Pitt Books

This book provides an excellent examination of car culture in the U.S., making strikingly original points about the connection between cars and our personal, social, and political lives. Rajan's analysis is both incredibly deep and thorough, and will change the way you look at your life in your car (if it doesn't make you flat out give it up.)

They are expensive but you get what you pay for. You can open this Bible up to Genesis 1 or Revelation 22 and it will lie flat. Looks great, feels great, reads great, my only knock is it has small print 7pt font. However the font is larger than most compact Bibles. If you are looking for a good compact Bible to carry with you look no further than Pitt Minion ESV.

This is another heartwrenching account of the suffering of the Polish people during WWII. In recent years, a slew of books have been published about Poland and Poles starting with WWII and continuing on through the end of the Cold War and beyond. The world is finding out about the Polish experience during the last 50 year, finally.
This book brings to us another sad chapter that has to be known.

I recommend this one wholeheartedly. It is a respectable addition to anyone's personal library. Buy it !!!

I find it rare that a book this deeply embodied and visceral also manages to be so spiritually awake. This gorgeous book demands the emotional presence of its reader. Upon finishing it, I felt as though I had witnessed some natural phenomenon--gruesome at times, not without danger, but breathtaking in its beauty.

What a career as a journalist Pitts might have had. The superb "people skills" and vivid descriptive powers expressed in this book make it a very "human." Pitts, however, is an archaeologist, bringing a strong scientific background to an account of a prehistoric dig and what it brought to view. As the evidence mounted of ancient hominids living along the Sussex coast, it became clear that Boxgrove revealed an unprecedented age for European habitation. Boxgrove, as this book makes graphically clear, will become the standard against which older archeology will be judged and future finds compared.

It is difficult to distinguish the respective contributions made by each author in this book. Mark Roberts, a young archeologist at the beginning of the excavations who became the Director of the site, is a dedicated digger. He managed logistics, personnel, site management and analysed the results. It is likely that he provided significant portions of the scientific background for the account. The story is simply one of persistence in using evidence to gain support for extending operations when funding seemed threatened. Those extensions continued to reveal an assemblage of fossils, tools, and other signs of human activity. All from half a million years ago.

With the authors contributing background material on climate conditions, glaciation and sea levels, soil content and the new science of geomagnetism, we're given a detailed picture of the world surrounding those ancient people. What impact did that environment have on their lives? What does the evidence suggest about how they coped with what nature imposed on them? Did they hunt, or scavenge? Was meat a mainstay or a "side dish" in their diet?

This book makes a major leap of interpretation in formulating what sort of people existed those millennia ago. With help from many sources, the authors build a picture of a sophisticated creature. Boxgrove produced a wealth of flint tools and flakes, some the researchers were able to reconstruct into the original stones. The evidence, they assert, suggests a creature with strong intelligence, capable of in-depth analysis in selected topics. The most important consideration was in hunting and creating the tools to make the hunt a success. Knapping flakes from flint is "more than banging a couple of rocks together" - requires the ability to foresee several steps in advance - "like a game of chess." The tools meant ready access to meat - and meat is necessary for increased brain power. Far from a raw savage, Boxgrove's revelations image our ancestor a capable creature. From this interpretation, it's clear older finds must be reassessed. New discoveries will need to draw on the same interdisciplinary teamwork Roberts was able to assemble.

Fairweather Eden is a wealth of information, both historic and current. Much background material is provided, interspersing the descriptions of participants in the finds and subsequent analysis. One individual actually strips down a carcass with the provided flint tools. Beyond the text is an array of diagrams and photographs depicting the information. If this book has a shortcoming, it's the use of notes' sources in lieu of a bibliography. That hardly detracts from its worth, however. The amount and quality of work Pitts and Roberts have put into this study will keep it useful for a long time. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This is undoubtedly the best book of poetry I've read in 1997. Wojahn's capacity for compelling language, brutal description and transcendant beauty, makes everyone else pale by comparison

Award-winning African-American poet Reginald Shepherd presents his fifth collection, Fata Morgana, a gathering of lyrical, free-verse poetry that bridges the divide between words and song. Drawing upon a diversity of sources from personal experience to history, mythology, politics, and natural science, Fata Morgana delves into the mutual effects conception, perception, the self, and a physical and social world have upon one another. At times wistful, at times adventurous, Fata Morgana dares to offer a different perspective of Eve's first awakening, hidden history within the Sahara desert, and the dust that is all that remains of humans and stars in the sky alike. Highly recommended. Feelings for Orpheus I: "Orpheus sits on the strumming esplanade / losing his head for water. Florid / light sounds noon, currents green // with overflowing sun and dumped / industrial wastes: the Chicago River turning / mineral, all emerald, tourmaline."

Great, but unfortunately was only published in english. (incredible how brazilian publishers are dumb...)
It develops a great vision about politics and the state role in Brazilian cinema (1900~1986), giving names, statiscs and numbers. Most important: relates audiovisual politics with brazilian politics and economy (all types, during that period, including Dictatorship).

Fascinating. Eerie. Magnificent. Whatever words you choose to describe the architectural landscape of Avebury (in England not far from Stonehenge), you will stand amazed. Avebury is more than just a stone circle: it is a complex of standing stones, burial grounds, ditches, and a mysterious giant hill whose meaning has never been determined.

Using this book as our guide, let's walk the history of these megaliths and surrounding structures. "Built to house the bones of important people" (2), the West Kennet Long Barrow was the first structure. Other barrows dot the countryside. Several ditches and banks appear here and there. At one time a wooden fortress and a small village were enclosed atop the banks.

The most puzzling structure is Silbury Hill. Made "entirely of tightly rammed chalk," Silbury Hill is the tallest structure in prehistoric Europe. Yet, its purpose remains "one of the great unsolved mysteries of prehistory" (14). On the other hand, historic peoples had their use for it. Romans used some of its chalk to build roads, the Saxons built a fort on top, and locals used it as a site for partying. During the Victorian period locals used many of the megaliths as building stone for their houses and shops to the sickening dismay of later historians.

The rest of Avebury consists of stone circles, avenues of megaliths leading to specific stones, deep ditches now two-thirds filled with silt, with houses, shops, and a church now occupying much of Avebury.

This little book is a guide filled with photographs, both historical and current, maps, charts, illustrations, sketches, and other pertinent kinds of information necessary for a real excursion through history. As you walk the book, you will have a keen sense of what man is willing to do to leave his mark on the world.

THIS BOOK IS A VERY GOOD INSIGHT INTO PRE -WAR CZECHOSLOVAKIA,THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AT THE END OF THE 1930s.IT SHOWS SOMEWHAT WHY THAT COUNTRY WAS ABLE TO RETAIN A DEMOCRACY IN POOR CIRCUMSTANCES WHILE ITS NEIGHBOURS WERE NOT ,THOUGH SVEHLAs SKILFUL LEADERSHIP WAS NOT THE ONLY REASON.HE WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MOST OF HIS BETTER KNOWN COLLEAGUES,SUCH BENES.