My wife got this book because she's from St.Louis, though not from this neighborhood. It's a compilation of photos from the turn of the century and before, depicting mostly architecture of the neighborhood known as the Central West End, once a tony area where the city's wealthiest residents lived. While it was for a long time a slum, it's apparently undergoing a renovation, and hopefully will regain it's luster.

For those not familiar with the Images of America series, these are slim volumes (this one's 128 pages) with typically two photographs per page, and a small caption. There's sometimes an introduction of several paragraphs or a page or two at the beginning of the book, though in this one it's at the front and runs to only slightly more than one page. The focus is on the photos of the buildings of a bygone era, mansions, churches, government buildings and businesses, sometimes with quaint people standing in front of them looking sharp for the camera.

This book centers on the Central West End of St.Louis, a neighborhood that grew up in the late 1800's to accomodate the wealthy of the city who wished to avoid the riffraff. There's a large park in the center of the neighborhood, and the 1904 St.Louis World's Fair was held there. There's a whole chapter devoted to the Fair itself. There's also a chapter devoted to a tornado which devastated the neighborhood some years later, and several chapters devoted to the renovation efforts.

A book like this lives or dies by its photos. This book has some beautiful pictures of houses that used to belong to wealthy people, and some of relatively modest accomodations that housed once-famous people. Some of the captions are a bit erroneous or unhelpful, and one that shows a pair of kids riding a turtle is somewhat humorous. It says they're riding the turtle for fun, but their facial expressions say otherwise.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it makes me want to visit the area portrayed in the book.

Intriguing tale of travelers on the Bozeman trail in 1869 who are thrown by their own needs to reach white settlements. Hannah headed back East to spend the gentile life her wit has made in real estate in Virginia City, Mt, Linc, 12-yr old whose parents were killed by the Souix, ane Wiley Smart, a "used horse" salesman, are taken under the wing of the less-than-friendly Absarkees. The gradual transformation of Linc and Hannah under the protection of the Indians and the blaggardy of Wiley make for an exciting and informative tale.

Richard Hart is a boss of a historian, especially on capturing the nuances of the commonwealth caribbean's social and political history. Other books by him recommended: Slaves who abolished slavery. volume 1: Blacks in Bondage; and Slaves who abolished slavery. Volume 2: Blacks in Rebellion. From Occupation to Independence is sharp and succinct. Also an easy and pleasurable read -- the reader is not boggled down by unnecessary academic and quasi-intellectual jargon.

The Storyteller screen conveniently puts most of the frequently referenced charts and tables at the ST's fingertips, while providing plenty of room to hide dice rolls and ST notes. Frontier Secrets gives additional gifts, ideas about antagonists (information about Wild West Fomori), and plenty of other surprises for both players and storytellers. All in all, a great "supplement" for anyone running (or even playing) in a Werewolf Wild West game... even more so for the book than for the screen.

Benny and Pete live in an assisted living facility, ie: retirement home. Benny is an exmobster hiding out from someone, Pete is a former thief. The home is full of colorful characters, including the elusive Mad Joker, whose practical jokes liven up the story. Pete's girlfriend Eleanor, receives packages and flowers from a secret admirer, which first alarm and then frighten her. Then someone is killed at the Halloween party, or shall I say killed again. Alice the retired clown is run down while walking on the sidewalk, and Grace, the home's favorite employee is kidnapped. Who from Eleanor's past is doing this, and how can they stop him.

This is a very entertaining story. The characters are very colorful, yet there are a few secrets left to uncover. Fast read!!

A narrative that will appeal to those interested in western US history, natural science, geography, and exploration. Features excellent word portraits of the four survey groups, their leaders and key members, and descriptions of the conditions, methods, equipment and problems encountered. Includes a selection of contemporary photographs. The only negative: The several maps included are too small and require use of magnifying glass to read the fine print.

This is a nice little book that doesn't try to be all things to the California Wine Country Visitor. It has some really fine touches:

The three-day Weekend itinerary is one that works for a first time visitor, and while I would change few stops, I have been touring here since 1968!

The little inserts on many pages are very up-to-date (the new wine cruises up the Sacarmanto River) and the informative ones (like the one about Oakville Grocery and the historical tid-bit on page 86) give the reader something to look forward to on every turn of a page.

The black & white maps could have used a little more detail (have to say something needs improvement) but the color AAA ones are a nice, convenient touch.

All-in-all there may be better tour books around, but not as concise, well written, informative, and available for only $14.

Going to the California Wine Country? Buy this book!!! You will enjoy your trip much, much more with it along.

Wilk develops an excellent model for talking about social organization. Based around an ethnography of the Kekchi Maya, household ecology presents a model that allows the anthropologist to deal with such issues as history, gender relations, markets, subsistence and political organization (and that is easily transferred to different settings for comparative work). This is a book for readers interested in understanding how households function as social institutions, it is replete with information and useful data. Not for a beginner, but for the student of anthropology and ecology, this is an important text.

Richard Evans offers the student of modern German history an excellent review of the so-called Historikerstreit, which took place amongst academics in the mid to late 1980s. He outlines the basic arguments of those "neoconservative" historians who attempted to relativize the crimes of the Nazi regime. Evans focuses primarily on Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber, both of whom claimed that Nazi atrocities were justifiable responses to impending violence on the part of the Soviet Union. These historians also asserted that the Holocaust was not fundamentally different from Stalin's murder of Soviet citizens in the Gulags or from the massacre of Armenians in 1915 by the Turks. Evans clearly sides with the majority of historians when he argues that these attempts at relativizing Nazi crimes are irresponsible. Overall, this book is quite useful to the serious student who wants a quick review of a heated historiographical debate in modern German history.

Recently, movements such as the Sagebrush Rebellion in Nevada have sprung up in the West pitting ranchers, mining companies, and developers against federal government agencies in charge of managing the land. It's been a long held myth that the government agencies, especially the Forest Service and BLM, have enacted rules to hasten the end of these economic interests in the Western US. This is one of the first books to accurately dispel many western myths such as the lone individual expressing a lifestyle of freedom, land and neighbors be damned! Read this book and learn before automatically siding with groups whose sole motivation is greed at any cost to our precious land, land that will take centuries to recouperate if left alone. These "interests" hide their motives behind "noble" state rights issues, insisting that American taxpayers turn over to state politicians (who receive the bulk of their campaign funds from these special interests) what's left of western wilderness so cattle can graze, ranchers can grow surplus crops such as alfalfa, foreign mining companies can rape the land and pay a pittance to the US Treasury, and developers can hasten the destruction of what's left of our western lands. We need more books like this one to combat the misinformation these special interests spread. Remember that in the end all american taxpayers pony up the money for these groups either through ridiculously low grazing and mining fees to subsidized water systems. This is big business, not mom and pop operations nor is it the Marboro man riding into the sunset. And after reading this book, read Cadillac Desert (Marc Reisner) to better understand how these special interest groups are threatening our beloved west.