as well as the customary shading to indicate overall range. In short, they are similar in format to those provided in Birds of Ecuador.

Finally there is a good selection of references at the end of the book and some very nice colour habitat photographs at the beginning. A well annotated locality map of the country is also provided together with colour relief and vegetation maps.

Any drawbacks? With a work of this magnitude there are bound to be some errors and omissions and I quickly found a number of minor inaccuracies too petty to mention here. Perhaps the guide could have a benefited a wee bit more from external review of status and range of some species - there are gaps in the known range of a number of species. Many will also carp about the dimensions and weight of this new guide, though this is an inevitable product of the diversity of the avifauna in question and nothing that cannot be remedied with a pair of scissors and a certain degree of irreverence.

In resumé, an essential buy for all who are interested in Neotropical ornithology and truly great value for money too. I can't wait to get the book out into the field!

Half of this book is about famous paleontologists, what dinosaurs are, and how they became extinct. The next half has at least 80 pictures and paintings of different species of dinosaurs, and a description of their characteristics and how they live. I would especially recommend it to 11 and 12 year olds who know their dinosaurs. WARNING: This is not a little kid's book. It does contain A LOT of information. It has at least a page on each species of dinosaur, but I think it should go into even more detail on these amazing animals.

We used this book to get a complete overview of these wonderful creatures. The book is large sized and has wonderful color pictures. The text is easy to read for ages 9 and up and can be read aloud to younger kids, so the book works for whole families. There are all sorts of hands on projects, great little pieces about some famous dinosaur excavators and dinosaur moments in history. Of course all the information about how the shape of the continents took place, how fossils are made, the geological time, etc. is there and complete. We were really impressed with the ease in which we could gather information from the book.

I got this book as a gift. From the first page, I knew that I liked it! The detailed pictures show texture and are colorful. It is easy to read and understand. On each page there are different boxes with crafts you can do and interesting facts. (for example, some small carnivore dinosaurs ate their young when they were starving.)

I use this book for research in school and when I write stories. I have read it many times and it seems like it's new every time! If you know any kids that like to read and like dinosaurs, this is a book for them. There are exciting and surprising things on every page!

This book is surface level at best, but it is very sweet for the new Believer in your life. Great Stocking stuffer, or gift for a friend. I found it a relaxing enjoyable book to read for one evening. Only 100 pages makes it a little short, but overall it's Decent!

I really enjoyed this book. It isn't real long and it's not too heavy for the lay-person. Part I of the book consists of 10 chapters on such topics as Praying the Psalms, The Lord's Prayer, and Biblical Meditation. There is an excellent chapter on unanswered prayer, which is an important issue to address.

The real goldmine in this book, however, is Part II, which consists of nine lists of specific scriptures to use in your prayers. There is a list of Psalms by mood, scripture passages on thanksgiving and praise, Bible promises, and also a Harmony of the Gospels type list that helps you meditate on the Gospels.

This is an excellent resource on prayer for your personal library or your church library.

Please check out my other reviews of Christian books and music.

This small book is really practical in nature. The book is divided into two parts. The 1st part is how to pray through scriptures. The 2nd part contains a list of scriptures that can be prayed through and meditated over arranged according to different topics. How to use this list is explained in the 1st part.

Indeed as the back of the book writes, "Although Christians are lovers of the Bible, not all have learned and followed the venerable Christian custom of praying directly from Scripture."

This is very true. This book isn't a book on the theology of prayer, but rather, it's a book teaching Christians a very neglected way of praying - Praying through Scriptures.

Christians often do not know what to pray for. The content is often missing. That's why it is so important to learn from scriptural prayers what to pray and include in our prayers. This book helps in this area.

What is learnt here is something like DA Carson's book - "A Call to Spiritual Reformation - Priorities from Paul and His prayers." If you loved that book, you'll definitely love Howard's book. And if Carson's book revolutionalized your prayer life and taught you a very different way of approaching your prayers and devotion, this book will do more - if you follow through on its ideas and use the list in the 2nd part of the book.

Like i said, the book is very practical. That's because of the list compiled in the 2nd part of the book. Therefore, those who have finished reading the book (the first part), have really only just begun. The challenge is to use the list at the book, and include Scriptures in your prayers. I'm going to do that and I believe it will help my prayer life.

Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of Mitchell, and I really enjoyed CERMONIAL TIME. This lead me to look forward to the arrival of WALKING... and at one level I was not disappointed. AS in all his work Mitchell is adept at weaving together diverse strands of history, culture, and place and to get us thinking about the landscape in new ways. His taste in friends (or at least his way of introducing us to his friends) however seems somewhat flawed. While his other books are more solitary ruminations on ideas and areas, in WALKING he brings along two annoying Yuppies, who would serve as comic relief if any was needed. One is an incredibly PC Indian Wannabe, the other is the sort of Birder that gets some of us reaching for the shotgun, between them they serve only to distract the reader from what would otherwise be a pleasant cross-country ramble through a landscape made all the more interesting by Mitchell's knowledge of both recent history and geological "deep time". Overall Mitchell is at his best when he talks about the dead or the non-human, he can be downright cruel in his descriptions of the living people that he encounters as he approaches Concord. For all that I can sympathize with Mitchell's obvious concern for the rampant development that he must deal with I am not sure that this sort of meaness towards folks who may well be Fellow Travellers (in several senses of the word) does the story much good. In spite of my criticism this is probably a stroll worth taking though you may want to stuff two of your companions into a cedar swamp!

These 300 pages describe both a physical journey, lasting but a day, overlaid with historical, architectural, artistic, anthropological, and literary musings of a richly cultivated mind. He writes, for example, upon viewing a stark landscape, "...I made the connection...This hollow...looks very much like the fourteenth-century Tuscan forest as envisioned by nineteenth-century French illustrator Gustave Dore."

Making connections is Mitchell's forte. The narrative of a tramp through woods and sloughs brings to Mitchell's fertile imagination scenes enacted in the places they pass. He seamlessly inter-weaves the fascinating story of King Philip's War, described as "one of the first anti-imperialist efforts ... the first American revolution" alongside the war between the colonists and British regulars, "essentially a civil war."

Rather than re-hash Thoreau's meditations in "Walden," Mitchell shares his own stream-of-consciousness, touching on "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and "The Wizard of Oz," "The Inferno" and some of Melville's "chief harpooners." Additionally, he offers an in-depth account of the way that nineteenth-century landscape painters changed the view of society toward their environment, suggesting that "It is doubtful that the preservation of a wilderness park would even have been considered if the painters hadn't been there first." Indeed, his descriptions are painterly, but he also succeeds in carefully bringing his companions and those they meet on the way to believable life.

The book is divided into 18 chapters, fifteen of them given names of places traversed in each of the miles walked. These names, such as "Nonset Brook" and "Nagog" are less likely to register with the reader than the connections these places evoke in the mind of the author. Who can recall, for instance, that the etymology of "Key West" is to be found in "Mile 10: Thoreau Country?" Hopefully, an index in a later edition will make it easier for the reader to re-discover favorite passages.

The readers join Mitchell and his friends as they walk through an historical and artistic region of our nation. We discuss the history, nature, the people and the sights as we meet others along the walk. We walk along with Thoreau as well as Mitchell's fascinating friends. There are few books that I've enjoyed as much as this friendly hike. Mitchell is one of best of the current nature writers because he becomes a participant with the reader in enjoying nature and history.