Wood Books

Although the book indicates developing prints from other media than wood blocks, those are very few. Yet the guide to using wood to produce amazing print blocks, with imagery from those made in the past, encourages an artist to use this media. The beautiful projects, tools needed, step-by-step instructions gave the book a 5-star ranking. There is even a project that shows the steps in simple book-making. You won't be disappointed in this book on printmaking/stamping, particularly in the modern frenzy in multi-media artwork.

Never took a printmaking class in college...I've been carving erasers and wondering about this new world of relief printing. This book is wonderful.

Not too much information on complicated techniques. Enough info to have me working on new ideas. If you're beyond the commercial rubber stamps and/or are an artist hoping to incorporate printed images into
multimedia work...buy this book! Great reference! It'll fill in the blanks for those who have an art education but no basic printmaking.

This book is aimed at relief printmaking without a press using a range of techniques from linocuts through to using found objects. The techniques are clearly described and are applied to a number of simple but attractive projects such as single pamphlet books. pillows or cards. The photographs are clear and helpful. I particularly liked the fact that Gwen Diehn went through the clean up process, which is often not covered in much detail, and that she used vegetable oil rather than the more noxious kerosene. Throughout the book are a number of inspiring examples by past and present printmakers which help to extend the processes described. Whilst this book is aimed primarily at beginners, it offers stimulus and information of use to the more experienced printmakers too.

I am a former English student of the author of "South of Seattle," and not only is this man an exceptional teacher, but he is the only writer of my acquaintance to so vibrantly capture the spirit of life in the ever-growing Pacific Northwest--roots, leaves, rain, et al. If you want to experience a small lumber town and are unfourtunate enough not to have been born and raised there, then take your next best option as an outsider and read this book. This journey through time and terrain is all the more meaningful due to the obvious love the author feels for his topic. Don't miss this one...

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "It matters not how far you travel, but how much you are alive," and Jim LeMonds, a former English teacher of mine in the small "mill-town" city of Longview, WA embodies this phrase in his tight, solid prose and compassionate understanding of the area and it's people. For anybody to understand the psyche of this area, the Pacific Northwest, I recommend not only living here and listening, but also a cold plunge into the severely deprived art scene and it's few vibrant sectors. Jim LeMonds, in South of Seattle, provides us with one of these. My favorite essay was Scripture For The Land, for it's sheer intensity and truths.

Jim has captured the life of small town America. More precisely small town Pacific Northwest where the largest employer is the lumber companies and the county fair still attracks the whole town. Jim brings to light some of the hardships and personal obstacles that impede the daily lives of even the most simple lives. The memories that Jim shares will most definitely make you laugh and may even bring you to tears. An intimate exploration of a great geographical area.

Dr. Besant presents her material with loving concern for all people on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Her style is thoughtful and illumining, not doctrinaire or dogmatic. Every chapter guides and inspires us to greater love and service to all mankind.This is a work I'll cherish and return to again & again.

Besant is so gifted in enlightening one on the spiritual path! This book of essays will inspire you when you need a lift and comfort you when you are in despair. She simply is incomparable in her ability to shed light on life and the divine.

For someone who is looking for a deeper understanding of the nature of reality and/or the attainment of a better life, this book will educate and inspire you greatly, opening up many doors of opportunity for you.

For the earnest and devoted seeker of The Path, this book contains much light that will surely illumine many obscure parts of your search. It clearly lays out the direct way to finding the narrow path and also gives many subtle keys that will prove to be necessary as you progess closer to the light.

I would also recommend "The Power of Thought" by Annie Besant, The Path of Light by Lorr/Crary, and any of the Ramacharaka books.

If there was any doubt that Garrity is the best golf writer in the business, this anthology should dispel it. Much of his most memorable work is here, from the 2000 article that ignited the Vijay Singh cheating controversy, to the 2003 close-quarters look at the tumultuous marriage of John and Sherrie Daly, to more recent, outstanding pieces on Tiger Woods and Johnny Miller. (Each seems to be reworked and/or lengthened from its original SI form.) Between the profiles are offbeat pieces on, for example, driving ranges and golf schools-- the kind of pieces that open up the seams of the recreational game and, with empathy and wit, explore its grip on everyday addict-players. In all, this is the kind of book that's so approachable and engaging that you're almost surprised when you look up from it and say, Wow-- it's hard to imagine anybody doing a better job writing on this subject than this guy does.

A fine, very fine, anthology of golf writing. Garrity is one of the best and it only follows that a collection of his stories would be one of the best as well.

Singling out the best of the pieces in this book proves to be very difficult. There are exceptional pieces on the "usual suspects," Tiger, Nicklaus, Palmer, and others. But there are exceptional pieces on Tom Watson, Frank Stranahan, the man who was "muscled out of the Masters" and many, many others.

There are lots of golf anthologies that are read and passed along. This is one golf anthology that will be read and put on the shelf. It is a keeper. Truly a keeper.

A very enjoyable (and informative) book. The author's ability to entertain the reader makes this collection of articles special.

This book is a very thorough reference on finishing... well written. I find myself reading it a second time.

Save yourself some frustration, and do some reading prior to attempting serious spray painting. There are only a few good books, and this is one of them. If you know the basics, you may want to check out J. Jewitt's FINISHING.

A great collection of all the relevant details I missed in numerous magazines. Organised and indexed better than I could have and well worth the purchase.

This book dspelled many of my personal myths about public management. I purchased Tales from the Trenches as a reference for my Business Management class. I wanted to contrast private management with public management. I felt private management was more dynamaic and challenging. I now see that public managers, espcially at the local government level, are just as sophisticated and resourceful as their private counterparts. They also make the same type of blunders. The authors have done a great job in their selection of real life tales. I found
the manqagement advice they dispersed throughout the stories very useful. I also loved the cartoons which set the theme for each chapter.

Collaboratively written by former city managers Len Wood and Joe Baker, Tales From The Trenches: Achievements, Blunders And Challenges In Local Government Management is a grand collection of great achievements and ridiculous blunders in local government. Innovations, challenges, and good intentions that went horribly wrong, pack the pages of this involving and highly readable guide which is especially recommended reading for all voters, and which will provide particularly meaningful to those with a personal and/or professional interest in local politics.

After reading Len Wood's and Joe Baker's new book, I'm reminded why I entered this interesting profession. "Tales from the Trenches: Achievements, Blunders and Challenges in Local Government Management" provides an insightful glimpse into the event-filled life of public managers.

The eleven chapters reflect the key public manager responsibilities and challenges. Each chapter contains several stories that illustrate key management concepts. Included with these tales are tips containing advice and alternative approaches to addressing the situation. Stories are written in a straightforward manner, and best of all, are true to life because current and former local government managers contributed each tale.

What makes "Tales" especially valuable is the 180 page Instructor's Manual which complements the book, chapter for chapter. It contains discussion questions for each tale along with numerous case studies, management exercises and questionnaires.

Assuredly, "Tales from the Trenches: Achievements, Blunders and Challenges in Local Government Management" will inspire young professionals to take a close look at a local government career. This book is also a good mentoring guide.

This review was submitted to the California City Manager's Newsletter by Greg Ramirez, Assistant City Manager, Agoura Hills.

Although this book is aimed at parents, it is a quick and easy tool for teachers as well. I have seen several ideas that can be used in my kindergarten classroom and shared with parents to use at home. The book also covers severl levels from beginning spellers to higher levels.

I found this book very practical and helpful.It gave me fun games and simple word lists.try this book if you want tips and useful information that really works.

If you want your child to win the national spelling bee this probably isnt the book you need but if you want simple explanations of fairly hard spellings this is a great book. You get lists of words with tricky sounds in them and a lot of word families and its all explained in easy terms. I have taught my child many of the lists and will keep going.

My daughter is one and a half years old. She loves this little book. It's a clever little story about parrots who fly off to exotic places. As I almost sing the refrain about the parrots "sitting in a tree spreading their wings..." a big smile creeps over her face and she starts to bob her head from side to side to the rhythm of the rhymes. The artwork is vibrant, engrossing. All in all, a good find. One potential con: the book's physical construction is more for a mature reader-- a minute of inattention with a one year old and the book might drastically change states as children that age bring new meaning to the term "voracious reader."

My toddler and I enjoy reading this interactive book on a regular basis.
She likes to identify colors, various objects and count along. At the end of the story she regularly says "mas" more in Spanish. This book is a must for any child's library!

We have this book and it is a bedtime favorite! My children love it! The rhymes are catchy and fun, they even end up singing parts of it as I read. The pictures are bright and colorful with a lot to look at. I have four kids ages 2-7 and they all love this book, I would definately recommend it.

For perfectly good reasons, we tend to associate Cajun and Zydeco music with Louisiana, but for much of the 20th century, Cajun and Creole people moved West into Texas, usually for straightforward economic advantage - the towns and cities of Texas offered more employment and better living conditions - and they took their music with them. You are at least as likely to find people playing Zydeco in Texas as in Louisiana. In the introduction to this stunningly handsome book, the author makes the point that it was in Houston, not in New Orleans or any other Louisiana city, that `the folk music of black Creoles from southwest Louisiana first (underwent) a major synthesis with urban influences to create, document and codify that sound'. He goes on to make the claim (and as the book progresses, to substantiate it) that `several key innovations in the evolution of this music - concerning not only its name, but also its instruments, recording history, leading figures, and stylistic twists and turns - occurred initially in Texas'. He uses the phrase `Louisiana Lapland' to describe where `a large part of south Louisiana seems to have "lapped over" into Texas, and quotes John Minton to the effect that the music `first made its mark' in Texas, before becoming popular back in Louisiana. Later, he asserts that `Zydeco is a doubly syncretized musical phenomenon, a hybrid that required transplantation and cross-pollination to come into existence' - saying in effect that Zydeco, as we know it could only really have happened in Texas.
The book is a celebration of this music and its associated culture, marrying Roger Wood's text and James Fraher's photography. It is a marvellously successful combination. The photographs, of which there are a great many - on average, every other page seems to be given over to one - are beautifully reproduced in a monochrome of outstanding depth and clarity. Fraher is evidently as much an artist as he is a Zydeco fan, and he has captured the people, the instruments, the atmosphere and the context of the music with great skill, sensitivity and style. Almost any photograph could be singled out for special mention, but for just a few examples - Leroy Thomas with his stars and stripes accordion, Raymond Chavis almost in silhouette, the proud determination on the face of Sherman Robertson, Zydeco dancers at the Silver Slipper, Dora Jenkins in seductive pose and Vanessa David in action at a festival. There's an especially poignant portrait of L.C. Donatto Jnr, holding a photograph of his father and a rubboard that has been played so hard it has a gaping hole in the middle. This is black music, but Fraher's scope extends also to the white people who are and have been players in the scene, as club owners, collectors (including a fine shot of Mack McCormick), fans, dancers and even occasionally as executants.
The illustrations are so striking, and you could spend so long admiring them, that you might almost forget to read the text, but that would be a bad move. Wood's account of the music has to be the most definitive yet published. He is well informed and lucid on the subject of the music's history - the chapter `Chank-A-Chank and Social Change' tells the story of how the music came to be, and it is a measure of the thorough job he has done that it begins by noting a French presence in Texas documented as far back as 1682. A couple of pages on, he points out that Amadie Ardoin recorded in San Antonio in 1934, and that just over a decade or later, it was at sessions in Houston that the first two recordings were made whose lyrics included the word `zydeco' (or a variant of the word - the book goes into some detail on the etymology, variation and development of the term), by Lightnin' Hopkins and Clarence Garlow respectively. The music's history is thoroughly rehearsed, supported by what looks like meticulous research and plenty of fine oral history - an appendix giving the list of interviews carried out takes up more than three pages. There is a chapter devoted to Clifton Chenier, covering the introduction of the piano-key accordion and the invention of the rubboard (the first one was made by a Cajun welder by the name of Willie Landry, based on a design drawn in the sand by Clifton himself). This must be one of the fullest accounts of Chenier's life and music yet published, and it ends by quoting Wilbert Thibodeaux - `Clifton Chenier is the only zydeco man who ever really deserved to call himself the king'. Amen to that, but we're still only a little over halfway into the book.
The remainder covers the wide range of other Zydeco men and women - not kings or queens perhaps, but plenty with claims to the aristocracy. It also tells the story of how Zydeco's popularity grew and grew in the years following the king's death - he had benefited from the wider interest in the music, nationally and internationally, but it has been the last twenty-odd years (Chenier died in 1987) that has seen the music's greatest popularity. It has also been a time when, as Moore states, it: `went through a process of radically redefining itself according to a multitude of contemporary realities and new possibilities'. These change factors are covered here, and the story is brought right up to date, not only with the work of young radicals and experimenters like Li'l Brian Terry, but also with the reach back into the music's roots represented by Les Amis Creole (a recent Arhoolie CD). The story covers not only the musicians themselves, but also the role of the venue owners, the musical instrument makers, the recording companies and so on.
This book is a beautiful object to own for its own sake, but it is also of major significance in the documentation of Zydeco, and is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more about this most extraordinary of music. (this review, by Ray Templeton, first appeared in Blues & Rhythm magazine, used by permission)

I could hear the Zydeco music playing as I read this book. Roots, if you want to know how Zydeco orginated, who played or stills plays Zydeco music and where to go to listen to this music, this is the book. Being a Zydeco music fan and actually attending zydeco events that are mentioned made this a very exciting book.

James Fraher's black and white photos highlight a solid story of the most influential players and history in Zydeco music past and present, and while the survey focuses on the genre's rise in Texas, any with an interest in Cajun or Zydeco music will find it incorporates facts and history from other states as well. Chapters chart the movement of black Creoles from Louisiana into Texas and the cross-influence of their music with other Texas forms. The seven-year collaboration between writer Wood and photographer Fraher provides powerful visual embellishment to the facts and biographies within.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

THIS IS AN EXCLLENTLY WRITTEN BOOK,THE FOMAT IS VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND ,IT HOLDS YOUR INTEREST FROPM BEGINING TO THE END.

Dr.Wood, M.D. gives hope to those who enter therapy with the idea that spirituality and hope is there for us to be found with the help of the counselor/therapist. I especially liked the idea that one should as the patient get in touch with the feelings I am feeling rather than have a negative or flat affect on my face. Or like smiling while inside I am crying my mind out. The pages in her book which list many emotions brought tears to my eyes. I had never got into touch with the real me before reading this book and discussing it with my psychotherapist/psychologist. I have already ordered both of Dr.Wood's upcoming new books. (And one is even in May 2007 due to be out!)

Excellent, hopeful book: very easy to read and clear. Written with compassion and dedication. Carefully examines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, psychodynamic influences, medication, and spirituality making a cogent case for an integrative approach.
Highly recommend to therapists and clients.