Twenty-five years ago, this was THE guidebook to climbing in Yosemite. We used to play trivia games to name the first ascent parties, the dates, etc., of the most obscure climbs Roper listed. Another part of the game was figuring out Roper's idiosyncrasies - for example, each sentence describes a seperate pitch & the adjective "adventurous" means dangerously loose & dirty. Nowadays, the book is mainly an historical artifact. The number of climbs is many times greater than in 1971 & the level of difficulty of climbs has similarly increased. But Roper's book is still useful for both the history of climbing in the Valley & also for descriptions of how to get to the various climbing areas, with verbal descriptions of the climbs (a rarity in this age of topos).

I personally found this book to be of great use to me during my training as a student nurse, it was easy to use and helped me with most of my assignments, and I will find it to be continally usefull as a qualified nurse.
The book was originally recomended to me by a lecturer, and finding it difficult to loan from the library as it was such a popular book I eventually bought it and I found it to be a worth while investment.
The book itself is well structured, clearly set out, informative and easy to read.

When I picked up this book, I was expecting something from one of the situation comedies that I love to watch. While it wasn't a laugh a minute, it was a really great read. The primise is well set up. The kids definately needed something. And the solution is well thought out. It was obvious that Gayle Roper put some time into thinking this through. I found the subplots involving Molly's dealings with her own mother and in-laws very interesting. I thought the ending was a little rushed, but I could see them coming to that ending soon, if not right then. All in all this is a great, thought provoking book.

"...I know that some critics may object. They may say that the witch-craze is a disgusting subject, below the dignity of history. To them I would reply that, disgusting or not, it is also a historical fact...Ugly though it may be, we can no more overlook it...than we can overlook the equally ugly phenomenon of anti-semitism in 'contemporary' history..."

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, the son of a doctor, was educated at Charter House and Christ Church, Oxford. From 1937-1939 he was Research Fellow of Merton College. After the war he returned to Oxford as a Student of Christ Church, and in 1957 was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History. In 'The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries', Professor Trevor-Roper questions why, early modern Europe had regressed since the Dark Ages. In this collection of essays Roper is not merely concerned with witch-beliefs, with the elementary village credulities that anthropologists discover in all times and at all places; Roper sees the craze as a form of social intolerance - the witch, like the Jew, cast first as the non-conforming scapegoat of feudal society and later as a victim of conflicting ideologies. The subject in this book is then not with only beliefs, which are universal, but the witch-craze itself, which is limited in space and in time; and by the 'witch-craze' Roper refers to '...the inflammation of those beliefs, the incorporation of them, by educating men, into a bizarre but coherent intellectual system which, at certain socially determined times gave to otherwise unorganized peasant credulity a centrally directed, officially blessed persecuting force...' He goes on to show why attacks on details of the craze could never touch its real nature, the real nature being rooted in a coherent cosmology and social structure accepted even by critics of the persecution. He legitimately studies how those beliefs are motivated and how they should be interpreted. I found the result of Roper's study to be a brilliant, well-sourced witty collection of essays that not only explore but also endeavor to explain the phenomenon of the witch-craze - a fanatastic starting point for anyone studying the witch-craze!

I have spent many, many of my childhood summers in Florida. Florida's Historic Restaurants is a wonderful taste of the south. In addition, each restaurant has a description of it's history that is captivating. The description provides far more information than an average restaurant review in a newspaper or advertisement. No book of historic Florida restaurants would have any validity without the inclusion of The Columbia, Florida's oldest restaraunt. The Snapper Alicante is delicious. And everyone should try the Nicholson Farmhouse Restaraunt recipe for boiled peanuts for a taste of the old south that should not be missed. Many of the recipes are based around fish and vegetables that are particularly plentiful in Florida such as snapper, grouper and okra. I enjoyed the book because it really reflects Florida cooking and with supermarkets stocked so well I can cook the recipes no matter where I live.

In a sequel to her _Plantagenet Chronicles,_ Hallam follows the same style and layout and indulges in the same lavishness of illustration. In addition to the four generations of monarchs in the title, one finds featured many of the other influential figures of the time, including St. Louis IX, William Wallace, Dante and Chaucer, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, and even Jenghiz Khan. From the birth of the Age of Chivalry to the Black Death that killed almost half of Europe (and precipitated the decline of Norman-Angevin feudalism), these were what the old Chinese curse might regard as "interesting times."

In THE KEY, artist and schoolteacher Kristie Matthews yearns for a simpler life. The day she moves into her new apartment, she sustains a dog bite necessitating a trip to the emergency room. Jon Clarke Griffin, who is at the farm to visit his friend, Jake, takes her to the hospital. While she is in the Emergency Room, a stranger hands her a key telling her to keep it for him but to tell no one she has it. She ends up befriending the elderly stranger as he is hospitalized recovering from a heart attack. She has no idea she is putting herself in danger as well. Meanwhile Kristie breaks off the relationship with her lawyer boyfriend, Todd Reasoner and soon thereafter begins seeing Clarke Griffin. Soon a series of peculiar events including a break-ins, make Kristie wonder what she has gotten herself into.

The three books in this series, set on the Zook's Amish farm, each have an element of suspense in addition to the romance. Each story is told in first-person from the heroine's point of view. Gayle Roper is a master at storytelling! I also heartily recommend THE DOCUMENT and THE DECISION as well as THE KEY - it's been a long time since I read all three books in a series back-to-back, but I really couldn't put these down.

This book is full of information and a good source for references which several historians have consulted when tackling the subject (which still remains surrounded in mystery) of Hitler's final days. It is a rather quick read, although a bit dry at times, and I must say it is also very depressing due to the subject matter. This is not, however, a criticism of the author. I think he did very well compared to most of his peers.

This is a really good book, which reads very well and once started it is difficult to leave down. The content is satisfactory alhough somewhat lacking in a few areas. It does not require a lot of prior knowledge which is of particular benefit to the beginner. One problem is that some areas are only dealt with on a rather superficial level which can be somewhat frustrating and requires other books to be used. However the details of the book are sufficient to achieve a pass in any undergraduae medical course. The layout and illustrations are fine, rather unremarkable. All in All a good investment for the average student. For those who have a greater interest in the subject a mor detaild text would be advised

This small but very useful book writen by Norberto Bobbio in the early eighties give us a general picture of the relations between the liberal tradition and the defense o democracy as political regime. There is not a justaposition between these two philosophical concepts as we are so many times tempted to make. Both step out different traditions: Bobbio enlighten us that the major philosophers akeen with political liberalism, such as Stuart Mill, Locke, or Alexis de Tocqueville can hardly be named as partisans of democracy. They are liberals in the old and classical way. That's why he defends that the acquisition of democracy in contemporary political philosophy is a recent event and also a on-definitive one. By the time Bobbio write this small essay he saw liberalism and democratic socialism capable of connecting eachother ina liberal-socialism sincretic result, that kept from each vision of the world and society the best os ist contributions: the preserverance of liberty, in the first case; the pursuit of the possible equality, in the second. Time showed that this sinthesis was dispensable because socialism perished along its mistakes and contradictions when te Berlin Wall and the communist empire implode in 1989.
That add a major responsability to the liberal field -where Bobbio reviews himself as man of the political left - to match major concerns of social equality and solidarity to the three-century old defense of freedom and political liberties, rule of law and primacy of the market.
That's why «Liberalism and Democracy» should be used as a memorandum of liberalism as we see it today.
The reading of tis book should be complemented with «Left and Right» and «What Socialism?».