Pacific

Mr. Stienstra did it again...in spades! This is the most complete and helpful advice
I have seen on how to truly enjoy the Bay Area. His description of the places I know are right on target...for the many I don't know he has given me chapter and verse on which ones I want ot explore next. Who needs Montana? We've got it right here!!

Thanks Tom...

Where are all those great fishing holes? Where do you take visitors when they want to go Steelhead in early November? This is the book you. Find those holes, just around your block, ( really!!!), or just a few miles away. Thanks Terry.....

If you're planning a visit to Yosemite, Sequoia, the Redwoods, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Lassen, or any of California's great national parks, and if you love to hike, this book is perfect. We spent a week in Yosemite last year, picking and choosing from this book's great trails. We did a long day-hike (8-12 miles) every day. Each one of the recommended trails was exactly as the author described. Without this book, we never could have decided which trails to hike in the park. We just came back from Death Valley and we used the book again. It's great! You really get your money's worth here.

I use it a lot as a reference.

Nancy Turner's coverage of food plants in her area is amazing. In this new edition, the photos are splendid and really aid in identifying the plants. She has found out about the plants from the people who have used them extensively. One of my favorite wild edible plant books!

Though this book was first published in 1908, it remains as absolutely one of the all-time great classics in identifying and learning about the trees of the Pacific region of the United States and Canada. The detailed descriptions of the trees, their leaves, their bark, and so on are very clear. The book is unexcelled in giving precise locations of where a particular species of tree can be found, and is also unexcelled in describing the kind of climate, habitat, and soil a particular tree likes. Almost unique among books is an attempt to give an approximate longevity of each tree. True, some of the longevity figures would now be considered inaccurate today, but Sudworth truly did his best to secure the best available information of his times. Sudworth's practical experiences in his tree identification skills truly show in his writings. He allows for variations to be expected, as well as mentioning rules of thumbs and practical ways to help learn to identify the trees. The line drawings of the leaves, fruits or cones, and seeds of the trees are among the very, very best I've ever seen---such exquisite details are to be seen in the drawings! This book has been so useful for me that I'm going to have to find a new---or at least a used copy in good shape---to replace my present but worn copy. For the serious or beginning or advanced dendrologist, this book is an abslolute must in his or her personal library. It's such a great book that it really could use a six-star rating. Sudworth would be bursting with pride to know how useful his book has been for not just me, but for many others as well. It's truly one of the most scholarly and greatest of any tree books ever published, and I highly recommend it.

I bought this book when it first was released. After reading it, I bought about 20 copies to give to friends for Christmas. It is a great book. Without giving away the true story, it is about the hard life of a man, told by himself as though you are sitting at his knee as a grandchild. This is a story of a 'ordinary man' who thought of himself as such; but he was really a hero of his generation, and actually LIVED history.

If your home waters are in Oregon/Washington or if you are planning a future trip to the Pacific Northwest, this book is a must-read. I enjoyed the author's style of writing and am impressed with his knowledge of freshwater species. Enjoy!

In 1943, Cleveland writer and journalist Dan Levin joined the Marine Corps to become a Combat Correspondent. From the Battlefield -- published by the Naval Institute Press fifty years after the Battle of Iwo Jima -- is his extraordinary personal account of World War II campaigns in the Pacific. He landed on Saipan on D+9, on Tarawa on D+2, and on Iwo Jima on D-Day.

The book is the memoir of a combat journalist, from boot camp at Parris Island, to Lejeune and Pendleton, through training in Hawaii, and on to the islands of battle and death. Levin weaves his own story with those of the young Marines he accompanied into battle -- all told in a spare, direct, manly style. The writing is matched by the Naval Institute Press's inspired layout of the book, using a typewriter font to convey both journalism and the period of the war.

From the Battlefield more than a memoir, however. It is also an anthology of some of Sergeant Levin's best war writing. His dispatches -- written on a portable typewriter under fire, carried by runner back to the ships offshore, sent by radio to the U.S. for distribution to newspapers and radio stations -- are as gripping today as they were in 1944 and 1945.

Levin's dispatches deserve re-reading, fifty years later, for the spirit of democracy they convey. Most of the Marines he fought with were young, products of the hard times of the Depression, who had known few advantages in life. He drew out their democratic inner nobility. He salutes in particular two men -- Frank Krywicki, who led the assault platoon (demolition satchels and flame-throwers) that Levin accompanied onto the beach, and Joe Berger, whose "different kind of heroism," work with captured and wounded Japanese, enlarged Levin's sense of humanity. He stopped using "Japs" in his dispatches as a result. He honors too the uplifting eulogy delivered after the Iwo Jima battle by Navy Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn, a rabbi.

He shares his journalistic techniques -- keeping a journal, writing "Joe Blow" stori! es, using literary references in his articles, and painting a mental picture of the battlefield for the distant American reader. At Gettysburg there were the "Devil's Den" and the "Peach Orchard." In Levin's corner of Iwo Jima there were "the Amphitheatre," "the Wilderness," and the "Brimstone Pit."

In addition to the articles and dispatches, From the Battlefield includes some of Levin's letters home and entries from his notebook, unpublished during the war because they could not pass the censors or were too grave. His battle muse also drove him to write poetry. "We Clasp Our Fallen" -- an agonized tribute to the Marines that fell in the thirty-one day battle of Iwo Jima -- combines GI experiences and emotions with a feeling for America and for the dignity of sacrifice matched in few other American memorial poems.

In one of the book's most poignant moments, Levin relates how his dispatch from the beach at Iwo Jima was heard on America's radios the next day. His wife, at work in a Washington war office, burst into tears -- knowing that he had lived at least a few hours on the battlefield, knowing at the same time that her husband was square in the middle of one of America's most awful days of blood.

From the Battlefield has the lingo and emotions of the '40s and the '90s in one volume. Fifty years after the battles, Levin's life as a journalist, businessman, and professor have aged and matured his memories. The integrated presentation of contemporary journalism and retrospective memoir gives this book rare power, and rarer wisdom.

-30-

I have attempted to do more than 100 hikes in this book -- 90% in Oregon. At least 30% of the trails do not exist or the driving directions were so poor you could not find the trailhead -- and some you simply could not get to in a standard vehicle. The descriptions were not accurate. It seems like the author wrote by using maps, not by visiting the trails. I ended up using a few of the pages to start a fire on one of the hikes. That was the best use I got out of the guide.

Some information was reasonable.

I love this book. I've been in the Pacific NW for 3 years and have been impressed with all the hikes I've chosen in this book. It catalogs the hikes by location, so you can easily narrow down your list of choices based on how far you want to drive or what region you want to drive to. It also has a rating system for each hike, one for difficulty and the other for scenery. I've found both to be reasonably accurate. This is THE book to get if you want a comprehensive guide to hiking in the Pacific NW.