Seeds Pop Stick Guide Rlb

Book Description

See a different side of Italy on this rugged, rustic island. Travel through the traditional villages and elegant cities, along the spectacular coastline and to the ancient nuraghe monuments with Cadogan's expert guidance.

Customer Reviews:

Absolutely fantastic!.......2004-10-14

I bought this book because I am actually moving to Sardinia in a few months - and, believe it or not, I've never been there - so I needed a book that encompasses absolutely everything about the island. From food and wine to history, from beaches to the nuraghi, this book definitely has it all! It's a fairly easy read and I've learned so much from it. I feel like I've already been there. Even if you've never thought about visiting Sardinia, you'll want to after reading this guide. It has my highest recommendation.

The only guide that helps.......2003-04-12

It is tough to find guides to Sardinia. This one (Cadogan) is the best available. The Insight Guide gives you interesting information about the island, but it doesn't tell you where to stay or eat. The Eyewitness Guide gives a limited amount of information about hotels and lodging, but does offer helpful explanations of the local food, including pictures. This is great since we do not speak italian. My Cadogan Guide is well worn, the mark of a truly useful book.

Thoughtful, and filled with valuable details.......2001-09-15

Cadogan's guide to Sardinia is filled with history and practical details. The guide doesn't have pictures, just simple illustrations and some useful maps. The recommendations for hotels were also very good. We stayed in Cagliari, Arbus, and Nuoro. We were looking for hotels which were charming and not too expensive, and the book definitely met that need. The beach descriptions were also useful. Sardinia has many of them. :-) It's not necessary to go to the more expensive Costa Smeralda region in order to have a wonderful holiday in Sardinia. As a side tip, if you are going to Sardinia via Cagliari, drop by the tourist office. The people there were very nice, and they had a plethora of good information on Sardinia.

Book Description

"Black cat creeping on Halloween night,
prowling down the alleyway,
green eyes bright."

Poor little kitty, with no home to go to. But Halloween night is the night when black cats rule. So when a couple of ghosts, princesses and pirates, ghouls and goblins, clowns and dragons, and scary, hairy beasties come walking by, the curious creature joins the parade and the party. But it's the lonely witch girl at the end of the line who really makes the cat's dreams come true. With its fun rhyme, lively illustrations, and irresistible animal hero, this picture book will enchant children on Halloween.

Book Description

The first highly illustrated history of vintage luggage from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, covering the developments in the shape and manufacture of luggage and its increasing portability in response to advances in travel. All shapes and styles of luggage, and the varied materials used in its manufacture, are described and illustrated in color.

Customer Reviews:

Vintage Luggage.......1999-12-12

If you adore vintage luggage, for collecting or/and for using, this is your book. It makes you leather-addict!

Book Description

An all-in-one guide designed for northern-tier gardens from coast to coast

Growing Shrubs and Trees in Cold Climates provides northern-tier gardeners from coast to coast with an incredible range of choices, no matter what their skill level.

Part I profiles 50 plant groups best suited to gardens in zones 1 to 5. Each plant has been tested for hardiness over a period of at least 10 years--and has proved hardy to no less than -30 degrees F. Readers will easily be able to select shrubs and trees that produce wonderful fragrant flowers and those that bloom more than once in the spring and summer seasons.

Part 2 covers the basics of growing shrubs and small trees, with special attention on solving problems that occur in cooler climates.

Customer Reviews:

Great Resource For Cold Climates!.......2004-08-10

I have had this book for a few years now and used it extensively. I am in north central Iowa, zone 4, and this book has helped me to choose shrubs and small trees that can withstand my extremely bitter cold winters. What I love about this book is there are many photos, many nursery resources listed, and it is full of very valuable information.

If you are gardening/landscaping in a cold climate and need to know which cultivar's can survive in zone 4 or 3 or 2 then you need to have this book.

Thorough and superbly illustrated.......2004-07-20

How wonderful to have a book that provides the level of detail made available here for those of us who shiver through our winters and worry about whether the new additions to the garden are as hardy as the garden center promised.

The details? Everything from pronunciation to names of various suppliers. How to plant, feed and prune and informed odds about whether a particular plant will survive transplanting. Plants aren't merely promised to be hardy; charts give the specific temperature to which varieties will survive. The charts also show information about flower color and fruit, the plant's anticipated size, and comments about the variety's assets and liabilities for the home gardener.

Photographs are large enough to show detail and convey actual information: aspects of a particular plant or its appearance in different seasons, and variables among varieties.

This is a fine book and, in my view, unusual in that it is certainly well worth its sticker price. It is organized like an encyclopedia, notwithstanding some useful material in chapters outside the alphabetized plant list. As such, it does not have an index -- which might be useful -- and some of the text can be recursive. But these are minor flaws in an outstandingly useful and beautifully published book.

Very useful and helpful information.......2003-07-02

This book has been more helpful to us in many different areas. It explains everything from how and when to prune to how and when to fertilize. It shows both common name and scientific name in the table of contents to quickly find what you're looking for. If you are looking for a book that explains how to take care of everything available in the cold northeast, this is the book for you. Gardeners can't go wrong with this book.

Book Description

From the much-admired biographer of Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and the Barrymores (“Margot Peters is surely now . . . our foremost historian of stage make-believe”—Leon Edel), a new biography of the most famous English-speaking acting team of the twentieth century.

Individually, they were recognized as extraordinary actors, each one a star celebrated, imitated, sought after. Together, they were legend. The Lunts. A name to conjure with. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne worked together so imaginatively, so seamlessly onstage that they seemed to fuse into one person. Offstage, they brawled so famously and raucously over every detail of every performance that they inspired the musical Kiss Me, Kate. At home on Broadway, in London’s West End, touring the United States and Great Britain, and even playing “the foxhole circuit” of World War II, the Lunts stunned, moved, and mystified audiences for more than four decades. They were considered to be a rarefied taste, but when they toured Texas in the 1930s, the audience threw cowboy hats onto the stage.

Their private life was equally fascinating, as unusual as the one they led in public. Friends like the critic Alexander Woollcott (whom Edna Ferber once described as “the little New Jersey Nero who thinks his pinafore is a toga”), Noël Coward, Laurette Taylor, and Sidney Greenstreet received lifelong loyalty and hospitality. Ten Chimneys, their country home in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, “is to performers what the Vatican is to Catholics,” Carol Channing once said. “The Lunts are where we all spring from.”

In this new biography, Margot Peters catches the magic of Lunt and Fontanne—their period, their work, their intimacy and its contradictions—with candor, delicacy, intelligence, and wit. She writes about their personal and creative choices as deftly as she captures their world, from their meeting (backstage, naturally)—when Fontanne was a young actress in the first flush of stardom and Lunt a lanky midwesterner who came in the stage door, bowed to her elaborately, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs—and the early days when an unknown and very hungry Noël Coward lived in a swank hotel in a room the size of a closet and cadged meals at their table to the telegram the famous couple once sent to a movie mogul, turning down a studio contract worth a fortune (“We can be bought, my dear Mr. Laemmle, but we can’t be bored”).

We follow the Lunts through triumphs in plays such as The Guardsman, The Taming of the Shrew, and Design for Living; through friendships and feuds; through the intricate way they worked with such playwrights and directors as S. N. Behrman, Robert Sherwood, Giraudoux, Dürrenmatt, Peter Brook, and with each other.
Margot Peters captures the gallantry of two remarkably gifted people who lived for their art and for each other. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were once described as an “amazing duet of intelligence and gaiety.” Margot Peters re-creates the fun and the fireworks.

Customer Reviews:

Lovely People Exploited in Very Dubious "Biography".......2005-09-08

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the greatest star couple of the American theater of the 20th century, probably of all time. Their careers span over a half century and they were beloved within their industry for their great kindness, outgoing friendliness, and awesome talent. Their private lives were quiet, scandal-free, and they seem the least possible of celebrities to write a tawdry book about which doesn't stop Ms. Margot Peters. The heart, if you can call it a heart, of this book is that this legendarily devoted couple were in fact both homosexuals and theirs was an "arranged" marriage. This is old gossip, the type that almost 100 percent of actors who make any sort of name for themselves in show business receives. Peters fails to even name a single same-sex lover of either star but doesn't stop her from pushing this theme. Among her sources: One critic overhears some teenaged bimbo in the 1950's, looking at a theater poster, saying Alfred likes guys and Lynn likes girls. Ms. Peters writes of this incident as if it was a source!! The Lunts had scores of friends, many of them gay, yet Peters cannot find a single person in the loop who acknowledges they were gay. Indeed, Ms. Peters makes the worst sort of homophobic comment when noting their gay friends as some sort of evidence this makes the Lunts gay as if straight people couldn't possibly befriend homosexuals. Nor does she acknowledge it was not really necessarily for a theater star to pretend to be straight in that era when several gay stars (among them Eva La Gallienne and the Lunts' great friend Noel Coward) were able to live in peace since the general public was not as interested in the private lives of theater greats as they were in movie stars. (And Coward's private diaries suggest nothing of any secret life going on with the Lunts which he certainly would have written about there given his other indiscreet remarks on celebrities.) Certainly if the Lunts were gay, wouldn't they spend at least some degree of their time off having romances which could have been carried off with ease, yet they were basically joined at the hip, their devotion as legendary as their talent. Reading some of Peters' comments one can reason she herself doesn't completely believe they were gay but she is not about to let that rumor go since it's a good publicity angle for the book.

And then there's the curious discreet hostility Peters has for Fontanne, yet she can come up with nothing to base this criticism like a rude diva-like personality or anything. Lunt is clearly her favorite of the duo. Worse is Peters constant arm chair psychology, following quotes by the actors with her intrepretation of what they "really" mean.

The Lunts left tragically little recorded work of their talents and sadly their legend grows a little dimmer each year. What a shame Margot Peters has chosen to taken a tabloidish spin on the private lives of two artists the likes of which the theater will likely never see again.

A good but not great biography.......2004-08-24

This book probably deserves three-and-a-half stars, but I'll round it up to four.

Margot Peters clearly did a lot of research for this book, and it shows. If you're interested in learning about the Lunts, this book is more than adequate. But if Jared Brown's "The Fabulous Lunts" were in print, that would be my first recommendation for a biography of the couple.

That having been said, this book is arguably superior in some respects. If you want to learn about the Lunts' private lives, Peters provides far more information than does Brown (even if some of her surmises about the couple's sex life, or lack thereof, are a bit of a stretch). In comparison with "The Fabulous Lunts," here we learn a great deal more about Lunt's family; Ten Chimneys, their estate in Wisconsin; and many of their friendships. (The downside is that some of this is not very interesting.) On the other hand, Brown is generally more thorough in discussing their professional lives, though Peters is more thorough on a few productions (including "The Taming of the Shrew" and Coward's "Design for Living").

To Peters's credit, there are relatively few factual errors (as far as I can tell), and there are extensive endnotes. Unfortunately, even with all the endnotes, there are still some things that didn't get them but should have, and some of the endnotes that are included are more confusing than informative.

Indeed, one of the problems with this book is that Peters's writing is sometimes maddeningly convoluted, occasionally descending into incoherence. This is where Brown scores over Peters most of all: His writing is simple, straightforward, and clear, making "The Fabulous Lunts" a better read than "Design for Living."

Still, for the most part this is a good book, and I can recommend it to those who want to learn about the Lunts.

EDIT: Since I wrote the above, "The Fabulous Lunts" has come back into print.

Where is the magic ?.......2004-06-21

Never having seen Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne onstage, I, like the author, Margot Peters, cannot explain what made them exceptional. Ms. Peters, whose previous book, "The House of Barrymore", is a fascinating and definitive biography of the great theatrical siblings, Ethel, Lionel and John Barrymore, disappointed this reader with her dual portrait of the Lunts.
The author thoroughly documents their triumphs, tours, friendships and quirks, yet their theatrical charm and power eludes her pen and is never found on the page.

Unlike in the previously mentioned bio, here she simply cannot capture the vitality of the times, places and people she is writing about throughout this volume. The author might have checked with Shakespeare for more insight into the truth about actors on the stage: "These our actors,/ As I foretold you, were all spirits, and/ Are melted into air, into thin air...".

I guess you had to be there during Broadway's great years to understand their alchemy.

Left wanting more.......2003-12-19

The biography was not about this famous couple as real people; rather it was a recitation of their newspaper reviews for each production. I have been to their home and taking the tour brought me firmly into their world. Reading this book did not.

two extraordinary actors.......2003-12-07

DESIGN FOR LIVING is a biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, extremely popular husband and wife stage actors in the first half of the 20th century. Author Margot Peters provides, in exhaustive detail, the histories of the Lunts many successful stage productions, mostly by now underremembered writers like Noel Coward and Robert Sherwood. Throughout their careers, the Lunts enjoyed good reviews from New York critics but were often chastised for choosing inferior plays. Even though I enjoyed learning about the Lunts, I didn't really understand what would have led them to make these choices after reading the book.
Peters also comes up a bit short when discussing the Lunts acting technique... (she shouldn't be faulted too much or this though, working from secondary sources). Repeated references are made to how they made everything seem "fresh" and "spontaneous", but we don't know how they really got their teeth in a character.
Peters notes that other biographers of the Lunts have claimed that both Alfred and Lynn engaged in gay relationships without providing any evidence. Peters also provides no evidence, but also provides no evidence that the Lunts had any intimate life with each other. After reading DESIGN FOR LIVING, I came away feeling that I knew the Lunts well as actors but very little as people. Probably how they would have wanted it.

Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne: A Biography

Average customer rating:

Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne: A Biography
Margot Peters
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OXCFGK

Book Description

Samuel Beckett's radical drama, prose and poetry challenged and forever changed the concepts of literature and theatre. His work remains a core part of introductory courses on literary history, drama, theatre or performance and also features in more specialist classes such as Modernism or The Absurd. Many courses on twentieth century literature begin with Beckett. However, strange as it may seem, this book is the first single-authored introductory guide which covers life and contexts, work and criticism, as well as poetry, prose, drama, and radio plays.

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