A fine read for budding geographers, developers, urban planners and other devotees of the surveyor’s art.
A thoughtfully written, handsomely illustrated history of surveying.
Why should civilians care about where townships, counties, states and nations place their boundaries? As Rushing, president of surveying-supply house Berntsen International, suggests, boundary disputes can cost money, sometimes in the form of double taxation. So it was with the neighboring towns of Hampton and Salisbury (now Seabrook), N.H., which both levied taxes on homes running alongside the Hampton River. Only a thorough survey and indestructible boundary marker could solve this dispute. Other surveying solutions add context to a locale as well as provide a durable mark, like the rock-solid monument that replaced one worn away by tourists at the famed boundary of the Four Corners states: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Rushing also adds historical context to the craft. While modern-day presidents tend to be lawyers, many past presidents were surveyors. Jefferson laid out parts of Washington, D.C., while Washington surveyed the Virginia frontier and Lincoln “performed about 33 land surveys, and laid out three roads and five towns.” Rushing also documents unusual situations confronting surveyors today, including marking a coral reef damaged in a shipping accident, placing relatively elements-proof boundary plaques atop Mauna Kea and Mount McKinley and establishing accurate geospatial measurements of Iraq and Afghanistan, which lack a “critical component of national infrastructure.”
A fine read for budding geographers, developers, urban planners and other devotees of the surveyor’s art.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-9765043-8-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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