Geography Books

This book can provide plenty of help and guide for anyone traveling to Pakistan, foreigners in particular (she mentioned a few things in Lahore, my hometown, which even I did not know). I picked the book from my father's bookshelf to kill my time and ended up reading all of it. She explains most things about the local culture extremely well, without the usual negative tone that most other authors unconsciously get into (no offence for anyone please).

For me if a book gives you the information that you need and makes you read more than what you initially planned, is a five star, so is this one!

We visited North Pakistan, looking at the archaeology, and this guidebook was excellent- it covered virtually everything.
We ordered it from London, and it arrived very promptly - and cheaper than the price quoted by amazon.co.uk!

My journey home to Pakistan started a little over five years ago when I married a Pakistani national who had immigrated to the United States in the early nineties. The decision to visit my family back home in Lahore City was one that took nearly five years to make. After securing my flight at the height of the summer travel season and I might add the hottest time of year in that part of the Indian subcontinent I desparately sought out the most comprehensive travel guide I could find. Isobel Shaw's book is informative and a godsend to a novice traveller to the Indian subcontinent such as my self. From her descriptions of famous landmarks to the locations of hotels and hospices she gives an accurate account of what to expect. The index of Urdu phrases came in handy on several occasions as I do not speak or read the language and was often dependent on my husband's translating capability. The maps and descriptions of the different regions allowed us to the luxury of travelling to areas of Pakistan I might never have seen otherwise. My only regret is that we were unable to see more of Kashmir than the border checkpoint. Due to my blonde hair and western features the border guards were relunctant to let us in. Perhaps next time I shall be allowed to travel in that region. I would not hesitate to recommend Ms. Shaw's guidebook to anyone travelling in Pakistan. It is an informative and enjoyable book on the people and the country of Pakistan.

For fifteen years, "A Passion for this Earth," by Valerie Andrews, has been
high on the list of books I have recommended to my creative writing and
mythology students. Ms. Andrews writes in the passionate tradition of Rachel Carson, Thomas Berry, and Annie Dillard. I find her book to be a resounding call for a "new story, a new mythology" that reconciles women and men with the earth. To my lights, Ms. Andrews' prose is stunningly beautiful, and her conviction about the role of passionate storytelling, in an era marked by irony and cynicism, is a balm for the soul. -- Phil Cousineau, author of "The Art of Pilgrimage"

What an odd comment from Library Journal! Its sister publication, Publisher's Weekly, got it right. The book is a good companion for those of us who are tying to live a more balanced life (inner and outer), in tune with nature, better balancing feminine and masculine. As to the particulars in the Library Journal review, nowhere does Andrews say that the term childbearing has to do with bears (Was that in another book?). Many writiers, including Riane Eisler have since pointed out that any society which values the gifts and accomplishments of one sex over the other is one-sided. The early chapters of Passion read a bit like Garrison Keillor on the importance of a sense of place and are friendly reminders of what us baby boomers lost as we saw our hometowns invaded by malls and freeways. But Andrews also takes us on a literary jaunt, showing how our inner lives have changed as we altered our relation to the land. She cites the Arthurian legend of Dame Ragnell; the 19th century playwright Von Kleist on the tangle between the Amazon heroine, Penthesilea and the Greek warrior Achilles; Tolstoy's War and Peace; and Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles. In fact, Passion has been used in college level courses that focus on eco-spirituality.

Andrews edited "Dream of the Earth," Thomas Berry's classic on Deep Ecology, and she is familiar with scholarly sources, but her writing is personal and immediate, and she often gives us examples from her life. It's a book I've had on my bedside table and found to be like an ongoing dialogue with a faithful, stimulating friend. The writing is personal and provocative and makes us think about our values and our chosen way of life.

Andrews received glowing reviews from the Jungian community for this book. Marion Woodman called it a courageous work, best selling author Jean Shinoda Bolen said this is a powerful and poignant meditation on our need for a sense of place in a time when most people experience some form of uprootedness. As a pastor, I know how much people are in need of reorientation, and how our modern mobility often leaves people cut adrift, without a sense of community, without a deep connection to a certain place. In my own work, I am greatly concerned with the balance of masculine and feminine- and a divine model for creation that draws equally on the gifts of both ways of being in the world. This book has much to say about the way and individual can draw on each.

Robert Johnson, another best-selling Jungian analysis says, "I have a consuming hunger for a new mythology that will be loyal to the past but rises above the one-sided patriarchy that has occupied humanity for several millenia. Valerie Andrews writes with the grace and insight on this subject that only a woman could provide. It is good to hear a reconciling female voice."

The best part of this book is the author's even handedness when describing relations between men and women, and our common goal: to serve the life force and reconcile ourselves with our own internal opposites. The essays are really about our own inner work as much as they are about the broader canvas of nature, and the workings of the living world. I've also found the films the author cites useful in my own educational work.

This is a terrific book. It details the origins of the passport, how it developed from an informal travel document to the modern entity we know of today. There are some stories and some topics I would have liked to have seen discussed at more length, but overall an excellent and entertaining book.

Martin Lloyd does a good job in this book of telling the story of the passport. He uses a fair number of illustrative stories to show how international incidents could come about (an assassination attempt on Napoleon III, for instance) because of passport rules (in that case, passports could be issued by one nation to another's citizens at that time). The book kept my interest throughout, and it includes illustrative pictures of passports and similar documents. The author is very conversational, occasionally letting his viewpoint come through but in a non-irritating way. It is interesting contemplating being a customs officer before passports were at least somewhat standardized. It's hard enough NOW to determine their authenticity!

Every now and then an expert in a field will produce about it a guide for laymen, a book to introduce aspects of his life's work to others. One might not expect much from Martin Lloyd, who spent 23 years in Her Majesty's Immigration Service, especially since as author he has confined himself to one little part of his job. In _The Passport: The History of Man's Most Travelled Document_ (Sutton), however, Lloyd has made uniquely interesting a document that most travelers just take for granted. From the paper it is printed on to its cover, and from cuneiform to optical scanner recognition, the passport is all here. This is just the book to give to someone racking up international frequent flier miles.

It is surprising how unsubstantial a passport is in legal terms, and how much it has changed in the centuries. International law, amazingly, has nothing to say about the rights of those with or without passports. Passports themselves were originally a sort of letter of introduction, but then monarchs became established and realized that it was useful to have some sort of control of who was leaving or entering one's realm. Even this was not given much legal weight. A more-or-less organized passport system has been in place for three centuries, but before the First World War, one could travel to most of the world without one; a passport was "in most cases a facility or a politeness, not a requirement." Internationalizing passports has presented problems, many of which have no good solution. It was difficult, once passport booklets had become the standard and once typewriters were universal, to develop a way to type into the booklet without breaking the spine. Worse, it was often hard to tell what was the front of a passport; Lloyd may be writing from his own experience when he explains that puzzled passport control officers would try to remember whether a certain nation's passports opened at the front, the back, were read sideways, and if so, which way sideways. International Civil Aviation Organization organizes passports, and has decreed, for the sake of civil rights, that passports not have a magnetic strip; that would make using them easier, but it might also encode information about the bearer.

Lloyd has included a host of interesting anecdotes about passports through history. William Joyce, for instance, was famous as Lord Haw Haw, the broadcaster of Nazi propaganda. He was obviously a traitor, but he was born an American and had become German, and had never been British. He was captured by the British, and accused of treason, but it is not logical that Britons could try a non-Briton for such a thing. Joyce happened, however, to have gotten illegally a British passport, and this was enough eventually to hang him. In 1953, an American named Davis declared himself a citizen of the world, and made his own passports under the auspices of the World Service Authority, a "fictional organization"; the document was mistakenly endorsed as real by some countries. Napoleon III, himself nearly a victim of an assassination plot involving false passports, said that passports are "... an obstacle to the peaceable citizen, but are utterly powerless against those who wish to deceive the vigilance of authority." Today's travelers are probably more inconvenienced by searches and interrogations, but Lloyd's original book, full of surprising facts, gives the full story of the original and everlasting ticket to overseas, one that governments have found useful, travelers a nuisance, and international law a nonentity.

Hilda Van Stockum was one of my favorite authors in elementary and middle school. My first book by this outstanding author was "The Winged Watchman," which was a historical look at a Dutch family during WWII. It was a lovely story replete with Dutch customs. "Pegeen" and the entire "Bantry Bay" series will not disappoint, either. The characters are lively, heart warming and full of fun and vigor. I am lucky in that I have several Hilda Van Stockum books as my library was having a sale some years ago. I have never read a bad Hilda Van Stockum -- there is no such thing. She is a keeper.

Pegeen is the third and final volume in Hilda van Stockum's delightful Bantry Bay series. Without a hint of pedantry or preachiness, all three books teach children virtues such as courage, self-sacrifice, and honesty. The whimsical and charming young heroine of the present volume gets into a few tight scrapes, learns to accept the blame for her own wrongdoings, and is rewarded in the end. I've read all three books to my three year old; he can listen to them for hours on end. They are quite appropriate for accomplished young readers ages ten to twelve. Pegeen can be read without any knowledge of the preceding volumes, but do your children (and yourself) a favor - buy all three; you will not be disappointed.

Pegeen is a half-wild little girl who was raised by an elderly grandmother. She loves the outdoors and living things, but has had no schooling and very little interaction with other people. When her grandmother dies, there is much consternation about where she will live. The parish priest learns of a relation in America, but arranges for Pegeen to live with the O'Sullivan family (first introduced in *The Cottage at Bantry Bay*) until arrangements can be made.

Here, Pegeen is all the trouble one might imagine for a little girl grieving over the loss of her beloved grandmother and adjusting to an entirely different life. Poor Mother O'Sullivan is nearly beside herself trying to deal with all the chaos.

Can't really tell you more lest I spoil the beautiful plot, but I'll just say that this is one of the most touching, heartwarming books I've ever read. It is sure to become a favorite of your children and you too.

Please, Please bring this book back into print! It is a wonderful tribute to New York - the perfect introduction to the magic of NYC for any child. Wonderful characters, beautiful illustrations. My nephews love this book.

Herbie, Max, Charlie and Miles Penguin find happiness and tasty fish in New York City, playing the coolest jazz around. This story has something for everyone: funny penguins and silly scenes for kids, jazz jokes and parenting puns for the old(er) folks reading the story at bedtime. Colorful illustrations and an album of the quartet's snapshots of their visit to New York round out the package. Pure fun.

I love this book because it has two of my favorite things: jazz and penguins. The illustrations are adorable, and you can find something new in them every time. The pages are simply bursting with color. The plot line is clever and attention-keeping. This book deserves an A+ without a doubt!

This book is a very good book for many children. There are many details and I recommend this book to any teacher that has a small library in their classroom.

It's a great book and I'm MAD about Geography. The more info I can get the better.

This book was recommended by "The Well Trained Mind" as a second grade earth science textbook. It is the perfect "starter" volume to begin a study of the earth. Each topic has two pages, with a lot of illustrations and explanations, to whet the appetite, and encourage follow-up reading and study. Major topics include the land, water, weather, landscapes, and conservation.

This book is very informative, educational, and entertaining all at once. The style is akin to Asimov, clear enough for the layman, but of interest to professionals. The trials, travails, and intrigue of the many historical figures who helped create the globe as we know it are brought alive by this book.

It has a distinctive stamp of the author, Ariel all over it, giving it a very individual and personal style, quite different from so many books that give a lot of facts, but no more. The corroborative details about the persons historically involved add greatly to the interest and enjoyment. The facts are given as well and are given clearly. It deserves to sell well every where. Consider me a fan.

Easy to understand easy to acquire information for most readers, explaining quite a few subjects accepted as common knowledge without any idea of their origin.
Also very interesting and entertaining historical backrounds.
Apart from usual inquisitive reader, it should be specifcally reccomended to defence service cadets and officer training establishments

I own a lot of books on the subject and a lot of them are mainly text with a few pictures of actual objects here and there, so when I decided to build a miniature scale of an ancient roman home I knew I needed more visuals and especially reconstruction images. This book is perfect for that. It has basic descriptions on what, where and how for people looking to understand the basics on ancient roman life and lots of great drawings to illustrate the different sections.

I recommend this book for children and adults alike since it is well organized, easy to understand and the visuals will help anyone get interested in the subject or add to an already knowledgeable audience.

Being an (adult)artist, I have found that children's books are far more informative when you're looking for new info. I've been reading alot about Pompeii and Herculaneum for a year, and Peter Connelly's book lit the fire. I have since purchased all of his other books when I can find them. The detail is fascinating and easy to understand; and the drawings are in great detail.

This 77-page booklet is jam-packed with full-color photographs and drawings including many fascinating cut-aways detailing Pompeiian architecture. The author covers a lot of territory, discussing in brief, easy-to-read text many historical aspects including: the disaster resulting from Vesuvius' eruption, discovery and excavation, streets and water supply, the people and their homes, public and private baths, commercial life (bakers, bars, taverns, etc.) and much more. The detail is extraordinary. Recommended for all ages.

AMERICA is a continent bearing a name only for 500 Years. It has been proposed such a name to honor Amerigo Vespucci (the first to recognize the New World as a new part of the world), by an exciting circle of Renaissance scholars from France and Germany in a booklet (103 pages) entitled "COSMOGRAPHIAE INTRODUCTIO" printed in ST-DIE-DES-VOSGES , a little city in the heart of the VOSGES blue mountain range between Lorraine and Alsace (Eastern France), on Marcus' day, (April the 25th), 1507, maybe remembering of Marco Polo, the first narrator of the Indies. This giant wall worldmap, with the name AMERICA, one of both maps along with a small globe-gores map, to accompany that booklet is the most exciting and mysterious map of the early Renaissance.

In 1507 a German cartographer working in Saint Die crated a world map for included the newly-discovered Western Hemisphere land masses for the first time, calling them "America' to honor one Amerigo Vespucci, who had been credited with setting foot on South American soil before Columbus. From this error did 'America' become the accepted name of the land mass - amid centuries of controversy since. The map was lost for four centuries before it was discovered in 1901 in a German castle - and finally purchased by the Library of Congress for some, $10 million - and this history of the map brings to life its colorful background in a fine recommendation for any college-level collection strong in world history.

"Want to know what 10 million dollars looks like? It's the first map naming us as "America" instead of Columbus. This map was lost for four centuries before it was discovered in a German castle and eventually sold to the Library of Congress for 10 million dollars."

Although booked as a student book, I found it a very interesting way to get a few facts on all the countries. Not overwhelming but has a lot of good facts presented in a easy to follow manner. The kids love it too!!

I purchased this atlas to teach world geography to jr. high students and it is fantastic. Each student also has one and they have a terrific time using it and discovering new facts. It is also extremely easy to use. I wish I purchased this years ago.

This atlas gets constant use. It sits right next to my desk for all those times when you just need to know what the highest five mountains in the world are, or what the population of Djibouti is. I have yet to encounter a general geographical or basic demographic question the Answer Atlas can't handle. Its very easy to use, and all the maps are tremendous.

Contains maps for just about everthing from population density to average income to lifetime expectancy (for the US, at least. Other countries and continents are presented in detail, but not to the same extent as the US). Also contains a section with every nation's flag and a few tidbits of information, neatly presented. The front has questions and answers about each of the continents, and there is a section containing graphs and charts that compare just about everything geographical.

A great reference for students and adults, especially those who take pride in knowing the answers to obscure questions.