Arizona has a lot of places with strange or unusual names. Before I can across this book I often wondered where these names came from. If you're interested in Arizona, it's history, or trivia about the state you'll ejoy perusing through the pages of this book.

Ten years ago, someone at the University of Arizona Press decided to reissue this book and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate that person. Even though the book hasn't been updated since the mid 1930's, the text is of extreme value to the historian, researcher and casual reader as is. By reissuing the book the University performed a valuable public service.

With high hopes and expectations, I purchased this book with the intention of doing research on place names along the Santa Fe Railroad in Arizona. I am pleased to report that Arizona Place Names was the most valuable reference in assisting me with that project. But, for me, there was a bonus. The book also served to reacquaint me with the Arizona of my youth as I was born and raised in Yavapai County and often traveled with my parents around the state. It has rekindled interest in my roots, far exceeded my hopes and expectations and brought me back to better times in my life.

The author's style is more like a mentor and friend. There were times that I felt I was riding with him on horseback discussing the name origin of a nearby spring or butte. Factual and accurate, his style shows that he loved what he was doing. The text is short, to the point, and can be read by the casual reader who would like to sit back in the rocking chair or recliner and escape to Arizona.

What more can I say except if you have any interest in Arizona, this book has to be the cornerstone of your libary. Once you pick it up, it's hard to put down. Five stars -- and then some....

Dr. Ausband's elegant, easy, affable writing style (threaded with humor and just a hint of the bawdy) mirrors that of his subject, and reading this book is very much like listening in on a conversation between two men sharing their thoughts, observations, and tall tales about their adventures in a land they both love, while warming their hands around a steaming mug of coffee before an autumn campfire. The fact that they are separated by three centuries of "progress" is no barrier to their camaraderie, and because the book is so well written, the reader becomes a member of Byrd's expedition team, too, as Ausband does---without having to clean the mud off his or her boots, or cut through the brush in the Dismal Swamp. Almost incidentally, he or she also gets an education in botany, ornithology, and zoology along the imaginary line that separates Virginia from North Carolina, the descriptions of the animals, plants, and people Byrd encountered (and Ausband revisits) as colorful as the Carolina parakeet that once overran the area--and nowhere to be found is the cloying smell of leather elbow patches and tweed the one might expect such a book to exude.

It's a skillful piece of work, written by a master storyteller, and will be of interest to anyone who is a student of Byrd of Westover, a resident of the geographic area, a fisherman or hunter or hiker, or a bibliophile unable to resist the lure of an exceptionally well-wrought book.