Stuart Books

Our family thought this book was wonderful. My mother grew up in the Cumberland area while the dam was being built and we still have relatives there to this day. This book gives a delightful "feel" to the feeling of family and love that was so typical there during that time. It also gives an accurate depiction of the pain that progress may cause for those in it's path.

I think this is a great book! It talks about Lake Cumberland being formed. It made me realize what life was like before the Wolf Creek Dam was built. I enjoyed reading this book very much and think you will too, especially if you live near where the setting was like me.

I'm fortunate in that someone very special recognized my interests this year with a generous gift in Stuart Kirkfield's book.

Wayne, Elser, Howells and Carmichael's books are all tickled to have this new one sitting amongst them on my shelf. Stuart evidently has forgotten more about building and restoration than many of us will learn. But, thanks to his book we're all better makers due to his efforts.

Tight lines,

Gerald

This is a surprisingly insightful, comprehensive book on the subject. Starts with good overview of bamboo fly rod evaluation, and walks the reader through the entire process of stripping, repair, varnishing, and beyond. Also useful to people who aren't interested in restoring fly rods, but do want to learn more about them. Belongs on the book shelf of every fly fisherman!

This is the book to find out about the impact of the Russian Revolution in the U.S., before Stalinism. Cannon was the most important of the original American communist leaders-and a great writer to boot. In his easy and colorful style, he focuses on the critical importance of the Russian Revolution for his generation of working class militants. Those who rallied to its banner gave a vital impetus to all later fighters for social change. Among the most valuable lessons are how the communists defended all class-war prisoners, regardless of their adherence to communism, including the story about Big Bill Haywood and the International Labor Defense. Also interesting, is Cannon's appendix on the "Negro Question" (as it was then known). I'm convinced by his thesis-that the Russian Revolution and the existence of a U.S. communist party had a liberating effect on the Black struggle in the 1920s.

Cannon was the leader of the genuine American revolutionists who continued Communism and didnot succumb to Stalin and the degeneration of the American Communist Party. This is the story of the founding, the struggle of American Communism before Stalinism turned the Communist Party into its opposite. Here too is much history of the IWW, the Socialist party, and the other fighters who came before. This is not nostalgia, but written by a fighter for other fighters to learn to use these experiences to continue Cannon's fight to change the world. . . . I discovered this book in the library 35 years ago when I was dismayed by how rotten American Stalinists of the Maoist and Moscow varieties were and thought I would abandon trying to change the world. This book inspired me with the genuine revolutionism that came before, and that fighters like Cannon continued the fight, I found worth giving my life to.

A review of this book has been published in the following journal:

Houle, A. (1999). Book-Review: Foraging for survival: Yearling baboons in Africa. Behavioural Processes. (in press)

This is a story of how eleven juvenile baboons feed themselves. The setting: Amboseli National Park, Kenya. This is, however, much more than a simple story. Throughout, Altmann engages the reader with his elegant analysis - rich with ecological detail - of the costs and benefits primates must negotiate in their daily pursuit of requisite nutrients and energy. Baboons are exemplary eclectic omnivores; still, as Altmann quotes, "there is no such thing as a free lunch." Bearing this in mind, he sets out to evaluate the balancing act baboons must achieve in maximizing nutrient intake, while at the same time minimizing toxic accumulation of plant secondary metabolites.

At the outset, Altmann describes what the baboons ate, how they ate it, and what foods they avoided altogether during the study period (1975-1976). He then identifies what baboons should eat. A foraging strategy is an ultimate endpoint, achieved via an array of potential tactical routes. Altmann evaluates both the feeding tactics and the eclectic foraging strategy of his young baboons by identifying the degree to which they deviate from an optimum model of adaptive feeding traits. The baboons' actual dietary intake is compared to the specifications of adequate and optimal diets; this is done for both an average yearling's diet, as well as on individual variance from the predicted diets.

Deviations from the optimum are viewed as indicators of potential differences in reproductive fitness. Although the feeding data stem from research undertaken in the mid-1970s, Altmann takes advantage of the two succeeding decades to relate differences in juvenile diets to longevity and fitness outcomes later in life. This historical depth is particularly valuable because it tests the model by evaluating whether those baboons that come closer to the optimum as juveniles have higher fitness as adults.

Altmann expands on the extreme selectivity exhibited by baboons, providing details on the toxic load, protein, carbohydrate, water content, and load of various plant species and the manner in which baboons maximize (or minimize) their intake of these food components. Finally, he assesses the anatomical and behavioral attributes that may contribute to making baboons one of the most successful and broadly distributed primate species. To complement the main body of the text, Altmann includes a series of appendices and tables in which he evaluates various methodological and definitional issues relating to calculating feeding bouts and dietary intake. Here, he presents additional detail on diet composition and the nutritional and toxic attributes of plant foods.

The work's emphasis on juvenile feeding behavior is an unusual yet valuable feature. This developmental stage is often overlooked in studies of non-human primate behavior and ecology, despite the fact that this period, and the transition from a milk diet to an adult diet, are undoubtedly critical to our understanding of adult fitness and life history patterns.

However, some caution is warranted: This book was not intended for the casual student of animal feeding behavior, nor for those new to optimal foraging theory. Altmann's models, food intake calculations, and feeding bout formulae are exacting, and quite abstracted from the experience of observing feeding behavior. Before embarking into this volume, non-modelers will have to review the technical terminology that necessarily accompanies Optimization Theory. In addition, I do not view the generalizations (outlined in Chapter Two) based on the relationships among body size, patch size, and dietary selectivity to be particularly illuminating. Too many exceptions to his proposed relationships can be found for such generalizations to be of much explanatory utility.

Nonetheless, this book is destined to become a classic in primate feeding behavior. It is exhaustive in its breadth, a pleasure to read, and sets the standard for amalgamation of modeling theory and ecological observation.

Forget everything you know about this world - you need to suspend disbelief when you pick up Frantic Planet, and you'll be greatly rewarded for doing so.

When I bought this book, I honestly didn't know what to expect: was I going to get a series of throwaway stories that I was going to forget straight away, or would it be an astounding piece of writing?

Well, almost five months after buying the book, I still find myself flicking through it from time to time to relive the tales of the lunatic lottery winner, Ted Danson, and my own personal favourite, the man who was held hostage by an artist.

It's one of the best fiction books you read this year that hasn't been commandeered by a huge media-led bandwagon. Buy the book!

Frantic Planet is the literary bridge between reality and surreality.

The stories include three separate realities: the world we inhabit and know (complete with effectively apt cultural references); our world as it could be without social constraints; and a world where our laws of physics do not apply. The collection veers back and forth between these different worlds which, in the hands of a less-skilled writer might easily be clumsy and destroy suspension of disbelief. But here the juxtaposition creates an effective sense of uncertainty: by the time the reader deduces which rules apply to a particular piece, they will already be compelled by the story. And so that world becomes just as real as our own.

The collection also varies widely in length. Some are as brief as a couple of hundred words and, as might be expected, these can be hit and miss. It seems likely the author has produced the book over a lengthy period as there appears to be a notable disparity among the briefer stories in terms of the skill with which the pretext, the hook and the payoff are delivered.

It is the longer tales that highlight the anthology, and perhaps not coincidentally they all inhabit the middle of the three literary worlds: that which follows our conventions of time and space, but rejects our conventions of behaviour . 'Just a statistic' is a twisted literal interpretation taking to ever more grotesque extremes. 'Rooting for truffles' examines the consequences of a 'What if?' scenario where only fate will ever allow the reader to confirm their conviction that they would never behave that way. And the centrepiece 'Simple Choices, clocking in at 55 pages (a quarter of the full book) treads a dangerous line between the revulsion provoked by the story's events and the contemplation provoked by its themes. The specifics are of a fantasy world but the message is firmly rooted in our own.

A full appreciation of the subtleties of Frantic Planet may be contingent on a culture and humour overlap between audience and author. But the powers and burdens of free will are all that is needed to appreciate the way physical events in the book's fictional reality relate to less tangible ideals and behaviour in our physical world.

Are we Americans special ? Do we believe that we are somehow morally superior, or more benevolent than those others ? So much so that we are immune to being the prosecuters of evil ?

This book, which was seized by the French government upon its release, and the printing plates destroyed, in an attempt to prevent this story from coming to the light, shows, in glaring detail, how a so-called civilized society can resort to the most depraved measures when confronted with what is percieved to be enemies of the State.

It also shows the extent the governments will go to justify their actions and paint a picture over the facts, for public consumption.

This is the testimony of a few university students of Algeria who were brutally tortured by the French governemnt. These student were alleged to be members of the "rebels", the "resistance"; in effect "terrorists".

The chapters:
The Gangrene, A Sworn Statement, "We'll Treat You Decently", The Experts, The Minister Of Rats, "They'll Cut You To Pieces", Two Testimonies, Within The Law.

I was about to list this item on amazon for sale. It had come in a batch of books from a nondescript source, and it caught my eye. I read it through till the end and now feel compelled to present a review to any who will listen.

If you think that what America has done in Iraq is an aberration or unique to our psyche, think again. Here is a tale of torture committed by French authorities, who had only recently left the pain and oppression of Nazi Germany. But more than that, it is perpetrated upon poor Middle Eastern students (Algerian), in the same way our soldiers have perpetrated it upon the poor of Iraq. Including processes using electrodes, waterboarding, muscle stress, etc.

As the dust jacket states at the end, "Every one who cares about people must read The Gangrene".

The Garden Through the Year is a beautiful and wonderful book. It would make an excellent addition to any serious gardener's own personal library. It would also make a terrific present for anyone you know who loves gardening.
I am writing this today, April 21, 03, on the day that I just heard that the author Graham Stuart Thomas just died. Thomas was easily one of the greatest of all the English garden writers. He wrote many marvelous books and in every one of them, his personality and vast experience shines brightly through.
This latest book is no exception to that rule of excellence in garden writing. I am a garden writer myself (Safe Sex in the Garden, Ten Speed Press)and I always appreciate extra good, extra informed garden writing. No one does it better than Graham Stuart Thomas. First, Thomas was an extraordinary gardener, in the finest tradition of English gardeners. In this book he brings in many new and exciting plants and always his writing is full of the best possible gardening advice. This is a very useful book for someone who is interested in how his/her garden might look (or could look!) in different seasons.
In my own back yard I have a large and beautiful yellow rose bush, a David Austin creation, called, 'Graham Thomas.' This rose smells wonderful, grows strongly, and has that old fashioned petal form that is a joy to see. Like the writer it was named for, the rose is a winner. If you have never had the pleasure of reading any Graham Thomas, buy this book and you'll be pleased. If you are already familar with his work, buy it also, and savor the high quality of an excellent book, probably the last one from the garden master, Graham Stuart Thomas.

It's not often you find a book that lives up to its cover blurb, but this one does. In it the author, who has restored and maintained some of England's most important gardens, shares his own garden and plant wisdom with the reader. The cover reads " The Garden Through the Year is an Invitation to stroll around the garden, season by season, month by month....The reader receives the benefit of Thomas's tremendous experience, delivered in the form of a conversation with an intimate friend." That, together with beautiful and relevant illustrations, are what you get in this book.

The author sets out to tell us which plants he treasures in his garden each month of the year and how they contribute, whether by flower, foliage or bark, to the beauty of the garden at that time of year. He throws in some suggestions to help us grow the plant more successfully.

Mr Thomas was about 90 years old when he wrote this book so we can honestly say he is sharing a lifetime of experience with us. His knowledge of plants and how they grow is profound and he has received almost all the chief honours of the horticultural world. The pleasure of this book is that his knowledge and experience are shared in such a conversational way, as if the reader was strolling around his garden with him and he was chatting about his plants. It's not often I feel enriched by a book, but this one both enriched me and made me feel more confident about my garden.

This book lets you in on the dealings of Tecumseh with more details. The records of the decisions of the military commanding officers are astounding. As I was reading the events I wanted to kick somebody for getting so many people killed.

This book isn't as strong as some of Eckert's others, but as a part of his series, (and for a book that was previously out of print) I'd strongly recommend it.

I had read Frontiersmen, Tecumseh and Dark and Bloody River, and preferred them easily to this book, but still enjoyed it, and have re-read it many times.

This book is excellent if you believe in the supernatural and you are superstitios. With stories such as The Headless Nun & A Host of Ghosts, this book is excellent for the fearless type!

This book is a great read if you love ghost stories. New Brunswick, Canada is a little known province that was once referred to as "the realm of ghosts" due to the abundance of ghostly tales (whether they be fact or fiction). Trueman is a great storyteller and the book is well researched. If Amazon can't find it for you, check your local library for it (I've found it in most Ontario libraries).

I like this book as an introduction to fractions. I use it with my kindergarten students. They can all relate to having to share with siblings or friends..... and they love the food fight at the end of the story!

This book is an accurate description of how children react to sharing. As the brother and sister learn to share the food each of them have, they are also learning about fractions. Each child is reminded by their parents to divide the pizza, juice, and cupcakes in half to share equally. The children's first instinct is to share unequally. The book introduces new terms (i.e. divide) and gives the reader a fun introduction to fractions and getting along with each other.