My husband and I were traveling by motorhome through the Southwest this winter. I bought this guide and it made our trip to New Mexico so much more meaningful. It provides exactly the kind of cultural and historical context I like to have in a very user friendly format. I have used other guides including Insight, Smithsonian, Mobil, etc. If the others in the series are as well done, this will be my guide of choice. It also has beautiful photos and helpful maps.

Hey amazon! There's a new edition of this book (actually there have been 2.....) The newest comes out in February, with completely updated info and pictures. You should order it!

The best science & technology encyclopedia of its class (affordable desktop size of less than 1000 pages). Articles are lengthy and meaty. Well indexed and well illustrated; excellent cross-indexing indicating pre- and post- requisite articles. Content of articles is very up to date and just right regarding level of sophistication for the intelligent lay public: not watered down yet not too difficult. Articles are interesting and thought provoking, taking the reader beyond mere comprehension of empirical scientific facts toward deeper understanding and meaning.

Whether you are a serious student of science and/or technology, or just posess a casual interest in the broad spectrum of the two subjects, this book is as slick as they get. It's packed with tons of useful information from the inner workings of computers, to the amazing physics behind our universe. It's beautifully organized (each entry points you to what item in the book you should read before and after the current one), it's filled with excellent color illustrations and photos, and it never gets boring browsing the 1000+ entries. Dinosaurs, CD-ROM drives, radiology, astronomy, great people of science, great inventions, and on and on. This book is highly reccomended, and serves up information that could have easily been broken up into multiple books. A must buy.

While not the 1st artist to take on the conceptions of light and its practical uses in art, now Flagstff, AZ. artist James Turrell has brought the perception of light in art to creative and fantastic new levels through his conceptions such as his famous "skyspaces" to "darkspaces," "blue rooms," etc. Many of his pieces offer low light level environments, some almost no light at all, still others brilliant hues of red and blue.

Like most artists, Turrell shies away from giving detailed explinations of his works so that each individual can surmise the piece for themselves. This is not necessarly the case in this work. Turrell wanted, (and did) to build a specific "skyscape" in order to view an eclipse that occurred in England. Like his other "skyscapes," Turrell took the environment and all of its factors, as well as very specific geometry, into account, so that he could construct the perfect medium through which to not just observe the eclipse, but to better magnify the light, or lack thereof, of the eclipse.

The book is a wonderful look at this process, complete with analysis and pictures of the eclipse, the "skyscape," etc. An added bonus is the cd by German composer Paul Schulze, who's approach to his music (a minimalist ambient style, normally) is a perfect match to Turrell's art.

Fans of Turrell, or those who are interested in the interplay between light, our senses, and the reality they both help us create, will find this rather short treatsie to be of invaluable use to them. A wonderfully intriguing work.

James Turrell has long been a major player in the field of light art, and visitors to the Matress Factory museum in Pittsburgh are well aware of his outstanding way of playing with art and images. This amusing meditation on an eclipse is an excellent addition to his body of work

I found this work to be an extremely thorough examination of Pope John Paul II's views, thoughts and teachings that helps shapes contemporary Catholic thinking.

Antoine Nachef has a true vision into the Catholic faith, this book has incredible insight into the philosophy of Pope John Paul II and his ministry, it is an excellent read and only superlatives can adequately describe this magnificant work. As a former student of Nachef I have read all of his works and they are wonderful and Mary's Pope is no exception, an essential read for the faithful Christian.

I like the book for the following reasons and many more: -covers both routers & switches -covers the show commands as well as the equivalent SNMP objects -tells me the inside information (e.g.) Which ver of IOS started supporting sub-interfaces, IOS hidden commands -tells me how I can leverage applications like HpOV NNM, MRTG etc

And it tells all this and more in a simple language (e.g.) The chapter on monitoring CPU & Memory resources explains lucidly how one can be proactive about monitoring these 2 key elements.

The chapter on VLAN management is another good example. One of the topics it covers is about monitoring spanning tree topology changes, how you can use community string indexing to get vlan information for each individual vlan

I am certainly not a professional but found this book very informative. The writing was "reader friendly" but, of course, having a computer and being networked certainly are not enough credentials to fully understand the nuances of this book. I highly recommend this book for people "in the business."

Dalton's poetry is intense, and exudes revolution in every verse. Knowing a history of the poet's life and struggle, you get a greater feel and appreciation for all his work. His pain, love, and hate all mixed together delivers the most powerful poetry I've ever read. I enjoyed this book immensely, and recommend it to all of those that are a rebel at heart.

In Dalton's words you can hear his pain, loss and anger; but it's his love and romantic vision that you take away. I tresure this book and it stands as my most read book.

Nations of Nations tells the history of our country in a very tangible way that is accessable and interesting. It is a rare history book that focusues as much on the culture and the people from different time periods as the country's leaders and law makers. Which, when studying American History, is of the utmost importance.

NATION OF NATIONS VOLUME TWO: SINCE 1865 WAS A FABULOUS TEXT BOOK. THIS BOOK HELPED ME TO BETTER UNDERSTAND ALL ASPECTS OF THE INFORMATION WITHIN. AS A FRESHMAN THIS YEAR I HAD A HARD TIME ADJUSTING TO MY CLASSES BUT WITH THIS TEXT I HAD NO PROBLEMS UNDERSTANDING MY READING ASSIGNMENTS AND ENDED UP DOING VERY WELL IN THE CLASS. I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE A HARD TIME PICKING OUT THE IMPORTANT PARTS OF A PARAGRAPH BECAUSE IT HAS GOOD OUTLINES. IT WAS A FANTASTIC TEXT BOOK!

What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy by James Paul Gee (Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a controversial yet thought-provoking look at interactive games and what can be learned from them. Persuasively presenting thirty-six learning principles that are built into good interactive video games, and contemplatively studying everything from issues of forming identity, to the acquisition of problem-solving skills, to learning non-verbal cues, What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy sheds considerable light in a most extraordinary way on this rapidly evolving and increasingly pervasive aspect of American popular culture in the twenty-first century.

I read through the entire book today, enthralled that an academic of the same generation as my parents finally "got" what made videogames (focusing on action, adventure, and rpg games) a fascinating medium both for players and creators. Furthermore, the author was then able to apply this knowledge to his area of expertise, educational theory. I knew videogames could be art, I knew that as simulations they could be political, but I never quite saw what seems to me perfectly obvious now, that good videogames of almost every variety teach us how to think and learn, and that they do this much better than our school system.

This book should be loved by anyone with a strong interest in videogame theory or educational theory, as it impressively doesn't simplify either area to fit the demands of the other.

I also applaud the organization of the book, as each section centers around a few key concepts of educational theory which are repeated in the appendix giving everyone who has read the book an easy way to recall the '36 learning principles'.

Father Dumoulin's magisterial two volume history of Zen Buddhism is the standard English work on the subject and come highly recommended for any student of Zen of Eastern religions who wants a scholarly overview of the subject. My only caveat would be that this is NOT a history of Zen thought in the sense of a detailed analysis of the various philosophical doctrines of the various schools of Zen. Such a work would be much, much larger than this one. It does, of course, deal with these issues, but only in a very basic way, as one would expect from a general history. In short, it is the best general history of Zen available.

It's a real shame that this book is out of print. This is one of the great, classic studies of the history of the development of Zen. Volume 1 (this one) covers the antecedents of Zen in India to its development in China. Volume 2 covers Zen in Japan. I've only read volume 1, but I learned a lot about both the history of Zen and also its philosophy. Dumoulin is one of the great scholars of the history of Zen, and although he is not always philosophically acute, you will get some genuine insights into Zen doctrine by reading this. (Of course, according to Zen, the doctrine isn't really what's important!)

This book should be on the desk of every policymaker ! As a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church I would also hope that deacons, animators of justice and peace in the local Church, would read and ponder this difficult and complex problem. After 20 years of my own study of the problem of war and peace in the nuclear age, with the end of the Cold War, there seemed to have emerged more questions than answers for myself and others.

This collection of essays gives the reader insight into the multilayered complexity of what to do with nuclear weapons, how useful are they, and what can we do to get rid of them in the future. I was impressed by the depth of the essays from each of the contributors, even when I disagreed with some of the assumptions or conclusions. This book forces one to wrestle with the unfinished agenda of human survival and thrival. As a Christian theologian, the ethical argument opposing nuclear weapons forces one to grapple with the complexity of this issue as an act of love. It is a struggle directed to understanding this seemingly unsolvable problem and the possibilities for living in a more just and peaceful world. This cannot be accomplished without knowing something of the world and problem of nuclear weapons. This book offers a superb overview of this most important and vexing dilemma at this time in human history. We cannot hope to secure some level of peace and justice without study and discussion of the emerging constellation of problems and developments surrounding this issue. This book helps us to understand.