using this book helped me immensely when it came time to raise my own tipi! using only the book and my woefully average construction skills, i easily put up my 22 foot diameter tipi in the northern california woods in a few hours with minimal assistance, the first try!

the other parts of the book offer fascinating aspects related to tipi living, history and culture. a must read for any tipi enthusiast!
great!
heartLove, the electric tipi hippy!

The wealth of information included by the Laubins, and their heartfelt respect for the American Indian, permeate this book. Many tipi construction books these days are written by would-be hippies--but the Laubins come across as the real thing. They had real contact with the tribes who made the various designs and they understood the distinctions between them. Better yet they have done an excellent job at getting these techniques across to the reader. An excellent resource for our business and home pursuits alike and the only book on the subject we recommend.

Besides providing all necessary details on the materials, construction, setting up, and maintenance of a tipi, this book also provides comparisons with alternate designs and why one might be better than another, and gives advice on varying the size to fit your needs. It provides all the essentials, including adjustments for various seasons and types of weather (rain, snow, and wind), layout of living and sleeping space, furniture, storage of supplies, fire building, cooking, recipes, brain tanning, making parfleche containers, and moccasins. Plus it includes a few words about a native ceremony to properly dedicate the new lodge, and describes tipi etiquette for hosts and visitors. Lots of photos, drawings and detailed diagrams are provided.

The cover of this excellent juvenile biography of Leonardo Da Vinci is quite interesting because it shows him as a young man in front of the background from his most famous painting, the "Mona Lisa." I saw a story once that compared the face of the "Mona Lisa" with the famous red ink drawing of Da Vinci as an old man, which did size comparisons and argued they were the same. In other words, the "Mona Lisa" is really a self-portrait of Da Vinci. This makes a bit of sense since the artist worked on it for years, obviously with the benefit of a model. Diane Stanley's cover painting, intentionally or not, references this intriguing hypothesis.

Stanley does some fascinating things with the art throughout this book. She puts reproductions of Da Vinci's actual paintings into her own works and includes various drawings by Da Vinci to complement her text. Young readers will learn about the highlights of Da Vinci's life, both as an artist and as an inventor. Consequently, they will see not only the painting of "The Last Supper" but the flying machine he designed. In a fascinating postscript Stanley details what happened to the grave of Da Vinci and what few of his paintings remain. Stanley provides an excellent introduction to the life of the original Renaissance Man.

For those who do not yet know, Diane Stanley writes the best kid-level biographies out there, and Leonardo da Vinci is no exception. She carefully traces his life from birth (including alluding to the legitamacy question) to death. Worked into the illustrations are many of Leonardo's works (so that you needn't buy a separate book for your child to appreciate them). A wonderful book that should be mandatory reading!

Meet Leonardo da Vinci, a man of vision who was centuries ahead of his time. Born April 15, 1452, and raised in his father's house, Leonardo was the illegitimate son of Ser Piero, "...an important man, a leading citizen of Vinci." and a peasant girl. Because of the circumstances of his birth, he was not entitled to an upper class education in banking, medicine, or law, and "what little schooling he got probably came from the parish priest and was limited to reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. He later described himself as an omo sanza lettere, a man without education." As a boy, Leonardo showed talent for drawing, and was sent to Florence to apprentice with the famous artist, Andrea del Verrocchio. And it was there that the course of his life began to take shape. Though his superb artistic talents were quickly recognized, and Leonardo was commissioned to paint many important works during his lifetime, he had a short attention span and was always restless, often failing to complete his pieces. His imagination, his interests and genius went far beyond art and painting. He was fascinated with anatomy, engineering, science, and music, and filled thousands of pages in his now famous notebooks with his ideas, plans, drawings and inventions. He was employed by kings, princes and popes, and was the friend of Machiavelli, Cesar Borgia and King Francis I, of France. But throughout his life he never married, and was a very solitary man..... Diane Stanley brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this beautifully written and well researched, introductory biography. Her easy to read, conversational text is entertaining, engaging and intelligent, and packed full of history, drama, mystery, fun facts, anecdotes, and sketches from Leonardo's notebooks. Her graceful and elegant illustrations complement the story line beautifully, and really capture the essence of the artist and his times. With an introduction detailing the Italian Renaissance, and a Postscript to enhance and complete the narrative, this is an informative and spellbinding biography. Perfect for youngsters 9-12, Leonardo da Vinci is a wonderful addition to Ms Stanley's highly acclaimed biographical series, and a book that definitely shouldn't be missed.

February 2003 - just back from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I found the book helpful, accurate and comprehensive - exactly the qualities required in a travel guide.

I'm currently using this book to plan a Sep 2003 trip up to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island & possibly the Bay of Fundy. Lonely Planet has to be my favorite series of travel books, and this edition is right on par with their other guides.

One goal of mine has been to stay in B&B's the whole time (I picture lots of intimate Atlantic oceanside places), and there is a good focus on these accommodations. Another increasing trend in the LP series has been to supplement with web addresses for more information. The author looks like they have gone to great lengths to provide an extraordinary number of links for accommodations, activities, visitor info and often, restaurants. Coverage of maps (including city) and suggested itineraries are two of my favorite aspects of Lonely Planet, and this guide has great ones. This book also doubles as a history primer for the area. Two easy-read examples within that I enjoyed included background on the New Brunswick-to-PEI bridge & the history of why Halifax gives a Christmas tree to Boston each year.

Overall, there is more information contained within than I could use while visiting the area. It's simply the best choice for visiting the Maritimes.

One last note, Lonely Planet also released a full guide on Quebec as well.

As the previous reviewer stated, this is a great guide for locals as well as visitors. The author combines some fine local history and stories with essential travel tips that will definitely point travellers in the right direction for an enjoyable vacation.

Dr. Thomas Stanley has become a big name since his book "The Millionaire Next Door" but some of his have been tracking his work since his days as Georgia State Professor.

This was his breakthrough work. Lots of original research and tremendous insights.

I work as a financial consultant to people who receive personal injury awards and found Dr. Stanley's writing extremely valuable.

Anyone who works with high producers or who wants to be a high income producer should own this book.

Don McNay...

this book is the bible to your success in the field of sales. very descriptive, easy- to-digest advice and overall highly engaging. a more than required purchase for anyone who wants to expand their abilities at work and even personally in the facet of marketing.

You can offer the greatest service in the world, but if you don't know how to reach desired clientle, you won't make nickel.Marketing to the Affluent pinpoints where the real money is. It is like a treasure map for sales people that leads to the right prospects.I also recommend Selling to the Affluent, also by Dr. Stanley.

Selection of postmortem photographs from the "Burns Archive," which contains over 500,000 vintage prints including the world's largest collection of early medical photographs. Printed in two very limited editions - fascinating collection. Extensively illustrated with photgraphs and accompanied by a chronological essay on death in America, and a bibliography. Provocative and unsettling.

Dr. Stanley Burns, author of "Sleeping Beauty" and I produced "Death In America, A Chronological History Of Illness and Death" which is based on Sleeping Beauty and includes many of the images from the book. The Burns Archive, which houses the collected images, is the single largest privately held collection of photographs in the world. With more than 500,000 images, the collection specializes in post-mortum and medical photograhy (ref: Ken Burns "Civil War" - no family relation). Death In America has been airing nationally on public television since 1998 and can be seen at www.deathinamerica.com. The type post-mortum photography chronicled in Sleeping Beauty was very expensive and nearly always a great sacrifice on the part of the family. If, as an example, you were a farmer in 1850 making a few dollars each month, one photograph could easily cost you several months pay. It is virtually impossible for us today to understand the pre-photographic mind. Until the invention of photography the average family had no way to hold a keepsake of their loved one. This one image was so precious an object that they were worn as jewelry and in later years even sent to relatives as post cards. One of the most important aspects of "Sleeping Beauty" is Dr. Burns' historical chronology which describes each image, tells the story behind the image and gives the reader a real sense of the social and cultural influences of the time. Examples include physicians keeping grave-robbers on retainer for over 250 years, the Bayer Company inventing Heroin, the development of the germ-theory of disease and the editor of the Ladies Home Journal creating the "Living Room". Death In America has to date been seen by approximately 45 million viewers. In September of 2000, PBS will begin running a new program on death by Bill Moyers. Many stations will run Death In America as a companion piece. If anyone wishes to contact the producers of our program they can respond to our e-mail at Blackmirror@msn.com.

I was interested to find "Sleeping Beauty" after reading about it on the webpage of the PBS documentary "Death In America," which was based on this book. Unfortunately, I discovered it was out of print, but managed to borrow a copy through an interlibrary loan. I found it to be utterly fascinating. Some of the photos were beautifully done, resembling quietly sleeping children, while others were quite disturbing as the subjects were very obviously deceased. Particularly shocking were a pair of photos, one of a little boy lying on a bed with his toy ball, staring sadly at the camera, and another of the same boy after death. It is a sad reminder of the fact that the infant mortality rate during this time was so high, and often these were the only portraits the family might have of a child. It is incredible to think that a family might treasure such mementos, but I think of the now fairly commonplace practice of photographing miscarried or stillborn babies, and understand to an extent the need to have "proof" that this person existed.

I didn't encounter this book until I was 20, and I regret all the years this wasn't one of my favorite children books. Written by the ever amazing Jane Yolen (check her out, folks. She ROCKS!), this "fairy tale" is a riot, a romance, and a sweet little read. Whether you use it to entertain children (which it will) or to keep your college roommate entertained at one in the morning as she pulls her hair out, anyone and everyone will enjoy the book.

My mom used to read me this book when I was little. It teaches young girls that beauty is on the inside. I think more girls need to be read this story.

I remember borrowing this book from the library over and over and over as a small child. I was so struck by the idea that the beautiful princess didn't win the prince (never mind that he was the youngest son of a youngest son with no jewels or wealth or property to speak of), but that she lost him to an orphaned "Plain Jane". It was only recently that I read the opinion of some "enlightened" reviewer that labeled this book as "feministic." What is so feministic about the idea that someone would look past the lovely facade of one to see the inner beauty of another? I read this book to my class of five-year-olds, and I had just said, "The end" when they began chanting in unison, "Read it again; read it again!" At the end, continuing in the strain of humor that flows throughout this tale, is the story's moral: "Let sleeping princesses lie, or lying princesses sleep . . . " while in truth, it teaches something far more important.

for those of you who want a picture of life on an oar boat on the Great Lakes in the 1950's, this book is for you. Very enjoyable and accurate portrayal of that life.

I sailed on a number of Great Lakes oar boats in the 1950's. Reading this book, I had a vivid re-experience of my life as a Great Lakes sailor, both positive and negative. For anyone interested in an accurate and compelling account of life on oar boats back then, this book will give you a good read as well as a historical account of that time.

I was a Great Lakes sailor in the 1950's and worked on a number of ore boats. I view Meditations of a Great Lakes Sailor as a highly accurate, albeit fictional, account of what it was like to work on the Great Lakes at that time. Reading this account, I was enabled to vividly relive some of my own experiences, both positive and negative. This book, I believe, has historical significance in recreating an important time in our history.

Moe the Dog in Tropical Paradise is a wonderful book. I liked it because Moe uses his imagination to find something to do over the weekend. He pretends to be in a tropical paradise. If you can't go there in real life you can be like Moe and pretend.
He shares his great ideas with his friend. I like to share my ideas with my friends too.

Michelle Anderson

Moe the Dog is a wonderful character who makes the most of a bad situation. Sick of winter and the cold, Moe dreams of vacationing in Tahiti but lacks the funds so he takes matters into his own paws! He turns his living room into a Tropical Paradise and invites his friend over to enjoy it with him. They wear sunglasses, drink fruity drinks and lounge on beach chairs. The illustrations truly bring the characters to life and will make you laugh out loud.

It is a wonderful way to show children that problems can often be solved with a little imagination and creativity.

The story leaves Moe planning a trip to Egypt. I can't wait for the next book!

Moe is the kind of friend every child would like to have. Thisis a wonderful book for children. It teaches them to make the bestout of every situation. The bright illustrations draw the reader in. This is a book children will have you read over again and again.

This book is very harsh, unpleasant, impressive. Not at all for anybody because you need tohave the guts to keep your glance at the pictures mirroring the abnormal, the illnesses, the horror of nature, the facts of the old times of surgery. As Bacon's paintings these pictures have a very sui-generis esthetics, based upon the ugly and the deformity.

This collection of photographs and plates are some of the most concise findings on the medical world I have ever seen. It has opened my eyes to these people and has given me something new and interesting to learn about. I really enjoy seeing how far we have come in the field of medicine but also the advancement has diminished the frequency of medical oddities that are found in this book. I really recomend this to anyone who has an interest in the medical field and all of its mishaps.

This book of stunning, yet disturbing, photographs of medical anomalies spanning 100 years from the mid-19th c., may not be for everyone. It is a comprehensive visual essay into things that we find fascinating, yet repulsive. Unlike a carnival sideshow, however, the purpose of this wonderful book is not to cynically trivialize the individuals illustrated. Like the Mütter Museum, (Mütter Museum: Philadelphia College of Physicians, 19 South 22nd Street, between Chestnut and Market Hours: Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 12-4pm), Stanley Burns' book is a window into the 19th century propensity to gather esoteric information of all types, organize it and, ultimately, to exhibit it as the means to greater knowledge.

Stanley Plumly's poems could be described as quietly magnificent. There is an amplitude and gracefulness to the work that hearkens strongly back strongly to the nineteenth-century Romantics, in particular Keats: "Like some dreams, they appear, then reappear, / cloistered in the space of their own wounding, / their public mourning, their gravity's gray coat. / Even at a distance, as if drawn by being seen, / they come straight at you, the almost elegant woman / in the aisle, the tall young birdlike silent / weeping man . . ." (from "Grievers").
Yet Plumly never sounds antique. Reading the poems in this new, retrospective collection is an experience in following a thought process that is physically embodied in phrases, complex sentences and vivid images embedded in articulate lines. Doubters who question whether any of today's poets have schooled themselves sufficiently in the hard apprenticeship of Yeats and other poetic forbears should listen and take heart: "Sound of the breath blown over the bottle, / sound of the reveler home at down, light of / the sun a warbler yellow, the sun in / song-flight, lopsided-pose. Be of good cheer, // my father says, lifting his glass to greet / a morning in which he's awake to be / with the birds . . ." (from "Cheer").
Plumly's poems are muted in manner yet never tentative; sonorous and fluent while refusing to be merely beautiful. He persists by searching out new ways to see, new ways of grasping what it means to be alive in these drastically fragile bodies. His book's title alludes to a strangely ambiguous evocation of parent and child lying beside one another - perhaps a small boy and his father, but more likely a diminished and failing father whose still vital son is recognizing in their unaccustomed intimacy a rare bridge across distance.
One of the wonders of this selection of Plumly's work drawn from thirty years is the way the book is arranged as a continuous sequence "in reverse chronological order," with only a brief author's note to indicate the original book titles. It is uncanny to see how comparable in acuity and eloquence the early and later poems really are in this fresh reading. The book lingers in its look back, filled to the brimming point with birds, trees, and people that are gone, all gone, residing now only here. Truly, a life's work.
Plumly has never been prolific - three slender books in the 1970s, two in the 1980s, and only one in the 1990s. Yet his ode-like soundings of mortality have accumulated in power and resonance. His voice is; the care with which these poems were made is evident in every line. This, then, from "Doves in January": "Long o's, long o's, long o's, and then a pause, / a whistle more like someone's voice than song, / as if in a moment a day could pass // from nothing's grief to some becoming grace.

Jim Schley, who lives in Vermont, is the author of a poetry chapbook, One Another (Chapiteau, 1999).

Stanley Plumly isn't just a great poet. He is possibly the greatest American poet writing today and this compilation is a journey through some of the best poetry of the past thirty years. The depth of thought present in this work and the manner in which that depth is conveyed hold ground by even the most demanding poetic standards. Having interviewed him in the past, I can vouch for Plumly's genius. One look at his writing is all that the reader needs to vouch for his talent. A talented writer when he began, he has honed his skills over the past thirty years to a level that borders perfect. This books belongs on the bookshelf of anyone whose tastes include good poetry. You won't find a better volume of modern American poetry around.

I attended Plumly's reading here at Grinnell College two days ago. His voice was intoxicating-- sort of an articulate growl. I had to buy the book (and get it signed, of course). One of the most striking pieces, I believe, is "Wrong Side of the River," an excellent demonstration of his simple prose and resonating imagery. Beautiful.