This little (fits in a jacket pocket. Handy!) book is a masterpiece and worth every penny. Not only do you get detailed maps and descriptions of trails in the Kalmiopsis wildland, Red Buttes and High Siskiyous, but you are also given good advice: walk it(don't ride, bike or drive). Pack everything out with you (rather than burying it. The bears *will* dig it up). John Hart tells you how to access some very obscure and little-known trails, how to follow trails which are faint, neglected and devastated by natural or human-inflicted disaster(s), gives you a "heads up" about areas where you might otherwise unwittingly trample salamanders and/or rare plants and speaks about wilderness areas that were (and still are) threatened by the activities of loggers and miners in Northern California and Southern Oregon. He gives potentially life-saving information, pinpointing locations of clean drinking water and shelter, weather conditions and recommendations for clothing and gear. Even if you never get off the sofa and go for a hike, this book is a terrific read!

This is a book that packs a lot of worthy information into a small book that is easy to backpack. You will need detailed topo maps as those in the book are for overview only, but the hikes are exquisitely detailed and accurate. Many of the trips are in the less well-known areas of Nevada and Eastern California and will please those who like to hike without meeting anyone else. The author encourages readers to find alternative routes to destinations and, although most of the trips are to peaks, there are some easier canyon hikes. Longer trips definitely need experience and route-finding abilities.

The agriculture industry in North America has been badly misunderstood for many years by Government officials and consumers alike. "The Land That Feeds Us" sets out to correct that grievance and does so very well, with numerous farmers' stories from the major agricultural sectors. Hart's prose is colorful enough to engage the casual young reader and has insights to spare for the professional. This book should generate new (and overdue) respect for the farmer and reform of the systems involved in the production of food and cash crops.

I loved Moonlight For Maggie! This book is fast-paced, romantic, and exciting, and the characters engaged me from the very first page. Maggie is smart, spunky and full of life; Paul is sexy and just a little bit cynical--a great hero! Moonlight For Maggie is a terrific debut for Alexis Hart! Don't miss it!

This has to be the most eye appealing book for anyone who loves cats, especially if the cat lover is also into antiques. The antique "scrap" images are so numerous and varied that everytime you look at this book you find things you missed the time before. The design is very decorative and colorful and is a beautiful coffee table book. I recommend it highly!

Shell of wonder opened new doors for me. It was exciting and beautifully written. It was very imaginative and and was illsutrated quite well.

I guess I may be a little biased because I was one of the primary sources for the book, but with some very minor issues, it is the most accurate re-telling of a story that should have been turned into a film. If you want to read a GREAT legal story that is also a true story, this is an excellent read. Oh yeah, it also has the obligatory beautiful photographs of Mono lake. Seems that lake doesn't know how to take a bad photograph! :-)

Hart and Muether have written a book on Presbyterian worship that is instructive for most Christian traditions. The reason is that they ask simple questions that most discussions of contemporary worship beg. Why is it better if it's more emotional? Who says that worship HAS to be seeker-sensitive? Why would something foreign to most non-believers be redesigned to make them feel at home? Just as important is the authors' decision to set some ground rules for discussions of song and music appropriate to corporate worship. Too often the debates begin and make little progress beyond musical preferences. Hart and Muether ground such considerations in a broader range of theological topics. Any pastor, church officer or person serving on a worship committee of the local parish should read this book, which is an easy one.

The best novel I've read in some time. I almost missed this book, as I typically think of Katzenbach as a sort of schlocky thriller writer (no offense; that's not meant as an insult). He's written something deeper, better, more meaningful and complex here; yet it's still a tremendously fast-paced thriller and engaging mystery. I found myself casting the movie in my head.

The book is an engaging and descriptive war novel, and the characters are well-developed, if predictable (the heroic black soldier, the brilliant, aging English barrister who loves his tea, the creepy one-armed Luftwaffe (Gestapo?) Hauptmann). My only criticism is that the escape scenes, while compelling, seem to be right out of the movies, right down to the details (multiple tunnels and tugs on a rope as a signal). I found myself looking for Bronson, Garner and McQueen. Wasn't there any other way out of a German POW camp?

Still, this is the first book in awhile that I'm making a point of passing around to my friends. Very, very good.

At first look, the basic plot of HART'S WAR is nothing extraordinary. A black man is framed by a racist populace for the murder of an ostensibly popular white man. And, of course, a novice lawyer, with zero experience in capital murder cases, is assigned as defense counsel for the trial. Ho-hum. The premise is so threadbare that I normally wouldn't have read beyond the jacket. But, hang on a minute ...

In this multi-faceted thriller by John Katzenbach, the place is Stalag Luft 13, a Luftwaffe prison camp for allied flyers shot down in WWII. The accused, Lincoln Scott, is a fictional black pilot of the real-life, famed 332nd Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen), who was downed while heroically defending a crippled B-17 bomber. He's the only Negro prisoner in the camp, and a aloof loner by choice because, you understand, he distrusts whites. The victim, Trader Vic, is a respected bomber pilot from Mississippi that had become the stalag's expert trader in forbidden goods. Lt. Tommy Hart, the navigator of a downed B-25, stands for the defense. Tommy, who left law school to join the Army Air Corps, has essentially finished his law studies while as a POW by reading every legal text he can lay his hands on. The Senior American Officer, Col. MacNamara, and the camp commandant, Luftwaffe Oberst Von Reiter, only want to get Scott's court-martial wrapped up quickly without undue embarrassment to either the Americans or the Germans.

This novel unfolds on many levels. It is, of course, a courtroom drama. But it's also a war drama, a detective drama, a prison drama, and an escape drama. Young Hart is clearly the reluctant, white-hatted good guy, but the moral and ethical issues revealed as he squares off against the rest of the camp remain elusively gray. Who, for instance, is the most evil, black-hatted bad guy? Even the battle-maimed and bitter camp adjutant, Hauptmann Visser, is a man possessing a certain honor, and doing his duty as he perceives it. And, when the identity and motive of the real killer are uncovered, would you, the reader, condemn and convict? This is a question that Tommy himself must ultimately answer as his personality is hammered to maturity in the forge of "growing up".

I liked this book very much, finishing it over a 4-day business trip to DC. I especially liked the irony presented by the 84 hats, an "in-your-face" consequence thrust into Tommy's consciousness, the unforeseen result of a decision he, essentially a non-violent person, had to make to survive.

Looking at the raves, you'd think this is War and Peace. It's not. But it's a great read and it poses enough moral dilemmas to make those people who just like a breezy plot (like Grisham) to use their minds a little. Yes, there are a few carboard chartacters _ the good German Fritz and the evil Nazi; the British barrister and the hockey-playing Canadian cop. But this isn't a perfect book, just a good one with a lot of nice points, like the fact that war heroes aren't sometimes a bit unwavory when they have no sanctioned war to fight. Katzenbach has always been uneven _ some quite good novels and some quite bad ones. Maybe we should credit this turn to his father (read the afterword). I gather that Katzenbach has wanted to make his own name rather than bask in his father's, who was attorney general under Johnson (Tommy Hart seems to come out pretty close to that). But it's clear he is awed by his dad's wartime experience.. One addendum: Is Denzel Washington too old to star with Tom Cruise in the movie? I'd rather see Andre Braugher. But Denzel sells tickets

Some fans of Faulkner have bemoaned the fact that his final novel is not a profound summation of his heftier, more philosophical works (as though Faulkner could have foreseen his own death and owed his readers that much). While it is true that The Reivers is a much lighter (and more comical) work than those commonly regarded as Faulkner's "masterpieces," it is still worthy of attention. For one thing, The Reivers is Faulkner at his most entertaining; unburdened by the need to address the darker symptoms of the human condition, he is free to let his imagination run wild: the trials and triumphs of young Lucius Priest and his travelling companions make for some hilarious scenes and leave the reader feeling far more bouyant at the novel's close that, say, at the end of The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!. The Reivers also features two additional benefits: the divine Miss Reba (second only to Granny Millard as Faulkner's most entertaining and resourceful female character); and the much-appreciated absence of that nosy and annoying popinjay Gavin Stevens. While one might read The Reivers as a Bildungsroman (Lucius's growth and awakening to the realities of the world around him are clearly underscored throughout the novel), I prefer to see it as a simple, amusing and satisfying story from a man who, by the end of his life, had done more to explore the human condition than most writers ever attempt - and was content to leave it at that.

Faulkner's novel The Reivers is in my opinion his best work. Unlike many of Faulkner's stories The Reiver's comedic and lighthearted and at the same time it tackles and touches on many of the dark and not so comedic sectors of human nature. The novel is viewed through the lens of a young man named Lucius priest. Lucius accompanies his on an unsanctioned trip to Memphis with two of his fathers employees Boon Hoggenbeck and Ned McCaslin. Putting it lightly Lucius' traveling companions are, "men of the world" that is they protray a great deal of flaws and weaknesses that permiate humanity. They drink, smoke, gamble, steal, and womanize..... As Faulkner puts it they are, "practitioners of non-virtue". As the trip progresses Lucius soon realizes that he too has began down the path of non-virtue. As I said earlier Lucius and party are travelling to Memphis, but in The Reivers it is not the destination that is important to the story it is how they get their. Every leg of the journey find the characters with a new problem to tackle and a new display of what non-virtue is. As with many of his novels Faulkner takes the base human instincts good and bad and portrays them in a believable and poignant manner. The language used in the novels suits its characters and time perfectly and adds to the humor in some instances. The question you should ponder is does Lucius succumb to the non-virtue he is surrounded by in his travels? Read it and find out.

I remember reading Faulkner's Sound and the Fury as a college sophmore and swearing never to read another book by him again. I happened to find the Reivers in my local library and decided to give his Pulitzer Prize winning book a try. It is a charming book that tells the story of a stolen car, a stolen horse, a horse race, and the life changing experiences of an 11 year old boy in the course of a week. Although Faulkner employs colons and semicolons more than any writer, and his sentences seem to continue on indefinitely, the effort of adjusting to his style rewards the reader with a wonderful tale. I highly reccomend this book, and hope to try another Faulkner book in the near future. Maybe I will even attempt the Sound and the Fury someday.