Westerns Books

The book came wrapped in cardboard and tape, but nothing was damaged. Great buy! Awesome book, very intense and graphic. I had to read it for an AP European History class.

This old book of 296 pages, first published in 1928 in German, is often considered the "greatest war novel of all time," and it is almost unbearable to read. Who knows if it is "the best?" That's immaterial and moot. There is no glory here, no swashbuckling heroism, and no adulation of the honor of dying for no discernible reason. It is simply a plain, gorgeous story about the awfulness of war.

A young German, Paul, age 20, serving in the army, is the narrator, his story told in first person. He and his buddies, as the war claims them one by one, endure 3 years of World War I trench warfare on the French-German lines. They knit themselves into a fierce family of unlikely comrades. They love one another desperately and despair that when the war is over, they will not know what to do with themselves. They only know death, killing and horror.

Blood, death, despair, inhuman conditions, and frailty abound. Lice and rancid food characterize their daily life. Fear, grief and compassion fill their hearts. Paul nearly loses his mind when he has to kill a Frenchman, a guy with a wife and child at home, and then has to endure a couple of nights with him in his shell-hole. He apologies to the body and begs it for forgiveness.

Page 115, "The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor - thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers."

Paul's first home leave is beyond painful. It humiliates and degrades. The reader cringes and shies away from the pages of Paul's visit to his home village and family. The psychological toll of war on everyone overwhelms. Paul's hospital stay after being wounded, is a ghastly indictment of all who wage war and even of those who try to help the injured.

While welcome and very funny, the occasional army style bad-boy antics and the ever-present gallows humor are the things that keep the men sane - or does it? They distract themselves to distraction.

The prose is Hemingway-like in its terse, simple-sentence style. Sometimes the translation suffers from its own tell-tale German "accent." In all, the writing is irredeemably blunt and yet does not offend.

Remarque speaks to us through Paul, and he speaks for all of us. Like the movie "Gallipoli," which is the best anti-war movie I've ever seen, this book is the one of the best anti-war statements in print.

"All Quite on the Western Front" is terribly difficult to read. It is grisly and graphic. But read it we must.

The first classic I have read in a while. As great as advertised ("The GREATEST WAR NOVEL of ALL TIME") on the cover.

Devastating in its matter-of-fact dealing with the suffering of dog soldiers in the Great War, but perhaps most powerful in its occasional humor.

All Quiet on the Western Front vividly and movingly describes the experiences of the "Lost Generation." Those young men who came of age during the First World War, who fought and died in a conflict which set the standards of horror and destruction in the 20th century. This book should be read by all who seek to understand.

I grew up playing war like every other kid and had a somewhat glamorized view of war. When we went to war in Iraq for the first time I thought it was kind of cool. Being a Jewish person who lost a great deal of their family in the Holocaust having any sympathy for any Germans was not an easy thing to believe I could ever feel. This book floored me,the absolute horror of war just rippled through me for the first time in my life. What a callous maniac you have to be to start a war, declaring one is the ultimate sacrifice you can ask of people and should be under extreme circumstances only. This book is a must read, well written and engrossing. Enjoy reading it, if that's the appropriate term.

In 1854, President Ulysses Grant attended a Native American peace conference during which a Cheyenne chief named Little Wolf offered to trade 1,000 of his horses for 1,000 white brides for his tribesmen. Little Wolf hoped that the white women would help his people assimilate to the white man's way of life before there were no more buffalo to hunt. Grant rejected this proposition, but Jim Fergus' novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd, follows what would have happened if Grant's response had been in the affirmative. Grant's fictional approval was based on the hopes that the women would convince the Cheyenne to move to reservations so that white settlers could peacefully live upon land formerly inhabited by the Native Americans and exploit the land for its resources.

May Dodd is in the first group of white women to marry and live among the Cheyenne. She writes in her journal, "...we are contractually obligated to bear but one child with our Indian husbands, after which time we are free to go, or stay as we choose. Should we fail to become with child, we are required to remain with our husbands for two full years, after which time we are free to do as we wish...or, at least, so say the authorities." All the women who sign up for the Brides for Indians program do so voluntarily, some to escape poverty, others to win freedom from jail, and still others, like May, to win release from a lunatic asylum. May, a woman of good breeding, had been committed to the asylum by her parents who felt she must be insane after she cohabitated with a man below her social stature and bore him two children.

Through diary entries and letters, Fergus' story traces the adventures of May and her new-found friends as they leave Chicago bound for the Nebraska prairie and their Cheyenne husbands. May's writings vividly capture the colorful personalities of her companions, along with their dialects--the Irish brogues of the Kelly sisters, the southern drawl of Daisy Lovelace, the Swiss cant of Gretchen Fathauer.

While the women hope to teach American customs to the Cheyenne, as months pass, it is apparent that for some, the reverse occurs: Many of the brides adopt the Cheyenne way of life, though others find reasons to defect.

Through brilliant writing that includes romance, violence, and the challenges of Mother Nature, Fergus shows us May's inner struggle of straddling the worlds of the white man and the Cheyenne.

Quill says: This story will raise emotions you never knew you had. Read it.

You ladies out there, pay attention: this is what gives "books for women" a bad name! I don't have the stamina to go into this book's manifold idiocies (it was assigned by my bookclub; never even heard of it before that). Just please read some of the other one star reviews and have more self-respect than to stoop to read this absurdity.

Corpse Whisperer

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd was a fast read. I think that the author made the story realistic and I was living with that Indian tribe.
There were enough details to bring the story to life. I'm not a big fan of historical novels, but I really enjoyed this one.

My friends and I have started our own informal book club, and someone chose this book. I was kind of skeptical after hearing the description of the book, as well as some of my friends.were. But we all love it! We all have said that we cant put it down! I am the first one to finish, and I thought the whole book was great. It draws you in emotionally, and I felt deeply for the characters. Also, this book is great for a book club b/c it has questions in the back that you can discuss. I would defintely recommend this as required read!

I really loved this book. There were some things that were a stretch, but it was a nice and smooth read.

My book came right on time as it said and you could track the order the entire time. The book is in great condition and was packaged very well.

Great Seller. Fast shipping and the textbook was as described. Thanks!

This was an awesome book although the instructor never used it, I am ready to sell it as like new if anyone is interested please contact me.

I would have given it 5 stars if the price was lower, but that's what you get for text books these days. It was still cheaper than buying it at Berkeley's bookstore.

I found this book to be very informative and well written whith good flow and easy to understand examples. The author brings current events into the world of Microeconomics, and allows the reader to understand the underlying mechanism that drives the decisions we make. When used in conjunction with a class, or by itself, this book provides the novice with a thorough understanding of the principles of Microeconomics.

Joseph Schumpeter once encouraged his readers to make up their mind whether they wanted simple or useful answers, because both could not be had at the same time. Mankiw opts for the former option. A student who knows little about economics and who will be exposed to the discipline for the first time by using this textbook will get a very narrow view of economics. He or she will have no idea that there are strong disagreements about economic phenomena and even different schools of thought. This can be expected: Mankiw is a neoclassical economist, that school is dominant for one reason or another, so few would expect him to go out of his way to point out that there are different intellectual traditions in economics. However, Mankiw does not even bother much to point out disagreements within the mainstream either. For him, economics is a quasi-scientific discipline that clearly explains how things are; thus, economists disagree solely because of values.

That is a gross mischaracterization: neoclassical economists disagree a lot on theoretical issues, too. Mankiw's own colleague at Harvard - Dani Rodrik - described these disagreements mainly springing from the division between "first-best economists" and "second-best economists". The former group (Becker, Cowen, Mankiw) almost always finds a solution in the supply-demand framework and competitive markets. The latter group (Stiglitz, Rodrik, Akerlof) search for more nuanced and contextual explanations. Mankiw's only reference to "second-best" issues like imperfect information and behavioral economics is relegated to a couple paltry pages in the end of the book where it can be safely forgotten. The minimum wage is a case in point: Mankiw uses the simple supply-demand framework to "prove" that minimum wage causes unemployment. In fact, this view has lost popularity even among neoclassical economists. Recently over 600 American economists (including several Nobel laureates such as one of the fathers of modern neoclassical economics Kenneth Arrow!) signed the petition to increase the minimum wage in the US. Some of the most important research disproving Mankiw's claim has been done by people as mainstream as David Card (Berkeley) and Alan Krueger (Princeton).

Trade is another example. When arguing for "free" trade, Mankiw goes through possible counterarguments. The "infant industry" argument (supported by the "father" of economics Adam Smith himself) is dismissed after one paragraph. If these infant industries are of any promise, Mankiw proclaims, the private sector will take them up. Never mind uncertainty (not risk, but uncertainty). Never mind the fact that the US used protective barriers designed by Hamilton to allow its industries mature, never mind the fact that Japan and Korea developed using the same method. Never mind the fact that a very recent Commission on Growth and Development (which includes someone as mainstream as the Nobel laureate Bob Solow) concluded that "Government intervention in the economy, and a degree of protectionism, will be needed in the early stages of development".

My final example is the agency assumption. To act with a degree of self-interest is one thing, but to be a selfish and calculating sociopath is another. The mainstream is more and more open to alternative ideas about agency. Kenneth Arrow himself once said that if human beings were to act as utility-maximizers all the time, society and all of its social ties would be pretty much destroyed. The mainstream borrows more and more from behavioral economics, behavioral game theory, etc. Samuel Bowles, for one, does a good job of effectively combing the ideas of the mainstream with alternative ideas about agency. Of course, Mankiw does not care. I could go on, but I think this is enough.

Adbusters Magazine called "one of the most effective and talented propagandists of our times". That might be an exaggeration, but beware and hope that your instructor will add at least some nuance to Mankiw's exposition of economics. I was quite fortunate since my instructor, while thoroughly neoclassical, at least made sure to spell out the assumptions and point out which ones were more arbitrary than others (e.g. constant marginal utility of money in welfare economics) and when exactly economists are being sneaky (e.g. gains from free trade, even if all assumptions hold, are only a potential Pareto improvement). Some others may not be so lucky.

This is the third Cormac McCarthy book I have read, and my awe for him as a poet is as strong as ever. My awe for him as an anti-sentimentalist is also stronger than ever. Blood Meridian not an exhilarating book based on it's contents. Quite the opposite; It is a haunting and sobering account of a group of despicable men in the West, and all that they partake of. However the style of McCarthy's prose, and his economic use of striking vocabulary are a beauty to behold. Consider it a painting, masterfully composed, but inducing an awful awe and depression on those who behold it.

Blood Meridian is, at its most obvious, an anti-western. It is about all the things that Heroic stories of the settling of the west, and all those outlaws that are idolized, are not talked about. It is about brutality, inhuman (or, how you look at it, all too human) behavior and all the rest of the things that legends are NOT made of. And yet you can feel it is honest. However beneath the Western Motif, it is not just for the West, but for all mythologized things, that the book is making a statement. There have been comparisons of this book to the classical works such as THE ODYSSEY, and I feel that it is well earned. THE ODYSSEY is about a journey, but even when reading that classical work, there are hints of barbarism that the story doesn't stay long on to contemplate. There are acts of killing and slavery in THE ODYSSEY, however that would taint all that we love about the Heroic journey, and so it is not emphasized.

Blood Meridian is, you could argue, the side of the heroic tale that is not celebrated, and yet lurks under it if you are looking for it. With Blood Meridian it is all there, stripped of it's glory. Once you read this book, you will wonder, `was this what it was like? Was Davy Crockett such a brute? Only elevated for what he did for his own people, glossing over what he wrought to everyone else?' I'm not saying that Crockett was a bad man, only that this book serves to illustrate how, perhaps the figures in history who have songs and tales commemorating them, might have only one aspect of their lives committed to history. I believe part of the purpose of this book is to see the Judge as a champion of European values, and triumphing over the Indians and Mexicans. This is not, understand, the part YOU will read in Blood Meridian, I merely point out that the romanticized version of the west, of cowboys and Indians, of the Alamo, are mere interpretations. The grim reality of how those `obstacles' to America's `taming' of the west are perhaps too brutal and horrific to remember. I will personally be haunted by several sequences in this book, and I think that is the point. America was an inherited land, and it took a lot of bloodshed and villainy to make it the place that is celebrated today. Would the Judge, had he been a real man, been sung about in America as a conqueror of wild regions that were a threat to homesteaders? And more to the point, is this idea of Indians attacking settlers not one that goes 2 ways? Who was the first to draw first blood in the West? Should we be glorifying what was a massacre of a less developed culture? It is not something you have to contemplate the way McCarthy does, but if you read this book you will look at the Romantic Western Outlaws in a different light.

There is a passage in this book. It is in response to a man who does not want to be sketched, documented if you will, into the Judge's sketchbook/journal. The Judge's response is, smiling, "Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world." I am citing this as one of many statements to the reader in this book. You will not like what you read, but you are asked to bear WITNESS to it. I can think of no other explanation to this book. It is one of a kind, and it will not be a
book that you put down and forget. Like me, you will be imprinted with it's imagery for many days after. That is what makes this a great book; it is not necessarily enjoyed, but it is deeply philosophical on the heart of man, and how we as a culture like to abbreviate what barbarity has made our place in the world. Again, this is only my interpretation of one aspect of the book. There is much more to it, I am merely emphasizing one aspect.

In the first Batman movie, Nicholson's Joker offers an infamous evaluation of his vandalism: "It may not be art but I like it." If you turn that phrase on its head, that describes my impression of "Blood Meridian": "It may be art but [at least for the first 200 pages] I don't like it."

In the first 200 pages or so, McCarthy turns a phrase. He evokes. He makes literary observations. What he doesn't do in my opinion is create one character whom we care about. That it took awhile to figure out who was who wasn't the problem. It wasn't the big words. It was that I didn't care if anybody in the book lived or died. Even an anti-hero like Captain Ahab or Tony Soprano calls you to feel for them at some level even though you know they have it coming. McCarthy doesn't suceed in doing that in my opinion.

For the first 200 pages anyway. At about page 204, the story takes off. Characters begin to have some redeeming value. The judge becomes more mythological but at the same time starts to make more sense.

I have read several reviews where the reader has given up disgusted after 100 pages. I would strongly encourage you (if you don't have completion compulsion like I do) to skip ahead to chapter 15 and pick up the story from there. You haven't missed a bit of the plot but there is some challenging writing in those last 130 pages.

Cormac McCarthy writing style is brilliant. He is poetic and his literary inventiveness make a bloodbath aesthetic.

I have not read other books by McCarthy, but this one is highly recommended.

This book felt too much like required reading in high school - so boring in fact I couldn't even finish it. I made it about halfway through and felt like I was reading and reading and not getting anywhere....I kept waiting for somehting to happen....for it to get "good" but it just didn't. It was painstakingly boring and bland.

McCarthy's villains in No Country for Old Men, and Child of God were no match for the cruel blows to the human body dealt out in this one. But, it's the I-cant-take-my-eyes-off-the-page train wreck syndrome. He has a way of reminding us that we are animals, after all, and will do what it takes to survive, when backed in a corner. He also reminds us of how our ancestors granted the Native American a favor by giving him all that desert. I'd never given much thought to their plight before I read this book.
I would give Child of God, and The Road, 5 Stars, but this one doesn't miss by much.

I found this book an effort to read. Confusing at the start, yet did grab me midway but I was ready to discard with about 1/3 left, but thought better of it and completed. Yes, his writing is very descriptive and captures the essence of every sense the reader needs to be placed within the story. However, it just seemed to skip and jumble along, the ending wasn't anything like the many my mind conjured up, it wasn't really anything special at all...Grady continued on rambling as did the book. I perhaps need to read another of his works to get a better grasp of the talent of this writer, as so many have applauded his style.

Cormac McCarthy seems to be everywhere right now--Oprah's book club, a recent Coen Brothers film adaptation, one of the top novels of the past quarter-century. I decided it was time to check out his work, since he's considered the modern Faulkner, and a great depicter of the violent and beautiful American southwest. All the Pretty Horses both lives up to my expectations and kind of frustrates them. The novel starts out gloomy with the funeral for the protagonist John Grady's grandfather, turns comedic when Grady and his friend cross the border into Mexico in search of adventure, then shifts into a semi-melodramatic romance, finally returning to a state of pitch-black gloom and despair. All throughout, McCarthy retains a distance from the world of the novel, coldly surveying the raw beauty of the Mexican landscape and stubbornly refusing to enter the heads of his equally stubborn characters. In some ways, this narrative distance works quite well, amplifying the frankness and simplicity that Hemingway is known for. But it also prevents the novel from striking home on any real emotional level.

The most problematic part of the novel is Grady's passionate love for a ranch owner's daughter, Alejandra. The two are a sort of Romeo and Juliet pair, deeply desiring one another, but knowing that their love can never be allowed to flower. The romance, however, is jarringly out of place with the events in the rest of the novel, and feels a little bit contrived. Especially irritating is the lack of insight into Alejandra's character; she is given no more than a handful of lines, and it is never really clear what she sees in run-down, dirt-poor Grady.

Minor criticisms aside, the icing to top off this striking novel, however, is McCarthy's metaphysical musing that underlies all the events of the novel. Most profound is his consideration of the workings of Fate in human activities. One of the best passages in the novel occurs when Grady confronts Alejandra's grand-aunt for the second time. She is determined to prevent him from stealing off with her protégé, but respects him enough to deliver a haunting and thorough account of her reasoning. She expresses her deep frustration with the randomness of life, describing a coin minter who arbitrarily decides which way to press each coin he makes, blindly affecting countless coin flips down the road. She laments the inability of mankind to ever know the alternative course that their actions could have taken; for a history that never sees the light of day, and can never be judged against what actually transpired. Building off this theme is Grady's fascination with the long-dead frontier of the American West. Early in the novel we see him wistfully imagining the hunting parties of the glorious and departed Native American tribes, disappearing in the red light of the setting sun. At the end of the novel, Grady likewise disappears, fading into history like so many movements whose splendor the world will never see.

Adventure, full-hearted love, revenge, the majestic wilderness, and of course horses: the western-movie staples are what moves this novel. Yet if All The Pretty Horses is a classic cowboy story, it is also that of a dying world, and all the more accessible to us that it is set in the post-war era.

John Grady Cole, a young man of 16 years, leaves the country for Mexico together with his friend Lacey Rawlins, both on horseback, in search of a life that has become inaccessible to them in Texas. A cruel but romantic saga of tests and tribulations awaits them - which I won't spoil by giving too much of it.

The dialogues are suitably laconic. The characters are frank and unambiguous, except for one key exception. Nature is reserved the richer, more complex, and admiring language. While the novel begins at a slow pace, making the reader wonder whether this is really a back-to-the-wild story, the action later quickens to a satisfyingly gripping climax. One warning: a good part of the dialogue is in Spanish, untranslated; though this won't throw you off the plot, if you don't understand Spanish, it may get annoying.

I have looked at some of the reviews here, and am a bit surprised as the number of people who hated this book. It is a challenge to read, but this is no "Ulysses." The main themes can be understood with a little careful attention. Some have compared McCarthy's style to Hemingway's but this is not a fair comparision. McCarthy's prose is far more complex. Hemingway wrote arresting prose, but at times his minimalist style was cartoonish. McCarthy is simple the way Picasso is simple -- that is to say, only if you do not look hard enough.

McCarthy's skill with language is unequalled among living American authors. It is the language that is the star of this book, and if you cannot appreciate the language itself the story will not bear the weight. Yes, I found myself re-reading passages and puzzling out the construction of some sentences, but I did it with the same pleasure a sports fan looks at a replay of a spectacular play. This is a book for the patient. Not every book pays off like a James Bond novel.

I can't believe I've waited this long to get into Cormac McCarthy. We Texans have always known him to be one of the great Texas western writers, right up there with Larry McMurtry, earning a place in our hearts. But Cormac is bigger than that. Bigger than Texas, you say? His craft has been compared to Faulkner and Conrad. We're talking about literature here.

After I saw the movie, "No Country For Old Men," I knew I should read this guy and I'd start somewhere near the beginning. I picked "All The Pretty Horses," the first in a series of novels called "The Border Trilogy." John Grady Cole, last of a long line of Texas ranchers is sixteen years old and from San Angelo, Texas, takes off with friend Lacey Rawlins, on an adventurous hero's journey by horseback across country, over the Rio Grande and south into Mexico.

Even though the time period is in the late 1940s and on the cusp of modern life, with cars, trucks and radios, the story is basically a western, with horses, cowboy coffee made over an open fire, guns, and hand rolled cigarettes. I like the sprinkling of Spanish throughout, even though I didn't comprehend it all. It was a nice touch.

I'm not sure if it's the lack of some punctuation such as quotations and apostrophes, or the ultra long sentences, or the full to the brim characters, but it puts this novel in a class of its own. The writing is beyond good, it's classic. For all us regular folks who can't take the high-literary of Faulkner, here's a true and gritty albeit well written western. I plan to read the next two books, and find I can't wait to get into volume two. "Pretty Horses" was haunting, it's emotion and realism hard to stop thinking about.

An entertaining shoot-'em-up western. But it's so typically in the style of the Spencer series that I sometimes expected Hawk to appear - Instead it was Virgil.
Good entertainment - I listened to it on audio.

Resolution is the first work of Robert B. Parker I've read. I can say that I am not disappointed. I do, however, wish that before reading it I'd read Appaloosa, the predecessor to Resolutuion and the first appearances of Hitch and Cole.

Within the opening few paragraphs there was some great action, shocking even, that propelled the story quickly. Hitch is a character that is easy to latch onto. He has a way of luring you along with him because he says all the right things.

Things move along quickly in the small, developing town of Resolution. Events come and go, building the story and setting up the climax. Developments each lead to the next scene. I love the short chapters, each containing one scene. It's a lean story, but a lot of fluff is unnecessary if the characters are correctly designed. I have a very clear still shot of Resolution in my mind: The Blackfoot Saloon, The Excelsior, Bob Redmond, Cato and Rose. I picture Virgil Cole as looking like Sam Elliot.

My first experience with Robert B. Parker is a good one. It won't be my last.

This is the second in this new Western series. Parker, as always, keeps the story moving along and and his writing is crisp. However there is little to this story. The bigest problem for Parker fans is that they will recognize that the dialogue between the two main characters, (and even the lesser ones) is identical in cadence and even words used by Spenser and Hawk. All men do not talk as if they are caught in a second rate John Wayne movie. Still this is worth the afternoon or so it takes to read.

I am not going to give you another synopsis of the story. People much more talented
than I have already done so. I love Hitch and Cole. Reading about them is
like coming home on a cold winters day and slipping into warm slippers and
curling up on the sofa with an old friend telling me a story. It just does
not get any better than this. Yes there were several things Parker could have
done different but I got my money's worth and I am glad I bought the book.

Another outstanding book by Robert Parker. His unique writing style is fun to read. I look forward to every book.

The Western Garden Book Western Garden Book (Sunset Western Garden Book)is THE standard reference work for gardening from California to the Pacific Northwest, the desert Southwest up to western Montana. Includes descriptions and scientific names for plants that will grow in various climate zones. Plant descriptions include growing conditions, when to prune, and dealing responsibly with diseases and insect pests. It has been produced for over 40 years with many editions. Used editions are still good. Get a new one every ten years or so if you are a serious gardener. Makes great holiday/birthday gift for the new homeowner in the West.

A good reference book to replace my 40th Anniversary edition (1998) hoping to get more information on draught tolerant landscape (not much more than the 40th edition). What's missing though is the Index with scientific and common names. My 1998 edition had a 12 page index the new one has 3 pages. All in all, I like the old one better.

As Master Gardeners my wife and I are often asked questions, and while we have a lot of gardening books, this is the book that most often answers our questions.

This book has been a mainstay of gardening information for many years. There have been positive changes/updates through the years and it is a great reference.

My latest obsessive interest is gardening, specifically vegetable & fruit gardening. So I've been in info-gathering mode: going to the library to scope out books, obsessively cross-referencing blurbs about the same plant across 5-10 books at a time, being some of the things I've done. So I'm drowning in a sea of gardening books as I write this.

This is a book that I would not buy for substantive gardening because it does not measure up to what else is available. Many of the blurbs are less substantive than a seed envelope. I looked at it because of Amazon's high ratings, but here's why I think this book is an unwise investment for that purpose:

1) It's hard to read. For most of the plants listed, the header is accompanied by a single tiny (~1inch size) representative pastel-colored illustration followed by 1-10 short paragraphs of generic text. I'm only in my 20s and I feel like I have to crack out reading glasses.

2) The meat of the book is like a dictionary, alphabetically listed by scientific name or common name. To find something, you have to thumb through pages of tiny print with nothing to grab your attention. It's boring, having neither anecdotes (if you like those) nor the utility of bullets. Too bad Sunset magazine didn't include some of their big, eye-popping, full-page colorful photo spreads.

3) And like a dictionary, the blurbs are short and generic. For all the bountiful garden greens available in California & along the west coast, there is a 7 paragraph generic description of "lettuce". The strains are mentioned not to describe their look or taste, but to just list their names so they've been covered. Some of the fruits and trees are accompanined by tables, so their descriptions are better.

4) This book tries to have the scope of American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening while being the local expert, but falls very very short because it is not detailed enough and also passes the buck. True, there's a huge list of plants, but it's more like a cheap catalog with generic, cursory tips and zero visual stimulation. The worst is the passing of the responsibility. For example: (a small blurb on tomato problems) "If certain diseases or nematodes cause trouble locally, you may be able to grow varieties that resist one or more problems. Keys to resistance you may see on plant labels or in catalog descriptions..." Thanks. My all-in-one West Coast compendium tells me to look for local info in other resources.

5) With such generic, short descriptions, you'd think there'd be plenty of space on the page. But the margins are about 1/2 inch, so if you plan on jotting down notes, crack out your reading glasses.

6) There's almost zero visualization because not only are there so few pictures, a lot of times the strains are not even described, merely mentioned by name only. There is a short chapter in the beginning with 1-2inch color photos, but it is organized by scientific name. It wasn't useful because I didn't know the scientific names of strains I was trying to learn about. The seed catalogs that I've gotten from online companies do a much better job.

7) Because I was impressed by how bad I thought this book was (given it's high ratings), I checked the library for older editions to see how it had "improved" over time. Unfortunately, they only had the 7th ed and it was same as the 8th, minus different cover art.


For better, encyclopedia-like gardening books that have gorgeous color photos and insightful, detailed writing, try:
American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants and The American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers (American Horticultural Society Practical Guides) and American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening
-- has it all including photos and sequential drawings when plants need specific instructions. Fat, heavy books (You may pull a muscle, but together, these are the books that comprise a full reference.)

New Illustrated Guide to Gardening
-- succeeds where Western Garden fails; big coffee-table photos with substantive, practical writing; not as heavy cause it doesn't list everything like the book above, but it comes close

The Random House Book of Vegetables (Random House Garden)
-- I put this one in because in an ideal world, I want to see pictures of the varieties alongside good text in an all-inclusive gardening compendium. If anyone knows of any current book like this, please let me know! Thanks!

This book was right on point...before I chose this book, I was concerned if it had everything that I needed and it did. I was also impressed with the condition of the book. So going forward, I will be ordering all of my text books from Amazon.

Monique Prescott

I ordered this book from the seller and it never arrived even though the seller charged my account.

Economics is a necessary part of business and for people to just plain understand how money and supply and demand work.Whoever said Economics was fun is plain wrong. While this was required reading for college I did find the information difficult to understand, but I am no economics major either.

This book, despite all its charts, diagrams and those algebra/calculus-looking formulas, which apparently is what economics supply/demand is all about, was easy to read, broken up well, and kept my interest despite this being for a class that was a necessity for my degree program. It was clear and you could apply what you learn from it in basic/general terms and concepts, or really get into tne nitty-gritty technicalities of the economic system if that's your thing!

This is one of the better books I have seen in economics. It is an excellent introduction to the field. It is comprehensive with very useful case studies from the real world.

If I want to break the review down to the two main parts of the book, I would give 4.5 stars to the micro part and 3 stars to the macro part. However, I am not aware of any good book on macroeconomics. I think most authors (or maybe all of them) just don't have a deep understanding of macroeconomics. Albert Einstein once said "if you can't explain an idea to a 6-year-old, then you don't understand that idea."

So, given the lack of better books, I would recommend this one as your starting point in economics.

First, I really enjoyed this book. I believe Tuchman did a masterful job of giving life to the people and events that led to WWI. This book is well worth reading, but only for what it is: half-history, half-literature.

This is not the place to start if you want to understand what led to WWI. The author does have a distinct anti-German bias that glosses over most of the complexities that influenced Germany's actions. Given when the book was written, this bias is understandable, but it does affect its historical value. Moreover, Serbia and the Hapsburgs are essentially footnotes in this book when in reality, they are essential for understanding the causes of the war. When you ignore Serbia and Austro-Hungary, well, all you're left with is Germany acting like a belligerent punk under the hand of the man-child Wilhelm II.

Also, Tuchman definitely prefers some individuals over others. For example, she gives Sir French pretty short-shrift in comparison to Lord Kitchener when in reality, there was more than enough incompetence to go around (not that I would have done any better than they).

I do whole-heartedly recommend this book, but only as a halfway step from history to fiction, perhaps sandwiched between A World Undone and All Quiet on the Western Front.

I didn't even bother to finish this book because, although i tried to read it and fell asleep on pretty much every other page, the writing was convoluted and stuffy, the "action" (was there any?) was slow, and I just couldn't bring myself to care about anything this author had to say. A unanimous vote by the AP Euro class I was forced to "read" this for took the book off the reading list for next year's class...although we would have loved to make the following classes suffer the same way we did, we simply could not bring ourselves to stuff this ridiculous book down any other poor students' throats.

Mr. M......You were a cool teacher, but I don't know if I can ever forgive you for letting this haunt my entire summer.

The Guns of August is an easy to read and flowing history of the early days of World War I. The author does a great job a bringing you up to speed with the state of mind for each of the major players in the early days of the war. The book then moves more or less chronologically through the eve of Marne in great detail. I also like that the author does not take sides. For example, she presents the horrific treatment of Belgium civilians in a matter of fact way but still drives home the terribleness of those actions. The only deficiency (unless this missed it in the notes and sources) is the lack of complete translations for the large number of French phrases used in the book; some of the more obscure are translated but not all. A good English-French dictionary comes in handy.

There is absolutely a reason for this book to be regarded as a classic. Actually, there are lots of reasons. Tuchman's writing is informative, yet intimate. She tells you what you need to know to understand the topic at hand then goes on to supply more information that you didn't need but adds to your appreciation. All this without the book ever bogging down, unlike the war. Possibly, a big part of this is the topic she chose to cover from WWI, the first month. That was when armies marched, counter-marched and fought instead of slogging through mud for years.
Tuchman covers the cuases for war in ways as good as any I've read. It's a hard topic, but she addresses it very well. Every topic in the book is covered well.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Great War. It's also a must read to get some understanding of how the folly of man makes war more horrofic, if that's possible. It's just a good read if you're looking for something for the beach.

In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman successfully brings to life the political climate of the early 20th century, how the great European powers of the time had been planning for war with their rivals for very nearly a century, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Each country had a different war plan, but all of them were more or less variations on a theme - our glorious soldiers will be mobilized, will take the field against our enemies, will crush our enemies in battle, then will march triumphantly into the enemy's capital city!

Perhaps never before had belligerent nations gone to war with such hubris and ignorance of the true horrors of war. Many of the powers assumed that the upcoming war would be waged much as the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian wars had been fought, where gallant sweeping cavaly charges would be the order of the day. The power of the machine gun and the development of accurate, rapid-firing artillery would render all previous battle tactics obsolete overnight.

However, in the first month of this terrible new war, the warring generals couldn't adjust to these new facts. They kept sending thousands upon thousands of men to their deaths in the months before trench warfare became commonplace. The disastrous Battle of the Frontiers (which appears in very few history books in comparison to the Somme and Verdun) is told in heartbreaking detail on how the brightly-clad French soldiers (with their blue coats and bright red pants) marched into the muzzles of German machine guns and died, by the hundreds and thousands, because their commanding generals couldn't comprehend the new, much deadlier, face of war.

Book was in excellent condition. But shipping took more than 2 weeks and my email to the vendor inquiring about its status took a while before any response from vendor
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This book is very good book especially for the beginners.
It explains well about both accounting principles and their applications.

But in examples, I found some typos~

New book, great price just like stated. I love amazon! Save $50.00 from bookstore price and recieved it in 2 days.

The book is good, as part of the pre-MBA courses, it gives you a great overview of accounting

This book gives detailed instructions on fundamental to intermediate accounting concepts. Some concepts can be easily understood without teacher assistance others are a bit hard to understand without further explanation. I bought this book because it was required for my undergraduate class in accounting.