3 comments about The Everglades Handbook.

1. Probably the most useful and interesting single book on the Everglades. If you're on a budget, the older edition contains much of the same information at a fraction of the cost.



2. As an environmental consultant, I found the first edition of The Everglades Handbook to be very useful, and the second edition even better! There are new chapters and very important new information, such as the new chapters on the Big Cypress Swamp, Lake Okeechobee, and "Synthesis" with its diagrams of succession and food chains, and the updated final chapter with details of human history in South Florida. I especially looked forward to the updated information on the Everglades restoration - it was excellent. The new edition is well worth the price (I heard that CRC Press reduced the price by 10%!). I can't recommend this book more highly for those people wanting to become familiar with how the Everglades works as an ecosystem.



3. I hae been reading several pages in this book so far for my enviromental science class. I have found the pages very helpful in understanding the Everglades enviroment.

5 comments about Essentials of Soil Mechanics and Foundations: Basic Geotechnics (7th Edition).

1. I found Mr. McCarthy's book to be a valuable resource. From a geologist's perspective, it was of great help in bridging the gap between engineering geology and geotechnical engineering. It gave me greater insight into not only field technique, but also into geologic considerations that are of importance in foundation design. The text was both concise and clearly written.



2. Even though Index is not that great like CERM (Civil Engineering Reference Manual, you can still find valuable examples and basic concepts that PE Exam requires.
   
   Best of Luck.



3. Can't review a book I have NOT received. When will it be delivered? Lolly Pinkston



4. This product never arrived but the seller gave me all my money back as well as a credit to use for another purchase from them. Very caring people when the customer is not satisfied!



5. Although this appears to be an acedemic text, it is both informative and useful for the non-engineer construction manager.
   
   The chapters on soil types, clasification of soils, and the impact of water were clear and not unnecessarily technical. The chapters on stresses, settlement, and compaction provided a broader perspective useful for evaluating unusual conditions. And, the chapters on foundation design and slope stability offered practical insights.
   
   In one book, a most usable and complete treatment of the subject for the working construction manager.
   
   Note: althought the reviewer and author have very similar names, they are not related, and have never had any contact.
   
   Choosing Project Success - A Guide for Building Professionals

5 comments about Natural Goat Care.

1. This book is awesome. I just started out with dairy goats and I find this book very helpful, especially since so many problems can be avoided or solved naturally. I highly recommend this book to anyone raising goats.



2. Very well written with good information. Easy to understand for first time goat owners. The book is good even if you only have pet goats and are not breeding or milking but much of that information is there as well.



3. I think this author is out there somewhere on most topics. However, I did find some informative info.



4. Lots of information about goats in general--all breeds. Where most books focus on either milk goats or fiber goats, this one discusses milk, meat and fiber goat history and needs. It even includes a chapter on goat psychology which is enlightening and useful.
   
   The book is about the importance of balanced minerals in goat diet for preventive health care. There were welcome specifics about the differing needs of goats vs. sheep.
   
   Mostly about pasture management, mineral supplementation, and preventative care, there is also information about problem-specific treatments with minerals. Unfortunately, many of the minerals recommended for treating animals and pasture are not readily available in the United States in quantity or quality appropriate for livestock. The book is written based on Australian needs and availability.



5. Well written and her recommendations work well! I would not do without this book. I had loaned mine out several years ago and it was not returned so I bought another one as I missed having it for a reference.

5 comments about Pygmy Goats: Management & Veterinary Care.

1. This book helped me learn everything I needed to know about my new Pygmy Goats. I've learned how to care for them properly and what kinds of things they love to do. I took the author's advice and built them some things to climb on. I have never seen them happier. I HIGHLY recommend this book for new owners as well as for experienced owners. There is something in there for everyone.



2. The book was great and gave me alot of helpful information. The delivery was great would buy from seller again



3. This book is a must have for any pygmy goat owner...it's concise, easy to follow, and is all about pygmies! Most information available deals with meat or dairy goats. Lorrie Boldrick is a pygmy goat owner, a former NPGA judge and board member, a veterinarian, and she knows her goats!



4. I was a bit disappointed when I read this because it was the same information as I had found in regular books on goat care. Although very few things were specific to the Pygmy breed, it is a good book on goat care.



5. Love this book! It has all the info I was looking for including easy to understand health and feeding guides.

5 comments about Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration.

1. I loved this book. After reading it I spent the next night telling my wife all I'd managed to remember.



2. There is few to say that has not been said. It is very well written and the information is mind-boggling.



3. Journey to the Ants is a shorter version of the authors' monumental The Ants (1990), a 732-page tome aimed at professional biologists with a lot of technical language and a clear encyclopedic intent. This book, as Holldobler and Wilson explain in the Preface, is of "a more manageable length, with less technical language and with an admitted and unavoidable bias toward those topics and species on which we have personally worked."
   
   It is a terrific book, lavishly illustrated with many color plates, line drawings, black and white drawings, photos, etc. Especially wonderful are the color prints of paintings by John D. Dawson showing ants in various activities. His style reminds me a bit of M.C. Esher. Also notable are the many photos taken by Holldobler and Wilson during their many travels and studies. They are both renowned experts on ants around the world.
   
   The text is both informative and entertaining. Wilson in particular is a world class science writer as well as a great scientist, and his clarity of expression and enthusiasm show through. The chapters examine and illustrate how ants live in their colonies, how they hunt prey, tend aphid "cattle," cultivate fungi, raid other ant colonies; how they fight and how they reproduce. Other chapters focus on particular species, like army ants or leaf cutter ants, or "strange" ants. Still other chapters show how ants communicate especially through pheromones and touch. There is some theory on ant origins (about 100-120 million years ago) and their evolution and present distribution. I was particularly interested in and appalled by both the way some ants are parasites and how they themselves are exploited by parasites. Our esteemed authors show how ants, for all their power and evolutionary success, can be the most naive victims of beetles, flies, butterfly larva, etc. simply because they can be fooled by smells that mimic those of the colony and/or because they can be given irresistible concoctions of food or what might be called "drugs" that make them passive and acceptive of insects that will eat their eggs and larva. They are also tricked into feeding strangers on the trail and alien larva in the colony nest!
   
   I purposely first read a couple of other books on ants (The World of Ants: A Science-Fiction Universe (1970) by Remy Chauvin, and Ants (1977) by M.V. Brian), written by myrmecologists of an earlier generation so as to be able to better appreciate this famous work. But you need not do that. Journey to the Ants is eminently accessible to just about any literate person.
   
   While reading I had some thoughts (as Wilson famously has had) on the differences and similarities between ant societies and human ones. Ants are not governed as we are (and as was once thought) in any way by a central authority. (They are influenced by the queen's pheromones and her behavior.) Instead ants are examples of "swarm intelligence," that is purposeful and coordinated behavior that arises from each individual doing what comes naturally to that individual. This sort of intelligence was just beginning to be appreciated when Holldobler and Wilson wrote this book. The phrase "swarm intelligence" does not appear anywhere in the book, and yet it is clear that our present understanding of how this intelligence works was gleaned in part from the work of biologists and ethologists like Holldobler and Wilson.
   
   Ants are famous for doing human-like things that no other animals or few can do, such as gardening, tending herds, making war, and constructing elaborate living spaces. It is usually said that ants do it from pure instinct whereas we use our intelligence and the experience. Humans and ants cannot be defined independently of their respective cultures. What I wonder is, is it an artificiality to say that their intelligence, spread out as it is among the individuals and their genetic endowments, is fundamentally different from our own? Clearly ants are limited in what they can construct, what they can understand, and what tools they can make and use. I read somewhere that ants never developed fire because no ant could get close enough to a sustainable fire to tend it.
   
   A striking conclusion is that perhaps the real difference between us comes from our ability to grow a million times bigger in size which allows us not only to tend fires, but to develop brains large enough to handle abstract thought such as in language, which further allows us to develop and share ideas, concepts, practices, and all the other aspects of our culture in a way that is impossible for ants, whose brain size is limited by their anatomy.
   
   So, although ants were here long before we arrived, and although they probably will be here long after we are gone, it is impossible to say which life form is the more successful. We do have at present the capability, which ants do not, of enhancing our ability to survive through genetic engineering and the development of biologically friendly machines, and even the ability to migrate away from this earth so that our genes and ourselves are not in one basket, so to speak. Should a planet-sterilizing event hit the earth, we could be on Mars and still survive.
   
   But then there is this insidious thought: perhaps the ants, like our resident microbes, will find a way to come with us!
   
   Don't miss this book. You are in for a treat.



4. Apart from being a great book for all kind of reader, it was, for me (eight years ago!), a start point and it was probably the cause I focus my career nowadays in these small insects. It's quite nice for a child (then better with adult, not to read alone) or young people interested in natural sciences.



5. I have to admit I did not expect to find this book as interesting as it turned out to be. I was only interested in identifying some species within my yard and discovered quite a bit about ants. This book won't make you an expert, but it has made me see ants from a whole new perspective, so much so that I have come to like them instead of disliking them. I can also see why it is possible to kill a colony so easily. Never knew that once the queen is gone, there is no colony. I think if ants had atom bombs they would have destroyed the earth by now - killing each other. I had no idea they were so aggressive towards one another. Anyway, great book to read.

5 comments about Biochemistry: Board Review Series.

1. This book is a must for any medical biochemistry class. I probably could have skipped all the required texts and just bought this.



2. It's a good to help review before a test. Not very good for intro biochemistry (amino acids, protein structures, post-translational modification, etc). Has good clinical applications.



3. This book is not bad but for Board review stick with Goljan and get the Rapid Review. For class there is not enough detail so I would stick with Lippincott's Biochemistry



4. Buy the new one. The older version (Version 3) is far inferior to the new one (Version 4). Regardless neither version was extremely helpful or relative to my class, however they might come in handy when studying for boards (I am keeping my book till then).



5. I had the misfortune of not taking medical school biochemistry in my first year, so I attempted to cram all of biochemistry in a few days using this book. The books was incredibly dense, went into the pathways in incredible detail, and was not particularly helpful for highlighting the important concepts tested on USMLE Step I. I would definitely use another book for Step I review, but I might use this if I had to take a rigorous biochemistry course.

No comments about Study Guide w/Selected Solutions for General Organic and Biological Chemistry.

1 comments about Essentials of General, Organic, and Biochemistry (with CD-ROM).

1. very good book with lots of questions in excersises which will help students to prepare for the test. i got an A by using this book.

4 comments about Biochemical Calculations: How to Solve Mathematical Problems in General Biochemistry, 2nd Edition.

1. Segel's book is a concise and very clear discussion of the most important mathematical concepts needed for biochemistry. Each Topic is discussed briefly, and step by step example problems are presented. Practice problems end each chapter and require a thorough understanding of the topic covered. An excellent tutorial presented in an extremely clear manner.



2. This is an essential book for anyone looking to practice biochemical problems -- if only for the reason that books with as many practice problems are hard to find. If you're a true biochemist and love the subject ad will continue on with graduate work or careers in biochemistry, this may be the book for you. For everyone else... probably not. This book is very minimalist. No frills. It has an answer key to the practice problems but lacks any explainations to the answer. Reviews of the material covered in the book are scant at best and very technical. Few examples from real biochemical situations in living organisms are used. It does nothing to make you interested in the subject. The book also uses units such as normality (N) and Calories (C) rather than molarity (M) and Joules (J), the more modern and internationally accepted units of biochemical equations. I have also encountered typos and mistakes in the book in my studies. The only reason why this book is still published is that there are few other books available that offer so many practice problems. If you're looking for practice on any possible biochemical calculation, buy this book. When you're done with it, compost it. Or get $2 back by selling it to the local college bookstore. Biochemical Calculations wouldn't be so bad if a new edition would be written. Biology is a rapidly changing science, and a book that is now going on 25 years old can't compete with the newer and more reader friendly texts.



3. I have taught Biochemistry and Enzymology at the undergraduate and graduate level for over 20 years, and have recommended this book every year, to every student. Although the field of biochemistry has changed greatly during this time period, certain fundamental concepts have not changed at all, and remain central to a true understanding of how to do biochemistry. These include acid/base chemistry, energetics, enzyme kinetics, spectrophotometry, and isotopes. Of these, the first three gnerally give beginning (and even some advanced)students the most difficulty. In "Biochemical Calculations" Dr. Segel provides excellent explanations of the most important aspects of these topics. He provides example problems, with the answers worked out in detail, and then at the end of each chapter he provides numerous practice problems (along with the answer). I know of no other source of such a variety of practice problems covering these topics. Any student who expends the effort to work through these problems will certainly gain the confidence to tackle the common quantitative problems associated with biochemistry. Clearly this is not intended to be a biochemistry textbook, but rather a supplemental resource, to be used to more fully understand the topics covered in the early chapters of all current biochemistry texts.



4. As a biochemistry teacher, I find that a large number of our students are defficient in their quantitative skills. This is because many of them are biology majors, who do not have the best math background. This relatively inexpensive volume bridges the math gap for these students. It also provides the teacher with tools that increase his efficiency in dealing with the problem, without taking too much time away from the materials in the course syllabus. Although it is an older book, there is no modern replacement for what it does.

5 comments about Practical Entomologist.

1. This book was the first one I ever bought and it was very helpful.It is just loaded with useful information, and helpful diagrams. However, if you like hands on experiences, its loaded with all kinds of easy to do experiments that are fun and educational. However, due to the amount of scientific words and phrases, I would not recommend this book to children under seven.



2. The book may be useful for an extreme novice in bug collection and identification, or for helping youngsters. It superficially treats any given group of insects, with less detail than I had anticipated. Most of the insects illustrated are foreign, which was disappointing. This is a book that will sit on the shelf until I decide which nephew to give it to.



3. I purchased this book to be used as a text for a lower div entomology class....amazing. Simple descriptions and GREAT photos. A must have for any amateur entomologist.



4. I was given this book for Christmas by a classmate in the fourth grade, and it remains one of my favourites. It covers all the basic areas of entomology, and has fascinating pictures from all over the world. There are many subsets which detail different fun projects with bugs, and there's even a whole section on making an insect collection. It's pretty basic, but I would definitely recommend it to kids ages 9-16, and maybe even adults who just want a brief introduction to insects.



5. To begin with, this book consists of approximately 160 pages. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out, just my visually checking the mass alone, that this is on the beginning and end of all insect collecting or study books. I have some books on my shelf which weight several pounds, and they don't even begin to cover the subject adequately. That being said....
   
   This is a wonderful book for the beginning or budding collector of insect. By collecting, I mean also observing, photographing and yes, actually killing the subject and sticking it to a board. This small volume does cover all the basics of entomology, briefly touching on taxonomy, anatomy and morphology, capturing methods, preserving methods, different photographic methods and a whole lot of practical advice. This book, supplemented with other texts, is a wonderful guide to lead a high school, and yes, even a beginning college group though the process. It makes the lesson plans more interesting and does provide much valuable information. It provides a nice list of biological equipment and supply companies along with a nice list of entomological organizations and their phone numbers and addresses. This is useful information.
   
   Now please note: The earth is populated by thousands and thousands of different insects, groups and subgroups and sub-subgroups. This book IS NOT an insect identification guide. Yes, it does address the characteristics of major groups, but that is it. That is not the purpose of this book. I like to thing of it as a tickler book. It should encourage those who have an interest in this field of study, to search further, read more, to study more, to observe more. This book would be ideal for the home school crowd, as well as a useful tool for the biology teacher starting to address this subject. The text is great, the pictures sharp and clear, and the advice is good and practical. I have been collecting (beetles only please) for around 56 years now. I do wish I had had access to this when I first started out. It certainly would have made my life less complicated.