Touring Books

I am an above average cyclist and like to take day-long trips between 20-45 miles with friends. This book purports to be for the average cyclist but its tours have many steep hills that the authors do not warn you about. Bicycling trips using this book have consistently been very bad - not because of the scenery but because the authors fail to warn the reader about steep hills that occur throughout many of these tours. Stay away and buy other titles that are better researched and written.

This book has no useful information for anyone that is a seasoned cyclist that has some interest in touring! Very beginner oriented. No real information about touring. This book mostly goes over basics about riding and what you should wear and eat (neither of which i agree with the author about). This book should be titled Cycling for Beginners with a little bit of information about Touring. Total waste of money for me! No packing lists, no gear/rack/pannier suggestions, no information basically! If you are green to cycling then you might find this book useful...all others, buy another book!

As an avid outdoor's person, I have to say that I was thoroughly disappointed by this book. Some of the information it contains is inaccurate, and the writing style is pretty . . . . YAWN. I hate to be so brutal, but this book is a waste of money.

Don't bother.

this book sucks!!! most of the rides are really short and the direction for the trips are bad

This book seems more a bland compilation of every bed and breakfast the authors could find than a selection of 'special' places. The reviews are short, the pictures often uninformative - everything is in black and white and many places look like standard, run of the mill places. A truly special place I stayed at in Sicily wasn't even included. For random selection of bed and breakfasts, I suppose it could be useful, but even for that, I would recommend several websites instead that seem to have a much wider selection and are more informative.

Arrogant American does the world on a bike, and bus, train, boat. "I took a stroll around this morning, they were up in a sitting position, begging. In spite of my charitable nickname, I have found that it doesn't pay to give alms because they never leave you alone. Snobbish rotter in the Raj style, that's me. By this time I can look at a starving mother with a starving child and mutter, 'Not my problem'." Very boorish overall. Only seems to like McDonalds food. Cant' wait to find out where she found beef to gnaw on in Calcutta. This book could have used an editor as well. Pretty much written in the style of this review. Except the author may have skipped the capitalization on McDonalds.

While doing research for an essay on the "Search for Postmodernism in a Modernist World," I purchased Ms Rowell's book, curiously titled Objects of Desire. At the very least, it was a questionable investment. However, it is indicative of what is wrong with the world of modern art [or even postmodern art] where pretentious jargon takes the place of actual description, reason or discussion as an excuse for art works that in the end are just boring.

At the time of the book's publication, Ms Rowell was allegedly a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her explanation of Postmodernism gets at the heart of the matter in such a way that I am compelled to quote her at length, in particular her explanation regarding the bridge between pastiche and schizophrenia:

"The possibility of pastiche -- its neutrality and blankness - presupposes that individualism is dead. The copy is impersonal; the model is either indifferent, forgotten, or never existed. High modernism, however, was "predicated on the invention of a personal private style... This means that the modernist aesthetic is in some way a unique personality and individuality, which can be expected to generate its own unique vision of the world, and to forge its own unique, unmistakable style." Yet today, scientists, social scientists, and cultural critics are "exploring the notion that that [sic] kind of individualism and personal identity is a thing of the past; that the old individual or individualist subject is `dead'; and that one might even describe the concept of the unique individual and the theoretical basis of individualism as ideological." Thus the old models of modernism are no longer viable. As we know, schizophrenia is defined as a basic breakdown of relationships - because objects in a perceptual field, for example and between words and their meaning or content, or between words and each other as a continuous fabric of meaning in a linguistic system. As a result, the schizophrenic has no concept of time as linear, interconnected, and sequential, and none either of personal identity as a selection and interrelation of certain specific human potentials at the expense of others. Conversely, because the schizophrenic does not (indeed cannot) search for meaning behind the object, behind the word, or within the unhierarchical unfolding of the field of experience, he or she has an experience of the present and of its objects that is "overwhelmingly vital and `material'... ever more material - or better still, literal - ever more vivid in sensory ways." ... Pashtiching the objects of desire of our traditional landscape, they set a film of meaning (or nonmeaning) between themselves and ourselves. In their deliberate displacement and disconnection from familiar circuits of meaning - whether aesthetic or real - these surrogates or simulacra embody another register of experience, that of the signs and systems of the postmodern world." [Rowell, 194-195]

Is there anything more that can be added after such an erudite analysis? Perhaps there is. However, the analysis does cause one to ask a number of questions. Did anyone buy this book for anything other than the pictures? How does one get a job as a curator in a major museum? And more to the point, was there an editor, or was the editor on vacation when page after page of turgid, incoherent and virtually incomprehensible pseudo-intellectualism made its way to print? Or perhaps this presentation is meant to be a literary representation of Postmodernism, most likely a parody of postmodern Deconstructionist style. One can only hope that this is satire - the world of Dilbert in the "artplace." Dramatic readings of her text have provided considerable entertainment for my friends and family, who found it quite amusing.

This book was s big disappointment. (I returned my copy.) It has just one or two paragraphs each about hundreds of attractions. Broad and shallow. No information that is particularly useful to parents.

If you're a AAA member, you'd be better off with their tour book, which is free to boot!

Oh my god! Is this guy for real or what? Clearly, Dan Goldfischer did not ride this route himself and whoever penned the map has a sick sense of humor. Mr. Goldfischer refers to the terrain as gently rolling, huh?, as we were climbing the many hills our panting was accompanied by cars and motorcycles straining to get up these hills. In fact, when we stopped for directions because the map was so out of scale-people said that they would not want to drive their cars on those roads. It felt like we were being waved off by Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride as he comments to his wife that it will take a miracle. Mr. Goldfischer mentions that an average rider would have no trouble with this ride, he is just dead wrong. The three of us are above average riders, one having riden across the U.S. and most of Europe. Do not go on this ride without driving the route and making corrections on the map. The traffic was constant to heavy on a Sunday morning. Find another ride guide this one sucks.

I kept thinking surely this isn't what I paid $5.95 for!!! What a joke. Don't waste your money. I'd like to get mine back.