FACING EDEN: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area was created to accompany the 1995 museum exhibition of the same name at the de Young Memeorial Museum in San Francisco. The fact that it retains popularity as a Book is a testimony of how fine the actual catalogue is. Beautifully illustrated and written, the idiosyncrasies of the Bay Area topography are first addressed with photographs and maps and drawings dating back to the 1890s. Then these seeds of ideas are followed through the great painters of the Bay Area and for many readers this will be the first exposure to the unique quality of composition, light, and stance that identifies some very major painters with a Regionalism that competes soundly with the Hudson River School! Here are the works of Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, Andy Goldsworth, Stephen deStaebler, and David Park along side less well known painters such as Gordon Cook, Jess, and Michael Gregory. But the catalogue and exhibition are careful to include the three dimensional works of Bob Arneson,, Tony Cragg and Richard Shaw while introducing less well known works by such fine painters as Christopher Brown, Robert Bechtle, and Richard Estes. The book is divided into seven sections, each accompanied by a fine essay by some very fine art historians. And just as the book begins with factual photographs of the area that inspired the art, it ends with a beautifully rich section on art photographs of the 'interpreting' the lovely facts of nature. Highly recommended reading and looking.

What a career as a journalist Pitts might have had. The superb "people skills" and vivid descriptive powers expressed in this book make it a very "human." Pitts, however, is an archaeologist, bringing a strong scientific background to an account of a prehistoric dig and what it brought to view. As the evidence mounted of ancient hominids living along the Sussex coast, it became clear that Boxgrove revealed an unprecedented age for European habitation. Boxgrove, as this book makes graphically clear, will become the standard against which older archeology will be judged and future finds compared.

It is difficult to distinguish the respective contributions made by each author in this book. Mark Roberts, a young archeologist at the beginning of the excavations who became the Director of the site, is a dedicated digger. He managed logistics, personnel, site management and analysed the results. It is likely that he provided significant portions of the scientific background for the account. The story is simply one of persistence in using evidence to gain support for extending operations when funding seemed threatened. Those extensions continued to reveal an assemblage of fossils, tools, and other signs of human activity. All from half a million years ago.

With the authors contributing background material on climate conditions, glaciation and sea levels, soil content and the new science of geomagnetism, we're given a detailed picture of the world surrounding those ancient people. What impact did that environment have on their lives? What does the evidence suggest about how they coped with what nature imposed on them? Did they hunt, or scavenge? Was meat a mainstay or a "side dish" in their diet?

This book makes a major leap of interpretation in formulating what sort of people existed those millennia ago. With help from many sources, the authors build a picture of a sophisticated creature. Boxgrove produced a wealth of flint tools and flakes, some the researchers were able to reconstruct into the original stones. The evidence, they assert, suggests a creature with strong intelligence, capable of in-depth analysis in selected topics. The most important consideration was in hunting and creating the tools to make the hunt a success. Knapping flakes from flint is "more than banging a couple of rocks together" - requires the ability to foresee several steps in advance - "like a game of chess." The tools meant ready access to meat - and meat is necessary for increased brain power. Far from a raw savage, Boxgrove's revelations image our ancestor a capable creature. From this interpretation, it's clear older finds must be reassessed. New discoveries will need to draw on the same interdisciplinary teamwork Roberts was able to assemble.

Fairweather Eden is a wealth of information, both historic and current. Much background material is provided, interspersing the descriptions of participants in the finds and subsequent analysis. One individual actually strips down a carcass with the provided flint tools. Beyond the text is an array of diagrams and photographs depicting the information. If this book has a shortcoming, it's the use of notes' sources in lieu of a bibliography. That hardly detracts from its worth, however. The amount and quality of work Pitts and Roberts have put into this study will keep it useful for a long time. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Richard S. Wheeler proves with every new book that he is the undisputed master of the historical novel of the American West -- a fact known to his colleagues in Western Writers of America, Inc., who have awarded him three Spur Awards for his work, and this year will bestow on his their Owen Wister Award for lifelong contributions to the history and literature of the West. In THE FIELDS OF EDEN, Wheeler takes the reader to the Oregon Country of the 1840s, a time when this immense, primitive, breathtakingly beautiful territory is ruled by England's venerable Hudson's Bay Company, a hegemony being challenged by the arrival of emigrants seeking a chance at a new life. The author's unforgettable cast of characters include the O'Malleys, John and Mary Kate, who come from an Irish village and endure the heartbreaking journey to the Pacific with a simple dream of making an honest living and rising above the grinding poverty of their beloved home country; Rev. Jasper Constable, who brings his family to Oregon with lofty motives--to bring God to the natives--and who is as unaccustomed to physical labor as he is to disillusionment; Abel Brownell, married to Felicity and father of two, who has been lucky all his life, making money with no effort and hoping to make a fortune out West with his gift of gab and carefree manner; and Garwood Reese, whose dream is the most ambitious of all: to convince others that he is the savior of Oregon, the man who will eject the British and their French-Canadian cohorts and establish white American supremacy in the Northwest. In his efforts he is aided by his sister-in-law Electra Reese, whose husband drowns in the Columbia River rapids and who, with her own predatory agenda, wastes no time grieving. The one man who both aids and stands in the way of this disparate party of dreamers is the "White Eagle" of the Oregon country, Doctor John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a physical and intellectual giant torn by his allegiance to the British Crown he represents and his innate humanity toward the starving, trail-worn emigrants struggling into his domain. Wheeler is no mere "story-teller" -- all his books (among them, SIERRA, AFTERSHOCKS, SECOND LIVES, THE BUFFALO COMMONS, SUN MOUNTAIN, MASTERSON, BADLANDS) elucidate some element of the American character -- often a failing, more often an understated nobility -- and while the reader may not realize it while caught up in this master's stylish narrative, there is a gentle moral in every book. THE FIELDS OF EDEN is grandly-conceived, flawlessly written, and unfailingly moving: hallmarks of the work of this American master.

I enjoyed reading the book very much. I have visited a number of the places mentioned and found his information to be accurate. He provided information about locations I had never known even though I had lived there.

It also works well as a guidebook when vacationing

This book is a great resource about the history of the Mediterranean. Attenborouh does a good job in telling about the geological as well as human history. He has to lose the accent though. Get it if you get a chance. Only...

Frans Lanting and Christine Eckstrom, along with the National Geographic Society, are to be heartily congratulated for putting together such a splendid book on the most intriguing wild places on the planet. What a gorgeous book.

With truly spectacular photographs and informative text they explore the misty rain forests of Borneo, home to thousands of species still new to science, domain of the orangutan, the rarely seen rhino, the secretive tarsier, flying frogs and flying snakes, and on Mount Kinabalu, the massive cloud-wreathed peak that dominates northern Borneo, over 3,000 orchid species, a full 10 percent of the world's total. Next they explore frigid and storm-ravaged South Georgia, "one of a scattering of small islands that ring Antarctica like the moons of an icy planet." Here the two show us raucous penguin colonies, thousands of seals, graceful albatrosses, terns, petrels, and more that call this island at the end of the earth home. Then it is on to Hawaii, "the farthest paradise." Born of fiery volcanoes, they are home to unqiue flora such as the 'ama'u fern, first to colonize after lava flows have cooled, and the magnificent silverswords, which breed at ten or fifteen years of age in breathtaking blossoms, and then perish. The animal life is no less impressive here, with thousands of endemic land snails, breathtaking birds such as the brilliant 'i'iwi or the wide-ranging blue-faced booby, and marine creatures such as the Hawaiian monk seal and the green sea turtle. Next they whisk you to Madagascar, a lost world that preserves some of the life from the days of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, present during the time of the dinosaurs. This giant island, as this book shows, is home to scores of lemurs (including the playful ringtail and the nocturnal aye-aye), chameleons, bizarre baobab species, geckos, and more, all of which developed in isolation from the rest of the world. The last stop is Okavango, an African widlife paradise in the form of an inland delta and associated wetlands, all in the midst of the harsh Kalahari Desert. Here one can find the largest elephant herd on the planet as well as hippos, lechwes (a type of marsh-dwelling antelope), storks, crocodiles, frogs, flamingos, lions, and other manner of creature great and small.

The greatest thing about the book is obviously the photographs, but the accompanying text is wortwhile too. The text addresses issue of conservation, and provide many interesting facts and information. For instance the section on Madagascar discusses some of the fascinating extinct megafauna (such as elephant birds and giant lemurs) that once existed there.

A great book, a must for any nature lover or anyone who loves exotic destinations.

Mr. Williams gives a very fresh and interesting overview of Christianity. I thoroughly enjoyed and was inspired by the thoughts and analogies of this book.

This book is GREAT! This book is beautiful, this book is wonderful!!! [gee, think I like the book?] If you are considering buying only one book of botanical illustrations this is the perfect book to start with. If you have many books of botanical works of art this will be a valued addition to them. It is basically a sampling of botanical works of art throughout history. It includes many different artists from all different countries and all differnet styles. The one thing they all share in common is beauty.
If you want to purchase books of botanical illustration and don't know where or with whom to start this is the perfect book for you because it displays so many different artists, techniques time periods and styles.
Even if you already have a collection of this art I can still highly recommend this book. It is that good. I don't think that the book loses much of anything by being a paperback. The cover is of a very heavy material with a vibrant illustration on it. It is a coated cover so that it will stand up to quite a bit of wear. Please don't let that stop you from purchsing this wonderful book. There is so very much to look at and study here, it is a book that you will never tire of browsing through. It is also a great reference for reviewing a large number of different masters in this art form. Get this one, you will not regret it!

This beautiful folio houses some 510 lush, botanical landscapes and small illustrations, featuring a collection from the oldest known "herbarium"- the Byzantine "Codex Aniciae Julianae." The introduction and the rest of the text are given in three languages: English, German, and French. This book is a perfect gift for a gardener or for someone who simply enjoys looking at and delighting in floral reproductions. The only fault I found with this otherwise perfect edition was its being a paperback. As something I wished to have with me for many years-to-come, I naturally wanted "Garden Eden" to be in the hardcover format, but unfortunately it is available only in paperback. It is nevertheless a gorgeous volume, and a perfect addition to Albertus Seba's "Cabinet of Natural Curiosities." Highly recommended.

Author Dickstein would have better served his readers if he had given his work the subtitle it really deserves: American literature in the 50s and 60s. The book is given over almost entirely to literary criticism beginning with Ginsberg and working its way through 50s Jewish literature, the new journalism, African-American authors, and postmodernism (Barth, Pynchon, Barthelme, etc..).

This was not what I was expecting going into the book and so at first I was rather disappointed as it seemed that it would be a rather high-brow academic look at the era it deals with. But I was won over by Dickstein's deft handling and insight into the literature of the time. As the book progressed there were random glimpses of an unorthodox approach to criticism which I enjoyed very much. Any lit critic who will say of a work, "This may be bullsh--, but it's significant bullsh--" wins my immediate respect.

So don't look to Gates of Eden for another rehash of Columbia, Vietnam, Chicago.... But if you want an original and entertaining analysis of how American literature influenced and was influenced by the turbulence of that era, you won't regret starting here.