Roff Smith.
Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2000 (reprint 2001).
Book information: Amazon.com.

I would be happier if this book were twice as long and had more pictures (many Amazon reviewers also comment that the book seems too short to them). The author bicycled a counter-clockwise route around Australia starting and ending in Sydney during 1996/1997. Most of the text discusses the regions he visited during the first half of his trip: New South Wales, Queensland, and the Top End. He has very little to say about southwestern Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. He relates many stories of encounters with the inhabitants during the first half of his trip; after that his interest in the adventure wanes. The desolation of the northwestern, western and southern coasts, a crash with injuries in Western Australia that required a 3 week recovery, followed by the Nullarbor Plain, cumulatively seems to have broken his spirit (the author admits this on page 277). Then he picked up a viral infection in South Australia that hindered the remainder of the trip. The book may be insightful for NSW, QLD, NT and parts of WA; it is very weak for SA, VIC, TAS.

Bill Bryson.
In a Sunburned Country.
New York: Broadway Books, 2000, 2001.
Book information: Amazon.com.

Travels around Australia during 1999 & 2000.

Tony Horwitz.
One For The Road: An Outback Adventure, revised edition.
New York: Vintage Books / Random House, 1999.
Originally published: Sydney & New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Book information: Amazon.com.

Hitchhiking the Australian outback during 1986/1987.

Elizabeth Kay Berner and Robert A. Berner.
Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles.
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
Book information: Publisher, Amazon.com.

This book is a revised second edition of the authors' earlier book The Global Water Cycle: Geochemistry and Environment, 1987. The book is a good introduction to aquatic chemistry in various geological contexts: rainwater, rock weathering, rivers, lakes, estuaries, oceans. With respect to chemistry the book is very introductory; occasionally extensive literature reviews give the book a tedious character.

More substantial accounts of the topics discussed in Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles can be found in books like the following:

• James I. Drever.
  The Geochemistry of Natural Waters: Surface and Groundwater Environments, Third edition.
  Prentice Hall, 1997.


• Werner Stumm and James J. Morgan.
  Aquatic Chemistry: Chemical Equillibra and Rates in Natural Waters, Third edition.
  Wiley, 1996.


• C.A.J. Appelo and D. Postma.
  Geochemistry, Groundwater and Pollution, Second edition.
  Taylor & Francis, 2005.


• Edward A. Laws.
  Aquatic Pollution: An Introductory Text, Third edition.
  Wiley, 2000.


• René P. Schwarzenbach, Philip M. Gschwend, Dieter M. Imboden.
  Environmental Organic Chemistry, Second edition.
  Wiley, 2002.


• Michael Jacobson, Robert J. Charlson, Henning Rodhe, Gordon H. Orians.
  Earth System Science: From Biogeochemical Cycles to Global Change.
  Academic Press, 2000.
  (The first edition of this book appeared under the title Global Biogeochemical Cycles in 1992.)


• Patrick A. Domenico and Franklin W. Schwartz.
  Physical and Chemical Hydrogeology, Second edition.
  Wiley, 1997.


• G. A. Cole.
  Textbook of Limnology, Fourth edition.
  Waveland Press Inc., 1994.


• Abraham Lerman, et al., editors.
  Physics and Chemistry of Lakes, Second edition.
  Springer Verlag, 1995.


• Roy Chester.
  Marine Geochemistry, Second edition.
  Blackwell Publishers, 2003.


• and the books on Atmospheric Chemistry listed here.

Notable Essay:

Crisis in Europe by Bruce Bawer (The Hudson Review, Vol. 58, No. 4, Winter 2006).

Discusses the lack of liberty-mindedness in Europe, particularly among European intellectuals and Europe's Muslim immigrants. Bawer is the author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within.

The American Interest, Volume 1, Number 3, Spring 2006.

Notable Essay:

Civil Society at The Second Draft by Richard Landes and Pedro Zúquete.

An introduction to the concept of civil society (and its relationship to pre-modern / traditional / aristocratic / agricultural / hiearchical societies). The Second Draft website has many insightful essays, many of a general nature providing a philosophical framework for understanding political disputes, in addition to those particularly related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. See also Richard Landes' blog Augean Stables.

First Things, Number 162, April 2006.

Notable essays:

• Theology’s Continental Captivity by R.R. Reno.
  [Discusses differences between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy.]


• Iraq: Then & Now by George Weigel.
  [Discusses the Iraq war in the context of just war theory; opposes those who (mis)use just war theory to oppose the Iraq war.]

City Journal, Volume 16, Number 1, Winter 2006.

Notable essays:

• The Plot to Shush Rush and O’Reilly by Brian C. Anderson.
  [Politically motivated attempts to squelch free speech via campaign-finance "reform".]


• Marriage and Caste by Kay S. Hymowitz.
  [Marriage is the sine qua non for the overall well-being of children.]

Notable Essay:

The Return of Patriarchy by Phillip Longman. Foreign Policy, March/April 2006.

"Patriarchal societies come in many varieties and evolve through different stages. What they have in common are customs and attitudes that collectively serve to maximize fertility and parental investment in the next generation."