Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest

Book Description

These personal and historical meditations explore the human and natural history of the Near Southwest, a bio-region that embraces New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and slices of Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Centuries ago, the Navajos named this region the Horizontal Yellow, a landscape characterized by yellowed grass stretching in all four directions, rivers that drain from the Southern Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico, and human cultures peculiarly adapted to the regional biome. The Horizontal YellowÂ's piney woods, oak savannahs, blackland prairies, rolling desert plains, desert scrub basins, scarp mesas, table lands, piÃ±on-juniper foothills, and diverse mountain ranges have succored and inspired American Indians, Hispanos, Anglos, and Frenchmen, including Dan FloresÂ's own ancestors, who homesteaded in western Louisiana three hundred years ago and were mustangers on the Southern Plains. Moving between the present and past, the personal and historical, the author ruminates on myth, wilderness, wolves, horses, deserts, mountains, rivers, and human endeavor from Cabeza de Vaca to Georgia OÂ'Keeffe in the Near Southwest.

Â“Dan Flores explores our complex relationship with the natural environment in a way that far surpasses the simple-minded rhapsody of most nature writers. This is a provocative book from an original mind.Â”Â—Stephen Harrigan

Personal and historical meditations explore the human and natural history of the large expanse of land the Navajos once named the Horizontal Yellow.

Customer Reviews:

Embrace the Southern Plains through an appreciative lover.......2006-01-21

Dan Flores has lived most of his life in the Horizontal Yellow. Another, more historical term for this land would be the Spanish-Mexican Frontier. Florida was not settled from Mexico, of course, and the settlement of California was decades to more than a century later.

Flores explores this land from both the history and natural history points of view, with the historical part generally beginning with the first Spanish-U.S. contact as part of post-Louisiana Treaty boundary negotiations.

Not all Texas is the Southern spillover of Dallas and Houston; get acquainted with the rest of it, and adjacent areas, in this book.

Flores proves once again he has few peers........1999-10-29

Dan Flores' long-awaited new book once again proves he has few peers when it comes to a deep understanding of his native Near Southwest, a vision for its long term health, and the ability to weave a tale which is scholarly, literary, and deeply personal.

Book Description

A beautiful book about God's creation, where each turn of the page reveals more of the oak tree as the acorn disappears.

Customer Reviews:

A must-have for children.......2007-01-30

God's Oak Tree by Allia Zobel Nolan is based on The Acorn and the Oak Tree by Lori C. Froeb. The story is accompanied by the Bible verse, Genesis 1:11.

God has a plan for everything. And to illustrate His plan, Allia Zobel Nolan tells the story, in rhyme, of an acorn that grows into a mighty oak tree.

The book's layout is unusual and I can't even describe it. I will just say that there is an illustration of an acorn and when you turn the pages, a bit of the acorn disappears and part of the oak tree appears in its place, until all you see is the mighty oak tree.

Children will be attracted to God's Oak Tree for the beautiful illustrations, the unique layout and the lyrical verse.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a must have for children. The message is powerful and the story is memorable.

Average customer rating:

From Acorn to Oak Tree (Welcome Books)
Jan Kottke
Manufacturer: Children's Press (CT)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Biology | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0516235060

Average customer rating:

Wonderful book and series

The Acorn and the Oak Tree
Lori Froeb
Manufacturer: Reader's Digest
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0794405029

Book Description

Every living thing grows, and this beautiful book tells a story about growth in a tender and unique way. Readers follow an acorn as it falls off the old oak tree, takes root, goes through some hard times, and becomes a big, strong oak. The pages are graduated in size, so as kids turn the page, a little bit of the acorn goes away and a little piece of the oak tree appears.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful book and series.......2007-03-21

This and the other book in the series (Goodnight Sun, Hello Moon) are nice, peaceful stories, with a very creative page set-up. The pages are split to first show the acorn, and then gradually reveal the tree fully grown. This book is worth getting used, as it is durable and worth the effort.

Average customer rating:

The Oak Tree
Paula Z. Hogan
Manufacturer: Steck-Vaughn
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: School & Library Binding

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0817212515

From Little Acorns: A First Look at the Life Cycle of a Tree (First Look: Science)

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From Little Acorns: A First Look at the Life Cycle of a Tree (First Look: Science)
Sam Godwin
Manufacturer: Picture Window Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Biology | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Botany | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 140480658X

The Life Cycle of an Oak Tree (Pebble Plus)

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The Life Cycle of an Oak Tree (Pebble Plus)
Linda Tagliaferro
Manufacturer: Pebble Plus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

Botany | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Oak Tree (Life Cycles)
Jason Cooper
Manufacturer: Rourke Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Oak Trees (First Step Nonfiction: Plant Life Cycles)

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Oak Trees (First Step Nonfiction: Plant Life Cycles)
Melanie Mitchell
Manufacturer: Lerner Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Botany | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0822546108

Average customer rating:

Tree (Life Cycle Books)
Althea Braithwaite , and Carolyn Rubin
Manufacturer: Longman Trade/Caroline House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Botany | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0884621960

Book Description

Discover the secrets of getting the most points for the least play. This book rates 57 southern Nevada slot clubs. Once you know how to play them, slot clubs are your best ticket to: cash rebates, meal comps, free rooms, and more.

Customer Reviews:

On My Way to L. V. and still Using This Book.......2006-01-18

I am heading for Las Vegas again very soon and am going through this book very carefully to decide where I will do most of my playing. This is the 3rd time I am using this book as a reference to guide me to the best places to play slots and video poker. I had hoped a newer edition would be out by now, hence the 4 rating rather than a 5, but don't let that stop you from buying this book. The am't of info
contained in this book will guide the new and the veteran
Las Vegas gambler alike. I won't leave home without it!

Outdated.......2000-01-23

This is the 1995 edition which, while useful in showing how Slot Clubs work, is hopelessly outdated in its particulars. I had understood that there would be a 1998 edition which would have been more useful. None of the newer casinos is listed here because of the book's age. I also know for fact that the club at MGM Grand has changed its modus operandi since this book was written. If you want an overview of how slot clubs work, this book could be for you. I cannot recommend it for current information.

The Las Vegas Advisor Guide to Slot Clubs

Average customer rating:

The Las Vegas Advisor Guide to Slot Clubs
Jeffrey Compton
Manufacturer: Huntington Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NUJB3E

Book Description

Biology takes a special place among the other natural sciences because biological units, be they pieces of DNA, cells or organisms, reproduce more or less faithfully. As for any other biological processes, reproduction has a large random component. The theory of branching processes was developed especially as a mathematical counterpart to this most fundamental of biological processes. This active and rich research area allows us to make predictions about both extinction risks and the development of population composition, and also uncovers aspects of a population's history from its current genetic composition. Branching processes play an increasingly important role in models of genetics, molecular biology, microbiology, ecology and evolutionary theory. This book presents this body of mathematical ideas for a biological audience, but should also be enjoyable to mathematicians.

Book Description

Henstock-Kurzweil (HK) integration, which is based on integral sums, can be obtained by an inconspicuous change in the definition of Riemann integration. It is an extension of Lebesgue integration and there exists an HK-integrable function f such that its absolute value |f| is not HK-integrable. In this book HK integration is treated only on compact one-dimensional intervals.

Book Description

A comprehensive review of the Kurzweil-Henstock integration process on the real line and in higher dimensions. It seeks to provide a unified theory of integration that highlights Riemann-Stieljes and Lebesgue integrals as well as integrals of elementary calculus. The author presents practical applications of the definitions and theorems in each section as well as appended sets of exercises.

Average customer rating:

A masterpiece of the inner life..

Nature under the microscope!

The Issa Valley: A Novel
Czeslaw Milosz
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition

The Captive Mind

To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays

Legends of Modernity: Essays and Letters from Occupied Poland, 1942-1943

Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment

ASIN: 0374516952

Book Description

Thomas, the child-protagonist of The Issa Valley, is subject to both the contradictions of nature in this severe northern setting and sometimes enchanting, sometimes brutal timbre of village life. There are the deep pine and spruce forests, the grouse and the deer, and the hunter's gun. There is Magdalena, the beautiful mistress of the village priest, whose suicide unleashes her ghost to haunt the parish. There are also the loving grandparents with whom Thomas lives, who provide a balance of the not-quite-Dostoevskian devils that visit the villagers. In the end, Thomas is severed from his childhood and the Issa River, and leaves prepared for adventures beyond his valley. Poetic and richly imagined, The Issa Valley is a masterful work of fiction from one of our greatest living poets.

Customer Reviews:

A masterpiece of the inner life.........2007-02-27

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,Czeslaw Milosz here writes deftly
yet with the right amount of passion about the child,Thomas. What an inner
life,what thoughts,what dreams,this child has. He soars with Aurora.then
blends with the trees in his beloved Issa Valley. What poetry in writing..
I was enchanted as you will be,too.Let Mr. Milosz and the Issa Valley wrap you in it's gentle and mercurial embrace.
M.Baker

Nature under the microscope!.......2005-07-20

Renowned Polish-Lithuanian poet, Czeslaw Milosz crafts his poetry with prose-like clarity and his prose with flowing rhythm and sententious weight. His coming of age novel, 'The Issa Valley' is a stunning example of how the mediatative lyric can be woven into a novel.

The novel takes place in the wild forests of central Lithuania near to where Milosz spent his youthful summers at the manor houses of his grandparents. The central character, Thomas, an adolescent school-boy of an aristocratic Polish family is sent away to his grandparents for the summer. Grandfather Surkont is the model of noblisse oblige, a Polonized Lithuanian aristocrat who strives to keep his household and his villagers happy despite the violent changes which threaten to engulf this forgotten paradise. The time is just after the Great War, when the newly-formed Republic of Lithuania is struggling with its indepedence after centuries of foreign domination, by the Russians on a state level, by the Polish landowners on the local level. Polish 'pan,' Thomas, is abruptly thrown into a fresh and vibrant world completely foreign from the fast-paced city life he has known until now. Here in the villages and manors around the Issa River, the world is pagan and Lithuanian. Ancient spirits and gods dwell in the minds and souls of the Lithuanian peasants who people Thomas's new world. And most of all, Thomas meets up with his newest passion, that which teaches him more than any school-book ever could, the rich and primeval natural world.

More than anything, Milosz's novel is a giant mediatative prose poem on the shape and workings of nature. Sentence after sentence drips with near religious reverence for the water-lillied, cobalt-colored Issa, for the inpenetrable jungles of black pine, home to the bullet-headed snipe, siena-shaded mule deer, the fearsome black-bodied, red-hooded forest vipers whose lethal injection will put the strongest of men down before he can whisper, 'Holy Jesus, home to an infinite variety of bird and bug. Thomas is immediately captured by such an environment and sets out to become a 'naturalist.' In the Issa valley that means 'hunter.' Thomas soons attaches himself to the local hunter, Romauld, who initiates Thomas in the arts of tracking, waiting and dropping prey. Thomas hungers to learn this ancient art but fails dismally. Always a step behind, a little too hestitant to pull the trigger, he fails to make the big kill. Until the squirrel. Thomas' deliberate wounding of his unsuspecting and innocent victim causes a painful enlightenment. Through his tears of remorse and agonizing pang of guilt, Thomas grows up in a moment. He has taken life, thereby losing his Adam-like innocence. This two-page metaphor for the fall of man is in itself worth the whole book.

This seminal climax in Thomas' life underscores Milosz's central theme: we are all inextricably attached to our environment, slaves of the brutal and beautiful outside world that holds us in her hand. The natural world forms the backbone, muscle and tissue of this novel. The characters whom surround Thomas's microcosm are mere pawns of omnipotent nature and through them, Milosz makes his creed clear: accept your place in the nature of things or woe is your lot. Magdelena covets the village priest and finally gets her wish, but at a dire cost. Ostracized from her surroundings, she choses suicide and her ghost haunts the village until she finally finds her place again. Balthazar, the manor's forester, covets a life not his, more land, more money, a prettier wife. A dangerous desire. One which eventually leads to madness, mayhem and murder.

Milosz sketches these characters with a light brush. Milosz leaves out emotional depth for the sake of proving his teleology. Thus, the characters, Thomas included, often seem like indistinct shadows cast in the background. But Milosz's sun, the portrayal of nature in all its savage colors, nonetheless burns an indelible image on the brain if not the heart. 'The Issa Valley' is not only a vibrant and melancholy journey around that world that surrounds us but a detached, yet oddly moving, examination of those passions within us which hunger to connect with something greater. Those longing for such a journey would do well to pick up 'The Issa Valley.'

The Issa Valley. A Novel. Translated by Louis Iribarne.

Average customer rating:

The Issa Valley. A Novel. Translated by Louis Iribarne.
CZESLAW. MILOSZ
Manufacturer: New York:Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UBG4IG

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