Natural Landscaping is an essential resource for anyone interested in landscaping with native plants. The importance of learning to use native plants is so important as we face continuing droughts in various parts of the country, including here in Williamsburg, VA. The book is so full of information that I find myself going back to it often. Many thanks to the authors for this fine volume.

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, Natural Landscaping: Designing With Native Plant Communities by licensed architect and landscaping authority John Diekelmann and natural plan restoration expert Robert Schuster is a fascinating, "user friendly" instructional guide on basic landscaping principles, as well as cogent, authoritative advice on how to restore wetlands and introduce native plant species for wetlands, grasslands, forests, and more. Black-and-white photographs as well as an inset section of color plates wonderfully illustrate this meticulous, fact-filled, professional quality, highly recommended "how-to" guide for anyone aspiring to enhance or restore native plant communities.

I have the 1982 edition of this book - I stumbled across it and have been amazed ever since that such a book was written in 1982 before this approach to gardening/landscaping was popular.
It is tailored to the midwest, but the technical solidity and sound design concepts should apply anywhere.

I read this book to prepare myself for a salescourse at the company where I work. As it turns out I am no salesman, but the trainer did note that I had a very good insight into the salesprocess. So good, in fact, that he advised me to become a selling consultant for my company instead of a salesman. All that, thanks to having read this book in combination with "The New Strategic Selling" (also by Heiman). If you really want to start selling, you must read this book!

Throw the old rules of traditional sales out the window. Stephen E. Heiman and his co-authors, Diane Sanchez and Tad Tuleja, state in no uncertain terms that to remain a successful sales professional, you need to change the way you view the selling process. They advocate a customer-driven model of sales as the only approach for long-term success. The book includes “personal workshops” to allow you to apply these concepts directly to your sales situation. We ...recommend this book to anyone frustrated by the limitations of product-pitch selling. Note: This book is a revision of Conceptual Selling (by Robert Bruce Miller with Heiman and Tuleja, Warner Books, 1987), which has been updated to reflect the economy of today and tomorrow.

This was another fantastic book by the same people who brought you Strategic Selling. It provides the blocking and tackling of sales situations that fills out the strategic approach of their earlier book.

This is a professional, mature approach to selling that is sadly rare in the profession.

I was driving to the airport at 4:30am in a heavy rain storm. I didn't see the flatbed truck when I enterred the freeway. He skidded and jacknifed and I saw the back-right corner of his truck coming straight for my side window. My whole life did NOT flash before me but I thought about the police notifying my wife of my death and about all that would follow. The tons of metal and steel stopped just short of my window but close enough to hit my rearview mirror.

As I calmed down, or tried to calm down, I turned on the radio. Rather than the usual popular music, the station was playing religious music in the wee hours. The most beautiful sound I've ever heard came through the speakers. It was just a lone woman's voice singing without accompanyment. I was ready to go straight to the radio station to determine what it was but the announcer saved me a trip. It was Bobbie Wolgemuth singing "O Sacred Head Now Wounded" from the "O Worship the King" disk of hymns. Most of us grew up learning this tune as "Because All Men Are Brothers" by Peter, Paul & Mary. I believe it originally came from "Saint Matthew's Passion," an 18th Century choral work.

Ms. Wolgemuth's song stilled my beating heart and gave me a sense of peace I've never experienced. I am not a religious man but the beauty of this music convinced me that there must be a living God somewhere.

This book and accompanying CD of 12 hymns is awesome. I truly feel in the presence of the Lord when listening to the worship songs and I am enjoying the background information surrounding each hymn. These original hymns date back to the 1800's. I enjoy contemporary worship songs, but am now a fan of original hymns from the early days. I am going to purchase several copies of this book as Christmas gifts this year!

Many of us have sung popular hymns like O Worship the King and A Mighty Fortress is Our God, but few know the stories behind them. Now popular authors like Joni Eareckson Tada, John MacArthur and Robert and Bobbie Wolgemuth bring to us a beautifully bound book along with CD full of hymns. While you read the book, listen to the music. You'll be shocked to discover that many of the hymns were born out of persecution, fear, betrayal and sorrow.

This is a fish of a good book! The information that has come out in the last ten years about photonic band-gap materiels can be confusing and offputting. This book enables any astute reader a comprehension of the various properties that come into play when dealing with and controlling the propogation of light. I recommend it highly for use in the classroom as well as for the bedstand.

Graduate students (or advanced physics undergrads) will appreciate the beautiful analogy this book makes between solid state physics, which gave us semiconductor devices, and the newer field of photonics, which promises a revolution in optical devices. The writing is clear and consise, and the many colorful illustrations aid the reader in formulating a picture of how it all works. Just plain WELL DONE -- more physics texts should read like this one.

With help of this new theory,we can turn so many things into realities which can't even be imagined several years ago. This theory urges us to look on things in a brand new way! I think miracles will come forth after our studying.

Dr. Robert O'Connell, author of Of Arms and Men (1989), has written another excellent book on the history of weapons and warfare with Soul of the Sword. Running to nearly 400 pages, it covers all the major weapon developments on land, sea, and air from the spear to nuclear weapons. All the great classics are here, such as the Trireme, the Gladius, Composite bows, Wheel lock pistols, the Brown Bess .78 caliber flintlock, Ships-of-the-line, Enfield 1853 rifle, Dreadnoughts, Gatling guns, the Sopwith Camel, the Flak 88mm, the T-34, V series rockets - and much more. Very detailed illustrations are also included. A nice touch are the occasional vignettes that accompany the main text, describing little known battles, incidents, or weapons that are of special historical significance, neatly summarized on a page or less. For example, who has heard of the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592 with a fleet of ironclads 250 years before the Monitor and CSS Virginia fought in the Chesapeake Bay? Or the fact that the Ferguson breech loading flintlock proved itself ready for battle when the British used 100 of them at Brandywine Creek in 1777 but was never widely adopted?

As with Of Arms and Men, O'Connell is concerned with the heavy influence that culture has exercised on weapon design and employment. He points out numerous historical cases where a new deadly weapon was invented only to be suppressed or discouraged by the reigning military establishment (Spencer repeating rifles, explosive-filled shells before 1850, etc).

The only minor distractions are the lack of full-page color pictures for this illustrated volume and O'Connell's tendency to come up with cute chapter titles that do not help the reader know where he is chronologically.

In short, this volume will make a nice companion to the other classic works I am proud to display on my library shelf devoted to the general history of weapons and warfare - Brodie's From Crossbow to H-Bomb, Dupuy's The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, Van Creveld's Technology and War, and O'Connell's own Of Arms and Men.

This highly readable, impeccably researched, well-balanced book is a prime example of what an informed, imaginative author can do with a well-worn subject. Do we really need another illustrated history of weaponry? I would have said no--until I encountered Robert O'Connell's superb book (with well-done illustrations by John Batchelor). O'Connell is something of a renaissance man, a respected defense analyst, a historian, a critically praised novelist...and perhaps that's the key to this book's humaneness, despite the subject. O'Connell never forgets that even the most unusual or most effective weapons are wielded by human beings, against human beings. This isn't simply a book about the machinery of war. It is about devices created by human beings for ferocious human purposes. Laced with anecdotes as entertaining as they are illuminating, this book has equal value for old-hand military historians and interested novices. A fine gift, too, for the "family warrior," military veteran or just that splenetic armchair general who needs to be placated at Christmas (so the rest of us can get on with our celebrations). This is in no way intended as a condescending remark--on the contrary, it is a mark of the author's great skill and talent that he has produced such a handsome book, and one as interesting to a four-star general as to a general reader. Extremely well done, and highly recommended. Also, because of its lucid style, this book would be suitable for a wide range of age groups, from bright teenagers to cranky old professors. First-rate and flawless.

This is a big, sweeping treatment which integrates advances in weapons and warfare with their political and socioeconomic interactions and ramifications on the scale of world history. And it is brilliantly conceptualized: walled cities become necessary when militant shepherds learned to ride; walled cities, European countries for two hundred years after 1648, and the nations of the world after WWII needed only limited war to maintain the balance of power between them; dictatorships had to tear down city walls and employ mercenaries to control their subjects; small family-owned farms in Greece could produce hoplite phalanxes which were lethal to cavalry and ideal for weekend soldiers, but vulnerable to the Roman short sword; naval warfare appeared on a massive scale with the Phoenician introduction of the triple-levelled galley; guns were manufactured on a massive scale only when they came to need little training to use and less marching because of the construction of railroads; and so on. The story is amazingly detailed and full of fascinating examples: France was able to end the Hundred Years War by liberating seventy castles in little more than a year by the introduction of siege guns; wage inflation in the 16th century forced navies to man their galleys with slaves and prisoners; in 1592 the invading Japanese were defeated by the Korean navy with ships with gun-ports and armored with metal plates. I marvel at O'Connell's masterful grasp of the subject.

Having worked in insurance for years, I expected this book would be of interest to people like me. I was surprised, however, to find it has a much broader appeal. It was fascinating to read how commercial insurance developed in conjunction with and support of our country's development. Many will be surprised to learn of its significant role in protecting our society and promoting our economy.

The personal stories about the people who developed the business are especially enjoyable--some of the most interesting are
about founders of major brokerages and those associated with
problems at Lloyds of London in the eighties.

I recommend this book to insurance and business professionals and to general readers with interest in American history.

Spreading the Risks: Insuring the American Experience is a fascinating account of the key events shaping the development of property and casualty insurance as an indigenous American business -- from colonial times to the present day. It is based on 13 years of research by an industry insider who had unique access to insurance leaders and records. It also is the most complete account I've found of how the insurance agency and brokerage system evolved through disasters and economic transformations into the 21st century.

It has an extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index that make it especially useful as a source of information.

Spreading the Risks does an outstanding job of telling the amazing story of the insurance industry. Who knew that insurance could be so interesting?

John Bogardus and Robert Moore have clearly spent considerable time researching this material and their "real life" experience in the field shines through beautifully. This book is incredibly valuable to people in the insurance field. However, it is written in a way that also appeals to the person who is simply curious about business, history, and life in general.

The book does a great job of demonstrating how the insurance business (in the past, and now ) affects all of us.

This volume measures up to the superb standards of the Anatomy of a Ship series, and it is high time we had such a comprehensive and attractive guide to HMS Dreadnought, the prototype for all 20th century battleships. The book includes a narrative history of the ship and description of its features, full technical data, and superb drawings of virtually every detail of the ship's construction and equipment. The one request I would ask only for more interior photos. Highly recommended to historians, naval buffs and serious modellers.

This book is nearly complete enough to build the real ship. It's quite amazing that this ship, that changed naval warfare, never fired a shot in her entire career!

George S. Schuyler was one of the premier black journalists of his, or any other, day. Between his own acerbic style and being published in The American Mercury, he was referred to as the Black Mencken. In addition, he wrote one great satirical novel, Black No More, and a fair amount of pulp fiction. Two of those pulp titles, The Black Internationale : Story of Black Genius Against the World and the sequel, Black Empire : An Imaginative Story of a Great New Civilization in Modern Africa, are reproduced here in one volume. Written under the pseudonym, Samuel I . Brooks, for a black weekly newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier, these sixty two serial installments in an ongoing adventure story originally appeared between 1936 and 1938.

Reminiscent of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, Schuyler tells the story of Carl Slater, writer for the Harlem Blade, who accidentally witnesses the murder of a white woman. The black assailant forces Slater into a waiting car at gunpoint, whereupon he is drugged. When he wakens, the murderer reveals himself to be Dr. Henry Belsidus, leader of the Black Internationale, an elite organization of black professionals whom the Doctor plans to lead in his mission to liberate Africa and restore blacks to their rightful position of dominance on the world stage. He explains that the woman had been one of his agents and her murder was punishment for failure. It turns out that Slater was on a list of blacks whom Belsidus planned to eventually recruit to his cause, and now circumstances force him to choose between joining up or being killed. He joins.

Dr. Belsidus is clearly maniacal, but he is also possessed of a compelling vision :

My son, all great schemes appear mad in the beginning. Christians, Communists, Fascists and Nazis were at first called scary. Success made them sane. With brains, courage and wealth even the most fantastic scheme can become a reality. I have dedicated my life, Slater, to destroying white world supremacy. My ideal and objective is very frankly to cast down Caucasians and elevate the colored people in their places. I plan to do this by every means within my power. I intend to stop at nothing, Slater, whether right or wrong. Right is success. Wrong is failure. I will not fail because I am ruthless. Those who fail are them men who get sentimental, who weaken, who balk at a little bloodshed. Such vermin deserve to fail. Every great movement the world has ever seen has collapsed because it grew weak. I shall never become weak, nor shall I ever tolerate weakness around me. Weakness means failure, Slater, and I do not intend to fail.

In the ensuing chapters he realizes this vision, along the way utilizing such visionary technological wizardry as solar power, hydroponics and death rays, and such social measures as as his own new religion, the Church of Love. Carl Slater witnesses it all and--at the behest of Schuyler's editors and readers--falls in love with Patricia Givens, the beautiful aviatrix who commands the Black Internationale's Air Force. The serial ends with Belsidus and his followers triumphant and white Europe expelled from Africa.

Stylistically this is pretty standard fare, following the over-the-top, melodramatic, cliff-hanging, conventions of the pulp fiction formula. It's well written and exciting, though overwrought. What really makes it interesting though is it's politics. Schuyler, particularly late in life, was a conservative. He moved farther Right as he became more vehemently anti-Communist and finished his career writing for publications put out by the John Birch Society (see hyperlinked Essays below). Part of this evolution entailed becoming generally hostile to the Civil Rights movement and to African Nationalism, but apparently in the 1930's he was himself a Pan-Africanist, especially concerned with the fate of Ethiopia after the Italians invaded and with liberating Liberia. There's a tendency to dismiss black conservatives as somehow self-loathing, as if conservative values are necessarily at odds with the advancement of the black race. And you can see something of a dichotomy in Schuyler's writings if you take for instance one of his comments on Marcus Garvey, of whom he was generally skeptical :

Marcus Garvey has a vision. He sees plainly that everywhere in the Western and Eastern hemispheres the Negro, regardless of his religion or nationality, is being crushed under the heel of white imperialism and exploitation. Rapidly the population of the world is being aligned in two rival camps: white and black. The whites have arms, power, organization, wealth; the blacks have only their intelligence and their potential power. If they are to be saved, they must be organized so they can present united opposition to those who seek to continue their enslavement. (George S. Schuyler, writing in the Interstate Tattler, August 23, 1929)

and compare it to what he had to say about the success of Black Empire :

I have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for 'The Black Internationale,' which is hokum and hack work of the purest vein. I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure. The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race. (George S. Schuyler, from a Letter to P.L. Prattis, April 4, 1937)

Taken at face value, he seems to be criticizing his black readership for enjoying stories based on the vision he had extolled in Garvey.

But perhaps this conflict is more easily reconciled than critics would have us believe. Throughout his career, Schuyler seems to have been entirely consistent in his hostility towards those who sought to speak for blacks. It is this general stance which explains his opposition to Garvey, Communists, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and so on. In Black Empire, he presents Belsidus as quite a monster, willing to use mass murder and near genocide to achieve his ends. It's easy to read the story as reflecting both his most treasured dream--the triumph of blacks over racial oppression--and his inherent pessimism about the leaders and means that would be required to achieve that goal.

At any rate, the story is great fun and Schuyler's personal conflicts only serve to add a few layers of tension. The reader is often unsure whether he's writing with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek or whether he's allowing characters to speak his own forbidden thoughts. That you can read it on various levels merely adds to the enjoyment. There's also a terrific Afterword by Robert A. Hill and R. Kent Rasmussen, from which I gleaned much of the information in this review. Altogether, it's a marvelous book and the Northeastern Library of Black Literature is to be applauded for restoring it to print. Schuyler's reputation among academics and intellectuals declined in direct proportion to his increasing conservatism, but his is a unique and valuable voice, deserving of revival.

GRADE : A-

This is an incredibly interesting (to say the least) story ofthe rise of a Black dictator who takes over Africa (and the Blackdiaspora). Sort of "The Turner Diaries" meets "TheSpook Who Sat By The Door." It is noteworthy that Schuyler (asthe notes in the introduction indicate) did not intend for this workto be taken seriously. But many did, and I'm sure that many modernAfrocentric readers would also.

This is a great book for anyone interested in the cattle business, Texas history, or the politics of big business in the middle of this century. One need not be a rancher or cattleman to enjoy this book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone from any background.

If you have an interest in the King Ranch, you should read this book.

I'm going to have this book. I got to look at a copy thanks to inter library loan. It is like having all the Anatomy of the Ship books for the entire British line of Battleships and Battlecruisers. It appears to have all the BB's and BBC's that served in WW2, including the old ones and Vanguard. There are many plan and side views including the insides. This book really does deserve 10 stars.

The definitive book on British Battleships of WW2. Hard to find but more than worth the effort. This is one book that shouldn't go out of print - ever!