Powell Books

This collection of 200 or so photographs cover San Francisco's famous cable cars as they have run with fairly minor changes since the 1890's. Pictures show the cars, the operating system, the growth, the 1906 earthquake and fire and the rebuilding of the system. They show the major reconstruction of the system in the early 1980's when it was discovered (among other things) that the cablecar barn had been assembled incorrectly when it was built after the fire in 1907.

The cable cars are a symbol of San Francisco right up there with the Golden Gate Bridge and Tony Bennett's song. They are one of the things that no politician (the system is now owned by the city) would dare propose ending.

These pictures show the love that the two collecters have put into their labor of colleting them. The book is probably not going to appeal to the general public, but to the cablecar affectionado there's no alternative.

I was totally amazed when I saw the first set of books. The story and illustrations are just great. It is very easy for children to identify with the chararcters right away. Adults will not be bored with the book as it has a refreshing sense of humor. You can always find something new in the illustrations every time you read the book. The children enjoy the sense of humor in the illustrations and the story as well. To maximize the book's effects I suggest you purchase the piano book. I was amazed at how easy it was to understand the principle of using color to teach the different notes, and how effortlessly the use of color is incorporated into the storyline. I can see now how using the colors makes perfect sense. More important, I see the results with my daughters since I don't have to constantly remind them to practice the piano. My daughters started the musicland series and are currently taking piano lessons using the method. They have made incredible progress, and I am looking forward to hear them playing at their Christmas recital. Check the author's website at www.yellowcatpublishing.com for more products and ideas about using the book as a tool for teaching music to children and adults.

"How can I express through the mediocre means of verbiage what my heart has garnered from the Messages from God? Step by loving step, the lessons provided have gently guided me to a remembrance of how to create from pure love; allowing God to live and love through me beyond the limitations of ego. These profound communications, so passionately, consistently, and selflessly provided through the Circle of Light, have kept my heart on course as it has opened into unimaginable vistas of beauty and ecstasy. Without reservation, I claim this as the most critically important information flooding the consciousness of mankind today!" Vickie Moyle aka Angelina Heart, author of The Teaching of Little Crow, Virgin, UT, USA

"How can I express through the mediocre means of verbiage what my heart has garnered from the Messages from God? Step by loving step, the lessons provided have gently guided me to a remembrance of how to create from pure love; allowing God to live and love through me beyond the limitations of ego. These profound communications, so passionately, consistently, and selflessly provided through the Circle of Light, have kept my heart on course as it has opened into unimaginable vistas of beauty and ecstasy. Without reservation, I claim this as the most critically important information flooding the consciousness of mankind today!" Vickie Moyle aka Angelina Heart, author of The Teaching of Little Crow, Virgin, UT, USA

The Scale Chord Synopticon is an essential addition to any musician interested in expanding their musical vocabulary. Approaching the basic elements of musical organization as a series of matematical patterns with clearly defined limits rather than as a historical/ethnological search for what has already been used, Powell and Fowler have created what is essentially a directory of all possible scales and chords within the tempered 12-note system of Western music. I recently used it to explore all the possible three-note chords, from a three-note chromatic cluster to the symmetric augmented triad; using the Synopticon was far quicker than trying to work out the possibilities on my own.

It's one of the cardinal beliefs of the Darwin Legend that prior to the publication of the Origin, there was scarcely any acquaintance with evolution theory among England's scientists or the general public, let alone any favorable opinion. Huxley, Wallace, and George Romanes strongly endorsed this belief as part of their hallelujah to Darwin's originality. In this they followed Darwin, who expressed the same opinion, claiming that although he had talked with many naturalists, never had he found anyone who endorsed evolution. He insisted on this view despite two pre-Origin evolutionists who publicly offered their own defense of evolution as proof to the contrary. More amazing still, he didn't revise his spurious claim to originality, in the closing chapter of Origin, even after he had added, in the 3rd edition, a lengthy statement on transmutation theory prior to the publication of his book.

The articulate response to the Origin clearly exposes the error. In his outstanding study, A Victorian Sensation, James Secord documents the spread of awareness of `transmutation' as England responded to the anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). The present study performs a like service for the period 1820-1860. His focal character, Baden Powell, was Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford from the mid-1820s until his death in 1860. Corsi tracks a progression from Baden Powell's initial apologetics, concerned with reconciling faith and reason, to complete abandonment of any ascription of literal truth to Scripture. What remains is Unitarianism. This position had been available in post-Cromwell England, when it was known as Latitudinarianism (also Deism). Indeed it was continuous among some clergy from that time. But Baden Powell came to it through his endeavor to integrate an evolutionary natural history with faith. Rather than writing an intellectual biography, Corsi uses Baden Powell's placement in English thought to describe the relevant intellectual culture.

England's encounter with transmutation was stimulated by the reception of French evolutionary thought, which the author described in his outstanding study, The Age of Lamarck. One of the earliest expressions of transmutationism was the 1816 anatomical lectures of William Lawrence. J. H. Green in 1824 and Jones Quain in 1830 lectured at the College of Physicians on anatomy and physiology considered from an evolutionary point of view. During this time David Brewster, Robert Grant, and Robert Knox studied transmutationist natural history in France and brought it back with them. Corsi writes: `During the 1830s the debate on the succession of species through the ages of the earth became a central feature of the natural sciences. Awareness of French developments created great anxiety among British intellectuals, in particular the Christian apologists. It could indeed be argued that the first phase of the debate on species in Britain represented the reaction to new trends in French science' (p. 228). One such response was Peter Mark Roget's Animal and Vegetable Creation Considered with Reference to Natural Theology 1834. Roget endorsed Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's theory of unity of composition and endorsed Serres-Tiedemann theory of embryonic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogenesis. Yet he maintained that species were immutable--clearly a precarious position.

Corsi is in agreement with Secord that the anonymous publication of the Vestiges introduced a strong stimulus to scholarly natural history as well as exciting enormous public interest. The book innovated by arguing the case for natural history uncompromised by any concessions to religious doctrine and by setting out the story, beginning with the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system, and continuing to the origin and evolution of life, including the primate origin of the human species. The author, Robert Chambers, endorsed non-catastrophic continuous variation in the geological record and rejected the interpretation of the fossil record which showed long periods of stasis interrupted by sudden introduction of new species. This was the dominant view among French authors; and it was adopted by Darwin. The theological question Chambers resolved by opting for a superintending Providence that set natural laws and then did not intervene. (This is basically the Cartesian-Spinozist position at the basis of Deism). Corsi states: `the question of species was discussed with full awareness of the epistemological, cosmological and theological issues involved . . . the question of species became the highly publicized ground for the confrontation between those who believed that nature was governed by laws, and those who insisted on the continuous intervention of God in natural and human affairs'. A canvass of the views of Whewell, Lyell, Brewster, Sedgwick and other leading lights shows the variety of positions taken to prevent slippage into the unbearable materialism that Chambers' position seemed to imply. Lyell is perhaps the most interesting of these authors because he wished avoid accepting species evolution, especially the natural origin of man (with its materialist implication) but at the same time wished to avoid acknowledging divine intervention anywhere in the natural scheme of things. That takes fancy footwork, including silences and evasion.

It's indicative of how much there is to learn about the history of evolutionary thought that so few science historians, let alone Neo-Darwinians, recognize Baden Powell's name and contributions. Yet he claimed to have forestalled Chambers' position and identified it with his own (p. 274). Corsi is to be commended and thanked for this outstanding contribution. But it's a pity that the Cambridge Press has priced the book out of the market.

Having read several biographies recently of Baden-Powell the founder of the World Scouting Movement. I must admit I prefer Freedman's little book to the larger and more authoritative works. Freedman writes with an easy style that makes reading a pleasure. The illustrations are original photos or B-P's own drawings, and add flavor to the text without being distracting. This is not a critical nor a comprehensive biography; it is a sympathetic treatment of Baden-Powell omitting any serious controversies and taking Baden-Powell's own writings at face value. It is a very good introduction to Baden-Powell for anyone with little or sketchy knowledge of "the Hero of Mafeking" and "Chief Scout of the World".

Like most biographers, he pays most attention to the time in South Africa (the Seige of Mafeking), and the founding of the Scouting movement. Still, we get a good picture of the mischievous student who prefered the woods and rivers to classrooms. We meet the wheeling-dealing soldier and sometime actor and dancer,in India, Afghanistan, South Africa, India again, and back to South Africa.

Freedman focuses on the story of the little town of Mafeking where BP's new regiment of fresh, untrained soldiers were surrounded by a much larger (3-4 times as large) group of better trained and equipped enemy soldiers for 217 days. For 217 days the clever leader Baden-Powell was creating new ways to bluff the enemy or to raise moral among the townspeople and soldiers as they slowly ran out of food. This is a celebration of Baden-Powell at his finest.

And after you are the toast of the entire British Empire, what do you do for an encore? Why you begin a new life and create the most successful youth movement in history. One can almost feel BP falling by accident into beginning the Scouting movement. You can feel his tentative excitement building as he realizes he has found, in the scouting teachings he had been developing in the cavalry, the key to young people's hearts and minds.

The end of the book moves very quickly, too quickly, from the founding of scouting, to his wedding and new family life, to the great world Jamborees, to his final days and burial in Africa.

I read this before I started Tim Jeal's and "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt's biographies of Baden-Powell. Please pardon me if I make some comparisons. This book is 218 pages of text compared to Jeal's 596 pages and Hillcourt's 417. Freedman, in acknowledging his souces, admits that he used 10 of B-P's books and many of his papers (inluding some not on exhibit), several periodicals, and 7 other related books from the Baden-Powell Library, as well as interviews with Mr Tabori of London about Scouting in the '30s. Jeal's book was 5 years in the making referring to 35 of B-P's books, about 220 other publications, many private collections of letters and papers, and uncounted interviews, culminating in nearly 50 pages of footnotes alone. Hillcourt wrote in collaboration with B-P's widow and refers to 65 of B-P's books and collections of papers, and unnumbered other books and volumes of private letters and papers, detailed in 24 pages of footnotes. Jeal was writing for an academic audience. Hillcourt was writing to a scholarly reader. Freedman appears to be writing for a secondary school audience. And I highly recommend this one for all but the serious student of Baden-Powell.

I would give this book the highest recommendation for senior Scouts and Scout Leaders. Others who would thoroughly enjoy it would be militry history buffs, those interested in South African history, the Boer Wars, and those interested in the late 19th century England.

From this book you get a real since of who BP was, why he materialized into what he became, his passion, and why he was not only Knighted, but granted the title of Lord.

Inspirational how a simple man - with cunny, wits, and wisdom lived two impressive careers, one in the British Military, one in Scouting. The book neatly discussed the cross-over of the two fields, and the how and why the military and scouting greatly differ in many aspects. The text flowed nicely, read easily, and was of appropriate length for reading within a few hours.

I like this book book very much for its completeness (at least at the species level, but subspecies are discussed in the text), the combination of drawings and photographs, and the extensive information. In my opinion, drawings are much more useful for identification than photographs, and are therefore a must in a field guide, but it helps a lot when this is complemented with a few good photographs. Detailed distribution maps as well as information on behavior are very helpful in the identification process. Because of the extensive information, the book is an identification guide and a reference book at the same time. Despite the number of pages, the size is still sufficiciently practical for a field guide.

This book changed my life, I have not come across many books from Jamaican authors, so that initially caught my attention. Her life story intertwined with powerful messages on how to take charge of your life and follow your dreams has made me totally revamp my life. Great book!