Montana Books

This book is an excellent resource for anyone involved in making costumes and props for children's plays. It includes several reproducible patterns and the directions are well-written. Basic concepts are presented for visors, hats, ears, tunics, and capes which can be easily modified to suit your costume needs.

I bought this book at a bookstore in a little town in Montana while traveling through the state. It was in the "regional selections" category, but it really was so much more than that. This story is a moving (true) story of a young woman in Montana who marries a rancher in the period when the West was still being settled. Widowed at an early age and left to fend for herself and her young children, grit and a sense of purpose keep her going. It was a true joy to follow the life of this heroic woman through difficult circumstances. This book is a gem and I would highly recommend it, as I intend to read it again and again through life. Perhaps women will enjoy it more than men, and mothers will likely appreciate it the most.

If you missed B.J. Daniels first book, it is coming back out in May 2002 as part of Harlequin/Silhouette's newest reprint continuity entitled Dangerous to Love USA. This book received 4 1/2 stars from Romantic Times and was nominated for Best Intrigue in 1995 and Best First Book.

This dark often amusing and satirical crime suspense anthology is a terrific anthology from one of the best short story authors today (Mr. Fowler's odd couple Bryant and May police procedural novels are also excellent). Each of the twenty-two entries is top rate. Baker St Irregulars will especially appreciate "The Lady Downstairs" starring Mr. Holmes's landlady while fans of 1960s British movies will relish the appearance of the late actor Terry-Thomas in the aptly named ghost story "Old Friends". Weird fun are "Turbo-Satan" in which two East Londoner slackers Daz and Mat text messaging to SATAN and even stranger "Take It All Back, Put It All Back" starring statistically bad luck magnet Lukas Forrest. Also superb is the Miami police officer struggling with "The Spider Kiss" mad disease spreading amidst residents in which an outbreak of insane human behavior in South Florida proves to have strange beastly origins. Well written, Christopher Fowler uses taken for granted aspects of everyday life like text messaging, walking the dog on a big city street, and comic books, etc. but runs them into dark dangerous devices and places.

Harriet Klausner

This is a perfect book. Admittedly, the subject matter may not appeal to a broad audience, but any book so masterfully crafted must get a perfect score.

First, it is important to note that this book is less about roads than it is about landscapes and the meaning of changes to landscapes. The archives of the Montana Historical Society contain photos taken of road projects in the 1920s and 1930s. The federal government was just beginning to provide money for road construction at that time. These black-and-white photos show before and after views of how Montana was spending the money. Mr. Wyckoff selected a group of the photos and traveled the state during 2001-2003 re-photographing the scenes as closely as possible. In addition, he researched each scene by consulting people familiar with the history of the location, reviewing newspaper files, and finding other historical sources. It is obvious that gathering the material for this book required an enormous amount of time and work. The heart of the book is an introductory chapter, 58 two-page modules, and a closing chapter. There is also a Foreward written by William Cronon and what Mr. Wyckoff terms a Bibliographic Essay. Each part of the book is perfect in its own right, even the title.

Second, Mr. Wyckoff is a very good writer. Students at Montana State University must feel privileged to take a class in historical geography from Mr. Wyckoff.

The 27-page introductory chapter takes the reader through an overview of the field of re-photography and the science of historical geography. To illustrate, it analyzes two photos taken from the same spot near Fife, Montana, one showing the scene in 1922 and the other in 2001. The section also provides a sufficient overview of Montana history that a person unfamiliar with the state can easily understand the context of the modules that follow.

Each of the 58 modules has a pair of black-and-white photos taken about eighty years apart. The facing page of text analyzes the photos in terms of changes, or lack of changes, in the scene and what that might mean to the landscape itself or to the people who live there. The comments range from locally significant to those of import statewide or nationally. Some of the scenes are rural and Mr. Wyckoff points out changes in land use, crops, or the ecology of the area. For example, a large number of the photos show an increase in the number of trees on the landscape and the text discusses what happens in the absence of fire. Some shots are urban, such as the downtown scenes in Polson and Wibaux. The discussions highlight the differences that occur depending on whether the town is growing or not. Some modules describe the impact of railroads, mining, and other industries as they wax and wane. In some cases the roads of the 1920s have become interstate highways, and in other places they have returned to sagebrush or farmland. Often the text analyzes the changes in the broader context of Montana's economic, political, cultural, and ecological history.

The concluding chapter pulls together the implications of the changes and how trends established over the intervening eighty years might impact Montana in the future

I am giving the book as gifts or recommending it to people interested in Montana, particularly those familiar with the state's physical aspects. I also find myself recommending it to people with a general interest in history and as an example of how to develop a perfect book.

You have got to be kidding? No one has read and reviewed this book? It is easily a 5 Star plus book.

This is Sheriff Judd Hensley, remember he was befriending the widow, Maris Wyler in #2? Judd is 44 and divorced from his ex, now FBI agent Tracy Roper, 36. They lost their son and the tragedy ended in divorce.

Tracy was 19 when Judd first met her, he was 8 years older.
Now, the Players in this episode:
George Sweetwater is known for finding the bones of an arm and partial hand. Because it was found on Laughing Horse Reservation someone called the FBI and reported it, so Tracy was sent out because of her credentials.

Sara Lewis, the curator of the Native American Museum helped Tracy by letting her view their N. Am. bones. [Her story is #6]
Lily Mae Wheeler, a widow and gossip began hinting to Tracy that she should meet her father, Proffessor Roper.

Winona Cobb, the junk lady about 70 years old starts getting psychic vibrations from Tracy, especially after she has handled the bones.
Frank Many Horses, head council of the Northern Cheyenne, is keeping the bones until Tracy can find out if the are Native American.
Sterling McCallun and Jackson Hawk show up.

Melissa Avery - owner of the Hip Hop Cafe is disturbed about her missing father, Charlie Avery who it was rumored left town with Lexine Baxter.[Her story is up Next - The Rancher Takes a Wife #5]
Ah yes, and something about a sapphire mine that Mary Jo Kincaid was interested in. And Judd's 9 year old neighbor boy ends up falling into a mine shaft. Which puts Tracy upside down. Can he save them both?

Ah jealosy! Judd doesn't like it when 28 year old, Officer Rafe "Wolf Boy" Rawlings shows up and is interested in the bones that Tracy is working on. [His story is #7] And another new comer is Dr. Kane Hunter, head of the trauma unit. [His story is #9] Oh, they just keep getting better.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED plus - yeah, there is some sex but this story doesn't depend on it as a filler - oh yes, the bones [more were found]were Charlie. He didn't just walk out on Nan and Melissa.

Bill Pepper, a personel friend of Dr. King's later became James Earl Ray's defense lawyer. Upon hearing Ray's testimony the King family was also convinced of Ray's innocense. Pepper documents tha tragic day of King's death, the HSCA hearings and Ray's TV trial. We're also introduced to the stories from Ray about the mysterious Raul, who hired Ray as a bag man for his smuggling operation. Ray implicates Raul in the assasination, however Raul vanishes. There is much more to the story and I'm conviced that Ray was a patsy, much in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald was. I look forward to the second book "Act of State" that picks up where "Orders to Kill", leaves off.

great gift for friends with a new home in Montana. Arrived in superb condition with prompt/friendly service from the seller.

Two tales of the Kootenai are simply told by Kootenai elders and illustrated by Kootenai artists of Flathead Indian Reservation. "Owl's Eyes" tells how Owl first got his eyes opened by being surprised to see his friend Mouse gobbled up by Snake. Ever since, he stares! "Seeking a Spirit" tells of Lassaw's search for a spirit guide. He vision-quests on a mountain and discovers a great buffalo who will be his spirit helper. Imagine a cold winter night by the fire in (present day) northwest Montana where the Kootenai or Kaanka nation live. There were fish, deer, buffalo, roots and berries to eat. It was a hard life but a good one. Storytelling passed the time in the long winters and also communicated traditional values, such as wariness, respect for prey,habits and characteristics of game animals, and values such as respect for tribal community, sharing, and thrift. Owl's Eyes And Seeking A Spirit is second in a series of three. Suitable for children.

Nancy Lorraine Reviewer

`The Panda's Thumb' is the second in a long series of bound essays by leading science writer Stephen Jay Gould. As important as these columns from the journal `Natural History' is, this is but a modest part of Gould's importance in American intellectual life. Gould, who died about three years ago from cancer, was a professor of geology, biology, and history of science at Harvard University and one of the world's leading researchers in broadening and interpreting Darwin's theory of evolution.

I was reminded of Gould just yesterday when an advocate of creationism (belief that the accounts of the history of the world as recounted in the Bible have some literal truth) described the theory of evolution as a `dogma'. This is exactly the kind of statement which Gould was so capable of dissecting in the most gentle manner to expose how completely wrongheaded the statement was, using the force of reason alone, without resorting to any appeal to emotion.

Gould was the consummate intellectual whose primary targets were beliefs which were based on mistaken reasoning or which base logically correct inferences on unsound or inappropriate premises.

My favorite example of the first pathology is his arguments showing that in spite of the fact that baseball statistics on performance have been dropping since the 1940's, overall baseball performance has actually been improving. This is one of the many inconsistencies between a rigorous application of probability versus an uncritical intuition.

The application of the word `dogma' to a scientific theory may be an example of the second pathology. The speaker is confusing scientific belief and religious belief. Scientific discourse creates theories whose power of explanation comes from its grounding in observation. As soon as an observation contradicts a theory, the quest to improve the theory or find a better one should begin. In Science, a `theory' is not something that is unproved, it is something which is believed and which is subject to disproof by evidence. A religious belief or dogma is, at least in Christian theology, something that is taken to be true because it was said under the influence of divine inspiration. By it's nature, since it is the result of a private experience (See William James' great `The Varieties of Religious Experience'), it cannot be disproved. That is not to say that the person who witnessed this experience is not free to write it down and try to convince someone else of the truth of what the true believer says they experienced. The whole Bible is composed of such stories. The fact that the Bible has inspired and improved the quality of life of billions of people over the millennia is evidence that it's message is worth advertising. But none of that changes the fact that religious beliefs are based on faith, which by its very nature is NOT based on empirical evidence.

The very best example of this dichotomy is in the methods used by the investigators on the CSI TV show, where the physical evidence is paramount and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence there is. That someone says it is true does not make it so! This includes things said and written down 3000 years ago.

While I am going on a length without talking about the book `The Panda's Thumb', I wanted to state as clearly as possible what Gould was all about. And, I chose a review of this book to explain Gould's general position because it was the finding of this book in a bookstore in 1981 which lead me to the discovery of Gould's writing, and I have been a fan of his writing up to his death.

If I may, my love of Gould's writing is a match made in heaven, as my interest in evolutionary theory goes back to the tenth grade and my interest in the general history and philosophy of science goes back at least to the mid-1960's when I began my study of philosophy. My focus on this book is also based on the fact that Gould's essays in his earlier books seem just a little fresher than his later works. Whether that is because his ideas were coming to paper for the first time of because he was not distracted by the battle with his cancer I do not know. Gould himself says he found his earlier essays somewhat shallow. I simply don't see it. It is possible that the earlier essays were somewhat less technical, but if that is so, the difference is subtle. It may all be due to the fact that Gould revisits certain themes over and over, so my reading them for the first time had a lot more punch than the 10th time around.

The subject of the title essay in this book, the panda's thumb, is all about a sixth digit on the panda's hand which is not a true finger, but something developed out of a bone in the wrist to enable the panda to easily strip leaves off of bamboo shoots, the panda's favorite gourmet snack. While this may seem like a really insignificant detail, this is one of Gould's persistent themes. Most of the best examples of evolutionary theory can be found in some of the most innocent looking cases. I am constantly reminded of this as I discover examples in the oddest of places, as the last book I reviewed on bees and honey gives the story of a little experiment conducted by Charles Darwin on how bees construct their hexagonal cells of beeswax to hold honey.

As with all his books, this collection is divided into eight (more or less) sections covering all his various fields of interest such as Evolution, Darwinania, Human Abilities and Evolution, Science and Politics, the nature of change, geology and fossils, biological conjectures (Were dinosaurs dumb?), biological scale and development.

Gould is arguably the best writer on science for laymen in this generation. Everyone should read him, and this is an excellent place to start.