Heartland Books

Great book! I owned my first arctic wolf/husky some 25 years ago and have owned two other wolves since. Little Grizz just howled in the back yard, probably to his firefighter friends who just went by with their siren whistling. After experiencing The Wolves of Minnesota, David Mech has reminded me; I'm still learning.

Edited by renowned wolf expert L. David Mech, The Wolves of Minnesota: Howl in the Heartland collects the expertise of individuals who have devoted themselves to studying Minnesota wolves, and presents the amazing true story of the wild Minnesota wolf's remarkable comeback. Gorgeous full-color photography on almost every page enhances this collection of essays that range from a summary of the wolf's life cycle and predator/prey habits to an in-depth discussion of managing the conflict between livestock owners who suffer from wolf depredations, wildlife supporters who have strong beliefs against allowing the killing of wolves, and government wolf control and compensation programs meant to chart an equitable middle ground. Enthusiastically recommended for wolf lovers everywhere.

In this book, the alpha male of wolf studies, David Mech, has collected contributions from other leading researchers on a variety of topics concerning wolf behavior, wolf-human conflicts, and wolf research and policy. It differs from other books on wolves in focusing very narrowly on the Minnesota population, with only occasional mention of connected metapopulations in Michigan, Ontario and Wisconsin.

The book is filled with beautiful pictures of wolves at all times of the Minnesota year - - winter, no longer winter, and getting to be winter. (These seasons are also known as "winter" and "road construction.") Jokes aside, the pictures are beautiful and well worth the modest price of the book.

The chapters provide a very helpful introduction to wolves, written at the classic tenth-grade reading level that we are all supposed to use for adults. They are accessible and informative, but wolf freaks won't find anything new.

I'd heartily recommend this book for every high school and public library in Minnesota, and also recommend it to others for the pictures. The text is good for a certain audience, which I hope I've described above, but not for other audiences.

I recieved this book as a gift, and I was duly impressed by the stunning photography and loads of intriguing wolf information. I am also an avid wolf artist, and I use this book's color photography for reference quite often. Anyone who loves wolves and wild canids, Minnesotan or not, should read this book.

This is a fine piece of storytelling. Don Horton has created a work with such intricate design of the human spirit, it is difficult to believe that his characters are fictional. A definite must-read for anyone who enjoys a cup of tea, a fireplace, and words and illustrations that help us realize the true importance of life.

I've purchased this book as a gift for many, many friends and family members. No matter what their religious or cultural background the book resonates with everyone to whom I've given it. Like me, many have made the reading of this story a new Holiday tradition. I find that playing the audio cassette of the book in my car is great season primer, especially when things are just a little too hectic and I forget what the real meaning of Christmas is.

Last year a dear friend of mine was going on a cruise with her family over the Holiday season. Since her grown children were arriving from various parts of the country, I couldn't think of a more appropriate and easy to carry gift than The Chestnut Pan. When she returned from her trip she told me that she had gathered the family in the ship's library and had her son read the story aloud. She said that the simple act of sharing the story together was magical. They experienced a closeness they hadn't known in years. They all shared fond memories of Christmas' spent in Minnesota and chuckled over the many characters in their own lives that resembled those in the book.

The warmth and love written in the pages of this book are spread to all those with whom you share it. This is a beautiful story that immediately comes to life in full living color from beginning to end.

This heart-touching, tear-tugging, humor-laced tale about one family's unusual Christmas tradition will delight and satisfy the appetite of any story-hungry reader. Its family-friendly length and content, with pen-and-ink illustrations that bring the characters to life, is now one of my family's holiday traditions - reading it together and giving it to others. When I finished reading The Chestnut Pan it made me hope that this first book by Donald Horton, a master storyteller, will not be his last.

_Feminism in the Heartland_ will give young women a feel for the joys and sorrows of second wave feminism. As a community activist, I learned a lot from this readable study on how people, with little political clout, came together and built a movement that changed the fabric of American society.

_Feminism in the Heartland_ will give young women a feel for the joys and sorrows of second wave feminism. As a community activist, I learned a lot from this readable study on how people, with little political clout, came together and built a movement that changed the fabric of American society.

In the fall of 1969, some 20 women from all walks of life gathered in the living room of a middle class family home in Dayton, Ohio, to learn about the birth of a new idea: women's liberation. They ranged in age from 20 to 40. Among them were a minister, a journalist, several stay-at-home moms, a college student, a clerical union organizer, a social worker and a retail clerk. Like the women who initiated the "first wave" of the women's movement when they met in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, many of the Dayton women were first awakened to their own oppression while working for the liberation of others. The Dayton feminists were as inspired by the civil rights and black liberation movements of the 1960s as the 19th century feminists were by abolitionism.

Within a year, the women in that room inspired hundreds of others throughout the city and suburbs of that quintessential Middle American town to reexamine their own lives and communities in small consciousness raising groups. By the end of the 1970s, close to a dozen women's organizations ranging from a socialist feminist collective to a pro-choice coalition had brought profound changes to the lives of thousands of their sisters in Dayton and beyond.

This is the story Judith Ezekiel tells in Feminism in the Heartland. An impeccably researched scholarly work that is must reading for serious students of women's studies, this book also offers a fascinating collection of personal stories told by 58 of the women who were involved. As one of those women, I can attest to the author's fairness, thoroughness and accuracy. The stories are as fresh and inspirational today as they were when they first unfolded.

`The Food of Northern Spain' by culinary writer, Jenny Chandler contributes much to achieving parity between writings on regional cuisines in Spain and Italy. This is such a popular genre nowadays, there have been a few less than luminary titles recently, but this one is a real winner.

It will take a close look at the map of Spain to understand the region of which Senorita Chandler is writing. It is easy to think of it as only the northern Atlantic coast of Spain, west of the Pyrenees, but she is really taking the entire line, virtually all along the same meridian of latitude, from northwestern, Celtic Galacia to the very urban and modern Catalonia on the Mediterranean coast, including the landlocked Navarre and parts of Aragon.

The appropriateness of this choice is clear once one has read important recent books on both the Basque and Catalan cuisines, both of which tout their subject as Spain's culinary center. Senorita Chandler makes the excellent case that this entire region, distinguished primarily by deep valleys in mountainous terrain and rough seacoasts, taken together, is the culinary heart of Spain.

While this does not appear on the surface to be a very scholarly study, a la Coleman Andrews or Paula Wolfert, of this cuisine it is really much more studied and revealing of the soul of its subject than other recent oversized travelogues of Spanish cuisine.

The author begins with a chapter of Background on each of the regions comprising her chosen territory. While giving us not much more than two pages per province, she manages to evoke the spirit and resources of the region as brightly and as passionately as a much longer discourse.

Next, is an excellent chapter on the Storecupboard and Cellar on the principle ingredients of the regions. I am taken by the fact that she begins not with olives and olive oil, but with peppers. It is crystal clear from every book I've read on Spanish cuisine that the great variety of peppers arriving from the New World are as much an influence on the food of northern Spain as the tomato is for the cuisine of southern Italy. A bit of reflection tells me that peppers as a class are a far richer addition than tomatoes, as the range of colors, sizes, and flavors of peppers is far greater than the similar range for tomatoes. There is just so much variety you can squeeze out of a plum tomato, even if it was grown in the shadow of Vesuvius. This little essay on peppers also reveals something about Spain that I have known for years about far-flung former Spanish colonies such as the Philippines, but which never came to the fore in other books. This is the fact that to Spaniards, canned produce is just as good as fresh, it's just different, not inferior. This will become obvious to you the next time you pass the 30-foot long Goya section of your supermarket. The Goya brand is Spanish, not Mexican, as I was want to jump to before actually looking at a can of Goya beans and a bottle of highly regarded Goya olive oil.

Next in importance, especially for the northern marches, is cheese. I was delighted to discover here that the famous Spanish Cabrales cheese is actually a mix of milk from cows, sheep, AND goats. The catalogue of cheeses is not as large or renowned as the great Italian or French cheese kingdoms, but it is pretty important and sizable. This section is rounded out with essays on Olives and olive oil, Pork, Pulses (legumes, beans), salt cod, Crustaceans, Mollusks, Cephalopods and Wild Mushrooms.

In the land of tapas and pinchos (very characteristic of the north), you would expect the next section on matching Spanish food and wine. This is not as exhaustive as Penelope Casas' coverage in `The Food and Wine of Spain', but it is illuminating and very easy to read.

The recipes are organized as one would a traditional cookbook, by type of dish or course. These are:

Light Bites and Tapas, featuring pinchos of olives, anchovies, foie gras, chorizo, and croquettes. The obvious centerpiece is the recipe for tortilla espanola. The description is lovingly given, but may be just a bit less detailed than Senora Casas' recipe in her book `Tapas'. Senorita Chandler also doesn't give us the scoop on how it is served (usually in wedges in the South and cut into cubes and stuck on skewers in the North). I am especially happy to see her recipes for empanadas, with both tuna and pork fillings.

Soups and Starters, featuring a gazpacho with asparagus and a gazpacho with beetroot, a blended mushroom soup, a squid soup, tuna tartar, grilled scallops, and Escabeche.

Salads and Vegetable Dishes, featuring a tuna mixed salad, a spinach and ham salad, and vegetable stews reminiscent of Ratatouille.

Rice and Pulses, featuring two of the most famous Spanish dishes, Cocido and Paella. Interestingly, Ms. Chandler agrees with most others that it is Cocido and not Paella that is the apple of most Spaniard's culinary soul.

Fish and Shellfish, with lots of salmon and salt cod dishes. Hake is very popular here, and Sea Bass is as common here as on the Chilean coast.

Poultry, Meat, and Game, featuring some really surprising combinations such as chicken and prawns and partridge with chocolate. And, some of the steak recipes are gorgeous.

Sauces and Seasonings, with Allioli (with no egg!) et al.

Desserts, with fritters, flans, and coulis.

This book succeeds in its task of really making you interested in the cuisine of the author's chosen regions. While the author doesn't push scholarship, there is both learning and passion aplenty here, all appropriate to its subject.

An excellent foodie read AND cookbook.

This is a small, but very choice cookbook, simply chock full of the most delicious looking recipes. It is simply perfect for cooks - at any skill level - who like to cook healthy, home-made food without spending twelve hours in the kitchen. It also has a lovely, well written guide to the rarely mentioned northern provinces of Spain - Galicia and Asturias, especially - which has now made it my ambition to visit them for myself. However, if your idea of "Spanish" cooking is Mexican or Central American, let this one alone; it is traditional European home cooking with enough of a gourmet touch that you can serve a formal dinner party but not so complicated that you cannot make it for the family. I think this is one book that everyone who likes to cook should have on their kitchen shelf.

Jenny Chandler's style is truly unique. She combines the most enticing dishes and mouthwatering photography with a fabulously dry wit. Indulge your senses!

For the asking: one tract of prime Iowa farmland, extravagantly fertile, well-situated with plentiful water sources. Comes complete with access to insanity, violence, death, and its very own Indian curse.
At the height of the United States' expansion westward, forcing dozens of Native American peoples ever further from their customary lands and lifestyles, four renegade U.S. soldiers torture and kill three young Sauk women. Enraged with grief, a tribal chief curses the land where the massacre took place. He names the place "Heartless" and calls upon the spirits to force the white man to leave it alone or face certain madness and a horrible death.
An invisible malignancy lingers in this piece of America's Heartland, but its attractive, innocent appearance draws men to its maw time and time again. For the next 140 years this terrible curse visits tragedy and heartbreak upon the inhabitants of this place until one woman finds the courage to fight its deadly pull. This is the story and the horror of HEARTLESS HEARTLAND.

This book is EVERYTHING a reader could ask for. It includes all the elements required to be a 5 star novel. I simply COULD NOT put it down!!! I read it in less than 24 hours!! I traveled back in time and truly sensed everything described in the book. The author laid out the descriptive details of this book to perfection. Events in the book flow smoothly; it kept me glued to my seat to find out what was going to happen next. I would recommend this book to ANYONE who truly enjoys a good read!!!!

Heartless Heartland is actually a book with a lot of heart in it. I was intrigued by the description of it as a story of a piece of Iowa farmland with a terrible curse on it that haunts people over 140 years. I expected something more typical of horror films where stupid teenagers go into places they shouldn't go and consequently are killed by chainsaw murderers or the like. Instead, it is a very well-thought out tale of a family over the course of generations who through no fault of their own, end up being terrorized for generations because they settle on a piece of cursed property. Heartless Heartland is very much in the tradition of the Gothic novel where Gothic plots are family plots.

What Bradtke does so well in the novel is detail the family's inner-workings, their struggles and the family members' relationships with one another. The back of the book states of the author that "she has a special interest in both the human psyche and in paranormal events and how the two sometimes interact". That interest is apparent throughout the book where people with weaknesses, due to alcoholism, or greed, or being in an abusive family allow that weakness to overcome them to the point where the haunted land can get a hold on them and use a person's weaknesses to carry out its thirst for revenge.

The book starts out reading almost like a collection of short stories about the haunted land for the first hundred pages, befire focusing on the family of Rudy Baumann in the 1960s and 1970s. Rudy is in many ways the victim of the land already because his parents have died as a result of the curse and he is raised in another family. He grows up with some serious emotional problems but tries to live the right way as he marries and raises children, yet his inner demons overpower him, and when he moves back to the family farm in hopes of making a better life, the story climaxes. To say more would give away the plot, but since the story ends in the 1970s, I would be curious if Bradtke intends to write a sequel to bring the story up to the present day.

Overall, the novel is fast-paced and a fun page-turner to read. One comes to care about the characters and their struggles and to hope everything will work out for them. The conclusion is well-conceived rather than just a prearranged ending the story leads up to. It may even make you think twice about ever visiting Iowa.

So many gardening guides try and address the entire country in a one size fits all attempt to sell more books. These are typically limited in truely helpful information on your specific region. This book is great for Illinois gardeners and home owners in general. I love the month by month format so I can keep track of what I should be doing each month in my lawn and garden. The only thing I'd change is combining all the sections so everything for one month was together, the book has sections like garden, trees, lawn, etc and each section has it's own monthly pages.

This book presents month-by-month plans for growing your garden in Illinois. It gives tips on such activities as planting, pruning, fertilizing, and so much more. The plans are organized into categories, including annuals, bulbs, herbs, vegetables, houseplants, lawns, perennials, roses, shrubs and trees. I love this book, and recommend it wholeheartedly!

This is a book for both novices and experts. It is the most useful of the many gardening books that I own, and the one I go back to over and again.

Ripsnorting Whoppers is a great book to read!It's really funny & enjoyable.I got to eat lunch with Mr.Sowash last year at my school.He has a good way of putting things,and he is really funny.I think everybody should get a chance to meet him.He also has another good book out that you should read called Ohio hero's.They are both Great books & once you read them you will be temted to put in a revew!

Rick Sowash is a very intelligent and unique individual and I am glad that he takes interest in the history and the famous people that have come from Lebanon. He taught my whole school about the book for right to read week and it was very exciting.

Enjoyed this book. The stories are appropriate for people of all ages. Definately recommend this book.

This book was particularly poignant for me as it was reminiscent of my own youth, but also that of my parents. Bettie Youngs is a gifted story-teller, but her stories do much more than merely entertain. They remind us of timeless values, sadly all but forgotten by too many of us. Even my children enjoyed some of these stories. Their favorite was "Red Dot." Treat yourself to this and other books by Bettie Youngs.

This book was particularly poignant for me as it was reminiscent of my own youth, but also that of my parents. Bettie Youngs is a gifted story-teller, but her stories do much more than merely entertain. They remind us of timeless values, sadly all but forgotten by too many of us. Even my children enjoyed some of these stories. Their favorite was "Red Dot." Treat yourself to this and other books by Bettie Youngs.

This book was interesting and enjoyable to read but it also contained a lot of wisdom about life. The author does a great job of recreating the excitement and potential of youth in a way that is interesting to young people or adults. I found the book made me look back to lessons I'd learned from my youth that I'd almost forgotten about. It also made me think a little more consciously about the stories in my life that have helped to create my own values and beliefs.

I read this book after my first trip to Cuzco. I deeply regret that I did not read it prior to my trip. While some will undoubtedly find it a bit technical at times, it is concise, easily readable, highly informative, and often fascinating. Chapter 12, "The Mummies of the Royal Inca," was one of the most interesting bits of reading I've enjoyed in some time. I very highly recommend this book.

This is a must read if you are going down to Cuzco. Good up to date history of the area.

This author proves again she is more than a category romance author. One of her most powerful books yet, The Awakening of Dr. Brown has a riveting story with characters to cheer for and care about. Real emotional baggage and conflict bring this tale to life, without the rough language or gore of many single title bestsellers. This one's a keeper, to be read and cherished again and again. It's part of SIM's "Heartland" series. I've read every one and strongly recommend them, even if you have to order from the out-of-print files.

This book was a heart-warming touching experience. The book is a story about a girl who although she's "lived," in another words, been around the block a couple times, is still a virgin at heart. With compelling characters that seem to jump off the page in 3D, this book really comes to life. You'll spend half of it crying, and the other half cheering them on. The book is full of twists that make it impossible to put down, and it ends with a copy of the song sung throughout the book. Always remember, "Hello is easy, Goodbye is hard, and it's what comes in between that counts."