Ellis, McCosker, and Giddings have produced an informative and entertaining book on the Great White shark. While the book does provide scientific information it does not require that you hold a degree in marine biology or physiology to comprehend the information being presented. Adding to the text are an abundance of quality photographs. I read this book several years ago, but still open it up again and again to re-read passages and look at the photographs. One of the best shark books I have ever read.

The Great White Shark is by far the best investment I have made to date. I picked up the book while working on a Co-op work term from school and could not put the book down. Every aspect of the oceans most respected predator is covered with many dynamic pictures and illustrations (done by Ellis). From learning about it's biology to investigating why we can't keep white pointers in captivity, this book is a must for anyone interested in reading about the king of the sea.

Richard Ellis and Dr. John E. McCosker bring their years of experience and knowledge about the Great White Shark to the public in this exhaustive study of the world's most fearsome predator. With their words and hundreds of stunning photographs (by Al Giddings and others), they reveal an animal that is not the monster of popular fiction but instead, an efficient and awesome product of evolution. This book is a must for any student or fan of the Great White

I first read this book in 1972, the original 1947 edition. It is one of the few permanent items in my library. I read it again at least once a year. I have even tried some of the projects John describes including the radio set made out of bits laying around the cabin. If you want a relaxing and enjoyable read about life in the woods, get this!

Every true outdoors man and woman needs to read two books. One is Leopold's A Sand County Alamanac, the other is Cache Lake Country. If you've hunted, fished, and trekked the northwoods as much as I have, and love its brooding, dark beauty, this book will capture the sensations of the taiga. It is almost painful to read it if you find yourself trapped in someone else's idea of the good life, when what you really want to do is chuck it all for a cabin in the boreal forest.

I first read this book when I was 12 years old, I am now 46. I could not put it down and can not. I made my first knike sheath, first snow shoes, and my first moc;s (which remain my favorite type of moc's) from sketches from this book, as well as many of the other projects and they all lived up to expectations of a young teenager to present. You feel like you are there with the three men of the story. It is is one of the few books that I reread every couple of years. Worth every penney and then some.

The burning question in my mind as I look at a stunning photo in a calendar, postcard, or coffee-table book is "How did they do it?" There are just certain details about a photo that stand out and scream "professional". Many photography guidebooks tend to fall into two camps: those are little more than glorified list of equipment you likely wouldn't ever buy or be able to afford, and those that are a showcase for the photographer to expound on his experience and philosophy. This book, by well-known landscape and wildlife photographer John Shaw, will tell you exactly how _he_ did it. In clear and concise prose, he explains in details his system for getting the exposure you want (as distinguished from simply determining the correct exposure). While this may not be earth-shattering or even entirely novel, its simplicity and ease of use will make you wonder why you didn't think of it before. It obviously works beautifully for Shaw. For me, this was the single most useful thing I got out of the book.

The rest of the book is geared more toward the beginning photographer with extensive coverage of basic principles of exposure, lens selection, composition, flash photography, etc. There is a surprisingly large section on close-ups, usually not the most well expounded topic in a general photography book. There are some advices on field gear and locations that a veteran photographer may find useful. Shaw does cover enough gear (mostly Nikon) to keep an equipment junkie happy. In all, true to the book's title as a "field guide", the predominant theme is practicality, and you can actually put many of his suggestions to good use right away. Lastly, the book also has enough beautiful photos to be an impressive coffee table book.

I find Shaw's prose to be efficient and direct, not condescending or ingratiating as how-to books tend to get. The book is logically organized and compartmental; you will not have to read cover to cover to benefit from it. If you're interested in nature photography, this book would be a worthy addition to your shelf.

With the release of this updated Field Guide, Shaw presents his incredible photography, along with his personal opinions regarding gear, lighting, lenses, accessories. His discussions delve into all aspects of the each topic. For instance, under the chapter "Teleconverters," he not only explains the theory behind them, but he elaborates as to when and under what circumstances to consider using them--and when to avoid them. There are specific gear references and opinions throughout the book, for anyone looking to build or expand an equipment base (with a heavy Nikon emphasis). The photography, as expected, is absolutely amazing and inspiring. His photographs serve to illustrate any nature photography topic you could name--filters/ film speed/ depth of field/ telephotos/ macro photography/ composition, etc., and each topic is explained in concise, yet conversational language. He writes as though he's been asked to share his wealth of nature photography knowledge with a friend--very readable and yet technically detailed. This book deserves a place on any photographer's bookshelf--you won't be disappointed!

I knew how to focus, point, and shoot, but I didn't know aperture, f-stop, shutter speed, exposure values, film speed or how these things could affect the pictures I take. Just after the first chapter, I understood more about my camera and the purpose of all of its options (and I'm using a Sony digital Mavica). John Shaw takes the time to explain what you need to know without getting too technical. And all of his many incredible photos throughout the book include descriptive captions of how he took the photo. Each photo emphasizes the point he is making.

This book was excellent for me as a beginner and includes many techniques for outdoor photography. I enjoy the humourous tone, particularly when explaining technical points.

The images are fantastic. Even if you don't read it, the book makes an excellent coffee table addition!

Back in the prehistoric days of the 1970's, I found this small book in my school library. Despite it's small size, it became, and has always been a bible of life in the northwoods. No politics, no social agenda, just a detailed blueprint of the pleasures and perils of living far from the city. The book covers the basics of shelter and winter warmth. It instructs the reader in a variety of skills ( from keeping oatmeal warm until breakfast, to making snowshoes to get along in mid-winter). All in all, I recall it as the first docu-drama that I ever had the pleasure to read. Though it can be labeled as non fiction (of the instructive kind), it has the ability to build endles dreams of pioneer life in the mind of most any reader.

I reviewed this book several years ago, and after accidently stumbling upon my review, the same images, smells, and excitement still come to mind. I just purchased an old copy at many times the original price, and I can't wait to read it again after more than thirty years. It still amazes me to thnk that a simple diary of life in a bygone distant frontier could elicit such a Technicolor panorama in the mind of the reader. Everyone should read this book. It's good for the soul.

Don't we all wish we knew someone like J.J. Rowlands. What a life! He should have been a father; what a wealth of information he might have imparted... ...and what delivery! Couldn't put it down. Thank goodness he left us his book.

Dinosaur Lives introduces the lay reader (that would be you and me) to a number of exciting ideas. The book provides us with an update to Horner's field work since he wrote "Digging Dinosaurs," but it also delves deeper into some of the bigger ideas concerning dinosaurs. A large portion of the book is devoted to speculation about the behavior of dinosaurs, especially the raising of young and herd/pack associations. What interested me most, however, is Horner's deconstruction of Linnean taxonomy, and the description of cladistics as a more powerful tool to look at relationships between living and extinct creatures. For those of us raised on the idea of speciation, this is powerful stuff. You may find, as I did, that light bulbs start popping in your head as you realize that the very way you think about a subject can severely limit your ability to perceive new ideas.

If all this sounds a bit airy-fairy, Horner does a much better job than I can here explaining some pretty complex stuff in a very simple way. My only complaints about the book are that Horner sometimes can be a bit wordy while telling us what he is about to tell us. I could have used a bit more technical detail in some of his descriptions, and certainly the illustrations should have been more complete. These are minor complaints, however. This is a fascinating book for anyone who likes thinking about dinosaurs, and the endless cycles of life. You don't need to have any prior knowledge to thoroughly enjoy this book.

Dinosaur Lives: Unearthing an Evolutionary Saga written by John R. Horner is a well-written account of paleontological fieldwork told in an engaging style. This book is the continuation of the book Digging Dinosaurs one of the author's previous books.

Horner is a thinker as has helped out on numerous motion pictures to make the dinosaurs seem real and alive. In this book we get to read (speculation) about dinosaur eggs, their young and their nests as found from the fossil record.

Horner has an infectous style when he write and you can't help but getting into lock-step with him as he writes a telling-tale, making the read feel as if you are there right along side. Our understanding of how dinosaurs grew up, raised their young, and socialized with other dinosaurs are brought out in this book.

There is still a lot of information yet to be discovered, but Horner has been making long strides in elucidating information and answering some of the nagging questions involving dinosaurs. Some of the new evidence and arguments regarding the major dinosaur controversies of the day, being that of warm-blooded verses cold-blooded are tackled in this book.

This book is a quick read and should be on your bookshelf as the author's discoveries regarding the dinosaur are ground-breaking and unparalleled. Paleontologist Robert Bakker is another forward thinker when it comes to dinosaurs.

This book gives some credence to Bakker's theory about the inland sea retreats and the dinosaurs from the eastern part of the North American continent mixed with those of the West, exchanging bacteria and other pathogens for which the recieving group had no inherent resistance. This could be a slow death or a prolonged one depending upon the pathogen involved. Also, climate was changing substantially at that time as well, becoming cooler, and more arid, this could slowly add to the demise of the dinosaurs.

This book was an enjoyable, engaging read.

Mr. Horner has made an extraordinary accomplishment with 'Diggin Dinosaurs,' as it is able to present relative information regarding the topic at hand in a manner to be easily read by the masses and hold the reader's attention. His ability to stimulate the imagination with his illustrative speach and diction is quite amazing, as is his ability to distill the necessary information from the vast amounts of data that is available for analysis. An amazing breakthrough to be certain.

The Nature Company's Guide to sharks and rays is a well written introduction to this group of truly wonderful creatures. It is not the best book, but if you have an interest it should be in your library. It will be especially useful to the teen reader or marine naturalist/hobbyist. The photography and illustrations are beautiful and informative. The write ups on individual species, while not all inclusive to any particular group or geographic area are great. They cover some little known but fascinating animals. My only complaint is that it's a little TO visual, it tends to rely on the graphic to make points over the text and is a little short on newer science. But this may be a plus for the new student of marine biology. If you or an friend has an interest in fishes in general or elasmobranchs in particular you want this book.

What an excellent, well organized reference source for anyone interested in sharks, and especially for scuba divers looking for a good identification book.

Of all the shark books I've reviewed, this one tops my list and is recommended to readers of my web site.

We bought this book as a Christmas gift for our 12 year old daughter who is fascinated with sharks. What a gem!!! We keep it on the coffee table now as a reference book. Every time an undersea show comes on, someone grabs the book to look up whatever they discuss. This book is full of great information and incredible photographs. Anyone interested in the ocean MUST get this book. We are all certified scuba divers and it is especially valuable to us for identifications, habitats and habits of sharks and rays, and general information which we need to know when siting one of these marvelous creatures!!

Bill Belleville's sublime story of the St. John's River was a book I could not put down. A modern version of William Bartram's Travels, "River of Lakes" truly catches the history, geology and flavor of life along the St. John's River. For those of us who have grown up on the river, and who have played in its creeks and springs since childhood, it was an absolute joy to read. I hope that Belleville (who also makes films about rivers) makes a film about the St. John's based on this book. Hang up your hammock by the river, sit back and soak up the beauty of this poetic odyssey. If you haven't seen the St. John's before, you will want to now!

As the author states, we are all students in this great shared learning experience of life, and we can see the river not only as a conveyer of water but also as a great lesson in ecology. Very true. This is a fascinating exploration of the St. Johns river and surrounding areas in Florida, much of it still largely unspoiled wilderness. I have been to one of it's (small) tributaries , Juniper Springs, twice while canoeing, and it is a beautiful wilderness I can attest. The author, Bill Belleville, takes readers on a leisurely tour of the St. Johns river system starting in his own backyard and neighborhood, and from the marshy headwaters in an airboat, and later a kayak down river to a houseboat, and finally to the ocean, sometimes written in a dreamy poetic style, but still with lots of river lore and information. The St. Johns river is steeped in tons of history and Bill navigates it to great effect. By reading this book you can learn a lot about geology, history, plants and animals, ecology and conservation, evolution and natural selection, the beauty and value of nature, why it is important to preserve our wetlands, and along the way meet several interesting folks.

At the back of the volume is a list of access points on the St. John river and near it, a list of public and private agencies, and also an extensive bibliography. Finally, I want to add that the part in the book where Belleville was floating past that tavern next to the river that was blaring out the Patsy Cline song "Crazy" (p. 140), in light of the history associated with that area, well, I laughed so hard I almost broke a rib!

Bill Belleville invites you aboard an allegorical raft as he explores Florida's St. Johns River. I was glad I accepted his invitation. With him as your guide "discover" this river with its many surprises and wonderments. With Belleville you learn how much of the "old" has survived modern day Florida and how important it is to preserve what remains. It is a wonderfully written book and before you know it you are caught up in Belleville's storytelling and when his story is finished you wish there were more bends in the river to travel and more tales to read about.

The truth be it known, I have not read the book as yet. However, I know the artist personally since he was a child. I have seen his work on painting dinosaurs before he was ever published and other works that he has done. I remember that you could almost feel the hair on the bodies of the Animals that he has drawn. His devotion over all his life has been to realism in his paintings and without even seeing his book, I know the quality of his art. Just buy the book for the illustrations and it it will be worth its weight in gold to the art lover. I predict that he will be one of the great artists of his time. Jack Feins

Gorgeous. Beautiful. Stunning. Exhilarating. This book is enough to send one running for the thesaurus to find new adjectives to describe it! One of my favorite paleo books to come along these last few years, Larry Felder and John Colagrande have combined to create a truly beautiful book. If you loved "Walking With Dinosaurs" this book is a must-have. In many ways I even prefer it. Whereas the CGI dinos of WWD are pretty amazing there is just something about the touch of a brush to canvas, the interaction between artist and paint that I'll prefer anytime. Felder's images are full of warmth and vitality, almost as though a they are being visualized by a Renaissance artist. The science behind the images is fully 21st century, however. Felder is on the very edge of the new breed of paleo artists who depict dinos as vivid, highly colorful, sophisticated creatures. Whether you prefer your dinos drab or day-glow, however, there is no denying the splendidness of these paintings.
As for the text, Cologrande has crafted a wonderful, free-flowing narrative of life in the Mesozoic. As with "Walking With Dinos" (which this book can't avoid being compared to) there is a large amount of speculation involved about the day-to-day details of dino life. But Cologrande obviously placed a high priority upon grounding his speculations in as much solid science as possible. No wild flights of fancy are found here. In fact, in text this book is substantially superior to WWD.
As a paleoartist myself I find this book to be a constant source of inspiration and amazement. Jack Horner called it "jet fuel for the imagination." I can't think of a better description. BUY IT!

This book is a true treasure. I have not heard of Larry Felder before,but he has quickly become my favourite dinosaur painter. The way the book is made is as unique as the paintings. It is not an encyclopedia,but instead a book of wildlife on Earth. The pictures are amazingly detailed and I can see that the animals` shapes and colours are based on carefull studies of real wildlife. For example,the Pteranodons looks and acts like pelicans,as well as the Parasaurolophus are similar to zebras. Most of the meat-eating dinosaurs are feathered and are sometimes similar to birds of prey or lions and tigers. The habitat pictures are among my favourites... Among my favourites comes the triassic chapter,the late jurassic,and the cretaceous chapters of the seas and the dinosaur migrations. I love drawing dinosaurs and when I look at the pictures,I learn to draw such dinosaurs too,although not as detailed as Felder`s. I will also base my story "A Dinosaur Story" on the behaviour and look of the animals in this book. Over all,this is a book that could not be much better. The only thing minus is that I think it is almost too short. A book of 300 pages would have been better and with more artists.

I found this book hard to grade, but easy to read. Stories are the best way for people to learn, and this book has six interesting ones (about Josiah Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell) describing entrepreneurs pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to create major brands. As a book of engaging business stories, this is a five star book. In terms of the insight you will get from these stories compared to the potential insight you should get, this is a three-star book. I compromised the two to come up with my grading.

If you want to learn about today's brand-building challenges, other books handle that subject much better. If you want to learn about how the Wedgwood, H.J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Starbucks, and Dell businesses got started, this is your book. The material is handled much like historical fiction (except the facts are meticulously gathered and documented), and you will find the going easy and pleasant.

If you like Horatio Alger stories, you will find those here as well. I suspect that exhausted entrepreneurs on long plane trips where their computer batteries have run out will find this book helpful in recharging their personal batteries. As Winston Churchill once said, "Never give up." That's the key lesson here. Through trial and error, these entrepreneurs kept trying until they found formulas that worked.

The choice of examples is a little flawed. Five are consumer branding examples and only one is a business example (Dell). Of the consumer branding examples, you will find that most are about selling to the higher income people. That gets a little repetitive.

The explanation of the examples is also incomplete. Considering that this is a business book, there is relatively little financial information other than annual sales and occasional asset turnover ratios. Qualitative example are helpful, but they are more helpful with more pinning down. For example, when you see the profit margins that Wedgwood had, that explains a lot about why the company could afford such lavish promotions. Without similar information on Heinz, you wonder why he was so successful in making sales but went bankrupt. Presumably, he had low margins.

The photographs and maps in the book are a plus, and I enjoyed them very much. The book was printed on such high quality paper (similar to that used for diplomas) that the images are on the same paper as the text. This permits the book to have many more illustrations than similar-sized business books.

The point about earning trust in the book is easily explained. At the time when these entrepreneurs were getting started, their largest competitors usually provided poor quality products, sometimes had inappropriate brand images, often failed to offer decent guarantees, and typically acted in self-serving ways. Earning trust isn't too hard if others are scoundrels or incompetent. Above all, these entrepreneurs stood for decent human values, and got that point across in one-to-one situations. I'm not sure that point comes out clearly enough, even though it is certainly present in each example.

Those who think the Internet age is unique will find the comparisons to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England and the transportation improvements in the United States to be valuable contrasts. But each age brings its unique changes. Entrepreneurs should seek to grasp those changes, but also see what others have missed. I think that the Starbucks concept could have been successfully innovated in the late 1950s. It's just that no one did it then.

After you finish enjoying these stories, I suggest that you think about the values that your organization stands for. Are those values presented and delivered in ways that make your organization more trustworthy than any other? How else do you have to be superior in order to establish a burnished brand image?

Be serious about giving people the best you can possibly provide!

This highly readable business book profiles six successful entrepreneurs from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Each profile (Josiah Wedgwood, Henry Heinz, Marshall Field, Estee Lauder, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell) details the milieu of the era and offers insight into the environmental business factors that each of these business builders faced.

It is this holistic approach to the subject of each profile that makes the stories so compelling. Using her command of history, Ms. Koehn outlines the period view of each of the products (pickles to perfume) and vividly draws the reader into the strategy of each of these entrepreneurs' approach to the market and building their brand. It is the power of these stories that gives the brand message such import. All of these people had a great number of competitors in their market niche but their focussed approach to the brand associated with their goods or services is what set them apart.

Ms. Koehn uses some excellent demographic and financial information (indexed to today's dollars) that provide the backdrop for the scale of the success each of these entrepreneurs' achieved. This provides just enough quantitative information to provide texture without clouding the real story in statistics.

As an executive in the software business today, I found a great deal of comfort in the fact that the challenges I face in today's competitive marketplace are not new. In fact, with great courage and resolve, they have been solved again and again in differing but similar ways over centuries.

Brand New is a brilliantly written book about entrepreneurs, brands, consumers, business history, and socioeconomic change. The book explores these subjects through the examples of six entrepreneurs-Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, Marshall Field, Estée Lauder, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Michael Dell-and the brands and companies they created during times of economic and social change: Wedgwood during the Industrial Revolution, Heinz and Field during the Transportation and Communication Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Lauder, Schultz, and Dell in our time.

Koehn is a perceptive historian and biographer as well as an astute analyst of brand creation, entrepreneurship, and organization-building. She explains how the entrepreneurs in her book were able to understand the economic and social change of their times and anticipate and respond to demand-side shifts. This understanding, she argues convincingly, enabled these entrepreneurs to bring to market products that consumers needed and wanted and to create meaningful, lasting connections with consumers through their brands. Koehn also focuses on the importance of these entrepreneurs as organization builders who understood that their success depended on developing organizational capabilities that supported their products and brands. Her book is very well-researched throughout, and uses primary archival documents extensively in the historical chapters on Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, and Marshall Field. Koehn also brings her entrepreneurs and the stories of how each built his or her company and brand to life with her talent as a biographer and historian.

The book's emphasis on drawing lessons from both past and present offers many valuable insights for those interested in coming to a better understanding of brand creation, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial management, and organization-building. Koehn's emphasis on the demand side of the economy and on entrepreneurs and companies making connections with consumers through the brand distinguishes her book as an important work of business scholarship on brands and entrepreneurship. A lively, interesting, and engaging read, Brand New is also valuable reading for anyone interested in business, economic, or social history or biography of business leaders. I highly recommend it!

If you like John Mcphee, you'll like this book as much as his others. If you are about to vacation in Florida - BRING THIS BOOK.

Every time someone asks me about John McPhee (I am, I admit a total fan) I find myself saying "Look, Here is a guy who can take a subject like, say ORANGES, and make it fascinating." This is the book where he does just that. I gather that ORANGES started out as a short magazine piece & like so many of McPhee's books became an obsession. Here we can get the history, the ecology, the landscape of orange groves along with discussions of the effects of oranges and orange growing on both the culture and the surroundings, all in McPhee's eminently readable prose. This is a fast read about a subject that you probably haven't though much about, but you will walk away from this book not only better informed about the fruit but also taken with the infinite possibility of the wonder that can be found in what seem to be every-day things.

Be sure to take advantage of Amazons Inside function to see how good this book can be.
John McPhee, born and raised in Princeton, once again intrigues us with his tales of "citrus." He took what was supposed to be an article on oranges and expanded it into a book. He covers everything you want to know and then some. Under history he will remind you not to let any females sit in you tree. Some of the subjects are history, how to grow, and how to market oranges. He touches on grapefruit also. .