Iowa Books

This book deserves five huge stars. It tells about a girls feelings and it can inspire you like it did to me. Learn how to still contact your friends when they move or live raf away from you, in this book. I would also recommend you to read: P.S. Longer, Letter, Later. That's also a great book and if you love writing letters and friendship then you'll love this book it's about Tara Starr and Elizabeth. Like it, go grab it!

Frequently forgotten or misjudged, this book provides one of the most hilarious plots ever written. The "common sense" of Huck is always fighting for bring Tom's lunacies to Earth, but the question is, why should we do that? Tom's reveries are the key for happy travel with a sane state of mind, providing the key which erase the nuance between what should be and possibly, what actually is. A delightful book.

In an age when it seems like publishing houses are being snapped up right and left, it's a delight to read interviews with noted publishers who took a chance on writers they loved, regardless of the bottom line (and even made a profit doing so - sometimes). There are nine small press publishers represented here and the interviews are quite detailed and fascinating to read. Those interviewed are Henry Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Godine, Daniel Halpern, Sam Hamill and Tree Swenson, James Laughlin, John Martin and Jonathan Williams. They represent, in no particular order, the publishing houses of City Lights, Cummingham Press, David R. Godine, Copper Canyon Press, Ecco Press, New Directions, Black Sparrow and The Jargon Society, among others.

If you are interested in preservation, vernacular architecture, architectural history, or just in understanding the beautiful and functional adobe buildings of northern New Mexico, this book is an absolute must-read. I've lived in Santa Fe my whole life, and have always loved adobe buildings, but I still learned a lot from it. What it's not: a superficial collection of pretty pictures to show you how to make your faux-dobe house look all "Santa Fe Style".

Also, if you are thinking of stuccoing your adobe house, put down the trowel and read this first. Please?

Alexander Haig was President Reagan's former Secretary of State. In this book he gives his views on international events in the Middle East, the Falklands, Poland, and Lebanon and spells out his differences with the Reagan strategists. He thus reveals his rivals' flaws as well as his own. This is an interesting personal first hand look inside the Foreign Policies and the Department of State of the Regan Administration. Well worth the read.

The reality of chronic worldwide hunger and malnutrition persists despite world food production increasing faster than population. An Informal Consultation on the Response of Land-Grant Universities to World Hunger was held at Iowa State University in 1978. It focused on the role of land-grant universities and churches in the continuing battle against world hunger. This collection of the symposium papers, edited by Dieter Hessel, is the product of that conference.

The Ames Consultation was convened by Dr. John T. Conner, moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, who invited pairs of Presbyterian participatnets - a teacher or administrator and a campus minister - from ten land-grant schools, plus consultants and staff. Their charge was to begin a process of rethinking their institution's responsibilities in research, curriculum, training, and extension.

Believing that "their" problem is really "our" problem, too, the participants critiqued the strengths and weaknesses of current U.S. food programs involving developing countries and the land-grant schools' agricultural curricula and training programs. Parallel concerns of the United States and other countries for meeting world food needs and ensuring small farm survival are considered. Underlying this, the implications for the campus ministry are explored.

The wide-ranging and candid discussions run the gamut from analysis of existing agricultural political coalitions influencing research and aid to questions of post-Green Revolution responsibilities of agricultural schools to poor countries. Among the innovative ideas advanced is the suggestion to establish courses in peace education. Collectively, the papers reflect a lively awareness of the appropriate agricultural agenda for the last two decades of the twentieth century.
--- from book's back cover

Alone Among Friends is the first full-scale biography of W. Robert Parks, the eleventh and longest-serving president of Iowa State University. The life of Parks and the evolution of his university are intimately intertwined compelling this biography to serve as a history of the nation's first land-grand university as well. Alone Among Friends shows how a people's college, under Parks' stewardship, went on to become one of the nation's great institutions of higher learning a the peer of even the more prestigious European university systems. Alone Among Friends is a detailed, candid, occasionally humorous, exceptionally well presented and highly recommended biography of the man who, more than any other, is inextricably linked to Iowa State University.

This is the only book of its kind written by an observer of the Amana Colonies during the era when the people lived under religious communism.

Mrs. Shambaugh made repeated trips to the Amanas and became a lifelong friend of the Amana people. This rare book tells of life in the Amana Colonies at the turn of the century.

The Amana people voted in 1932 to live under free enterprise, incorporating their land and businesses as the Amana Society and establishing a separate Amana Church Society. The people brought their own homes and many opened small businesses. With their traditional German family style restaurants, the Amanas today are Iowa's premier tourist attraction.

For over forty years, Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret has photographed Iowa's Amana villages and the people. The 1959 image earliest in the series, originally taken on assignment for The Iowan magazine is of workers eating lunch at the Colony Inn. The most recent images are of the color cover of tulips and trees blooming in South Amana, and of the 1999 Maifest.

The book begins with photographs of the Community of True Inspiration, the religion of the original Amana settlers, their churches and religious followers. The next section is "The Communal Legacy" with villagers, villages and artifacts left over from the days when the colonists followed a system of religious communal life. In 1932 they voted The Great Change to a free enterprise system with a corporation owning the 26,000 acres, mills and various businesses. The people could now own their own homes. A photograph taken in 1982 shows "Those Who Knew the Communal Way," The elderly fifty years after The Great Change. A final section titled "The Winds of Change" shows the traditions of Germany as celebrated in the Maifest and an Oktoberfest. The Amana Heritage Society documents its historic past in several museums. Over 100 black- and- white images are in the book.

The color section, "The Beautiful Amanas, The Amanas in Bloom," has 13 photographs, ending with two views of the Native American Fish Dam on the Iowa river prior to the destruction of the dam in the floods of 1993.

A Foreword by Lanny Haldy, Executive Director of the Amana Heritage Society, and a Preface by Abigail Foerstner, photography critic, contribute to an understanding of the community and the photographs.

In her introduction, Joan writes, "the spirit of love and friendship, religious faith, and traditions continues today even through the vast winds of change in the Colonies and America.

An exhibition of the photographs complements the book.

The perfect book gift for the poetry lover. A wonderful introduction to a new leading voice in poetry.