Arizona Books

Great book and quick read. I wasn't sure what to expect but i really enjoyed it!

Loved it. This is a great book. Our book club read it and many members have decided to read Quilts by Nancy Turner as well. These is my Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 (P.S.)

This book was the One Book Arizona selection for this year. I thought the title was odd, but purchased it anyway. I could not put it down. I was immediately drawn into the world of Arizona's early history, and I was so sad when the book was over. I've since purchased it for all my family members, and my friends who love books.

I love this book so much that I can't bear to think of reading another book just yet. The characters lived, laughed, struggled, loved, breathed, and died around me while I read. The detailed historical authenticity and voice of the novel seemed so real I could not believe it wasn't coming from an actual diary. I instantly fell in love with the main character, Sarah, for her courage, child-like innocence, and down-and-dirty-spunkiness. I could not get enough of Captain Jack Elliot! What a great hero -- ranking right up there with Rhett and Gilbert Blythe as my all time favorites. Their love story was so beautiful and true to life from beginning to end. This book was so funny, so exciting, so tender, and at times so sad I thought I would find a whole in my chest for the aching I felt (as well as the laughing I did). Every time Sarah cried, I cried. Maybe I am so partial to the novel since my ancestors also settled around the same area as Sarah, around the same time. A COMPELLING, BEAUTIFUL read. I will read this one again and again. "A nice girl should never go anywhere without a loaded gun and a big knife."

And, I actually feel guilty that I don't like it more. It is a Diary of a woman facing hard times. It was just hard to get through as a book, and I actually felt relieved that is was over.

.....you wanted to read the entire Bible, this is the way to do it. Being chronological, scripture is drawn from various books as best they could determine in sequence. Makes for a great story and allowed me to put things in perspective.

I first started reading The Daily Bible over 15 yeards ago and I continue to do so today. I can think of no better version to use as a daily bible. Being arranged chronologically, gives a better understanding of the history of God's dealing with mankind. In addition, reading the various writings in their historical context is a great aid to understanding why these inspired men wrote what they did. I keep several copies of The Daily Bible on hand and give them to those who I meet that are sincere students of God's word.

This is great tool for daily bible readings. You can read the bible thru in a year. Loved it and I ordered 2 more after receiving mine.

I purchased this Chronological Bible (NIV) several years ago based on the recommendation of a friend at church. I had tried several times reading through the Bible based on a reading schedule, but never completed the Bible until I received this easy to read chronological Bible.

Wow! It was life changing as I had never read through the Bible. This Bible gives a brief summary of what you'll be reading each day which is an excellent way to begin reading by reinforcing God's word. I've now read through it 3 times and each time, I learn new things about God and his son, Jesus Christ. If you've never read through the Bible, this is the best Bible as it puts the Bible in chronological order which makes so much sense! Enjoy. You won't regret this purchase. It will change your life.

This is a great Bible to read in one year. This is the first time I have read the Bible in a year and all the way through. I found that in reading THE Book this way, one could grasp God's message to us all, His plan's and why and how everyone fit's into HIS-STORY. I mean everyone who has lived, is living and will live. I "got" the whole picture of life in a wonderful, profound way reading this book. Mr Smith's insights were very thoughtful and helpful. Everyone should read this Bible. I am giving it as gifts for Christmas.

This book was extremely disappointing unless you would like to know how many gallons of water it takes to illegally cross from Mexico into the United States. The author takes a liberal and sympathic view of illegals and tries to sway the reader into thinking that breaking the law is OK for these people. Give me a break. Where is the equal-sided journalism? What about the economic drain to healthcare, gang violence and drugs that these people bring into the United States? If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck then it is a duck. Illegals are illegals are illegals. Don't waste your time on this book.

"A passionate exponent of more human solutions to the problems of illegal border crossings...John Annerino, an Arizona writer-photojournalist, tells the story up close and personal in a gut wrenching, bare knuckle account...His account puts flesh and bones on the story behind the dreams, and skeletons,too," Desert Candle.

There are those who call themselves experts on the subject and those who are. John is the genuine expert. His points on the subject can only be done by being there and doing it. That is John, that is how he is. That is how he lives. A Master photographer, a Father, Journalist. His treatment on the border issue is a no-holds-barred trip into the unknown. He makes it known, he does it masterfully! When I read Dead in Their Tracks I found it to be the best publication on the subject. It should be required reading for those who are studying Hispanic Culture here at the University of Arizona! When one has the folks at ABC News and other News organizations beating on your door for your knowledge on the subject you know it is John Annerino. When you read a John Annerino book or see his imigaes you are guaranteed that you have exposed to the very best in subject treatment. Dead in Their Tracks will take you for a ride you won't soon forget.

-"Photojournalist John Annerino plunges into a world few Americans ever consider, much less confront: a pitiless trek through the southwestern Arizona Desert that can deliver a man to steady work - or to a whimpering death," Laura Brooks, The Arizona Daily Star.

-"Anyone interested in this slaughter should run, not walk, to John Annerino's Dead in Their Tracks," Charles Bowden, author of Down by the River.

-"A passionate chronicle. The story...is gripping and profoundly disturbing," Susan J. Tweit, The Bloomsbury Review.

-"A stunning portrayal of the dangers (including death) faced by immigrants eager to work in the United States," Library Journal.

-"I'm trying to illuminate the lives of those who continue to die in America's killing ground," Annerino said," abcnews.com.

-"A gripping firsthand account of crossing the Camino del Diablo in the company of Mexican nationals...Annerino's evocative words and haunting pictures make the issue impossible to ignore," Donnamarie Barnes, People Magazine.

-"The story is riveting.Annerino's writing is emotional and graphic," Ernesto Portillo, San Diego Union-Tribune.

-"Through cholla cactus and scorpions, along sands simmering at 140-160 degrees, John Annerino and four Mexican companions stumble toward an oasis north of poverty: the American dream," oneworldjournies.com.

-"The book is a testament and a memorial.Thirty pages list the known dead...Annerino deserves praise for putting this story into words and pictures," Will Chaffey, San Antonio Express-News.

-"A gripping work of investigative reporting," Nicole Davis, National Geographic Adventure.

-"Seen on CNN and featured on CNN Bokchat, John Annerino has worked on the border for Newsweek, ABC Primetime, National Geographic Adventure, and America 24/7," KmG

This book is poorly written, _utterly_ disjointed, and has a cloying sentimentality that is really annoying. By that I mean it's not at all analytical: it includes random snippets of poems, etc. that serve only to confound the reader looking for some meat. Plus, there are certain phrases like "cutting sign" that I hadn't the foggiest idea about until I looked it up. Help the reader out here.

Yeah, it's hot as hell in the desert, and it's doggone handy to have water. It sucks that people are dying in the desert and the forces that draw them to _El Norte_ are highly complex and not necessarily their fault. Still, they are breaking the law from the word go, and well they know it, and it seems to me there are worse tragedies involving truly innocent people. Plus, it peeves me to no end that these illegals have largely trashed some of the most beautiful and exotic wildernesses in the U.S. So my sympathy is just not all that deep.

The photos are for the most part of lousy quality as well. Why it took carrying several cameras, as the author claims, to produce these pictures is beyond me.

Lastly the book is VERY short, with a ridiculously long appendix addressing every single death that has occurred in this area ... newsflash: no one is going to read that.

How could the editors have allowed a book like this to go to press? It's absolutely amateurish, despite being driven by sincere emotions.

Normally being a slow reader with a wandering mind, I read this entire book in just four days, unable to put it down. It was such a sweet, heartwarming story; I could easily imagine the author writing it, as I know him personally, and he truly is such a nice man. But this book is more than a sentimental tear-jerker; actual historical people that existed at the time the story takes place, are here. I learned things about American history I had not previously known. I also found it interesting how the author emphasized how the Jews are not truly white people at all, but their own separate race who may have more affinity with American Indians than with White America.

I'll admit, I bought THE HEBREW KID AND THE APACHE MAIDEN for my 12 year-old nephew, but I couldn't resist taking a peek myself. And, once I started it, I was hooked; couldn't put it down.

Author Robert Avrech has crafted a marvelous plot. He weaves together the history of the Jews with details about traditional anti-Semitism--both in Europe and in the United States--along with lore about the American Wild West of the 19th Century.

This novel is a work which combines great imagination with scholarly research.

Every page here is an adventure, starting with Apaches on the war path and moving on to Mexican desperadoes. The reader, especially the younger reader, definitely will learn much about the Jewish religion as a result of reading this book.

According to the author's biography, he already is a successful screenwriter. I have read novels written by great authors, and I have seen screenplays written by great screenwriters, and THE HEBREW KID AND THE APACHE MAIDEN is the equal of the best of them.

Robert Avrech dedicated this book to the memory of his son.

Robert Avrech's first installment of the adventures of Ariel in the turbulent beginnings of the American Southwest isn't simply a book for young adults. It's an enjoyable must-read for adults -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- interested in Judaism in any way. His explanations of Jewish and Apache spirituality are simple without being simplistic, and are beautifully woven into the adventurous tale of a boy trying to learn how to be a man -- and a "mensch" -- in a dangerous world. Hopefully it won't be too long before we're able to enjoy Ariel's next journey!

The book is captivating from beginning to end. This book is a wonderful example of what books for young people should be. It covers the full range of emotion; love, passion, fear, etc. It examines bigotry in it's characters as well as brotherhood amongst 'strangers'. It would be well that the parent reads the book as well, because it might open up many as yet unaddressed topics of conversation. I loved it!

An author's intellect too often outstrips his spirit. The observation, the wit, the rendered phrase will display polish, but the work as a whole may lack a certain, deeper luster. And it's that luster that fixes our attention - while we're reading the work and while it lives with us forever after. Fortunately, Robert Avrech's first children's novel is imbued with this kind of luster.

The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden is an entertaining and inspiring tale honed with high craft and deep piety. Written by a career screenwriter for a primarily (though by no means exclusively) young, Jewish, male audience, it is at once plausible and improbable, silly and serious, magical and didactic. I read it one afternoon in a cafe, pausing only to wag its colorful cover in front of a few inquisitive onlookers while telling them that they too ("big people," like me) should read this. Did I adequately communicate this to the other "big people"? I can't say, because before finding out if I had, I let myself be transported again - under the sure, guiding author's hand - to that age....

Yet there's more going on - and at stake - in HKAM than quality entertainment. It has to do with Mr. Avrech's choice of setting the novel in the Arizona of the 1870s, thereby overlaying mass Jewish immigration with mass American expansion and the Indian Wars. It also has to do with the interwoven themes of coming of age, learning to handle firearms, and Jewish self-defense. For while the novel makes no pretense of speaking directly to other - mostly "big people" - works which treat some or all of these themes, HKAM reminds me, indirectly, of some other works that (in part or in whole) do treat them: Primo Levi's If Not Now, When?; Antek Zuckerman's A Surplus of Memory; Romain Gary's A European Education; Esther Forbes's Johnny Tremain; and any number of Hemingway stories. Yet by predating the 20th Century - and the Shoah - and by sticking to the Kid's point of view, Avrech helps preserve that degree of Orthodox Judaism's innocence and wonder and awe which frequently is beyond the scope of "big people" or less observant or 20th Century works. For, as the dedication offers, what's also at stake in this novel is the debt Mr. Avrech is attempting to repay to his departed son - the great inspiration for the Hebrew Kid.

The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden is a mitzvah through and through. Purchase it in hardcover while you still can. You will want your copy to last as long as there are generations to come, generations which will always peer into the lives of past generations, wondering how to learn from them.

I am in the process of planning a short, expensive trip to Sedona and purchased a slew of books on the area from Amazon including this one. "Secret Sedona" is a large, thin book of landscape and nature photographs very similar in style to an Eliot Porter portfolio. That's nice, but it's hardly the sort of practical information I am craving right now. It's the sort of book that you could buy in Sedona and easily pack into your suitcase as a souvenir, but not the sort of thing one would bring from home on the trip, and really not all that useful in planning a vacation.

I love this book. My parents are long time Sedona residents, and every time I visit them I purchase a few of Lindahl's "Secret Sedona's" to take home as gifts from vacation. The photography is phenomenal, as well as the written word, which decribes Sedona in the romantic fashion it is in reality.
An easy read, with pictures worth a thousand words and beautifully laid out, I recommend this book to anyone, whether you live in Sedona, visited Sedona, or have even never been there! (It will make to want to do all of the above.) 5 Stars!!!!!

Secret Sedona illumines, with precision and beauty, Sedona's swirled red rock country and its ethereal waters.

Larry Lindahl's photos have such depth that it's worth taking them into the sunshine, to see into the purple shadows.

The layers of his text include Lindahl's journal, cultural and natural history, plus a thorough index.

But the book isn't a travel guide. Lindahl's text invites the reader to settle in for a slow read, with supple images, riding the edge of the known and unknown in Sedona.

Here is a lasting cache of awe to enjoy, alongside, or far away from, time in Sedona.

-Jane Yett

This is an unbelievable beautiful book and for the price, unbelievable quality. Wonderful book to daydream about Sedona

Larry Lindahl's combinations of awsome photography and colorful narative descriptions, reveals not only the spirit and personality of this incredible landscape, but of his own as well. It gives you a glimps into the soul of this artist and his incredible drive to explore, uncover and connect with the land. With great respect and a keen eye, he takes you visually into hidden places most people would never make an effort to see themselves, and shares
his observations and extensive knowledge of each secret place he encounters. A great addition to anyone's library or a great reason to start one.

This book seems to cover many great hiking areas in Sedona. It is quite explicit re: directions and information about the hiking trails. Great book for a person new to the area or even people who have been around awhile. Very informative!

I used this book for planning a 2 day visit to Sedona. I was extremely happy with the format. It has 2 pages per hike, with a high quality photo of what to expect for views, driving/hiking distance/time, as well as selections of their favorites. We didn't visit long enough to do a lot of the hikes, but we truly felt that we were able to select 3 hikes that were perfectly suited to our tastes and with nice variety. Overall, I don't think you could go wrong in Sedona, but I felt like this guide was well worth the price and only wish I could find similar guides for other locations. The Magnum's have done a great job, deserving of 5 stars.

The only shortcoming you may find is that their maps are very general and mostly help you find the trailhead (which was flawless). But, I prefer to have a quality map as well and I purchased the Emmitt Barks Cartography - Sedona Trails Map (not sure if it was on Amazon), and was very happy with it. Personally, I don't think you can create a detailed map inside the book for each hike, so I don't consider this a flaw to the book - just a bit of advice if you are planning a trip.

This book was very helpful in deciding which hikes to do. We were not dissappointed by any of the hikes. It was good that we knew about the pink jeaps ahead of time.

I have read five books about the Sedona hikes, all written approximately across the same time period, and this is why Iknow what I am talking about.I have also been to Sedona twice and know about it in a general sence. Short and sweet...this is the best all around Sedona hiking book filled with lots of bits about popular and unheard of hikes. This book is good because it is created by a Husband and Wife writer and photographer team who have lived in the area for years. The book includes maps of how to get to the trail heads and where the trails go from there. Also, descriptions of weather related to time of year and level of exertion required to do the hikes. The hikes that include VORTEXES are clearly marked. The photography is great. The five other books are best described by one or several of the following phrases: sickening and homespun; the writer as spiritual guru who is grandiose; might as well not bother; information repeated elsewhere ad nauseum. GET THIS BOOK

This book is good you want to look up a specific trail by name. I am more interested in researching trails in a specific area and found the layout of this book VERY frustrating. This book NEEDS a trail map overview where one can see where a specific trail is in relationship to the other trails. If you purchase this book make sure to purchase a Sedona Trail Map as well.

Best Read. John Annerino's CANYONS OF THE SOUTHWEST. -Tucson Weekl

CANYONS OF THE SOUTHWEST by John Annerino features the author's photographs of towering red rock and rushing waters. -Travel-Holiday Magazine

CANYONS OF THE SOUTHWEST by John Annerino. A stunning overview of the "inverted mountains." -Summit Magazine

For people who love the West, especially those who seldom leave the concrete road, this book provides unbelievably beautiful pictures and stories about gorgeous places in the wilderness. -Rocky Mountain News

Foremost are the photographs. I would call Annerino's canyon portraits the best of a really good lot, even over big-time large-format photographers. While the large-format works are stunning artistic studies of light and color shot with impossibly huge f-stops, Annerino's canyon photographs give expression to the phrase "wearing one's heart on the sleeve." His photos have an active passion that others lack. Anyone who knows him will say he is among the "hardmen' to tackle the Southwestern mountains and canyons, but that he is definitely the most sincere in his passion for place. Perhaps, because of this he lacks a calculated commercial view of the places he photographs. His images also record his own passion, creating compelling and unique photographs. More than any other contemporary outdoor photographer, Annerino's photos mirror his love of the land's people. In the text, Annerino portrays canyonlands people as part of what makes the places special. He has a deep affection for past and present native peoples, but unlike some Anglo North Americans, Annerino isn't a lost 20th century soul. Rather, he seems to have a straightfoward and genuine admiration for native people, and has learned a great deal about them. His research on each canyon's history is impressive. Annerino writes with an immensity commensurate with his subject. His style is old-fashioned, evoking an older, more grandiose era of writing of explorers like Powell and Pattie. While many modern writers seem bent on infusing themselves into as much of the story as possible, Annerino's style is not so full of himself as full of the intensity of his canyon experiences...Annerino is at his best when he writes about Mexico, especially the Big Bend passage where he talks about the injustices served the Mexican across the river at the hands of our national park there. An optimist who sees great things in the canyons, Annerino neither ignores nor dwells on the obvious problems facing the West like pollution and development. And fortunately, CANYONS OF THE SOUTHWEST is not a treasure map guidebook to these areas. -Desert Skies

GOING BACK TO BISBEE is essentially a memoir augmented by plenty of history, both natural and human. It won an award in 1992 for "creative nonfiction" and I can understand why. The conceit of the book, which is taken up by the title, is a drive by the author Richard Shelton from his current hometown of Tucson to Bisbee, Arizona, where he had spent two years of his life, newly married and a fledgling teacher, fresh out of the military, about thirty years earlier. He intersperses his account of his half-day-long, 100-mile drive with recollections of his personal life in Southern Arizona, stories of the history of the area (for example, the Apaches, the U.S. Army, and a century of mining), and sidebars on the flora, fauna, and geography of the region. The book ends with Shelton back in Bisbee, having dinner with an old friend and grande dame of the former mining town re-invented as a center for the arts.

For my taste, the "going back to Bisbee" conceit is a little too artificial and forced, and the anthropomorphism to which Shelton is prone becomes mildly annoying, especially when repeatedly used with reference to the van, "Blue Boy," in which he makes his trip. But on the whole, the book is very engaging. It certainly is a much more entertaining way of learning about Colorado river toads, Perry's agave, coyotes, mesquite, and many similar subjects than the typical natural history guide. At the same time one learns much about the destruction of the landscape by the Anglo invasion and their cattle-ranching and mining without undue preaching, and one is treated to a number of interesting personal anecdotes, some of which are genuinely funny.

Hence, GOING BACK TO BISBEE can be recommended on a number of levels, but it would be especially appreciated, I think, by those interested in the Sonoran desert and the mountains of Southern Arizona.

"And I'm going back to Bisbee, not really knowing why. Perhaps it is because two years of my life were left there, put behind me, and now I have reached an age at which I cannot afford to forget even two years out of those allotted to me. Perhaps I am looking for the spirit of a mountain I never knew, a mountain which became a crater on whose edge I lived for two years, happily, while the landscape and earth around me was being destroyed. Or perhaps it is just nostalgia. I was happy there, while the destruction went on for twenty-four hours a day, and now I want to go back" (pp. 21-22).

Richard Shelton is an Arizona writer and poet. His 1992 memoir Going Back to Bisbee won the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction in 1992 and was selected for the 2007 One Book Arizona program. It is his love song to Bisbee, a desert city with a European feel located 82 miles southeast of Tucson in the mile-high mountains of southern Arizona. With his poet's eye for detail, Shelton immerses his reader in the landscape, flora, and fauna of the Sonoran desert as he makes his nostalgic journey (in the temperamental van he proudly calls "Blue Boy") from Tucson to Bisbee, where he taught English in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Along the way, he not only revisits the natural history of southeastern Arizona, but he reveals the beauty of the Sonoran desert, even capturing in words the scent of the desert when it smells like rain. Ultimately, Shelton's highly-recommended memoir reveals that Bisbee is as much a state of mind as a place. I should know. I have Bisbee dust in my blood. I was born and raised there. And like Shelton, I was happy there. I say read the book, and then experience Bisbee for yourself.

G. Merritt

This is a terrific book. I live in Arizona and learned so much from reading it. It is never boring and is full of information and fun stuff.
I even learned a few new words for things that happen in Arizona.
I would highly recommend this book.

Others have already heaped praise on Mr. Shelton and this book, so I can't improve on that. But you must also try his 2007 book "Crossing the Yard". It is every bit as good, if not better,Crossing the Yard: Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer than "Going back to Bisbee"

What fun we had tracing Richard Shelton's steps (and drive) through the Arizona desert. He's personal stories throughout this book are great. The information on the flora and fauna are very detailed. The history on this desert area itself is fascinating.

This is a must read! A series of stimulating and well-written essays centering on a common theme: how wildness (once but no longer the essence of wilderness) has been mediated, micromanaged, and abstracted nearly out of existence. Turner's polemic focuses on the abstractions that divorce us from the natural world, which cause us to create pseudo-wild places like Yellowstone National Park and Grand Canyon, places that resemble nothing so much as a theme park.

This book is radical (read: essential) environmentalism at its best and effectively reconnects the modern perspective to the passionate roots of Henry David Thoreau. Anyone concerned with preserving (much less revitalizing) the wild and wilderness, particularly in these dire times, should take Turner's ideas into account.

By Kyle Gardner, author of Medicine Rock Reflections

Jack Turner sheds light on issues most people care too little about, in this most philosophical of his books. This is food for deep thought. Definitely worth reading more than once.

consider this fact about the USA - 13 (now 14)have reviewed this book in this forum - and all have declared that this book, against almost all other books regarding the environment, and specifically, wildness, comes the closest to expressing their own hearts, if not before reading it, then because of reading it - yet we are force fed through the mass media that americans are gluttonous and rapacious - well as it turns out, no - just a handful are- and that handful has all of the money and all of the guns.

the landlady, dear readers, IS strangling our cat.

I got this book when searching for something for my biodiversity class to read that would hook them to the subject and move them the way "Sand County Almanac" did me back in my college days. Wasn't able to read it at the time, but I picked it up this fall, thought I would read an essay at a time before bed, like I usually do with essay books. Sometime in the wee hours I realized that I had to stop reading or I would head out into the dark night and wander until I found the wilderness again. Few modern writers, or writers of any age, have so clearly and eloquently expressed what it means to love the wild, what we are about to loose, and truly why we are loosing it despite efforts to the contrary. Turner's solution is one I believe in, but rarely find seriously advocated, probably because it would work. Frankly, if you haven't gone wild, you may not "get" this book. If you want to really know what the wild is about though, read this book and if you like the sound of things, go seek it out. If you are wild, this will be one of the few books on the topic you can stand to read these days. I haven't been so enlightened since I read "The Practice of the Wild" by Gary Snyder. Five stars means a great book. Some books are beyond that, this is one for the ages.

This book hits the nail on the head regarding what we think we believe and with how we really live and work in this world. Chapter 2, "the Abstract Wild: a Rant" and chapter 4, "Economic Nature" are particularly valuable, but then so is the rest. This is a book that makes the reader face the reality of our world and what we are making of it on no uncertian terms. If you think that we can reconcile the comfort of modern life with the real world you need to read this book. The world we are loosing is very different from the "abstract wild" we believe we are "saving". The book makes the strongest justification and argument for the spiritual reality of the world over the "economic reality" that we seem to think we must compromise with.

The "Abstract Wild" belongs in every hand that hold such writings as Thoreau, Leopold and Abbey important. Much like Thoreau, it holds up a mirror that all of us, including the "mainstream" environmentalists should look on. It reveals an image that is difficult to rationalize away, showing some hard truths that we all must heed if we wish to truely change, both individually and as a culture. The "Wildness" that is the salvation of the world is more than a slogan, a momentary protest or a cause. It's Reality in the true meaning of the word.

Like one previous reviewer, I discovered this amazing book when I was in junior high. I read an enthusiastic Time magazine review of Jones' surrealist coming-of-age saga in 1974, but didn't actually buy a copy 'til the following year.

Like two previous reviewers, I was struck by the Huck Finn parallels, or anti-parallels. I actually wrote a paper for a high school English class detailing how I felt Jones had used Huck Finn as a starting point, then turned certain aspects of Twain's allegory on end. It was a public high school, so my insights -- indeed my entire topic selection! -- were poorly received. It's just as well that I resisted my initial urge to drag James Dickey's novel/screenplay 'Deliverance,' another allegorical mid-'70s river voyage, into the analysis.

'Blood Sport' is a brutally honest but infallibly entertaining depiction of [male] human nature and the human condition, and it's the last word on what guys are all about. Metrosexuals won't like 'Blood Sport' at all.

Exploring the Hassayampa headwaters is about more than just growing up; indeed, growing up is about more than just growing up! The thematic linchpin of Blood Sport is exposed during Ratnose's discussion of the second law of thermodynamics: Life itself is rebellion, he argues, against the second law, which dictates that energy in a high state tends to become energy in a lower state, all the way down to the inert ...

A terrifically entertaining read. As a military man, hunter and Deadhead (different sides of myself I've often found hard to reconcile) it was a real treat to find a book that included elements of outdoorsmanship, combat, and the absurd (in extrema).

What a great book!! An excellent piece of surrealistic fiction. If you are a hunter, a fisherman or just an old-style libertarian hippie (Your modern tree hugging, gun-phobic, quiche-eating hippie won't like it.), I highly recommend this book.

This novel is without a doubt a classic, grizzly account of manhood and survival, transformation and change. Perhaps if you are one who believes that the spirit of the bear resides inside of you, pick this book up and read it all the way through. It is a magnificent story full of gritty, earthly imagery that will thicken your skin. From gunfights to hemp-laiden philosophy, from sensitivity to utter insanity... Stand up and play the hand god has dealt. Play fair but play to win.

Where's the sequel, Jones?

So glad to see this amazing novel back in print. I read a Dell paperback (with a beautiful full-color cover) when I was in junior high (middle school to you youngsters) back in '75 or so. Blew the top of my head clean off. Broke a bunch of rules and made up some new ones in the process. After I read this I graduated directly to Vonnegut, Brautigan and Castaneda. Blood Sport changed the way I look at writers and writing, and it deserves a spot on the same shelf as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness and Deliverance. The chapter listing "27 Things I Learned About Ratnose" is itself worth the cover price. Long live R.F. Jones. He has written a true adventure classic.