Wildflowers and other colorful inhabitants of the North Woods

Book Description

With over 100,000 copies sold, the For Free series has been a godsend for people scared by the high cost of travel.

Book Description

Cells of Ourselves includes fifty drawings (ten reproduced in full colour) organized allusively around the idea of a cage, presented alongside a prose commentary on the images. The drawings are all very small and reproduced, for the most part, size as. Tiny, but complex and richly detailed, these teeming miniature drawings are endlessly explorable meditations on the idea of the cage, the enclosure, the cordoned-off area: this cage theme encompasses everything from the calligraphic wrought-iron erected like architectonic ivy around French grave sites to depictions of animals in zoos, historical artefacts in glass cases, buildings within walls, anatomies of the Paris Metro cars, even an eloquent up-close exploration of the fearsome nature of an ordinary fly-swatter.

Running through all these drawings of cages and grids is a common theme: that what is inside an enclosure is not so much a part of the greater world held captive, but rather a part of the world now intimately focussed for our inspection. The act of entrapment (mimicked, to some extent, by the artist) becomes an act of homage, an endeavour to hold something still so that its true nature can be understood, so that it becomes possible to see the world in a grain of sand rather than to see moments of selected experience as moments endlessly lost in flux, endlessly condemned to freedom and dissolution.

Here the task of both artist and writer is to see much in little -- which is one of the states of reverie that leads to freedom.

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Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terror Without Terrorizing Ourselves
Michael A. Sheehan
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Terrorism | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
International Security | Freedom & Security | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0307382176
Release Date: 2008-03-25

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Solving energy "non problems"; are we spending to solve problems, or to convince ourselves that solutions are in sight? (Contrarian's View on Energy).: An article from: Energy
Ernst M. Cohn
Manufacturer: Business Communications Company, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0009FMO2I
Release Date: 2005-07-30

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Energy, published by Business Communications Company, Inc. on March 22, 2002. The length of the article is 1830 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Solving energy "non problems"; are we spending to solve problems, or to convince ourselves that solutions are in sight? (Contrarian's View on Energy).
Author: Ernst M. Cohn
Publication: Energy (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2002
Publisher: Business Communications Company, Inc.
Volume: 27 Issue: 2 Page: 46(2)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Customer Reviews:

Excellent: Ferrets 101.......1999-11-05

Although I liked the companion book (Training Your Pet Ferret) more, this is an excellent concise guide for someone who knows nothing about ferrets. This is not a book for anyone who has even a working knowledge about ferret behavior. But then again I haven't found a good guide yet that goes in depth into ferret matters for those of us who know the basics about them, but would like to know more.

Excellent: Ferrets 101.......1999-11-05

Not bad, but not great either.......1999-07-12

While some of the information is unique to this book (like the part about ferret sounds and body language) there are some alarming errors (a ferret should NEVER be housed in an aquarium!). Use it as an additional reference, but not your primary one. You should have several different sources to refer to anyway.

10 Years Hardly Made Any Difference.......1999-04-23

There are many more up-to-date reference books on the Domestic Pet Ferret. It's an add to my Ferret book collection only. I recommend researching all books available before deciding to be owned by Ferrets.

Please don't buy this book, you may hurt your Ferret!.......1999-01-11

As a keeper of Ferrets here in England I was appalled when I was given this book as a present for Christmas 98'. There are a number of really quite harmful and cruel elements to this book This could not be further from the truth. The Ferret is a highly social animal and they should really be kept in a minimum of threes, two females and a male.

De-scenting. This is a highly controversial prac n integral part of the animals communication system and to remove them just for the delicate nostrils of the owner is really very unfair on the animal.

To say that Ferrets release odour when in fear of their life is quite innaccurate. Ferrets release an odour when they are excited, prior to eating, before hunting or going for a walk.

Within the book the subject of housing the Ferret is not covered at all satisfatorily, to suggest that a Ferret needs a cage of only 10 inches in height is cruel. Ferrets are climbers by ntaure and mine reguarly climb the seven feet to the top of their 6 foot by 6 foot court. There is scant reference to the correct size and positioning of an outdoor court and cub.

I could go on, but frankly the 1000 word limit is rapidly running out. But for those die hards amongst you who rate this book, just refer to the "My tip" on page 23, advising the reader "never to strike the Ferret's body" This lady must really have been struggling for something to write if she thinks that the average Ferret loving reader would hit such a small animal!

The picture of the "White-footed butterscotch" on page 41 is further testament to this authors own ineptitude, either if this Ferret is her own or the picture is from a library, it should never have been used in a reference book. The poor animal's nails are clearly too long and should have been t rimmed, if they grow much further they'll grow back under themselves! Poor Ferret.

One thing this "guide" is not is complete!

In short, don't waste your money. There has to be a much better guide out there somwhere! By the way, the only reason I gave this book one star is because the review software won't let you choose none!

Average customer rating:
Ferrets - Everything About Purchase, Care, Nutrition, Diseases, Behavior, And Breeding
Chuck And Fox Morton
Manufacturer: Barron's Educational Series
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PHO464

Average customer rating:

A good book for choosing garden tools

Truly wonderful

The Tool Book: A Compendium of Over 500 Tools and How to Use Them
William Bryant Logan
Manufacturer: Workman Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Reference | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Hand Tools | How-to & Home Improvements | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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Smith & Hawken: The Book of Outdoor Gardening (Smith & Hawken)

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

Botany for Gardeners

ASIN: 0761121366

Amazon.com

At first glance The Tool Book might look like a dry catalogue of various garden tools, but it's actually a fresh and inspiring history lesson. Author William Bryant Logan carefully intersperses his detailed descriptions of hoes, mattocks, tining forks, or pruning saws with short meditations on the tool's evolution. In a chapter entitled "Digging," he writes, "The growth of civilization paralleled the evolution of the spade and the shovel." Behind the book, there's a vision of humanity constantly forging new technology to more carefully and effortlessly shape the landscape.

Amateur gardeners will learn the vast differences between cheap and expensive tools. Clear explanations of the differences between "stamping" and "forging" metal tools, and how to tell the difference, will change your perspective the next time you go to make a purchase. You will also learn why some handles are short and others are long, and why corn husks with their pointed tips led to the invention of the trowel. To Logan's credit, he understands that gardeners arbitrarily love certain tools and hate others, and thus his descriptions are objective--his book more an orientation than a lesson in the "right" way to garden. Packed with photos, The Tool Book is an essential text for anyone facing the daunting task of creating and maintaining a garden. --Emily White

Book Description

The Garden Writers Association of America declared it best book of the year for 1998. And The New York Times wrote: "Logan, who is one of our best garden writers, has produced not only a real book but a scrupulously researched, handsomely designed, and highly enjoyable one to book."

The Tool Book celebrates garden tools in all their pleasure, practicality, variety, beauty, ingenuity, simplicity, and purity. Thirteen chapters and over 70 striking full-color photographic spreads-obsessive and obsessively informative-present hundreds of tools organized by task: 22 shovels, 21 spades, 12 trowels, 16 hoes, 11 weeders, 19 hand pruners, 10 pruning saws. In addition to garden tool necessities, here are knives, axes, hooks, watering cans, rakes, riddles, brooms, wheel barrows, shears, and scoops, and much more. There are tools to start the garden from seed in the spring, tools to keep it growing and healthy all summer, and tools clean up in the fall. And, finally, tools to care for the tools.

In addition, the the book presents a detailed overview of the marriage of tool to type of work-how garden tools evolved, how to use each type of tool properly, and what to look for in a tool. It's the right tool for the right job.

Customer Reviews:

A good book for choosing garden tools.......2001-08-18

If you are a beginning gardener and don't know the difference between a shovel and a spade, or what to use them for, this book is immensely useful. It is certainly worth the price and the time it takes to browse through it to find and understand the exact tools you will need for your individual garden before you go out shopping. In addition to pages of full color pictures of each tool, it contains historic accounts regarding the tools and some nice quotes about gardening. After reading this book I felt like I understood garden tools, whereas prior to reading it, I just used tools in a haphazard way without understanding their purpose and how they could help me in the garden.

Truly wonderful.......1998-07-15

A piece of art, fits the coffee table and yet is packed with valuable information

Book Description

Erasmus' revolutionary Latin and Greek New Testament of 1516 was accompanied by annotations intended to be brief but which were already challenging and often discursive. This edition gives them with all their variants. The years 1519, 1523, 1527 and 1535 saw those notes grow and grow in number, size and importance. Some treat just those vital minutiy which led Aquinas, say, into error or folly when he ignored or neglected them: others form ever-expanding essays spreading over several pages and bringing Erasmus into the centre of controversy. Here, for the first time ever, the annotations are edited and dated. They now form an indispensable companion to Erasmus' letters as a major source of our knowledge of the nuances and development of his thought and scholarship.

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Penzler Pick, August 2001: Two years ago, I wrote a book titled 101 Greatest Films of Mystery and Suspense. In addition to watching every one of those movies again (not exactly a horrendous ordeal), I did tons of research, flipping through or reading more than a hundred books about film. The best book--the one with the most offbeat stories and anecdotes, the most accurate information, and the most entertainingly written--was Dark City by Eddie Muller. It was a fascinating study of the great films noir, and a page didn't go by without my learning something.

Now Muller is back with Dark City Dames. It's a very different kind of book, not offering the big-picture overview that Dark City did, but it's nearly as fascinating. It's a portrait of six of the greatest femme fatales of the wonderful black-and-white crime movies that filled the screens in the 1940s and '50s: Jane Greer (the star, with Robert Mitchum, of Out of the Past and The Big Steal), Marie Windsor (The Killing, The Narrow Margin), Ann Savage (Detour), Evelyn Keyes (The Prowler, Johnny O'Clock), Audrey Totter (The Lady in the Lake, The Unsuspected), and Coleen Gray (The Sleeping City, Kiss of Death, Nightmare Alley).

But these aren't rehashes of plots and quotes from the rave reviews of these stars. Muller personally interviewed each of them, and the second half of the book is a kind of "Where are they now?" Perhaps oddly--perhaps not--these wicked, lying, cheating, double-crossing, money-hungry temptresses of the screen turn out to be rather nice ladies, as normal as one could expect of beautiful movie stars, and Muller brings them fully to life.

There are regrets here, both on the part of the reader and of Muller, that space couldn't be devoted to many of the biggest female stars of film noir. There's no Barbara Stanwyck, or Gloria Grahame, or Veronica Lake, or Lisabeth Scott, or Claire Trevor, or Ida Lupino. Scott became a silent recluse, and the others had died. But that is only in real life. On the screen they will live forever, just as they do in Muller's marvelous love letter to them all. --Otto Penzler

Book Description

Film noir was the dark side of the movies' happily-ever-after mythology. Sinister and sexy, it forged a new icon: the tough, independent, take-no-guff dame. Determined, desirable, dangerous when cornered, she could handle trouble -- or deal out some of her own.

If you thought these women were something special onscreen, wait till you meet the genuine articles. In Dark City Dames, acclaimed film historian Eddie Muller profiles six women who made a lasting impression in this cinematic terrain -- from veteran "bad girls" Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor, and Jane Greer to unexpected genre fixtures Evelyn Keyes, Coleen Gray, and Ann Savage. The book surveys the lives of these formidable women during the height of their careers circa 1950, as they balanced love and career, struggled against typecasting, and sought fulfillment in a ruthless business. Their personal stories -- teeming with larger-than-life characters like Howard Hughes, L.B. Mayer, Robert Mitchum, Otto Preminger, and John Huston -- offer an illuminating counterpoint to their movies, such as Out of the Past, Detour, The Lady in the Lake, and The Killing. Then Dark City Dames revisits each one of these women today, fifty years on, to witness their hard-won -- and triumphant -- survival. On every page their own voices ring through, reflecting on their lives with as much passion, pain, intelligence, energy, and humor as any movie script.

Dark City Dames re-creates the excitement and glamour of a group of gifted performers who lived out their youthful fantasies -- and, along the way, remade the image of the American woman.

Customer Reviews:

Then-and-Now Biographies of 6 Actresses of Classic Film Noir.......2004-12-30

Author Eddie Muller proved himself adept at engaging readers with a lively tour of classic film noir in his popular book "Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir". In "Dark City Dames", Muller presents then-and-now biographies of 6 actresses whose portrayals of femmes fatales will forever fix their images on the consciousness of film noir audiences. The first half of the book, entitled "Hollywood Midcentury", introduces us to these women, who came to Hollywood from a variety of backgrounds and locales, but all aspired to be movie actresses and were under contract to one studio or another in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Jane Greer was brought to Hollywood from Washington, D.C. as a teenager under contract to RKO. She made "Out of the Past" and "The Big Steal", among others, before Howard Hughes vowed to end her career. Audrey Totter was straight-laced, professional, and ambitious. She acted in 6 film noirs, among them "The Lady in the Lake", "The Unsuspected", "Alias Nick Beal", and "The Set-Up" before remarkable coincidence began her married life and ended her film career, just as coincidence had launched it. Marie Windsor was the pride of Marysvale, Utah, who had dreamed of being an actress since childhood. Pragmatic and persistent, her dark hair made her the villain in "The Narrow Margin", "Force of Evil", and "The Killing". Evelyn Keyes was backwards and unworldly when Cecile B. DeMille signed her. But her persistent curiosity and independent nature inspired her to many Hollywood adventures. Her films included "Johnny O'Clock" and "The Prowler" , before she walked away from Hollywood after 13 years in the business. Coleen Gray was an insecure midwestern farmer's daughter, but you wouldn't know it from "The Sleeping City", "Nightmare Alley", or "Kiss of Death". Anne Savage was headstrong and vivacious, as her stage name implies. She will be best remembered for "Detour", which might have ended her decade-long acting career.

In the second part of "Dark City Dames", "Hollywood Fin de Siècle", we meet the 6 actresses today. Now in their 70s and 80s, the ladies of film noir tell us what happened as their film careers dwindled and what they've done since. It's interesting that the revived interest in classic film noir has brought these actresses a lot of unexpected attention and praise that was lacking when it would have helped their careers. Several of them lament the demise of the studio system that protected actors even as it limited them -and studio politics ended many careers prematurely. All of the actresses profiled cooperated with the author, so their stories are personal and very much their point of view. "Dark City Dames" doesn't actually say much about the films or the characters these actresses embodied. It's about the experiences of its 6 heroines, who, as young starlets in post-war Hollywood, probably aspired to be A-list stars, but became indelible vixens of film noir instead.

This guy knows what he's talking about!.......2004-02-25

I met Eddie at a lecture in San Francisco during the Noir Festival at the Castro Theater, and this guy really knows his stuff. He is the quintissential renaissance man; a writer, a thinker, and (more than likely) an artist. His books do nothing less than to amaze the reader how a man so young coud have gained so much knowledge about a genre that happened before his birth.

Those Dangerous and Intriguing Women.......2003-10-28

One of the most challenging roles for an actress is that of a femme fatale. She must exhibit far more than mere treachery. The femme fatale must convince audiences that what the poor male succumbing to her charms is experiencing is plausibly merited. She must exhibit the kind of overpowering appeal combined with a Svengali manner to sell audiences that the poor man's captivated fascination is plausibly worth it. Otherwise the whole story falls flat.

Eddie Muller writes about women who accepted that challenge and surmounted it convincingly. Jane Greer is a classic example. While only 22 when she appeared opposite Robert Mitchum in the classical noir work, "Out of the Past," she revealed a native intelligence and air of sophistication of a woman who had been around forever. Mitchum, while fully aware of her treachery, found himself incapable of turning away until it was too late and he was ultimately doomed.

Ann Savage was a former model who found her niche as a femme fatale in one of the most remarkable low budget triumphs in Hollywood annals, "Detour," directed by independent film genius Edgar Ulmer, who took a no frills, low budget project and carved out a classic by using limited space to commanding advantage. Tom Neil could not get away from Savage, who exuded a suffocating presence on the hapless musician, who was trying to reunite with his singer girlfriend in Los Angeles. Savage clearly had other ideas.

Marie Windsor was a willowy former beauty contest winner who traveled from her small Utah hometown to Hollywood in search of fame. Her height was a turnoff initially in her career and she was compelled to work in a lot of low budget westerns before getting her opportunity to shine, which she did in Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing." Her scenes as the faithless wife in love with gigolo Vince Edwards and her shamefully sadistic usery of husband Elisha Cook Jr. serve as a dramatic highlight of a superb, hard-hitting movie about an ex-con played by Sterling Hyden, who seeks to engineer a holdup of a racetrack on the biggest pay day of the season. The more Cook begs and implores, the more savagely biting the wisecracks which emanate from Windsor, but in the final analysis the henpecked husband hits back in a way neither she nor Edwards are able to anticipate.

Coleen Gray and Audrey Totter are also included in Muller's work. His penetrating interviews enable the reader to get familiar with the personalities and their lives away from the cameras. Gray played the girlfriends of Sterling Hayden and Tyrone Power in two noir gems, "The Killing" nnd "Nightmare Alley," while Totter was the love interest of detective Philip Marlowe, played by Robert Montgomery, who also directed, in Raymond Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake."

Superb biography of the queens of film noir.......2002-04-28

Some 50 years ago, the women of this book worked in relative obsurity amidst the shadows of large studios during film noir's heyday. Now with the resurgent popularity of the film noir genre, these actresses are finally being recognized for the keen talent they possess and the effect they had on a generation of movies.

None of these women are household names because none of these women were given the star publicity treatment that Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford and others were givne during the same time period. But their stories are every bit as interesting and author Eddie Muller tells them wonderfully.

Muller is obviously a fan of folm noir, but does not let this color these biographies. Rather, Muller deftly allows the six actresses featured here to tell their own stories. The result is an honest, touching and insightful view into the Hollywood moviemaking era of the late 30s to early 50s.

Each actress' life is chronicled from the time she was born until the present. The personalities shine through as Muller shows the different ways in which each woman found a love for acting and was later "discovered" by Hollywood. The result is poignant. From the exhileration of the "big" movie to the sorrow at the death of a spouse, each life is fascinating. A great book!

DAMES ? This one you can live with!.......2002-02-22

Dark City's leading citizen has done it again with Dames. In this beautiful book, 'hiz honor' introduces us to the lives and work of Jane Greer, Ann Savage, Audrey Totter, Coleen Gray, Evelyn Keyes and Marie Windsor. Do you dare argue?, the quintessential Noir Babes?

It is fair to say that the author's work here is nothing less then visionary. These actresses have never received the credit that they deserved and now in the their golden years someone has come forward to celebrate the contributions that they made to the American Cinema. The word on the street in Dark City is, that no one could have done it better than the Mayor, Eddie Muller.

Among his works, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir and a recently released novel 'The Distance'. He is the co-director of the American Cinematheque's Annual Festival Of Film Noir at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood during March and April.

Average customer rating:
Dark City Dames The Wicked Women of Film Noir
Muller Eddie
Manufacturer: ReganBooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UEI0XU

Average customer rating:
Dark City Dames the Wicked Women of Film Noir
Muller Eddie
Manufacturer: ReganBooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SZ7CNU

Average customer rating:
Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir
Eddie Muller
Manufacturer: ReganBooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OESMCK

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