The reason I think this a 5 stars book beacuse it help helps me understand New Yorks History. It Has many things I didn't know until now.

Shade and Color is the only book I have found on the market that offers such an update guide to arid-climate plants. The pictures are well done and plentiful.

The majority of the book consists of "Individual Plant Descriptions" -- amazingly comprehensive. The authors have even taken the time and forethought to classify whether or not your plant will do well in not only one but also several desert elevations.

Every important landscape detail is accounted for each type of desert plant. You will know ahead of time the height, width, flower color, and watering needs of each plant.

Anyone living in the Southwest and California that wants to be successful at landscaping needs this book in his/her library. This enlarged text is also an essential reference book for landscapers and landscape maintenance companies.

Reads a tremendous lot like Robert Fulghum, but beyond that...

Through essays, the presumably all true story of a man who lived as if he was born with a detailed, incredibly accurate set of instructions and near-Godlike wisdom. Learns pool and billiards as an eleven-year-old kid and beats the town champ. Takes up basketball, making his high school team as a freshman and becoming a good major-school college player. Starts a loving marriage in college that remains super-strong over 25 years later. Plays guitar, and with his small combo is chosen for national TV appearances with Charles Kuralt and Robert Kennedy. Despite all his independent thought, establishes a solid - actually distinguished - career in academia. And, in the decade after this book, writes a novel that may have sold more copies - and tickets to its subsequent movie - than ANY in the 1990's!

And guess what? NONE of this - not even a SCRAP of it, according to the essays - ever misled him or cost him anything! He didn't drop out of school to hustle pool, ignore academics to over-concentrate on basketball, discover his wife who he chose at age 22 didn't fit his ever-evolving life at age 50, go for a low-paying full-time music career, QUIT music altogether and lose the fun of playing recreationally, or constrict his thinking by getting it in line with the PC work setting of a university.

Not only did he seem to be always doing the exact right thing at the right time, he avoided every trap there was.

Amazing! Have never seen a life so comprehensively superb since Jennifer Beals' in Flashdance, and she was FICTIONAL!

So, Robert James, we have two ways to interpret you. You can be one of the most premier renaissance men of our time, or an archly annoying "perfect" person akin to Martha Stewart. So, my challenge to you is - write an essay, telling us in detail, how in at least one instance YOU, not circumstances, luck or the people around you - have FAILED. Have you done it? Can you do it?

I was 15 years old when I was first introduced to this book and author. The essay "Slow Waltz for Georgia Ann" was the most touching story iv ever hurd. It was love, and reckless, and compation, and solitude all wrapped up into one. Every time I need something to make me smile I read this story. I have incouraged every one I have met, who also loves to read, to read this book. The cat, his daughter, the birds and the romance tie it all together to make this book, in my opinion, the greatest ever writen. If you were to pass this up without at least reading once you are a fool. I am 20 now and the original paperback that was givin to me 5 years ago is still laying on my nightstand next my bed.

I have read this book several times, love to take it on vacation. These stories are wonderful, heartfelt. A nice reminder of my own childhood growing up in Indiana. We have dusty roads, and favorite pets, and enjoy the quite life here too. It's beautifully written by a wonderful Author. Sure wish he would write more!

After reading the back cover and introduction of this book, I expected a rather harsh portrayal of neoclassical economics. This book does not end up being too crtical of the Chicago school. Of course there are a number of strawmen in this book, portions where the expert is portrayed as an out of touch academic oblivious to the effects of his theories. Perhaps my greatest criticism of this book is that it does not adequately exlore the "sovereign's charter" - the government maintained monopolies. The authors refer to the concentration in the airline industry without really considering the effects of regulation that excluded foreign airlines from domestic routes. In addition, the authors do not seem to commit enough attention to the availability of substitutes for virtually any commodity or service. Even if the major airlines offer fewer flights from a particular airport in the long run smaller air lines will establish routes. If not, there are alternatives like high speed rail. At the exteremes, one could consider technological advances like teleconferencing and electronic data exchange reduce the need for certain forms of business flights. Overall, however, the book only takes a few hours to read and introduces the major debates of this subject.

This is the same topic the authors have tackled in their other books, this time presented in a somewhat screenplay-ish format. Once again it is an argument between theory and evidence. As you read the discussion between the lawyer and the economist you wonder why the economist always retreats to theory in the face of evidence. It would interesting to hear a Chicago economist's explanation of the facts Adams and Brock bring to bear.

A short presentation of the content and importance of discoveries in Qumran! This short book composed of 4 small essays written by Biblical scholars gives us a brief explanation of the importance of the Dead Sea scrolls discovered in Qumran both in our understanding of Christian and Jewish origins. These documents remain as the only and greatest evidence of 1st century's Palestinian Judaism and give us a better understanding of the birth of Christianity. The Christian ideas about a "Son of God", a mass of bread and wine, a final Apocalypse and some literary similarities in the interpretation of Old Testament prophecies are proof of a relation (although complicated) between Christians and Essenes. Also, the authors explain how the content of the scrolls leave rational Christian faith unaffected and that the sensational documents about "a dying Messiah" or "Mark's little apocalypse" may have been ill-interpreted by their translators. Still, I would have liked to read a more extensive explanation of these matters, because I believe that there still remains more to be said. For instance, James Charlesworth was quite brief in dismissing Allegro's ideas about Christian origins and I would like to have read a better discussion of this subject. This reading defied several of my thoughts and beliefs about the nature of the discoveries at Qumran and gave me a better view of their content and importance.

Carlos Madeira, 21st of August of 99