The book captures a remarkable series of photos of desert canyons. The photos are good enough to keep the book on my office conference table. Ms. Williams' text provides stories of people encountering wilderness at the near edge of mystic experience.

Straight to my heart. If you love the red rocks and enjoy Terry's writing, this is it. The photography is excellent!

Coyote's Canyon is a collection of photography of the Southwestern US, coupled with Terry Tempest Williams's haunting prose. The photographs are, by and large, rich and full of the sense of the desert. The collection of short essays by Williams includes two of my absolute favorite stories about the Southwest--the one about the Man who Buries Poems, and the one about finding the Perfect Kiva. Worth the read, for anyone who yearns for the desert, or who lives there and wants to rediscover an appreciation for its magic, both in photographs and in lyrical prose.

No one paints aviation sunsets like this man! Classic aircraft, biplanes, WW II fighters all the way to rocket planes. A great collection from the same artist who brought you the July '97 classic aircraft postage stamp collection. Bill Phillips' work is entertaining for the aviation enthusiast/perfectionist, as well as being satisfying fine art. Painting is his calling and he is faithful with his gift. The text stops short of explaining some of the most significant, and encouraging, aspects of Bill's biography.Closely examine his signature and you'll discover the driving force that sustains Bill and his work. This is a wonderful book that would have rated a 10 if the art was not split across the page gutters. As is the price is right, but I'd gladly have paid another $20 to have a larger book with the images on one page. It violates every user-friendly layout rule of coffee table art books- but this is NOT the fault of the artist! Don't get me wrong, I'm still happy to have this book. But it could have been even better. J. Campbell Martin

Edward Parks has done a masterful job of interpreting the art of Bill Phillips. Mr. Parks was a fighter pilot (P-39's) in New Guinea at the start of WWII and after the war became a nationally recognized writer for the National Geographic and later, for the Smithsonian Institute. His first hand knowledge of flying combined with an incredible gift for prose makes "The Glory of Flight" a perfect match between artist and writer. Bill Phillips is undoubtedly America's premier aviation artist. His ability to capture the experience of seeing the world from aloft is truly inspiring. "The Glory of Flight" is a must for any aviation enthusiast. The title says it all!

Bill Phillips is a superb landscape artist who captures aircraft in moments of aviation history on the richest backgrounds imaginable. I was priviledged to attend his showing of major works in the National Air & Space Museum in September, 1987; and have been an avid collector since

The title sums it all up. The book is indeed useful, you can find all sorts of neat features by using it, but it really is a bit simplified. Perhaps it's just me, but it was GREAT for my kids (8 and 11) who are both, well, they read. Anything. As long as they can catch it.

This was the text for part of our Field Camp. I was fortunate enough to have the Dr. Fritz as my personal guide to Yellowstone National Park. I still use the book as a reference in my personal studies of U.S. Geology. It is must for anyone traveling to Yellowstone with even the most remote interest in Geology.

I'm a nerd. I was left with nothing to read in the cold nights. I was also having trouble sleeping. I thought this book would help.

Yes it put me to sleep because reading about rock and millenia of dirt moving is tiresome.

But what I absorbed made me look at yellowstone in a new way. The book was quite clear-and I could see and easily understand how Americas greatest monument to beauty was madeof millions of years.

It's like seeing the Louvre after taking an art class. The paint on canvass comes alive with history and meaning.

So too if you read this.

Ansel Adams was our photographer-advocate laureate of the national parks. This outstandng volume combines a look at his efforts both to capture the meaning of the parks and to lobby on their behalf. Fortified with a Guggenheim Fellowship in the 1940s, Adams was able to travel throughout the U.S. to visit the many national parks outside of his beloved, native California. This volume greatly benefits from those travels in creating his ideas and the 80 black and white images contained in it.

As Ansel Adams reminds us, "The National Parks, are, indeed a phenomena of an advanced society . . . ." When Yellowstone was established by President Grant in 1872, it was the first national park in the history of the world. Since then, we have been in a race between despoiling our wilderness environment and retaining some of it in national parks. The challenge is heightened by the pressures to commercialize and increase access to wilderness areas. How many people should visit Yosemite each year? These are the questions that Ansel Adams anticipated and helped us address. These questions are even more relevant and important today than when he first raised them. "Possessions, both material and spiritual, are appreciated most when we find ourselves in peril of losing them."

"There is a constant erosion of the concept and the reality of wilderness." Unfortunately, Adams was much more successful as a photographer than in achieving his environmental vision. Will his final epitaph of the future be of someone who captured images of what does not exist any more? I certainly hope not.

I recommend the preface by William A. Turnage very highly to understand Ansel Adams' vision and its effects on our society. The preface also contains a delightful section by Nancy Newhall on what it was like to be Ansel Adams' assistant for his dawn photography treks.

This book contains much more written material by Ansel Adams on conservation and the national parks than in any other book of his photographs that I have seen. I enjoyed reading about his ideas, and they helped me understand his photography better as well. He is trying to show us "the clear realities of Nature seen with the inner eye of the spirit [to] reveal the ultimate echo of God."

As I mentioned in the title to this review, the publisher put these images on pages that are too small to capture the detail of Adams' work in most cases. In fairness to the publisher, I should also point out that remarkable efforts have been made to reproduce these images well in the small format. Compared to other small reproductions of these same images, these are by far the best I have seen.

Some compositions in fact succeed in overcoming the limitations of the page size. These include:

Cliff Palace Ruin, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 1941

Leaves, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, 1942

Forest, Early Morning, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, 1949

Leaf, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 1948

Forest, Beartrack Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 1949

Teklanika River, Denali National Park, Alaska, 1947

Mount McKinley from Stoney Pass, Denali National Park, Alaska, 1948

Cinder Cone in Crater of Haleakala, Haleakala National Park, Hawaii, 1956

Mount Lassen from Devastated Area, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, 1949

Mount Clarence King, Pool, Kings Canyon National Park, California, 1932

Many of the other photographs will be familiar to Ansel Adams' fans. If you have seen them reproduced in larger sizes, you can use your memory to add the missing detail. In this size though, the details being indistinct is like erasing chapters from a novel. Adams often accentuated reflections of details between different natural features in his compositions. When some details are obscured in small size, the reflections thus are not available to stimulate your mind.

In keeping with the spirit of Ansel Adams, I suggest that you consider becoming active in organizations (like the Sierra Club, which Adams belonged to for many years) that fight to save wilderness areas. If your great grandchildren are ever to experience the spiritual cleansing of the wilderness, we each must act now.

"Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere."

This book is really beautiful. The pictures have been really well selected. I think this book would make a perfect gift for almost anyone, since it has pictures from all over the United States.

New York State Parks does a great job of providing detailed information about individual campsites in various regions of NYS. I especially liked the detailed description of facilities and attractions nad their proximity to the campsite.

The description of individual cabins and here settings were of particular interest to me. As a new camper, I found this book very user friendly.

Before visiting New York to camp, hike, fish, boat, bike, or enjoy wildlife in one of their many state parks, pick up a copy of Bill Bailey's very detailed New York State Parks.

I am a very avid camper and hiker, and I travel all about New England, New York, PA, and VA to camp. Before doing this howerever, I always consult Bailey's book (if he has one for that state) to find the park with the shadiest and most private campsite and the steepest trails. His detail about the individual campsites are very valuable to me. He also includes detailed descriptions about the park trails, but he does a better job about that in most of his other books. I also find his maps and the charts at the end of each region very helpful.

The only real downfalls in my opinion is that his photographs arent very good, and he dosent go into detail about every park in the NYS park system, but oh well. The information he provides I find to be very valuable. Buy this book; I guarntee you'll find a park that suits you!

This book made me immediately drive to the Smokies and search out the many logging camps described in great detail. Bill Hooks makes this book a "must have" for the Smoky Mountain Hiker types. The information on the ancient town of Elkmont was fantastic. I will be using this book along with my trail maps to find the many 'turn-of-the-century' archaeological spots tucked away in the National Park.

Hooks and Schmidt have written the definitive history of the Little River Railroad and Lumber Companies with Whistle Over the Mountain. Hooks has spent most of his 80 years researching the natural and human history of the Smokies. Packed with maps and vintage photos. This has become our "Bible" here at the Little River Museum in Townsend, and is a must for any railroad, logging or hiking fan. Beautifully designed and very well written.

This book tells you where wildlife refuges are located and the best times of year to see certain types of wildlife.

Illinois State Parks's Guidebook is a great resource of information divulging a wealth of information. This is a great source for readers who are not familiar with the parks, offering a brief history of the park, detailed information about the facilities and available activities, and park maps. The book however does not appear to be totally complete, as some parks have been omitted from the book. In addition, the book seems to be biased to activities which the author has an interest in, rather than being comprehensive coverage. Overall, it is a good book to have as a reference for day trips throughout the state.

This book has contains some excellent piano pieces. The contents are as follows: "Journey To The Island," "Theme From 'Jurassic Park'," "My Friend, The Brachiosaurus," "Remembering Petticoat Lane," "A Tree For My Bed," and "Welcome To Jurassic Park."

Three pieces use the music from the main theme: "Journey To The Island," "Theme From 'Jurassic Park'," and "Welcome To Jurassic Park." Incidentally, I found these three to be the most rewarding to play on the piano. "Journey To the Island" is my personal favorite and is magical to play.

I give this book four stars because I know it could have been much better. There's only 32 pages here, and of those pages only 25 of those are sheet music. The front of the book has photos from the movie which are superfluous. I have no idea why publishers put movie photos in soundtrack music books. I think people who buy such books are probably familiar enough already with the movie. The extra space could have been used for more music pieces instead. On the "Jurassic Park" soundtrack, 16 tracks are included. This book only has 6 of those in sheet music form, and generally speaking those 6 are the more mellow of the songs. I think it would have been interesting to include some action pieces like "The Raptor Attack."

The pieces are at least intermediate in the level of difficulty, but they are very rewarding to play on the piano (I will give the publisher some kudos for releasing this as a piano solo edition). I highly recommend this book for piano players who like the "Jurassic Park" theme music.

We will perhaps never be able to come across a "definitive" (in the modern sense) life of Shakespeare because of the obviously sketchy nature of the extant documents relating to his life .Realising this,Mr.Honan has done the next best thing : to fill in the bare bones of the Bard's life with information from the Elizabethan period & done it in an exquisite fashion.What we get is not what Shakespeare DID at any given point in his life but a sense of what he was MOST LIKELY DOING given the socio-cultural milieu,Elizabethan mores,surviving public documents ,comments by his contemporaries and autobiographical fragments from his plays and sonnets.Mr.Honan's view is by its very nature "oblique" but given the paucity of "hard data" ,it is the wisest approach .Moreover he doesn't gloss over the gaps in our knowledge of Shakespeare's life but freely acknowledges them .Each chapter is thoroughly referenced and annotated .The picture that emerges from this account is of a remarkably sensitive genius endowed with a superlative gift for expressing the universal & the ineffable pertaining to the human condition____ in timeless prose .Interestingly ,Honan manages to do this without deifying Shakespeare ,which is wise given that Shakespeare is too fascinating a man to be 'deified away' !In the final analysis genius is always inexplicable in that it breaks the existing molds and "liberates" us to see,hear and experience the world in a novel and yet distinctly human way .This is an exquisite and enjoyable book .

After the standard non-bio (we know so little about him, etc) offered during my school years, this detailed and solid account of Shakespeare comes as an entertaining surprise. Obviously there's been a lot unearthed about Shakespeare's life just since the short time I last visited Stratford. Honan's book is especially interesting for the myths it dispels about the Bard. He seems to have been a surprisingly down to earth man, good natured, aware of his talent but by no means filled with an overweaning sense of greatness the way later artists would be. Superb overall.

A great deal of Shakespeare's life appears never to have made it into the official record, and Park Honan, for all his skill as a writer, cannot change that.

What Mr. Honan does do, however, is construct in detail the setting for what facts we do know about Shakespeare's life. Even if we lack many of the basic facts of Shakespeare's boyhood, for instance, we know what Stratford was like, and we know what kind of lives boys in Stratford led. Mr. Honan lays out this setting, gives us the known facts about young Will, contents himself with making the occasional relatively safe guess, and leaves it at that.

Despite the fact that Mr. Honan's book is mostly setting, with a fairly scarce plot, it's a good read, flowing well and entertaining. Your study of Shakespeare should start here.