Growing up in San Antonio, my family frequently traveled to Rockport for the weekend. We would fish at night and go sightseeing by day. As a child I was always fascinated by the area and I grew so did this curiosity.
Four years ago I read in the Rockport Pilot's Visitor Guide that this book existed. That very day I was dragging my wife around looking for it, finally found it at the Art Museum by the beach. The entire weekend was spent skimming and reading this wonderful book. Since I have got the book I have read and re-read it many many times.
Today I enjoy visiting Rockport as often as I can. While driving around I try to picture what it was like at the turn of the century when the Aransas Hotel was still stood and the Baily Pavillion was THE place to be. Who would have thought that the little towns of Rockport and Fulton would have such a deep history?

I have been visiting the Gulf Coast/Aransas Pass area for 9 years now. Every time I go I am intrigued by everything I see. The history that resides there is amazing. I stay at a house on Fulton Beach Road that is filled with history. It has been in my friends family for over one hundred years. The house is actually mentioned in the book. This book is an amazing look at an amazing time in an amazing place. If you are interested in the history of the Texas Coastal Bend then this the book for you.

Thanks, John Conner San Jose, CA

As a resident of Rockport, in Aransas Co., Texas, but not a native, I was interested in the history of this part of the state. When Sue Taylor and Bill Allen's book, ARANSAS, A Tale of a Texas Coastal County, was published, I was among many who lined up for Sue's signature on my copy.

It was a thick book, I put it aside until I had time to go through it. I've just had 10 days off, and that was among my reading activities.

I assumed it would be historical; so I did not anticipate reading it as I do some novels. But I started. To my surprise, it caught my attention and imagination right away.

Also, to my surprise, I lingered over the words because they painted pictures I wanted to enjoy. I took much longer to read this book, because I was captivated by the words themselves.

The story moved along like an adventure tale, which the history of Texas actually is. It was dangerous, scary, wild, and took courageous and foolhardy men and women to survive. Texas had citizens with those characteristics on both sides of the Rio Grande.

The saga of many real families unfolded. Reading ARANSAS was like looking at a photograph album of one's grandparents--or great-grandparents. You never met them, but through this book you do know them. They became real people, with real personalities.

I did not know of the participation of Aransas County in both the Texas Revolution and the Civil War. It was a port to be conquered by the "other" side in both wars--a strategic military outpost. Other history books refer to the importance of Copano Bay.

Throughout the book the authors give geographic locations of homes or stores or hotels or fishing or cattle wharfs. In the back the references are detailed. We can still visit these places. That's my next goal--to find where history happened, and is still going on.

Frances Mayo

This book provides different views on the topic of designing new buildings in historic context. Although it does not make one prior to the other, it sits on a specific point of view. This point of view rejects any prejudgements or principles. It singles out specific successfull examples. It gives hints about the key issues leading to success. It helped me in my research for a critical dialogue with the historic environment.

All of these recipes are served at Cucina Bella in Chicago. They are universal and are easy to create at home.

You never know what will happen to the people in the story.It really makes you believe that you are part of it.It also lets you know what it felt like to be Afican-American and live in the times of slavery and hate against you

This is really two excellent books in one. The first book is a comprehensive comparison of how the cognitive abilities of humans, apes, and monkeys develop. Like others of Professor Parker's books, it will be a reference for years to come. A particular strong point is the numerous easily-understood tables that present a large mass of important information in a readily-understood manner. These compare not just the development of the species, but the different theories that have been proposed about how development occurs. The second book proposes a theory about how the differences among primates evolved, then applies it from monkeys through apes and Homo erectus to ourselves. The theory is the opposite of that proposed by Stephen Jay Gould. Instead of being laid to neoteny, or progressive juvenilzation, the authors argue that the cause is progressive adultification. A very worthwhile book for anyone interested in the intelligence of humans, apes, or monkeys.

This is a rewarding book, especially in its middle two chapters. After the scene-setting of ch. 1, in which we learn just what the Bonobo ape Kanzi can do as far as communicating with a human is concerned, ch. 2 gives us a protracted survey of the Cartesian tradition of thinking about the 'mental' and hence communicative lives of animals, showing the degree to which writers like Pinker, and indeed many of us, are, largely due to an outmoded view of ourselves, caught up in a fallacy about the status of animals vis-à-vis humans which needs to be replaced with a saner outlook. In ch. 3 we are given an insight into the rhetorical strategies of those who perpetuate the Cartesian view, and shown to what extent such strategies may be motivated less by a search for truth than by the socio-politico-economic imperative of our exploitation of the animal world. The authors then proceed to show that arguments which have been used to bolster the 'existential gap' view in fact are incapable of supporting the notion that humans themselves have the exclusive and proprietary capacities which Cartesian thinkers have attributed to them. That is, (a) the evidence which such thinkers use purportedly to prove the existence of various capacities in humans is shown to be equally in evidence in at least one kind of animal, but (b) the evidence which is used purportedly to disprove these capacities in animals is shown in fact to be inadequate to prove the existence of those capacities in humans. In other words, as is further suggested in the final chapter, we have no logical or evidential basis for maintaining the Cartesian view, and the implications for our own human behavior are accordingly far-reaching.

This brilliant and original book demonstrates that symbolic representation is the basic substance of language, and shows once and for all that language is not an exclusively human achievement. Savage-Rumbaugh's serendipitous discovery that the critical period for language acquisition in bonobos is in early infancy renders all earlier language experimentation with apes obsolete. Contrary to Chomsky and Pinker, grammar is a high level embellishment to language, rather than the foundation of communicative skill. The philosophical commentaries on Savage-Rumbaugh's work by Shanker and Taylor bring out the revolutionary implications of her findings, and provide a new and more sophisticated point of view on the continuities and discontinuities between ourselves and our nearest relatives. It's good to see contemporary science finally replacing the 17th century perspective of many linguists.

I wonder if the reader from Austin, Texas, read the same book as I did! I could find no trace of any personal attacks (nor personal glorifications, for that matter) in this highly original, provocative and exceptionally well-argued book. Interdisciplinary collaborations on complex themes are notoriously difficult to pull off, but this team has succeeded admirably. The philosophical analysis of the significance of the bonobo ape research for our currently dominant ways of thinking about language, communication and animal capacities is strikingly original. Certainly, these authors do not hold back from exploring the wider significance of their proposed interpretations, but there is a wealth of well-documented and rigorous argument here to support their contentions, and not a shred of evidence of -animus- against those whose views they dispute. A serious and significant book for everyone interested in animal cognition.

Interesting book in which a team of researchers described their look deep into and experiences with apes. This team of researchers shows the social, psychological and behavioral apects of Apes and how they set them apart from another animals and humans, as well as how they are similar to humans.

Although I preferred Anne Russon's "Orangutans : Wizards of the Rain Forest", I would think this book would be interesting for anyone with interests in human and animal psychology. This book takes a much more in-depth look at the apes' psychology than Russon's "Wizards of the Rain Forest" book.

If you're interested in Hans Bellmer's art aside from his doll, this is the only book currently in print that has pictures of his drawing, painting, and print work. As an art book, it's pretty mediocre. There are 5 color plates. All the other pictures are reproduced in black and white, no bigger than 3 x 4 inches and often smaller. Picture text includes artist, title, and medium, but does not give original dimensions or indicate if the picture was originally in color. Many of the pictures are reproduced so lightly that, coupled with the small size, it is difficult to see the work at all.

The text, and there is a lot of it, focuses almost entirely on a Freudian examination of Bellmer himself. The art becomes merely an extension of the author's analysis of the artist. The author clings so strongly to this narrow interpretation that all the other facts and influences of Bellmar's life (growing up in Germany during WW1, coming of age during the Weimar Republic, and emigrating after the Nazi's labeled him as degenerate, the influence of the other Surrealists, the death of his first wife, his alcoholism, and so on) are simply mentioned in passing and then neglected as other avenues of explanation. By the end, the theory overwhelms the subject, and one wonders why the author chose to write about Bellmar at all and didn't simply write a general text on Freudian theory as a means of interpreting of art.

The book does have a chronology of Bellmer's life, which is helpful for finding context, and a very thorough bibliography that will point you towards better examples of the art. I added a rating star for including pictures of previously unpublished work.

I purchased the soft cover version, 64 pages long, there are 8 color photos of Wendt's paintings and 13 black and white. I'm sorry to say, the black and white photos DON'T do his paintings justice. And the color photos of his art work in this book, AREN'T the greatest either. ...I'm NOT really impressed with it. As far as what is written about Mr Wendt in the book... well.... Topics include: California Art Club; Wendt and Stendahl, The Letters; Four Conversations on William Wendt; and a few other topics. If your looking for quality photos of Mr Wendt's art work, I wouldn't look here in this book. And if your looking for something more in-depth on the life of William Wendt, well... I'd probably look elsewhere. In conclusion, I feel I wasted [my $].

Eagerly waited for this book from Amazon for two months, only to be sorely disappointed in the low resolution, muddy colors and blurry reproductions of the paintings. Even more disgusted that I paid ... for a book that onlyhas under 10 paintings in color, considering that Wendt was a master at selecting color for his CA masterpieces. Save your money for any Impressionism series that includes Wendt's work. Special thanks to Amazon for obtaining this rare book for me.