I'll make this short and sweet. Buy this book and read it; you'll be inspired to investigate the world of hydroponics. The author's enthusiasm comes across and makes one want to start experimenting before the book is finished. The full color pictures tell a story all their own. You can see what it's all about. I never considered that there were so many types of hydroponic methods. Dr. Sutherland extensively covers various plants and their needs. He recommends certain vegetables as his favorites and why. The big three mediums seem to be: perlite, vermiculite and "growool". If there was a negative to the book it would only be that the author is in Australia, so most of the appendix is directed toward Australian and New Zealand suppliers. Thanks to the internet I don't think that is such a big deal. If you haven't guessed it by now, I enjoyed this book.

I have read the local library copy of an older copyright of this book. It is excellent and my current gardening for myself is being restructured to many of the ideas given in this book. My parents just moved into a mobile home and still wanted to garden. The ideas in this book will provide them with a wonderful hobby as well as a potentially higher productive, cost effective, long lasting garden area. Very usable for mom who is physically limited by age and bending over abilities. A 5 tier plastic pipe unit will be used for top crops, and a framework lined with agricultural plastic from a local dairy will be used for root crops in a "bin" about 30" high. I will use a combination of "soils" for this by combining several types of mediums. Sawdust, some potting soil, composted manure and then super charge this mix with nutrients and watering with a hydroponic solution. Wish us luck and a productive year! I am going to order this newer volume of the book for myself.

New Zealand historian J.C. Beaglehole made the history of exploration in the Pacific his life's work and no such effort could possibly be complete without a thorough understanding of the voyages of Captain James Cook. When Beaglehole started, the existing editions of Cook's Journal were not of high historical standards and, in decades of work with the original journals and auxilliary material, Beaglehole eventually produced the definitive, modern editions. They were originally published in the 1960s by the Cambridge University Press. Other outstanding, related works of Beaglehole are his "Life of Captain Cook" - read no other until you've read this one - and the "Journals of Joseph Banks"

If you're interested in James Cook, read this one. I found it hard to put down, and an excellent source of info for all ages.

A real tear jerker at the finish and and interesting historial perspective on Australia during the 1930s and 40s.

Len Williams was a young Australian pilot during WW2. The book consists of his letters home to his mother. He describes his training in Africa and England. Although he was very young he wrote well. Sadly he never returned. Well worth reading.

I read through this book and was geniunely impressed by the way Ms. Trevor was able to create such colorful characters and weave them into an honest text. This novel has the ability to make you smile and cry at the same time. It is a gem.

I found this book a little hard to get into at first, but as the pages flipped past I found myself getting more amd more engrossed and moved by the view this little girl has on her world.

I'm a big fan of the lady who wrote it, so I could be biased in my interpretation of the novel, but I don't care !!!

Read it and find out for yourself !!!

I spent several months In Melbourne the second half of 1999. It proved worth its price alone for the detailed maps which I studied constantly my first weeks there to figure out Lonsdale Street from Bourke Street and which tram goes where. It covers the high lights of everything to see and do in this wonderous city in a very compact size. While the Lonely Planet guide to Australia is useful as well, this is a must have if you plan to spent any amount of time in Melbourne. Looking back now, I wish I had taken the time to visit more of the suggested places in this guidebook.

This pocket sized book followed me everywhere when I enjoyed Melbourne and its surroundings for a couple of months of 1999. The extensive map section helps you navigate without problems. Its restaurant guide is excellent, the prices and the foods are exactly as described. If you are a student or budget traveller you will find your money back with this book in no time. All events (Melbourne has got heaps of that! ) are listed with tips and details, accurate and witty. Also, you find everything you need to get to Anglesea, Torquay and Phillip Island for the surf or for the splendid nature. It's got the lots for Melbourne - simply go there with it and enjoy!

The Northern Territory of Australia is one of the world's most facscinating places to visit. Kakadu and Litchfield are superb national parks with stunning landscapes and further south things like Devil's Marbles and Ayers Rock are breathtaking. Of course, the whole journey of about 2500 miles from Darwin to Alice Springs along the Stuart Highway is an adventure.

The LP guide gives a lot of good tips on where to stay and what to see. The information, as usual, is accurate and certainly helps to get around. It contains a lot of interesting "extra" information on things like Aboriginal Art etc.

However, the book misses out on quite a few things which you can see and do in the parks and villages you visit like e.g. the gold digger in Pine Creek who for the "gold museum" in Pine Creek where we could "find" our own gold.

The best thing is to take a couple of books. During the long ride there is plenty of time to read. The LP guide is not an appetite wetter, but it is a very good tool for planning your trip and should not be missed out.

I practically wore this book out during my 2 week trek through "The Top End" - Darwin, Litchfield, Katherine and Kakadu. It was extermely helpful in deciding where to go, what to see, and where to stay. All the supplemental reading was very useful and entertaining as well. Go Lonely Planet!!

This is a great book for planning a tramping trip to New Zealand, although it's a bit too much to carry while actually hiking. The book contains good references and maps to the most popular tracks, and some of the lesser known tracks. If your tight on cash, I recommend going to the visitor centers in New Zealand and picking up the DOC pamphlets they supply. D.O.C. has detailed pamphlets on pretty much every track in New Zealand and they only charge about 50 cents (US) for each one. But if you want to plan a trip from home, this is the book to get, it's far easier to understand than the other New Zealand tramping books, and gives good information on what you need to bring. It also gives good info on the New Zealand back country hut system. Buy a hut pass, they're only 35 bucks (US) for a year. It even supplies some decent fly fishing tips for the rivers that border some of the tracks. But be warned that almost every other tourist hiker in New Zealand also has this book, so if you really want to get away from people, you'll have to do some bushwacking.

This edition is far better than the previous editions. It's new organization and additional information sections are a marked improvement. A new section on Flora and Fauna gives a highlight of any New Zealand tramp. This book acts as an excellent reference book while tramping. Of course, if the book contained every piece of required information, (i.e. highly detailed maps and every step of the way instructions) it would require 1000's of pages. The authors surmount that difficulty by including instructions on how to obtain additional necessary information. The book is perfect for those that are looking into or planning a backpacking trek to New Zealand.

A word of warning to non-Australian readers, although written in English, the Australian vernacular in this book is used often and with wild abandon. Before reading the book, it would be wise to brush up on your Aussie slang, lest you get left behind. A quick test is provided at the end of this review to see if you're up to it.

In case you want to brave it without fortifying yourself with the lingo, err...language, here's a rundown as to what the book's about. Fair dinkum!

It's 1990 and the city of Melbourne is making a bid for the 1996 Olympic Games, and things are looking very promising. As far as the Bid Committee is concerned, they're a shoo-in, with only one possible cloud on the horizon. They want to ensure that the aboriginal people are on board when the IOC delegates hit town. So Murray Whelan is enlisted to keep things quiet on the aboriginal front. A simple job as far as he's concerned, it should be money for jam and then back to his job as advisor to the Minister for Water Supply.

And so it was until a young aboriginal athlete is bashed to death, and pretty soon, the whole bid starts to become jeopardised. As fast as Murray tries to fix the problems, the more they seem to crop up with the problems becoming more outlandish and, at times, amusing.

As we all know, the Melbourne bid for the 1996 Olympic Games failed and this is a humorous suggestion as to a contributing factor to it's failure.

Oh yes, and here's my test to see how hard or easy it will be to understand the language: "Take a squiz at this book, she's a real corker, fair dinkum. You'd be a real drongo to miss it and probably about as popular as a blowie at a barbie .So garn, give it a burl."

Today - Memorial Day 2000 - the New York Times headlined a story about a massive protest by the Aborigines in Sidney. They feel left out of the cultural doings at the upcoming Summer Olympics. In his book, Mr.Maloney's protagonist Murray Wheelan tries to nail down Melbourne's bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Guess what the problem is? The aborigines feel neglected and protest. This being fiction, things get quite involved, of course, with murder, mayhem and a family confusion right out of Gilbert and Sullivan. We have a passel of Aussie crackpots, and the author's humor makes you laugh out loud. Ignore the mystery part - just enjoy the incredible humor.

When I read this book I was looking for a detailed account of the natural history of the south pacific-the people, cultures, places, maps, archaeology, geology, biogeography, and so on. This book is very good, but not by any means exhaustive-its 11 chapters provide a useful overview of natural history, initial polynesian and then European discovery, and the various cultures of the Tahitian islands (chapters 1-2), the Fijian group (3), the Tongan group (4), a chapter on polynesian seafearing (5), the story of Fletcher Christian and the Bounty Mutineers (6), the Cook Islands (6), the Marquesas Islands (6-7), Easter Island (8), European Impact (9), Hawaii (9), New Zealand (10), and the future (11).

A strong point is the beautiful colour photographs and cultural depictions, however a notably weak point is the poorness of the maps. Often it is difficult to tell which islands belong to which particular "group" from the text, and the maps don't help in this respect-they are very simplisitic and look hand-drawn. These maps are in stark contrast to the beauty and extravagance of the colour photos of various wildlife, vistas and aerial photographs.

One of the best chapters is that on Easter Island with its stone statues, general cultural and natural history and subsequent decline. It is a little brief, but I found the archaeological accounts of it the islands cultural downfall particularly interesting. Basically, the ruling religious class (hanau eepe) are overthrown by a warrior class (matatoa) after the resource base of the island, and the cultural structure which depended on it, collapsed. By the time Europeans arrived in the 17th and 18th centuries, the island was already in warfare and decline.

Typical useful snippets include the taro root being found to contain natural flouride complexes by western science, which was discovered after someone researched why the polynesians seemed to have such good teeth. After the connection was made, flouide was routinely introduced into toothpaste/water in western societies. The New Zealand Maoris had no pigs or chickens, unlike other polynesians, probably because they were substituted by the now extinct Moa as a food source, after they first arrived in New Zealand. The presence of the sweet potatoe and other South American oddities suggests some natural or cultural influx from South America-either with seafarers from the east, by natural currents and winds (eg some lizards on Fiji, and South American trees on Easter Island), or by the polynesians themselves who may have reached South America, but never settled there. Another bit of trivia is on page 84-it is an aerial colour shot of the island where Tom Hanks was marooned in the movie "Castaway".

Overall quite a useful overview of the natural history of Polynesia, and beautifully illustrated, but not presented in any exhaustive detail.

Peter's journey throughout the Pacific, following in the footsteps of the travelling Polynesians, takes you far and wide across the vastness of the ocean. Excellently written and divided into easily negotiated sections, you can see in stages, how the islands came to be inhabited.

The pictures are breathtaking although the maps of the Pacific and individual islands look a little cheap and could have been more detailed for the price of the book.

Particularly poignant is the story of the most remote spot on earth, namely "Rapa Nui" or Easter Island. This strange tale tells how the island was populated and then brought about it's own extinction, leaving the eerie Moai figures staring out across the sea for all eternity.

A beautifully written piece of work, that I would recommend any arm chair traveller to read.

This is the seventh in McEvedy's series of comprehensive historical atlases. Having covered Europe and the Middle East in a group of four (ancient, medieval, modern and recent), Africa, and North America, he has now produced the largest of all -- a 120-page work dealing with Asia and the Pacific. To my mind this is not quite as good as the others.

It has some of their strength -- principally a tremendous amount of information and research, which is very enlightening on some important themes -- i.e. population growth, European voyages of discovery, and the expansion of the Malays and Polynesians into Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Also McEvedy's graceful and humorous style. For example, finding that anthropologists seem to have reached the anomalous conclusion that the native Tasmanians were more closely related to the Melanesians north of Australia than to their immediate neighbors the Australian aborigines, he quotes a Victorian on evolution: "let us hope that it is not true, and if it is, that it not become generally known."

However I note several weaknesses in comparison to the others.

First, the atlas seems to tell too many stories. It covers at least five major areas -- China & Northeast Asia; Southeast Asia; Central Asia & Tibet; the Pacific; and North America. Even though the atlas is physically larger than its predecessors, this reduces detail so much that events become hard to follow at times, particularly in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Tibetan plateau. This is true even of some of the Atlas's major focuses -- i.e. colonial expansion and the Second World War. If North America were dropped some information might be lost but the whole atlas would become much clearer.

Second, it covers the whole span of history. This makes coverage spotty up till around 1000 AD, and some important events (Warring States period and Three Kingdoms/disunity eras in China; Tai migration into Southeast Asia; Muslim conversion of Central Asia) are lost altogether.

Probably three and a half stars is a better choice than four. Nonetheless it has a lot of information, is well written, and has the special virtue of being the only book of its kind I have ever seen & reasonably priced as well.

Mcevedy's achievement is to take a broad sweep of history spanning several millenia and present it in a form which is clear, scholarly and readily comprehensible to the layman. His prose style is entertaining and the text is amply complemented by the adjoining maps. It is possible to follow the historical narrative and place it in a geographical context which would normally elude the lay reader. I found this to be an excellent and most entertaining book, as good as if not better than his previous work.