Collins Guide to Mushrooms & Toadstools

Book Description

This pocket-sized guide covers over 400 of the commonest species of mushroom and toadstool found in Britain and Europe. Each species is illustrated with a photograph and described in detail in the text, which includes information on colour, shape, smell, taste, time of year the mushroom is seen, and similar species. The guide is not arranged in complicated taxonomic order, but by shape for easy identification. This means that even the absolute beginner can identify mushrooms using this guide. Other features include additional helpful mushroom information at the back and a durable plastic cover.

Field Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Field Guide)

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Field Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Field Guide)
Morton Dance , and F. Byard
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Mushrooms & Toadstools (Collins Watch Guide)

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Mushrooms & Toadstools (Collins Watch Guide)

Manufacturer: Harpercollins Pub Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 000220102X

Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Gem Guide Series)

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Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Gem Guide Series)
J. Wilkinson , and S. Buczacki
Manufacturer: Lubrecht & Cramer, Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Bacteriology | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Mushrooms & Toadstools: Get to Know the Natural World (Collins Wild Guide)

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Mushrooms & Toadstools: Get to Know the Natural World (Collins Wild Guide)
Brian Spooner
Manufacturer: HarperCollins UK
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0007191502

Book Description

This illustrated guide to mushrooms and toadstools enables quick and easy identification of 240 species found in Britain and Europe. The text includes information about distribution, habitat, season, size, stem and gills, whether it is poisonous or edible and any associated folklore.

Collins Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Pocket Guide)

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Collins Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Pocket Guide)
Stefan T. Buczacki
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Mushrooms and Toadstools (Collins Gem Guide Series)
J.; Buczacki, S. Wilkinson
Manufacturer: Lubrecht & Cramer, Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O8KU0S

Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and North-western Europe (Collins Pocket Guide)

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Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and North-western Europe (Collins Pocket Guide)

Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Fans will find this a hard-hitting account that pulls no punches

An enjoyable read that doesn't answer any questions

Clang! Harvey Araton Throws Up Half a Brick

Araton At His Best

Crashing the Borders: How Basketball Won the World and Lost Its Soul at Home
Harvey Araton
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
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SIXTH MAN, THE: A SEASON INSIDE THE NBA PLAYGROUND

Foul Lines: A Pro Basketball Novel

Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era

ASIN: 0743280695

Book Description

The game of basketball has gone global and is now the world's fastest-growing sport. Talented players from Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa are literally crashing the borders as the level of their game now often equals that of the American pros, who no longer are sure winners in international competition and who must compete with foreign players for coveted spots on NBA rosters. Yet that refreshing world outlook stands in stark contrast to the game's troubled image here at home. The concept of team play in the NBA has declined as, in the aftermath of the Michael Jordan phenomenon, the league's marketers and television promoters have placed a premium on hyping individual stars instead of teams, and the players have come to see that big-buck contracts and endorsements come to those who selfishly demand the spotlight for themselves.

Even worse, relations between players and fans are at a low ebb. Players are perceived to be overpaid, ill-behaved, and arrogant. Fans, paying hundreds of dollars for tickets, often act boorishly and tauntingly. This tension boiled over on the night of November 19, 2004, at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Michigan, during a Detroit Pistons-Indiana Pacers game, when players brawled with fans as much as each other in what was, in fact, a racial skirmish. When the Pacer players entered the stands throwing punches, they had truly smashed an altogether different kind of border.

In the aftermath of that sorry spectacle, regular-season television ratings declined for NBA games. Playoff-game ratings plummeted. Sales in NBA-licensing products sagged by a reported 30 percent. For the millions of Americans who cherish basketball, the love affair has reached a state of crisis.

Few people care as deeply and know as much about basketball as Harvey Araton, the highly literate and well-traveled sports columnist for The New York Times. For many a season, Araton has observed "the ballers," as the players call themselves, at college tournaments, the NBA, and the Olympics. He has enjoyed a pressbox seat while watching the great 1980s rivalries of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the transcendent career of Michael Jordan, and the slow unraveling of the game through the 1990s until the present season, as newly arrived players and league officials misunderstood and misapplied the mixed lessons of Jordan's legacy. Calling on his many years of watching games, of locker-room interviews, of world-hopping reportage, Araton takes us to scenes of vivid play on the court and to off-camera dramas as well.

In this taut, simmering book, the author points his finger at the greed and exploitation that has weakened the American game. And with uncommon journalistic courage, he opens a discussion on the volatile, undiscussed subject that lies at the heart of basketball's crisis: race. It begins, he argues, at the college level, where, too often, undereducated, inner-city talents are expected to perform for the benefit of affluent white crowds and to fill the coffers of their respective schools in what Araton calls a kind of "modern-day minstrel show." It continues at the pro level, where marketers have determined that "gangsta" imagery provides for a livelier entertainment package, never mind the effect it has on the quality of team play. And where, moreover, players themselves, often both street smart and immature, decide to live up to the thuggish stereotypes.

Harvey Araton knows the players well enough to see beyond the stereotypes. He knows that for every clownish Dennis Rodman there is also an admirable David Robinson. For every Ron Artest, there is a Tim Duncan. Combining passion and knowledge, he calls on the NBA to heal itself and, with a hopeful sense of the possible, he points the way to a better future.

Unflinching, timely, and authoritative, Crashing the Borders is the beginning of a much-needed conversation about sport and American culture. For those who care about both, this book will be the must-read work of the season.

Customer Reviews:

Fans will find this a hard-hitting account that pulls no punches.......2006-01-07

Basketball fans will find a vibrant and unusual story in Crashing The Borders: How Basketball Won The World And Lost Its Soul At Home: it tells how talented players from around the world are playing at a level which challenges American pros, and how the sport is simultaneously facing a troubled image on its own home turf. Relations between players and fans are at a low point, TV ratings for NBA games are on the decline, and basketball fan Harvey Araton, sports columnist for the New York Times, here traces the problem to the greed of those who would exploit the game and thus weaken it. Fans will find this a hard-hitting account that pulls no punches.

An enjoyable read that doesn't answer any questions.......2005-12-29

While I enjoyed this quick and easy effort from Araton, it left me with one question at the end - "What exactly was the author trying to prove in writing this?"

The title would indicate that we should expect a treatise covering several topics: the decline of basketball fundamentals in America, the fall of the U.S. as a basketball empire, the MTV-ization of the game, and a few others that would all contribute to proving what the title claims. Instead, this is a disjointed effort, part lecture, part memoir, and part history lesson.

Personally, I think that this would have worked better as a simple memoir of Araton's time spent covering the game. He could have told more of the interesting personal stories that he interjects here, especially considering how long he's been around the game. This is a book that becomes repititious, and that might have been avoided had he included more about his interactions with players, coaches, etc. He could have talked about how he believes the game has declined here, but it wouldn't have had to be the centerpiece of his book.

I believe that a great book about the decline of basketball here in the U.S. needs to be written, but I don't think this is it. This doesn't dig nearly deep enough into the underlying causes of the decline, and the format is so scattershot as to keep the reader guessing exactly what might be the point of certain parts of the book. Again, this is an enjoyable and fast read, but I was expecting something more.

Clang! Harvey Araton Throws Up Half a Brick.......2005-12-26

Harvey Araton, long-time sports columnist for the New York Times, explores the history of "pure basketball's" decline in his latest book, CRASHING THE BORDERS. As someone who grew up watching and playing pure basketball in its American capital, Indiana, I could hardly agree more with Araton's basic contention: that basketball has lost its balletic soul, that the ultimate in spontaneous team games has become a game of power and force too often centered around individuals whose attention-seeking egos match their outsized Nike sneaker endorsements. Worse, too many players lack the fundamental skills that were formerly the hallmark of NBA play.

Araton traces the decline to the rise of Michael Jordan as a one-player product bigger than the NBA itself. Jordan became a role model for the next generation of "look at me" American players whose inarguable athleticism catapulted them into the spotlight before their psyches or their fundamental basketball skills had had time to mature and develop for a team game. In Araton's view, Jordan begat Vince Carter begat Kobe Bryant begat Alan Iverson begat Lebron James ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Yet half those begatted stars fell flat on their public relations faces, tarnishing the NBA and upping its hip-hop image while inciting racist sentiments in the stands that culminated in the Pacers/Pistons/fans rumble at The Palace of Auburn Hills (Detroit) on November 19, 2004.

At the same time, NBA Dream Teams had their proverbial hats handed to them in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Athens Olympics. Those defeats signaled deep problems in the quality of the NBA's underlying team game and accelerated the infusion into the NBA of foreign players with better basketball fundamentals than the 18-year-olds from urban America's playgrounds (hence the weakly-punned title, as in "crashing the boards"). Araton blames Nike and Adidas, the scouts and summer camps who hype 12-year-olds as the next incarnation of Michael, fawning college coaches, and David Stern for this marketing-over-substance approach. He argues that Jordan himself shoulders some of the blame for his unwillingness to act for any purpose other than his own financial self-interest.

While Araton's thesis seems largely on target, his book's execution is somewhat disappointing. It reads like an extended version of his newspaper column, full of personal stories and anecdotes but lacking in depth of analysis. We learn quite unnecessarily, for example, how the author chose family over work and missed taking an airplane flight that crashed. We visit Tbilisi, Soviet Georgia, to learn about two workmanlike but relatively undistinguished players from Soviet Georgia, Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Manuchar Markoishvili, but we never visit the inner city playgrounds of Chicago, Philadephia, L.A., or New York. We see far too much of David Stern and far too little of the great team players like Magic and Bird and Jason Kidd or the great coaches like Bob Knight, Coach K, Larry Brown, and Pete Carrill.

More important, Araton opines endlessly about the decline of the NBA game, using nothing but a few references to team scoring per game as his wholly inadequate gauge. What about shooting percentages, turnover to assist or assists to goals scored ratios, team scoring or shots taken distributions, or other player performance measures? A February 13, 2005 article by Michael Sokolove in the New York Times Sunday Magazine provided in just one statistic a better measure of the situation than Araton's entire 200-page run-on. In the 2004 Summer Olympics, the U.S. woman's team outshot their NBA men's team counterparts from the free throw line, 76% to 67%. What better evidence could there be of the decline in fundamentals than ability to hit an 15-foot shot - unguarded?

In point of fact, Sokolove's article, entitled, "Clang!" and sub-headed, "Pro basketball doesn't have a drug problem or a thug problem. It has a basketball problem," makes virtually the same case in four pages as Harvey Araton makes in 200 pages. And Sokolove at least has the courage of his convictions to argue for the elimination of both the slam dunk and the three-point shot (sadly, neither can happen as long as the NBA is more about marketing than it is about the sport). Read CRASHING THE BORDERS if you've missed the last ten years of the NBA or want to read Araton's version of "famous people I have touched." Otherwise, check out Sokolove's more insightful article from the Times archives, watch the games for yourselves, and stick with your daily sports pages. Araton's book is interesting, but it's simply too lacking in insight and analysis - and far too timid - to justify its $25 price tag.

Araton At His Best.......2005-11-28

Those who are regular readers of Harvey Araton's columns in the New York Times will recognize the quality and intelligence of the writing in this must-read dissection of the basketball world at large.

Book Description

Step By Step, these twenty lessons, with charming and helpful illustrations, will enable you, regardless of previous language training, to read, write and speak French in the shortest possible time.The Cortina Method has been time-tested and is the quick, easy and natural way to learn a language. It has received the approval of teachers, students, schools, colleges and business firms all over the world.Guide To Pronunciation And SpellingExplains how to pronounce the sounds, words and phrases of the language through simple phonetic symbols based on English spelling. Rules of spelling are also explained.Twenty Conversational LessonsThese lessons include useful vocabularies and everyday conversations. Alongside of each word and sentence is given the correct pronunciation and English translation. Easy-to-understand grammatical footnotes are combined in this Method to make your language study effective and interesting.Complete Reference GrammarProvides a complete and clear explanation of every rule of structure. It is cross-referenced with and adds to the explanation in the conversational lesson footnotes.Bi-Lingual DictionaryFrench-English/English-French Dictionary contains all useful words and terms you need to know, so you can locate them easily.Over 2,500,000 Cortina Method language books have been sold.FREE CASSETTE Offer On Back Of Book.

Customer Reviews:

French refresher.......2007-05-13

This is a great book to learn French but especially good to refresh your high school or college French lessons. An older book but still very good.

Excellent for a review of French and for beginners too.......2005-10-05

The book is very helpful for me and I now look forward to returning to Paris with more proficiency in French. A good buy indeed.

Tres Bon!.......2003-10-01

This is an excellent book for beginners! My son was able to pick it up and immediately use it. The lessons are easy to understand. It is a well written book and was well worth the money. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn French.

The grammar section alone is worth twice the price.......2002-10-24

If you were to rip this book in half and just keep the reference grammar section, you'd still have a bargain. The twenty lessons are excellent and are also a bargain on their own. Compare this book to everything else on the shelves at your favorite bookstore, compare its price to the prices of the others, and you'll soon learn that by that scale any Cortina "20 lessons in Conversational (whatever language)..." is worth four times what it costs. The free tape they offer is merely a promo and not overly helpful, but the book is top notch. In short: the best bang for the buck out there, period.

Cortina taught me French.......2000-09-26

The Cortina series are awesome. I have the French nad the German books in this series. I have always thought French was beyond my abilities. I love languages but French always seemed heard. But with the Cortina it was easy to sound the words out and once I got the free tape that they include a postage paid card for, I had French down pat. Eventually I want to learn 10 languages plus my native English! I highly recommend this book.

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Conversational French 20 Lessons
R. D. Cortina
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Education | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Test Prep Central | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0064636011

CORTINA METHOD CONVERSATIONAL FRENCH IN 20 LESSONS ILLUSTRATED

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CORTINA METHOD CONVERSATIONAL FRENCH IN 20 LESSONS ILLUSTRATED

Manufacturer: R.D. Cortina
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H37J5O

Conversational French in 20 Lessons: Cortina Method: Intended for Self-Study and for Use in Schools

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Conversational French in 20 Lessons: Cortina Method: Intended for Self-Study and for Use in Schools
R. Diez de la Cortina
Manufacturer: Henry Holt & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LL4QMQ

Product Description

From his actual teaching experience in his Cortina Academy of Languages, which he founded in the United States in 1882, Count Cortina developed a new simplified method of language instruction that became an instant success. It has never been surpassed since, as the method has been constantly refined and improved from the Academy's long experience in teaching languages, and in terms of the changing needs of the present-day language student. It is now known all over the world as The Cortina Method.

Conversational French in 20 Lessons: Intended for Self-Study and for Use in Schools: With a Simplified System of Phonetic Pronunciation (Cortina Method)

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Conversational French in 20 Lessons: Intended for Self-Study and for Use in Schools: With a Simplified System of Phonetic Pronunciation (Cortina Method)
R. Diez de la Cortina
Manufacturer: distributors, Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0832700037

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Wonderful story

Favorite childs book on adoption!

Not the best book on adoption, but oh-so-sweet!

Not as good as other china adoption books

Nice and very colorfull true story

Shaoey And Dot: Bug Meets Bundle

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: B0009A2ODW

Book Description

Shaoey & Dot: Bug Meets Bundle is an endearing tale told from the point of view of one little ladybug, Dot, who happens upon a mysterious bundle one sunny day. Dot stays with the little bundle as she is carried to the place "where babies come to be found" and promises to stay with the little one throughout her journeys toward getting a family. Written by Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth, this heartwarming tale is inspired by the true story of their adoption of three little girls from China and is a story of hope and faith for all families who have been blessed by a "lost little bundle of love."

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful story.......2007-09-26

This is a great little storybook for a child adopted in China. Very sensitive portral of abandonment and adoption issues for a young child. My grandaughter loved it. Hard to read without getting a lump in your throat though.

Favorite childs book on adoption!.......2007-05-16

Loved it - it was a great book, cute pictures & story.

Not the best book on adoption, but oh-so-sweet!.......2007-05-11

Shaoey and Dot is written by Mary Beth & Steven Curtis Chapman. The book was inspired by the true story of their adopton of a girl from China. Shaoey (pronounced SHOW-ee) is a little Chinese baby discovered by Dot, a little Chinese ladybug. Together the two embark on the journey of adoption. Told through rhyming verse, the book describes the orphanage and the first experiences of these two in their different environments. Dot acts as protector and comforter for this bundle she's found. It ends with both Shaoey and Dot going on an airplane with their new family to their new home.

Steven Curtis Chapman has won four Grammy Awards, forty-seven Dove Awards and one American Music Award. He and his wife, Mary Beth, have six children, including three girls adopted from China.

The book is illustrated by Jim Chapman, Mary Beth's brother. (Her maiden name was Chapman.) He and his wife have also adopted from China. His illustrations consist of line drawings and soft watercolor. They are endearing and detailed.

What I Like: There are a ton of children's books about adoption, but very few with a Christian perspective. This is one of them. I love the tenderness of this story. My sister was adopted from Korea, so adoption is close to my heart. Furthermore, all believers are adopted by God, so it is something I feel Christians should understand and embrace. This book is a wonderful way to introduce the concept to children. I like that it is truthful without giving too many details. The circumstances leading up to adoption are not always pleasant. This book does a wonderful job keeping everything positive. Also, the book reads easily. My daughter has me read it over and over.

What I Dislike: The illustrations are too sketchy and pastel for my taste. The illustrator is obviously very talented, but the quality seems inconsistent to me. Some parts are extremely detailed and interesting, while other parts of the same illustration seem rushed or incomplete. Also, the ending of the book seemed abrupt. The authors spent a lot of time telling us about Shaoey and her home in China, but no time telling us about her new family or her new home in America. I would love to see the book expanded (or a sequel) to describe her adjustments to her new life.

Overall Rating: Good.

Tanya -- Christian Children's Book Review

Not as good as other china adoption books.......2007-04-07

My daughter really did not get this one. We have other books related to China adoption that capture her attention more and focus on family.
This book just does not connect for her her or us as a family.

Nice and very colorfull true story.......2007-01-04

It's nice for younger kids and has a good true story.

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