Iowa Books

Robert Stein has written another exciting story that will hold you from the first line to the end. He's rapidly becoming a force in suspense publishing, and with reason.

This book is a collection of Christmas stories that take you back to a much simpler time. While the people were poorer in the monetary sense, they were richer in the social and familial senses. You will not read about people scrambling from store to store in order to identify and purchase gifts. All of the Christmas gifts you read about in this book were simple, yet deeply appreciated. Most striking is the repeated mention of oranges, specifically that they were such a treat that the recipient ate only one a year, the one they found in their stocking on Christmas morning.
The main theme is about community and family, how people got together and enjoyed the season and the company. Large extended families came together, almost always at Grandma's and ate more than is humanly possible. Some of the Christmas tales in this book are from the early days of statehood for Iowa and give you a glimpse into how the people lived their lives.
I enjoyed reading this book, it demonstrates the true spirit of Christmas and how it really should be celebrated, not with religious or economic but with familial fervor.

good pictures and descriptions of how teeth grow. what was of particular interest was the part on dentin development. a great book for novices interested in knowing what a dentist knows!

As a lifelong resident of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area and a current resident of Marion, I am always fascinated to find a book featuring the history of the area. This book describes an estate that is approximately ten miles south of my house that I have never seen. It contains a large, spring fed pond and has quite a history. For a short time, it was a home for alcoholics who voluntarily committed themselves, but at the time of publication, the authors owned the property.
While the majority of the pages are devoted to photos, I did learn some interesting facts about the Cedar Rapids area. Longtime actor and comedian Don Ameche attended school in the area and the bulldozer and sheepfoot types of construction equipment were both invented in Cedar Rapids. This book is an interesting description of a local landmark.

Susan Puckett brings us along to the family dinners and the local celebrations in Iowa. The stories behind the recipes are what makes the book interesting. When you meet the people and families and then get the recipes that they talk about and prepare you see what makes the food important to them. As a former resident of Iowa, I found the memories of smells and tastes returning. The food is what I remembered.

This book comprehensively surveys the development of evolutionary ideas from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The book is sympathetic to the resistance these deeply pious thinkers felt to the implications of the most natural interpretations of what the data that they were collecting. The book is scholarly and not for those seeking a sound-bite.

Judy and Michael Corbett have written a brief and thoughtful, not to mention well-informed book on the subject of designing and building sustainable communities. The various chapters on the history of their subject, on their seminal and justifiably respected community in Davis, CA, and on elements of the planning process and the integration of real estate pragmatics with environmental ideals will serve as both a user-friendly introduction for lay readers and a handy reference for professionals looking to expand their horizons. The writing is clear and uncomplicated, the design of the book is simple and straightforward, and there is the nice sense throughout that it has been put together by people who know wherof they speak. One complaint: it's unclear why a paperback published by a non-academic press would be priced a bit high but it is unfortunate, as it will serve to prevent this book from reaching the broader audience it deserves.

This book was really cute, it is about the journey of a greyhound and his owner. It gives a picture of the racing industry and how many of the dogs are handled. Not all trainers are bad trainers. It sets the idea that once you have one of these magnificent dogs in your life you and the dog and everything about it are intwined together forever. It is a great read, and very enjoyable.

The hustle and bustle of busy Beijing must present a startling contrast to the corn fields of Iowa. The similarities and surprises that another culture can provide are described in this book by University of Iowa journalism professor Kenneth Starck who spent a year in China teaching journalism to Chinese students in the mid 1980s. Besides the differences in the U.S and Chinese news media and the perplexities they cause in teaching, Starck also describes his forays into China with his wife and daughter. Besides the obvious (a visit to the Great Wall), there are also little delightful episodes; one such is when an inspector on a train demanded that Starck's daughter hand over her Walkman cassette player, and slipped on the headphones to check what kind of music the American girl was listening too. While Starck sweated ('we could be in real trouble'), the inspector started to bop to the music and handed back the equipment to them with a smile. "We passed," Starck writes. "So did the Eurythmics."

I highly recommend this book for someone who wishes to have a greater understanding of social history and economy in medieval Iceland. Written by an anthropologist it uses a good combination of historical record, written literature (sagas) and anthropological technique to describe the economic conditions of Iceland during this period.

It is a very short book but is nice to have for the collection:

Chapters include: Production Chiefly Consumption Politics Exchange Kinship, Church, and King Ideology

In the conclusion it has a nice justification for the use of the saga as source for social information.