Virginia Books

I personally know the author, Shirley Stewart Burns, and knew that the caliber of this story would be of the highest order. I was not surprised when I read it, and her emotional connection to the story and in particular the small mining communities of West Virginia shines through from start to finish. This is a story that should be read by all, as it highlights the power of the people and the ever increasing need for communities to rally behind a cause.
I congratulate Dr Burns on a wonderful, thought provoking and personally touching account. Even from the southern hemisphere where I am living, stories like this are relevant, and a number of my environmental friends have shown an interest in reading it.

I bought this book the day it hit the market and have read it twice. Dr. Burns lays out the case against mountaintop removal as only a native of southern West Virginia could. If everyone read this book the nation would finally understand the horror that is mountaintop removal, and take action to halt the practice. This is without doubt the authoratative academic work on this subject!

One of the most important books WVU Press has published to date is Bringing Down the Mountains, by Shirley Stewart Burns. This book documents the effects of mountaintop removal on human communities and is the best study to date. The author focuses in detail--with rigor of mind and fidelity of heart--on the human impact of moutaintop removal. MTR may as well be called "extractive desertification," both in ecological and sociological terms.

This book is already having an impact and is serving to link more and more voices around the most compelling criticisms of MTR. The author is the daughter of a coal miner and knows first hand what devastation this practice wreaks: like me, her hometown is being encroached upon by one of these sites.

Mountaintop removal is not coal mining and it does not participate in that cultural legacy. Those who work these sites are excavators, and their employment is short.

If you care about Appalachia, the most diverse temperate forests in the world, a major source of water, or the impact of globalism, read this book.

As a big fan of John Michne's website, I became very interested when I heard this book was coming out. I ordered it right away and I was not disappointed. The are a few books out today on the subject of boatbuilding for the home hobbyist that are really fantastic and this ranks right up there along with Ted Moore's Canoecraft, John Brooks' Glued Lapstrake Boatbuilding. The author's combine boatbuilding skill and documentation skill which is not an easy or common feat. They have done a great job in documenting the build of the H. Dwight Grant design 16' Guideboat "Virginia" so home boatbuilders like me can follow right along. I would not have considered building a boat like this without this book. The book includes all of the steps and precise details on how to reproduce this great craft. Many tips and techniques are shown that will insure high quality if carefully followed. The authors approach is one of setting a very high standard instead of mass appeal simplicity. The sanding stick idea is ingeniously simple for sanding rolling bevels on stems and ribs but I had never heard of it before. The sections on seat caning and brass metalwork clearly illustrate that it is something within my reach. I particularly liked that the authors were faithful to the Grant design "Virginia" lines as precisely documented by John Gardner. It is a great tribute to Grant, Gardner, Kenneth Durant and anyone who appreciates this special piece of history. I am sure they would be happy that new guideboats will continue to emerge from workshops and garages and be used all over the world rather than slowly fading away as museum pieces only. The Adirondack Guideboat design is really not for a beginning boatbuilder who is looking to build a first boat. It will turn out much better if you have already built a few boats. Don't miss out on this book though just because you are not ready to build one. No other type of book exists that I know of on how to build this remarkable boat.

im no expert on any type of boat,nor a writer.

i enjoyed this book quite a bit. its amaizing what you learn that you never ever heard of before.
i would definatly like to build one of these boats,, but,i must first build a smaller less complicated dinghy type first. to get a bit of practice. after all, thats alot of money in wood and epoxy,FG so,, id want to be a little more confident before i begin one of my own.
the book has great pictures,and the text..... well you begin to admire the builders that came before us.. (i always do) the craftmanship of these boats is truly amaizing. and they did alot of it with old school tools.

i cant recomend this book enough. i buy two types of boat books.
one type shares building information with me,techniques,tips,ect,ect..,so i might build a beauty of my own somday.
the second reason i buy boat books,,is for the history of boating in general. and this book has a full load of both kinds of information.

its nice to have it on the shelf.

roy

This is an absolutely excellent book! If you have any interest in Adirondack guideboats or in strip building canoes, you owe it to yourself to buy this book. The authors do a masterful job of explaining - in excrutiating detail - how to build a reproduction of a guideboat that is currently in a museum. They leave no stone unturned and describe the process very clearly with lots of photographs. They do a great job as well of weaving throughout the chapters the history of guideboats and their construction. Much of what they describe can be used for building other boats as well. This is a must have if you're into boat building or guideboats or the Adirondacks. It's probably the best book available on this topic!

I've found this book to be exceedingly useful in researching architecture in West Virginia. It's a shame it is not more widely available! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in preservation or taking architectural tours of the Mountain State. Well researched, must have been a massive undertaking. It's recently helped me out on a rather difficult project, so I'm very thankful I found it!

West Virginia was created through political conflict during the Civil War, and many people may think of it only as part of that part of our nation's history, or perhaps as a place of coal mines and Appalachian troubles. What Chambers shows us in this carefully researched, beautifully written book is that West Virginia has a history and an architectural heritage of great distinction and diversity. Chambers looks at the full range of this state's architecture, from the distinguished work of many state and regional as well as national architects in the principal towns and cities to the sagas of the industrial settlements, of which there are many, and the slower changing regional patterns of small town and rural areas. Buy this book, and learn that West Virginia is a state to visit, appreciate, and admire. Chambers's nuanced study takes into consideration the multiple and complex aspects of its history, and gives us all a new appreciation for an American state with a complex heritage. Anyone wanting to understand the South, Appalachia, or indeed America needs this book.

Chambers has written the book I wish I had written. If you are interested in architecture in the Mountain State, buy this book.

I was born and raised in West Virginia, but had always thought my native state nearly bereft of architecture, having only had the luck to have a succession of inferior state capitols go up in flames until the present Cass Gilbert statehouse. Chambers' book will disabuse you of that notion and make you proud of a significant architectural legacy. (The job now, of course, is to preserve what we have.)

He has performed a public service for every West Virginian, whether at home or living elsewhere.

The only nit I can pick is that he has chosen to ignore a number of significant engineering structures (mostly railroad coaling towers and coal tipples). Concrete coaling towers such as in Bluefield and Thurmond are important structures in their own right. Tipples, though not significant individually and now mostly gone, were significant as a building form. They were once nearly as common as 7-Elevens and no one who grew up in the coalfields ever quite gets over a love affair with the exposed I-beams, the corrugated metal and the jumble of roof and conveyor angles that used to be seen in the once-ubiquitous coal tipple.

Butterfly in a Net is a story about courage in the face of inexplicable terror. The author's purpose is to take the reader through fifty years of her life, years during which she struggled with two internal demons, anxiety and depression. Though she searches constantly for the root causes of her problems, aided and abetted by a host of practitioners, medical and otherwise, her quest is not rewarded with success. Some of the approaches she explores (or is required by others to explore) are reasonable, while others are downright loony. Ultimately there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel, although it comes in a surprising form.
From what I wrote in the paragraph above, one could easily think that this book is itself anxious and depressing, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Virginia Fisher Yaffe is first and foremost a writer who wants to communicate with her readership. As a result, her style is bouncy and interesting, which keeps the reader turning the pages right up to the end. Two of her major personality traits simply leap off the page: her sense of humour and her strong determination to succeed despite everything.
Some of the descriptions of the situations in which her neuroses involved her are screamingly funny, and I actually laughed out loud while reading them. The main source of the humour lies in her ability to write objectively about these occurrences, especially the ones that lie relatively far back in her past. The ridiculous aspects of some of her fears are very clear to her, and that openness to see herself as others might see her adds a certain edgy charm to the humour. She is frank about her shortcomings, and has a way of turning a phrase that keeps the reader interested in her narrative.
Her determination to succeed is quite simply proven by the facts of her life. Despite her debilitating insecurities, she has been able to obtain a graduate school education, successfully marry (though the marriage ultimately ended in divorce after many years) and raise three children. She has been able to maintain friendships of long standing, and pursue work as a teacher and book reviewer.
One fear that she claims not to have is that of public speaking, and in fact, the book comes across as an autobiographic lecture most of the time; it is one of the few books I've come across that would be perfectly suited to reading aloud to an audience. Fisher Yaffe tells her story in a convoluted way, such that time is refracted and reflected, much as the faces in Picasso's Cubist works contain different planes and angles. Saying this is not at all a criticism, for the device makes the telling more interesting than if it had been written in a strictly chronological way.
To sum up, Butterfly in a Net is a book well worth reading, both for its content and its style. I feel as if I have made a new friend, and hope that Fisher Yaffe will use her obvious gifts to produce more published work, perhaps next time in the realm of fiction.

Ms. Yaffe's poignant memoir is often laugh out loud funny even as she describes the debilitating fears that have plagued her since age two. Determined not to allow the feelings of anxiety and depression to get the better of her, Ms. Yaffe describes her lifelong struggle to overcome them. The millions of others who suffer from similar demons can benefit from reading BUTTERLY IN A MAZE.

In her memoir, "Butterfly in a Net" Virginia Yaffe traces her decades-old search for sanity. With humor and hindsight, Yaffe takes the reader through the maze of her panic attacks beginning at age two through the onset of a near-crippling depression. Yaffe manages to evoke both sympathy and laughter as she describes years of therapy marked by missed diagnoses, well-meaning psychiatrists and semi-conscious teachers. Until her mid 40s, her life was a daily rollercoaster fueled by fear and depression. Her eventual victory over the twin demons speaks to both her own determination and the remarkable advances made in recognizing and treating mental illness over the past decade. Her story is a must read for sufferers and their healers, and proves there is a way out of every maze if you don't mind banging into a lot of walls on your way out.

I first borrowed this book from the library in Casper, Wyoming. Was browsing for a good book and the title intrigued me. Needless to say I could not put the book down, I laughed so hard I cried, then in the sad times I cried till the tissue box was empty. I read the book twice before taking back to the library and then some years later tried to borrow it again but disappointed that it was no longer available till I found it through Amazon.com, I bought it. Now I want to order it for a dear friend who is moving to a rual area in Kentucky. I know she will love it as much as I have. I only wish I could find more books out there with the same real to life hopes, joys,and sorrows that happen in every day life but build character and fill us with wisdom that working with and appreciating the animal kingdom can bring us. Margaret Barnes, this is my most favorite book 2nd only to my Bible and is close at hand on my bed side stand- you are the best.

A cow under a beach umbrella? Perhaps with a glass of tea? These are just a few of the absurd images shared in this charming book. In A Buzzard Is My best Friend, Margaret Anne Barnes describes her family's experience on a 112 acre farm. Searching for solace beyond the suburbs, they sought the peace of a country home. Little did they know what lay ahead. As they moved from crisis to crisis, family members learned as much about themselves as they did about farming. They also learned about the animals and birds around them. An ice-water rescue by ducks, and peacocks in a paddock are just a few of the situations they encountered. Written in an engaging companionable style, this memoir explores the triumphs and tragedies of rural living. A celebration of bonding and values, it is peopled with an assortment of personalities, including four-legged creatures. Its insights are lessons for all generations. Originally published in 1981, the work has been reprinted by the Mercer University Press, a testimonial to its timeless appeal. (This book was a joy to read, not only because of its interesting story, but because of the fantastically good writing. Margaret Anne Barnes has a true gift, a natural talent for putting words to paper.)

This book will be re-released by the publisher in February. It is the hilariously funny recounting of a city-gentlewoman's family's attempt to manage a Virginia farm and get "back to the simple things" in life. Their trials, tribulations and mistakes will keep you rolling with laughter. If you have read any of Mrs. Barnes' other books you will recognize her fine writing style. She wrote this from her own family's experience. If you live on a farm or have ever thought this would be just the thing for you, you'll enjoy this book.

This book was required for a course I took in real-number (non-trig) Calculus. Now, my philosophy about math, is that no teacher can teach you math. It's the only subject that you really MUST learn on your own. This book makes this work simple. The problems and examples are usually of similar difficulty and anyone with a good background in basic college algebra should be able to fly through this thing. It made me become unafraid of calculus enough that I bought more advanced texts and began to teach myself out of those too. For awakening a love for math I never knew I had, I have to give this book 5 stars.

As for complaints, I have none. The book is organized incredibly well, and if you're rusty in college algebra, the 7 section review pulls you online with everything you'll need to know for the rest of the book.

The applied examples are varied and don't go out into left field from the pure problems; they don't expect you to put together something in a way you haven't seen before.

Having taught this material at the community college level for over 15 years, I find this to be one of the best texts we have used. As always, materials from a Lial book are easily understood. Futhermore, the authors have not lost contact with all rigor as in some math books intended for liberal arts usage. For example, the fact that a critical number can occur at an undefined value of the derivative, but only if the function itself is defined at that value, is fully explained.

Man, I have no idea where to begin. So let me start of by stating my mathematical background before I picked up this book. Before I picked up this book, I was fairly good with algebra but not very good at pre-calculus because all I knew about pre-calculus was that there are parabolas, but I knew very small trigonometry, statistics, series, and some other parts of pre-calculus. Anyway, so here I am in my last year of high school, a very terrible high school, with very small knowledge of mathematics, and I really want to see what the big fuss was with Calculus. So I decided to find some books on Calculus. My first three books on Calculus were very hard to follow along with. They were all textbooks, and one of them I bought. So I decided to sacrifice my $150.00 and buy this book from www.aw.com. When I first picked up this book, I had a hard time following along with the pre-calculus material, so I skipped them. I went into Limits and beyond. I understood every thing to my surprise, but when I got to the parts with Logs and Calculus, I went back to the pre-calculus section, and to my surprise, I understood it this time. Therefore, this book opened my mind. It allowed me to understand things I could not before by explaining the complicated subjects in a very easy to follow matter. I am in my first year of college taking Calculus I and I passed every test with a 50/50 except for one that I missed because of a negative sign, finding the equation of the tangent line to a given function. Anyway, I would recommend this book very much to anyone who wants to learn Calculus. I am very proud of what I got out of this book. This book in fact, made me a calculus teacher in a small way because I now tutor kids who are struggling with Calculus.

P.S. This book is teaches material equivalent to Calculus III.

Dr. Turner writes with dry wit and intimate understanding of the beauty, complexity, and mystery of the Eastern Shore of VA.

Loved the book, couldn't wait for the next chapter. Easy to read. Turner has another book East of the Chesapeake and it is a must also. After you read the first one it's nice to check out his museum. In his books he has such an interest in people, he finds something interesting in anyone he seems to meet. Very enjoyable writer.

With the recent purchase of a 1926 farmhouse on Hoopers Island on Maryland's Eastern Shore, I wanted to learn more about life on the Bay. My family and I hoped this book would shed light on perhaps a gentler time, with a return to "the basics." William Turner has written a wonderful account of his life growing up on the Chesapeake Bay in the 40's and '50s. The stories are entertaining, with laughs, as well as gasps, as well as tears. My sons, ages 10 and 6, beg me to retell his stories on our drives to our new Eastern Shore retreat home. From bear sightings to pig butchering to duck hunting adventures to sinking boats in the dead of winter, William Turner paints vivid images in our minds of life on the Chesapeake Bay during a time of neighborly help and family closeness. He is an artist, and shares his sketches in this book as well, which further brings home the true meaning of his stories. This is a treasure!

This is the perfect book for those who like some substance to their form. The writing is wonderful - I felt like I took a trip through time and through Thailand. The photos are beautiful as well because they aren't just the standard head-on shots, but interesting details and angles.

Having bought a large number of architectural books on Thailand, I can validate that this is the best so far. It is a well written book and definitely worth purchasing. I definitely recommend it for whoever has a passion for the decorative arts and for plain class Thai architecture. Definitely a gem.

I wish I had owned this book before my month long visit to Thailand three years ago. I received this book as a Christmas gift last year and really appreciated the insight it provides concerning the history, culture, and style of Thailand. Not only is it a gorgeous book with wonderful pictures but it also helped me to better understand Thai culture and style.

It really helped me to better appreciate my experiences in Thailand.

A must have for ANP student or professional. Concise and accurate. Excellent source for collaborative practice agreements.

This is a great book for nurse practitioner students and NPs. The information is very valuable and organized. I highly recommend this book!

This book is a must for any NP in Primary Care Practice. Well written, large print, easy to follow protocols.

I'm writing about the 2nd ed. (1990), but if you landed here, I think what I have is of value for later editions too. The book is fantastic. There are a myriad of technical terms for various kinds of multivariate analyses. The average person has no idea what the names mean -- or how to choose between them! To be able to DO anything (right, anyway) you need a CONCRETE understanding. Such is what this book provides. Right off the bat, the book tells you -- not only what kind of data each technique requires -- but what questions you might ask (and want answered) for such data. So, in a mere 4 pages -- near the beginning! -- you get 1 or 2 paragraphs on each of these: factor analysis, discriminant analysis, cluster analysis, multiple linear regression, principal components analysis, and more. You'll know what these techniques require as input (what kinds of data situations) and what they assume the question(s) is/are that you want answered -- already concrete, already good understanding of the differences of the formerly cryptic technique names in a mere 4 pages! I have seen no other book do this. The rest of the book is nearly as effective in the decoding of other details of the multivariate analyses. In short, start with this book, because therein you will be way way ahead in acquiring a perspective on multivariate analyses with little effort. Go to any other book(s) first and you may eventually develope a perspective -- only by accident, that is with little author help -- after a long hard road. Get your perspective from the get-go instead -- with this book.

While this book will not teach you all you need to know about any of the techniques to be an expert, it WILL teach you enough to read research, and to learn what the various techniques do. The mathematical level is moderate, and the emphasis is on practical applications. Highly recommended for grad students in the social sciences

Often, students and researchers need to perform multivariate statistical analyses on their data. Unfortunately, a lack of mathematical training prevents many from taking advantage of advanced techniques, in part, because books focus on the theory and neglect explaining how to perform and interpret multivariate analyses on real-life data. Computer-Aided Multivariate Analysis is a welcome exception, helping students choose the appropriate analyses for their data, carry them out and interpret the results. Only a limited knowledge of statistics is assumed and geometrical and graphical explanations are used to explain what the analyses do. However the basic model is always given and assumptions are discussed. In this edition the computer emphasis is enhanced by the inclusion of three additional statistical packages written for the personal computer. The authors also discuss data entry, database management, data screening, data transformations, as well as multivariate data analysis. This third edition contains a new chapter on log-linear analysis of multi-way frequency tables.