This book is incredible, the essays, photography, map drawings and descriptions really changed the way I looked at the world around me. This book was used as our text book for a Senior Project class in design school.

This book will change the way you look at and think about landscape. Technically, it's a landscape architecture book, and the essays that deal with that subject are excellent. James Corner is one of the best landscape architects/theorists around, and his writing is though-provoking, lucid and enjoyable to read. He draws an wonderful comparison between this work and Le Corbusier's sightseeing flights over North Africa in the 1930's. But without a doubt, the reason to buy this book are the photographs that document the unexpected beauty that arises out of the interaction between man and nature. The incongruities of landscape, juxtaposed against the linear certainty of the Land Ordinance Act grid, farm plots and other common interventions make for stunning photography.

There are also little subplots, such as creative reuses of already built spaces (tennis courts as parking lots & football field yard lines over a baseball diamond), and the similarity of totally unrelated natural forms (who knew that from 7,000 feet, cracked pond ice looks like microscopic images of streptococcal bacteria?).

There are dozens of other little thoughts I could include, and one of most remarkable things about this book is that the photogrpahs allow the reader to draw on his or her own knowledge to make connections and interpertations. There's no right or wrong way to see these things, which makes it universally rewarding and enjoyable.

I always enjoy graphic design, but this one integrates intelligent visual graphic representation and it portraits site/landscape analysis.
Not your usual blueprint survey, but delightful new way of documentation.

What a beautiful story! It's so nice to see a well-written book with a good message. I'm sure that we can expect great things to come from this author.

With understated simplicity, Morano's wonderful characters provide insightful commentary on religion, gender, race and other social issues. "A Wing And A Prayer" is a beautiful story for all ages...I was unable to put it down until I had finished it. It has forever changed my view of nature and of animals...I wonder if they're not like Lupe and his friends, with beliefs, hopes, and dreams...

No matter what your age, you will find yourself caught up in the life of Lupe. The wonderfully three-dimensional characters will make you laugh and cry as you find yourself being drawn into the story with each chapter. Despite the suggested age range, it's a page turner.

I JUST READ THE SYNOPSIS OF ROLAND BISHOP'S NEW BOOK CODENAME FIREANT, NOT YET PUBLISHED AND FOUND THE EXCERPTS TO BE EQUAL TO OR EVEN BETTER THAN HIS FIRST BOOK OPERATION ARABIAN KNIGHTS WHICH I READ IN ITS ENTIRETY IN TWO DAYS. IT APPEALED TO MY INTERESTS AND I LITERALLY COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. I WOULD GIVE HIS FIRST BOOK FIVE STARS AND EXPECT THE CODENAME FIRE ANT TO BE EVEN MORE ENTHRALLING. DR. P.T. MESSICK DDS

The author, Mr. Bishop, weaves a facinating and captivating story of intrigue, suspense and terrorism. He displays a vast knowledge of his subjects; Iraq, intelligence, patriotism and nuclear holocaust. The story line keeps you riveted and focused in the action and drama. Compelling and filled with suspense. Highly Recommended.

With so much unsettling events going on currently in the Mideast, this gripping novel about international terrorism is timely, authentic and filled with convincing characters. The author makes the readers feel the suspence of this covert military operation. This book was so well written, I look forward to reading Bishop's next novel. I highly recommend the book to readers who enjoy Tom Clancy type novels.

This novel both intrigued and concerned me as I enjoyed the science fiction aspects but was ever aware that the political implications are reality-based. Dana Barbour's character development is excellent, and he does an excellent job of integrating the plot with current sociopolitical issues. The Question is challenging intellectually but definitely read-worthy! If you wonder about implications of current political events, read Dana Barbour's The Question...it's in his book!

THE QUESTION HOLDS MY ATTENTION AS IT SEEMS MORE FUTURE REALITY THAN FICTION.IT IS HUMAN NATURE TO DENY OUR PROBLEMS AND DISASTERS SUCH THAT IMPENDING CONTROL OF OUR FATE MAY RELY ON OUR ABILITY TO FORESEE A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT IS NOT INDEED BENEVOLENT. IN A MODERN FAST PACED LIFESTYLE, IF WE LET OTHERS MAKE OUR DECISIONS WE GIVE UP MANY OPTIONS TO CONTROL OUR FUTURE FATE. THIS BOOK SHOULD SOUND AN ALARM TO ANY FREE THINKING AWARE READER.

This book combines a engrossing science fiction plot with it's mind challenging and thought provoking philosophical discourse. In this age of apathy and cynicism this is a book by someone who dares to give a damn, and that is refreshing.

No simple answers here but persistent readers will come away with their minds expanded.

"Regina's Record" is an exceptional piece of literary non-fiction. Van Amber combines the story of his mother's mental illness and the horrifying treatment she suffers at the hands of the Veterans' Administration hospital staff with the autobiographical details of his own childhood and early adulthood. The writing is crisp and restrained during the most horrifying events, creating a sense of clarity in the reader. In other sections, the writing becomes lyrical, moving in its expression of love and pity and search for kindness. By the end, the reader believes both Van Amber's grandmother who says "The world is a hard place," and Van Amber, who finds miracles and kindness in that hardness. A beautiful book. A must read for students of counseling and psychology and psychiatry and nursing and medicine, for anyone whose profession requires them to see the human faces of the patient and the family members behind the label of the mental illness.

THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY BRAVE LOOK AT A LIFE, THAT IN SO MANY OTHER SIMILAR CASES HAVE BEEN PASSED OVER, AND EXAMINED FOR WHAT IT IS - A LIFE! REGINA'S RECORD IS SO SENSETIVELY WRITTEN, AND KEPT ME PINNED TO MY FAVORITE READING CHAIR. THANK YOU JAMES VAN AMBER!

The most affecting moments in this memoir take place when the mother and son share a scene. The opening scene, for example, shows, in great detail, how a five-year-old boy witnessed his mother being taken away to the mental hospital. Much later, as an 18-year-old about to join the Army, he visits her at a VA hospital north of Chicago, and she does not recognize him; furthermore, she says that she has no son. What would she make of this memoir-- the son, now in his fifties, reclaiming his mother, detailing her life of abuse and sad delusion? That is the powerful irony that lies embedded in every word of this memoir--how Regina never knew her son (and could not help him) and how the author only knew Regina long after she had died (and could do nothing to help her).

In one sense, it's a tough book to read. It does not spare the reader. It never censors itself. At the same time, it is beautifully written, a work of great literary craft, that can be appreciated by all who care about excellence in writing, not just by those who are interested in the subject of this book. It would make a terrific movie.

Comprehensive, accesible and updated with great Web resources. Highly recommended!

This is a fun and easy to understand book for a often-tedious though important subject --corporate finance. Wachowicz takes pain to update the book through his web page. Excellent!

This book is used in the Applied Capital Budgeting at University of Massachussetts Dartmouth. It's a very helpful and useful book. In order to understand time value of money, financial statement analysis , capital budgeting and risk , return , I am strongly advise you to buy this book.

Before I read this book, I knew almost nothing about Jacques Derrida, though I had browsed through some of his works. I think this is a good book for the general reader. It goes more into depth on Derrida than Powell's other book Postmodernism for Beginners.

Derrida is my favorite philosopher. I don't think that his 'Deconstruction' is holistic necessarily but the gist of it explains the inherent problems of doing philosophy better then anything else I've read.

Unlike the greats of Science who simplify complex ideas (i.e..Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman), the guru's of philosophy take fairly straight-forward ideas and shroud them with such mysterious sounding proprietary language that their work becomes nearly impossible to decipher. Derrida is no exception. This is a shame because his underlying message is brilliant...and really not not all that abstract.

So until philosophers realize that less words does not directly translate to less intelligence, we should be very glad to have commentators like Jim Powell around.

"Derrida For Beginners" concentrates on developing the key concept of "differance" and defining the necessary Derridian terminology used to communicate its meaning. The book clearly defines, "binary opposites", "texts", "logocentricism" etc.. and has plenty of diagram's to help you get the idea. While I can't say the artwork did much for me, the cartoon setting does force the message to be carried accross succinctly...no babling. The first book I read after failing miserably to tackle "Of Grammatology" was "Derrida" by Christopher Norris. While his was an excellent introduction..I will say that after I read "Derrida for Beginners" I went back and read most of Norris' book again and got a lot more out of it. Try this: read "Derrida for Beginners" as many times as needed until you have all the words in bold print at your fingertips..then, read Norris' book "Derrida". With this few hours of investment, do some online searches and read some of the commentaries and criticism of Derrida. You will be surprised at how badly he is misunderstood by so many who have studied him a lot more then you, and should feel good about your knowledge in comparisom. Of course you then need to get humble again so start reading "Of Grammatology". :)

Before I read this book, all I ever hear of Derrida is that he is so hard to read. Upon reading this, I realized where this could be true. This beginners book is very well written and made Derrida's work simple to understand. Although one may need a basic knowledge in linguistics and Sassure, one does not need it all together to comprehend some of Derrida's work. Author Jim Powell gives a concise look into the dense writings of the linguist which I not only found easy, but exciting - enough to make me want to go out and read some of the material that is written about. Along with an explanation of Derrida's work is also a brief biography which gives on an idea where he is coming from. Highly reccomended! One of the best beginners book to date.

This is a great idea book- or lovely gift for a gardening friend. The illustrations are lovely. There are gardens from various climates, formal and informal- If you buy it for a gift, you may not want to give it up.

This book is a wonderful addition to any Landscape Architects shelf, the photographs emphasize the technique used by these two talented designers, and the pictorial key to their frequently used plant material acts as a springboard for your own interpretation on these very modern, yet naturalistic designs.

I am absolutely positive that you cannot go wrong with this book, or any other by these two incredible designers. With an emphasis on ornamental grasses and very "naturalistic" design styles that are beautiful year round, you'll have a hard time putting this one down. Photographs are absolutely beautiful!! You will definitely not be dissapointed!!!

Have you ever wondered why you return time and time again to certain web sites yet there are others you wish not to return again?

One of the measurements of site success is customer retention. In order to retain your customers, you must know and understand them. Not all web sites have the same customer requirements but they do share some of the same principles. Van Duyne, Landay, and Hong provide the guidance to explain the differentiation of site categories, what they have in common and what customers expect out of them. They reveal how the top benchmark sites are developed from the customer viewpoint. They explain how a customer should know where they are on a site and to navigate, even if they enter the site 5 layers down.

The authors define eleven site genres and then discuss the various patterns that best fit specific type of site or general to multiple types of sites. There have been many books written on web usability and design ... but this book provides the reading experience that can be applied to any site.

Have you ever wondered why you return time and time again to certain books yet there are others you wish not to return again? This book is a "Pager Returner."

This book is highly recommended.

Unlike many books on usability or on web or interactive design, "The Design of Sites" covers both aspects in equal depth. It is well research, with hundreds of examples, and it is written in concise language with oodles of cross-references to other sections. The book is very attractively designed, and works well from start to finish or with random soundings. Above all, it is comprehensive in addressing all design problems, yet brief and to the point on the many "patterns" (which could just as well be called "topics") it covers.

Perhaps not the first book a new web designer should read, but a good candidate for the second one -- it is certainly of great interest to anyone who has begun to grapple with the many design challenges of web development.

Highly recommended.

This is the first computer related book that I have bought and thought - "Perfect, just what I needed." What I like most about this book is that it spends so little time explaining why building user centered web sites is a good idea, and tells you exactly what techniques are used to create them. You can open the book up to almost any page, read a paragraph and get something out of it. It is clear that the authors spend alot of time laying out the book to make information retrieval easy.

Dont let "look inside" pictures that amazon has posted fool you - they are probably the only boring sections of the book. In part 2 (about page 100), the book gets really really good. For the next 500 pages they cover almost every area of of web design imaginable and present the areas in a problem - solution format. Many books dont offer concrete techniques, just tell you - "design for the user", "users hate poorly designed pages" etc etc. Each problem/solution is about 2 pages long, and they are web techniques that can be applied to almost every web site. They literally say to solve X problem do Y solution. Very specific, very useful.

The book also is good from cover to cover. I have found that alot of books are good for the first chapter and then loose quality. They present each "nugget of information" with the perfect amount of description - enough to explain why its useful, but not too much to drag on.

They also use these hand drawn pictures that I liked to show how a generic web page would function, instead of only pictures of pre-existing web pages ( which they also have ample examples) So you can actually apply it to your project instead of saying, I understand why hotmail looks the way it does. I would recommend this book to anyone, hands down.

This work is a fairly standard, straight-forward biography of King Strang. It is very well researched, documented, and foot noted. It would appear that Mr. Van Noord dug deeper into his reseach than most authors dealing with James Strang have in the past. The book enlightened me on several points regarding King Strang that I had previously read and Mr. Van Noord found to be incorrect. If you are interested in learning about a fascinating man and those around him this is the book. However it gives only a sparce and very typical Beaver Island history and does not touch on the legendary (and I believe, mythical) Mormon, Beaver Island treasure at all. If those items are your points of interest, look elsewhere.

Mormonism's second prophet wasn't the famous Brigham Young -- he may have seized control of many of the Church's institutions, but he never claimed to be the "Prophet". That mantle was seized by the insteresting historic figure, James J. Strang, who led his portion of the Mormon Church from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Voree, Wisconsin, and then to Beaver Island, Michigan at the same time that Young was leading his branch to Utah.

Van Noord's book is a great biography of Strang which makes close use of Strang's journals, letters, books, and draws a great deal from the newspapers which Strang's church published. Strang's many successes both on Beaver Island and then also in the Michigan legislature, imply that he was quite a brilliant and eloquent character. The book leads you to wonder what might have happened had he not been assassinated.

The only problems with Van Noord's book are that he does not seem to be an expert in the field of Mormon history generally, and he has relied on informants in the modern Utah church -- the great rival of Strang's church -- for some of his information on Mormonism. Additionally, the biography definitely leaves you wanting a larger history of the Strangite church.

All in all, the book is an excellent read. I picked it up and nearly read it cover to cover uninterrupted, as I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Strang next.

I have done extensive study on the subject of Jas. Strang and his followers. I found this book and several others extremely fair-minded considering the controversies (as well as present day prejudices) surrounding this utopian experiment. I welcome other comments. My great-great grandfather was present at Strang's coronation on Beaver Island, Michigan.