This book has a wealth of information about a wide variety of bird topics. It has bird anatomy, songs, how to build a nest box, etc. The main chapter of this book, named 'The Habitat BirdFinder' is a field guide to about 100 of the most commonly seen birds in North America, and isn't in any specific order, but by which habitat it is most likely to be seen in. It is very useful, with a large photograph and colour drawings with text for each bird. The range maps are very clear and easy to use. In the back of the book there is a good selection of other books and resources, including local birding organizations.
If you are looking for a first birding book, to get you started and familiar with birds, then this is a great start.

This book has been an excellent addition to my library on birding. Splendid photography! Helpful tips!Interesting insights and all at a great price. The book is beautiful and is clearly of high quality. You won't be disappointed!

This is a wonderfully put together reference book for bird watchers. I also gave one to my father as a gift and he just can't put it down. The pictures are teriffic and there's a lot of information about each bird. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys birds.

I am always left breatheless at the majestic beauty of every cave I am blessed to enter. This book gives wonderful descriptions of caves and the pictures in this coffeesque style book are the icing on the cake.

This book is very well written with lovingly detailed chapters devoted to the many splendid cave networks dotted around the world. There's a great section on the flora and fauna of the underworld, as well. I went potholing in Kak Canyon once, and saw a couple of chutney ferrets, all thanks to this book. Incredible creatures - and I wouldn't have known they were there until I read this.

I really liked this book. It has good pictures for people who want to be a cave explorer. It tells you a good description of the caves these people explored. I really liked the fact that they explored ice, water and earth caves. I think students that are studying caves would really like this book

WHile there are a number of flower books for the Sierra available, I found this one particularly useful because the plants are arranged by family so you can learn how to identify plants that are not in the range covered by the book. THe introductory section was also really informative and interesting.

Weekends in Tahoe are tons better with this book in tow. It is way cool to know the names of the gorgy plants and flowers with whom you are sharing your away-from-work time. I especially like being able to answer my two-year-old's question, "What's dat one momma," as he begins to take an interest in the names of the plant life surrounding him. A great gift for parents of children who go to Tahoe from time to time...or for anyone still young at heart/inquisitive enough to want to know more about Tahoe vegetation.

Without a doubt, this is the best plant or flower book I have ever read. The author clearly knows Tahoe Basin vegetation and natural history like nobody else. The key is masterful in its simplicity, the pictures spectacular and the text brilliantly concise (and sometimes witty!). You can leave your tent, cell phone and coffee mug behind, but you must not forget Mr. Graf's book when going to Tahoe.

Beautiful pictures, touching and moving story. About the restoration of the wolves.

Beautiful pictures illustrates the many different wolves that were restored to yellowstone (#10, #9etc...). Illustrates the effort the yellowstone had to put in to restore the wolf to its natural habitat. Very interesting to the average wolf lover and those who are interested in what happened in the 1995 restoration of the wolves to yellowstoen.

This book brings you right into the experience of bringing the wolves back to Yellowstone where they belong! Find out the behind the scenes activity that brought the sight and sound of the wolf back after an absence of over 60 years. You'll never be the same after reading this. Excellent!!

It is interesting that this book is being published for the first time since much of the material comes from Professor Mares's work with small desert mammals during the seventies. Mares, who is the Curator of Mammals and Director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma is also the author of Encyclopedia of Deserts (1999). Perhaps he has been too busy to publish what is essentially a popular work. Since the book includes reports on his field work and that of his students into the nineties, maybe this book is a way of rounding out a career.

Regardless of the reason for the material finally finding publication, we are the better for it. Part memoir, part fieldwork journal, and part travelogue, A Desert Calling is that rare scientific tome that engages our adventurous spirit through a vivid and lively presentation while at the same time giving us a concrete sense of the animals and their habitats. As the late Stephen Jay Gould expresses it in the Foreword, Mares writes with "a verbal freshness (and a fine sense for a good yarn) that will delight even the most sophisticated urbanite...." (p. xi)

The book is also beautifully edited and presented with handsome page layouts. Chapter beginnings and major paragraph breaks feature photo icons of the small desert rodents that were the focus of much of Mares's work. The text is interspersed with black and white photos of animals and the forbidding desert climes that he and his fellow field biologists encountered on three continents. There are four maps to help us locate these places. Mares includes an appendix giving both the common and scientific names of species mentioned in the text organized geographically. There are 14 pages of suggestions for further reading ordered by chapter.

Mares's travels include the Sonoran and Mojave deserts in the American southwest, the Monte Desert and the Patagonia and Caatinga regions in South America, and the Dasht-i-Kavir in Iran and the Sahara in Egypt. He traveled to Argentina during the years of the Dirty War and was in Iran just before the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He lived through blinding sandstorms and heat so oppressive that he sought relief in pig water and mud laced with pig feces. He endured stings from hoards of vicious insects in landscapes nearly as barren as the moon with shaded Fahrenheit temperatures in the 130's. (p. 181) He encountered bureaucratic obstruction that would try the patience of a saint, poverty that would move even Scrooge to tears, and enough danger to satisfy a jaded CIA agent.

But above all he reports on the animals and how they live. He includes the discovery of a number of new species and genera of mammals, and three major ecological findings, all having to do with convergent evolution. Seeking the animal in the Monte Desert of Argentina that is the analogue of the kangaroo rat of the North American Sonoran Desert he inexplicably finds none. But then by happenstance he becomes aware of an extinct marsupial skeleton collected by famed biologist George Gaylord Simpson that fits the expected convergence to a tee. Indeed the animal had gone extinct only a million years previous which explained why none of the other rodents had yet evolved to fill that niche. (p. 126)

Mares also demonstrates that the jerboa of the Sahara, which is taxonomically nearly identical to the kangaroo rat, a fact well know for many decades, is not the whole story. It turns out that their diets and therefore some parts of their anatomy, including their teeth of course and presumably their digestive systems, are more different than was previously supposed. Mares realized this because he discovered that while kangaroo rats are seed specialists, the convergent jerboas have a more varied diet including plants and even crickets. After some further research, Mares understood that the bipedal adaption of the jerboas and kangaroo rats is an adaptation to allow them to run (hop!) away from predators.

To my mind the most interesting discovery was that the rock hyraxes of Africa have a nearly exact counterpart in the rock cavies of Caatinga in Argentina. As Mares expresses it (p. 202), they "are about as distantly related as mammals can be, [but they] not only look alike, but are similar in almost all aspects of their reproduction, ecology, and behavior." In a splendid example of natural selection at work, Mares points to their unique but similar rock pile environments as strongly shaping their morphology and behavior.

Perhaps what Mares does best that other scientists that work in distant places do not always do so well is to shed light on not only the climate and the species but on the local people, what they are like and how they live. His description of the isolation of some of the people in the Monte and the Chaco ("El Impenetrable" in Spanish, which Mares calls a "land of thorns") in Argentina is almost like reading about lost tribes from ancient times. His encounters with locals sometimes reminded me of something from a wild west movie of my childhood.

Also very interesting was his account of the discovery of a new species, the golden vizcacha rat on pages 257-259. I also liked his touching recollection of coming home for Halloween just in time to join his two boys for trick or treating on page 275.

Bottom line: this engaging and colorful book allows us to experience the hard work, pure drudgery, quiet contentment, and the sometimes thrilling exhalation of field work through the eyes of a working scientist with a gift for exposition.

Michael Mares' book grew on me enormously as I read it. The combination of his series of wild experiences along with his enthusiasm for the research puzzles he confronts made this book read almost like a double thriller. This could be read as a travel book, very much like Eric Hansen's books, with a bonus of learning a lot about nature, evolution, ecology, etc. Or, it could be read as a book of ecology and evolution with the bonus of extraordinary adventures. At first, I kept on reading the book more for the adventures and then realized that my excitement about the science was growing. I have never had a book sneak up on me in this way.

We are quite used to hearing about the rainforest and the worries about its loss. We hear less about the loss of deserts. Let the military test there, let off-track entertainment vehicles bounce there, let toxic wastes accumulate there; they are not good for much else, goes the common view. They are uncomfortable places to visit, and they can't be turned to agriculture. Michael A. Mares, in _A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape_ (Harvard), has a completely different view. Mares has spent his professional life studying the deserts of the United States, Argentina, Iran, and Egypt. He undoubtedly knows plenty about plants, insects, birds, and snakes of these areas, but he is a specialist in the mammals that have evolved to live in such harsh conditions. Desert rats, mice, armadillos, and gerbils have been his study, and he has here (note the double meaning of the title) assembled a description of his life's work, as well as an attempted explanation of just why he has spent so much time in places the rest of us could not stand. His thoughtful and funny stories are a sort of autobiography, and he has much to tell us about the exotic animals that he wants better appreciated.

There are some peculiar beasts out there. The kangaroo rat has a nose exquisitely tuned to find buried seeds, and can filter sixty seeds from sand in a second. There are penguins in the desert in Patagonia. There are a few rodents on different continents who can live on the leaves of the saltbush, leaves that have a protective outer layer of cells full of salt. They have special teeth, or in one case, special dental hairs, that strip away the inedible layer to get to the green below. There are deadly assassin bugs. Mares describes staying in some of the most unpleasant regions of the world, and admits that when he is busy with academia and home, he longs to get to the desert, but it works vice versa, too. He is almost killed by fungus infesting his lungs after climbing through guano deposits in a New Mexico cave. He is nearly crushed by trees falling during a storm on a bat hunt in Costa Rica. Some of the most surprising specimens described here are humans, and Mares has plenty of funny stories.

_A Desert Calling_ is full of light moments, and near-disasters that are pleasant to recall because they are over. However, Mares has a good deal serious to say about the study of desert animals, and in the larger view, about taxonomy in general. "If you do not know the taxonomy and systematics of the organisms you study - if you cannot identify them correctly and understand how they are related - then you cannot study them in any meaningful manner." Research in "bigger" topics such as ecology is only possible when taxonomists have gone to the field beforehand and identified one creature from another and settled their ranges and evolutionary relationships. Mares has found and been responsible for the first scientific descriptions of many mammals, and knows that there are still plenty out there which have yet to be properly catalogued and studied. Over and over, he comes across specimens about which no one has basic answers: Are they diurnal or nocturnal? Do they live in colonies? Do they hibernate? What do they eat? There is an enormous amount of basic science brightly reported here, and an enormous amount that is yet to be done.

If you are a serious dinosaur lover with some money to spend, this is the book. At the time of publication, every classified species was included, along with pertinent details and from 1-3 pages of write-up. It talks of the holotypes, it has 1-2 photos on every page, it gives it all. It is exhaustive, well written, and just simply outstanding. Put it this way, paleontologists and reconstructionist-artists keep this on their desk like the military folk keep a copy of Jane's, it's simply far and away the best reference on the various species of dinosaurs. Is it pricey? Yup. However, you could easily spend far more buying every dinosaur encyclopedia sold on Amazon and still come up with a fraction of the material that is in this book. To be blunt, no other reference is in it's class. Throw in that periodic supplements are published that describe all of the new species and information discovered from the previous release, and you simply can't go wrong.

If I have to pick one flaw, it's that some of the photographs are of poor quality, however most of these seem to be because the only surviving photo is a zerox or what have you, so the quality is dependant on the source picture, not due to any corner-cutting (of which there seems to be NONE) in the book.

If you want to find all there is known about each and every dinosaur, this is the place to look. It's technically comprehensive, accurate and complete. An overwhelming undertaking. Required reading for the serious dino-freak.

A good review of the synapomorphies and research of dinosaurs before Sinosauropteryx was described.

I am delighted to see this book back in print as I can now start giving it as a gift again. The book has very thorough and comprehensive instructions on small list covering all types of meals. Everything in the book is awesome. It is particularly good for people that want to cook great meals but don't have experience as the author assumes nothing. The book is not lavishly illustrated and has no photographs.

I'd never heard of Michael Fields when a family friend gave me this cookbook as a wedding gift in 1970. But even then, I was interested in cooking so I eventually started leafing through it -- and gradually, through the years, trying out this recipe and that. Now, 31 years and a second marriage later, it's one of the mainstays of my cookbook collection -- not because of the breadth of its offerings (it actually doesn't have that many recipes compared to other classics like Julia Child's The Way to Cook), but because of the quality of the recipes and his instruction.

Each of the sections (a fairly typical selection -- appetizers, soups, fish and shellfish, beef, lamb, etc.) has about 8 to 10 recipes, prefaced by a lengthy introduction about the ingredients at hand and why the recipes were chosen. The recipes themselves are also in narrative style (except for the ingredients, of course) -- and many indeed do include detailed explanations of a key basic cooking technique: how to make a hollandaise sauce or a basic chicken stock, or how to bone a leg of lamb, for example. You also get lessons on shopping for and preparing ingredients, and tips on serving your creations.

But even if you are already a reasonably accomplished chef, I would recommend this book simply for the recipes. I've never made one that wasn't simply delicious. And I really like the mix of best-of-breed classics (his coq au vin and osso bucco, for example) with less common preparations such as his halibut mousse with shrimp sauce (a killer if you want to impress company). Also, while many of the recipes do require a fair amount of time, some are simple enough to prepare after work (the broiled chicken with butter, lemon, soy sauce and garlic is a regular on my weeknight menus).

I'd recommend this book for anyone who likes good food and is willing to put a little time and effort into it. Fields may not be as famous as Julia, Jacques, or Emeril (I believe he died some years ago), but he should be. Also check out All Manner of Food, another of his fine books.

When I was a newlywed, my wife one day tried to create a culinary masterpiece. Upon tasting her first attempt I exclaimed "Do you want to order a pizza?" Her reply was "Sausage and peppers!". Several weeks later I gave her a copy of this book. Since then the only pizza served in our home is baked in our home. The author assumes that you are a moron when it comes to understanding cooking terms. By the time you finish your first recipe, you will have an understanding of the color, texture and consistency of a "roux" in addition to knowing the term

As a first-year graduate student, I undersood most topics tangentially at best. Nonetheless, I was able to get a feel for some of the last century's most contributions to all of mathematics. I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone with a lot of exposue to various fields of mathematics, even if your knowledge of those fields is limited to the "exposure" level.

So what is mathematics anyway? You may think you know, especially if you are a math grad student, but unless you're familiar with the contents of this book, you don't!

This book was a real eye-opener for me. Basically it covers what is considered to be important mathematics by the math community at large by recounting the discoveries/creations of the Fields Medalists. I found it fascinating how the Fields Medalists' work tied together large areas of mathematics together, and how many times this intertwining nature of their work wasn't realized until years later!

This book is rather incomprehensible initially, even if delightfully put together. The first time I read it, I couldn't pronounce some of the words. The second time, I knew what some of those words meant. The third time, I saw how the words I was comfortable with were related with those I weren't. One can read sections over and over again, each time having gained more knowledge of the mathematics involved, and still get a handy pointer on what to learn next. I think that is the greatest thing about the book: one can see the relation of what one is doing to the Grand Plan of mathematics and how the latter developed and is growing even now.

I've only gone over the topology section in some depth, since that is my area, but I've found it useful for pointing me towards what to concentrate on. The bibliography is very useful in that regard; I feel it could be more extensive, but certainly it does an admirable job in listing some of the more useful references.

Dyson's introduction describes this book as a "roadmap". Seen that way, you should get plenty of use out of it over a long period of time, although perhaps not immediately.

Most professional mathematicians know next to nothing about branches of mathematics outside their own narrow specialty. If this describes you, then you *must* read this book. This beautiful little book of Monastyrsky gives a brilliant exposition of the work of all the Fields medalists up to and including the 1994 winners. It seems impossible in such a small amount of space to assume no more than what the average mathematician can be expected to know, and yet at the same time to provide enough technical detail for the reader to gain an accurate understanding of the content and significance of the major theorems of all the medalists. Perhaps this is actually impossible, but Monastyrsky comes as close as is humanly possible to achieving this goal. This book will broaden your mathematical culture more than any other single book I know. It was not until I read this book that I learned how simply the exotic structures on S^7 may be described, or what Margulis got his Fields medal for.

Warning: if you do not have at least a graduate-level education in mathematics, most of the book will be incomprehensible. Although there are some historical notes and insights into people's personalities scattered throughout the book, the intended audience is unquestionably the research mathematician who wants to know more than just the buzzwords associated with each Fields medalist.

A good book for nearly anyone. There is plenty of excitement and it is full of sea knowledge. My only complaint is that there are dreary sections filled with the author's life philosophy that I found quite boring, and ended up skipping over.

Books should have a central theme, and the philosophy blurred whatever the theme was supposed to be. A good editor would have removed most of it.

I absolutely loved this book, and am looking forward to reading it again. Carlos' narrations combined with his twist on words paints a picture even the most land locked reader can imagine. As a marine enthusiast and student, it is wonderful to read works from hunters who also appreciate the undersea world and respect its power and importance.

The Blue Edge is Carlos Eyles latest book. It is a pseudo-diary of the authors sixty-five day journey aboard the Nirvana with his friends Jack and Pam. He journeys through the Sea of Cortez to the San Benedicto islands. The journey is on one level a journey from the once bountiful Sea of Cortez to near pristine San Benedicto islands. On another level it is a journey through man's impact on the ocean in the infinitesimal slice of geographic time that man has populated the planet. On an introspective level it is a journey through one man's search for balance and his link to the ocean, and to himself.

The word "mystical" has been used to describe the writing of the book. "Mystical" implies something apart from the human experience. The Blue Edge is experiential. It is about experiences that we all face. It is apropos that the boat is named Nirvana, which is the Buddhist term for "enlightenment." Some of the things that the Buddha realized on the road to enlightenment were, that the world is suffering, all things are impermanent, and that there is no Self. The Blue Edge takes us through part of that journey. It shows us the pain, and the joy, as one man struggles with finding his place in the world. As he tries to balance his love for the ocean, his love for his family, and his love for himself.

Carlos leads the reader through the fragile, and thus transitory, illusion of the permanence of job, family, possessions, and our natural resources. He describes how man's greed, and ego, has affected the balance of the once pristine waters of the Sea of Cortez, and how it also is taking its toll on the San Benedicto islands.

For the spearfishmen this is the journey that some of us go through in our diving careers. Our pictures of full stringers of fish on our desks and walls. Our attempts to give permanence to a moment in time. Our attempts to catch the "most" fish. As our diving careers progress we find we take fewer and fewer shots looking for the "right" fish. The contrast Carlos paints with Jack, who is struggling to find his place in his relationship with Pam and with the ocean, and the spearfishermen aboard the Ambar III that are dumping the carcasses of the filleted fish into the water, to Brian Yoshikawa not taking any shots waiting for the 200 pound tuna.

The Blue Edge may be difficult reading for people who have no ties to the ocean, since the sixty-five day journey is aboard a boat. It, however, is must reading for anyone who spends any time with the ocean. The book encapsulates our life journey in those sixty-five days. It gives us glimpses of Nirvana (enlightenment) through Carlos's eyes. It is this poignant glimpse which is what wraps us up page after page, because we feel from the very beginning of the book that Nirvana is not to be attained for Carlos at this time. The struggles through the grinding teeth of sharks, and lawnmowers, is something the ocean takes us through. The longing to play in the ocean, the longing for wealth, the longing for pleasure, the longing for the kill. The experiences Carlos goes through in The Blue Edge shows us that "Nirvana", on one level, or more simply the struggle to find balance with the ocean, on a lower level, is unattainable as long as we long to possess it.

Like many new editors, I came to Final Cut Pro with no NLE experience nor any knowledge of video whatsoever. In fact when I started, just over two years ago, there was not a single book on FCP. Since that time there have been a number of excellent books published about FCP. I have bought and read all of them.

During the past two years I have learned the terminology used with FCP video. But my knowledge is FCP-centeric. I had little understanding of video, it's relationship to film or it's history.

Last week I discovered "Nonlinear/4" written by Michael Rubin. I can best describe this book as a complete reference guide to all things video. But its actually more.

Each element covered in this book is in it's own section. Each section is brief, concise and clearly written. Very simple (read: clever) analogies are employed to help the reader gain understanding. While there is technical information, the book is not overly technical. There is a great deal of art, illustrations and photos. This art furthers the learning experience and is one reason that the book works so well, the art really illustrates the
lessons being taught.

The history of film and video runs throughout the book. This history is essential to understanding how and why video is what it is today.

I learned a great deal from this book and now have a better understanding of why things are the way they are. Our modern day NLE Digital video is the result of a long legacy, going all the way back to the early days of film. This book is a great reference guide as well with a full index at the back.

I am really glad that I came across Nonlinear/4. I truly have a better understanding of what's going on with Video and how it works. This knowledge will certainly help me with FCP.

--ken

As a working (nonlinear) editor, and as an editing teacher, I can't recommend this book highly enough. Six years ago I made the switch from film to computer, with Michael Rubin's book as my constant companion. Rubin writes with a keen intelligence and an implied sympathy for both the professional editor and the student trying to make sense of the complex and rapidly-changing world of post production.

Because he IS an editor, Rubin is the only technical writer I know who is able to prioritize exactly what you need to know and to tell you why you need to know it. Like any good editor, he has the ability to think macro- and microscopically at once. His post-production flowcharts, history of nonlinear, and overview of systems and distribution are unsurpassed in the field. The down-and-dirty details of digital video- subjects like timecode, telecine and 3:2 pulldown, and compression algorithms- are clearly demystified. These are sections to which I still refer! This book is always in my cutting room as a reference, and when I teach I borrow examples from the book and urge my students to purchase their own copy.

This book contains another unique feature, which is an intellectual and practical interest in editing theory. Rubin has worked not only as an editor, but also in research and development at several companies during the dawn of nonlinear technology. Thus, he is able to pose and answer the most fundamental questions: Why do we need nonlinear technology? And how can that technology serve our creative needs? What might we see in the future?

This is a book that will be helpful for anyone who is already editing at any level, or for anyone just learning about the craft. Straightforward, well-organized, and filled with humor and wisdom, this is quite simply my favorite book about the technical side of editing.

I've read a number of books on the subject, and this is by far the best. Its clarity and concision put most of the others (such as the disorganized Ohanian books) to shame.