THE EVERLASTING BOOK OF THE LIGHT!

Steve Brown, has done it again. Writing the second book in the Everlasting series of Role Playing Games. Following up with his award winning Book of the Undead, Steve has written a much needed counter to the darkness found in the first installment. In the Book of The Light. We are introduced to the various creatures of the light, or essentially good beings. Players now have the choice of playing such character types as Angels, Questers, and Daevas. Angels of course being the messengers from heaven, are available to the players in several forms, include the Exhusai or Angels of Death and the Cherubs. Questers are brave men and woman who have devoted their life to a cause, and because of this devotion, they are granted immortality and can leave through the century's striving to fulfill their goal. Daevas , are demi gods and goddess. Immortals who have at one time , might have been worshiped by the Greeks or the Norse. The Book of the Light is a stand alone, and a supplement. If you are new to the Everlasting world, you can use this book to get you started. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in gaming, that is not gothic to the extreme like Vampire or Were Wolf. Then this is for you.

My boyfriend had read "Beyond the Last Villiage" (also by Rabinowitz) and really enjoyed it so when we saw this one I figured I would see if I liked it. I am into nature and wildlife and this book is filled with all the goodies. I couldn't put down the book, I read it in 2 days! I wanted to see what happened to the jaguar that he caught and find out what happened to it.
I highly reccommend this book to anyone that is interested in our environment and wildlife. Now from reading this book I am planning my next vacation to Belize. I am in Thailand now and plan on visiting the National Park that he studied tigers and jaguars at...SO...my reccommendation is buy this book you won't regret it!

I never would have chosen this book, but it showed up in my mail and, well, what else is there to do but read it? I'm so glad I did.

This is a fascinating story of a zoologist who, in 1983, went into the rain forest of Central America to study the jaguar in its native habitat.

"On Dec. 2, 1984, the Cockscomb Basin was declared a National Forest Reserve, with a no hunting provision for the protection of the jaguar. This made Belize the first country in the world to protect jaguars."

This book tells an utterly fantastic tale -- sometimes terrifying -- of how that came to be. It portrays a world most safely enjoyed from the comfort of an armchair; a very personal story that is a combination of natural history and hair-raising adventure in the Stanley Livingston tradition.

This book will appeal to readers who have a specific interest in jaguars and those with more overall conservation leanings. Dr. Rabinowitz is a pioneer in research on this elusive animal and his groundbreaking work shows just how vital the jaguar is to rainforest ecologist, and the devestating impact man has had on this magnificent species. The book is also a remarkable story about the animals and people of the rainforest, who we get to know through Dr. Rabinowitz's exciting narrative. I found myself laughing and crying all at once and was not able to put this book down!

Alan has a wonderful gift for expressing his expeditions and emotional journeys on paper. He can set you in the middle of his trails and make you feel his inner turmoils and exhilerations. Although Jaguar was by far his best book, this one should not be missed. I will be anxiouxly awaiting his next journey and book.

Massachusetts Sierran, March 2002
Diana Muir

Alan Rabinowitz has the best day job in America. The Bronx Zoo pays him to fly to parts of the world that have been off-limits to western scientists for generations. He assembles a team and walks into the forest where he treks beyond the point at which effective government ends, beyond the last road negotiable by Land Rover, beyond the last village. He comes back to report the existence of new species of large mammals previously unknown to science. Then he arranges to have vast tracks of wild land set off as protected nature reserves.
Rabinowitz works for the organization that runs the Bronx Zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and he doesn't actually find an entirely new species of large mammal every time he steps into the bush. But the delicate Burmese leaf deer he discovered for science in 1997 is flourishing in forests that his Burmese scientific and administrative collaborators are working to conserve. Their efforts have resulted in the protection of 3.2% of the land area of Myanmar as national parkland or wildlife refuge. And the adventures in Myanmar recounted in Beyond the Last Village are merely the latest exploits in a career spent mapping the last refuges of the nearly extinct Sumatran rhino, tracking tigers in Thailand, and determining how large a jaguar preserve need be to succeed in preserving jaguar.
No one is perfect. Rabinowitz has a great story to tell, but he attempts to combine a sensitve exploration of his inner self with real-life adventures that play like an Indiana Jones movie. The outcome can be bad enough to make you wince. Here is Rabinowitz, the sensitive male, awaiting the birth of his child.
"The due date came and went, and I was surprised at how rattled I was. I had helped deliver a Mayan baby in the back of a pickup truck on a bumpy dirt road in southern Belize. I had sewn up my dog, Cleo, after his neck was ripped open by a jaguar. I had ridden for help on a motorcycle in Thailand with a broken leg and a bamboo stake through my foot. I had had to find my way out of the jungle with a subdural hematoma after a plane crash. But nothing compared to this. This was my child."
When Rabinowitz discovers a species unknown to science, he takes evidence to the Director of Genetics at the Bronx Zoo for expert confirmation. If he had taken the account of his trip to a professional writer for similarly expert help he would have a best seller on his hands. Make no mistake, Rabinowitz has a first-rate story to tell. The sort of story that might have reached millions of readers around the world and persuaded them of the importance of saving the world's last wild places. Instead we have a book that is almost wonderful.
This is a great read nevertheless because Rabinowitz is the real deal. He goes to places where we cannot go and sees things that we would never see. Had I somehow gotten permission to hike into upland forests of Myanmar off limits to outsiders, I would have seen some pretty little deer. Rabinowitz saw an undescribed species. And while the writing may be clunky, the adventure is real.
E. O. Wilson's new book, The Future of Life, is an elegant statement of the importance of preserving the biodiversity of this planet by protecting large, intact ecosystems from exploitation. Rabinowitz takes the problem down to cases.
His new species of leaf dear, along with bear, tiger, rhino and a bevy of southeast Asian species whose names I failed even to recognize, are endangered by poverty, and by a voracious Chinese appetite for bogus medicine and chimerical aphrodisiacs. Sometimes it can take surprisingly little to save them.
In the remote highlands of Myanmar Rabinowitz and his Burmese colleague, Dr. U Saw Tun Khaing, discovered villages with no access to salt. The only way that they could obtain this vital commodity was by hunting and selling wildlife parts to Chinese traders. Rhino, the species most prized by credulous Chinese men, were extirpated in the area decades ago.
Dr. Khaing has now set up a system in which payment in salt and other goods is made to villages that preserve the wildlife around them. Erstwhile hunters are employed as game monitors with the cost picked up by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Salt and self-interest will surely do more to induce local people to preserve game than any number of wardens could.
The pity is that poachers serving the Chinese market continue to hunt Asian rhino elsewhere. My son, the college student, suggests that the only way to protect the last wild Asian rhinos from poachers is to provide free Viagra to every middle-aged man in China. He just might be right. Meanwhile, I'm glad that Alan Rabinowitz is on the job.

A wonderful book. Informative and cleanly written. Mr. Rabinowitz is a well informed, engaging storyteller who lays this story out with lots of quality information and a minimum of fuss. A book that's not particularly sentimental even in the sentimental parts.
But inquring minds, or this one at least, has one nagging question that this book might (and perhaps should) have been able to answer.
Mr. Rabinowitz freely admits he's got compulsion to travel and explore. Even though this compulsion takes a toll on his marriage Mr. Rabinowitz, for reasons he amply explains in the book, decides to trudge forward anyway.
The birth of his child is an epiphany, and is wonderfully described. <

The One Last Question is this: How will Mr. Rabinowitz reconcile the demands of fatherhood with his compulsion to travel?

"Like his first book, Jaguar, Rabinowitz's Chasing The Dragon's Tail is a telling testimony to the difficulties emarked upon in the attempt at large predator conservation. Rabinowitz's books are a must read for anyone interested in habitat preservation and conservation."