Book Description
"Fill[s] a significant void in the literature on ornamental plant usage.... [The book] is a valuable text and reference work for advanced students, professional plantsmen, and landscape architects and is a welcome addition to the literature." —American Society of Horticultural Science
"This is not only a textbook but a valuable reference work for anyone involved with landscape plants." —American Horticulturalist
Here is the definitive one-stop survey of more than 1500 woody ornamental plants and 2500 cultivars of eastern North America for students and professionals in landscape architecture and design, horticulture, and urban forestry. Written by an esteemed authority in the field, this book includes:
- Greatly expanded coverage of plant species, including significantly increased attention to commercial cultivars
- Sensible cross-referencing for plant selection based on more than two dozen design criteria, with lists arranged according to such vital factors as size, hardiness, and environmental requirements
- Hundreds of crisp textural diagrams portraying each primary species at 15 and 40 years in relation to average human height
- More than 400 photographs depicting plants of exceptional visual interest
- Maps and graphs, including a full-color map of hardiness zones, offering invaluable visual summaries of major design considerations
- Succinct explorations of problems and maintenance issues for each species, diminishing the complications of choosing among high- and low-maintenance plants
- An index listing plants by their scientific and common names
Now in its second edition, this book remains the core reference on landscape design in eastern North America—intelligently organized for maximum planning efficiency. Enhanced with up-to-date coverage of additional shrubs, trees, and their cultivars, as well as expanded listings of plants classified by characteristics, Landscape Plants for Eastern North America continues to provide all the information necessary for landscape designing in the region.
This complete guide provides a concise description of each plant species' function, adaptability, seasonal interest, growth rate, common problems, maintenance, cultivars, and related species, along with more than 1000 high-quality scale drawings and hundreds of photographs. And Dr. Flint's book goes beyond many works on landscape plants because of its unique focus on the landscape design process: with cross-referencing in more than two dozen categories based on such design criteria as size, site requirements, and soil prerequisites, readers will easily be able to determine which plants are appropriate to their needs.
Throughout the book, a variety of illustrations provide quick reference on a range of important considerations. A full-color map represents the hardiness zones of the eastern region, and bar graphs indicate such adaptability considerations as light, wind, soil moisture, and pH requirements. For each primary species, a seasonal clock furnishes a straightforward visual delineation of the duration and intensity of color throughout the year.
Encompassing plant life from herbaceous ground covers to large trees, this is a most comprehensive, easy-to-use resource for anyone involved in landscaping in eastern North America.
Customer Reviews:
Eastern North America landscape plants.......2007-04-07
Excellent resource for gardeners referencing plants in Eastern North America. I love it.
Invaluable reference for the landscape professional.......2000-08-26
As a landscape designer, I use this book almost daily as a complement to Michael Dirr's texts. The line drawings of each plant in youth and maturity provide a better idea of its habit than most pictures ever could. The "Problems and Maintenance" section has helped me avoid many potentially inferior plants, and the "Adaptability" information gives a nuanced understanding of wind tolerance, pH, light and water requirements. Finally, the "Seasonal Interest" symbol provides a finely tuned assessment of the plant's attractiveness throughout the year: I use it to find plants with year-around interest. This is a book for professionals who have to live, and die, by their plant recommendations.
Book Description
The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.
In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."
Customer Reviews:
luddite indictment of a car .......2007-05-22
The book is well written and provides a lot of facts, though many of these may be known anyhow. However, the author's pet idea - that the car is THE reason for aberrations in suburban development - begins to be more and more irritating as we read on; there is one large chapter devoted to the car and road planning, but if this were not enough the point gets reiterated every few paragraphs. Perhaps indeed the car is the ultimate evil of modern civilization; if only we didn't have to reread this again and again.
As a form of compensation, we get very limited look at the social, economic and demographic causes of all landscape changes during past century. Yes, there is a mention of some historical events, such as WWII, but it disappears under the weight of all those cars blamed for commercial strips, parking lots and suburban housing. Somehow, the population growth, which the strips, suburbs, parking lots and cars try to accomodate, gets overlooked. But then, we get also a healthy dose of nostagia after the goode olde times, when towns were small, kids could play in the streets without a risk of traffic accident, and farms were the base of economy. I could not escape the impression that the author's leading motive was to lament the lifestyles gone.
A Worthy Rant.......2007-02-08
This is book is largely a rant--well-researched and eloquent--but a rant nonetheless. Overwrought with cynicism, it is hard to distinguish Kunstler's reasonable concerns from his own sense of nostalgia. He draws some erroneous parallels (e.g. holding Disney World to the standard of anything but an amusement park) but does make an effective point regarding how U.S. citizens were ill-prepared for the after effects of the heyday of the automobile.
Fundamentally, Kunstler's cynicism aside, he's an advocate for renewed interest in civic planning, decreased dependency on fossil fuels, and models of sustainability. He presents Portland, OR as the best model for a city and the community of Seaside, FL as the model for a smaller town. He sees urban planning as the opportunity to develop while respecting the present landscape and enriching sense of community and public space.
The weakness of the book lies in the author's bitterness, which disguises his very real passion for the topic. The saving grace is that given most of his likely readership, he is preaching to the choir who understands his anger. This choir will understand that Kunstler embeds important lessons in his bleak diatribe--lessons worth embracing.
Kunstler's Gift of Entertaining While Informing.......2006-11-29
I have little more to add to the many thorough reviews already posted, so I'll just note what grabbed me: it was the rare book that was fun to read, even while dealing with serious societal problems in a thoughtful manner. A great introduction to community development issues.
highway to hell.......2006-02-01
Last night in his State of the Union speech, G. W. Bush pointed out the obvious fact that America depends far too heavily on oil to support its lifestyle. Whoever programmed him to say that must have been reacting to the mounting unrest over the crises associated with big oil: war, pollution, corruption, and extreme flabbiness.
Most of the problems associated with oil are problems associated with cars, and cars are the focus of J. H. Kunstler's book. Published in the early 90s, The Geography of Nowhere describes the impact of automobiles on the development of the U.S. Apparently, things started to go south during the Depression, when people were driven out of cities by poverty and the diminishing quality of life in the tenements. Fueling the flight to the suburbs were New Deal programs to build roads and cheap houses. In the ensuing decades the American landscape was built to serve cars rather than people, and that is what Kunstler is angry about. His main criticisms are:
1) A lot of the architecture, both residential and commerical, is very ugly. Buildings are constructed quickly and cheaply, and without regard to their surroundings. After all, what's the point of worrying about your surroundings if people are just going to drive directly to their destination? On this point, Kunstler is angry and sarcastic, though often funny. However, his tone is unfortunate, because ugliness is ultimately a matter of opinion, and I would bet that most people would say they are quite happy living in their suburban boxes. Kunstler argues that people are happy this way because they don't know any better, and he's probably right, but as far as I know there is no good way to force people to appreciate beauty.
2) When you step back from the individual buildings, and look at the organization of towns and cities, things start to look really grim. Here Kunstler's got a good point. Throughout most of America, the landscape is zoned into residential and commercial districts, which are separated by long stretches of four-lane roads. The residential zones are further divided by income (and to a lesser extent, by race and ethnicity), impeding the development of anything like a genuine community. The result is a weird mix of intolerance and paranoia that pervades the culture of what has historically been a relatively progressive nation.
3) At an even larger scale, the impact of cars on the nation and on the world seems absolutely dire. The Geography of Nowhere was written before car companies had figured out how to trick yuppies into buying pick-up trucks, and by now there is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth's climate is getting warmer as a result of human activities. Yet people continue to buy bigger and bigger SUVs, and to drive them longer distances to get to work or to buy their microwaveable burritos. It's like a hideous inversion of the idea of public transportation, in which every individual drives his or her own bus to work. Here it's not merely a matter of personal preference -- it's only possible for an individual to drive an SUV if other people subsidize the cost of cheap oil and environmental degradation. In all likelihood these other people haven't been born yet.
Ultimately, someone has to make decisions about the development of towns and cities, and there's no reason in a democratic society why these decisions have to be based on short-term economic interests. Although most suburbanites are probably not miserable in their surroundings, I doubt if anyone would consider their dependence on cars to be ideal. The Geography of Nowhere is a good way to start thinking about kicking the habit.
The Rise and Decline of Humanity.......2006-01-01
I believe that many of the ways we view our lives and live it is directly related to the relation of space, especially where our homes are and what we do daily.
Kunstler points out very cunningly and sometimes with anger how horrible America has set up its cities - cities of which I usually refer to as 'Suburbia World' and America, for a large part, really has turned into a world of suburbia, of endless homes stacked next to each other in a large sea, of which all its inhabitants commute to a Office park some 30 miles away.
Anyway, although Kunstler does not cover as in-depth as I believe he should, he points out many architectural and planning elements that even I, as an architecture student in Los Angeles, have never truly observed. He so well argues against suburban development that I am, even more than before, inspired to work on architectural projects that have nothing to do with suburban qualities (although this shall be very difficult).
If you are looking for a book to explain how horrible our cities really are (especially in the suburban world) and have never had the vocabulary to express that please read this book, it is something I wish everyone could understand and react to.
Amazon.com
Open the door and step outside to see how the Arts & Crafts aesthetic has shaped gardens over the years as surely as it has influenced architecture and furniture. This follow-up volume to Inside the Bungalow: America's Arts and Crafts Interior shows the characteristic brick, tile and wood, wide-porched exteriors of the bungalow style half-buried beneath wisteria vines, arbors, flowers, and foliage.
The bungalows that the gardens surround range from the archetypal dark, timbered wood and stone to the rustic, grand, and even Southwestern, offering a visual feast of gardens to match. The authors emphasize not specific plants, but the architectural elements and style of such gardens: tiled fountains, pergolas, pathways, and the use of stone, timbers, and courtyards to tie house and garden together.
Both text and photos focus in on details like outdoor light fixtures, hose bibs, mailboxes, birdhouses, fences and lattice as part of the characteristic Arts & Crafts aesthetic. The "Garden Portraits" chapter includes garden plans as well as photos of bungalow exteriors from Seattle to southern California, emphasizing that it is not the plants themselves but how they are grouped to emphasize the architecture and the hardscaping that creates an Arts & Crafts garden. Still, there are certain plants that appear over and over again in the photos, and have the right look for such gardens--ornamental grasses, vines, climbing roses, and plants with bold structural foliage like iris, ferns, clivia, and hosta. The charming chapter on potting sheds and tree houses, as well as the exuberant and colorful plantings throughout, go a long way toward explaining why people have been so captivated by "bungalowmania" for more than three decades. --Valerie Easton
Book Description
This third volume in a popular series highlights the special beauty and enduring appeal of Arts and Crafts bungalow gardens.
Matching Paul Duchscherer's authoritative text with striking photographs by Douglas Keister--the team that made The Bungalow and Inside the Bungalow so successful--Outside the Bungalow will captivate the ever-growing number of Arts and Crafts aficionados. In it the garden, with its "nature-friendly" charm and character, takes the spotlight as an integral part of bungalow living.
Focusing on the fixed architectural or "hardscape" elements, striking ensembles include entry gates, arbors, portals, and driveways; wooden fences, screens, railings, and masonry walls; paths, walkways, and steps; ponds, fountains, bird baths, swimming pools, and spas; courtyards, patios, gazebos, pergolas, and porches; outdoor furniture from benches to swings; and details from treehouses and potting sheds to lighting and garden accessories. Special chapters feature gardens of the famous Charles and Henry Greene houses, and a turn-of-the-century plant list. Portraits of gardens in context with their vintage bungalows range from glorious color photographs to hand-colored postcards of the period and will thrill architecture or design professionals and amateurs eager to recapture the romance of "bungalowmania."
Customer Reviews:
America's Arts and Crafts Garden is great for ideas........2006-11-10
This book is full of pictures of lovely arts and crafts style homes and gardens. I got several ideas for my own yard just from leafing through the pages.
Unique style beautifully presented.......2002-11-26
This book covers the architectural aspects of the property surrounding the bungalow - gates, arbors, fences, walls, paths, steps, water features, courtyards, patios, pergolas, porches, outdoor furniture, etc. The photography and color illustrations are superb and it is hard to take your eyes off the photos to actually read the text! And although the photos were taken at the present, the authors have not neglected the history of these dwellings and have included beautiful colored postcards that were so popular during the 1920s and 1930s. An introductory sections discusses the movers and shakers of the Arts and Crafts Movement, like William Morris, William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll and Gustav Stickley. The final chapter is devoted to the architectural firm of Greene and Greene, whose style was a major influence. Most of the houses and gardens photographed here are on the West Coast (mainly Seattle, WA, Portland, OR and Pasadena, CA) although there are some Rhode Island properties included as well. A final section is devoted to planting the garden and includes lists of plants which are good for any situation imaginable. This is a wonderful book - beautiful, unique and inspiring!
Nothing like it............2002-10-12
Disclaimer: I'm a bit biased, because its my home on the cover, despite this, the book is a crucial tool, there was so obvious a need for a book on this topic, one that relates to what people were wanting to do with their homes, and helping them to avoid. to a point, having to scrounge through years of bound periodicals in the library, and random drives through promising neighborhoods in search of inspiring examples....not that you would get to see the back yards.
Doug and Paul have gone out of their way to search out appropriate examples for all three of their bungalow books together, ranging always from the garden shed to the Gamble house. This is the only in-print book I'd recommend for the topics of Arts & Crafts fencing, walls, paths, site integration etc.
Having seen many of these sites in person, I can say that photographer Doug Keister, has brought a focus that many would miss in person. My wisteria only blooms 4-5 weeks a year, but of course, they got it then.
My only complaint is that the photos are so compelling that many might never get to read all the text, which is what the book is all about.
There is some validity to the point above about a West-Coast bias to the topics, but when you consider that virtually every other A & C garden book has a English tilt, it seems less a problem. There is room for a knowledgeable Mid-Westerner to write a good book as well. "Outside the Bungalow" is not the last book that should be written on the topic, just the best, by far, so far.
Excellent resource for creating a "complete" environment.......2000-09-19
What a great resource for those who feel that their home begins outside in its surroundings. The bungalow has never really gone out of style and continues to hold national appeal. This book is full of ideas that cross the spectrum from simple to ellegant. It draws the reader outside of the bungalow and gives one cause to reflect on making the outside environment beautiful, comfortable, unique and completmentary to the structure itself. Many of the small towns in Southern California have undergone a second life with downtown revitalization projects that have extented into the older neighborhoods. Duchscherer & Keister give the reader an appreciation for the beauty that can be created around these older homes.
The constant theme running through this book is the timeliness of the garden. The garden didn't come into being during the Arts & Crafts period, it simply became a tremendous complement to the home.
Don't be discouraged if you don't live in a Greene & Greene, the effort and love you put into the setting of your home, will give you the same level of pride in ownership. You may not be able to have the largest or most expensive home on the block, but you can have the most beautiful garden.
Many of the gardens in the book have multiple photographs which are cross-referenced to give the reader an almost 360 degree visualization. The only suggestion I would make is that the author include an overview of those superlative gardens and identify the various views to provide the reader with an even better understanding and appreciation of the home's surroundings.
The Bible in Bungalow Restoration and Gardens!.......2000-07-21
This entire series--The Bungalow, Outside the Bungalow and Inside the Bungalow--are bibles for bungalow restoration. They are filled with many great ideas and lots of wonderful pictures. Great initial books to buy and refer to time and again throughout your restoration process. If anything could be found wrong with the books, it is the heavy concentration of pictures of West Coast bungalows. We have many bungalows in Minnesota too!
Book Description
The acclaimed author of The End of Nature takes a three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two landscapes.
Bill McKibben begins his journey atop Vermont’s Mt. Abraham, with a stunning view to the west that introduces us to the broad Champlain Valley of Vermont, the expanse of Lake Champlain, and behind it the towering wall of the Adirondacks. “In my experience,” McKibben tells us, “the world contains no finer blend of soil and rock and water and forest than that found in this scene laid out before me—a few just as fine, perhaps, but none finer. And no place where the essential human skills—cooperation, husbandry, restraint—offer more possibility for competent and graceful inhabitation, for working out the answers that the planet is posing in this age of ecological pinch and social fray.”
The region he traverses offers a fine contrast between diverse forms of human habitation and pure wilderness. On the Vermont side, he visits with old friends who are trying to sustain traditional ways of living on the land and to invent new ones, from wineries to biodiesel. After crossing the lake in a rowboat, he backpacks south for ten days through the vast Adirondack woods. As he walks, he contemplates the questions that he first began to raise in his groundbreaking meditation on climate change, The End of Nature: What constitutes the natural? How much human intervention can a place stand before it loses its essence? What does it mean for a place to be truly wild?
Wandering Home is a wise and hopeful book that enables us to better understand these questions and our place in the natural world. It also represents some of the best nature writing McKibben has ever done.
Customer Reviews:
A Connection to the Land.......2007-06-26
I have spent much of my recreational time in the two places Bill McKibben writes about in this book -- The Adirondacks of New York and the Champlain Valley of Vermont. They both offer some of the most beautiful, pastoral scenery in the US. From Lake Champlain itself you can see the Green Mountains of Vermont on one side and the Adirondack Mountains of New York on the other. As Mr. KcKibben points out, while they may look similar and proximate from afar, each is quite different from the other. The Champlain Valley is more pastoral, bucolic and New England-like. The Adirondacks are much more rugged, wilderness-like and rough around the edges. Both can call to you in a way that becomes a lifetime's pursuit.
This book is an easy and short read. It is engaging, paints wonderful pictures with words and gets you to think about the tension between a simpler life closer to the natural world and modern society and progress/development. He is fair in his assessment of the joys and the struggles associated with a simpler life closer to nature. I don't know who would enjoy this book more - the person who has enjoyed this simpler life or one who can only imagine it through books like this one. I highly recommend this book for people who love this part of the world or who have thought about getting closer to the land and living a simpler life.
An Insight into Place and Community........2006-10-17
Bill McKibben describes a walk through place and community. The community is bound by a geographic region but the displaced reader is imperceptibly drawn into the mind-set of McKibben and his guests. You are introduced to a group who love the land on the Vermont/New York border and recognise it as one of the few "wild" places left in America. It is their passion to preserve and conserve that comes through and it is infectious. The book inspires the reader to analyse their relationship to place and modes of behaviour driven by place. The antithesis of economic consumption exists in all of us, however repressed. Bill brings it to the fore. The effect on the distant reader is such that you will join the community despite being so far way. Bravo Bill !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review of Bill McKibben's "Wandering Home".......2006-05-15
Bill McKibben walks for sixteen days through the Adirondack Mountains to share his love of the land with his readers but what makes the book so special are the people Bill introduces, walks with, and talks with (and about...) along his journey. I was a Travel Agent for five years and was lucky enough to be sent to some of the best, first class places in America and this journey that Bill McKibben takes us on with his words is more meaningful than many of those places I went to which include the Grand Canyon & Scottsdale, AZ; the San Francisco Bay Area; Paradise Island & Nassau, Bahamas; Manhattan; the Sierra-Nevada Mountains (by train); and New Orleans & Mississippi River Cruise!
Each authentic and real person that McKibben joins on his trek lends a hand in telling the story. The book is as much about the beauty of the people as it is of the land. I grew up twenty miles away from the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, and presently I am a steward and guardian of 400 acres of land in central PA with my husband, his uncle, and my husband's brother and I share and appreciate Bill McKibben's deep love for the power of nature, the wild, and the people. I found John Davis (owns a bicycle, no car) as one of the most interesting characters in the book. I also like the stories of Chris Shaw, who has the good sense of memorializing the people who have passed on but that once lived in the Adirondacks and give the book historical authenticity. My favorite stories in the book are from Donald Armstrong and especially Armstrong's memory he shares with McKibben (and us) about Don's wife, Velda and a fly-fishing event. I laughed so hard I cried! It is a funny moment, but this husband-wife story is so cute and sweet, and gives one a feeling of nostalgia. (The church steeple is a cool part, too.) This is a gem of a story and Wandering Home is a gem of a book.
I am a people person and for the first few chapters of Wandering Home I'm thinking that it is too bad Bill McKibben spends all this passion on the Adirondacks. I imagine what his passion could do to improve the lives of the infirm or impoverished people. Much to my chagrin, in the last few chapters McKibben admits this deficit with charm and honesty. He admits he should spend more time helping the less fortunate, and then justifies his love and preservation of the Adirondacks as his way of giving something back to people. And, I agree that he has. Furthermore, he explains that he tries not to be a drain on the planet. If only we could all think this way, maybe our global warming and environmental problems would vanish. For the first time in my life, I realize the full extent of the impact that people have had and still have on our surroundings and I am saddened and sickened by it. (I imagine a sunrise or a sunset over a mountain, or an ocean breeze I thank God there are still a few areas left in this world that man / woman hasn't been able to get his / her hands on.)
I do have one eco-criticism of Wandering Home. Bill writes that he and John Davis climb to the top of Owl's Head on page 93 of his book. Owl's Head is a considerable distance away from Bristol, and is not included in the path outlined on the inside covers of his book. But, every author has to create mystery in some way, right? Judging by the description of Owl's Head I can see why McKibben would include it in his "walk" since Owl's Head sounds like a stunning place with it's 390 degree view of the Adirondack mountains. On my map, Owl's Head is about sixty miles north of Lake Placid one way, as the crow flies.
Dr. Robert Bernard Hass (English Professor, poet, writer, and Robert Frost expert at Edinboro University) and I got into a discussion about hyper-individualism in class one day. Dr. Hass told me about his friend named Bill McKibben and how McKibben writes about hyper-individualism and that a good place to start on the subject would be Wandering Home. I am grateful that Hass recommended the book to me. It was a book that I was sad to see end, but a journey I will always remember in more ways than one. I was so inspired that I am planning on a short family vacation to the Adirondacks for this summer. I will do my best to demonstrate a sense of forest preservation and protection while I'm there, visiting the wild of the Adirondacks.
Thin but worth reading.......2006-04-06
This book is thin. I mean literally. It is really just a somewhat longish essay. I was disappointed that there was not more depth, more history, more "more."
This is the story of McKibben's amble from Vermont to the central Adirondacks, with a crossing by row boat of Lake Champlain. McKibben is a good writer and he loves this landscape and is very concerned about it and its place in the global environment, but I could not help comparing him and this book to another Bill-namely Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Bryson is a much more energetic writer. In my opinion, he is funnier and deeper than McKibben. A Walk in the Woods is a great book, Wandering Home is light weight by comparison.
McKibben has some very good thoughts on environmental issues and expresses an admirable moderation in this book. He is especially sensitive to the complexity of many environmental issues and actively criticizes the "knee-jerk" environmentalists for over-simplifying the issues in many cases. On the other hand, McKibben is something of a romantic airhead. Often his ruminations are fatuous and patronizing; for example, his dogma that those simple Vermont farmers and old Adirondack loggers that he's met are more "authentic" than you or I (McKibben makes this claim more than once in Wandering Home).
Nevertheless, I liked this book and enjoyed reading it. McKibben loves the Adirondacks and so do I. In this short book he's managed to capture something of the flavor of the hidden Adirondacks, that fortunately so few people know. The Adirondack Park of New York is the most beautiful sylvan landscape in the world. McKibben's book raises, but barely starts to answer, such questions as why and how to protect and preserve the Adirondacks and other similarly blessed places.
A dangerous book.......2005-10-24
Bill McKibben is a thoughtful writer. Most of all, this book made me wish I could take a hike with him and meet the land he loves so much. Be warned that this book might make you homesick, even if you've never been to Vermont or the Adirondacks. But beyond that, the book has some serious points to make.
I'm a suburbanite trapped in the cycle of debt that has sucked in so many Americans (in my case, student loans and a mortgage). I work for the Department of Commerce. I have a husband. I have a child who is addicted to video games. I don't have the money or the freedom to move to the Adirondacks, or even take a trip there. This book is a reminder that Americans don't have to live the way we do. We might very well be happier if we got rid of a lot of our stuff and lived more lightly on the land. Of course, McKibben punctures that little bubble by pointing out that a lot of people have tried to do that in Vermont, with laughable results.
I believe that once the cheap oil is gone, life in America is going to be very different. Ordinary American life today puts so much emphasis on getting places quickly. In the not-so-distant future we're going to be staying much more in one spot, and only rarely going anywhere we can't reach on foot or bicycle. This book is a reminder that such a stationary life might not be so bad. There's more to a meaningful and happy existence than what cheap gasoline and Wal-Mart can bring. Maybe someday the science of economics will remember that.
Book Description
Introducing
An Aerial View of Geology series.
Geology is thrilling. It's the Earth in all its splendor. Unfortunately, geology texts rarely communicate that sense of excitement.
Enter Michael Collier, geologist, writer and one of America's premier aerial photographers. For over 20 years, he has piloted his Cessna 180 to inaccessible locations and returned with stunning photographs that lay bare the Earth's workings.
Over the Mountains, the first book in Michael Collier's new series, focuses on geology's most spectacular subject in a most spectacular way. It includes:
- Detailed and breathtaking large-format color photographs covering the geology of every major mountain range in the United States
- Clear, easy-to-understand text, diagrams and captions that explain and illuminate the geologic processes shown in the photographs.
After exploring the pages of
Over the Mountains, readers will never think of mountains -- or geology -- in the same way again.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent for a casual enthusiast, if a bit short........2007-08-17
I'm not trained in geology. I'm just someone who is fascinated by the fact that the earth can heave entire continents across its surface and push dozens of cubic miles of rock miles into the sky. All this before it is taken down again by gravity and water and wind over a span of time that a human can hardly begin to comprehend. So while I may not share a geologist's deep understanding of the forces at work, I probably share some of their motivations for studying it. And this book really hits the mark for someone like me. It's one thing to see diagrams and illustrations of the structures that lead to mountains, but it's entirely another to see it in a photograph that shows the results of the folds and faults that push and stretch the earth. Finally you feel you can comprehend at least some of the scope of what is going on when viewed from above. Mountains finally start to fit into the human mind when we can see this piece of land being pulled that way, or thrown upward along a clearly defined fault. As others have said, the text accompanying the photos makes an excellent introduction to the principles involved, informative but also infused with the author's clear love of the subject.
If I had any complaint about the book it would be its length. I would have enjoyed seeing more of the nice photography, but it is hard to fault Mr. Collier for this when there is so much beautiful material presented for a reasonable price.
So I'd definitely recommend this for a casual fan of geology. And someone more involved with the subject would probably also appreciate having such a fine collection of vivid illustrations of the principles they study too. Here's to hoping this author gives us more work like this in the future.
Magnificent Aerial Geology.......2007-07-20
This ia a magnificent new book on aerial geology of the United States by Dr. Michael Collier. He is trained as a structural geologist (MS, Stanford University), a private pilot with his own Cessna 180, and is a practicing physician in Flagstaff, Arizona. This book has a broad appeal to the general public (as a beautiful folio with scenic geology), and to professional geologists alike. The book contains dramatically new views of mountains that are familiar to most hikers and mountaineers (e.g., Mount Whitney, Mount Baker, Denali, the Grand Teton)---- but the aerial view direction is startling and thrilling to behold.
Collier's book is highly recommended. The quality of the color plates is quite good, and the book is reasonably priced. It takes a place on my shelf of geology field books next to John Shelton's classic book, Geology Illustrated. Indeed, Shelton has written the forward to Collier's book.
Robert H. Sydnor, geologist, Fair Oaks, California
Disappointed.......2007-07-12
We had seen some of Michael Collier's work on the internet and were excited by his photos. When the book came, we were very disappointed in the quality of the photography. It didn't capture the essence of his work half as well as his internet photos. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison or perhaps the photos weren't reproduced in adequate quality. Nice book but not what we expected.
Beautiful geology intro.......2007-07-03
This is one of the best books I have ever read on science! Each page describes a basic geological concept and then shows it with amazing pictures. Collier's explanations are clear and understandable. I read it to my kids. They now know the various kinds of rocks are easily identified- strawberry, vanilla, chocolate--igeneous, sedimentary, metamorphic! His excitment for the study of geology pours out of the pages and makes the reader want to learn more.
amazing book.......2007-07-03
the photographs in this book are truly beautiful! worth every cent I paid for it! Absolutely lovely!
Average customer rating:
- crowd pleaser
- Outstanding photos!
- Great Pictures
- Spirit of America By Peter Lik
|
Spirit Of America
Peter Lik
Manufacturer: Peter Lik's Wilderness Press Pty
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Maui: Hawaiian Paradise
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ASIN: 1876585153 |
Customer Reviews:
crowd pleaser.......2007-08-31
At least five of my friends and family, who had looked at the book, imediately purchased one for themselves. The pictures are amazing. Get it while you can - they sell out fast. I waited six months between printings.
Outstanding photos!.......2007-07-31
I viewed this talented artist's work while vacationing in Las Vegas, and loved it. When I returned home, I found the new book on amazon.com for half price--a great collection of beautiful photographs at a great price.
Great Pictures.......2007-05-09
The book arrived right on time and it was great. The pictures were like nothing I have ever seen before. I recommend the book and Peter Lik to anyone.
Spirit of America By Peter Lik.......2006-07-23
I was fortunate to purchase a Peter Lik Limited Addition Photo, at which time the book had been just rec'd. by the Maui Hawaii Gallery. The sales person was kind enough to give me a copy of his new book. They has just rec'd. and still in the back shop. Boy what a great gift and stunning piece to have on your end table for guest to see. Would highly recommend this fabulous book.
Book Description
In Landscaping Your Home, some of the best designers in the field show how to do a complete makeover of front, back, and side yards. The book is packed with fresh ideas for entrances, foundation plantings, and pathways, and explains how to use landscaping to better situate a house, thereby increasing its property value. Lavish illustrations make this practical approach to landscaping easy to follow.
Customer Reviews:
Great book!.......2007-01-10
I am loving this book! It has so many helpful instructions on landscaping your home. Plus the beautiful pictures are great. It's a book that truly lives up to the Taunton tradition of excellent gardening material.
Advanced garden design reading.......2006-08-13
A cut above the typical home-center landscape book. Not another do-it-yourself guide but a collection of design considerations and approaches by multiple garden/landscape designers. Excellent for those interested in learning more about various principles of garden design.
A lot of help........2001-12-29
Great for helping you to relize the importance of a layout.
Planing ahead is something I didn't usually do.
A must for design start.......2001-03-27
What a great rescource for someone trying to make those needed changes. Just getting started is aleays the most difficult of any task. This book assists in getting anyone well on their way.
Amazon.com
A popular painter who claims to hate traveling has written a "travel book" illustrated with his own brightly colored landscapes. What's that all about? Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels is actually a record of the pleasant American locales Kahn has visited over the past forty-odd years in order to teach a workshop, attend an exhibition of his work or fulfill a commission from a wealthy patron. A refugee from Nazi Germany, born in 1927, he understandably prefers the comforts of home to the anxieties of travel. Yet he finds visual inspiration everywhere he goes, even in a restaurant parking lot overlooking a marsh. Kahn gracefully interweaves studio shop talk about color with brief observations about specific landscapes and the inevitable mishaps of travel. The book includes 100 full-color reproductions of his gentle, quasi-abstract renderings of barns and dunes, woods and shorelines, sunsets and snowy fields. The painting sites range from Maine to Florida, with excursions to Yosemite and New Mexico, but Kahn's high-keyed colors and favored compositional devices vary only slightly. Although he studied with Hans Hofmann and writes of friendships with other major American painters, his own work has a prettified quality at odds with his peers. One of the challenges of landscape painting, he writes, is to find locales "where comfort and subject coincide." Kahn's most self-revealing moment occurs when he asks Fairfield Porter why he painted a gas tank in the foreground of a Maine landscape. Porter replies that the tank was in his field of vision and he doesn't want to "censor" landscape. Kahn writes that he respects this point of view, but "I certainly would have kept the gas tank out." —-Cathy Curtis
Book Description
Wolf Kahn, whose beautiful and lyrical landscapes are among America's most popular contemporary paintings, has traveled the world in his lifetime. In this engaging volume, he describes his journeys throughout the United States in pursuit of his art, illustrating his adventures with the paintings he created as he went. At the same time, he brings the reader into his creative life, discussing the problems various locations presented and how he solved them, and sharing memories from his peripatetic wanderings, vividly recounting tales of the people he has met and the sights he has seen.
Enhanced by Wolf Kahn's lovely paintings and by John Updike's introduction, a tribute to an admired friend, Wolf Kahn's America is a charming and refreshing look at the world of a painter, seen through the candid and unpretentious eyes of one of America's best-loved artists.
Customer Reviews:
Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels.......2006-11-04
Another in a series of great books by this author. Colors are interesting and vivid. Inspirational.
Beautiful Book.......2006-08-06
This is a beautifully presented, simply and elegantly written book of Wolf Kahn's work, of which it is hard not to be a great fan.
Inspiring.......2006-02-27
This book is beautifully presented, with a large number of colour plates of his oil and pastel paintings. I really enjoyed the sensitive, well written and interesting story by Wolf about his travels across America and his findings along the way. He shows its not necessarily the subject that makes the painting but how you treat it and Wolf is a master of atmosphere and luminous colur to the max.
Angela McMeekin - Te Anau, New Zealand
Gorgeous Colors.......2006-02-23
Another beautiful and thought provoking book with Wolf Kahn's art and writings about his process. The colors are excellent, and as a pastelist I appreciate his thoughts about painting in this medium.
Wolf Kahn's America.......2005-09-21
Excellent, personable insight on the rationale and approach by an artist relative to his subject matter. Kahn succinctly summarizes, discusses not only his appreciation for the unusual, be in Nature or weathered man-made structures, but also the specific application of the medium used, pastels and oils, to capture the emotional content of the scene, as well as the color harmonies developed over a lifetime of conscientious study. Freedom of action and thought pervades the book that appeals to his artistic soul.
Average customer rating:
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Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada (Creating the North American Landscape)
John C. Hudson
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0801865670 |
Book Description
Based on decades of research and written in clear, concise prose by one of the foremost geographers in North America, John C. Hudson's Across This Land is a comprehensive regional geography of the North American continent.
Clearly organized, the book divides the entire United States and Canada into six major regions, then further subdivides them into twelve smaller areas. Hudson emphasizes each region or area's distinguishing place-specific attributes, including -- to a larger degree than previous regional geographies -- political considerations. In this way, the book tells the story of each region, relying on a brisk narrative that reveals the dynamic processes of their distinctive characteristics.
The first extensive regional geography of the North American continent in over seventy-five years, Hudson's Across This Land will become the standard text in geography courses dealing with Canada and the U.S. as well as a popular reference work for scholars, students, and lay readers.
Average customer rating:
- American Photography at its Best
- Poor quality
- Not Worth Looking At
- Adams wouldn't have approved
- Are we looking at the same book?
|
America's Wilderness: The Photographs of Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams ,
John Muir , and
Elaine M. Bucher
Manufacturer: Courage Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Adams, Ansel
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ASIN: 0762413905 |
Book Description
The Photographs of Ansel Adams with the Writings of John Muir
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ansel Adams whose landmark early photographs of wild America, originally taken for the Works Progress Administration, fill the pages of this splendid volume. Adams' breathtaking images are accompanied by excerpts from the writings of Sierra Club founder John Muir, the renowned conservationist who devoted his life to celebrating and preserving the American wilderness.
Customer Reviews:
American Photography at its Best.......2007-06-15
Breathtaking photos. Especially in light of the rudimentary equipment available at the time they were taken. Proves that Ansel Adams is still unsurpassed in American photography. Captures the majesty and beauty of the vanishing American wilderness. Members of Congress should view this work before voting to open refuge or wild lands to drilling and logging.
Poor quality.......2007-05-03
Poor reproduction quality. Actually no quality. As educational book, to study composition or something like that, perhaps the book serves.
Not Worth Looking At.......2006-04-05
Poor reproduction quality. Actually no quality. Not approved by the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.
Adams wouldn't have approved.......2005-07-18
While some photos are reasonable, most are seriously flawed. Some are flat, some are excessively contrasty, others seem murky and indistinct. Some of the photos need cleaning to remove dust spots, etc. Even the title is wrong , as the book includes photos of dams and sheep. There are many other excellent books, which have been prepared from Adams prints and produced with much more care. Buy one of those.
Are we looking at the same book?.......2005-01-02
Many of Ansel Adams' exquisite photographs call out for large reproductions, and this book displays them in a decent size format. But what a waste. The reproductions are nearly all flat and murky, with little detail in the shadow. If I had read far enough down into the customer reviews, I would have been warned; but the reviews at the top of the stack were quite favorable. Which leads me to wonder: Are we looking at the same book? I advise readers to purchase Adams books published by Little, Brown, and Company (aka "Bulfinch"). Even at smaller sizes their books display much more detail and clarity than does this disappointing edition.
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