Having been a childhood schoolmate of the author from elementary to high school, we shared personally many of the circumstances and situations Roger recounts with unique clarity of recall and poignance in this compelling work. From the opening paragraph to the closing, the reader, whether or not a native of Appalachia, will quickly find himself enjoying vicariously through each of the "voices" who contributed to this heartwarming anthology, an emotional rollercoaster ride which spans the entire realm of human experience. I truly am honored to have the privilege of being one of those "voices."

I have known Mr Osborne almost all my life. We attended the same school, and grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia. Roger is a very talented writer, and he brings our younger years back to life again. When you read his books, it is like you are back in time and living the years over again. If anyone has not read Roger's books, they should buy them, and once they do, they will not be able to put them down until the last word is read. My books are in a very special place in my house. I have all of Roger's books, and if it is possible that there are more to follow, I will have them to. God Bless Roger.

Roger Osborne's "Voices From Appalachia" preserves the thoughts, hopes, dreams and struggles of the Appalachian people. The book is enlighting, entertaining and blessed with down home stories written from the heart by Roger and other Appalachian writers. "Voices From Appalachia" will live forever in my memory. The stories are about love, sharing, sacrifice, tragedy, grief, and forgiveness. Readers will find great joy in meeting and knowing the people of Appalachia. Roger Osborne is a master storyteller that shows gentle warmth and wit in his writings about growing up in and around mining towns of West Virginia. He documents an Appalachian boy's discovery of varied pleasures, puzzling paradoxes, and inescapable pain of finding his place in the community and the world. I also enjoyed reading Roger Osborne's three other books, "Land Of Yesterday, The Mountains Wept and Pilgrimage To An Appalachian Mining Camp."

This book is excellent if you are eager to seek out places Elvis frequented throughout his life. Not simply Sun Records or other well-known locations; rather, the non-traditional hangouts. I have brought the book to Memphis and used it as a guide to visiting some out-of-the-way places. Elvis was a lot more than Graceland and Sun. If you are interested in other locations which assisted in his formative years, take this book to Memphis and look up some of the addresses listed. You'll gain a better appreciation for the King.

Intended for the general reader, this well illustrated book is an atlas of the Earth from the Archean to the present. Geological concepts are explained well, and are tied together with the paleontology of various periods.

while so many school administrators worry about improving standardized test scores, they fail to care whether students actually comprehend the most basic science concepts. rote memorization is not the answer, as it has been proven that children will regurgitate what is expected of them for an exam, without actually changing the way they innately feel about scientific phenomena. afterwards, the majority of them will revert back to their original ideas. the authors stress the constructivist viewpoint: it is imperative to acknowledge and respect children's existing ideas about science -- be they right or wrong -- when teaching new concepts and elaborating upon old ones in the science classroom. once the basics are learned, the rest of the world is a cinch. all science educators should read this one, for they cannot help but become better teachers for doing so. phenomenal!

Conrad is a real star, I'm rather fond of him. Under Western Eyes is about living in a time of revolutionary urgency, individual fragility in a delicate system, and personal honor.

To summarize; Razumov, the 'Hero' is a university student in Russia post 1905 but pre 1917 who keeps to himself and has no real family and no close friends. A fellow student and a revolutionary, Victor Haldin, assasinates a local oppressive Tsarist autocrat. He then takes a chance and takes momentary asylum with Razumov, asking him to help him get out of the city. Razumov is an evolutionary progressive, not a revolutionary. Not willing to risk association with a radical like Haldin and destroy his entire life, Razumov turns him in to the police, and Haldin is subsequently hung.

The rest of the novel deals with Razumov's struggle with himself- he betrayed, and he has to live with a lie. Complicating things, he falls in love with Haldin's sister in exile. Raz can't bear it though, and eventually he does the right thing, but things get messy.

Thats the general plot, but the real meat of the novel is in the characters and the ideas underlying the conversations between them. The idea of how you justify revolution, the chaos of revolution vs the order of gradual reform, the unwillingness and helplessness of the individual caught in it all. And there's a continual theme of the diference between East and West.

Razumov reminds me a bit of Crime and Punishment's Raskolnikov- an isolated university student waxing the time away in a single apartment, brooding over Big Ideas and being slowly crushed by a powerful conscience. The stuff of modernity. Dostoyevsky was a little bit better, so thats why Under Western Eyes only gets 4 stars.

If you are familiar enough with Conrad's writing you will know he has a few favorite words - like "inscrutable" and "destiny". They reflect I believe Conrad's literary outlook. He likes to take characters, give them a haunted past with some shameful secret, emphasize a fatal weakness, introduce some culminating stimulae, and watch the tragic unfold. I think he could have written a brilliant biography of Richard Nixon. But to the point..."Under Western Eyes" is a quintessentially Conradian book. But unlike many of his other novels - Lord Jim, Nostromo, Victory - "Under Western Eyes" treats of period politics (namely the revolutionary movement on the rise in Europe) as he weaves his tale of betrayal and tragedy. There are no heroes in this book (save perhaps one) but only a motley collection of victims, fools, and eccentrics. There is not much action, despite its subject matter. I don't want to give away too much. The story unfolds in Moscow and Geneva, not around political machinations but around the tragedy of the central character, a young Russian thrown into the revolutionary movement entirely against his will. The saga of the young man's anger, self-loathing, and attempts to extricate himself from his "situation" form one salient plot of the novel. The ultimate solution to his unsought conundrum also serves to redeem him in his own eyes, if not those of others.

"Under Western Eyes" is also an attempt by Conrad to explore the peculiarities of the "Russian character". This is another line of development in the work. I put this in partentheses because such notions of racial character are naturally not so well received now as in Conrad's day. Whether you agree or not, Conrad (who himself was Polish) offers some interesting personal insights into the nature of the "inscrutable" Russian soul - its ability to persevere, its mysticism, its ultimate radicalism. Such issues were particular relevent to the time the book was written (1908), as Russia was then already breaking out in revolutionary violence. The story's narrator - a retired English bachelor - are the "Western eyes" under which Russia is regarded.

I might label "Under Western Eyes" a comic-tragedy, in that the primary factor behind the story's tragic chain of events is a misunderstanding. It is ultimately for the book's central character a journey of personal redemtion. Within the context of this, however, Conrad details some of his views on Russia, its people, and the nature of the revolutionary movement. I did not find it as engaging as some of Conrad's other works but anyone interested in the Russian revolutionary movement, or radical politics of the period in general, or with a bent for stories of betrayal, tragedy, and love should take a look.

"Perhaps life is just that," reflected Razumov, pacing to and fro under the trees of the little island, all alone with the bronze statue of Rousseau. "A dream and a fear." It is on this small space of remote land that young Razumov finds what we all seek after--a place for quiet contemplation (reminds me of Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place"). And in this very thought-provoking Rousseau-inspired environment Razumov stumbles upon the thesis that all of life is but a dream--a dream full of constant fear. The taciturn, exiled, young Razumov reminds us of Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, and even more so Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. Indeed, Conrad attempted to continue the legacy of the great Russian novelists, by forcing an eclectic grasp on some of Dostoevsky's themes (like the need for, and final apparent conclusion of, man's suffering) whilst straying away from other Dostoevskyian qualities. All in all, Under Western Eyes is about ideas--as Conrad repeatedly suggests-an ideal gripping psychological tale of a young intellectual's suffering for choosing the path of the czarist leaders. If Razumov, like Stephen Dedalus, was more skeptical, more prone to the need for exile (not the exile he indeed does embark on to Geneva via the Councilor's strategic plan) would he have ultimately had his eardrums smashed by a revolutionary brute? Certainly, Razumov must confess for his betrayal of Haldin; Razumov realizes the intelligence, love, and raison d' étre of Haldin altogether too late. Razumov, who knowingly understands that because of his actions Haldin lost his life, gives up his own body for lifelong suffering. And by doing so, Razumov seems to willingly accept his punishment, and further he lives no longer in fear. Upon completion of this wonderful novel, we can bask in the warm sunny glow of Conrad's wit that shines upon us--"Peter Ivanovitch (or any person who opposes despotic cruelty) is an inspired man." Joseph Conrad is an inspired man.

Robert McArthur was on he knew was his last speaking trip across the country when I heard him in Boulder in the winter of 1974. He didn't talk about death; he talked about life and how it works. He wrote one short equation on the blackboard, then talked about it for an hour. No long after he was dead, but he was the real young lion, he changed ecology forever. His start was simple: look at avifauna in terms of foliage height diversity, but he did not stop there.

Wilson? He's brilliant in his own way, of course, but I'm betting his contribution to Island Biogeography was criticism and editing.

People have spent a lot of time attacking parts of this book, an equation here, an equation there. And if you don't like equations at all, skip them and go for the ideas. This was the seminal book, the start of the New Era, where complex ideas can be encapsulated in a brief expression, then turned around and it's implications tested. It will teach you how to think.

Originally published as part of the Princeton University Press' Monographs in Population Biology series, Robert MacArthur's and Edward O. Wilson's "Theory Of Island Biogeography" is regarded by many as the most influential tome in theoretical ecology published in the latter half of the 20th Century. Its importance is due to its success in predicting the causes and outcomes of variations in species diversity across a wide range of habitats, not only tropical islands. Furthermore it is the underlying theory behind current research in conservation biology. And it has played a magnificient role in analyzing fluctuations in taxonomic diversity from both marine and continental fossil records across the span of more than half a billion years of Earth history. MacArthur and Wilson conceived of a simple, yet conceptually fruitful equilibrium model of species diversity, recognizing that species diversity is often in a state of flux between varying rates of species immigration (or perhaps, speciation) and extinction. This then novel way at looking at species diversity combined MacArthur's sound mathematical reasoning with Wilson's excellent field biogeographic research (Yet those who are not mathematically inclined should not feel intimidated; their theoretical arguments are made through lucid, exquisite prose.). Without a doubt, their equilibrium theory of island biogeography is one of the finest achievements of 20th Century ecology.

When I first saw this book in hardcover, I jumped on it. After seeing the hardcover price, however, and what was "inside" I found I could leave it on the shelf.

This book is basically the aircraft history of every single B-17 ever built. Now, if that's what you're looking for - then this book is for you. If, however, you're looking for the comprehensive narrative history of the B-17 Flying Fortress that you "thought" this book was going to give you -- keep looking. That's not what this is.

Now that it's in paperback, I MIGHT consider purchasing it. As someone has said, this is like the "B-17 telephone book". It's an awesome reference work on each individual aircraft just like they maintain at the USAF Historical Research Agency in Montgomery, Alabama. For many, this book is ideal. For most of us, that's probably way too much detailed airframe information than we care for.

I was rather disappointed with the content of the book. Over 70% of it has little to do with "story" as the title promises. The majority of the book is more like a telephone book, with a 250-page (out of the total 319 pages) listing of 12,731 B-17s. Each of the entries starts with a US Army serial number assinged to the aircraft, followed by a series of dates and proper names (i.e., the aircraft's base assignments while in the U.S.). The length of the entries can be anywhere between 2 to 10 lines. The book is a valuable companion for B-17 experts or for people who has a passion for certain recorded facts about those 12,731 B-17s listed. And the 250-page listing is obviously an admirable outcome of strenuous work. But I would not recommend this book to people who want to read touching and exciting stories of or about the Flying Fortress. I have a feeling that I was misled by the book's title.

This books announces itself on its back cover as the "ultimate illustrated history of the B-17." But it certainly doesn't qualify as that, and even the title is rather deceptive. The book really is devoted to giving a very short, condensed history (about four lines, in three columns) of every single B-17 ever built. It is a work of reference, and an impressive one, rather than a story. This compilation fills 249 of the 319 pages of the book, leaving just 60 pages devoted to telling the story of the B-17. And that is too short, of course, to contain a complete, thorough treatment of the B-17's service life: Better accounts of that have been published elsewhere. This part still contains contain some quite interesting information, nevertheless. To conclude, this is a very valuable book to have if you are deeply interested in the story of the B-17, but it isn't what it pretends to be. Therefore, it rather disappointed me; but for some readers this will be exactly what they want.