the Ultimate Yo-Yo Book by Larry Sayco isn't really "ultimate" but it is a very good read and a lot more fun than you'd initially think. Written for a young audience, it actually is of tremendous use for any yo-er who expects to ever perform in public.

It includes many of the standard tricks you're used to seeing everywhere else - but described in new ways. Bowling, you might have heard of. But "Tumbling Tower"? "Statue of Liberty"? And you should see the audiences react!

Two "coolness" factors: the cover is a sorta adaption of the way-cool cover to the One & Only Yo-Yo Book from last decade. And extra points go to Larry for including troubleshooting tips for his tricks! That, folks, is cool.

What Larry has put together here is a terrific "script" for an act, which requires - NOT the "best" yo-yo skill in the world, but persistence and practice. And studying this book. (review from BANDALORE reprinted by permission)

This book sticks just to the tricks which is nice. The trouble tips sections included for most of the tricks is a unique addition and very helpful for the novice. This is an excellent basic yo-yo trick book, but advanced players should check out the Yonomicon. Lucky Meisenheimer M.D. author of "Lucky's Collectors Guide to 20th Century Yo-Yos...History and Values.

Now this book was truley da bomb. My brother ordered it and it had so many tricks and tips in it. I am not really into yo-yos but now that I have read this book I really and starting to like them. Trust me but if you have a sister or brother at home and they like yo-yos then get them this book they will love it. Another thing I noticed about the book is it was really easy to follow. Even my little brother can follow this that is how east this book is to follow. Sorry to write follow all the time but it really is so easy to read. Bye Bye

The author's vivid descriptions of the mountains and terrain, the weather and the trials and tribulations of hiking, camping, building log structures and the camaraderie of such an outstanding troop is nothing but masterful ! What the author has produced should be a legend for all those presently in scouting. I truly doubt that any other troop has ever been or will be as dedicated or productive as 511. Braman has really chronicled the true spirit of scouting in a way that will inspire future generations of scouts, even though I doubt that it will ever be equaled. Where "The Fuzzy Marmots Grow" is a work of art. This book was a pleasure to read, it captivates the reader and it's hard to put down. I certainly enjoyed it

Very funny! Amazingly detailed memories. A great read-aloud for the whole family.

This delightful memoir of boyhood is a chronicle of humor, nostalgia and charm. It's story-telling at its best. Unequivocally recommended to those who enjoy remembering, reliving, the spirit of youth - when the miracle of adventure was an everyday occurrence. Lovingly conceived, deftly written.

I am new to the sport of deer hunting and have no one to guide me in learning the skills needed. I purchased this book for this reason and am glad that I did so. It covers all areas of hunting needed to begin from equipment to finding locations to tracking and gutting a deer. It is advisable even for those who are veterans to the sport and wish to increase their chances of harvesting a deer. A definite recomended reading for deer hunters.

This is the third book from the Hunting and Fishing Library that I have read and this one was as good as the others. As a begining deer hunter this book was invaluable but an experienced hunter could benefit also. It has sections on habitat, senses, guns, and equipment. It also has great sections on tactics and even a step by step photo guide on field dressing. One thing you should expect from this series of books is great pictures and this book is no exception. If you want to hunt deer, buy this book.

This book is the best! It has so much information in it. It also has lots of color pictures. This book is for anyone who hunt whitetails.

Larry Snider's book is filled with beautiful, sensitive photographs. I have seen Snider's works before, and it is a great pleasure to be able to "visit" them as often as I like by simply owning this volume.

For anyone who loves the art of photography and portraiture, adventure travel, or remote and ancient cultures, this book is a treasure. It contains haunting, sublime portraits of people of China, Tibet, Bhutan, and Ladakh: laughing children, wise elders, rakish young men, monks, families, laborers, and women, old and young, at work or dressed in ceremonial finery. The portraits were not taken in a studio, and the architecture of their settings -- monasteries, villages, shops, and streets -- are as intriguing as the subjects themselves.

The poignancy and beauty of these portraits lies not only in their technical and artistic excellence, but also in their deft blending of contrasts: the exotic and the familiar, the ancient and the modern, the distinctly Asian, and the rare Western or perhaps global artifacts of our modern culture.

A World Away merits one's attention again and again, as the portraits yield evocative details and depth of meaning with each viewing. This collection is a compassionate and eloquent account of the people encountered during the artist's Asian travels. It would make an elegant gift, and, since the book's impact is visual rather than verbal, the recipient need not speak English to enjoy it.

A thoughtfully engaging and beautifully produced monograph which details the artist's travels thoughout Asia. It is no wonder the artist's work is in so many musuems and has been the subject of numerous exhibits.

Upon finishing this wonderful effort, I was surprised to find that this work was Mr. Sasscer's first to be published. Stunning images pervade the pages. The characters are full and intriging. The clarity of the prose make the read a pleasurable one and, as the title of this review states it is 'Well worth a weekend's investment'. Well done Mr, Sasscer -- this reader awaits the next installment. ---

A touching story of young love and growing up in WWII. Not your standard Hollywood production, this story rings true! Author Sasscer has captured the essence of a time and place, the feelings, hopes, values and experience of a generation. He tells his story in a simple, direct style, convincing you that you are reading a memoir or personal life history, about real people and what happened to them. His characters are believable and engaging- you want to keep reading because you care about them. YMRT preserves for us a significant slice of our own history, and it's a tribute to those who sacrificed so much to preserve our current freedoms.

I intended to read this book over a period of a week when I had some free time. I became so involved in the characters that I did not want to put it down. Airplanes and [X] -makes a great combination. It also gives a glimpse of how average small town residents were affected by WW II. I was surprised that I did not figure out the ending in advance, but I guess that is part of the excitement of the book.

It is not often that a religious fictional work increases faith in the coming of a better day in our real lives. This book does that. Through a fictional story, the authors portray scriptural truth and insightful commentary on our day. They show that through trials men can become humble and seek God. And that society can reach an ideal. The book is not as preachy as this review : ) It is a quick and enjoyable read. It leaves you thinking. It inspires you to look upward in your own life.

This was a terrific book. I absolutely couldn't put it down in the middle of a chapter. The action started with a bear attack and kept going through the whole book. One can definitely see parallels between the society of Enoch's time and ours.

Impressive. Larry Barkdull scores again. Mourning Dove moved me, but Zion! swept me away. The power of the story and the truth of the morals are something people should read today. In U.S. run wild with hypocrasy and scandle, it's good to read a book like this. The similarities between the time of Enoch and our own are frightening (corrupt leaders seeking personal gain and power, fathers leaving families and home for wealth while rationalizing it away, the mistreatment of the poor, etc.), but the truths discussed leave one believing that we, too, can (and will?) see a better day. This is one book well-worth the investment of time and money. The text flows and carries one along with the story. I found it hard to put down. While it is unquestionably based on the life and times of the prophet Enoch, it holds true to the scriptures and apocrypha. People of all religions and political stripes should enjoy this wonderful book.

Life is a stage and everyone is a performer and actor. If you want to understand yourself and possibly change behavior, this book is great. I have the first edition which I paid $$$ for. I am not an actor, but we all act a part when in front of people. If we want to portray some person with certain traits or characteristics which would benefit us, you can learn from this book. It is not being someone who you are not, but bringing out some behavior which is part of you anyway, which would positively benefit you.

If you need a good, step-by-step resource that outlines all of the basics you need to know to perform well, go ahead and buy this book. It is a little expensive, but it is worth it because no other book I have run across gives you such powerful basic methods to charge-up your acing skills when you are feeling a little confused about what you should/could be doing. Someone who follows the instructions in this book can literally transform from a clumsy actor to a basically skilled actor in about a week.

This is a fabulous book for novice actors! An absolute must for the beginner. Summurised in these pages you can find the teachings of the great masters of drama (such as the well known Stanislavski. It is very clear and easy to read and understand even for the complete beginners. On top of all the good advice and techinques you get a lot of exercises to practice what you've learnt till then. It really has helped me with my acting!

Amazing Grace received the 2003 Western Heritage Award (Poetry Category) from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

Amazing Grace received the prestigious 2003 Western Heritage Award (poetry category) from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

The sixty-four poems in this collection, the second book from up-and-coming Texas poet Larry D. Thomas, probe the complex interrelations between the land and the creatures that inhabit it. The book won the 2001 Texas Review Poetry Prize and it is easy to see why these lean, sharp-edged poems were selected by the judges. Geographically and thematically, Amazing Grace encompasses all that is integral to Texas and Texans, while at the same time transcending the merely regional to explore universal human truths.

The collection is divided into four sections, each of which anatomizes a particular region of the state. The first quarter of the book, Their Heaven of Bleakness, is set in West Texas. It is the most tightly-knit of the four sections. Opening with a poem entitled "'Of Dust Thou Art'" and closing with "'And to Dust Thou Shalt Return,'" these twenty pieces are linked by interwoven themes of living and dying-the springing from the soil of life, death's return to the land, the miracle of rebirth from earth's dark womb-and by the ever-present tie between the dry West Texas country and its drought-resistant denizens. The imagery of these powerful lyric poems is as rugged as the Guadalupe Mountains and their language cuts like a blue norther, bone-deep. Here be turkey vultures, rattlesnakes, claret cup cactus, cattle, and above all an unconquerable people who "take to their gritty beds, / ease the quilts of grandmas / over their leathery bodies / like slabs of red earth, and they pray."

The setting for the second quarter of the collection, Near the Big Thicket, moves east across the Balcones Escarpment into the shadow of the Piney Woods. The dark shadows of the pines are echoed in these twenty pieces by a deeper darkness that underlies so much of the human experience. In "The Slough," Thomas interweaves concrete natural imagery of death's rank decay with the figurative putrefaction of original sin so that the poem becomes an extended metaphor whose vehicle is the dark bayou and whose tenor is the human condition. The viewpoint character of the piece "can hear / the muffled steady engine of its rot" as the slough "works its timeless wonders / under still, dark waters. Its film / has already claimed his pale, blue eyes."

In the third quarter of the collection, At the Jetty's End, Thomas revisits the Gulf coast that he portrayed with such poignancy in his debut collection, The Lighthouse Keeper (Timberline Press 2001). The ten pieces in this section are filled with a tone of longing that contrasts nicely with the dark tone of the poems in section two. The land-dwelling speakers and viewpoint characters of these bittersweet lyrics seek with varying degrees of success to merge themselves with the sea. "Mooring Line," a piece reprinted from Thomas's debut collection, addresses the difficulty of making this connection-and its tenuousness once the connection is achieved. The controlling image of the poem, the mooring line of the title, lies half-buried in sand, "sponging the screams and fleeting / shadows of the gulls, / tethering uselessness / to the slow, consuming pull / of ruin."

The fourth quarter of the book, A Short Distance from the Border, circles back to far West Texas like one of the hawks Thomas uses so effectively in these high desert poems. The fourteen pieces in this final section celebrate the diversity of the West Texas and Northern Mexico country and its people with subjects ranging from bikers and tattoo artists to young boxers to the "chocolate eyes of young mothers / so comfortable with death / they candy its skulls / for the tongues of bronze children." In "El Camino del Rio," Thomas employs the Rio Grande as a metaphor for the geography the river has carved and the cultures and peoples it has nourished. Some, like the Apaches, have gone to "the places of no return" so that "Only / the screams of hawks, bouncing / ad infinitum off the canyon walls, / sound as if they belong."

As promised in the title, the poems of Amazing Grace are rendered with a poise that almost belies the strength of the language and images from which they are made. Thomas has captured the spirit that underlies the physical geography of the land and the hearts of the people who have helped to shape it. In the dust from which his characters spring, and the "rich / red fields / of deep lineage" that so patiently await their return, lie the beginning and end of us all.

Ah, for the good old days of the passenger train! This book brings it all back. New York City's classic Penn Station (regretably demolished from 1963 to 1966, but that's another story) was the beginning of many a winter journey from the frigid Northeast to warm, sunny Florida, and the Atlantic Coast Line was the way to go! (Those who went via the Seaboard Air Line Railroad may take exception to that statement, but, once again, that's another story.) This book relives these halcyon days.

This book shows it all, from the revolutionary Champion to the lowly local and the mixed train which handled freight as well as passenger traffic. The text is easy to read; photographs are plentiful and of good quality. A roster of postwar passenger cars is included as well as representative consists of the passenger trains themselves.

This book is a good read and should be in the library of anyone who nostalgically remembers the American pre-Amtrak passenger train.

Goolsby's book offers both intensive and extensive information about ACL service, with charts, photographs, and extremely interesting and informative narratives about passenger train service from the 1940's up to the time of Amtrak. For aficianados of passenger train service in the South, this book is a must.

A major work on the passenger trains and streamliners of the ACL.A wonderful mix of art,photos,and history on the ACL. Anyone whos an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad enthusiast will treasure this book!

An "Elegant Book of California Flora" (as stated in the preface). The book has ~135 gorgeous plates of wildflower pictures, some closeup and some landscapes. The flowers are identified with both common names as well as scientific ones. Dates and locations are shown for each photo. This book is more a photographic study than a wildflower identification book.

I bought 2 of these for gifts and 1 for myself. The drawings and photos in field guides are always too small. The pictures of flowers in this book leave no doubt about what your're looking at. Non-native (alien) species are identified. Even pine cones and insects are identified. The introduction about habitats, pollinators, soils, climate,etc. is well written. There is a discussion about cameras, lenses and film used. This is not a comprehnsive field guide, but it will help most amateur naturalists identify many common plants. I love this book and hope the authors continue their wonderful work. Last, but perhaps most importantly, this book is incredibly afforable.

This is a book to cherish. Larry Ulrich's large format photography brings us into a world of beauty. From the grand views to the tiny details, everything is perfection. All flowers were taken in their setting and at their best. I have the 1994 edition. Printing is one of the sharpest I have seen and colors are sumptuous.