Thirty years ago I left the plains of Western North Dakota for the woods of Central Minnesota. I lasted six mohths. Clay S. Jenkinson expresses the reasons why I came back and why I have stayed. It is almost impossible to express to someone not from here what the badlands and the prairie can mean, but the author uses imagery that evokes a strong sense of place and spiritual belonging, much as N. Scott Momaday does. The people are real and the places are too. It is good to have someone who can say what I can't. This book is delightfully humorous and at the same time profound.

Having grown up and lived my fifty-plus years in North Dakota, Jenkinson has captured my response to this place of the Plains at a very deep, thoughtful level. It is hard to explain to a "mountain", or "ocean" or "forest" person just what the prairie and badlands evoke, but this book is among the best I've read to describe it. The people portrayed in this book are people I know or very like people I know. But most especially, his challenge to those of us who live in this place to treasure it and to branch out of our great tendency toward provincialism confirmed and gave words to many of my own long-held feelings.

To journey though this book is like being on a train. You will come to the end finding you have traveled parallel tracks. . . One is the scholarly exploration of ideas and questions. The other, a man's life filled with colorful friends and experiences. Both a book of essays and a memoir. This duality is the magic that makes the book. Even the writing balances between direct and lyrical, functional and sublime.

But, what I liked most about Message on the Wind was the personality of the man telling the story. That he could make bold pronouncements and just as quickly point out his own foibles. As when he says, "Just how a man driving a tractor whose tire he could not change if his life depended upon it can feel marvelously independent is not clear, but that is the unmistakable mythology of the place. And I swallowed the whole hog."

Back to the train: Wallow in the sheer joy of being carried away on an adventure. Or, examine the tracks and ponder the method. Either course will result in many delightful hours of reading. Reading, perchance to think. :-)

Ramey knows all the obscure places to hike in Ohio and this book 's organization by region lets you see what is availible in your corner of Ohio. The milage is usefull, though the estimated hiking times are a little long in many cases. I may just walk too fast. I think this is book is essential to help find new places to hike, that would otherwise go unexplored. I'm thrilled that he has written a second book with 50 more hikes.

This book was a gift for my husband who is an avid hiker. Since our home is in Pennsylvania, he is very familiar with local forests, like Allegheny National Forest and Cook Forest. However, Ohio is less then a half hour away, and he needed more information about where to hike and where to take the Boy Scouts for both hikes and camping trips. We never realized Ohio had such wonderful and great sites until we saw this book. The maps and descriptions and information about difficulty of hiking for the various trails are great (except at least one map we used need updating for changes in the path). What is really enjoyed is the historical information given. Sometimes the Scouts need to be given some historical information to make the hiking more interesting, and history always aids in making memories. For an example in the section on Beaver Creek State Park there are a bunch of old locks and damns. One of the locks on the canal was named after the daughter of a worker on the canal who died. Her casket was buried in the lock, and when the worker was finished in Ohio he dug up the casket to take it back to his country. The ship sunk on the ocean and both the worker and the casket were never retrieved. This type of story makes the history of the time period more accessible to both the Scouts and to anyone who is hiking in the area. It certainly is a good reminder of how easy our lives are compared to the 1800's... Great reference book. Karen Sadler University of Pittsburgh

This book features some of the best hiking Ohio has to offer. The hikes range in distance from 1.6 miles to over 20 miles, thus accomodating hikers of every ability. Each hike contains a detailed description of the trail, a trail map, usually taken for the USGS maps, and directions to the trailhead. Ramey has a very warm, friendly writing style. In addition, his considerable experience in hiking and wildlife management makes Ramey the perfect guide for the trail. This book is an essential part of the library of any Ohio hiker.

Even if you don't live in Illinois or plan to visit, the offbeat humor in this book makes it well worth reading. More than half the book is given over to Chicago and the burbs. For the location of many sites mentioned in the book, you'll see the original structures have been torn down. So while you may go to where the 1st skyscraper was constructed, you won't see it today.

The areas outside of Chicago are covered in much less detail. The author has included 3 maps covering northern, central, and southern Illinois to help with locating these more out of the way attractions.

The book has a somewhat disturbing bent towards scenes of violence and death. Cemeteries are covered in detail as are sites of various tragedies.

Okay, here's the deal with this book- if you're like me and my friends and you drive around in search of adventure, this book is way awesome! "Oddball Illinois: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places" has tons of neato places to visit! Popeye's hometown, a broom museum and the sight of the Valentine's Day Massacre are only a few of the featured places. Some of the places are famous- The Museum of Science and Industry, and some are relatively unheard of- The Hindsdale Animal Cemetary. The greatest asset of this fine piece of literature is that it includes admission fees and visiting hours where applicable. And because it was written so recently, most of the info is very up-to-date. Jerome Pohlen is quite funny in his comments and makes this book a truly fun experiance.

SOME STUFF YOU MIGHT WANT TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE YOU EMBARK UPON ONE OF THESE ADVENTURES: An IL road map and internet directions can make finding some of the smaller towns much easier. Trust me on that one! Anyway, happy reading and enjoy some of those really stange places!

This book is so fun to read. If you live in Illinois, you will love finding out the very strange things that exist in the Land of Lincoln. I live in Chicago, and there is a VERY large section of this book that deals with Chicago and it's wierdness. From cemeteries to strange house decorations to wild birds living in a local park.........Illinois is so much more than I ever imagined....and I've lived here for over 25 years. Get this book and put it on your coffee table,you will find yourself picking it up over and over again.

Mr. Logsdon's book, although, "nice" and romantic as a read is flawed in it's premise that somehow, despite sky rocketing real estate costs for rural land, etc. that we can somehow go back to the land and earn a living. It seems that Mr. Logsdon's need to write to support himself and his wife belies the very notion he argues. Having tried, myself, to find land at a reasonable cost, having been launched a number of years ago by this author and others of the same bent, I found nothing but frustration and disappointment.

Mr. Logsdon would leave one to believe that all large scale farmers are without brains and that they choose to ignore the profits of small scale farming. Instead, I believe that Mr. Logsdon has closed his eyes to the hard realities that land values require large scale farming and that he fails to prove, other than in a romantic yearning only, that we can truly "Go Home Again". Truly, I wish it were so...unfortunately, unless you are Amish you cannot afford to.

The book leaves one with a warm feeling despite its flawed premise. The book could be shortened with less diabtribe about old villages or softball teams.

I bought the book still holding onto a waning desire to find "the way" to go home again myself only to realize that his book, likely unwittingly, provides many of the reasons why we can't go home again despite the desire to do so...and that is sad and unfortunate.

I *am* going home again. After nearly 20 years in Texas, my family is moving back to Ohio. We feel that call that Gene Logsdon describes so movingly, hilariously. Now, most people, considering the fact that we are doing it by going first and finding jobs later, think we are certifiable. How wonderful to read Gene's work and find encouragement in values that go beyond acquisition and comfort. We're college [over]educated and employable, and jobs are the least of our worries.

Gene's book talks about home, care, a sense of place. When a place where eleven generations have called home calls you back, you have to listen, and that's why we're going. We have a "10-year plan" -- we're lucky enough to be starting out on some acreage on my Dad's farm. And will build from there. My child and my brother's children will be able to cross the pasture to visit each other and their grandparents.

Will we be self-sufficient? Of course not. What does that mean anyway? People are too "self-sufficient" as it is. I want to live someplace where I can depend on people (in all the right senses of the word). We'll grow some vegetables and berries, raise some chickens and have a good time doing it. I dream grandiosely of a cow or maybe three goats (I want to name them Gina, Lola and Brigitta, but my husband is pushing for "Shot Clock I, II, & III" [he spends a lot of time statting basketball games!]) I pour over Lehman's catalogues. It's fun to plan.

I think that's where reviewer "trailboss" below misses Gene's point. I've read everything of Gene's that I can lay my hands on (too much is out of print! ), and one point he repeatedly emphasizes is that this is not about subsistence farming. There's more than "survival" to it or it wouldn't be worth last week's supermarket strawberries.

Gene never claims that you can find Total Peace, Contentment and Happiness and on a homestead. If you don't have some of that before you start, then disappointment is inevitable.

Going home is about place, people, and good dirt. That's the saving grace of it. Not making a "profit" on it, not becoming Organically Pure, or worshipping Gaia. Of course, you can do all those things, but the home and the dirt is the start of it.

And the softball. Former high school first-base ace here! Since we're moving to southern Richland County, Ohio, I hope we get to meet Gene and the boys in a softball tournament somewhere, sometime! In the meantime, Gene, keep pestering your publishers about reprints. :)

I just finished the book.

Reading the other reviews, one gets the feeling that they were reading different books. It reminds me of the Indian folktale of the four blind men and the elephant. Actually, I like the Persian version better: where three men encounter the elephant on a very dark night. The fourth man brings a candle. Ultimately, the Persian story is a story of redemption and salvation. And so is You Can Go Home.

This book is likely to cause discomfort to those have a very high need for order. Sometimes we (the Hecksel's) have guests on short notice. When that happens, we make the house suitable for company by taking all the clutter-of-life and pitching it into one of the bedrooms...the one with the lock, of course. Gene's book is a personal guided tour of that room. Great fun for those who love stories and antiques. Pain for those who crave a completely deterministic approach to life.

Gene is gutsy because he talks about religion. Gene is doubly gutsy for talking about money. Americans are funny people. We will tell total strangers of our sexual conquests before ordering our second drink, but not tell our CPA the true extent of our wealth & earnings. Go figure.

We are rich in proportion to what we do not need.

Do you want a book with pictures of gardens you can emulate at home? Keep looking. This book has no pictures, only close-up black and white illustrations of flowers.

After receiving this book as a gift, I felt obligated to try to turn my brown yard into at least a small spot of color. With the guidance and help from Laara's book, my drab fenceline is now lined with beautiful perennial flowers that are low maintenance and high color bringing joy to my family and the songbirds in the area. I even tried buying and growing a rose plant and this spring intend to plant more. The instructions about planting, mulchign and feeding the roses really made a difference. They were beautiful all summer. The book can even make a brown thumb like mine green.

I recently cameto Southern Iowa and was struggling for what to plant in the Midwestern garden that had been left in a sad state of ruin by the former occupants. With my busy family, I needed something low maintenance but also wanted something really lovely to showcase my old Victorian home. Midwest Gardens is the perfect book- well written, beautiful photographs. I felt just like a good friend was leading me by the hand through my land showing me what to plant. I got the book last fall as a gift and followed all the suggestions. Now that spring is coming, my beautiful daffodils, crocus and other flowers are peeping up to be followed by the other flowers recommended. I was so happy with this book that I've decided to try my hand at vegetable gardens. I received that book, too and now that I have been successful wtih flowers, will try that advice and try to raise some great vegetables. Thank you for such a valuable resources.

I heard great things about the book but was a little disappointed. She dedicated only a very small portion of the introduction to the specifics of WI soil conditions, etc. I suspect the rest of the material regarding plant varieties was written on a formula provided by the publisher. (they do these books for a lot of states) Although she does address some WI specific issues for each variety, I thought the coverage was over simplified and I would have loved pictures included with the text. (All of the pictures are less than an inch high and inserted in the center of the book.) It's a nice attempt at a broad set of topics. Maybe it would have been even better with less of a "follow the formula" form.

This is one of the books that I refer to often when deciding what to plant in our yard.

Descriptions of the plant, whether it's a native species, and recommendations for certain varieties to look for, are very useful.

Is it a single resource that answers all of your questions? No. But no one book could be, and that's why you choose a few valuable books to provide a range of information.

If you live in Wisconsin, this book should be in your reference collection.

The book contains 445 pages, about 30 pages are on general gardening and 30 pages are specific to Wisconsin. Specific information includes a full page color USDA Hardiness Map of Wisconsin with detail showing county borders, Wisconsin frost maps, monthly temperature & precipation data for 27 Wisconsin cities, lists of Wisconsin gardens and societies, and more.

The remaining 385 pages are about selected species. And these pages contain some of the best information that I have ever read in a garden book. If you buy it just for these pages, you will have an excellent reference book no matter where you live.

The species info covers 26 annuals, 15 bulbs, 17 ground covers, 10 ornamental grasses, 28 perennials, 6 roses, 25 shrubs, 30 trees, 3 turf grasses, and 9 vines, with 160 small photos. The info is perfectly arranged with two pages of text per each species. Each contain a paragraph on when to plant, where to plant, how to plant, care, additional info, and other varieties. My kind of book - all the info in one place and easy to find.

If you garden in Wisconsin, this is a must have book!

Unlike all my other garden books, I actual know of every species talked about in this book. The book talks about the plants we grow in Wisconsin. And best, Myers tells us about some popular plants that don't do well here (I wish the plant nursery would have told me this before they sold me many wrong varieties). I learned this by trial and error.

My only criticism about the book is that I wish she had written another volume. Great information!

Steelhead Dreams ranks up there as one the best books about the Great Lakes steelhead fishery. Author Matt Supinski is considered one of the top Great Lakes steelhead guru. In this book he shares decades of knowledge and experience. The book has chapters on mastering the rivers, different times of year, presentations and the top Great Lakes rivers.

Steelhead Dreams is a very easy book to follow and understand. This book also has the best fly recipe section I've seen in any book. There are plenty of color plates of popular nymph, egg, and streamer flies. This is an excellent book for the angler deciding to get into steelheading.

This is a "must have" for any Great Lakes Basin Steelhead Fly Fisher. Written from One who has been faced with "4th & goal" and has made the conversion. Matt's underlying theme is that each and every one of us Great Lakes' Steelheaders MUST realize that we have to take care to preserve this awesome privilege that we enjoy. Matt shows how and why the traditional West Coast Methods are very limited in the Great Lakes Basin. He does, indeed cover everything you'll need to know and do to become a more proficient fly fishing steelheader...I promise.

I have been an eastern and great lakes trout and salmon fly fisher for 42 years and fished many of the great lakes rivers for steelhead the last 22 years with the fly rod. Steelhead Dreams presents a wonderful description of the immense steelhead fly fishing opportunities through outthe great lakes states and canada. The history of the fishery, comparisons to the PNW steelhead fishery, tackle, techniques, rivers, and how to approach the four seasons of steelhead fly fishing are discussed in detail to aid both new anglers and more experienced steelhead fly fishers. Matt obviously has a great love for steelhead, fly fishing, and the great lakes fishery. Excellent color pictures of the rivers, fish, tackle, and flies are provided. All great lakes and PNW steelhead anglers will benefit in increased knowledge of this fishery to enhance their angling experience. I learned some new things from Matt which will be applied this year. This is the best indepth book on great lakes steelhead fly fishing I have seen to date. I look forward to more books from Matt on the great lakes fishery.

I live 5 miles from Cherry, and we have already had a local author who retold the story several years ago, so I was interested to read the new version of events. The author has obviously done her research well, and attempted to relay the events in a logical sequence, but I felt the text needed more diagrams, possibly a glossary of mining terms. A list of the dead is included, but a list of survivors would be interesting from a local point of view.

"Trapped" is the latest in a recent glut of books about historical disasters. The quality of these books depends largely on the storytelling ability of the author in question. Fortunately, Karen Tintori, who has a familial connection to this particular disaster, is well up to the task. She tells the harrowing tale of the 1909 Cherry (coal) Mine fire in central Illinois that ranks as the nation's third deadliest mine disaster. Over 250 men died in the mine, and the death toll could have been much worse if not for the amazing heroism of some of the rescuers (eight of whom died in circumstances eerily reminiscent of the firefighters who perished on September 11th).

The disaster was the usual result of carelessness, bad luck and arrogant overconfidence. When built, the Cherry Mine was thought to be fireproof, much like the Titanic was thought to be iceberg proof. When the fire started, it wasn't taken seriously at first, indeed, the elevator operators continued to haul up coal for over an hour after the initial flames appeared. By the time the danger became readilly apparent, it was too late for a majority of the miners.

Tintori adopts the correct tone for such a book, letting the words of the survivors speak for themselves whenever possible. Her account of the twenty miners who spent several days trapped below ground and presumed dead before being rescued is particularly compelling, as are the verbatum words from a short journal written by a trapped miner who eventually suffocated. Tintori may not quite have the narrative touch of say, Sebastian Junger or Jon Krakauer, but she is still quite good.

Overall, an excellent historical account of a very unfortunate trajedy.

This is a real page turner. Karen Tintori does a great job of putting her story in context. She gives us a good feel for the mood of the times, and a fine appreciation for the life of a Cherry Hill miner. One fascinating part for me was how a series of small errors cascaded into a full scale catastrophe. Additionally, Tintori was able to interweave many different threads - the trapped miners underground, the miners' families and company officials topside, government troops and university experts arriving on mile a minute trains - into a cohesive and easy to follow tale. Most interesting of all were the steps that one group of miners took to stay alive. Their adventures, and those of their heroic would-be rescuers, give new insights on survival under all-but-impossible odds. This is a very involving story. If you are not afraid of an emotional roller coaster, then hop aboard for a ride!

I found this guide ideal when I used it to locate lights to visit in this region last year. Bruce Roberts' superb photography and Ray Jones interesting and informative narrative significantly enhanced my enjoyment in visiting the lights.

There are directions and other info for finding and visiting lighthouses. They do not always show all lights for a given area. The photos are all color. I own 3 of these books. There are not many other guide books out there so if you are looking for guide books these are good to have. Since there are so many books in this series I thought I'd help people find them easier. This is the series.
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American Lighthouses
California Lighthouses
Eastern Great Lakes Lighthouses - I own this one
Western Great Lakes Lighthouses - I own this one
Southeastern Lighthouses - I own this one
Southern Lighthouses
New England Lighthouses
Mid Atlantic Lighthouses
Gulf Coast Lighthouses

I know that Bruce and Ray Jones don't visit or include all of the Great Lake lights in their books, but it is highly arguable that they do portray the best looking ones. I travel from Chicago to Upper Peninsula and have to include their books on the trip with all of the excellent directions. They are excellent travel guides and provide nice context to why and where they lights originated and give sufficient information about the beacon. They are my number one travel books when I go on a lighthouse expedition and they are bar none no better book published with directions on Great Lake lighthouses.

Wisconsin borders two of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. It is home to hardwood and evergreen forests, a superb system of lakes and streams, and a wealth of municipal, county, state, and national parks. In Hiking Wisconsin, Eric Hansen (who hiked over 800 miles of Wisconsin trails while working on this guide) showcases the best outdoor hiking trails available to the general public. Each hiking trail entry features hike descriptions, difficulty ratings, and trail lengths. Hiking Wisconsin is enhanced with "user friendly" maps, clear directions, information on camping, seasonal access, and trail restrictions. Hiking Wisconsin is the perfect "take along" guidebook whether you plan to be gone for an afternoon or a weekend or a week. If you are anticipating an outdoor excursion somewhere in the Badger State, then begin your planning by securing and browsing through a copy of Eric Hansen's Hiking Wisconsin!

Eric Hansen's guidebook provides the reader with hikes that take you away from traditional trails and allows the hiker solitude and ability to experience nature in some of its purest forms. I have personally travelled on some of the trails listed. His directions are clear. The book provides Eric's insight into various experiences along the routes. Erics's keen awareness of the environment and trail savvy makes this book a must for any serious trails enthusiast interested in the midwest outdoors.

The fifty percent of Wisconsin residents who like to hike, most of the eighty percent who like to walk, and visitors to the state will find value in this book. Several premier Ice Age and North Country Trail segments are highlighted. The introductory chapter offers insights for foot travelers to improve this popular and healthy activity. The size of the book is handy. The "For more information" listing on every hike review can be especially useful.