Gardening in Small Spaces: Creative Ideas from America's Best Gardeners (Fine Gardening Design Guides)

Gardening in Small Spaces: Creative Ideas from America's Best Gardeners (Fine Gardening Design Guides)
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Gardening in Small Spaces

Disappointing

Great Ideas

Great little compendium of approaches to small space

Gardening in Small Spaces: Creative Ideas from America's Best Gardeners (Fine Gardening Design Guides)

Manufacturer: Taunton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Gardening in Containers: Creative Ideas from America's Best Gardeners

ASIN: 1561585807
Release Date: 2002-12-01

Book Description

The eighth title in the Fine Gardening Design series illustrates innumerable techniques to make a little garden space go a long way. It shows how to create a garden that feels much larger than it is, and demonstrates how small gardens can create privacy. A look at sample gardens reveals some of the tips and tricks of gardening in small spaces, such as using diagonal lines and breaking areas into individual sections. Sound advice on pruning and selecting appropriate plants helps readers transform a small lot into a place of beauty and comfort. Featuring designs from some of America's best-known landscape artists with over 100 color photos and illustrations, Gardening in Small Spaces is a great guide to creating a garden paradise with limited space.

Customer Reviews:

Gardening in Small Spaces.......2006-08-31

This book goes beyond eye candy for the gardener. There are plans, and good ideas, like combining different paving materials. I would have liked a little more on front yards and entry areas.

Disappointing.......2006-04-19

This book was long on promises...short on delivery!

I was very dissapointed...I have many Taunton books...similar in nature & was very impressed by some of their other gardening books.

What bothered me most about this book was 'most'..not all...but most of the designers seemed wrapped up in their own fascination with their own victories accomplished in their own yards.

It would seem to me that it would be obvious if a designer is approached to write a contribution for this kind of book...in this particular format...that it would be absolutely essential to convey principles, ideas & workable solutions that anybody could utilize in their 'small space'.

I expected the chosen designers to be much more attuned to the reader rather than coming across so enthralled with the great jobs they'd done in their own yards...& the plants they used etc. There was far too much information involving useless details...such as..."we built the fence ourselvles" type thing.

Much more constructive information was sorely missing from this book. As the reader I quickly tired of reading the same comment over & over from each contributor..."divide your small space up into various rooms". There was such an opportunity here for each of these obviously talented designers to really display their wares...

The same advice about dividing small garden spaces into rooms...was repeated often...with little additonal detail of color, style or scale.

As a designer myself...I found this book to be much more bones...than meat. Don't recommend it!

Great Ideas.......2005-03-06

This book is a collaborative effort which allows room for different tastes. Lots of help and ideas to create an intimate courtyard garden. There are plenty of photos to get your imagination going.
I like that most of the gardens can be adapted to my sub-tropic zone, nothing is cut in stone, except the pathways.

Great little compendium of approaches to small space.......2003-03-16

The terrific thing about this book is that in less than 150 pages it exposes readers to no less than 18 different approaches to creating a garden in small space. The editors never set forth a precise metric of "small space", but these seem to range from the smaller suburban lots to the truly postage stamp sizes many of us grapple with.

Since this is a Taunton publication, there are large color photos and lots of them. There are also plenty of drawings to help readers make sense of elements in various gardens.

Most of the gardeners work in temperate zones and so there is some limit to the planting ideas for a zone 5 plugger like me. Even so, the design ideas and, especially, the hardscaping open up interesting possibilities, albeit ones to explore with different materials.

The sections on design strategies and creating privacy provide a great framework before looking at the "compelling garden spaces" being made on tiny, unpromising lots. Here's a book of information as well as inspiration. I recommend it highly.

Journey To Machu Picchu: Spiritual Wisdom from the Andes
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Book about the Quecha people

A touching spiritual guide

gently informative

A Journey Outward and Inward -- One Not to be Missed

Journey To Machu Picchu: Spiritual Wisdom from the Andes
Carol Cumes , and Romulo Lizarraga Valencia
Manufacturer: Llewellyn Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Pachamama's Children: Mother Earth & Her Children of the Andes in Peru (Llewellyn's World Religion & Magic Series) Pachamama's Children: Mother Earth & Her Children of the Andes in Peru (Llewellyn's World Religion & Magic Series)

ASIN: 1567181864

Customer Reviews:

Book about the Quecha people.......2006-04-10

This is a pretty good book on the Quecha culture of Peru. However, there is not much in the book about Machu Picchu. So the title is a bit misleading. If you are looking for information about the historical and spiritual culture of Peru, this book, along with Return of the Children of Light, and Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical world of the Q'ero of Peru, are your best bets. If you are looking for detailed information on Machu Picchu you should look at The Machu Picchu Guidebook: A Self-Guided Tour.

A touching spiritual guide.......2000-04-09

Journey to Machu Picchu is not a travel guide, but a glimpse at the magic and spirituality of the Peruvian Andes. A mixture of folk lore, the authors' personal experience, stories from living Quechuans (the direct blood line of the Inca), this book isn't for everyone. But, if you're interested in the spritual aspect of Machu Picchu or the Andes, then this is required reading.

gently informative.......1999-10-06

Carol and Romulo have writen a beautiful description about an wounderful location. Filling the reader with an understanding of why Machu Picchu intrigues so many people, encouraging a deeper love for the region.

A Journey Outward and Inward -- One Not to be Missed.......1998-11-28

Whether you travel to Peru in person or in spirit, this book will guide you. The authors share their vast knowledge of all things Andean, going far beyond Machu Picchu and other sites of Peru in much greater depth than the usual tour books. This book is very readable, very approachable, and the reader comes to know how deeply the authors love Pachamama (Mother Earth) and the people of the Andes. The book is enhanced by outstanding stories of the people and by splendid photography (color as well as black and white).

Bottom line: I love this book.

The book has the information of an encyclopedia without the dryness and some might say without the organization. It is like a syncopated fountain, flowing with details, dotted with definitions and poetic words of the people. Information is often repeated in different contexts so that at the end the reader has really learned something. That something is likely to be very personal to each reader. It may include a knowledge of Andean cosmology and a familiarity with the three worlds of Hanakpacha (upper world, represented by the condor), Kaypacha (present world, represented by the puma), and Ukhupacha (lower or inner world, represented by the snake). Along the journey, the reader will come to know and feel the protection of the apukuna (deities of the mountains) and to appreciate the connection we all have to Pachamama and to each other. The reader can also delve into sacred sites, healing ceremonies, daily life, the rich language, dream material, medicinal healing techniques, and so many other subjects.

Like an incredible tapestry, the book weaves together the personal stories of the authors, plus the tales and traditions of many others. One of the most moving "stories" in the book is related by Aurelio Aguirre, telling of his experience as a guide for an Italian group, whose members may have literally saved his life. The tale keenly illustrates the interconnectedness of spiritual seekers--the learning and teaching and healing that ties us together, whether Andean or not, whether traveling in person or through books, in fact whether "seeking" or not.

This reviewer is no expert on Peru, but I recently returned from my first trip there, during which time this book was published. I know that when (not if) I return to the Andes, this book will accompany me. While in Peru, I had the good fortune to meet Carol Cumes and some of the people whose stories fill this book. They are real, as authentic as can be.

Book Description

Roger E. Bilstein's Flight in America has won acclaim as the foremost history of one of the twentieth century's landmark achievements--human flight. In this revised and expanded third edition, Bilstein chronicles changes in military, commercial, and space aviation in the 1990s. He offers a glimpse of the developments one might expect in the new millennium.

Richly illustrated and splendidly written, Flight in America charts the manifold ways in which the airplane has touched virtually every feature of American enterprise, history, and culture--leisure and business travel, commercial transportation, national defense, and imaginative literature. More than 125 lively photographs document the beauty of flying machines and the daring of the men and women who invented, built, and flew them.Praise for previous editions:"The most comprehensive survey of the history of American aeronautics and space flight yet published."--Technology and Culture

"Bilstein casts wide and far to net virtually everything from technological trends and research and development to the effect of air travel on the expansion of major league baseball in the 1950s and early 1960s... A superior work that will satisfy aero buffs and professionals alike."--Journal of American History

"By far the best book on man and air travel yet written."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"For those who won't soon be able to visit the National Air and Space Museum, perhaps the next best thing would be to read Flight in America."--Chronicle of Higher Education

Customer Reviews:

great book, poorly constructed.......2007-09-10

this is a great book for any aviation enthusiasts and history buffs alike. The book starts off with the ornithopter and ends in space travel/missels, with complete detail. the author does a great job of explaining political, military and economic impacts on the aviation industry. The only bad part is im on the 3rd chapter and the book is practically falling apart and i bought it new.

Missing pages.......2007-05-14

The book itself is great but I was missing pages from 52 to 87. I am not sure if the book is printed that way or of my book was the exception. Just make sure when you first get the book to check for missing pages.

General History of Flight.......2005-07-31

A very readable, quick and general history of flight in the United States. Bilstein is a noted historian and provides a narrative history of aviation that while comprehensive is a little disjointed in parts.

The Making of a New Aerospace History, and it's Most Welcome.......2004-06-22

No one writes better syntheses of major topics in the history of air and space than Roger E. Bilstein, now retired from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. "Flight in America" is one of those exceptionally powerful syntheses that lays out a broad master narrative of the subject. Originally published in 1984, this work has now been through three editions, each refining and expanding the work to incorporate new understandings and broader perspectives. Indeed, "Flight in America" is THE place to start in any serious investigation of the development of air and space in the United States. Along with two other broad interpretive works-"Enterprise of Flight: The American Aviation and Aerospace Industry" (Smithsonian, 2001) and "Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA" (Johns Hopkins, 2003)-"Flight in America" offers a comprehensive narrative of the subject.

In this volume Bilstein progresses chronologically from the time of the Wright brothers, barnstorming, and early military aviation to the rise of aviation as a business, the advent of airlines, and the technological progress of the airplane. He then spend considerable effort discussing the role of the airplane in World War II before moving into post-war developments with jet airliners, global military reach made possible with aircraft, and the beginning and development of the space age. In every sense, he offers a satisfying survey of aerospace issues that is useful both to students and scholars alike.

At a fundamental level, "Flight in America" represents an attempt to help coalesce a "New Aerospace History." Like the "New Western History" or the "New Social History" that has been so important in the last twenty years, this approach represents a significant transformation that has largely been, although not exclusively, taking place in the field. Specifically, the "New Aerospace History" is committed to relating the subject to the larger issues of society, politics, and culture, taking a more sophisticated view of the technology than historians previously held. In the past, many writers on aerospace history held a fascination with the machinery, which has been largely anthropomorphized and often seen as "magical."

The "New Aerospace History" embodied in this work moves beyond a fetish for the artifact to emphasize the broader role of the air- and spacecraft, and more importantly the whole technological system including not just the vehicle but also the other components that make up the aerospace climate, as an integral part of the human experience. This is not to be understood as lacking an interest in the artifact, or being artifactless. Rather it is an affirmation that one moves through reason and study to a larger understanding. It suggests that many unanswered questions are present in helping the development of modern flight, and that inquisitive individuals seek to know that which they do not understand. This assumption arises within historians and is based on their understanding of humans, for technological systems are constructions of the human mind or minds.

This work emphasizes, therefore, research in aerospace topics that are no longer limited to the vehicle-centered, internalist, style of history that had gone before. "Flight in America" offers all of us an opportunity to immerse ourselves in this truly challenging new approach to the field. Highly recommended.

WHAT A WONDERFUL BOOK!.......2000-07-30

This is one of those books that you look for, but seldom find. It is written so that it is easily read, easily understood, and easily absorbed. It is well researched, full of interesting facts and personal stories, and never lets up the pace of delivering an interesting, informative and educational narrative. I found it so much fun to read and understand, that I finished the entire book in three days, then read it again to reap what I might have missed the first time through. The author did an outstanding job of compiling and presenting complicated facts, dry figures, and personal stories into one very interesting and fun narrative. I recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to know every step of the race to flight history in the United states from the Wright brothers, to space exploration. The author managed to include almost every detail in this history of flight that you could ever want to know and still keep the story line from becoming boring, or slowing down once throughout the entire book. This wonderful work would be worth twice the asking price. I am glad that I found it, and am really glad that I now own it as part of my historical collection.

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Fascinating stories and unique viewpoints of the Apollo program

Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes
Billy Watkins
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0275987027

Book Description

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued a challenge: the United States would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. It seemed like an impossible task and one that the Russians--who had launched the first satellite and put the first man into Earth orbit--would surely perform before us. The ingenuity, passion, and sacrifice of thousands of ordinary men and women, from all walks of life, enabled the space program to meet this extraordinary goal. In all, six crews would land on the moon before Congress withdrew financial backing for the program. This is the story of those men and women who worked behind the scenes, without fanfare or recognition, to make these missions a success. Thirty years later, they still speak of Apollo with pride, sometimes even awe. After Apollo moonwalker John Young told journalist Billy Watkins in a 1999 interview that "nobody knows anything about the people who helped make those flights so successful," Watkins made it his mission to identify the unsung heroes and learn their stories. His subjects include: BLJulian Scheer (NASA publicist): Argued for and won the inclusion of a television camera on Apollo 11, enabling Armstrong's walk on the moon to be broadcast and recorded for posterity. BLSonny Morea, lead designer of the Lunar Rover. BLHugh Brown, one of the few African Americans who worked on the Apollo program, helped monitor for Russian submarines trying to jam NASA communication during launches, and later went on to become head of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. BLJoAnn Morgan, launch control: One of the few women involved in the space program, Morgan was designated the "lightning specialist." Her knowledge was crucial when the Apollo 12 spacecraft was struck by lightning only seconds after liftoff, nearly causing an abort. She was one of the few specialists allowed in the "firing room" during liftoff. BLJoan Roosa, widow of Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa, talks about the sacrifices of the families and their devotion to "The Program." BLJoe Schmitt, veteran suit technician was responsible for making sure the suits were leak-proof and hooked up correctly--knowing any mistake would mean instant death in space. BLJoseph Laitin, who came up with the idea for the Apollo 8 astronauts to read the first ten verses of Genesis during their Christmas Eve television broadcast from the moon. BLClancy Hatelberg, the Navy diver, who plucked the first humans to walk on the moon from the Pacific Ocean after the Apollo 11 landing.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating stories and unique viewpoints of the Apollo program.......2006-02-05

In Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes, author Billy Watkins delivers 14 fascinating stories of little known people from the Apollo program. For those of us who read a lot about Apollo, this book adds some well-needed alternative views of the program. I've read most of the astronaut biographies and many of the histories of Apollo-after a while I'm looking for some nook or cranny of information that I did not know already.

The chapters in Apollo Moon Missions are similar to the wonderful 12 page riff in Stages to Saturn about the Super Guppy aircraft that was used to transport the Saturn S-IVB stage. In Stages to Saturn, this story is told partly by profiling flamboyant entrepreneur John M. Conroy and his company Aero Spacelines that built the Super Guppy. I like this kind of story because it personalizes the Apollo program. The accounts in Apollo Moon Missions of people like Sonny Morea, the lead designer of the Lunar Rover, Julian Scheer, the NASA publicist who got TV cameras onto Apollo 11, and Joe Schmitt, suit technician, who was often the last person the astronauts saw before the hatch was closed on the launch pad are fun and unusual.

Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman

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The Highs, Lows, and In-Betweens of Alan B. Shepard
Certainly changed my mind about Al Shepard!
Al Deserved Better Than This Shoddy Book
As close as one can get to the "real" Alan Shepard
Enjoyable, but the essence of the man is missing....

Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman
Neal Thompson
Manufacturer: Crown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey Of A Mercury Astronaut

ASIN: 0609610015
Release Date: 2004-03-23

Book Description

lan Shepard was the brashest, cockiest, and most flamboyant of America’s original Mercury Seven, but he was also regarded as the best. Intense, colorful, and dramatic—the man who hit a golf ball on the moon—he was among the most private of America’s public figures and, until his death in 1998, he guarded the story of his life zealously.

Light This Candle, based on Neal Thompson’s exclusive access to private papers and interviews with Shepard’s family and closest friends—including John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper—offers a riveting, action-packed account of Shepard’s life. Among the first men to fly off aircraft carriers, he was one of the most fearless test pilots. He endured long separations from his devoted wife and three daughters to fly dangerous missions, working his way up the ranks despite clashes with authority over his brazen flying maneuvers and penchant for risky pranks. Hugely competitive, he beat out John Glenn for the first Mercury spaceflight and then overcame a rare illness to return to space again on Apollo 14.

He took every challenge head-on and seemed to win every time.

Long overdue, Light This Candle is a candid and inspiring account of a bold American life.

Customer Reviews:

The Highs, Lows, and In-Betweens of Alan B. Shepard.......2006-12-31

Surprise of surprises. Amid the clutter of hastily-written self-serving memoirs from the early days of the space program, finally there appears something akin to solid history and literary proficiency. Neal Thompson was a Baltimore reporter when Alan Shepard died in 1998 of leukemia. Assigned to write an obituary, Thompson discovered that no first rate biography of the United State's first spaceman was then in print. Sensing an opportunity, Thompson, a free lance writer, began a six-year research project and produced a highly respectable treatment of a very private man. What had been known about Shepard were primarily his great successes and his notable shortcomings. Johnson tackles the great middle--and the puzzle that was Alan Shepard now begins to make sense.

In truth, there is probably misunderstanding about all of the early astronaut heroes, as if each was assigned a role in a bigger cosmic drama. Scotty Carpenter will always be the house philosopher, Gordo Cooper the hotdog, Gus Grissom the curmudgeon. Shepard's role was to be first, the best, the winner of a grueling marathon to ride the Redstone rocket--tiny by today's standards--for fifteen minutes on May 5, 1961. Given the unpredictability of the rockets of that era, the greater risk to the astronaut was on the ground than in space. This fact was appreciated in 1961, and being chosen number one was a statement from his superiors about his fortitude as much as his mastery of flying and technology.

Alan Shepard was born in 1923 in Derry, NH, to a somewhat removed, demanding father. Young Shepard inherited a fierce competitiveness and an independence that allowed him to pursue personal goals with little concern about his impression on others. This latter quality, to his advantage, is what set him apart from his archrival John Glenn, who did worry about public relations. Shepard was one of those rare men who had his cake and ate it, too: he achieved remarkable career goals while entertaining himself along the way with what can only be called oppositional defiance. In a strange twist of history, he actually pulled off the mischief that has always been attached to others like Gordon Cooper.

In this regard Thompson studies Shepard's military misbehavior and his philandering. The author's account of the future astronaut's brushes with military authority is detailed and rather surprising. One comes away with a sense that the New Hampshire flyboy's skills as a naval test pilot must have been noteworthy, outweighing numerous dangerous incidents of "flat-hatting" or strafing civilians on the ground. His cheating on his virtuous and devoted wife Louise--a spouse of the Lady Bird Johnson mold--is a blotch that time will probably not erase. Thompson does observe that Shepard's amorous sorties off the reservation were adolescent in nature; the astronaut apparently never engaged in any sort of long term relationship in which Louise was displaced.

Although there is in this work a lot about Shepard to dislike, the author clearly strove for a balanced presentation. Shepard appears to have made his peace with Glenn at the time of the Freedom Seven flight. After retirement he demonstrated a better than average interest in philanthropy and seems to have worked harder in his later years to enrich his marriage with Louise. Perhaps best known is his decade long battle with Meniere's Disease, and later with a form of leukemia. In some ways the Meniere's was more of a psychological jolt, coming as it did at the beginning of the Gemini, and ultimately, the Apollo Programs. Whatever his colleagues felt about him, Shepard was widely respected in the NASA management circle for outstanding cape com work in the troubled Carpenter and Cooper flights. With Glenn, his chief rival, out of the picture due to a head injury and political considerations, Shepard was the logical choice to command the maiden voyages of these new craft--and by implication become the first man to walk on the moon.

But this was not to be. For nearly a decade Shepard lost his license to fly any type of aircraft due to balance impairment [and other less known medical problems brought to light by the author.] Did he take this forced grounding graciously? Admittedly not. But the author assesses this period of Shepard's career with more depth than other commentators. He notes, for example, that Shepard had burned his bridges with the Navy by joining NASA and could not return to what seemed to be a straight road to admiralty status. While the Navy was no longer an option, Shepard was proving himself to be a better than average business man and becoming independently wealthy. Freed of aviator-astronaut responsibilities, he could have lived a highly lucrative lifestyle.

But he stayed with NASA, a nasty Don Quixote. Only a man in similar straits like Deke Slayton, himself medically grounded from space travel, could have understood and tolerated his subaltern's angry depression which alienated other astronauts in the program and at times rendered him a public relations nightmare. What sustained him through his bureaucratic Siberia was the desire to return to active status, but perhaps more strongly a desire to conquer his own medical problem. Shepard would admit that his selection for the first Mercury flight was the professional highlight of his career. Reinstatement to flight status for Apollo was for him a personal triumph of a different sort,

Shepard was due for some luck. Experimental surgery put him on line for Apollo 13, but management bumped him to 14 to absorb training and thus he avoided the near catastrophic events of unlucky 13. Shepard seemed grateful to be back--choosing for his Apollo 14 crew Stu Roosa, who had defined the art of avoiding Shepard in company hallways. Apollo 14 survived at least three mission-threatening crises on its way to the world's most famous tee shot. What the author shares about the moon landing mission is one of its least known achievements: it brought its commander to tears.

Certainly changed my mind about Al Shepard!.......2006-08-10

I am a "space nut". I have read numerous books, seen numerous vhs and dvd stories of everything from the start of the space age to the shuttle flights. I have never had a more inspiring feeling than upon finishing "Light this candle". It started a little slow with all the early life details of Shepard but, helped later in the book with how & why he reacted to many (and I mean many) tough situations that he faced in his unbelievable life. Being a space nut, I was happy to see little details explained in the book that are lacking in other books I have read. Such things as Shepard talking about laying in the LEM following an EVA on Apollo 14. He and Mitchell were supposed to be sleeping but Shepard talked about the "eerie silence" and hearing the A/C unit click on and off. Also, feeling like they were going to tilt over and falling out of the bunk when he thought the LEM was sliding down the edge of the crater. All of these things made it a "tough to put down" book that I would HIGHLY recommend.
I used to think of Al Shepard as an egotistical, bi-polar, spoiled fly-boy that I wanted no part in learning more about. I would have rather stuck to anyone of the other 6 Mercury astronauts. BOY WAS I WRONG! This book might have turned me to thinking that Al Shepard is the most interesting of the original 7.

Al Deserved Better Than This Shoddy Book.......2005-08-12

I had been meaning to read this long-overdue biography of Alan Shepard, and I happened to pick it up in a cruise ship library. As I read it I was surprised at the number of factual inaccuracies--there is at least one glaring non-technical error per chapter, which calls into question almost everything else between the covers. Numerous reviews here mention more problems with technical aspects of the book that I was unaware of, but which do not surprise me given the apparent lack of proofreading and fact-checking.

An example: upon finding the book, I leafed through it and found the section on Apollo 14. There it mentioned that John Glenn had "almost killed himself when he lost control of the pace car at the Daytona 500 and slammed into a flatbed trailer crowded with journalists." This sentence boggled my mind, for it contained two errors: the pace car was at the Indianapolis 500, and John Glenn was a passenger while a local Dodge dealership owner was the driver. The book is just full of examples of this kind of sloppy reporting.

Edit: I see that at least the paperback edition correctly says Indianapolis 500, but it still incorrectly implies that Glenn was driving the pace car.

As close as one can get to the "real" Alan Shepard.......2005-05-25

I missed an opportunity to go to a book-signing where Alan Shepard was signing copies of "Moon Shot". I figured I would have another chance but then before long he was gone. What a thrill it would have been to have shook the hand of the first American in space.

Nostalgia aside, this book is a capsule of the life of the man. True, it is littered with inaccuracies in spots, and seems to delve far too deeply at moments on the personal life of one of the most important men in the last 50 years. But then again, how many JFK biographers have tried to delve into the hush-hush side of the man?

This book will give you a clear picture of the over-achieving, success-driven, consumate test pilot who one day became an important symbol to many Americans, who were afraid their world was about to be consumed by communism. At times wistful, sometimes aggrandizing, other times pointedly candid, this biography attempt to reveal the Alan Shepard even the man himself wanted no one to see.

You will be amazed at the story.

Enjoyable, but the essence of the man is missing...........2005-01-10

I was surprised to learn how few biographies have been written about Alan Shepard. Perhaps this is a function of the Life Magazine exclusivity contracts; it would seem that such a pivotal character at the birth of the age of space exploration would have generated more interest. However, the lack of literary output cannot diminish Mr. Shepard's contributions which are, unequivocally, legendary.

Mr. Thompson's research appears to be of professional caliber. However, I was left with a view of Shepard as a courgeous philanderer, whose marriage survived his self indulgence. His cold, competitive detachment appears to be one of his most admirable qualities, in addition to his aforementioned intestinal fortitude.

Those of us who, as childeren, watched him hit the most famous extra-terrestrial golf shot in history, imagined a hero cut from different cloth. Courage, and an almost unimaginable grace under immense pressure, are more fitting labels.

Indeed, it may be that the author's account is more accurate than one's imagination. In fairness, the early flying exploits are exciting and intriguing; the fatality rate in training was horrific. The mere fact that those men would attempt Carrier landings, at night, is worthy of our admiration and respect.

Perhaps in an era where literature must reveal every harsh truth, no matter how tasteless, one may be forgiven in yearning for a more gentle, respectful memory.

Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, 1870-1940

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Adds depth to the history of a great city
Great women's history

Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, 1870-1940
Sarah Deutsch
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195057058

Amazon.com

In Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, 1870-1940, Sarah Deutsch examines the relationship between the city's evolving structure and the choices and strategies of various groups of women. Her study follows the efforts of working-class, middle-class, and elite matrons as they struggled to shape the city to meet their respective needs. In succeeding, they redefined the moral geography of the city, and broadened Deutsch's own opportunities many decades later.

Deutsch orders her study topically. The first four chapters examine the politics of everyday life, showing how the daily lives and domestic spaces of women were intimately connected to the sorts of claims they made in and on public arenas. Her final three chapters follow women as they organize and institutionalize their efforts, demonstrating the complex ways in which the relationship between women and the public terrain is specific to class, ethnicity, and historical moment. As the book makes clear, space "does not have independent agency." Its meaning and power are determined by how groups of people organize their social, political, and economic interactions. For the women of Boston, the ability to lay claim to certain types of space and the power to shape place were crucial to meeting their basic needs.

A promising young historian from the University of Arizona, Deutsch breaks new ground in her analysis of women's role in shaping the modern city. Her thoroughly researched study makes frequent reference to individual biography, while illustrating a firm understanding of Boston history. Although her enthusiasm for detail and third-person narrative often obscures her larger claims, Women and the City clearly illustrates the ability of women to negotiate the urban terrain on their own terms. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

Book Description

In the 70 years between the Civil War and World War II, the women of Boston changed the city dramatically. From anti-spitting campaigns and demands for police mothers to patrol local parks, to calls for a decent wage and living quarters, women rich and poor, white and black, immigrant and native-born struggled to make a place for themselves in the city. Now, in Women and the City historian Sarah Deutsch tells this story for the first time, revealing how they changed not only the manners but also the physical layout of the modern city. Deutsch shows how the women of Boston turned the city from a place with no respectable public space for women, to a city where women sat on the City Council and met their beaux on the street corners. The book follows the efforts of working-class, middle-class, and elite matrons, working girls and "new women" as they struggled to shape the city in their own interests. And in fact they succeeded in breathtaking fashion, rearranging and redefining the moral geography of the city, and in so doing broadening the scope of their own opportunities. But Deutsch reveals that not all women shared equally in this new access to public space, and even those who did walk the streets with relative impunity and protested their wrongs in public, did so only through strategic and limited alliances with other women and with men. A penetrating new work by a brilliant young historian, Women and the City is the first book to analyze women's role in shaping the modern city. It casts new light not only on urban history, but also on women's domestic lives, women's organizations, labor organizing, and city politics, and on the crucial connections between gender, space, and power.

Customer Reviews:

Adds depth to the history of a great city.......2007-05-09

Hard to know where to start praising this wonderful book. Chapter after chapter, Sarah Deutsch tosses off insights like a dog shaking water off its back. For historians coming up behind her, there is a thesis idea on virtually every page. In a section entitled "Protegees, Politics, and Class (1909-1931)," Deutsch identifies political partisanship and patronage networks as the kind of disruptive or countervailing forces that now, as then, may skew news reporting and divide individuals who might otherwise work together for a social good. An example: "When the headlines blared, 'Women Republicans Opposed [the appointment of] Miss Meehan,' women Republicans insisted that the issue, instead, was nonpartisanship. Meehan's was not the only patronage case being disputed after a decade of Republican hegemony so strong that the party's members had forgotten it was a party and not a nonpartisan organization. The women (and the fewer men) involved in the dispute deployed the language of expertise, political hackery, and gender to make their case. Meehan's supporters spoke, in addition, the language of class and party." Women and the City also has an excellent index.

Great women's history.......2005-01-13

Not only the legal status but the personal outlooks of women changed immeasurably
in the period this book covers; the subtitle speaks of space and power, but Deutsch
has also given us a fine overview of intellectual change: what women thought, and
why they thought in those ways, during an era of astonishing industrial and social
development. Through her research, we can see why the women of Henry James
were not the same as those of F. Scott Fitzgerald--and they were very different.

We are used to sympathizing with the plight of working class women, and giving
great credit to the founders of the settlement houses and political groups that helped
them, but until now I had never realized how class differences affected attitudes, and
how perfectly reasonable women of either set found great difficulty in
understanding how those of the other thought and felt. This book has helped me get
a better understanding of both groups.

In recent months I've been reading heavily in Boston history and in women's history
of this period. This book is far and away the best thing I've found. Having done
historical research using primary sources, I can tell you this author has done an
immense amount of work, and it has paid off. She uses not only the minutes of
meetings and legal reports, but personal letters and contemporary novels to tell the
story. She writes clearly, and the book is well organized. If you want a real feel for
the lives of women during a period of tremendous change, this book is the best place
I know to get it. Deutsch straightens out a lot of misconceptions, and helps to clarify
an extremely complex period.

City Fictions: Language, Body, and Spanish American Urban Space (The Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory)

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City Fictions: Language, Body, and Spanish American Urban Space (The Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory)
Amanda Holmes
Manufacturer: Bucknell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Latin American | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0838756735

Specular City: Transforming Culture Consumption and Space In Buenos Aires 1955-1973

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Specular City: Transforming Culture Consumption and Space In Buenos Aires 1955-1973
Laura Podalsky
Manufacturer: Temple University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1566399483

Book Description

A sweeping account of one of the cultural centers of Latin America, Specular City tells the history of Buenos Aires during the interregnum after Juan Perón's fall from power and before his restoration. During those two decades, the city experienced a rapid metamorphosis at the behest of its middle class citizens, who were eager to cast off the working-class imprint left by the Perónists. Laura Podalsky discusses the ways in which the proliferation of skyscrapers, the emergence of car culture, and the diffusion of an emerging revolution in the arts helped transform Buenos Aires, and, in so doing, redefine Argentine collective history.

Book Description

Can we address the issue of nationalism without polemics and restore it to the domain of social science? Claudio Lomnitz-Adler takes a major step in that direction by applying anthropological tools to the study of national culture. His sweeping and innovative interpretation of Mexican national ideology constructs an entirely new theoretical framework for the study of national and regional cultures everywhere. With an analysis of culture and ideology in internally differentiated regional spaces--in this case Morelos and the Huasteca in Mexico--Exits from the Labyrinth links rich ethnographic and historical research to two specific aspects of Mexican national ideology and culture: the history of legitimacy and charisma in Mexican politics, and the relationship between the national community and racial ideology.

Customer Reviews:

A must read for all students of Latin America.......2001-04-30

This book not only restructures the way we look at nationalism in Mexico, but how we define nationalism in general. It steps beyond the bounds of traditional theory and presents a cogent and practical thesis. This is a must read for students of Latin America, the social sciences, history, and cultural theory.

Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage

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Worthwhile Read
Fascinating Read
Couldn't get away from it
Easy read for the beginner Space Age history buff.
Excellent histroy book on US Strategic Reconnaissance 1950s

Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage
Philip Taubman
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Aviation | Military | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0684857006

Book Description

In a brief period of explosive, top-secret innovation during the 1950s, a small group of scientists, engineers, businessmen, and government officials rewrote the book on airplane design and led the nation into outer space. Led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, they invented the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the first reconnaissance satellites that revolutionized spying, proved that the missile gap was a myth, and protected the United States from Soviet surprise nuclear attack. They also made possible the space-based mapping, communications, and targeting systems used in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Veteran New York Times reporter and editor Philip Taubman interviewed dozens of participants and mined thousands of previously classified documents to tell this hidden, far-reaching story. He reconstructs the crucial meetings, conversations, and decisions that inspired and guided the development of the spy plane and satellite projects during one of the most perilous periods in our history, a time when, as President Eisenhower said, the world seemed to be "racing toward catastrophe."

This is the story of these secret heroes, told in full for the first time.

Customer Reviews:

Worthwhile Read.......2007-08-16

I found the presentation of information in this book to be very thorough, and I learned a ton about some of the really advanced aerial and orbital systems that have come to shape the way America thinks of espionage. Definitely worth my time.

Fascinating Read.......2006-09-14

I stumbled onto this book (actually a MP3 audiobook) based upon a recommendation of a friend. Though I consider myself to be fairly well versed in the history of technology, I had no idea about the background of early American space-based espionage. I was just a child when America got serious about spying on the Russians.

This is a great book and blends story-telling with technical background information. I could hardly wait to get into my car and listen to more on the way to work and back. The book balances talking about the great triumphs of early American space efforts (U2, Blackbird, satellites) against the debacles and failures each program. You learn much about the actual people that made this all possible.

I highly recommend this book, particularly if you are new to this genre. BTW, I had no idea which famous American inventor and industrialist was so closely associated with early spaced based reconnaissance efforts. Enjoy!

Couldn't get away from it.......2006-02-26

This book is very good with balancing the technical, personal, and historical development of the US spy satelite program. I read it straight through in about 3 days. I only say very good because sometimes there was more details about the personal lives on the characters than I wanted; however, I tend to lean toward getting excited about the technical aspects of this topic.

Easy read for the beginner Space Age history buff........2005-11-09

The epilogue of the book brings the dramatic storytelling and allure of the initial years of high altitude spying to a screeching halt when the author makes a futile effort to connect the 1950's and 60's to our post 9-11 world. He believes that "terrorists are everything Soviet military forces were not," and that civilian and military intelligence analysts were crutched by the availability of high-resolution pictures vice experienced Human Intelligence operatives in the world's hot spots (pg. 361). This loosely formulated conclusion seems to be as cockamamie as blaming the "smart" bombs dropped from B-1's and B-52's for not homing in on and killing terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

Every technology has its place. But, it's like comparing apples and oranges when it comes to the intelligence disciplines. Human operatives have a different focus than imagery intelligence, and can really give a ground truth perspective of the political, emotional, and potential hostilities of a situation. If Taubman feels that the lack of CIA and other agents on the ground in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were the crux of the problem, then he could have addressed such in a different forum than this very comprehensive effort on the history of United States air and space-borne reconnaissance.

Excellent histroy book on US Strategic Reconnaissance 1950s.......2005-03-03

It is a clear, consecutive and exciting story which gives readers vivid description on what's going on with strategic reconnaissance on USSR in those cold war days.
For the sake of a free world, a small group of super smart Ph.D. engineer, ambitious military officer and brave pilots tried their best to unveil the attacking powers under the iron curtain, and finally they made it --- U2, SR71, and Spy Satellite.
I have to say this book changed my mind a lot on President Eisenhower, who overcomed various obstruct from USAF, Congress and so on, pushed the R&D of these reconnaissance craft. In this point, he is a sort of like President Reagan, who brought US a rebirth by speeding up the military race which directly or indirectly speed up the final crash of that "Evil Empire". Great men.
No idea why downstair guys gave such a low rating, IMHO, it is a definitly 5 pts book for cold war histroy.
btw, Philip was Times's Moscow bureau chief in the late 1980's

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