Field Books

This book is a great resource for military personnel and their families. It would have been a godsend when my kids were deployed to Iraq. I give a copy to everyone I know whose loved one is being deployed...and, unfortunately, that number is fairly high. The book has great tips, lots of resources, and is written in an easy-to-read, friendly style.

Let me preface by saying I do not know anyone who is deployed. That being said, I found "Mom's Field Guide" to be an awesome read.

This book is written in an easy-to-read style and is a wealth of information for those with loved ones on deployment. Tips and tricks on everything from gathering news from alternate sources to sending packages to soldiers overseas.

Fitted between the pages of invaluable information lie personal glimpses into the relationship of mother and soldier. These pages keep the reader truly involved in what is happening and not just reading the lines of a how-to guide. The interrupted style provides a shift from practical to personal. While reading Mom's Field Guide, I found myself looking forward to the next email from David (the author's son), hoping to find him well and intrigued by where he was in the midst of the battle.

Mom's Field Guide is not only an imperative read for those with loved ones in the military, but is an insightful, informative read for anyone.

I don't have a child in the service, but was attracted to this book anyway. Read it cover to cover, and found it to be a great read.

I think this book would be an excellent resource for anyone who has a child (or any relative--cousin, brother, sister, parent, etc.) in any branch of the service.

Every now and then there are gifted individuals who come along who see and understand with new eyes and have a thorough understanding of their subject, not only in its own right, but in the context of how that topic fits into the whole. Fukuoka is such an individual and his understanding and practice of farming is genius and he explains how using his methods will make your farm easy to run, outproduce typical American farming methods without the need for chemicals that have been destroying the soil and poisoning our water and poisoning the farmer as well. His methods are incredibly simple, require no special machinery, no big equipment mortgages, are applicable to all size farms and produce results. Not only that, his methods improve the soil and he has simple ideas on how to bring back areas that we have turned into desert due to bad farming practices and animal grazing. I wish his writing would spread to the whole farming community as I suspect his books have not been noticed. His books are priceless and a real gift to food production.

After reading the one straw revolution i really wanted to see how Fukuokas' system worked. I was not disapointed by this well layed out and functional guide to his methods. While his philosophy claims that no list of rules and time tables can acturatelly set out how natural farming should work, the publication of the hystory and methods of his experiment proves vital to the unhinging of common industrial theories on the subject.

Doing nothing, being nothing, becoming nothing is the goal of Fukuoka's farming method, an approach to agriculture which he has pursued for over forty years with resounding success. With no tillage, no fertilizer, no weeding and no pesticides he consistently produces rice, barley, fruit and vegetable crops that equal or exceed the yield per acre of neighboring farmers who embrace modern scientific agriculture. The basis of his philosophy is that nature grows plants just fine without our interference so that the most practical approach is to get out of the way. In the course of explaining his reasoning and methods, this do-nothing farmer delivers a scorching indictment of chemical agriculture and the human assumption that we can improve on nature. He explains the beneficial role of insects and plants usually characterized as pests, the fallacy of artificially boosting fertility with petrochemical concoctions, the logical error implicit in the use of farm machinery or draft animals, and why pollution is an inevitable result of misguided attempts to improve on nature. Calculation of the energy input versus the caloric output of various farms results in the surprising discovery (perhaps it shouldn't be) that (minimal) human labor is the most efficient way to produce food. Draft animals add more work and more energy input, small scale machines compound the problem and large scale mechanized agriculture proves to be a vast waste of energy. He calls modern American farmers "subcontractors of the oil industry," and claims that traditional Japanese farmers on 3-5 acres achieve a real net income higher than American farmers on 500-700 acres. (A skeptical friend of mine wondered if Japanese farm price supports were a factor here. Obviously a complex issue, that, but the declining economic viability of petro-chemical farming is obvious when we note that the onslaught of monster tractors and oil based fertilizers and pesticides has paralleled the collapse of the family farm. The author, to his credit, rejects any artificial manipulation of food prices and believes they should naturally be more or less the same worldwide.) Nor is this text pure philosophy, including as it does specific practical advice on the transition from scientific to natural methods. Crop rotation programs for cold or warm climates, and a ten year rotation system for grain and vegetables make this a practical manual for husbandry. As Fukuoka eloquently suggests, the universe is a circle returning to nothing. Nothing is the most profitable object of our meditations. Doing nothing is simply going with the flow. (See also his "groundbreaking" (literally) ONE STRAW REVOLUTION, Other India Press; 1992)

I found this book at a used book store on my 12th birthday. I was one of the better presents I've ever received. It inspired my love of nature and the natural world, it got me outside and made me dream of having a rock collection of my very own.

I would recommend this book for children ages 10-14 and adults interested in the natural world. It would be particularly useful in conjunction with a few of the Audubon field guides.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I deals with reasons an individual may want to study the natural world and ways he/she could go about doing it. It outlines a plan for starting a nature observation club, going on field trips, creating nature trails, keeping a nature journal and setting up a nature workshop.

The second part deals with specific activities within each of the natural sciences. It is set up rather oddly- animals having a section of their own, apart from sections about birds, reptiles, insects and water life. I suspect that the animals section was meant to be a section on mammals. This doesn't really affect its functionality though. Each section on living things contains a set of neat activities for observing the organism in it's natural habitat.

The first section in part two is about birds and birding. It gives a detailed overview of birding techniques, ways to attract birds to your yard, how to photograph them and information about collecting bird feathers and eggshells. The second section is about animals, really about mammals. It tells you how to find wild animals, get close to them, clean a skeleton for your collection and even keep them as pets (not an activity recommended by me!). This book was published in the 50's after all, and that sort of thing wasn't as taboo then I suppose.

The third section is about reptiles. Once again, this chapter teaches you how to keep wild reptiles in captivity. It would probably be best to use this information to keep domestic reptiles. Unless you're very experienced, handling wild animals isn't the smartest thing to do.

The fourth and fifth sections are on insects and aquatic life respectively. They are quite like the previous chapters- they contain information on how to find animals, catch them, mount them for a collection and keep them in captivity.

The next two sections, Flowers and Flowerless Plants and Trees really ought to be combined into one chapter. After all, trees are flowering or flowerless plants. Also, for some reason he includes mushrooms in the flowering plant chapter. Still, I can forgive Mr. Hillcourt because these chapters are my favorites. Here he describes methods for making a flower calender, growing a wildflower garden, making a leaf collection and many other interesting activities.

The final three chapters deal with geologic studies, the weather and astronomy. Following the patern of previous sections, they describe how to observe natural phenomena, take notes and make collections for later study.

Really, it's a great little book, even if it's dated. Buy it for your daughter and get his butt outside. Let her look at bugs under a hand lens and squeal at the sight of a Barred Owl. Because lets face it, kids need the outdoors as much as they need calcium. It's good for the body, it's good for the soul.

This book is simply the best. It has nature activities in all areas of science. Trees, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, astronomy, animals, etc. A how-to guide for the amateur naturalist.

I'm still using this book, and I'm 46 years old. I received it when I was 12, and found it full of wonderful, exciting adventures and activities.

The 378 pages in my 1970 edition, contain activities you can do inside on a wet rainy day when you can't go outside, as well as plenty of things to do when the weather allows you to go outside. There are plenty of things for city kids, I didn't grow up in the `country.' I was able to see and identify many stars and there's a chart of the year's 9 major meteor showers (Perseid in Aug offers the easiest/best viewing). I used the fountains at the local park to find aquatic life forms and various algae. Birds were everywhere and became a life-long passion for me. I used the sidewalk outside the house to attract and capture ants. (Warning - although freezing the ants temporarily will slow down their mobility allowing you to view them more easily -oops, watch that timer or you'll freeze them to death! I still feel really badly about that accident.) I collected leaves, plant specimens, made fish prints, collected neat rocks and fossils and collected bugs, moths and butterflies - but I chose to let them all go free.

All the activities are clearly marked - 1 dot meant I could do this activity on my own, 2 dots meant I'd need a little help from Dad, and 3 dots meant a larger undertaking, requiring equipment or something extra, in additiona to Dad's assistance.

My edition had LOTS and LOTS of notes about places / books/ places to write to / places to visit to learn more about a topic of interest - with today's internet, it would be a breeze to find more information.

My edition is water damaged from being in the field, moldy, warped, underlined and FILLED with happy notes of my DOING the activities, and my experiences. It's really fun to see over the years which activities remain as fun to do and how my experience of the activities have changed. My edition has (by today's standards) hilarious examples of still- and moving- picture cameras. I don't know if the new edition has newer examples of photography equipment.

I love to share this book with all the children who come into my life, my nieces, my friends' children, etc. I'm buying a newly updated book as a gift for a friend's son who is 7 - the PERFECT age to further spark his budding (ha ha, sorry for the pun) interest in nature and science.

If you yourself want to get back to nature and have some fun, even as an adult, this is the book for you. (BTW it's small and easily portable into the "field.") If you want to delight a child, spark an interest in the world around us, and perhaps 'turn them onto' science, I HIGHLY recommend this delightful, well-written, solid information (no inaccuracies nor dis-information)-please buy a copy. Perhaps this book is why I majored in both Biology and Chemistry in college??

Enjoy!
Cathryn

This is the kind of poetry book you read in bed before you go to sleep. You poke your husband with your elbow and say, "Listen to this one." He does.

Some of the most amazing poetry written in recent times is contained in this book. The works truly exemplify the American poetry scene.

This book of poetry will stay with you. You will take it off the shelf time after time to reread a poem that had a distinctive ring of truth and feeling of place about it.

My favorite poem, "Dr. Invisible and Mr. Hide" by Charles Webb. Close second was "Mean and Stupid" by Christopher Howell.

This book is an excellent account of real life as an assistant principal, mainly on the secondary level. As a HS teacher in an urban school district all of the accounts in this book are, (in my opinion) true and factual experiences. In my few years as a teacher I have witnessed and experienced, many of the everyday challenges these administrators face. The book pulls no punches and gives it to you "raw"! If you wanna know what the job really entails you will pick this up. Excellent read, great resouce.

The book is well organized and well written. It presents real life stories, issues, and feelings of first-year assistant principals. The book presents the stories and quotes within a research context and utilizes triangulation of data sources for a more solid "research" basis. It is an excellent book for a real look inside the administrative offices of assistant principals.

The neat thing about this book is that it has tons of quotes from 1st year assistant principals. It is very easy for school administrators to mock or make fun of authors who have never been where we are; however, this book is nothing like that. The authors give the landscape and REAL AP's fill in the paint. Excellent book.

This is only one among many collections of Loren Eisley's thoughtful works, and I would willingly recommend all those I have read. THE NIGHT COUNTRY, however, remains my favorite. Eisley's vision overlays the human and non-human worlds and examines both over the span of ages rather than years. He will show you tiny snippets of life in a parking lot, shadows on cave walls, deserts, pigeons and childhood memories that will linger in your thinking like dinosaur footprints impressed in mud and baked to permanence by hot volcanic ash. You may choose not to follow that trail again, but I assure you it will remain vivid. Consider the return of an old man to a boyhood home after more than a half century, eager to see the cottonwood tree he and his father planted together. It was the tree his father had promised would provide Eisley with shade in his old age, where he might sit and remember his Dad; a tree that had grown and blossomed and flourished year after year in Eisley's thoughts and dreams; a tree under whose branches Eisley figuratively lived his entire life. Gone. For, who knows, fifty years? And yet, what tree could have been more real, more alive? Like a field mouse displaced by developers, pigeons abandoned with an archaic train station, a bum dying in a depot, or a wasp fading into the chill of autumn, Eisley knows that the shadow he casts on a hotel wall will be that of another man tomorrow, and all shadows fade together into the night.

I first was introduced to Loren Eisley by a roommate in graduate school who read aloud to me the final essay in this book. It is entitled, "The Brown Wasps," and if you've never read anything by Eisley, you might want to start there. Among many things, this particular essay is about memory, home, and the place of death in life - themes that run throughout the book whose essays are intimate narratives that intermingle meditations on science and personal history. Having now written these words I feel they miss the mark in recommending this book becuase the themes of Eisley's work seem more experiential than concrete to me, which is the case for many truths about life - truths that can be captured more by the feelings evoked by a time and a place than by mere words alone. And yet, his words do a remarkable job of evoking past times and places, locating them in your present life and providing a context for understanding their meaning. If you read this book, perhaps you'll want to share it with a friend, as my friend did with me, and I have with many good friends since. Eisley communicates the happy/sad, excited/melancholic, naive/wise tensions of nostalgia like no one else I've read.

Theodosius Dobzhansky described Eiseley as "...a Proust miraculously turned into an evolutionary anthropologist," and his works are greatly admired by Ray Bradbury. This was the second book I read of his after "The Immense Journey" and it was no let down at all! It too is haunting, beautiful, disturbing, hopeful, fearful, and immensely imaginative.

Here's a taste, from the chapter The Places Below: "If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession. If you fear the sound of water hurrying through crevices toward unknown and mysterious destinations, do not consider it. Seek out the sunshine. It is a simpler prescription. Avoid the darkness."

I have known David and Roger since the 70's and have other books by them. They love running foot races and it shows. You can count that this will be the best researched and well written book. I was not disappointed. I dug in and read the book over a couple of weeks. If it is not in this book then it is an unproved rumor.

If you are a runner (especially a marathoner) you have to get this book. It goes through every marathon in Olympic history, giving each race history, events, course, statistics, etc. It is very thorough, while pacing itself to get in all the Olympic marathons into a single volume. And, it was written in an interesting and readable manner.

The competition and sport of the races themselves give a great basis for an exciting read.

If you are doing a research project (like I was) this was the only book I would recommend - or, at least the first book. I could not find a book anywhere that showed the 1960 Rome Olympic course. Martin and Gynn had it. In fact, their race course map was better than the map a friend obtained for me from the Italian Olympic Library (Federazione Italiana Di Ateletica Leggera).

The authors, Martin and Gynn, have put together an unbelieveably detailed review of every Olympic Marathon in the modern era. The detail provided brings the excitement of each successive Marathon alive. The Olympic Marathon is, perhaps, the most grueling Olympic event, and the comprehensive coverage of each race makes the reader feel as if it's taking place before their very eyes. Read this book and you'll get a sense of the drama of the event, the personal history of the runners, and the historical setting of each race. The authors have even reconstructed old Olympic documents to trace the paths each Olympic Marathon took. The information in this book is truly encyclopedic, and the authors have given us with a wonderful sense of what this race is about. This book is a gem.

Countries have a long history of ingratitude towards those who save them from peril. This book, in fictional form, was the first part of a planned trilogy detailing how the Polish army under King Jan Sobieski rescued the Western world from the encroachment of the Turks, by relieving the siege of Vienna in 1683. Without that victory, our entire history would probably have changed. What thanks did Poland receive for this tremendous accomplishment? It was dismembered by the very countries it had saved!
Sienkiewicz was a fine writer, unfortunately nearly unknown in these times. This is a robust work, but there is a dominant theme of patriotism infusing his characters. Rarely is love of country shown so clearly as in this work. It is also a love story, and a well-told one at that. The book has Sienkiewicz's usual elements: star-crossed lovers, strudy and loyal heroes, hissable villans, and characters who offer welcome comic relief. The writing is a bit old fashioned at times, but the patriotic feeling with which it was written practically leaps off the page at you. This book is much shorter than Sienkiewicz's other works that I have read, but its brevity does not diminish its impact.

This book is written beautifully and patriotically, you find yourself wanting to postpone evrything around you so can immerse you totally in the book
a well written novel by the master story teller sienkiewicz
definatly a keeper you will read it again
Have a good day

First of all, as much as I love this book, I'd suggest that the first Henryk Sienkiewicz book a person should read be either Quo Vadis or With Fire and Sword. They are long but worth it. This book - incredible as it is - is almost just a fragment compared with the giant scale and spirit of his other books that I've read. Even so, it is head and shoulders above most literature in so many ways.

You really get a sense of the times from Sienkiewicz, and this book is no exception. The descriptions of the armies and the countryside and the people in them establish a very concrete setting. Even so, Sienkiewicz infuses everything in the book with thematic relevance, but it is all done so very subtly that only gradually does the reader cumulatively percieve what the author wants him to understand. This must have been very difficult to accomplish, but he makes it seem effortless.

All the characterizations are centered on ideals and you come to know the people in the story through what they stand for and do. It hardly matters what any character's goal is. What's important here is the idealism and purity - or lack thereof - with which they pursue those goals. The heroes are extremely idealized, and the villians are predatory and evil. The "damsel in distress" is not typecast as a ditz. She is a full participant in the action - almost the main character - and her nobility is played off to great advantage against the trials she goes through. It's hard to resist such larger than life portrayals. Plus, the action is fast paced and always interesting.

Admitedly, this novel was the first of a planned trilogy that Sienkiewicz never completed and it shows a little. On the Field of Glory stands on its own, but it is still just a first act. Jacek's character is probably developed more fully in what would have been book two. In On the Field of Glory, we see powerful, passionate people who are being swept up into a greater conflict, but we do not get to see that greater conflict.

An excellent book that stands on its own, but it's a great loss to world literature that Sienkiewicz couldn't complete the trilogy!

Great addition to the workbook. I was not interested in organization psychology but had to take the class to graduate. I was suprised how much I liked the course and reading the text. Became my favorite course of this semester. Easy to read and very informative.

An Excellent Book.. A Must For All The Managers In Any Organistaion.

"The organizational behavior reader" contains twenty chapters, each with two or three readings by recognized academic experts, usually adapted from the original source, e.g., Harvard Business Review. Chapters begin with the psychological contract (1), theories of managing people (2), individual and organizational learning (3), individual and organizational motivation (4), ethics and values (5), personal growth and work stress (6), and later topics include managing diversity (12), leadership (13), decision making (15), performance appraisal (18), and managing change (20). The pantheon of authors features experts such as Henry Mintzberg, Jay Conger, Denise Rousseau, Ed Lawler, Peter Senge, Cary Cooper, Deborah Tannen, Geert Hofstede, Hank Sims, Victor Vroom, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Ray Miles, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. There are numerous charts, diagrams, graphs and models. Anecdotes and examples are plentiful. Self-assessments are rare. Few of the readings offer empirical data; the emphasis is on mental models, images, and concepts.

Professors of organizational behavior, looking for readings rather than integrated text, exercises, and cases, as well as a less expensive alternative to traditional college textbooks, will find this book appealing. These authors are, in general, engaging and highly readable. Chapters can be assigned in an order or avoided altogether to please the teacher's preferences. The breadth of topics, the currency of the treatments, and the expertise of the authors provide a solid foundation for the primary college OB course. Graduate students in need of less text structure and faculty in need of less ancillary materials will find the most benefit.

The book is rooted in social psychology and emphasizes perception, learning, thinking, images and personality, e.g., interpersonal communication, attribution, creativity. There is less on the `behavior' side of organizational behavior. Several authors use the device of posing `myths' to contrast with the author's learned, alternative state (`fact'), and sometimes the myths read more like `conventional wisdom' or the author's own attempt to make his or her point more vivid by presenting a myth that exists only in the minds of a few people. For business school students, this reader is more about organizations and people than about business. Business faculty and courses adopting this book will likely want and need to provide a management context.

This concise and very well written book is thoughtful distillation of the enormous literature related to the onset of WWII in Europe. The simple question, who started WWII, has a simple answer. It was Adolf Hitler. The simple answer obscures a whole series of considerably more difficult questions. How did a marginal figure and 4th-rate ideologue like Hitler come to rule the most powerful state in Europe? Why wasn't there more initial resistance to Hitler? What was the role of the Great Depression? To what extent did the post-WWI settlement lead to WWII? What was the role of the Soviet Union and Stalin? Many other questions arise. Bell deals with many of these issues in a series of well crafted chapters. The book opens by framing the issues, including a short but worthwhile discussion of historiographic issues, follows by discussing underlying factors such as ideology, economics, the role of the depression, the roles of the military postures adopted by the major actors, and then concludes with a nice narrative of the outbreak of war. Bell very intelligently extends his narrative beyond 1939 to the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, pointing out that it is these later events that allow assessment of the role of key ideological factors in the coming of WWII. This book is worth reading just for the chapters dealing with the consequences of the Great Depression. A theme throughout the book is the limited options possessed by the leaders of France and Britain. Given their internal political situations, some form of appeasement was inevitable, though consistently unpalatable. I have a couple of minor complaints. I don't think Bell deals with the uncertain nature of politics in the Weimar Republic. Hitler's accession to power was not inevitable. While some form of reactionary German government bent on reversing the settlement of WWI was probably inevitable, it could have been one dominated by more traditional conservatives. This type of leadership would have been amenable to the type of accomodation and diplomacy attempted by Chamberlain and the French leadership. It is clear also, in retrospect, that few in Europe really understood the depth of the Nazi racial preoccupations and their bizarre model of history, a tragic though understandable mistake.

This is a great book everyone should read, I salute it.

Bell does a fine job of looking at just what brought about the Second World War. He explains its connections to the Great War, by first discussing the idea of a Thirty Years War, and by then examining how the first war and its results brought about the second. Bell also provides readers with the roles and views of the various ideologies and the many desires for and against war, and also the many strategies involved with each of the main players. An excellent book for anyone wishing to better understand the differing forces and actions which brought about this war.