Farming Books

I'm originally from Indianola, Mississippi, the town Schweid writes about in this book. It's an unusual place--the home of B. B. King and the Citizen's Council, a town that is sixty-five percent black but one in which almost everything is owned and run by whites. Schweid sees and records all that is troubling about the place--and there's plenty that is--but at the same time he finds himself inexorably drawn to it. The people of the Delta, both black and white, come alive here, and it's also worth noting that Schweid writes like an angel. Buy the book--it's a gem.

Roger Caras was an ABC-TV News Special Correspondent for Animals and the Environment and a regular commentator on the same subject for the ABC radio network. This is fantastic reading material!

This book is a great collection of facts and folklore.

Chapters on: The Sporting, Hound, and Working Dogs; The Terriers, Toys, Nonsporting Dogs, and Herding Dogs; The Miscellaneous Breeds and Other Dogs; The Dog Show (Heaven Help Us); Looking at Dogs/Personal Reminiscences.

Anyone who has been "into dogs" will enjoy this fabulous book.

I found "Changing Works" to be a very informative text in the area of technological advances in the dairy industry. Harper uses SONJ pictures to highlight wonderful interviews with various dairy farmers that farmed in the generations before World War II. These interviews bring the past back to life as the reader goes through the mechanization introductions such as replacement of horses and the reconstruction of the milking process. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the dairy industry and to future dairymen. As an agricultural student, I was enthralled throughout the entire book. Harper tends to be less descriptive when it comes to the actual workings of the machinery, but it does not take much away from the rich narrative he weaves with the farmers' interviews. The reader gets a feeling of loss for the traditional ways that Harper projects throughout the book and it only enhances the content.

The followup to "Clarissa and The Countryman" and the companion book to the second installment of the BBC television series is as enjoyable as the first. Once again Ms. Wright and Sir Scott provide a very personal glimpse into the tradtional English country way of life. The book carries with it the dry humor and robust love of life that Ms. Wright is known for, along with Sir Scott's prodigious and intimate understanding of the natural cycles of life that only a true countryman can posess.

Unfortunately, as a result of this book and series Ms. Wright and Sir Scott have come under fire (including death threats in Ms. Wright's case) for their stewardship and love of the planet and its ecology by shortsighted, over-zealous, and un-informed so-called "Animal Rights Activists". Some of this is dealt with in the book, and stands in stark contrast to the otherwise light nature of this read.

My hat is off again to these brave authors, and as I said in my review of the previous book --- Hey, BBC!! Throw us Yanks a bone and air this series on BBC America!

Compiled by American tractor enthusiast Cletus Hohman, Classic Deere Tractors is a showcase album of a wide variety of farm tractors from 1914 to 1970. Full-color photographs present each of these classic "big green" tractor models, while brief captions containing just the facts about each model enhance what is primarily a pictorial tribute. Classic Deere Tractors is a thoroughly enjoyable and nostalgic book which is specifically and enthusiastically recommended for dedicated tractor enthusiasts in general, and John Deere fans in particular.

Wow! I said when I read this book. It is descriptive and very well written. It's a page turner!

Few would quarrel with the assertion that the successes of modern biochemistry and molecular biology spring from the growth of our in-depth awareness of enzyme mechanism and control. The ability to design new therapeutic agents, the creation of catalytic antibodies, the development of modified organisms that contain reorganized metabolic pathways for organic synthesis and bioremediation, and the ability to trim, cut, and redesign DNA molecules---all of these advances are the product of the systematic characterization of enzyme kinetics and mechanism. In this four-volume series, the editors have brought together the latest achievements and perspectives of the acknowledged leaders in the field. This series treats enzymes by the type of organic reaction, thereby allowing the reader to integrate the wide-ranging information and data about enzymes that are related more by their catalytic mechanisms than by their position in otherwise diverse metabolic pathways. The coverage is uniformly excellent, and the lexicon in vol. IV allows one to gain familiarity with some of the conceptual underpinning and jargon of the field. The editors, Dr. Michael Sinnott, Dr. C. David Garner, Dr. Eric First, and Dr. Gideon Davies all deserve praise for providing the reader with a virtually flawless reference book. They are also undoubtedly responsible for the uniformly high quality of the diagrams, chemical structures, as well as the three-dimensional color plates of enzymes and active sites. Perhaps, the only weakness is that one must always keep vol. IV close by, because none of the other volumes contains a subject index. (For the advertised price of $899, surely the publisher could have included a comprehensive index in each of the volumes. It's not too late to offer this feature in future printings.) Few individuals can afford to purchase treatises like "Comprehensive Biological Catalysis", but everyone responsible for the reading rooms in biochemistry departments, pharmacology departments, and medicinal chemistry departments should greet this four-volume series as a special opportunity to educate graduate students, post-docs, and the faculty.

This is an informative series on various aspects of the destruction of our World. The content of all the books are written for children over 10. They discuss what is happening to the Earth and how it will affect us now and in the future. The series also explains how the reader can help counter the problem in each book. They also make it obvious to the readers why we need to save these valuable elements of our Earth, by stopping the destruction of them. The books hit a chord with young people, making them want to do something. I would recomend these to anyone, young or old wanting to read about our most precious resource, our home, the Earth.

This book has received an Award of Excellence from the 2001 Southern Books Competition. "The austere black and white Contemporary Ranches of Texas with its barbed-wire rule and powerfully understated photographs captures the essence of Texas." Congratulations to the author and photographer, designer Ellen McKie and the University of Texas Press.

I was lucky enough to travel from my home in Southern California to Tasmania to study abroad through my school, UCLA. At the University of Tasmania I had Professor Kirkpatrick for my Vegetation Management class, for which we bought this book. I assumed it would be dry, too large, too detailed, and boring, but it ended up proving to be inspiring, well-written, informative, and to the point. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in a) environmental issues, b) the management of plants (especially Australian plants, although the knowledge is useful for any bioregion), or c) some general philosophies, arguments, and reasonings for conservation of nature and the effect of humans on the environment. I am a Geography major and risked overpacking my bags for the flight back to Cali in order to bring this book back; despite my broke status at the end of my study abroad semester, I refused to sell this book back.