Book Description

This practical single-source reference discusses the proper sampling, handling, and preparation of soils for analysis and details the simplest and most frequently used procedures for analyzing soils and plant material. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Best of class!
Third Edition: A thorough compendium on feeding most types of livestock. Nutrient needs of most classes of farm livestock can be found in many sources, but I bought the book especially because of the information dealing with feeding dogs, cats and rabbits.

I recommend the book to anybody interested in producing domestic stock or wanting to understand nutritional needs of their pet dog or cat.

I hope a future edition will include game and exotic stock, such as elk, deer, reindeer, mink, ostrich and emu.

Great book to supplement lectures
Truly helpful in clarifying points in the lecture of a feeds and feeding class. Could, however, use examples of ration formulations. ... Read more

Book Description

Most of the earth's terrestrial species live in the soil. These organisms, which include many thousands of species of fungi and nematodes, shape aboveground plant and animal life as well as our climate and atmosphere. Indeed, all terrestrial ecosystems consist of interdependent aboveground and belowground compartments. Despite this, aboveground and belowground ecology have been conducted largely in isolation. This book represents the first major synthesis to focus explicitly on the connections between aboveground and belowground subsystems--and their importance for community structure and ecosystem functioning.

David Wardle integrates a vast body of literature from numerous fields--including population ecology, ecosystem ecology, ecophysiology, ecological theory, soil science, and global-change biology--to explain the key conceptual issues relating to how aboveground and belowground communities affect one another and the processes that each component carries out. He then applies these concepts to a host of critical questions, including the regulation and function of biodiversity as well as the consequences of human-induced global change in the form of biological invasions, extinctions, atmospheric carbon-dioxide enrichment, nitrogen deposition, land-use change, and global warming.

Through ambitious theoretical synthesis and a tremendous range of examples, Wardle shows that the key biotic drivers of community and ecosystem properties involve linkages between aboveground and belowground food webs, biotic interaction, the spatial and temporal dynamics of component organisms, and, ultimately, the ecophysiological traits of those organisms that emerge as ecological drivers. His conclusions will propel theoretical and empirical work throughout ecology. ... Read more

Book Description

For 17 years readers have turned to Storey Books for advice on raising animals. Our Modern Way series of six books has sold more than 1,000,000 copies. In an effort to provide readers with the best how-to animal books on the market we are completely updating all six Modern Way titles and re-introducing them as part of our Guide to Raising series.

Written by experts, these guides give novice and experienced livestock farmers all they need to know to successfully keep and profit from animals. Each book includes information on selection, housing, space requirements, breeding and birthing techniques, feeding, behavior, and health concerns and remedies for illness. The books also address the business of raising animals - processing meat, milk, eggs, and more. The authors were chosen not only for their expertise but also for their ability to explain the ins and outs of animal husbandry in an inviting and authoritative manner.Whether readers are ready to start an entire herd or flock or are considering purchasing their first animal, Storey's Guide to Raising series offers vital information; each book is an indispensable reference. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The book is a no-nonsense, fact-filled resource.
I have a homestead in Peru (near Cusco / Machu Picchu). I wanted to raise my own meat; thus I bought a dozen chicks. As life dictates they grew and the day came for eating. I gave the first chicken to my housekeeper to kill and clean. She smothered the poor bird by holding its beak closed and plugging the nostrils. The suffocation process took about two struggling minutes. Not a good way to kill a bird, I thought. The second chicken was given to my hired hand, and he killed the bird by stretching its neck three times. Yes, a better method, but really, what do the professionals recommend? Thus, I initially bought "Storey's Guide to Raising Poultry", to find the most humane way to kill poultry.

The book is a no-nonsense, fact-filled resource. Written for those who are serious about raising poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, game birds and other poultry). Written by a professional poultryman, the book covers nutrition, disease, immunity, housing, breeding and management in a comprehensive manner.

The writing is clear, terse and complete. The diagrams and drawings are good. The book has a superb index, along with a good glossary, a list of associations, an appendix that gives you sources of supplies and equipment, and much more.

The descriptions of the breeds of poultry could be better. The one paragraph given to various breeds is inadequate for those who are unfamiliar with breeds (Wyandottes, Australorps, Araucans etc.). The feed section is bias towards commercially packaged feeds, and gives little to no information on homemade mashes. In Peru, we must make our own mash, or go without.

All-in-all, Storey's Guide it is a lot more book than I initially needed. But, after reading through the book, I was both impressed and intrigued enough to consider raising other types of poultry. Hum, maybe turkeys are next. I did use Mercia's recommended method for killing chickens (sever the jugular and insert knife for debraining) and must confess that killing a chicken, regardless of the methodology, is not my preferred hobby. Strongly Recommended

If you only get ONE book for your poultry Library, THIS ONE
I picked this up at the public library to skim over and take back but after having it for just one week, I must have my own copy. The wonderful knowledge that is presented in easy to understand directions from all aspects of poultry. The nice part is they have instructions how to build most any poultry equipment you might need and this would be great for anyone, especially home schoolers.
I am getting my copy. ... Read more

Book Description

This fully revised and expanded edition of Fundamentals of Soil Ecology continues its holistic approach to soil biology and ecosystem function.Students and ecosystem researchers will gain a greater understanding of the central roles that soils play in ecosystem development and function.The authors emphasize the increasing importance of soils as the organizing center for all terrestrial ecosystems and provide an overview of theory and practice of soil ecology, both from an ecosystem and evolutionary biology point of view.This volume contains updated and greatly expanded coverage of all belowground biota (roots, microbes and fauna) and methods to identify and determine its distribution and abundance.New chapters are provided on soil biodiversity and its relationship to ecosystem processes, suggested laboratory and field methods to measure biota and their activities in ecosystems..

* Contains over 60% new material and 150 more pages
* Includes new chapters on soil biodiversity and its relationship to ecosystem function
* Outlines suggested laboratory and field methods
* Incorporates new pedagogical features
* Combines theoretical and practical approaches ... Read more

Book Description

This book gives a coherent and detailed description of analytical methods devised to study random matrices. Given the distribution of matrix elements satisfying certain symmetry conditions, the problem is to find the distribution of quantities depending on a few of its eigenvalues. The passage from matrix elements to all the eigenvalues is simpler than that from all the eigenvalues to a few of them. To achieve this purpose one introduces two kinds of skew-orthogonal polynomials and the method of integration over alternate variables. In the limit of large matrices one is led to the theory of integral equations and non-linear differential equations. All this is relevent to describe nuclear excitations, ultra-sonic resonances of structural materials, spectra of chaotic systems, zeros of Riemann and other zeta functions and in general, the characteristic energies of any sufficiently complicated system. The same mathematiical tools can be hopefully appliedin the study of stationary random processes.

Since the publication of the second editiion ofRandom Matrices in 1991, an old result has been better appreciated and many new ones have emerged. This revised and enlarged editionreflects these developements. For example, the theory of skew-orthogoanl and bi-orthogonal polynomials, parallel to that of the widely known and used orthogonal polynomials, is explained here for the first time. As the new material added one may list the intimate relations among the three classic ensembles (orthogonal, unitary and symplectic), power series expansions of the spacing functions, use fo non-linear differential equations to deduce power series and asymptotic expansions surpassing the previously used inverse scattering method, statistical properties of Gaussian real matrices without symmetry, correlations for Hermitian matrices coupled in a chain, probability density ofthe determinants ofmatrices taken from various matrix ensembles, and the relatiion between random permutations to the so called unitary ensembles, circular or Gaussian.

Presentation of many new results in one place for the first time.
First time coverage of skew-orthogonal and bi-orthogonal polynomials and their use in the evaluation of some multiple integrals.
Fredholm determinants and Painlevé equations.
The three Gaussian ensembles (unitary, orthogonal, and symplectic); their n-point correlations, spacing probabilities.
Fredholm determinants and inverse scattering theory.
Probability densities of random determinants. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The canonical book of random matrices
Mehta's book is the book that gets refered toin every article that deals with random matrices.It covers classical theory of random matrices well, but omits many important developments such as chiral random matrices.'Random matrices' is somewhat pricey but it is nevertheless the best bookthere is on theory of random matrices. Unfortunately. ... Read more

Amazon.com

What's the appropriate treatment when Fluffy decides to eat Oleander? What are the presenting symptoms indicating that Bowser may have come in contact with poison ivy? Dr. Knight, DVM at Colorado State University, has compiled a comprehensive, system-based title containing common North American plants and their toxicological effects on large and small animals, along with diagnoses and treatment. This title should be in every vet's library. --Carolyn Lewis ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Finding the answers
Loved this book. The layouts of the poison plants are easy to understand. Gives you a clear color picture closeup and distance shots of the plants. A a US map for the habitat -- great description of its actual locations i.e. "moist conditions preferring the edges of receding reservoirs and ponds." Describes the toxins involved then gives you clinical signs diagnosis and treatment for the animal. You need this book in your barn! ... Read more

Book Description

This new edition is a major contribution to botanical and ecological literature.Itprovides comprehensive coverage of the major vegetation types of North America, from the arctic tundra of Alaska to the tropical forests of Central America. Each chapter describes the composition, architecture, environment, and conservation status of each ecosystem. In addition, information is included on the abiotic environment, paleoecology, productivity, nutrient cycling, autecological behavior of dominant species, environmental issues, management problems, the role of natural disturbance, and critical areas for future research. This new edition has additional chapters on freshwater wetlands, coastal marine wetlands, temperate Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Hawaiian Islands. Every chapter has been thoroughly updated and now includes information on habitat loss and restoration-preservation programs.This is an outstanding new edition of a well-received text and it is essential reading for students and researchers in plant science, ecology, and conservation. ... Read more

Book Description

KEEPING LIVESTOCK HEALTHY is one of the recognized classics in its field. Small Farmer's Journal called it "a major contribution to available farm veterinary literature." Modern Veterinary Practice wrote: ". . . highly recommended to all livestock owners." And Farmstead Magazine said, "So admirably organized and indexed that its information is instantly available."

Now completely revised and updated, this fourth edition draws on the very latest research from experts on each of the five animals covered - horses, cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep. It presents new information on vaccines, artificial insemination, ultrasonography, disease testing, drug treatments, and diseases such as Lyme disease, Potomac fever, bluetongue, foot-and-mouth disease, and mad cow disease. This complete reference on livestock health is an invaluable guide to preventing disease through good nutrition, proper housing, and appropriate care.

... Read more

Book Description

The functioning of all living systems obeys the laws of physics in fundamental ways. This is true for all physiological processes that occur inside cells, tissues, organs, and organisms. The new edition of Park Nobel's classic text has been revised in an unprecedented fashion, while still remaining user-friendly and clearly presented. Certain to maintain its leading role in teaching general and comparative physiological principles, Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology now establishes a new standard of excellence in teaching advanced physiology.
The book covers water relations and ion transport for plant cells, including diffusion, chemical potential gradients, and solute movement in and out of plant cells. It also presents the interconnection of various energy forms, such as light, chlorophyll and accessory photosynthesis pigments, and ATP and NADPH. Additionally, the book describes the forms in which energy and matter enter and leave a plant, for example: energy budget analysis, water vapor and carbon dioxide, and water movement from soil to plant to atmosphere.

Key Features
* Over four hundred fifty updated references
* Thorough text revisions intended to improve clarity of presentation
* Enhanced coverage of bioenergetics, and gas and water fluxes
* Thoroughly revised figures
* Revised calculations in all chapters
* Reformatted problems with solutions
* New information on root properties and especially global climate change
* Established and classic equations presented in an easy-to-refer-to list
* Appendices with conversion factors and constants ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Libro de Fisiología
pienso que este libro es un valioso aporte al conocimiento de las respuestas fisiológicas de las plantas a los estímulos de su medio ambiente, ya que permite relacionar los fenómenos naturales externos (medioambientales) con el funcionamiento interno de un vegetal, apotando información para el proceso de comprensión de los comportamientos vegetales, un área con mucho conocimiento incompleto todavía ... Read more

Book Description

The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty-one essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. These essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture. Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments? Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality, and happiness of the whole community of creation. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Savor the wisdom in this book and then take action
For me the central theme of this book can be illustrated in this quote. " I don't think it is appreciated how much of an outdoor book the Bible is." Berry is a deeply religious man who lives his religion every moment in his deep, deep connections to the land, to all animals, to community,to the growing of food, and to the world as an organic entity.

As wonderful as it is to have Poet Laureates, I wish we also had Philosopher Laureates and that Wendell Berry had that forum. His thoughts are important for the national consciousness.

"The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other. The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life."

Berry advocates watching government closely, nationally but particularly locally. When it comes time to protest, he calls for facts and good arguments, not just slogans and buttons.
"I would rather go before the governement with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied."

These essays span several decades but the ideas are more relevant today than when they were written. The trends and programs, such as GATT and the loss of topsoil and the rise of megafarms, are as bad as he feared but time has proven them even more destructive.

"Restraint - for us, now - above all:the ability to accept and live within limits; to resist changes that are merely novel or fashionable; to resist greed and pride; to resist the temptation to 'solve' problems by ignoring them, accepting them as 'tradeoffs', or bequesthing them to posterity. A good solution, then, must be in harmony with good character, cultural value, and moral law."

Interesting, but frustrating
While I agree with a lot of what Berry has to say, I found his approach off-putting, in a way that I think will ruin his message for many readers.

Berry supports a simpler lifestyle, and his ideas are much like Thoreau's as described during his experience in "Walden". He says that simplifying will bring us back to nature and a healthier way of living. I agree with many aspects of what he has to say, although I quibble with him on several points - but that's a matter of personal opinion and not a problem with the book. But Berry takes a fairly hard-nosed, holier-than-thou approach to explaining the virtues of the lifestyle he supports, and this grows tiresome after reading the book for more than a short while.

Berry is also very long-winded. His writing style is somewhat overblown and very difficult to get through. This book and perhaps this author are probably best read in small doses, whether you like him or not.

Notes From a Native
Cover to cover this book encompasses twenty-one powerful essays spanning as many years, from "The Unsettling of America" (1977) to "The Whole Horse" (1999). It is basically the backdoor into the house of Berry's thought, the best way to familiarize oneself with his writings without buying all his books. In fact, to date, it is the only such compilation currently available.

For me personally, reading Berry is a kind of sacrament taken with the utmost reverence and joy. Like the bark of an ancient redwood tree, the essays are imbued with scent and deep, earthly texture. This language serves the underlying themes well -- themes of love, work, earth and health. Indeed, many of the essays set out explicitly to reestablish the hidden connections between body and soul, individual and community; the former necessarily connected with the land that created and sustains us. Like hymns to one's sense of place, one reads Berry and is transported back home.

"I came to see myself growing out of the earth like the other animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy of place, which would fall back into it like leaves in the autumn."

Full of common sense, prophetic visions, poetic beauty and cogent analyses of America's cultural crises, these essays will retain their relevance and charm for generations if not millennia to come. At present, I can think of no single author better suited to guide us through these troubled times. Humble, illuminating, honest and profound -- this is one thinker not to be overlooked by anyone concerned with our fate as species and the fate of the planet as a whole. Definitely one of the most important, soul-satisfying books I have ever read.

Descriptive, witty, but ultimately hard to understand
Yes, I am all for social and political reform in America. And yes, Americans don't know anything about the environmental situation at the moment, but Wendell Berry could tell this to me in half the words. ... Read more

Book Description

This book has a two-fold objective-(1) to describe the properties of feedstuffs used in the feeding of domestic animals and, (2) to provide information on feeding practices for a variety of domestic and exotic animal species.An environmentalist-friendly perspective of contemporary issues helps readers develop awareness of environmental and ecological effects of livestock production.For professional animal nutritionists, extension agents, veterinarians, and livestock producers. ... Read more

Amazon.com

The mid-20th-century environmental crisis that led to important protective legislation in the 1970s, is, to poet/farmer Wendell Berry's mind, also a crisis of character, agriculture, and culture. Because Americans are divorced from the land, they mistreat it; because they are divorced from each other, they mistreat those around them. Berry, writing in a prophetic mode, argues that if Americans are to heal the environmental wounds their land has suffered, they will also need to create more meaningful work, sustain happier and healthier lives, and return to what conservatives call "family values." The Unsettling of America is a quarter century old now, but most of its arguments remain current. ... Read more

Reviews (11)

Agriculture and Literature
I read this book years ago. Haunting. Who would have thought that a book about agriculture in America could qualify as literature. What Berry says in this book should wake you up (it woke me up, and that is enough to expect from a non-fiction work). But it is not just the facts that make this book. The writing is extraordinary. It is well researched. The ideas are presented in a very sober and direct manner. And at the same time, it is no dispassionate account. That is what was so striking to me on first reading. It is written as if the author were trying to restrain himself, holding back. And by doing so, it creates a sort of tension -- between the lines -- that you can feel from cover to cover. I don't think that I have ever read another book since that oozed so much of anger without ever stating the anger outright. Because of this book, I've gone on to read most of Berry's work as it has appeared, and I would recommend it all. But start with this one. It breathes fire.

Classic Berry.
This was the first Wendell Berry book I ever read. Berry is a Kentucky farmer and a prolific poet, essayist, and novelist. Since it was first published nearly twenty-five years ago, I have reread this Sierra Club classic many times. It remains as relevant today as when it was written. In fact, Berry notes in the 1986 Preface, "every problem I dealt with in this book . . . has grown worse since the book was written" (p. viii).

Americans are alienated from the land and from each other. This is the theme that resonates through the nine chapters--essays, really--of Berry's book. Because our modern society is dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profit, it suffers the loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of land. "The modern urban-industrialized society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation" (p. 137), Berry writes in "The Body and the Earth." Intending only to read the passages on fidelity contained within that essay, I ended up rereading Berry's book cover to cover today.

"Marriage and the care of the earth are each other's disciplines" (p. 132) In discussing marital fidelity, Berry notes that "there is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth" (p. 124). For Berry, fidelity can be seen "as the necessary discipline of sexuality, the practical definition of sexual responsibility, or the definition of the moral limits within which such responsibility can be conceived and enacted. The forsaking of all others is a keeping of faith, not just with the chosen one, but with the ones forsaken. The marriage vow unites not just a woman and a man with each other; it unites each of them with the community in a vow of sexual responsibility toward all others. The whole community is married, realizes its essential unity, in each of its marriages" (p. 122). In other words, "where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity" (p. 123). Fidelity leads us "to the highest joy we can know: that of union, communion, atonement (in the root sense of at-one-ment)" (p. 122).

THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA, however, is about more than fidelity metaphors. In the book's title essay, Berry observes that today, "the most numerous heirs of the farmers of Lexington and Concord are the little groups scattered all over the country whose names begin with 'Save': Save our Land, Save the Valley, Save our Mountains, Save our Farmland . . . people without official sanction . . . who are struggling to preserve their places, their values, and their lives as they know them and prefer to live them against the agencies of their own government which are using their own tax moneys against them" (p. 5). "No longer does human life rise from the earth like a pyramid, broadly and considerately founded upon its sources," Berry writes in "The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character." "Now it scatters itself out in a reckless horizontal sprawl, like a disorderly city whose suburbs and pavements destroy the fields" (p. 21). In that essay, Berry is critical not only of the "supposedly fortunate citizen," interested only in "making money and entertaining himself" (p. 20) with irresponsible consumption (p. 24), but also of the Sierra Club (his publisher). In another essay, Berry argues that "the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present" (p. 58). "We must cleanse ourselves of slovenliness, laziness, and waste," he writes. "We must learn to discipline ourselves, to restrain ourselves, to need less, to care more for the needs of others. We must understand what the health of the earth requires, and we must put that before all other needs" (pp. 65-6).

Unsettling more often than not, readers will find words to live by in this insightful Berry classic. This passionate book has the potential to change your life.

G. Merritt

This book should come with a warning label...
I had to read this in high school. It is a dangerously seductive piece of propaganda that persuasively hits all the "right notes," especially for anyone with a muddle-headed agenda that exists in defiance of common sense. When looked at rationally, it is probably the single most evil, hate-filled piece of writing I have ever encountered. It could only have been written from one of two perspectives. Either the author has absolutely no understanding of the realities that make human life possible, or else he has a profound and deep-seated loathing of civilization. I am not exaggerating when I state my feeling that, if there is ever another truly dangerous ideology that, like Nazism, will be embraced by the weak-minded and easily misled, a book like this could very easily be their bible. In it, they will find all of the misguided ammunition they need to justify destroying everything of value and beauty in the human world.

Berry: Self-righteous Luddite who knows what's best for you.
I suppose I should take comfort in that there are only nine reviews of this book so far, even if nearly all of them are wildly positive. It means Berry's influence remains minimal both here and abroad.

Years ago, I found an old edition of this book at a yard sale. Back then I was much more to the left politically than I was now, so I read it and agreed with many of its points. Still, there were things that stuck in my throat. Such as Berry's insistence that time-saving devices like washers and dryers had taken all the meaning and honest labor out of housework -- can't remember exactly how he worded it, but that was it in a nutshell: modern women had been cheated out of a kind of primal experience. (I wonder if Berry himself has ever had to pound clothes with rocks on a riverbank, or if he makes the little wifey do that.)

Also, from what I recall, he seemed to be insisting that "outside of nature" -- that is, in the cities and suburbs -- one could not get back in touch with one's humanity, or creation, or ghod, or whatever. As a child of the suburbs who has always preferred to live in urban areas, this struck me as narrow-minded, just like when fundamentalist preachers insist that *their* sect is your only path to salvation.

Of course, this isn't inconsistent with the devolution of environmentalism in recent years. It used to be about "preserving the trust" for future human generations -- i.e., stewardship. Now it seems to be about *worshipping* nature as a force in and of itself, in the form of "Mother Earth," "the Goddess," "Gaia," or various other anthropomorphisms for what is essentially a big chunk of rock with some greenery on it...and, conversely, demonizing humanity as "a disease on the Earth's skin," as Nietzsche did.

This new incarnation of environmentalism has some very disturbing allies: the more radical, virulently anti-male branches of feminism; Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front, and other terrorist groups who don't scruple to harm their fellow human beings or destroy their property in the name of "the earth"; the profoundly misanthropic animal-rights subculture, which would rather see all their grandmothers die of cancer (as mine did) than one lab rat perish; and various individuals unaffiliated with but sympathetic to these causes. Such as the morons I encountered this summer at a yard sale who were raising money for their pet dog's chemotherapy...and who said in all seriousness, "We need a good plague to get rid of about a third of the people on this planet."

But back to Berry. Other words and deeds of his I've noted over the years:

-- In a _Harper's_ feature entitled, "She comes to you for an abortion. What do you say?", various political figures and social commentators gave their opinions. I was struck that even Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's one-time speechwriter and certainly not a liberal, wrote a piece in the second person, addressing the young woman with respect and empathy. So, by the way, did the representative of Feminists for Life.

Berry, however, didn't even seem to grasp that he was asked to write something TO an unhappily pregnant woman. He instead produced a numbered list of reasons that he opposes abortion, each in the tone of a pulpit preacher denouncing adultery. I was, shall we say, less than comforted when he concluded with, "I could see how some women might get abortions, just as I could see how I might commit murder. All in all, I don't think abortion is a topic to get self-righteous about." Gee, thanks for clearing that up, Wend.

- Berry was once quoted in the _Boston Globe Magazine_ that he disapproved of motorboats. Fine, that's his right; but he claimed that the owner of a motorboat is merely fulfilling the needs of the corporation who made the boat, not his own. Fortunately, Felicia Ackerman, a long-standing activist with the Rhode Island Civil Liberties Union, wrote in to tear Berry a new one: Maybe the boat owner IS fulfilling his needs, because he LIKES driving the damned thing! Given how popular motorboats have become, she just might be right, even if an arrogant technophobe like Berry would never choose to buy one.

- Finally, there is Berry's practice of never using a computer, or even a typewriter, but always writing his stories, essays, etc. out long-hand, then having someone else type it up. I suppose this greatly endears him to the '60s relics who stayed on the commune long after everyone else grew up and went home. To me, it smacks of Luddite pretension -- and hypocrisy. *Someone* is going to have to type up that manuscript, so he's not minimizing the net use of technology all that much.

Not to mention that the secretary or typesetter -- and I've been both -- is going to have to put a lot more work into the job than would have been true had Berry had the freakin' basic consideration to type it up himself and save it to a floppy or CD-ROM. Ask anyone, like myself, who's ever been paid piss-poor wages to transcribe up the hideous scrawls of doctors, lawyers, and others who felt that learning even to hunt and peck was "beneath" them.

Berry, and cohorts of his like Bill "Enough" McKibben, are the left-wing equivalents of William Bennett: they gratify their bottomless self-righteousness and desire to control others, comfort the ranks of Nature Nazis out there who wish for apocalyptic plagues and the razing of cities on a grand scale; impress the hordes of college students addled by Luddite ideology; and earn buttloads of money...by deploring the way most Americans prefer to live, work, and enjoy themselves. Too bad so many people with enough sense to ignore Bennett fall for this tripe.

Character and intelligence define real progress
Berry writes in a very eloquent and poignant manner to enlighten readers about the big American misconception that modern agriculture and technology is the only way to prosper. It's time for education, politics, and the public make intelligent decisions based on real consequences that affect the land, our health, and common bonds, and to look beyond the narrow minded system of profits and production. I recommend this book to any person who cares about the environment, agriculture, and public policy. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent how-to.
I got the book from the library and I want it. There is too much good detail to remember. Can you talk them into publishing it on CD Rom? Or, can they at least print some more so I can buy it? It is a narrow subject that probably doesn't have enough readers, but it is good. ... Read more

Book Description

The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms.This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace.The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I.

Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history. ... Read more

Reviews (25)

How did it happen? The Soviet Union's real story.
"Harvest of Sorrow" is an important book for any age. Meticulous, rich with history, but refreshingly straight-on; Conquest knows and writes of the Soviet Union in a way that will bring everyone who reads this book to a much closer understanding of what really went on economically, and the twisted fates of 20 million people under communist manipulation and control . All that has helped bring mother Russia to the point she is today. In chaos and turmoil, and on her knees. This book should play an important role in every high school civics class today, and find its way to the reading tables of anyone interested in the economics and agricultural systems of communism.

The Economic Statistical Facts of Communist Russia
Harvest of Sorrow is an important book for any age. Meticulous, rich with history, but refreshingly unemotional, Conquest knows and writes of the Soviet Union in a way that will bring everyone who reads this book to a much closer understanding of what really went on economically, and the twisted fates of 20 million people under communist manipulation and control . All that has helped bring mother Russia to the point she is today. In chaos and turmoil, and on her knees. This book should play an important role in every high school civics class today, and find its way to the reading tables of anyone interested in the economics and agricultural systems of communism.

We were so moved by this book and another timeless classic - The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek that we also felt compelled to create a web page just for these type of books because we feel that many people may not yet have a clear understanding of what communism is (and was)all about. From what we've learned here, we have to say we "thought" we knew, but found we didn't have the actual bottom line until we'd digested this material.

Power is not a means, it is an end
Robert Conquest characterizes rightly the Ukranian genocide perpetrated by the CP under Stalin as 'one of the most dreadful periods of modern times'. (A. Koestler: 'starving children looked like embryos out of alcohol bottles'.)
He clearly explains the reader that it was an ideological as well as a political scheme; ideological, because it aimed at replacing private agriculture (the kulaks) by collective farms; political, because it aimed at crushing the Ukranian minority. The result was about 15 million deaths through deportation, starvation or direct liquidation.
This book contains excellent historical, political and ideological (Marx, Engels) background on the collectivization problem which would haunt the USSR until his final days: bureaucratization and rampant inefficiency.
Robert Conquest's book gives us an appalling picture of Lenin's terror reign and, after his death, of the power struggle at the top of the CP. The outcome was that one man through one party wielded totally uncontrolled power in an enormous country. He had even the power to inflict genocides without having to justify himself.
This book shows the USSR as a ghost state (reflected in the media) where all contact with reality was lost, as so brilliantly described in Ismail Kadare's novels. For the bureaucrats terror and obedience to any order from above became a normal method of administration.
When one ultimately askes why and how all those, humanly speaking, devastating facts could happen, I should remind the last words of Prof. David Chandler's magisterial book on Pol Pot's death camp 'Voices from S-21': 'the real truth ... is to be found in ourselves'.
The Ukranian genocide is not unique in the 20th century with its Nazi camps, Indonesian, Rwandan, Armenian or Bosnian mass killings.
A terrible but necessary book.
I should also recommend a prime eye-witness of this tragedy: Miron Dolot's 'The Hidden Holocaust'.

Towering Achievement
Conquest's examination of Stalin's calamitous decision to collectivize agriculture in the Soviet Union is not an easy read, nor should it be. It is a worthy companion to the author's great work on Stalin's reign of terror in the '30s, and in fact serves as a "prequel" to the latter, having been published some 15 years later.

The great strength of the work lies in Conquest's meticulous efforts to explicate the roots of the communist regime's ruthless murder of millions of peasants. He details Marx's and, more importantly, Lenin's disdain for the peasantry, an underlying hatred that helps to explain Stalin's justification for departing from Lenin's pragmatic decision to embark on a "New Economic Policy" in 1921 that -- against his ideological bias -- offered new freedoms that spawned the despised class known as the Kulaks. Without this groundwork, one is tempted to dismiss the human destruction as the mere abberations of a sick mind.

Conquest makes abundantly clear that these supposedly fabulously wealthy farmers -- the Kulaks -- were in fact people of very modest means. Their greatest crime, of course, was that they obstinately resisted Stalin's determination that capitalism would be wiped from the countryside, whatever the cost. Much of the last half of the book recounts in stark detail the incredibly costly, but ultimately successful, effort to end peasant resistance to collectivization. Importantly, he points out, even after all realistic Kulak "resistance" had been eliminated, the Soviets continued to claim that the threat continued and extended their seasons of murder. And even for the most coldly pragmatic, he also convincingly argues that the collectivization was an unmitigated economic disaster that killed incentive and left nearly barren a countryside that in the hands of an intelligent leader should have been turned into one of the most productive in the world.

If one were to ask, what is the point of reading and recalling this hideous chapter in Russian and human history, one might just as well ask, why remember the Holocaust? While the circumstances of human history may change, the motivations that drive individuals remain quite consistent. Stalin, in the end, shrugged off the Marxist theory to which he professed he was committed in favor of the naked pursuit of power. Economic theory served as nothing more than a justification for the slaughter of millions of human beings. Leaders who in the future aspire to the kind of local and world power that Hitler and Stalin achieved will reveal their motivations to those who are vigilant, and it will be to humanity's great profit if those with sufficient awareness and foresight are able to thwart those efforts.

The "Human" Face of Communism
We have heard so many excuses for the disaster that we call Soviet communism that one can almost recite them by heart - communism has never been tried, communism rescued citizens from the "tyanny" of the tsar (this is so pathetic as to be beyond laughable), communism had the wrong people, wrong methods, wrong country, blah, blah, blah.

Soviet collectivism is nowhere better illustrated than in the largest mass killing in the history of the world when over 14 million Ukranians were starved, shot and beaten to death by that "rescuing" crew - Lenin, Stalin & Company. This, of course, does not include the millions killed in the Civil War and the years directly afterwards. And if it were left up to Western intellectuals to highlight this holocaust we would still be waiting for news much less disapproval or blame.

Robert Conquest's tome reads like a documentary, describing a madness that one does not associate with civilized nations or people. But he is relentlessly systematic, the research and evidence overwhelming and mindnumbing. This methodical and studious approach is much more effective than anguished calls for revenge. Perhaps the magnitude of the event is too great to grasp for some, is so far beyond the pale that it surpasses the senses.

But that fact does not explain why even today the Soviet system has never come in for a tenth of the criticism of Nazi Germany despite committing five to six times the number of murders if over a longer time span. Worse, the regime had intellectual support in the West even after it's crimes were discovered - from the New York Times correspondent in Moscow to the usual bevy of college professors and "activists".

Conquest is measured but in this case the words and actions alone do not need shouting. In more poetic hands, this could have been a requiem - instead we have a lesson for the ages. ... Read more

Book Description

The growth of a single global market is having far-reaching and profound effects on what we eat, with corresponding implications for public health. This is the first full examination, by two of the world's leading food policy experts, of these developments.

From nutrition to antibiotics, from heart disease to food poisoning, what matters now is not just what we eat, but how it has been produced, distributed and processed. A new, global politics of food and health is emerging. In the North, the linkages of trade, food and health have been apparent in the reactions to BSE in beef and GM crops. In many developing countries, endemic problems of a 'Western' diet have been imported, so that coronary disease, food-related cancers, obesity and diabetes are found alongside food shortages. The policy responses continue to be contradictory, with health ministries trying to stem the rise of food-related disease, while trade ministers commit their food and agriculture industries to the policies that cause the problems.

The authors show how public health cannot be regarded as a barrier to 'free' trade, under agreements that allow powerful corporations and rich consumers to treat the world as their larder. Giving it the importance it demands will require a new, ecological and population-based conception of public health. There are many signs that this is emerging to be one of the main political agendas of the coming century.

The book will be essential and stimulating reading for everyone professionally or academically involved - or merely concerned - with health policy, agricultural and food policy and globalization issues. ... Read more