Utah Books

The book is a lie. Farnsworth did not invent television. Television was around before Farnsworth was born. Other inventors' patents were used by RCA, notably Kalman Tihanyi, who patented the iconoscope in 1928.

When Philo T. Farnsworth was fifteen, and plowing a field, he thougth up the concept that became electronic television. After one year of college, Farnsworth started repairing radio and then got support in the 1920s to develop electronic television. The only competition he faced was RCA and RCA tried to stop him. What followed were years of intense work and bitter frustrations. But in the end, Fransworth was proven to be the creator of television. Although forgotten today, this biography brings back to the public the importance of Philo T. Farnsworth and how the technology he developed back in the 1920s is till used today. An excellent read.

but it doesn't change the truth. Unless you believe the teacher lied (and I have never heard that suggested or demonstrated) you have no basis for an assumption that Farnsworth did not invent the essential element of electronic tv. And Sarnoff, as well as Zworykin, are known to have (to be polite) exaggerated their deeds and discoveries.

While Godfrey has compiled, and reasonably well organized a great deal of information, his written presentation lacks style and readibility. The quality of writing is what one might expect from a newly-minted PhD attempting to gain recognition by publishing his/her dissertaion. I could not recommend this book to anyone looking for a general Farnsworth biography. For the occasional advanced undergraduate or graduate student studying the history of technology, I would recommend it for its reference value.

I bought this book because it seemed the only large, comprehensive history of Utah available. Perhaps it was, but "comprehensive" is a bit misleading. It does indeed dabble in most every aspect of Utah's history: cultural, religious, political, economic. But the good professor does get, suffice it to say, tiresome...Instead of actually delving into the history of Utah he seems to mostly be engaged in personal commentary, with thorough history left as an afterthought. If only he could lay off the adjectives. History is supposed to be filled with more verbs and nouns. ....

In his summation of the 1945-69 era he writes: "Any state blessed with the artistic talents...encases itself in a solid armor against the blows of those Philistines who belittle the arts and humanities as of little consequence." This said referring to people who oppose not art but taxpayer funding of it. See? Commentary, not history.

Perhaps it's being too optimistic to assume that a good, comprehensive history can be written in a 459 page book with large print. But at least the Utah State Historical Society, which commissioned this [book], could have found a better author to attempt it.

Take my advice: Search for a better book on Utah history. Wait around, if you have to.

Alexander's "official" centennial Utah history is a strong overview of the history of Utah. Their are many pictures to make the work interesting, and the narrative is flowing and enjoyable. It's only flaw its that it does focus on Mormons, but that is the majority religious group in the state so he can be forgiven. The book celebrates the people of Utah past and present and glosses over some not so pretty events. A must read for anyone interested in Utah history.

I have long been wary of any book that uses the term "official" and "history" in its title. It connotes a certain sense of self-adoration and celebration at best and exhibits rather blatant spin-doctoring and perhaps even untruth at worst. If any historian could write an outstanding official history, however, it is Thomas G. Alexander, one of the leading historian of the Great Basin. Because of his skill, he often succeeds here, but the blinders of centennial celebration and religious heritage limit what could have been a magnificent synthesis to what is merely a good one.

"Utah, The Right Place" was commissioned by the state government in commemoration of the centennial of statehood. In a fit of largesse, the state legislature appropriated funds for this overview, a four-volume chronological history each written by a different scholar, histories of each Utah county, and several other publications and events. In this new state history, Alexander presents Utah as a crossroads where cultures met, conflicted, assimilated, and ultimately changed forever. Although there is some discussion of aboriginal peoples, the vast majority of the book deals with the cultural interaction between European-Americans and Native Americans, as well as between various groups of European-Americans. Alexander heavily emphasizes the period since 1847, with well over three/fourths of the book dealing with this chronological period.

A group that is both overrepresented and handled with a surprisingly positive alacrity is the Mormons. No doubt the members of the Mormon church have fundamentally influenced the development of Utah since 1847, but Alexander's too-easy acceptance of the church's conventional position is troubling. For instance, with the many other issues appropriate for this state history given incomplete treatment or omitted altogether, presumably because of space limitations, why does Alexander devote nearly a chapter to a narrative of Mormon origins and development prior to the 1846 exodus to Utah? And, having chosen to do so, why is the treatment so reflective of the Mormon leadership's beliefs about the church's origins?

Alexander, as a believing, practicing Mormon, handles most Mormon issues in this Utah history in a "faithful" manner, in most instances reflecting the church's beliefs about itself. A notable example of Alexander stepping beyond his religious convictions, however, is his use of the lessons of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to chide present-day mid-level Mormon officials about overzealous execution of presumed policies from the church leadership. In 1857, a combined Mormon and Paiute party brutally murdered a wagon train of Arkansans stopped at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah who were on their way to California. At the time, middle-management Mormon John D. Lee misinterpreted comments from Brigham Young and his chief lieutenants about possible war with the United States as a license to carry out this heinous crime, and successfully covered up the church's involvement for a number of years. Twenty years after the fact, Lee was executed for his role in the massacre but no one else was punished; in ritualistic manner he became a Christ-like figure absolving Mormonism of its great crime through his blood sacrifice.

Alexander uses this event as a launching pad to deride extremism among the Mormons. Presently, the church has publicly broken with its intellectual community and demanded complete subservience to an increasingly narrow party line. The church's middle-managers have zealously excommunicated some of the best-known Mormon intellectuals, and the question has been repeatedly asked, "Who is responsible for this crackdown?" Are local church officials taking obscure cues from high Mormon leaders or acting under their direct orders? Such intellectuals as Alexander probably hope that it represents incorrect cue-taking from higher officials, and he suggests this is improper. It happened in 1857, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the result. At one point, he wrote of the massacre, "Such underlings will abuse and murder others if they believe their leaders really want them to do so. Neither James Buchanan nor Brigham Young wanted people to suffer or die needlessly, but...[their underlings] believed that their leaders really did want these things to happen" (p. 133). They acted on that belief. Alexander might well conclude, just as surely as in 1857, that underlings in the present Mormon church have acted to punish intellectuals.

There are difficulties in the book, despite its usefulness overall. For instance, Alexander is at best cursory in his discussion concerning the development of air transportation and the aerospace community in Utah. A fair amount of U. S. western history has much to do with transportation, and in the twentieth century the air transport structure has been critical to regional development. Utah leaders were early and persistent advocates of air transportation, yet this area is barely mentioned. Likewise, the rise of large-scale aerospace activities in Utah-Morton Thiokol, Hercules Powder Co., and others-receive superficial treatment. These activities have fundamentally transformed the state's economic, and to some extent the political and social, landscape and cry out for analysis. At the same time, lengthy, but less important, discussions of sports teams in Utah, complete with photographs of sports celebrities, grace several pages.

Despite my apprehensions about what is missing in the book, there is much to praise in "Utah, The Right Place." It is a serviceable state history that emphasizes the themes of the "new social history"-race, ethnicity, class, and gender-and the "new western history" with its emphasis on social and environmental issues. It is sympathetic without being hagiographic, and Alexander's conclusions are usually well-measured. It can be profitably read by anyone interested in the development of the American West.

One of the other reviewers here suggests that Alexander is the wrong man to write a comprehensive history of Utah. This statement is patently absurd! Alexander is one of the most important historians of Mormonism and Utah since Leonard Arrington. Unfortunately, this book is commissioned history, and as such, Alexander's heart doesn't really seem in it. The book is overly verbose at times, and at other times it seems as if the introductions and conclusions to chapters are tacked on. Also, the book is almost entirely narrative with very little interpretation. (Another misstatement of this same reviewer.) In short, this is a workman-like narrative history, but it is not edited or written with the excellence and care that Alexander's other works exhibit. I know that this book was expanded and updated in 2003, so if you are inclined to purchase this book, get the newer edition. If you are looking for a tightly written, superb one volume history of Utah, try Dean L. May's, Utah: A People's History.

I was also disappointed for similar reasons to the other reviews already made. The hikes are (intentionally?) downgraded in rating so as to make it almost appear that all hikes in Utah are equally rewarding. While most hiking in Utah is in fact amazing, it is still normal to have our favorites, isn't it?

The book also does NOT even list Angel's Landing in Zion National Park. That's quite an ommission if you ask me.

However, the book is an excellent intro to the areas of hiking in the state. There are many "off the beaten path" wonders in the book. I'd also pick up M. Kelsey's Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau and any of Falcon's Utah Hiking guides to complement this.

I have a couple Foghorn books and really like their accuracy and insight. I especially like that they rate the hikes beased on beauty and other factors. Reading about a hike that is rated a 10/10 is much more appealing and inspiring than a 6/10 hike. But this is where The Foghorn Utah Hiking falls short. Since every hike is rated either a 7 or an 8 (i'm not kidding, check it out!), the rating system is basically meaningless. Not one hike is a 10? How could this be in a state with so much to offer. How do I distinguish between the hikes Buck? I also agree that there are too many overnight backpacking hikes. This is fine but in pretty much every case, you can turn these overnight hikes into a day hike. Just give us the info!

I am giving it 2.5 stars because it still provides good info and is a comprehensive Utah hiking guide. I like the maps and the layout.

I was looking for the detail that was in this book, but for day hikes. Not many of those in here for Southern Utah

THIS BOOK IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT KARL MALONE NBA SUPERSTAR. BUT ALOT OF THIS BOOK IS SPENT ON THE HISTORY OF THE JAZZ AND MANY OTHERS PLAYERS. IT IS NOT A BAD BOOK BUT NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. OK READ.

That Karl Malone fellow has been on the man show, movies, W.C.W, and knows Maxercise purple belt Mark Beekman. What else can a superstar basketball player accomplish?! The book is great, just like my girlfriend Joelle Fillipo and that Barry Sanders guy the dude mentioned when reviewing the book. Karl Malone should break the all-time record in a few years for points to show that Jason Haines from Parkway Manor kissed Jennifer Sue Frisch!

...then this is probably an okay book to get started. Probably more for teenagers. I was in Salt Lake when K.M. was drafted and the then owner of the team had really wanted Keith Lee but the fans gathered at the Salt Palace were happy Malone was still available. Before his name was announced fans were chanting "Mailman, Mailman..." That draft began a long and very good relationship with the Utah fans. Both have benefited greatly from the union. Unfortunately that part of K.M.'s story isn't in the book. Neither are a lot of things you'd like to know, such as the details of Mr. Malone's famous off-season workouts that make his workout partners puke, although it is touched on. I wanted to know how he developed it and who can keep up with him and what else he does to maintain his high durability in the modern game.

Karl deserves better. I met him his rookie year and found out he was a fantastic person, able to handle fame better than most. At that early stage he could make you feel like you were very important - how many rookie NBA players can do that? I've been a huge fan ever since and I don't even like basketball much.

I read the book hoping to see his development into the best power forward of all time and instead I got a bunch on newspaper clippings and vignettes on early NBA thugs. I think there's more to Mr. Malone than that. I think there's more to his development as a player than what I read.

He still hasn't won a championship. Well neither did Barry Sanders, Carl Yastremski, Gale Sayers or even Jerry Sloan. K.M is a great basketball player and an even better person - he deserves a better story than what the book told.

This may have been at one time a good guide, filling a great niche. Unfortunately at this time it is three years old. I found too many errors- specifically reviews and listings for restaurants that have closed, changed names/owners- for it to be trustworthy or even that useful. Granted, I live in the Boulder area and know most of the vegetarian restaurants here and in Denver, so I bought it to find those that I don't know of. Those listed in the guide may or may not even exist anymore.

Finally a guide book for Denver & Boulder that helps me locate healthy & tasty vegetarian food! I found this book easy to access, well organized, and at times, quite funny. Ms. Mather clearly did her research on this and it shows... I wish I had her job!

Let me start by saying I think guides like this are desperately needed, but also there is a responsibility of the author to provide fair critiques of the restaraunts chosen and I have major difficulties with some of the reviews given. I focus here mostly on the Salt Lake aspects of the guide, being a resident.

My most major problem with the reviews was a three-star review given to a major national chain. The same review of the same chain appears six times in the guide verbatim. This would be fair, except no other national chain restaraunt appears in the guide, and there is no differences between any of the reviews.

It also does not impress me that several exclusively vegetarian restaraunts ratings have been beaten out by restaraunts having few if any vegetarian or vegan fare. In one instance, a one-star restaraunt's review has no constructive criticism of the food from the establisment, but in the notes above considers the ambience "dingy". In another instance, vegetables accompanying a curry dish (potatoes, baby carrots, and onions) are considered "bland-looking" and needed some "green for both color and taste" - I thought these were the traditional accompaniment for a curried dish and the point was to be bland to offset the curry?

Without nit-picking too much more, the guide is a welcome and needed, but I hope the second edition undergoes a change in the consistancy of the reviews.

Without a doubt, this book is a big undertaking and doing it well has to be very difficult. There were a number of interesting chapters, but the style of writing, compound sentences combined with hyphenated phrases that went on for line upon line, made it very difficult to read and follow. This was probably the most frustrating book I've ever read, and I only finished it as a matter or principle.

This book gives alot of good information about the settling of the west and about many key figures who influenced the settlement of what was a vast wilderness area. The writing style is sometimes a bit too pedantic and this is not light reading that you'll go through quickly. However, the volume of information makes this book worth it. The closing of the American frontier and the settlement of the west are interesting subjects and this book does a good job of covering them.

I welcome feedback on this and all reviews at wstrnlibwarrior@yahoo.com

If you have purchased a river guide book or two in the past chances are you were disappointed. Mr. Ramptons book gives you just what you want; USGS maps with camps and rapids marked, hikes, history, geology all sprinkled in the right amounts.

Great color photos in this new version of the book as well. I have to say that Desolation Canyon is a terrible place, dont go there. I have been over a dozen times so I know what I am talking about :-)

After our 2nd day on the river, we had to seriously wonder if Mr. Rampton had ever actually been down this stretch of river. The camps he had marked didn't exist, and we discovered some great areas never mentioned in the guide. I realize rivers change, but after using various guides for the Grand Canyon, Gates of Lodore, San Juan, Rogue and Snake Rivers, this 2003 edition was one of the most inacurate guides I'd ever had to use. Thank goodness others on our group had the older Belknap's guide and had actually been on the river before.

The color topo maps were nice, but printed on too large of a scale to be easy to follow. You also have to flip back and forth between the mile-by-mile description and the maps in the back, so the book binding takes a beating. Both front and back covers had fallen off before the end of the trip. The most entertaining part of the guide was by far the description of the author's solo trip entitled "Solitude". The narrative provided hours of laughter as we read and reread the passages and even expanded the story, using his crazy, descriptive style.... "Raindrops seemed like intelligent missles that would guide themselves through any opening...."

There's some good, basic info in this guide, but don't let it be the only resource you have.

Mr. Yorgason may know his Mormon history but he sure blew it with the rest of this story. His credits claim that he has degrees in history but it's more than obvious that he didn't bother to use anything he learned about researching the subject before he put this one together! He's used one reference (and we all know which one it is)without bothering to authenticate any of the details and, unfortunately, he's so far off the money that he took much more than "literary license" with a story that was confusing enough already. Now he'll have even more people mixed up about what happened since some obviously can't separate fact and fiction. How would Civil War buffs like it if an author moved the date of the Gettysburg fight by a month!!

This is an excellent book and I liked the story line, but I found the author to be lacking in his ability to use simple descriptive words. This made it difficult to keep up with the story. I don't mind stretching my vocabulary some, but there were times these unusual words caused me to drift from the story. Like I said, I did like the story itself, except for the female lead character repeating her efforts to repent of her sins. It became a little boring there. But overall I give it 4 stars...A good book. I will buy book 3 when it come out.

This book provided me no useful information that wasn't available somewhere else in a cheaper or better format. If you are not a member of AAA, it might be useful, but it adds nothing that I could tell to the free AAA book(s) covering the same areas. I just got back from a trip driving in Northern Arizona/Southern Utah/Northwestern New Mexico and out of 5 sources it was the only one I did not take with me. It's possible the one I had was just outdated, but I don't think that was the only problem. Previous to buying it I looked at some other Frommer's in the book store, which seemed good. However, this (which I had not seen) to me was totally worthless.

This book was our Bible for our recent road trip through the four states covered. Accurate listings, in-depth coverage and helpful tips abound in this guide. We would have been lost without it!

Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to give this item zero stars.

Sadly, this book lives up to neither its title nor its promise. For anyone who knows anything about J.R.R. Tolkien's invented languages, this book is not a reliable 'Gateway to Sindarin'. Rather, it is an unacknowledged mishmash of Noldorin of the 1930s (fr. 'The Etymologies'), Sindarin of the 1950s (fr. 'The Lord of the Rings'), and numerous inventions of David Salo himself. It is therefore misleading to call this book 'A Gateway to Sindarin'. It would have been more accurate to call it 'An Introduction to David Salo's Synthetic Reinterpretation of Tolkien's Gnomish-Noldorin-Sindarin language'.

(One might charitably suppose that this was in fact Salo's preferred title, but that there simply wasn't room on the stylized Moria Gate on the cover of his book to accommodate such a lengthy phrase. Perhaps the switch from a Beleriandic mode of vowel-representation to one accommodating vowel-pointing tehtar might have saved some room?)

In all seriousness: the unacknowledged, uncredited, and therefore (one presumes) copyright-violating use of Tolkien's 'Moria Gate' drawing on the cover of 'Gateway to Sindarin' is just the tip of the iceberg. While the book does have an "Annotated Bibliography" (pp.416-435), this is no substitute for a proper citation and referencing strategy. One searches in vain for any accreditation of earlier scholars of Tolkien's languages, not least the editors of Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon, whose publications and analyses of much original Tolkien linguistic material this book silently mines for forms without acknowledging any of their theoretical or methodological contributions. If this book isn't already tied up in court proceedings then it certainly should be.

There are several reviews of this deeply-flawed and pseudo-scholarly work online; I urge all would-be purchasers to consult them before supporting the publication of this book (and those like it).

David Salo's humble attitude regarding his intensely thorough research has produced a work of profound and astounding scholarship. This book is exciting to the point of being breathtaking, for, again, it raises the expectation that Middle Earth was indeed peopled by speakers of i-lambi Eldaron and rich with a living, thriving culture in which the powers of Light finally overcame the forces of darkness. Elvish is aesthetically thrilling, but getting a handle on this tongue, i.e., actually allowing tangible use of Sindarin makes this "linguist" jump for joy. The organization of the book moves the reader through what might easily be one of the most interesting graduate courses in language that any elf-friend has ever taken in higher education. Hannon lle, David Salo!