Pacific

Being an Eagle Boy Scout, I was prepared for everything. In fact, I was so prepared I could hardly carry my pack. Ray Jardine has shown me a new way: less is more. Less weight is more enjoyment while backpacking.

The book was great if you can keep an open mind. The book can really change your hiking style.

Last summer I walked 515 miles using the techniques in Jardines book. I walked through the entire state of Washington. I encountered rain, snow, mosquitos galore and a host of other problems that were all easily handled with the techniques outlined in Ray's book. I even made my own backpack on an old Singer sewing machine with the plans in the book. I wore running shoes the whole way. I finished the hike in 23 days, counting the five rest days I took. This book is excellant, not to mention well written.

This cookbook is magnificent! With breathtaking photography,stellar production values and innovative recipes which emphasize the unique bounty of the Pacific Northwest, what more could anyone ask for in a cookbook? Grab your own copy to use and treasure forever!

Please contact me at either : hiltonpu@fedsure.co.za . . . or P O Box 371, Noordhoek, 7975, South Africa Many thanks!

I am looking for a copy. Can anyone help? Harriet

Fantastic Book! Sherry Simpson's brilliant style and insight mark her as one of the best writers of our time. This book is sure to become a classic that will be read and studied for generations to come. You will enjoy this book on many, many levels. If you don't own a copy of "The Way Winter Comes", buy it now. You won't be disappointed!

Calling this book nature writing, or Alaska writing, or wilderness writing is to box it into a space that is too small. This is just damn GOOD writing by someone who knows how to take the reader places without heavy-handedness. In many ways, I find Simpson's essay to be better than the oft-mentioned names like McPhee, Muir, Gutkind, etc.

Simpson takes the reader on a literary tour of Alaska. From her upbringing here in Juneau to her excursions in the deep Arctic, we are given an open window to peer into some of the mysteries of the many faces of Alaska. Her journalistic past affords her some true objectivity in dealing with controversial topics like wolf trapping.

An exceptional resource. The suggestions for activities were found to be right on target. About.com

"These useful guides are highly recommended... " Library Journal

"The ideal traveling companion, and a wonderful book for the armchair traveler." Midwest Book Review

Frank Chin's collection of essays is magnificent. The book is a course in itself on the authenticity of the Chinese-American experience in American culture. Chin's ideas are well researched, even scholarly in origin, but they are presented in ways that are eminently accessible. Each of the essays is provocative of the reader's thinking. I loved the essay on "Lowe Hoy & the 3 Legged Toad", for its exposition of strategy in Chinese social experience, and for its use of authentic Cantonese colloquialisms in his interviewees' speech.

Excellent book! Some events bring me back to my childhood years growing up in the Bay area.

I love the essays of Frank Chin. I just wished that the editor would put in "Racist Love" in this anthology. Anyway, this book is a treat because you'll have a commentary of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR. Over and over again I've heard Chin mention how well ART OF WAR reflects Asian thinking. Well, it's now available to you guys, written by Frank Chin himself!

Most of us who enjoy nature have relied upon "bird books" or other guides to the species at one time or another as we inquire about our surroundings. These dull but thorough reference books often make their topics LESS interesting, quelling the interests that they're supposed to serve. We look up our bird, animal or plant and then move on having learned little more than its Latin name. Ugh.

This book shines like a beacon to future nature writers as it uses every description as the basis for a prosaic mini-essay; rewarding curiosity with enlightenment, fascination and delight. Imagine a reference book so enticing to read that you can't stop reading with just one description. Instead, the object of your curiosity serves as a mere starting point in the book; the first page of what often becomes a genuine sit-down-and-read-it experience.

If every nature writer put this much love into their topics, the trails would be overrun with enthusiastic hikers. Here's hoping that the author visits your neck of the woods soon, and provides you with the same exuberant writing he's given us here in the Pacific Northwest.

Most of us who enjoy nature have relied upon "bird books" or other guides to the species at one time or another as we inquire about our surroundings. These dull but thorough reference books often make their topics LESS interesting, quelling the interests that they're supposed to serve. We look up our bird, animal or plant and then move on having learned little more than its Latin name. Ugh.

This book shines like a beacon to future nature writers as it uses every description as the basis for a prosaic mini-essay; rewarding curiosity with enlightenment, fascination and delight. Imagine a reference book so enticing to read that you can't stop reading with just one description. Instead, the object of your curiosity serves as a mere starting point in the book; the first page of what often becomes a genuine sit-down-and-read-it experience.

If every nature writer put this much love into their topics, the trails would be overrun with enthusiastic hikers. Here's hoping that the author visits your neck of the woods soon, and provides you with the same exuberant writing he's given us here in the Pacific Northwest.

I also have ordered this as a gift for several this year, including the revised edition for myself. Definitely not just a reference book but a great read also. I actually read the whole book,rather than just saving for information on specifics, when I got my first copy years ago.

This was a great, handy book to have while visiting southern California. I have been on two of the tours so far. Both were accurate and fun. I am origianally from California, but live in Dallas now. This was a nice way to refresh my memory of the area, and find out new places to see. It is a must have if you are planning to spend some time in the southern California area.

You will have fun reading this handy little book even if you don't go on the variety of tours it has to offer. The concise, often humorous, descriptions are full of little known facts on people and places all over L.A. There are museums, parks, landmarks, cemetaries and unique attractions I never knew existed and it was a great experience seeing them for the first time. Most of them were FREE! Pocket Guide to L.A. is not your typical Hollywood guide book. It is a entertaining and educational activity book that covers a wide range of interesting places to visit again and again. It would make a great gift.

What a great Book! This is the best guide to L.A. that I have seen. Not only does it contain over one hundred of the best attractions, but it also has five self-guided tours around the greater Los Angeles area.

Four of the tours stop at famous landmarks and the homes of the biggest superstars in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades. Celebrity biographies are provided for more then 60 of the greatest stars of today and yesteryear. Some of my favorites include Brad Pitt, John Travolta, Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman. Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, and Elvis Presley.

The final tour is a walking tour exploring downtown Los Angeles. This tour unveils the various cultures, historical facts and gives you a feel for the future of the city of Los Angeles. Featured are water parks, beautiful gardens, mini-museums, three different ethnic communities, architectural feats, and much more.

Not only does the book have very accurate driving directions, but it contains GPS coordinates for those who like to navigate with GPS. Additionally, it contains a very innovative GPS Adventure Game which is a type of cross word puzzle where you are given GPS coordinates and clues. You travel to each GPS coordinate, read the clue and determine the answers. The game's route follows pretty close to the route of Adventure Tour I, so you can play the game at the same time that you go on the tour. For example, one clue is the tomb inscription, "She did it the hard way". The GPS coordinates take you to Forest Lawn Memorial Park to Bette Davis' tomb. Another clue is "A winged lady holding an electron", and you are guided to GPS coordinates at The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences where you see a thirty foot Emmy (the answer) and many more busts of the greatest television stars.

The book was well planned and is very convenient. I highly recommend the "Pocket Guide to the Best of Los Angeles" to everyone.

This book is written by an academic. I don't necessarily mean this in a negative sense. The author has done a very thorough research on the topic and presented his findings. The effect is a book that can be called a comprehensive treatment as far as it can be done given that the practictioners are disappearing fast.
The downside is that it can send you to sleep as the author systematically compares how the navigational techniques are practiced in the various island groups.

The strength of the book is not only its thoroughness but also the fact that the author is a skilled sailor who has gone on trips using these techniques. This makes the material so much more authentic, because the reader can relate how effective these skills are and yet how much practice they require.

The author provides commentary on many practices and relates them to our modern day knowledge. An example was their ability to recognize the impact of sub surface currents, something that is today a rather specialist piece of knowledge not available to the everyday sailor.

Incredible book - how did people get to Hawaii, Tonga, and other pacific islands that are thousands of miles apart? Did they get lost? Did they get blown there by storms? Nooooooo - they could navigate over open ocean for thousands of miles by using art passed down from generation to generation. This book tells you how.

David Lewis has zig-zaged the Pacific in modern yachts and traditional canoes. His broad experience and long resarch, using his own and many schoolars data, has made this a good analysis and documentation of the extremly impressing and interesting phenomenon of ancient and present voyaging in the Pacific. Others, specially anthropologists fieldworking in the Central Carolines of Micronesia, had written about the presently used Micronesian voyaging system, others less throughly about the forgotten polynesian,but Lewis mangage to give a synthesis of the technologies and some of the social aspects of traditional voyaging in the Pacific

Seattle is set in a very diverse geographical region. This diversity provides for ample breathtakingly beautiful and lush photographs of the metropolitan area. Lakes, mountains, trees, islands, bays, rivers - this area has it all and is cleverly photographed in this Robert Cameron book.
The book is fairly up to date although citizens or connosieurs of Seattle may notice the dated-ness of the book by the conspicuous absense of some new construction in the downtown area and the changing condition of other areas of the city. If you like pictorials, this is a great one to own and probably one of the best of the Seattle Metropolitan Area. I highly recommend it.

THIS BOOK IS A KNOCKOUT, IT'S 12 X 14, THE PICTURES INSIDE, MOST OF THEM ARE THE SAME SIZE AND ARE SO CLEAR IT LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE THERE, YOU LOOK AT SEATTLE FROM ALL ANGLES AND TACOMA, YOU CAN MAKE OUT PEOPLE IN THE BUILDINGS, THERE ARE OLD PICTURES FROM THE 1920's RIGHT NEXT TO TODAYS PICTURES, THE BOOK TELLS YOU WHERE AND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT, YOU CAN READ SIGNS IN THESES PICTURES, IT SHOWS HOW CLEAN THE SEATTLE AND THE PUGET SOUND IS, IF YOU LIVE THERE THIS BOOK IS A MUST, FOR IT WILL SHOW YOU AREAS YOU MAY HAVE NEVER SEEN, FOR THERE IS SO MUCH TO SEE, AND TO THE REST OF THE WORLD, THIS BOOK THIS IS THE PERFECT TRAVEL GUIDE FOR THE NORTHWEST, IT'S A 160 PAGES OF THE CITY, WATER, NAVEL SHIPS, FERRYS,AIR PORTS, AND MOUNTAINS, THERE IS JUST NO WAY TO PUT THESE GREAT PICTURES IN TO WORDS! "THANKS" ROBERT CAMERON

Stunning quality; if you've been there, you will easily be able to pick out your favorite spots, despite the distance. The captions are a little dry, but the pictures make this aesthetic book one of value.

This book has roads in that my MapPoint 2003 program said didn't exist. So to see who was right-we built a backroads trip using the book and the software-and the book was absolutely correct.

It is easy to read, gives great places to see and fun things to do as well as an incredibly detailed map-down to showing you were the gates are on private roads.

Clearly the best--no doubt about it.

The relief maps are wonderful at making the terrain visible, but the strength of this atlas is how clearly it shows the roads - all of them including forest roads - paved, gravel and dirt. The depiction of campsites is also very complete. Unfortunately the campsite listings are not nearly as comprehensive as the map, so you will want a separate campground guide to for amenities and descriptions. Also appreciated, the overlap between maps on different pages is generous - finally a map book that doesn't leave you on the edge, flipping pages!

I found this special atlas to be a visual treasure map. I have traveled over much of Oregon, once on a field trip for a combined graduate class of paleontology and stratigraphy students at the University of Oregon, and I enjoyed reminiscing while viewing a more three dimensional-looking map of many of the sites we had visited.

Both the Recreational and Landscape sections are very useful and informative when planning a future trip, or just to "armchair travel."

Reading the maps can be both a history and a geology lesson.