Hi I'm from Europe.And almost every year go to USA.And when I finde this ROAD ATLAS I was surprised whit fantastic detail of this particular atlas in terms of detail and readability.Also whit this major scenic roads,nationals parks and rec.area.
A definite 5 Star Purchase.

I have traveled using the Road Atlas almost every where in the US and the Atlas has turned out to be a perfect guide. It shows all the major Interstates, US Highways and a lot more. The discount coupons at the back also help a lot.

In comparisn with the National Geographic Road Atlas, this Atlas comes on top because of the clarity of maps and the quality of paper. A definite 5 Star Purchase.

Rand McNally has compiled, once again, the yardstick that any road atlas will be measured against. As an avid traveller, I can personally testify to the fantastic detail of this particular atlas in terms of detail and readability. The number of cities that have a separate page dedicated to them is staggering and much appreciated.

My husband and I think this is a great atlas for the United States and Canada. The neighboring states in the U.S. are green; and the state you are looking at is in white. This makes it very clear at a glance. Also, the Canadian portion of this Atlas is spectacular. The entire atlas is very easy to read. We really do like it and we are very glad we bought it.

I love atlases and purchase each yearly edition of Rand McNally. Not much changes from year-to-year, but this edition represents a vast improvement on recent versions. First, they changed the color scheme. Neighboring states are now in olive green, instead of yellow as they were in recent editions. This change helps make it more obvious where borders are and the maps are clearer than before. In addition, national parks are now bright green, and stand out much better (in prior editions, they were outlined with pink and blended in with neighboring highways). Of course, each year, they update the road construction areas, which I have been impressed with their accuracy. This edition also includes a wonderful section highlighting some lesser known events and road trips around the country. Finally, there is a useful section that includes website addresses for state tourism offices. Even if you have a recent edition of this atlas, I highly recommend the 2002 version. Happy travelling!

This Atlas is the only way to go when you need a comprehensive map of roads in North America -- and who doesn't need one of those? I recently used the new edition on a long road trip, and every road was right where the book said it would be.

Outstanding! Since I travel frequently to and through New Mexico, this book was everything I hoped for. Familiar terrain takes on a new meaning now. The seller (BookPlanet) delivered the book promptly, at a reasonable price, and in new condition. Very satisfactory deal all the the way around. John Bradshaw

I expected a pretty dry book regarding a pretty dry subject. I was wrong.

This has stimulated my interest in geology. Each time we travel now, we take this book and the Roadside History of NM book with us. It makes our trips through New Mexico much more interesting. We stop and look at the places these books mention and read about the events that occured there and what the rocks are telling us. Sometimes we even take side trips to see things that are mentioned in one of these two books.

I particularly like how this book has diagrams and pictures to help clarify what it is exactly I'm looking at. There are answers to questions I wouldn't have thought to ask in this book.

If you drive through NM quite a bit, this is a good book to have with you as you travel. Even if you don't think you are interested in geology, this book is a good book to have.

Over the years, I have been saving up pictures and memories of geologic curiosities in New Mexico. I had meant to ask a geologist and/or look up books on the subject, but never quite got around to it. When we lived in Taos, I wanted to know more about the geological ages evidenced in the rock layers at the Rio Grande Gorge bridge. When we lived in Los Alamos, I was fascinated by the sculptured sandstone pinnacles in the canyon lands that look man made (but are not). When we lived in Santa Fe and environs, I wanted to know how climate and human interaction had altered the land and what the countryside must have looked like to ancient Indian peoples in that place. And now that we're living between Grants and Gallup, I'm most interested in the lava flow of the Malpais region. This author says that "The youngest flow is less than 1,000 years old and may figure in Indian legends as 'fire rock' that buried the fields of Indian ancestors." To the East is Mt. Taylor, an "eroded composite volcano."

So it's all here - the answers to all my questions and more - with photographs and diagrams and history. It covers all of New Mexico and into the states it touches - Arizona, Colorado and Texas (as well as the four corners region going into Utah). From Precambrian to Quarternary ages, from ancient flood plains and the Rio Grande rift to mountain rock glaciers and the Palisades, it's all here in this little gem of a book.

A perfect resource to accompany you when you're touring New Mexico either on the main highways or off the beaten track, you can go as deeply into the geology of the area you're seeing as you want or simply check out what type of rock you're looking at. *Roadside Geology of New Mexico* by Halka Chronic is exactly what I was looking for in one compact volume, and I'm most please to have discovered it.

pamhan99@aol.com

This was a great read! I have been to many of the places in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Romano-Lax visited, and I can vouch for the accuracy of her descriptions. I admire her courage (or possibly foolhardiness) in going on such an odyssey with her husband, two young children and a mentally questionable captain who also happened to be her brother-in-law. Oddly, I can identify with being with a mentally deranged person in Baja California. I was also in that same fix in 1968 when I joined a zoology field trip to San Felipe, Baja California Norte, only to find that one of my companions was seriously depressed to the point of being suicidal (it later turned out that he was on drugs). Travel to the Sea of Cortez seems to result in such strange associations.

I used to own an old copy of Steinbeck and Ricketts that I had been given for cleaning up a storage shed. It was the only book in the shed and I was surprised to find it. I fingered through Ed Ricketts' descriptions and photographs of porcelain crabs and murex shells. I read the text and pondered Steinbeck's philosophical diatribes. But most of all it made me want to go to Baja. Within a few years of my discovery of the book I traveled to northern Baja three times and later made an extensive trip as far south as La Paz in Baja Sur. Despite the problems, Baja left its mark on me and I never regretted any time that I spent there. My main grief is that I missed a trip to Cabo San Lucas in 1971 that I had an opportunity to take.

The mangroves, the beauties and problems of Bahia Concepción, Mullegé, La Paz, Loreto, the Colorado River delta and Golfo de Santa Clara are well known to me and Romano-Lax has described each of these so well that I almost felt that I was back on the beach smelling the salt air and watching v-shaped formations of pelicans as they seemed to float almost effortlessly over the surging tide.

Ed Ricketts would have approved of this book. Although he never liked to get his head wet, he was apparently most alive when wading in the surf and tidepools. In some ways this book is more a tribute to him than to John Steinbeck, but in this case you really can't separate them.

If you are at all interested in the sea and/or Baja California, you need to read "Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez: A Makeshift Expedition along Baja's Desert Coast." It is the next best thing to going there yourself!

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This is an ambitious book, well done. Its special beauty comes from Romano-Lax's ability to weave together so many elements into an enticing, captivating whole. There's the travel narrative, of course, with a string of adventures (and misadventures) involving her family -- including 5-year-old son Aryeh and 2-year-old daughter Tziporah -- and the challenges presented by an increasingly unstable brother-in-law who's also their boat's captain. There's the literary element, presenting new perspectives on John Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez explorations with buddy Ed Ricketts and fresh insights into their relationship. Toss in science, natural history, environmental issues, glimpses of Baja California's rich culture, and marvelous descriptions that give a strong sense of place. Then add in Romano-Lax's search for answers, her desire to understand how the Sea of Cortez has changed since Steinbeck's time, and, finally, her own shifting perspectives on what it means to know a place (or "know" anything) -- and the many ways of knowing. In the end, Romano-Lax's travels are multi-dimensional: across the Sea of Cortez, through time, and -- perhaps most important of all -- internally. The trip was well worth taking and I savored it from start to finish.

As a person who finds travel narratives relatively dull and often self-indulgent, this book stunned me in its lyric (and plot-based) grace. What a delight to read!

This wonderful book traces the history of the classic conflict between the pursuit of "the simple life" and the lure of materialism in America. Shi capsules in 281 pages four hundred years of individual and group struggles for a life of meaning in American society. If you have any interest in searching for the roots of our 21st Century quest for voluntary simplicity, this book will give you a glance at the Greek sources and take you insightfully through life in America from the Puritans, Emerson, Thoreau, Wendell Berry and Jimmy Carter to 1984. This historian, David Emory Shi, must be one of the best in America. His gift of writing is now my favorite treasure in books on voluntary simplicity.

The Simple Life: Plain Living And High Thinking In American Culture by David E. Shi (President and Professor of History, Furman University) is a candid, informative, scholarly examination throughout American social history of the drive to simplify one's life and find meaning by the means of deliberately giving up excess material vanity, as embodied in the writings and lifestyles of Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jimmy Carter, and others. Individual chapters discuss the simple life concept from the Puritan, Quaker, Republican, and other points of view, and the importance and value this way of thought, behavior, and culture retained even in today's increasingly fast-paced electronic world. A thoughtful book, filled with carefully assessed observations, The Simple Life is strongly recommended reading for anyone contemplating simplification of their personal lifestyles and circumstances as a means of improving the quality of their lives and themselves.

This is the best book I have ever read on simple living. The writer not only knows his history, but he can write. I especially liked the chapter on Emersonian views of simple living.

Richard J. Lorenz

The best book I've seen on the subject!

I bought this book several years ago at the Museum of Mankind, in London. It was the book for the exhibition, which featured incredible paper sculptures of skeletons and demons.
I read every word of the book, and enjoyed the culture, history, and personal stories of these Mexican artists.
Buy it!

As an anthropologist who teaches classes on Mexico, I use this book often. The "day of the dead" in Mexico exemplifies, for me, the difference between the U.S. culture and that of Mexico. Just as other cultures might find our U.S. Halloween celebrations strangely at odds with normally conservative Judeo-Christian religious observance, this book illustrates clearly the almost unfathomable blending of pre-Columbian cults of death and sacrifice with Spanish-Catholic traditions. Starting with its origins in Mexico's ancient civilizations, the book discusses and illustrates this observance through modern times, and takes the reader vicariously to the areas of Mexico in which it is most enthusiastically observed. Sit down with a cup of chocolate' and some "pan de los muertos" (bread of the dead), and enjoy a book whose topic you might have thought too morbid for your taste, but which you will probably end up finding much more compelling than repulsive. Unfortunately for me (but better for the publishing company!), I am about to order my 3rd copy of "Skeleton at the Feast"--apparently the students to whom I loan it find it too interesting to return!

This collection of stories is not to be missed. A romp around the world about curious and intriguing people. The characters will stick in your mind like the rather scary and funny guy who eats remorras.

Sky over El Nido is an amazing collection of short stories,not only because the writing by C.M. Mayo is superb,but also because it is a "box" full of surprises.The author (she or he?) provide us with continuous examples of a masterly use of ímage patterning,which keeps the reader wondering what will come next.No wonder C.M. Mayo won the Flannery O'Connor Award!

C.M. Mayo has the unique voice that enables you to not only envision the setting but the emotional swings and feelings of the characters. She writes of characters we wish we knew for pieces of them have been in our lives. Sky over El Nido is a perfect gift for the lover of the writing craft. Each character jumps up and is alive in the first paragraph. You wish you could revisit them sometime again in a longer story. Simply marvelous.

Like an old friend known forever, this book is a gift. Out of nowhere (accidentally stumbled across in THE SUN Magazine) I have a new hero. Brave enough to do what we with our boring jobs and routine lives dream of, Poe is todays Kerouac. A rambler who is real and possesses a remarkable and honest delivery across the page, Poe takes us next door to a neighborhood and a lifestyle unknown. How he can open up this much is exceptional. From a regular reader I give all I have to offer back- "Things I Like About America" has landed solidly in my top 5.

Poe Ballentine's work shows sensitivity, humor, compassion, and insight. These personal narratives make the everyday interesting and the exotic familiar. I am a fan of his writing, and this book certainly contains some of the best examples of his unique style. If everything in it is true, Poe Ballentine has taken extraordinary risks while becoming the writer he is today. If he made it all up, he sure tells fascinating stories. I bought an extra copy for a friend who appreciates good books.

I've been reading Poe Ballantine's work for almost ten years in The Sun magazine, a monthly that prides itself and proves itself on publishing the best writers in the country and abroad. It is a magazine that mimics somewhat Poe's life: both are relatively obscure but necessary. He has been traveling America and Mexico for two decades in a self-fashioned schooling of the road. He eschewed the standard for entering college when young and instead began a series of jobs, mostly cooking at greasy spoons, across the body of the continent. He did so to train himself as a writer, to chuck everything most people take for granted, like regular, sad career-goaled work, steady long term housing, companionship; he chucked it all to squeeze out living words. Poe Ballantine has succeeded. He's as real as a sunburn and the salve to quell the burning. This book of essays is bound to become a classic of road literature and self-examination. It is funny, sad, raw, disturbing, warm and occasionally painful. It is a book I read in one sitting and wept after. This man has taken his life, laid it out for us to read about and in turn held up the sharpest mirror man has viewed to see his true, troubled condition.

With "The Teachings Of Don Carlos", you delineated your path. With "Toltecs Of The New Millenium", you shared your experiences on that path. Victor, you have brought a reverence and sense of respect back to this world. You have shown us that here, all around us, we have a remarkable opportunity-- to tune one's spirit to the world at large. Embracing the world in such a way brings one into a deeper and clearer relation with Intent. This, is truly perception, and being, worthy of pursuit. Thank you.

Pre-Colombian with an o not u

For many of us looking for answers that doctrined religions cannot quite give us, Victor Sanchez has exposed a world where faith meets reality. Through his own research and paticipation, Sanchez experiences a spiritual domain that continues to exist admist the colonization and materialism now precedent around the world. Not restricted to boundaries of religion, Sanchez takes the reader through first hand understanding of what is possible when your allow and train your mind to believe in "separate realities." In a Carlos Casteneda like approach, Sanchez writes of his experiences with a group of Native Americans in rural Mexico, who have sustained their belief system and way of life before and after Spanish colonzation. Sanchez spent 15 years with these people and is sharing the world that these people "see." Those who have been exposed to Castaneda's work would find equal enjoyment with this book and have another supporting perspective of human capabilities with spirit and energy. Sanchez provides an answer to what is real to our eyes, may be only what we've been told and trained them to see. How easy is it to believe something you can't see, and if you do, should it be excused as hallucination or paganism. To the growing number of people not completely happy with formal religion, here is a glimsp of ancient wisdom that offers a possibility of human existence on a separate reality, one that is real.