bookshelf

ABC's OF THE EARTH

Name: ABC's OF THE EARTH
Author: Isaac Asimov
ISBN: 0802760910

by Isaac Asimov ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 1971

bookshelf

Another ill-conceived anomaly by the makers of ABC's of Space (1969) and ABC's of the Ocean (1970). For every letter of the alphabet there is an upper case and a lower case word related to geology but not in any way related to the preceding or following entries. Thus Kame and kettle (both made by glaciers) are separated from the more important "G" entry by the H, I and J words, and even "Earthquake" and "Fault" are split by "erosion." The scale of the concepts too is constantly changing: "C" goes from "Cave" to "continent." (And why does Cave get the capital letter?) Each word is followed by a brief definition-description, but though some of the discussions and accompanying diagrams are clarifying (gravity, for one), the selection of entries is arbitrary if not capricious (why xenon, a gas that makes up one ten-millionth of the air, except that it starts with x?), and there are not enough of them to make the book a reliable glossary. Similarly, some of the photographs are impressive, even striking, but no particular advantage is gained in bringing them together. Considering that children old enough for the contents don't want an ABC, it's hard to imagine any point to this wholly gratuitous earth catalog.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1971

ISBN: 0802760910

Page Count: -

Publisher: Walker

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1971

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE RETURN OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS
by Isaac Asimov & edited by Charles Ardai

- BOOK REVIEW
MAGIC
by Isaac Asimov

- BOOK REVIEW
GOLD
by Isaac Asimov

bookshelf

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

bookshelf

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

bookshelf

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)