Pines of Mexico and Central America

Customer Reviews:

The best book on pines in many years........1998-02-24

Perry's work could well serve as a model for other authors writing about trees. He clearly has a vast knowledge, based both on scholarly research and on field experience, of the world's most complex national pine flora. For each species, he presents a detailed description, a detailed description of its habitat, an excellent range map, several photographs (always in black-and-white, unfortunately), remarks on its taxonomic status (essential in light of the uncertain evolutionary relationships among Mexican pines), and a description of where the species may best be seen and exactly how to get there. This last feature will be particularly appreciated by anyone who has had the ambiguous pleasure of wandering around an unfamiliar country trying to find an unusual plant! I also appreciated the fact that Perry is not slow to point out that many of these pines are rare and that they may be in danger of extinction due to logging and habitat destruction. The two chapters dealing with this problem are a worthwhile read for anyone concerned about the loss of forest habitats due to population and development stresses in the Third World.

Average customer rating:

CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry
J. K Donahue
Manufacturer: CAMCORE--North Carolina State University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Classification of Pinus patula, P. tecunumanii, P. oocarpa, P. caribaea var. hondurensis, and related taxonomic entities (SuDoc A 13.78:SE-285)

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Classification of Pinus patula, P. tecunumanii, P. oocarpa, P. caribaea var. hondurensis, and related taxonomic entities (SuDoc A 13.78:SE-285)
A. E. Squillace
Manufacturer: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southeastern Forest Experiment Station
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00010FFAO

The distribution, ecology, and gene conservation of Pinus ayacahuite and P. chiapensis in Mexico and Central America (CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry)

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The distribution, ecology, and gene conservation of Pinus ayacahuite and P. chiapensis in Mexico and Central America (CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry)
J. K Donahue
Manufacturer: North Carolina State University, College of Forest Resources
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Pine nursery establishment and operations in the American tropics (CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry)

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Pine nursery establishment and operations in the American tropics (CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry)
C. B Davey
Manufacturer: North Carolina State University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Pinus maximinoi seed collections in Mexico and Central America (CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry)

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Pinus maximinoi seed collections in Mexico and Central America (CAMCORE bulletin on tropical forestry)
W. S Dvorak
Manufacturer: North Carolina State University, School of Forest Resources
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Book Description

The Complete Diving Guides to scuba diving in the Eastern Caribbean, including descriptions of ALL dive sites, dive stores and operators. Island maps show the location of dive sites and stores. Dive sites are illustrated by underwater maps and photographs.

Volume 3 gives you everything you ever need to know about scuba diving on these fantastic Caribbean islands:Puerto Rico (including Mona, Desecheo, Vieques and Culebra), US Virgin Islands (St Thomas, St John and St Croix) and the British Virgin Islands (including Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Jost van Dyke, Salt Island and HMS Rhone, Cooper Island, Peter Island and Norman Island)

Customer Reviews:

Good but..........2007-09-27

The book is designed to offer a good list of places to scuba relying on the use of dive operators - it lists many. Its use for a couple who just wish to go alone (in a buddy system, of course) is limited, since the locations are not exactly defined. The book also offers a lot of advice as to many facets of diving in these areas. In general, it is an excellent book with the caveat of not giving exact coordinates nor reference points by which to find the specific spots.

Very good guide.......2007-03-19

This book is very thorough on the coverage that I was looking for. I recommend this book. Actually, I couldn't find any other books that covered Puerto Rico.

The Complete diving Guide, .......2006-01-30

This is one of the most thorough and up to date dive travel books I've ever read. We used a lot of the information on diving and related material on our recent trip to P.R. and found it very helpfull and accurate.

Exactly what it says on the cover........2001-11-01

Once again we have an excellent and very useful publication aimed at amateur and professional diver alike. This is a true guide which concentrates on providing all the relevant and peripheral information that any Scuba Diver will want to know in respect of any of the Caribbean destinations covered. The maps and diagrams are particularly useful - and very easy to follow.

We live in an age where diving instructors and dive guides "have" to know what they are doing and it is interesting to see those professionals are using this book and not any of the glossy alternatives. Sadly, we also live in an age where many diving publications fall short. Too much false information - and even total lack of information is hidden behind excellent underwater photographs as publisher after publisher seeks to beguile, confuse and even mislead the potential buyer. Not so with this book!

My direct experience has been to find this series of books contain exactly the information divers require before during and even after their trip. Very well written, it includes all the general information on diving, facilities, climate, sea, regulations, boats, cruise liners, resorts, hotels, flora, fauna, shipwrecks, photography and safety. It then moves on to cover each of the target Caribbean countries which are the main subject of the book before concluding with a Glossary, Bibliography and Accident and Emergency Information.

We can all find pretty pictures on the internet - without even having to pay to see them. Information, however, especially reliable information, is much harder to find. If you are contemplating a trip to any of the countries featured in this book, you will find all - and I do mean "ALL" the information you require right here. That might be at the expense of some pretty pictures - but hey, once you get there, you can take those yourself.

In summary, once again we have "A Complete Guide" - which is exactly what it says on the cover.

NM

A very comprehensive guide to the Virgin Islands.......2000-07-31

I have been meaning to review this book for some time as it is one of the most thumbed books on our book shelf. My wife and I run a charter yacht in the Virgin Islands and many of our guests are keen divers. We bought The Complete Diving Guide for our own use initially but it has since become part of the yacht's library as our guests find it so useful and enjoyable to read. (as our copy is getting rather worn I'm pleased to say that many of them buy their own copy after having seen ours). It is rare to find a book that is so comprehensive and which presents a vast amount of information in such a readable manner. In particular we find the island and dive site maps useful along with the descriptions of the dives and the underwater route maps. I can direct our guests at the tyupe of dive that I think they would enjoy and they can read about it beforehand. They can also choose the dive store they would like to use. I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone planning to do some diving in the Virgin Islands (it even covers the Spanish Virgin Islands).

Book Description

Here is the inside story of one of the most significant Supreme Court cases in U.S. history--and the legal history of the accused's right to counsel and silence. Stuart personally knows many of the figures involved in the Miranda case and here unravels its complex history, revealing how the defense attorneys created the argument brought before the Court and analyzing the competing societal interests involved. He considers the case's aftermath, updates the story to the Supreme Court's 2000 Dickerson decision upholding Miranda, and considers its implications for cases involving the rights of suspected terrorists.

Miranda Law: The Right To Remain Silent (Supreme Court Milestones)

Average customer rating:

Miranda Law: The Right To Remain Silent (Supreme Court Milestones)
Ron Fridell
Manufacturer: Benchmark Books (NY)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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

Law & Crime | Reference & Nonfiction | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 076141942X

Miranda V. Arizona: "You Have the Right to Remain Silent..." (Historic Supreme Court Cases)

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Miranda V. Arizona: "You Have the Right to Remain Silent..." (Historic Supreme Court Cases)
Paul B. Wice
Manufacturer: Franklin Watts
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: School & Library Binding

Law & Crime | Reference & Nonfiction | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Criminal Law | Law | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0531112500

Vanquishing the most damaged witness: What to do if your client confessed :an outline of Massachusetts caselaw on confessions, the Miranda Rule, and the right to remain silent

Average customer rating:

Ado About Much
Much Ado
The Manifesto of Structuralism
a mind provoking anthropology book

Vanquishing the most damaged witness: What to do if your client confessed :an outline of Massachusetts caselaw on confessions, the Miranda Rule, and the right to remain silent
Brownlow M Speer
Manufacturer: Committee for Public Counsel Services
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Criminal Procedure | Criminal Law | Law | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture
Structural Anthropology
Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics)
Tristes Tropiques
Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (A School of American Research Advanced Seminar)

ASIN: B0006DFMI6

Customer Reviews:

Ado About Much.......2003-10-24

Academic scholarship does not generally lend itself to masterpieces. One tends to balance detail and complexity against efficiency, to narrow one's audience while deepening argumentation. Thus the truly great books of a particular discipline are often incomprehensible outside it, while the wonderfully accessible books rarely do more than describe what others have done.

The Savage Mind is one of a small number of exceptions to this rule. In a book that requires no prior knowledge of anthropology, Lévi-Strauss succeeds in leveling a major challenge to his discipline and simultaneously to every reader. In elegant, graceful prose, he meticulously dissects his objects, formulates his arguments, and stretches the range of theoretical speculation to cover an extraordinary range of material from all over the world-including the modern.

In the nearly fifty years since this book first appeared, however, much has changed. Structuralism, for which The Savage Mind served as something of a manifesto, has collapsed beneath the weight of its own logical formation and the critical assaults of various respondents-not all of them well-informed. But even that most scathing critic of structuralism, Jacques Derrida, has noted repeatedly that we can never really go back: structuralism is part of our thinking now, and the only way out is through. To put it simply, if you never read this book, you will never gain the right to criticize structuralism as a method for studying culture.

Another thing that has changed is basic education. Lévi-Strauss takes it for granted that we all know quite a bit about European literature, music, and art; that we know who the painter Clouet was, and the difference between Mannerism and Impressionism. He doesn't assume expertise, but a kind of general cultural education no longer usual. This can make some of his analyses opaque, where they are intended to be illustrative. Just as you can skim these arguments, which are often problematic anyway, you don't actually need to know much about totemic practices to understand; he summarizes what's important, and so long as you don't intend to challenge through data, you need no background.

Lévi-Strauss's arguments proceed methodically and exceedingly rapidly. Their weight lies in their logic, not their particulars; that is, it really doesn't matter whether his interpretation of any one myth or ritual is correct, but rather whether the means of going about it makes rigorous sense. He is not expert on everything, and he often inserts such phrases as, "Without presuming to decide this issue...." This is not mere qualification: he distinguishes between illustration of method and rigorous analysis of particular material. If you want him to analyze material, go read The Raw and the Cooked; if you want to know how he does it, read The Savage Mind.

To put this differently, to pick on trivia here is to miss the point. Perhaps you do name your pets differently than he does. Perhaps the Murngin creation-myth has a step he forgets to mention. Perhaps the interpretation of Clouet doesn't really quite make sense if you know much about Clouet. So what? These are illustrations, not proofs. The same happens with the famous essay "The Structural Study of Myth": Lévi-Strauss proposes a reading of Oedipus which, though wildly suggestive and interesting, really doesn't make a lot of sense for Oedipus, and leads to a stunningly silly conclusion. No matter: the point is to demonstrate how the method works. Again, if you want to see him analyze something, you don't read his pure theory books; you read The Raw and the Cooked, or Totemism, or (especially) The Elementary Structures of Kinship. So long as you can work out how the method functions, Lévi-Strauss thinks you should go test it yourself, on material you know. Then, if it doesn't work, you can come back and criticize.

As we read The Savage Mind, we are constantly forced to slow down. Lévi-Strauss has a tendency to condense an enormous argument into a paragraph, then move on; unlike his best American and English counterparts, who make their analyses as explicit as possible, Lévi-Strauss takes the classically French approach of hitting the highlights in the topic and concluding sentences of a paragraph, then putting all the illustrative detail of logic and material into the middle. This is a matter of style, a choice and not a vice. So if you really want to understand the book, you actually have to work through his examples very slowly and carefully. Otherwise one has a tendency to lose the thread and simply become bewildered.

Unfortunately, this translation is, as Clifford Geertz and everyone else has noticed, execrable. Some sentences are not even acceptable English grammar, to say nothing of their failures to render Lévi-Strauss's beautiful, dense French. Mercifully, the various translators involved all recognized their failures and refused to sign their names. Some day, a really good translation will come along, I suppose, but in the meantime at least this one is hyper-literalist-far better than simply wandering off course. If you read French perfectly, read La pensée sauvage; it's genius!

The Savage Mind is an endlessly fascinating, stimulating, brilliant book, a true masterpiece of the human sciences. It happens that Lévi-Strauss is quite often wrong, but the fact remains that this is a landmark of scholarship and a book everyone seriously interested in culture needs to read. Durkheim, Weber, Freud, and Marx are all wrong too. So are Eliade, Geertz, and Turner, for that matter. Does this mean we shouldn't read them? To think we can simply jump to the most recent people and skip what came before is to submit to ignorance and laziness. Lévi-Strauss is perhaps the last of the great French intellectuals, and his work will stand for a long time as a challenge and a landmark; you must take up his challenge, read him, and thoroughly master his thought. Only then can you move on.

Read now, and see a (slightly misguided) genius at work.

Much Ado.......2003-10-20

Claude Levi - Strauss' The Savage Mind (1962) is a densely - composed book that winds a circuitous path through several important thematic areas of the anthropological minefield. As multiple passages attest, Levi - Strauss was capable of writing and thinking clearly. Quoted passages - many of admirable simplicity - reveal that Levi - Strauss also appreciated straightforward writing, thinking, and scholarship in others.

Nonetheless, much of the book's content is bogged down in miasmic discussions concerning simplistic points of fact or interpretation that are obvious in many cases ("the principle underlying a classification can never be postulated in advance," or the unsurprising fact that Indian tribes from opposite regions of North America regarded the crow in entirely different lights), thus further obscuring his already ambiguous theses. Levi - Strauss conjures up extended metaphors which he manipulates haphazardly (the most prominent being the comparison of the myth - making process to the 'bricoleur'), and makes outright, seemingly willful mistakes of logic, such as the passage in which he refers to an eagle hunter cleverly hidden within a self - devised trap as "both the hunter and the hunted" merely because the man has situated himself on the inside of the trapping mechanism: within the trap he may be, but hunted by the eagle, or by anything else, he is not. That the hunter remains in firm control over the successful capture of the eagle is a fact Levi - Strauss slyly chooses to look away from.

Elsewhere, Levi - Strauss makes laughably incorrect suppositions when attempting to correct the broad generalizations of others, stating, for instance, after tacitly acknowledging the existence of such dietary cravings, that "there is no evidence that pregnant women the world over have cravings." Moving from literal to figurative meaning and jumping from objective fact to subjective interpretation without restraint ("Nature is not in itself contradictory. It can become so only in terms of some specific human activity which takes part in it; and the characteristics of the environment take on a different meaning according to the particular historical and technical form assumed in it by this or that type of activity"), the author's sentences intertwine recklessly together until the reader can reasonably conclude that entire passages are dazzlingly free of definite, cohesive content of any kind. Though he has literally hundreds of objective facts at his fingertips, Levi - Strauss' confidence in his ability to build them into a sustained, persuasive presentation seems illusory at best.

Readers who have thus far found the book almost impossible to absorb will find their judgment richly rewarded when Levi - Strauss discusses the role of domesticated animals in Western civilization - a subject most readers have had some degree of everyday familiarity with - in Chapter Seven, "The Individual As A Species." Beginning with the absurd statement that "birds are given human christian [sic] names in accordance with the species to which they belong more easily than any other zoological classes, because they can be permitted to resemble men for the very reason that they are so different," and continuing "consequently everything objective conspires to make us think of the bird world as a metaphorical human society: is it not after all literally parallel to it on another level?", the author's discussion of what he believes constitutes the underlying processes in naming dogs, cows, and horses in the West is so transparently ludicrous that it exposes everything that has come before as the intellectual hokum that it is.

The main supporting audience for The Savage Mind has been masochistic American academics who bow reflexively to European theorists, particularly French theorists, as if on command, building author cults small and large in the process, and thus entering suicidally into intellectual perdition. For such academics, the more obtuse a work, the better; most esteemed is a book completely beyond comprehension. The Savage Mind, a work of anti - knowledge, warrants that level of criticism: it completely fails to succinctly outline its ideas, or prove, finally, that its incommunicable "theories" have any appreciable merit whatsoever.

The Manifesto of Structuralism.......2002-01-02

hmmmm..... I can't see why this book has got such humble and unskilled review till now. This book is the easiest material to understand the tenet of structuralism. Personally I don't like the disposition of structuralism at all and I suspect whether in 50 years, anybody remember that kind of school existed at all except writers of history of philosophy.
Anyway, this book made structuralism floating on the vogue with its ease to understand and constructed the intellectual fashion of structuralsim which dominated the whether of discourse in human science in the 1960s and 1970s. Yep. now nobody read Levi-Strauss, even anthropolgists don't read his books. But if you want to understand structuralism, post-structuralsim and postmodernism, you'd better begin with this book for it's the easiest and fun to read.

a mind provoking anthropology book.......2000-04-05

This is the first anthropology book I read. It may be considered difficult to read this book. A scholarly and heavy description however very rewarding in my opinion. Spanning a real wide scope.

Low Risk, High Reward: Starting and Growing A Business with Minimal Risk
Average customer rating:

Must read, and better buy hardcover

Pass on this one

3 stars

Not bad

Pass. There are better books

Low Risk, High Reward: Starting and Growing A Business with Minimal Risk
Bob Reiss , and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Entrepreneurship | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0684849623

Amazon.com

Contrary to popular belief, successful entrepreneurs do not crave risk. In fact, they strive to minimize it. Bob Reiss, founder of several companies and the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, has written Low Risk, High Reward to share the many ideas he's developed over the past four decades for succeeding through prudent action. In straightforward language, he addresses practical methods for spotting, managing and reducing risks in virtually every facet of business, from developing initial concepts and financing their production to securing orders and preparing for the future. Some suggestions are somewhat obvious--such as using commissioned versus salaried employees, contracting for manufacturing facilities rather than building your own, and thoroughly testing ideas before implementing them. The vast majority, though, deal with risk reduction in more novel ways. Among those he details with specific suggestions: working with suppliers to stretch payments and free up cash; managing products from the start with an eye toward their natural (and limited) life span; focusing on packaging as a means of grabbing initial orders and securing crucial reorders; and vigorously protecting ideas by preventing knockoffs and responding forcefully if they do appear. Current business owners, along with those who hope to join them, will find his advice helpful. --Howard Rothman

Book Description

Contrary to popular belief, most entrepreneurs don't like risk. While they are not afraid to take chances, the most successful entrepreneurs do what they can to anticipate, minimize, and offset risk at every opportunity, insists Bob Reiss, who in his own flourishing entrepreneurial career has managed to turn risk reduction into a science. Now this successful self-starter, whose exploits have been featured in The Wall Street Journal and have become case studies for Harvard Business School classes, shares the lessons of a lifetime.

By following his own prescription for managing risk, and using real-life success stories from experienced entrepreneurs, Reiss covers every obstacle the entrepreneur is likely to encounter. Where do ideas come from and how do you get started? Where can you find money and expert advice? How do you hire the best people and build credibility? How do you get orders and reorders? How do you develop and introduce successful products? Should you go public? Through every step in the process, Reiss emphasizes how risk can be anticipated, managed, and significantly reduced.

Full of practical suggestions and insights, this easy-to-read book is an indispensable guide for anyone thinking about starting a business and particularly for those would-be entrepreneurs without experience or much capital. It is equally valuable to entrepreneurs looking for ways to make their businesses more successful.

Download Description

Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs don't like risk. While they are not afraid to take chances, they do what they can to anticipate, minimize, and offset risk at every opportunity, insists Robert Reiss, who in his own flourishing entrepreneurial career has managed to turn risk reduction into a science. Now this successful self-starter, whose exploits have been featured in The Wall Street Journal and have become case studies for Harvard Business School classes, shares the lessons of a lifetime.

Never straying far from his central thesis that risk can almost always be managed and significantly reduced, Reiss covers every obstacle the entrepreneur is likely to encounter. Where do ideas come from? How do you get started? Where can you find money? How do you build credibility? With myriad practical suggestions, this book will be the one indispensable guide for anyone starting a business.

Low Risk, High Reward is proof positive that with a little imagination and a healthy dose of confidence, opportunism, and flexibility almost anyone can start and grow a business into a "low risk with high return" venture.

Customer Reviews:

Must read, and better buy hardcover.......2007-06-19

Very best reference for starting self business

Pass on this one.......2004-04-13

Not that great which is why it is not selling.

3 stars.......2004-04-13

I'm giving this 3 stars because it does provide some good information albeit basic. Didn't find a whole lot of WOWSA information, but it did remind me of things that I forgot and for that it deserves 3 stars.

Not bad.......2004-04-13

The book does offer some insights that you will not find anywhere else. Worth a read even if you just borrow it form the library.

Pass. There are better books.......2004-04-13

I wouldn't waste my money on this and I didn't.

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