The Earth Books

The book arrived quickly and in good condition. I would purchase from this seller again.

I have been reading this book as part of a research project. The essence of the book is a play by play of the development of the LOTR through multiple drafts. If someone is looking for a continuation of the entertaining series, I would suggest first The Silmarillion, then Lost Tales, Lays of Beleriand, or Unfinished Tales. For the serious Tolkien fan who wants to understand the origins, the book does a good job of organizing the multiple drafts and highlighting significant shifts in Tolkien's thought.

For those of us who enjoy taking Tolkien's vision and expanding upon it, this book and the "History of Middle Earth" series is a must as a reference source.

This book and the whole series expounds on Tolkien's vision and desire for his characters. Often nuggets of data not found in the primary books (LotR, The Hobbitt, etc.) can be uncovered within the HoME.

`Sauron Defeated' is the last of a four volume series (`The History of the Lord of the Rings') within a series, (volume IX of `The History of Middle Earth') edited by Christopher Tolkien, from the unpublished writings of his father, J. R. R. Tolkien, most famous as the author of `The Hobbit' and `The Lord of the Rings' (LotR).

The most important thing to realize about this book is that only about a third of its pages deal with `The History of The Lord of the Rings'. The remaining two-thirds deals with a subject which harks back to `The Lost Road' and the wager taken up between the two `Inklings' (an Oxford literary and social society), Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

The LotR story in this book covers the last few days of Sam and Frodo in Mordor, as they painfully make their way to the Cracks of Doom on Orodruin in order to finally destroy the `One Ring'. This takes a very few pages, after which we are left with the notes on the long and slow road home, to one of to me the most interesting episodes in the whole LotR, `The Scouring of the Shire'. I can easily understand why Peter Jackson left this episode and the events involving Tom Bombadil from his films (ten hours is surely long enough for even a cinematic event of these proportions), but they still remain my favorite events.

The middle third of the book is taken up with `The Notion Club Papers', which appears to be a fictional account of the goings-on at the real live `Inkling' meetings at Oxford. There is a lot of playful parodying here, especially on some of C. S. Lewis' works. These drafts also use a conceit most famously used by Robert Graves in his `I, Claudius' and `Claudius The God' novels, where it is made out that these papers were discovered among discarded papers in the year 2012 (about 60 years after they were actually written.) The final third of this volume is filled with additional versions of Tolkien's Atlantis myth, entitled `The Drowning of Anadune', the events which lead the Numenorean ancestors to flee to Middle Earth and become the Dunedain.

The primary relevance of these materials to LotR lie in the fact that Tolkien seems to have put aside work on LotR to do these things, until his erstwhile publisher, Stanley Unwin gently prodded him into returning to completing LotR.

The LotR fanatic, these `The Notion Club Papers' have much less interest than LotR notes or even the Numenor myths, but there they are, certainly useful for any study of the times and doings of Oxford during the real war raging just on the other side of the channel.

Pending my review of the last three books of `The History of Middle Earth', I suspect these four are easily the most interesting to fans of Tolkien's published works.

So maybe you didn't fly through the last 3 books like the first five, but get ready to put your seatbelt on for this ride. The start of this book finished off the evolution of the lord, and also gives a pretty cool story where sam is answering his kids questions of what happened in the war of the ring.

The second part is back to the stuff that I love. I have reread the wierd inklings fictiot piece a number odf times, and it gets more interesting every time. My first time reading it, it was very hard for me to understand.

The third part of the book is certainly one of the coolest things that I have ever read. It is a totally superior version to the silmarillion of the fall of numenor. Anybody looking to go into the mind of sauron a little deeper, this is a MUST BUY for you!!!!!!!!!!

The last part of this book will go over most peoples heads(at least I hope so, cause it went way over mine.), it is a GREAT writing about the language of Adunic? I don't really speak any of tolkien's languages, but still like to read his essay-type papers on his languages. Though not as interesting as the lost tales and stuff like that, I still found all of them fun to read, and this one on the Adunic language I thought was the best out of them all.

OVERALL ONE HELL OF AN ADDITION TO THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE EARTH SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For years I have been collecting pieces of music that reflect the Pagan lifestyle. This is a collection that reflects the face of the Mother, and the children of Her Universe! An excellent collection of chants and musical offerings in one place. This should be on the book shelf of every Pagan, or Earth-friendly person!
Tyla

This is a great resource for anyone who likes to sing earth-friendly songs. Great selection, well organized, and the hole-punched format fits well with the many notebooks of music I have.

I am a choir director for a small, non-denominational Christian church. We like to do music from a wide variety of traditions. This book has been like a gift from the Gods! It's an amazing resource for music from so many different traditions, organized in an easy to use way. Every time I look through it I find something new.

I bought this book to use as resource for my environmental education and religion/spirituality work. As a musician and songwriter for the Earth Mama projects, I review lots of current music materials. This is the finest I have seen. Notation is clear and accurate. Commentary and notes on the songs and ideas are articulate and thoughtful. The entire volume (over 400 songs)is a rich resource of material from many traditions which I will savour and enjoy for years. References, incidentals, quotes and comments sprinked throughout are the icing on the cake. I have given several of these as gifts to schools, music departments and organizations. They are always delighted to add Songs for Earthlings to their library.
Joyce Rouse, AKA Earth Mama...

from Green Egg Magazine:This collection of songs meets all my expectations of a great songbook and more. It provides an excellent introduction to music theory in nine concentrated lessons that could easily turn a person who has never studied music into a well-grounded beginning musician and it specifically meets my thirst for a variety of songs in harmony (so to speak) with the Earth.Clearly a labor of love, Songs For Earthlings is beautifully, conveniently and informatively arranged and obviously inspired.This collection is multicultural, diverse, lovely, inspiring, and includes beloved old familiar songs and exciting new material.

Thin Ice by Mark Bowen is a great story, well told. The book captures the excitement of experimental climate science and the extremely hard work that it entails. Anyone who likes books about scientific endeavors will enjoy this book. After reading it I understood the arguments about climate change much better than I used to. Unfortunately, the bottom line is pretty grim. The author is both a scientist and an alpine climber. Climbers take the loss of the glaciers very personally, and this book, while not being weepy or overly political, imparts the message that humans urgently need to confront the issue of climate change.

My son recommended and bought this book for me. At university studying environmental science he started as a sceptic on anthropogenic climate change. He read widely. This book inspired him by clearly portraying the excitement of scientific discovery. Written by a physicist it describes the career of Lonnie Thomson an ice-core specialist and his research group. He had to fight bureaucracy to get to collect and analyse ice cores from the world's tropical ice fields. They have spent more time above 22,000 feet than any others. In parts it reads like a mountaineering epic such as Annapurna. But all the heroics are clearly determined by scientific goals. It is a story of team work and the excitement of discovery. They made the connection between ancient climate change and rise and fall of civilisations from ice cores dated to a single year or even a season of a single year. This is complementary to a more detailed account of rise and fall of civilisations Collapse by Jared Dimond. Bowen, being a physicist, provides a simple clear explanation of carbon dioxide rise and its connection to climate change. This book concentrates on the science and pre-dates but underpins the latest IPCC reports on the seriousness of anthropogenic climate change. My son has converted to believer and is vigorously pursing a research career after being inspired by this book. It is a well written and gripping account of modern day science which should be widely read. Thoroughly recommended.

This is an excellent book on climate change, and in particular the less seldom discussed evidence for climate change in the tropics. It will give readers a first hand account of not only the process of scientific thought but also some of the personalities and egos that are involved in cutting edge research. Lonnie Thompson is the rare scientist dedicated to a quest for the truth who is not driven by his resume. His unique mode of operation is one many scientists could learn from. The book is also full of high adventure and documents the sacrifices that are made in search of scientific data. A true adventure story. The writing style with long sentences takes some getting used to but it is still clearly written.

This is one of the best books I've picked up in years. Mark Bowen has produced a landmark piece of work. It's both extremely informative as well as being very readable.

The story centers on ice cores pulled up over the last 25+ years from the fast-disappearing glaciers on the tops of the world's highest mountains -- a grand adventure in itself -- with the results being put in the context of the current science of the greenhouse effect and global warming, the possible environmental collapse of numerous ancient civilizations (since the ice core records go back many thousands of years), with just enough on the politics of controlling carbon dioxide emissions and the way scientific research is done to keep things interesting and real.

As someone who tries to keep up with scientific developments -- as difficult as that is with the major news media being myopically focused on sensationalism and celebrity (right now it's the JonBenet Ramsey rerun...) -- I felt like I was being caught up on all the many important details and various threads of a story that I already sorta knew the larger outline and implications of.

If I had one complaint it was that the book seemed to need many more graphs than the single one it contains. Some of the subject matter is just technical enough that this would have been much better than the several paragraphs of carefully constructed words needed to convey the same idea. I suppose publishers think that it'll scare off too many customers if they see graphs in a book.

Highly recommended and deserving of much more attention than it's received (based partly on the paltry number of reviews here). Buy a copy for yourself and an additional one to give to a friend or colleague.

This is travelogue, musings, science, story-telling, and a gentle (non-polemic) argument about a critical present-day issue. The previous reviewers (especially the first two) and Bill McKibben's dust-jacket comment are good guides. Some of the author's descriptions of mountain scenery are quite beautiful. Although I always have been concerned about climate change based on the "precautionary principle" and "responsibility to future generations" ideas, this book helped me put some meat on the thin bones of my understanding. It also reached me at an emotional level, since the reader spends so much time with the scientists and get a close-up view of how they arrive at their understandings.

The book does not simply follow a chronological narrative, but branches off for visits to related topics. I found this style of organization effective and fun. (Like a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon where you frequently stop for a day to explore side canyons.)

There are 24 pages of notes and 21 pages of (about 400-500) references.

Jennifer Leigh Sauer has created a masterwork of words and photography that transcends the local tea culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and brings tea culture to a larger audience. By focusing on the Bay Area, she brings the centuries old concept of tea culture to a larger American audience. Her personal adventure in mastering this subject has created more than a local guidebook. Ms. Sauer's loving attention to detail has produced a beautiful book.

Few photographers can match Jennifer's eye for photographing tea. Her guide to tea in San Francisco is as complete a snapshot as you will find for this city that embraces both European and Asian tea traditions. The Way of Tea is a delicious feast for the eyes!

The Way to Tea has lured me into exploring the diverse world of tea and savoring its pleasures. The book's captivating pictures and thoughtful text are steeped with the author's spirit of adventure and appreciation for the world hidden behind cups of tea. The book inspires an awakening of the senses and intellect --an alluring antidote to the world of stressful living and mindless consumption. The Way to Tea is a beautiful way to celebrate the New Year as a gift to oneself or a friend.

What a delightful and well thought out book for Tea House Lovers, The Way To Tea. think the photos are beautifully done and I love the way the book reads. It is a perfect size for living room tables and friends have already picked it up at bookstores as well.I was surprised at how many quality places there are to go in San Fran. A great book for visitors and locals alike! Have already given two as gifts... many thanks

This is an excellent book with wonderful photographs and extremely well written. After reading this book I definitely want to visit San Francisco and visit some of the tea houses. Anyone would miss a great opportunity to learn more about tea and tea houses and history of tea if they do not buy this book.

This could have been a much longer book and sometimes I wish it was.

The author has a clear grasp on the subject of western mysticism and makes it clear to the reader. And this is no small task. Just his description alone of what the Knowledge and Conversation is with the Holy Guardian Angel makes this book worthy reading. But, even more, he's quite clear about the various approaches to meeting that objective, including straightforward devotion (often overlooked).

I hope this one stays in print for a while to give people a chance to discover it. The simple smart writing style is interesting (which is something often missing from works like this).

I often re-read it because of its wisdom. A great addition to my library.

This book is a very good read for those of us who have tried the old methods represented in Mathers version of the Abramerlin.

i AGREE WITH THE THE CONCEPTS OF NEW (old) AGE MAGIK IN THIS BOOK THEY WORK.

this book is awesome. it explains in great detail, yet simply, how to attain what crowley called the "knowledge and conversation of your holy gurdian angel." cutting through all the crap, he distills the essence of Abramalin. its so simple. change your self, change the world.

The book delivers what it promises: a modern look on the abramelin operation and the possible procedures involved in obtaining the so called knowledge and conversation with your Holy Guardian Angel, samadhi, or whatever your label of choice is for this ineffable experience you are after. Just like "The New Hermetics" (another title by the same author which I sincerely recommend for those with an interest in magick and/or NLP...and how big is the difference between the two after all?), 21st Century Mage keeps an eye on the past and tradition, while at the same time cutting through whatever may be superfluous, and keeping a very effective, non-dogmatic, outcome-oriented attitude. If you have a general interest for the abramelin operation and are after a good read, or if you are looking for the book that finally makes it sound feasible, explains how, and spurs you to seriously invest your time to DO IT, 21st Centruy Mage definitely has its place on your bookshelf.

I really enjoyed this book as I was not quite sure how to approach the abramelin book. For example, in the old book it talks about cleanliness, giving advice on how we should bath once a week to be pure. Obviously, 500-some years ago, people didn't have alot of water and using it to bath daily(like most modern city people do)well, once a week was more often than those folks were accustomed to. So I like that this book explains that we don't really have to follow that book down to the letter, as most of it is very Christian anyway, and as any practicing occultist would know, angels are NOT confined to Christian/Jewish beliefs, and that the HGA is most probably not even an angel at all.

I like this book very much and reccomend it to anyone who has already read the three books of abramelin the mage, and would like a modern interpretation of it.

I've just ordered "New Hermetics" by this same author and I'm sure it's great. It basically modernizes "Initiation into Hermetics" by Franz Bardon, so if you've had trouble reading that book too, get this new book as it uses common-sense easy to understand language. Visit the authors website to get previews of that book.

The author writes in a clear manner and fits a lot of interesting information into a fairly small book (about 50,000 words in 215 5X7 inch pages). He gets slightly technical -- about the right amount for a tyro like me.
I found his defense of evolution in chapter 3 to be particularly thought provoking. The author makes the point that there is no single cause, no essence, and no blue print for some complex processes -- "There are only the parts and their interactions". The mathematically inclined may wish to see a half-million word expansion of this theme in S. Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".
I noticed a couple of errors:

- Latitude and longitude get swapped from page 65 to page 67.

- Page 30 states that dogs breathe at 30-40 breaths/minute or pant at 300-400 breaths/minute, and they do not breathe at any in between rate. I timed my dog panting at about 180 breaths per minute.

Get ready to embark on a truly exciting and entertaining round-the-world voyage of discovery. And it won't take 80 days, either. In just 215 pages and in beautiful prose, Mark Blumberg explains the vitally important connection between temperature and life on Earth.

Body Heat not only answers questions that I've always wondered about but also answers questions that I've never even thought to ask. For example, before I read this book, I didn't know how Antarctic fish survive (answer: antifreeze in their blood) or how male penguins manage to incubate eggs while enduring temperatures of -76 degrees F (answer: I won't spoil it for you). On the opposite end of the thermometer-at 185 degrees F-is the bacterium that thrives within hydrothermal vents more than one mile below the surface of the ocean. As the author so rightly puts it, "These are the true athletes of the extreme." And then there are the enlightening discussions about those aspects of our lives that are much closer to home - thermostats, peppers, sleep, fevers, dogs, obesity, anorexia, language, behavior, and babies, just to name a few. It's amazing how much information can be shared when the language is clear and purposeful.

As told in this treasure of a book - with humor ("Pluto is cold; Chicago in January is merely inconvenient"), a passion for his subject, and a marvelous ability to draw on diverse subjects as well as personal experiences to tell this story - the tale of temperature and life on Earth is fascinating indeed.

In Body Heat : Temperature And Life On Earth, biophysicist Mark Blumberg's exploration of temperature in the world considers the many ways temperature rules the lives of animals, from how penguins survive Antarctic winters to why people survive drowning accidents in winter, but not in summer. Packed with important scientific insights and a lively style which lends to leisure browsing, Body Heat is a remarkable survey and a highly recommended selection for Environmental Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

Body Heat is an introduction to how living things regulate their internal temperature in the face of changing external circumstances. It is aimed at a general readership and written in a non-technical style. Although published by the Harvard University Press and handsomely presented, this is not as rigorously scientific as one might like.

First of all there are no footnotes so that some of University of Iowa psychology Professor Mark Blumberg's assertions are without reference. In a work aimed at the general public this is perhaps acceptable, even preferable; however when some of the assertions are a bit puzzling, it would be agreeable to have some attribution.

For example, Blumberg claims that the ancestors of the Pima Indians of southern Arizona (whom he is writing about because they have low levels of leptin which "predisposes them to fat storage") "have lived in North America for 30,000 years." (p. 182) From everything I know about the settlements in North America, there are none that go back 30,000 years. Perhaps this is a very recent discovery. If so, he should cite the source.

Or, consider Figure 8 on page 179. This is a black and white photo of two mice, "one bred for obesity (left) and the other a normal mouse..." On the facing page 178 the obese "mouse" is identified as a db/db (for diabetes) mouse, yet the text suggests that it is more likely a ob/ob (for obese) mouse. Maybe I have this wrong, but what REALLY bothers me about the photo is that I think those white mice are really white RATS and the wrong picture (or text) was used!

Or, on page 175 Blumberg writes that "a pound of fat holds twice as much energy as does a pound of sugar or protein." Actually it holds more like 2.25 times as much energy. There are nine calories in a gram of fat and four in either a gram of sugar or protein. Since I'm sure Blumberg knows this I can only attribute his expression to either a desire on the part of his publisher to "keep it simple" and avoid fractions, or because in the metabolism of fat some energy is lost. If the former is the reason, he should have insisted in the interest of accuracy on the more precise expression; and if the latter, he should have told us so. In either case, we are left wondering if we are being "dumbed down."

This simplistic approach, a kind of creeping casualness about what is and what isn't so, may lead the reader to wonder about the strict accuracy of other statements in the book. For example, on page 158 we learn that the psychologist Craig Anderson asserts that in high heat conditions (hot days) there is an increase in human violence and aggression. This seems reasonable enough. However Blumberg then cites Anderson as suggesting that "if global warming trends continue, an increase in average temperature by" two degrees fahrenheit "will result in 24,000 additional murders each year in the United States." This is startling, so much so I would like to have some of the evidence and the reasoning leading to his conclusion. But Blumberg does not provide any. He does however cite a research paper by Anderson in the bibliography.

Another example of Blumberg really needing to tell us more than he does is from page 188 where he writes that on a "practical level" leptin is not likely to help the average overweight person because "leptin costs nearly $200 per milligram." Problem here is, how much leptin would one need--a milligram a month or perhaps a milligram a day? Again Blumberg doesn't say.

This casualness of expression is really a shame because in perhaps the most interesting part of the book, in the chapter entitled "Livin' Off the Fat," Blumberg presents some evidence that anorexia nervosa may to some degree be a disease caused by a thermoregulatory dysfunction. (pp. 191-196) Unfortunately before he presents this argument he writes that the "discrepancy between the physical realities faced by most women and the messages portrayed by a minority of women who are so thin that many of them no longer have menstrual cycles has helped to generate a steady increase in the incidence of anorexia nervosa over the last twenty years." (p. 188)

I'm not sure what this means, except it sounds a lot like the usual lament about how the fashion media is in some sense responsible for anorexia. Yet, he doesn't exactly say that, does he? What he really says is that some "women" have "helped to... increase" anorexia!

Finally on page 204 Blumberg notes that there are "many theories, some of them silly and some of them intriguing" as to why we behave as we do in REM sleep. However, he just leaves it at that without mentioning any of them except to say that temperature is a factor.

On the plus side, there is a lot of interesting information in the book about how heat and cold affect us and other animals, and plants. I was surprised to learn that plants can heat themselves, that the skunk cabbage, for example, can melt snow (p. 92), and that some plants may be using heat instead of aroma or color to attract pollinating insects (p. 93). Also interesting is the little known fact that the skin of polar bears is actually black (to absorb as much of the sun's heat as possible) while its fur of course appears white to match the snow and ice of its environment.

Bottom line: this is definitely worth reading; however I think the decision to avoid being technical and explanatory work against the value of the book.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book. The publisher's weekly reviewer's criticism is misdirected. I guarantee that you will enjoy this book, and annoy the hell out of your friends/family quoting them little tidbits. I particularly enjoyed the author's discussion of the design of experiments, in his lab and in the lab's of other scientists, for various purposes. Highly recommended.

If I could have just one book on map collecting this would be it. The book is an enjoyable read, and written in a crystal clear fashion. The book contains much essential information for collectors: map terminology, printing methods, translation of common phrases into English, how to judge condition, and blunt advice on the workings of the marketplace. All of this plus great reference material on map makers, styles, and periods. I've had this book for several years now and find myself reaching for it time and again. Thank you Dr. Manasek!

Got this book for Christmas and read the whole thing through. Unlike other map reference books in my collection, I actually read this one cover to cover! It is a remarkable book and the author shares what is a vast knowledge with us in a very unusual and direct way. The illustrations are really great and there are lots of them. Where else, for example, can you learn the names of the different parts of a folding map, with each part illustrated with real examples? Every page seems to have several. It is a big and very beautiful book. I will now go and re-read it.

A book of substance. "Collecting Old Maps" really deals with the subject and is not a watered-down survey of old maps someone thinks we should collect. This book breaks with the old way map books were written and is a refreshing "out of the box" way to look at old map collecting. There is no other book like it and I don't know where else one can get the information that is in here. Very well written, a delight to read and not dumbed-down. There is even some sly humor in here! I agree with the earlier reviews so there is no point in repeating everything they said.

Love the book! Well written and very informative. I agree with the previous reviewers. I thank the autor.

This is truly an outstanding book. It is exceptionally well-written and the number of illustrations is exceptional. Unlike most map books, this one uses illustrations to make specific points about maps, as well as to show what the map looks like. There is a huge amount of information in here - including such things as illustrated details about pocket map construciton, microscope pictures of paper, information about acids (for the non-chemist!) and a wonderful section of over a hundred maps, one per page, arranged chronologically. I found the CollectingOldMaps website a very valuable collateral since it shows up-to-date prices for all the maps in the book. The readability and info in this book make it a bargain - it is beautiful, also!

As a transpersonal therapist, I have witnessed hundreds of spiritual transformations by patients brave enough to reach beyond the mere psychological approach within their therapy sessions. In her book, "Cut Cords of Attachment" Rose underscores one such methodology which uses a unique form of metaphysical detachment of energy fields which may bind one to their woundedness. Rose's dedication to completing an at-length, detailed account of her work and findings in this area is admirable. Her book is a good read with fascinating techniques to further build a healer's "bag-of-tricks" when dealing with past pain and trauma.
Barbara Sinor, Ph.D., Author
Gifts From The Child Within: Self-discovery and Self-recovery Through Re-Creation Therapy, 2nd Edition and
An Inspirational Guide for the Recovering Soul
Website: www.DrSinor.com

I have had the opportunity to go to Rose's Cord cutting Intensives- and it was so great to have this book as a back up to what i already learned. It helps put more "spiritual tools" in your tool belt!

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was interesting and delightful to read. The instruction in "Cut Cords of Attachment" was easy to follow and insightful. I highly recommend this book.

As soon as I started reading this book I knew it had come to me at an opportune time in my life. I devoured the pages with interest and delight. The instruction in "Cut Cords of Attachment" is unconventionally and powerfully presented. I felt as if Rose stood beside me teaching her techniques for cutting cords throughout the entire book.

If you want to learn how to reclaim the power in your life, make better choices and live more fully and authentically, please read this book.

Self-help guru Rosetree is the founder of ... Energy Spirituality and the author of numerous books.

In Cut Cords of Attachment, she argues for liberating personal relationships from the limitations of old patterns.

Are your interactions with your brother dominated by memories of sibling bullying? Does your college roommate always bring you down with her anger at men? Do you find yourself defending your life choices to your mom?

Whatever the pattern, Rosetree says, you can preserve the relationship while cutting the cord that binds, freeing you to interact in new ways. The book includes a "12-Step" program for severing such ties.

Note to Amazon readers, the original review appears in the Spring Issue 2008 of Brandeis University magazine. No stars are given in these reviews. The five-star treatment is extrapolated. Unfortunately, the Amazon listing process does not allow for more than three reviews posted in the review section.

Wolfe has managed to catch some of the Earth's most astounding and beautiful moments in clear, remarkable ways. With pictures of volcanoes exploding with nothing behind them but blackness and stars, and icebergs floating on the edge of gorgeous horizons, you really do feel as though you're on the very edge of the world.

Beauty and wildness are the two main themes of this book: eruptions of fire, crashing waves, and desert lands are all presented in beautiful and larger than life format. I honestly never knew that a volcano or iceberg could be strikingly beautiful until I read this book! I can't imagine how Wolfe caught these images. Although this book is not religious by theme, I don't know how anyone could come away from it unconvinced that there's a God, for surely only an infinetly majestic being could create such huge majesty. Read this book, and find yourself on the edge of an incredible world that you probably never realized you lived in.

Anyone who cares about wild places will find Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky to be a tremendously moving testament to our need to preserve the places that provide us with our sense of wonder. The photography will bring most people to this book, but the essays by Art Davidson about how our wild places are in jeopardy will stay just as vividly in your mind. Robert Redford and John Adams provide excellent forewords to set the stage for this remarkable work. Whether or not you know how to take landscape photographs, the section describing Art Wolfe's most unusual works will fascinate you.

The volume is divided into five wild landscape subjects: desert, ocean, mountain, forest, and polar. Now, if you are like me, you might think that desert is a strange choice. How can that be very interesting? Actually, the brilliance of the photographic work will astonish you. Mr. Wolfe unveils stunning montages of vivid color and shimmering shadows. In a few instances, he selects angles that reveal one or two trees in the foreground that are totally dominated by sand dunes in the background. It's like traveling to Herbert's Dune, although the scenes are from Namibia here on Earth.

Surprisingly, ocean is probably the least interesting subject among the five although no one will be yawning at these wonderful images. Mountain images provide a delightful combination of the familiar (Mount Everest and the Matterhorn) and the intriguing unfamiliar (Mount Fitzroy in Argentina and Los Penitentes in Chile). All of the polar scenes are eerie in their beauty and desolation.

Many books of landscape photography rely on the grandeur of nature's normal expression. Mr. Wolfe is far more artful in his compositions than that. Like Ansel Adams, the moon may be setting at just the right spot in the sky to provide extra drama. Using the light that may also exist for a few seconds on any day near sunrise or sunset, vivid colors streak across land, sky, and water. In one case, the illumination is from a brief solar eclipse. Mr. Wolfe is a man of great patience to create such unusual works. You could travel to all of these places for twenty years, and miss ever scene that Mr. Wolfe captured.

If you know anyone who cares about wild places, you would have a hard time finding a better gift than this one. And get a copy for yourself.

Find a way to keep the wild the way it is.

Bravo!

I really enjoyed this collection of still lives from the borderlines of space and time, light and structure.
Art Wolfe captures precious fleeting moments in its photographs, and makes you see things as you never did before. He shows the inherent and often overlooked beauty of lifeless landscapes; human beings, animals, and nearly all plants are excluded. The books five materials, sand, water, rock, trees/cacti, ice - and I may add a sixth: skies - are portrayed with such mastery, that you can feel their texture, and experience all their colors and shapes.
Art Davidson's texts are a perfect match, because they emphasize the photographer's statement that earth's integrity has to be conserved for the worth to humankind.

I bought this book and found that it is great in term of the technologies used to produce this book. From cover design, binding, scanned photos, paper quality, etc. However, honestly and with my respect to Mr. Art Wolfe photography skills, I found most of his photos are lifeless. Technical wise they are super but they lack aesthetic touch and they seem to be missing their messages. BTW, they say it was seven years working on this book...not true! It was a collection of photographs on a course of 7 years. If you want a coffee table book, it is a great one. If you want a how-to, look for my great photographer...John Shaw. The master of life photos not lifeless ones. Last thing look at the book dimensions before you buy it. Very big.

In my opinion, the images within this book reflect a perfect combination of light and opportunity and particularly I'm very impressed by the star trails. In general Art Wolfe shows us "through the lens" how beautiful our earth currently is. An important message is that it should be saved so that future generations will be able to live on. The (excellents) forewords in this book underline this approach.

At the end of the book Art Wolfe explains his used technique, how to achieve a proper exposure, how to consider the light etc.. This book is brilliant in all aspects!

If you like giant monster movies, and want to know more about how they were made, this book is for you. Not many photos of the monsters (there are other books out there for that) but there are behind the scenes photos. Learn the biographies of the men who made films you still love after all these years. Not much has been published in the West about them, but here it is! Well written and laid out. 2 page essays about certain film makers by noted Western Kaiju lovers. Worth the price, and thankful that it was printed.

This is a wonderful coffee-table size book that contains beautiful photos and interesting commentary. If you are a fan of Godzilla and/or Eiji Tsuburaya this is the book to get!

This book is a meticulous, thoughtful, well-written, and beautifully laid-out tribute to a true master of special effects. It is a fascinating look, not only into Tsuburaya's life and career, but also the way the film industry works in Japan. An interesting read for non-fans; a must-have for fans of the genre.

Phenomenal book. Great quality, design, and content. If you have any remote appreciation for this kind of film making and monster design, this book is an absolute love letter... A must have!

Tsuburaya Eiji was the Japanese special effects director who was behind so many monster movies that came out from Japan during the 1950s and 1960s. This is a pictorial biography of Tsuburaya Eiji that proves to be very well written and informative. I found the book to be rather insightful as the author included inserts written by men who worked with or worked under Tsuburaya Eiji during his career. The book also comes well illustrated with photographs and movie posters on almost every page as it traces the life and time of Tsuburaya Eiji's career. It was interesting to note that during World War II, he made a movie made from miniatures that showed the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was so realistic that during the initial post war period, Americans thought it was the real thing. Tsuburaya Eiji was also the man who made Godzilla what he was and creator of the Ultraman series that is still going on to this day.

Overall, this book is definitely worth your time and money to read over and treasure. Tsuburaya Eiji is one of the great pioneers of motion picture industry regarding special effects and his influence help shape this industry to this day. His influence in the science fiction genre will remains pretty strong as monster movies like Cloverfield still hit our theaters and on DVD to this day. The book strongly reflects the heydays of Japanese monster movie era history and it will remind many of us, the fun and wonder these movies brought us during our younger days. And it will inform otherwise misinformed that there is more to these movies then just a "guy in the monster suit" concept.

(And yes, I am writing the subject's name in Japanese style...sur name first always...Tsuburaya Eiji is the way you would address him if he was still alive today...as you would with any Japanese national.)