I travel a lot, and have found Lonely Planet guides to be a big help... I still do... granted, some of the info is inaccurate (particularly with prices), but every guidebook provides a caveat at its beginning to warn readers of unstable prices... generally the inaccuracies never amount to more a pitance.

I found the LP Spain book to be more useful than the Let's Go! Spain guidebook as the LP book had more background information, more listings for places to stay and more maps with better detail... unfortunately, as one of the other reviewers mentioned, this book and many of their other guide books are starting to refer you to other LP mini guides... they used to throw everything you needed between those covers, but these days you almost have to carry a small library around with you to get what a early 90s LP book would give you. Still better than Let's Go!, but for how long?...

My wife and I just completed a tour of some of the major cities of Spain. Before we went, we purchased this Lonely Planet rather than the individual city guides. Since we were part of a tour and merely wanted some supplemental information, we purchased this one.

The information they give on each of the sites and monuments is helpful. Although it didn't go into intense detail, you did get enough background historical information to make some sense. This book also gave us some good ideas of sites to see which the tour we took did not tell us about.

Some of the information is a little inaccurate, don't take this information as 100 percent correct. For instance, admission to the Capilla Real is 350 ptas and not 300. The hours were a little off also. We did find the maps to be pretty accurate. The walking tour of Madrid was a little more difficult to follow, but it could be done.

A fellow traveler had the Let's Go book for Spain and Portugal. Consistently, we found her looking at our Lonely Planet for better information.

I would recommend this book for a trip to Spain. Remember that it is supplemental and should not be taking as 100 percent accurate.

This book I found superior to competitors. Its maps were better and more detailed, allowing me to get aorund Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and the little towns of ALgicerias and La Linia without any trouble. It is a wonderful book and also has a wide variety of places to stay unlike some guidebooks which only have the most expensive or the cheapest(and most savage) places to stay. I was very happy when I found myself alone in Madrid to have this book.

The "Prey" series is one of my favorite.

Sandford creates some really great characters in this series and one great detective in Lucas Davenport.

The stories are always gripping and believable. The action is fast paced and nerve racking.

Most importantly, unlike so many other detective novel series by other other authors, the ending doesn't cheat the reader.

Start with the first book in this series and work your way through - you won't be disappointed.

I enjoyed this book more than the others in the Prey series because I am a Native American, and my last name is Love. The characters may have been homicidal, but they also had pride and character. Lucas Davenport is very intense and a bit homicidal himself. Excellent thriller series, Sandford never weakens, his stories are always strong, intense and complete

In his second outing, Lucas Davenport hunts a family of disgruntled Native Americans who have big plans for a political bad guy (who really does deserve to die.) He also meets a new woman, and you may find yourself not liking him very much afterwards.

However, by introducing us to the many faults of Davenport, Sandford goes a long way in making him even more real. And, if you keep reading the Prey series (and you should) you will find yourself taking satisfaction in Lucas' maturation process as much as in his hunting down the bad guys.

Read this book, and keep reading the Prey series

The sub-title "Myths and Wonders . . " is a misnomer. Unless you count the author's apparent fascination with celebrities, I did not find many myths. Any island that has movie stars as frequent visitors, or has actually had a film made there is, by default, high in the author's estimation.

The production quality of the book far exceeds the content. The photos are brilliantly reproduced, with deep blues and greens of the ocean, and nice aerials of many islands. The content of the photos, however, is very inconsistent from region to region. Some geographic areas have a nice mix of landscape and cultural shots, while others are only a series of aerial prints (nice but not sufficient.) In the "Tonga" section, we read of an interesting royal burial ground consisting of numerous pyramids, but only see a dozen photos of the island from a distance.

The editing and translation can be blamed for the frustration in reading the books. One of the more annoying layout aspects it's the placement of the photo captions. No effort seems to have been made to place them near the pictures they describe. The captions are also written in an inconsistent mix of broken sentences, quotes from the text and irrelevant facts - in many cases not even describing the photo's content.

There are several errors in distances and heights of mountains, which can be ascribed to conversion during the translation process; mountains are described as "5,456 feet (1,723 feet)" in height.

There are references to "mass" for individuals attending a protestant church service. In describing the "Bounty" mutineers' arrival on Pitcairn Island, the ship is said to have wandered the seas for "years" while the dates given only cover a few months.

So, in summary, the book is not what it claims to be, though it does have pretty pictures.

I was given this book as a gift and it is a wonderful book, both for its amazing photography and narrative. I highly recommend it!

Reading between the lines, this is clearly the memoir of co author Donald "DJ" Davenport's youth as a young, poor, black bookworm in rural Texas.

It would be intersting to have this story from DJ's perspective alone, without the celebrity PC filter of Rogers. There's a modern classic buried deep in these pages, unfortunately, as it now exists, there's also a lot of ABC After School Specials and Hallmark Hall of Fame weepies and a pinch of Uncle Tom patched in to what is essentially a pretentious, contrived and obvious tale.

Come on DJ, tell us the raw, true story of your black childhood with all the racial and religious elements as they were in rural Texas, and in many places still are.

Rogers and Davenport have written a moving contemporary Christmas story that succeeds in evoking many of the traditional, classic Christmas themes - family and extended family, light in a darkened world, generosity independent of wealth and means, as examples - while avoiding the cloying sweetness and predictability of many of their contemporaries - and most celebrities - who write as if a "spoonful of sugar" is all the reader wants or needs. Rogers' fans will be pleased by the generous moral content with which he is often identified in his music and movies, and readers who don't care about celebrity authors will be pleased to find a story which is well-crafted, subtly imagined and deftly written. Like the best of Young Adult fiction, it can be read by teens - and younger children - at one level, but will reward the reader who reads with a more discerning taste. Adults who may be concerned that their children or students are missing the meaning of the holiday which has been so commercialized for so long, will find that this is much more than celebrity confection: it's an enjoyable, thought-provoking holiday book.

Anyone considering buying this book (2 vol) should consider instead getting access to it through a library. The information contained herein is good and useful, but the price is way out of line. Other price guides are priced in the 20 dollar range and provide just about the same information about artists and the value of their works.

the best, more info than any where else

Can't be in the art business without it

My 4-year-old child didn't seem to enjoy this book very much because she didn't really understand what they were trying to say because the author makes teletubbies talk like babies. It would be more educational to make them speak PROPER ENGLISH!!

My 17 month old daughter loves this book. She asks me to read it to her every day, over and over. I have had to tape the pages together because it has gotten so much wear. I have only had the book for about a month.

This book follows part of the story from a Tubbies episode in which each Tubby gets to take turns dancing in a fluffy tutu. While Tinky Winky does not want to give the skirt to La-La, Dipsy does not want to wear the skirt when his turn comes, and is very happy when it falls off.

My toddler enjoys this book, and asks to read it frequently. The only improvement I think could be made is to make it a board book. The paper format has not stood up very well to being handled by a 2-year-old.

This book is a simple story of the Noo Noo cleaning up after the Teletubbies using stills from the tv shows. My daughter loves the story but I have found that the flaps and the pop-up at the end is not very durable and all ripped within the first week or two that we had it. I don't think my daughter (2 years at the time) was especially rough with the pages since our [other pop up books] ...are still going strong ... I just don't think this book is as good a quality as it could be.

This is essentially stills from the tv show, mounted with text and flaps. The flaps are big and easy for small hands to manipulate. The story is as simple as the show -- each tubby makes a mess, and the noo-noo (a vacuum cleaner with eyes) tidies up. There are only six or so page spreads. At the end, there is a center page pop up of the tubbies, affixed very poorly with a tiny bit of glue. Still, I think all children love these characters and the flaps will stay put.

At this point, most of the flaps are missing (the pop-up Teletubbies themselves were the first to go) but this book still fascinates her.

I thougght that this would be a good read-to get a different perspective. I hated it from the beginning and threw it in the trash. Don't waste your time.

This reads like an early teen's fantasies, and the writing level bears this out. The entire book is very degrading to women, but may find a market in junior high boys, which is sad, as it will only serve to perpetuate an immature outlook toward female classmates. My advice: save your money.

I thought this book was outstanding. Very true and bold. RJ told it like it is -- very honest. If you want the real deal -- this is a must read.

Obscure genius is difficult to comprehend in the first place. This author wants us to explore with him the depths of such genius. Sorry. Not impressed. Nixon should certainly not be included. But if you were going to include mad evil geniuses, why not Adolf Hitler instead of Nixon? And who exactly does the author anticipate will be his readers yearning for this obscure knowledge and insight? Sorry again. I can't answer that question either. I have no idea. My guess is that Guy Davenport will continue to remain an obscure writer desperately searching for an audience. Good luck, guy.

If the story is good enough, a story collection can be worth buying simply for the one. "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg," which features German author Robert Walser [whom I haven't read], is that good, but it is not the only story in this marvelous volume worth owning. "A Field of Snow" jumps among 3 times in Walser's life--the presumed present, when he is riding in a hot-air balloon; his stay in a mental institution; and his time as a butler for a "dotty" German lord. In all of these Walser is a compelling character, a man we want to know more about, a man capable of telling us, "The snow is a kind of music. Were I ever to write again, perhaps a poem as deft and transparent as one by a Chinese, I would like to witness to the beauty of the snow. And their books, these people who keep writing, who reads them? It is now a business like any other." Another story, "The Invention of Photography in Toledo," revolves around the rival claims of two possible inventors of photography and is laugh-out-loud funny as the [to us unknown] narrator confuses Toledo, Spain, and Toledo, Ohio. Characters in other stories include Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, and Richard Nixon [in China, no less]. Davenport's fictional world is constructed out of reality in a way unlike most writers, and thus he can have a character wonder, as Walser does, "Is it not preposterous that a shoe would go the journey of a foot?" Perhaps it is, but it is more preposterous that too many American readers do not know Davenport's work

I have savoured every "Prey" book and look forward with great anticipation whenever a new one is released. However, I was disappointed with "Easy Prey" and felt that Mr. Sanford took the easy way out. It seems that at some point he must have realized that the story was coming to an end and that he had no good suspect, so he had better make one materialize. I am glad to say that this is the only "Prey" book that I would give 2 stars, just about all the others warrant 5 stars. I suggest you skip right to "Chosen Prey", it continues where "Certain Prey" left off.

I have read all the "Prey" novels by John Sandford and had found the series to be slipping over the last several books. I got this one as a gift so I decided to give Lucas and Co. another chance. Unfortunately, the slippage continues. While not terrible, the book simply isn't very interesting or exciting. As others have noted, the killer comes in from out of left field. Sandford doesn't share clues with the readers so that we have a chance to figure out whodunit; there is no sense of fair play because there is no way we could have identified the killer. It is as if Sandford had reached his contractual limit on pages and needed to wrap it up. But of even greater concern to me was how things really never seemed to lead anywhere. Lucas and his cohorts would identify someone as a suspect or witness and shortly the individual was dead. Then they were off on another tangent. Characters were introduced and you assumed they would have some further involvement - the welder at the photo shoot, Catherine Kinsley, assorted drug dealers, etc - but they disappear from the plot or are never a factor. The writing was oddly sloppy; for example, on page 210, Weather is described as "...a small woman, with wide athletic shoulders..." On the very next page, Sandford writes "...she was a small woman, with shoulders that were slightly too broad..." The situation with Marcy goes on way too long and the ups and downs of his relationships with the three women in his life are terribly routine, although admittedly the last line of the book is somewhat clever. Overall, this is not a book I can recommend. It has its moments but clearly Sandford has either run out of ideas or he is getting tired and just cranking them out to fulfill that contractual obligation. It's a shame, since the series started out with such promise.

Lucas Davenport is called in to head the investigation into the strangulation death of supermodel Aliiee'e Maison at a society party following a photoshoot; the investigation soon uncovers the body of Sandy Lansing stuffed in a closet and the complications begin. As the story unfolds, these deaths are followed by evidence of drug use, lesbian sex, incest, and further murders interspersed with the complicated family and personal relationships of the people involved. Given all the interrelated aspects of the plot, the narrative jumped around a great deal and was further complicated by the influence of Lucas' personal relationships on the plot.

Readers of this series know that Lucas has been estranged from his former fiancee Weather Karkinnen since the horrific hospital shootout in SUDDEN PREY; this is the story that allows Lucas and Weather to have a chance to begin to reconnect. Meanwhile, his former girlfriend and fellow cop Marcy Sherrill plays a crucial role in the story, and Lucas is fascinated by and attracted to Alie'e girlfriend, the former model (who has taken up pottery) Joel Corbeau. And just to add a further complication he is distracted by a chance meeting with a college girlfriend who rekindles old memories (and perhaps more). Another female integral to the plot is Rose Marie Roux, who is still the chief of police and very worried about the political complications and widespread media attention. Finally Lucas needs to call on his old friend Ellie Kruger (Sister Mary Joseph) for advice once again.With the added backdrop of Lucas' personal relationships, at times Lucas and old friend Del Capslock seem even more confused than the reader and not at the top of their game.

I enjoyed the book, and found it a very fast and engaging read. But I read it as a Lucas Davenport fan rather than a devotee of the PREY series; I have just recently started the series and have been reading the books out of sequence and thus did not have the disappointment of some of the long time readers that this represented a break in style from the earlier works. This is about Lucas and how this case causes him to reevaluate his life and his relationships, the murders are clearly a means to that end for the author. Thus, the case was confusing, and some of the elements seem quite contrived relative to most of Sandford's books. Finally, the solution to the last of the unsolved murders and the ending of the book were not as at all foreshadowed as they are in most police procedurals and classic detective stories.

Thus, if your goal is to get to know Lucas, this book does a good job of character development and is four stars on that basis; it includes the usual supporting cast and the expected clever exchanges between Del and Lucas. You will be disappointed if you are expecting a book that follows the model of the previous books in the PREY series, as the many one and two star reviews indicate. While I definitely felt it was a wothwhile read and recommend EASY PREY, be prepared for what it is - a book which transitions the series from straight police procedurals to stories involving more character development and more complex storylines with interrelated subplots.