I purchased this book in order to plan a 6 week trip to New Mexico and Arizona. If you want a book that will clearly and intelligently tell you about everything in these two states, this is a good option. Unfortunately, this book isn't very helpful in prioritizing sites. For example, I'm sure every single indian pueblo is listed, but it's difficult to tell which ones are worth allocating time to. Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent book, but, if this is your first visit to the area, you will need a more opinionated book to help you sift though the many, many sightseeing options.

I had earlier editions of this book and just loved them. We found the best places to stay, motels and bed and breakfasts that are really special, at a great price. I used this book for planning many trips to the Southwest, for myself and friends, and it was always a great experience. It is the best reference books on places to eat and to stay, phone numbers of attractions etc. You can find every place in the Southwest. However, I would still use another travel guide for more detailed information about e.g. national parks and monuments or specific hiking tips.

I am not a fan of soap operas but the life of Baby Doe Tabor reads something like one and I found it fascinating. A rags to riches to rags true story that draws you in from start to finish. There is something about the person of Baby Doe that just draws you in and leaves you thinking about her long after the book is finished. I bought this book in 1993 on a trip to Colorado and I still pick it up from time to time and re-read it. The story of Horace and Baby Doe Tabor would make a great movie, and one was made in 1932 called Silver Dollar, sadly it is not available for home video. A good read.

The story of Baby Doe is worth reading. This well written account dramatically tells the story of her rise and fall in wealth and her personal and public lives. Anyone who appreciates stories of the American power mongers of the late 19th century will enjoy this insightful biography

In a workmanlike, if unexciting, literary style, Sellars provides a good deal of helpful information about the way the National Park Service has grown to maturity. Nevertheless, he lacks sufficient interest in the political world that has molded the NPS. (Disinterest in the public reaction to the 1988 Yellowstone fire is one indicator.) Had Mather, Albright, and the other founders of the Park Service not promoted tourism in their day, there would be less, not more, park ecology for "dedicated scientists" to manipulate in our own. As the author himself says, national park development is locked with preservation in a state of perpetual tension (181). May that tension long continue.

The concept of national parks, setting aside unbroken tracts of land and sea for the enjoyment of people, has been called America's best idea. In Preserving Nature in the National Parks, Richard West Sellars meticulously traces the evolution of the national park concept and America's national park system from 1870 to the present. From beginning to end, he confronts readers with evidence that disputes tradition. Among other beliefs, he authoritatively challenges the romantic campfire myth of an altruistic birth of Yellowstone National Park and the national park concept. He offers in its place a pragmatic rationale more consistent with the times. This book is a scholarly presentation of carefully researched and documented facts, woven into an unbroken story.

The tale unfolds from the perspective of the National Park Service, the primary governmental agency responsible for conserving parks. It starts with the campfire myth and renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. crafting and shaping the National Park Service's mission "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life [in parks]...unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." It ends with the 1993 creation of the National Biological Survey and the sweeping reorganization of the National Park Service in 1995. Throughout, readers get an insider's view of America's favorite government agency. As the story approaches the present, it necessarily shallows to encompass ever more territory, losing its rich historical texture, but gaining a journalistic perspective that serves readers well.

Great new ideas always create tension and elicit vigorous debate. Sellars skillfully draws our attention to a series of tensions created by the national park idea that shaped the concept and its manifestations in the 20th century. Creation of national parks was an attempt to resolve conflict over how to wrest the greatest good and profit from the land: consumption through private exploitation or through public tourism. Sellars also examines the tension between development in parks to facilitate access, lodging, and consumptive recreation versus wilderness preservation. Landscape architects, engineers, and biologists expressed conflicting interpretations of "unimpaired" during the 1920s and 1930s. This tension has evolved into a continuing discussion of scenery or façade versus ecosystem management.

Clearly, early promoters of national parks had no qualms about developing facilities in parks and consuming park resources. In promoting creation of the National Park Service in 1916, Robert Sterling Yard wrote in The Nation's Business "We want our national parks developed....We want good fishing. We want our wild animal life conserved and developed." The first two directors of the National Park Service, businessman Stephen Mather and lawyer Horace Albright, both believed the public needed to be enticed into parks with roads, lodges, and enhanced fishing, in addition to the parks' scenery and other natural assets. They set about building facilities, including fish hatcheries, and planting alien fish in parks as their first order of business for the new agency. They also believed they should 'enhance' the parks by suppressing fires, eradicating predators, and controlling forest pests and diseases, which they did vigorously.

At its inception, national park management was a new human endeavor. No one before had tried to preserve intact large tracts of wild land and seascapes for public enjoyment and to pass them on to future generations. Unlike forest and fisheries managers who had centuries of practice, park managers had no precedents. They were truly exploring the unknown and relied on extant professions for guidance. Foresters, landscape architects and engineers who used land to produce commodities and who molded landscapes to fit human perceptions of idyllic and pastoral settings came the closest to fitting the new paradigm so they got the job: directed by businessmen and lawyers. However, national park management is more than a simple combination of these early professions, it also requires applied sciences, particularly ecology. Adding ecologists to this mix, was like combining oil and water. We're still looking for an emulsification agent.

Sellars makes it clear that the tension between scientists and non-scientists regarding national park management was the same in the 1930s as it is today. In part, the differences arise from non-scientists' reliance on untestable, belief-based consensus versus scientists' adherence to a testable knowledge-based system of learning from experience. If one believes that fire destroys forests, or that wolves threaten elk populations, there is no reason to waste time and money testing the concepts. One simply acts on their beliefs and suppresses fire and kills wolves. Testing such beliefs threatens the belief and the believers, and thus creates a perception that science would make park management more costly, difficult, and time consuming. This may be at the root of the issue that creates the tension between so-called traditional and ecological approaches to park stewardship.

Science as a way of knowing should make attainment of the National Park Service mission more certain and cost effective. The true costs of ecological restoration and of losing America's heritage to unfounded beliefs is vastly greater than the costs associated with learning first how ecosystems work and doing the job right the first time. We paid dearly for early misguided forest fire suppression. First we paid the unnecessary costs of suppression. Now we are paying the costs of restoring fire, and if we delay any longer, risk losing the very assets we sought to protect. We paid to eradicate wolves and other predators, then paid to reduce elk and deer, lost soil and vegetation, and now we must pay to restore wolf populations. This kind of cost dwarfs the minimal costs of using science to learn what is in parks, how to restore impaired assets, how to maintain restored parks, and how to protect parks from pollution, unsustainable uses, fragmentation, and alien species. In short, using science to learn from our experience reduces both uncertainty and costs.

In the last century, the parks could afford the boosterism, 'enhancements,' and facilities of Mather and Albright and still recover, because parks were not the islands in a fragmented and diminished landscape they are today. Few refugia exist today, outside legislated wilderness, from which to find replacement genomes and species to repair the damage wrought by misguided policies. Time is short. Options to conserve and pass unimpaired parks on to future generations become more limited every year.

Change is inevitable. Will we use science to learn from experience, or continue to blindly accept and act on unsubstantiated beliefs? The National Park Service will not accept a change from its primary goal of recreational tourism to science-guided resources protection until its leaders personally experience success with science. As a result, people such as Richard Sellars run great risk of being attacked by opponents vested in the old system and only moderately supported by skeptics of the new, science-based system. Since the national park concept is new, unique, few have the necessary personal experience, yet. Perhaps the introspection in this book will lead to trying new ways to conserve parks.

Until we learn our history, we risk endlessly repeating the same mistakes. This account illuminates our path. Read it. You will like it. You may not agree with everything in it, but you will learn from it. We and our national parks will all be better for it.

This one is not to be missed. For history buffs, as well as those who enjoy a good read, this is a great excursion back in time to when the saloon was a cornerstone of the community. I enjoyed it immensely, laughed out loud more than a few times, and highly recommend it.

Richard Erdoes has done his homework in this homage to an icon of the old west-the saloon. Beginning with the early pubs & inns to the brawling watering holes of the frontier, Erdoes chronicles the decline and fall of a great American institution. The great illustrations alone are worth the price of the book.

Together with its companion volume, Snakes of North America: Eastern and Central Regions, this book provides a complete reference to snakes north of the U.S.-Mexico border. It is the weaker of the two volumes, however. It is slimmer, less detailed and lacks the eastern/central volume's bibliography and glossary. It covers snakes on a species-by-species basis (rather than by subspecies, which is the case in the eastern/central volume), which leaves most subspecies with a paragraph of description at most. (Are western subspecies less well-defined than eastern subspecies?) The difference probably results from the fact that the eastern/central book drew upon Tennant's earlier books on Florida and Texas snakes; this book did not have the same advantage. As well, errors in the book suggest that more careful editing was needed. At least one set of range maps was reversed, and there have been reports that some of the garter snake photos were mixed up. Accuracy in a field guide is essential; errors here can compound themselves down the road. Still worth having.

The collaborative effort of veteran herpetologist and herpetoculturist R. D. Bartlett and writer, wildlife lecturer, wilderness guide, and herpetologist Alan Tennant, Snakes Of North America: Western Region is a comprehensive guide to the wide variety of snake species found in the western region of North America. Enhanced with 186 full-color photographs, maps of habitat and range, abundance, size, venom status, prey, and behavior of species, and much, much more, Snakes Of North America: Western Region is confidently recommended as being a first-rate reference and field guide filled from cover to cover with the collective wisdom of two experienced herpetological professionals.

This is a scholarly work and reads like a thesis - a bit dense, but well documented. The focus is on the intellectual underpinnings of the Transcendentalist movement in the mid 19th Century. With the name "Utopias", however, it seams lacking in a clearer treatment of Utopianism is general, or in influences from Thomas Moore, in specific. Perhaps that isn't considered relevent, but I would have liked to have seen it. None-the-less, an excellent source for research in this area of early intentional communities, which were truly the New Age movements of their time.

This is quite a scholarly work and reads like a thesis - a bit dense but well documented. The focus is in on the theory and intellectual aspects of Transcendentalism. Surprisingly little, however, on Utopianism in general, or influences of Thomas Moore in specific. I was living in Harvard MA, site of the Fruitlands, and found the book useful for research purposes.

This is an excellent introduction to the native flowers of Utah. The authors present a hundred high quality photos of Utah wild flowers. Each picture has a small informative blurb (about 100 words) about each flower.

The photography is the main value of the book. The authors captures the beauty of the flowers. Unfortunately, the book does not give enough information identifying plants. As mentioned in the first review, many pictures do not show the leaves. Although the author captures the beauty of the subject, the reader may find it hard to use the book for identifying plants.

I would put this book at the top of the list for people wanting to get started learning about the native plants in Utah. I also feel that native plant entusiasts will enjoy the high quality photos. It would make a great gift for any one who enjoys walking in the Utah mountains. However, if you are looking for a primary reference for native plants, I fear that you will be disappointed.

If you live along the Wasatch Front and hike the many canyons of the Wasatch then this is the book for you. The Photographs are beautiful and show the flowers well, the text is interesting and tells of past uses of the plants by indians and settlers, and the book is small enough to carry with you on every hike. "Utah Wildflowers" does show many of the common flowers you may find in bloom during the late spring and summer months. If however you are looking for a comprehensive guide with field "identification" capabilities then I would look elsewhere. With only 102 flowers covered, little or no pictures of leaves, and little said of similar species, habitat or identification difficulties I cannot recommend this guide.

This book is an interesting overview of parents' widely varying approaches to raising children adopted from China. However, the authors seem to assume that virtually all adoptive parents are white and that real biculturalism is impossible. On the West Coast, at least, that's not true. Many Asian American parents have adopted children from China, and quite a few children are attending bilingual/bicultural schools. It's too bad Asian American views on bicultural socialization have been largely left out of the picture.

From both personal experience and quantitative research, these authors do an excellent job of defining and exploring the phenomenon of Americans adopting Chinese babies.

For adoptive parents, it serves as a chance to hear about what other parents feel about raising their children bi-culturally. For those otherwise interested in adoption from China, the book also offers an overview of the adoption process and descriptions of the excitement and strain it places on families.

Highly readable and accessible.

As an adoptive parent, I plan to save this book for my daughter to read when she becomes older (late teens or adult) as a reminder of social contexts and beliefs of adoptive families prevalent during the time of her adoption.

While the title of the book precludes a history of the Hoover dam. I found it to contain much more. The book does give a very good acounting of the building of the Hoover Dam.It also covers the beginnigs of some of the largest corporations in the world.

(Re)evaluating Nature especially in the new millenium is a new trend in thinking about the landscape. Misrach initiates this conversation with this early book about the changing face of the American West that has been transformed into a bombed-out wasteland. Somewhat beautiful? Yes, I thin kso. He approaches the subject sarcastically serious with a proposal to turn this highly violent landscape into America's newest national park, one which I would be the first visitor. His photographs instigate new questions in landscape photography and the new definition of "beauty" in all visual studies. A must for any artist/architect/planner. There is a new landscape. Misrach has found it.