This book really delves into the very complex and refined lifestyle of the Northern Paiute. Once thought of as primitive, the Paiute are finally given credit for a culture that has remained viable for thousands of years. This publication is a must for anyone interested in learning the true relationship between Native peoples and the environment.

Delightful rendition of the Pioneer spirit. Easy to read and hard to put down.

Unique Media Map has produced the best map I've ever seen. This are painted maps. With many details and all famos places where you have to go. The best map to plan your next trip!

This believed to be out of print book, offers an exceptionally detailed review of Las vegas and what makes its people tic. filled with hundreds of pictures, inside stories, and information from the cities early days to such historical events as the MGM fire, the book concentrates however on the people that work in Las Vegas and make this such a special town. However the book is quickly dated as the town is ever changing, it does have a little story about steve Wynn, and the building of the Mirage, so the book is before the renaissance of the early 1990's. It offers lots of looks at many hotels that have vanished, a collectors must have. Peter Huender (Vegaspeter) e-Vegas

Although I own and use many wildflower identification books, most are lacking in some respect...organization, quality of photographs, etc. I stumbled across this book at a State Park ranger station shop, and was immediately impressed with the excellent quality photographs and the organization of information. The introduction contains much valuable data about elevational zones and where to find the flowers. There's a Quick Key of tiny photographs to steer you to the plant family and page number where you'll find the flower in question. I'm recommending this guide to all my friends.

This is not really practical as a travel guide today, but it is a great way to take a look back and see what Nevada was like during the 1930s. Believe it or not, gambling only gets occasional and minor mention; at the time Las Vegas was a small town, Nevada was still best known for silver mining, and the biggest tourist attractions were the new Boulder Dam (now called Hoover Dam) and the mining boomtowns of just a couple of decades earlier which were already ghost towns by the time this was written. An enjoyable look back; something you might want to take along if you plan on doing any driving in Nevada, just to follow along and see how much has changed.

When I read this book I just couldn't put it down! I don't like frontier books but this one was just amazing. It teaches you a very valuable lesson and will have you hanging on every last page. The ending is to die for! Everyone should read this book!

Anyone who has enjoyed any of the eight previous Stephanie Plum novels would be very foolish to skip this one. If you haven't read any of those, you can safely start with this one . . . but don't expect the earlier ones to be nearly this good.

Stephanie Plum, the down home city girl from the Burg in Trenton, continues in her bounty hunter job, and she takes on some pretty unusual ones in To the Nines. As Stephanie describes it, her retrievals have more to do with Lucy Ricardo from I Love Lucy than with Wonder Woman. The book opens with Stephanie and Lula, her sometimes heavyweight sidekick, trying to pick up Punky Blalog. The rest of the escapade has to be read to be believed . . . but Vaseline plays a large role. When she returns to the office, she discovers that her cousin Vinnie faces an enormous embarrassment if he cannot find and bring in one Samuel Singh, a temporary worker from India, for whom Vinnie wrote a visa bond. Vinnie sends Stephanie and her mentor (and sometimes squeeze) Ranger out to find Singh. A major plot line of the book revolves around this search which takes her to Las Vegas before the book is done.

A secondary and engrossing plot involves the mystery of who is threatening Stephanie and killing people around her after she has lunch at McDonald's. Because of the threats, Ranger or his men play bodyguard for Stephanie whenever her undercover policeman boyfriend, Joe Morelli, isn't around. In many of the novels, Stephanie goes through cars like tissue paper. In this one, the bodyguards take it on the chin . . . and just about everywhere else.

A third and happier plot involves Stephanie and Morelli becoming much closer to one another.

A fourth plot focuses on Stephanie's unmarried sister, Valerie, who is nine months pregnant and the family's desire to get Valerie married and out of her parents' house.

There's also a fine and funny story line about Lula trying different diets so she can become a super model.

On top of these interesting plots and subplots, the mystery is quite engrossing. I had no idea what was really going on until about 60 pages from the end.

On top of this, the book is filled with hilarious little scenes featuring the manic members of the Burg, including her man-crazy Grandma Mazur, Morelli's Grandmother Bella who has visions of dead women all the time, the generously endowed Connie Rossolli from Vinnie's office, and even Stephanie's mother who's having trouble coping.

The pace of this book is amazing. There's something significant happening on almost every page. The scenes intersect with each other in truly inspired ways. For example, while Stephanie is finishing up her first bounty hunting gig, she gets an emergency call from her Grandmother Mazur. And you'll never guess what the problem is. The result of that scene then cuts into a woman making off-color comments about Stephanie because she seems to have an excess of Vaseline about her. And on it goes. The laughs come almost as fast.

I was thoroughly delighted with this book . . . except for one little problem. It was totally clear who the evil doer was in the last 60 pages. The attempts at misdirection seemed strangely inept. If Ms. Evanovich had cut down that section, this book would have been the perfect Plum. As it is, I think To the Nines is my favorite Plum to date.

After you finish racing break-neck through these pages, think about where your heart's desires may be leading you in contradictory directions. Then, go do something about it!

We've read all the author's books about Trenton-based bounty hunter Plum, and had feared we were tired of them when in "Seven" and "Eight" the stories seemed weak and the humor forced. "Nines" corrects that with a real pleaser ' plenty of natural humor, an almost gripping plot putting Steph in real danger, and lots of sexual tension with Ranger and Morelli. The other regulars -- Bob the dog, Grandma Mazur, Vinny, the parents, sister Valerie (and father-to-be Kloughn) ' especially fellow "helper" Lulu, whose dieting efforts in the story were outrageously funny, contributed to the good humor we had come to expect from the earlier books. After an opening scene in which Stephanie captures a greased up "skipper", her hunt for a fellow named Singh, secured by a visa bond (something we learned about in ths book), caught her and Ranger in a gruesome computer fantasy game gone bad: where the losers not merely failed to proceed in the game but got killed for their sub-par efforts. Soon enough, Plum herself becomes the prize in this game of hunt or be hunted. While this series is not particularly designed to create suspense, this one rated up there close to the serial killer novels of John Sandford. Evanovich even managed to work in some subtle relationship and trust commentary regarding close colleagues of the opposite gender, involving separately both Steph and her current roommate Morelli.

So -- not just a good beach book, but Plum back in her finest with an honest to goodness whodunit, with the crazy funny cast of supporting characters all in good form. Enjoy!

Stephanie Plum is back with a story line that could only be done by Janet Evanovich. With a combination of Elvis impersonators a la Tom Jones impersonator (who gets smacked in the face by Lula's thong) in Las Vegas, Lula trying to go on a diet,and of course the constant flipping between Ranger and Morelli (I am stopping there...don't want to give you too much info) you just can't help but laugh out loud. Janet has created a series that is so unique that you just can't find it in any other book around and you just can't help but jump up and down once a new Stephanie Plum book comes out. To The Nines is a showing of a author that is at the top of the list and is an excellent edition to an already wonderful series. This book is at the top of my all time favorites and I highly recommend to everyone this book and another book "HE NEVER CALLED AGAIN", the ultimate summer beach read!

Lerner's account is an interesting tale of an unlikely convict dumped into the hell of Nevada's prison system. A neophyte in a system of experienced and hard-core cons, Lerner must learn the ropes and rely on the most basic human instinct; survival. What I find most appealing about the book is it's human touch. Lerner makes few excuses for his actions and seems to honestly recount the progression of the crime that landed him in prison. The chapters that tell this tale are artfully interspersed throughout the novel and are interesting asides to the the central aim of the story.

Lerner manages to endear himself to a large segment of the prison's most undesirables. And while he is never fooled or ignorant of their violents past(s) and tendencies, the pictures painted in this book are of human beings. Lerner is able to portray at once the viciousness and sensitivities of his fellow inmates and in doing so he manipulates the reader's own attitudes to bring them into his hell.

In portions of the book the reader almost feels sorry for Lerner and his fellow inmates. Almost. It is difficult to ignore the crimes that landed these people in prison and Lerner (intentionally?) points these crimes out in various parts of the book.

This is certainly a worthy read, but not an introspective. While he ultimately becomes a player in the greater prison drama, Lerner is not a career con and his view remains skewed. Don't read this book expecting a tell-all of prison life. But, as most good books are, this is a story of an unlikely protagonist who must adapt to his surroundings and do little more than survive.

'All the white boys look like they emerged from the same sad inbred trailer park community where breakfast is an intravenous injection of methamphetamine followed by a Hostess Twinkie.' There are times in 'You Got Nothing Coming' where you will laugh out loud, which, I suppose, is better than crying. Jimmy Lerner, a 47-year-old MBA with a Dilbert lifestyle, kills a man in Las Vegas, and goes to prison for voluntary manslaughter. He gets lucky'his first 'cellie' is a huge, tattooed, and respected recidivist called Kansas. The two get along, and Kansas protects O.G. ('Old Gangsta''the only reason his fellow prisoners can figure out for why a guy his age would have lived long enough to be in jail) from many of the threats of prison life. This leaves Lerner free (in a matter of speaking) to observe those around him and report on what life is like in prison for someone literate enough to tell the tale.

Some of 'You Got Nothing Coming' is laugh-out-loud funny. A great deal of it is pathetic. Here is a huge institution crammed full of people who seem to come from a parallel universe. No matter what color they are, their lives are sagas of wretched beginnings and generations of poor decisions. These are frightening, yet often amiable guys. Lerner does not ask questions; he just lets his new neighbors tell their stories and hopes to high heaven that they leave him alone.

Stylistically, there are a few problems. The over-use of quirky prison phrases (such as 'you got nothing coming' and 'that ain't nothin' nice') dulls their effect and gives the book the sense of being cobbled together from a series of separate vignettes, especially when they're frequently used as kickers. Lerner apparently wrote the book in fragments, but the editor should have taken a look at how it sustained as a whole and spent more effort on transitions. The section on his crime is not smoothly integrated and hard to reconcile with the voice Lerner has established. Nonetheless, this book is a good read, especially when you know that he was recently paroled.

This is a sad, funny and diabolically authentic memoir about his life in prison (and how he got there) by a natural born, sideways-talkin' wordsmith writing with skill, verve and a kind of disarming warmth replete with a lot of "out of the side of his neck" irony. Lerner, a one-time nice Jewish boy from New York finds himself the cell mate of Kansas, a six-foot-six, three-hundred pound "Nazi Low Rider" with a swastika tattooed on his neck, a prison con who can bench press something like four-hundred pounds, a guy who controls the inner prison culture and enterprises with an iron fist. What's a fish to do? Lerner uses corporate skills, honed during 19 years at Ma Bell, to make friends and influence people. A nice irony throughout is the way Lerner compares the culture of the corporate structure with that of the prison, finding them similar except for the terminology. Lerner manages to weave corporate gobbledygook about "market repositioning" and the "pursuance of outside opportunities" into the prison narrative. He sees that the rake the "Yard Rats" and the "skinhead Phone Posse" charge the fish for using the public phone as "the same economic principle we employed at the phone company by charging customers for both access...and usage." (p. 152)

As far as the structure of this book goes I believe it was originally written in a straight-forward manner beginning with the earliest events and ending with the latest. But somewhere during development it was decided to begin in the middle as Lerner enters prison. This was an effective and tantalizing change for two significant reasons. One, the utter shock of being immediately immersed into convict culture carries the narrative practically by itself, and Two, we are enticed to read on to the end wondering just how such a person as "O.G." Lerner ever got himself to manslaughter in the first place.

Lerner's ear for the language of the convicts is something close to amazing. His absorption of their largely primitive and tribal culture is so complete that as the book ends we see him as one of them in action, inclination and loyalty as he bangs on his cell and yells out on command his blood curdling cat's meow to the disconcertion of the attack dogs of the "Dirt" (that's "Disciplinary Intervention and Response Team, and they ain't nothin' nice") and to the joy of his fellow "dawgs."

But Lerner's story is fascinating in itself. He is an alcoholic and a drug imbiber who after being attacked by "the monster" (as he calls his drug-addled, "Soldier of Fortune"-reading "friend" Dwayne Hassleman) fights back and through righteous rage and superior adrenaline flow manages to subdue and then kill his adversary. The Monster is such a degenerate beast of stupidity and animalistic hate and rage that we strongly identify with Lerner and are entirely pleased that Dwayne is no longer with us.

However, this is to accept Lerner's version of the crime which is not a twit removed from self-defense, a version that the jury apparently did not entirely accept. But as I used to tell my students, the one thing that all autobiographers have in common is that somewhere along the way they bend the truth to their advantage. This is just human nature, some of it unconscious, some of it intentional. It is amazingly difficult to tell the whole, unvarnished truth about ourselves. No matter how honestly our desire to confess all, when driven to autobiography or memoir, we will ever so slightly misrepresent the strict letter of the truth.

But no matter. What counts is that the overall story be told in a vivid and convincing manner allowing us to take the fine points of blame or behavior on advisement, as it were, secure in the impression that, as Huck Finn observed about Mark Twain, "he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

We can see, however, by reading between the lines that Lerner (although I believe he too told mainly the truth) is more compromised that he lets on. His continued association with the dangerous and crazy Dwayne, who threatens murder and mayhem while alluding jealously to Lerner's "precious little girlie family" (p. 354), suggests not so much forgiveness, loneliness and a big heart, but perhaps something closer to the fact that Dwayne as a drug dealer has "store," the kind of store Lerner thought he needed to get from one day to the next. We can also see that Lerner becomes not only a "righteous, stand-up con" but a pretty tough guy despite the fact that his nickname "O.G." stands as much for "Old Guy" as it does for "original gangsta" (see pages 49-50). The fact that he wins just about all his battles, physical and otherwise, and never rats anybody out, and is true to his code throughout, may suggest some selective memory device at work.

But again Lerner's ability to spin the tale and make it as vivid as new-found terror allows us to give him his self-image and hope that he will at long last kick the booze and the drugs and be the kind of father that his two girls can look up to. This book is a step in the right direction. Lerner has a brilliant gift for character, narrative and dialogue that will surely make this tome recommended reading at writers' workshops while being the kind of book professional writers can admire.

Incidentally, the title "You Got Nothing Coming" is the witch-cold, hopeless phrase used on convicts as a kind of sadistic way of saying "no" to whatever the request is, as in "you ain't got NOTHIN' comin', dawg--ever."

Like other reviewers, it only took me a several hours to read. I like gambling stories (I'm a poker player) and I've read both of Michael Konik's books, which are also great. I would consider this a one of the top gamblers' story out there, not quite up-there as Alvarez' "The Biggest Game in Town" or Konik's "More Gambling Stories", but close.

I thought his writing was very smooth and really put you in the "action". I entirely believe the details of Kevin Lewis' life as a counter as I worked for a software company based in Lincoln, MA and was told many times that the co-founders - all of Asian decent and MIT grads! - were part of the MIT blackjack team. (I don't know which one but their stories are similar to what Lewis tells.) So, I just had to read this book since I knew some of the MIT team personally.

As I read the stories, it was not hard to imagine that they could've been on the very team he was on!

So, if you like gambling stories, add this book to your collection . . . .

This has got to be one of the most intriguing non-fiction books of all time. It's basically how a group of MIT students combine together and take millions from major Casinos. Using team play, sound probability, expert training, and skill, they do the impossible and create havoc for the Casinos, and later themselves.

This book describes it all, and yes, it's better than any made up story a fiction writer could produce. Mezrich describes how Kevin Lewis became involved in what later became a lifestyle of glamor, big money, and even woman. Kevin goes from a geeky swimmer at MIT to a big player winning big money.

Mezrich knows how to weave the story. First he discusses the introduction, then the frightening orientation. He delves into the mathematics, the strategy, and how the teammates fit into what character roles. He shows how intricate the team aspect of blackjack works, and how they capitilized on it. Both seedy and genious, it sheds a whole new life on blackjack and casino gambling.

After that, he then starts showing how Casinos work, especially how they treat you when you're a big player versus when you're a card counter. Without giving too much away, this story not only deals with the winning, but also with the repercussions. Mezrich brings into the lifestyle, not only with the glamor, but also the suspense and terror that accompanies it.

This books is one of those few books that you cannot put down. It's a great story and most importunely, a great eye-opener. To top it off, it's all true.

No one who reads this will be able to gamble the same way again. No exaggeration. Just pick up this book. I bet you can't put it down (terrible pun intended).

I have never been to Las Vegas; the last time I was in Atlantic City if there were casinos, I certainly didn't know about them; I have bet and lost a few dollars in slot machines. In other words, I know next to nothing about gambling and absolutely nothing about a gambler stacking the odds in his favor through intelligent, obsessive, dizzyingly difficult planning.

Ben Mezrich's BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE is bound to become a movie: it is non-fiction that reads like one of the most exciting, fascinating novels you could pick up. Briefly (and simplisticly) six M.I.T. "nerd" students set about to win big at the tables in Vegas...and they did...by learning to count the cards in games of Blackjack. Sound simple? Well, the planning and execution that this entails is unbelievably hard, especially for someone like myself who is no good with math and/or numbers and has no patience for details, whatsoever.

I don't want to give away too many of Mezrich's surprises, but I promise you that his book is absolutely impossible to put down. When I didn't have a huge grin on my face, my mouth had dropped open in shock. This is a REAL caper adventure...one that I think I'd love to be a part of, but, upon reflection, know that it takes stronger hearts than mine. The guys who opened up their lives to Mezrich deserve everything they got. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED