Geography Books

As Governor Jim Hunt says in the forward, "North Carolina is at a crossroads in its history." This "atlas" provides not only a wealth of information, but an intelligent perspective on the future of the state as it enters the 21st century.

Subjects matter includes the natural environment, history, population, urbanization, economy, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, trade, politics, air quality, water resources, crime, health, education, arts, and recreation. I found these topics to be presented in an effective manner and certainly more enlightening than the statistical record one might imagine.

I also discovered, before I placed my order, that I was able to preview some of the book's illustrations at the UNC Charlotte Cartography Lab web site.

I would recommend this text not only to students, researchers and teachers, but anyone interested in a comprehensive and knowledgeable summary of the diverse state of North Carolina.

This is the most comprehensive and informative state atlas I have ever reviewed. Excellent maps, great charts and clearly written text makes "The North Carolina Atlas" a book that needs to be on the shelf of every public library and in the hands of all North Carolina devotes. Over the last century North Carolina has transformed itself from a struggling southern state to one of the fastest growing economies in the U.S. "The North Carolina Atlas" provides a definitive analysis of the changes that have created this wonderful state.

History, population, urbanization, and economy are transforming forces that molded North Carolina into what it is today. Each of these sections are clearly laid out so that the reader can make a critical analysis of the change and form an assessment of the coming changes that the future may bring.

Especially interesting are the sections that deal with quality of life in North Carolina. Crime, education, health care, water and air quality, cultural arts and outdoor recreation are profiled and supported by scores of maps, charts and diagrams. This is a book I would especially want in my possession if I was considering moving my family and business to this State. Highly Recommended.

I have a new student from Norway in my class and was very happy that a A True Book was available about Norway. I have used this series about other countries and it allows students to better articulate facts about the country they come from and introduces the country to the other students. It is easy to read and contains interesting facts.

This book provides younger children with a charming intro to Norway, combining simple information with beautiful photographs. Our children, aged 7, thoroughly enjoyed reading this book to learn more about the country, prior to the arrival of our Norwegian nanny. Since then, they have continued to pick it up and re-read the book. I personally enjoyed reading it, too, as it provided interesting information. I'd think it is especially good for kids ages 4-10.

THE OLD MAN WHO DOES AS HE PLEASES : Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Lu Yu. 126 pp. New York and London : Columbia University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-231-03766-X (hbk.)

Burton Watson has always struck me as an eminently civilized scholar and as a fine translator. Unlike certain others, he wears his scholarship lightly, and doesn't overburden the text with extraneous matter. His many translations from Chinese and Japanese Literature are of uniformly high quality, and are well worth having as they are books one often returns to.

Lu Yu (1125-1210) was an amazingly prolific poet, and left behind almost 10,000 poems as well as a variety of prose writings. His poetry is characterized by occasional spasms of intense patriotism, but mainly by a carefree enjoyment of life. Hence his literary name 'Fang-weng' or 'The old man who does as he pleases.' He adopted this name as a gesture of defiance after being dismissed from his official post for "drunkenness and irresponsibilty." This image of a lively and lovable old rascal is borne out by the poetry.

The present book offers a selection of sixty-three of Lu Yu's poems which provide us with glimpses of the poet's daily life. Here is a brief example, with my obliques added to indicate line breaks :

"My medicine's crude, yet the old farmer / swears it really works. / my poems are shallow, yet the mountain monk / has immoderate praise for their skill. / Cakes in pockets, with packets of tea / they come to pay me a visit. / What harm if in the midst of loneliness / we have one little laugh ? (p.59).

Besides the poems, Watson has also included translations of excerpts from Lu Yu's famous 'Diary of a trip to Shu' which was written in 1170 and describes the sights along the Grand Canal, the hair-raising experience of sailing through the Yangtze gorges, and the temples, shrines, and scenic spots he visited when travelling to take up the position of vice-governor of the province of K'uei-chou. This is a truly marvelous travel journal, and presents us with a vivid picture of life in central China in the twelfth century. Here is a brief passage selected at random which described an event Lu Yu witnessed in the Ch'ien-tao 6th year (1170 A.D.) 12th month :

"25th day : I watched the troops staging a mock battle on the water. There were seven hundred large warships, each ... fitted out with walls and turrets. Their flags and pennants shone brightly, their gongs and drums clattered and clanged as they raced back and forth, crashing through the huge waves as swiftly as though they had wings. Thirty or forty thousand people came to watch - it was in fact one of the most spectacular sights in the world" (p.100)

In addition to a typically interesting and informative Introduction, and his usual light annotations to all selections, Watson has also provided a useful map of 'Places Important in the Life of Lu Yu,' along with some bibliographical information. The book is small 8vo in size (6 by 8.5 inches), beautifully printed on excellent paper, stitched, and bound in full cloth.

Lu Yu was a unique and interesting figure, and anyone who cares for Chinese poetry in English is certain enjoy this book.

As a poet, Lu Yu goes a bit against the grain. Hardly the refined Taoist recluse type, there's something defiantly ordinary and down-to-earth about this man whose greatest unrealized ambition in life was to see his country stop piddling around and go to war already. Probably this guy was a real jerk--but an irresistibly likable one. A good bulk of his poems dwell on patriotic dreams of retaking North China from the Barbarian Chin, and, since this stance went against the official policy of the Southern Sung Dynasty, the rest of his poems dwell in loving detail on his everyday country life when out of a job as a government official. Almost as if to say, yeah, you fired me on trumped-up charges, but I'm doing fine here, thank you all the same. Even his literary name, the loose translation of which figures as the title of this book, evinces some of his defiance, delightfully incorporating the charges of drunken dereliction of duty used against him.

Of course, bombastically hawkish poems with preachy political themes, while convincingly sincere, tend not to weather the passage of centuries all that well even under the best of circumstances, and Lu Yu's seem especially bound to jar against contemporary poetic expectations and sensibilities. The opposite may be said of his irreverent homebody poems of simple everyday family life--these appeal directly to us across the intervening barriers of time, space, culture, and history; they feel more like real poetry to us. In which case the translator, Burton Watson, has struck a judicious balance between these two themes, including enough of the former that we get a proper and accurate sense of what Lu Yu's characteristic concerns were while somewhat favoring the latter ones we (and he, the translator, as he tells us outright) are more likely to enjoy as literature. And as always, with Watson the resulting translations are as close to a brilliant fusion of scholarly accuracy and literary quality as is perhaps humanly possible.

In addition to this modest sampling of Lu Yu's voluminous output of poems, Watson also includes a selective translation of Lu Yu's prose "Diary of a Trip to Shu" (about one third of the original). This seems a bit chopped up, okay for a generalist like me but probably a bit annoying for committed Sinologists. But one gets a vivid impression of the sights and sounds, the experiences and hardships of river travel as Lu Yu records the ups and downs of his trip. Here too we get a glimpse of a different, deeper Lu Yu with hints of an interest in Taoism. Usually poetry is the venue by which scholar officials such as Lu explored such concerns, but there's almost no hint of it in Lu's poetry at all. And then here of all places in a prosaic travel journal on the way to a government post it pops up unexpectedly. Lu Yu, just as he pleases, going against the grain to the very end.

I am planning a church-based course on Black theology in African American spirituals. Nikki Giovanni's unique treatment will be enriching for participants.

With her opening words, author Nikki Giovanni imparts truth needed by all readers as a context for the spirituals. "We say that the slavers went to Africa to get the slaves, which is far from true. The slavers went to Africa to get Africans to make them slaves."

How did free people, with their own cultures, their own families, their own everything survive and remain sane when overpowered and raped of everything? Captured and ruptured, how did they survive and even thrive?

Giovanni, award-winning author of "Rosa," and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, provides a core answer. It was through the co-created, spontaneous spirituals by which African Americans proclaimed, "I'm a child of God!"

As her aptly chosen subtitle suggests, "On My Journey Home" looks at African American history through the spirituals. Giovanni takes her readers on a journey from capture, to auction block, to daily hardships, escape, community building, the Invisible Institution, Sunday worship, heavenly hope, Emancipation, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the present, and even to the future.

Giovanni makes the vital point that we sing the slave spirituals as "cute children's songs," forgetting the depth, the pain, the passion, and the meaning that drove their creation and their singing. Build through the blending of Old Testament deliverance themes, New Testament redemption themes, and the pressing need for shared hope, these songs of Christian faith were anything but cute, though they did evidence the trusting faith of a child in a good Father.

Nor were these songs "polite." Often, subtly so, they challenged the hypocrisy of their Christian masters with words such as "Everybody talkin' `bout heaven ain't going there."

Giovanni has it right. The African American Christians "didn't just write the songs, they lived them." To understand African American history is to understand the slave spirituals and to understand the slave spirituals is to understand African American history. This is the gift of "On my Journey Now."

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," "Soul Physicians," and "Spiritual Friends."

Professor Setha M. Low's book On The Plaza-The Politics of Public Space and Culture discusses the interrelationship of public space and culture. She primarily focuses on two plazas in San Jose, Costa Rica, the Parque Central and the Plaza de la Cultura, while also making references to other places such as Tenochtitlan in Mexico. Using ethnographic, ethnohistorical, microgeographical, and statistic sampling methods, Low argues that "these culturally and politically charged public spaces are essential to everyday civic life and the maintenance of a participatory democracy."

Low describes the background of Costa Rica, going into its population, ethnic, religious, and urban proportion distribution. She explains the rise and fall of consecutive monocultural economies, such as cacao, tobacco, bananas, and coffee, its tradition of democracy, and the economic nadir in the 1980's. She then goes into the history of San Jose from colonial times to the present, including the devastating effects of the economic downtown and the trade vacuum created by NAFTA.

She then explores the history of the two plazas. Parque Central dates back to 1761, and is the larger and more densely populated of the two. It became a center for merchants, grocers, lottery ticket sellers, and sundry vendors, as well as shoppers and customers. Also, the trend of regulars sitting in the same benches over time gives Parque Central an ambience of traditional social life and hence less contested space between various social groups.

The Plaza de la Cultura, constructed between 1976 and 1982, was built as a contrast to the closed nature of Parque Central, as a more open space for the middle and lower classes. Central to the plaza was the National Theatre with a museum housing the country's Precolumbian gold. Despite its cultural stance, the new plaza became a haven for underage prostitutes, gangs, and drug users.

Plazas also contain social and spatial boundaries as factors that symbolize differences such as nationalities, race, class, and gender between plaza populations within a capitalist system. Low again contrasted the two plazas in San Jose in the framework of social boundaries:

Parque Central: mostly older men, closed space, clique-oriented, has professional prostitutes, lottery ticket, newspaper, food vendors, less foreigners, older.

Plaza de la Cultura: mostly women and children, open space, not clique-oriented, prostitutes who give services for clothes, nurturing relationships, balloon, popcorn, tourist item vendors, more foreigners, younger.

Another more important function of the plaza is for public protest. Low categorizes them in terms of the kinds of protest and their outcomes. Manifest protests such as strikes and demonstrations usually result in the temporary closure of the public space, followed by a reopening where the space is policed to discourage undesirables. An example of that involved the chasing out of shoeshine men from Parque Central. Latent protests involve conflicts that become apparent in terms of design and surrounding buildings and can result in discussions in various media or a plebiscite. Ritual protests, such as parades, normally involve the temporary takeover of space by a protesting group before it is relinquished to the forces nominally in charge of that space.

Taken in the context of protest, Low sees public space as symbolizing political objectives by those, particularly national leaders, who created them--e.g. the Plaza de la Democracia is a legacy to Oscar Arias Sanchez's Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts for Central American peace. Plazas that don't fulfill the objectives of their creators or are not deemed valuable are either redesigned or denied access to the public.

Constituting twenty-five years of research spanning from 1972 to 1997, Setha Low's exhaustively researched book depicts the essence of the function of the plaza.

I read this book mainly because as a Tico (Costa Rican) I was very surprised somebody would write a whole book about a couple of places that for me are part of my everyday life. Besides having been to the Plazas of Europe and seen on TV the huge plazas that some other Latin American countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, etc) have I was curious to find out the reason behind her choosing of the Parque Central and the Plaza de la Cultura for this work.
I really liked what I read, she has the benefit of having seen these two public spaces in the city of San Jose, Costa Rica evolve over the last 30 years, from the days we used to consider the Plaza de la Cultura not a nice place to go to, the days when we were outraged by foreign musicians and artist taking over a ground that was supposed to be for the display of our culture till nowadays that the Plaza has turned the city into a sort of fish-tank from where the tourists and US retirees can leisurely watch Costa Ricans as we go about our daily lives.
I truly recommend this book.

My daughter loves this book - Great Memorabilia from our trip to Washington D.C. This book has great photos!!!

Billy Wannyn

Terrific photographs. Ample coverage of the usual monuments and tourist must-stops. Refreshing attention is also paid to DC neighborhoods that make the city a great place to live as well as visit.

Page #54 is excellent.

No more explain about it!
See and Enjoy~

The Oxford Bible Atlas, edited by Herbert G. May, is a detailed, extremely useful book that will heighten anyone's general understanding of biblical geography. It contains more than maps as it delves into the history behind the maps, and the archaeology behind the history. It cites biblical sources but also cites apocryphal books unfamiliar to most Protestant readers. The end result is a colorful, informative work that helps place both Old and New testaments into perspective.

The book is divided into three sections, the first introducing the ancient world, then the several maps, and concluding with an archaeological overview. Part one blends seemingly incompatible topics of biblical and geologic history. It includes biblical and secular accounts of ancient history. The atlas does not attempt to expound too greatly on the "Holy Land" as being somehow superior in importance. In fact the Holy Land occupies an important crossroads between east and west more so than it stands as a regional religious center of its own merit. Those who held power such as David, Herod, or even Pontius Pilate were rarely more than a regional or even local rulers who paled in stature when compared to Alexander or any of the Roman Emperors.

The map section covers most of the primary locations mentioned in the Bible, and illustrates the vastness of the biblical lands. Many maps retain ancient place names, though the primary focus is on the Near East. There are some areas not covered, such as the city of Tarshish, Jonah's destination when he attempted to flee from his responsibilities, and the route of the Exodus does not take them across either the Red Sea, or either the modern Gulf of Suez or Gulf of Aqaba. But these apparent omissions do little to detract from the overall effectiveness of the maps.

The final section is akin to a primer on biblical archaeology. It introduces Carbon 14 dating, how a site is developed, and a brief history of archaeological efforts in the region. It shows how cultures are understood by what has survived through the ages, and helps fill gaps when written records are not available.

The end result is a very informative atlas that readers of many different backgrounds will appreciate.

David Harvey, the famous social geographer, is not particularly known for his work on cultural matters, having spent most of his career working on issues of political economy, spatial organization and (some) philosophy of the same. Nonetheless, "Paris, Capital of Modernity" is a partially cultural, partially political-geographical history of the modernization of Paris undertaken under the famous leadership of Georges Haussmann (1809-1891), who created the monument, park and boulevard systems for which Paris is now justly renowned. As context, Harvey analyzes the works and attitudes of famous writers of that period in Paris, such as Flaubert and De Balzac, in addition to providing many nice photographs and maps charting the changes and developments in France's capital.

As one can expect with Harvey, most of the work is spent on tracing the geographical and spatial aspects of the modernization and industrialization of Paris and its political background in the persons of Napoleon III, Emperor of France between 1852 and 1870, and Georges Haussmann. He shows the constellation of class forces that allowed Napoleon III to play various classes against each other, shifting support from financial capital to landlord powers and back, and the position Haussmann's developments had in this political ensemble. Although the initial material is a little dry, things get better as Harvey digs into the meat of the matter, where Haussmann does not appear as much as the hated enemy of the workers and wrecker of ancient Paris as he is often depicted, but rather as an embodiment of the 'creative destruction' that capitalism is when it fully comes into its own, as it did in France around this time. The tensions and furies caused by the combination of capitalist industrialization on the one hand, and the spatial and economic restructuring of Paris as such by Haussmann and speculators both would finally erupt into the Paris Commune of 1871, which inaugurated the permanent end of the power of both reaction and a bloody repression of socialism in France.

The book is written with the usual subtlety, political understanding, and nuance of Harvey's best work. Whether the literary additions to the work are an improvement or a distraction perhaps depends on taste, all the more since the first chapter, entirely on De Balzac's oeuvre, is rather at variance with the topic of the rest of the work. But although the topic of Paris' furious ascent into modernity is not quite a new topic (addressed famously by Walter Benjamin, for example), Harvey's book is a worthy addition to Marx' own studies on the history of France: "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) and "The Civil War in France" (The Civil War in France: The Paris Commune).

Implicitly taking his start from Benjamin's sketches of Paris as the "capitol" of the 19th century, Harvey analyses the elements that transformed Paris from medieval labrynth to modern bourgeois metropolis and the corresponding effect that this had on all levels of the class structure, men and women, and the spatial geography of the city itself. He starts with Balzac and Baudelaire, as all such studies must; but quickly moves out of literature and into history, looking at the changes in the city geography begun by Hausmann. Harvey uses his familiar metaphor of changes in geography as a symbol of the changes wrought by modernity. Excellent, pointed read for those interested in Paris and French history, urban development, and the effects of capital on capitols. Great bibliography too!

This book makes the polar areas very interesting. It can help you understand what a great loss these areas are going to be if we continue to do nothing about global warming. This books is about the joys of the polar regions however, not the loss. More fish prefer the polar regions than warmer regions. Penguins can't survive the bacteria and viruses found in warmer areas and get sick and die in zoos. Polar bears survive better in the cold areas. They love these places and are well suited to them. Musk Oxen and reindeer live in polar regions too. People live in the Arctic. To me, it's cold but it is an important ecosystem that we can't afford to lose. I appreciated learning more about the region and how well some living things are suited to it.

Penguins are in right now, whether they are marching or giving polar bear cubs soft drinks, so the one on the cover of "Penguins Swim But Don't Get Wet and Other Amazing Facts About Polar Animals" should catch a lot of eyes. This book by Melvin and Gilda Berger for the Speedy Facts series looks at the two coldest places on earth, the Arctic and the Antarctic. As this book explains, there are animals that live on the polar ice and the icy cold water where you can find birds that swim but do not fly, bears that spend more time in water than on land, fish with white blood, whales as long as three buses, and a bunch of other polar animals. The fact that bears can swim 62 miles (99.8 kilometers) without stopping is quite fascinating, but the book does not explain why they stop so close to the 100 km mark. Then again, curiosity is a good thing in young students and the hallmark of this series is that it makes subjects like ocean creatures, the human body, and wild weather seem absolutely fascinating.

The first chapter of the book is devoted to the Polar Lands, explaining about the icy cold, glaciers and icebergs. Then the Bergers look at the Arctic and Antarctic in turn, comparing the weather and the people that can be found in both (Inuits up north and scientists in the south). Then there are chapters devoted to penguins, polar bears, caribou and reindeer, musk oxen, arctic wolves, small arctic land animals (lemmings, arctic foxes, arctic hares, and ermines), whales, seals, walruses, Arctic birds, and Antarctic birds. Each chapter devotes each page to a separate topic. For example, the one on penguins looks at where penguins live, family life, getting along on land, and swimming champs. Each page has a couple of paragraphs of basic information and then up to five Speedy Facts (although you will find that most of the Speedy Facts about the emperor penguin you already know from "March of the Penguins," which just speaks to the educational value of that documentary).

There are also charts that will show the relative size of the various types of penguins, bears and seals (oh my), although often the Bergers will couch things in terms that young students can better understand (e.g., the emperor penguin is about as tall as second grader but weighs as much as a sixth grader). The table of contents only talks about the general category of animals and you will not find an index in the back of the book so that finding specific information is going to require you to flip through the book and look at the titles and facts here assembled. The last chapter talks about how polar animals are in danger because of human beings and ends with a plea to help protect these animals (although there is not a specific solution advanced). It would be nice to see Speedy Facts books about animals in other parts of the world, but of course the polar regions are ideally suited for this series because of the relatively few animals that live there (imagine trying to cover all of the animals you would find in just the basin of the Amazon River).

If you ever want to know anything about the rainforest, this is the series to buy. The author thoroughly discusses people, environment, and hope for rainforests. Beautiful colored pictures throughout the book supports the easy written text. I highly recommend this series to any student who needs to do a report on the rainforest. This series is a must have in any children's library collection.

If you ever want to know anything about the rainforest, this is the series to buy. The author thoroughly discusses people, environment, and hope for rainforests. Beautiful colored pictures throughout the book supports the easy written text. I highly recommend this series to any student who needs to do a report on the rainforest. This series is a must have in any children's library collection.