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This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jonathan Dimbleby, and many more: and a new preface by HRH Prince Charles. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Not Bill's Best Work
I'm a huge fan of Bill Bryson and must have read everything he's written at least twice. I bought "Icons of England" purely because it has his name on the cover (and yes, I know it is edited by, rather than written by Bill). Unfortunately it is disappointing - the articles are short on fact and long on reminiscing about the past. As such I suggest they are perhaps only really of interest to their writers.The articles' only saving grace is that each is very short, allowing the reader to quickly skip through each one and on to the next in the increasingly forlorn hope that one of them might be amusing or of interest. This didn't happen though and I got to the end of the book very quickly and with a certain sense of gullibility, based on the fact that this is one book that I erroneously judged by its cover! Sorry Bill, but I expect more from something with your name on it.

Not actually BY Bill Bryson ...
OK, OK.I know it says "Edited by Bill Bryson".Apparently, I just looked at the big name on the cover and made some assumptions.I love reading Bill Bryson.Everything he writes makes me laugh.I wanted to read Bill Bryson humour about icons of England.This book contains short (1-3 page) essays about icons of England, which are lovely and thoughtful and illuminating, but NOT written by Bryson.The best part of the book for me was the short introductory passage written by Bill Bryson, which was only 6 pages.I was disappointed, but you may not be, if you clearly understand what you are buying.

Icons of Englad
This book will make you laugh cry and THINK.Short articles describing places and things in England that are important in ways you would never imaginge.I enjoyed it so much that I immediately bought a paper back version for my grandson who had gone to university in York, England.I think I may put it back in my Kindle and read it again.Enjoy. Joan Fowler, Rochester, NH

Could use more Bryson
Wonderful, nostalgic depiction of some things that make Britain, well, British.Some pieces too short and it could have benefited from more comment by Bryson. ... Read more

Product Description
At once a love letter to the Rose City and a dream of escape, the first-person narratives of Portland Queer reveal the contradictions and commonalities of life in one of the world s great queer meccas. A waiter falls in love with a straight guy from the cafe next door. A young dyke discovers gay karaoke at the Silverado. A pregnant man prepares for new life transitions. An ambitious teenager finds her tribe at St. Mary s Academy. A closet-case is confronted by his wife. And a video-game addict takes a chance on love. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A delightful collection of queer short stories!
If you enjoy cutting-edge queer fiction mixed with a healthy dose of Portland's progressive politics, be sure to check out this captivating anthology of multi-sexual, multi-gender short stories. Alternately heart-warming and heart-breaking, these wonderful stories are full of passion, humor, love, and humanity. While I enjoyed all the contributions to this anthology, a few of the short stories stand out as exceptionally good, such as: Kathleen Bryson's moving story about the AIDS crisis in Portland called "Ghost Bikes" and Jacob Anderson-Minshall's story, "Chinook", about a pregnant transgender man living with breast cancer. I really love how he used the chinook salmon which lives in both freshwater and saltwater as a metaphor for his experience as a transgendered person. What a beautiful way to express his profound relationship to the ecology of the Pacific Northwest! If you like your LGBT literature a little crunchy (or even crusty!) and you don't mind some rain, then this fabulous anthology might just be for you!

A gem!
"Portland Queer" is a collection of about two-dozen short narratives, arranged thematically into four sections.The book is the creation of Ariel Gore, who has done a wonderful job of collecting and editing the various articles, and who wrote the Introduction, which got me hooked on the book from the first page.The stories themselves are absolute gems, celebrating and often joking about our city, its people, and our culture.

This book is a page-turner, and I love that this book is a compilation and not just one person's point of view.I laughed out loud so many times with the stories, which are as eclectic and captivating as the writers themselves.Other stories are serious and sometimes sad, and my emotions rose and fell along with the authors' as they shared their experiences and observations.

My favorite story?I couldn't pick just one, but I loved the one the book opens with, David Ciminello's "PDXOX."Crista Orth's well-written contribution, "Not Following The Rules," recounts some history in our progressive city and state (including 1992's infamous Ballot Measure 9), and serves as a reminder not only of how far we have come, but also of how far we still have to go.Michael Sage Ricci's "The Strange and Highly Selective Mating Patterns of the Human Male Animal" begins with online video games, which was a little difficult for me to get into not being a gamer, but the story turned out to be awesome.These are only a few of the selections included in the book.It ends with Stevie Anntonym's "Lesbian Lexicon," a contemporary dictionary that is at once informative and hilarious.

I believe that queer history has reached a new milestone with the publishing of this book, proudly printed right here in P-Town.I would think that "Portland Queer" could easily become a standard reading book for years to come, not only for Gay & Lesbian courses, but also as a general literature title - the quality is that good.I hope there will be a follow-up volume out someday soon.Anyone anywhere will enjoy this book, regardless of orientation.

Wonderful book
I think all of us who have read this book have read many other LGBT-specific books, so we know that the quality is not always the best, to say the least.I admit, I was a tiny bit skeptical when purchasing this collection of short stories, but was very pleasantly surprised at the amazing quality.Each one held my interest in some way, whether it was written by a male or female.While the title suggests a niche market that may be interesting to only those familiar with Portland, that is definitely not the case.I've never even been to Portland, but I am considering it now!Bravo to all the contributers of this book.Well done! ... Read more

Product Description
"I mean, so what? Order, chaos, order chaos. We have a real problem here!" exclaims one character in Only a Lower Paradise, the comic, profound, and likely blasphemous title story of Michael Bryson's new collection of heartache, emotional crisis, and the fickle quest for meaning in our post-post modern world.

Featuring cameo appearances by Lucifer, Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and a surly hippie named Ringo, the title story echos the early work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Thomas Pynchon. The story also acts as a prelude to the other nine stories in the collection--trickster tales that articulate the fine shadings between tragedy and comedy, darkness and hope, despair and redemption. ... Read more

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Andrew Bryson was punished for his part in the 1798 Irish rebellion by compulsory enlistment in the regular army. In a long and reflective letter to his sister, written in 1801 after his escape to New York, Bryson provides a vivid chronicle of his enforced travels through Ireland and beyond. ... Read more

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In recent years there has been a growing interest in problems of theory and method in the field of art history. Semiology, phenomenology, feminism, analytical philosophy and Marxism have all contributed to a lively debate among art historians and have helped to stimulate new research. This volume draws together some of the authors who have been most prominent and influential in recent methodological debates and enables them to develop their views. The contributions include Norman Bryson on semiology and the limits of meaning; Aruthur Danto on description and pictorial perception; Rosalind Krauss on the reception of recent French critical theory; Linda Nochlin on gender and power; Michael Podro on depiction; David Summers on image and metaphor; and Richard Wollheim on the role of the spectator. Each of these major contributions is critically discussed by a number of other scholars in the field. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Coffee with Isaac Newton
This book is written by a well-known science communicator. The book has 140 small pages plus an index, with reasonable size print. It is thus not a detailed scientific biography, but in my view Coffee with Isaac Newton does convey the essential features of Newton's character extremely well. There are some useful insights in Newton's quarrels with other scientists and his religious views, with an amusing little twist on the final page. Altogether a good quick read!
W. P. PALMER

Coffee with Isaqc Newton
An interesting pretend interview with this late genius.He was probably more frank and cordial than the real Isaac Newton. ... Read more

Product Description
In its 5th edition of the ARMA Manual delivers practical information to those who sell and install asphalt roofing. This assures that the ultimate purchaser may obtain maximum performance for their roofing dollars. This manual is a reference for distributors of asphalt roofing products, a text for those engaged in installation covering the application of asphalt shingles and roll roofing, and an educational tool for teaching good roofing application techniques. ... Read more

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Bryson speaks of the genesis of his stories. "I was in Ottawa at home sick in bed in 1989 when Marc Lepine killed 14 female engineering students at the University of Montreal. I remember lying in bed and hearing the news over the tv in the living room. That event seemed to crystallize all the negative energy about male/female relations during my time on campus. Also that fall, the Berlin Wall fell, and the political culture I had grown up with tore apart. A number of my stories deal with moving beyond binary oppositions, and the events of 1989 serve as symbolic reminders of why that is important." ... Read more

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The work of John Charles Fremont, Richard Byrd, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, John Wesley Powell, Susan Cooper, Rachel Carson, and Loren Eiseley represents a widely divergent body of writing. Yet despite their range of genres—including exploration narratives, technical reports, natural histories, scientific autobiographies, fictional utopias, nature writing, and popular scientific literature—these seven authors produced strikingly connected representations of nature and the practice of science in America from about 1840 to 1970. Michael A. Bryson provides a thoughtful examination of the authors, their work, and the ways in which science and nature unite them.

Visions of the Land explores how our environmental attitudes have influenced and been shaped by various scientific perspectives from the time of western expansion and geographic exploration in the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the contemporary environmental movement in the twentieth century. Bryson offers a literary-critical analysis of how writers of different backgrounds, scientific training, and geographic experiences represented nature through various kinds of natural science, from natural history to cartography to resource management to ecology and evolution, and in the process, explored the possibilities and limits of science itself.

Visions of the Land examines the varied, sometimes conflicting, but always fascinating ways in which we have defined the relations among science, nature, language, and the human community. Ultimately, it is an extended meditation on the capacity of using science to live well within nature. ... Read more

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The God portrayed in Paradise Lost is neither "good" nor "God." Milton uses this portrayal, not to suggest that his character represents God, but to argue strongly that it does not. Milton’s project in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained is to defend God by taking him down from a kingly throne.In pursuit of this argument, Michael Bryson charts a new path in the study of Milton’s prose and poetry, bridging the gap between the so-called "Neo-Christian" critics (C.S. Lewis, Stanley Fish, and others) and the "Romantic" or "Satanist" critics (Blake, Shelley, Empson, etc.), by reading Milton as engaged in a complex theodicy that rejects kingship as a proper way of imagining the divine. This interdisciplinary work argues for continuity of purpose and outlook in Milton’s antimonarchical prose and his epic poetry, working with the intersections between his theology, politics, and poetics.

The Father of Paradise Lost, imagined as a king, is not the model of divinity that Milton means to promulgate; rather, it is the Son (who in Paradise Regained rejects the external rule inherent in kingship in favor of an internal, spiritual self-government) who represents the model of politics and theology that the mature Milton is recommending to his "fit audience […] though few." Milton’s epics serve as a scathing critique of the English people and its slow but steady backsliding into the political habits of a nation long used to living under the yoke of kingship, a nation that maintained throughout its brief period of liberty the image of God as a heavenly king, and finally welcomed with open arms the return of a human king, Charles II.Milton uses the image of the Father, Satan and his rebellion, and the final return of the Son—-not to his Father’s throne in Heaven, but to his "Mother’s house private"—-as an indictment of everything that had, in his view, gone wrong with the attempt to reform England, to reform Christianity, and to reform the image of God. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Finally a lucid, logical understanding of Milton's Paradise Lost
I've long felt frustrated by continuing literary criticisms of Milton's Paradise Lost which use sophistry and distraction to blindly ignore the core meaning and importance of Milton's work - which is obviously parallel to his unorthodox political and theological writings.

Bryson's excellent and well researched book re-establishes for modern readers what potentially is Milton's original political intention in writing Paradise Lost (which is also the obvious interpretation of the text that unfortunately has been subjugated by literary criticism's attempt to enjoy Milton while 'de-thorning' him as it were, by ignoring his revolutionary agenda and ideology). The Tyranny of Heaven is perhaps a beacon in the modern humanistic effort to reclaim Milton out of orthodox readings which continue to ignore the 'majesty' of Satan.

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This study tracks a sample of lone mothers over five years to find out what really works in moving them off benefit and what makes a difference in easing hardship. The recommendations for changes to current policy, drawn from the findings of the research, frequently challenge accepted thinking. ... Read more

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INTRODUCTION
This is a collection of two complete and unabridged books by acclaimed author Jim Michael Hansen. All of Hansen’s books are standalone thrillers. They can be read in any order.

NIGHT LAWS
Denver homicide detective Bryson Coventry is on the hunt for a vicious killer who has warned attorney Kelly Parks, Esq., that she is on his murder list. Something from the beautiful young lawyer's past has come back to haunt her, something involving the dark secrets of Denver's largest law firm. With the elusive killer ever one step away, Kelly Parks frantically searches for answers, not only to save her life but also to find out whether she unwittingly participated in a murder herself.

ANCIENT LAWS
Denver homicide detective Bryson Coventry is thrust into his most gripping and intense case yet in Jim Michael Hansen's stunning new thriller, Ancient Laws. Coventry tracks a killer to Paris, expecting a dangerous but straightforward hunt. What he doesn't foresee is that he and a beautiful French detective would be pulled into a deadly game--a game that would stretch from Paris to Cairo to the Valley of the Kings; a game rooted in ancient tombs, archeological murders and lost treasures; a game that started thousands of years ago but is not over yet.
... Read more