California Books

Overall, this is an excellent guide book. Attempting to cover the entire state of California in a single volume, the authors freely admit that their "list" is incomplete and that they had to whittle the book down to include a limited selection of historical sites from among the hundreds found throughout the state. Fortunately, the coverage of the places that made the cut is excellent, providing plenty of background information about not only the mission, mansion, or museum itself, but also its place in California history. Websites are listed when available, allowing the visitor to check out updated information prior to a visit. My only recommendation would be that the authors consider publishing a second volume that would add in the many deserving sites that couldn't be included in this book.

If you're a California resident or library seeking a fine blend of California trivia facts and history and a travelogue to the state's best museums, then you can't go wrong with Best of California's Missions, Mansions and Museums. It functions like a travel guide by offering hours, costs, contact information and trip and tour itineraries for visitors - and it functions like a history book in providing a healthy dose of background history about each establishment. The 'don't miss this' tips are particularly well done.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Thanks to the Internet, it's easy these days to compile and publish lists of things, such as bed and breakfast getaways or suspension bridges or pet friendly parks, but rarer for authors actually to visit the venues they write about. That's what impressed me about "Best of California's Missions, Mansions and Museums" ($21.95 in paperback from Wilderness Press) by Ken and Dahlynn McKowen out of Sacramento.

The couple, along with Dahlynn's two children, 9-year-old Shawn and his sister, 14 year-old-Lahre, hit the road for four months, visited some 200 sites and racked up 10,000 miles on the odometer. The result, after some editing, are chatty descriptions of 135 family-friendly California missions, mansions and museums. This is a good guide to consult if one is planning a summer vacation in the Golden State.

The listings, write the authors, "provide a broad geographic and subject-matter selection of California's missions, mansions and museums, primarily as they relate to California's history and culture." Picking the "best" was difficult, subjective of course, and a lot of places were not included (such as most science and technology museums) that didn't meet the criteria of illuminating state history.

In the area of missions, "our final choice came down to 13 missions that we felt included not only wonderful museums, but retained much of their original or at least their early 20th century restored historic fabric. ... We chose our favorite mansions in much the same way as the missions, but we added accessibility -- how frequently they are open to the public for tours."

For museums, the authors concentrated on smaller collections. "We didn't choose them because of their size or the value or rarity of their collections, although we certainly considered those things. ... We considered their uniqueness, not only in the types of collections and the variety of artifacts, but also in how they relate to California's overall history or to their local community's history."

The book is divided geographically, from the North Coast, through the Great Valley and on to the South Coast and desert. Each section has a numbered locator map, trivia questions and introduction. Each two- or three-page entry features a "what's here" list, a "don't miss this" note, a description of the venue, usually a small black and white photograph and a box providing operating hours, cost, location and the Web site. The book also features an index and a list destinations by category.

The chapter devoted to the Great Valley includes entries for the Turtle Bay Exploration Park (including the Sundial Bridge) in Redding, and Chico's own Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park.

The authors note that the second floor of the mansion "features several of the home's 12 bedrooms. That was not a good location for bedrooms in a town where summer temperatures reach 100 degrees, and upstairs rooms become even hotter. Possibly, the plantation windows served as summer escapes to cooler sleeping arrangements on the outside balcony. The indoor toilets that Bidwell included were thought strange by his neighbors and visitors. Many believed that having to perform such bodily tasks inside a house, rather than in an outhouse, was unsanitary."

And there is some Great Valley trivia. "Where can you find the very first Pony Car (Mustang) manufactured by Ford?" It's at the Towe Auto Museum in Sacramento. The car is a white convertible, the first to roll off the assembly line back on April 9, 1964.

See you on the road!

Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

This book highlighted the best short hikes that anyone can do. What's so great about the book is you can select a bunch of short hikes that you can do in one day. You'll feel like you have gained a great overview of each of the parks by going on these short hikes because they're all quite different. Plus the book is small and light enough that you can take with you on the hike. It's great to read the passsage as you embark on the start of your hike to refresh your memory of what you'll encounter along the way. We even saw a black cub on one of these hikes. Not too scare anyone off, but we thought it was pretty cool since we're city folks. Happy hiking!

One would be hard pressed to find better authors for a hiking guide to the Northern California Redwood Forests. Jerry and Gisela Rohde have already published two excellent travel guides to the area and their works are a delight to read. Perhaps the single best feature of this book is that the authors actually limited themselves to describing only short and easy walks in the region. (This is in sharp contrast to some of the other Mountaineers Press "Short Hikes" guides which have been known to include 22 mile hikes!) Of the sixty-four hikes included in this book, twelve are less than a mile, and only seven exceed 5 miles. Literally anyone can find a walk suited to them among those listed in this book.

This book has several other nice aspects as well. Mileages for trails are accurate to within 1/20 (.05) miles. The Rohde's also provide graphic representations of the amount of elevation you can expect to gain or lose over the course of a hike. Finally, each hike includes a sketch map of the trail and most include stunning black and white photographs that are almost worth the price of the book alone.

If I have any complaint at all about this book, it is that I would have begun coverage of the North Coast Redwoods at Richardson Grove State Park rather than Humbolt Redwoods. Richardson Grove appears right after you cross the Humbolt County line while traveling north on Hwy 101. It is at this point you truly know you are in Redwood Country. The many beautiful trails there merit a visit if you are coming into Humbolt county from the south.

That said, the authors are to be commended for including Humbolt Redwoods State Park since it is outside the boundaries of the National Park and often overlooked. I personally think the F.K. Lane Grove walk (Hike 1 in this book) is the single best stroll among redwoods in the state. Humbolt Redwoods State Park is also the location of the tallest redwood trees, National Park claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Prarie Creek Redwoods State Park also receives much needed attention in this volume. I hope to spend several days there the next time I go north.

This book is simply a "must buy." Any trip to the Northern California Coast without it is incomplete. Also be sure to pick up the authors' other two books. They contain delightful local histories of the region and are a joy to read.

Written by longtime area residents, this handy guide reads south to north, has small but good trail maps, includes interesting historical details, and contains a healthy number of good-quality (alas, B&W) photos. An appendix lists Park and Campground information but the book does not cover lodging and dining facilities. The book concludes with a helpful index.

The front of the book features several pages of tables grouping hikes according to whether they feature Rivers, Creeks and Ponds, or Lots of Wildflowers, Old Growth Redwoods, Beaches and/or Coast, and even hikes for Terrific Fall Color. Also included are miles and difficulty.

Trail and hike descriptions list the essentials: length, difficulty, elevation; and for the photographers among us, indispensable details such as areas rich in spring wildflowers, as well as areas with concentrations of deciduous trees that lend themselves to good fall color, also riparian scenes, and of course old-growth stands of the most stunning Giants themselves.

I'm in the planning stages of a trip to Redwood Country and after just reading this book cover-to-cover, it may be the only guide I need.

If you have ever dreamed or wondered about what it must have been like to travel cross-country to California in the days of the gold-rush, you will enjoy - and learn from this book. The story is filled with bits of history, some of the heartbreaks and lessons of life, and the challenges and dangers of travel in a covered wagon - with a feel of the huge achievement of crossing the vast west. The story is flowing with human interest, offering young readers the opportunity to identify with Billy's experiences.

A good yarn about the old West
Reviewed by: Pearl Nancarrow (9/21/2005)
History comes alive in this well-researched tale of a young man heading West. Billy becomes part of the vanguard of all that is western when he signs on to help lead a wagon train from Missouri to the gold fields of California. This gem of a story is historically accurate from the wagons and their contents, the place names along the way, to the names of some of the people involved. The story wends its way from adventure to hardship, from pride of achievement, the thrill of new life and to the heartbreak of death along the trail. Billy not only grows up on this trek, he gains wisdom and matures into responsible adulthood. Walter Wood spins a "good yarn", in that a young reader can also learn a great deal about the movement west,and the 1870s in general. As a former teacher, I'd recommend this book for children from grade 3 on up through middle school.

A "must read" adventure story

This was a wonderful book to read,it was very entertaining. It held my attention and I coldn't put it down until I finished!! I live in Wisconsin and love reading about the west. I have lived in Wisconsin my whole life and have never been out west so this book made me feel like I was there. I live in Amery Wisconsin and I'm in the 8th grade. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone.

This scholarly work on the teachings of Bodhidharma sets a new standard. Not only does Broughton provide clear translations, but the volume of informative commentary has made this text my number one Bodhidharma resource. Broughton provides quality with quantity here, explaining unusual phrases from the ancient texts at page bottoms, and endnoting items requiring more thorough treatment. (The endnotes are generally both useful and quite insightful. My only "wish" is that the endnotes could be footnotes instead. This way, the reader could have simultaneous access to both the root text and Broughton's research. As it is, you have to flip back and forth a bit. This is a really minor quibble though, as footnoting everything would have the drawback of making the root text harder to read on its own - mostly by making the pages too "busy.")

This is not a book on "pop Zen"; it is a resource for those seeking to contextualize Tamo's teachings both historically and philosophically. Broughton makes a very good case that the "Two Entrances" commonly attributed to Tamo is actually the work of T'an-lin, an early Sanskritist. He points out that the character of the "Method for Quieting Mind," what he calls "Record I," is more consistent with what we know of Tamo's teaching. Broughton also discusses other members of Bodhidharma's circle, the supporting roles played by other sutras in these texts, and much more.

I believe that I can state objectively that this book represents a superb piece of research, and that Broughton has made Tamo's early teachings very accessible. It is my sincere hope that the author will continue working in this field. For anyone interested in the early development of Zen, this text is a fascinating read.

I live in the Buddhist hell of Too Many Zen Books. This nicely accompanies all my other ones, and clearly stands out in its own right.

Thorough and enlightening. Brilliant insights! Where has Prof. Broughton been all of these years?

Bottle Houses tells the true story of Grandma Prisbey, artist, collector, and builder. Although not as famous as Simon Rhodia of Watts Tower fame, she similarly constructed edifices out of discarded glass and other objects. Her creative urge led to a whole complex of varied structures, united by the use of found objects. As Grandma Prisbey said, "What some people throw away, I believe I could wear to church." Unfortunately for her-and for us-some of the buildings were damaged by the 1994 quake in Simi Valley, California; however, much remains, and there is a "Preserve Bottle Village Committee" working to restore the Village.

Melissa Slaymaker does a superb job of drawing us into the story. Right away, she describes Prisbey's, nonconformity, and independence: "...she didn't have a house. She was too busy to have one." "Grandma Prisbrey had some land in California, but she didn't have enough money to build a house in a regular way. But Grandma Prisbey wasn't the sort of person who did things in a regular sort of way."

Prisbey went to the local dump, using "what some people throw away" including "furniture, stoves, refrigerators, dishes, clothes, batteries....even dolls. Hundreds of dolls."

The most important of these junked items were the colored bottles. Using everything but milk bottles (apparently against the law) she stacked bottles atop each other and held them in pace with cement. With these as her basic building materials, she built bottle houses for her collections of pencils and dolls, a bottle chapel, bottle birdbath, wishing well, rumpus room, and the round house ("everything in it was round. It had a round fireplace, a round bed, and a round dresser with a round mirror over it." Other creative projects include a house of shells and a "singing tree," hung with thousands of bottles that rang like chimes. She built a pyramid out to headlights and 150 gold lipstick cases, and dyed her three cats (vegetable dye is supposedly safe) pink, green, and blue! Slaymaker and Paschkis portray Grandma Prisbey as an artist without formal training or conventional drawing talent, who still created beautiful, original, works that delight the eye and express her individuality.

The bright illustrations and decorative "folkish" art designs by illustrator Julie Paschkis add greatly to Slaymaker's text. Paschkis captures the luminosity of the colored glass bottles, using shading and reflection in her gouache illustrations. Other illustrations are reminiscent of old stencil patterns and mid-20th century graphics. Paschkis scattered her drawings over the page, yet they retain a uniform style, echoing the feeling and look of Prisbey's Bottle Village. Colors have unusual and beautiful hues, and Paschkis conveys the vivid, multi-colored mosaics accurately and with flair. The back of the book shows photos of Grandma Prisbey, some of the structures and a link to the Preserve Bottle Village Committee website (http://echomatic.home.mindspring.com/by). I strongly suggest viewing the site, and I higly recommend this enjoyable, eye-pleasing book.

Since the days when Simon Rodia built the "Watts Towers" in Los Angeles, I have wanted to visit other projects that were "flights of Imagination" ..... and this story of Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Houses naturally claims my applause. Here's to COLOR, CREATIVITY & INDEPENDENT THINKING ! What fun for the illustrator, and for us all!

In 1956 Grandma P. left her open-road life to settle in Simi Valley,California. She needed room for her souvenir pencil collection first, and a bottle house was the result of salvaged bottles, a strong arm for mixing mortar and persistence. Her sons helped with roofing & hanging doors as her little 'compound' grew.

But this was no Hyannisport! Tressa Prisbrey's unstifled creative juices led to other structures, small & tall: a house for dolls, a bottle chapel, birdbath, wishing well and a bottle Rumpus Room. There is a round House of bottles, and a Singing Tree where more than a thousand bottles hang & sing like wind chimes! She 'branched out' and used other materials, even potted cactus, and she laid pathways for the many gawking visitors & picture-takers.

A "Preserve Bottle Village Committee" works now to protect the future of this imaginative artistry; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. REVIEWER mcHAIKU enthuses over the author & illustrator who bring us Grandma Prisbrey's colors bursting like Roman candles: a memorable legacy for all to share.

This beautifully illustrated children's book tells the story of charmingly quaint Grandma Prisbrey who builds herself a house made of empty bottles (and just a whee bit of mortar) -- making her feel as if she lived inside a rainbow or a diamond. A little glass shed for her pencil collection, a well (made of blue bottles, of course) and a glass chapel are added later on. The furniture -- if she does not build it herself, from bottles -- and all kinds of knick-knacks to make the houses even prettier come from the local dump.

Sounds like a beautiful story? Well, it's a true story. Grandma Prisbrey lived in California, where she built "Bottle Village," later placed on the National Register of Historic Places. 1994, six years after her death, Bottle Village was seriously damaged by an earthquake. This book shows her creations when they were all still sparkling ...

The spiral bounding of the book makes it easy to use in the field, plus the detailed maps and pictures makes finding the boulders easy. I recommend this book highly.

Wow! This is the book I've been waiting for! So. Cal. needed this updated bouldering guide. Great pictures, too!

Excellent new guide for southern CA bouldering. Detailed maps with GPS coordinates. Great photos as well.

My God, what can one say about Nanoi. Feet on the earth. eyes on the stars. The simplicity and wisdom of Lao Tzu, Chaung Tzu, Ryokwan, and the entire linage of the imps and sages come into focus for our age. This is the real deal. out of the ashes of war we have hope. as we hope for for our times, perhaps this song needs to be sung and re affirmed with lust and volume. I shall break my mirror, and I shall sing against the evil and greed of our government in these dark times.

Poems of simple truths that the soul craves, but the mind forgets.

A modern rendering of ancient wisdom gained through experience,not intellect. Touching, intelligent, empty, thorough, leaving nothing untouched butleaving no trace. One of my few personal treasures, a true touchstone. I only wish there was more of his work available.

I read the book looking for an introduction to Japanese feminism more interesting than your average textbook and I was not disappointed. The interviews explore the women's personal interests, projects, and views about feminism. Each interview is supplemented by the a brief biography of the interviewee and an exerpt from something she has written.

Dense and interesting, definitely worth it.

This book breaks the stereotype of the submissive Japanese woman by presenting interviews and written works by Japanese women who are considered to be leading feminists in their fields, surprisingly few of those academic. It shows that Japanese feminists have the same concerns as American feminists, but they continue to focus on the family and mother roles as the saving grace of society. It's a refreshing viewpoint away from radical feminism, and it made me rethink my definitions of feminism. There are extensive references to Japanese culture and language, which may be hard to follow for those not familiar with Japan, but a good chronology and glossary are provided. It covers such issues as abortion, pornography, fertility treatments, and environmentalism. It's a very interesting book without the heavy obscure jargon of most academic publications. I highly recommend it if your interest lies in Japan, feminism, or both!

this book was really useful for me while i was working on my senior thesis. but i think that it would be a good read for anyone who is interested in feminism and women's issues. japanese feminisms have many differences from american feminisms, but at the same time, there are quite a few parallel. one of the best parts of this book was the section on the translated version of our bodies ourselves.

If you enjoy historical books about Asian American or California history, this is a "must read." Lani Ah Tye Farkas tells the fascinating true story of her great grandfather, who arrived in California in the early 1850s and overcame racial oppression and other challenges to successfully settle in America. She then traces the fortunes of his progeny, and tells their stories through two generations. The resulting book accurately portrays the many struggles and challenges that early Chinese immigrants faced in California in the last century and a half. The book features wonderful family photographs, some tragic stories, and is fully footnoted.

If you enjoy historical books about Asian American or California history, this is a "must read." Lani Ah Tye Farkas tells the fascinating true story of her great grandfather, who arrived in California in the early 1850s and overcame racial oppression and other challenges to successfully settle in America. She then traces the fortunes of his progeny, and tells their stories through two generations. The resulting book accurately portrays the many struggles and challenges that early Chinese immigrants faced in California in the last century and a half. The book features wonderful family photographs, some tragic stories, and is fully footnoted.

This beautifully illustrated and written story of a Chinese immigrant is fascinating in its scope, detail, and in putting his experience in the context of our California history. As a fourth generation Chinese, there was much here that I did not know about my ancestors' struggles and triumphs, courage and tragedies. Enjoy this wonderful story and receive an education.

I haven't read the book, just the first chapter. But it should be really good. Trust me, I should know. Mr. Abee is my English teacher.

It shreds the misconception of a shallow, fashion-obsessed La-La Land, where bastions of ultra-cool hipsters capture, tame and manufacture each new style. Where nothing is real and everybody wants to be in the movies, get a record contract, create scandal or just be cool. While that may be the image that is perpetuated by those who worship at the altar of Hollywood, for natives of LA, the story is quite different.

At times poignantly prophetic, comical and depraved, The Bus is an autobiographical novel in the tradition of Miller, Kerouac or Whitman, a lyrical journey down Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards as the author travels on the Number 4 city bus from the historic Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles to Santa Monica in order to retrieve his car from the auto mechanic.

As the bus passes through the major intersections and past the diverse urban scapes, the author travels backwards through his life, relating his experiences growing up and living in Los Angeles. From the reality of his current family life in the sights and sounds of Echo Park and Silverlake where he lives with his wife and two children. His memories from the recent past come to the surface along the rest of the way: at Sanborn Avenue, where an old drug buddy committed suicide, Vermont Avenue, where his mother used to live when she was a teenager, Highland Avenue and the porno shacks, 20th street, working in the St John's Hospital morgue and Lincoln Boulevard, where a boyhood fight took place at the Jack in the Box.

In this process, The Bus recreates vividly for the reader a city that is a home, a homeland, where children are born, families are raised, people grow old, struggle, go to school, work, give birth, get born, die... where Hollywood is a freeway and Beverly Hills is that place the Clampets moved to from Tennessee. And just like any other city in America, a place that can foster a personal history as deep as the one depicted in The Bus.

This book tells the story of taking the bus from the deep heavy heart of Los Angeles in Silver Lake to the glitzy made up,... face-lift westside Santa Monica. This book is a poetic novel that moves through the neighborhoods block by block, explores the life of the author, the language of his mind in big inspired bursts of love and music, moves you through the people, the struggle, and the love of the city. When the ride is over Abee sweetly deposits you at your destination. The Bus is an amazing and great work.