Illinois Books

Great book. Includes full color art with a nice synopsis for each bird as well as an illustration for its habitat. I've been able to identify many birds with it. Highly recomended!

If you want to identify birds in your Illinois backyard, or when you're hiking in the woods, on a picnic at the zoo, enjoying the flowers at the Botanic Gardens, or basking in the shade of a tree at an Arboretum, then this is the book for you. It won't confuse you with birds that don't belong in Illinois. This is THE field guide for Illinois bird watcher, no matter what the expertise. This guide is arranged by habitat and color coded for quick identification. Each bird has a full color beautiful drawing, interesting facts about the bird, including how to identify it in the field, as well as when during the year you're likely to see it.
Sheryl DeVore, an award-winning environmental journalist and editor, writes with technical and poetic ease. Steve Bailey, an ornithologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey is one of the top experts on Illinois breeding birds; his maps make it easy to identify each bird as breeder, summer visitor, year-round resident, or migrator.

Get this book if you live in Illinois and love to watch birds!

I am a Black Man from the Chicago area. I read A.C. book and found it to be very informative and funny. As a Man if those tactics were used on me they would work without any problems. Loved the book.

When I saw AC Young on Chicago's "190 North" television show, I had to rush out and see what she had to say on the subject of meeting men! AC Young's book was packed with great ideas on great places to meet men! It also included some fun exercises to try in approaching men that you want to meet. My friends and I went out to some of the places mentioned in the book and tried them - many of them worked! This is a really fun book!

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of bluegrass music. Carl Fleischhauer's photographs are worth the cost of the book alone. He has stunning black and white photos of early concerts featuring some of the greatest bluegrass musicians to grace the stage. He also has terrific backstage shots, photos of parking lot pickings, and nostalgic images, such as Uncle Pen's fiddle. These photos portray fascinating facets of bluegrass music's history. Neil Rosenberg's writing complements and enhances these images. His writing provides sufficient information to answer significant questions raised in looking at Fleischhauer's photographs. As a special treat, the book includes a fine photo memorial and essay to Bill Monroe. This book is an excellent record of the early history of bluegrass, and it vividly portrays images that ring true today.

This book blends a photo essay with a well written history of early years of bluegrass music. Neil Rosenberg has performed bluegrass music for years, and his compelling writing thoroughly documents the genre's history. Carl Fleischauer photographs folk culture with a terrific eye for ways in which music is situated with communities. There are vivid portraits of stellar bluegrass musicians and beautiful pictures of classic bluegrass venues during this formative time period. It is especially interesting to see bluegrass music's "look" from 1967-1986 still remains a presence within the contemporary bluegrass music scene.

This is a charming book about the earliest days of state sponored education. It does a great job re-creating the olden days! It brings people from long ago to life in a rare reconstruction of life in the 1800's.

This is a fascinating look at how education developed in the heart of the Mid-West. It describes legislation that led to the development of the one room school system, as well as the social mores of the times. For instance, it reveals that teachers had to quit once they were married, to provide someone else with the opportunity to have a job. There are nostalgic photos of actual teachers and students throughout the history of the school, which helps to bring the history alive. A great read -- it's definitely worth ferreting out this rare book.

Boundaries of Touch is excellent, a must read for parents, educators, child development specialists, anyone who cares about childres as well as those who raise them. Halley exposes and illuminates the control and manipulatioon frequently used by those who claim experise and how this places parents (most often mothers) in guilt ridden binds. As a psychologist, I have shared this information with my clients who are struggling with parenting. They felt liberated by Halley's careful research and description of the conflicting prescriptions mothers receive when turning to experts for advice.

This is a fascinating read. As a parent, its an eye-opener.

It explores the most fundamental of relationships, mother and child, and how that relationship has been shaped and reshaped by larger cultural influences and gender roles. But the implications go well beyond that to the other relationships we have in our life. Its a history of our culture, literally in the most formative of years.

I'm not an academic, or a sociologist by training, but I found the book to be accessible and very well-written. The author makes herself available in the writing and topic, which I found helpful and interesting.

Its strikes me as a critically important book. I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm certainly going to be thinking about it for a long long time.

Dryden -- The Conquest of Grenada
Villiers -- The Rehearsal
Dryden -- All for Love
Otway -- Venice Preserved
Etherege -- The Man of Mode
Wycherley -- The Plain Dealer
Vanbrugh -- The Relapse
Congreve -- The Way of the World
Farquhar -- The Beaux' Stratagem
Cibber -- The Careless Husband
Steele -- The Conscious Lovers
Addison -- Cato
Rowe -- The Tragedy of Jane Shore
Gay -- The Beggar's Opera
Fielding -- Tom Thumb
Lillo -- The London Merchant
Garrick -- The Lying Valet
Home -- Douglas
Colman -- The Jealous Wife
Cumberland -- The West Indian
Goldsmith -- She Stoops to Conquer
Sheridan -- The Rivals
Sheridan -- The School for Scandal
Sheridan -- The Critic

plus two essays:

Collier -- A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage
Goldsmith -- An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy


This handsome volume is actually a more convenient and more economical way to collect these 24 plays and additional essays than piecing together single plays in the New Mermaids, Regents Renaissance, or Revels series. In fact, many of the plays in this volume are not otherwise available.

This book is an embarrasment of riches -- enjoy!

Desperation can be the source of wisdom. I've known for a year that this fall I'll be teaching restoration and 18th century drama. Worse, I volunteered to do so. Worse yet, as of yesterday I had only 7 weeks left in which to pick a text of plays. And absolutely worst of all, while trying to look up restoration and 18th century texts on the Web, I found my own course staring me in the face: "English 232, Smith College, Gillian Kendall". Yikes! It was definitely time to find a text.

Nettleton saved me. I had been about to order a completely new edition of the plays (sample copy graciously sent to me by the publisher), albeit the edition was in many ways, well, let's say "not quite right for the course". Then I went to the library. Despite the recommendation of a friend -- a renowned 18th century expert -- I had been suspicious of Nettleton. The copyright on the edition I looked at was 17 years before I was born (sorry about the ageism, Mr. Nettleton). But the volume has everything. Lovely grandiose heroic drama (but not too much of it); Dryden's adaptation of Shakespeare's *Antony and Cleopatra*; five classic comedies of manners (the backbone of restoration drama), and a pleasant smorgasbord of the best of the 18th century.

I have a text. My students have a text. Life is good.

Bronzeville, located on the South Side of Chicago, was apparently given that name by the editor of the Chicago Bee and before that it was known as the 'Black Metropolis' because it was the center of black culture in America. Clearly an important place in black history and this stunning photobook shows what life was like there in the early forties.

What I thought was so remarkable about the book was the comprehensive coverage by FSA/OWI photographers Russell Lee, Edwin Rosskam, John Vachon and Jack Delano. With just over a hundred (beautifully printed) photos you'll see homes, workplaces, church activity, street scenes and folks having fun. These images are just so content rich and each has a story to tell. A nice touch is the inclusion of many text pieces taken from the Federal Writers' Project about Chicago. These excerpts are placed near relevant photos.

The book is an excellent production (paper, printing and design) but I just wonder why roman numerals were used for the first thirty-four pages, so that the contents page has two numbering styles. Also there are couple of examples of soft focus photos. Roy Stryker the boss in the Washington headquarters of the FSA/OWI used to punch holes in the negs of photos that he considered poor quality, clearly he missed some. The first photo spread in the book has a street scene on the left that is soft and blurred and the right-hand page has another street scene but pin sharp. Strangely both are by Russell Lee.

Maren Stange is to be congratulated on a first class editorial job with 'Bronzeville'. If you are interested in other FSA/OWI photos of Chicago have a look at 'Chicago and Downstate' (ISBN 0252060784) by Robert Reid and Larry Viskochil. The 162 photos (including some from 'Bronzeville') are a much wider coverage of life in the city and beyond by the same photographers.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Warning: Once you pick this book up, you won't be able to put it down.

I first skimmed it simply to enjoy the compelling photographs...that alone would have been enough for the money. But then add the text, especially the contemporary accounts from Richard Wright, and you'll feel you've time travelled. I've read about the Great Migration, but this book lives it.

Chicago was the "black capital" in the 1940's, having supplanted Harlem as the center of black culture and nationalism. It was home to notables like Joe Lewis, Thomas A. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Ebony Magazine and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. But the most arresting images and stories here are about the everyday people, ranging from grim images of the overcrowded slums to the more joyful life: a crowd watching the orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom, kids lined up in front of the movie theater, the Easter Parade outside Pilgrim Baptist. The book is divided into four parts: House & Home, Work, Church, Going Out.

One of the original essays discusses the fact that during the time period, most white media images of blacks perpetuated negative stereotypes, while many black photographers strove to counter this with "the strongest possible contrast to such representation." Which makes this collection even more important in that it presents such a wide range of people and situations, without trying to support an agenda. The photographers simply captured life.

I agree: This book should be a part of every photography and African American history collection.

Curator, AfroAmericanHeritage.com

Brownie the Boomer. This is perhaps THE classic book of all time regarding American Railroadiana. The history of this book is amazing. It was written and self-published, and then the author, Charles P. Brown, disappeared from the face of the earth. The book also disappeared. However, one of the university presses found an original, perhaps in the Library of Congress; I'm not sure where they got it. Suffice to say they knew what they were looking at when they saw it, and it has been republished. This book is dead-on original railroad. Not ghost-written, not a compilation. This guy, well, I won't give away the ending, but I can see him now sitting at a card table in a basement boiler room, hunting-and-pecking out his stories on an old portable typewriter. One of the really great things the author does is start just about every paragraph with: "Well, then I headed down into Oklahoma (or wherever). He starts the paragraphs this way because HE IS TELLING YOU THE STORY. Who says the past is gone? SIX STARS!

A tremendous insight into the (early twentieth century) world of a "Rail" (railroad employee), heavy with the vernacular of the industry (most of which is still used by today's "Rails"), with their irreverant sense of humor, which ranges from passive subtleties to outrageous exercises. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING!

This new book discusses in depth the building of the 1933-4 Chicago World's Fair. With astute attention to detail, the managers succeeded in making a profit while presenting both a science show and avant garde architectural display during the depths of the depression. From the breathing dome of the Travel and Transport Building to the all glass block Libbey Owens pavilion, all kinds of innovations in architecture were presented. Ms. Schrenk does an excellent job in describing the numerous innovations in addition to providing good illustrations. One is also informed of why Frank Lloyd Wright was not repesented and his campaign in response. From pre-fabrication to Fuller's dymaxion car (which could move sideways!), all the new construction and technical innovations of the time are here. In sum, a fascinating read for all those interested in Chicago history, architecture, and the "Can Do" spirit of America during the depression.

This book is that rare combination of first class photographs and illustrations surrounding a first rate work of historical scholarship.

Once you have a good grasp of Okell's Introduction to the Burmese Script or have mastered the basics on the seasite website, you can plunge into learning the literary style of Burmese.

This book uses actual Burmese texts to build your vocabulary and knowledge of the literary forms not generally used in the spoken language.

Unless you are able to devote full-time study to this book, I highly recommend you gradually and patiently assimilate the material. I now try to read something in Burmese almost every day, even if only for five mintues, and sometimes up to an hour (and sometimes I have to look up most of the words in the sentence!!). With a regular attention to reading, I've found that now the material in this book can be learned much more quickly.

Excellent resource!!!

There is no other equivelent for studying Burmese in english other than John Okell's books. I have the entire series along with the tapes and they are all excellent. My only wish is that these tapes will be converted to CD. I learned Burmese from my parents, but cannot read, write, or understand formal speech. His series of books and tapes have helped me tremendously.