Cross Books

I'm very pleased with this guide book. It's taken me to many places I would not have thought to go ski touring. Whenever our small group of ski tourers gets tired of the tri-canyon SLC area, we break out Bradley's book and head someplace new for the day. It's a must have for the serious Utah ski tourer.

`Backpacker's Cookbook' by Margaret Cross and Jean Fiske covers a remarkably complex subject for such a thin book. If you have never backpacked or cracked open the `Boy Scout Handbook' or Colin Fletcher's `The Complete Walker', you may have no notion of how difficult hiking and cooking can be. To be clear, this is not at all the same as tailgating, where you have no limit to how much you can carry, so you have practically no limits on the kind of food you can carry or the kind of dishes you can prepare.

There are three big differences between cooking at home and cooking while backpacking. First, you can use only what you can carry on your back in a pack and actually walk over uneven terrain at the same time. As a small, inexperienced Boy Scout, I was able to pack for an overnight hike with a scant 13 pounds; however, it is much more likely you will need upwards of 40 pounds of stuff for two or more days; especially if the weather is cold or wet or both. Second, walking 10 to 12 miles with forty (40) pounds of gear on your back means you will need to eat far more calories, and that means mostly fast calories, than you eat at home, even while going to work from 9 to 5 (assuming you don't walk or pedal to work). The classic high calorie hiking dish is `gorp' (good old raisins and peanuts) which may contain far more than just two ingredients (M&M's being the favorite add-in). Third, you realistically have less time to cook than normal, because you will be especially tired at the end of the day, and will have to spend time striking camp and packing up to start up at the beginning of the day.

This book covers those issues and more. This scenario is made even more complicated by the fact that in most hiking venues anywhere within 2 hours driving of civilization (Harriman Park northwest of New York City comes to mind), you will be discouraged by our wildlife guardians to not build fires using fuel you may find lying about. This means you need to add close to five pounds of gear for a camp stove and fuel. The best scenario here is that there are at least two people in the hiking party and they can split the stove and fuel between them. Things get REALLY dicey when you are hiking in an area with no ready supply of water. On the Appalachian Trail, for example, there are sources of clean water at every likely campsite. And, this is commonly water piped in from a friendly municipal water supply.

The other side of the coin is when you happen to be backpacking to a remote, but fecund fishing hole. This means not only do you have ample supplies of potable water, you have a practically inexhaustible supply of fresh, healthy protein. The only downside is that you have to tote your fishing gear in with you. But, my experience with `ultralight' fishing gear good for fish up to four pounds will not weigh much more than 2 or three pounds itself. While the shape may be awkward, fly fishing gear may be even lighter (but then, there are those waders!). The authors supply an entire chapter on cooking freshly caught fish.

One of the implications of these considerations is that you will need special equipment to cook on the trail. Fortunately, there is a great business in place for supplying an enormous range of specialized cookware. An excellent starting point is your trusty old local Boy Scout supplier. Not only is their gear made for effective camping, it is typically made for younger people, so lightness is a special characteristic of their equipment (I do suggest however, that you use your imagination. I recall some equipment such as the three piece eating set was made of fairly heavy stainless steel. For a short trip, heavy-duty plastic forks and spoons, two of each, may actually be lighter than the official Boy Scout issue.

One of the most amazing things about the book is the range of dishes the author believes one can actually make on the trail. To be sure, baking does require some highly specialized equipment (a reflector oven) and the questionable open fire, but it can be done, as long as you are especially careful about putting the fire out and assuring yourself that it is dead cold.

One other item which may never occur to a first time backpacker is the fact that all your gear and all your food has to survive in a tightly packed rucksack, and, you need to find all your stuff when you set up camp. This book continues the same traditional advice I learned in Boy Scouts, where everything is stored in its own clearly labeled muslin bag (at least muslin was the material of choice back in the day. I suspect there is a more high tech and lighter material available today, not to mention plastic zip top freezer bags.) This especially means that if you do plan some serious cooking on the trail, bag all the ingredients for each dish together. The good authors give us recipes with this very consideration in mind.

One last consideration is the fact that commercially prepared dehydrated (usually freeze-dried) trail preparations are relatively pricy. I'm surprised that the authors don't borrow some tips from the `Raw' cuisine folks on equipment to use at home to dehydrate food.

The novice hiker really needs this book, but they probably need Colin Fletcher's `The Complete Walker' even more, for sound paring down to the last ounce of weight advice on backpacking.

This is a most marvellous putdown of modern suburbia, of the baby-boomer generation, and the way children are brought up today. On a bookshelf, it should stand right next to the "Stepford Wives" as an explanation of the next generation

"Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform" couldn't have come at a more propitious moment. Demands for American schools to reinvent themselves are invariably accompanied by references to international test scores that show our students performing poorly compared with their peers from other countries. The collection of essays in this book edited by Iris C. Rotberg shows the dangers of generalizing about educational quality based on the headlines in the evening news.

What Rotberg's careful selection of authors underscores is that each country has its own set of values, choices and societal pressures. While it's tempting to try to transfer a particular model of education to the U.S., or -- by extension -- to any other country, it will not likely be successful. That's because an education system reflects the totality of a country's unique culture and history.

It's too bad that Bill Gates didn't read Rotberg's book before addressing the recent National Governors Association. If he had, he'd want to revise his remarks.

Even though I read the Finnish translation of Dowdy's book, I am quite sure the English original can't be any worse... and this book is a really good account of how the zeal for Christ of a handful of people in the 1940-60s turned into a harvest of thousands...

The book is also very well put together... it is like a best selling thriller, with the added benefit that it is true and many people received Christ...

this is one of larence schoonover best historical novels. it is another one that you won't want to put down.

Barbara Bourgeau-Richards is a native of Michigan, of French descent. She is a self-taught artist, who specializes in watercolor vignettes of pastoral, family life. Her work has appeared in national publications, corporate and private collections, and various museums.

"Christian Reflections for Courage, Hope and Healing" is the apt subtitle of this small volume of thoughts by historic and contemporary writers. Fourteen chapters, modern interpretations of the Station of the Cross, are devoted to the various crossroads in life's journey. Each group offers uplifting words of comfort and inspiration from some of the world's finest thinkers.

We begin with "The Journey Beckons" and the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ..."

"Seeing Christ in Others" offers some particularly meaningful words from Mother Teresa, while "Kept In Hope" is thoughtfully poignant, with selections from Haiti's Aristide and Henri Nouwen.

C. S. Lewis, M. Scott Peck, T.S. Eliot, Annie Dillard, Alan Paton, and others contribute to this timeless collection of inspirational reading.

- Gail Cooke

I've done Baatz' designs before, but these florals have pushed me to try them as pillows rather than framed works. The colors are spot on! the charts are easy to follow.

This work is a wonderful scholarly work that is rich in theology. Most Theological Aesthetic works lean heavily on art history with very little theological content. But this book is heavy on theology and balanced with art history. It shows how theology of various periods in the church affected the creation of the crucifix. The Passion of Jesus Christ is central to the faith of Christianity. What Viladesau does is dig into how theology is reflected in the making of the crucifix during early periods of Christianity.

This book is a wonderful journey through the earliest years of Christianity and the theology that affects our understanding of the crucifixion today.

I would highly recommend this book to artists, art historians, theologians, and pastors. The wealth of material in this work makes it one that will cause me to refer back to it on my bookshelf time and time again.