MO

...but if you can't suspend your disbelief a little bit, what the heck kind of mystery reader are you? The concept of this book was extremely intriguing and held my attention to the end. I thought the characters were excellent, and I hope to see some of Rachel Gold's supporting cast in her future adventures. All in all, one heckuva page-turner.

We used this guide in our recent visit to Kansas City and found it to be helpful. Not as helpful as our friends in the area, who knocked themselves out showing us things, but it even gave them some ideas.

This book demonstrates Napper's capability as a scholar of the Madhyamaka. Her critical article on the justification of a retranslation of the Wisdom chapter of the LRCM is well-balanced and lucid.

However, my praise goes to her for offering the backbone to the new edition of the LRCM (ASIN-1559391669), and at the same time delivering this book, which includes a superb translation of the 'interwoven' commentaries to the root text, and other salient pointers to the commentarial tradition of Wisdom in the Gelugpa monastary.

Hopefully, the book will be republished sometime!

As the author's step-brother, I felt this was a very good book that helped me get to know my step-sister better. It is also a very good description of life in those days. A heart felt description of a part of her life.

Michael

The loess hills of Iowa and Missouri are the gift of Ice Age dust storms, which deposited this very fertile soil in large piles on the East Bank of the Missouri River. Essentially, loess is dust that has been recompacted into soil. It is easily eroded once channel cutting starts, and the present hills are the result of these processes.

The book capably discusses these matters, and also addresses the biota and human history of the region. You will be amazed at the variety of plants, going from chestnut trees to prickly pear cacti.

The photos are helpful and pretty much follow the well written, well organized text. The book closes with an examination of the efforts being made to preserve these landforms, and a plea to continue them. I recommend this most interesting book for any traveler, geographer, or geologist, as well as anyone who lives in the Midwest.

Rachel Snyder takes a practical approach to the unique problems of the plains. Instead of telling me what I can't plant, she gives me myriad options for creating a long-lasting, beautiful garden. What this book lacks in beauty, it makes up for with loads of great advice and information about plants that will survive scorching heat, high winds and cold winters. I highly recommend the book for beginning gardeners.

The Gateway Arch has many beautiful pictures. It tells why the arch was invented and whose idea it was to be an arch. This book shows every step of the arch being built and it is a very beautiful sight from the book. I highly recommend this book to others, because it is a very educational book. It gives a very excellent description of the arch.This is my first book about a real place with such beauty and I do believe it is the best educationl book.

This is an excellent account of a trip group's travel in the rugged Lochsa River area. A series of poor decisions and heavy weather (always to be expected in this area) leads to trouble for the entire party.

Like other adventure tales from the turn of the century on is amazed at what they try to do with out the high tech fabrics and gadgets we have use today.

Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, garden columnist for the Indianapolis Star on Sundays and Tom Tyler, past Extension Educator and horticulturist for the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service in Indianapolis collaborated to pick more than 175 ornamental plants that do well in the Hoosier landscape. Detailed information on each plant including the "when, where and how" to plant is included. Although not every plant that does well in Indiana is listed, this book provides a great starting point. A must for long-time Hoosier residents and new arrivals as well!

Leisurely may be the best word to describe this novel set during the first Opium War and the founding of the British settlement at Hong Kong. Timothy Mo takes his time letting us get to know Gideon Chase and Walter Eastman and a large cast of traders, artists, debutantes and warriors who shared a cocooned existence in the trading enclaves of Canton, Macao and Hong Kong in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In this novel and others (The Monkey King and Sour Sweet), Timothy Mo displays a deep love of the characters he creates. He revels in their eccentricities, enjoys their friendships, understands and forgives their imperfections. Mo's writing powers are astounding. He can craft 79-word sentences that work. He slyly conveys Eastman and Chase's shared idealism and deep friendship simply by reproducing an expense ledger that shows they have agreed to equal pay in a business venture, despite holding different ranks. There are other subtle touches. An offhand observation that Chase will grow increasingly embittered and isolated after the year 1872 may (or may not) be explained by a biographical footnote at the end of the book; the uncertainty is intriguing. Mo's research was rigorous. He writes powerful and convincing accounts of bloody battles and describes a terrifying shipwreck. But An Insular Possession is not an easy read. Much of the narrative is expressed in dialogue and excerpts from newspapers, rendered in the language of the times. This reader (easily befuddled, it's true) occasionally got lost, wrongly thinking at one point that Eastman and Chase were about to fight each other in a duel and confusing two characters at another. I also began to wonder what Mo was trying to say here. The novel flows from one incident to another -- some of them amusing and intimate, others on a sweeping epic scale - without really leading anywhere in particular. But then, that seems to be Mo's point (or one of them) - that life and history drift through episodes, the underlying meanings of which remain elusive or nonexistent. In the end, Mo just invites us to spend time with engaging characters during a tumultuous period in history. That's enough.