Geography Books

This book provides an excellent viewpoint on physical problem solving by "thinking outside the box". I provides great approach to setting up all types of physical problems. I found the book very useful to all types of science. You don't have to be an environmental scientist to benefit from this text. The example problems are very good and the examples stand out in my memory for a long time -- very helpful for future challenges.

The book does an excellent job of teaching quantitative thinking skills and posing interesting problems. Also, it has a terrific appendix with all sorts of interesting data related to biogeochemistry.

This is the most significant book written about the South in the last 10 years. Aiken focuses on what he and others sometimes call the "shadow" areas of the Sunbelt -- the Mississippi Delta, Alabama's Black Belt, the lower southern Piedmont of Georgia. Progress came to Atlanta and Birmingham, but it passed over large swaths of the countryside where cotton had been king and poor people, mainly blacks, had been the workforce.

These areas are little understood, either by people who live in them or those who live elsewhere. Aiken, through scholarship and insight, explains how these regions evolved and why their lingering problems still confound politicians, social planners and a world of good intentions.

Aiken's examination of the restructuring of settlement in the cotton plantation South from the Civil War to contemporary times captures the complexities of this region's transformation. In three sections he establishes the post Civil War fragmentation of the plantation as tenancy dominates the region, the twentieth century exodus, and finally the contemporary pattern reflecting the changing social and economic structure of the region. Examining the postcolonial explanation for these changes, he opts for a more realistic combination of Faulknerian human failings and failures. Winner of the J B Jackson prize from the Association of American Georgraphers, this book is the culmination of a mature scholar's life work.

As a teacher of German in an elementary school, it is always difficult to find appropriate (if any) books to use in the classroom. Although this book is written in English, therefore technically off-limits in my German-only program, it has wonderful cultural ties that can be used at some point in my classes. The pictures, if nothing else, give a lot of information about German culture. This is also a great book for regular classroom teachers wanting to introduce a new culture to their students. What a thrill to find!

This little book is quite unique. Although written in English, it presents some interesting snippets of German culture. I love the cover: a picture of Der Rattenfänger von Hameln (The Pied Piper of Hamlin). I have my own language school, and hold a Master's degree and PA Teaching Certification in German. This will be a great text for me to use to introduce German culture to children OR adults. Gott sei dank, the author does not depend on stereotypical examples, such as the Alps, Lederhosen, Wurst, Bier, to present the numbers from 1-10. Whether he is well acquainted with Germany's culture and history through his own study of German, or not, the author, nevertheless, reflects his wish to provide accurate information. I offer kudos to him for his attention to correct English grammar as well. I can't wait until Count Your Way Through Germany 1-20 comes out!

Never have I experienced a book with such vivid Christmas images. Mary Sears uses her prolific sense of handmade ornaments and delightful Christmas surprises to write a book that really attracts fans of all ages.

It's never really too early to talk about Christmas for fanatics like myself. Even here in the midst of one of the hottest Summer seasons in recent years my thoughts are on bright Christmas lights glittering off the snow outside and the scent of pine and cinnamon inside. My wife and I have become avid crafters, making things not only for ourselves, but for friends and family as well. I never ceased to be amazed at the imagination and ingenuity that crafters show in creating items out of simple materials that can often be found right in your own home, or with a quick stop at a local craft store. My wife has always been big into a traditional country look, especially since we live smack dab in the middle of suburbia. The Country Living Handmade Christmas book is right up our alley with simple and inexpensive creations that range from the rustic to the elegant.

The book starts with simple, basic ideas for decorating your home such as various color schemes and using multiples of items such as small, pre-lit trees, wreaths, candles, plants, garlands, or holiday throw pools. Candles have become such a staple not only during the holiday season but year round and the lustrous scents of some of these can quickly get you into the holiday mood. There are a lot of great projects in this book, many which we made last year and are already making for this season.

One of the most simple is a Christmas ball tree made with a by gluing small glass Christmas balls to a Styrofoam cone, and then mounting inside a floral vase with some floral foam to help keep it in place. This is a great way to make use of old glass balls that you may not use on your tree anymore and makes for a great table centerpiece.

We collect snowmen and love making new ones. This book has several different snowmen than can be made very quickly and with items right around the house. For instance you can use old white tube socks, stuffed with foam, and adorned buttons, scraps of plaid fabric and then a tip of a colored sock for a cap. Other snowmen can be made from different sized Styrofoam balls, Paper Mache', and felt, all with their own unique looks. Patterns are included where needed.

There are lots of great projects to trim your tree with as well. A charming, rustic country design is to simply gather some twigs from your yard, and fashion them into the shapes of stars. Fashion the end points together using red twine or yarn or scraps of plaid fabric in seasonal colors. It's basically a cost-free decoration that fits the country scheme and always draws compliments from people who note your creativity!

An ingenious use of scrap fabric can be found in making Wool garland. Just cut old scrap wool or felt into 2" squares and run a strong thread through them, placing a button here and there and small Christmas bells or balls interspaced every few feet for a delightful accent on a table top tree. There's also patterns for making your own Christmas stockings out of old material as well. Now you know why we never throw anything away. Thrift stores are a great place to find old clothes for cutting up for these projects.

More and more people are making their own wrapping paper today and it makes a great change for that truly special gift for someone. You just need some colored paper which you can get on rolls from craft stores or even office supply stores, and then the paper can be adorned with painted stencil designs, rubber stamps, or sponge-painted. You can use the same techniques to make your own gift tags.

The book is loaded with brilliant, full-color photographs of each project and includes step-by-step instructions and materials list. You're really only limited by your own imagination. A truly superb book!

Reviewed by Tim Janson

Development is overtaking both habitable places in the Intermountain West. The general wealth of our society, the inherited fortunes of the world war generation, and the achievements of technology, allow urban areas to expand across the habitable landscape. Growth in the urban footprint, along with that of the supporting technological and recreational infrastructure, results in habitat loss. In turn, several Utah species are becoming extinct.

This book looks at the creatures at risk and the choices that have resulted in their becoming endangered. The reader learns that each sub division, road, strip mall, and power plant that is built to support our lives takes away precious habitat. The wild species that lived in that territory are not displaced. They may become endangered if the habitat loss is substantial. The burden of preservation is ours. The creatures endangered species cannot choose where to live. We must choose what to develop for ourselves and for them.

"Creatures of Habitat" is divided into three major sections. It addresses endangered species, loss of wild places, and the choices we have for the future. The technical material is presented to tell the stories of how and why certain species are endangered. The story of each creature deserves to be heard. The book examines habitat loss issues from many angles, connecting these into a coherent picture of the complex problem of western development. There are several suggestions for becoming involved as individuals or in organizations dedicated to saving what remains of our wild places.

I found the book to be unprejudiced and well researched. Problems are stated along with the history and present solutions, as are the behind-the-scenes groups that have been working to preserve habitat for years. There are probably surprises for readers who have not examined endangered species and habitat loss issues from all sides. In particular, I was pleased with the recognition that the hunter, and associated organizations, have worked to preserve habitat years before it became a well-known problem.

This book is shows us that there are no easy solutions to these problems. Perhaps the greatest hope is in education. This book does just that.

Creatures Of Habitat: The Changing Nature Of Wildlife And Wild Places In Utah And The Intermountain West is an illustrated, exhaustively detailed account of the extremely fascinating animals and plants to be found in the Utah and the intermountain west, ranging from the shorebird that eats brine shrimp and flies nonstop each year from the Great Salt Lake to central Argentina, to the rare mustard plant just recently discovered on Mount Ogden. Creatures Of Habitat openly discusses what is happening to this wildlife and its natural surroundings, emphasizing how the loss of its habitat is contributing to the decline and extinction of numerous species. With lists, guides to wildlife viewing, and habitat maps, Creatures Of Habitat is an excellent reference for any amateur animal watcher or natural world armchair traveler, particularly those who live in or near Utah!

I like this book, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in politics of environment. I am a climatologist who is trying to understand more about environmental policy, and I have often felt that the world is divided into people who understand science but not politics, and social scientists who seem to be disconnected from the real world. This book seems to fall in the middle because it criticizes many scientific assumptions about environment, but doesn't fall into the trap of those people who seem to think that any science is bad, or that everything is just social discourse. In fact this book tries to show how to get a better sense of reality about environmental change. It speaks my language because it is actually quite hopeful about getting science right and more engaged with the political process, even though it is critical about some elements of how environmental science is talked about. I enjoyed it because it showed that it is possible to remain scientific about environment plus political too. It also has a lot of discussion about 'political ecology' that I found interesting.

I was really drawn to the debate last year about that Danish statistician who wrote 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' because I always felt that environmentalists overstated problems, but at the same time, I felt that Lomborg was putting it too simply. This new book, Critical Political Ecology, takes on this whole issue in a different way by looking more deeply at the questions of what is an environmental problem, and the politics of who (and when) someone experiences it, before actually rushing off to measure it. It actually shows how wrong and simple Lomborg is! But it also shows that many popular ideas about environmental problems are also simplistic because they overlook the politics of how problems are seen to be problematic (and who by). Its a good book because it does not simply say 'yes the environment is in crisis' or 'no there is no such thing as crisis' but shows us how we can both understand how environmental problems happen, and the politics of how we see them as problems. This book shows a much better way to question environmentalism in a practical way than Lomborg's sensationalistic effort... It certainly got me thinking...

A companion book to the award-winning PBS series "Cruising American Waterways," The Erie Canal by Debbie Daino Stack (PBS Project Coordinator for the "Cruising American Waterways" television series) and Captain Ronald S. Marquisee (Producer of "Cruising America's Waterways"), is a quality travelogue showcasing the history and beauty of the famous Erie Canal, a still active waterway used for recreation, flood control, irrigation, and power generation. Lavish color photographs of this historic canal fill The Erie Canal from cover to cover, and the insightful text offers a wealth of cultural lore. A superbly gorgeous coffee-table book and enhanced with a foreword by Andrew Cuomo, The Erie Canal is a true pleasure to read and enjoy and highly recommended for armchair travelers and community library American History collections.

This book is filled with color photographs that capture the beauty and historic charm of this waterway. The text is comprehensive -- touching on everything from history to Canal utilization. It let's you see what all of New York's canals have to offer - as a boater, cruise ship tourist, or automotive traveller. The Canals are fully functional and waiting for tourists. This book let's you understand the "New York State Canal System" and all that it has to offer. As the text points out... (rough quote)...if we had not inherited this legacy resource; costs, environmental concerns, and political considerations would not allow its construction today. This is a superior book on the world's most famous canal.

The newest addition to the ABC-CLIO 'Global Studies: Latin America & The Caribbean' series, "Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook", compiled and written by Ted Henken (a Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, CUNY Graduate Center, new York) and an academic specialist in Cuban Economics) provides a detailed overview of Cuba's geography and history, its economics and development, as well as its institutions, culture and society. Of special note is the Reference Section highlighting key events in Cuban history; significant people, places, and events; Cuban language, food, etiquette, and holidays; Cuba-related organizations, on-line publications, and websites. Enhanced with the inclusion of an extensive bibliography and a detailed index, "Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook" is an especially appropriate addition to academic and community library International Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook provides a clear, provocative, and up-to-date overview of Cuban historical, political, economic, and sociocultural development from the pre-Columbian period to the present day with an emphasis on the Cuban Revolution, U.S.-Cuban relations, and Cuba's current socio-economic reality.

This comprehensive reference/text book of almost 600 pages seeks to present the many diverse characteristics of Cuba (music and dance, literature, cinema, revolutionary politics, Cuban exile politics, sugar/tobacco/rum, U.S. policy, history of the Spanish conquest and African slavery, and state socialist economics), as a complex but integrated whole - without trying to over-simplify or trivialize any of these characteristics.

Moreover, this ambitious work is written by an author who has a broad expertise in a wide array of contemporary Cuban reality having traveled to the island more than a dozen times since 1997. As such, the book benefits from direct, first-hand knowledge of the everyday struggles and engaging, endearing characteristics of the Cuban people (both on the island and in exile).

This exposure and sensitivity allows the author to provide the reader with sympathetic, dignified, but critical-minded portrayals of both committed revolutionaries and ardent counter-revolutionaries, refusing to choose sides between those Cubans who left and those who have remained in their homeland.

The book also includes a critical assessment of U.S. policy toward Cuba since the beginnings of the 19th century with John Quincy Adams' "ripe fruit" policy, up to the imposition of the Platt Amendment on the newly independent Cuban nation in 1902, culminating with the U.S. embargo (1960 - Eisenhower/Kennedy) and its hardening into the Helms-Burton Act (1996 - Clinton) and the measures of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (2003 - Bush).

CONTENTS: Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook provides an overview of Cuban historical, political, economic, and socio-cultural development from the pre-Columbian period to the present day with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The book contains four narrative chapters on (1) geography and history, (2) economics and development, (3) institutions, and (4) culture and society - each with its own bibliography.

This is followed by a reference section that provides fresh, detailed information on key historical events, important people, Cuban Spanish, etiquette (national habits and traditions, cuisine, and holidays), and leading institutions and organizations both in Cuba and abroad.

The book ends with an annotated bibliography that lists some of the most helpful resources used in preparing this volume (including books, newspapers, periodicals, films and documentaries, and websites).

Interspersed throughout the text are more than forty of the author's own photographs taken in Cuba since 1997, a timeline of Cuban history, a chart tracing the development of Cuban popular music, and a "discography" or listeners guide to some of Cuba's best music.

In sum, the book tells a critical yet sympathetic tale of Cuba's history and development, aimed at appealing especially to curious observers who want to add some historical weight and socio-cultural depth to what they already know about the island.

While the book is titled, Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook, it could well be subtitled, "Cuba: The Country that Dreamed It Was a Continent." That is, the island of Cuba has long had a political, strategic, and cultural importance that belied by its relatively small size, meager natural resource base, and scant population. Why is Cuba so BIG? Read this book to find out.

About the author: Ted A. Henken is an assistant professor of Black and Hispanic Studies and Sociology/Anthropology at Baruch College, City University of New York. He received a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University, 2002. Dr. Henken has traveled to Cuba on numerous occasions since 1997 to lead educational exchanges for Tulane University's Cuban/Caribbean Studies Institute and the CubaNola Collective, to attend academic conferences, and to conduct research. His work on Cuba has appeared in the journals Cuban Studies, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, Latin American Research Review, Latino Studies, and Cuba in Transition. He is a member of the board of directors of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE).

A huge contribution to a rapidly developing area of our lives and the future. Written with balance and interest it informs, yet poses further questions of pertinent relevance. Excellent value and of huge use to me in my Geography studies.

Very nice book with a lot of interesting thoughts about how cyberspace can be conceptualised. If you are interested in a more theoretical approach,then you have to buy this book. Social, political, economic implications of cyberspace are discussed, very helpfull handbook if you're working on empirical studies in/about cyberspace.

> Andrew Ross' study of the life and work of David Livingstone is a worthy
> contribution to the literary corpus of this great man. Ross makes
> accessible the revealing nuances and context of this giant of the 19th
> century. There is special sensitivity to Livingstone because, like
> Livingstone, Ross is also a Scot and served as a missionary in Africa.
> His impressive knowledge of Africa and its history serve the reader
> well in grappling with both the facts and implications of what
> Livingstone did. His research is thorough and objective, while his
> portrayal is winsome and inspiring. This book is necessary for an
> accurate understanding of Livingstone. Reading it is a delightful
> experience!

This work, featuring many new and nuanced insights, is a wonderfully written story of a very determined missionary and explorer. As the author so ably describes, our modern knowledge of David Livingstone is heavily influenced by the fact that, in death, he has been made the icon for many causes. His legacy has been put to the service of, for instance, British imperial aspirations. But as the author recounts, Livingstone's complexity defies any neat categorization.

Livingstone was possessed of a ferocious curiosity. He was born into a life of poverty, but became both a medical doctor and an ordained minister. He fathered a large family from whom, due to his travels, he was often away. Both his physical endurance, and his capacity to withstand pain were prodigious. His respect and admiration for African cultures was incomprehensible to his contemporaries. Witnessing firsthand the depredations of the slave trade, he devised strategies for development that, had they been heeded, provided a chance for leaving African cultures intact.

Livingstone mapped the unknown interior of Africa. His expeditions were remarkable both in the beauty of the places "discovered", and the grueling physical and consequent emotional demands on the explorers. During Livingstone's final expedition, the American journalist H.M. Stanley so famously "found" Livingstone. The meeting is replete with irony, and the context and effect of this meeting are very movingly described. Very moving, as well, is the story of Livingstone's death in Africa, and the transport, by loyal friends, of his body fifteen hundred miles to the coast.