This is a collection of essays about Chinese impressions of America over the last 150 years. We know what Americans thought of the Chinese when they first arrived -- this is a rare opportunity to learn what the Chinese thought of Americans. Topics include helpful suggestions concerning American ettiquite, essays on American women, black Americans, and the various problems in America (too much traffic, excessive consumption, etc.). This book will allow the American reader to examine his/her own society from a different perspective.

i love pop-ups and this book is another one for the collection. this book proves that pop-ups can be both enjoy by children and adults alike.

While Wilson and Savory's "That's Some Pig" is good, the real reason I bought this book was for Edward Lee and John Pelan's "Charlie's Web". No Charlotte's Web here, this story would be at home in any of Jeff Gelb's Hot Blood series books. You'll never look at pigs and spiders the same way again. Trust me.

A decent biography of Barber although it was published when he was only 28. It's hard to imagine such a prolific climber fading away at such a young age, you don't hear about him much now-a-days. This book isn't really written in chronological order and each chapter really can almost stand alone. Details his trips to Austraila and Germany the best. Gives insight into the statement I hear often climbing, 'Oh, that's a Henry Barber route,' which mean that it was probably hard. A must read for any Northeast based climber.

This biography explained the life of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. This book explains his life from birth and his family, to the marriage and his influence in the war. It explained how the general was the leader of the Confederacy. The book also explains the Civil War so that it is easy for the kids to understand. In the book there are also great pictures that mildly display war along with quotes ad images from that time period.
The author did a wonderful job displaying the war and allowing children to understand the concept on a very neutral level. I also liked the outline at the end of the book on his life. It helped children really visualize the order of events.
I like this book for all the above reasons also for the ease of reading. I found it so easy to understand and I think that this book will allow the children to gain interest into biographies and the war. Maybe even lead them into reading all Adler's other biographies.

A very good illustrated book, plenty of informations about all the signs you could find in a wood, a beach, a street.. Just open the book and you'll be able to find out which species of bird flown on your garden, which one eat your loved flowers... Very nice and veru useful!

I thought this book rather cute. The main character seems quite real, and the supporting characters well defined. The story was possibly a bit surreal, but overall, I enjoyed it through and through. I'm going to look for his other books right now.

There's not many classic books that are more well known than "The Swiss Family Robinson." A Swiss family is stranded on an uninhabited island and there doesn't seem to be any rescues that are lingering around the corner for many years. Soon the family is taming tons of new pets, fighting off animals such as anacondas and lions, and learning how to basically survive off the land the best they can. The Robinson family must keep an eye out for danger while also starting a whole new way of life for themselves.

I thought "The Swiss Family Robinson" was a spectacular adventure/survival book. You can say that the book is pretty much a long diary that is kept by the father of the family of everything that happens to them on the island. The book I read did have many references to God unlike some of the abridged editions. The only thing I didn't like about "The Swiss Family Robinson" is that when the family starts collecting and taming many animals that they find on the island, it gets a little tough to keep up with all the animals' names, but that wasn't bad enough to take anything away from the book for me.

I recommend anybody who likes survival or adventure books, especially if you like reading the classics, to get "The Swiss Family Robinson." I would recommend getting an unabridged version of the book if you can so you won't miss a word.

But let's be clear right up front. My 5-star rating of this book applies only to the original unabridged version in Johann Wyss' own words. The modernized versions are watered down, time-wasters for word wusses.

When I was nine years old I spent months struggling through this book for the first time. The old style language made for rough going, but I persevered. In the end I was rewarded with more than a classic tale marvelously told; I discovered a love of books and earned self-respect for tackling a tough read.

If I was a teacher whose task it was to introduce students to classic literature, I would skip Dickens and use this book. Kids love adventure, animals, and action. Swiss Family Robinson has it all. It's really a thriller disguised as a literary classic. All book lovers should read this one at least once.

And please don't watch the Disney movie and claim you've "been there, did that" on this story. The movie is totally different and in no way compares.

Never mind the film versions; the original unabridged Swiss Family Robinson is an exciting epic with a lot in it for the whole family.

Our third grade teacher read to us from this book every day and I could hardly wait for the next installment. Finally I got my own copy for a birthday gift, sat on the couch and read it cover to cover in one go. I still have this book, decades later.

From the opening, thrilling tempest scene to the very end and the "rescue", this book has plenty of action as well as creative solutions to problems. There is a lot of material for discussion, how the family solved problems, how they handled disagreements, adversity, disappointment, building of character.

This book definitely teaches values along with the adventure and the values are linked in such a way as to be an integral part of the story.

And Swiss Family Robinson is never boring. There is always an exciting new beast to be discovered, a new plant to use for food or clothing, a new machine or tool to be built, a new part of the island to explore. This is a wonderful book to read out loud to kids until they are old enough to enjoy reading it themselves. If you are bored with re-runs on TV, turn off the box and spend a half-hour or hour every evening reading this aloud. Everyone will have a great time, and kids who are read to, become readers themselves.

I'm learning with this book, and I do find it helpful and interesting. But I think the chapters introduce too many points at a time, and the exercises at the end of each chapter are not comprehensive enough to practice what was presented. I agree with other reviewers that the book relies a bit too much on intuition on the part of the reader.

The main thing I'm using it for is studying the conversation practices and comparing them with the tapes. I'd have to say that I've actually learned more Czech from a 40 year old copy of "Teach Yourself Czech" I found. Each chapter is only 2-3 pages long (there are lots of chapters) so you can digest things a bit at a time. So don't forget to look around some of your local used book stores!!

There are pretty much two popular czech language book courses (not just phrase books). I reccomend the other one because it is easier to follow and learn from. Glossary in this book is also only czech-english.

Czech is a very beautiful language, but it's also a very inflected one, and hence, it's very diffucult. Everything changes in this language, not just verb endings, but adjectives, nouns; every word. There's probably 15 different variations for the words 'this' or 'that'. So for the casual tourist this book isn't for you, you'd do better with Lonely Planet's Czech Phrasebook. But for those intent on learning more, then this book will suffice. The chapter topics are interesting for a language book; they are very abstract, they even teach you how to argue! I just wish it had shorter chapters to keep me motivated.

David J. Eicher's "The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War" is more than a military history of the civil war, but unfortunately it is also less. The facts may all be there, the details meticulously researched, developed and reported for the reader, but from the very beginning he has a "my book is more accurate than their book" attitude about those who have come before him and this undoes the work. He seems to revel in being right, and repeatedly corrects the prior record with snide remarks and asides, which if left unsaid would have made this a much better book.

James McPherson who arguably wrote the best single volume on the Civil War, "Battle Cry of Freedom," says in the foreword that this work is an "essential starting point" on Civil War history. With the utmost respect I completely disagree and refer Mr. McPherson to his own work as more than worthy of that description. Eicher's book is for those who have read just about everything else on the subject and are looking for more battle detail, which the author does provide. This is not by any measure a linear narrative of the war; events aren't always smoothly tied together, and there is a lot of social and political history, which has been omitted, as it should be in a strict military history.

The maps are ample, clear and well detailed, though the author or the editors must have an orientation bias. All maps have north pointing to the top of the book; as a result there is never a need to turn the book to review a map. For battles/events with a north/south orientation this is fine, these maps cover the entire page. The maps which have an east/west orientation suffer however as they are reduced in size to about a third of the page to maintain their orientation with the top of the book. Lastly, the maps often make the armies difficult to differentiate, as the gray representing the south is often very dark.

What the author does in his introduction however is completely unforgivable. He critiques both Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote's excellent multi-volume works. He complains that both are biased in the reportage, Catton for the North, Foote for the South and goes so far as to apparently blame Catton for the lack of research materials which has surfaced since he wrote his two trilogies decades ago. He takes Foote to task for other biases, as well and each are wholly inappropriate and uncalled for. There is no place for such personal editorial material in a purportedly objective historical work.

In addition to this error of judgment, throughout the text he makes want one can only call catty references to what he refers to at one point "dusty histories of the Civil War..." (pg. 365). He feels compelled to correct the written record by stating that in previous written histories such and such was reported, but it really was not that way at all. Occasionally he offers no further proof as when he relates on page 473 that "the term for 'hooker' as slang for prostitute most certainly existed long before Joe [Hooker] came onto the scene." The statement "most certainly" is proof of nothing. Lastly, his attempts to set the record straight becomes extreme and laughable when in retelling the rainy battle of Tullahoma he relates "The soldier's legend that Tullahoma was derived from the Greek tulla, meaning 'mud' and homa, meaning 'more mud,' was untrue." Eicher seems to miss the point that the soldiers were making a joke.

Finally because much of events in the Civil War overlap, the author occasionally gets his sequencing wrong. Most notably he relates Lincoln's assassination before he resolves Sherman's final triumph over Johnson. So Lincoln dies in mid-April and then we go back in time to March to Sherman's final pursuit.

If you have a driving need to read a book on the Civil War and have read everything else at least once (including McPherson, Foote and Catton) then if you must, read this. But it will be The Longest Read.

I'd never heard of David J. Eicher when I picked up this book. He has written about the Civil War before, notably doing a book-length bibliography (The Civil War in Books) and a book on Civil War battlefields, but his only narrative work of book length prior to the present work is a picture book on Robert E. Lee. Apparently, he's rather young and this is a first effort; who knows what he'll come up with next.

The Longest Night is one of the best books I've ever read on the Civil War, and I have read a considerable amount of stuff. Eicher spends little time on the politics of the war, instead devoting most of his attention to the seemingly endless series of battles and campaigns that were once called the "American Iliad." He exhibits an awe-inspiring command of sources and narrative, and must have an encyclopedic knowledge of Civil War combat. In addition to every major battle, more minor fights and even skirmishes are mentioned at least if not covered thoroughly. The maps seem to represent the battles they cover well, though occasionally they fall short of complete. I suppose that's inevitable given the size of the book.

I suppose I should comment on the bias allegations and the one fellow complaining about General Blunt being on the train. The bias involved here isn't pro-Northern, it's insufficiently pro-Southern. On two of the more controversial issues of Civil War history, the Dahlgren affair and the Fort Pillow Massacre, the author essentially stays out of the controversy, presenting the evidence briefly, and then leaving it up to the reader to decide. With the Lincoln assassination, he acknowledges the work done by William A. Tidwell, connecting the Davis administration with the plot, then baldly asserts that there's no proof the Confederates were directly involved in the assassination. In all three of these instances, a true pro-Northern author would be much more positive in his assertions; Eicher's just telling you what happened. And the reference to Blunt's wagon train even specifies how many teams of horses and mules were captured. No mention of locomotives is made.

I did have a few quibbles with the book, largely with the way the information is presented, though none of this is enough to lower my rating from 5 stars. For one thing, throughout the book there are passages describing various topical aspects of the Civil War: medical procedures and casualties, what the troops were armed with, how prisoners were dealt with, etc. For my money Eicher would have done better to put these in a separate chapter at the beginning of the book, or in an appendix. The chapters carry titles, but they only describe one event that occurs in each, and each is stuffed full of events. I would have liked to see the old style chapter sub-headings, or perhaps page headers describing what's going on on that page, along with the date of the events. When he listed ships, he seemed to be unaware he didn't need to put USS or CSS before every ship's individual name.

Given all of that, there's a mountain of information here, and it's well-presented. The author tells you of the passing of every general in either army, and the cause of death. He also makes an effort to correct previous works which credit various soldiers with promotion. Several reviewers seem to think he was bragging in this regard; it looked to me as if he was making sure everyone was on the same page. He singled out no one for special criticism.

One last point. In the forward, Eicher gives an overview of previous books on the Civil War, justifying his work. Let me quote his description of Catton's Centennial History of the Civil War: "...relatively light on military history and analysis, rich in the political relations between officers, and superb in it's biographical glimpses of the characters." I'm a fan of Catton, was raised on him, and that seems a fair assessment to me. Eicher's main critique of the Centennial History is that it was written forty years ago, and much scholarship has been done since on the Civil War, so that it's rather dated. Not exactly negative, is it? On Foote, he criticises him for pro-Southern bias, comparing the way the author dealt with Lincoln and Davis, and Grant and Foote, and quotes that author from several points in his work, pointing out passages that prove his point (in his mind anyway). This goes back to the issue of bias, and kind of proves what I was saying earlier. Eicher is determined not to be biased, and works at it.

Taking all of that in mind, this is a wonderful book to spend a weekend or an evening with, if you're a Civil War buff. It's not for the faint of heart: the text runs to 850 pages, and covers every military event concievable for the four years plus of the war. Every twenty pages or so he breaks down the organization of the opposing armies again, and after each battle he runs through the casualties, noting which generals got killed or wounded, if any. There is so much information here it's staggering, and the writing, while not quite Shelby Foote, is certainly good. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Civil War.

"From April 12, 1861, to June 2, 1865, the light of the great experiment of democracy burned but dimily as more than 8,700 battles and skirmishes swept across the land and extinguished more than 620,000 lives North and South. For all Americans, it was the longest night."--from the frontispiece.

By one estimate, the Civil War literature has swelled to more than 70,000 books, including multi-volume editions by Bruce Catton, Douglas Southall Freeman, Shelby Foote, and others. The best one-volume general work on the Civil War (which discusses political, economic, and social issues as well as military matters) is BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM, the Pulitzer Prize-winning work by James M. McPherson (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988).

Until now, however, there has been no standard one-volume military history of the Civil War. In THE LONGEST NIGHT, David J. Eicher has filled this gap by providing a comprehensive narrative of some 450 military engagements--major battles and minor skirmishes (although, for those who were killed, the skirmishes were not minor).

From the first shots fired at Fort Sumter (South Carolina), to Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House (Virginia), Eicher covers the "big battles": the bloodbath at Shiloh (Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee); Antietam, the war's bloodiest day (Sharpsburg, Maryland); the Union debacle at Fredericksburg (Virginia); the stalemate at Stones River (Murfreesboro, Tennessee); Lee's master stroke at Chancellorsville (Virginia); the three-day battle at Gettysburg (Pennsylvania); the seige and fall of Vicksburg (Mississippi); the stunning Confederate victory at Chickamauga, "the river of death" (Georgia), the battles for Chattanooga; Grant's campaign into the Wilderness and his worst blunder, at Cold Harbor (Virginia); Sherman's capture of Atlanta and March to the Sea; the siege of Petersburg (Virginia), and the collapse of Lee's army.

In addition to his coverage of the large battles, Eicher devotes much attention to the Western Theater, the Trans-Mississippi, the many naval actions along coastlines and on rivers, and many other aspects that earlier one-volume histories have brushed over lightly.

"I have supplemented this military history," Eicher writes, "with the words of the participants themselves, and I have based the narrative on numerous manuscript collections and recently published battle histories, diaries, letter collections, and biographies. . . . The result is a popular military history that can be thought of as a companion to McPherson's distinguished work."

It took me a month to finish this 990-page tome, but it was time well spent. Eicher paints his impressive military mural on a large canvas, revealing fascinating details often ignored by other literary artists. As the panorama spreads out before us, we are appalled at the slaughter--a total of at least 621,538 dead, North and South--a number approximately equal to the American deaths in all other wars combined.

THE LONGEST NIGHT deserves a place on your bookshelves; it earns five stars--the highest recommendation.