It grieves me to know that Moritz Thomsen will never write another novel. His brutal honesty, his self-effacing style, his humility and acceptance of his human flaws, makes his story captivating. Never before has a book filled me with such feelings; rage at his father, joy for his victories, compassion for the difficult life he led, saddness for a life ended. It brought me to tears. This book is a fitting epitaph for a man of astonishing virtues and abilities.

This book is the story of a man who had a dominating father and lived in the dominating world of war. Moritz Thomsen was this man and he tells his own personal stories of the war with his father and the second World War. He captivates his audience with the knowledge of how rough life can be. His father was a rich man that lost all of his families money and still kept spending. He ruled everyone in his family to the point of being called a tyrant. His knowledge of the "feelings" of war are tremendous. He explains and analyzes every detail so that it is possible to believe that you experienced it along with him. It is sad to know that Moritz Thomsen will never write another story about his life. In closing I thought that this was an awesome book that I will never forget.

Devoted readers of the late Moritz Thomsen's first three books needn't be reminded that Moritz wrote better on a bad day than 99% of the authors, living or dead, who have tried their hand at English prose. Just like his classic Living Poor, The Farm on the River of Emeralds, and The Saddest Pleasure, My Two Wars is searingly honest, funny, heartbreaking, compelling ‹ in short, vintage Thomsen. It's more than just obligatory reading for the cognoscenti, however. It documents Thomsen's "involvement with two outrageous catastrophes," his father, and the shorter war he fought against the various forces, insanities, and outrages of WW II as a B-17 bombardier in Europe. The two wars are by no means unrelated. The longer narrative is devoted to military service that began as a draftee. Regarding the longer war, if only half of the outrages Charlie Thomsen visited upon his family are true, "catastrophe" still euphemizes the man. The wartime account is fantastic, but the final scene in which Moritz returns from hell as a decorated officer to confront Charlie, wallowing in drunken bitterness over having been robbed of the prospect of being the father of a dead war hero son, has to be read to be believed. God bless you, Moritz, for an amazing life and for your final gift to us

Reclaiming the Native Home of Hope delivers a top-notch set of essays and case studies on western ecosystems, species re-introduction, land management, and conservation. The majority of the setting is focused on the Utah wilderness with other stories spiraling out to the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau areas.

The essays challenge the traditional thinking about the best uses for these remote and relatively unpopulated areas (e.g., mining and ranching) and bring the natural qualities to the top of the list. The book's arguments to preserve ecosystems of the west are balanced with constructive thoughts on ways to preserve jobs and private land.

Stephen Trimble sums up the motivation for spending time in open, natural spaces in an essay called "Letting Go of the Rim." The kind of story that would have left Wallace Stegner smiling.

Part history and part dreamy reminiscence, this book is an account of a boy growing up in Southwest Saskatchewan in the early part of the 20th Century. The central portion of the book is pure history, and the long chapters on cowboys are particularly challenging because they require an intimate knowledge of cowboy terminology. Stegner does not mince words about the difficulties of life on the plains--extremes of heat and cold, wind, hostile topography, lack of cultural amenities--the result of which is that most who grew up there moved elsewhere. But he also shows a passionate attachment for the country of his childhood. The narrative often seems rambling because, like James Michener, the author tries to incorporate so much besides history--including the biology and geology of the nearby Cypress Hills, the biologically diverse area nearby--and even his poetic musings have elements of fact, as when he describes the wind, or the gophers, or his swimming hole, or his school, or his family's homestead, or the problems involved in the town's incorporation.

This wonderful collection of essays and fiction about the last Western frontier is both romance and anti-romance. Writing in the 1950s, Stegner captures the breath-taking beauty of the unbroken plains of southwest Saskatchewan and the excitement of its settlment at the turn of the century. Part memoir, the book recounts the years of his boyhood in a small town along the Whitemud River in 1914-1919, the summers spent on the family's homestead 50 miles away along the Canadian-U.S border. His book is also an account of the loss of that Eden and the failed promise of agricultural development in this semi-arid region with thin top soil.

Stegner is a gifted, intelligent writer, able to turn the people and events of history into compelling reading. The opening section of the book describes the experience of being on the plains and specifically in the area where Stegner was a boy. And it lays out the geography of that land -- a distant range of hills, the river, the coulees, the town -- which the book will return to again and again.

The following section evokes the period of frontier Canada's early exploration, the emergence of the metis culture, the destruction of the buffalo herds, the introduction of rangeland cattle, and then wave upon wave of settlement pushing the last of the plains Indians westward and northward. A chapter is devoted to the surveying of the boundary along the Canada-U.S. border; another chapter describes the founding of the Mounted Police and its purely Canadian style of bringing law and order to the wild west.

The middle section of the book is a novella and a short story about the winter of 1906-1907. In the longer piece, eight men rounding up cattle are caught on the open plains in an early blizzard. Stegner builds the drama and the peril of their situation artfully and convincingly. The final section of the book returns to Stegner's memories of the town and the homestead, ending with his family's departure for Montana.

Stegner lived at a time and in a place where a person born in the 20th century could still experience something of the sweep of history that transformed the American plains. I've read many books about the West, and because of his depth of thought, his gifts as a writer, and his unflinching eye, Stegner's work ranks for me among the best. I heartily recommend this book.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Wallace Stegner grew up on the prairie frontiers of North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Montana, and in the mountains of Utah. As is indicated by the subtitle, this volume combines history, a memoir, and historical fiction. Readers who have spent significant time on the snow swept northern steppes may find a small part of themselves, and of this land, in Wolf Willow. ...
"On those miraculously beautiful and murderously cold nights glittering with the green and blue darts from a sky like polished dark metal, when the moon had gone down, leaving the hollow heavens to the stars and the overflowing cold light of the Aurora, he thought he had moments of the clearest vision ... In every direction ... the snow spread; here and there the implacable plain glinted back a spark - the beam of a cold star reflected in a crystal of ice." (The scene evokes in me a powerful memory, as I recall often standing alone on just such "murderously cold" snow blanketed prairies and gazing into those "miraculously beautiful" night skies.)

Absolutely superb reproductions of many 'new' and previously unpublished photographs .... stunning. I agree with the pevious reviewer in this respect. However, in my view the 'design' of the book is a disaster, and the potential enjoyment of this book seriously compromised. The adoption of a 'portrait' format for a collection of predominantly 'landscape' format images is perverse, and has meant that undersize images are surrounded top and/or bottom by acres of white paper, the image generally runs off the side of the page, all of which gives an unbalanced and uncontained appearance Worse still are the images that are reproduced across two pages (albeit at a very much more satisfactory size), with the crease of the spine in the image. AA had very clear views, as to how his images should be displayed, or published, he would surely not have countenanced this outrageous act of disrespect of his work. Should there be any more AA anthologies in the pipeline - and there must be given the huge quantity of his work as yet unseen, then I urge that a designer be used who actually understands the impact of design in use, respects the content of the book, and is able to enhance it, rather than compromise it as here. It is a shame that the book is not larger, and perhaps of a square format. I would still have have bought it, even at twice the price, and not regretted the purchase

If you are like me, you feel you know work work of Ansel Adams quite well. Well, this book was a pleasant surprise in that it introduced me to many rewarding works that I had not seen before. These evoked many happy memories for me, and added to my delight in knowing California.

I was born and raised in California, so most of these scenes are ones that are familiar to me. Surprisingly, these were the first good photographs I had ever seen of many of the scenes, even though the scenes captured by the camera are often common ones.

The book contains a great deal of text that attempts to expand one's understanding of California, both as a physical and as a psychological place. If you have never been to California, you may find these useful. If you know California, they may seem redundant to the images. The authors include Richard Henry Dana, Jr., John Steinbeck, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Miller, Joan Dideon, and Mark Twain. The texts are well chosen and appropriate, if sometimes superfluous.

The notes by the editor, Ms. Stillman, were helpful. "It was light that inspired Ansel to photograph . . . ." "He worked almost exclusively at dawn or sunset . . . " because the light was more vivid then. Here is a quote from Adams, "The silver light turned every blade of grass and every particle of sand into a luminous metallic spendor . . . ." Few have ever captured magnificence in black and white as well as Adams did.

Some of my favorite images included:

Trailer-Camp Children, Richmond, 1944

Hull of Wrecked Ship, Breakers, Drake's Bay, 1953

Forest, Castle Rock State Park, 1962

Pasture, Sonoma County, 1951

Clearing Storm, Sonoma County Hills, 1951

Mount Lassen from the devastated area, 1949

Redwoods, Bull Creek Flat, 1960

Edward Weston, Carmel Highlands, 1945

Surf and Rock, Monterey County Coast, 1945

Window, Robert Louis Stevenson House, Monterey, 1953

Orchard, Santa Clara, 1954

Dead Oak Tree, Sierra Foothills, 1938

Sunrise, Death Valley, 1948

Manley Beacon, Death Valley, 1948

Sand Fence, Near Keeler, 1948

Yosemite Valley View, 1944

Half Dome (Winter) from Glacier Point, 1940

El Capitan, 1952

Jeffrey Pine, Yosemite, 1945

Dawn, Mount Whitney, 1932

My enjoyment of the book was increased by nine images of Ansel Adams working by Dorothea Lange from 1953.

Why, then, did I rate the book at 4 stars, rather than 5?

Basically, the book design is all wrong. The size of the images are either too small for their grandeur and subject, or are reproduced across two pages with a crease in the middle. Although the paper and reproduction quality are excellent, the basic layout and page size are wrong. Perhaps a future edition will remedy that problem.

I also found the introduction by Page Stegner to be too much about California and not enough about Adams.

I do recommend that you examine this book. I'm not sure whether or not you will want to purchase it or not. The sizing of the images does spoil the effects quite a bit.

After you have finished enjoying many "new to you" Ansel Adams images, I suggest that you plan a trip to visit those places you are most inspired by. Take along your camera and see what wonderful photographs you can take now at dawn or dusk, with him as your teacher.

Live in the golden glow of California wherever you are!

CALIFORNIA is arguably the best compilation of Ansel Adams' work ever produced. The design of the large-format book is striking, elegant and restrained. Especially effective are the widely spaced lines of delicate sans serif type. The luxurious coated stock is very heavy and very glossy. The quality of the the roughly 100 big black-and-white duotone reproductions is extraordinary, the result, as it is, of cutting edge laser-scanning technology. Their sharpness, their bite and vividness, the richness and depth of their blacks and the brightness of their brights perfectly convey the essence of Adams' aesthetic ethos and vision and nonpareil technical skills. The texts of most books on Adams' work are chiefly concerned with how the photographs were made, and on the artist's intentions. CALIFORNIA has none of that. Instead, it features brief writings about the Golden State by a disparate array of authors, including, among others, Walt Whitman, John McPhee, Henry Miller and, quite unexpectedly, Emily Post. Certainly, these additions enhance the book's general appeal, but one wonders how comfortable Adams would have been with this approach, since his photographs speak so eloquently for themselves and don't require any verbal support whatsoever. Ansel Adams was probably the greatest landscape photographer who has ever lived and landscapes pedominate in this book. But he excelled with other kinds of pictures as well - portraits, buildings, outdoor still lives, etc. - and this splendid volume records the full range of his amazing talent.

I'm a big fan of Galen Rowell's images and nature books in general, but this one has a twist. Sprinkled throughout this book are photos (not by Rowell) of Ford Trucks placed in the wild....If you want to get a great Galen Rowell book on Amazon, try Mountain Light, Bay Area Wild or Poles Apart.

This lovely gift book is very inspirational. I am a fan of Galen Rowell's work and these photographs are particularly striking. Makes me want to travel, climb a mountain and get adventurous. Photography buffs and those into outdoor adventure sports will appreciate the scenic views.