While I have had the magnificent ability to have this man as a teacher, I found this book to be incredibly stifling. The contents often made little or no sense and had to be deciphered by the students. The book often seems loosely put together, as if there was no actual intellect used to produce it - as if the book was only published to be published and there is no other reason it should be available to the public. I do not advise anyone to read this book unless you absolutely must. This man obviously has a Napolean complex, and any further production of his books must be immediately halted.

As an instructor who has used this work for several years in various editions, I have found it to be quite solid. It provides a nice compilation of primary source materials and Rogers intros to each section are usually quite well researched and solidly presented.

It has worked quite well in my college level European history courses. I am somewhat troubled by comments appearing here questioning Rogers objectivity on, of all things, the Industrial Revolution. To compare the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe to the modern industrial development is in appropriate. Historical documentation shows quite clearly that workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution were treated extremely poorly. In Britain however, this treatment and the lives that evolved for working men, woman and children led to vast social and political changes in Britain.

Rogers description of the Industrial Revolution given the period he is dealing with and the documents he utilizes is completely accurate historically. The evidence can lead to no other conclusion.

As a high school teacher, I find Rodger's book a wonderful resource for helping students to see history through the eyes of the people who lived it. The books allow students to get acquainted with historical debates from which we can simulate them in the classroom. Students consistently report that they prefer the personal touch of primary sources to traditionally dry textbook accounts. After finding so much utility in them, I was somewhat surprised to see Rogers chided by so many reviewers. I noticed two dominant themes in these criticisms that warrant attention.
First, that "It's boring & confusing": This assertion reminds me of freshmen whose eyes glaze over when reading anything that contains anything with multiple syllables. Rogers' thesis is that history can only be made intelligible by studying the ideas of the people who shaped it. Those unaccustomed or disinclined from engaging with viewpoints other than their own would naturally take umbrage with his approach. Furthermore, one should not assume that one's own difficulties of understanding are necessarily symptomatic of defects on the part of the author. Serious reading takes time and patience.
Those who can discern no logic to the organization of the collection need only assemble a fuller concept of the history before attempting it. Rogers posits history as a debate between differing points of view. The outcomes of these debates become the dominant institutions and beliefs that define the events of any given period. His selections help us to see that process, from the horse's mouth as they say...
Second, that "Rogers is a Marxist": It is disheartening to see that readers lay the faults of communism on Rogers' doorstep. While certainly one is entitled to despise alternatives to capitalism, one cannot justly dispute that the activities of its opponents have done much to shape history, for good or ill. Rogers is an historian, not a politician. The beauty of Rogers' approach is that he allows his readers MAKE UP THEIR OWN MINDS by giving us competing ideas from many points of view. Of course if a free marketplace of ideas is repugnant to you, it would best to confine yourself to a diet of historical fiction, propaganda and your own writing. After all, wasn't politicizing history the worst mistake Marx ever made?

Reading Malcolmson's book is a test to anyone's patience. His general lament is that America lacks a shared history, a history that can be used to form a truly collective American identity. I do not fault him for attempting to trace our shared histories, but his book fails at this. Instead, it is a shallow attempt to reposition the white male narrative in a multicultural history that lacks a critical analysis of how concepts of "race" and inequality have collided to shape a separate America.

Any undergraduate social science or history student would be appalled at Malcolmson's treatment of race and conflict in this book. Little context or evidence is given to justify his numerous claims while concepts are not qualified at all. This is definitely not a book to use for instruction. I read this book as part of a graduate seminar at UC Berkeley and we spent most of the class time criticizing it.

Lastly, a third of the book centers on his life growing up in Oakland. Believe me, it's the most completely self-absorbed irrelevant biography I have ever seen. It reads as a weak attempt at rearticulating a "Can't we just get along" position.

Malcomson emphasizes the idea that the new USA needed a racial identity - "to the extent that Americans wanted a national identity as a people, rather than human beings that happened to be in America, that identity almost had to be racial.... 'American' identity would be a white identity."
While this is true in large part, it largely ignores the huge impact of the colonies' religious identity (which had driven the founding of several colonies) by curtly stating the unattributed fact that "in 1790 only about one in ten white American was a member of a formal church." Whatever relationship actual membership in a "formal church" may have to do with American's personal beliefs, there is ample evidence that a common core of publicly-expressed religious beliefs formed the basis of the "American" character in 1790.
Malcomson likewise downplays the cohesive unity brought about by the struggle against Britain, joint membership in a new country, and the adherence to the ideals of the Declaration. This emphasis on the preeminent racial nature of "American" identity is somewhat at odds with his other theme that "being white meant, above all, not being black."
While the book is subtitled "The American Misadventures of Race," the book could benefit from some discussion about the role of race in other civilizations and countries. What, in other countries, is similar to, or different from, the US experience?
While Malcomson does a good job in analyzing popular culture's take on race in many cases, this could improve. There's no mention of the effect of Defoe's 1719 _Robinson Crusoe_ - the first English novel, and full of the racial assumptions of the time (during 28 years on the island pondering why God abandoned him, Crusoe never considers it could be because of his involvement in the slave trade; nor does Crusoe give second thought to his assumption that Friday will be his servant after leaving the island). D.W. Griffith's 1915 "Birth of a Nation" is barely mentioned.
Malcomson's attitude toward religion is inconsistent. At one point, he tries to argue that religion did not support slavery, writing that pro-slavery advocates "desperately ransacked the Bible to find comfort for slaveholders ... [with] harried thumbings of the Bible." Yet it isn't too hard to find the Bible's tacit approval of slavery, its general comments on separation of peoples, and even direct commands such as "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters." Nor does Malcomson mention the approval that many churches gave to slavery, and the typical segregation practiced by churches, which certainly lent legitimacy to feelings of white superiority. Billy Graham astonished some church members when he refused to allow segregated seating in his crusades after 1954: in some areas, formalized church segregation continued through the 1960's.
Yet, ignoring the church's segregation through the 1960's, Malcomson suddenly decides the church is segregated in the 1970's. He writes, "When, as a teenager, I left Oakland, I also left the church.... I could not choose to be in a white church. That would be like choosing a white school (or a white town).... [In the black church,] the music is undeniably better, there's more to eat at socials, and grief is not treated as a ... character flaw. Where the white church is a lake, the black church is an ocean."
First, where is the discussion about _why_ some churches are "white" ?? There are many reasons besides intended segregation that a church may wind up to be predominately white. Second, what right does Malcomson have to generalize from his own experience to the idea that the "black" church is everywhere superior to the "white" church?
Why does Malcomson think that "when I was a teenager" is a date every reader should recognize? (By reading other passages, Malcomson was apparently a teenager in the 1970's.) In another passage, Malcomson strangely dates an event by the year when "Grandma was closing in on death."
Malcomson frequently picks on the negative: he spends seven pages describing the 1849 California constitutional convention debates on whether to admit free blacks to California, yet he does not give the end vote and its margin, nor any relevant language of the California constitution.
The book, published in 2000, essentially ends its narration of American racial history in the mid 1970's, with the observation that whites then tried to move away from their racial past, as other races moved toward theirs.
One major current issue on race in America is "reverse discrimination." Malcomson doesn't even mention cases such as Baake. Is it right for blacks to receive benefits based on race? Malcomson's only comment, somewhat on point, is that "races in America have functioned so much as families do, and once you are in the family you receive your part of the inheritance, and the American past becomes your past."
Earlier Malcomson discusses the attempt of abolitionists in the 1840's to keep blacks from forming black groups or holding black conventions, on the principle of equality. "The beyond-race principle lacked a historical element. Perhaps that is in the nature of a principle. But in the case of race in America, it could have strange consequences, because race, being itself historical, resists ahistorical explanation."
Where are the author's thoughts on the solution to our racial problems? How long must the correction of our "family" problem continue? One would hope that someone who had done so much research would have some thoughts, but they're not presented.
This is a worthwhile book to read, because it will make you think. Yet it has a lot of gaps in it, is overly long in many sections, and its stream-of-consciousness organization (as Salon states) is "unorthodox if not downright infuriating."

Malcomson provides a wealth of historical, detailed proof of the European, Renaissance-period origins of "race." Additionally, from a uniquely American perspective, he shows how destructive this concept has been for both "white" people and "non-white" peoples, alike. This book is necessarily somewhat dry, because the concept of race lies so deep within our sub-conscious thinking that cursory analyses and descriptions would come off as either mythological or hysterical -- and therefore would convince no one of their truth.

This book is used as a MEH textbook for sophomores in my highschool. My friends and i found this book to be very dull and boring. It contains a lot of information but the way it is presented is not in an interesting manner, rather in a dull way. This book has no bold words which makes it difficult for us to read. I believe it was chapter 17 or 18 that the beginning was very interesting but suddenly it became boring. I think history is interesting but the way that this book teaches it to you is very uninteresting. I don't suggest this book for any highschool student. Everyday when we get our history assignment i dread to read this book because it is so boring.

I enjoyed this text during my history class very much because it was so in depth. The hundreds of famous paintings alone make this book worthwhile, but it reads very much like a college text. Don't get me wrong -- I came to love history through taking this class, and the book was a large part of that. You must have a high level of literacy and some previous knowledge of history to read this book very easily. NO DETAILS ARE LEFT OUT!!! The book is fabulous and I would recommend it to any level anyways.

The book had lots of info and was easy to understand. It covered all of the most important aspects of western civilizations. Anyone who complains that it was hard to read is an ... I would consider myself smart but i am by no means a rocket scientist and i found this book easy to read and enjoyable. It provided lots of information about certain interesting aspects of different civilizations cultures that would appeal to anyone who whould sign up for a history course.

The Lost Tribe is an account of a journalists short (2 week) trip into one of Papua New Guinea's more remote areas. The book is descriptively well written, but is also full of inaccuracies caused by the authors lack of knowlege of local languages and of modern Papua New Guinea. The people he descibes may well be highly isolated but as with most of PNG, their names are included in the common role. Had he given imself more time he could have obatined proper maps which reveal the location of the village and the fictitious volcano he descibes. He could also have learnt Pidgin properly which would have been useful in getting himeself out of the situation that arose. What the author doesn't know is that after his departure from Wanakepa those villagers were forced to pay huge compensation for what happened. They would like the author to bare some of the cost. I'm sure this could be arranged through MAF whoom he can contact through the internet.

This was an author I had hoped would deliver something that many travel-writers don't - a sense of the freedom and anguish of the way we once lived, portrayed through the experiences of the living. In review, he largely managed this. But I still felt strangely unsatisfied when finishing the book. A feeling that emerges from the fact that you leave the story without actually knowing all that much about the tribe. You see, in truth this book is more about a series of events along a storyline than an expose of a 'lost' tribe. Of course this has much to do with his difficulties in communicating with the tribe, but nevertheless it is a shame.

I did though feel that this story highlights the gulf still existing in the world across the spectrum of human cultures. It is for the reader to decide (or not) the value in maintaining or trying to close such a gulf, and for whose benefit - ours or theirs. For example, the impact of western religion on such tribes is shown in the book to be thoughtless and combattant in the way it is taught. Perhaps to be expected in the 18th or 19th century, but quite disturbing when it is in the present day.

In conclusion, I think Marriot has done the Liawep justice with this story, but the damage he did during the course of his stay will probably haunt him and the Liawep for many years to come.

It is not often that one finds travel writing elevated to the level of adventure. What's more, Marriott's prose is clear and sincere. Overall, a great read. If you have not got your hand on a good travel book in a while, invest in this one. I'm going out to get the "Savage shore".

This is a poorly written book with minimal content concerning the trail or hiking in general. I bought the book because of the title and was subjected to bad poetry and worse prose. His ramblings about religion and philosophy were a poor substitute for actual trail expierences. Give me my money back!

Male menopause is correct. I do not comprehend how the author made it. Dont' waste your time unless are like me and just read everything about the AT you can get your hands on. This book is poorly written and long-winded.

This is not a movie with forced humor and stunt people. A retired military man provides an involving recount of his AT hike. I have tried to read many books on the AT (some were unbearable, so I did not finish them). This was one of the few full-reads, and a good one at that. In comparison to all other books, I might give this a four-stars rating, but seeing how bad some of the competition is, I have to give it a five-stars rating. See you on the trails!

I found this book to be a major disappointment. Of the many turnoffs, one being the section titled, "Types of Parents and Types of Children" where Mr. Sehlinger goes into way out-of-touch psycho babble. "In the context of a Disney vacation, it is useful to locate your, your partner's, and your combined parenting type on the parenting continuum and your child's basic personality type on the personality continuum." Please! However, Kim Wright Wiley's book, "Walt Disney with Kids 2000" is much more informative and leaves the parenting to the parents.

I have purchased the Unofficial Guide to Wald Disney world once before when we were planning a trip- we didn't get to go, so I purchased the updated one just last month. Along with my order, I decided to add the Unofficial Guide "with kids" because we have 3 small children. I was very disapointed. This could have been a great accompaniment to the regular Unofficial Guide. For starters, in both my situations, the Unoffical Guide was A+ on info, I loved it. The "with kids" seemed to copy and paste bits from that book. But, the confusing part, is that they didn't copy and paste parts that I found to be most useful in the Unoffical Guide. I am confused about why you would need this book- and it lacks some of his personal insight. My guess is that he did not actually do Disney with children and it seems to show. The upside is that "with kids" does give web sites for outside the world hotels that is missing from the Unofficial Guide. I also did find a couple other tidbits like the section on packing and creating uniforms for your family. There is a lot of info on parenting style that is not found in the regular Unofficial guide- but I am still not sure why it is in this one either. I was so excited to see his insight and sad to say he didn't have any. Bottom line IMO is to skip this book, but don't skip the regular Unofficial guide. It is a 6 star book!!

I looked at quite a few different books before I decided on this one. I wanted a book that was small, dealt with children, and had a quick and easy references (didn't want it to take 5-10 minutes to look up everything). This book was a winner and I would highly recommend it to any parents taking the trip to WDW. It came in very useful when planning our days activities. Rated each ride/attraction on a 1-5 scale, which included different age group. The book is also small enough to carry with during your trips to each of WDW's parks.

After reading two pages of glowing reviews (and even a comment about Carey being a successor to Thoreau), I was expecting a well-written, thoughtful book centered on nature, the forest, and the life within. Instead, Flat Rock Journal struck me as more of a tribute to one man's ego.

The book got off on a bad foot for me when Chicago-born Carey buys a clunker car to begin his quest for nature and life in the forest. It struck me that, 100 years ago, this would not have been an option at all and that it seems a strange way to get around when there are alternatives, such as cycling and walking, that bring one closer to the earth. Next, he runs into the woman who will become his wife on the Berkeley campus with whom he makes love on some bleachers. He sees this as a spiritual moment and her as a strong woman with no fears, while in reality it comes across as young people doing what comes naturally to young people. One wonders why these children of nature did not find some grass under a tree.

Carey and his wife move to an old farmhouse in the Ozarks, where they have few conveniences (although, of course, they can't seem to get by without a truck and eventually a gas-powered refrigerator). Carey's day in the forest gives the reader little real feel for life, but does provide insights into his perspectives, which are at best centered around himself rather than the world around him. He says that a day in the forest helps him to rid himself of assumptions, the baggage of the world, what have you. He then describes clouds, storms, lizards, rock formations, birds, trees -- everything in sight -- in purely anthropmorphic terms as though he can't grasp that this is part of those unnecessary, irrelevant assumptions. He talks about the copperheads that live around the long-abandoned house he buys as "intruders" without seeming to understand that it is his family that is intruding on them. He kills them, albeit regretfully, as a danger to his young children, not seeming to understand that this is how humans have always justified killing so-called "pest animals." When he can no longer take killing them, he pollutes the atmosphere and uses nonrenewable resources by driving them elsewhere so they are not underfoot. He is surprised when they return; he doesn't even seem to know the basic biology of territoriality that man and his fellow animals all have at heart. When he pets them in his lap and they relax, he thinks this is a sign of friendliness (whereas someone a little more in tune with the mind of reptiles -- and I put myself in this category -- understands how much reptiles like a comfortably warm spot, like a lap). This kind of anthropormophising is a grave injustice to nature, and anthropomorphising is a large part of what we do that disrespects nature and leads to environmental trouble and imbalance.

Carey also has a fair amount of contempt for urbanites who don't understand the country and nature, and who exploit "cheap country resources" to lead lives that of excessive consumption. He has a blind side to his own consumption and to his own lack of understanding. He does not absorb nature or sit back and appreciate it; he consistently forces his own predispositions onto it.

He believes environmentalists are wrong to assume that man and nature cannot coexist and that man has the unique capacity to improve the earth, although he doesn't really explain how. (I would have liked at least one example of a building, structure, or anything that is manmade that "improves" nature, but one is not forthcoming.) He and his wife produce a large family, which, while well within their rights, is unnecessary in this country of low child mortality and long life spans, and surely even Carey can acknowledge that it is a combination of excessive consumption and overpopulation that will be the downfall of nature. He can happily live on many acres in a forest, but doesn't seem to think that, if all 280 million Americans tried to follow the same lifestyle, basic as it is, there would be no wild left -- all would be farms, gardens, and watering systems simply to accommodate the volume of people.

He seems to think that depression is something that one shrugs off with the proper attitude and that too much of depression is blamed on "childhood" or "somebody else." This reveals only his profound ignorance of clinical depression as well as issues of child physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

His pseudospiritual ramblings are more annoying than enlightening. They are not the type of beliefs that can be universally felt, but are based on his own approach to his own readings, thoughts, and feelings. They are frequently contradictory to both common sense and a sense of wonder.

I was looking forward to a book that would make me feel like I was part of the forest, part of the Ozarks, part of the world. I have read the works of many environmental and nature writers who put their egos in the back seat and channel the beauty of the woods around them with minimal interjections of self, and those are the works that transport me, move me, and help me renew my own touch with my world and with all that inhabits it. This is not it.

Despite the glowing blurbs, which make me wonder if reviewers put any thought into their reviews, this book is not worth the time when there are so many more thoughtful, eloquent writers out there. It is apparently out of print. I can understand why.

Anyone seeking a copy of this book can have mine. While I enjoyed the author's interesting perspectives on nature and lifestyle, the pace of this book was that of a bear in hibernation. The author is just too zany for his own good. Although he laughs at his mistakes, if he wasn't so clueless he wouldn't make them in the first place. It was when I got to the interminable section where the author battles a lightning storm from atop tree (a highly recommended stunt!) that I realized the book was better served helping to balance my washing machine. And we wonder why this thing is out of print?

Ken Carey is a brilliant writer whose past experiences bring relevance and meaning to the things he sees on a spring journey through his "backyard" forest in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. He uses his keen spiritual insight, naturalistic knowledge, and reponsible way of life to show how man and nature are linked--inseperable. I am a native of the Ozark region and thoroughly enjoyed reading his accounts of the natural history of the Ozarks and of his adventures abroad.

This biography managed to make mundane and boring one of the most fascinating characters of the opening of the West. The fat-free, salt-free prose relentlessly rambles on with no distinction between events of monumental importance (Bear Flag Revolt, e.g. - one page) and tedious details of Carson's children. No explanatory detail is given about saddlery,horses,firearms,clothing,etc., nor is sufficient description given to the geography of the country in which he spent so much time. Most of all, the book suffers from a lack of detailed maps. On the bright side, the book seems well researched and documented and the sources are clearly indicated. Best of all, in this era of historical demonization, there is a genuine affection and sympathy for Kit Carson, quite convincing me that he was not only a fascinating pioneer but an exemplary character.

Although this account of the famous explorer's life and adventures contained well documented and interesting information, I found the presentation rambling and often outright confusing. The first chapters were arranged according to specific expeditions, but the purpose of each expedition was poorly explained and it was easy to loose track of the individuals present and the chronology of events. Occasionally, events referred to in early chapters were not actually described until later chapters (i.e. the Court Martial of Fremont). Unfortunately the disjointed narrative distracted significantly from the informative content of the book.

Much like the pulp-novel persona that sprung from the legends of Kit Carson, the real man was a master of life in the West. From his early days as a mountain man to his later life as an Indian agent, Guild and Carter do a good job of illustrating the life of Carson and his role in the opening of the West. Throughout the book, the authors keep the focus on Carson and do not let the wider events in which he was involved overshadow the man. On one level this approach diminishes the importance of those events and Carson's role in them, but it also seems to provide a good illustration of how Carson viewed those events.

While this guidebook is still the only printed source for central Texas limestone, it is extremely outdated. Do not get me wrong, for those wishing to merely sample the limestone of central Texas, this well established guide will lead you in the right direction. However, with the innumerable number of sport routes and bouldering areas that have developed over the past five years, this guide is in need of a serious overhaul. As well, it is DEFINATELY not worth more than 15 bucks! Better to look at Blodyflapper.com or Texasclimbers.com for up to date information.

GREAT BOOK WITH DESCRIPTIVE DETAIL ON CLIMBS. IT'S REALLY A SIN TO PUBLISH ALL THIS BETA. TEXAS CLIMBING WITH AN ATTITUDE. I LIKE IT. AND YES, E-ROCK IS STILL CLOSED TO ALL CLIMBING... THANKS, RPM

For finding limestone routes around central texas, nothing compares, except I guess having someone take you there. The exposition is clever & irreverant. The directions to the crags are clear and the topos are pretty good for picking out which route is which (though not the best I've seen).

The biggest drawback is that the current addition is going on 5 years since the last edition. Many new routes have been added & changes have been made to the protection on many routes. Hopefull the authors will create a new edition soon. Until then, there is nothing better (at least that I've seen..)

This guide is useless. The information in this book is for the most part worthless. The driving times in the book were wrong. The guide said Juno Beach was 45 minutes from San Jose. It took us two hours to get there and we went the speed limit. The author doesn't even seem to enjoy Costa Rica. She complains about everything in Costa Rica. Save your money and buy a guide worth something.

We used the book religiously on our trip to Costa Rica. It was helpful in finding some of the best areas, but we relied on help from the locals to find the good stuff.

When touring Costa Rica, it is very difficult to eliminate options.... the country is so beautiful, the topography so diverse. This book zeroes right in on the best, the 'must see' and 'highly recommended' attractions. It also offers a wonderful assortment of colored photographs.

I highly recommend this travel guide, especially for a first-time traveler to Costa Rica, or one who has limited time to explore the wonders of this diverse and enchanting environment!