Utah Books

I have the Utah book "4WD Adventures" printed in 2000 and I have been using it since then every two years for a two week drive in the desert. Spot on. I've tried the rest and this is the best. It's hot and you haven't seen another vehicle in the past eight hours but with Massey Wilson telling you to turn left in the wash, you turn left in the wash. My book is well worn but it has never lead me astray. My only walkouts are when they describe a place six years before and I try to cross. Guess what? The desert changes. So I'm buying the new edition.

ps. I'm out here right now after visiting Wild Horse Mesa east of Capital Reef. This is the first time in 15 years I have seen boulder crunching gully washers. These books describe the most amazing places in the world. Get off that tarred road. But bring water.

We took this book on a trailbike tour this summer, and it was indispensable. The Moab area is crisscrossed with many trails, and it's impossible to tell what they're like until you've ridden them. Although written for 4x4s and ATVs, with a little reading between the lines we could find the trails most appropriate for cycles. When looking for a trailhead, it's very important to read his step-by-step directions first. The trail synopsis will mention where it is, but a little too vaguely sometimes. I will say the author definitely has no fear of heights, because some of the trails he mentions as being "steep" are in fact terrifyingly close to very, very long drops. Assess your level of acrophobia before choosing a trail!

Many of the 4WD roads in the Moab area are notoriously unmarked, with numerous false roads going nowhere. Moreover, most maps of the area are incomplete or, even worse, erroneous, regarding 4WD roads. This book makes it simple and easy. The maps are perfect--just enough detail to be clear. The descriptions are succinct. The color photos are excellent. But it's the route directions that make this book so useful. They keep you from getting lost, but they don't deprive you of feeling like you're actually doing some exploring and route-finding. This book is really indispensable. (One odd omission: Trail #26 (Willow Flats Road) does not even mention the dinosaur tracks (at 3.3 mi. from U.S. 191), the primary feature of this road.)

I was so impressed with the content and writing style, I have made 3 of my friends read it so far. It is written with such description and clarity, I absolutely loved it. Thank you for educating the public collective on such an important subject.

I was raised in Southwestern Idaho with an interest in the history of the Native Americans of my area. Finally, I have encountered all of the information that I always wanted but had never found: IN THIS BOOK. This book is not limited to the "Weiser" Indians, but includes all of the cultures that traded or traveled through this area. It tells of a gathering area where an annual regional rendezvous allowed peaceful cultural and material exchange from the West Coast to the Great Plains. And it tells of a band of Shoshoni who had the foresight to quietly embrace the forces of change and thus avoid the genocide that destroyed so many others. It brings together historical accounts which are carefully annotated, and it includes the lives of numerous important historical persons. Thank you, Hank Corless, for providing this delightful book. It is good, readable storytelling, organized by timelines. This book combines readability with academic research, and it avoids romanticizing. I hope it gets reprinted. At the time of this review, it is out of print and only available used, but still well worth buying.

A fascinating study of how land molds people and forges alliances between groups who should be enemies. My sisters and I grew up in the Weiser Valley, never knowing of the existence of this group. When we studied Idaho history, we never learned about this hardy band who walked where our parents settled dozens of years later. The steep, formidable mountains which rise from the Weiser Valley still provide remote shelter to hardy souls who can survive in a non-electronic world. It pleased me to read this story and know that the white settlers in the upper mountains made their own alliances with the Weiser Indians and helped them keep their whereabouts unknown for many years.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument comprises a large area of Southern Utah, west of the Colorado River and Lake Powell. Easily worthy of a national park status, the monument was created from BLM lands by President Clinton in 1996. At present, the monument has very few paved roads, and this writer hopes that it stays in that condition. This fabulous book demonstrates why.

The present work is just simply the finest photographic essay I have seen on the monument, and is one of the very best on any area of the West. The pictures are uniformly displayed in excellent, clear color and quality, and readily demonstrate the beauty and grandeur of the countless hoodoos, arches, slot canyons, qnd other geological marvels that festoon the entire region.

A sparse, but very informative, well-written text discusses what the skilled photography highlights. Plainly, areas like this monument might be explored every day for a lifetime, and the same sight never seen twice. It is that good.

Kudoes to the author and photographer. They have produced an absolute masterpiece about a place that was saved for all of us just in the nick of time. If only the same had happened in Glen Canyon, but that is the subject of another book and review. What is portrayed here may be one of the most outstanding natural areas left anywhere.

The book is an an absolute jewel. Buy it, and love it. My recommendation is off the scale

Unlike the previous review, the book contains excellent photographs but superb essays by Taylor. Taylor is no Abbey wannabe, in his own right he is a more accomplished essayist, book author and magazine editor. The essays are personal, intimate and written by someone who knows the land better than 99% of reviewers. His book sandstone sunsets won critics acclaim and was named best contemporary non fiction book of the year by the Western Writers of America.

If anyone is curious to see what the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument looks like, Anselm Spring's photos are terrific! However, Mark Taylor is a pretentious Edward Abbey wannabe. All in all, a nice coffee table book though.

There aren't many species of herps in these two parks; they're cold and fairly far north. The book list 12 definite species and four or five possible species. However, the book covered them very well, dealing with their role in the parks ecology, how fires have helped shape their habitat, and so on. It's a really good refernce for how reptiles are distributed in the park, and how they interact with the other species. There are better sources for info on the various reptile species mentioned here, as the author's field of interest is narrow. Still, an execellent book on the herps of those two parks.

I laughed, I cried; two thumbs up! A science-based book, complete with citations of all the current literature, coupled with a readable, flowing style of writing. An important repository of all the scientific knowledge of these species in this region and issues affecting them (e.g., fire, climate change), yet engaging even to younger amateur herpetologists. Or, of interest to anyone who simply loves Yellowstone and the Tetons.

There are occasionally characters that stick around in my head, some for a while, some forever. Ghosts of fiction that won't leave, who comment on, inform, or even complicate my life. Some I love like dear friends, others not so much. Greta - Christine Allen-Yazzie's protagonist in "The Arc and the Sediment" - is still with me, she shows no sign of leaving, and she is as lost, erratic, and gritty in my head as she was in deserts of southern Utah, the book's setting. This is an intimate book, the kind that connects you to the author and the character she's created. I read it over a weekend. That weekend now feels like a sordid, but worthwhile, affair.

I picked up The Arc and the Sediment hungry for fresh modern fiction, and that's what I got. The narrative is not tidy; instead, it is complex, literary, real, and relevant. Gretta is a working Caucasian mom married to a Navajo man, Lance, who has left her--ostensibly because of her inability to stop drinking. But nothing is simple; Lance's leaving has also necessarily occurred against the backdrop of family resentments; the couple's location on the margins of the Utah politico-religious culture in which they live; and Gretta's struggle to find any sense of sustainable identity as a feminist wife, mother, and writer. This is a travel story, describing Gretta's road trip across the southern Utah desert to attempt to bring her husband back from the reservation and his family to their two children, a project about which she feels tremendous ambivalence. Drunk, weary, broke, and divested of hope for any morality but her own, Gretta is exhausted with the contortions of deciding what that might be. Thus, the novel takes on the messy themes of ethnocentrism, colonialism, and the crisis of inhabiting a postmodern identity. Allen-Yazzie's stark, understated prose provides the right tone for unfolding a story which feels sometimes tender, sometimes bludgeoning, and sometimes eerily barren. It's a book that deserves academic attention but also kept me rapt throughout my casual read. I'll definitely be watching for more from Christine Allen-Yazzie.

Knowledgeably compiled and expertly edited by Stephen H. Lekson (Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Anthropology, Museum of natural History, University of Colorado--Boulder), "The Architecture Of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico" focuses upon the Native American structures of Chaco Canyon built between AD 850 and 1130. These magnificent ruins are numbered upon the most compelling buildings constructing in the pre-Columbian world of North America. The various contributors concentrate on the Chaco Great Houses in terms of three overlapping themes: studies of technology and building types employed by the ancients; analyses of architectural change; and readings of the built environment. Informed and informative, the text is enhanced throughout with the inclusion of more than 150 maps, floor plans, elevations, and photographs (both black-and-white as well as color). "The Architecture Of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico" is a work of superb scholarship and a highly recommended contribution to any academic library's Native American Studies and Pre-Columbian Archaeology Studies reference collections.

I, along with my daughter who is a successful New York City architect, have long been fascinated with Chaco Canyon. Being native New Mexicans it's easy for us to visit the park when she is home to visit. This book is a great reference addition to my library and very helpful in the studies of this wonderful mystery.

Robert Irvine has created a detective named Moroni Traveler who has a love/hate (perhaps mostly hate) relationship with the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. The author, in creating the setting for his novels, takes us into the history of the Mormon Church and its relationship to Utah political power. The characters are interesting and likable and the background is interesting. In Baptism for the Dead, the detective is hired to find a missing person and winds up, somewhat unwillingly, assisting the Mormon Church in its battle against a local cult. Robert Irvine can be counted on to deliver a well-written and enjoyable mystery. Baptism for the Dead is worth reading.

I've long been of the opinion that the distinctive feature of the great hard-boiled private eye story is the hero's vulnerability. He's physically vulnerable because both the crooks and the cops distrust him. As a result of which, he frequently ends up being beaten and battered. He's emotionally vulnerable because he's alone and prey to falling in love with clients or other women he meets in the course of the case, or at least caring too much about the people whose lives he finds himself involved in. As a result of which, he frequently ends up heart broken. Such are the Quixote-like characteristics that have defined the genre.

Unfortunately, in recent years there's been a tendency on the part of authors to give their detectives permanent girlfriends and overeager allies in law enforcement, which serves to allay both vulnerabilities. Call it the Robert Parker effect. This trend has been so pervasive that only a very few really good writers have been able to buck it : Loren Estleman, Jonathan Valin, and a few others. Meanwhile, the most interesting new detective fiction has featured investigators in authoritarian countries, where their vulnerability is greatly magnified : Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series and Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series spring to mind, the one set in the USSR, the other in Nazi Germany.

Which brings us to what I think is one of the best, and most unusual, private eye series of the modern era. Robert Irvine managed to create a fairly traditional private eye, an ex-football player, ex-soldier, with the unlikely name of Moroni Traveler, and only gussy him up with a few emotional ties : a father who may not be his biological dad, and a couple of street characters for friends. Then he borrowed a page from Smith and Kerr and set the stories in Salt Lake City, where Moroni's investigations often run afoul of the Mormon Church, which essentially controls the state. In addition to providing dramatic tension, this setting in the land of the Latter Day Saints offers Irvine, himself of Mormon descent, an opportunity to work Mormon history and beliefs into the narrative.

The resulting books are really fascinating, though I find them a tad too anti-Mormon, and Moroni and his cronies are immensely likable. They aren't all still in print and, though I couldn't find much information online, I believe I recall reading that Irvine died a few years ago, but if you can find the books, they are terrific.

GRADE : A

The atlas was great. The box it was shipped in was crushed, therefore my order was creased in two spots. I did send one back since it was a gift, (they did replace it) although I just kept the Utah atlas due to a time factor. Not packed very well the first time. They do have a great return policy!

Pick this one up, and you'll never look at the DeLorme one again. Once again, Benchmark/Raven show that maps can be both functional and beautiful. By far, it is the best single resource in print on backcountry roads, terrain, land ownership/administration, and sites of interest. I take whenever I'm going to get off the freeway.

Of course, it's not perfect. I've found a few mistakes, but they're mostly things that only map geeks would notice.

This book is the baseline reference for any naturalist seeking to better understand the southwestern landscape. I refer to mine often. Be sure to get the companion map.

Brown's book provides a good overview of biotic communities in an easy to understand and organized format. It serves as an excellent introduction to plant communities of the Southwest, with secondary references to animal populations. The drawback is that all references to elevation and precipitation are in metric units with no parenthetic conversion to feet and inches.

I was delighted to find this book in the Hovenweep National Monument visitor centre bookstore. I had already photographed the wild flowers of Arches, Canyonlands and Colorado for my website. Now I could identify them. The book organises the flowers by colour which is good for an amateur like me. Now, I have to admit that I could not identify all the species I photographed, but I was pleased when I could. A big thank you to Damian Fagan for this book, I thought I might be a little bit too excentric hunting for new wild flowers in Canyondlands and Arches National Parks, even worse photographing wild flowers during my lunch hour while working in Colorado.

The Colorado Plateau country of southern Utah, western Colorado, and northern Arizona is justifiably famous for its magnificent scenery, but the stunning wildflowers are less widely appreciated. Fagan's "Canyon Country Wildflowers" is the best guide to these treasures that I've yet seen. The photographs are absolutely top-notch (sometimes I browse the guide, just daydreaming...), often showing the entire plant in its natural habitat. Likewise, the collection is relatively complete. Flowers are organized by colors and typically easy to find. To top it off, the book is relatively compact and durable in the field. Nowadays, I don't head south without it. -William Adair, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Utah State University