Newcomb's Wildflower Guide: An Ingenious New Key System for Quick, Positive Field Identification of the Wildflowers, Flowering Shrubs and Vines of N

Average customer rating:

RI Master Gardener Advanced Education

Best Wildflower Guide I Know

Very Useful

Great guide for beginners and advanced

A Staple for Every Fan of Plants

Newcomb's Wildflower Guide: An Ingenious New Key System for Quick, Positive Field Identification of the Wildflowers, Flowering Shrubs and Vines of N
Lawrence Newcomb
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Flowers | Plants | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Plants | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Botany | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
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A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs: Northeastern and north-central United States and southeastern and south-centralCanada (Peterson Field Guides(R))

A Field Guide to Wildflowers : Northeastern and North-Central North America (Peterson Field Guides)

A Field Guide to Eastern Trees (Peterson Field Guides)

Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification

Field Guide to the Grasses, Sedges, and Rushes of the Northern United States

ASIN: 0316604410

Customer Reviews:

RI Master Gardener Advanced Education.......2007-10-17

As the RI Master Gardener Advanced Education Coordinator, I have used this book for two years in workshops delivered to our membership. The "Locator Key" and identification system is easy to use (easier than using the weed identification systems) and the drawings and descriptions are clear. Would recommend to anyone interested in identifying wildflowers or "weeds."

Best Wildflower Guide I Know.......2007-08-14

Because the keys are based on number of petals, this is the easiest identification guide I have. I take it into the field along with the Peterson's guide, which has better illustrations, and cross-check my flowers.

Very Useful.......2007-06-11

In the past, I found field guides to wildflowers very frustrating. I have both A Field Guide to Wildflowers : Northeastern and North-Central North America (Peterson Field Guides)and a Golden Wildflower guide. Because the aforementioned are organized by color first, one has to painstakingly search though all of the illustrations until a probable match is found. This is time consuming, and for me, very difficult, leading to many misidentifications.

Newcomb's Wildflower guide takes a different approach. Created for the non botanist, it begins with flower shape, then leaf location, then leaf shape, until you have a 3 digit numeric key. Next by looking under this key for more detail, you are directed to the right page(s). For me this is wonderful, it takes a little practice, but once you get the hang of it, you find the correct illustration and description quickly without having to page though a multitude of pink or blue or white, etc. flowers.

Admittedly, this system is not for everyone. Many people may like starting with color, but for me this guide is truly useful in the field.

Great guide for beginners and advanced.......2007-05-23

Overall a great book if you are interested in wildflower identification. I wish there were more pictures. Once you learn the coding, it is easy to narrow what you are looking for. I tried identifying a a flower that I already new by using the coding and was able to go directly to it. Using it to identify others you don't know takes a little practice, but it cuts your search time way down.

A Staple for Every Fan of Plants.......2007-03-08

This book is the first to go into a field bag when headed outside. It is an invaluable resource. A great deal of drawings (mostly B/W) that aid in the identification of Northeastern wildflowers. Note: requires a moderate amount of practice and/or knowledge of plants and flowers to be truly effective.

Average customer rating:

A New Key to Wild Flowers
John Hayward
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This is an original key for the naming of flowers, trees, grasses, sedges, rushes and ferns in the British Isles. No expert botanical knowledge is expected of the user and with a little practice the key can quickly be mastered. The key is not a descriptive flora but is a handy means to rapid identification which should be useful to students of all ages and to all who like to know the names of flowers, but are discouraged by more sophisticated wordy floras. This flora breaks new ground in wild flower identification in adopting a novel approach. It has its origins in courses run by the author where a simple field key was required that could give rapid results and was based upon easily seen characters. Subsequent extensive testing through the AIDGAP (Aids to Identification in Difficult Groups of Animals and Plants) organisation has further refined the key as a working tool for field and bench use.

Amazon.com

From glamour and glitz to the La Brea tar pits, The Rough Guide Los Angeles takes readers on an informed and well-balanced tour of L.A.'s many personalities. Maps and lists of travel basics help clarify the tangle of freeways and present the diverse cityscape, neighborhood by neighborhood, for easy exploration. Brief cultural and historical essays place contemporary sights in context, introduce famous residents, and take on L.A.'s recent past of riots, gangs, mass-transit problems, and racial tensions. Sections on the rise of Hollywood, on books and films in L.A., and glossaries prove valuable inclusions. Thorough, honest accounts coupled with critical savvy give this guide a smart, streetwise flair. --Byron Ricks

Book Description

INTRODUCTION

A maddening collection of freeways and beaches, fast-food joints and theme parks, seedy suburbs and high-gloss neighborhoods, Los Angeles is California's biggest and most stimulating city - though an unconventional one by any standard. Indeed, LA's character is so shifting and elusive - understandable "only dimly, and in flashes," according to F. Scott Fitzgerald - that the city might be freely dismissed by many outsiders if it weren't so central to the world's mass culture. Its multiple personalities and lack of any unifying design make it seem at first neither approachable, nor perhaps even enjoyable; but once the free-spirited chaos of the place takes hold, you'll be hard-pressed to resist.

Made up of scores of distinct municipalities, LA is a model for modern city development, having traded urban centralization for suburban sprawl and high-rise corporate towers for strip malls. It gets more than ample opportunity to show off its wares because of its stature as global entertainment center, which paints a picture of a sunny and glamorous place like no other. It is certainly unique, an unpredictable and addictive assault on the senses, where mud-wrestling venues and porn cinemas stand next door to chic boutiques and trendy restaurants, the whole of it under constant threat of the next earthquake, flood, or natural disaster.

Despite this uniqueness, LA has much in common with other major US cities. With the largest combined port in the country (and biggest in the world outside of China), LA is a center for transpacific trade and a dominant financial hub in its own right. Meanwhile, LA's social gaps are quite broad, and there appears to be no end in sight for the nasty racial divisions broadcast to the world during the 1992 riots. Not a simple matter of black versus white, LA's unparalleled diversity means that more languages are spoken here than in any other US city, even as some residents - especially white suburbanites - cordon themselves off from one another in gated communities.

Unlike more conventional cities, LA does not reward an attraction-oriented itinerary, going from one museum or official exhibit to the next. While there are world-class institutions here - the Getty Center foremost among them - the sights that are most worth seeing tend to be separated by vast distances, and you'll doubtless spend most of your time on the freeway if you try to see them all. Instead, LA is perhaps best experienced as the locals do, by way of its innovative restaurants and dynamic nightlife, funky shopping strips and colorful boardwalks. Surprisingly for such a huge place, many of these places are concentrated in fairly compact neighborhoods, such as Venice and Old Pasadena, where you can often leave your car in a parking lot or just take public transit to get there. Outside the central city, LA can be surprisingly relaxing as well, whether you're lounging on a deserted beach, taking an island tour of Santa Catalina, or skiing in the eastern mountains.

Customer Reviews:

Very comprehensive, but somewhat left-learning.......2004-09-11

I picked up this book from my local library. A good overview of various places to visit in the Los Angeles area, but from almost the beggining I could tell what Mr. Dickey's political leaning is. In his media listings he lists Fox News as "providing a right-wing slant on the day's events.", but no such left-wing qualifier for CNN. Again in the Radio stations list, KFI 640 is described as "Tub-thumping talk radio, mostly with a far-right slant.", but KCRW 89.9 is described as "One of the country's better NPR affliates". Other examples are his distribes against Harrison Gray Otis "the arch-conservative publisher" who started the Los Angeles Times in 1881 (accordding to Dickey the LA Times "changed course dramatically" in 1960 when Otis Chandler took over the paper and "rejected its provincial conservatism") and of course Richard Nixon. Once you get past all of this, the info is actually quite good. I've been to many places around the US and have read many tour guides about them, but this book is at times a tour guide wrapped in DNC talking point memos. For a travel guide just give the facts about the place you're writting about, not the 'facts as you see them'.

Essential........2000-07-20

LA can be a daunting city to visit, but this book makes travelling around so much easier. If you are not planning to hire a car when you are there, this book really is essential. It has good maps of Downtown and Hollywood, and very useful maps of the main bus routes. The commentaries are really helpful and quite entertaining, although they can sometimes sound slightly pretentious. Nonetheless, I used the book every single day and would have been lost without it. A must have.

P.S. Make sure you take in a Dodgers game when you're there - you won't be disappointed!

This book is filled with useful info..........2000-06-18

I found this guide to be pretty good. It's a no-frills, easy-to-follow book. It summarizes the neighborhoods briefly, but I don't know how much has changed since it was published a year and half ago. For someone like me, who knew nothing about LA before reading this, this book is a good introduction to the area.

Book Description

Nothing on the market can rival the epic of Hu Jintao: Facing ChinaÂ's Challenges Ahead. This sweeping biography revealed this mysterious Chinese leaderÂ—from his ambitious youth in Qinhua University to the vanguard of political reform. The book discloses the astonishing truth about China: rampant corruptions in the government, tensions across Taiwan Strait, controversial Tibet issues, environment crisis, unemployment, poverty, AIDS, and the volatile US-China relations.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing.......2004-10-15

After lviing in China for 5 years and working in the region for 10, I was looking forward to learing about Hu Jintao, what has formed his character, and how he is likely to govern. What I read in this book was nothing more than a one sided view of the Chinese Governments views on key issues. No objectivity.

Very disapointed

A well written biography.......2002-05-17

A well researched and very well written biography of Hu Jintao. This informative book is recommended to anyone who wants to know China's leadership and current issues. This book also has useful information about China's government structure, labor law, and Tibet documents.

Outstanding.......2002-05-17

This is an uniquely non-biased and unfiltered look at the China's pressing issues and Hu Jintao. Just in time for the upcoming National Congress in Beijing. What an eye-opener!

Average customer rating:

from The Crafts Report

The Basic Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork: With Profitable Strategies for Recordkeeping, Cutting Material Costs, Time & Workplace Management, Plus Tax
James Dillehay
Manufacturer: Warm Snow Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Pricing | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Reference | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0962992321

Book Description

One of the most often asked questions from craftpersons selling their work is "How much should I charge?" Whether you have been in business or just starting, this step-by-step guidebook will help you answer that question. You'll get:

Ways to raise the perceived value of your work and charge more

Basic formulas for pricing craftwork, retail or wholesale

How to use pricing strategies to increase sales

How to price one-of-a-kind pieces

How to know if you are really making a profit

How to keep records, with sample forms you can copy

How to get the most profit out of every hour

Legal ways to cut your tax bills and boost your net income

More ways to boost your cash income than you ever imagined

Customer Reviews:

from The Crafts Report.......2004-12-12

"An excellent resource . . . a well organized book is nothing without solid information and the book delivers here." -- The Crafts Report

Average customer rating:

waste of money

A great tooll for healthy eating

It's hard to read

Good But Wished It Had a Bit More

Don't waste your money

The Complete Book of Food Counts- 5th Edition (Complete Book of Food Counts)
Corinne T. Netzer
Manufacturer: Dell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
Food Counters | Diets & Weight Loss | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Nutrition | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Exercise & Fitness | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
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Tanita BC533 Glass Innerscan Body Composition Monitor

ASIN: 0440225639
Release Date: 2000-01-04

Amazon.com

If you really want to analyze and/or change your diet, you need to know more than a count of the calories you're taking in; you also need to know the fat, cholesterol, fiber, and sodium. You get all this and more from The Complete Book of Food Counts, a 770-page paperback that lists every food you can think of, including brand-name items. Each food is analyzed by calories; grams of protein, carbohydrate, fat, and fiber; and milligrams of cholesterol and sodium. Let's say you're trying to stick to a healthy diet that is high in fiber and low in fat and sodium. Look up a food item and you'll see an array of brands compared, making it easy to find the healthiest choices. All major brands of packaged, canned, and frozen food items are listed. You can even look up a chain restaurant and check out menu options before you order; for example, a Carl's Jr. Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich feeds you 530 calories and a whopping 30 grams of fat (the same as a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese!) and 1,230 milligrams of sodium. Know what you're eating--look it up before you buy! --Joan Price

Book Description

The phenomenal bestseller!

The most listings ever!

The book that counts it all:

Calories
Carbohydrates
Protein
Sodium
Cholesterol
Fat
Fiber

The ultimate one-volume reference from Corinne T. Netzer, America's #1 authority on the nutritional content of food.

Are you counting your calories, carbs, or fat grams? Boosting fiber or watching your sodium or cholesterol intake? Whatever your nutritional needs, this authoritative one-volume reference from Corinne T. Netzer, America's most trusted authority on the nutritional content of food, provides the latest, most accurate information on the largest possible variety of foods. The Complete Book of Food Counts, completely revised and updated for the fifth edition, contains more listings than ever before and features all the essential counts for generic and brand-name foods, fresh, frozen, and fast-food items--even gourmet and health foods.

Calorie counts
Carbohydrate grams
Cholesterol milligrams
Sodium milligrams
Protein grams
Fat grams
Fiber grams

Plus:

A conversion table for weight and capacity measures
Alphabetized listing for easy reference
And much, much more

Quick and easy to use! From abalone to zucchini, all the information you need is here at your fingertips--whenever you need it! It's the book that belongs in every home and wherever you go--the ultimate gift for yourself and your family--the gift of knowledge, of choice, of good health!

Customer Reviews:

waste of money.......2007-08-24

This book is basically a list of Nutrition Facts that you find on the back of food packages and THAT's IT!

A great tooll for healthy eating.......2007-01-14

An exhaustive resource for food nutrional info. Sometimes too much informatiom makes it hard to find exactly what you're looking for. Some brand names on the list seem to be outdated. Nevertheless, its available at bargain prices.

It's hard to read.......2006-06-10

It has tons of information; both fresh and processed foods, but I found it difficult to look at the pages. The cheap, greyish, mass market paperback pages are fine for a novel and straight through reading, but when you're trying to follow a tiny chart it makes it hard to do. After looking at all the food counting books in the bookstore, I finally found one compact book with medium stock, bright paper and great info that was easy on the eyes for just $2 more. The Ultimate Calorie, Carb, & Fat Gram Counter by Lea Ann Holzmeister. I recommend that one over the Netzer book.

Good But Wished It Had a Bit More.......2006-05-12

I am on a strict high protein diet so this was a very good book as it lists protein amts. for tons of foods.

My one complaint is it seems to list almost all pre-packaged or restaurant foods. How 'bout a chicken leg you make or a hamburger not from Burger King? I'd find it helpful if that type of info. were included as well.

Don't waste your money.......2006-03-09

This book is not very helpful and confusing to use. A lot of the information it provides is information you can read on the food labels IF you buy those brands.

Average customer rating:

This is not a Dutch treat

Long - Unique - What can I say?

What in the world was this author thinking?

Almost unreadable, but I finished it after 6 years

More revealing of Morris' character than Reagan's

Dutch : A Memoir of Ronald Reagan

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Reagan, Ronald | ( R ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: B000065V2W

Amazon.com

Why did Pulitzer-winning Theodore Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris controversially choose to write his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan in the form of a historical novel? There's a clue in a quote the book attributes to Jane Wyman, Reagan's first wife. As Ronnie speechified about the Red Menace at a 1940s Hollywood party, Wyman allegedly whispered to a friend, "I'm so bored with him, I'll either kill him or kill myself." This anecdote, if true, is more revealing than Nancy Reagan's charge in the book that Jane had attempted suicide to get Ronnie to marry her in the first place. Jane was no intellectual--Morris cracks that "If Jane had ever heard of Finland, she probably thought it was an aquarium"--but he found to his horror, after years of research, that he felt much the same as Wyman. Reagan was as boring as a box of rocks, as elusive as a ghost.

Decades before Alzheimer's clouded Reagan's mind, he showed a terrifying lack of human presence. "I was real proud when Dad came to my high school commencement," reports his son, Michael Reagan. After posing for photos with Michael and his classmates, the future president came up to him, looked right in his eyes, and said, "Hi, my name's Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" Poor Michael replied, "Dad, it's me. Your son. Mike."

Despite deep research and unprecedented access--no previous biography has ever been authorized by a sitting president--Morris could get no closer to Reagan's elusive soul than Reagan's own kids could. So Morris decided to dramatize Reagan's life with several invented characters--including a fictionalized version of himself and an imaginary gossip columnist who makes wicked comments on Reagan's career. This is one weird tactic, forcing the reader constantly to consult the footnotes at the back of the book to sort things out, and Morris makes it tougher by presenting his invented characters as real, even in the footnotes.

Ultimately, the hubbub over Morris's odd method is beside the point. His speculative entry into Reagan's life and mind is plausible, dramatic, literary, and lit by dazzling flashes of insight. The narrator watches the young Reagan as a lifeguard (years before the real Morris was born):

One tunnels along in a shroud of silvery bubbles, insulated from any sight or sound.... Others may swim alongside for a while, but their individuality tends to refract away, through the bubbles and the blur. Often I have marveled at Reagan's cool, unhurried progress through crises of politics and personnel, and thought to myself, He sees the world as a swimmer sees it.

We cannot verify Morris's notion that Reagan probably approved the illegal Iran-Contra funding without having a clue it was illegal, or that the "Star Wars" program sprang from his love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's first novel, A Princess of Mars, which featured glass-domed cities. But however bizarre and ignorant his thoughts were, however cold his heart, Morris believes, the guy did crush the Evil Empire and achieve greatness. Morris achieves a kind of greatness, too, but one wishes he had written a more straightforward dramatization of history. --Tim Appelo

Amazon.com Audiobook Review

In what must surely be one of the most unusual and critically scrutinized biographies ever written, Edmund Morris has created a difficult but fascinating chronicle nearly as enigmatic as his book's inscrutable subject. Read by the author himself, this audio version comes replete with a special acknowledgment of the controversial nature of the book and an especially poignant closing passage addressing Reagan's senescent slide into dementia. In the explanatory preface Morris describes the rationale behind his unconventional effort: "When the biographer sits talking with the still living subject, as I did so often with President Reagan ... the story of his journey becomes, in effect, an autobiography, that interrelates with the biography he's writing. In other words, this is the true story of a real person told by an imaginary narrator who eventually mutates into myself." A curious and debatable strategy. However, using this unprecedented approach, Morris has created an unarguably intimate, highly detailed, and powerfully moving memoir which reaches a level of emotional resonance rarely achieved in more traditional biographies. (Running time: 9 hours, 6 cassettes) --George Laney

Book Description

This book, the only biography ever authorized by a sitting President--yet written with complete interpretive freedom--is as revolutionary in method as it is formidable in scholarship. When Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, one of his first literary guests was Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt. Morris developed a fascination for the genial yet inscrutable President and, after Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984, put aside the second volume of his life of Roosevelt to become an observing eye and ear at the White House.

Coming and going with Reagan's benign approval ("I'm not going to ride up San Juan Hill for you"), Morris found the President to be a man of extraordinary power and mystery. Although the historic early achievements were plain to see--the restoration of American optimism and patriotism, a repowering of the national economy, a massive arms buildup deliberately forcing the "Evil Empire" of Soviet Communism to come to terms--nobody, let alone Reagan himself, could explain how he succeeded in shaping events to his will. And when Reagan's second term came to grips with some of the most fundamental moral issues of the late twentieth century--at Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen, at Geneva and Reykjavík,publicly outside the Brandenburg Gate ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"), and deep within the mother monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church, Morris realized that he had taken on a subject of epic dimensions.

Thus began a long biographical pilgrimage to the heart of Ronald Reagan's mystery, beginning with his birth in 1911 in the heart of rural Illinois (where he is still remembered as "Dutch," the dreamy son of an alcoholic father and a fiercely religious mother) and progressing through the way stations of an amazingly varied career: young lifeguard (he saved seventy-seven lives), aspiring writer, ace sportscaster, film star, soldier,union leader, corporate spokesman, Governor, and President. Reagan granted Morris full access to his personal papers, including early autobiographical stories and a handwritten White House diary.

The pilgrimage climaxes in 1993, when, in a moment of aching poignancy, Morris escorts his aged and failing subject back up the stairs of his birthplace. "An odd, Dantesque reversal of roles had occurred, as if I were now the leader rather than the led."

During thirteen years of obsessive archival research and interviews with Reagan and his family, friends, admirers and enemies (the book's enormous dramatis personae includes such varied characters as Mikhail Gorbachev, Michelangelo Antonioni, Elie Wiesel, Mario Savio, François Mitterrand, Grant Wood, and Zippy the Pinhead), Morris lived what amounted to a doppelgänger life, studying the young "Dutch," the middle-aged "Ronnie," and the septuagenarian Chief Executive with a closeness and dispassion, not to mention alternations of amusement, horror,and amazed respect, unmatched by any other presidential biographer.

This almost Boswellian closeness led to a unique literary method whereby, in the earlier chapters of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan,Morris's biographical mind becomes in effect another character in the narrative, recording long-ago events with the same eyewitness vividness (and absolute documentary fidelity) with which the author later describes the great dramas of Reagan's presidency, and the tragedy of a noble life now darkened by dementia.

"I quite understand," the author has remarked, "that readers will have to adjust, at first, to what amounts to a new biographical style. But the revelations of this style, which derive directly from Ronald Reagan's own way of looking at his life, are I think rewarding enough to convince them that one of the most interesting characters in recent American history looms here like a colossus."

Customer Reviews:

This is not a Dutch treat.......2007-06-12

Years ago in a drugstore near Boston I noticed various news magazines had devoted their front pages to Edmund Morris' new biography on Reagan. It garnered weak reviews due to his unique style of presenting Ronald "Dutch" Reagan to the world. I finally read the book and found that his use of fictional characters, presented as real in order for the reader to capture the essence of Reagan, does not work. While at times an "a-ha" moment occurred when I read about Reagan's youthful actions through the eyes of a fictional acquaintance, I was not interested in reading about this character's life, family, problems and future. To take the biography seriously I was asked to pretend. All the while I felt these inclusions were keeping me away from Reagan, which is not the best praise a biography could receive. His insights into how rural, solitary cornfields and swimming shaped this world leader were fascinating, but sorting through fictional characters to get to them was frustrating.
Since the publication of Dinesh D'Souza's book Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man became an Extraordinary Leader in the mid 1990s, the floodgates have opened with a barrage of pro-Reagan books from former aids, colleagues, political pundits and even his wayward daughter. What is needed is another solid, analytical biography about this larger than life president. Dutch is not it. Written while Reagan was still alive but moribund due to Alzheimer's, it is a miscalculation. Morris stated in an interview that his was a revolutionary way of writing a biography. Some have called it akin to an historical novel. To write a biography-cum-historical novel on Ronald Reagan might be revolutionary, but from what I saw at the revolution, the essence of Reagan might have been beyond even the considerable talents of Mr. Morris.

Long - Unique - What can I say?.......2007-06-05

This book took me two years to get through if you count the times I tried to start reading it and when I actually started plowing through it the last few months. In the beginning it was absolutely hard to get through with the literary technique Morris was using in order to tell the story. Once you get through the weird flow the book which spends as much time at the start talking about the fake narrator as Ronald Reagan, you can get at Reagan. But, as many reviewers have alluded to, this book is hard to get through.

I did learn a lot about President Reagan. There is no doubt that the book is filled with information. I think a glaring error was how little Iran-Contra was dealt with, and how it was dealt with. The portrait that Morris paints of Reagan throughout this book is a cool, detached leader who alternated between caring about the job to not knowing what he was supposed to say at what time. I lean towards Reagan was a very private person who picked his spots to be vulnerable - if ever. Overall - you need to read this book if you are into Presidential history, but allow some time, and breaks. JVD

What in the world was this author thinking?.......2007-05-23

I had heard a lot about this book long before reading it, none of it good, and reading the book confirmed everything that I had heard. Reading it quickly became a battle of wills between me and the author. Will this book ever start being interesting? Will Morris ever stop talking about himself? Will the author ever deflate his soaring ego and float back down to Earth? Will I be able to hang on long enough to finish it? The answers turned out to be no, no, no, and no, although I did manage to make it all the way to page 230.

The book put me in mind of a story Ronald Reagan liked to tell about an overly optimistic lad whose parents found him digging through a pile of manure. He was convinced that with such a large pile there had to be a pony in there somewhere. I don't know how that boy fared, but I never found a pony. I can't help but wonder: what in the world was Morris thinking? I give the book one star for Morris's overstuffed vocabulary, his use of large words, and his monumental ego. Otherwise, I'd have to give it no stars, although I must admit masochists might like it.

Almost unreadable, but I finished it after 6 years.......2006-12-27

I started this book in 2000, and found it unreadable and unfinishable. I, like many, loved Morris's work on T. Roosevelt, and was looking forward to someone explaining to me what Reagan was all about because I didn't understand at the time. I understand only a little better for having read Morris's book.

His use of himself as a fictional character in the book simply doesn't work, sometime in spectacular manner--the narrator's son was killed by Reagan goons firing from a helicopter during a campus protest....Please. The object of the narrator's study has the blood of the writer's son on his hands. What are we supposed to get from that except that the fictional narrator could not possibly be objective?

Add to the book's fundamental structural problems (arising from the fictional narrator's baggage in his relationship with Reagan), the repeated use of French expressions that an English speaking audience as a group are unlikely to understand or appreciate (and, really, I find frequent references to French or Latin phrases, as well as technical terms or industry jargon just plain tiring in any work intended for mass consumption). Just write clearly in English and that will be fine.

One of Morris's clearest messages is that Reagan was no T. Roosevelt, but I knew that before I picked up the book. I am sorry that such a good writer was unable to do better than this, given his access to the players and presumably the time he had to reflect on his subject.

More revealing of Morris' character than Reagan's.......2006-10-18

Morris had the opportunity of a lifetime and blew it. Unparalleled access to a sitting president, and Morris can't understand what made Reagan larger than life? Morris seems utterly disappointed that Reagan is not Teddy Roosevelt, and proceeds to paint Reagan as a amiable dullard pretending to be president. Morris misses the mark, and his invective only throws his aim off even more. Edmund Morris comes off as an erudite Michael Moore.

Average customer rating:

Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
Edmund Morris
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NE4F68

Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.(Review) (book review): An article from: Presidential Studies Quarterly

Average customer rating:

Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.(Review) (book review): An article from: Presidential Studies Quarterly
Peter Hannaford , and Robert D. Schulzinger
Manufacturer: Center for the Study of the Presidency
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Netherlands | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Presidential Studies Quarterly, published by Center for the Study of the Presidency on June 1, 2000. The length of the article is 3563 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: Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.(Review) (book review)
Author: Peter Hannaford
Publication: Presidential Studies Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2000
Publisher: Center for the Study of the Presidency
Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Page: 388

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Dutch a Memoir of Ronald Reagan
Edmund Morris
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000X69RY6

Customer Reviews:

Adventure classic.......2004-12-17

I was delighted to obtain a copy of this book from one of my UK relatives. I had read Children of the Black House and loved it so I was thrilled to find another Calum Ferguson book . His ability to capture the extraordinary life and times of John Macleod and put it so effortlessly on paper attests to his genius as a writer. He makes it very easy to visualize John and the trials he faces. This book would make a great movie and I hope to see it in film one day. I look forward to further writings from this very gifted story teller and I hope Amazon Canada will have it available on this side of the ocean soon.
Sincerely,
Bethany Laine

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John Devoy's Recollections

Recollections of an Irish Rebel
John Devoy
Manufacturer: Irish Academic Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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John Devoy's Recollections.......2000-04-01

As one of the high ranking members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the ninteenth century and a leader of the Clan na Gael in America, John Devoy is well qualified to write a history of Fenianism. Though billed as a memoir, Recollections of an Irish Rebel goes beyond Devoy's personal experiences, giving profound insight into Ireland's most infamous secret societies during some of her darkest hours. John Devoy joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in its early days following its formation by James Stephens in the 1850's. He was imprisoned during wide-scale arrests preceding the Fenian uprising of 1867, after which he was exiled in America. From there he was instrumental in organizing the American aid for the Easter Rising of 1916. All of this is explored in great detail in his book. The one drawback of this book is its tendency to get bogged down in sometimes confusing details. It could stand to be less wordy, but a better first hand account of ninteenth century Fenianism is not to be found.

Recollections of an Irish rebel;: The Fenian movement. Its origin and progress. Methods of work in Ireland and in the British army. Why it failed to achieve ... of Easter week, 1916. A personal narrative

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Recollections of an Irish rebel;: The Fenian movement. Its origin and progress. Methods of work in Ireland and in the British army. Why it failed to achieve ... of Easter week, 1916. A personal narrative
John Devoy
Manufacturer: Chas. P. Young Co., printers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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