You may be as surprised by this book as I was - I bought it thinking that I OUGHT to read it to learn more about a river-running legend, but I didn't expect to enjoy it all that much. I was wrong. Author Richard Westwood engagingly tells the story of Georgie White Clark and how she came to be one of the most celebrated pioneers of Western United State river-running, especially on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. In surprising detail (including the names of many of her passengers and boatmen) this book describes the trips, travails, and triumphs of Georgie's long career here in the United State and elsewhere. The book gives brief details of Georgie's early years, but focuses on her river-running years starting in 1945 when she and Harry Aleson swam from Diamond Creek to Lake Mead, through 1992 when she died.

To the author's credit he does not dodge the controversies that have marred Georgie's legend. Westwood frankly acknowledges and, in some instances, documents the validity of some of the criticisms leveled at Georgie over the years. He states what he knows or what his considerable research revealed, and leaves the conclusions up to the reader.

Through this book you will get an unvarnished portrait of a unique individual, someone who left her imprint on a sport that largely didn't exist when she started and was a multi-million dollar industry when she died. You'll learn about an incredibly complex person: alternately engaging or aloof, compassionate or driven -- but always a pioneer. This very readable book includes over 50 photographs and maps that bring to life much of what is written, and give the reader a glimpse of Georgie's world.

In "Yorkshire West," Richard Hamilton successfully weaves a large cast of characters into an intricate and fascinating storyline. The author's love of all things British shines through in his settings and the detailed attention he gives to his dialogue. "Yorkshire West" will hold your attention and keep you guessing until the very end. This is a work well worth keeping close at hand, to be read over and over again.

With its genuine classic "old style" of writing, this book will take and place you into the center of a wonderful journey of youth and growth. A great book and an interestingly easy read for those moments when catapulting yourself into another life, time and location is just what you need. I highly reccomend it, and don't forget to share this one with the younger generation in your homes!

The beautifully illustrated DK duo cover characters, costumes, and weaponry in the Visual Dictionary, while the Cross Sections book dissects vehicles and spacecraft. Want to know how a light saber really works or what the interior of an Imperial Stormtrooper's helmet looks like? It's all in here. The most remarkable thing about the books is the amount of thought that's been expelled on the workings of things that don't even exist. The DK books are seriously cool and exceedingly browsable. Though aimed at kids, don't be surprised to see plenty of adults flipping through them also.-Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

Where do I start? This book is amazing! I am a full fledged Star Wars fan, but since I don't own Fort Knox, I can't afford to buy all of the merchandise. As a result I have to be extremely picky about which items I purchase. I had only to see the Millennium Falcon drawing on the cover, and I was hooked!

I have read The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, but I found the information contradictory to previously published material, and a bit amateurish. Incredible Cross Sections does such a well-thought-out job, and is worded so well, that you almost forget these things don't exist! The gate-fold spread of the Death Star is absolutely incredible! The detail is also carefully executed, right down to the gold-foil insulation on the air ducts in the Millennium Falcon. Everything a Star Wars Technophile could want is in this book. I highly recommend buying the companion book as well: The Star Wars Visual Dictionary.

All I can say is, More! I would love to see another edition of this book containing some of the other vehicles.

Highly Recommended!

While the new prequel trilogy shows us the most sleek, sophisticated, and mind-boggling ships in the Star Wars universe, the ships of the original trilogy are like cars from the 1950s...they'll always remain loved. Sure the Millennium Falcon doesn't look as dignified as Episode 1's Republic Cruiser or as stylish as Padme's yacht in Episode 2, but you don't exactly get a regular chance to see the insides of the Death Star, do you? Although there are probably a few people out there that like this book because the Empire's hardware is disected, I enjoyed this because of the more personalized craft such as the Millennium Falcon, the original Slave 1, and Jabba the Hutt's sail barge, as well as more industrialized vehicles like the Jawa Sandcrawler. I'm just one man, but it gives me a smile twelve parsecs wide to go through this book and think "Now if I owned this ship..." Han Solo always bragged about how much he modified his ship. Well, now you can check out just how screwed up the Millennium Falcon really is! Or if you ever wondered how Jabba the Hutt managed to get his greasy butt onto his sail barge then you'll want to at least glance through this book.

This book was the most useful book I purchased to plan our trip to San Francisco. I can't say enough good things about it. It divides the city into neighborhoods then goes through each one not only listing the good points and points of interest, but also listing the bad. The information is practical and easy to find and understand. His carefully researched data helps one understand the city and the culture that make it so unique. From parking garages to street vendors this is the book to have on San Francisco.

I have used various versions of this guide over the last few years and have found it to be the most organized and enjoyable of all the guidebooks I've seen on the market. The traveler is guided almost building by building, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood through this beautiful city. It's the best guide for hotels, sights, shopping, and general information. You can't go wrong!

I have visited SF many times but never was able to get a clear picture in my mind of the different neighborhoods. This book's presentation of splendid neighborhood maps (and comments on the architecture and history) has allowed me to get a hold on the city which I much appreciate.

5/8/2001

NAPA VALLEY: The Ultimate Winery Guide Revised and updated Third Edition by Antonia Allegra Photography by Richard Gillette Forward by Robert Mondavi

In her book, NAPA VALLEY: The Ultimate Winery Guide, Antonia Allegra features 29 of her favorite wineries. She bases her selections on how she feels they will become an enjoyable learning experience as well as a fond memory. Richard Gillette's splendid photography makes this a feast of photos, a collection to keep and share.

Allegra's book is filled with winemaking stories and local history. Each property, with its ancient and contemporary art, fills ivy-covered halls, Victorian landmarks and ambling chateaus. These are mixed amongst magnificent castles, an old California abbey and a Greco-Roman temple. Humble mission abodes and California plantation homes lend their appeal, as well.

Allegra devotes a separate chapter to each winery, with a side bar telling access details, hours of operation, tasting times -- charges, if any -- types of wine offered and website information. She also indexes each winery as to region, town, visiting seasons and special attractions. In a section entitled, Triangle Tours, Allegra suggests three easily seen wineries during a single day's Napa Valley outing.

This Guide is as beautiful as it is helpful. (end)

"We have a day or two. There are 200+ wineries. How can we best enjoy a quality visit of the Napa Valley"?

While directing the Napa Valley Wine Auction, this question was often posed to me by prospective visitors. What a pleasure it was and is to point guests in the direction of Antonia Allegra's fine book, Napa Valley: The Ultimate Winery Guide. It is a splendid resource for discovering or simply remembering the wonders of this world-renown wine region.

Antonia Allegra's award-winning writing style, reminiscent of MFK Fisher, complemented by the stunning photography of Richard Gillette is as inviting as the lush landscapes of the Napa Valley itself. Touring alternatives, including many hidden gems, are selected from the favored 50 wineries. While offering seasonal variation, tours are thoughtfully presented to appeal to a wide range of possible reader interests be they wine-making, architecture, gardens, panoramas, art, grape-growing or regional characteristics. Even cave-dwellers will find a dream tour in these pages. As a guide, a gift or a treasure, readers are certain to find satisfaction in the Artistry of "Napa Valley: The Ultimate Winery Guide". I've purchased dozens as gifts, and most recently carried several copies of Allegra's book on a luggage-sparse trek of South America where it became a wonderful tool for communicating the otherwise indescribably rich wonders of this valley I have the good fortune to call "home".

LN Russell

As a California native, and a person who has lived in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County wine country for years, I keep my copy of "Napa Valley The Ultimate Winery Guide" in the trunk of my car. It is not only my guide to wineries in each particular geographic section of Napa Valley, but also my resource for tracking down a certain vintage or type of wine.

It also assists me in planning short excursions during which I may want to visit an art gallery along with a winery, and long weekend tours with friends when I want to give an overview with a bit of everything Napa Valley has to offer: a small town not well-known by tourists, a French-Chateau, the best view in the Valley, wonderful walks and, always, pointers on events--both fixed offerings at each winery and seasonal goings-on. The detailed information and directions make this guide a user-friendly pleasure.

In short, this is a convenient reference book on how to get the most out of Napa Valley...whether you are a resident who hasn't yet had the opportunity to discover all of Ms. Allegra's wonderful finds, or a visitor wanting to pack a variety of the Valley's best into a day or two.

This is a must for anyone visiting Napa Valley, or vicariously enjoying an armchair tour through the beautiful photographs.

This is an excellent history of Yugoslavia over the past critical fifty years, and sheds light on the roots of Yugoslavia's violent breakup in the 1990's. Reading this book will give insight into the sinister nature of the communist dictator Tito, who like Ceaucescu of Romania was one of the Western powers' favored, "good" communist despots. The chapters on Tito's rise to power during World War 2 and subsequent years of control will let readers in on the reasons for the 1990's Yugoslavian wars. Well worth the cover price.

A good read! This book is well-researched and contains information that everyone and their brother and sister should read. This man knows Yugoslavia, knows the history of the country, and demonstrates that the world had done nothing toward solving the "nationalities" problem after the fall of Nazi Germany, when a reconciliation was possible. The author demonstrates how the world stood by and allowed the Ustasha to highjack planes, to blow them up in mid-air, to run rampant with their terrorist ideals while the Communists were in power, even going so far as to give them the places to train their terrorist soldiers. While the author condemns Tito for not confronting the problem in Yugoslavia and dealing with it while he was in power, the author also condemns the rest of the world for their complicity to the crime.

During the recent troubles in former Yugoslavia we learned to hate the Serbs for their policy of ethnic cleansing. But this book explains that the Serbs had ample reason for their hatred of the Croats and for their desire to turn the tables on their former tormenters. The one ray of hope is that many Yugoslavs live in peace with their neighbors and intermarry regardless of ethnicity or religion, not obsessed with prolonging the hatred.

The atrocities against humanity committed by the Croats against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies (500,000 murdered) were more sadistic and horrifying than anything since. The evil Ustasha, the terrorist arm of the Croats, specialized in sadistic torture prior to murder, all in the name of religion.

I picked this book up to learn about Marshall Tito, the fascinating political figure who successfully resisted both Hitler and Stalin, and who kept the tinderbox of Yugoslavia at peace throughout his life. Tito must have been an amazing man. And he didn't do it with terror. It is incredible how he maintained independence in that part of the world surrounded by such aggressive nations. The Tito period was a time of prosperity for Yugoslavia, making even their Italian neighbors envious.

Ever try to look up a word in a 600 page dictionary that isn't in any order known to you? Unless you know this book's secret you'll have to look through the entire book to find your weed, if it's in the book at all. There is a key on page 603 but no instructions on how to use it and the author apparently doesn't return email inquiries. This book is full of great pictures but if you want a book to help you identify a weed in your garden look somewhere else.

A must-have book for gardeners, hikers, rural residences. 100% color photos make it great to ID weeds about the house. Categorized by family so pretty easy to find. Books that have art renderings of plants just don't ID a plant for me, and I'm an artist!
Any negative about the book would be that it could use more descriptive type about the plant.

This book isn't for everyone, but it really fills a gaping hole in the reference library of any gardener interested in the use of native plants, xeriscape gardening, wildflower cultivation, etc. For anyone who has ever let a yard go to seed "just to see what happens" (or dreamed of doing so) this book helps you determine what weeds are really weeds and what weeds are hidden treasures. The book is amply illustrated with photos of both mature plants and seedlings, which helps you determine what to get rid of after monsoon rains have done their part. The descriptions are clear and the index functions fine. Plus I just love the idea of having an entire book on weeds!

This novel is a lifelong passion for me. I read Mountain Man as a project with my father when I was 11, some 22 years ago. I associate this work with wide-eyed boyhood and love of nature. It rings of a time when America was still a wild frontier of hard men, bent on survival and self government. I refuse to apply 90s political correctness to this novel. Such intellectual revisionism had no place in Sam Minard's world, and therefore it has no place in the assessment of the work itself after the fact. I have read this novel at least 25 times, and find new and more rapturous moments in it each successive time. The love that Sam had for Lotus and the regard he had for Kate are two of the most shining examples of literary love I have ever encountered. This book is a glorious orchestration of a seldom taught period of American history and an Old West adventure tale of the first order. It recounts a time of great courage and brutality, portrayed fairly and with much class and distinction. It would have been easy to make it sappy and formulaic, but Fisher deftly avoids such tactics. Instead, he is as detached from this novel as "The Almighty" was from the characters of Sam, Lotus, Kate and the Big Sky wilderness: He created, then set free his creation to fend for itself. Waugh! This is as solid a novel as there is on this subject, if not the finest ever.

From the opening lines of this story, you feel like you're traveling with Sam Minard (renamed Jeremiah Johnson in the Robert Redford film) in the old west. Vardis Fisher weaves a tale that you can touch, smell, taste and see. I first read this book in 1980, and several times since then... and it always brings me back to a renewed appreciation for the American wilds. The movie was good, but doesn't begin to give you the flavor of the book.

The story of Sam Minard, based on the life of the 'Crow Killer,' the real Jeremiah Johnson, is a beautiful tale that combines the reality of the life of the mountain men in its most brutal form and the myth of the mountain man as we would like him to be. Sam Minard is the most accomplished of the mountain men, the best trapper, the best fighting man and absolutely ruthless as he applies his craft, but not far beneath the rugged exterior is a man of enormous sensitivity able to describe the beauty of the wilderness in detail that allows the reader to be there. In Chapter 18, Minard, still mourning the death of his wife, spends the winter in what is today Yellowstone Park. Minard's (Fisher's) description of the winter in the magical land of Yellowstone is one that has remained with me all my life and inspired me to perform my own explorations of wild country. If you have any interest in the mountain men, the west before it became the 'Old West,' or just like a damn well told story, this book will not disappoint.

The version of this classic I read was a translation into modern English by Nevill Coghill. As you can see above, I awarded Chaucer (and the translation) five stars; but I do have a criticism. This translation (and many other publications of Chaucer) do not contain the two prose tales ("The Tale of Melibee" and "The Parson's Tale"). These are rarely read and I understand the publisher's and the translator's desire to keep the book to a managable size. Still, that should be the readers decision and no one else's. I had to go to the University library and get a complete copy in order to read those sections. As I mentioned, this copy is a translation into modern English. However, I do recommend that readers take a look at the Middle English version, at least of the Prologue. Many years ago, when I was in high school, my teacher had the entire class memorize the first part of the Prologue in the original Middle English. Almost forty years later, I still know it. I am always stunned at how beautiful, fluid, and melodic the poetry is, even if you don't understand the words. Twenty-nine pilgrims meet in the Tabard Inn in Southwark on their way to Canterbury. The host suggests that the pilgrims tell four stories each in order to shorten the trip (the work is incomplete in that only twenty-four stories are told). The tales are linked by narrative exchanges and each tale is presented in the manner and style of the character providing the story. This book was a major influence on literature. In fact, the development of the "short story" format owes much to these tales. All of the elements needed in a successful short story are present: flow of diction and freedom from artifice, faultless technical details and lightness of touch, and a graphic style which propels the story. In poetry, Chaucer introduced into English what will become known as rime royal (seven-line stanza riming ababbcc), the eight-line stanza (riming ababbcbc), and the heroic couplet. His poetry is noted for being melodious and fluid and has influenced a great many later poets. He has a remarkable talent for imagery and description. With respect to humor, which often receives the most negative responses from a certain group of readers (as witnessed by some of the comments below), there are at least three types: good humor which produces a laugh and is unexpected and unpredictable (for example, the description of the Prioress in the Prologue), satire (for example, the Wife of Bath's confession in the Prologue to her tale), and course humor, which is always meant to keep with the salty character of the teller of the tale or with the gross character of the tale itself. I am really stunned at the comments of the reviewer from London (of June 21, 1999). He/she clearly has no idea of the influence of the work nor on the reasons why Chaucer chose to present the humor the way he has. T. Keene of May 17 gave the work only three stars, presumably because it was once banned in Lake City, Florida. (Does that mean it would get fewer stars if it hadn't been banned?) Perhaps our London reviewer will be more comfortable moving to Lake City! Another reviewer suggested that "The Canterbury Tales" was only a classic because it had been around a long time. No! Chaucer's own contemporaries (for example, Gower, Lydgate, and Hoccleve) acknowledged his genius. My goodness, even science fiction books acknowledge the Tales (for example, Dan Simmons' "Hyperion," which won the 1990 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year, is based on the Tales). These brief entries are too short to review all of the tales. Let me just descibe the first two. Other readers might consider reviewing the other tales in later responses. In "The Knight's Tale," the Theban cousins Palamon and Arcite, while prisoners of the King of Athens (Theseus), fall in love with Emelyn, sister of Hippolyta and sister-in-law to Theseus. Their rivalry for Emelyn destroys their friendship. They compete for her in a tournament with different Greek gods supporting the two combatants. Arcite, supported by Mars, wins but soon dies from a fall from his horse (due to the intervention of Venus and Saturn). Both Palamon and Emelyn mourn Arcite, after which they are united. It is the basis of "The Two Noble Kinsmen" by Fletcher and Shakespeare. "The Miller's Tale" is a ribald tale about a husband, the carpenter John, who is deceived by the scholar Nicholas and the carpenter's wife Alison that a second flood is due. In this tale, a prospective lover is deceived into kissing a lady in an unusual location. And, recalling the response from our reviewer from London, apparently this Tale should not be read by people from London (or Lake City)!

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the first great works of literature in the English language and are good reading for a number of reasons. They are written in "old English", however, and read like a foreign language for most of us. Barbara Cohen's adapted translation gives us four of the tales in contemporary English and therefore provides an excellent introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Cohen's tales retain Chaucer's colorful insight into fourteenth century England including life as a knight, the horror of the plague, and the religous hypocrisy of the age. The illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman are vivid and tell a story all by themselves. I use Cohen's book as a supplement to teaching medieval history and literature to 7th and 8th graders.

In addition to its literary importance, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are an enchanting reading experience. The Bantam Classic edition presents the tales in Modern English translation alongside the Middle English so that one can fully appreciate the tales as Chaucer composed them, or if you're just in the mood for a fun romp you can speedily read the translation. The tales themselves move at a quick pace, so beginners will probably enjoy the modern version much more.

The Canterbury Tales revolve around a group of 29 on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to pay homage to the martyred St. Thomas a'Becket. The members of the pilgrimage come from all walks of life, including a Knight, Prioress, Merchant, Miller, the ever-entertaining Wife of Bath, and many others. The Canterbury Tales are the pilgrims' stories and each one reflects the individual character's personality beautifully. One can't help but feel a part of this lively group.

Whether you like a bawdy, raucous tale or a morally sound fable you will definitely find something entertaining in this book. I laughed out loud several times and found Chaucer's use of symbolism, wit, wisdom, and the glimpse into 14th Century life absolutely fascinating.