Columbia Reviews

This book is like medicine. It is the kind of book you want when you come home after a busy day. When you begin to read it you will feel how you start to relax and forget the world around you. It is a quiet novel and the characters are quiet as well. The author thought about the plot and clearly loves her characters. A brilliant read.

I would like to thank Elizabeth Latham for this wonderful book. I read it at a time when I was experiencing a lot of strain and felt depressed and overworked. This book was better than any medicine you might want to take in such a situation. It is so soothing and makes you feel better immediately. You will become absorbed in the wonderful style very quickly and notice how your body starts to relax. Although the story may sometimes seem a little sad, the ending is great and you will want to go on and on forever. Simply a masterpiece and highly recommendable.

The Shuttle Columbia ( STS-107) was on its way back to florida when it exploded over texas. It killed its 7 astronauts. The are:

1.Michael Anderson
2.Kalpana Chawla
3.Laurel Clark
4.David Brown
5.Rick Husband
6.Ilan Ramon
7.Willaim Macool

This book expalins all about the disaster. It was caused by a foam that hit the left wing on launch. The foam came from the External Fuel Tannk.

Wonderful insightful book , that is very hard toput down a must have for the nasa collector!

You could hurt yourself laughing! I recommend NOT reading it in a public space as people are sure to think you've gone over the edge. The only thing wrong with it is that it's nearly two decades old. Where are the bloopers from the 80s till now?

This is a wonderful book, especially for reading aloud. The headlines and other excerpts are works of deathless prose or unintended double-entendres which were *actually printed* by newspapers around the country. Watch for your home town newspaper -- perhaps someone you know thought up the headline "Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder." Well worth the investment.

This is the best book available regarding the little-known and mysterious transient orcas. In addition to having a detail catolgue of each transient whale in B.C waters, the book analysis and discuss the distinct behaviour and hunting styles of the transients, which are completely different from the salmon-eating resident killer whales.

Futhermore, there are numerous rare and spectacualr photos showing transients launching into the air and attacking their preys. This shows why Killer Whales are called "killers". For while these whales do not attack or eat man, they are highly efficient predators, no marine mammal is safe from transient whales. Read this book and you will understand why.

This is the definitive source for information on the transient or mammal hunting race of killer whales of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. If you are serious about learning what there is to know about these fascinating superpredators-this is THE book to buy. I am a naturalist on a whale watch boat in the San Juan Islands and we use this book constantly to inform our guests about the "alter egos" of our salmon eating Resident Orcas. Fabulous pictures and incredible stories.

Dennis Tamburello is pure genius. His clear writing simply brings St. Bernard to life in this scholarly portrayal. This goes down with "Ordinary Mysticism" as one of the biggest classics of our time.

intelligently written and great for everyone who loves st. bernard. books written by bernard are difficult to read, you really have to like this guy, he is very flowery and does not speak to us in our time. not contemporary. so in this book you only get small doses of bernard and it is very good. unlike leaders in the catholic church bernard does not shrink from giving priority to faith over good works. catholics today stress being good deed doers. god accepts us because of belief in Christ. this emphasis and other medieval thoughts present in bernard's mystical writings are a pleasure to read being examined by the scholarly author.

I checked out this undeservedly out-of-print book from the library while living in the Columbia University area in the late 1990s. I come from a journalistic family, and "Up Against the Ivy Wall" struck me as the single best piece of at-the-moment journalism I had ever read. The scope of the reporting of such a contentious time is amazing; it has little of the tunnelvision you normally expect from even the best journalists in such circumstances. I had to keep reminding myself that....the authors were college kids, too--only a few awkward references to sexual antics reminded me of that. What an achievement! Please, somebody, bring it back into print.

This is the definitive account of how a small group of radical students at Columbia University convinced hundreds of undergraduates that class struggle, the Vietnam war, and racial divides could all be addressed by taking over several campus buildings and dumping Grayson Kirk. That many students today look longingly at the 1968 episode and try to emulate it suggests they haven't read this book and learned its lessons.

What is truly fascinating about "Up Against the Ivy Wall," is how it captures the division within the radical ranks, specifically between the SDS and SAS. That black students took over their own building and barred white participation surprised the white radicals who had started it all, and illustrated how the radical message had splintered into a dozen causes--from opposing the construction of a gymnasium in Morningside Park, to scoring the administration for supporting a Defense Department arms initiative, to criticizing the University structure as necessarily oppressive to students, staff, and community. The resulting confusion doomed the movement. Administrators who didn't want to listen to the students' pointed to the changing message as another reason to ignore them or just to call in the police (whose brutality on this occasion is graphically detailed in the book) and end the uprising. Faculty who sought to work out a compromise saw the confusion in the student ranks and the intransigence of the administrators and simply threw up their hands in frustration.

Today's student radicals ought to read this book to learn how not to conduct a massive campaign, for any cause. Because if you look at Columbia today, you will find a University with all the institutional arrogance of its predecessors, and not the least bit in fear of students who look to failed methods of change for guidance.

This ia a truly masterful work on a person British Columbians recently selected as their person of the century.

Mitchell has done a top notch job in recounting the life and times of W.A.C., using the medium of a biography to relate the growth and development of a region. This is even more remarkable given the disfavour that biographies of white, male politicians have fallen into in the past few decades as a historical means of recounting the past.

Mitchell relies heavily on personal interviews he conducted with Bennett in the last years of his life, along with those of the many individuals involved with this first Socred regime. The only fault I can personally site with this book is that it might be too sympathetic, a point Mitchell even alludes too!

There is not much that this book misses out on. It starts literally at the beginning with W.A.C.'s start in New Brunswick, the move to Alberta and the starting of the first hradware strore, and then the final move to the Okanagan where Bennett was to become involved in politics, leading a rather obscure existence (with a few failures along the way) before he finally bolted from the coalition government to start Social Credit in the early 1950s - a move which was decidely different than the grassroots movement of Social Credit in Alberta. Social Credit in B.C. would always be a top-down movement.

Regardless, this is an excellent piece of work and does much to shed some light on the political history of a province whose historiography has been woefully inadaquete in this area.

With the ascention of the technocrat Bill Bennett to the premier's office, one may indeed wonder if the age of populism in B.C. and across Canada is over. David Mitchell provides a masterful picture of one of Canada's great politicans; a man in the exclusive company of past politicans like Bill Aberhart, Diefenbaker, Mitch Hepburn, and Joey Smallwood. The difference between Bennett and these others is the amount of success in their political careers. Mitchell also guides readers through the time of expansion, "The Rise of BC," accomplishments that were largly due to the efforts of it's premier. Mitchell states that when Bennett finally passed away in 1978, BC was, for the first time in a quarter of a century, on it's own. He's right. BC has always lacked strong premiers to lead the province since Bennett. The book is a beautiful journey through Bennett's life, his times, and the province he moulded in his image. Anyone wishing to understand BC politics and BC in general need to first understand the man who defined both, and Mitchell does an exceptionally good job of doing so.

One of the very best area-specific wildflower books ever. Descriptions and photographs make identification easy. The guide to location includes best times to go, roads to travel and paths to follow.

CLEAR GLOSSY COLOR PHOTOS OF EACH FLOWER, THE SCIENTIFIC AND COMMON NAMES, HABITATS AND BLOOMING DATES MAKE YOUR COLUMBIA GORGE WILDFLOWER IDENTIFICATION A SNAP! THIS BOOK IS A MUST FOR THE LIBRARY OF THE GORGE HIKER, BOTANIST OR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES THE SPECTACULAR BEAUTY AND DIVERSITY OF THIS NATURAL SCENIC AREA.

This is an excellent book! More information than any of the other similar books I've purchased. Good maps, succinct descriptions of conditions and animal life, tide information, and site warnings. Although the entire book is in B&W, there are interesting photographs mixed in with the text.

For the most part, information in the book has been correct and consistent with my own observations. This is a great introduction to how diverse and exciting the local diving can be, and why it's considered some of the best waters in the world. Buy this book!

This is a very good book that fills a definite need.

It is very easy to use, because it is organized like an encyclopedia (although nowhere near as large), with entries listed alphabetically. Each entry is between one paragraph and half a page in length.

The book covers a nice range of topics. It covers the standard myths and legends in a very condensed way that gives you the gist of what you need to know so when someone says "this shows the Raven stealing the Sun" you'll know why that's important.

The author also covers everyday items in a native's life, like clams and coppers, and tells why these things are important.

The third type of entry is totally mythological beings, like Sisiyutl, and tells just enough to get a good sense of who each is and why it is important.

The breadth of the book is excellent, as the author also covers things that are rarely covered in other books. For example, the Heron was not uncommonly used as a crest and in artwork, but it is almost never even mentioned in other books. This book has it.

The title is somewhat misleading, however, because it does not really explain the meaning of Northwest Coast art, per se, but rather explains the meaning of the things that are depicted in the artwork.

For example, the entry on Beaver goes for 8 paragraphs talking about why beaver is important to the people for its fur, along with some of the myths and legends and Beaver's place in the world of mythological creates. Right at the end of the entry, the author finally gives 3 sentences telling us the characteristics of a beaver as it is depicted in the art in order to help you identify a beaver carving or drawing. So you understand the meaning of the THING, but not of the ART. Some of the similar types of entries don't even tell how the thing is normally depicted.

If your primary goal is to understand how the art is created, or how to identify the various creatures by looking at the artwork, or even how to draw it yourself, this is not the book for you. the few pages in the appendix are well done, but far too brief. Instead, get "Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast" by Stewart, "Learning by Designing" by Gilbert and Clark, and "Northwest Coast Indian Art, an Analysis of Form" by Holm.

If you want more extensive descriptions of myths and legends, there are a large number of books available. Also, this book has very little in the way of artwork or pictures. It is very text-oriented.

Nonetheless, if you want a handy, easy-to-use, easy-to-read book that is more broad in its coverage than any I've found so far, and at the same time gets right to the point in each entry, this is the book for you. It is well worth having as part of your library.