I have just finished reading the new guide entitled Fly Fishing the Sierra Nevada by Bill Sunderland, (Aguabonita Books, 1999). When I first heard about it I thought this was the last thing we needed, as Ralph Cutter has long had the definitive guide to the High Sierra, now in its second edition. However, upon reading the new work I see that the two are complementary. Basically Cutter's book assumed you would be backpacking in to high country lakes; Sunderland's book assumes you will making the initial approach by car, essentially along one of the many transsierra highways. Thus the new book takes you up Interstate 80, US 50 and California 4 and 108 and tells you where to get off. Having spend decades coming up these roads without a clue where to find good fishable streams makes the book worth its price immediately. Spending a lot of time in photography myself, I could not help comparing the photographic content of the two works. Both are of top quality. Here Sunderland had considerable help, but I tire a bit long exposures of slow film on rushing streams resulting in flowing milk rather than water. A little fill-flash would not have hurt on some of the images. All in all, I found Cutter's photos and illustrations a small cut above. Cutter also spends 21 pages with detailed illustrations on "Trout food" to 4 pages by Sunderland. On the other hand, where Sunderland shines is the clear maps. There are sufficiently detailed maps of all the major roads and access to the relevant waters. There were a couple I would have liked to learned even a bit more detail. Getting off on those Forest Service roads (where the locals seem to lisf the signs each season) is often an adventure without GPS. Yet, given the number of anglers currently in California, a little obscurity for some streams will not hurt. A nice touch by Sunderland is the extensive listings of resources such as fly shops, camp grounds ranger stations for each section. In sum, Cutter is basically High Mountains and foot travel with a lot on basic techniques. Sunderland is more stream-oriented and road travel, a bit like a AAA guide. All in all, both books are complementary and worth the price. Jerome Yesavage, author Desolation Wilderness Fishing Guide END

Call me old fashioned, but I think you have to love any book that includes a map of the faults surrounding Virginia Lake. Oh, did I mention the photograph of the school bus caught in the 1983 Ophir Creek debris flow.
This book is subtitled Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Special Publication 19, and it makes me want to run out and buy the whole series. The cover has a wonderful aerial photographic of the Truckee Meadows oriented toward the south, snow clad mountains disappearing into the horizon.
Did I mention that this book is cheap?

We wrote this book to let people know about a place we know well, a vast and beautiful landscape that lies hidden behind the clanging slot machines and roulette wheels that people associate with Nevada. This is a dynamic landscape created by glaciers, vast lakes, desert winds, and explosive volcanism. We lead you to active faults that have produced violent earthquakes, hot springs where steam escapes from far below, ghost towns where men once toiled for gold, and 10,000-year-old petroglyphs left behind by ancient inhabitants. We'd like to invite you on a trip that may change your mind about Nevada; we'll be your guides, but the land itself is the storyteller.

This book is a wonderful account of growing up surrounded by nature and the imagination it provokes. Shyrle's book is also rich with history and insight into the place females were expected to take during that era. The writing is sharp and descriptive without being stale. I highly recommend this book.!

A book for gold nugget searching in Nevada is long over-due....Precise information along with maps to the gold sites and gold areas.....Placer gold areas listed with geological info. and generous maps accompaning each text.....A waybill for Nevada's rich's.....No other book like it nor can any other book compare with it's information....Money well spent for this interesting Nevada book is a gold searcher's dream come true....The maps presented will get the seacher right into the precise area of interest....Metal detecting for gold nuggets made easier with Delos Toole's generous use of maps....Nevada's out-back is comparable to Australia's out-back for gold nugget searching. A must see book.

Thrive on the words of this new delight to the Thoene's library. this book is very exciting and leaves you wanting to read every page.

Zanjani brings the vanished world of the goldrush to life with a masterful blend of vivid details concerning key lives and scenes together with a sophisticated understanding of the demography and geology of the mining camp. Wonderful!

hop up and down in your Teva sandals. Wade the great streams as they roar over round stones down from ancient peaks... dance the silver dance of the wild rainbow... but find a place in your ultralight backpack for this book. It deserves a place next to that bag of peanuts, your titanium cup; worth its weight in gold dust from the river, split pea soup from the pouch. Ancient shaman tales and woodcut journeys... yambushi of the mind, and lots of white space for taking your own cryptic outerspace trailnotes...

Imagine the thrill that touches a person at the first Springtime sighting of wild poppies in bloom. If the blossoms are gold, then it's a distinctively California experience, evoking a strong sense of place and of natural wonder. I felt something of the same qualities of delight and surprise when I read Shirley Ewart's Highly Respectable Families: The Cornish of Grass Valley California 1854 - 1954, newly released by Comstock Bonanza Press. In her words the Cornish migration and assimilation into Nevada County, California, assumes the energy of a natural force.

At the center of this ramble through local social history is a tuft of eight family stories - actually a whole meadow - that exemplify the values of the immigrants from the southwestern-most corner of the United Kingdom who came to America to find opportunity for themselves and their children. Here is a vivid and highly readable account of 100 years of nearly constant emigration from Cornwall to California. In telling the stories Shirley enumerates the values that made these families both respected and successful - self-reliance, devotion to family and church, ethnic identity, faith in self-improvement, scorn of liquor, impassive acceptance of hard work and danger, love of music. She explains how these families, who were the arms and hands of industry in the mine, and the voices and faces of faith in the church, earned the respect of the wider community. In a new land they brought an old world culture to full flower.

The vitality of the book comes from the stories themselves, accounts of representative families, such as the Henwoods, the Bennallacks, the Tremenwans and others, all of which turn on intimate moments of decision and self-revelation. The book tells the story of the George family and of Harold J. George, who was offered a cornet if he would learn to play it and who went on to conduct the fabled Grass Valley Cornish Carol Choir for half a century and to bring music to children in the Grass Valley schools. It relates the love story of Jim and Alberta Rowe (grandfather of our Cornish Cousin Winnifred Rowe Cannon) who reportedly never exchanged a cross word in sixty years of marriage, and who were determined that their son would never be "a mucker in a mine." It tells of Mary Anne Mitchell, a young widow and mother scraping by in Cornwall, who had a proposal of marriage from a Cornishmen in America she knew primarily through his letters. She considered the offer and prayed and in the end it was thinking of the future of her two children that turned the balance. In recounting these stories Shirley had the help of Harold T. George, whose name also appears on the book.

Shirley, who spent much of her childhood in St. Ives, Cornwall, and knows first-hand the hardship of immigration and the miseries of homesickness, brought a rare understanding to this work. She was never turned down for an interview, which says as much about her empathy as it does about the generosity of the families she met. She collected these stories over two decades and relates them with sympathy and skill. All of us who are part of the Cornish community owe her a debt of gratitude for preserving and relating these intimate accounts and we are indebted to her publisher for presenting them in such an appealing volume.

This is a book that packs a lot of worthy information into a small book that is easy to backpack. You will need detailed topo maps as those in the book are for overview only, but the hikes are exquisitely detailed and accurate. Many of the trips are in the less well-known areas of Nevada and Eastern California and will please those who like to hike without meeting anyone else. The author encourages readers to find alternative routes to destinations and, although most of the trips are to peaks, there are some easier canyon hikes. Longer trips definitely need experience and route-finding abilities.