Nevada Books

I am a resident of Nevada and read a lot of history. Recently I have read a lot of books on Nevada history, and I must say this is one of the best. Thoroughly researched and footnoted, it covers almost every aspect of Virginia City history, yet is eminently readable. Some history books are too dry and dusty, and you have to plow through them (or give up), but Mr. James' book holds your interest from beginning to end. If you are interested in the history of VC, this is the one to buy!

Mr. James cuts through all of the legends that have grown up around Virginia City and its fabled Comstock Lode to give us a truly outstanding and eminently readable history. He draws together primary and secondary sources, demographic analysis and archaeology to give the reader a broad, yet surprisingly detailed understanding of the Comstock from its humble beginnings, through bonanza and borrasca, and right up to the present day. Highly recommended!!

Thoroughly enjoyed reading each chapter of Mr.James' book. I would suggest it for anyone having an interest in the old West, the mining periods, and personnae of the same, and perhaps just as importantly to gain some insightful information behind the storefornt facades and adits of Virginia City. The author has provided much background behind the legends, pulled down to earth other "legends" and truly given this "tourist site" it's legitmate and historical due. I am anxious to visit the Lake Tahoe area once again and take that little jaunt over the hill to visit a now-less-mysterious Virginia City.

This book is very informative in it's text and few pictures. What it really lacked is readable maps, GPS coordinates or really anything other then the very vague directions to any given site. Some instructions are go to site 1 then take this route to site 2 then turn right to site 3. Which is ok assuming they give you good directions to site #1. When they say turn left on dirt road, you have no idea what dirt road they are talking about, because in mining areas there could be 10 dirt roads in a span of 300 feet.

This is an extremely complete history of the local history which provides detailed directions which are easy to follow. Covers many more sites than any other book on the subject I have seen. Excellent contrast of vintage and modern photos.

I have visited Eureka several times since finding out my great grandfather worked in the mines there. Romancing Nevada's Past directed me right to the mining site my great grandfather worked and the book had a picture of the house my grandfather was born in. The information is well written and accurate. I often find myself reading it just for the fun of learning more about Eureka and the surrounding areas.

This book is a look back at Las Vegas and the area from prehistoric times to the present. It is very informative and packed with information that history buffs will love. It also explains the evolution of Las Vegas from a western town teetering on the edge of becoming a ghost town to the boom that started with the building of the Hoover (Boulder) Dam and continues today. This book is very academic in nature, so you have to love history to like this book. Overall a very interesting book.

This books gives an general overall history of Las Vegas and its chameleonistic changes over time. From the dawn of mans first wanderings into the Las Vegas area to modern day gambling mecca and suburban success, this book packs a short, but sweet punch into a somewhat short span. This book is good for people interested in Las Vegas history where general Nevada history leaves off,

The Lands have an easy, breezy writing style. In particular they bring the last 100 years of Las Vegas history alive with many photos of the times and observations of citizens and visitors alike who were there. Although they do not discuss the role the divorce business or the wedding industry played in the city's development (and weddings are associated with Vegas almost as much as gaming), the picture of the city presented here is fun and informative. To quote the authors quoting Steve Wynn, "Las Vegas is a party that never stops. God bless this daffy place."

This poem is so wonderfully written and the pictures are so beautiful. Great book for kids.

This book was actually pretty good, I thought, I had to read it for a Children's Book Project for my 8th grade English class. I randomly picked it from a stack, and thought it was nice. It has beautiful imagery and tone, and amazing artistry with the help of Wendell Minor. As you know, this book is at a 2nd-4th grade level, so I didn't really think any of it, just a blatant book for kids, but its actually a poem in a sort of a way, deeply detailed and carefully written.

Each double page spread includes a beautiful Wendell Minor paintings. The book is really a poem that is told to you as if the mountains are speaking to you about the aspects of its life. In this book, nature has a voice.

I think this is a pretty good book for beginners, but for more advanced flower identification, this book is not that good. First, it is organized by color variation, and not by plant family. Also, there are many species of wildflowers that occur in the sierras that do not appear in this book.

As an example to illustrate how this is a weakness, imagine the following sceanrio:
If you found a yellow flower that was not in the book, you would have a hard time identifying it looking in the 'yellow' section of this book, because closely related species may not be yellow.

The pictures, on the other hand, are very well done. The photos are closeups, and very bright. If you want a basic book this may be the one for you.

Good luck!

This field guide to the wildflowers of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California -- one of the FalconGuide series -- is terrific. It first introduces you to the geology of the region, defining the types of habitat for the plants, and describes how to identify the plants, including wonderful, careful line drawings of types of leaves and flowers. The book itself is organized by color of the flowers (so the chapters are "Blue and Purple Flowers," "Red and Orange Flowers," and so on), which makes identifying them easier, since their most obvious characteristic comes first. Each of the 230 wildflowers included in the book has a picture and a description, habitat locator, and comment from the author. In addition, the book is very sturdy and well-produced, with excellent photographs of the plants and a strong binding. And here's a neat design feature: the corners are rounded, so they'll never become dog-eared. Up until now on hikes I've admired wildflowers in the abstract; this book makes it easy to appreciate more of what you see.

It's obvious the author of this book knows what she's talking about! In our exploration of the Sierra Nevada we've come across a multitude of flora, but never before did we know what it was. In this book, Karen Weise provdes beautiful photographs along with a complete description of the flower, it's blooming period, habitat/range, and her comments, which include the genus of each plant. Owning this book, I find no need to search for any others. I buy this book for my special friends who share the Sierra Nevada with the flora found there!

I enjoy all of the Winnett books because they are accurate, fun to read and reliable. This book has little chapters on over 100 trips in the Sierra range, and the descriptions of each trek are a total delight. So often these hiking books neglect to tell you how to reach the trailhead and oftentimes they don't provide detailed instructions. Winnett never makes this mistake. You will not need a separate map to locate any of the trailheads, his maps and written instructions are first-rate. In fact, there is even a nifty fold-out map sewn into the rear pocket so you can tote it along on any of your journeys. Equally interesting is that this book doesn't merely give elevation gains, difficulty ratings and desriptions of the trail conditions. These are vital to know, but Winnett also includes little bits of information of what kinds of wild flowers you will encounter, birds, wildlife and other little nuggets neglected in other guides.

The book is supposed to be only for overnight backpacking trips, but there are many trails here that can be used for day hikes. These trips will be in the 10-16 mile range and any strong hiker can easily do these hikes in one day. If you do choose to go the multi-day backpacking route, Winnett describes water sources, camping sites and addresses whether bears or marmots might be a problem for you. Most importantly, he tells you where to find water and whether the water source is reliable throughout the whole year.

I can't recommend this guide highly enough. Even if you're an armchair hiker, you'll derive many hours of vicarious joy from this guide.

Great trip planning resource - more overnighters than Sierra South.

My wife and I are volunteer forest service workers in Los Padres National Forest, Ventana Wilderness. We maintain the Pine Ridge Trail, and spur trails, between Big Sur Ranger Station and Sykes Hot springs (with lots of help from friendly hikers). We enjoy exploring other areas for backpacking and camping but don't want to waste our precious leisure time searching for the better hikes, so we use good trail books, like this one, to plan our trips.

Sierra North covers selected better trails in Yosemite National Park, and the following wilderness areas: Mokelumne, Carson Iceberg, Emigrant, Hoover, Ansel Adams and the northern end of John Muir. It meets most of our demands for identifying the better hikes to explore in a convenient easy to use book. It provides good directions to the trailheads and descriptions of the trails, camps and attractions along the way. It provides a description of how strenuous the hikes are and has a neat graph to show the gain and loss of altitude over the distance for each trail. It has a "take out" folded map showing the trails and trailheads and it has a convenient table summarizing information on all the trails to help with trip selection. It is small enough to carry on a backpacking trip.

Some down side knits are. The map is not sufficient for backcountry hiking so, you still need to buy a good trail, contour map. The instructions of how to use the altitude gain and loss graph are located in the Maps chapter (hard to find) instead of in the Introduction with the other information on how to use this book. There is no small single page map showing the general location of all the trails; therefore, you must take out and unfold the larger map each time you want to check a location.

There is a companion book titled "Sierra South" which covers Kings Canyon National Park, Sequoia National Park and John Muir Wilderness. My wife and I use both of these books and recommend them for others. These are good trail books to get you started in one of the above areas. After you make somehikes and wish to explore a specific area more thoroughly, you may want a trail book that specializes in that one area.

This is a wonderful guidebook with very helpful information about some of the best hikes in the southern Sierra. It's not just a good guidebook, but is also just plain fun to read. The pictures are nice as well. The included map is decent, but could use a little help.

I really like how different paces for the hikes are given, leisurely, moderate, and strenuous. Also, information about what season the hike should be take, early, mid, and late. Also, all the topo maps needed for the hike is given. Introductions to various geographic areas is given as well.

One thing I was really disappointed about, though. The description of the Mt. Whitney Trail from Whitney Portal to the summit is pretty poor. I thought they might describe more about the summit, this being the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., but maybe I'll have to wait until I get Secour's "High Sierra".

I enjoy all of the Winnett books because they are accurate, fun to read and reliable. This book has little chapters on over 100 trips in the Sierra range, and the descriptions of each trek are a total delight. So often these hiking books neglect to tell you how to reach the trailhead and oftentimes they don't provide detailed instructions. Winnett never makes this mistake. You will not need a separate map to locate any of the trailheads, his maps and written instructions are first-rate. In fact, there is even a nifty fold-out map sewn into the rear pocket so you can tote it along on any of your journeys. Equally interesting is that this book doesn't merely give elevation gains, difficulty ratings and desriptions of the trail conditions. These are vital to know, but Winnett also includes little bits of information of what kinds of wild flowers you will encounter, birds, wildlife and other little nuggets neglected in other guides.

The book is supposed to be only for overnight backpacking trips, but there are many trails here that can be used for day hikes. These trips will be in the 10-16 mile range and any strong hiker can easily do these hikes in one day. If you do choose to go the multi-day backpacking route, Winnett describes water sources, camping sites and addresses whether bears or marmots might be a problem for you. Most importantly, he tells you where to find water and whether the water source is reliable throughout the whole year.

I can't recommend this guide highly enough. Even if you're an armchair hiker, you'll derive many hours of vicarious joy from this guide.

My wife and I are a Volunteer Trail Crew in Los Padres National Forest, Ventana Wilderness. We maintain 12 miles of the Pine Ridge Trail, and spur trails, between Big Sur Ranger Station and Sykes Hot springs (with lots of help from friendly hikers). I also have a full time day job so my leisure time is very precious. I enjoy exploring new areas for backpacking and camping but I want others to do the legwork and report the best trails, so I rely on good trail books.

Sierra South covers selected better trails in Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park and John Muir Wilderness. It meets most of my demands for identifying the better hikes to explore in aconvenient easy to use book. It provides good directions to the trailhead and good descriptions of the trails, camps and attractions along the way. It provides a description of how strenuous the hikes are and has a neat graph to show the gain and loss of altitude over the distance for each trail. It has a small "take out" folded map showing the trails and trailheads and it has a convenient table summarizing information on all the trails to help with your selection. It is small enough to carry on a backpacking trip. I use It and I recommend it for others.

On the down side: Updates to trail information is provided on a page in the back of the book (easy to overlook/forget). The map does not have elevation contours (you still need to buy a contour map). The description of how to use the altitude gain and loss graph is located in the Maps chapter (hard to find) instead of in the Introduction chapter with the other information on how to use this book. There is no small single page map showing the general location of all the trails; therefore, you must take out and unfold the larger map each time you want to check a location.

There is a companion book titled "Sierra North".

I enjoy all of the Winnett books because they are accurate, fun to read and reliable. This book has little chapters on over 100 trips in the Sierra range, and the descriptions of each trek are a total delight. So often these hiking books neglect to tell you how to reach the trailhead and oftentimes they don't provide detailed instructions. Winnett never makes this mistake. You will not need a separate map to locate any of the trailheads, his maps and written instructions are first-rate. Equally interesting is that this book doesn't merely give elevation gains, difficulty ratings and desriptions of the trail conditions. These are vital to know, but Winnett also includes little bits of information of what kinds of wild flowers you will encounter, birds, wildlife and other little nuggets neglected in other guides.

The book is supposed to be only for overnight backpacking trips, but there are many trails here that can be used for day hikes. These trips will be in the 10-16 mile range and any strong hiker can easily do these hikes in one day. If you do choose to go the multi-day backpacking route, Winnett describes water sources, camping sites and addresses whether bears or marmots might be a problem for you. Most importantly, he tells you where to find water and whether the water source is reliable throughout the whole year.

I can't recommend this guide highly enough. Even if you're an armchair hiker, you'll derive many hours of vicarious joy from this guide.

The only thing I would add to the previous review is that Sierra South does not have that big a selection of overnighters. Of the ones they do have, many are 9-ish miles in length (round trip) and I don't like to drive that far to do a couple hours of hiking. It is still a great book, though. Sierra North has more in the way of overnighters.

Well researched and extremely well written, it is a wealth of accurate information for planning either partial day hikes or multiday backpacks. The single most reached for resource I use for the lower Sierra's trails. The description of the trail, fauna and flora to be expected enroute and access to trailheads are valuable and allows even the armchair hiker a good virtual experience. A companion guide to be used with this book would be a good topo map similar to perhaps those produced by Tom Harrison Maps.

This book would be a good intro for beginners but there are many books already there. For those with more knowledge of the Sierras the old book had more cross country routes and many of the trips involved some off trail. This new edition is all trail (as far as I know) and that ruined the book a lot. The 7th edition did not have maps like the new one and had they only done it would have been much better. Also, for anyone who is planning a serious backpacking trip into the Sierras you will have to get a topo map anyway so it's better to have the trailheads organized by name rather than by road (or maybe combine both).

All in all, this is nowhere as good as the old 7th edition and I'm glad I had the hardback version of it. I will look for another one unless the 9th editions brings back the many wonderful x-c trips of the 7th edition

Sierra South is another one of those irreplaceable Wilderness Press guides. For anyone hiking in the southern Sierras, this is the must have book. The eighth edition is about 12 years later than my 6th edition, and has taken advantage of the advances in printing technology. There are good maps imbedded in the book, gray shading to highlight text of special interest, and gray section tabs visible on the edge of the book.

The book starts out with good basic information for anyone hiking in the wilderness. For example, one tip that I would have applied last week was to do stream crossings angled upstream, so that the force of the water will not cause your knees to buckle. Since we didn't have this info yet, my wife and I angled downstream, and the force of the water caught her by surprise, causing the bottom of her pack to hit the water.

The organization is now by state access highway, Highway 41, 198, etc. This is useful for quickly determining practical two or three day trips. The book is now 6 by 9 instead of 4.5 by 8, so you will probably resort to cutting out the trip you choose, and carry it with you.The larger size allows more photographs and easier to read text. As in the old book, there are elevation profiles for each trip route. It looks to me as if they have extended the coverage slightly farther north, as my old book didn't have the highway 41 trips. For those GPS enabled hikers you will find gps waypoints for destinations and significant junctions.

When I read through Sierra South, it seems like there are a lot more destinations than in the old book, but the new book has 84 trips, and the old one 100 trips. In any event, the new book can keep you busy for many summers.

My one suggestion for future editions is that the overall map give some indication of where Highway 41 is. I had to check the old Sierra North map.

If you are going to hike the southern Sierra, this is a book you need to have.

Even though TW has "retired" and they've changed the name (made obligatory by the elimination of the even 100 hikes in previous editions) this information packed volume is still the best all around (with the companion Sierra North) hiking guide covering the Sierra Nevada in print today. This edition is organized a little differently and the spiffy fold out map is missing from the back cover but the same reliable and up to date information is available for both arm chair hiking and trip planning.

A great many of the same routes are included as were in the previous volumes and it appears they have been updated with current (and depressing) requlatory requirements and accurate descriptions of the state of repair or disrepair of primitive camp sites and historic markers. Additional trips are included that appear to be more "moderate". Again up to date trail and camp site information along with hazards and fishing data are included.

The only caveat I would add is to take the somewhat nostalgic pining for the "good old days" with a grain of salt. While it's true water quality degradation has made mandatory the use of filters or other types of purification and black bears (and too many friggin' hikers) have forced more and more regulations and quotas on a land that once was wide open for exploration; there's still more "wild" here than in just about any other locale in the country. And that's the same stuff that's drawn legions of backpackers, mountaineers and naturalists ever since John Muir "discovered" it over a hundred years ago. It's still there waiting for you...

My copy of this book is nearly destroyed from all the use it receives. This book is not just for winter. Many of the tours described have also turned out to be excellent mountain bike routes and hiking trips. The descriptions of the areas the routes traverse could be expanded, but the route information itself is first class.

Sufficient detail and a whole lot of information - perhaps too much information, it's a thick book - to plan ski tours, generally for lightweight touring gear, e.g. classic Nordic skis or 3-pin tele's. Alpine riders seeking vertical ft look for George Hurchalla's book.

I had the first (1985) edition and find the second (1995) edition greatly expanded. It went from 78 to 102 tours in 167 to 256 pages. The maps are more detailed--about 2 inches per mile instead of 1 inch. I find more detailed descriptions of side trips than before.

The tours are described with a mileage log instead of a narrative format. I find it easier to find where I am in this format.

The only thing I would add is an index, but due to its detailedness, I still rate the book excellent and worth buying, even if you have the old edition.