When I first glanced over Dick's book I thought that it would be based a little too much on his sponser (garden way-great carts by the way, have used them for 20 years) and perhaps some fertilizer company. Although he supports the use of some chemical fertilizers and tills quite a bit more than I might support, he has really terrific organic methods, green manures and old-fashioned thinking that remind me of what gardening used to be - a means to feeding the family with all of the fun short cuts and ideas!
The book has fabulous photos, great wide row and multi-cropping ideas, super tips on all aspects of gardening , and offers insight into maximizing your harvest. His tried and true methods and down-home common sense really make for motivating garden reading! I am going to try to grow sweet potatoes from started slips this year in my community ocean-side garden in Maine, as well as attempt his tomato caging technique with roofing paper. This is a great book to learn heaps about gardening in a simple, friendly way.

I never gardened until I moved to Vermont a few years back. As a city slicker I was amazed a little seed in some dirt could amount to anything. I got a few gardening books to help me, but this one handed to me by my mother-in-law was the very best (I found the others, especially "Gardening for Dummies" a waste of money). Dick's book is filled with photos of just about any run-of-the-mill vegetable (such as the tomato) as well as the more exotic (like my favorite, the brussels sprout). With clear and easy to follow directions and photos, Dick guides you through the process of growing any vegetable successfully. My second season of gardening I had an incredible bounty of tomatoes as my fellow gardeners' tomatoes were hit by blight - I just followed Dick's suggestions for planting and mulching. With the help of this book, I became a somewhat comfortable organic vegetable gardener. I just bought it for a friend on the West Coast as a housewarming gift - he plans to plant his first garden ever, and as he spoke, I just knew this book would help him.

The only caveats I would add are: 1) I did not find much success with his seed-scattering method. For some veggies, he suggests using a wide row and putting seeds in a salt shaker to scatter and over-sow, and then raking through to thin the young sprouts. I did find his wide-row method helpful for planting more in a smaller area, but I found I had to plot out where things would go. 2) This is a book for organic vegetable gardening. If you are interested in commercial pesticides or primarily in flower-gardening, this book is not for you.

Good luck & happy planting!

Some books are like gold-bearing ore--you have to sift tons of words to find a few nuggets. This book has nuggets on nearly every page. And unlike some authors, Raymond is open-minded to the various gardening methods and has tried them. Even better, he has worked in different soils in different parts of the country. And he is innovative.

I am not a fan of tillers and I am biased against chemicals, so Raymond had to overcome my initial skepticism. He did. While he extols the use of his tiller [he has a long relationship with Troy-Bilt, owned by Garden Way, publishers of this book], he also shows how to garden without one. And in most cases he offers organic alternatives to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Furthermore, he started out on a farm, paid for his first home with a garden and roadside stand, has appeared in food production documentaries and has given gardening classes throughout the country, face-to-face and on radio and television.

I do not agree with all he writes, nor is he inclusive of all gardening methods, for instance Fukuoka's no-till, Steiner's biodynamics or Mollison's permaculture. But in gardening, the proof is in the eating and it is clear that Dick Raymond eats very well. Beginning, mid-field and advanced gardeners alike will learn valuable techniques for soil enrichment, bed-building, seed-growing, transplanting, spacing, weed-killing and insect-handling. He is excellent on green manure crops, seeding and harvesting. I was especially taken with his Eternal Yield experimental plots, where he imports only seeds and lime but has improved yields and soil over a ten-year period. "My goal was to plant different sequences of green manure crops to see if they alone could provide all the nutrients food crops need. My guidelines were simple: don't add any fertilizer, compost, or manures to the soil. As for organic matter, till under only the crops that grow on the plot. Do not bring in any outside material--no leaves, no mulch, nothing."

This is the best-illustrated gardening book I have found. Hundreds of color photos and drawings on high-quality paper illustrate every lesson. All popular plants are given their own coverage including gourds, peanuts and sunflowers. In the section on pests I learned a technique I am eager to try on the mole army here--sticking pieces of blackberry canes into the runways. There is an insect pest section as well as one on diseases. An eight-page planting guide supplements and synopsizes earlier coverage, there are maps on first- and last-expected frost dates. The index is small but adequate.

Should your budget allow only one gardening book, this is as good as you can do.

I'm shocked these books are out of print. I totally enjoyed them and I think I read every one. This book especially was practically prophetic from the standpoint of what the military is currently working on. Consider the year written, and it is quite remarkable.

I would highly recommend this book for young kids interested in imaginative inventions. "Creative inventors", so to speak.

Danny, loooooooong preceeding "Neuromancer", dons a helmet and gloves which give him sensations from an outside source--in this case, a mechanical dragonfly. He uses this technology to his own ends, of course. Prescient sci-fi from the team of Williams and Abraskin.

I can remember pouring over the pictures in this book,using my book light,long after the final lights out call from my parents. I traveled back in time, imagining dinosaur growls and prehistoric seashells. By day, I would wander the acreage on my Grandma's farm, scouring the weedy earth for the slightest hint of ancient rock or dinosaur footprint. I wanted my school-age children to enjoy the imaginative art of archeology and paleantology and immediately remembered my favorite book, Fossils: A Guide to Prehistoric Life. I was delighted to see that it was still in print with the same exciting drawings. I immediatley ordered my copy! I then decided to order a copy for my kids! This is a great book that will encourage your children to look beyond the video games and satellite channels and into the fascinating world of the ancient past.

This little guide is the best choice for beginners and children. Book gives the reader an idea about what a fossil is, where and how they can be found, and some information about major fossils. All the pictures are hand drawn illustrations, so that they are not very detailed but still OK for kids and beginers. (I liked it when I was young!)

In the tradition of "little instruction books", this volume is full of short tips on writing well and getting published. These secrets will motivate, instruct and make you laugh.

The tips are categorized by chapter: inspiration, characterization, dialogue, plot, style, technique, writer's block, editing, marketing, the business of writing, reading & writing and the writing life. There is an index to help you find valuable passages again.

THIS IS A GREAT GIFT for yourself or for the writeaholic who is making your (co-dependent) life miserable.

As the author of 113 books (including revisions and foreign-language editions) and over 500 magazine articles, I recommend this book to writers. DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.

This is a great book to help keep you focused on what it takes to not only write a great book but to get it published! A friend loaned it to me for daily inspiration and I wore it out while waiting for traffic, waiting for the dentist, etc. Great to keep with you to keep you motivated and on the right track!

Country Churches moves beyond the boundaries of just being a book profiling church architecture. In this wonderful tome, Raymond Zirblis captures the beauty and simplicity of country churches in the rural communities of Europe and the Americas. Unlike their larger counterparts in the city, these churches evoke a powerful sense of spirituality and grandeur in their simplicity.

In order to appreciate the aesthetics of these churches, the author gives us a brief history of church architecture's early development. From there we are taken on a panaromic tour of how these different architectural styles translated themselves into rural settings. What you see is simply stunning.

The photographs of the churches are fantastic. You get the feel of the sacredness and warmth of these varied sanctuaries that are out in the middle of nowhere. In Latin America you see the impact of European church styles melded with the indigenous culture to form an architectural synthesis of spirituality. I found the pictures very moving and powerful in their display of these house of worship. As we go from country to country, the author explains the historical context which impacted upon the building of these edifices.

This is an excellent book for those who are curious about church architectural in general and country churches in particular. If you are a photography buff who specializes in taking pictures of churches, you will appreciate the beauty displayed in each photo. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for your spiritual enjoyment.

Even though I read this book a little while ago, I remember it being good. I liked the whole book, especially the end and the middle.

This is an excellent book that contains every phamaceutical excipient that I have ever had the need to know about. I work for a dietary supplement manufacturer and we quite often get calls from customers that want to know all about all those "other ingredients" that are listed on product cartons. The book has a section for each excipient and each excipient has the following sections: Nonproprietary Names, Synonyms, Chemical Name and CAS Registry Number, Empirical Formula and Molecular Weight, Structural Formula, Functional Category, Applications in Pharmaceutical Formulation or Technology, Description, Pharmacopeial Specifications, Typical Properties, stability and Storage Conditions, Incompatibilities, Method of Manufacture, Safety, Handling Precautions, Regulatory Status, Pharmacopeias, Related Substances, Comments, Specific References, General References, and Authors. While I have a background in Biology, I found several of the sections to be easy to understand by several of our employees that do not have a science background. While, still, there was highly technical/scientific information as well. Each excipient's information is contained in 2-4 pages. The book is arranged alphabetically which makes finding information easy. In addition, it contains an index that is very well constructed. For example: If you are looking for an Emulsifying Agent, the index lists all the excipients that can be used for that purpose. I can't say enough how easy this book is to use. Its information is pared down to the essential text, and is chocked full of graphs, charts and microscopic photos of the excipients.

I love "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" stories, and this largely light-hearted one is great for the younger kids. As to the storyline(s), I offer but one piece of advice: don't take candy from strangers -- especially if they're Furry Turtles! :)

Paul Barnett is also known as Bishop Paul Barnett of the diocese of Sydney, Australia. Apart from his theological qualifications, he has a doctrate in Ancient History and lectures at Macquarie University and Moore Theological College. Barnett has addressed the views of John Spong (and others) in specific and general ways in this book (and others). His thesis is that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is not only historically defensible - and that conversely other views (such that it is all a myth etc), are indefensible and do not come to grips with the phenomenon of early Christianity attested to both in Biblical sources and extra biblical sources. Bishop Barnett's careful scholarship takes on the selective and naive historical analysis of Spong, Theiring and the Jesus Seminar. Barnett shows that the historical Christian explanation for the events of the New Testament are water tight. You would use this book if you wanted to seriously investigate the claims of the Bible, devoid of modern gnosticism (Spong), reductionist emoiricism (Jesus Seminar) or pure speculation (Theiring). This is a book for the serious sercher of the facts of the matter.

This ecumenical effort to study the basics about Mary in the NT was undertaken in the mid-70's and is still the standard almost thirty years later. A truly exhaustive, balanced, and informative work that keeps its focus on Scriptural interpretation and probabilities...seeing a number of sides of the sectarian coin on Mary but always opting for the most plausible interpretation, based upon the flat-out *science* of understanding Scripture. Excellent. The best part is the extra chapter on Mary in the 2nd century Christian experience, following-up on what the post-Apostolic churches garnered from the original records and traditions. An absolute MUST for any student or Christian scholar's library.