Erosion Books

This a great collection of poems from the past! If you enjoy whimsy, this is for you!

with eliot, a maximum of content is achieved through a FORM worked with a
care and conciousness not seen perhaps since the greeks. he understood,
as he once wrote, that the novel form ended with flaubert. in the centuries after picasso and stravinsky there is no place for anything in
literature which makes people remain sitting, whithout standing and perhaps dancing. the same thing could be said about pound, very different though very twin.

The Eliot of despair, the Eliot of 'Prufrock' and 'Wasteland' is contended with and overcome by the Eliot of the 'Quartets'. The message of modern mankind's meaninglessness, the broken fragments ( of Tradition) shored against his ruin is replaced by the vision of sacred turning, a Christian vision of redemption. Eliot is a writer whose work and life break down into these two distinct periods each of which has its champions in defining what is best in him.
As one raised on 'April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land' and 'Let us go then you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table' the most memorable lines are certainly of the first phase where it ends not with a bang but with a whimper.
Yet my admiration for the hypnotic power of Eliot's memorable lines is strongly qualified by my knowledge of his 'Burbank with a Baedaker, and Bluestein with a Cigar' with his all too fashionable literary anti- Semitism. Of course Eliot was not preaching death camps and extermination but he did connect his work to the tradition of Christian Anti- Semitism.
Thus I have always had difficulty being comfortable with my 'enjoying of Eliot's poetry. And I have never been able to sympathetically read 'The Quartets.' They have always seemed to me to be too impersonal characterless and abstract.
Eliot who for most of the century strode the English Departments as if he were a colossus did noble work in reviving interest in 'The Metaphysicals' but somehow failed in my mind to write a poetry humanly rich in the deepest sense.

When you think of the best poets ever, T.S. Eliot is one of those that comes to mind. His work is well crafted, intelligent, beautifully written, and has a flow to it that few poets can match. And this is a fine collection for the Eliot lover or for the reader unfamiliar with Eliot. It's divided into several sections. The first section is his Prufrock section, poems from 1917, which contains probably his finest poems: "Prufrock", "Preludes" "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", "Hysteria", among others. Then there is the Poems 1920 section which also contains many fine poems ("Sweeney Erect" and "The Hippopotamus" being my favorites). Then follows his masterpiece The Wasteland. Then The Hollow Men which is followed by the wonderful Ash Wednesday. Then the Ariel Poems (which contains "Journey of the Magi"). Then there are two unfinished poems, "Sweeney Agonistes" and "Coriolan" which I thought were weak. Maybe they would have been great had he ever finished them. Then there is a section called minor poems followed by the mediocre "Choruses from 'The Rock.' And then there is what I consider to be his true masterpiece, "Four Quartets." And the book finishes with some occasional verses, one of which is a sweet and touching poem to his wife. This is a great collection of poems.

Yep, this is a great collection of Eliot's works. I initially found out about Eliot throught the Movie 'Apocalypse Now' in which Brando is heard reciting the poem 'The Hollow Men'. The poem sounded so good I hunted it down and came across this little book.

My favourite poems would have to be 'The Hollow Men', 'Love song of Prufrock', 'Ash Wednesday' and 'Rannoch, by Glencoe (perfectly captured, drive through Rannoch and you'll see ;-)

Yep, definetly worth a read.

My mom bought this book for my son several years ago at a small bookshop. It has been one of our favorites ever since. My son has enjoyed it from 4 years old to 11 and now his 3 and 4 year old brother and sister are enjoying it. This is one of the best. It is geology with a slight spritual undertone - I think anyway! I wish this book was available new to give as gifts.

as someone working with geologists and geology as a career, i found earthsteps to be a fun way to introduce this subject to children. most children are not exposed to earth science, so a book of this calibur should be a part of all elementary school libraries.

This is a very colorful and educational book for kids. It's a fun way for children to learn about geology!

*Earthsteps: A Rock's Journey Through Time* is one of those rare children's books that an adult can also enjoy reading over and over. The illustrations complement the thoughtful and intelligent text, making it a journey to enjoy and to learn from at the same time. My 14 year old read it eagerly, as did my 11 year old. I expected that because they are both voracious readers who have a geologist father, but what I was delighted by was the excited interest of the 5 through 9 year olds to whom I read it at the school where I substitute teach regularly. I highly recommend this fine work to everyone.

I enthusiastically recommend this book! Who knew that the journey of a rock through time was dramatic AND fascinating? When was the last time you considered how a simple rock came to be? This story is as educational as it is entertaining to the children who have read it in my home. I had a five-year-old guest for the weekend, and THIS is the book she wanted out of all the books in my library. She was drawn to this rock and cared what happened to it. It was fun for her to "find" the rock in every beautiful illustration. Every time I read it to the younger children, I learn a little more, too!

Loved it. Couldn't put it down. It grabbed me from page one with the very first line and it never stopped. There is really no one to compare this author. He's really in a class by himself. Can't wait for the movie.

Erosion was one of the fastest reads I've ever experienced. I couldn't put it down. The story does grab you from the very beginning, and the mythology and symbolism just add layers of depth to the story.

A great, well rounded novel that will keep you turning the pages!

I loved this book. Buy it! Read it. Love it. I agree that this is a great first effort. Can't wait to see more.

I enjoyed this novel for it's attention to research into the subject that it covers. This was not a regular thriller that you'd expect but a blend of Steven King, James Patterson and Tony Hillerman. I heard there was a movie being made. Can't wait to see it.

From start to end I loved this book. It was fast paced and I really got into the characters and their plight in their little town. The strongest character was the killer and he was so twisted that I couldn't get enough of him. In stead of a who-done-it? this book was a why-done-it? Finding out was as surprising and delightful as anything but also sad. I felt for the antagonist even though I knew he was evil. Sort of like you feel bad for Darth Vader after seeing Star Wars. I am going to go out and buy all of his books.

SPEECHLESS: THE EROSION OF FREE EXPRESSION IN THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE is a top pick for college-level business libraries, addressing issues of freedom of speech from legal, managerial and ethical perspectives and examining how the legal system affects employee speech rights and employer workplace management alike. From office politics and political correctness to protection for expression and how and why free speech works, SPEECHLESS is a key acquisition not just for business holdings, but for libraries strong in American politics and civil rights issues.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book is very well researched and scholarly but also written in a very readable format -- even with a respectful sense of humor in places. As a human resources professional, I find the subject of this work of particular interest. Not only does it cover the subject of free speech in the workplace in a very authoritative manner, but it also provides some excellent legal context on topics such as 'employment at will' in an easily understand fashion for the reader who may not have any formal legal experience. Overall, it was a very worthwhile read which both informed and captivated me on a topic of significant import in today's workplace. A respectable piece of writing on a complex and potentially controversial topic! Well done Professor Barry.

This is an important book, and I read it with a growing sense of its value and force. It is in the American dialogue - the great national debate that takes place at the water cooler as well as the blogosphere; the church picnic as surely as the corner bar - that the warp and hue of our nation's culture take shape - finally forming through policy, legislation and influence the environment that we, and those who follow us, will inhabit.

If this is correct, as Vanderbilt University professor Bruce Barry makes a solid case for in his timely, lucid and meticulously researched "Speechless - the Erosion of Free Expression" in the American Workplace (swerving neither left nor right as he goes) then certainly, if we are to have a true democracy, this dialogue must carry forward the beliefs of all Americans. Nor are these beliefs merely intended for the ballot box; indeed, they are the essence of what Dr. Barry refers to as the marketplace of ideas. For it is in this marketplace (as Dr. Barry makes plain) with its tension, its push and pull of competing voices, that arises the most vital and important element of a functioning democracy: Truth.

This notion of a marketplace of ideas and the necessity of its vitality is not new. In Chapter 6 ("Why Free Speech Works"), Dr. Barry quotes Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous dissent in the 1919 Abrams v. United States, in which Holmes describes "the best test of truth" as "the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."

A marketplace for ideas, from which truth is sometimes "roughly" (mostly roughly, it seems) constructed - this very truth which informs our laws and policies and national conversation - we have this very marketplace now, right? And it's protected by the First Amendment, right? In fact, in the Internet age, this marketplace for ideas is bigger and better than ever, right? So why write a book called "Speechless - the Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace"? Ok, so maybe we can't always say what we want in the workplace, but doesn't that still give us weekends and evenings for speaking our mind?

Wrong. And this is where "Speechless" especially shines - as a compelling, sometimes unnerving study of the vast patchwork quilt of law and policy that many of us confidently suppose is there to cover our back.

In "Speechless," Barry shows us how that quilt is doing an increasingly uneven job of protecting us (us mainly being employees but by extension here, all Americans) as it inevitably, along the way degrades our national dialogue. Building his case that our backs are either not covered, or not covered very well (nor with any kind of predictability), Barry travels the country, producing case after case of this employee and that employee losing his or her job for reasons complex and simple, large and small. Drawing out guidelines based on state action (i.e., the right that congress will not curtail our speech), differences in public vs. private employment, and exceptions like whistleblower protection (including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and others, we are left with a certain cold clarity: as a public-sector employee, "you have rights to free speech except where you don't," and rather worse for private-sector employees: "you have no right to free speech except when you do."

But it's not even that simple. Shoring up many of these free speech (or lack thereof) terminations (with, in these cases, their attendant litigation) is the rule of "at will" employment - basically meaning that both employee and employer either may be fired - or may quit - without "cause, notice or severance." In other words, if as an employer I decide I don't like your blog about, say, undocumented workers (regardless of what it says), and even though it has nothing to do with my company and you wrote it on your own computer, on your own time, I can fire you when you next walk in the door, and not hand over a penny in severance pay. (If as an employee, I don't like my boss's blog, I am free to quit my job without notice, etc, but I am the one without the paycheck.)

And as Barry points out, at-will employment is the "dominant employee relations policy in the United States."

Combine "at-will" employment with such additional conditions as (among others) a significant decline in union employees, judges increasingly likely to tilt toward management, an increase toward company political partisanship, and longer work hours w/the Internet at hand, and the net result is that our glorious marketplace of ideas is lately more often the kind of place where if you value your job, you'll want to watch what you say, and to whom you say it. Of course, anyone may contest a termination and push it toward settlement or courtroom - but the individual (possibly still minus a paycheck) will be squaring off against Goliath, and Goliath's well-paid lawyers.

Dr. Barry has performed a much needed job in rounding up so concisely the many loose strands that circumscribe America's environment for free speech. But he also done something else: in Speechless, he broadly and brightly illuminates areas of our lives as Americans that have slipped deeper into the shadows, where essential protections have begun to drop off and in some cases, no longer even exist. And it is only with this knowledge that we can begin to reclaim what we are losing.

As a business ethicist, I expected to find in Speechless a detailed discussion of the implications of voice and silence for ethics in organizations, with references to topics like whistle-blowing, groupthink, and moral imagination. I found that discussion in Chapter 9, which is about the right length for it, because those topics have been covered well elsewhere, and Chapter 9 is a good introduction to many of the important works in that area.

The rest of the book treats the restriction of expression in the workplace as an ethical problem of a different order, with implications both for the quality of life of individual employees, and for the quality of participation in political and cultural institutions outside the firm. But despite clear advocacy for greater freedom of expression in the workplace, Speechless also explores the risks that such freedom poses: a hostile working environment, partiality in public bureaucracies, employees driven to distraction by each other, or the legal and reputational threats that can arise when someone says something thoughtless. The result is a thorough, evenhanded, and entertaining study of a perennial problem: with liberty comes liability, both for those who grant them and for those who take them.

Speechless's readable discussions of the relevant legal frameworks and cases are particularly helpful. They facilitate not only understanding the tensions between goods at stake, but also identifying remedies that can be taken at both the public policy and the enlightened-management levels. For scholars interested in exploring the implications of speech and its restriction in the workplace, this book is a useful introduction to the perspectives of law and management on the problem. Managers trying to ascertain what they have a responsibility to control and what they have the freedom to permit will also find Speechless to be a valuable resource . . . as will employees who are curious or nervous about the risk posed to their careers by the scope of their convictions or their recreations.

Soennichsen has brought Mr. Bretz alive. The other excellent books about Bretz talk in detail about what he did, but the author completes the circle. Even if this is your first book about Bretz, you will come away with a good understanding of Bretz's work.

I heartily recommend this book.

Bob Bushnell

[[ASIN:1570615055 Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood]This is a wonderfully written story that brings an area, a story and a man vividly to life! I looked forward to this book because I had really enjoyed Soennichsen's last work, and he did not disappoint!

Author Soennichsen brings to this work both the science of a significant geologic event and his considerable skills as a biographer. The result is a captivating account of J. Harlan Bretz's lifelong determination to convince a doubting scientific establishment that one of the postulates of their field was in error - that the earth's physical condiditon today could result at least in part from a catclysmic event, rather than only from predictable slow processes. While I knew the story of the event well from other readings (particularly David Alt), Soennichsen brought to me the character of the man who withstood the barbs and arrows of doubt and lived to see vindication.

For many years, the view was widely held that Japan's Midway Operation in June 1942 was limited to two major aims. The first was to extend Japan's eastern defensive perimeter to the Midway Atoll, and thereby deprive the United States of its last island outpost west of Hawaii. The second aim was to draw the aircraft carriers of the United States Pacific Fleet to a decisive battle off Midway where they could be destroyed by the Japanese Navy.

Powerful historical evidence now indicates that Admiral Yamamoto had a third aim when he launched his Midway Operation. He did not intend simply to capture Midway Atoll and garrison it. The Japanese knew that it would be impossible to supply, maintain and hold a tiny atoll so far from Japan. It was too small to develop into a stronghold. Moreover, it was within range of B-17 heavy bombers based on Oahu. If he succeeded in destroying the carriers of the US Pacific Fleet at Midway, Yamamoto intended to use Midway Atoll as a stepping stone to attack Hawaii. At the highest levels of Japan's Combined Fleet, the plan to attack Hawaii was known as "Eastern Operation".

New light was thrown on the full scope of Japan's Midway Operation by Professor John J. Stephan in his book "Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan's Plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor" (1984), University of Hawaii Press. At the time he wrote that book, Dr Stephan was Professor of Modern Japanese History at the University of Hawaii. Professor Stephan speaks and reads Japanese fluently, and he has lectured at the National Defence College at Tokyo and major Japanese universities (including Tokyo and Waseda).

Based upon extensive research and documentation, including the combing of Japanese archives and discussions with Japanese military historians, Professor Stephan claims in his book that the aims of Japan's Midway Operation were not limited to destruction of the US Pacific Fleet and the capture of Midway Atoll as an end in itself. He claims that the capture of Midway Atoll was intended to be the first stage of a more ambitious plan that would culminate in a major Japanese attack on Hawaii. The next step would be the occupation of America's Johnston Island (710 miles south-west of Pearl Harbor), and then establishing bases on Hawaii, the largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago. Having established air and naval bases on Hawaii, Stephan claims that the Japanese intended to launch air and naval attacks on Oahu from those bases. Professor Stephan claims that the planned operations against Johnston Island and Hawaii were aspects of what was known collectively at the highest levels of Japan's Combined Fleet as Eastern Operation, and that Eastern Operation was predicated on the destruction of the carriers of the US Pacific Fleet at Midway. As Admiral Yamamoto saw it, the placing of a Japanese noose around Oahu, and relentlessly tightening it, offered the best prospect of drawing the United States into peace talks that would lead to recognition of Japan's claim to domination of the western Pacific region and save Japan from a prolonged war that Yamamoto believed would inevitably be disastrous for Japan.

Professor Stephan supplies extensive references in his book to support his account of Japanese strategic planning for an attack on Hawaii in 1942, and intra-service and inter-service squabbling between Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway (these references appear as page notes at the end of the book). Many of his references are Japanese sources, both published and unpublished. The distinguished Japanese military historian, Ikuhiko Hata, lends his support to Professor Stephan's research and conclusions about Imperial Japanese planning for an invasion of Hawaii, as does Professor Henry Frei who lectures in Japanese history at Tsukuba Women's University.

Professor Stephan claims that on 3 June 1942 (Tokyo Time) Major General Tanaka instructed his subordinates in the Operations Section of Army General Staff to prepare a feasibility study for an assault on Oahu (p.119). On 5 June 1942 (Tokyo Time) the four fleet carriers of the Japanese carrier striking force at Midway were destroyed by SBD dive-bombers of the US Pacific Fleet. For an extensive illustrated account of the momentous Battle of Midway and its importance in the overall scheme of World War 2 see my web-site at

www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar/Midway.html

Professor Stephan claims that the disaster at Midway put an end to "Eastern Operation", and that on 8 June 1942 (Tokyo Time), all training for the Hawaii invasion was cancelled (p.120).

CONCLUSION

Professor Stephan limits himself to an examination of Japan's strategic aims when it launched the Midway Operation in June 1942. He tells us what Admiral Yamamoto was planning to achieve in Hawaii if the Midway Operation fulfilled Japanese expectations and produced the annihilation of the US Pacific Fleet. In my view, Professor Stephan has very properly, and sensibly, avoided the quite separate and speculative issue of whether or not Japan had the capability to capture or seriously threaten Oahu if it had succeeded in destroying the US Pacific Fleet.

As a Pacific War historian and author of the Battle of Midway web-site (reference above), I found Professor Stephan's scholarship impressive and his conclusions about Japan's Midway Operation convincing. His research and conclusions about the full scope of the Midway Operation resolve the difficult problems raised by the suggestion from Japanese naval officers Fuchida and Okumiya in their book "Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan" that the aims of the Midway Operation were limited to the destruction of the US Pacific Fleet and the capture and garrisoning of Midway Atoll as an end in itself. If the Midway Operation is accepted as being the first step in a Japanese plan to seize Hawaii and thereby persuade the United States to take part in peace talks favourable to Japan, Midway is clearly entitled to be viewed not only as the most important battle of the Pacific War but also as one of the five most important battles of World War II.

. Equipped with Japanese language skills and academic experience in Japan, Dr. Stephan conducted exhaustive research into military and civilian sources in order to develop the full story of Japan's designs upon Hawaii in the early stages of WWII. His book reveals a serious intent to actually invade and occupy the islands, primarily to deny the U.S. Navy its natural springboard for challenging Japanese advances in the Pacific. The kicker in that regard was the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, which convinced the Japanese Army that Hawaii was a threat that had to be neutralized.
. A secondary goal was to liberate the "Asian" poplace of Hawaii (which to Imperial Japan was everyone there except Caucasians) and bring them into their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Some Japanese even advocated annexing Hawaii outright, as a natural extension of their own island nation.
. One surprise to this reviewer was learning the extent to which many of Hawaii's ethnic Japanese citizens directly participated in the mother country's war, at least before Pearl Harbor. Many served in the Imperial armed forces (i.e., in China) and others returned to Japan before Pearl Harbor to support the war through academic or jounalistic pursuits. There is no suggestion, though, that Japanese-Americans in Hawaii (after Pearl Harbor) engaged in any such activities.
. The book also reveals that a Japanese attempt to take and hold Hawaii was most likely doomed to failure; a potential calamity on a grand scale. By late 1942 (the proposed time frame for the invasion) U.S. forces on Oahu alone were far superior, at least in numbers, to the proposed Japanese invasion force. Ghastly attrition of invasion troops would have been unavoidable, even if the campaign was ultimately successful. And once in control of Hawaii, Japan clearly didn't have the logistic capacity to sustain themselves there--there's no way their merchant marine could have replaced the necessary constant flow of supplies coming from the U.S. Both conquerers and conquered would have faced cruel deprivation in a few short months.
. Clearly, Hawaii would have been Japan's "Bridge Too Far." Everyone--Japanese, Hawaiians, and other Americans--were far better off because the Battle of Midway put an abrupt end to the whole idea.
. In summary, this is a fascinating topic that will hold the interest of any serious student of WWII in the Pacific. Dr. Stephan's treatment of it is highly detailed, thoroughly researched, and presented in a manner that holds the reader's interest from cover to cover.

This is true scholarship in service of a great question. A distinguished historian at University of Hawaii, Stephan analyzes the place of Hawaii in Japanese military strategy in WW II. Obviously, this raises the question of the fate of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The issue has received illumination in recent books by Greg Robinson and Eric Muller. Stephan offers a politically incorrect interpretation that indicates that the Japanese military thought they could rely on using American Japanese for their purposes following a successful invasion of Hawaii. The prospect cannot be denied. With internal national security issues more vital than ever, Stephan's book should be on the minds of all serious students and citizens today.

Fantastic photojournalistic documentation of the Dust Bowl; first edition published in 1939. Get them while you can, prices are increasing for this book!

BOOK DESCRIPTION (from the dustjacket flap):

'In this stunning -- and sobering -- pictorial record, the covered wagon of '39 streams westward, bearing its broken human freight from old and tired land toward that beckoning horizon where the blue perpetually begins. With an impact at once as gentle as the click of a camera shutter and as brutal as a Vigilante's fist, it lays bare, for all to see and ponder, the story of the mightiest exodus of a people in modern times.

Migration is not new in America. A century ago the French traveler de Toqueville found Americans moving steadily westward with "the solemnity of a providential event...like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of God."

Once more the dispossessed of the earth trek to towns and ciies and to the West, impelled by powerful forces of man and nature. Land depletion, the greed of great owners, mechanized farming, the catastrophe of drought and dust storms have made them homeless wanderers.

This contemporary exodus is the theme of this book. It attains the most dramatic form on the deltas, the prairies, and the plains of the South, and in the tides of people which move to the Pacific Coast. But it is almost universal and it is an urgent national problem to which attention has already been directed by John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath.'

In this book, the living participants in this tragic drama speak for themselves, in accents so plain that none can mistake their meaning. Rarely has the camera been used so beautifully and effectively as a documentary tool to convey understanding easily, clearly, and vividly. And the text provides a background for a sharp focus on this great human story which is being played out today before our eyes."

____

Dorothea Lange credits photographers Ansel Adams and Ron Partridge for the help they have lent her.

Paul Schuster Taylor sites the following writers, whose quotations have been used in the book:
Rupert B. Vance
Arthur F. Raper
Russell Lord
M. L. Wilson and Ray Bowden
J. Russell Smith

_______

Reynal & Hitchcock, N.Y., 1939 (lst ed.)
158 pages - 7.75" x 10.25" - with Black and White Photographs

These heart-breaking black & whites were shot while Lange and her husband Paul Taylor were under contract with the Federal WPA and chronicle the exodus of dustbowl refugees of the Great Depression and the anguish of their daily struggles for survival in the 'promised land' of California. Some of these photographs are difficult to view, giving an infinite depth-of-field perspective of the arid, ruined farms and starving families of the midwest hitch-hiking or walking (sometimes barefoot) to find a better life. For it's superb detail, brutal realism, and captured raw emotion, this collection is regarded as one of the most important photographic documentaries published during the 20th century. It is criminal this masterful work has not been reissued in affordable hardback binding. Scholar, amateur photographer, and layman will surely peruse these monumental pages with pleasure for years to come.

A well printed paperback facsimile of the original 1939 hardback edition of this famous book. The 112 photos, one to a page with a short headline and quote, capture the desperate times thousands of farmers and their families endured in the South and Midwest and their migration to an uncertain future in California. Nearly all of the photos were taken by Dorothea Lange and this includes forty-six that she took for the Farm Security Administration between 1935 and 1938.

In the back of the book there are two essays, one by Sam Stourdze, is an excellent explanation of how Lange and Taylor compiled the book. The sales fell well short of their expectations and Stourdze comments "the rigor of its approach, the verism of its oral testimony and the radicality of its photographs were hardly designed to have mass appeal" Quite right I think, having looked through the book many times I don't think the powerful photos are backed up by adequate captions. All the photos are anonymous, even the ones with people, and surely any reader would want to know who are these folk, what is their story? This information was available because Lange took detailed notes on all her photographic assignments. It's as if the author's thought the only way they could put their point across was in an abstract way and ignore the very human turmoil the photos clearly show. In 1937 photographer Margaret Bourke-White and writer Erskine Caldwell compiled a similar photo book about the living conditions of the desperately poor rural underclass, called `You Have Seen Their Faces' (reissued as a paperback in 1995) but here the photos and captions blend together better.

'An American Exodus' is a book of remarkable photos and well worth having if you are interested in America during the Depression years. BTW, the book reproduces the back dust jacket of the original and the New York publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock, list other "Vital books of our Time" and for three bucks you could buy 'Mein Kampf' by Adolf Hitler, "The blueprint of the Nazi program by the man who is shaking the world. No American should miss it".

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

After being frustrated of where to find helpful data about microbial crusts I asked a Army Corp of Engineer professional with a long documented research history of microbial crusts. He recommended this book and basically anything that Belnap is involved in. I find it containing a plethora of information that encourages me in my studies. There are case studies of microbial crusts from around the world in it, as well as a foundational information pertaining to the structure and purpose of these micro communities. I am eager to reference this in my thesis.

Compiled and written by various experts from many different academic fields, this book represents our sum-total knowledge of biological soil crusts (BSCs) to date (at least, as of 2003). It is logically-arranged into different sections and chapters, each written by an expert in that area. It is fully referenced throughout, and includes bibliographies at the end of each chapter.

The book is a valuable research tool for exploring nearly any topic related to BSCs--from the microbial structure to their biogeography. It also discusses areas of further research needed, and how much we still lack in knowledge about this wonderful ecosystem.

If you have ever wanted to know the intricacies associated with BSCs, or are simply a curious scientist (or generally curious person, I suppose), this is a superb introduction and overview of a quite complex ecosystem. It is an invaluable research resource.

BSCs are found all over the world, and it is a shame that more people aren't aware of them, their accompanying benefits, and the need to preserve them.

This is the book that will change America for the better! Not only does it list the problems, but it gives us detailed ways to solve the problems without violence or civil war.

It breaks the illegal bond between corporate America and our "trusted" lawmakers. The author says it is of Historical Significance and he is not kidding!

A must read for every American!

This is an easy to read book stating what is going wrong in America as we speak. The author gets to the point without a whole lot of mumbo jumbo filler as other authors do. I particulary like the part where he uses personal examples of being scamed and highlights a way all Americans are scamed. But the best part is that he actually gives us several solutions that we as Americans can do to change the downward spiral our society has become accustomed to. This is more than your average call your congressmen crap that most feed us. The solutions empower us instead of them.