People in my industry (golf) finally have a "Bible" to refer to when it comes to professional irrigation systems. Laid out in a basic, yet thorough format this book has it all, from good photos to useful charts and glossary. Anyone even considering installing a new system should have this book at their side. I wish I had it when our system was designed and "thrown in the ground" by a purported expert.

A genuine classic used heavily by my students in ecology in several decades of teaching. A detailed glossary is usually sufficient to enable beginners to readily use the keys to identify the most readily observed and collected fresh-water plants and animals. With keys for the identification of all major groups of aquatic life from algae, major invertebrates and common fishes, this compact volume is a delight. In addition, representatives most commonly seen by students are illustrated with accurate, well-labelled line drawings. A brief essay on methods of sampling and analyzing aquatic organisms and their habitats completes this compact, useful guide. To be sure, the references, although significant in their day, are now of historical interest and more interested students and others eager to learn more about aquatic life would need to do some library search for more current work on the aquatic organims featured in this guide.

Coming out of RazorBlade Press, Hideous Progeny is one monstrously beautiful anthology that explores the world as it would have been if Dr. Victor Frankenstein's gruesome experiments had not gone awry. Writers such as Tim Lebbon, Peter Crowther, Steven Volk, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Rhys Hughes (to name just a few) each donate a small literary organ to the mix, and everything is skilfully stitched together into a marvellous book by first-time editor Brian Willis.

Cosmetically, the book is a two-face: while cover design by Chris Nurse is nothing short of outstanding, the internal layout is not without blemish. For example, outside margins are too wide, story titles are not always at the same height in the page, and the author's name is italicised in some but not all of the instances. Another gripe I have is that page numbers on the right-hand pages are left-aligned; plus, headers have no indication about the stories presented below them: these will give you a bad time if you want to riffle through the book to look up a specific something. There are a few extra typesetting warts and moles as well, as I noticed some characters showing up in a different size than the rest of the text, uneven spacing between words, typos derived from bad OCR, and so on. I sincerely encourage RazorBlade Press to pay more attention to internal design in the future, and run a few spell checks as well. Still, don't let appearances fool you, because the writing on these pages is top-notch.

In the whole, I was not in the least disappointed by Hideous Progeny while expecting quality work. Many short stories surprised me by their original angles, and all are very well written. The subjects are quite varied too, although some do overlap a little - it seems inevitable given the limitations inherent to their collective premise. I have my favourites, of course: Peter Crowther's piece is shocking yet touching at the same time, and the idea behind "Mad Jack" is a simple but nevertheless brilliant one. "The Banker of Ingolstadt" is perhaps the funniest in the book, and I found Steven Volk's "Blitzenstein" to rank among the best.

Whatever shortcomings the book has, they're quickly overwhelmed by the superb fiction it it, not to mention a downright gorgeous cover. For £6.99, it's well worth getting Hideous Progeny: not only will you be adding a fine specimen of a book to your library, you'll also be helping small press business to thrive. Because I want to see more from RazorBlade Press. Oh yeah.

"The question is not what you look at, but what you SEE."- -H.D. Thoreau

This quote from Thoreau aptly applies to the work of Flagstaff, AZ. artist James Turrell. Turrell has been fascinated all his life with the concept of light and its use in art and architecture. Add to this his notion that the individual should experience this art alone, embracing what the piece has, and does not have, to offer, and one has the basic mindset to take on his art.

To best experience Turrell, one needs to go to an exhibit and take the time necessary to participate IN his art. Like a good book or good music, art reqires a level of active participation to fully realize the piece's potential and to maximize its impact. A Turrell exhibit is a glorious thing- each person actively participates, taking in his color concepts, becoming one with them. Whether in one of his famed "skyspaces," where the participants sit in a consistently lighted room to look through an oval shaped hole in the roof at dusk to watch the changing lighting patterns- the light from the roof diminishes and the consistent railing lighting in the room dominates- or vice versa if one sees the exhibit at dawn, to his "dark rooms" where the viewer is in a 99.9% darkened room with the faint glimpse of an outline of light, allowing the mind and eyes of the viewer to re-conceive its surroundings and realities- not unlike an ink blot test, but in the dark, Turrell's pieces are challenging the concept of light and how each of us perceive it and use it in our lives.

What his art offers is vividly displayed in this book, a wonderfully in-depth one that showcases his growth and remarkable consistency brilliantly. His art is eclectic, ranging from the aforementioned "dark rooms," "Skyscapes," "blue rooms" (viewers in a room with a blue light dominating it, again, challenging perceptions and optics), to a recent "skyscape" that allowed perceived viewings of an eclipse, to his re-construction of a dormant crater (outside of Flagstaff, AZ) to allow unique views of the sky, light, the world. Each piece of art challenges the concept of optical illusion vs. reality- the light offers 3 dimenstional viewing in a 2 dimensional world based on angles of the light, the walls, etc- as well as the common perceptions of light in art.

Again, Turrell should be viewed in a proper exhibit, but this book offers a brilliant overview of his career. The text is in both German and English, but still offers precise pictures, diagrams,and Turrell's philosophies on art, light, and the world. It's a brilliant work by one of today's foremost artists.

'The Paintings of James-Paul Brown,' published by Capra Press, is a retrospective of the artist at play in a garden of color and light for the last twenty years. This is a book that should be available to every student of art as an example of one man's on-going blessed passion exploding in an artistic triumph ofjoy,romance,whimsy,playfulness, hope, and the divine gift of life. As a Christmas gift, this collection of paintings would be well received.

James Dunn is, in my opinion, a model scholar. He begins from liberal presuppositions but his conclusions tend to be quite conservative.

As a liberal, Dunn does not assume that the Bible is inerrant; for each issue he raises, he proceeds to examine the evidence in detail. But despite his liberal presuppositions, he always employs careful exegesis. He does not make unwarranted leaps from the biblical text to supposed extra-biblical parallels, but closely examines the biblical text in its own light before extending his inquiry cautiously outwards.

It is widely recognized that there is a large conceptual leap between Jesus (as presented in the Gospels) and Paul. Jesus lived as a Jew, in obedience to the Law of Moses, and he restricted his mission to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt. 15:24). Paul devoted himself primarily to the conversion of Gentiles. He held that Gentiles could be saved apart from circumcision and other works of the Law, asserting that Christ was "the end of the Law" (Ro. 10:3).

Dunn argues that the conceptual link is not as unbridgable as many scholars assume. Indeed, he argues that Jesus' attitude toward the Law constitutes a bridge to later Christianity. In Dunn's opinion, Paul was merely following Jesus' position to its logical conclusion, responding to issues as they subsequently arose in early Church history in a way that was consistent with Jesus' own stance.

For example, Dunn examines Mark 7 in detail. (There Jesus is reported to have "declared all foods clean".) Dunn does not assume that Mark's report is historical, but weighs the evidence pro and con. He ultimately concludes that Jesus made a somewhat ambiguous statement. Mark interpreted it one way; Matthew interpreted it somewhat differently. It was the ambiguity of Jesus' position which gave rise to subsequent controversy in the Church. Yet Jesus did lay a foundation for the position ultimately expounded by Paul.

Such a brief summary does not do justice to Dunn's approach, however. The value of the book is in its detailed argumentation. In addition to his careful exegesis, Dunn builds on the research of E. P. Sanders on extra-biblical Jewish literature -- though Dunn reaches different conclusions than those of Sanders. At various points, Dunn explores the intertestamental history recorded in 1 and 2 Maccabees, he discusses "Jesus, the Pharisees, and sinners" -- in direct response to Sanders -- and he talks about the Hellenists (see Acts 6:1ff.) as a historical bridge between Jesus and Paul. He also attempts to unravel controversies in the early Church -- notably that between Paul, Barnabas, Peter and James (see Gal. 2).

The net effect is to set Jesus in a broad historical context: Dunn reaches back to critical intertestamental events, carefully considers Jesus' position vis-a-vis the Pharisees, and proceeds forward through the Hellenists to Paul and other early Christian leaders. The broad sweep of the argument is, to my mind, quite persuasive.

The book is not a light read! It consists of a series of articles on individual New Testament texts. Dunn wrote the articles as part of his research for a commentary on Romans (since published in the Word Biblical Commentary series). Each article was published in a theological journal, thus each chapter of this book has been submitted to scholarly review. In compiling the book, Dunn has added a brief appendix to each chapter, in which he responds to the scholarly critique of each original article. Given the detailed nature of the argumentation, and the scholarly audience to which the articles were originally directed, readers may find it a difficult read. It is not necessary to read Greek in order to make sense of the book, however.

The first few chapters of the book focus on the Gospel of Mark; the remainder of the book examines passages critical to the interpretation of Paul's letter to the Galatians.

To a scientific mind, there is no such thing as "the last word" on any given subject. Other scholars vigorously dissent from Dunn's conclusions. But for Christians who are troubled by the radical scepticism of many scholars, Dunn demonstrates that conservative conclusions can be defended in a responsible manner.

This book provides a concise and very readable summary of John Paul II philosophy of the human person. The main section of the book presents John Paul's philosophy of education by gathering together his many written thoughts on the matter -- works from both before and after becoming pope.
The entire book is very readable and understandable for all, whether or not you have a good grounding in philosophy. It gives some good "food for thought" for all educators.

This is a concise and clear image of the kind of reception and response given and taken on Paul's missionary journeys. A good first place to start and to prepare oneself before taking a pilgrimage today.

This book is a wonderful mix of fiction and non-fiction stories. The stories are so well written, the reader is unsure which is which. There is also a blend in some of the stories of both types of story. If anyone can find this book, read it and see for yourself. You will never get rid of it.

Ms. James's book entitled, "The Mud Family" is a very heartwarming and culturally sound book. I am an elementary school teacher. I read "The Mud Family" to my second graders every year in November when we study Native American traditions. I have several copies of this book so that my students can read it together in small groups or pairs. It's a wonderful read-aloud, too!