Iowa Books

Great reference for breeders and other applied crop/plant geneticists. Emphasis is on maize, and applications to other outbreeding species but there is equal relevence to workers in self-pollinated species. The section on estimation of variances (mating designs etc.) and effects are among the best around.

An essential volume to have, keep and cherish. It's not bedside reading (...hmmm!!) I regularly refer to my copy when my students aren't reading it themselves!!

Highly recommended, if you can get a copy.

These poems are refreshing, startling, witty and warm. Common items in nature speak wisdomand love. Readers who drink from this little treasure will come away refreshed. Both makes me want to travel to Crescent City while feeling like I already have. A joy!

Raptors In Your Pocket: A Guide To Great Plains Birds Of Prey by Dana Gardner is an informative, color illustrated, "user friendly", highly portable reference for rightfully identifying the raptors of the great state of Iowa. Providing fourteen plastic coated waterproof panels showing twenty-six species both perched and in flight, and throughout various dark, light, and juvenile phases, as well as male/female differentiation, Raptors In Your Pocket offers the perfect guide for ease in identifying the great aviary raptors of the Great Plains area. Raptors In Your Pocket is very highly recommended for all bird-watchers/observers and naturalists searching for a quick and useful display reference to identify when sighting these impressive birds of prey.

.I'M LOOKING FOR THE BOOK BY PEG HEIN LIFE'S TOO SHORT NOT TO LIVE IT AS A TEXAN

For an assessment of the subtle traffic between literature and law in America, "Reconstituting Authority" is one of the best in its field. I plan to assign it to my students.

Very informative not only in the happenings of a year in and around the town of Peterson, but also an in-depth and easy to understand history of the area begining with the formation of the land during the glacial age. The black & white photos rival the quality of Ansel Adams. This book is more than just and excellent coffee table print. This could be any midwest farming community.

Religion And Popular Culture: Studies On The Interaction Of World Views features seminal case studies involving religion and today's cultural media from the Disney boycott by Southern Baptists to the uses of contemporary Christian music. The contributors explore how the "culture wars" approach is impacting the study of mass communication; what various religious leaders teach their members about media use; how new information technologies impact religious worship; and how religious groups differ in the way they define "media literacy". A very highly recommended, scholarly and benchmark introduction for students of religion, media, and popular culture, Religion And Popular Culture provides the reader with informative theoretical discussions of the complex interplay between religion and the media of popular culture as well as describing several world religions and Eastern philosophies with respect to their teachings about media use.

Here's what the Times said about the book, April 19, 1987:

RESURRECTIONISTS. By Russell Working. (University of Iowa Press, $14.95.) The Iowa Short Fiction Award is among the most prestigious literary prizes American offers. It has been given every year since 1970 by the University of Iowa - and let there be no snide jokes about 'corn country.' The judges are always people with distinguished writing careers of their own. This year's judge was Tobias Wolff, whose 'In the Garden of the North American Martyrs' made quite an impression of its own in 1981. Russell Working, co-winner with Dan O'Brien for 1986, is a 26-year-old reporter in Oregon; the youngest recipient of this award, he has an amazing ability to draw the reader immediately into the world about which he is writing, whether it is the paper mills of the Pacific Northwest, where a former policeman is almost courting death, the Haiti of voodoo and the dread Tonton Macoutes, or the lazy hot summer afternoons of a group of young boys. The final story in this collection of eight, titled 'On Freedom,' is a stark, relentless tale of a night in jail and the brutality and degradation it can bring from callous guards and fellow prisoners alike. Two of the stories, 'Charis' and 'The Monkey,' introduce with both compassion and aching realism the subject of epilepsy and how it can affect those who love him. It is the quiet intensity of this writing that is so impressive. Basically, Mr. Working concentrates on people caught up in situations they never anticipated. Even if they do not quite understand it, they are longing for a personal 'resurrection,' a rebirth from what life has dealt them so far. It will be interesting to see what this young writer will do with a full-length novel.

In 1988, at age 37, with an 18-month-old daughter and a precarious financial outlook, biologist Norment decides to chuck his steady, if unsatisfying teaching job, and pursue his doctorate. He chooses to study Harris's Sparrows, for two good reasons. For one, they breed in a beautiful, isolated patch of the Canadian arctic that Norment remembers with longing from a youthful 3-year stint there. And the second good reason is that because the place is so remote, very little is known about them.

His book describes the three summers that he spent in Warden's Grove - from the initial uncertainties, failures and fears of failure to his increasing confidence in himself and affection for his subject. The structure of his book echoes this path, moving from the general and objective to the specific and subjective.

The beginning is concerned with setting up the project - repairing the bear-trashed cabin, finding the sparrow's nests, trapping and banding birds, recording the data. Not until the end of the book do we learn of the nightmares he had about horrible accidents befalling his tiny daughter, or how deeply aware he was of the effect his youthful experiences in Warden's Grove had had on his psyche, as if coming back could make him young and carefree again.

We learn little about his research assistants (there was a different one each year), but at the end of the book he admits he kept them - even the two who were close friends - at arm's length, never discussing anything personal.

As he settles more comfortably into the project, he describes the satisfaction he gets from the work, his pleasure in maps and the beauty of scientific names, the hours of watching undone by the superior patience and attention of a small bird, the plagues of mosquitoes and black flies and the differing personalities of the clouds of delicate, crafty mosquitoes and the hordes of frenzied, voracious black flies.

We share his relief when one of the female sparrows escapes a shrike attack and his ambivalence about "collecting" - killing birds (outside his project area of course) for science.

Norment gives us a feel for the work and the attention to detail, but he gives us an even stronger feel for the scientist, his place in the scheme of things, his relation with the wilderness. The writing is contemplative, vivid and sometimes dryly humorous, mostly when dealing with bugs: "Mosquitoes hovered at the screen door, persistent in their obsessive interest, their collective hum an ironically gentle susurrus."

This is a book for anyone interested in the natural world and especially in one man's journey as he gropes his way through life with determination, doubt and eloquent reflection.

This is a wonderful little book fashioned with humor and insight. I especially liked the poem/story about the cat that slept on the top of the car's tire and took a half-circle ride. Poor Cat. An excellent and accessible read.