An excellent, accurate and comprehensive guide to Australian Military Aircraft. Invaluable for the collector. I constantly refer to it. Highly reccomended if you can find it.

Although out of print and out of date, this is still a superb and unparalleled picture guide to the terrain of New Zealand. The mountains, coasts, and parklands it covers should be essentially unchanged since the publication date of 1982. The copious and excellent photo coverage is beautifully organized with thunmbnail locater maps on every two page spread to help you pinpoint the areas that look most interesting for a visit.

This book was great! Even better than Ms. Schaerf's first book Granton Manor. I look forward to reading more of her books.

Mother's Taxi focuses on how women support and facilitate sport played by others. Thompson's study, which is presented in the book, is an area of research that not many social scientists have yet explored. Her book was easy to read, with several stories told by mothers of athletes, wives of athletes, and female athletes. Men's roles are briefly discussed, but Thompson wanted her primary focus to be on women, an area of very little research. Much of the work done by women to facilitate sport is done privately. This book recognizes their efforts and attempts to make it known to the public eye.

The year 2000 was particularly nice for me, in that Elly Govor, my Russian friend whom I had helped with English, had her second book launched. It was the best book launch I'd ever attended, and it made everybody a bit misty-eyed. The book is "My Dark Brother", and it's the story of the Illin family who migrated from Russia to Queensland, Australia, and marrying into the aboriginal community. What made the launch so very appealing was that some of the present Illins had come to Canberra for the occasion, and met, indeed, some of their relatives they had not seen. Elly's book had for the first time brought the history of the family to their notice. And Elly had really stumbled on the material whilst researching her first book, "Australia in the Russian Mirror". I had a long conversation with Glenda Illin, great-granddaughter of Nikolai. Glenda took a "package" from the Australian Government department where she worked and is thinking of moving to Canberra, Australia's capital. Written like a novel, My Dark Brother is a great read. UNSW Press. All history should be like that. Elly was kind enough to mention me ini the acknowlegments.

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What's it like growing up on an Aussie farm? Read Alison Lester's "My Farm" and you will be captivated by her reminiscences.

You will follow young Alison and her two brothers and sister through the highs (many) and lows (a few) of their young rural lives.

There's lots of Aussie bush humour shining through. Painting clay stripes on an old black horse gives you a "Native Australian Zebra" and entering your Kelpie sheep dog in the dog high jump is all part of the fun.

We are not shielded from the harsher realities of life in the bush. We are threatened by bushfires; round-up runaway cows and we even assist mum to deliver a newborn calf.

We enjoy the bounties of nature and go picking wild blackberries and field mushrooms.

There are some esoteric references to which only Aussies might relate, such as children swinging on the rotary clothesline, best known as the iconic Hills Hoist.

Alison's illustrations have a quirky charm. Faces are simply drawn, but the atmospherics of the landscapes and farm scenes are exquisite.

"My Farm" is the most sophisticated of Alison's works and neatly supplements her other works such as "Bouncing and Bumping" for the younger reader and "Imagine" her most successful book.

Some readers may want a glossary of Aussie terms eg chooks = hens, drover = cowboy, mobs = herd, but these all give a delightful flavour to a book which will have great appeal to all young children.

I admit that I purchased my original first edition of this book solely for the photographs of Tahiti and the nearby island of Moorea. The prose was of secondary interest to me.

However, upon reading the first chapter of this Irish-American adventurer's memoirs, I became hooked on the fascinating descriptions of the places and the people, whose life style was already, in 1921, being replaced by imported modernity.

The attitudes are, of course, dated and ethnocentric, but the author's love for the lands and the life of the South Seas becomes evident, as the many characters (both native and expatriate European) virtually come to life in this charming first-hand account of life in Tahiti.

This is a wonderful volume to dip into a little bit at a time, and some parts will read more easily to a 21st century arm-chair adventurer than others. But it left me with an intention to seek out the other two South Seas books by the same author, "White Shadows In The South Seas" and "Atolls In The Sun".

If you like travel memoirs of exotic, unspoiled places, you'll enjoy this book immensely, as I did.

Frank Dalton Embreeville, PA

This book is very much in the genre of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" and Bryan Burrough's "Barbarians at the Gate" - all packaged with a distinct Australian flavour.

The story documents the twilight years of a high profile Australian Bank (State Bank of New South Wales) until its eventual privatisation in 1994. From 54 expressions of interest, a solitary bidder emerged, extracting a plethora of guarantees and caveats from an enthusiastic vendor and effectively reducing the sale price to one more akin to a Thanksgiving sale at Wal Mart. Compared to more recent sales, it's easy to sympathise with Hand's conclusion that this was "the biggest Bank heist of all time". Indeed, within 5 years, the purchaser (Colonial Mutual) had onsold the Bank (and itself in the process) for over 10 times the purchase price.

But the story is much bigger than State Bank in isolation. Hand meanders around Australian Banking in general during the 1990s, coining the term "mating call" to illustrate Australia's unofficial banking cartel. And yet the story is more than a factual guide to contemporary banking - it's also about changing social attitudes and community values. The chapter named "From revered to reviled" illustrates bankers simply ignoring their demise in community stature, actively absolving themselves of social responsibilities in the name of "shareholder value".

The diversity of anecdotes range from young-gun dealers cheering disastrous employment statistics when it suits the portfolio to the multimillion dollar executive payouts as rural branch closures gather pace. One gem is an assessment of the Bank's bizarre attempt to market a variety of new fees as being of benefit to customers. Overall, the book is factual, well researched and entertaining, offering a balanced commentary and avoiding the easier path of sensationalism. The book is also critical of the government's splashing of public monies around simply to bolster their own fortunes.

Hand has a very entertaining writing style with a strong social conscience, offering meaningful anecdotes and insightful commentary. He has a great strategic perspective of Banking that that makes it so easy to see the woods from the trees. I just think it's a great rollicking yarn with a significance that will grow rather than diminish over time.

I've perused them all--Lonely Planet, DK Eyewitness, Citypack, Fodor's, whatever--and I found this guide to be the best of the bunch. It combines all the best of each of those: great pictures, detailed color maps, historical tidbits, walking tours, and easy, color-coded organization. I imagine it would be appropriate for those planning both long or short visits to Sydney. It's packed with lots to see and do but well organized so that you're not overwhelmed by it if you're just taking a short trip and want just highlights. My second choice would be the Time Out Sydney, which as usual, offers tons of shopping & cool tips & out of the way info. As a frequent traveller and consequently, owner of a plethora of guidebooks, I found this one refreshingly awesome. Just wish that they had a bigger range of destinations in their offering....