As a student coming from a merely conservative culture, I can relate with the Bradburds' expriences. I find the Komachies and the Malays(dominant ethnicity of Malaysia) having similar culture and tradition because of the religion; Islam. The wedding trays are very alike and men are considered to have more power than women. However, my mom wears the pants in my family ;-). I came directly from Malaysia to upstate Potsdam NY. It 's such a culture shock and quite an interesting experience. I understand the feeling of being FAR away from home....and let me tell you, it ain't easy!

As a friend, fellow ethnographer, and reviewer of other writings by Bradburd, I am very pleased to see this book in paperback (i.e., classroom usable) form and happily recommend it to others. It is highly readable, personally engaging, and very informative about people, settings, and ways of life that are not generally accessible to cultural outsiders -- even other Iranians. That Bradburd is able to help a reader gain an appreciation and understanding of the complexities of Komachi life is a credit to his skill as a writer -- both most of all as a researcher. Well done!

Is it possible to learn anything about another culture without skewing the data just by being there? Dan Bradburd argues that it is, and shows how. For general readers interested in finding out what field work is like, the book provides a diverting account. For anthropologists who think there's no point in going, a convincing argument to the contrary.

BERMUDA ATLAS AND GAZETTEER

Paradise lost, paradise found,
In pages that are bound.
A timeless treasure of pictures and words,
If you've never seen, nor heard
The Siren's song like those who've been.
You'll want to return again and again.

-----------------------------------------------------

1962

Thoughts of the past come back
To a place called "Cotton Patch",
It's not here in Tennessee,
But somewhere far across the sea.
A pale green house high on a hill,
I wonder if it sits there still,
Surrounded by banana trees
And childhood memories.
Salt spray on shutters in a storm,
A pony to ride in the neighbor's barn,
White steps on our roof to catch the rain,
I wonder if it's still the same.
Caves to hide in and rocks to climb,
Out all day, never mind the time,
Easter lilies grown to sell,
But we didn't have to pay for the smell,
Or the view--
Every day was something new.
Gnarled cedars on a sandy path--
I think I found it on a map
In the BERMUDA ATLAS AND GAZETTEER,
A book to ponder year after year,
To find the places I have seen,
Long ago and in my dreams.

Jane Barcroft Forgy
9/6/00

A beautifully designed and thoughtful book. The watercolors evoke the pink gentile Bermuda I visited as a child. This book is a must for any history and nautical buff who wants to learn of the origins of the island,as well as shipping and sailing lore.400 pages of comprehensive, thorough, detailed information about this corner of paradise on earth

As a first-time visitor to Bermuda, I was looking for a comprehensive book to learn about the island's history and culture. I was struck by this sophisticated volume - it stood out among the others for its beautiful look and feel, more like a fine 19th century guide for the well-heeled traveler. I found the watercolors alluring and then, as I scouted Bermuda, I realized that the artist had painted with such sensitivity and grace that he captured the real beauty of his chosen sites. For instance, the magnificent painting of the cave in Tom Moore's Jungle is exactly as the mystical and enchanted grotto appears in real life. Yet the artist's style still adds something magical that photographs or other mediums could not match. The book is also a joy to read as well as behold. The author's writing style, while factual, is easy to read and the entries include interesting folklore and anecdotes about all the places of Bermuda. The book is at once a valuable reference volume, an atlas with sixteen fold-out maps, and a beautiful collection of exquisite watercolors. Although it is pricey, the Bermuda Atlas is well worth the money spent as the ultimate souvenir of the island.

I enjoyed the books throughly and Ms. Daniels is a gifted writer. I agree with all of the other comments. Ms. Daniels if you're listening, please get rid of those made up words. They don't add anything to the plot and had kind of a negative effect on the flow of the words. I hope you make this a series.

Body of Intuition by Claire Daniels (Berkley Prime Crime) is my kind of whodunit. The plot was intriguing, the clues fair (not too easy, not too hard), the charcters wonderfully developed and unique. And then there is the protagonist, Cally Lazar. If she wasn't fictional, I'd marry her myself. She is a witty, lively, smart, and good-hearted alternative healer who uses all of her skills to find a murderer at an ill-fated and sometimes hysterically funny intimacy seminar. I read the book in one sitting. And now I want to see the sequel. I rate both Cally and Body of Intuition five-star delights.

Cally Lazar is a recovering lawyer who joined a twelve-step recovery program to make sure she doesn't fall back into practicing jurisprudence. After she quit the legal profession, she became a masseuse. With some of her patients, she sees auras that enable her to know what is wrong and how to heal the patient.

Cally works with Tricia Snell, whose deceased husband insists he did not commit suicide but was murdered. Tricia convinces Cally to attend an intimacy workshop at the Inn at Fiebre where the same attendees will be present. She agrees to go and her friends Warren Kapp and Dee Dee Lee accompany her. When they arrive and start questioning people, it seems everyone disliked Seager Snell and had a reason to kill him, but the murderer intends to make Cally the next victim if she doesn't stop snooping around.

Claire Daniels has written a creative New Age psychic mystery staring a heroine that it is impossible not to like. The author writes in a breezy easy going and humorous manner so that readers don't feel overwhelmed from the complex plot with numerous viable suspects. This is the first installment in what looks to be a unique hit series. Let's hope in the next book, the author clues the reader in to why the protagonist quit practicing law though perhaps Cally was simply ahead of her time and just frustrated by judges Determining No to Aura-ology as supporting evidence.

Harriet Klausner

CHRISTMAS TREES AND MONKEYS, besides boasting one of the most unusual titles ever for a collection of horror stories, proves Daniel G. Keohane to be one of the very best (perhaps THE best) of the next wave of writers in this genre - and heads above many of the (for now) better-established names I won't divulge here. His prose is clean, assured, his plots and characters intriguing, his imagination sparkling, his approach widely varied so that one doesn't know what to expect from each story - which keeps the offering fresh. A story like BARK can be very simple is plot, but a powerful engine of suspense. AM is a super-spooky tale that would make great reading at Halloween. But as eminently entertaining as these stories are, at times Keohane steps into the realm of surreal literature with brilliant and achingly human stories like FEED THE BIRDS and the gorgeous WHITE WAVE OF MERCY (perhaps the best story in the collection), and THE MONKEY ON THE TOWERS, in which the titular preternatural simian is an enigmatic symbol of chaos and catalyst in the lives of numerous people (Keohane is very adept at shifting view points). There are also a good many stories with a religious theme, in which an intimate hell (RITUAL) or apocalyptic event (REDEMPTION, LAVISH and the unnerving zombie tale TWO FISH TO FEED THE MASSES) are brought about by an incomprehensibly harsh Creator more frightening than any literary Satan - and in which characters fight for redemption, or at least a modicum of understanding in the face of the bleak unknown. Though the last story, TANNER'S BOMB, is a little silly, every story in this book is impressive in its own unique way. Keohane is a master in the making, and any fan of horror in its many sub-categories will find more than enough to be impressed by in this first collection from a first-rate author.

Up until the last story, I didn't think I would have a favorite, although a few will stick with me for quite a while. "Feed the Birds" will take you into the bowels of human depravity. "The Doll Wagon" outshines the old Twilight Zone story. Positively creepy. Thanks to Keohane, I will never see GI Joe the same way again! Ever.

The other stories are strange and thought-provoking (such as Y2Kay and The Storm of Generations). My favorite was "Tanner's Bomb". It was a darkly hilarious story about a trucker, desperate to drop his load so he could get home to his family in time for Christmas. He did, but not without dire consequences.

I not only enjoyed Christmas Trees and Monkeys for the stories, but for the way they were written. Mr. Keohane has his own unique style, which I found refreshing. I look forward to reading his next book. Highly recommended.

I've known Dan for a few months now and just picked this book up at a group signing we did a few weeks back. This is a stupendous collection of work from a writer with a serious future in speculative fiction. Excellent narrative skills combine with sleek dialogue and a wonderful gift for building suspense to create some of the coolest short stories I've read in a long time. Standouts for me included "Y2Kay" - one of the most unique takes on the Y2K crisis - and "Lavish" a truly great epic tale. Dan Keohane's work shines here and he will definitely be making a big mark on the genre. Don't miss this fantastic collection of stories from a serious up-and-coming author.

"Chronicle of America" is a capsulized approach to American history from 1492 to present. Significant events are organized as newspaper articles that quickly break down the most important aspects of the event in a simple "who, what, where, when, and how" format. Contemporary illustrations and photographs are interspersed throughout each year to reinforce the newspaper approach.

Although especially handy for young students, this book is also useful when you need to just look up a few basic facts without having to wade through or locate more indepth works. Definitely handy to have around.

As a Librarian I use this book several times a week. There is nothing like it for putting issues in context. The newspaper format and photographs make it attractive to young people. I hope that a new edition will come out soon.

This book is a MUST if you are interested in American history. It very easy to follow having been written as a collection of news articles. I would recomend this book to anyone, even students.

Mr. Foote does an excellent job of presenting the birth of Christ from the perspective of an innocent child. In this day and age when folks seldom appreciate the "Gift" of the birth of the son of God, it is so refreshing to happen across a work of art such as what Mr. Foote has crafted. His artwork jumps off the pages at you and the simplistic message of the gift of Jesus Christ is as always, a timely message. This isn't a Christmas book, this is something everyone should add to their library.

The Bible tells this story several times - the meaning all the same. God sent His Son as our Savior and sent him to us in a form which only a rare few could ignore--a baby. Dan again retells the story and sights some very human feelings and thoughts in a way children can relate. The story helps me as an adult realize that the birth and the coming of our King had very human aspects.

Dan shows that children play a very important part in helping others..."for you know not when you might be entertaining angels".

He makes the Birth of our King REAL!

Dan has kept the story true to the Scriptural account of the birth of Jesus with some imagination through the eyes of a child. I think it is an excellent telling of an old story and the artwork is second to none. The colors are bright and eye catching for the children. Dan, in his art, was not afraid to portray things they way they are in real life.

I bought a copy for each of my grown daughters, who each have 3 children of their own, and one for my wife and me.

"Annoyingly" this page is devoted to the stories of Dylan Thomas; also"annoyingly", both the Publishers Weekly review as well as that of a disgrunted reader refer stories by Leslie Norris; Norris' book may be splendid; I don't know; I have read Dylan's stories and honor and love them (they are live things wearing incandescent prose -- believe me); perhaps Amazon could reassign the aforementioned reviews and those of us who -- on this page at least -- have (happily) written about the appropriate book will be left to bask unannoyed.

Annoyingly, both of the reviews already posted on this page for the "Collected Stories" of Welsh writer Leslie Norris refer to the "Collected Stories" of Welsh writer Dylan Thomas, which Leslie Norris designed but did not (obviously) write. This review, then, is an actual review of Leslie Norris' "Collected Stories"!

Leslie Norris's collected stories are a sort of bittersweet beauty very much in the Joycean tradition (think especially of "Dubliners"). They begin with some sort of pivotal moment at which confusion either enters into or peaks in the protagonist's young life, and they end with an epiphany that seems sweetly to keep the bitter at bay, but knows that the respite is at best only temporary.

Also a poet (see his "Collected Poems" as well), like fellow Welshman Thomas, Norris's language is simple but fresh, and sumptuous when necessary, a prose tone perfectly in step with the state of his protagonists. Often (if not always), they are young boys on the brink of a knowledge that will disillusion them and send them closer to the concerns of adulthood.

In "Sliding," an accident during an afternoon of sliding across a frozen pond upsets a group of boys, their first initiation into the idea of impermanence. In "Kingfisher," a boy, who has just been with his father to visit his dying grandmother, sees in the garden the dead body of a bird that he and his father had only that morning watched together; in a moment of suddenly adult consciousness, he takes it upon himself to conceal the bad news of mortality from his father. In "Shaving," one of my faves from the collection, an athlete in the full strength of youth returns triumphant from the rugby field to shave his ailing father, who, in the full fading of disease, is too weak to shave himself.

This volume collects Norris's previous two (unfortunately long out-of-print) books, "Sliding" and "The Girl from Cardigan," putting them together with a few new stories in book form for the first time.

Norris excels at awakening emotion, but is subtle enough and careful enough not to hit you over the head with the hammer of sentimentality. If you appreciate and enjoy fiction that looks at those moments that we all know, where we begin to feel ourselves a part of the knowledge that life ends up teaching everyone sooner or later, then this book is a terrific buy.

Was Dylan thomas the consummate craftsman? Indeed, he was; and took real delight in his gifts and his exercise of them; he was a Celtic bard in the truest sense of that role -- the lonely public/private man who carried within him the lyric history of his race, the love of his language and a very vocal sense of wonder over his role in life; that he had song, yes; that he was funny, loud, boisterous, cautious, selfish, rude, unforgettable -- all of that and more; he was the poet's poet and the singer for those who longed for lost boyhood, who raged at death and who marvelled at the all the world's words rediscovered in a dewdrop; his stories, like his poems, should be read aloud; there is an incantatory quality to them -- as if something profoundly old and grandfatherly were suddenly shared with the reader; Thomas himself was a great reader; to hear him is to savor him at his best and to feel deeply and sweetly the majesty and holy compulsion of our mother tongue; the stories, while less charged than the poems, nonetheless captivate and break into a kind of lyricism that gladdens the heart and restores the ear. If he wasn't the best of our poets, he was easily the most tuneful and spoke from a very deep place that only the purest of us can truly know.

There need to be more books like this one. An important topic like prematurity needs more attention.

Dail R. Cantrell was recently nominated for a Book of the Year award for Equal to the Task, one of the best books on the subject ever written. This book is a good companion.

I thought this book was wonderful. It helps people who have never experienced life in the NICU get a glimpse of it. I have quadruplets and all 4 of my babies went through the NICU at Chidren's Hospital in Minneapolis. Dr. Ronald Hoekstra took care of my babies and he is as wonderful as the stories in this book make him sound. It is very difficult and hard to explain what life is like in the NICU and this book does a marlvous job of conveying that. I have given this book to many friends and family members to help them understand what I went through.

I loved this book. I often read and the gym on the exercise bike and my mind will wander. Not with this book! I was engrossed with the stories and tears came to my eyes often as these people of faith go through very challenging times. Although written to partially explain how the Christian faith of these parents and some of the staff helped them through their individual ordeals, it was not offensive. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the wonder of new life.

This collection of articles is very good. I found it somewhat redundant in some respects. One might find it useful to read the first chapter and skip to the center chapters that attempt to discuss applications of the different theories, thus learning them 'in the process', rather that individualy before moving forward. The articles form the foundation of this discipline and thus provide an excellent begining for the study of the topic.

A definitive text. Choices, Values and Frames is no casual read but is a first class exposition of the basics in this area of cognitive psychology. I read it from the perspective of a healthcare practitioner trying to understand more about why 'risk' judgements seem so variable and subjective. The insights gained from Choices, Values and Frames have already modified my behaviour.

The only weakness of the text is that it assumes that the reader has reasonable literacy in manipulating abstract mathematical concepts. More exposition would have been appreciated here. However, even if one does not understand the more 'mathematical' sections the book as a whole is still an engaging exposition of how humans process decisions under risk and uncertainty.

A 'must read' for anybody seriously interested in, but unfamiliar with, this area of cognitive psychology

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have spent their whole lives developing an alternative to the "rational actor" model of human decision-making, the standard of traditional economic theory and the decision sciences. Their ideas were received rather well from the start, but in recent years, their alternative, which we can fairly call "behavioral economics" has virtually displaced traditional decision theory as an active research area.

People often think of the Kahneman-Tversky behaviorists as "bomb-throwers" in the sense that they appear to love to destroy traditional concepts of rationality rather that put constructive models in their place. This collection, which consists of 42 very high quality essays by the leading lights of the field, shows clearly that this is not the case. Prospect theory, loss aversion, framing effets, status quo effect, and the like are carefully modeled in this book. I came away quite impressed.

It is a shame that Amos Tversky never lived to see the light of day of this fine volume. It is certainly a vigorous vindication of his lifetime research agenda.

What I truly loved about this book, aside from it's fun, compact, easily tote-able size, is that it tells the story of many beloved New York holiday landmarks and traditions, from the Thanksgiving Day Parade to the Tree at Rockerfeller Center. As a New Yorker, these are integral aspects of Christmas--Celebrated and admired year after year with little question or understanding as to where their traditions stemmed. This book takes you back to the first windows ever displayed on 5th Ave, while telling fun, quirky stories about the Macy's Parade balloons and how in the early years, they were actually released into the air at the end of every parade. This was eventually halted when an airplane almost crashed into one, and ships on the Atlantic reported strange floating sea creatures! I have always loved New York during the holidays and I feel as if this book has increased my appreciation of them by giving me a greater connection to their origins. It's a quick read, which is good in one aspect, (it covers a lot of topics) but you don't get a whole heck of a lot of detail on each topic. Though, it is just enough to keep you interested and moves you right along to the next topic. The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is becuase none of the photographs in the book are color. Personally, I would have been willing to pay slightly more for the book to get color pics.. You just dont do justice to Christmas anything in black and white--but its nice that there are a few pictures, especially that of the first Rockerfeller Christmas tree ever, that workmen erected on the then construction site during the depression. The men spent so much of their time their, they got their own little tree and decorated it with cans and other things that were strewn about... But truly this book would have been much improved if color photographs were included. Otherwise this is a fun coffe table table medley of history and tradition!

This book couldn't be made better if you tried. Daniel Pool did an excellent job describing New York at Christmastime. From Rockefeller Center to Tiffany's & Co. This book describes everything to see, from store windows to parades, to movies.

This is a must have for anyone visiting New York this holiday season, and a beautiful book to add to any collection.

I bought this book to share with my three sons, as we are taking our first family vacation to New York this Thanksgiving, and I was looking for something to enhance their appreciation of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectactular. Without even looking I knew the author was a New Yorker. Reading this book feels like listening to a narrative by someone in your family, describing the charm of your own home town to a young adult or out of towner. Of course this town is New York City-the very heart of the Christmas Spirit in the United States! This book gave me what I was looking for and so much more. As if the sheer sight of New York at Christmas isn't enough, the history and stories shared by the author has deepened my love of the Holidays, this sensational city and the people who experienced it in the past and in the years to come.