About this product: Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.
Of this initial group of six titles, The Grapes of Wrath is in a new edition with a completely revised introduction and, for the first time, detailed notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott.
Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again and again.
About this product: Grapes are the most popular and widely grown fruit in the world. From the tropics to Alaska, grapes will grow successfully in almost every climate. Whether you raise them for fresh eating, or for making wine, juice, or jellies and preserves, the right grapes will reward you with abundant crops for a modest investment of time and effort.
Now for the first time comes a book for grape growers who wish to use organic growing methods to raise healthy, thriving vineyards in the backyard or on a small commercial scale. The Grape Grower distills the broad knowledge and long-time personal experience of Lon Rombough, one of North America’s foremost authorities on viticulture.
From finding and preparing the right site for your vineyard to training, trellising, and pruning vines to growing new grapes from seeds and cuttings, The Grape Grower offers thorough and accessible information on all the basics. The chapters on grape species, varieties, and hybrids are alone worth the price of a college course in viticulture. And technical information on the major (and minor) insect pests and diseases that affect grapes, as well as their organic controls, makes this book an invaluable reference that readers will turn to again and again.
Rombaugh also provides a wealth of information on hardy but little-known grapes that are native to North America, and on a wide range of topics, including: • pruning neglected or overgrown vines • growing grapes on arbors and in greenhouses • controlling animal pests in the vineyard • bunch grapes and muscadine grapes for the South • winter protection, and how to increase the hardiness of grapes • creating your own new varieties
About this product: How is it possible to count a complicated pattern of strawberry seeds or grapes on a vine or camel humps--in a blink of an eye? If children can open their minds to new ways of perceiving math, anything is possible! Greg Tang shows readers creative ways to use patterns and combinations of numbers to solve math puzzles quickly and effectively. Rather than laboriously counting 24 mushroom slices on a pizza, Tang suggests: "Let me give you some advice, / Just do half and count twice." And in adding the number of dots on a fan: "Instead of seeing groups of threes, / Count by fives and it's a breeze!"
Every two-page spread features cheerful computer-generated art by Harry Briggs, depicting rows of camels, beaches full of seashells, and vines laden with grapes. Tang's witty little accompanying verses tickle the fancy even as they challenge the mind. Guided by hints in the verses, readers find solutions to each math riddle, by looking "askew" to find a pattern, subtracting in order to add, or adding numbers that have easy sums before clustering them to add in groups. Solutions and explanations are provided in the back of the book. With a little creativity and common sense, as opposed to formulas and memorization, Tang believes that all kids can do well in math--and have fun while they're at it. Readers of The Grapes of Math are already ahead of the game. (Ages 6 to 10) --Emilie Coulter
About this product: Steinbeck wrote this book to bring into the spotlight the plight of migrant workers. In The Grapes of Wrath a migrant family travels from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California only to be exploited by the agricultural system. The ferocity of resulting attacks on Steinbeck and his politics point to the truth and power of the stories told in this novel.
About this product: Why is wine considered more sophisticated even though the production of beer is much more technologically complex? Why is wine touted for its health benefits when beer has more nutritive value? Why does wine conjure up images of staid dinner parties while beer denotes screaming young partiers? Charles Bamforth explores several paradoxes involving these beverages, paying special attention to the culture surrounding each. He argues that beer can be just as grown-up and worldly as wine and be part of a healthy, mature lifestyle. Both beer and wine have histories spanning thousands of years. This is the first book to compare them from the perspectives of history, technology, nature of the market for each, quality attributes, types and styles, and the effect that they have on human health and nutrition.
About this product: Fox eyed a bunch of tantalizing grapes hanging from a vine growing high on a tree.
"Those juicy morsels are for me," he said with a grin.
The problem was, Fox was only so high...and the grapes were so, so, so high.
"No matter," said he. "I am sly. Clever. Smart. After all, I am a fox."
He made a plan....
And what a plan it is! Here Margie Palatini and Barry Moser, who collaborated on Earthquack! and The Three Silly Billies, give an ingenious -- and hilarious -- twist to the well-loved Aesop's fable "The Fox and the Grapes."
About this product: Since 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life.
About this product: Who am I to review one of the greatest literary works of all time? Could I possibly give this book anything less than the maximum rating it so richly deserves? Should I even commence? Those were just some of my private thoughts as I finally put down a copy of this book - read. This is the book which stirred the American conscience, caused political reform and brought about change when first published in 1939. This is the book which described how families were starving to death because of corruption. This is John Steinbeck at his exceptional best. For those people who never got around to reading this engaging and absorbing account of the Joad family, may I suggest you actually purchase a copy (any copy!) and finally read it.
Today the world is either in recession or emerging from the dark grip of this latest financial catastrophe. Whilst we may live in a time when millions of families are no longer allowed to starve to death - well, not in the developed world at any rate, I earnestly believe there are lessons to be learned from this book about the rich and powerful who care not for their fellow man but only for personal gain. More importantly, those lessons are as relevant today as they were in 1939.
Another similarity also failed to escape my notice; In this book we see how US police and other officials use their positions of authority to threaten and even blackmail the many thousands of American migrants who were simply looking for work in order to feed hungry mouths. These people had not arrived from any foreign country and were not even black - something which would have made their persecution much easier. No!, these ordinary white American folk were honest farmers who had been forcibly evicted from their homes and the land they had worked for generations. Seventy years on, here in the UK, we are besieged by TV programmes depicting our different police forces undertaking their various duties around the country. Yet more cheaply produced "reality" television! Significantly, however, I have occasionally noticed how some police officers deliberately provoke a hostile situation where exists. Whilst not on the scale portrayed in this outstanding work, it is interesting that I should recognise that underlying attitude of arrogant superiority.
Whilst some may find the book slow going at the start, Steinbeck quickly gathers in those loose strands until they suddenly pull together to assume a story, reveal a mental photograph and produce a relevance into which the reader becomes fully immersed. I promptly learned local words and understood the dialect in which they were spoken as the Joad story unfolded. I could hear those southern accents as hardships are endured and explained through the actions of those who lived them. This was the organised, legalised daylight robbery and exploitation of the poor by the rich who were actively supported by the law enforcement agencies. A week's work for 1,000 fruit pickers paying 50 cents an hour is advertised to 3,000 hungry people who then pass on the message. Consequently, 5,000 starving workers arrive in search of that employment. With so much competition, the rate is lowered to 30 cents - take it or leave it! It was a deliberate ploy repeated time after time. Anyone attempting to organise his fellow workers is photographed, black-listed and branded a communist. Now feed that to your children. Then the banks insist the farmers reduced the rate to 25 cents and any landowner who questions that decision is swiftly reminded of his own vulnerability as a mortgagee! In short, either you pay them 25 cents or you join them! My own immediate reaction was to recognise a similarity between then and now - specifically with those modern banking practises which preyed on the sub-prime market. Anyone who cared to consider precisely what "sub-prime" meant, knew it was a policy destined to fail. And fail it did in spectacular fashion - and yet, the fat cat bankers still draw bonuses based on "personal performance" and not on their company's overall profit or loss...
I note from some of the comments appended to certain editions of this book, that various issues have been produced in which, apparently, Steinbeck's prose are changed to make the work an easier read. Please don't take the easy option, take the version written as it was intended to be read - i.e. the version written by Steinbeck. If not, you cannot claim to have read this book at all - instead you have the equivalent of, say, a Romeo and Juliet story - set in Manhattan in the 21st Century - and there are plenty of those...
In closing, I would urge anyone (indeed everyone) who has not already read an original version of this book If to go out and buy a copy - any old copy and then simply read it. Having done that, you too will draw parallels with our modern age and understand what I mean. You will also be richer for having done so - as would those fat cats who, unfortunately, will probably never bother. Having finally finished reading this outstanding work, I wonder how many of you will still be wondering whatever happened to that perfectly matched pair of Bays! I do...
About this product: This book is surprisingly helpful, supportive, optimistic and is written for both men and women. I am a 40-year-old woman who doesn't have children because of illness. This book is applicable to unwanted childlessness from all causes--not just infertility. An alternate title could be "Sweet Grapes: How to Stop Feeling Miserable About Not Having Children and Start Living Again." With some effort, the whole book can be generalized from the specific case of infertility to childlessness for other reasons.
The authors make the case that a person who is not fertile can actively choose either infertility or childfree living. Their unusual definitions of childfree versus infertile and childless actually made sense after I read their detailed explanations. They write, "It is choice that makes the difference between voluntary and involuntary childlessness. Childfree means turning involuntary childlessness into voluntary childlessness. And we would rather live our lives in the achievement of a major life goal than in the constant reminder of the frustration of one." Childfree does not mean disliking children.
This book does a good job of explaining exactly what childfree living is and how it has worked for them. Luckily, they are not pushing this option on readers. Key points are: 1. Happiness after infertility is much more likely if one makes active choices about how to spend the rest of one's life than if one drifts. 2. Every loss such as infertility or childlessness also contains the potential for gain and personal growth. 3. Building effective communication skills between partners is important. 4. Decision-making processes and skills can be learned. Decisions addressed are how much infertility treatment to undergo, how to spend the rest of one's life if biological children are not possible and whether to live childfree. Be sure to read the revised 1998 edition because it includes an Epilogue. Bibliography but no index included.
I highly recommend Linda Hunt Anton's 1992 "Never To Be A Mother: A Guide For All Women Who Didn't--Or Couldn't--Have Children." Written by an infertile, childless, social-worker-therapist, it is the best self-help book I've found on dealing with emotional aspects of childlessness. Readers benefit from her non-threatening writing style, professional training and years of experience in infertility and childlessness counseling.
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