Park Books

This is a great trivia book for all ages. You will learn a lot, and have fun too.

I bought this and the version on geography for a former history teacher who was recuperating from hip surgery. She loved the books and was even stumped by quite a few of the facts.

Best trivia book for 2008! Trivia questions and answers on American History and World History - always entertaining trivia writer, "Queen of Trivia" makes learning fun . . . Great for kids and adults alike. Highly recommend this fun, entertaining and educational trivia book for anyone with a desire to learn more about our world.

A very good story about a French family saga. I enjoyed the narrative descriptions about the French life and the creativity surrounding events and characters. Some historical details add interest to the novel.
Definitely, a wonderful book to read for your summer vacation.
Marie-Claude

It has been a long time since I have found a book to be so completely enjoyable. The story is compelling - and - the auhor's descriptions so captivating that my imagination easily became a part of the story! I look forward to meeting these interesting characters again in the author's sequel. --- Mary Haynes

This is a wonderful book of characters with an authentic flavor of France: it has a kaleidoscope of personalities and human frailties... To read this book is a magical journey in time, and a very special voyage through a good book. Beautifully written. The time, place and people could not be more real. I savor her writing. Her wit and ability to make each character come alive make this a marvelous read.

Finally a book that is an easy read and answers questions about the area of Texas known as the Big Bend. This book takes you several steps beyond the Roadside Geology of Texas book. The book has excellent maps, is well organized, and has many photographs to help you get your orientation. I also recommend a companion book that he has written about the Davis Mountains area.

I love this book! In Chapter I, Setting the Scene, MacLeod provides a concise geologic history, explaining difficult concepts in language easily accessible to the layman. The following chapters interpret the landscapes along various local routes. The maps, photos and sketches nicely complement the text. I like to read the appropriate chapter the night before a road trip and then take the book along in the car. It certainly adds interest to the trip.

Use Big Bend Vistas to get an overview of the region or just to look up that mountain that catches your eye. Easy to read descriptions of the geology with lots of pictures, illustrations and a glossary to help the average person understand and appreciate the landscape yet detailed enough for the more geologically astute. Vistas makes the trip to Big Bend National Park more fun!

What a great biking guide for the Grand Canyon!! The book is well written, organized and laid out clearly. The book has great photographs and information about places seldom seen by many. If you like to bike and see awesome places and views at the Grand Canyon this is the book for you!!

Andrea's been there and done that and tells all about it (and how you can do it too) in this snappily written, info-packed guidebook for biking the Grand Canyon. Though Andrea's a long-distance cyclist at heart, she's written this book for us regular folk. An intro includes tons of advice on biking in general and biking the Grand Canyon specifically, even including a history of biking in the area which is fascinating! Rides range from 1.2 miles on up and are rated for technical difficulty and family friendliness. She includes info for each ride on the type of terrain, the availability of water, elevation profiles, necc. permits, and the best season to bike it. The book is well illustrated with photos and maps and also includes anecdotes and local lore cyclists can enjoy over a campfire or when they're taking a breather. Andrea was a Grand Canyon National Park ranger for many years and her depth and bredth of knowledge about the place is incredible. For any level of mountain biker heading to the Grand Canyon, this book is as essential as your water bottle and a set of properly inflated tires.

Biking the Grand Canyon Area is more than a travel book. It is immediately apparent that Andrea Lankford knows what she is talking about with regards to great trails. This is the second book of hers that I have read. Her first book scored 5 on my list as well and is called Biking the Arizona Trail. Andrea was one of the best Park Rangers the National Park Service had. She passes on her knowledge of an area she called home for many years. You won't find a more detailed book! Go out and buy it and ride like the wind!

As a seasoned world birder with a very extensive birding library, I have purchased dozens of birdfinding guides to regions, countries, states, cities, parks and refuges, and local areas. Scott Roederer's book ranks among the very best birdfinding guides available. I purchased it prior to a trip to RMNP in 2003 and used it to successfully find a number of specialty species missing from my ABA Area and Colorado lists. Scott's book is sort of like a Lane/ABA Birdfinding Guide, but better. Since RMNP is large and possesses many different habitats, Scott has divided the park into about eight areas and provided thorough birdfinding directions for each of these areas. He uses easy-to-follow directions and strategies for locating not only specialty species, but the more common western birds as well. This book is easily used while driving your car since Scott has provided mileages (from various start points) using your trip odometer and bird species names in boldface. The same goes for use when hiking along trails. This book is directed toward both casual and serious birders who want to easily locate their target birds in a reasonable period of time while enjoying the beauty of RMNP. My main target birds for my all too brief trip to RMNP were the Brown-capped Rosy Finch, Williamson's Sapsucker, and Three-toed Woodpecker. Using Scott's directions and strategies for avoiding the crowds, I easily found the sapsucker and woodpecker on my first try at the Endovalley picnic area and the rosy finch along Trail Ridge Road at the Lava Cliffs parking area. The Lava Cliffs parking area is normally crammed full of tourists and birding is difficult or impossible. Scott suggested arriving at dawn before the other tourists were up and about and this strategy worked brilliantly. I had the entire parking area to myself and within minutes had several Brown-capped Rosy Finches land on the retaining wall about several meters from me. I'm looking forward to using this book again on my next trip to RMNP.

This summer while stopped at an overlook on Trail Ridge Rd. in Rocky Mountain National Park, we spoke with a Park Ranger who had Scott Roederer's Birding Rocky Mountain National Park book in her vehicle. She told us that Scott's book was the best book on birding in RMNP. She uses it as a reference for park visitors who have questions about different birds and where to find them. It also is very well illustrated. I would definitely recommend this book for birders who visit this magnificent Park.

As first time visitors to Rocky Mountain Park, we purchased Scott Roederer's Birding Rocky Mountain National Park in the park bookstore, but we wish we had had it to study beforehand. This guide not only focuses on the best locations for specific birds, but also provides careful directions (complete with odometer readings!) to trailheads that go well beyond the general maps available. We were also grateful for his strategies for avoiding the summer crowds, including when to arrive at specific trails and the order in which to bird them. Add to all of this Scott's warm, lucid style spiced with birding anecdotes that we can all relate to, and you get a bible for birding Rocky. Although we are certain that birding the park with Scott would have been the supreme experience, carrying his book in a hip pocket is the next best thing!

When preparing for a Disney Vacation, the Internet can be useful but you really need to buy this book and TAKE this book.

Although the coupons are of questionable value, the information is clear, well-presented, and well organized. Just avoiding the busy times made life so much better.

It was so very helpful when we got caught in rain (we went to Epcot- GOOD ADVICE)

It was just as good when the rain began the next day (went to Disney Quest - GREAT ADVICE)

Between this and http://allearsnet.com we saved a bunch of money, got the right resort, and had a ton of fun.

Great book - don't leave home without it.

I love, love, love it! Did I say I love it???

This is a great book for those going to WDW without kids. It gives great info without all the "kid-friendly" stuff that we don't need. It might even be a good book for parents who plan on spending some time away form their older kids at WDW.

It's mostly a sized-down, more focused version of the Official Guide by Birnbaum, but definitely worth the money.

The pictures alone are worth the price. I love it!!!

This is the best guide book I've found, bar none. Not only is it informative but with the pictures, maps and helpful tips it is interesting and insightful. I've used it for two previous trips (one all-girls week and one with my husband) and can only say carry it with you at all times. It's well organized for quick-reference and helps when you have an unexpected change of plans--like those mid-summer afternoon showers that tend to pop up in Florida.

Wow. I can't believe that every South Park fan and Canadian aren't rushing out to buy this! It's a great read, informative but not boring, a fascinating pop culture history.

This is a great book about South Park and its relationship to contemporary culture. Many of the insights end up surprising. There are three parts to this book. The first part mentions the impact of South Park on culture and how it became popular and widespread. The second part is about the show itself: the dialogue, sounds, characters, and visuals. The third part deals with the issues presented in the show. There was an extensive amount of research done for this book and it shows. The author is also not a fan, so the insights come from a more neutral perspective, which makes the book an even better read.

The author also spends a lot of time on the impact and popularity of the show, which is unlike most book about tv shows and culture. The characters chapter is long but still unusually short for a tv show and culture book. Most books about TV shows and culture devote and entire unit and at least 40 pages to talk about the characters. Because she only devotes a chapter, there could have easily been more said about the characters.

All in all, if you are a fan of South Park or like reading about popular culture, then you should read this book. It is entertaining, insightful, and enjoyable.

Just when I began to despair about finding a real fan resource for South Park, along comes "Blame Canada". The various edited volumes about South Park and philosophy (Arp and Hanley) seem to be collections of scholarly opinions that I am sure are important to some obscure university lecture series on philosophy, and Anderson's "South Park Conservatives" is really only of interest to militant Log Cabin Republicans. "Blame Canada" is well constructed, well written and thought provoking. As a fan, I find it a fascinating resource, more so because the author is clearly NOT a fan herself. Neither a sycophantic piece nor a knee-jerk condemnation, "Blame Canada" is accurate and dispassionate.

My favourite chapter in "Blame Canada" is the chapter on South Park and the internet. It documents a period of internet history that had nearly been lost, in which South Park featured uniquely as a pop culture window into the infancy of the internet. I myself, who came late to the South Park phenomenon, had been unable to track down the grass roots fan information that should have been available on the internet for any pop culture icon as important as South Park. Now I know that it is a result of the engulf-and-devour policy of Comedy Central towards "unauthorized" South Park content on the web, which is somewhat ironic considering the libertarian content of the show. I am left to wonder how much more of internet history is being lost forever as technology changes, web pages are updated without being archived, and corporate America exerts more and more control over internet content.

The most interesting aspect of "Blame Canada", however, is the theoretical framework in which Johnson-woods places the show. South Park is nothing if not carnivalesque, so it is an apt analysis. But more than that, through the Baktine analysis South Park fandom becomes legitimized, and South Park becomes as much (and as normal) a pop culture influence in its time as Star Wars or I Love Lucy were in theirs. It is refreshing to know that fan attraction to fart jokes is as old as fandom itself, and not some new aberrant form of entertainment that is a result of (or even responsible for) the moral decay of our society.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Blame Canada", and I am happy to recommend it highly to any South Park fan. It is a worthy read.

Covers all facets of Irish life interpreted in verse. Humorous or serious, from antiquity to present, this book will open the the entire spectrum of Irish life for you to enjoy.

This anthology, selected and introduced by John Montague, begins with ancient Irish poetry and takes the reader mid-way through the 20th century. We begin with "The First Invasion of Ireland," from The Book of Invasions, and move on to some of the beautiful chants and incantations of Amergin, the chief bard of the Milesians: "I am a stag: of seven tines/I am a flood: across a plain/ I am a wind: on a deep lake/I am a tear: the Sun lets fall. . ." These ancient selections provide some of the best pagan Celtic reading I've come across.

Montague then guides us through some writings of the early monastics, such as "Marban, A Hermit Speaks: Young of all things, /bring faith to me,/ guard my door:/ the rough, unloved/ wild dogs, tall deer,/ quiet does." These writings give one the sense of a people so intimately interwoven into natural patterns and rhythms that there is no feeling of separation from Nature.

All the early selections of course are translated from the Gaelic, and we do not get into the poems written in English until later. According to Montague's excellent introduction, most poets composed in their native tongue until the nineteenth century, at which point most began writing in English. "Irish literature in English is in the uneasy position that the larger part of its past lies in another language," writes Montague. Thus we read in Montague's own poem "A Grafted Tongue: (Dumb,/ Bloodied, the severed/ head now chokes to/ speak another tongue:--"

But even before the use of Gaelic was waning, Irish culture was being systematically crushed by the British occupiers. The war against Ireland's native culture began before Elizabethan times. Thus, in the later poets Montague finds "a racial sensibility striving to be reborn; is it strange that it comes through with a mournful sound, like a medium's wail?": "I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night;/ I went to the window to see the sight;/ All the Dead that ever I knew/ Going one by one and two by two. . ." (William Allingham (1824-1889).

Even in the later poets of Christianized Ireland, who write in English, the pagan past is never quite obscured. Patrick MacDonogh (1902-1961) writes in "Now the Holy Lamp of Love: "Cradling hands are all too small/And your hair is drenched with dew;/ Love though strong can build no wall/ From the hungry fox for you." And Denis Devlin (1908-1959) writes in "Ascension" of a visionary experience of blinding light. He begins with "Aengus, the god of Love, my shoulders brushed/With birds, you could say lark or thrush or thieves. . ./" but moves on to "For it was God's Son foreign to our moor:/ When I looked out the window, all was white,/And what's beloved in the heart was sure,. . ."

In so many of these poems there is beauty, grace, and felicity, juxtaposed with suffering and sometimes bitterness. Contemporary poet Paul Muldoon (born 1951) writes in "Dancers At the Moy" of horses who tore "at briars and whins,/ Ate the flesh of each other/Like people in famine. . .The local people gathered/Up the white skeletons./Horses buried for years/Under the foundations/Give their earthen floors/The ease of trampolines." Here, suffering and loss become the foundation for continued life.

A complex national character manifests through these poems. Reading them, we see the English language being borne into new poetic realms by a nation for whom English is "a grafted tongue." A wonderful book.

This book was just wonderful. Being a Celt by blood, I was inspired by these wonderful works included in this collection. I hope that there will be more of this kind of compilations that will continue to come out.

If you love Central Park, you will enjoy this book. The history of the park is fascinating. This book focuses on the bridges in the park and the stories behind them. Many of the old photos are captivating. Enjoy!

This is a wonderful pictorial history of Central Park, pictures from the past and current pictures.
This history of the park is well depicted.
I would recommend this book to any one who enjoys history and/or New York City. Linda Steele, Largo, Florida

Must have history of the bridges. If you have ever been to Central Park then you will love this book. If you haven't then????????

I just recently got done reading this book that I picked up on a trip to the mountain. There is still so much left to see, and i have been down there five times already. The history is rich, and very informative. It is a shame that politics got involved and that the original dream was not able to be fullfilled, but alas we got something

This tells the story well. However, I would like to see more murals carved into the granite on the rest of Stone Mountain's sides. For a more balanced memorial to those who served and suffered in the years surrounding the War of the Secession, these should include images of Dred Scott, John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and Frederick Douglass, as well as the Cherokee Trail of Tears.

Having lived in Atlanta until 1985, I played on and around the mountain most of my childhood, but knew little of it's history. Mr. Freeman's book is very informative and explains in an interesting way how the park came to be. If your interested in what some call the "8th Wonder of The World," I would suggest this read.