Chunmuk-BookReview

Lonely Planet Thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Sun, 27 May 2007 06:31:00 +0000

Reviews

Book Description

Thailand was once an enigmatic paradise of pristine beaches, hidden temples and remote mountain refuges. Here's the secret: it can still be that way. Let Lonely Planet guide you past the world of the tourist brochures and into the true heart of the this glorious land.
�?� AUTHORITATIVE OPINION - incisive, candid reviews let you travel your way
�?� INSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE - from traveling with children to visiting tsunami-affected regions, our expert authors provide the definitive word
�?� THE WORLD'S BEST TRAVEL MAPS - meticulously checked and fully cross-referenced
�?� ACCOMMODATION FOR ALL BUDGETS - from sumptuous palace hotels to breezy beach bungalows
�?� EXTENSIVE LANGUAGE CHAPTER - you'll be ordering Singhas and chatting with locals in no time

Product Details
Paperback: 808 pages
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications; 11 edition (September 30, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1740596978
ISBN-13: 978-1740596978
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

Lonely Planet Thailand's Islands and Beaches

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Sun, 27 May 2007 06:25:00 +0000

Reviews

Book Description

There's never been a better time to experience Thailand's world-class islands and beaches, pristine sands and crystal clear waters await. Expanded coverage on remote islands; new diving and other activities special chapter; indepth history, culture and food and drink chapters; more than 85 easy to use maps.

- EXPERT AUTHORS - providing the best insider tips and tricks

- UNBEATABLE ACCURACY - updated on the road, in person by regional experts

- THE WORLD'S BEST TRAVEL MAPS - more then 80 detailed maps inside

- NO GUESSWORK - opinionated reviews and inspiring highlights sections

From the PublisherWho We Are

At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travellers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large.

What We Do

- We offer travellers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in 70 languages.

- We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.

- When we update our guidebooks, we check every listing, in person, every time.

- We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent.

- We challenge our growing community of travellers; leading debate and discussion about travel and the world.

- We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travellers; not clouded by any other motive.

Product Details
Paperback: 472 pages
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications; 5th edition (July 21, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1740599306
ISBN-13: 978-1740599306
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches

Book Guide ReviewTravel in Thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Fri, 25 May 2007 18:06:00 +0000

Experience a place the way the locals do. Enjoy the best it has to offer. Frommer's. The best trips start here.

- Full post-tsunami update, plus advice on the best beaches, temples, towns, and resorts.
- Outspoken opinions on what's worth your time and what's not.
- Exact prices, so you can plan the perfect trip whatever your budget.
- Off-the-beaten-path experiences and undiscovered gems, plus new takes on top attractions.

You'll never fall into the tourist traps when you travel with Frommer's. It's like having a friend show you around, taking you to the places locals like best. Our expert authors have already gone everywhere you might go--they've done the legwork for you, and they're not afraid to tell it like it is, saving you time and money. No other series offers candid reviews of so many hotels and restaurants in all price ranges. Every Frommer's Travel Guide is up-to-date, with exact prices for everything, dozens of color maps, and exciting coverage of sports, shopping, and nightlife. You'd be lost without us!
Frommer's holds the key to worry-free travel in this exotic land, with valuable cultural insights, the latest trip-planning advice, detailed maps, and smart tips on language, local customs, and getting around. You'll find honest, in-depth reviews of luxury beach resorts, high-tech business hotels, intimate inns, and simple guest houses and bungalows, all based on recent personal inspections.
We'll show you spectacular beaches, waterfalls, floating markets, majestic temples, ancient ruins, national parks, palaces, and traditional villages. We'll lead you to amazing restaurants, and even take you elephant trekking in the Northern Hills. You'll also rely on us to guide you through the confusing, bustling, but intriguing city of Bangkok (our author, who lived there while writing this guide, knows it intimately, and discovered all sorts of hidden surprises). With Frommer's in hand, you'll experience all the wonder of Thailand!

Product Details
Paperback: 404 pages
Publisher: Frommers; 7 edition (April 24, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471784702
ISBN-13: 978-0471784708
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 1.1 inches

Heat

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:18:00 +0000

Heat : An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Hardcover)

Review From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Buford's book starts smartly�??he first met dynamic celebrity chef Mario Batali at a dinner party at his own home, where Batali sparkled until 3 a.m.�??and continues at a fast clip as he conceives the notion of becoming Batali's "kitchen slave." Buford wanted to profile Batali for the New Yorker but also wanted to learn about cooking; he would be a "journalist-tourist" in the boot camp of a "kitchen genius." His subject became an obsession, and over the next three years, he investigated a rich menu of subjects: what makes a three-star restaurant work; what it takes to be a TV food star; the techniques and history of Italian cooking, not just from library research but also from repeated trips to Italy to visit Batali's relatives. Terrific culinary writing tracks Buford's successive passions for short ribs, polenta, tortellini and then the butcher's art, Italian-style, of pig and cow. Along the way, to his own surprise, Buford found that he had become a kitchen insider. This is a wonderfully detailed and highly amusing book from the writer who once took an insider's look at English soccer hooligans in Among the Thugs. 100,000 first printing. (June 13)

Product Details
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Knopf (May 30, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400041201
ISBN-13: 978-1400041206
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

The Places In Between (Paperback)

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:16:00 +0000

The Places In Between (Paperback)

Reviews From Publishers Weekly
We never really find out why Stewart decided to walk across Afghanistan only a few months after the Taliban were deposed, but what emerges from the last leg of his two-year journey across Asia is a lesson in good travel writing. By turns harrowing and meditative, Stewart's trek through Afghanistan in the footsteps of the 15th-century emperor Babur is edifying at every step, grounded by his knowledge of local history, politics and dialects. His prose is lean and unsentimental: whether pushing through chest-high snow in the mountains of Hazarajat or through villages still under de facto Taliban control, his descriptions offer a cool assessment of a landscape and a people eviscerated by war, forgotten by time and isolated by geography. The well-oiled apparatus of his writing mimics a dispassionate camera shutter in its precision. But if we are to accompany someone on such a highly personal quest, we want to know who that person is. Unfortunately, Stewart shares little emotional background; the writer's identity is discerned best by inference. Sometimes we get the sense he cares more for preserving history than for the people who live in it (and for whom historical knowledge would be luxury). But remembering Geraldo Rivera's gunslinging escapades, perhaps we could use less sap and more clarity about this troubled and fascinating country.(May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Stewart, a resident of Scotland, has written for the New York Times Magazine and the London Review of Books, and he is a former fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In January 2002, having just spent 16 months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, Stewart began a walk across Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul. Although the Taliban had been ousted several weeks earlier, Stewart was launching a journey through a devastated, unsettled, and unsafe landscape. The recounting of that journey makes for an engrossing, surprising, and often deeply moving portrait of the land and the peoples who inhabit it. Stewart relates his encounters with ordinary villagers, security officials, students, displaced Taliban officials, foreign-aid workers, and rural strongmen, and his descriptions of the views and attitudes of those he lived with are presented in frank, unvarnished terms. Nation building in Afghanistan remains a work in progress, and this work should help those who wish to understand the complexities of that task. Jay Freeman

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Harvest Books (May 8, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0156031566
ISBN-13: 978-0156031561
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces

The Omnivore's Dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:14:00 +0000

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Review From Publishers Weekly

[Signature]Reviewed by Pamela KaufmanPollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. (Apr.)Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at Food & Wine magazine.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

Most of us are at a great distance from our food. I don't mean that we live "twelve miles from a lemon," as English wit Sydney Smith said about a home in Yorkshire. I mean that our food bears little resemblance to its natural substance. Hamburger never mooed; spaghetti grows on the pasta tree; baby carrots come from a pink and blue nursery. Still, we worry about our meals -- from calories to carbs, from heart-healthy to brain food. And we prefer our food to be "natural," as long as natural doesn't involve real.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown -- what it is, in fact, that we are eating. The book is really three in one: The first section discusses industrial farming; the second, organic food, both as big business and on a relatively small farm; and the third, what it is like to hunt and gather food for oneself. And each section culminates in a meal -- a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's; roast chicken, vegetables and a salad from Whole Foods; and grilled chicken, corn and a chocolate soufflé (made with fresh eggs) from a sustainable farm; and, finally, mushrooms and pork, foraged from the wild.
The first section is a wake-up call for anyone who has ever been hungry. In the United States, Pollan makes clear, we're mostly fed by two things: corn and oil. We may not sit down to bowls of yummy petroleum, but almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to get to our tables. Oil products are part of the fertilizers that feed plants, the pesticides that keep insects away from them, the fuels used by the trains and trucks that transport them across the country, and the packaging in which they're wrapped. We're addicted to oil, and we really like to eat.
Oil underlines Pollan's story about agribusiness, but corn is its focus. American cattle fatten on corn. Corn also feeds poultry, pigs and sheep, even farmed fish. But that's just the beginning. In addition to dairy products from corn-fed cows and eggs from corn-fed chickens, corn starch, corn oil and corn syrup make up key ingredients in prepared foods. High-fructose corn syrup sweetens everything from juice to toothpaste. Even the alcohol in beer is corn-based. Corn is in everything from frozen yogurt to ketchup, from mayonnaise and mustard to hot dogs and bologna, from salad dressings to vitamin pills. "Tell me what you eat," said the French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "and I will tell you what you are." We're corn.
Each bushel of industrial corn grown, Pollan notes, uses the equivalent of up to a third of a gallon of oil. Some of the oil products evaporate and acidify rain; some seep into the water table; some wash into rivers, affecting drinking water and poisoning marine ecosystems. The industrial logic also means vast farms that grow only corn. When the price of corn drops, the solution, the farmer hopes, is to plant more corn for next year. The paradoxical result? While farmers earn less, there's an over-supply of cheap corn, and that means finding ever more ways to use it up.
Is eating all this corn good for us? Who knows? We think we've tamed nature, but we're just beginning to learn about all that we don't yet know. Ships were once provided with plenty of food, but sailors got scurvy because they needed vitamin C. We're sailing on the same sea, thinking we're eating well but still discovering nutrients in our food that we hadn't known were there -- that we don't yet know we need.
We've lost touch with the natural loops of farming, in which livestock and crops are connected in mutually beneficial circles. Pollan discusses the alternatives to industrial farming, but these two long (and occasionally self-indulgent) sections lack the focus and intensity -- the anger beneath the surface -- of the first. He spends a week at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley, a farm that works with nature, rather than despite it. Salatin calls himself a grass farmer, though his farm produces cows, chickens, eggs and corn. But everything begins with the grass: The cows nibble at it at the precise moment when it's at its sweetest and are moved from pasture to pasture to keep the grass at its best height. Their droppings fertilize the grass, and the cycle is under way. There's a kind of lyrical symmetry to everything that happens on this farm. Even the final slaughtering of chickens is done quickly and humanely, in the open air. It isn't pleasant, but compared to the way cattle are fattened and slaughtered in meat industry feedlots and slaughterhouses, it is remarkably reasonable.
We needn't learn how to shoot our own pigs, as Pollan does; there's hope in other ways -- farmers' markets, the Slow Food movement, restaurants supplied by local farms. To Pollan, the omnivore's dilemma is twofold: what we choose to eat ("What should we have for dinner?" he asks in the opening sentence of his book) and how we let that food be produced. His book is an eater's manifesto, and he touches on a vast array of subjects, from food fads and taboos to our avoidance of not only our food's animality, but also our own. Along the way, he is alert to his own emotions and thoughts, to see how they affect what he does and what he eats, to learn more and to explain what he knows. His approach is steeped in honesty and self-awareness. His cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling.
Be careful of your dinner!
Reviewed by Bunny Crumpacker Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Product Details
Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (April 11, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594200823
ISBN-13: 978-1594200823
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

The Looming Tower

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:12:00 +0000

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Hardcover)

Review From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review.

Wright, a New Yorker writer, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism. He begins with the observation that, despite an impressive record of terror and assassination, post�??WWarII, Islamic militants failed to establish theocracies in any Arab country. Many helped Afghanistan resist the Russian invasion of 1979 before their unemployed warriors stepped up efforts at home. Al-Qaeda, formed in Afghanistan in 1988 and led by Osama bin Laden, pursued a different agenda, blaming America for Islam's problems. Less wealthy than believed, bin Laden's talents lay in organization and PR, Wright asserts. Ten years later, bin Laden blew up U.S. embassies in Africa and the destroyer Cole, opening the floodgates of money and recruits. Wright's step-by-step description of these attacks reveals that planning terror is a sloppy business, leaving a trail of clues that, in the case of 9/11, raised many suspicions among individuals in the FBI, CIA and NSA. Wright shows that 9/11 could have been prevented if those agencies had worked together. As a fugitive, bin Ladin's days as a terror mastermind may be past, but his success has spawned swarms of imitators. This is an important, gripping and profoundly disheartening book. (Aug.)

Review From Bookmarks Magazine

The Looming Tower may be the most riveting, informative, and "heart-stopping account" yet of the men who shaped 9/11 (New York Times Book Review). The focus on individuals gives the book its emotional punch, but it is also a narrative bold in conception and historical sweep. Lawrence Wright conducted more than 500 interviews, from bin Laden's best friend in college to Richard A. Clarke, Saudi royalty, Afghan mujahideen, and reporters for Al Jazeera. The result, while evenhanded in its analysis of the complex motives, ideals, and power plays that led to 9/11, leaves few nefarious details uncovered. An abrupt ending did little to sway critics that Looming Tower is nothing less than "indispensable" reading (Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Product Details
Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Knopf (August 8, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 037541486X
ISBN-13: 978-0375414862
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds

Sharp Objects

noreply@blogger.com (Thammarat) — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:09:00 +0000

Sharp Objects: A Novel (Hardcover)

Review From Publishers Weekly

Flynn gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional family" in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille's hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story. Though the police, including Richard Willis, a profiler from Kansas City, Mo., say they suspect a transient, Camille thinks the killer is local. Interviewing old acquaintances and newcomers, she relives her disturbed childhood, gradually uncovering family secrets as gruesome as the scars beneath her clothing. The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shocking, dreadful and memorable double ending. She writes fluidly of smalltown America, though many characters are clichés hiding secrets. Flynn, the lead TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, has already garnered blurbs from Stephen King and Harlan Coben. 5-city author tour; foreign rights sold in 10 countries. (Oct.)

Product Details
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (September 26, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307341542
ISBN-13: 978-0307341549
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds