Iowa Books

I read this book, here in Brazil.I'm an agronomist.Even unemployed today, I feel very good, when I find someone defending the true agronomy.I must tell you that this book isn't only for agronomists or farmers.This book is made to be read for everyone.
Examples of great parts of this excellent book:
Page 74:"Researchers are still looking for the first death from pesticide residues, fifty years after DDT was introduced and thirty years after its use was banned in the United States, but mannure is claiming lives almost daily through bacterial contamination of organic food."
Page 77:"Vegetarianism neither is the "original human diet" nor is more natural than any other diet."
Page 119:"She says, "if Elizabethan England had the sort of regulatory system we have now, there is no way the potato would ever been introduced into this country(Linden 1999)."
Page 127:"However throughout the less-developed world, iodine is still necessary for control of goiter and mental retardation(Giroud 2000)"
Also on page 127:"Many affluent urbanites, who wouldn't know the difference between a cow patty and a rice paddy if they stepped in one, have become "experts" on agriculture on agriculture after reading tracts written by those who know virtually nothing about the subject "
Page 130:"It should be not in fact have come as a shock to anyone who had followed the debate on the safety of DDT over the last thirty years.Numerous studies studies on those most exposed, including those who were dusted with DDT during World War II, those who worked over ten years manufacturing DDT, and those havely exposed to DDT in antimalaria spraying campaign, failed to find any adverse health effects on humans(Mellanby 1992,73-82;A. Smith 2000). "
Page 142:"No matter how one compares losses, the agricultural tecnology of the green revolution has made more food available for far more people than any time in human history.From 1945 to 1989, many important crops, including some that are heavy users of pesticides, such as corn(maize), more than doubled their yield per acre.The accompanying increase in insect loss was actually a decrease in loss per unit of output and still resulted in a massive increase in food availability."
Page 151:"Vegetarianism and commitment to organic agriculture were a component in Nazi ideology.According to Arluke and Sax (1992), Hitler and other elite Nazis became vegetarians in emulation of Wagner."
Page 157:"It is hard to imagine anyone opposing the green revolution.The increase in yields from the green revolution in rice alone has produced enough to feed one billion people(DeGregory 1987b)."
Page 162:"Eating fresh, uncooked produce may have many taste and health benefits, but it can also be dangerous unless proper cautions are taken(Bruhn 1997;Zink 1997; Lindsay 1997; Beauchat and Ryu 1997). "
Page 173:"Chrorination of water in the United States began in the early part of twentieth century and very quickly "produced dramatic reductions in morbidity and mortality associated with waterborne, such as typhoid, cholera, , amoelic dysentery, bacterial gastroenteritis and giardisis".Chlorinating contaminated drinking water stopped a potential typhoid epidemic in Chicago in 1908."
Page 183:"They found that that if the mortality rates in 1900 had prevailed throughout,half of all americans Americans would not be alive today."
Page 184:"As White and Preston(1996)tells us, "mortality reduction throughout the world has been more rapid in the twentieth century than in any prevous period"(415)."
Page 185: "Over the last four to five decades, life expectancy has increased about twenty years(USAID 1998,1;Goklany 200,171)."
Page 187:"The good news about life seems to be getting better."
Page 190:"Some humanists can oppose the construction of dams for irrigation and power or the use of pesticides for crop protection.For them, electricity is flipping a switch, water flows with the turn of a faucet, food is a trip to the supermarket, health food store, or fast food outlet, and one's family's future is a serie of paychecks with a pension at the end of the line."
Page 198: "The gains made during twentieth century in the fight against infectious would have seemed utopian,had they been predicted in 1900."
Page 204:"To be pro-tecnology is to be pro-people."

DeGregori defends the importance technology has played in feeding the world and offers insights into where it will push forward to feed the 2.5 to 3 billion people left to arrive over the next half-century. His accounts of the technology, and the ideologies both opposing and supporting the technology, keep the book entertaining while his use of numbers gives the book an expansive scope. A definite read for any scholar or interested layman of agriculture, technological progress, or both.

Bowling Green professor James C. Foust does a commendable job of describing and analyzing the process of regulating radio's clear channels. The systems approach he uses is similar to that taken by Krasnow, et al. in their book. Dr. Foust provides details of how the industry acquired the ability to define the issues in economic terms and held on to that interpretation while using consumer groups to pay lip service to "the public interest."

Specifically he talks about how farmers groups were courted by the licensees of clear channel stations. They masterfully talked out of both sides of their mouths in that they would talk about providing programming for rural listeners, while all the time actually filling their schedules with content designed for urban audiences.

This book is a study in compromise in the process of regulation. The story unfolds like a well scripted plot. The FCC has always voiced its interest in local control, somehow that has NEVER been realized in the history of broadcasting. This book shows it the telecommunications system we inherited evolved as it did.

Some think it's magic that they can tune in distant radio stations on their AM radios at night. Others know that the skywaves of these clear channel stations bounce off of the ionosphere and can travel great distances at night. Early on their was debate as to whether certain stations should be given the ability to dominate certain frequencies at night, afterall could KDKA Pittsburgh truly serve the public interests of Podunkville, KY? Well, this book takes a look at the history of this debate and how the AM dial ended up being carved up. The main radio owner group today, has its namesake, but it is not about today's Clear Channel gobbling up the other owners... this book is historical and about AM mostly. A good read if you're into radio, especially AM, which not too many are these days it seems.

After leaving her Arkansas home to fulfill the promise she made before her father's death, Constance Miller steps from the stage in Browning City, Iowa, and falls into the arms of the handsome town blacksmith, Hans Van de Keift. Her mission is difficult enough: She must find a war friend of her father's, convince the man to return a stolen shipment of gold to the Yankees, then encourage him to turn to the Lord. But with Hans gently blocking her search attempts in order to keep her safe from the mishaps that seem to follow her, Constance's secret quest begins to weigh on her heart.

Will she be able to find her father's friend and rid herself of this burden? Once she has, will she be able to leave these kind people and this place of warm breezes and flowering hills? Could these stirrings in her heart mean that God has another reason for bringing her here?

With her rich scenic descriptions and her smoothly flowing narrative, author Lena Nelson Dooley pens a sweet romance that goes down like a glass of lemonade on a warm summer day. Though her heroine Constance is a little too accident-prone, and Hans has a need to carry Constance more than seems necessary, A Daughter's Quest provides a delightful getaway, one both mothers and daughters are sure to enjoy.

~Tammy Barley, author and reviewer

When an author has been married to the love of her life for over four decades, she's earned the right to pen inspirational romance!

Lena Nelson Dooley dedicates all of her novels to her husband, James. On the dedication page of A Daughter's Quest, she writes to her husband, "You are always there for me. You love me, cherish me, protect me, and make me laugh. These last forty-two years have been an amazing ride. I never want to get off." (Aaawww...sweet!)

In Dooley's latest novel, A Daughter's Quest, Constance has been asked by her dying father to travel to Iowa to find his long-lost war comrade Jim. He worries that Jim doesn't know God, and he can't die in peace until he knows he tried to reach him.

Constance promises to follow her father's wishes, yet along the way, God has some intriguing plans for her, involving a handsome stranger with eyes of blue.

--Christian Women Online Book Buzz

Feinberg's work is an excellent collection of biographical data and Tabori's antecdotes. Her writing is captivating, although at times her analysis is not quite clear or simply not complete. However, she does offer a huge sampling of themes prevalent in Tabori's work. The book is a good source for Taboriisms and feeling Tabori's spirit.

I snapped this one up as soon as I found it since there are no other books in English (at least, that I know of) which focus on this controversial Jewish-Hungarian playwright. I'd consider this one a must for those interested in Jewish drama, literature and/or Holocaust studies.
Tabori's drama was often more avant-garde than traditional and frequently shocking and provocative. One play, Cannibals, portrayed concentration camp inmates who were prepared to eat another inmate to survive and others of his "Holocaust" (Jubilee, My Mother's Courage, Mein Kampf) are equally revolutionary and non-conventional.
The author, Anat Feinberg, uses archival material to round out this well-written and detailed portrait of an unusual dramatist. There is also a photo section which I found captivating and quite interesting.

This book certainly explains all the basic requirements for all FAA medicals, but I believe the author is too repetitive, especially when he explains 100 times how important the medical is. The whole book could have been a lot shorter. The only interesting part was the nutrition section, and the hypertension chapter.

Fellow licensed pilots, I'm about 1/2-way through this book and I can't believe I did for so long without it. Dr. Reinhart provides every nuance of the Medical Certification Process, along with the encouraging words for taking responsibility for our own "airworthiness." I fly as a hobby, with a 3rd class medical, and this book has taken away much of the anxiety I previously felt about the process. It took me many painstaking years to earn my Private Certificate, and I am now more secure that I'm better equipped to keep current with the knowledge and insights provided by Dr. Reinhart.

This opened my eyes to women's status in the Gilded Age in a typical good-sized Midwestern town. I couldn't put it down.

My godson is taking his orals for his PhD, and as a requirement, was told to read this, among 100 other assigned books. As he knew I was a Davenport native, he thought I might enjoy reading this. As a female, I found it especially fascinating as it deals mostly with the status of women, both prostitutes and women who owned small businesses, worked as clerks and in other professions, in the Gilded Age. I had no idea that prostition was once legalized in Davenport and such establishements were licensed. I also was surprised to learn how the German influence led to widespread flauting of Prohibition. I had gone to the Lend-A-Hand club as a small girl after school, and reading the history of that venerable institution was really heartening. My grandfather ran a Shell Service station at the base of the Government Bridge and it was amazing to read how that area was a hotbed of vice from 1880-1920.

I bought this book for my mother, who grew up in Davenport, and who is now 90. She knew many of the names in the book, attended school with one of the girls, and was amazed to hear all this come to life. Many of the facts and stories were told her by HER mother, and she was taken back in time when these stories were confirmed. She is now busily engaged in digesting the book.


But the book is better than simply a Davenport history snapshot. As a woman, I was disheartened in the extreme to read of the cruelty practiced on young girls, as young as 11 who were forced into prostitution after having been raped. The Good Shepherd Home in Dubuque proved a godsend for many of the unfortunate girls. They were given a new life and dignity. It left me with new respect for the work of the Catholic Church in restoring people's lives.


This book gave me a view of middle America that caught me off guard. I hope this book gains wide currency, as it deserves it.

This book is very interesting for anyone concerned with US Presidential elections. It takes a balanced approach but comes to definite conclusions about the importance of the Iowa Caucus. What I liked was the way it dug beneath the surface statistics to provide an in-depth analysis of what is going on.

Christopher Hull has written a rigorously-researched and tightly-sourced analysis of the impact of the Iowa presidential caucuses. His work applies academic precision to a subject with which Hull has extensive real-world experience, and this combination truly shines through the page. An absolute must-read for those who seek to understand the presidential selection process.

This beautifully written short novel by the great critic is among the best descriptions of the 1920's I've read! All the characters are based on real life people, and taken from the author's own notebooks, as descibed in the notes at the end of the book. Such luminaries as Dorothy Parker, Robery Benchley, and others of the renowned "Round Table" are included, not to mention Mr. Wilson's own love interests, shown quite indiscretely for the time. And the "uncle" in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, is truly bizarre! Also the architectural and travel (mostly train, but some auto) rides are perfectly done too! This is a fine book for the general reader, as well as the 1920's or Wilson afficionado. But perhaps too "R-Rated" for the school-set.

This book is actually an unfinished novel Wilson started to write but put aside before it was published. It contains many ideas that will not surprise people who are familiar with Wilson's literary criticism, particularly his distrust of popular culture. The book is best when it deals with a character that is clearly based on Dorothy Parker, who Wilson knew and liked. It gave me insights to Parker's personality that were fascinating. Even though parts of this book are sketchy and were clearly meant to be expanded, by the end I was caught up in the narrative and found this volume ultimately quite involving. For anyone interested in peek at Jazz age life New York this book is well worth reading.

This ABC book is a wonderful way to introduce your child to some of the fun and interesting history of Iowa. Readers will discover some little known facts about the state, through real-life pictures and cute illustrations. Mrs. Gensicke really understands what will captivate a young audience and employs her knowledge of the young reader in this book. Audiences of all ages will be surprised at facts they will pick up about a small, but very wonderful state.

I purchased this delightful book for my children a few years ago. It contains a series of historical facts about the state of Iowa, one for each letter of the alphabet. My children were fascinated by some of the entries and my son used some of them in his schoolwork about the history of the state. I work in computers and they were astounded to learn that the computer was in fact invented in Iowa. There were many other instances when they came to me and excitedly said, "Daddy, did you know that . . . ?"
This is a wonderful book of historical facts suitable for children in the 6-10 years of age range. I highly recommend that you get it if you have children of that age.

There just is not a better book or piece of information to have than a state atlas when travelling. With the atlas, you are able to get (off the beaten path), see the "hard to get to" areas of the United States, and actually get back on track again. You will do all of this and never get lost!

These books are amazing. Not only do they have all the gravel roads but even the dirt roads! Buy the Atlas, you won't be sorry.

This atlas, like other products from DeLorme, provides high quality maps. It contains very useful information and detailed maps of the entire state. There are no city maps in the atlas which is its only flaw. Larger metro areas like Des Moines, Iowa City, and the Quad Cities ought to be shown in greater detail.