John Books

This book was mailed to me in a fast manner. I am enjoying this book. It is about how you can Heal yourself. And it does work. Thank you

It is a great book that gives very important insite in the field that the traditional medicine does not cover. The importance of the understanding human nature and the complex relationship of our "internal" and "external" world is revealed with compelling evidences. The book can be offered to any person who is interested to improve the health. Special recommendation would be given to health care providers.

I originally bought this as a gift for someone else, however before I gave it to them gave it a good once over and found it quite interesting. For a beginer I found this book to be quite full of detail that was easy to comprehend and was not to heavy with field jargon and terms. It was over all a good read for both beginers and as I have been informed by my friend a good source book for advanced users also. Should be more text books out there like this!

Yes, your hands can heal you...but this book can also heal your views on what you think you now know. Learn how to change your views on your past, and excel into the future. The only way to advance into the future, is to release the baggage of the past.

Learn how to be spiritual, and find out just who you are and where you want to go in life.

The book is clearly laid out and is a big aid in my Pranic healing. It is true your hands can heal.

It is a very good book, the reading is really good!!! I loved reading the letters between Jefferson and Adams!!!! The letters are very good!!!!

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall and to be able to share in the thoughts and happenings of important places and people? Well, if your desires in that regard include the office of the Presidency of the United States and the early days following the American Revolution, that is exactly what this book provides.

As was typical of statesmen of that day, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams maintained a lengthy personal and professional correspondance the subjects of which were both mundane and highly intellectual. This book takes that correspondance, chronologically arranges it and then groups it according the characteristics of the time and the themes of their correspondance. As an additional bonus, John's wife Abigail Adams is included as well.

My attraction to this volume was to seek clarity and focus on several questions that are quite relevant to today. What was meant and intended by the concept of Separation of Church and State and what was the philisophic and religious thinking of there two important figures? There's no shortage of resources out there to tell you what these men thought, the context of their society and usually as an added bonus how these matters in one way or another support the agenda or perspective of the one putting the source together.

At some point however, if you really want to grapple with these issues or just understand the times and importance of these two men, there is no substitute for simply reading and allowing them to speak for themselves.

The added benefit of reading it through in its entirity is that you are not subjected to the judgement of another as to what is significant, what isn't and you aren't relying upon snippets and quotes that may or may not be in context and may or may not be representative of all that either man had to say upon a certain matter.

Certainly, this is just a small cross-section of all that these two men wrote and by itself there is much more that should be added. However, more than any other correspondance preserved from that day that these men engaged in, this was an exchange between men who considered the other his equal and for whom, with exceptions in time periods that are noted, mutual respect and a desire to explain themselves to one another motivated a candor and depth of intimacy that is difficult to find in other sectors.

Certainly, any student of American History needs this resource as a reference and as such it affords a ready means to add information and topically flip through the pages to see what each man had to say on a particular subject.

Every such student though, in my opinion, owes it to themselves, at least once, to just sit down and read the entire volume. Do this, and you'll have a handle upon the style of communication of the day, a feeling for many of the issues of the day and how they were viewed by the participants who did not have the advantage of knowing at the time how something would resolve. Idiosyncrasies in language and social custom will become more self-evident and the chances of being mislead by a quote isolated from its context will diminish considerably.

In short, for anyone who loves History, this is an experience not to be missed.

The footnotes and introductory passages to the different sections in my opinion do a remarkably good job of providing the reader with just enough context and outside information so that the letters themselves make sense and are not misunderstood. The reader is not told what to think about the letters per se, but rather equipped to make a better informed evaluation and come to their own conclusions. Those elements make the book valuable as well.

5 stars if ever there was a book worthy of 5 stars; again, this IS history.

Bart Breen

What an incredible feeling reading the words of two of our country's founding fathers. To feel the respect and affection , as well as irritation, of these men is astounding. I am grateful that they have been made available to us to have and hold in our own hands and libraries and to pass on to our children.

This is a very intersting book. The letters are all preceeded by an introduction that gives the reader historical context as well as a description of the relationship at the time between the writers of the letter.

Out second and third presidents began their political career as friends, fell out, and then fortunately became friends again. In this wonderful collection of personal letters we see not only the men but the times until their deaths July 4, 1826. One of our most beloved presidents and most mis-understood are brought into reality by this collection. They were after all both remarkable men and human beings.

Professor stated it is a book we will refer to for a long time. Havent read it. Came quickly and in good condition.

This is a great textbook for ABA. It is perfect for studying for the Board Certification for Behavior Analysis (BCBA).

Book is essential for any Behavior Analyists career to understand the science of ABA.

Very helpful for the field!

Just kidding. This is a clear, concise text that I am finding to be very user-friendly. This text is not nearly as difficult to understand as Michael's Concepts and Principles of Behavior Analysis, at least for someone like myself who is fairly new to behavior analytic textbooks.

This text is spectacular. This edition is a triumph. I was a bit dubious when the forward obliquely compared this book to The Beatles (The White Album), but have become more sympathetic to the perspective as I have spent more time with it. Cooper/Heron is simply the book to use in studying Applied Behavior Analysis. It's not chummy or dated like some texts of 70s (an effort to reduce the response effort of learning the material, no doubt). Instead it is complete, precise and well written. My sincere thanks to the authors. Worth twice the going price.

I give this only three stars, but not because there's anything wrong with it. It's just that, if your child is really ready to read, the first set will definitely give them the tools to do so. But once they grasp the "key to castle" of sounding out that that first set delivers, they may be ready for a bigger leap than this second set offers.

We did the first set with our daughter, but then we never got more than a book or two into this one before she was picking up lots of other books we had around and checking easy readers out of the library, and completely lost interest in these. We definitely never considered any sets beyond this one.

I'd recommend the first box, but then as soon as they grasp that they CAN read, if they are anything like my daughter, kids are going to want something with more of a story. I'd recommend the Max the Cat series readers, they have more of a story to each little book, but the same difficulty levels as the Bob books. They are listed on Amazon as Phonics Practice Readers: Series A, Set 1/10 Reader's Plus Teacher's Guide

The Bob book series are excellent for encouraging very beginning readers. Each page has only a few words and kids who are just beginning to sound out and read the stories. This makes them want to keep learning. The only thing to watch out for is kids sometimes memorize the books if they read only one or two over and over so you need to mix them up to have them actually read the books.

I've been using these with my 4 and 5 year olds and they both love them.

I am amazed at how these books have helped my 4.5 year old son take off with his reading. He eats these books up, and I have taken to letting him read one in bed at night with a little book light to encourage his reading. He even asks about the punctuation marks and what they mean! By the time he hits kindergarten I think he will be through the whole set!

I am a Special Education teacher. I help children with learning disabilities (K-5) learn to read. I don't think there are words for how highly I want to reccommend these books to parents and other educators. These books are PHONICS based and they are systematic and sequential. They help train a child's brain to see the patterns in the english language. Learning these patterns is how children learn to read. Other reviews have slammed these books for being boring and low interest. Are they the most exciting and engaging books ever? No, not really. Will they help your child/student learn to read? YES, they will. And the stories have enough content that I am able to monitor comprehension with questions such as "Who was this story about?", "Why did the fox try to hide when he saw the hen?", and "How do you think the animals felt when they saw the fox?". But most importantly, it is just such a thrill to see that expression of astonished pride on the child's face when they finish reading the book to you all by themselves. It's that bewildered sense of accomplishment that makes my students willing to take on new challenges and continue improving their reading skills.

I liked this set but unfortunatly it contained many of the same books as the first set, which we already have. I think they could have done it a little differently. If I had it to do over again I would have either skipped this set or started off with this one and skipped the first one.

This is a history of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army, formed on 19 September 1944. They saw action in Italy in the spring of 1945 but did not have the opportunity to enter Germany until after the war was over, possibly because of the reaction some of them have to a group of German POWs - they attacked the POWs and the Jewish officers had to stand between the Jewish soldiers and the POWs. After the surrender of Germany, Sergeant Israel Carmi and Captain Johanan Peltz visit the survivors at Mauthausen and return to camp with revenge on their minds. Carmi requests a transfer to military intelligence and begins gathering information on the commanders of the SS - and forms an execution squad made of Jewish soldiers. Throughout the summer of 1945, they execute by their estimate 300 Gestapo. Then in July 1945, Peltz and Carmi go into Poland to execute a Gestapo agent hiding as a Catholic priest. As they enter the church, they discover the priest is conducting a class of teenage girls. One of the girls makes her way to them, sees the Star of David on the shoulder patch of their uniforms, and declares her wish to return to her own people - her parents had hidden her in a Catholic orphanage. They forget their original mission and take the girl back to a Displaced Person camp near their camp. This launches the Jewish Brigade Group into a new mission - rescuing Displaced Persons and smuggling them into Palestine. I recommend this book on how history can be changed by a small decision.

It is excellently written. A true story. You do not want to let go.

I met Howard Blum at a book signing at the JCC in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He was there for his book "The Eve of Destruction". He is an amazing story teller and has a powerful story to tell. This story is told thru the eye's of three men and a woman, Israel Carmi, Johanan Peltz, and Arie Pinchuk, Leah Pinchuk. The British in almost a regretfully way allow a Jewish Brigade to be raised from voluteer's from Palestine. A brigade of 5000 troops who fought the Nazi's in the Italian campaign. These brave men then take on another mission. Their most important mission in their lifes, rescueing Jewish orphan children. These troops stationed in Europe after the conflict were privately hunting down war crinimal's when almost by accident they rescued a ophan Jewish girl. Darkness had almost consumed these men in the never ending spiral of death when God stepped in and handed them the orphan girl.
"The more he killed in cold blood, the more he ensured that the horror the Nazis had let loose would continue to triumph. His only hope was to make a movement away from this ruinous faith. And now he knew what he had to do. For the first time he started to envision the beginnings of a plan, an active strategy, that brought with it the possibility of a world beyond all the evil."
Now you would think this would not be such a difficult problem, however the British were determined not to allow any more Jewish refugee's into Palestine!
A thrilling true story that will keep you in suspense till then end! This was a little known unit that contributed so much to humanity.

Howard Blum has written a compelling true narrative of a small group of Jewish soldiers who fought the Nazis along side the British Army in WWII. This little known slice of history is conveyed persuasively in The Brigade.

Blum discovered this small piece of history by accident when visiting the US Holocaust Museum. After he pulled together scores of interviews, he chose to tell the story through the eyes of three soldiers and one survivor, the sister of one of the soldiers. This telling is what gives this book its potency.

The strength of The Brigade is that it reads as a novel, and the reader cannot turn the pages fast enough to find out what happens next. Blum's accurate portrayal and attention to details is what keeps us focused on the reality of this amazing story of courage and perserverance. He reminds us through his excellent storytelling that this did happen.

The book is not another war novel that expounds on the accounts of military victories. It shows the sacrifices and the souls of these men who risked their lives to save their people. It reveals their struggles and their doubts as well as their triumphant spirits.

The Brigade is a must read. It is uplifting and demonstrates the human spirit at its best.

How this book went under the radar is beyond me! Steven Spielberg should make a movie out of this, and it could be better than "Saving Private Ryan"! This is a true story, of the first official Jewish military fighting unit. It was formed, when the British government, agreed to send 5,000 Jewish volunteers to fight in Europe, during World War II. Let your heart, mind and soul, be put in the place of a Jewish soldier: Millions of Jews being exterminated in the concentration camps, and you aren't allowed to fight back, as a recognized official unit or brigade. Now your chance comes! This book, first delves into the different types of men in this group. The feeling of helplessness, even after being approved and organized, because they're kept away from the main fighting. I was deeply impacted, as I was told, that no one, had ever worn the Star Of David, on a military uniform before. What a wonderful contrast, to the Star Of David being put on all the Holocaust victims sleeves, as a means of humiliation. When the war ends, this Jewish Brigade, decides not to stop! They continue to go after Nazi officers in hiding, and people who stole Jewish citizen's artwork and valuables. Two individual scenes, brought pride to my chest, and tears to my eyes. One was when, two of the Brigade, finally tracked down one of the Germans, who had performed various atrocities against the Jews, and one member of the Brigade, said to the war criminal: "In the name of the Jewish people, I sentence you to death!" The other scene, was when members of the Brigade, came to the gates of a concentration camp, and the skeletal survivor's in pajamas, stood looking at them, and did not speak. One soldier said, "Don't be afraid" in Yiddish. "The survivors still did not speak" "The soldier felt guilty-of his health, his strength, his good fortune, to have been spared." "He tried again, "We're Jews," he said. "Confused, a man pointed to the Star Of David on the soldier's sleeve, and asked hesitantly, "You're Jewish angels?" I could not put this book down, and have tried to think of a million different reasons, why no one has made this into a movie. I bought the book for my son, who, with starting a new family, and a new job, doesn't have time to read. But after starting this book, he read it every morning before work, and at lunch, and finished it in a week. I bought a copy and sent it to my brother, who is the busiest guy I know. He never has time to read. He read it in a week, and then passed it on to an older gentleman where he works. I sent a copy to one of my best friends; he finished it in a week. We all still discuss, and quote this book today, and I read it over three years ago!

This is a book mainly geared toward classes, possibly overcrowded, that have students from different disciplines (engineering, chemistry, physics, math, etc). This is the book for the Let's-get-this-over-with-quickly approach. I think that this book will probably disapoint physics or mathematics undergraduates - assuming, of course, they care about physics or maths.
The task of carefully choosing a balance between mathematical rigor and applications is the main one that falls upon an author of a calculus text at this level. Not dumbing down the mathematical notation and theorems too much, while being able to keep the dots between the abstractions and the applications, therein lies the art of writing. The more I look at this book, the less the author's choices seems to make sense. If you look at it, it's just an ordinary modern calculus text, nicely illustrated and all. That's the problem. Too many calculus text are copies of other calculus text, and have not put in the effort to connect the dots through the student's eye. Even little things...like defining a parabola as x^2 = -4py, instead of y = -(1/4p)x^2, because, after all, we're used to y=f(x)...Sure, all the theorems are there...So what? Wouldn't be a calculus book if it didn't have the theorems. I ask myself: if you give little boxes of theorems in nice typography, cool illustrations, together with scissors and glue, will little children put together a nice calculus book for you? Will a thousand monkeys with keyboards write mathematics textbooks?
The first book is better than the second. If you can avoid it, don't buy volume II (that is, don't buy the Combined edition). Even in volume I there are problems. For instance, there's omission of integration of algebraic functions resulting in the arctg, IIRC (there's just a formula thrown at you).
Volume II is below average (Multivariable Calculus). Don't expect to learn much along the lines of the /reasons/ behind what you are doing here. Why must you parametrize a curve? To transform a path integral in an ordinary integral in one variable, perhaps? Should you use a position vector or just autoparametrization? Did you see the relation between conservative fields, the gradient and potential energy? Do you think you can relate a map of the density of a population of a certain species to a double integral? All these are examples of issues that you'll not glimpse into using this book. It does not bring you *understanding*. Of course, if what you expect is learning by rote, than this book does that: trains students to calculate little numerical problems or perform algebraic manipulations. No doubt that's important, but that is not all. They performed as you expected. You measure them by that stick, fine. Everyone's happy. Goodbye. Next class. Calculus was invented to solve real problems, let's not loose sight of that. My experience with this book was that it made the explanations so disconected, so without grounding, that I had to look for other texts. Edwards and Penney, Thomas and Finney, Guidorizzi, Kaplan, Piskunov, until I settled for McCallum's Multivariable Calculus. I wasted a substantial time trying to fill in the gaps with other books.
Don't expect to read even a mildly reasonable explanation of partial differentiation. Not rigorous, not enough demonstrations. Some explanations are really bad, like Lagrange multipliers. Oversimplifying explanations is not adequate, IMHO. There's not enough geometric visualizations for the issue of gradients, for instance. Parametrization and the analytic geometry for the second half of the book is interpersed throughout the first half, and in a somewhat awkward order. I've seen better ordering of the material. Total differential and total increment are a little over a page in length.
I blame this book, in part, for the high "flunk rate" on Calculus II at my University. However, it seems the publisher is being very successful in marketing it all over the world. All it means to me is that the marketing department is competent.
In my ordeal through The Quest for Answers, I have found other books that I think are better, at this level. Look for Edwards & Penney, McCallum's Multivariable Calculus (this is probably the best choice) or Thomas and Finney. Anton does not succeed in making you achieve a reasonable working knowledge of the material in terms of comprehension.
On the bright side, the wealth of examples is nice (although your exam will probably be more like the exercises that start at number 40 or so, instead of the examples). The layout is good too. But there's absolutely nothing in it that justifies it as "different" ("New Horizon") or that makes it stand apart from the other books geared at the same audience, unless, that is, you compare it to a 1969 book.
Also nice is how the use of a CAS is blended in the book, so that if you do those CAS exercises, you will be on your way to become proficient in some CAS package wrt Calculus. A note here: I think the author should've mentioned open source CAS - there are at least 2 packages: Axiom and Maxima; they bear no cost to the student and have years of research behind them. Also, Scilab from INRIA (Institute National de Recherche et Information) replaces Matlab and is also open source (but both Scilab and Matlab are not for symbolic manipulations).
3 stars because it does its job of covering the basics. But no "classic", just average.
If you're having trouble with this book, see my review of McCallum's et al. Multivariable Calculus.

I thought I was terrible at math until I picked up this book for a college calculus course. In contrast to virtually every other math textbook I'd ever been forced to use, this book explained concepts clearly and simply, providing examples that increased gradually in complexity. I happened to have a good professor that semester, but whenever I didn't understand something in class, I taught myself from this textbook. It was a rare pleasure to feel I could learn such a difficult subject independently. I ended up getting an A in the class - and more importantly, I learned I wasn't bad at math at all.

To add a bit more information to the raw data of these reviews, I've mapped the universe of all possible readers of this book onto a set of x-y axes. Let the x-axis run from "non-Math-types" up through "Math-types." Let they y-axis go from "non-geniuses" up through "geniuses:"

- Quadrant I: genius Math-types will probably be both irritated and bored with this book. Their irritation will spring from the fact that not all of the pure-math proofs they'll be looking for are here. The book focuses more on explaining and doing calculus than on proving it. Most of the material is proven (properly: no missing steps), but the proofs that would get in the way of doing calculus are omitted. Quadrant Is will be bored because the author does his best to pound on a topic until practically everyone can understand it. Genius math-types, since they're inherently capable of grasping this material from proofs alone, will not be pleased by this repetition. For Quadrant Is, some version of Tom M. Apostol's Calculus books (ISBNs 9686708103, 842915003X, 8429150013, 0471000051, 0471503037, 0471000078, or 0471000086) would be a better text.

- Quadrant II: genius non-Math-types will probably prefer the fact that the author skipped some proofs in favor of applications. However, like the Quadrant Is, they'll probably be somewhat bored by the author's "slowness" in moving on after he introduces a topic. This book will be OK for them, but they'd probably prefer a more "terse" presentation. Unfortunately, I don't have any recommendations for such a book.

- Quadrant III: non-genius non-Math-types (i.e., "normal" people), will find this book just right. As noted above, the author's focus is on teaching and using calculus, not *necessarily* on proving it. If the proofs are complex enough that they'd distract from that mission, they're either relegated to Appendix G or omitted (though most proofs are present). Best of all, the author doesn't skip steps in his proofs: all the steps are there in their detailed glory. Later in the book, he will occasionally skip a simplification of an expression, but none of the "proof" material is missing. In the latter half of the book, he sometimes does the "proof is left as an exercise for the student" routine, but those are for non-essential proofs. After the author introduces a topic/theorem/method, he always gives multiple (at least three) examples. So, if the readers are having trouble with the equations and proofs, they'll have several chances to figure out what he means from the examples. Also, all the odd problems have answers in the back of the book. There are no steps included with the answers, but usually that's not a problem (since there are so many examples in the book). I also found the appendices giving explanations of pre-Calculus math facts very useful: it's been a long time since I've seen those things, so I needed the refresher.

- Quadrant IV: non-genius Math-types will join the Quadrant Is in disliking the skipping of several proofs, but, like the Quadrant IIIs, will be pleased with the thorough, step-by-step nature of the existing proofs. Not the best choice of a textbook for them, but for those who are having trouble with a "pure math" Calculus book, this is a good supplement.

Overall, this is an excellent book (I rate it 5 stars out of 5). The author did a wonderful job matching his material to his chosen audience (Quadrant III, "normal" people). For non-genius non-math-types, I highly recommend it. For genius non-math-types and non-genius math-types, it's OK. Genius math-types should avoid it and try something like Apostol's Calculus.

I'm learning Calculus with this book and I'm finding excellent!
My college changed Swokowski's book (it's out of print in Brazil!!!) by Anton's book. This book -together with Swokowski- is highly recommended for the beginners undergraduates. For me, Anton is very better Stewart's book -for instance-. Therefore, buy "Calculus a new horizont, 6th edition!

Well am trying to find out where can i get all answer sheet for the questions which is provided in the book.

I have found answers to odd-numbered exercies, But am looking for all answers. How can i get it please.
Thanks for helpping customers

I have a copy of the first edition of this book and am still mesmerized by it. When it first came out, everyone I knew at design school who bought it felt like the information and techniques had given them an out-of-body-experience and it quickly became THE book to own, learn from, and emulate. Anyone who buys this book and applies the material and techniques will become better at drawing, rendering, and creative presentation methods...it is a sure-fire way to achieve "star power" in your office and in front of your clients!

great book! Out of the dozens of hand rendering guides I looked at, this was by far the best and the easiest to learn from. It tells you what pencils, markers, and tools to buy to achieve certain effects, and gives you step-by-step rendering instructions for tons of different types of materials and lighting situations. I highly recommend this- in fact, it should be mandatory for interior design students!

This is an excellent resouce for the study of rendering. After detailing the elements of color and design, it describes, step-by-step, how to achieve many finishes both interior and exterior. It is both instructive and informative.

It's really hard to say too many things about this book. Even older editions of Color Drawing are great, but this newest one goes above and beyond the call of duty. In an age when a lot of books get re-released as new editions with few substantive changes, Color Drawing breaks the mold by updating the techniques with current technology (i.e. Photoshop). It's great to see that the author and publisher realize that pure hand-drawing and rendering is quickly becoming a thing of the past and that the practitioners of today and tomorrow need to have excellent computer skills too. This book is full of very useful tips for combining Photoshop with hand drawings to create great effects. So even if you have an earlier edition, do yourself a favor and buy the new one anyway because you will learn a lot.

This is the standard for rendering in architecture and interior design as far as I am concerned. It will most definitely become a required textbook for my classes in visual presentation in the years to come. Doyle takes you step-by-step into the process of rendering with marker, color pencil, and pastels. But he doesn't just spoon feed you the recipe for each material rendering, he presents the basis for a process that allows you to render virtually any material not found in the book.

I love sea stories, I love survival stories & I knew very little about this book besides the fact that almost every review was 5 stars. I thought I would give it try. This is the story of John Caldwell who at the end of WW2 was stranded at the opposite end of the world from his new wife Mary whom he had married the year before. Try as John might he could not find a way to get back to his wife in Australia. From his years of service in the merchant marine he had enough money saved up to buy a 26 year old 29 foot sailboat. With ZERO training & knowledge of sailing he set off from Panama for a 9,000 mile journey.

One of the things that sets this book apart is at the start John really knows nothing about sailing & he isn't afraid to admit it. Right from the moment he casts off he is only minutes from disaster but somehow he prevails & after numerous mistakes he slowly learns to be a better sailor. He sails solo but he is far from alone, he has two kittens who you learn to love & other secret stowaways. Some become friends, some become dinner. John writes with a great sense of humor. As I was reading the book I was expecting John to get lost or beat up in storms but I wasn't expecting the epic tale of survival. It is one of most successful sailing stories ever. I won't delve any farther into what happens but I will say he has endless interesting escapades with the creatures of the south seas & you will see why this is a desperate voyage. Also you will be amazed at what a human being will eat if pushed to the brink of death.

You will love John's storytelling. I was sad to learn that John has passed on. This week (Sept 2008) his wife has published another book (Mary's Voyage) about further journeys with John - I can't believe he stepped foot on another sailboat. If you love sea stories this book will not disappoint.

John Caldwell was in love. So in love he bought a less-than-adequate 29 foot sailboat to sail thousands of miles across the Pacific (from Panama to Sydney, Australia) to be with his new bride. On his way, adventure and obstacles ensue, and he really shows what he's made of throughout the story.

What a great book! A real page-turner. You will have a hard time putting this one down. I know I did!

John Caldwell, a young American who served in the Australian air force and the US merchant marine during WWII, found himself at the end of hostilities stranded in Panama. He had no way to get back to Australia and his new wife Mary.

With more pluck than brains Caldwell, who had not done any small boating, buys a small sailboat (about 29 feet) with the idea of sailing to far off Australia--more than 8500 miles of open Pacific. First he learns how to maneuver his boat in and around the islands off Panama, with many hilarious screw-ups. Finally he sets off across the ocean. He has a tiresome voyage to the Galapagos Islands, again with many screw-ups, some of which almost cost him his life and nearly wreck his sailboat and disable his auxiliary engine. After the Galapagos the sailing goes better as he has wind and current with him and only some 8000 miles left to go. Then about half way there, between the Marquesas Islands and Samoa, Caldwell is hit by a terrible hurricane that destroys his rig, nearly sinks his boat, and forces him to jettison all of his food, water, navigation equipment, and supplies. His prospects for survival, not to speak of getting to Australia, are remote. Fortunately he had an almost indestructible craft, and that was his greatest piece of luck.

Under jury jig and near death from starvation, he eventually fetches up in the Fiji Islands. He is nursed back to health by the kindly natives and soon makes it the rest of the way to Australia by hitching rides on boats and planes, and is reunited with his beloved Mary. They apparently have lived happily ever after (or at least until the late 1990s), even founding and running a resort in the Caribbean.

Desperate Voyage is a wonderful and wonderfully engaging story. Caldwell writes so well and so engagingly that this book is really hard to put down. I thoroughly enjoyed it. You cannot help liking this plucky screw-up with a penchant for survival. Of course, I feel somewhat guilty enjoying this tale so much--after all it is mostly about screw-ups, disaster, pain, and close brushes with death most of which resulted from Caldwell's rashness and carelessness. Caldwell's voyage is not one to emulate. But as A.J. Mackinnon says in his masterful The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow (another boating story full of screw-ups) "No screw-ups, no story." Certainly if Caldwell had been an accomplished yachtsman and as careful as we boaters are supposed to be, there would have been nothing here to laugh and cry about. Also when reading Caldwell's tale I was reminded of Mackinnon's admission: "Of course, I exaggerate for effect." How much has Caldwell exaggerated to enhance his tale? No one knows, but I sincerely doubt that he really drank his engine oil in order to assuage his hunger when he was starving.

More than thirty years ago when my young family were avid deep water sailors, I read many survival and adventure stories written by those who had had narrow escapes. John Caldwell's vivid tale of his struggle to return to his Australian lady love following his release from the Navy at the end of WWII still stands out in my mind. This year, as I home school my grandson and encourage him to develop innovative thinking, determination and loyalty, "Desperate Voyage" once again comes to mind. One of your other reviewers remarked that Caldwell "had no literary pretentions," but his book is, nevertheless, well worth reading for Caldwell's own humor and durability in the face of disaster. I am happy once again to add it to my library on my grandson's behalf.

This was a very insightfull book of one man's sailing adventure to return to his true love. I was very moved by this book as I have visited both Costa Rica (from where he starts his adventure) and where he finally found his perfect island in the West Indies. Both sailers and non sailers will love his humour and love.

this is the best cookie book out there. This is my number one go to for cookies! Every time I make something out of this book I look like a professional.

amazing, easy to follow, the best cookie book out there, hands down.

This is one of the best cookie cook books I have the pleasure of owning. They are a little exotic but easy recipes and taste soooo good. If you believe in butter and sugar and everything nice deserves to be in a cookie, you'll love this cookbook. Don't hesitate - buy it. A friend of mine regularly takes this out of the library - I say, why bother, just buy it!

So far, I've enjoyed every recipe I've attempted from Tish Boyle's collection. However, the only limitation of this book is the presentation -- i.e., the lack of photos. Half the pleasure of cookies, I think, is being able to see them -- their shapes, color, thickness and texture.

I would not recommend this book to a beginner. This is really for someone who's at least at an intermediate level -- familiar with all the tools of crafty cookie-making and has the capacity to make adjustments, such as adding or subtracting flour, as needed.

I used to have a side business selling cookies and have made more varieties of cookies than anyone I know. This is hands down my favorite cookie book. The pictures are beautiful, the organization is thoughtful, and the recipes are scrumptious and spot-on. My favorite cookie of all time is the monster fudge nut cookie featured here. Every time I have made it, people gush over how wonderful it is. I strongly recommend this book.

The life of John James Audubon could have been a historical novel. This West Indian French bastard survived revolutions, wars, earthquakes, floods, economic collapses, and epidemics. He called everywhere in North America, as well as Europe and the Caribbean, his home. He combined entrepreneurial skills with a love of the outdoors and the gifts of the naturalist and artist (not to mention hunter). His equally-amazing English-born wife Lucy took to the frontier as readily as he, raising a family and providing frontier hospitality wherever their fortunes took them.

A biographer or historian may lack a novelist's eye for the kinds of background details that make the past come alive to the reader. But Richard Rhodes has immersed himself in his subject's world. He's read everything, not only what Audubon himself wrote, but also what his family, acquaintances, and others who experienced the same things wrote. Suppose you'd been in New York City on 9/11 but hadn't written much about your experience. A future historian might use the descriptions by others who were there too to fill in the gaps. That's what Rhodes has done for Audubon.

Before this book, Rhodes was known for his Pulitzer-winning history of the development of the atomic bomb. Now he's known as Audubon's biographer, having edited the Everyman's Library edition of The Audubon Reader and contributed an introduction to the forthcoming Audubon: Early Drawings. This is a remarkable book by someone who really knows his subject, his period, and his craft as writer and historian.

This book is nothing short of MAGNIFICENT! Rhodes is an elegant writer who knows and loves his subject as well as history and gets it all right. This is more than the biography of one brilliant man; it is a history of frontier America in its early days and is populated with much more than birds. There are Indians, friends, enemies, 4-legged animals, and yes, loads and loads of American birds. The voyages back and forth from Europe to America are enlightening and amazing to think about. I knew next to nothing about birds when I bought this book; I bought it because of an interesting book review I read a couple of years ago.

There is another Audobon book that came out the same year, Under a Wild Sky by Souder, and I own that book, too. The Souder book was a finalist for the Pulitzer, but I really don't know how it could have been selected over this book by Richard Rhodes. For example, this book goes into all the details of Audubon's personal life right up to his last days on earth, whereas the Souder book covers most of it in a few paragraphs at the end of his book.

I LOVED this book! I had a couple of bird books next to my chair as I was reading (one, a condensed version of Audubon's Birds of America), and referred to them throughout reading, which was fun and very enlightening and educational. Audubon knew and loved his birds so well that he even wrote biographies of individual species, and indeed individual birds themselves! What could be more amazing than that?

This is a truly delicious book that I wish more people would read. Right now there are only 18 individual reviews, which is much less than this book should have. I always blame the publishers for not doing justice to the fabulous books they are entrusted with. Do yourself a favor and read this special book! It is about a great man, yes, but also covers so much more. In these days of being green, Audubon predicted (and saw the beginnings of) the sad ruination and ultimate demise of nature in all its forms, and that was in the early 1800s. He was a pioneer as well as a bright man, and a funny man, and a driven man who loved and adored his family and his birds.

In its own way, this book reveals as much about the early 'natural history' years of the nation's founding as "Roots" does about early 'social history' years of Americans' tangled involvement with its imported slave population. Just as a national audience sat transfixed before TV sets watching a human drama unfold, so too, a reader following Audubon's manic treks back and forth from the East Coast to Louisiana to capture and sketch American birds, and his inspired obsession develop and finance a folio of ornithological plates by selling subscriptions in England, would marvel first at his tenacity, second at his self-awareness, and finally recognize that we live in a much less fecund animal world than the one he captured.

Audubon was an innovator of the first rank, in devising a systematic methodology (wire-frame supports) for accurately posing the bird in its natural setting, and a keen observer of the world he was both illustrating and helping to eradicate. Throughout his collecting and drafting career, he noted the transformations of habitats and ranges, and recognized that the 'natural' world he knew would look very different after his death. Large-scale conversion of woodlands to other uses, and the relentless pressure of colonization, exerted a profound impact on the distribution and range of avian species, and Audubon watched it happen in real time. His descriptions of the 'bird counts' he conducted tell the story. Repeatedly, he describes flocks that 'blacken the sky' - something we'll never see today.

Rhodes' biography is exhaustive, and a review should note that there is quite a bit of superfluous detail brought into the description of his early years. Furthermore, Rhodes in this effort did not turn out to be a great prose stylist, so some serious editing for length would have helped. Those criticisms aside, the Rhodes biography succeeds in bringing to life a vanished world, one in which colonists, pioneers and settlers were surrounded by 'wild nature,' and most of the people could actually name the animals (and birds) they saw!

If you want to really gain a great deal of insight into the forming of the American Frontier...read this book! It is really far more about that than it is about JJ Audobon although he is a very interesting character all by himself. A fascinating person at a fascinating time in history. I highly recommend it.

In the tradition of the great biographers, Rhodes leaves no stone unturned in his exploration of this remarkable fellow. The author carries us through the journey of the quintessential self-made man as he comes into maturity with his new country, the United States.
This is a study of a man, not an ornithological treatise. We all have seen the beautiful portraits of birds (terrific color plates in the paperback edition I have) and, through Rhodes efforts, discover Audubon's ingenuity in rendering them with the sort of lifelike quality he hoped to achieve. He earned his passage on many early excursions as the boat's hunter and trapper requiring lone forays into the hinterland. He clearly absorbed everything in his environment while he was making his way. His love for wildlife extended beyond avian society to all flora and fauna contained in the natural environment. He painted other animals and plants, as well. In his waning years, he executed a series of North American mammals with his sons. He had hoped to do much more.
Audubon's history is entwined with early America. He surely enjoyed his notoriety in European courts but always longed for his wild territory. In his later years (he died a decade before the Civil War), his assessment of the burgeoning nation was that it was becoming too crowded, overpopulated; ruined. THAT America was gone before Audubon died but Mr. Rhodes allows us an almost palpable glimpse at it as he illuminates one of it's most colorful citizens. Who would be a better guide into the young U.S. than this great naturalist, so skillfully revealed by this delightful writer?