Park University Books

Carpenter's book & CD-ROM w Neurolab experiments is a well illustrated text, with fewer in color photos than Kandel, Schwartz, & Jessell's larger tome. Carpenter has illustrations reinforcing the major points and concepts of functional neurophysiology. His expertise in Oculomotor Anatomy & Electrophysiology is a strength of this title, making the chapters on Motor Control, and Vision very well done indeed. Roger has end of chapter sections on the History of Neurophysiology with descriptions of key historical figures who have made a contribution to the field, chiefly from the English tradition, i.e. a European approach. Roger summarizes and paraphrases many interesting books on journal references with nice succinct commentaries at the end of each chapter as well. Dr. Carpenter has written an entire chapter on engineering concepts in neuroscience such as feedback control and how it applies to neural network theory. The chapter on balance & postural control (the vestibular system) is excellent. Neurophysiology reads like a student's textbook, but serves a wider purpose in my opinion. The CDROM contains a full text version, has a brain atlas of structures, highlights many clever experiments with electrophysiological parameters, and so on. The 4th edition of the book is longer by about 80-100 pages than the 1996 3rd edition. The 5th edition should prove to be even longer and better. This book is aimed for medical students in their first year, but will prove useful to the first year graduate student in a PhD Program. To review the essentials is one of the tasks I do find myself doing on occasion by referring to Roger's lucid prose. He makes you feel comfortable and at home with some of the global issues. Summing up Marr's computational view of the cerebellum succinctly and running Sir John Eccles functional modules and cross-talk into this text, makes it a good read. For more advanced computational models, one should really also have Michael Arbib's Handbook of Brain and Neural Network Theory (2nd edition) on your desk at the same time. He taught me albedo which is the visual quality of white light, not illuminance, a measure of brightness, i.e. intensity.

Don't look here for hotel or restaurant info. This is a beach book, so check in here by county to see the well-known beaches and those that will surprise you. The author selected Hammocks Beach State Park as the best of the lesser known beaches. He suggests the best beaches for first time visitors, the best for sports oriented vacations, and the best for visiting in the off-season.
The information is detailed, giving the things you need to know for your vacation. Want a boat ramp, or to see a lighthouse? This books tells you where to go. (The Associated Press reviewed this book favorably.)

I'm new to North Carolina and wanted help choosing and visiting the beaches. This book gives a lot of good information, especially about avoiding the crowds, getting around in traffic, and where to park. An essential guide to NC beaches.

"The Olympic Rain Forest: An Ecological Web" is an excellent book. From the first time I had opened this book, I found out that I had made a good choice.
"The Olympic Rain Forest: An Ecological Web" tells us about the wonderful ecosystem of the temperate rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula. The very interesting text with many detail information is enriched with many quality color photographs of magnificent trees, nice flowers and wild animals that we can see in the Olympic Rain Forest. The book describes whole history of this unique forest and perfectly explains an ecological web of the temperate rain forest.
I highly recommend this book for everyone who is interested in wildlife and nature conservation.

Excellent story of how to conserve land and create parks.

Olmsted's own writings about the necessity and joys of grand public green spaces are amazingly current and relevant.

Along with Paul Schullery, who not long ago penned the insightful and important Searching for Yellowstone, and Richard West Sellars, author of the definitive history of science in the U.S. National Park System titled Preserving Nature in the National Parks, Jim Pritchard has established himself as one of the premier observers on the often perilous collision course between science and politics. While Pritchard's Preserving Yellowstone's Natural Conditions: Politics and the Perception of Nature is destined to become required reading for university environmental studies programs‹as well it should‹it is a lively and entertaining read for anyone who loves our national parks, but in particular the mother of parks, Yellowstone. He deserves praise for a fine piece of work.

Urban parks provide important public spaces which invite different groups to meet and relax, strengthening community interactions - but at times parks become inhospitable to different groups. Cultural diversity should be the key goal in designing urban parks, the authors maintain: RETHINKING URBAN PARKS: PUBLIC SPACE AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY uses case studies of selected New York and Philadelphia parks to identify common problems and how parks may be used to manage cultural diversity. Chapters survey limiting factors to park use, ethnic activities, and restoration project goals. College-level students of urban planning and public space access will find this essential to understanding how cultural needs interact with urban park design and use.

This is a one of kind book by a one of kind writer and doctor. I am on my second copy, my first in paperback wore out long ago.

Like McDonald's, Coca-Cola and they other highly visible aspects of American culture, Disney has long been taken to be one of America's many types of "cultural imperialism" - a part of American culture forced on the rest of the world whether they like it or not that quickly gets absorbed like candy by most other countries. In "Riding the Black Ship", Aviad Raz makes a very compelling case for how Japan, in fact, reworks Disney to fit its own image in a very non-traditional way.

Drawing on visits to Tokyo Disneyland, interviews with current and former employees and comparisons with the American Disney parks and Japan's other theme parks, he looks at how Disney is presented, not only to Japan, but to the park's employees and to the country itself. He represents this as three aspects: "on-stage", "backstage" and "off-stage". He takes us through how employees are trained, how rides are conceptualized and how the people of Japan see the park - among other things.

From this he boils down his argument to essentially say that, while the illusion of being "just like America" is preserved at great lengths, Tokyo Disneyland subtly alters just about every aspect of the park to appeal to a more Japanese audience. More interestingly, this is mostly done by the Japanese management and can be used to show how Japan deals not only with cultural influences, but with the entire world.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in cultural anthropology, Japanese business practice or just a curiosity about Disney. In anthropology, arguments and perspectives like these are being used with greater frequency, but rarely are they exhibited as well as in Raz's book. It's very readable and it makes some fascinating - and important - arguments about how Japan sees and deals with the world today.