California Books

I have been involed in criminal justice practice and education for several years. This book is one of the BEST first hand accounts of prison life I have ever read. A plus was that I got to meet the author on Alacatraz during a visit in 1996. We spoke at some length and he signed a copy of the book for me. I was sorry to hear when I went back a few years later for a return visit to the "Rock" that he had died. This book is a keeper for your library!

While Alcatraz is the centerpoint of the book, the overall story is about a young man's life and how it changes--how it is forcibly changed, rather, through a prison system that had reached its limit with him. Though he describes other prisons (including San Quinten), it is Alcatraz that breaks him of his youthful attitudes of rebellion and crime. And that's how Alcatraz was to him and others--not a place of rehabilitation nor even pennance, but a place meant to break them and make them harmless, or kill them. The awful sense of frustration and desperation that must accompany prison life comes through vividly in his narrative.

The story is told with honesty. I felt I had a sense of him as a young man, and later as an older one facing the real, adult world for the first time. Stories of Alcatraz itself, and its escapes, are well-told from an insider's view, with only hints of residual anger.

I bought the book in 1997 on my first visit to the Rock. I loved it and when I returned to Alcatraz a few months later, I was able to meet Jim Quillen and have my picture taken with him. I felt like I knew him because of the book. It was a neat experience.

I got this book in San Fransisco and from then on I was hooked!If I could recommend any book to anyone it would be this one. I couldn't put it down. I won't let anyone borrow it because I don't want it to get ruined. Please if you are looking into getting a book on Alcatraz for yourself or anyone else, get this one! You won't regret it!! I know I didn't!!

Great book! It was very powerful

This book is very important to read: mostly because so few people know about the bushmeat trade in Africa and its impact on the great apes. The book goes into why apes are worth saving, the contribution of logging to crisis, how the crisis is kept hidden, and suggestions on how to alleviate the problem. You will be very surprised to learn the lengths, difficulties, and dangers the contributors of the book go through simply to bring this issue into the spotlight. I also found it very shameful how the crisis has been ignored and exacerbated by the media and the conservation groups.


Honestly though, I felt the book was a little long. It's not actually a long book, but its longer than it needs to be. It seemed to get a little repetitive as the author kept hammering the same points over again. Also, though the author does include an aside on vegetarianism and its merits (while discouraging veganism), he is not a vegetarian himself. While this is, of course, not the subject of the book I feel that if he is going to argue to protect the great apes on the grounds of their sentience, than it is wrong to overlook the sentience of cows, chickens, and especially pigs (who have the same mental capacity as a dog). This is just a minor criticism, but it did bother me a little throughout the book.

So yes, you should read this book. Its very thorough, detailed, complete, and compelling. You will learn a lot and, if the authors have succeeded (and I think they have), you will be sufficiently outraged and willing to contribute to the cause.

Sometime far in our past, humans took up rocks and sticks to hunt food instead of scavenging from other predators. With our meat available today in shrink-wrapped containers it's easy to lose sight of that long-standing tradition. Others in the world still obtain meat in the traditional environment. The difference is that instead of spears, the weapons are high-powered shotguns. Instead of skulking through the forest seeking prey, hunters are now given rides by timber carriers using deep-penetrating access roads. In this book, Dale Peterson reveals the transformations forest hunting has undergone in West African nations. It's not a
pleasing picture, but it's valid and it's important. And it must change.

The bushmeat trade has many implications, but Peterson has chosen three significant ones. One, of course, is that by killing chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas for food, we're consuming our nearest relations. The primate line divided only 12 million years ago, with the descendants of one line becoming today's mountain gorillas. The other line led to chimpanzees and bonobos with a spur turning off about 7 million years ago leading to you and me. The proximity of chimpanzee and human DNA patterns is no longer news, but the reminder needs to be flashed occasionally.

Another implication is health. With so much attention given to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it's worth reflecting on its origins. More importantly, as Peterson reminds us, is to consider how it works. HIV/AIDS appears to be a recent evolutionary virus quirk. It adapts and evolves with amazing speed. The roots of it remain in the African forest and a new strain can emerge at any time. The best means of transmission from ape or monkey to human is through blood - that stuff the hunter is soaked in as he butchers his forest kill.

The third theme is the question of human relations with the rest of our environment. Human population growth is presented in a novel framework. How many humans come into existence every day is contrasted with the great ape population. Peterson calculates that the entire gorilla population is equalled by new humans every twelve hours. Population pressures in the "developed" world lead to demands for African timber products. In turn, the timber firms are cutting great swaths of forest using displaced populations for labour. To feed these workers, hunters are hired or loggers hunt and apes, due to their availability and size, become a major food source. In a feedback cycle of habitat reduction and hunting, the apes are simply being exterminated. Recovery would require sharply reduced logging. Peterson notes that trees are being taken that began growth in Michaelangelo's time, but their replacements will be cut in only forty years.

Peterson is effusive in his description of the significant role played by Swiss photographer Karl Ammann. Ammann's chance encounter with a logging truck driver revealed the role international logging firms play in the ape slaughter and the extended bushmeat trade. The logging firms, particularly CIB, contend they are providing "employment for locals, health services, food and education". Peterson explains the falsity of this contention, with "health services limited to a nurse and schools and teachers paid for by the workers' families.

Peterson argues that the long-established bushmeat tradition is already lost, displaced by commercial logging practices and new, mass hunting methods using guns, sometimes lent by government officials. If we can change a culture, such as was done with slavery, hunting traditions no longer tenable can be modified, as well. He cites the willingness of Americans to spend minimal annual funds to protect wolves, bears and other fauna. Why not establish a fund for ape protection. He calculates that US$1 billion per year could be raised with an individual contribution of but US$50. Not an enormous sum, given that other donations and military expenditures far exceed it. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

What animals we eat are selected by what culture we grow up in. Distant societies think nothing of eating dogs. Some closer ones think eating horse is completely acceptable. Then there are frogs, snakes, and insect larvae. It is all a matter of getting enough protein. One man's protein is another man's atrocity. Americans are used to eating meat they find in Styrofoam trays wrapped in plastic, but the indigenous peoples of central Africa have always eaten the animals living around them: elephants, antelopes, porcupines, rodents, and so on. They don't mind a stew of gorilla or a chimp's sirloin, and what of it? It's the way they have always done things. Tribal languages, in fact, often use the same word for wild animal as they do for meat. The world, however, is not the way it always was, and a shocking book, _Eating Apes_ (University of California Press) by Dale Peterson, shows that apes on the menu is not something the world ought to continue to accept.

We ourselves are members of the tribe of great apes; chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are on the branch with us. But if African tribes don't share our scientific view or our squeamishness, traditional hunters, in predation balance over the centuries, surely are not going to do lasting harm. Traditional hunting, however, is no longer traditional. There has been an invasion from outside the continent by logging companies, making huge profits from our demand for hardwoods. The companies have lots of workers, many of them from the region, and all the workers have to be fed. Hunters, many of whom are also from the region, are hired to bring in the protein. Bows, arrows, and nets have given way to the far more efficient and deadly wire snares and automatic rifles and shotguns. Perhaps if greater firepower were the only threat to our primate cousins, they could still make it. But we are destroying their habitat (again, mostly by logging), and primates will suffer before other species because of their slow rate of reproduction. There are plenty of species headed toward extinction, but few because we are eating them, and none so close to us evolutionarily. In addition, butchering the apes may be the way humans got HIV and Ebola viruses. It may well be that you haven't heard of the problem of eating apes into extinction because the conservation organizations are keeping quiet about such a downer of a message, and because they are, believe it or not, in partnership with the loggers.

What will be needed is the courage to challenge cultural convictions. It is possible for the West to value (or at least claim to value) sensitivity to other cultures, but in the case of eating apes, it will have to impose scientific knowledge of close kinship, risk of disease, and impending loss of primates to get the native cultures to change. It may even be possible within the corporate culture, which mines habitats to get at profits, to insist not just on sustainable development (a nebulous idea the logging companies pay lip service to) but to take on a wider view of environmental improvement. You can figure up the odds of occurrence of these cultural changes, and especially if you look at our past record, you will not be optimistic. Peterson includes an appendix of what you, and what conservation organizations, can do; he obviously is not giving up hope. Perhaps it is a sign of hope that his reasonable and dispassionate account of this disaster will start many people thinking about the previously covert problem of the loss of the apes. Nevertheless, this is a profoundly disturbing and sad book, and will not be forgotten by those who can get through it.

American and international conservation organizations may be doing little more than feel-good guilt assuaging with many of their slick magazine glossy photos, while ignoring a huge elephant right in front of the world's faces and refusing to show readers the problem.

So says Peterson in the challenging and disturbing book Eating Apes.

Peterson writes about the hunting for bushmeat in Central Africa, specifically hunting great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. He accuses the Wildlife Conservation Society of doing little more than giving PR flak to a German logging concern in the Congo, CIB, a decade ago, just at the time public pressure was starting to ratchet up on the issue, in large part due to photographer Karl Ammann.

He also accuses Wildlife Conservation, the magazine of WCS, along with National Geographic and other such magazines and other media for generally downplaying or even spiking the issue. Ammann, as interviewed in the book, is even blunter, noting how several wildlife conservation magazines said they didn't want his pictures specifically because they were too controversial and, in not so many words, too guilt-provoking while showing that the modern western-nation wildlife preservation industry wasn't wearing any clothes on this issue.

Read Eating Apes. Then rethink your donations to wildlife groups, at least without some strong letters to the editor.

With its appealing cover-picture of two baby chimps and its appalling title, "Eating Apes" is a must read for everybody interested in conservation in general and the survival of the great apes in particular. Although I've been already aware of the bushmeat crisis through voluntary work at a zoo, this book hit me hard. The scope of denial by many - individuals and conservation groups alike - paired with risky relationships between NGOs and logging companies is driving our closest living relatives - the great apes - to extinction. Dale Peterson's book encompasses every aspect of this difficult and very complex issue and Karl Ammann's pictures and comments provide further evidence of what really is happening. Everbody who makes or is going to make decisions regarding the bushmeat trade, logging, development and conservation in central Africa has to read this book before making those important and far-reaching decisions. My next task will be to check with the various conservation groups I support, to find out what they are planning to do about this subject. Depending on their answers, I may well choose to cancel some memberships. Something I haven't actually thought about before reading this book - so I hope that many others will follow suit and choose action over complacency!

wonderful. when you read this work you can actually feel the soil, smell the grass, and taste the fruit. a greeat read

I feel a connection with David Masumoto. Not that I've met him or anything - in fact, there's a good chance I never will (although I keep hoping that one summer day I can make it over to his farm to pick peaches). No, this feeling is based on an impression that we have both fought the same fight over different things, for the same reasons. It is also because he writes so poignantly about a landscape I grew up in. Mr. Masumoto is an organic farmer in the valley of California, and his story is becoming more and more familiar to me as I see this way of life disappearing across the country.

A third generation Japanese American peach and grape farmer, David Masumoto inherited the family orchard from his father. He also had the heritage of his childhood memories of how that particular peach variety, Sun Crest, tasted and ran with juice unlike the pretty red baseballs that have passed for today's supermarket peach varieties. Mr. M wanted to show the world how delightful an old-fashioned peach could be.

When he took over his father's farm, he resolved to not only continue growing his Sun Crests, but to do it organically. This would prove challenging in our day and age of cheap, quick fixes; moreover, it would test his strongly felt ideals. The land needed to heal and replenish itself after years of chemical fertilizers and toxic pest control methods. Masumoto had to take his example from research on other organic farming practices, planting wildflowers to encourage beneficial insect life and sowing "green manure" crops to act as natural mulch and compost. All this took time, patience, and faith that his hard work would eventually pay off.

Epitaph for a Peach is rich in sensory descriptions, philosophy, and nostalgic flashbacks. It is a picture of the way a farmer's life is connected to the seasons, capricious weather patterns, and changing market conditions. Not incidentally, Masumoto also teaches about the obscure history of Japanese farmers in the Valley - something that even I, native to Fresno, had little idea of. Reading this book was a slow, thoughtful experience much in the same manner that one slows down to savor a rich fruit. Recommended to anybody interested in history, growing food, or the vanishing California landscape.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

Author David Masumoto has written an excellent vignette into the year in a life of a small-scale, family farmer. His passion for his life's work, his connection to the land, and his strong family values are so clearly evident in his writing. I think a lot of readers will be envious of the life he describes. I share many of his views on the value of small family farms and the need to focus on how food should taste. Masumoto's book will reonsate deeply with those of us who know what it means to be curious about how something grows, who look forward to the first ripe peach or melon of the year, who prefer to make things from scratch and sit down with all our kids at dinner.

It is rare to read a book where the author works miracles with his hands and his words. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys non-fiction but finds it dry, without humanity. David Mas Masumoto is anything but dry. His land may be at times, but his poetic prose is anything but. His relationship with his family, his family's farm and nature is a rare combination. I highly recommend this read.

I live somewhat north of the area Mr. Masumoto writes about - where the San Francisco Bay Area Suburbs collide with the San Joaquin Farmlands. The Peach and Cherry Orchards and the Sweet Corn, Tomatoes and Strawberries are currently holding their own - but like Mr. Masumoto's Peaches and Grapes, only tenuously, and with great courage. If you would like to understand not only how these people live, but who and why they are, you should read this book. It is both beautifully written and thought provoking.

We just discovered this great hiking book. Our weekend trips have been put on hold and we're finding some pretty places along the Marin coastline to explore. Doubles as a tourist guide for our out-of-town friends. They look at the pictures and tell us where they want to go.

There's alot of advice and information in here and it's nicely arranged for reference. Chunky and spunky, good to go!

For us, this guide is our number one source for dayhiking around here. We bought it after seeing it on the shelves of our Marin REI. It's a total package with it's photos, bulging content and honest appraisals of ALL our trails. Most of our terrain is on the rolling gentle side and the mountain trails are well marked once you get on them. We have two dogs and their "Doggie Trails" section has been well used. It's nice to know where the pups are welcome and can run free.

I would say it's one of the most helpful travel books I've ever bought. The detailed descriptions for family walks around San Francisco and through the Marin woods were especially good. It's organized. The writing style is colorful, direct, and amusing. Buy this book and you might want to buy a restaurant guide to to along with it. Going to California is now going to be a yearly ritual.Zagat 2008 San Francisco Restaurants

A great resource and really user friendly. We loved the whole feel and layout. We parked the car in one spot and spent one entire day walking and hopping the cable cars. All the action is grouped so our time was well spent and car expenses kept to a minimum. Strongly recommended for a city fix.

Our carcamping trip to the West Coast last month was a big success. Our first stop in the San Francisco Bay Area was Muir Woods where the Trailblazer untangled the trail system for us. Our Marin campsite was a perfect staging area for our daily outings.

This book is fully illustrated with photos and locater maps and they've even included a little California history to spice it up. Clean graphics, well organized. You can dip in and out of the pages and get clued in on the fly. The route from Fisherman's Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge by bike provided beautiful views of the bay. For us an excellent way to see the area on a limited budget.

i bought this book in prob. 1990. on the upper west side of nyc. i lived downtown, but whatever, the cover of the paperback grabbed me and i recommended it with intention to SO many friends. i'm a californian. i know this story. it's not my story, but the story as told is poetic and real and visceral and scary as hell. and beautiful. a wonderful debut. i just sent a copy to a friend. i hope he can handle it. it is intense. go you. great work. xo.

I have been reading this book over and over for years. It is a beautiful landscape novel set along the highways in California in its suburban, fast food squalor. The metaphor throughout the book is the emphasis on scientific elements and how they apply to a young boy and his mother on the run. Incredibly well written.

The use of language and the unbelievible accesibility to heavy intelectual concepts (e.g. cultural theory, metaphysics, and subjectivity) will make a lot of creative writing students a tad bit envious. I read the book and one night and after reading it I felt like I took the craziest drug possible, minus the brain damage. This novel is f-ing nuts, sick and disturbing, and yet you can't possibly not fall in love with its brilliance.

I accidentally found this book while browsing the stacks of a local bookstore and was really surprised that I hadn't heard of the book or the author. Not many writers have the ability to startle me with such a wonderful writing style coupled with a zesty storyline. This is one of those books whose words are placed together with great feeling and care, resulting in a sharp, clear and sometimes painful book.

I picked this book up from a remainder stack at a local bookstore because I liked the title... I'm keeping this book because it took me for a ride that few contemporary works of fiction have. A thoroughly enjoyable read, full of startling twists and intelligent writing.

Hooked is a facinating story of five peoples lives and should be read for this alone. The author does a great job of telling their stories. Painlessly wrapped inside these stories is a Masters Degree on the drug treatment system.

Hooked will give you an insight into drug treatment systems without the bias of the creators. Hooked will give you years of development history and terminology.

Finally, if your state or county is going to start or start-over a drug treatment program Hooked will tell you the best approach. The approach selected has results that clearly make it the plan of choice. (Read the book for the answer.)

I work in the drug-use prevention field. I purchased this book for my own education. I became emotionally involved in the lives of the drug addicts featured in the book. It was beneficial to learn about their backgrounds and to see their daily lives in detail. I learned a great deal and am even more passionate about my work now!

drug rehab right between the eyes that pulls no pun ches and shows us where we need to go next

This book is amazing. I rarely give books 5 stars, but this one is exceptional - fair, honest, compassionate without being treacly, thorough, thoughtful, well-written. Shavelson does a remarkable job profiling his subjects, the reasons for their drug use and how it turned into abuse, and the challenges they face just finding treatment (not to mention completing it). He describes each program fully and carefully before evaluating them, so that the reader can understand the basis for his criticisms and form her own opinion. Despite the sad outcomes of some subjects, Shavelson offers the reader a glimmer of hope by showing us what is likely to work, why addicts are worth saving, and why numerous "second chances" at treatment are necessary and eventually pay off. Read this book!

Hooked is a very good book. It starts of as one of those investigative journalist things with a description of real drug addicts. Often books of this type look at these people as if they were the inmates of a zoo, but rather than doing that the book uses their problems to illustrate the difficulties which plague organisations which provide assistance to drug addicts.

One woman suffers from a combination of mental illness and drug abuse. Her attempts to find help are continually frustrated by the fact that when she applies for assistance from mental health professionals she is told that she has a drug problem and she is referred onwards. When she speaks to drug agencies she is told that she has a mental health problem and told to see a psychologist. In the last chapter of the book she is able to find an agency which will help her, but this occurs only after the intervention of one of the doctors. The intake staff is concerned about accepting her as they prefer people who have fewer problems and who are easy to deal with.

A lot of the book is focused on one person Mike who attends a live in facility for close to a year. His story illustrates how current rehabilitation facilities fail to have access to services such as detoxification and also use ritual humiliation as a means of controlling the inmates. Mike breaks a rule by developing a relationship with another inmate. He has to sit in a chair for three days and to go through a re-education session similar to those that featured in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The author makes the point that the people running the program are generally untrained and not able to work out when such treatment is appropriate or whether those who might be put through it could suffer from major mental illnesses. Those people who suffer from substance abuse problems generally will have a background of some difficulty. In this case Mike was a person who was raped repeatedly as a child. There was however no psychological treatment available in the program. More important however is the inability of the program to deal with relapse. Drug addiction is a problem that is often defined by the tendency to relapse. However the response of Mikes program was to kick him out. That is despite the fact that if allowed back into the program his prognosis would have been good.

The author is an admirer of the Drug Court system. The reason for his admiration is that the Drug Court is better able to make the diverse and not well functioning elements of the treatment system accountable. Thus they use relapses to build the drug addicts skills in dealing with their addiction so that they are more likely to stay clean. They can also ensure that rehab placements accept people, provide them with appropriate care and they can also direct addicts to detoxification.

The book is not only an interesting discussion of the issues the author is able to interest the reader in the story of the addicts he studies. One can see them as humans and follow their struggle to get on top of their problems and to live lives as valuable citizens. A book which should be a must read for anyone with an interest in the area.

I loved this book. I stumbled onto Ted Dekker a few months ago, and when I heard that Ted Dekker is working with Robert Liparulo, I had to read it.
And what a great story. A lot of suspense, and I couldn't put the book down.

Definitely a Recommend for every body to read.

Buy this book!

If you are a thriller reader, and are at all hesitant to pick up Bob's latest because it's in a young adult category, then trust me, it delivers for us adults! This review won't tell you about the story, all the other reviews do that. I want to focus on how the book reads.

I read almost every thriller writer in the genre, and Bob offers a unique world where violence, horror, suspense, mystery, and action are reduced to the most basic elements, then spun into a believable world - and all that without the industry's typical gratuitous languange, sex or overly descriptive violence. I would have my children read any of his books, but this series I'm holding on to for my nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. In House of Dark Shadows, Bob has delivered true supsense that caused me to read it in one afternoon (during the US Open no less). The opening scene will tell you this is no ordinary haunted house. While utilizing some familiar suspense tones (secret rooms, noises in the night, appearance of unknown forces), he does a great job blending them into a fast paced story that feels like it will come to conclusion. Then, it twists! That's primarily why I'll read the next book, but more importantly, I've become attached to this family, and want to know where they go next, and what historical setting they might experience.

As a reader, I've been allowed in this book to glimpse the family relationship and each of their unique personalities while at the same time using my own imagination to paint a picture of their history, and current importance to their world.

I hope this book sees the publishing success it deserves. By the way, It's design shows well on the bookshelf too. I look forward to the series continuing.

Liparulo established himself as a major presence in the thriller market with "Comes a Horseman," followed by two other fine-tuned suspense novels. I had no doubt he could create the same chills for a younger audience, particularly since he draws from his own experience as a father.

I was not disappointed. "House of Dark Shadows" reads like a mix between a very tame Stephen King and a very mature Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book (you have to be much older than 16 to remember those!). When the King family--no relation to Stephen--relocates to a creepy old house in the woods, they have no idea what they are in for. Xander and Dave, the two brothers, take center stage as they stumble upon secrets and mysterious doorways in their new home. From unexplained footprints, to gladiators, to the jungle, Liparulo takes us along on a fast-paced adventure. He leaves us hanging, anxious for the next book, "Watcher in the Woods," and certain that there are plenty more escapades and dangers for the entire family to maneuver.

I haven't yet read a Liparulo book I didn't enjoy. He always gives a good story, memorable characters, and secrets lurking in every corner.

Oh, and "Gatekeepers" is book three? More good books to read!

I didn't read this personally, but my 16 year old son read them in record time! The first book makes you want to read the second one immediately! The main drawback to this is the third book won't be out until January 2009. My son said he wants to read the third book when it comes out, but he will still continue to live without reading it immediately :) He really enjoyed both books and he doesn't think they're too scary, but when I read them, I may disagree!

I emailed Robert Liparulo and he responded to me personally. He seems like a very nice person and according to my son, an excellent author. I'm looking forward to reading his books!

I haven't seen the Young Adult years in...years, but I can tell you that this series is SCARY even for adults. I finished House of Dark Shadows a little while ago and can testify that it's freakier than Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews and just about as scary as The Amityville Horror. Did I mention this book was scary, LOL? But I finished it. I just didn't read it at night. Seriously. And I'm thankful that my house has neither an attic or a basement or I wouldn't be able to sleep! I know it's just fiction, but while I was reading the story I was in it, so it seemed real to me. Too real.

So far I haven't found a spiritual element (like they didn't even pray when scared) but it's still an incredibly entertaining tale of horror. I dare say it ranks right up there with any number of scary secular novels. There is even some blood in the book. Did I mention it was scary? Bottom line...this is top notch fiction but it is tolerable even for big honking chickens like me. In fact, I want to read the next book right away...but it's dark outside, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow!

Like the reviewer (below) from 1999, I read this in grade school back in the 1960's. A friend recently asked me why I became a writer and reader. I cited this book. Then I ordered a used copy and read it again a week ago. My 15-year-old daughter read it too -- pretty much in one sitting. This is a captivating story. The main character is very resourceful and a tremendous relationship develops between "Steve" and a coyote on the island. The writing isn't spectacular; it's a little bit of "Steve did this and then Steve did that." But the story is an inexorable tug of survival and man versus nature in all forms. Highly recommended for pre-teens and young teens looking for a bit of adventure.

I first read this book when I was ten or eleven years old, about 25 years ago. It made quite an impression on me, and I clearly remember checking it out of the library again and again so that I could re-read it. I wanted to fly planes more than anything at that time, so this story of a young pilot stranded alone on a desert island hooked me from the start, and there were times that I actually wished that I would find myself in the same situation, just to see if I could match his ingenuity. That never did happen - well, it hasn't yet - which is probably for the best, but this book still ranks as one of my all-time favorites. I'm now looking for it for my son, and I'm certain I'll read it again myself as well.

i thought this was the best book ever and i dont like to read much but i couldnt put this book down the author did a wonderful job. this is sorta like your tipical book about someone who is stranded on an island but then again it is so greatkind boring in the begining but after that its great.

This book is just like any other survival story you see out there. There is always a guy who crashes on an island, finds a friend, and then somehow gets off the island. For it to be a good book, it has to have some type of twist to it.

I also read the book in elementary school and now 6 years later, it is still amazing. It is one of my favorite books. It is a great story and I would recommend this to someone looking for a good book.

As readers, we expect many things from a good piece of historical fiction. "River of Souls" by Ivon Blum delivers on most of those expectations.

The subtitle, "A Novel of the American Myth", refers us to that subgenre that deals with the same 19th century West that Horace Greeley had in mind. The novel tells the story of a number of men (and one woman) seeking their fortune and/or deliverance in a rumored or dreamt new environment further west from wherever they began. Blum's selection of his main characters runs just slightly askew of the predictable: a Spanish-American cowboy, two mountain men (one American, the other French-Canadian), an escaped slave, and a coming-of-age girl cast out by her father. All of course have 24-karat hearts.

The author provides just enough nuance to keep these characters from becoming stereotypical. Less successfully drawn are subsidiary characters such as the manipulative banker and the evil sheriff. And don't look here (after a half-hearted attempt in the early chapters) for a sophisticated depiction of American Indians. But in this type of novel we expect history to play the major supporting roles, and in this respect Blum doesn't disappoint. The California Gold Rush, the progression of the Santa Fe Trail, and the nature of the New Mexico territory are prominently cast.

Blum doesn't necessarily deliver historical accuracy. What he does provide is its cousin -- a sense of believability. He has created a fictional universe that seems internally consistent and artfully rendered. It doesn't completely coincide with the myths of the West on which many of us were raised; instead and more importantly, he gives us a world which seems slightly more complicated and therefore considerably more convincing.

But he doesn't do this effortlessly. In his determination to create a novel voice of his own and unique dialects for his characters, the sweat sometimes shows through. Yet, instead of being annoyed, I found myself appreciative of the attempt.

As for the plot itself, it struck me as well-paced and adequately complex. Covering the years 1846 to 1853 and locales from Santa Fe to San Francisco, the chapters are short and forceful, advancing the story-line in mostly unexpected ways. Blum does not always seem in full control of his chronology, but he always manages to steer things back on course before losing the reader. A few story lines are left dangling and the book could use a map or two. But these are minor quibbles, and I'm confident most readers will finish "River of Souls" with satisfaction.

River of Souls transports the reader into the real southwest and uses this as a backdrop for exploring coming of age issues in a turbulent time. None of the western stereotypes exist, so when the reader connects with tangential facts and events, it seems all the more real and satisfying. The historical reality combined with the interpersonal intensity of the characters make this a surprisingly enjoyable read.

Ivon Blum did extensive research for this book, which shows, even while it's an entertaining read. The reason I titled my review as I did is that this book is about love. There's a lot of family love before we get into a romantic interest for Pedro (Pete) Cortez. When we do meet up with Becky, she has been brutalized and is almost dead. Once she regains consciousness, under Pete's care, she's a real little spitfire. Adventure abounds, with Black Hess being the most evil of all characters. Pete searches for and finds gold. A good read and a painless history lesson, take it from a woman and a retired librarian.

When I came across River of Souls, I thought, sure, another shoot 'em up instead of car crashes. Blum proved me wrong. His characters came alive in my mind and I began to care about each one. Of course, that Black Demon character felt more like a rattle snake slithering through the open door making me want to pick up my feet. The shifting scenes reminded me of what I knew of the gold fields but gave me so much more of the drama. If only the history text books could be so intense, I wouldn't be learning afresh now at my age. A robust romp through the Southwest that kept me turning the pages.

This is a man's type of story about very real men living raw outdoor life without apology. The author's vivid desciptions including all five senses made me miss the outdoors and tell us that the author has spent time there and understands the environment as well as the times.

This is for anyone who has ever fallen in love with this wonderful city, that is any who has ever, however briefly, been there.

The format is, as it is for all the "Then and Now" series to show vintage photographs paired with modern shots of the same view. The captions describe the scenes, giving short historical backgrounds. Anyone who has ever spent any time in the city will recognize some of the modern views and will probably find themselves interested in the vintage shots giving the history of the scene. Those who are planning a return visit just might want to slip this slim book into their luggage to take sightseeing. It also just might make a welcome reference for anyone reading about the old days in the City or watching an old film set there.

Lovely to look at and reasonably informative. Will be most enjoyed by fans of San Francisco. I can't see midwesterners enjoying this book. But if you live in or have visited the city by the bay this may be the book for you.

I received the book as a gift vut I would gladly paid for it.

This book is wonderful. A must have whether you live in the Bay Area or have visited here. Worth every penny.

These are a great series of books, I own each of my Favorite cities in the US. Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. It is really cool to see old pictures of the cities compared to current pictures.

I'm not using "conservative" in the current political sense, obviously. Everybody knows that John McCain has less than a snowball's chance in Gomorrah of winning in SF. I using the term conservative in its root meaning, something like "saving what was valued in the past." Preservation and conservation have the same Latin root. San Francisco has conserved more of its past than any western American city, and I could make a case, I think, for its preservation of more old-fashioned city life even than Boston or Savannah.

Except for the tiny downtown financial district, San Francisco "looks" old. The vast majority of houses, churches, and schools were built in late Victorian styles and have been lovingly restored in the same styles. Even the relatively "new" streets of the Sunset are old-fashioned now, predominantly in modest Art Deco style of the 30s and 40s. And it should be no surprise that ATT baseball park is a booking success, since it's strikingly old-style brick in construction, with a street car stop at the front gate.

San Francisco is a bastion of old-fashioned independent mom 'n pop businesses. There are thriving corner groceries and open-air once-a-week markets: independent restaurants ranging from very cheap to ultra expensive, but hardly any chain restaurants in the neighborhoods. The big chain grocery stores like Albertson's struggle to stay open in competition with locally owned stores like Andronico's, which has six stores around the whole Bay Area. There are more independent fitness centers and gyms in the neighborhoods; 24-hour fat farms are not the norm in SF. There are no malls that would be recognizable to most Americans in downtown or neighborhood San Francisco. The only malls - and very small they are by US norms - are on the suburban fringes.

Even Boston is cut up by freeways today, though the traffic is no better managed than when I lived there in the early '60s. Seattle is sliced in half by its ineeffective central freeway. San Francisco is the place that blocked freeway construction in the late '60s. Several freeways have been demolished in SF in the last ten years! Streets in SF are narrow and parking is tough, but a measure to build more parking lots was recently defeated at the polls, and any attempt to chop wider streets through SF would meet with armed resistance.

Baseball is the number one sport in SF. The fans of the football team pour in from the 'burbs to the hideous modernistic but crumbling stadium just at the edge of the city. The basketball team plays in Oakland. Any town where baseball rules has got to be considered conservative!

People in SF are conservative dressers, especially by California standards. I know women who live in LA, who carry clothes they consider drab to SF when they visit, so that they will not stick out like the inflamed rear view of a peacock's tail. One never sees "his and hers" outfits on the streets, especially not pastels. Men wear less bling per capita in SF than in Omaha. A neck chain and an open shirt would get you sneered out of polite society in SF.

Sweet old-fashioned window boxes are everywhere in SF. Street tree plantings are lovingly maintained. Open space is all-important to San Franciscans, and it's by stubborn resistance to development than SF has preserved more open space (finangling the take-over of decommissioned army, coast guard, and navy bases) than any comparably populated region of the USA. Nature is inherently conservative.

The half-mile strip of upper Haight Street, which gets the attention of the "screaming heads" on TV and radio, is not populated by San Franciscans. It's the runaway and stumble-away refuge of the discontented - the "poor abused confused missused" - of all the dysfunctional "conservative" families and communities from Modesto to Miami. They come to SF to enjoy the true conservative values of privacy, tolerance, and neighborhood friendliness.