Barton Books

One great way for non-Chinese speakers to appreciate the nature of this book is to compare many different translations and see how different they can be. I've read any number of translations of the Dao De Jing, and this is by far my favorite. Most of them tend to be pretty academic, which certainly has it's value, but Ms. Le Guin demonstrates an genuine affection for this work that comes through on every page. She gives each verse a warm, personal feel without sacrificing any of the paradox or mysticism.

Also, since she is more of a poet than an academic, her translation is a joy to read, while still being insightfully elucidated by her comments. I'd still recommend reading other versions, but if you're only going to get one, make it this one.

Ursula le Guin captured the essence and poetry of the original without losing the focus and foresight of the original. Long one of my favorite fiction writers, le Guin drew on her ability to envision different worlds and exotic cultures to bring the words of an ancient Chinese philosopher into the 21st Century.

Many translations of the Tao Te Ching are on the market, few worth the paper wasted printing them. I've read most of them and found them severely lacking; they either mistranslate or distort the Chinese to maintain an artificial poetic meter or lose both poetry and meter with a literal translation. Le Guin's version maintains both intact with sublime success. I recommend it highly. Tao Te Ching aficionados, students of Chinese philosophy, poetry lovers, and curious readers will all take pleasure in this skilled translation.

Ms. LeGuin clearly understands the sujecy at hand. If you like Lao Tzu then you should own this translation.

Ursula K. LeGuin writes with her heart and her mind. I can not tell which is the more mystical, wonderful place as they always seem to merge in her writings. From the introduction, through her translations, to her notes, this Tao is accessible and personal. It is also mysterious and complex. It is the best addition I have made to my Tao literature.

This book gives alot of information about the Tao Te Tching, however, it does not do anything more than further distance people from the true meaning. I bought this book a couple of years ago and it was then a little helpful. The more that you explore minds like, Osho, Bodhidharma, and Chang Tzu, the more distancing this book becomes. To those who are pursuing enlightenment, take heed, this is the way to knowledge, not the way to knowing. Do what I did and read some Osho, Sun Tzu, Chang Tzu, and more Lieh Tzu and come back to this book...you will see what I am talking about.

A great book with samples to try out the different pop ups. Great for novices to get started.

I bought both this and Volume 2. Returned Volume 1 and am not too thrilled with Volume 2. I have much better books on the same information which include easier to understand instructions, illustrations and certainly a much broader spectrum of challenges. Artfully illustrated but too limited in my opinion. It covers only one technique many time over. Volume 2 goes just a little beyond that! As a design instructor I used the art of "POP UP" as a tool for my students to use paper engineering to exercise their critical thinking skills. I would not have included either volume in my recommended reading for that purpose. It is more of a "cut and paste what is already provided" example of a very limited number of techniques.

The perfect book for a beginner. As a bonus, the book itself has a fantastic design concept. It presents an example, then you can tear out a card with the pattern for that example, and when you finish, it has a pocket on the next page where you can store the card you just cut. Also, if you don't like cutting up your book, there is an order form for replacement cards. It's nice to see form follow function!!

the Pocket Paper Engineer book is very informative from tools that you'll need to templates for a variety of designs. The only negative i have is that i wish it wasn't on spiral for greater ease of removal of the templates.

Of the several how-to books I own on creating & designing pop-ups, this book disappointed me.
The vast majority is devoted to what is basically one pop-up technique, and the author gives numerous variations on that one type of pop-up as if each were entirely different. Yes, this book is simple & easy to use... great for those who want to play a bit -- or people who work with kids.
For true pop-up explorers however, pop-up mechanisms such as floating layers, scenery flats, boxes, etc. are not included in this book. To really dig into the subject of pop-ups and paper engineering, look elsewhere.

Whenever life becomes far more treacherous than we can handle alone, we turn to One whose intention for us includes guidance and light for our "sacred journey." But our human tendency is to try to make reality conform to our desires. We attempt to do this with any resource that is available to us, including God. Instead of seeking to know what God wills and "wanting what God wills," many of us prefer to ask God to will what we want.

In 1944 an English Methodist minister named Leslie Weatherhead faced this very dilemma. The wife of a friend had just died of cancer. The man grieved for a long time. Finally, he squared his shoulders and said, "It is the will of God. I must accept it." Weatherhead was startled by these words. His friend was a physician and had tried to avert what had just happened. He had used his skills and had enlisted the aid of others in an effort to save his wife's life. Weatherhead asked himself, "Has this doctor done all of this in conscious rebellion against the purpose of God while feeling that death was what God really willed?" He went on to speculate that had the illness gone the other way, his friend would have used the same phrase to celebrate her recovery. Weatherhead reported that this experience made him realize the utter confusion that exists about this important reality. So he preached a series of sermons in the City Temple of London on the subject and they were published in this book as "The Will Of God."

Weatherhead points out three different forms of God's will, namely, "intentional," "circumstantial" and "ultimate" will. This book describes what he means and he concludes by noting that the will of God isn't something that calls for a sigh of surrender to the inevitable. The will of God is the option that is best because God's will is unfailingly positive and creative. If you struggle to understand the circumstances of life such as China's earthquake or the death of a friend in the prime of life then this book will make an enormous contribution to your understanding. I recommend it for your careful study!

I ordered "The Will of God" as a used book in mid-April which was advertised as $0.01 (one cent) plus $4.00 shipping. My account was charged the $4.00 on April 14, but I never received the book. I sent an email to that effect to the shipper over a week ago and have still not received a response. My enthusiasm for Amazon has been greatly diminished.
Mike Reichmann

This book has revolutionized my comprehension of the will of God. I have already bought eight copies to give away and I know I will be ordering more.

Everyone who's ever wondered about the will of God should read this book. It provided answers to many questions I have always had about suffering and sins. An excellent read.

What is the will of God? We throw that phrase around regularly, often using it to explain events in our lives that we can't find meaning for otherwise. But Leslie Weatherhead shows that the will of God is something other more than an explanation when things go wrong. An excerpt helps illustrate:

"I have a good friend whose dearly loved wife recently died. When she was dead, he said, "Well, I must just accept it. It is the will of God." But he is himself a doctor, and for weeks he had been fighting for her life. He had called in the best specialists...He had used all the devices of modern science, all the inventive apparatus by which the energies of nature can be used to fight disease. Was he all that time fighting against the will of God? If she had recovered, would he not have called her recovery the will of God? Yet surely we cannot have it both ways. The woman's recovery and the woman's death cannot equally be the will of God..."

This book was originally printed in 1944. Weatherhead lived in London during World War II, so he knew about grief, loss, violence, and suffering. He paints a picture of God as having an ultimate will, which cannot be altered, but also gives humans autonomy, which results in His circumstantial will(when humans mess it up). The book is fairly interesting, and if questions about the will of God intrigue you, I would suggest picking this up if you can get it cheap. It will make you think, and that's the bare minimum you can ask out of a book.

This Sam's study guide is comprehensive, well-written, and well-illustrated. I have only a few, minor criticisms of it:

-The chapter on Netware is pretty good, but it could have been expanded upon with more detail, especially from the perspective of Netware.

-The instructions for setting up server-based profiles on an NT machine could have been more clearly delineated on page 267. Some of the instructions apply only to the client, and the others apply only to the NT machine.

Usually, when I'm finished reading a study guide, I will throw the study guide away, or give it away, or I will burn it. This Sam's book falls into a different category altogether: keeper.

Chow, baby......

I used this book as my main resource to study for the Win 98 exam. It's well-written and clear, but 14 days is a bit aggressive; I took my own notes so each 1-day chapter took me 2-3 days. Along with my knowledge (esp. TCP/IP) from the Networking Essentials exam, and my general experience with Windows 98 and networking, I was able to pass the exam on the first try. The actual exam was MUCH tougher than the practice exam in the book and the Transcender exams; I'd still recommend supplementing the book's exam with the Transcender exams. LOTS of simulation questions on the real thing, though. I was rarely totally "in the dark" on any question.

This book is a must for those that wish to pass the Microsoft Windows 98 Exam. It is true that I`ve read Microsoft MOC too, but I could say this book had almost 90% of what the exam required me to pass. I passed with a 890 grade and I thank God first and then this book. Passing the exam was a breeze...

If you are planing to take a MCSE exam in Windows 98 this is the book should get. It holds all the information you need and is very easy to read. I passed with 930 point out of 1000 using this book.

The Windows 98 exam is very tough with lots of simulation and scenario questions. Sams book on MCSE Windows 98 is an excellent book to learn the more advanced topics needed for the exam. I though I knew a lot about Windows 98 after using it for a few years until I read this book. The exam is heavy on using Windows 98 as a client in a Windows NT4.0 or Novell domain. You must learn everything in the network properties dialog box to pass the exam and the book does a good job on this with lots of diagrams and hands on exercises. Other important topics covered well are TCP/IP setup including DHCP & WINS, file systems, installing, boot sequence, dial up networking, registry, printer installing/control, hardware and user profiles, network neighborhood, browser functions (using netbios broadcasts), and system policies. Everthing you need to pass is in this book, however for an extra margin of safety I recommend investing in Exam Cram also. The test questions in Sams book are helpful, but the ones in Exam Cram do a better job of telling if you know your stuff enough to take the exam. The writing style of the author is enjoyable with lots of important points boxed off for emphasis and easy review later. I also recommend the book to anyone who just wants to learn a lot more about advanced topics of Windows 98.

This is brilliantly written, gripping, horrifying, impossible to put down. Gellman's got 70 pages of source notes, and talks to or quotes the major players, which makes his research credible, and he sticks to the facts. Jim Comey is now my personal hero. Read this book!

I have read these other reviews and they see this book as being far more scathing than I do. Perhaps my loathing of Cheney raised my expectations.

The book is a very long, somehwat dry argument for the idea that Cheney was the true "evil-doer" in the Bush administration, and that Bush himself was merely an inconvient fool. It's all vaguely reminiscent of any 70's sit com where the guy in charge is an idiot who has to be "managed" but who occasionally suspects he's being manipulated and must be appeased. McLean Stevenson's character on Mash, the governor in Benson, Ted Baxter in Mary Tyler Moore. Cheney is a silent man who nevertheless is characterized as having immoveable opinions and limitless conviction in his own righteousness.

Familiar stories are recounted: how he appointed himself as VP, how he behaved during the 9/11 travesty, the Justice department meltdown, torture,etc.

There is nothing new here.

It may be necessary for this administration to be removed from the White House before truth will eventually leak out. Until now, none of the books I have seen provide any new insights or any clearer understanding than I could get from simply reading newspapers.

Be patient. It'll all come out. But I'd suggest holding off on buying these books in the meantime. They are sadly unsatisfying.

We have read all the exposés of the Bush Years. This is the best and the most terrifying.

This book is one of the first of its kind to profile Richard Cheney, although not the only one (Rise Of The Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet). Certainly Cheney deserves a biography and the question about his role in the Bush White House, the perception that he had a great deal of power and how he may have used that power is important. Cheney has been potrayed by some voices as a sort of svengali, lurking behind the throne and whispering in the presidents ear, akin to something out of Lord of the Rings.

This book takes the view that although Cheney may not be a character from a movie, he is nevertheless a nefarious and overly powerful person who influenced every aspect of the Bush administration. This is an interesting view. It blames Cheney for failure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and then accuses him of even orchestrating supreme court nominations, foreign policy, environmental policies and other things.

but can this truily be beleived. Did Cheney and his 'men' such as Libby, really run the U.S government for 8 years? What about the other men involved, such as Condi and Rumsfeld? Didn't they speak out? And what of Bush himself? The end result of this book is that it creates s scapegoat on which all things are thrown. But this doesn't seem entirely right. There were other people invovled. There is no doubt that Cheney was influential and authority was delegated to him, but to blame him for every in an out gives him too much credit and it seems would have required a 24 hour work day from a man whose heart was already in bad shape. How did he shoulder the workaday burden?

There are certainly unanswered questions and this book does not do justice to solving them all.

Seth J. Frantzman

The best book of 2008, none I've read thus far even compare. Angler is an incredibly illuminating book into the most unique vice presidency in American history. I would also argue, after having read about a dozen books on President Bush and his Administration; that you cannot truly understand the failures of the Bush Administration and the woeful performance of the GOP in the past eight years without having read this book.

My perspective is one that had me voting for Bush in 2000, primarily in hopes that a Republican president and Republican-majority Congress would lead to authentic tax reform as proposed by most economists of that time if one wanted to sincerely optimize economic growth (i.e., a national sales consumption tax that supplanted all other federal income and wealth taxes based on a 1997 study). While I was aware that Bush was not the most competent person to be running for the job, his nominating Dick Cheney as his running mate pulled me over to supporting and voting for Bush in 2000 (though certainly not in 2004). The Dick Cheney known by his friends and even his opponents was one of intelligence, competence, patriotism, analytic skills, institutional knowledge of the Executive Branch without peer, and judgment.

This perception, shared by many both inside and outside the party, including Democratic colleagues, begs the question in retrospect: How could such a competent VP who had the ear of the President lead to such incompetent results?

Gellman shows his mastery of many topics in providing the answers and he does provide the answers. Gellman's findings are stunning given the opaqueness of the Bush presidency. Gellman was provided access to enough of the players and coupled with his functional expertise in understanding constitutional law and the machinations of the Executive Branch, provides a thorough account of several initiatives that Cheney decides to engage. The book is not a complete biography of the Cheney vice presidency, but instead an analysis of his performance by studying several key areas, such as his transforming intelligence activities post-9/11, fighting to increase the power of the Executive Branch while avoiding the checks of Congress and the SCOTUS, getting Bush reelected in 2004 by pushing for unsound economic policy that is partly the reason this recession will be deeper and longer than need be, to becoming a culture warrior in the war against science to promote certain business interests, and more.

There are no bad chapters, in fact each chapter is a masterpiece of reporting. Each is rife with explosive revelations:
from the process to win the nomination without being vetted,
to staffing allies in certain positions beyond the office of the Vice Presidency that allowed him to virtually control the content of their respective department's work in his areas of interest,
to how Cheney circumvented the law, the constitution, and its ideals,
to insuring an extremely lazy Bush was presented with only those arguments Cheney wanted him to hear,
to developing policy where his fingerprints were missing even to Bush,
to whether Cheney's efforts were in good faith or a result of cronyism or corruption;
Gellman's reporting is done within a proper context, with excellent sources, and in a writing style that reads like a thriller.

The only critique I have is a small one and mostly irrelevant for most readers of this sort of book. Gellman doesn't cover any ground on the ramifications of Cheney's policy execution. For example, while the story of Cheney implementing our torturing people we captured, some of whom were innocent, is excellently sourced, reported, and framed within the context of both American law and our founding ideals, it's an abstract rendering of results. Nowhere does Gellman report on how Cheney's policy affected real people, from those in the military that actually tortured people, to those people who are innocent of any wrongdoing that were tortured and some even tortured to death. This could cause the less-informed reader to not take Cheney's violations of our law as seriously as I believe they deserve (criminal investigations are warranted). For those readers who don't have that perspective, I also suggest the book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals and/or the DVD documentary, Taxi To the Dark Side, which chronicles the harm done to both torturer and the torturer while harming, not helping, American interests.

Does the book answer the questions I previously posed? Yes, without qualification I can now present a one paragraph response to how an Administration staffed with such a competent individual and delegated so much power ultimately failed so badly America will suffer its ramifications for generations.

Another one of my faves by Beverly Barton. Yes, it's graphic - be forewarned, but it's a murder/mystery - I would expect no less. The romance between Jim & Bernie is realistic and sweet, IMO. I also enjoyed reading how the relationship between Jim and his son grew (and his son's relationship with Bernie). The secondary characters were also well defined - Raymond, Robyn and Bernie's parents (as well as others).

As for the murderer, I had it between two of the characters and once I thought I figured it out, the book threw me for a tailspin.

It's definitely worth reading!

This is the first Beverly Barton book I have ever read. I found it randomly while walking through a Borders while I waited for the train one day. The beginning was interesting enough and it held my attention. Though, I was a little put off by some of the wording like "panty creaming good looks". I laughed so hard when I read that and not in a good way. It was more in a "Lol what?" kind of way. But I could get past that and get on with the story, at least till I got halfway through.

More and more as I read, I was increasingly being turned off to this book by how it would time and again refer to women as being weak. Whether it be the second victim musing about how no woman has the physical strength to change her own tire. Or the Bernie, the female sheriff's father constantly coming to the rescue and undermining her authority.

Probably though the most infuriating part of the book was the ending. I had guessed the killer several chapters before the end and it was just frustrating when the characters had not yet figured it out. Then when they had figured it out, the reader was still left in the dark. I suppose this was done to add suspense but it failed in doing that. I eventually just began skimming the pages of the last chapter, to confirm who I believed it was and didn't even bother with the epilogue. I just had to read the first sentence of that to know what was going on.

Overall this book is very average and all the romance for the main couple is at the very end and is very stunted. Barton gave all the romance to the pretty sister, while the heroine of the book gets one chapter near the end of the book where her and the hero are suddenly together.

As most of the other reviewers gave a detailed description of the plot, I would only say that there are a couple of things that threw me off this book. I think I will re-sell it.
First of course the graphic rape and torture scenes (it made me give the book 2 stars instead of 3) - there are several of them and some of them pretty gruesome and unnecessary (not to mention long). I felt that the book would have won in focusing more on the crime investigation instead of depicting in detail such scenes.
Second, the sheriff and the crime investigator take a long time in figuring out who the murderer is - I mean after the 3rd crime when the victim apparently goes away willingly with the murderer, how hard can it be to figure some things out?
Third, there are some less than subtle ideas that are forced on the reader every 20 pages or so - as Bernie telling repeatedly Jim Norton that he is a good father (he is always at a loss about what to do with his son, so I can't see the reasoning behind it), Jim's frequent comparisons between Bernie and his ex-wife etc etc.
Overall, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I would have liked.

I just finished reading this book and enjoyed it very much. The mystery and writing were excellent. I did figure out the identity of the killer about half-way through the book but it did not take away from the great story telling. I look forward to reading Ms. Barton's next book. I really enjoyed how the end was written, very well done.

I WENT TO BED AT 2 AM, BUT I WANTED TO STAY UP LATER TO FINISH THIS BOOK. IT WAS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HARD TO PUT DOWN AND CAN'T WAIT UNTIL I KNOW THE ENDING.

My 5 year old son was able to read the book by himself after I read it to him the first time. It is a very easy book to read and wonderfully illustrated. We loved it

This book has been a favorite of my family's for 20 years. I give it to all of my friends who have little boys. I only wish that it were available in hard cover again.

My 3.5 year old twins absolutely love this book. We have to read it over and over again.

Byron Barton has created another great children's book with colorful illustrations and simple text. The rhythm of the text makes this book clever and musical. It was a fovorite of my son for several years. I now purchase this book for other children and a shower gift for expecting parents. As a sppech language pathologist, I want to foster the child's love of communication through words ans illustrations.

As with all Byron Barton books, "Astronaut" is a preschool classic -- simple pictures, few words. I bought it for my 3-year-old grandson who wants to be an astronaut "because they get to wear helmets with their snowsuits." GrammaVona

It is a New Bible, perfect shape, the add said it had a bent corner on the box, I didn't even notice. It was for me, but I would have given it as a present.

I absoulutely love this Bible. Easy to read and explains everything about the scripture.

The NIV Life Applications Study Bible is very helpful to those of us who want to have a better understanding and be more knowledgable about the bible. I'm so glad I bought it and will recommend it to all of my family and friends.

I was disappointed in the "large print" of this purported large print bible. I got it for my mother who is 82 and enjoys reading but can only read large print books. granted this is larger print than your standard bible but not by much.

It's a great bible. It is ironic though that on a "large print" bible, the tabs which made the bible more expensive are very small print so they are pretty much worthless. All in all I am pretty happy with it. I would have preferred a color choice or that at least the listing on amazon would indicate the color, which is black.

Until chapter 10, the book is a pleasure to read. It is very systematic, everything is explained in great detail, and the different concepts are very clear and well exposed. The author succeeds in turning a rather obscure scientific topic into an exciting adventure. If I should judge the book only for this first part, I would give it 5 stars. In fact the book is misleading since when you start reading, you get the illusion string theory can be made accessible even for beginners with an average background.

However, this illusion is in vain since the panorama changes dramatically in chapter 10, where the author enters directly into quantum field theory, without any further preparation. An this is the real problem, because the author who developed from the ground up the classical approach to strings mechanics, takes for granted the reader is highly knowledged in quantum mechanics. In spite of his efforts to introduce the subject in successive approximations, all is in vain because the subject is too intricate. The book is not any more systematic for readers lacking adequate quantum theory background.

Certainly this is not a book for beginners. The book requires previous deep understanding of quantum mechanics. Beginners can still learn some interesting concepts from the first part of the book, but a complete reading would require deep study of less advanced quantum mechanics bibliography. That said, I must also point out if the level of the book is maintained in its second part, it may become a top ten for more advanced readers.

I really cannot recommend this book more highly. The way it approaches a subject that is considered so formidable, the attention to detail, the painstakingly explicit calculations... An the fact that it doesn't just try to sell you a bunch of difficult math as a physical theory, but it actually explains the motivation of every abstract construction it introduces... Perfection! This is the way every physics book should be written. I don't know if there is a chance of this happening, but if Zwiebach ever attempts to write something similar for Field Theory, it will be a blessing.

The first half of the book is also a must read for every physicist, even if you don't know (or wish to know) about string theory. It includes among other things, a truly incredible way to explain the number of degrees of freedom of quantum fields depending on their spin, using light-cone coordinates to write the equations of motion. I haven't seen this anywhere else. This is the way this topic should be taught in field theory courses and I wonder why it isn't more widely used. The book is generally full of such "this really makes sense" kind of epiphanies that will help you understand more fully other things that you used to find confusing or poorly explained elsewhere.

One of the best physics books ever. Really makes one wonder what is wrong with most of the other physics authors.

I still think advanced physics needs advanced mathematics to explain and explore. With limited depth of mathematics in this book, even though lots of ideas can be expressed, the process is tedious. This introductory book can satisfy my curiosity but not enough to envision the potential study advancement.

For any advanced undergraduate student in physics who is interested in string theory, this book is ideal. It starts off very easily, reviewing concepts of free point particle actions in special relativity and then gradually introduces classical strings, which are then quantised in the light-cone gauge. It doesn' get too technical, but it provides one with a good foundation in string theory's concepts. The topics are discussed very clearly, both in words and in formulae. At the end of the book, black holes are discussed very briefly (in connection with the Hagedoorn temperature) in an easy way, covariant quantisation (as an "improvement" on the light-cone gauge, which does not preserve Lorentz invariance all the way through), and D-branes.
This book is intended for advanced undergraduates, but for those who find beginning graduate courses in string theory too complicated at the outset, buy this one, read it and you'll probably understand more of the classics by Polchinski or Green/Schwarz/Witten. Those who have a solid knowledge of QFT might go passed this book, but it might be a good back-up for what more standard textbooks might call "trivial calculations".

In spite of being published only two years ago, this book does not make any mention of Professor Susskind's Landscape theory, the single most important advancement in string theory since anomaly cancellation was discovered. The book does a disservice to the students it is intended for, letting them think they understand string theory while depriving them of key mathematical and physical concepts, such as the Lanscape or Calabi Yau manifolds.

I have to share this: Recently while weeding out my various collections and selling some, my Mother listed this book for me. I did not tell her it was fiction and after looking over and reading some of the book she decided to go online and get more information about the Kesh. She was convienced they had actually existed. Now, my Mom is an intellgent and informed woman -- The amazing job Ursula did in making the Kesh so REAL is astounding! This Book and Tape are definitly worth the time and money for ANYONE who appreciates Great writing.....Genre be darned!

Ms. Le Guin is one of the foremost authors in America working across a broad spectrum of genres. This is one of her best works detailing a life in a culture that works with the land & the spirit. The rich details of this culture appear in the music, poetry, stories and art of the Kesh. These are a vibrant people who appeal on every level.

Ursula LeGuin's Kafka Award winner and 1985 National Book Award runner-up is the deepest deep-ecology fiction I know of and my favorite novel. It's the only scifi book to earn such honors [her 1972 National Book Award for "The Farthest Shore" was in Childrens Books]. "Always Coming Home" is less a book about landscape than a book that inhabits a landscape. I've just finished my third reading in twenty years.

True to her anthropological scifi themes, LeGuin creates the feeling of living in a very different culture better than any other writer I've read. In negative reviews I've seen, [not just here] aside from problems reading it's "experimental" format, I've been struck by reviewers simply not getting it at a fundamental level.

Many years ago, the credo of my graduate fiction-writing workshops was "Show, don't tell" and "Be concrete", both accomplished through use of details. Thus defined, ACH is a fiction-writing tour de force in which she not only invents an Amerindian-like culture [with advanced technology, sort of], but has us participate in its calendar of rituals, oral wisdom and parables, eco-knowledge, recipes, poems, songs and family fights. The original boxed editions included a cassette tape of fables, poems, songs, and sacred chanting in a language she invented for these people, the Kesh. And the Kesh are embedded within the natural landscape of California's Napa Valley sometime in the nebulous future.

The story takes place millenia after a worldwide industrial apocalypse. Fossil fuels are exhausted, wide swaths of territory are poisoned by chemicals and radiation and sterilized by plastic sands. Large geological events have put the San Francisco Bay basin, California's central valley and the Great Basin under the ocean.

The book's antagonist, the Condor culture, Leguin's version of the warrior-dominated Indo-Europeans migrating from the steppes into agrarian Europe circa 3500 B.C. is an almost cartoonish sketch. A foil for Kesh society, Condor society is a social and material culture as unsustainable as our current rapacious, consumption-at-all-costs society [which may be changing]. But it's a mistake to read ACH as a simple industrialization versus environmentalism vision. It's not primarily about that, nor is it about the future, nor a metaphor for today, nor utopian fare, although it's partly all those.

Ultimately, with science-hunger moved off-stage, ACH is about how it has felt and what it has meant to be human over our million or so years on the planet. This hasn't changed, nor will it, despite today's technological veener. LeGuin's vision sums up this entire experience of being human and particularizes it to one specific biophysical environment just as all cultures have been so particularized, except in some instances over the last few millenia.

The Kesh do have industry. For example, much of their Na valley floor is covered with vineyards and a railroad delivers barrels of wine to the coast where a farflung maritime trading system begins. But it's appropriate technology use; their culture is rooted in being human, not in production. The Kesh are not poor, nor subsistence-level livers, nor backward in any way, but their material lives service their non-material lives -- their humaness -- and not vice versa. They still have teenagers, testosterone-driven conflicts between groups, curious and lazy people, firebrands, hermits, dissidents, warriors, mystics, cliques, social outcasts and the joys and tribulations of sexuality.

Anyone familiar with the structure and daily lives of primal cultures will recognize the verisimilitude under the scifi novel conventions here. And if you know a bit about the vanished, semi-sedentary cultures of the California Indians you'll find LeGuin's fictitious one as real as rain. [The cultures that inspired her are revived in "The Ohlone Way", a gem of a book by Malcolm Margolin.]

The book's major weakness is it's stiff, shallow, and simplistic antogonist [culture], a characteristic problem in LeGuin's work; she doesn't write good villians. Another is the actual narrative, the story of Stone Telling, only 112 extracted pages and our primary view of Condor culture, so I wish she'd developed it more. Her P.O.V. -- that of a socially immature, pre-adolescent in a restrictive harem -- may be the problem in both instances. I want some plot device to get her out of the house. Still, Stone Telling's story resolves perfectly for this symphony of life in the Na Valley.

The book's non-linear format will turn many people off, and it's flawed, but for me ACH is in a class by itself, even beyond the novels of my favorite novelist, William Faulkner. Faulkner is the better writer, perhaps, but the realization of the Na Valley exceeds that of Yoknapatawpha County.

LeGuin's anthropological slant is developed to it's structural extreme: a collection of field notes and texts including visual and impeccably accurate oral material -- a file cabinet -- as novel. This hints at the epistolary origin of the English novel. Giving the book the time and attitude it requires means buying or borrowing the CD/tape. You not only hear the Kesh speak and sing, a suprisingly evocative tool, but even the Na Valley landscape itself. This audio portion of a novel is not only unique but integral to LeGuin's mosaic. She's constructed a complete culture, a formidable creative accomplishment.

LeGuin spent formative years in the Na valley and the village of Sinshan itself. I live in the Bay Area and know it's ecosystems and pre-contact Native American culture. She's nailed them. Sit on a shaded, worn redwood deck bordering a bay laurel or redwood grove, gaze out at the dry, yellow, August hills of the California coast range, and it's easy to see, feel, and smell the ancient stone and redwood Kesh family great houses. Easy.

The Kesh live in a numinous environment that is mostly lost now but is still here for us to rediscover. Give this book a chance and you will breathe with the Kesh.

Ursula Le Guin is my favorite living author, and this is my favorite of her novels. If you don't want a review that comes from that position, which has developed over thirty years and uncountable books and is not (quite) as facile as it sounds, stop now.

This book, though, received a lot of criticism, some of it, perhaps, just. It was criticized for appropriating Native American culture, and although Le Guin is explicit in denying that as her intent, it's an issue worth discussing. Because Le Guin is the daughter of anthropologists specializing in deep study of native cultures, it might be truer to say that those visions of the world have appropriated and influenced her. Nonetheless, this is something to discuss if you teach the book, or recommend it to a friend.

Le Guin's also been variously accused of predicting the future with that least forgivable sin, earnestness, and of creating a prescriptive utopia in which no reasonable reader can believe. These charges, though, I find less worthy of discussion. Those who say it's unbelievable cite

a) the Kesh's success in dealing with the military-industrial Condor through nonviolent resistance (nonviolent resistance actually work? Ridiculous! Oh, wait a minute...),
b) the improbability of the Condor getting so caught up in their exploding toys that they don't make good use of them (also ridiculous! no one would build more and more bombers while failing to provide body armor for their troops, and the Afghanis never drove out the techno-heavy USSR with flintlock rifles), and
c) the belief that the culture of the Kesh "really" wouldn't be anything like this.

If we're talking of earnestness and prescriptive prediction, though, I think such critics undermine their own position. It doesn't get much more earnest, or much more prescriptive, than saying that someone else's imaginary culture "would" "really" have done thus-and-such. One of Le Guin's points is that the world doesn't *have* to go the way that some military-industrial-consumer Americans are prone to believe it must; there are other choices, though perhaps only after some very regrettable ecological catastrophes. She's also mildly famous for pointing out that SF authors don't predict the future; they observe the present. By that standard, ACH doesn't say that people will live in Kesh-like valleys, or that they should live in Kesh-like valleys, but that some people, right now, do in some sort live this way. And that, in my experience, is the literal truth. Those people are silenced and ignored and sneered at and mocked, but they exist, and not just in straw-bale solar houses.

In terms of Utopia, Le Guin explicitly rejects it(in the passage "Pandora Converses with the Archivist.") Now maybe she needs more than a single rejection to prove that this doesn't function as an improbable utopia; but it doesn't hurt to actually read the thing before dismissing it, and see what she does say.

I tend to think that it avoids utopianism by what IS included: for instance, people in the Valley routinely and slowly die of mercury poisoning (or something very like it, "sevai".) Not so Utopian, really. Again, rather than having machines which make all manual labor obsolete, we see two women digging a garden in soil that's "like wet concrete when it's wet, and like dry concrete when it's dry." They do this by digging a shovelful and then handing it to the other woman to clean off the concrete-like mud while digging a second shovelful with a second spade, and so on. If that's your idea of utopia, I can only say it's not mine: people suffer, people die, people work, sometimes, very hard. The fact that they aren't doing it in Wal-Mart, or in a cubicle, doesn't mean that hard work isn't, well, hard work. Thirdly, living "in harmony" in this valley (or anywhere else) isn't just a matter of the warm fuzzies: it requires some knowledge of ecology, and some brutal adjustments to it. These people can have two children per person, no exceptions. If you marry someone who's got two, you won't have any children of your body. If you want six, you're out of luck, that's all, and it's not such an easy proposition. "Living in balance" is a term easy to scoff at; but balance, as those know who've tried it, requires work and thought, both routinely thought to be unnecessary in a well-maintained utopia. And, finally, this "utopia" spans one valley in one mountain range: the Kesh's "goodness" hasn't convinced the rest of the world to change its ways, not even the Pig People next door. If picturing a world in which one insular society is allowed to live sustainably and peacefully is Utopian, then, yes, it's Utopian; but viewing this as so improbable as to be not worth contemplating says more about the reader than about the author.

Still with me? needless to say, I recommend it very highly indeed. Maybe it's not fair in its use of indigenous elements; I don't feel qualified to say. Maybe it is a Utopia, if people can die and suffer and sweat and fart in Utopia. But whether or no, it's a beautiful and entertaining and thought-provoking book.

On the one hand, I agree with all the good things other reviewers have mentioned. On the other hand, I also agree with all the bad things.

The cultures in the book struck me not so much as "simple" but as "simplistic." I think I was also really bothered by the lack of enough story to illuminate the practices of the society. The story parts were great. The poetry parts frequently drove me up the wall (true also of my reading of Tolkein). It was choppy, which made it difficult to read without the concentration one reserves for *actual* archaeological study.

I think in the end that might have been my biggest problem with it. I wanted to read about a world that never was, a world that might be, a world of people different from me. Instead, I was stuck reading fake archaeology. I was uncomfortable with the in-between-ness of it - I either wanted real archaeology, or real fiction, not a mishmash of the two. The book is incredibly self-indulgent of the author; what saves it is that LeGuin is so phenominally gifted that even her self-indulgence is interesting and well-written.

It was compelling (in places) and maddeningly dull (in places). I think I'm glad I read it - but I'm not sure - and I don't think I'll read it again - but I'm not sure.

I'm sorry this isn't a more coherent review. It's hard for me to know if the problem was mine, or the book's. A very strange, in-between book that left me in a strange, in-between place.

In sum: Very well written, very unique book, that left me very ambivalent about whether it was "worth it" as a reader.