Jim dale Vickery profiles eight men who championed wildlife conservation, preservation, and environmentalism: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), John Muir (1838-1914), Robert W. Service (1874-1958), Bob Marshall (1902-1939), Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), Olaus Johan Murie (1889-1963), Calvin Rutstrum (1895-1982), and Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982). If you're an avid nature fan yourself, you've probably read about some of these men in other books. And yet, here each chapter is more than mere biography. Vickery highlights personal details that bring these men to life again, and we see not just the individuals, but also the natural places that mattered the most to them. We hear what they had to say about those places in their own words. Coincidentally -- or, not -- each of the eight spent at least a little time in Vickery's native Minnesota, and so it is from an additional love of his own land that the author relates the stories. Writers are always advised to write what they know, and that knowledge comes through in this book. An engaging addition to the environmentalist's bookshelf. Finding a used copy is well worth the search.

I found this book to be different than the typical management book. Rather than filled with the usual platitudes, it contains some real world advice on how to deal with and capitalize on situations that occur in a corporate environment. The book starts a bit slow, but it gets moving once it gets into the 10 strategies. The author has a nice conversational, straight-talking style of writing. The exercises and advice at the end of each chapter are excellent. I would recommend this book for new graduates starting in management and for seasoned veterans.

Marshall has written an exceptional book, a smart and practical book that reflects a very intelligent and perceptive grasp of business action and the people who are the action-eers. People run businesses and businesses are only as good as the people that run them. "How To Grow A Backbone" is at once very revealing and very familiar. We will all find ourselves somewhere in this book...for better or worse. We may smile or grimace at the unerring precision with which Marshall cuts straight to the bone, through all the usual fat, and shows us how much backbone we really have, I really have, you really have. Most important, she shows us how to grow what we're missing. Every CEO should read this book and then issue it to his staff, to everyone on the staff including the mail boy and the sweeper. If that CEO is big enough, smart enough (and secure enough) to encourage, to allow, to require, to inspire, his people to grow backbone, that boss will have one hell of a spinning business. Action, forward motion, innovation and fun the way business should be fun, going a mile a minute, breaking through. Everyone who dreams of being more than they are, or of being a CEO, should quit dreaming and dig into "Backbone". This is no "guru magic" that pumps you up for a week, this is the straight answer for anyone who has the courage to try to be what he or she can be. Miss Marshall will show you the way. "How To Grow A Backbone" is a lean, no nonsense bible for the feint of heart who want to grow the lion inside them. It's more than a business book. It's for anyone who hears their Jiminy Cricket whispering, you could have, you should have, why didn't you? Anyone who wants to know how to grow the seeds of character we all possess, who wants to be somebody, must read "How To Grow A Backbone". WARNING: Read only if you want to be better than you are.

This is a must read for anyone that wants to move further faster in the business world -- especially those who are fledglings in Corporate America! Marshall writes with clarity and good humor spiced with pithy observations and examples. This is more than a pie-in-the-sky, ethereal how-to book. She backs up her advice with practical, easy to implement ACTIONS to integrate the strategies into all areas of interactions with others. And her "excercises" are more than informative and effective: they're fun to boot!

A collection of black-and-white photographs depicting life in miserable camps of Cambodian displaced persons strung along the Thai border. The photographs are interwoven with touching personal stories. These are not beautiful images, but then nothing in the camps was ever beautiful to my eyes. Those Cambodian-Americans who were interned in the camps and those who worked with humanitarian agencies involved in programs along the Thai-Cambodian border will want to own this book. Forwards are by the Dalai Lama and Dith Pran. The reader cannot help but wonder what "repatriated" Cambodians who once resided in the camps would have to say today. Was that chaotic mass repatriation back to troubled Cambodia truly a United Nations success story, or was one misery simply exchanged for another, with the victims conveniently moved out of sight, or is the truth somewhere in between? Kari Rene Hall's fine work cries out for a sequel and follow-up research work inside Cambodia, where things have never been easily understood even by those most intimately involved.

Baseball as metaphor for life, or life as a metaphor for baseball has been pretty well covered. Unfortunately most of the writers in this book are caught in some personal vortex that can work only for them and has little to offer the reader. This collection is mostly about everyday people involved with some aspect of baseball and the inference tends to be that the essence of the game somehow lies in the milllions who participate in some form at some level. But it's a ruse, used to justify or validate many of the authors' opinions and maybe cherised moments. Not much here of merit.

Though most of the stories don't bridge the gap from the teller's personal interest to valid story telling, there are two exceptional pieces that belong in any first rate short story anthology.

They are "The Warriors," by Sherman Alexie, and "What Pop Fly Gave His Daugher," by Lynda Berry. These are excellent works. They are powerful, moving, informative, wonderful stories that happen to include baseball. Sherman Alexie brings humor, the quixotic mine fields of emerging adolesence, core questions about pecking orders, and schooling on and off the reservation in an engaging, entertaining, and authentic manner.

Lynda Berry offers a story in the life of a girl/emerging woman as she finds a way to deal with a near intolerable family. We are are shown a glimpse of the confusion and agony of this girl, and her determination and reslience as she survives and comes to grips with her noncaring and self-centered father. It's an excellent and informative read. And yes, baseball gloves, even if they only cost $.59, can work magic.

The remaining seven selections are meanderings of minimal interest. They are dull, and in the same breath as extolling the life virtues of baseball they tend justify ugliness and/or reflect/validate a sad personal perspective.

In "God's Tourney," Robert Leo Heilman treats American Legion regional playoff baseball with the devout obsequiosness of a budding acolyte of the true religion. He gives us a lot about being good enough, the quirks of the game, the usual about how baseball makes better people of those who play it, and becomes positively reverent when describing the hallowed ground of the Roseburg field. Seemingly unaware of the contradiction, he then plays the reality card: the very non amateur baseball commercial concessions necessary for legion ball to survive are dismissed as just a part of big thing called life. The official car (Buick), and so on. No dealing with reality and the obvious: you can't make nice something that isn't. Instead of letting the obvious just lie there, the author tries to validate it and somwhow attach it to the glow of those beautiful 600 wooden seats.

In "From the Church of Baseball: Different Hymns," by Timothy Eagon we have the modern blow up of all the coaches and parents who never figured out the value of games for children. While he does profess to come to some sort of epiphany at the end, he can't get past his obsession, not passion, about the game and "life."

From some dark recess he rails about the pathetic nature of T-ball and coach-pitch, everybody-is-a-winner stuff that is peddled at the lower ages. His squad is made up of nine year olds. He continues about how reality comes early for these kids - his team, which includes his daughter - about the pain the kids felt when Griffey broke his wrist running down a deep drive, or Ayala's "closings." He tells us that these kids know grit, triumph, and agony, and rambles on in a debasing monolouge, ending with "self-esteem, schmelf-esteem."

9 year old girls (and boys) just don't agonize over these things, unless they are tactical survival techniques for life at at home. With any luck, children at this age are encoureaged to learn and discover, allowed to be kids. The grit and agony too many of them know are obscene expectations to be adults by the age of nine, to validate adults instead of being validated by them, and to be bludgeoned into equating a hollow concept of "being a winner" with being valued. A quick look at the courts and social services shows us what too many 9 year olds, and younger, know about the agony of despair and abuse. That's real. Ayala and Griffey are nice diversions.

It's the game that's the thing, it's the game that rich and rewarding, unlike all but two of this collection.

The book and its essays are charming. Through these words you can feel the writer's life experiences as viewed through some association with baseball. Baseball is not the topic of this book, it is the illustration used to bring to you a number of life experiences - some joyful, others emotional - all worth reading and experiencing. Sort of a "Baseball - Soup for the Soul"!

First of all - I rate this book as five stars, essential for anyone in central Texas who is interested in wildflowers. It is simply the best.
BUT, this book is NOT OUT OF PRINT!!! It is available in central Texas for the original price.

Excellent photography is a real treat; the fine details of each plant are a real help in identification. The text is well-organized and nicely written. The book answers many of my I.D. questions about many S. TX herbaceous plants which have all but disappeared. Wildscapers and nature lovers will find this book to be "user-wonderful."