There's a lot of information in this book, but it's also a personal narrative that introduces you to a woman who you think would make a wonderful companion to the sights & experiences she describes - she makes the rivers come alive, and peoples the city streets; there's birdsong in the background.

I ran across the following review by Marsha Lynn Bragg in the Case Western Reserve University Magazine, Winter 2002.

Dove Dances Through Asia is a first for alumna Sally Swope (GRS'77, art history), a consultant, writer and fundraiser from San Francisco. Her previous writing has included articles published for Bay Area newspapers and national and international publications.

The book is about her real-life addventures in Asia. The main character, Dove (Ms. Swope), "dances from one country to the next" on press-related trips, accompanied by friends, or alone. "Asia has fascinated me since I received a master's degree in Asian art history from CWRU and studied with curators at the Cleveland Museum of Art. My book includes freelance articles on Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India. I was curious to explore new cultures and meet friendly people."

Of the book, she adds, "I wrote about special places, my impressions of unusual sights, important cultural monuments, and fascinating people I met along the way."

Sally Bowen enters the minds of young readers into a fun filled fantasy. The story is well written and fun. The artwork is absolutely beautiful and will have appeal to children as well as adults. The print quality and book construction is EXCELLENT! The story is timeless and the book makes a wonderful gift as well as an everyday addition to any young readers library.

Young Emmy, while visiting her grandfather one summer, creates imaginary friends in the form of elves. These tiny creatures with flower petals surrounding their face, have names such as Fool-Around, Big-Time-Charlie, and Talk-too-Much.They enjoy the Enchanted Stream by such things as water skiing behind a tennis shoe serving as a boat and using paddle pop sticks as skis. In the end, Emmy's fear of making friends is conquered by her own imagination. Kristina Wasmer's illustrations beautifully capture the elves in all their activities.

Sally Savic has one of the most lyrical, comic voices in American literature. Her portrait of New Orleans is graceful, moving and funny. Read it now. Her son is lucky to know her Mom is a genius. She graced my life with her beautiful gifts for a short while. Can't wait for her next book, you will, too.

Well, considering the fact that my mom wrote this book, i found this book to be the greatest book in the world! so buy it! buy it now! my mom is a genius! praise her as if she were your god! -her son.

I am lucky enough to own a copy of "Farming for Self-Sufficiency." I have been following it's advice now for the past 6 years and have found it very helpful. You have to add your own caution to the words of Mr. Seymour because he is ever the optimist which is refreshing in the face of all the horror stories you will recieve from other sources. If you ever see any of his books for sale, buy them on the spot. You won't regret it.

Este libro da la ayuda para aquellos que precisan una base para comenzar a disfrutar de la vida sencilla, utilizando los recursos infinitos que da el campo. Poca tecnología moderna, experiencia de siglos de desarrollo y tradición agricola, y sobre todo una gran pasión por transmitir ese estilo de vida. Maravilloso y útil

This is a great "growing-up" book, especially appropriate for girls. When Hattie Knowlton's immediate family dies (parents, brother, and eventually her caretaker Aunt Lydia), she goes to live with her affluent relatives--Aunt Margaret, Uncle Charley, and cousin Soph. Most of the action happens at Miss Bulkley's Seminary for Young Ladies in New York during the late 1800s. Not only does this novel show the reader about daily life in a different era, middle-school teachers should find this an excellent resource to use in conjunction with teaching writing. Sally Warner uses her great-grandmother Hattie's journals to show how writers create "reality" throught the act of writing. Hattie writes, "Soph came a week ago Monday [to Miss Bulkley's] and we four girls have had a jolly time ever since." Hattie actually felt intimidated by her new surroundings. Never mind! The omniscient narrator tells us, "She [Hattie] could create another Hattie, happy, funny, and confident...that would be the Hattie that lived on...." Quite a testament to the power of writing.

After Hattie Knowlton's parents died when she was a little girl, she and her baby brother were sent to live with their great-aunt. But when Hattie is fourteen, both her great-aunt and her brother died, leaving her all alone in the world. Having lived in poverty all her life, she feels awkward and out of place when she arrives at the luxurious New York City home of her Uncle Charley and Aunt Margaret, and their daughter Sophie, an elegant young lady who Hattie feels like a country bumpkin next to. Even though Sophie is kind to Hattie, she is still lonely, grieving for her little brother. When fall comes, Hattie is sent with Sophie to a boarding school for wealthy young ladies. Hattie is ashamed of being a "charity case," and worries that all the other girls will find out. This was a wonderful novel set during the 1880s about a young girl who struggles to rise above her difficult childhood to find her own place in the world. I would reccomend this book to young teenage girls who enjoy historical fiction.

This book is all about handquilting, and gives great information on the entire process from choosing batting, threads, thimbles, and basting methods, and includes color photos for each step explained. Handquilting is time consuming, but is by no means hard to learn. This book will provide beginners with all the information they need, and is an excellent volume to own for reference.

This is an excellent reference book for hand quilters, beginner or advanced!

Fran's war is a heart wrenching book set in the Bosnia war. Sally Trench writes this book through the eyes of a child, Fran. Fran and her Family are forced to live in their basement by the war, one minute her town was normal and the next thrown into Havoc by a war of ethnic cleansing. The story shows just how strong one child can be just to survive alone, with no help or Family. To sum up Fran's war this is what i thought of it. It was a little bit sad, well actually really sad but in other parts of the book you are overcome with happiness and relief. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading real-life situations. I give Fran's war 10 out of 10.

This review is taken from a journal I kept while in training to work as a volunteer at the Center for Grieving Children here in Portland, Me. where I was fortunate enough to meet Sally and spend time with her.

...Even though they say everyone's story is important and has value in he telling (and I don't deny this) Sally's story put all others into perspective. It brought back a flood of memories, emotions, and intellectual challanges that I hadn't felt since working for mother Teresa in Calcutta eighteen yrs. ago and then finally meeting her in Nairobi in 1989. Suddenly, I was back at that place in my head while in college. It was a place I had almost forgotten about. Any sadness I ever had seemed insignificant as it quickly became blanketed by her words. I was overwhelmed with something I haven't quite found the words for. Perhaps there aren't any. I thought of a passage from Aztec Two Step....

"...My mind is a circus. My thoughts are surreal. There's no words for expressing the way that I feel."

Her story was filled me with memories, anger, ahhorrence, happiness, compassion, tears, warmth, joy and love. It is a truly powerful story about the hatred, misery, love and compassion that war brings. We who have our freedom are profoundly fortunate. This story reminds us that this privilege should never be forgotten nor taken away. I strongly urge everyone to read this novel for within the pages contains a deeply enlightening message that noone should live life without. Theresa Roelke

This book gives general principles of gardens with prairie plants, examples of actual gardens, a few plans and lots of information on specific plants. The information on the plants is the highlight of the book. The plans that they show are excellent.

[Gardening with Prairie Plants by Sally Wasowski], Native Plant Society of Texas News, 20 (March April 2002): 5.

Convincing people that native flora are ideal for their home landscape should be easy. Colorful native plants flower as early as late February and continue to bloom until late June. After a respite during the intense heat and withering drought of summer, a riot of blossoms emerge again from September until the first frost of late autumn. Few gardens comprised of commercially popular non-native plants can compete with the duration of such a showy display. And few can match the low maintenance, the reduced water requirements, and the environmental benefits of native-flora horticulture.

Sally Wasowski's latest book, Gardening with Prairie Plants, is aimed at converting skeptics who doubt that native-plant landscapes can make any difference in the world. These are people who argue the futility of trying to reverse the course of things in any given region. In reply, Wasowski points to native-plant landscaping as one way to preserve biodiversity. Biodiversity is like the human auto-immune system; it provides an eco-system with the means for successfully adjusting to disruptive new conditions.
Wasowski has a good chance of succeeding against the skeptics because her volume-reasonably-priced and readily available in Texas bookstores-is excellently produced. Not only is her well-informed commentary accessible to the average reader, but Andy Wasowski's accompanying color photographs are spectacular. The publisher wisely opted to print large illustrations, and the 241 that appear in Gardening with Prairie Plants prove the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. Since Texas is a prairie state, there are attractive photos of Brown County, Quitaque, Gruene, Fort Worth and Lubbock, among other Lone Star State locales.

Gardening with Prairie Plants commences with several instructive definitions, such as the difference between short-grass prairies, which tend to be found in dry regions subject to very hot weather, and long-grass prairies, which tend to be found in wet regions subject to very cold weather. But such distinctions can become somewhat more complex, and Wasowski negotiates various qualifications in an easy-to-understand way. Her book then proceeds to consider the design, installation and maintenance of prairie gardens. This section is highlighted by photographs of homes, schools and museums exemplifying successful transitions to native landscaping. The impressive experiment at Selah Ranch in Johnson City is also featured.

Most of Wasowski's book is devoted to plant profiles, which comprise a richly illustrated section of the volume and are accompanied by helpful horticultural data and numerous floral distribution maps. The flowers populating this portion of the book are so appealingly presented that it will be hard for some readers to resist wanting to adopt all of them. Consider, for example, the allure of the beautiful photograph of needle-and-thread (Hesperostipa comata), accompanied by this description: "Needle-and-thread sways in the slightest wind with a motion like water, and the awns have a silvery cast. ... Wind blows the 'needle' onto the soil. The threadlike 5-to-8-inch awn is twisted behind the needle, and as it unwinds, the seed is literally drilled into the soil."

Gardening with Prairie Plants is an admirable work. It will be cherished by anyone devoted to native flora, but it will appeal equally to those who have as yet made only a modest foray into native-plant landscaping. Gardening with Prairie Plants is not only extraordinarily useful, it is also exceptionally beautiful-a lavishly designed book for enthusiast and dreamer alike.

William J. Scheick, a former NPSOT vice-president, is also a member of the Central Texas Horticulture Council and a frequent contributor to Texas Gardener.

Erickson's book (as well as "United We Solve") is a fabulous tool for teachers of math (as well as some social sciences). The activities are for small groups and the "rules" for solving the problems make it a good basis for evaluating both individual and group work.

I use these activities with my third and fourth graders, but the activities are also good for much older students. The topics are varied, including geometry, equations, logic, and even some social studies topics. My students love working on these, and I love watching them as they work to solve the creative problems.

I highly, highly, highly recommend this book AND "United We Solve".

I think of myself a traditional teacher. As a sixth-grade teacher of math, I believe that students need a strong foundation in the basics of mathematics. However, with Get It Together by Mr. Erikson, I found myself motivated by activities that go beyond the trendy 'math games.' There are many acitivites that have real learning value. Also, the students enjoy working together in small groups to find the answer. At least once a week, I find myself using an activity or two out of this book. It has been an excellent resource in the classroom.

If you are a cyclist (beginner or avid) and are looking for some great new riding profiles this is the book for you. Where's your focus?...Your heart, of course!! Proper training of your heart rate will get you where you want (need) to be. If you succeed in completing ALL 50 workouts you will have improved the three abilities necessary for successful riding: Endurance, Strength, and Speed. You will learn to control your heartrate, push your lactate threshold and reduce recovery time. Effective riding will lead you to more and more riding...Buy it! (P.S. Spinning instructors - this is awesome!)

I have recently started to enjoy recreational cycling for fitness. I ride both on-road and off-road and up until now I was just going out for a ride most days without a training plan or a real purpose to my rides, not understanding why some days I felt good and other days were a hard slog. While I am definitely getting results, I know that I am not optimizing my training.

I read through this book in a couple of days and can't wait to begin putting into practice many of the things I learned. What made this particularly appealing to me is that I am both a "gadget-head" by nature and also enjoy measuring and monitoring things. This book has shown me how to tie these things into my training to help me plan, execute and monitor my fitness program.