This is a very complete book with down-home recipes of every kind. The stories and anecdotes that accompany many of the recipes make this a great read while the recipe you've prepared is cooking. A have found few books that compare in simplicity with as much home-made influence. These recipes are so good you'll want to share them, but the book is a piece of work by itself.

This is not just any old cook book, it is full of stories that are fun to read and add to your enjoyment in cooking and eating the delicious recipes. I would recommend it to anyone who likes to cook or to read about farm life in Wisconsin.

Okay, so I am a distant cousin, but that doesn't cloud my review. I never even met the author until after I read the book. I enjoyed it because it was well written for a first book and the adventure takes place in such a fashion that I was able to be on the river with Matt, and yet be warm and dry in my own home. He does capture the flow and ebb of the river, I believe. Good use of terminology. It is a good read, since, after all, how many of us are going to take the actual ride?

this is trully an adventure! the book is well written to include the reader in the excitement. what a journey....the poetry is thought-evoking....great book!

The Fodor guides are a good source for the various locations around the globe. They are not as good as the Arthur Frommer guides. The Fodor guides are not for the budget traveler. They focus on the pricier accommodations and restaurants. But, what they do rate there is a wonderful detailed description. The maps could be more detailed.

Very thorough guide about a city loaded with things to do and see. I found this guide to be not only informative but also quite accurate-something one can appreciate when rediscovering their city. Excellent for first-time visitors as well. Highly recommended!

This was an easy and fun-to-read book because I also grew up in Iowa, the eldest of four sisters (and six brothers). The traditions and the recipes brought back many memories of wonderful Christmases past.

I'm trying to find four more copies for the four adult daughters of a friend of mine who died this past year. I've told their dad what a meaningful gift it would be for each of them.

This was truly a special book for me to read. And it reminded me how much I treasure my family.

This books has become an essential part of my own holiday traditions. I read it every year as I prepare for the holidays, and in difficult years I find it cheers me when nothing else will. The recipes are typically simple and Mmmm!. Holly has a bold no-nonsense approach to doing what it takes to have fun during the holidays, while still being sensitive, tender and funny. As a quilter, I particularly loved her recommendation about favorite holiday fabrics (Buy the bolt!). For anyone who either lives, has lived, or who romanticizes rural living, AND loves Christmas, this is a pure pleasure. Thank you, 4 Burkhalter sisters!

I found this book in a bookstore on a rainy day and did not put it down till the last page was read. Having spent meny summers in Michigan this book directed me to a few new spots I had not known about. A few made for some interesting sight seeing and photography. In particular, "The ghostly Ruins of Marlborough". I spent the better half of a hot summer day walking, climbing and exploring the "the Ruins of Rome". Nearby North Lake provided a place to cool down before dinner. If you explore the back roads when you travel this gives you some interesting spots to stop. I would have liked it if there were better maps of the locations in the book but overall it made for several interesting days. If you like reading about the history of Michigan or ghost towns this is a good book. I now know how I want to spend next summer. Looking for "Ghost Towns Of Michigan Part 2"

Brian

i have lived in mich my whole life and spent many summers up north. i got this book right around the time i recieved my licence, so this book made up north interesting for a kid. my brother and i drove to the area's near us, and managed to locate two of them. we found an old cemetary, and the the oldest head stone was about 1920ish. we also found ruins of a house and a very old rusted ford. it was fun. if you are ever in the area get a map of the northern half of the state and try to locate them. its a great time to spend with your kids.

The Great Lakes region has some good plant books already in use, noteably Plants of the Chicago Region, the flora bible for many. As a practicing wetland professional I am always on the lookout for references that make my life easier. This book really fits the need, while remaining accessible to non-professionals. By providing wetland habitat descriptions, as well as solid information on each family and species, the book really adds to the discussion of the Great Lakes flora. Illustrations in the book are detailed enough to serve as a diagnostic tool, enabling the careful reader to separate similar species readily by eye, as well as by technical detail, a feature lacking in some other regional plant reference books.

Far more comprehensive than most similar books for the Great Lakes and upper midwest. Considerably more accessible than the typical work with this breadth. It will be an excellent field reference for wetland professionals, plant ecologists and allied disciplines. The drawings are good quality, picking up key differences in appearance among groups such as the sedges - critical for professional users. I look forward t using it on my trips to wetlands in the northern midwest as both casual botanist and plant ecologist.

Excellent aid for beginning bikers and walkers as well. The maps are very helpful and it is a delight to know how much is actually right here in Cook County. Don't tear out pages though - then you can't find them when you want them the next time, and you will want to revisit some of these great locations once the book helps you discover them. My only concern is that it needs to be updated and I hope there will be a new edition coming out soon.

This book provides a thorough guide to the hiking and biking trails available in Cook County. Some of this information is available nowhere else! I didn't realize how extensive the Forest Preserve trail system is until I checked this book. This one is going to stay in my car!

Good hiking reference if you're new to the BH and hiking in general. I've found the ratings to be more for beginners or folks without a lot of hiking skill (ie. a moderate trail listed as strenuous). Good to get you oriented to the area.

I live in the Black Hills and use this guide extensively. Itis well written and trails are accurately described. If you purchaseone hiking book for SD....make sure it is this one!...

I read Sister Carrie when I was a teenager in China. The other day I listened to a Hoosier's holiday on Talking Books. He went back to his hometown after some thirty years. I went back to my hometown, Hangzhou, China and saw my old house now completely destroyed and replaced by a huge scaffolding. Somehow I felt my experience wasn't so different from Dreisers. I liked the book so much I'm going to order a copy to read certain parts again, although I have been in Indianapolis exactly once in my lifetime. Indianapolis and Hangzhou are world's apart. Dreiser and me are only 50 years apart but I feel I knew how he felt. Kai Lai Chung

Theodore Dreiser is one of America's great authors, but he is also an enigma wrapped inside a contradiction. Forever in awe of the "great social forces" lurching mankind forward, and inspired by the great financial titans and clever capitalist geniuses who attempted to reap the whirlwind, Dreiser nevertheless embraced communism late in his life as the antidote for the injustices plaguing mankind. He was a spirited social rebel, railing against orthodoxy and Puritan "Babbitts" who would foist their Midwestern morality down upon him, but at the same time, as he demonstrates in this book, his idealization of the small-town Hoosier philistines in Warsaw, Sullivan, and other whistle stop towns far removed from the Broadway footlights he had known intimately by the time this epic journey to the Heartland commences. Dreiser devoted hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages of prose to attacking the small-town "Babbitts" sharing the views of another world-weary cynic, Henry Louis Mencken. And yet, for all his caustic attitudes toward rigid conventions, Dreiser swoons in near reverie after catching first glimpse of the mundane streets, the old grammar school, feed store, and the simple folk he remembered from his youth. In other passages,examples of plain country living he encounters along the bumpy, dusty backroads of America circa 1914, are ridiculed and scorned as one would commonly expect of Theodore Dreiser and his war against society's religious and social conventions. Nevertheless, Dreiser's personal observations on life are often more engaging and inciteful than in some of his later novels. He is an American master; a pioneer of literary realism, and despite the contradictions, this is a fine and engaging volume exploring a vanished American landscape. Mr. Brinkley is to be commended for presenting it to the reading public again after all these years.

very usefull guide to local gardening.chapters for annuals,bulbs,perennials,shrubs and more.i find i refer to it often for care and maintenance as well as new ideas for plants to try.it's well written and easy to read.it's great for first timers and the experienced.

An easy to use reference book which tells the Illinois gardner what to plant, where to plant, and when to prune. It's a very useful handbook for novice and not-so-novice midwest gardners.