I found this book at my local library and am somewhat disappointed to discover that it is out of print. Durant and Harwood seem like good people, if a tad too serious about matching Audubon step for step on his collecting trips around the country more than 150 years ago. I was consistently amazed at their earnestness in seeking out a particular view or clearing or ditch that the artist might have stopped at.

Clearly this was a labor of love for them, and their dedication, not to mention their scholarship, is commendable. It has been said, however, that an author should resist the urge to tell the reader EVERYTHING he or she knows. I know that rule gets thrown out the window when what is being written is more academic than artistic, but this book was apparently intended as both, and I can't tell you how boring it was to read paragraphs that consisted of nothing more than the names of all the plants the author saw around her. The bird lists made for only slightly less dull reading, but only because I'm a birder.

The book is really a combination travelogue/biography/history. It succeeds best at the last two, and some passages and descriptions are quite poetic. But less minutia, no matter how fascinating to the author, would have been most welcome. The urge to record and relate everything (including a photograph of the authors' makeshift drying rack, moist socks included) kills some of the joy of this book.

But I learned a lot about Audubon and grew to respect the authors' experience and knowledge of natural history - Harwood seems to be a highly expert birder and ditto for Durant as botanist.

I will also be seeking out a permanent Audubon exhibit and the artist's grave, which I learned are nearby in New York.

Though the book often came across as a little too indulgent, the zeal and genuine love the Harwoods bring to their work (and they work very hard) is truly inspiring.

I couldn't disagree more with the last reviewer. I read this book more than ten years ago and it is still the best source of information on the life of Audubon, as well as the most enjoyable read in the large Audubon literature. It fired my interest in Audubon more than any other book. The fact that the authors contemplate the people, places, plants, and birds that they found in Audubon's path -- and the changes that have taken place over nearly 200 years -- only adds to the book's value. This is history (natural and biographical) in 3D, and brings Audubon to life like no other book about him.

A near excellent review of the Asian Crisis. Chapter 2 by Richard Cooper is especially good. Here in some 12 pages you can get a clear overview of what went wrong. Chapter 3 is a rather lengthy tedious study; the conclusions are clear however: mostly Asian corporate managers are to blame for the crisis. As they took on more and more financial leverage even while net profit margins kept sinking during the boom period of 1992 to 1996. Or at the very least "deficiencies in their risk managment practices greeatly exacerbated it" (the crisis).

What most of these type of books miss however is how large global institutional investors ignored values in SE Asia's stock markets. This in the fanatic pursuit of liquidity. It helped create ignoring of values and incredible overpricing of liquid equities here, until it all crashed.

Even while profitability of Asian companies deteriorated, p/e ratios on most stock exchanges kept rising due to foreign money coming in masses. If Asian managers are to fault, what does this say about global institutional investors? Why is this left out?

Paul A. Renaud.

This book was a wonder for me. It really showed me what to do when a certain crisis strickes. It also told me how to react. Overall, it made some things much clearer for me.