Don't bother with this book. There are singularly few trips, to begin with, and they cover such a tiny portion of the potential material. Worse, he misses all the good stuff! For instance, in San Francisco proper, due to geology classes I've taken and scouting around on my own, I could think of a score of excellent sites, whereas he chose only a few sites and those are mediocre-to-poor. Don't waste your money.

It's clear that Konigsmark knows a fair amount about Franciscan geology. However, there is a ridiculously high number of errors in the maps accompanying the text. Just a few examples:

The San Joaquin River is described as having flowed through the Santa Clara Valley in the late Pleistocene.

Columbus Avenue is wrongly labeled as "Market Street" in a series of four maps: all the more egregious considering that the real Market Street is also labeled, and correctly.

A fault trace of the Hayward Fault in downtown Hayward is labeled as "San Andreas fault".

And so on. ... the number of trips described could be much larger. The East Bay hills are nowhere mentioned, despite dramatic and accessible displays of everything from Tertiary volcanism to warped and folded marine cherts to fossilized alluvial fans. But what really kills this book for me is the sloppy editing. If Geo Press can't even be bothered to copy edit howlers like those described above, why should I trust the rest of the book?

If you're looking for accounts of Naval actions of the Spanish American war, then you won't find them any place else. Otherwise this book is a collection of Naval stories possibly not published anywhere else AND for good reason. What this book needed was some more background research to add some zip to these stories. Unfortunately that wasn't done & this is merely a collection of incidents. This is from a person who even finds the 14th century exciting.

The French Are in the Bay is a compendium of Irish scholarly essays on the French expedition to Bantry Bay in December 1796. The French had dispatched the expedition in the hope of landing, inflicting a defeat upon the British forces there and thereby inducing England to negotiate a peace agreement. Irish rebels in exile, led by the nationalistic lawyer Wolfe Tone, had instigated the French expedition and hoped to create a new united Ireland in the wake of a French military victory. However, none of these aspirations came to pass because the French expedition ended in ignominious failure, with not a single French soldier landed on Irish soil in 1796. This book, based on lectures given at the Bantry By summer school in 1996, attempts to place the expedition in historical and local perspective. Unfortunately, this compendium starts well and then gradually wanders far away from its subject, until it is more cultural mythology than history. The book is certainly a disappointment for historians interested in this phase of the French Revolutionary Wars, although there are some useful nuggets of information.

The French Are in the Bay consists of ten chapters, beginning with the best chapter, a 16-page summary of the expedition. Another chapter on weather gives a great deal of factual data concerning the impact of the weather on the expedition and concludes, "in terms of the influence of the weather, the Bantry Bay Expedition must rank as one of the most significant of European military history." A third chapter covering the naval and military aspects of the expedition has some of the most useful information, particularly concerning British forces and capabilities in Ireland. In addition, there are 12 primary source letters from a Major John Brown of the Royal Engineers, who was an eyewitness of the French activities in Bantry Bay. Unfortunately, the remainder of the essays rapidly dwindle into irrelevance, starting with chapters on Wolfe Tone's ideology, the South Munster region in the 1790s, the development of the settlement at Bantry, Irish political ballads and folk tales about the expedition. Unfortunately, there are no accounts from the French perspective, even though these are available. There are 14 pages of endnotes and one sketch map of Bantry Bay but no index.

The historical value of this book is very limited and it appears to be primarily intended for local consumption. Irish nationalistic mythology creeps into this version of history at every turn, which further erodes the objectiveness of this study. While there are some useful nuggets of information contained within these pages, they are few and far between.

This book works as an entertainment, but as a research book it trips itself by not indexing everyone and everything mentioned in the body of the text. For example, check out the "Robert Mapplethorpe and Jack Fritscher" connection --as well as San Francisco's own Gay-Bay "Drummer" magazine itself-- all on page 134, and then try to find these two people and that singular magazine in the index. This is just one instance of sloppy indexing and sloppier scholarship that mars this volume,and the integrity of the editors--at least to this anal-retentive buyer of historical books. The two editors seem asleep at the wheel, relying on researchers who lack an overview. They should have paid attention. Armistead Maupin in his superficial introduction takes the usual cheap, gay potshot at Judaism and Christianity for the woes suffered by lesbigay culture, when he could have done so much more with the opportunity of the two pages to theorize/talk about the actual Gay-Bay culture itself. Obviously, his name is exploited as an advertising device for a kind of cover "endorsement".

The illustrations are by a well-known marine artist.
The taxonomy is decades out of date; many of the names are NO LONGER VALID. The list of species is incomplete by >100% and many of the included species are no more than guesses.
The illustrations are really suitable only for high school or lower college undergraduate general biology or marine biology courses. They are useless if an accurate identification of marine phytolankton is needed. I would never pay more than $ for this, except for the nice line drawings by John Lutes. 5/03

The real problem with this book is that I am unclear as to what its purpose was. Was it for the new investor? Existing?

I found most of the information a little too simple and at points too detailed. There is a fair swab of information but not alot of 'here is what you should do'. You may view this as a strength - I tend to prefer books that are a little more practical.

If you are thinking of investing for the future, I would suggest starting with something like 'The Wealthy Barber' by David Chilton before this book.

Marshall jumps from character to character so quickly in this book that it's quite confusing to follow. One creepy criminal is throwing spoiled fruit juice bombs into people's cars in Manila Bay, meanwhile a "cockfight" is disrupted by gunshots. The way the entire plot unravels is quite unbelievable, but for people who like to read books where the bodies stack up (unfortunately, sometimes, that's me), it's a fairly good read.

This is a nice collection of songs---but I just got my copy, and was horribly disappointed to discover that the music is only chorded for guitar, without piano accompaniment.

Boring, inane plot with a "heroine" who is so self-centered and shallow you wonder why you are bothering to read another word about her. Try Perri O'Shaughnessy's books instead.

One would expect a book with this title to be written by someone who is an Alfa expert. But twice in the opening chapter Mr. Rees states unequivocally that the original Alfa spider was designed by Bertone. This is, of course, ridiculous. All Alfa spiders have been designed by Pinifarina.

The photos are good, and Mr. Rees appears to be thorough. It is just that the error about such a fundamental fact undermines my confidence in the rest of his work.