Book Description
Hikes varying from half-hour strolls to full-day adventures, this guidebook is for everyone, including families.
Customer Reviews:
Good for ideas, but not as a true "guide" book.......2007-02-13
This book is divided into three sections; Cedar Mesa in SW Utah, The Escalante Canyon and Grand Staircase-Paria Canyon. The Escalante-Grand Staircase hikes range in length and difficultly. Included are the following hikes:
Upper calf Creek Falls -2m
Lower Calf Creek Falls-6.2m
Devils Garden-.07m
Fortymile Ridge to Sunset Arch-3m
Willow Gulch to Broken Bow Arrow-4m
Kodachrome Basin's Panorama Trail-2.9-5.4m
Cottonwood Canyon Narrows-3m
Willis Creek Narrows-4.8m
Lick Wash-8m
Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch-3.4m
and 9 hikes in the SW area of Utah
This book might be good for getting ideas on where to hike, but some of the information contained in it is not accurate, or lacks sufficient detail. For example, the author fails to mention that a permit to hike Wire pass to Buckskin Gulch must usually be obtained 3 months ahead of time. Also, the directions to Sunset Arch are different than any other guide book. (?) He also fails in giving accurate campground information. There are many more camping opportunities than what he mentions. I would advise consulting other guide books before setting off on any of the hikes and would not use this book for trip planning.
Excellent for What it Covers.......2005-01-20
This is a streamlined version of Adkison's lengthier book about the national monument, but is perfect for the short hikes in this beautiful region. It has everything a pocket guidebook should have: clear descriptions, mileage, elevations, maps, and ratings. This is my favorite guidebook for the Grand Staircase whenever I do short hikes.
The Grand Escalante.......2000-07-13
Look interesting and informative for people who are planning to go to Escalante soon. Good resource. I saw Bryce and Zion Parks on my first trip to Utah- can't wait to go back The escalante looked so beautiful even though I only saw part of it on the way to Capitol Reef National Park
Customer Reviews:
A Good Place to Start for Beginners.......2007-04-05
As somebody who has not yet begun to seriously study Dari, I have found this to be a very helpful companion. It has helped me unravel the Dari words and phrases used in guide books and travelogues on Afghanistan, and the short guide to Afghan history is concise yet insightful.
The "Very Basic Grammar" and "Pronunciation Guide" provide key building blocks to understanding and speaking the language. The dictionary, at 87 pages, is by no means comprehensive, but covers simple vocabulary beginners need to know. And the phrase book pulls together basic words and phrases for a myriad of situations one is likely to face as a tourist in Afghanistan.
All in all, not bad for a book of a little more than 200 pages that can fit in your back pocket.
Pretty Dang Good.......2006-11-04
This book was quite useful. The only complaint I have is that the terms that are given, some are extremely proper. Which I guess is better than being too informal but you get some funny looks sometimes when you are having a casual conversation. Overall its a great book and I would recommend it to anyone that is traveling to Afghanistan or anyone that wants to learn this language.
A useful guide.......2005-09-26
This is an excellant book for travel. The book gives you common pharses used for every day conversation and also an english to dari or dari to english dictionary.
It even has a special section for pharses used by aid workers.
Dari?.......2005-04-16
It's easier to be a critic than an author; much easier in the case of "Dari Dictionary & Phrasebook." An internet search on "Nicholas Awad" introduces a true polyglot, from Hausa to Armenian, and it appears from the content of this work that Awad and his collaborators have a mastery of classical Persian -- and a very quirky understanding of Afghan Dari. It's an excellent phrase book, but many of the Dari terms used would raise eyebrows from Mazar to Kabul. If you don't mind occasionally being in the position of a guy walking into a biker bar and saying, "Ho, good innkeeper, willst thou draw me a draught of your finest ale?", this book provides an interesting, and indeed useful, introduction to Dari. Provided the barman gets beyond your initial, "Ho . . ." The pronounciations sometimes follow the Iranian more than the Afghan model, many of the words use the Iranian rather than the Afghan varient (q.y., beer, strawberry), many of the phrases are far more flowery than commonly used, and the pronunciation guide and the verb forms used -- well, an additional expression that could well have been used in the book is "be-resh" which literally means "beardless" but the metaphorical meaning transcends "campy." Go ahead and buy this book if you are heading toward Afghanistan; your ear will quickly atune you to the pronunciation and verb forms commonly used. Think of Dari as probably the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn, perhaps the second easiest after Malay, study the book, and be confident in your conversation with Afghans. Most of them are pretty forgiving in matters of language.
Customer Reviews:
A great value for the money.......2006-08-28
This is a great book to use to learn Kabuli Dari (the version of Persian spoken in Kabul). I have not been able to find a better book in English for learning Dari. Most of the books available are for learning Farsi (the version of Persian spoken in Iran).
I feel that some of the other reviewers have unfairly harsh in their reviews. This is a relatively inexpensive book (currently $12). It does not come with an audio CD. I don't think anyone should expect to be able to learn a language from a book and have perfect pronunciation. If you want to learn the language properly you will need an audio companion for this book or ideally a tutor. The book that the other reviewers offer as a better alternative (Thackston's Introduction to Persian) is for learning Farsi, not Dari.
This book is a great way to try out learning Dari with minimal financial investment.
It's not as bad as it's been rated before.......2006-05-26
If one does not approach this book or the language from a too scientific angle this book is not too bad.
Proper pronounciation is anyway only acquired by listening to native speakers, so deliberating on whether or not this or the other stransliteration should be used or whether the one in the book is very consistant hence become secondary.
If one has never heard the sound of the language it becomes very difficult in any case to learn the proper pronounciation from a book.
The negative points of this book first:
The introduction to the alphabet in my view lacks claritiy about the varying form of each letter according to its position in the word.
The size of the book does not allow the letters to be printed big enough for the absolute beginner to decipher details clearly. Big font writing should have been chosen instead.
The grammar section does not seem to pay attention to more colloquial uses of the spoken language. E.g. the sentence: Shumaa az kuja ast? Where are you from? is more realistically written as: Shumaa az kujaast? as in everyday pronounciation things are shortened to such forms.
The book tries to get the alphabet out of the way first before teaching how to speak. This requires some endurance on side of the student. If one would introduce simple sentences straight away in Roman transliteration, certain grammatical structures of Dari would become clear straight away and the book would give the immediate feeling of a little mastery of the language. The alphabet could be introduced a little later into the book
The positive sides:
The book gives a concise overview of basic grammer issues. But one must be slightly talented with languages and familiar with the terms in order to understand the explanations.
Overall I feel the book gives a reasonable introduction to Dari for the outsider and beginner. But one must go the country to speak, read and write properly - as with all "exotic" languages. But that is probably anyway the case if one takes it upon oneself to learn this language ...
Really not worth it.......2005-08-03
Let me start with the *brief* listing of this book's virtues. If you are already comfortable with written and spoken Persian, this book has some use. Some minor vocabulary differences between Farsi (Iranian Persian) and Dari (Afghan Persian) can be picked up from the thematic word lists (i.e. using the work "tashakkor" in place of "merci" to mean "thanks), and some of the more subtle differences in pronunciation can be garnered from the author's translatirations (i.e. pronouncing the present-stem indicator as "may" instead of "mi," as one would do in Iran). So much for the positives.
This book has some major flaws. Some have already been enumerated in another review on this site, so I won't repeat theam. I want to illustrate the difficulty presented by the author's non-standard transliteration; customary practice dictates that the Persian "aleph" be transcribed as either "â," or "aa." Instead, the author has chosen to transcribe it as "'a". Meanwhile she uses the standard transliteration for the letter "ayn," which is either "'" or "a'." Not only is this confusing, I've spotted two places in the book where she herself mixed the two up.
And that leads me to my next complaint about this book. It would seem that its first draft made the press. I don't see an editor listed, only a note thanking a certain person for "insightful suggestions on the manuscript." There are numerous mistakes, not just in transliteration, but also in her Persian spelling! For a true beginner (recall the title of the book, if you please) this could produce a lot of confusion.
I can't comment on the grammar sections, having skipped them. I agree with the reviewer here who suggested reading Thackston's introductory book-- it is very technical, but *very* precise, and there is really no issue about transliteration, spelling, or translation.
If, like me, you wanted to have a textual reference to familiarize your mind with Dari, this is not what you're looking for. My best suggestion is find a native Dari speaker: many Afghans have been to Iran and could guide you through the differences between the two dialects; otherwise just listen to them speak. But whatever you do, it's not worth your while to buy this book.
It should never have left the publisher.......2005-02-11
At the moment, there is a real shortage of Dari courses in English. This is the only Dari course on the market and it's a complete failure.
Dari has eight vowels. In the introduction, the author describes the six vowels she is going to use. When you start the book, you'll find that she uses no less than eleven vowels, in a very random way. To take but two examples. The long i-sound of English "been" or "leaf" is not mentioned at all in the introduction. In the course, this sounds is sometimes spelled as -`i- and sometimes as -ee-. There is no difference between these, in some lessons the author uses one, in another she uses another. The beginner who does not know Dari will probably assume that there is a difference between -`i- and -ee-, though in fact there is none. The same goes for another sounds, sometimes spelled -`u- and sometimes -oo-.
There exist a more or less agreed upon system of transcribing Persian words into the Latin alphabet (Dari is a form of Persian) which has been used both in older Dari courses and in courses on other forms of Perisan. For a beginner, it would have been easiest if the author had chosen this transcription model, since it is very simple, logic and completely accurate. The fact that another transcription was employed would not be much of a problem if it was only explained and if it was consistent throughout the course instead of changing from one lesson to the next.
The transcriptions are the main problem, if they were in order I would have given the book three stars. The lessons are easy to follow, although not very far-reaching. The course is far behind such courses excellent Persian courses as Thackston's Introduction to Persian and Baizoyev's A Beginner's Guide to Tajiki. It's also far from Colloquial Persian, but could be a good, short introduction if only the transcriptions would make sense.
Finally, there is one group of people who will find this course useful. Those who already speak another form of Persian, such as Farsi or Tajiki, and want to learn the basics of Dari will not have much of a problem. But for them better books already exist in Persian. Those of us who speak English will have to wait for a revised edition or another Dari course.
Average customer rating:
- OK, but by no means great
- Engaging, albeit strange, story.
- Okay...
- The Best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- A wonderful mix of history and fiction
|
Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined
Linda Crew
Manufacturer: HarperTempest
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ASIN: 0064472175
Release Date: 2003-09-02 |
Amazon.com
Many of the citizens of Corvallis, Oregon, hope that the handsome, fervent drifter who claims to have God's ear will continue on his spiritual journey--right on out of town. But its young people, especially 16-year-old Eva Mae Hurt, are completely entranced by itinerant preacher Joshua Creffield. From the first time she sees Joshua in 1903, Eva Mae feels "absolutely riveted." Her feelings are shared by other young women, who follow Joshua unhesitatingly. They listen to his end-of-the-world sermons in a state of ecstasy, confident in their "chosen" status. But Eva is troubled by Joshua's unreasonable rules and the "secret rites" he performs with his "brides of Eden" alone in his tent. Swept up in his wonderful and terrible vision, Eva Mae loses almost everything before she is able to break free of the bindings of Joshua's brainwashing.
Based on historical events, Brides of Eden is strongly written and deeply felt. Using Eva Mae's voice, Crew captures perfectly not only the spell of fanaticism, but also the difficulty in readjusting to everyday life: "If you've felt yourself to be center stage in a great drama, a thrilling story which might, on any given day, climax with your ascension into the clouds, it's not so easy to return to your old place in the real world." Older teens will identify with Eva Mae's aching need to belong to this exclusive group and will be fascinated by this portrait of extremism parallel to the Heaven's Gate and Branch Davidian cults of their time. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert
Book Description
In our defense, I can say only that nothing seemed so terribly strange in the beginning...
When, in 1903, the fiery preacher Joshua arrives in sleepy Corvallis, Oregon, Eva Mae -- and the whole town -- is never the same again.
Joshua is wonderful. He's charismatic. Insisting on simplicity, he commands his converts to burn their possessions. Demanding devotion to Christ, he tells them to abandon their personal ties.
But there's a surge of violence rising, and before it's over, families will be ripped apart and lives will be destroyed. Eva Mae's gripping true story is a stranger-than-fiction tale of a turn-of-the-century apocalyptic cult.
Customer Reviews:
OK, but by no means great.......2006-02-21
I've read better books. It bounces from small moment to small moment. Nothing climactic at all. The author never went into great detail about the people in the story and, even though I live here, couldn't figure out where anything actually took place, which is strange. I only recommended this book to one person because she likes to read about odd happenings in odd cities. Corvallis definitely qualifies as odd.
Engaging, albeit strange, story. .......2004-07-30
From the moment 16-year-old Eva Mae Hurt laid eyes on Corvallis newcomer Joshua Creffield, she knew things would never be the same again. Before long, this preacher and false prophet has the proper, God-fearing ladies of Corvallis throwing off their corsets, letting down their hair, burning their worldly possessions, and signing over their assets. Eva Mae, her mother, and her sister Maud are just a few of Creffield's ardent followers, and for a time, his revival meetings are even held in the Hurt home, much to the chagrin of their skeptical father. Not so easily charmed by his good looks and charisma, both Hurt and his fellow menfolk are understandably put off by Creffield's particular brand of religious fanaticism. They've lost wives, daughters, girlfriends, and mothers to his way-out ideas. But when it seems things couldn't get any worse, the men discover that Creffield has been intimate with nearly everyone of his followers on the flimsy excuse that he was trying to find the "second mother." What ensues is a strange string of events in which many of the once-rational women are declared insane, institutionalized, and cured, only to fall once again under Creffield's seductive spell. Murder and suicide finally bring the cult down, Creffield and all.
Based on actual events, BRIDES OF EDEN is truth imagined. Crew, author of CHILDREN OF THE RIVER, indulged a lifelong fascination in bringing the events surrounding cult-leader Joshua Creffield and his followers to life. From 1903 to 1906, Creffield and his women were the talk of Corvallis, Oregon. Crew, a Corvallis native, grew up seeped in lore about the preacher and his women and was hooked. Through extensive research conducted in the annals of Corvallis history (newspaper articles, historical records, and such), Crew was able to convincingly recreate this engaging, albeit strange, story.
--- Reviewed by Tammy L. Currier
Okay..........2002-02-24
This book was interesting, but nothing much happened in the book. While there were many little events, there was nothing big. Brides of Eden wasn't my favorite, and there are better books out there.
The Best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.......2001-03-06
This book will keep you riveted with the power of language used, and the situations these naive young women find themselves in. I read this book in one day, nonstop, because I thought it was so good.
A wonderful mix of history and fiction.......2001-01-25
I was priveleged to read an advance copy of Linda Crew's new book and to interview her and write a review for the local paper. This is a wondeful book. It is the story of a charming young man, Joshua, who comes to Corvallis, Oregon and manages to start a religious cult, populated mostly by young women. The story is told from the point of view of a 16 year old girl, Eva Mae Hurt, a real person who lived there and then. Her family was very involved with Joshua. Most of the information was culled from newspaper reports from the time, but (apparently), the Holy Rollers are local lore; Crew said she has always known about them. Crew imbues Eva Mae with a vivid personality and thoughts, and, although none of them can be verified, they make sense given the age and situation. This book inspired me to read all of Crew's other books, which I enjoyed. Although all but one are written for Young Adults, some adults will enjoy them. In the case of "Brides of Eden," it definitely will appeal to both young adults and adults. Come learn a bit about old Corvallis, back when it was populated by 2,000, not 50,000 people!
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Horn Book Magazine, published by Horn Book, Inc. on March 1, 2001. The length of the article is 440 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined.(Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
Author: C.m.h.
Publication:
The Horn Book Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2001
Publisher: Horn Book, Inc.
Volume: 77
Issue: 2
Page: 206
Article Type: Book Review, Young Adult Review, Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
|
Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined
Linda Crew
Manufacturer: Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media
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Binding: Turtleback
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