In Pursuit of Plants: Experiences of Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Plant Collectors

Book Description

These accounts are a mix of adventure, images from a lost world, and stories of the practical problems of plant collecting.

Customer Reviews:

A tad too methodical.......2007-08-07

Enticing jacket blurb: "In Surinam, plant hunter F.W. Hostmann allowed vampire bats to suck his toes; Thomas Drummond was attached by a bear in the North American woods; George Forrest narrowly escaped rampaging lamas in Western China; and, in Fiji, Berthold Seemann recorded which plants cannibals used as an accompaniment to human flesh."

Well, if that doesn't pull you in, what will? I must say, though, the book doesn't entirely live up to its promise. Arranged by continent, it features dozens of naturalists, all in basically the same format. First, there's a brief bio, and then a passage or two from their writings. Yes, there is plenty of excitement, but the format is a little deadening, with one naturalist followed by another, and another, and...

In short, this is a book best dipped into for brief excursions, and not read straight through. Perfect for a bedside table.

Sleep tight. Don't let the bats bite.

IN PURSUIT OF PLANTS. Experiences of nineteenth & early twentieth century plant collectors.

Average customer rating:

IN PURSUIT OF PLANTS. Experiences of nineteenth & early twentieth century plant collectors.
Philip: Short
Manufacturer: Pan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000W2Q14U

Book Description

Beyond the magnificent Renaissance cities is a rolling landscape crying out for exploration, whether it's bustling markets and medieval hill towns, drowsy piazzas and ancient vineyards, or frenetic festivals and thermal springs. With detailed regional coverage, this definitive guide to Tuscany and Umbria is the key to your perfect getaway.

TREASURE HUNT - tracking down fine art or hunting great espresso, our in-depth descriptions ensure you find the region's hidden gems

ESCAPE - leave the crowds behind with detours to local haunts and insider tips for getting off the beaten track

WINE & DINE - from family-run trattorie to truffle festivals, seek out the regions' outstanding cuisine with over 250 refined restaurant reviews

KNOW YOUR WAY - inspirational itineraries and comprehensive maps help you plan ahead and get the most from your holiday

Customer Reviews:

Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria, 4th Edition, 2006.......2007-03-02

My partner and I used this guide for our trip to Tuscany (Toscana) in June 2006, and we found it very serviceable. The places we visited were Siena, Florence (Firenze), Assisi, Perugia, Orvieto, and Volterra, among others.

Lonely Planet's guide gave us all the options available for getting to and from each city and town in the region. Whether by train, car, bicycle, or foot, it provides enough information to help you get there and back without too much trouble. This is in contrast to the Let's Go guidebooks which provide more information about staying in the towns themselves than about how to get there. This guide helped us with taking the train from Rome (Roma), and renting a car in Siena and making daytrips to Assisi, Perugia, and Orvieto.

The information on hotels is sufficient but I'd recommend doing a little research online about places to stay BEFORE you leave. LP guides give you a sampling of hotels and inns and a little blurb about each, but don't expect too much information on them. The quoted price ranges can be a little off, but LP assumes one is travelling during the peak season (July-August).

The information on restaurants is okay, and LP provides a decent listing of places to eat in whatever town you may be. It was either hit or miss for us. A few of the places LP recommended turned out to be duds but a few were spot on. One of the hits was a little taverna in Assisi that served linguini with black truffle sauce--yum!

As far as sites and attractions go, don't expect a wealth of information. LP gives a brief history/description for all the major sites but a lot of minor ones are either only touched upon or passed over altogether. One would be better off using the Michelin Green Guides for more detailed information about specific sites and attractions, as those provide a plethora of names, dates, and events that make them more akin to history books than travel guides.

The maps in the book are really good; they are accurate and easy to read. For all the major cities and towns covered in the guide, LP plots out the locations of all the hotels, restaurants, and attractions they mention. In this regard they are exactly like Let's Go (and all other guides, I imagine).

In my opinion this Lonely Planet guide is not the definitive book on Tuscany, but when used with other guides it can be an invaluable resource for your trip to this wonderful region of Italy. Pack it with you when you go--and don't forget the sunscreen!

Lonely Planet Tuscany (Lonely Planet Tuscany and Umbria)

Average customer rating:

Major disappointment - even Lonely Planet can do better!
Not up to Lonely Planet Standards

Lonely Planet Tuscany (Lonely Planet Tuscany and Umbria)
Neal Bedford , Damien Simonis , and Imogen Franks
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

San Marino & Umbria | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Lonely Planet | Guidebook Series | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1864503572

Book Description

Glowing frescoes, patchwork blue-green landscapes, multihued Gothic cathedrals and cypress-dotted vineyards - from Florence's Renaissance riches to medieval hilltop villages, this guide will help you get the most out of Italy's most beguiling region.

46 detailed maps, including full-colour regional map
mouthwatering special section on the region's food and wine
comprehensive coverage of Tuscan art and architecture
in-depth walking section
the finest accommodation options, from convents to castelli
practical Italian language chapter with Tuscan pronunciation guide

Customer Reviews:

Major disappointment - even Lonely Planet can do better!.......2003-06-10

Previous edition (2000) was very poor, and now this one is no improvement at all.

Lonely Planet has a long tradition for producing brilliant guides to less-explored destinations - and messing things up in a major way when they are dealing with places like Tuscany, or Venice, or New York.

This time, the problem is not the trademark self-righteous attitude or a preachy tone. It's just the general feeling of the guide having been done on the cheap. It's difficult to justify this - the book costs the same as every other guide on the market, thank you very much.

The other reviewer noted chaos and lack of focus - it is difficult to disagree. The guide boasts of "strict hierarchical structure" of its headlines - well, if you say so. It is very difficult to find anything, there are no visual "hooks" for easy navigation, and the only help in orientation can be offered by meaningless, heart-stoppingly ugly and amateurish drawings, placed here and there (they are worse than even chapter icons in Rough Guides that remind you of artwork adorning leaflets from a social security office or a community clinic).

And the photos - yes, I understand that they are not the main selling point of this guide, but just how CHEAP you have to be to find something like that (especially when they seen perfectly capable of finding excellent pictures for their covers)? What are these - your aunt's holiday snaps made with a disposable camera?

Maps are poor and confusing. How difficult it is to include a clear map - in color? How expensive would this make the guide?
Information on tickets is so out-of-date and irrelevant that it beggars belief. People in Europe and America are finding cheap tickets on the Internet in ten minutes, low-cost airlines are all over the place, but somebody needs to tell Lonely Planet. The guide is like a senile grandfather who cannot stop talking garbage about his younger days: apex fares... super apex... courier fligts... Why waste paper on this?

The same out-of-date irrelevance is true about Money section. Maybe Lonely Planet is on commission, but who uses travellers checks these days? (Probably same people who go to airline office ask for "apex fare ticket"). This is supposed to be a guide for shoestring travellers - yes, they will really appreciate the worst exchange rate imaginable and a commission of up to 10%. No wonder some people complain Europe is expensive - after guidance like that and leaving half of your money to banks and excange offices, there will not be much in your pocket to pay for lodging and meals.

But the main reason why you should not bother to buy this book is its poor, uninspired and dull writing. No attraction, no treasure of art, no historic building is spared this indifferent and lazy treatment: it feels as if they didn't want to write about all these churches but they had to. This is strange: this guide often poses as a staunch critic of mass tourism and commercial crowds. Here, Lonely Planet adopts exactly the approach of box-ticking thoughtless crowd: "Been there, done that."

To sum up - if you are planning to buy this, please think again. There are better guides for listings and practicalities (Rough Guide), there are better guides for signtseeing or culture (Blue Guide or Cadogan), and there are better all-rounders (DK Eyewitness). Even if Lonely Planet until now has been your favorite guide and you are a loyal follower, please think again. You will do yourself a favor.

Not up to Lonely Planet Standards.......2001-03-02

I am reading this guide in preparation for an upcoming trip to Florence. I have found this guide confusing and badly organized. I still don't have a feel for the major sights in each area. I'm going to have to buy a few other guides. I usually have good luck with Lonely Planet guides - this one just isn't up to snuff.

Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria (Lonely Planet Tuscany and Umbria)

Average customer rating:

Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria (Lonely Planet Tuscany and Umbria)
Nicola Williams
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

San Marino & Umbria | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Lonely Planet | Guidebook Series | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1741043131

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Treasures of the World: Literature and Source Readings for World History

Average customer rating:

Treasures of the World: Literature and Source Readings for World History
Donna Maier , and Heidi Roupp
Manufacturer: Pearson Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | History & Historical Fiction | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Teen Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0673350932

Average customer rating:

Treasures of the World - Literature and Source Readings for World History

Manufacturer: Scott Foresman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0673351017

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books