BRO is the best friend of any discriminating wedding or party-planner in the Bay Area. This reference book contains invaluable tips, advice and reviews about the vendors and venues that can make your special day extra special. Its pages contain eye opening answers and anecdotes that will spare countless hours of research and worry for even the most seasoned host.

My wife and I were just married on May 13th, and this book provided us with a wealth of excellent information on wonderful vendors in the San Francisco bay area. We located our photographer (Glenn Jay Photography), DJ (Soundtrax), and many other resources here, and they were spectacular! This book not only saved us much time and work, but was also a link to some of the best wedding professionals in this area. If you're getting married within the next 2 years, please do yourself a favor and pick this book up!

I got engaged last month, and one of my engagement gifts was this wonderful book. When I first went to look for a book, I did not know what to look for. This book gives me access to all the vendors within the San Francisco Bay area. I feel a lot of all the hard part of the job is done for me, and I really can enjoy the engagement. So far I have found a wonderful band, photographer, and location. As a very nervous bride that wants everything to be perfect, this has really put my mind at ease. I highly recommend this book anyone getting party or even throwing a party.

We received our cookbook as a Christmas present and have not only had so much fun experimenting with the different recipes, we have been so impressed with the book and its cause. Our recommendation? Chili cheese bake, of course! What a great book!

What an outstanding book and what a great cause! Whatever type of food your hankering for -- it's probably in here. Mexican, Chinese, California cuisine, even Russia and Belize are represented. There is everything from "family" night 15 minute meals to equisite menus from famous chefs. We've given it as hostess gifts, Christmas gifts and birthday presents! It's a great book!

This is a cookbook with tremendous heart and soul! My copy is on its way to becoming dog-earred, and I've bought several as hostess gifts. I love to cook, own many cookbooks, and really use a select few. This is one of the select few I use. Great recipes for all: Utilitarian for the family, the working household, and for entertaining! The recipe commentary is well-written, and enticing. The recipes are very user-friendly, and delicious! I'm so pleased to purchase a cookbook that benefits a worthy cause--our public schools!

Superbly illustrated with black/white photography and "user friendly" maps, One Tank Trips With Bill Murphy showcases 52 Florida-based adventures that can, quite literally, be taken with one tank of gas in the car, van, truck, or motorhome. From the Pioneer Florida Museum in Dade City to the Mote Marine Aquarium in Sarasota, a wealth of relevant information and "how to" advice make One Tank Trips With Bill Murphy a strongly recommended planning aid for anyone seeking fun in the Florida sun! Also very highly recommended is the new sequel, More One Tank Trips With Bill Murphy (0942084276, ...) which follows the same superbly presented composition of the first book and offers the vacationer with 52 additional fun-filled Florida excursions based on the "one tank of gas to get there and back) that ranges from the San Sebastian Winery in St. Augustine to the Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum in Parrish. If you are planning an outing anywhere in Florida, begin by browsing through these two excellent travel idea guidebooks by Bill Murphy.

I got this book because I was new to the area - Am I glad I did! It has lots of wonderful places to visit including nature parks that locals didn't even know existed. I have given a copy of this book to all my overseas & out of state guests and they have enjoyed exploring the wonderful area we live in. Does not contain the big theme parks - we all know where they are - but all the hidden and interesting places that are suitable for all ages. A great book!!!!

THIS GREAT TRAVEL BOOKS BY WELL KNOWN TV ANCHOR BILL MURPHY HAS SOLD 75,000 COPIES SINCE November. It is well written with 52 great trips to take on just one tank of gas. You will be surprised how many other interesting places has besides Walt Disneyworld!!!!

This is one of the best books I've read in recent years. The characters are so well-delveloped and they are memorable, warm, and real. The relationships among the friends in this story curled the tips of my toes. It is suspenseful, humorous in the right places, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and totally worth the read from page one all the way to the last sentence on the last page. I found myself thinking about these characters as if they were real, even weeks after I finished the book. My only regret was that the story had to end. I highly recommend this book if you want an excellent read that makes you feel warm way down deep inside.

This was an exciting, heartwarming mystery that kept my attention throughout the book. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and I kept reading with anticipation until the end. It was a nice mixture of the love and friendship between characters.

The Ghosts of Old Bay Road is a very heartwarming mystery that I found hard to put down. The author captures your interest in the character of Shayna McDuffy from current day back through her past to develop the mystery of her life. There were just enough characters involved in the story so as not to confuse or bore you. I couldn't wait to get to the end of the story to find out the mystery but when I did finish I was disappointed it was over. I wanted it to go on and on. Very easy and enjoyable reading. Highly recommended.

Although I have read most all of Felice Picano's books, I find myself returning to A HOUSE ON THE OCEAN, A HOUSE ON THE BAY most frequently - sometimes just for recalling his atmospheric descriptions of places with and without people, sometimes just to re-visit Fire Island - a place I've never been but that has become for me a solid symbol of East Coast escape. Picano's memoirs at times are overwhelming: how could one man have experienced life so richly and tranposed it to words for us, the voyeur readers? Perhaps the places and people he so succinctly describes are bathed in poetic license, but that only makes the moments in between interpersonal encounters pregnant pauses. Picano has managed to keep us entertained book after book and I eagerly await the release of ONYX.

Checking as to when the next novel by Felice Picano is due out, I realized that though I have read all his books I have never written about them in this forum. Strange, but understandable when I look back over all the experiences of reading his work. Picano writes in the manner of long nighttime walks with a close friend: he shares quips and bedazzling escapades and memories of lost friends like few others. His stories are at once funny, tender, bitchy (in a way that few can imitate), and just plain good stories. In A HOUSE ON THE OCEAN, A HOUSE ON THE BAY he seems to have paused in the midst of memories very special to him...or at least his characters are so acutely drawn that they seem like pages from a diary. If you've ever wondered what Fire Island was like at its peak, here it is. Wonderful tales populated by people you'd like to know....or at least have observed! Felice Picano keeps treating us to fine writing and I eagerly await ONYX!

I am Felice Picano, or certainly am living his life. Well, sort of. When I read straight through this book--a library copy, I am going to buy it now--I said to myself and to my friends that I loved the book so much because of how much I see of him in me, including that he was also born on February 22nd, that we are both gay, and that I am struggling, as he was, to write. If any book can give me inspiration to live my dream, it is "A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay." Bravo to Picano for writing a book that was written for me.

I live close to many of these hikes, but never knew about them. Yes, there are some that just about everybody knows, but this book also takes you to places that are really overlooked. I like many things about the book: the chart in the front that lets you know about the hikes at a glance, how it is organized by region, and how the author tells little stories about the history, plants, and animals of the area you are going to visit. I own five other hiking guides to hikes in and around the area, and this one is, by far, the best of the lot.

I had bought Adkins' 50 Hikes in Maryland, so I thought I would give this one a try. He did it again for me. Short hikes, long hikes, overnighters--there is something here for everyone. And again he does it in an easy style of writing. As a response to one of the other Amazon.com reviews of this book; Adkins tells of general camping areas, but does not point out specific sites. He does this to help preserve and protect areas from overuse. Get this book--your feet will be happy and your eyes will enjoy the places it brings you.

50 Hikes In Northern Virginia is a superbly written and presented compendium of outdoor hiking trails that range from the rugged summits of the Allegheny Mountains to the gentle shores of the Chesapeake Bay. There are hiking opportunities for the novice, the experienced, the young and the not-so-young. An overview chart provides information on each of the fifty hikes at a glance. Each hike description includes directions to the trailhead, a detailed account of the route, a topographic map, and entertaining infobits on historical and natural points of interest. If you are seeking an outdoor adventure in what Northern Virginia has to offer, begin your planning with Leonard Adkins' 50 Hikes In Northern Virginia!

This book was very interesting. Not only did it have plenty of photos, the text was actually useful and have a great message. Reading Galen's work is just as great as looking at it. I had never even heard of or seen most of the places in the book until I got the book. Now, I'm walking some of the same trails I discovered in the book.

An incredible photographic argument that nature is ever-present, fecund, and indomitable! Rowell and Sewell capture the majesty of one the world's most beautiful urban areas to describe nature's ability to adapt and thrive next to mankind. A surprising array of wild animals are photographed within the ex-urban landscape and combine with dramatic Bay Area landscapes to make a compelling story of the beauty that surrounds us--if only we can take time out from our busy lives to see it! This is a great gift to bring back East for the holidays.

Galen Rowell is showing here surely the nicest landscape shots I have ever seen. The Bay Area, that I didn't know, is here in spades, and if you know a little bit of tech, you see several uses of Galen special shooting way (flash, A2 Nikon filtering, s.o.)

The book presents an interesting first-person study of how the 53 mile-wide Chesapeake impact structure was identified. The 40-million year-old feature is not apparent from surface observation, and its unmasking forms this classic tale of scientific detective work at is finest. The author is not hesitant in issuing praise to those who knew some atypical feature was present, but who lacked the means or opportunity to categorically identify the structure for what it was. In this respect, the narrative is delightfully free of much of the acrimony that has marked so many of the works about the Chixulub dinosaur killer.

The book's text is highly readable and explains in an unpatronizing manner many of the tools and concepts used in solving this great scientific puzzle. Also, the book's author doesn't allow himself to be bogged down in minutiae, an all-to-easy peril in a work of this nature.

The book is recommended to any teen or adult with a limited background in science, and to any and all persons with an interest in earth science or the scientific method in action. I liked it very much. Enjoy.

Geology is a fun science and part of the fun is due to the historical nature of much of geology - geology is all about solving ancient mysteries. Chesapeake Invader by C. Wylie Poag excellenty describes the solving of one such geological mystery. Starting in the middle of the 20th-Century, geologists began to find unusual rock formations in coastal Virginia that didn't have a garden variety geologic explanation. The plate tectonics revolution, which provided so many solutions to so many geologic conundrums, didn't unravel these weird East Coast rocks. This mystery had to wait until humans wrapped their minds around one of the last great discoveries of geology, the realization that asteroid and comet impacts are an important force in our Solar System and that the Earth is not immune from the devastation of these impacts. Poag gives the reader a good glimpse of how geologists [and scientists in general] go about solving problems. Folks who enjoy learning about impacts, but are tired of reading about the end of Cretaceous impact, should enjoy Chesapeake Invader as a welcome change of pace. [If you haven't read enough about the end of Cretaceous impact, I would highly recommend The End Of The Dinosaurs by Charles Frankel and Night Comes To The Cretaceous by James Lawrence Powell.] I enjoyed going along for the ride while C. Wylie Poag solved this great geological mystery and I recommend that you also take this ride.

This book is well-written non-fiction.

Poag tells of a fifty-year geological research project on the East Coast of North America. He tells us how the findings of several natural sciences have combined to demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that a large meteor impacted Earth at Chesapeake Bay, some 35 million years ago. In doing so, Poag teaches the reader about undersea sonic surveying, about core drilling to determine the structures surrounding impact craters of various types, about fossils found in seabed (and former seabed) rocks, and about how those fossils permit approximate dating of sedimentary deposits back to life's origin on earth, some 4 billion years ago.

We now know that large meteor impacts have played a major role in the Earth's evolution. Striking only 35 million years back, Poag's "Chesapeake Invader" was a relatively recent such event. In its closing chapter, his book addresses the present NASA search for the NEXT one.

This is a book about the game of football when it was REALLY football, and when the players were genuinely tough guys who poured their hearts into the game... and not the candy-derriere prima donnas on the pro teams today (except for the Dallas Cowboys). Vince Lombardi worked these guys, built and molded them, inspired them to be one of the best teams of any sort in history. It so happened their medium was football, but I think their determination and Lombardi's leadership could have driven this particular Green Bay Packer group to accomplish anything they set out to do. Kramer's story is a fantastic look into the gritty gridiron world of yesteryear, before all the promotional opportunities and player greed converted professional football from a knock-heads team sport into something more akin to professional wrestling.

Buy it today. It's a great story you won't be able to put down.

As a fan of the Packers, or sports in general, Instant Replay is a must-read for the sports enthusiast. Stirring and funny, Jerry Kramer weaves his way through life with Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers. One only hopes they reprint this for future generations. Don't overlook it's companion, Distant Replay, which picks up where Instant Replay leaves off, 20 years later. These should be a staple in the sports reader's library.

This is a fascinating diary of a year in the life of a pro football player. And what a year!! Jerry Kramer is an offensive guard who plays for the 1967 Green Bay Packers as they try to become the first NFL team to win three straight championships. Not only is it a great drama (especially if you don't already know the outcome), but it's very interesting to see how the NFL has changed over the past 30 years - and how it's still the same in many ways. It's also a good snapshot of what the average person saw, thought, said and dreamed about in the late 60's, from the perspective not of a flower-child or a politician, but from a regular, honest guy who happened to play pro football for a living before the big salaries and ESPN. I can't recommend this book enough. I didn't want it to ever end.