Deep Black: An Adventure Through The Black Canyon by travel and nature writer Robb Magley is both an extensively researched history and a thrilling saga of personal challenge. Magley recounts the history of Colorado's Black Canyon, a part of the Colorado country whose dangerous rapids were not conquered until 1901. In addition to thorough archival research, the author's own journey on foot through all thirty-three miles of a canyon that is steeper and narrower than the more famous Grand Canyon, the reader is deftly introduced to seventy-six river crossings, and informed of a brush with death that forcefully illustrates the power, majesty, and danger of this great natural resource and wonder.

Told from a refreshingly honest and unjaded viewpoint - unlike many adventure travel writers, this author does not try to impress us mere readers by mentioning other trips he may have taken in exotic foreign countries. The book explores Magley's relationship with the Black Canyon in Colorado and the research he undertakes to find out more about the first explorers there, but Magley takes the reader on many other side adventures - what do we (the paying public) really expect from National Parks? How does that differ from what our ancesters expected from the same area 200 years ago? And, what do the author and his friend do when exploring the river turns life threatening? This is a great read.

This guide provides detailed maps of where the best waters are, and how to get there. It also provides valuable hatch information. We also had great success in some of the Gunnison waters as well.

The evil Purple Empire has invaded America. Secret Service Operator 5 leads a ragged band on patriots to save the day. This is true pulp adventure -- Operator 5 at his finest!

Crested Butte Singletrack by Holly Annala is the authoritative guide to mountain biking throughout the Gunnison Valley. I highly recommend owning this guide before setting out on your next ride, whether a visitor to the area or a local.
As a Crested Butte resident, Holly provides a detailed local's perspective to the best riding opportunities in this breathtaking region. I found each trail to be well documented with directions to the trailhead, detailed mileage logs and topographic maps.
As an added bonus, the guidebook was smartly designed to fit nicely into waterpacks.

Mary Anne Tarr's guidebook to the Gunnison, Colorado area is thorough, interesting, and very helpful for anyone wishing to explore what these mountains have to offer. The book offers a wide variety of trails in the Gunnison-Crested Butte-Lake City area, as well as hints for hiking around here. If you live nearby, or are considering a trip, this is a book you will want to take with you.

In researching the Gunnison Massacre and the Steptoe Expediton in the 1850's I found this book to be the ultimate source of information on these obscure but important events in American and Mormon history. Dr. Fielding was a professor of history at BYU. His extensive research is combined with a well written account of how John Gunnison, an Army Topographer, and the book he wrote on the Mormon's in 1852 would drastically impact the course of history. The book documents the events in that period that eventually lead to Mountain Meadows Massacre and the "invasion" of the US Army in 1857. Anyone with an interest in Mormon or American history should read this book.

One of the best western genre historical novels I've ever read. Evolves into a first rate thriller. Delves into the dark fringes of frontier life. Well researched and written. The author really knows his subject and how to engage the reader.

This book had me hooked from page 1. The writing style is descriptive, poetic, and thoroughly engaging. This historical novel is based on the real-life adventures of Doc Shores, a Colorado lawman. The story also describes the country and characters of the late nineteenth-century west in vivid detail.

Opening lines: "The Old Man's been dead a long time, nearly thirty years. Now I am old, nearly as old as the Old Man when I first met him. He died alone. Alone I serve his legacy. If stories improve with age, he and I have seasoned his to near perfection."

A great read!

The great pulp magazines are unfamiliar territory to many people, and this Guide offers valuable data for both the serious collector, and people with general interest in the pulps. Publishing dates, number of issues, as well as an overview of the magazines and other great information makes the Guide a valuable item. While bits and pieces of this information on individual titles are available in other forms, this is the first effort to pull it all together, including data on some very unusual and obscure titles. I found the book very useful, and I'm sure other pulp enthusiasts will too.

"The Adventure House Guide to the Pulps" is a seminal book for pulp magazine collectors. A three-year project reflecting a lifetime of collecting on the part of its three author/editors--Doug Ellis, John Gunnison and John Locke--this book should find a cherished spot on every collector's shelf. It lists by year and date 97 percent of all the pulp magazines ever published from October, 1896 to when they died in the mid-fifties. The book has a long introductory history that is a valuable resource in and of itself, as well as thumnail photographs of most of the magazines covered. Each issue gets a small box in which the buyer can check off the issue in his own collection--and keep track of those he still needs. The book is NOT a price guide--anybody who follows eBay knows the futility of that. Nor is it intended as a pictorial history of the field. But for a collector to see at a glance how many issues of a magazine were published, their date, the publishing company that issued them, etc., is information that's usually not readily available and is hard to come by. One thing for sure, if Lawrence Davidson and I had had this book prior to compiling "Pulp Culture" (now out of print), it would have made our task far easier. The author/editors are to be congratulated for a book that should be on every collector's--and every library's--shelf. Highly recommended. -- Frank M. Robinson, San Francisco, CA.

I've been a collector of pulps for nearly forty years. I own one of the largest pulp magazine collections in the world and have written numerous books and articles about these great magazines. The pulps are a major part of American publishing that have never gotten the attention they deserved. Great authors from Dashiell Hammett to H.P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch to Ray Bradbury all began writing in the pulps.

However, there's always been one major obstacle in collecting pulp magazines. There has never been a comprehensive guide to exactly what magazines exist. When buying pulps, you never know if you are getting one of three issues or one of a hundred. The volume numbers were deceiving as many publishers mixed them up or never used them properly. Many pulps were even dated wrong. As a collector, I went crazy for years trying to discover what pulps existed. That's all changed with this book.

For the first time ever a collector can discover exactly how many issues of Weird Tales or Black Mask or literally a thousand other magazines were published. And know the exact dates of the issues. This guide is a perfect checklist for anyone who wants to collect the pulps or wants to know when they were published. It is a book aimed at pulp fans and pulp collectors. This book was never intended to be a pulp price guide or some sort of index to the contents of pulp magazines. It does exactly what it promises and does it extremely well. It is a checklist of what pulps were published and when. That information is invaluable to anyone who is a collector, fan, or researcher involved in the pulp field.

As a collector, fan, and researcher I found this book incredibly valuable. My only complaint is that it wasn't done thirty or forty years ago. If you are interested in the pulps, this is a book you must own.

Muriel Marshall has done it again. This prolific chronicler of Western Slope history is well known for her histories of Escalante Canyon, Grand Mesa, The Uncompahgre Plateau, and the Gunnison-Uncompahgre river region. She has a well-earned reputation for highly readable, authoritative writing that is unmatched for its clarity and scholarship. Thus, it was with great anticipation that I awaited the arrival of her latest effort, a history of the 'Dobie Badlands. The 'Dobies(locals shun the word "adobe")are found along the base of mountain ranges in such diverse areas as Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, eastern Colorado, the Dakotas and a barren looking patch stretching between Grand Junction and Delta, CO. Casual observers tend to describe the 'Dobie's as a barren, desolate, desert that is truly a "no-mans-land." Ah, but they haven't seen them through the eyes or pen of Marshall. What an eye-opening view it is! True to form, Marshall provides the reader with a wonderful description of the history of the 'Dobies which were seas, fresh water lakes and islands some 100 million years ago. She traces the evolution of the area with its diverse geology, flora, fauna and characters that are every bit as awesome as the 'Dobies themselves.While she does justice to the entire area she favors the area along the Gunnison river in Western Colorado. Here we learn that what some call a wasteland is a beautiful, haunting, mesmerizing "pure abstract art form." What do the 'Dobies look like? Well, that depends... "...like hell, if you listen to herders who have lost sheep in them, truckers who've been mired up to the axle during a thaw..." "...like heaven if you listen to photographers, artists, and rockhounds..." "...like haven to runaways. The 'Dobies are a terrible place to finad a cow or a crook..." Its all here, the stories of the men and women that tried to make a life among the unique features of the 'Dobies. The disappearance of a nine-hole golf course; the raising of peacocks; the railroads attempt to tame the terrain; and Doc Holiday's search for outlaws! The history of the 'Dobies is anything but barren or desolate after reading Marshall's exciting work. It was worth the wait to get this marvelous history of an area much misunderstood. Marshall is to be complemented on a job well done.

The Purple War wages on, and Operator 5 (Jimmy Christopher) never tires. The Purple War books by Tepperman are the best of Operator 5 -- pure pulp action, without the annoyances of other authers who handled the character (no ridiculous secret indentity, no stopping the story to explain the magic trick of the month).