Passages from the books (with the author's permission) can be found on my site.

This is an excellent book for an person who intends visiting Malta for a holiday. I think the reader should read the other three books in the series. If after having read these books, you would like to learn the Maltese language, I recommend Merhba 2 - Maltese Language Conversation Course. This course is bilingual ie English/Maltese and it consists of audio tapes and reader. For more information contact karatt@ozemail.com.au

This book is for anyone who is interested in the history of pottery in North Carolina. The book focuses on pottery as necessary to the rural way of life. Turners and Burners makes the reader appreciate the functional designs of the early potters.
It explores three rich pottery areas in the state - Catawba Valley, Seagrove area and Moravian potters. Many families in these areas are still turning out pottery. The book goes into great detail about Burlon Craig, who is considered the last folk potter in North Carolina.
Sections of the book reviews glazes, kiln construction and functionality of different container designs. Also, it reviews whimsies, face jugs and ring jugs and their place in the pottery tradition of North Carolina.
Turners and Burners gives the reader a great appreciation for the history of pottery in the North Carolina. It will make you want to plan a trip to Seagrove or the Catawba Valley.

Turners and Burners is a must for anyone interested in North Carolina Folk pottery. It presents the history starting with the first potters to settle in the region to the evolution of the trade that lives on today.

Charles Zug does an outstanding job of presenting the culture and the mindset that guided the craft through generations of potters spanning over two centuries.

And the technologies of the craft is given ample attention, through interesting descriptions, drawings, and photographs. A prime example is the discussion of how alkaline glaze kilns differed from the salt kilns in terms of design, firing methods, and durability.

This is a great book, full of useful information to the researcher as well as praticing potters.

The book is well written and informative: I reccomend it! It;s absolutely super!

This is no book for someone not previously familiar with volcano technology. That much aside, the book is an absolute gem for anyone planning a trip to the Cascade Range, California, or other volcanic area of the continental USA or Canada. A must-have for anyone geeked on volcanoes.

Across The North Pacific by Charles Potts is a literary tour de force of sweeping, free-verse poems projecting a future torn in three directions by the languages and attached cultures of English, Japanese, and Mandarin. Dividing its pages into spheres of influence, Across The North Pacific culminates in a verbal thunderhead explosion that will leave poetry devotees yearning for more. The North Star: This is not Polaris/But a one man satellite/In permanent geosynchronous orbit/Over the North Pacific/Trying simultaneously to see and understand/All three great North Pacific cultures at the same time.

This volume by Hollinger and Capper is the first of two in their ambitious goal to "round up" and compile a representative sampling of documents in American Intellectual History. They succeed brilliantly.

Volume I logically starts with the Pilgrims and ends with the Civil War and is divided neatly into component chapters with contributions from John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards ("Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is just breathtaking...), Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams (the founding fathers section), on through Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendentalism), to Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to John C. Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, Martin Delaney, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

The editors provide a small biographical sketch of each author that precedes the selection and the selections track a wide range of issues including race relations, relations between the North and the South, the enfranchisement of women, American exceptionalism (Winthrop's "City on a Hill"), the formation of the United States, transcendentalism (the seedling for America's first original philosophy, Pragmatism). These issues are picked up later and expanded (or concluded) in Volume II of the work.

Volume II of Hollinger and Capper's work is as excellent as the first.

Volume II contains contributions from American writers such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan Sontag, Malcolm X, Rienhold Niebuhr, Noam Chomsky, John Crowe Ransom, Betty Friedan, John Dewey, W.E.B. DuBois, H.L. Mencken, Jane Addams, Woodrow Wilson, Samuel Huntington, etc.

Volume II traces the developments of race relations in America, the advancement of minorities and women in America, American foreign relations, insight into the state of the South after the Civil War, the effect of transportation revolutions on interstate travel as well as traces the development of Pragmatism, America's contribution to the world of Philosophy from Charles Sanders Peirce to William James to Thomas Kuhn to Richard Rorty.

Simply put, the topical treatment of this work is first rate and the collection of these various works is a creditable contribution to the field of American Intellectual History.

Although this book contains "only" 224 pages, it seems to be much larger. Some of it may be due to the larger format (9"x11"). Most of it may be due to the excellent large (full-page and two-page) photographs. The accompanying text is concise, easy-to-read yet very informative. The photographs cover many aspects of vineyards and workers. The books does a good job covering the various areas of the U.S. and provides a surprising amount of detail about history and current status of each.

In ATLANTIC SECURITY: CONTENDING VISIONS, Kupchan presents severeal examples of what could and should become of NATO in the future. This is a book of 3 comparative essays by Stephen Walt, Olie Waever, and Kupchan. If you're interested in possible future scenario's for NATO then this work is interesting, even though Kupchan's view may not be plausible under current national circumstances for both the U.S. and several western European countries. Walt and Waever both put forth intriguing arguments on NATO's future. This work was a good introduction to the topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about Bandelier. If you are interested in Bandelier or history it's a great read.

Written by the top-notch experts working in bee systematics today, this book is extremely well conceived and executed. It would be very useful for pollination ecologists and others who encounter wild bee species and are at a loss as to what they're dealing with.