Tours and Travel Books

This is a "must" companion piece for anyone who drives the Natchez Trace, whether for 4 miles or 400. Without the book's detailed information about the Trace's history, the towns it runs through, and the many recreational opportunities along the way, the Trace would be just another road. The Summerlin's book and their subject remind us that life is indeed a journey, not a destination

Travelling Historian's Guide To France is more than just another route map of 'must sees', though this is one of its foundations: Robin Neillands supplements maps and tour information with a bibliography of books to read before you go, and plenty of cultural and historical background information on unique French features. Small villages, towns which discourage cars, and byways make for a pleasing emphasis on France's lesser-discovered routes, and memorable tours based on historical events.

A wonderful collection of recipes assembled by Betty Hicks during her golf career. The recipes were contributed by golf pros, movie stars and other celebrities. Along with great meals you will find humorous stories involving the recipe and the chef that created it.

"Treasures of the National Air and Space Museum" beautifully capture the best this vibrant museum has to offer. The 300 illustrations are an homage to aviation history: the famous aircraft, experimental vehicles and the obscure vessels. The illustrations include the Spirit of St. Louis, the Wright Flyer, Mercury and Apollo backup spacecraft, representative cutting edge aircraft for their time, and a host of other wonderful photographs.

The museum also owns an impressive collection of aviation-related art which this book also includes.

You can spend days in the actual museum and not get to see all it offers, but this book will give you a head start and an appreciation for the breadth of the museum's collection.

Considering the specialized nature of this book and the few other publications on this subject I find it not only a useful travel guide, but also an in-depth, scholarly publication on this subject. The illustrations are of outstanding quality for a book of this sort; the book format helpful to the traveler. I do not understand why this book is catalogued as Bemporad/Brandes whereas the editors are Bemporad and Annamarcella Tedeschi Falco

This is William A. Gordon, the author of "The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book." A revised and expanded fourth edition of the book was released in late 2007, but Amazon has not yet added the new cover, reviews, and updated information, even though it was e-mailed the information numerous times. The cover image is similar to the 3rd edition but uses a different font. The book has also been expanded by 14 pages to 288. You will receive the latest edition if you order the book from Amazon. (And I offer e-mail updates to readers in between editions.) If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me directly at BGordonLA@aol.com.

Stephen Linn really gets to the heart of tailgating with terrific recommendations of what to see and do in every major tailgate city. Details on the stadiums and parking are very helpful. This guide's going to be on the front seat when I load up my Silverado with beer and brats and take my Freedom Grill on the road for a few tailgating road trips this fall. I can't wait! Go Chargers!

The book was lots of fun to read. The descriptions of the city using the vantage point of a walker up and down the specified streets was brilliant. Even though my trip to Victoria fell through, I can pick up the book and almost hear, smell and see this fascinating place I hope to visit someday.

Compiled, edited, and organized by Mary Melvin Petronella for the New England Chapter of the Victorian Society in America, Victorian Boston Today offers the contemporary reader twelve truly outstanding "walking tours" that reveal Boston's Victorian cultural and architectural legacy. The tours comprising this traveler's compendium include: Boston's Nineteenth-Century Waterfront (Pauline Chase-Harrell); Boston's South End: Mid-Nineteenth-Century Urban Planning and Architecture (Margaret Supplee Smith and Richard O. Card); Ethnic Diversity in the Victorian North End (Will Holton); The Commercial District with a Prior Look at Boston's Nineteenth-Century Charles Street Jail (Robert B. MacKay); Touring Through Time to the Heart of Back Bay: Boylston and Dartmouth Streets with Copley Square (Margaret Henderson Floyd); Boston's Victorian Authors: Thinkers in the Center of the Planet (Eguenia Kaledin and Mary Melvin Petronella); Black Heritage Trail (Sue Bailey Thurman et al.); Walking with Women in Victorian Boston (Patricia C. Morris); Charlestown in the Victorian Era: From the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument to the Coming of the Main Line Elevated (Edward W. Gordon); Victorian Boston's Chocolate Village (Anthony Mitchell Sammarco); Victorian Jamaica Plain: Monument Square and Summer Hill (Edward W. Gordon); A Victorian Boulevard Preserved: Cambridge's Brattle Street (Charles Bahne). Enhanced with a wealth of illustrations, maps, lively historical anecdotes, landmarks, luminaries and landscapes, Victorian Boston Today is strongly recommended for life-long Boston residents seeking to learn more about the history of their city and community, as well as an invaluable resource for tourists, historians, and students of American architecture.

I have owned the hardback edition of this excellent book for several years, and will be using it in a course on late medieval France in the fall of 2000. In depicting the landscapes, the buildings and the material culture of France, the book does more than most historical accounts, past and present, to explain the diversity that comprises French identity today.

French identity is rooted in its medieval and early modern past. Because French villages, like the country's cities, were built in stone, and because they are inhabited today, the past is visible in people's daily lives. Churches and fortresses, manor houses and monasteries, walls and fountained market squares document France's centuries-long religious and political struggles. The mountain ridges and plateaus on which most villages are situated contrast with the valley settings of most German and English villages of Germany and England. Building materials differ as well, with the latter choosing of clay, thatch and timber. Whereas most German and English villages were devoted to agriculture and local trade, French villages were defensive, self-sufficient and isolated.

Unlike other European countries, France's landscape made it vulnerable from attack, both from within France and from beyond the Alps and the Rhine, and less often, from Spain and the British Isles. Although each region of France developed different archictectural styles, France itself was unified both by its vulnerability and by it defensiveness.

This book contains beautiful photographs of each of France's micro-environments as well as lucid and informed discussions of ecology and history. Although aimed at the interested reader, and perhaps intended for casual browsing, "Villages of France" enables students to glimpse the fascinating physical and human history of France.