Washington Books

I am a former student of Arno. His work captures his brilliance for a split second that everyone gets to look at. But he is so much more than that. Traveling with him across Europe to make Body Land seemed almost dream like. His love, passion and dedication to his work and his students is like nothing else one can describe. Master!!!

Just when you think you've seen everything, you see Arno Rafael Minkkinen's book, "Body Land". He has tapped into a truly new form of image in nature. His photographs are intensly creative and will inspire even the most inexperienced photographer. The form of the nude body blends perfectly in nature with images that will leave you gazing. Everyone needs to see this collection.

From 1955 to 1957, Boise, Idaho, was caught in the grip of a full-blown Gay panic that made national headlines and gave Idaho's judicial system a black eye. This study of the panic, published in 1965, is both of its time and decades ahead of it. Gerassi brilliantly dissects the (chiefly economic) motives of people involved in promoting and prosecuting the scandal. He also displays a sharp eye for character and incidental detail.

A must-read for anyone interested in GLBT history, and also a classic piece of investigative journalism, Gerassi's book is an astonishing piece of work. (Neil Miller covers a similar scandal in Sioux City, IA, with the somewhat inferior _Sex Crime Panic_.)

The Boys of Boise is one of those books that anyone interested in understanding the issues besetting those living an alternative lifestyle must read.

John Gerassi writes an editorial history of a series of politically motivated arrests and harrassments of those in the homosexual community in Boise, Idaho in 1955. Gerassi writes from a mid-1960s perspective in the midst of the sexual revolution looking back on a different perspective when homosexuality was even less accepted than it was in the 1960s.

The book explores several issues as they impacted a prosecution of a given portion of the homosexual population: community politics, the input and influence of a religous community (in Boise - the LDS), the role of the popular local press, a grab for power by those outside the main community power structure, the role of law enforcement and the courts.

Why is this book a must read for understanding issues facing those living alternative lifestyles today? The events covered could happen in any community today - to those who are exploring poly relationships, BDSM, and Gor - as well as to those who continue to simply live within the Gay community. There are laws on our books in each state and locale that could be discriminatively enforced to bring problems to individuals or groups - in violation of protections they believe they have under the Bill of Rights.

The only possible negative in the book - and for some it is not a negative - is the amount of space devoted to reproducing the entirety of court dialogs and certain other primary sources. While I personally enjoyed having the sources there - other historians would prefer they be relegated to either appendices or simply referenced and summarized. It should be noted that when Gerassi wrote this book - he was a reporter/editor for a news periodical rather than a university professor.

The book definitely belongs in the library of scholars devoted to Urban studies, gay studies, the sociology of alternative lifestyles and the like.

If you enjoy skillfully-crafted character studies, this is the perfect book for you. You will fall in love with the town and people depicted in this excellent read. My only disappointment with this book was that it ended. I found myself missing the characters and wishing I had lived then and could have known them in person. My daughter actually introduced me to the book when it was on her required reading list for an English class when she was in high school. It is a book worth having in your collection to read over and over again every few years. When you read it again, it's like meeting up with an old friend who you haven't seen in years, but can converse with like you had never been apart.

Captivating book that grabs you on the first page and doesn't let you go! Realistic tales of love and loss that hit close to home. Wonderful when read with her autobiographical collection of essays "Chain of Hands".

I read this book over 45 years ago while completing my undergraduate studies in Engineering. I have never forgotten it!! The significant substories within the book describe the development of wire rope; the construction of the first successful suspension bridge across the Niagara Gorge; the details of construction of the Brooklyn Bridge; and the comparison of the sway bracing of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and its ultimate fate. These could all have been the subject of separate books and each was facinating in itself.

This fascinating book descibes the the story of the brooklyn bridge in New York, and the story of their builders, the roebling brothers. Roebling had the great idea of building a bridge not with stiff beams, but with two big soft ropes made of fibers of strong and elastic steel. An idea, which now is used with nearly all Bridges of wide span. I love this book, because it is not an engineering report, but the touching story of the life of mainly the elder Roebling brother, who dedicated his health and his life to this bridge.

I could read this book nearly 40 years ago, and still it is one of my favorites. I do not posess it, and I deeply regret that it is not available any more. Hopefully AMAZON can find some and put them on their stock...

Thank you so much! I love it when sellers are so honest about their products. It is in Excellent shape like new inspite of a few pages being the penciled in answers. I have a choice to erase or leave them. :) an extra benifit. I am glad I purshased my work book from such honest people thank you for making my educucational textbooks affordable. The shipping was speedy too. thank you

This series of vocabulary books is so helpful for teaching young people, with "Building Vocab" being best for students at the 8-9 grade reading level. 10 words per chapter, with lots of activities & exercises to see the word in context, pronounciation help, & SAT-type questions--sentence completions & analogies. Every 6th chapter is word parts (prefixes, suffixes, roots), & is followed by a unit review of several pages, including a crossword & other multiple choice/matching questions. Highly recommend.

The author, a lawyer and a dual citizen of Venezuela and the United States, has literally risked her life to publish this book. She has received numerous death threats and plenty of insults. A sequel to her previous bestseller, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela", it examines secret US documents that reveal how hard the Bush administration is trying to overthrow the democratically-elected Venezuelan government.

"Follow the money trail" is good advice for any investigative journalist, and Golinger does just that. By studying thousands of US government documents obtained through exhaustive requests of every relevant department through the Freedom of Information Act, she is revealing proof of manipulation and covert operations to overthrow Chávez.

Historians generally do this work decades after major upheavals in Latin America. Golinger is doing this research now, in "real-time", to break the secrecy of Bush's imperial designs and to prevent a coup in the making.

Is the United States funding Counter-revolutionary groups in Venezuela? Yes, says "Bush vs Chavez: Washington's War on Venezuela". Claiming that American taxpayer dollars are funding, albeit indirectly, organizations that fund the counter-revolutionary groups of Venezuela, in hopes for gaining favor with Latin America's most oil rich nation. More frightening, there is a build up of US troops in the Caribbean that are ready to threaten the Venezuelan people and their governments. "Bush vs Chavez: Washington's War on Venezuela" is highly recommended for community library social issues collections and for anyone who wants a look into the shadier actions of the Bush Administration.

I have two copies of this book.

It opened my eyes to things I had never seen wandering the Coastal Range and Cascade Mountains of Oregon and SW Washington.

This field guide is well organized with beautiful photos. Each butterfly listed has a key for recognition, variations, life history as well as habitat range and the time of year you are likely to see this butterfly on the wing. A particularly nice feature is is the list of names for each as butterflies often have akas (also known as.)Dr. Pyles broad knowledge of nature allows him to include additional information about the history of butterfly study. This book will supplant other field guides whose scope intends to include the entire continent. The beautiful durable cover will look good on your desk and will function well in your field pack.
The tremendous amount of data collected in these pages reflect a dedication to the study of butterflies that is inspiring to the amateur and professional naturalist.

I like reading the book. This book contain all basic information about the Hmong culture. I highly recommended all Hmong and nonHmong who are interesting about Hmong culture to read this book. The author Patricia Symonds have come to understand and experience the Hmong Culture well.

I came to this book after reading several recent ethnographies, and went on to more. This book stood out as a high peak between the others. Symonds actually tells, in wonderful detail, how the White Hmong of north Thailand are born, negotiate life, and finally die and receive burial. She presents the Hmong through their own words--both individual stories and sacred texts. One high point of the book is the material on childbirth--hard to study in the field, and rarely reported. Another high point is the text and translation of the entire White Hmong burial chant, which is the most sacred of texts and includes the Hmong cosmology. A sustained, striking poem, it must be darkly powerful and chillingly beautiful when shamans chant it over the deceased.
One virtue of this ethnography is that it complements existing (mostly male-written) Hmong ethnographies by presenting a female-centered view; White Hmong society is quite gender-separate, and a male ethnographer would not have had the insights into birth and its rituals.
Symonds tells us enough about herself to allow us to understand her situation, but is not obtrusively "reflexive." She contexts the Hmong in Thai politics, but never loses her focus on the Hmong. (This in contrast to some recent ethnographies I have read, in which anthropologists blow their own expertise--ethnography--and try with conspicuous lack of success to be political scientists instead.) She tells us what she thinks is happening, thus fulfilling anthropological responsibilities, but does not bury her material under floods of speculative "interpretation," again in contrast to some recent works I have had to read. Like Nicholas Tapp (oft cited herein), she actually lets the Hmong speak and act, and thus we have the enormous benefit of their words, views, and deeds. This is an extremely valuable corrective to the mere-victim or mere-backdrop status that the Hmong, like other minority peoples, have had in so much of the literature. The Hmong experience, like all human experience, is precious to us all, and this book presents an impressive amount of it. I hope young ethnographers will read and learn.

This book is fantastic! It covers Carnival celebrations from all over the world. The history is detailed but not dull, and the pictures are vibrant and lively. I recommend this book to anyone that has been to (or wants to attend) a Carnival celebration and anyone that is interested in the stories/histories of the celebrations.

In the forward to the vibrant, sumptuous and well-researched ¡Carnival!, Joyce Ice, Director of the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA), notes that festivals "as cultural phenomena never fail to intrigue and captivate us as human beings, whether we are casual observers, researchers, or participants." Edited by Barbara Mauldin, curator of Latin American folk art at MOIFA, ¡Carnival! does indeed intrigue and captivate as we are plunged-through essays, photographs and illustrations-into the fascinating and diverse celebration of this important and lively Christian festival. ¡Carnival! focuses on communities in Spain, Mexico, Switzerland, Haiti, Bulgaria, Italy, the United States, Bolivia, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago. A varied and highly-qualified stable of historians, folklorists, anthropologists, linguists and curators offer well-researched and insightful essays that demonstrate how one festival could evolve into wonderfully diverse (yet similar) pre-Lenten celebrations. Colorful photographs and illustrations capture the sizzle and sass of the parades and costumes that take center stage in each of the cultures represented in this book. ¡Carnival! was almost a decade in the making and it shows. Meticulous yet soulful, scholarly yet enchanting, ¡Carnival! delights and amazes as much as it reminds us of the astonishing diversity of the world's cultures. [The full review first appeared in Southwest BookViews.]

Whether you are a climber, a hiker, a car traveler, or just an armchair explorer, the Beckey guides are the indispensible resources for your mountain experience. The three volumes are filled with information about the natural and human history of the Washington Cascades, as well as complete route and access data for every significant summit. The photos alone are reason enough to own these books. If you are interested in really "knowing" the Washington Cascades, you MUST have them in your library. Highest possible recommendation.

I have used this Guidebook so many times in the past 12 years that I've had to purchase it three times. The definitive section on the Picket Range alone is worth the price of the book.

For those who want to experience the North Cascades as they were in the 30's and 40's, reading the "Trails and Alpine Hiking Approaches" section will steer you in the right direction. This book is rife with golden kernels of information found nowhere else. Any serious climber should have all three of the Cascade Alpine Guide books.

Mike Quinn