Used price: $7.99
I'ts Jessica and Liz's seventeenth Birthday,they both are in for a shock when they feel the earthquake shaking Sweet Valley....
But what else can go wrong on Friday the thirteenth.....
Used price: $2.00
Buy one from zShops for: $2.95
The book focuses primarily on Washington's life up until the time he became President. The book does cover his entire life, but his years as President are skimpy by comparison to the rest of his life. The author's interest is more on who Washington was as a man than on his public accomplishments. Focusing on his formative years provides more insight into his character.
Nevertheless, the novel demonstrates the truly great accomplishments Washington made to American history. Without Washington, we would not have won the Revolutionary War: he provided the military strategy, the determination, and the leadership needed to win. Without Washington, we would not have become a country: he provided the leadership the 13 colonies needed to come together as a union. Without Washington, we would not have become a democracy: he resisted efforts to anoint him king, and he voluntarily relinquished power--first as commanding general who won the War of Independence, and later as the nation's first President.
Washington was an admirable person, and deserves the adulation the nation gave him then and since. But of course he had his flaws, and Citizen Washington conveys them, particularly via the characters in the novel who did not idolize him. Such was Washington's force of personality, though, that even his detractors were in awe of him.
This novel is particularly valuable as an adjunct to a nonfiction account of Washington's life, the best of which is James Thomas Flexner's Washington: The Indispensable Man.
Used price: $12.39
Chase County, Kansas is an empty area in relative terms. The arrangement of the book is to follow a sort of geographical grid. The author introduces new concerns with a series of paragraphs and quotations from other works. Individual stories are inserted for interest and historical verisimilitude. For example, Gabriel Jacobs was a Dunkard preacher from Indiana. He and his wife arrived in Chase County in 1856.
The book is filled with maps. Cottonwood Falls, State Lake, Spring Creek, Den Creek, Rock Creek, Cottonwood River, Sharp Creek, Roniger Hill, Landon Rocks and Bazaar are shown on the map of the Bazaar Quadrangle. Chase County is tall grass country. Beef is the major pursuit. It absolutely depends upon grass. The work of Chase is to turn soil and cellulose into humanly digestible carbohydrates and protein. Tribal people took their health from prairie plants. Antelope are returning to the Flint Hills through a restocking program. The author observes that the land in Chase County is like a good library, it lets a fellow extend himself. Common Chase properties of the land are the vales and uplands through which the author enjoyed traveling.
A review by me cannot do justice to this book. The work is as multi-dimensional as EXECUTIONER'S SONG by Norman Mailer. Vachel Lindsay traveled down the Cottonwood Valley. A student going to high school in Chase County thinks there is no privacy, no opportunity to be one's self. A grade school teacher told the author she hoped that people in Chase County could learn to love themselves less and the children more. The largest cottonwood in Kansas has a trunk 27 feet around. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 gave 160 acres of land to the settler who would plant ten of these acres in trees. In 1931 a Fokker plane carrying the famous football coach Knute Rockne crashed in Chase County near Bazaar.
People ariving in Chase County after 1862, the Homestead Act, were limited to taking a quarter section, 160 acres. Most county bottom land had been claimed by 1870. Absentee land ownership has been a fact of life in Chase County since the 19th century when the English aristocracy and the railroads owned large tracts.
The author says that for him writing is not a search for explanations, but a ramble. He believes that Chase County is the ideal place to develop a prototype of a new agricultural community. The book began when the author arrived at Roniger Hill with an image of a topographical grid in his head. Of the dozen settlements in Chase County, three or four can still be called villages and two are towns. The significance of prairyerth is that Chase County lies among it. "The Prairyerths and Blackerths are deep soils, lightly granular, relatively nonacid, unleached, with full stores of humus and minerals."
There is truly nothing like living in this community and experiencing the sights, places and people described so richly in PrairyErth. William Least Heat-Moon knows this place well, and paints a picture that is as vivid and timeless as Chase County itself. As a "local", I've returned to this book time and time again.
Unfortunately, my job is now taking us away from here. If you've read the passage about Spring Street in Cottonwood Falls, then you know our home. This is truly a beautiful and extraordinary place; unique in the world. If you would like to experience the sense of community that my family and I have been so blessed with, give me a call.
List price: $15.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $5.66
Buy one from zShops for: $8.50
Williams' emphasis on plate discipline and mental approach, combined with his teaching of how to analyze your own swing gives you the basic tools you need to be an excellent offensive player. For pitchers, this book is a must to understand the weapons available to the batter.
For fans, this book will help you understand what's important and what's just filler by the broadcast team. If you're under 14 years old, buy this book, or go get from your local library, and study it on a field with a tee and a bag of balls. Then read it every day before you do your hitting reps.
This book turns bad hitters fair, and good hitters great. You just need to put in the work.
Used price: $1.98
Collectible price: $4.95
Buy one from zShops for: $4.95
Working with varied groups as a grammar expert, I am concerned about receiving a question I can't answer. Thanks to The Gregg Reference Manual, that's never happened. I've found answers to questions about even the finest points of grammar as do my students. Regardless of the concept in question, the book is amazingly easy to navigate thanks to its unique index. Unlike others, this one does not simply contain page references. Mr. Sabin references the numerous and detailed subjects in his index to distinctly numbered and lettered paragraphs instead. Those paragraphs contain both clear explanations of the related rules along with enlightening examples that serve to clarify rather than complicate the issues in question.
In my business, I have worked with thoursands of corporate and government employees ranging from experts in English to those who can barely differentiate between a subject and a verb. Whatever their English expertise or lack thereof, I recommend this manual to all of them. Without exception, those who bought it are praising it for the resons mentioned in this review and more. In addition, the price is right.
Try it for yourself, and join the myriad of other satisfied users who say, "Gregg is great!"
As a full-time trainer of writers and editors, I have used this book with everyone from grammar-challenged support staff to highly educated professional editors. With some classes, I've also used the optional worksheets (sold separately). I can't recommend Gregg highly enough.
List price: $30.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $20.70
Buy one from zShops for: $19.88
If you want learn to REALLY animate characters with life and believability, get this book.
Williams' long awaited book on animation technique is the logical successor to Preston Blair's CARTOON ANIMATION and it successfully updates some of the weaknesses of that book, particularly in handling dialogue animation. He covers a lot of the same ground that Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston did in their now out-of-print THE ILLUSION OF LIFE.
There is some history, but that's available in other books. What is unique about this book is that Williams writes how surprised he, an Academy Award winning animator with a successful professional studio, was to learn that he needed to learn just about everything over again from Harris and Babbitt. Fortunately for us he is now sharing these priceless lessons with the public.
The most important thing that an aspiring animator will get from this book is: that animation IS an art form, and good animation has nothing to do with whether it is done on computer or on paper. Williams exhorts his readers to 'draw whenever possible' and even though there is a computer modelled figure on the cover of the book, there is not a single piece of computer generated imagery in it. The book is about the bare bones, about creating life in art. Animation is the twentieth century's contribution to world art and deserves to be taken very seriously.
Buy this book.
It's also more practical than the Illusion of Life, in that it has a logical progression of lessons and enough custom illustrations to more precicely demonstrate these points. In many ways, It's the intermediate book between the intellectual aspects of the Illusion of Life, and the basic principals of Cartoon Animation.
For me, this was like a second year of school: I had learned all the concepts and basic principals I needed in that first year of school using Tony White and Preson Blair. Richard William's book expanded on those concepts, and has already started to improve my work in the first two months of receiving it. I highly recommend this book to any animation students out there, as well as graduates looking to increase their skills.
Used price: $13.50
Buy one from zShops for: $29.85
The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.
Used price: $9.00
Collectible price: $10.00
Buy one from zShops for: $15.90
This is a must read. A wonderful story of love, hardships, and more love, REFUGE is a truly breathtaking piece of art.
Used price: $2.95
Collectible price: $3.95
Buy one from zShops for: $4.16