The book was poorly writen, often repeating the same idea multiple times within a paragraph, making the material harder to understand due to sentice structure and unrelated tangents. While this book is required for some classes, if you can get by without it, do so. Perhaps they will write a better one soon.

A new edition will appear in summer 1999. The book has a new publisher, Kendall/Hunt.

the author

The planning to buy this book was detailed and meticulous. Consultations had to be held with interested parties (my sons) and the wait for it to arrive was lengthy - at least ten days.
It was with a sense of mounting excitement that we eagerly surveyed the flat white cover of the package, I could sense our goal. I knew it wasn't going to be easy traversing 428 pages of a book titled "The Ice" but I had completed intensive practical training for this expedition. I was a veteran of Huntsford's "Schackleton", Huxley's "Scott of the Antarctic", Fuchs & Hillary's "The Crossing of Antarctica", the list was long but rewarding. Here was my biggest challenge to date.
The warnings were stark right from the start, the prologue uses half a page to list 72 ways to name ice. I stumbled and nearly gave up. Willpower, only willpower kept me going. I was becoming word blind. Reaching my first goal, the middle, I could only contemplate with horror the trials still awaiting me. "Great God, this is an awful book", I thought as I turned the next page. I wondered if I had the stamina to make it, others before me must have faltered. My son looked at me, "I'm just going out, I may be some time". I could only admire his courage, at having come so far. I ploughed on, yet another reference to Admiral Byrd appeared on the horizon. Until now I had been unaware of his supreme importance as an American and Antarctic explorer. Similarly I had been foolishly unaware of the fact that "...there is nothing in the Heroic age to compare with Ellsworth's all-or-nothing transcontinental flight, even Schackleton turned back..." The fact that Ellsworth achieved precisely nothing is of no importance, he was an American.
Things were looking bleak, stamina was draining fast. A crevasse nearly finished me as I learned that TMW Turner (English) had painted sunsets. I began to lose hope, I was hallucinating, could he really mean JMW Turner who painted ships too, and trains ? It was my darkest hour, all hope was gone. I closed the book.
This is a book for the fanatical written by someone who equates flowery, overblown prose with literature, it is so bad it is almost a parody. If you want to read about the modern Antarctic, read Sara Wheeler's polar classic "Terra Incognita". The best place for Pyne's tome is on an iceberg, drifting slowly out of sight towards the equator.

Stephen Pyne is a difficult writer, but the depth and meticulous nature of his intelligence pulls you back to him even though you tell yourself to lighten up and read a good mystery. Three cheers to university presses (U of Iowa and U of Washington) for putting and keeping this book in print. The Ice touches on everything about Antarctica: the history, the landscape, the literature, the geology, the biology. The book is all-encompassing--as is The Ice that is its focus and deep passion. It's worth the effort, and your vocabulary will never be the same afterwards. You can read a mystery later.

This book is written as though it was the 'Old Testament'. In fact it contains more 'scripture than details of the happenings.

True story of minister's daughter taken during Deerfield massacre in 1600's. Family tries for many years to rescue her. She had been taken at the age of 6 and was adopted into Mohawk family near Canada. The family finally finds her, years later but I'll let you read the book to find out what happens. A real glimpse into colonial American history.

Everything about Australia's fire history from its geologic origins to the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires can be found in this book. Perhaps a little too much. We learn about everything from the Flora and Fauna of the continent, to aboriginal fire practices, to modern fire fighting techniques. If one wishes to know about all of this, then the Burning Bush is an indespensible source. For those with more narrow interests, be weary. I bought the book to learn about the major fires that have devastated the country periodically. The accounts are there, but the first one appeared 220 pages into the book! All of the accounts combined cover only around twenty pages. Readers with similar interests will find the book to be a 400 page yawn. Pyne would have been better served to narrow his focus a bit. It's all there, but more than most other books the reader will want to refer to the index rather than slog through each page.

Stephen J. Williams, A Crowd of Voices (Pariah Press, 1985)

I found this Australian collection of poetry while looking up Richard Lortz's recently-dustbunnied novel of the same title while researching the review of it, and the coincidence was amusing enough that I went out and picked up a copy of this. My recent explorations into the world of as-yet-unfamiliar-to-me poetry have been something less than pleasing, so I went into this book without too much hope.

The first two lines of the first poem, "The High Price of Travelling," seemed to confirm my worst fears: "Even though our eyes are bruised/From reading all the daily news..." I almost threw the thing across the room and jumped away from it as if it were a tarantula. However, I steeled myself and went on. Not a bad choice, as those are the only two rhyming lines couched in a free-verse poem in the book, and the only time Williams ever stretches far enough to use a filler word in order to pick up the rhythm ("all" turns it from a poetic line into something out of a pop song. A very bad pop song). Bear with us, though. I should have been thinking "after that, where is there to go but up?"

Williams does go up. He doesn't hit the heights of a David St. John or an Ira Sadoff, but don't stick him in the same bin as Rod McKuen. There's nothing all too new here, but every once in a while Williams comes up with some excellent phrasing, and everything falls together quite nicely:

Some of the men cry, and many of the women

Make impossible devotions. Some others

Who are neither men nor women go about their work

Invisibly - or else, becoming.

(from "Hunger")

The only other major problem in the work, aside from those first two lines, is that Williams has the type of social conscience that manifests itself with a sledgehammer (cf. such titles as "The Weight of Freedom" and "The King of Hate," which have roughly the content one would expect from such titles). Not to say, of course, that Williams is being wrongheaded in his social values. As we have seen thousands, if not millions, of times over, though, socially conscious poetry tends to find itself mired in metaphor rather than letting the images impart the metaphor.

This is not an unreadable book, to say the least, and while some of what's here could have used reworking, there are enough moments of small pleasure contained therein for the average poetry fan to consider picking it up, if you find it easier to come across than did I.

Fair overview of basic plasma processing techniques. Because it's written by various experts in the field, the quality varies from chapter to chapter. The section on reactive ion etching comes highly recommended and is thoroughly referenced.

A bit dry, this book is used to teach intermediate level officers at the USAF Air Command and Staff College the "big picture" regarding U.S. National Security. It is informative, timely, and gives a very good picture of how U.S. National Security is developed and applied.

This is a basic boring english book. There are some grammar sections that could be worked on. The example papers in the book aren't to bad though.

Please, if you're finding yourself sucked in by the deceptive advertising, false promises, and outright lies of the despicable method of thievery called alternative medicine, stop right now and read this book. You have nothing to lose -- whereas if you stick with the quacks you're likely to lose thousands of dollars and maybe your life.

And no, I have nothing to do with the AMA (whatever that is) or traditional medicine. I just know fraud when I see it.

This book is a needed antidote to the thousands of hucksters who are fleecing the American public. Giving hope to people in trouble is commendable, but knowingly spreading false cures and making millions off the gullible is reprehensible. I urge you to read this so that you or anyone you love may not be taken by the frauds and fakes in the irrational alternative medicine movement.

I really enjoyed this book. It taught me much about why and how different types of scams are perpetrated by different types of alternative medicine huxters. It was very objectively written, with opinions that were backed up with excellent references. A great book to survey all forms of health quackery currently being hawked to the public.

See Mark Hirschey in action. He is always wrong on the Yahoo and Motely Fool message boards. Look under mhirschey.

This book unlike many undergrad books appears to be intentionally elusive. It's examples transcend the entire chapter instead a clear example followed by more challenging ones. I have to scour the pages for clues as to how to approach one of the end of the chapter problems and still I find myself guessing. The books structure is a mish/mash. I can't believe I have to endure another two moths of this. MBA Student.

For those in Executive MBA programs, this is a terribly useful supporting text for any managerial economics programs. The authors are very aware of who their audience is -- all learning is in a managerial framework (as opposed to the dryer, more theoretical, straight economics textbooks).

They cover the basics, but also do a great job on game theory and probablistic decision making. I had no economics before reading this, and found it clear and understandable even for the most abstruse concepts. Highly recommended.