Watershed: The Undamming of America

Book Description

A close examination of the questions facing communities across the United States where dam removal is on the environmental and political agenda.

Dams and diversions along America's rivers have transformed the country and in doing so created environmental problems whose resolution will, in many ways, determine how we live in the next century. There are over 75,000 dams in the country and almost no major river in the country remains undammed. But now, for the first time in our nation's history, the pace of dam removal has overtaken the pace of construction as communities across the country commit themselves to river restoration, including the removal of harmful dams.

Questioning the value of dams requires a serious readjustment in the country's notion of progress, a prospect threatening to some and daunting to all. Watershed examines the implications of dam removal to America's rivers and their communities by exploring the stories of a number of places where dam removal and river restoration are now underway. This is a story of people and place, and of a vital turning point in the nation's relationship to its rivers.

Book Description

Ganoderma is a fungal pathogen that causes diseases on a variety of perennial crops including oil, palm, tea, rubber and coconut. Basal stem rot of oil palm caused by Ganoderma is considered the single major disease constraint to oil palm production in South East Asia, where losses can reach 80% after repeated planting cycles. Chapters in the book are based on presentations given at regional research workshops, one held in Egham, UK in August 1998, the other in Serdang, Malaysia in October 1998.

Book Description

Moon Handbooks: Honduras is full of nitty-gritty, firsthand details on all aspects of travel in this picturesque, unspoiled country. Author Chris Humphrey leads you beyond the standard tourist destinations to pristine beaches, diving spots, tropical rainforests, Mayan ruins, and mountain mining towns. He gives you details on traveling by bus, taxi, car, plane, ferry, canoe, and foot, and shares his reviews of restaurants and hotels in every price range. Moon Handbooks: Honduras also provides an in-depth exploration of Honduras' geography, plant and animal life, history, and culture, giving you the chance to see this enigmatic country in its historical context.

Customer Reviews:

Trusty Travel Companion.......2003-11-27

Another hard-working Moon Handbook that gets the job done. Chris Humphrey has done an in-depth analysis of Honduran travel considerations and come up with a balanced and useful guide. He handles the basics well - his reviews and recommendations seem to be accurate and on the mark.

I particularly like his more off-the-beaten track sidetrips - my recent trip there was greatly enhanced by some of the lesser-known tourist attractions. He also gives realistic, no-nonsense advice about health and safety issues. Honduras is, after all, a third-world country with a population that often suffers from health, poverty, and crime problems. Humphreys addresses these problems with straightforward common-sense but without being an alarmist about it. He also exhibits a very welcome aura of compassion for the less-fortunate, complete with suggestions on how to entertain the local youngsters.

A fine effort.

Moon Handbooks Honduras.......2003-07-01

I should have looked more closely at the publishing date rather then the glowing reviews by other readers because most of the information is from 1999 (published in 2000) and is fairly out of date. Though I love the format and the amounts of information in the book I found myself using The Open Road Honduras Guide (2002) for my hotel, bus and pricing information. If you're going to Honduras this year I'd recommend the Open Road Guide - especially for E-mail and Web Site info as that tends to change very fast.

A Model Guidebook! Will be hard to beat this one.......2003-04-16

This is what a guidebook should be like. I have traveled extensively around the world using many different guidebooks, but none have surpassed this one. Chris Humphrey has done a great job. He really understands the country and its people, and is a very good writer. This guidebook thoroughly covers the Honduran culture, customs, society, economy and history. It contains lots of interesting nuggets of information that will help you get more out of your trip. It also makes getting around and finding a place to stay and things to do very easy since the information is very accurate and up-to-date. Overall, this Honduras guide is hard to beat.

Excellent.......2000-11-10

(From Planeta Journal) - This second edition by Humphrey revises the nuts-and-bolts information about traveling in Honduras and provides an entertaining read for anyone heading to this Central American country. This guidebook has great details about Celaque National Park, the petroglyphs of El Sauce and even an analysis of the country's maquiladoras. Honduras seems to have it all -- Caribbean beaches, coral reefs, ancient Maya ruins, colonial villages, and virgin forests -- but it takes a good guidebook to get you there. Independent travelers will relish this book.

Book Description

A comprehensive compendium of cutting-edge protocols for the generation of molecular diversity. Described in step-by-step detail to ensure experimental success, these protocols include readily reproducible methods for random mutagenesis of entire genes or segments of genes, for homologous and nonhomologus recombination, and for constructing in vivo libraries in bacteria and yeast. In addition to the various protocols for creating libraries, this volume also describes ways to analyze libraries, particularly those made by recombination. An accompanying volume, Directed Enzyme Evolution: Screening and Selection Methods (ISBN: 1-58829-286-X), is devoted entirely to selection and screening methods that can be applied to the directed evolution of enzymes.

Copy for Both Volumes

Directed Evolution Library Creation: Methods and Protocols and Directed Enzyme Evolution: Screening and Selection Methods constitute an extraordinary collection of all the key methods used today for directed evolution research. Described in step-by-step detail to ensure robust experimental results, these methods will enable both newcomers and more experienced investigators to design and implement directed evolution strategies for the engineering of novel proteins. The first volume describes methods for the creation of mutated DNA molecules, or DNA libraries, encoding variants of desired proteins. The second volume describes methods for screening DNA libraries to isolate mutant proteins that exhibit a specified function.

Book Description

This book shows how to improve well-known heuristics by randomizing and optimizing their parameters. The ten in-depth examples are designed to teach operations research and the theory of games and markets using the Internet. Each example is a simple representation of some important family of real-life problems. Remote Internet users can run the accompanying software. The supporting web sites include software for Java, C++, and other languages. Audience: Researchers and specialists in operations research, systems engineering and optimization methods, as well as Internet applications experts in the fields of economics, industrial and applied mathematics, computer science, engineering, and environmental sciences.

Book Description

Hans Giebernath lives among the dull and respectable townsfolk of a sleepy Black Forest village. When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious scholarship. Hans dutifully follows the regimen of study and endless examinations, his success rewarded only with more crushing assignments. When Hans befriends a rebellious young poet, he begins to imagine other possibilities outside the narrowly circumscribed world of the academy. Finally sent home after a nervous breakdown, Hans is revived by nature and romance, and vows never to return to the gray conformity of the academic system.

Customer Reviews:

A damning indictment of the Prussian Education System.......2007-05-18

This is a brilliantly written critique - of the Prussian Education System - in the form of a novel. Herman Hesse intended to show how a natural genius(or any child) is stiffled under an educational system that does not care for the needs and desires of the children. A system that is designed for the benefit of the status quo social structure, but ignores the freedom of the children to grow up in accordance with their own dreams.

The central character in this book is Hans Giebernath, a brilliant student in school, but a miserable failure in college after a short while. He is burned out - studying, studying, studying - matters irrelevant to him. He is not able to enjoy and cherish the joys of life. This is the story of his tragedy. His attempts to find a different path for himself in life, his desire to break out of the cage of the academy.

Many will be able to relate to the story; I especially felt a strong similarity between Hans' lifestory and my own. I was a brilliant student in high school, went to an elite college carrying high hopes placed upon me by everybody that knew me, but burned out by the sheer boredom and irrelevance of the 'ivory towers'. However, unlike Hans Giebernath, I managed to put myself through four years, but not without much frustration similar to that felt by him. That is why I loved this story, finally a book that understands and sympathizes with young men like me.

Hans' story continues after the college, has a few surprise twists and an ending that many can see coming. But that is not a shortcoming of the book, the author has built it up so that many a readers will not feel surprised by how the book ends.

What can be said about the writing itself? It's brilliant and choke full of great imagery. Even without a florid prose, Herman Hess has created a work that is great pleasure to read for it's quality of writing and deep thoughts contained therein.

Not a German "Catcher in the Rye".......2007-04-19

Although I have seen this Hesse novel called "a Black Forest 'Catcher in the Rye'," I see little similarity beyond a young male protagonist who drops out of school. Otherwise, both the book's tone and the protagonist's personality are wildly different from Salinger's. Hesse's book is more steeped in academia than Salinger's, which only briefly treats Holden Caulfield's disillusionment with school early on in that book. Here the criticism of the academic grind are more focused and take up more than half the book. Also, "Beneath the Wheel" contains Hesse's trademark Romanticism and obsession with nature, and though we can consider Salinger's young hero a frustrated Romantic of sorts, sarcasm and cynicism are the preferred vehicles used and there's little in the way of paeans to nature as seen in the German tale.

Fans of Hesse will find this book of interest, but might consider it "Hesse Light" compared to the author's more heavyweight entries. There's a touch of "Little Lord Fauntleroy-itis" to our young hero, Hans Giebermath, and some of his Werther-like sufferings are staples of adolescent tales we've read before. In his rebellion, Hans will sample blue-collar work and the siren calls of beer and cigars, but it is his forays into nature that lend the story its appeal. Hesse is at his best when describing forest streams with silent fish rising to dimple the surface, autumn valleys with milk-white mist rising from their crevices, and the torches of October trees turned bright red and orange before the approach of winter. If you love description, "Under the Wheel" will not disappoint. As a bildungsroman of a young man in school, however, it is very good, if not the strongest example of its kind.

Think of the wheel as cyclical. 1906 or 2006? .......2006-06-20

As an educator, I just had two of my gifted students read this novel, and am pleased that I can now read it with multiple lenses. I re-read it recalling my own experiences of high pressure and one-up-manship from an affluent Catholic suburban high school. But now, as a teacher, I see all the dangers in creating gateways and irreversible standards for present day students where colorless logic and linguistics have sadly replaced the need for creativity, independence, and integrity.

Set in pre-World War Germany of the early 1900s, it's also a remarkable read when you compare it to the state of affairs of modern America. These timeless themes have surprisingly remained the same: social status over spiritual discovery, labels and test scores over substance and meaning, product over process. One must ask, are we headed in the same direction as early 20th century Germany?

How many Hans Giebenrath's will we neglect in our lifetime? How many times will we set up an education system where genius is stifled? It makes you wonder how many great minds are lost in the rat race of modernity.

This classic is a great way to generate discussion between teacher and student, especially the student who strives for excellence yet struggles to maintain sanity and identity in a world that has unfortunately favored high SAT's and social rank over family, honor, friendship, and art for art's sake.

It's a beautiful contrast of the real and the ideal; the simple life and the complexity of adolescence.

work of a great writer before he became great.......2005-10-13

This book tells a meaningful story about a young boy struggling with an academic system that stifles freedom and creativity. He finds great success academically until he is awakened by a rebellious and free-spirited friend, who makes him rethink his drive to succeed on someone else's terms. This story seems to be going somewhere- as the boy falls out of the academic system he ultimately finds some new satisfaction in manual labor and finds a second chance to experience childhood. However, the story ends in a melodramatically tragic way, without exploring the boy's conflict in any real depth.

Hesse makes some insightfully cutting remarks about academia's taming of young genius "like a jungle... cleared and its growth thwarted," and manipulation of students as vessels to store teachers' ideas. However, Hesse just as often gets distracted in irrelevant details and overly brief development of flat characters.

This is certainly not near at the level of Hesse's best works, though this is still early in his career (1906). Also, though there are thematic comparisons to Catcher in the Rye, this is an otherwise very reserved and repressed writing style typical of its time.

Unterm Rad.......2005-09-19

(4.5 stars, actually)

'Beneath the Wheel,' or, as it was originally titled in German, 'Unterm Rad,' is a stunningly good early Hesse novel, one of his best and more memorable early books (although my personal favorite of his early work is 'Rosshalde'). I wouldn't say it's as memorable as a book like N&G or 'Steppenwolf,' but it's more memorable than, say, 'Knulp' or 'Peter Camenzind.' It concerns a promising young schoolboy, Hans Giebernath, one of the brightest minds in his local school, who is so intelligent and accomplished a scholar he is chosen to take an important test that, if he passes, will grant him entry into a higher institution of learning and knowledge, so much more advanced and well-equipped than the village school he's currently enrolled in. If accepted, he will be able to make a better life for himself and make his father, a widower, proud of him. However, as much as Hans is longing for this opportunity to break away from stagnant home village, he also isn't too keen on the idea of having to study 'round the clock instead of being able to spend more time in one of his very favorite pastimes, fishing.

Hans is incredibly worried he won't pass, even after all he's given up and how much he's studied, convinced he has completely blown the Latin or Greek portion of the test. But, since he's so brilliant, he passes with flying colors and is able to go away to the big school. However, before he leaves, the local priest counsels him that they may teach him Greek in a "heretical" fashion; i.e., in a way that may expose some centuries-old mistranslations and misinterpretations of the Bible, and therefore cast into doubt the entirety of religion and the authority of priests such as he is. Hans doesn't agree with the priest's narrow-minded view, and determines he'll study Greek however he wants to, whether or not it conflicts with traditionalist translations of the Bible.

Upon arriving at the school, Hans very soon finds himself crushed further and further "beneath the wheel." Instead of encountering enlightened nurturing teachers, he finds teachers who are little more than machines, not instilling any love of or joy in learning. He starts falling behind in his studies and suffering from ill health as a result of all of this, and in addition has become friends with Hermann, another nonconformist the school is trying to crack down on. This friendship gets him into trouble with the other boys as well, not just their teachers. What follows exposes the dangers lurking in ivory towers, how bright innocent young people who come to post-secondary institutions full of joy, hope, and promise, on a quest for knowledge, enlightenment, and people who feel the same way they do are often turned into mindless automatons or risk paying the price for how they don't fall into line. Hans himself is eventually expelled the same way Hermann is, finding his way back to his native village, looked on with shame and stigma, with little choice but to follow in his father's footsteps and become a mechanic. The final result of all of this was really a surprise to me; I did not see the end coming, though some people might have predicted it.

Average customer rating:

Beneath The Wheel

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0374110646

Average customer rating:

Beneath the Wheel
Hermann Hesse
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Classic 100 year old novel

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Customer Reviews:

Classic 100 year old novel.......2007-08-26

Hesse's second novel, published in 1906. The story fosters an attack on educational systems that foster intellect, purposefulness, and ambition to the detriment of emotion, instinct, and soul. The duality of human nature (a familiar theme in Hesse) is represented by complimentary figures of Hans and Hermann, the latter escaping through art and a rejection of the system, while the former is crushed beneath the wheel. Hans' progress towards oblivion unfolds with many surprises, and the sensuous beauty of nautre plays its part even at tragic moments, as in the finale, when Hans is infatuated with the village girl, Emma, and when he goes off on a summer afternoon's drunken spree.

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