Simply fascinating book on ordinary plants in your own yard. Great recipes and very entertaining. I did not know you could eat half of this stuff! Wowie!

This is the first wild-foods book I have found that is ideal for children. Preteens and young teenagers can be intimidated or overwhelmed by Billy Joe Tatum, or tuned out to the personal story flavor of Euell Gibbons. This book is so clear and so beautifully illustrated-- it is perfect to get young people involved in the foraging lifestyle. It's botanically precise, as well, to assuage the fears of worried mothers! The book is not just for young people, of course; it is a joy for foragers of all ages.

Although some of the recipes contain exotic ingredients that may be hard to get in some areas, many are relatively simple and incredibly delicious! Amazingly, they are also all low-fat. Plus, the book benefits a good cause. I've never gone wrong cooking something out of here--always raves from the guests!

Fabulous recipes for a great cause. A mouth watering guide to the Bay Area's finest chef's and restaurants. The book contains short biographies on each contributing chef.

This book, based on a series of talks given at the New York Library, biographers Robert Caro, David McCullough, Paul C. Nagel, Richard B. Sewall, Ronald Steel and Jean Strouse explain how and why they went about writing biographies in the way that they did.

Each biographer explains well how the life of the biographer becomes intertwined with that of the person they are researching. In each case, they stress that biography writing is both intense and time-consuming.

Lyndon B. Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, recommends Francis Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" for two reasons. One, to show that the job of the historian is to try to write at the same level as the greatest novelists. Second, that the duty of the historian is to go to the locales of the events that will be described, and not to leave, no matter how long it takes...until the writer has done his or her best to understand the locales and their cultures and their people.

In the end, it means that the biographer must not only understand the person, but also needs to intimately know the area where the person grew up and lived.

This book gives its readers new insights into the lives of some of this nation's most prominent figures, through the eyes of six well-known biographers. In "The Unexpected Harry Truman," David McCullough shows the life of Truman through new eyes. McCullough stresses that a biographer must genuinely care about his [or her] subject because you are living with that person every single day. The process is like that of choosing a spouse or roommate, therefore, the subjects that he chooses must have a degree of animal, human vitality. In Truman, he said, as with Theodore Roosevelt, he found no shortage of vitality.

McCullough created a detailed chronology, almost a diary of what Truman was doing from year to year, even day to day if the events were important enough. He also used primary sources, such as personal diaries, letters and documents from the time period. Truman poured himself out on paper and provided a large, wonderfully written base of writing for McCullough to sort through and "find" the man.

McCullough says that the magic of writing comes from not knowing where you are headed, what you are going to wind up feeling and what you are going to decide.

Richard Sewell's "In Search of Emily Dickinson," research process took twenty years and he says, "In the beginning I didn't go searching for her, she went searching for me." The process took him two sabbaticals, years of correspondence and meetings with Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter Millicent Todd Bingham to uncover the whole truth.

Paul Nagel's "The Adams Women," gives readers a sense of how important the women in the Adam's family were. Nagel said that contemplating the development of ideology is good training for a biographer. After all, he said, the intellectual historian takes an idea and brings it to life. For Nagel, working with ideas establishes a bridge into the mind and life of the people who had the ideas he studies.

Nagel said that he likes and admires women and this is why, after writing about the Adams' men, he wrote about the Adams' women. Nagel also said that he has learned and taught his students that our grasp of history must always remain incomplete.

Ronald Steel said, that the hardest job a biographer has is not to judge his or her subject, however, most fail to keep their judgements out of the biography.

In Jean Strouse's, "The Real Reasons," she explains that the modern biography examines how character affects and is affected by social circumstance. Biography also tells the reader a great deal about history and gives them a wonderful story.

In writing about Alice James, Strouse found that there was not an interesting plot line to her life other than that her brothers were writers Henry and William James.

Strouse, when asked by another writer about the descendents of the three James' children, she said that William's great-grandson in Massachusetts, tired of being asked whether he was related to Henry or William, moved to Colorado where he was asked whether he was related to Jesse or Frank. Strouse reported that he stayed in Colorado.

Strouse realized that in order to tell the story of the James' family, she was going to have to use her own voice to give life to the family, especially Alice. This is not recommended for all biographies, but in a case such as hers, it needs that biographer's voice to connect all the information for the reader.

In Robert Caro's, "Lyndon Johnson and the Roots of Power," he talked to the people who knew Johnson to get a sense of the former President from Texas and what made him worthy of a new biography. He wrote the biography to illuminate readers to the time period and what shaped the time, especially politically.

This book will help writers understand the steps he or she will need to take to write a biography. It shows the difficult research processes and makes the reader want to either write a biography about an interesting person or never want to write again. Either way, this book provides new insights that one may have never thought about before. I recommend this book to both beginning and seasoned writers

This book turned out to be interesting as well as informative.
You are led through Getty's road to riches. The founding of his oil company recieves proper attention in this book. You are also given some background on the founding of the Getty Museum. The
marriages of Geyyt as well as some of his children are given
coveragw as well. This was a very good book.

Wow, what a good book! Just finished reading this book and have to say that I really enjoyed all the information in it. I had heard of the Getty Museum and knew that he had made a lot of money in the oil business, but was not aware of the history. This is the third book that I have read in the past couple years or so that involve men who became extremely wealthy as a result of their ambitions. I find these stories to be fascinating, fun to read, and very informative. The Great Getty did'nt let me down.

Although it took 25 years after Gaultier first started designing under his own name for someone to dedicate a book to him, it was well worth the wait. McDowell, as with his book on Galliano, does a lavish job on Gaultier's life and designs. The book is packed with runway photos and details about some of the collections. My only complaints about the book (and they are very minor complaints): McDowell goes into over-detail about Gaultier's life, especially up to 1976 when he first started designing his own label, making for slow reading for half of the book; a few of the photos are mislabelled with the wrong collection (mostly the couture photos); and although there are some great runway photos in the book, a lot of Gaultier's show-stopping designs in the past are not represented, and there aren't enough photos from men's collections. A great book though!

Colin McDowell's peek into the wild world of Jean Paul Gaultier is both long overdue and well worth the wait! From his earliest childhood memories to his 2000 couture show and all points inbetween, McDowell reveals all in the same manner Gaultier designs his collections--with wit, irreverence, and style! This lavishly illustrated book has pictures and sketches (sadly, not Gaultier's own) from his most famous collections, including some rare and unusual ones. Photo coverage starts in heavily from around the 1989 collections, but earlier eighties collections are glimpsed here and there throughout the book. McDowell punctuates with notable quotes and images of Gaultier's influences, from pin-up queens to Physique Pictorial, from the great couturiers to street fashion. Smartly written and solidly designed (it even has Gaultier's nautical stripes in the end caps!) this book is a MUST for all Gaultier fans and admirers. It explains, in vivid detail, how he became the fashion icon that he is today!

This is another one of the American Girls Short Stories series about Josefina Montoya, a nine-year-old girl living in the New Mexico of 1824. In this book, when Josefina and her father journey up to the mountains to visit one of the rancho's shepherds and his grandson, they discover a recent illness has left him blind. In spite of Josefina's pleading, her father decides to retire the shepherd. But, on their way home, Josefina and her father are caught in a sudden storm, and he is injured. Can Josefina save the day?

The final chapter of this book looks at shepherding in 1824, and gives directions for making a mini rug (it looks quite fun and easy, and my daughter and I are going to make one). As always, Jean-Paul Tibbles has produced some excellent illustrations that add a great deal to this already excellent book. My daughter and I both highly enjoyed this book, and we recommend it to you.

"Josefina's Song" is the third Josefina short story that was published, but it is set just before the book "Josefina Saves the Day". In "Josefina's Song", Josefina is allowed to join her Papa on a trip to the local mountains. They are going to visit the shepherd and his son who spend most of the year with the herd of sheep on the more abundant grazing land found in the mountains. When they arrive at their camp, they realize that the shepherd has become blind from a fever, and his nine year old son watches the sheep. Even though the shepherd proves himself capable around the camp, Papa is still worried for his safety. Papa offers to house them comfortably in town, but Josefina boldly speaks up for them, jeopardizing her own trip to Santa Fe that same summer. On their way home, a summer storm hits and Papa is injured when his frightened horse rears at lightning and bolts. Brave Josefina leads her Papa on her own horse back to the shepards camp, until men from home discover the runaway horse and rescue them in the morning. During the night, Josefina sings in her beautiful voice to the shepherd's flute playing. When she runs out of songs she knows, she sings her feelings about her journey, her outspokenness, the storm, Papa's accident and about the care the shepherd gives them. The next day, the abilities of the shepherd and his son are re-evaluated.

Josefina's Theater Kit contains the ingredients to create a short play about Josefina. The play is titled "Josefina's Gift". Each of the five acts in the play are based on the book "Happy Birthday, Josefina!" Josefina believes that she may want to be a healer like her Tia Magdalena until she accidently breaks one of Tia Magdalena's priceless jars while cleaning, and then runs home. Tia Dolores helps Josefina take responsibility for her actions, and get a second chance to have Tia Magdalena teach her about being a healer. Her lesson on herbs with Tia Magdalena, and her confidence in herself give her the chance to save her friend, Marianna, from a snake bite.

The play is for six characters (five females, one male role for Papa). It comes with four script booklets, a directors guide, and a poster to announce your performance. The scripts contain stage directions: an excellent practice for reading materials written in different formats. The directors guide contains information about the directors job, stage directions, costuming, stage sets, and how to put on the play. All of the materials are detailed and user friendly. Motivated actors could make this into a production worthy of inviting the neighborhood over, or even a talent show entry.

This is a fun-to-preform play, with scripts, tips, and more!

After a brief overview of the "oldest art in the world" and a discussion of the caveats associated with the term 'art' as applied to extinct cultures Bahn describes the problem of taphonomy where knowledge of another older culture is shaped by the survival of artifacts. He also discusses the problem of controlled and limited access to ancient sites, as well as the use of modern photography to capture and transmit information about these sites to a larger audience.

Next, Bahn discusses different kinds of ice age art, which he categorizes as: 1) parietal art which takes the form of wall paintings and sculptures, floor tiles, and other large relatively immovable blocks of stone on which "signs" have been worked. Wall art can be incised, sculpted (additive or subtractive), or painted. 2) portable art which takes the form of figurines, musical instruments, tools, weapons, pottery, and other items that could be easily carried. Surviving portable items are generally made of ivory, bone, or ceramic clay or some other relatively durable inorganic substance.

Bahn then describes how analysts attempt to date ice age material. At one time, scientists believed ice age art could not be dated because it was either inorganic or the methods available for dating organic material were clumsy and destructive. Recent improvements in dating techniques have changed that. For example, charcoal (an organic substance) was frequently used by ice age artists to create the black outlines seen in many wall paintings. For years, scientists thought the black paint was manganese dioxide, an inorganic substance. Since only a pinprick of paint is now required for radio carbon analysis, scientists have been able to test the black paint, discover it was carbon based, and date it.

The book is filled with wonderful technical material as well as plenty of stylistic and other material of interest to art historians. I most appreciated the section that reviewed the various theories about "Why" ice age art was created. Was it art for art's sake? Was it the work of hunters practicing sympathetic magic? Was it a fertility ritual? Bahn pretty much dismisses these theories with practical observations about their shortcomings. What he does not dismiss is the creation of the ice age art for mythical purposes associated with healing rituals. Parietal ice age art is located inside dark passages near water. Often this water derives from warm springs. Sometimes the water flows from dark passages into the daylight. Often, mysterious markings that correspond to the seasons and the moon can be found at the entryways to cave chambers. Does this circumstantial evidence point to ritual undertakings that involved a Mother Goddess?

As an artist whose work is inspired by the cave paintings of Lascaux, I am always on the lookout for new books about the prehistoric cave art of Europe. This book is a delightful addition to my collection. I should caution that I approach books like this strictly from a layman's and artist's point of view, as I have a limited background in archeology.

Before I read this book, I'd always considered the cave art of Lascaux as the "birthplace of human art" (which was how it was presented in most of my art history courses at school.) Now I realize that the artists of that period are actually almost exactly halfway, timewise, between the earliest evidence of prehistoric art, and the art of today. Each new discovery of prehistoric cave art seems to push back the "birthdate" of human art a few tens of thousands of years.

Rather than focusing on a single cave site, this book is a more comprehensive treatment of Ice age art, discussing caves across Europe, with references to caves in Russia and China. It presents a more complete treatment of all aspects of these caves, discussing anthropological characteristics of the people who created the art, similarities and differences in the artwork, theories about their signicance(mostly debunked here), forgeries, history of the caves' discovery, etc. The photographs are excellent, and many are of paintings and objects I've never seen before. The writing, though comprehensive, is also entertaining and engaging, a good read. I enjoyed this book immensely.

This book is unique to me for several reasons. First, the wonderful photographs not only feature the more widely known paintings inside the caves (referred to in the book as "parietal art" or wall art), but also the artifacts found in conjunction with the paintings--"portable art". I found more photographs of such objects than in any other book I've read. Many are of artifacts I've never read about before.

Also, almost every possible theory ever presented to explain these paintings and artifacts is examined--and most of them debunked. Somehow, this is reassuring to me as an artist--although it would be exciting to understand more about the purpose of the art, it is also satisfying to realize that there is still no encompassing theory about why these amazing paintings and artifacts were created. Their mystery is still profound, intact and untouched. The various theories and conjecture throughout the years about these caves, argues the author, clearly reveals more about US, as modern people, than it does about the cultures that created the cave art. We overlay our desires, prejudices and blind spots onto the art, and for the last 150 years, observers have tended to "find" what they are looking for in the paintings.

There is a whole chapter devoted to fakes and forgeries of Ice Age art, a subject I find fascinating. My favorite phrase in this chapter is a caption of a photograph (p. 81)"...the dot and plantlike sign near the dreadful hand stencil appeared after the first photographs were taken."

In summary, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in archeology, cave paintings, art history, and art.

This is another one of the American Girls Short Stories series about Josefina Montoya, a nine-year-old girl living in the New Mexico of 1824. When Josefina's grandparents arrive with her aunt Dolores, Josefina finds herself suddenly torn. She had always been her grandmother's favorite, and mainly because she reminded her so much of her dead mother, a fact that Josefina had always been proud of. But now, she is getting older and is beginning to grow in directions her mother never had, a fact that her grandmother finds disappointing. What can Josefina do?

The final chapter of this book is a fascinating look at women's rights in 1824, both in Mexico and in the United States. (Plus there are directions for making apple empanditas, and delicious apple tart!) And, as always, Jean-Paul Tibbles' illustrations are excellent, and help to make this a truly wonderful book.

This is an excellent story, and a wonderful addition to the Josefina stories. My daughter and I both enjoyed the story for itself, and I like the lesson it taught, both for children and the ones who love them. My daughter and I both highly recommend this book.

"Just Josefina" is the most recently published (and fourth) short story about Josefina. "Just Josefina" fits between the books "Meet Josefina" and "Josefina Learns a Lesson". Josefina's grandparents have brought Tia (Aunt) Dolores to stay with Josefina's family and to visit. Josefina and her sisters greet their grandparents with respect, and then Josefina helps Abuelita freshen up after her journey. It is clear that Abuelita holds a special place in her heart for Josefina. It is also clear that Abueblita expects Josefina to be a quiet, well mannered girl who follows the rules of conduct, even when her sisters don't.

Josefina is torn between wanting to please her Abuelita and wanting to be herself. At a party, Tia Dolores plays her piano while the friends and neighbors dance. She urges Josefina to show them the new dance that she has learned, but Josefina is too young to dance in front of others. Abuelita is shocked at Tia Dolores's suggestion, and claims that Josefina is too shy. But dance is exactly what Josefina wants to do, and ends up doing, to Abuelita's disapproval.

Then, her skirt button pops. Abuelita had given the skirt to Josefina because it was the skirt of Josefina's deceased mother, and Abuelita's oldest daughter. Josefina tries to give Abuelita the skirt back, because, like Abuelita's image of Josefina as being shy and obedient like her Mama, it just didn't fit. In the end, the skirt button can be adjusted to fit, just like how Abuelita sees Josefina can be changed to accept Josefina as "Just Josefina".

This book is my favorite out of the Josefina short stories because of the clear, dignified portrayal of Abuelita as a traditional Spanish matron. I also enjoyed this book because Josefina learns that she can communicate who she is without compromising her relationship with her grandmother.

I, too, have only ever seen this produced, and never found it in print... but it's just brilliant. And FUNNY. How do you build a farce around the idea that "bad faith makes the world go 'round?" Well, Sartre manages it... I'll stop before this turns into an essay, and just recommend that anyone who has a chance to see this performed by a cast of any distinction at all should jump at it.

My first trip to England in the early 70's was the highpoint of my theater-going experiences. I was lucky enough to see Alec Guiness in "Voyage Round My Father," the Peter Brook production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and a young Ian McClellan playing the lead in "Kean." All were unforgettable, but this play still sticks in my mind as being among the negelected masterpieces of 20th century playwrighting. Sartre understood theater history and he understood role-playing, appearance vs. reality and all the other critical saws that are discussed in high-school English classes. Yet in this play these tired themes are perfectly expressed and therefor renewed and made infinitely interesting by the manner in which the playwright unfolds them. There is a gradual peeling away of pretense and bravado on the part of the protagonist (the play might as well be a monologue), and the audience comes to understand that behind all the masks, what Sartre finally wants to show us is humanity stripped of its skin. He exposes the viscera, the protruding bones, the raw psychic flesh that we are all heir to. Kean, by play's conclusion, has degenerated into a knd of erstwhile Truman Capote, having sacrificed his soul in the process of gaining notoriety. He also shares Capote's substance abuse weaknesses, though his alcoholism is merely a symptom of his inner malaise. Sartre is saying a great deal about art, about the effect of fame and about the human condition in this work. It is a play that should be revived every fifth year either on the West End or on Broadway, in my opinion. It is apparently hard to come by. I can't even swear that it reads as well as it plays (I've seen two productions, but haven't been able to find it in print myself). If you ever have the opportunity to see the play, by all means avail yourself of a rare theatrical treat.