Before you put it out by the side of the road, read this book.
356819
This is my first Amazon book review. I was at my wits' end with my serger -- I was literally ready to put it out by the side of the road. It is an OLD Pfaff 5-thread serger I bought second hand a few years back. One day, it just stopped working. I threaded and threaded over and over again, oiled, changed needles twice, and it still wouldn't work. I called the place where i bought it and the repair cost was steep, plus the price of any parts. My gut was telling me not to spend money because it didn't need to be repaired, I just had to figure out where the problem was. But, I needed some guidance. I looked up videos on the internet, and knew that it wasn't the timing or the motor. To make a long story short, I purchased this book in desperation  while waiting for The Ultimate Serger Answer Guide to come through the library. As has been said before, the Troubleshooting and Maintenance sections of this book are excellent. I read through both of them, and between these two books was able to get my serger up and running again! Thank you Clifford Blodget, you are a lifesaver, well, actually serger saver.
3241240
This is a must read if you see the street lives and know there must be a fix. Turning from the painful truth makes us responsible at some level.
2417733
The Girl Next Door, by Brad Parks, ain't great literature.  But it sure will help you pass the time pleasantly and will get rid of the doldrums.

Parks has written a paint by the numbers murder mystery that will take you a New York minute to read.  Carter Ross, a veteran newspaperman for the Newark Eagle Examiner, is down on his luck (they're always down on their luck).  Given a paucity of real news to cover, he decides to write a human interest story about a newspaper delivery woman who was killed on the job by a hit and run driver whilst completing her appointed rounds. Inevitably, Ross discovers that this was not a simple hit and run.  Following Park's linear plot, Ross' pursuit of the story leads him into direct conflict with his editor, puts his very job in jeopardy, and (of course) also positions him as the next victim.

Parks relates Carter Ross' tale with a great deal of humor and the obligatory palette of colorful minor characters.  Okay, there are some problems.  It's not much of a whodunit: Parks is a little heavy handed when he pushes you in one direction, so you actually see the red herring before you smell it. The characters may be fun, but they are thinner than the paper that the book is printed on.  It's also hard to ratchet up tension, when writing in the first person, by putting the narrator's life in danger.  Unless you assume that the book was written from the notes of the dead newspaperman's diary, it's a foregone conclusion that he will survive the novel.  (Most authors ratchet up the tension in a first person narrative by putting another character--say an innocent victim--in danger.  Someone who realistically could get dismembered by the end of the novel...)

But even though there are flaws, they really don't matter.  This isn't meant to be an answer to Faulkner and Parks isn't even positioning himself to be the next Agatha Christie.  He simply wants to entertain and does this brilliantly.
2979180
Have you ever watched interstate road construction and felt like it would be obsolete before it was completed?  In some ways, I feel that way about this book.  I wish it had been written five, maybe ten, years ago.  Nevertheless, I'm glad that it HAS been written.  It points out critical issues in our community's infrastructure and labor force and brings to light both harsh realities to be faced in our communities and some ideas for productively dealing with them.  Most of all, it's a wake-up call that can't be ignored by any of us.
This is a "can't miss" read for policy makers, community developers, and job-hunters, and an important message for any of us who want to be a part of a better future .
2665694
It's a good story, but so much more.  Read it and share it with family and friends, before it becomes reality.
2216239
Virtually all serious books on the automobile are, in some form or other, polemics, taking one side or another of the endless cultural wars about the car, treating it as brute villan despoiling the environment, gulping gas, spreading sprawl, destroying mass transit and undermining community character and individual morals, or as the ultimate manifestation of American industrial might and consumer culture, opening up the landscape, freeing the individual to make his own choices, making gracious suburban living and escape from noxious and failed cities possible, and serving as the prideful foundation of American culture. Finch's book is happily different.  Written by an author who manages to be a serious lover of car travel (not just cars, an important and oft overlooked distinction), an environmentally aware citizen and a lover of American culture, it is a clear eyed, dispassionate walk through the automobile's role in shaping 20th century America that does not hide any warts but captures fully all the dynamism that the car released into American life.  The book is particularly good on how the automobile first liberated an enormously varied manifestation of local responses and then, as it enabled people to venture into new and strange locales, became an enormous force for homogenization of American life (i.e. national chains like MacDonald's replacing local drive-ins, freeways becoming the standard model for roads) as a people sought familiarity and predictability in unknown places.  And, for those who grew up in the American West, it captures the space conquering sense the car gives particularly well.  As told by Finch, the relation of the auto and Americans began as a love story, but it is now a marriage, one with lots of sex and mutual affection and likely to last, but one that has all the rough spots and smoothed-over incompatibilties of a real marriage as well, most of which are more likely to be endured into the future than resolved.  A must read for transportation planners, urbanists, environmentalists and general lovers of American culture.  Its insights have not aged at all in the 15 years since its 1992 writing.
2041684
I was very interested in reading this book because I've been working on growing as much of my own food as possible, and who wouldn't like to live more independently of the economy? I saw it was highly praised here and elsewhere and was happy to find a copy of it. Ha. This book makes you realize that the reason why SOME folk want to live outside of the economy is because they are criminals. For instance, you're advised that to deal with sticky legal matters, you go to the house of the lawyer or opponent in question late at night and cut the phone lines or put a brick through the window or poison the dog. Make sure to walk there. And this is discussed like it is something adorable and just so good-old-fashioned self-reliant when in fact it is absolutely insane and a good way to end up either shot or in the penitentiary. But it makes total sense when you put it together with the fact that one of the highest priorities of this author and her father is to have plenty of high-proof liquor on hand which they produce themselves from a homemade still. I don't know--when you think of living independently of society, does a still come right to mind? Shoot. If you want a life like this, you can become a bum and go live in a tent in a hobo jungle for a lot less trouble, and you will find many like-minded people who consider drinking and violence and eating carp to be a good way to spend their lives. If you are instead interested in becoming independent of the economy, there are many other books that will help you do it. This ain't it. All this book does is make you glad you don't live next door to these folk.
2762734
This is a finely-written view of a post-collapse America.  Cormac Mccarthy's novel Road was an altogether darker vision:  Kunstler's book is neither as dark or foreboding.  Society functions, but only locally--there are no national or even regional governments, as far as is known.  We've gone from Friedman's The World is Flat to a world where communication and trade resembles that of, say, 800AD.  "Here be Dragons" might as well appear on maps.  The number of people in Union Grove in upstate New York who have travelled more than 50 miles from home is small, at least until a flock of The New Faith arrive from Virginia.

The amenities are gone:  no gasoline, no bicycles (for want of rubber tires), no antibiotics, no anaesthesia, roads and bridges crumbling into complete disrepair.  Yet life goes on, as America in 1700 got by without bicycles and antibiotics.  Robert Earle, the central fugure in the novel, works as a carpenter--his former life in computing is gone forever.  Lack of oil, nuclear explosions, and the Mexican Flu all contributed to the collapse.  The Flu took most of Earle's family except for his son, who left on his own many years before and never heard from again.  Earle takes things philosophically and with grace, and is more at ease with his world than most of us could be.  In Earle, Kunstler has provided a rock about which life swirls:  he provides a foundation of normality, insofar as normality can exist, and his character prevents a doom-and-gloom view type book from prevailing.

Kunstler presents a well-drawn picture of a world where there are no chain saws and power tools, no refrigeration, very little electric power anywhere.  Paper money is disappearing, bartering is returning, work is done by hand.  Horses are great assets. You will probably find yourself asking some questions:  some of these are answered, some are not.  After 20 or 30 years of life in places such as Union Grove, where are the clothes coming from?  How many people could weave a shirt?  There do not seem to be many sheep around for wool, and you get the impression from the book that everything isn't animal skins.  What about glassmaking for storage jars and windows?  There should perhaps be a cottage industry for saltpeter to make gunpowder.  But these are relatively minor.  The primary thing is the wonderfully detailed, finely crafted view of a world where people have had to return to the amenities of colonial times, or even long before that.  This is a novel that's creative and well thought out:  very worth reading.
2576269
The title of the book will probably threaten your sense of composure. Is this something I want to waste my time with? New-agey. Woo-woo. Recognizing that titles sometimes miss the mark and that there's good stuff between the covers of the book, I moved beyond the front page and into the text.
The book begins with our storyteller relating a frustrating experience of being locked in a monumental traffic jam. We can all identify with that scenario. Would you just sit there and wait-especially after a police officer had informed you that the problem wouldn't be cleared for at least an hour? Our hero got himself out of that jam and headed back down the highway in the opposite direction, looking for another route to reach his destination. And that's the crux of this book.
Finding himself totally lost, not seeing a soul for miles, he pulls into a diner. The  menu includes three deep questions about life that are processed progressively through his conversations in chapter after chapter. Once you get into this book, you won't want to put it down. You'll find yourself on a similar introspective journey of discovery.
I could probably write a lot more about the messages in this book, but its best that you read and explore them for yourself. The book is inexpensive; the return on your investment will be rich.
2050969
If you want to get after it, you better get after it and get this book.
600191
Larry Roth has written a handbook for the rest of us - you know, the worker bees not on the fringe of anything? While I don't agree with all of larry's political stances, he talks to common ground more effectively and honesty than you are used to, I guarantee you.

If the book does nothing more than open your mind to the possibilities of a new way of looking at the world, it is worth every penny. If we take his clear advice to heart, we can all be better neighbors - and that just cannot be bought at any price.

Read it, savor it - let it light your path.
112583
Not often does a road guide go in to the category of leisure reading, but this one certainly does. The descriptions capture the magic of this part of the country, and serve as a reminder of previous visits to the area, and as a stimulus for future visits.
2650328
I wanted to take the opportunity to recommend this book to anyone who has wondered why every place in America looks like everywhere else.  There's a funny line in the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie where "our heros" are traveling by car across America in a race against time to foil the plan of the arch villan. As they pass the same gas station and fast food franchise again and again Bullwinkle says, "Haven't we been here before?"  That was the same reaction my seven-year old had this summer when we were on our family vacation.  We were in Richmond, Virginia and he said we've been here before because I remember that place over there.  I had to explain to him what franchise architecture was and how just about every town in America has one of those types of buildings.  This is a sad commentary on the American landscape that we as consumers expect the to see the familiar sign of our favorite business.  This is one reason why I wrote this book; to let folks know that there's a better way. In fact, we used to do it better.  The types of places that capture our attention and long to live are the places that were built prior to World War II.  The small towns that so many families idealize as the place they'd rather raise their kids are the same places that couldn't be built today because of "modern" zoning ordinances.  And the sad thing is today's generation is the first to be raised totally in a suburban environment that requires owning an automobile just to survive.  If you're intersted in how this could change and what the alternatives are Community by Design is your book! There's 250 illustrations and photos that show you what's possible right now.  The book helps you understand why community can and should be designed and lets you see some places where it has been. If you ask me this is a great book.  ...
4471594
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Last-Block-in-Harlem/dp/B00295S4VQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Last Block in Harlem</a>

The last Block in Harlem is much more than that. Although the story does delve into the gentrification of a neighborhood in New York, this could be pretty much any neighborhood in the United States.

As a resident of coastal New England, I can assure you that there was a time when you could afford to raise a family of four on a relatively modest income. Just getting by did not require two parents working over time to keep food on the table. There was a time when you knew your neighbors and actually cared about their well being. Times have changed.

You can't ignore the fact that the "money people" will buy up a town piece by piece until the average school teacher, plumber, cashier, day care provider, gas station attendant, waitress or anyone else trying to earn a decent honest living can't afford to live in the neighborhood they and their parents grew up in.

It would be ignorant to believe that gentrification only happens in "minority" communities. There are plenty of white people across the country that will tell you that is not the case. Come to Portsmouth, NH and ask damn near anyone in town over the age of 35 what their town was like growing up vs now...I assure you the responses would echo the sentiment in The Last Block in Harlem.

I think any book that challenges you to think is a book worth picking up. This book is sure to be a spring board for conversations and controversy.

The Last Block in Harlem is filled with a myriad of characters that remind you of people you might have known while you were growing up. Page by page you become more engrossed in the characters lives and what brought them to the point where they are in life today.

Frankly, I don't like telling too much about a story because it ruins the book for the reader. What I will tell you is that this novel is not only entertaining but it challenges you to think about the world we are living in and the direction that manipulation, greed and disparity points us in.

Christopher Herz has a gift for making his reader see the world through the eyes of a man on the brink of insanity. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys reading. Even if you are following the chapters closely, you will never guess where this story takes you in the end.

Pick up the book. You won't be disappointed.
1932407
This book reveals the stark reality of where our global economy currently resides. Readers should take note and be prudent in acting on the advice given.
4646732
If you have a job, or plan to get a job, you should read this book.
3938773
There is not enough room to write the importance of why you should read this book!  READ IT. Then, read it again.