Details the flora and landscape of the hike; degree of difficulty of hike in a straight forward, useful manner. I have used the book for several day hikes in the Lake Tahoe and Bay Area and the book has helped make the hikes enjoyable and fun. Heed the degree of difficulty listing, they are accurate.

BUY IT and ENJOY!!!!!!!!

I had a short time to spend in the backcountry and needed some succinct guidance for choosing the best trail for my time and experience levels. The 100 Hikes guide filled the bill - got me from Reno to the Sand Ridge Trail. The trail guide and map was way ahead of the material I picked up at the Forest Service Ranger station and I had a great two nights on trails that were just right for the equipment I had with me. Well written, guide from guys who've obviously been there on the ground. I'd even buy the book someday if the library copy is checked out next time I'm heading for northern California. Dick Williams 10-30-97

I liked this book, but I guessed both the identity of the murder and two basic plot twists (I won't tell you which ones so I don't spoil it for you) before I was even halfway through with the book...

Alpine native, Dani Marsh, returns to her hometown to make a movie. Shortly after she arrives, her ex-husband is found dead. Does her return tie in with the murder? Was her movie star boyfriend jealous? Emma Lord, owner of the local newspaper, works on this and other possible motives in her effort
to track down the murderer. Her friend, Milo, the local sheriff, has a new girlfriend, but despite this, he and Emma work together to uncover the killer. This is a good addition to the series.

If you need a light fun read this is definitly the series for you. This was a hard book to put down. If you live in a small town you see your own local characters popping up on the pages. The Alpine books are a great escape from heavy fiction. I'd recommend the complete series.

It is a little rough around the edges. Many of the directions in the book are unclear, and make finding the trail difficult. Also the series needs to improve on emphasing the difficulty of some hikes. I have met many people on the trail that thought the 6 mile hike at 3800 ft increase in elevation was not going to be too bad. The author should note on these hike the experience the hiker should have.

Good book to get ideas, but you will need supplemental maps.

Good book for assisting in decisions about where you'd like to hike. Provides an idea of how crowded, well-maintained trails are, etc. Not the best Olympics guide, however (for that you want Robert Woods' book). Like the rest of the 100 Trails series, it's very good for an overview of your hiking options but lacks depth. Not a severe criticism, I've found my volumes of these books useful for many years.

No one, and I mean no one, knows the trails of the Pacific Northwest like Ira Spring and Harvey Manning. Whether you are looking for advice on a brutal five day hike-a-thon over the toughest terain, or a family-friendly afternoon hike to introduce your outdoors passion to family or friends, they have been there and done that, with and without the kids or the crampons. The directions are always clear, concise, and accurate. The photos belong in a glossy coffee table book, not a guide book. Maybe there are individual books that are better at an individual trail, but for a sure thing every time, go with Spring and Manning!

While the horticultural information is minimally valuable, the communist anti-capitalist quackery contained herein is worthless and wrong. Much better books are available such as the Vegetable Gardeners Bible by Edward C. Smith expanding on the deep wide bed philosophy of the French Intensive Method and Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew which replaces commercial techniques with one based on providing food for a single family. Add a Rodale book on organic gardening and you will have all the information you need without the moralistic communist anti-profit preaching of Mr. Solomon.

In composing a review of a book we've used constantly & incessantly over the years, my husband murmured that I should describe our copy. Wherever we've found a portion that pertains to our patch of earth in a valley on the edges of a National Forest, I've stashed a marker. Sometimes it's an emery board, a letter from England, pages from scratchpads with recipes for slug bait or maps of our raised bed plantings for a year, postcards from friends warning us about their impending visit. This book is now double in thickness yet these markers allow me easy access to what I need most often. We have enjoyed every penny we invested in Steve Solomon's Complete Guide to Natural Gardening. When we've got a problem, there's usually an answer right in there. When we're wondering about our climate, or our soil or our expectations for a harvest, given our climate, Steve Solomon's got an answer. Really useful, just wish it had more illustrations!

If you are a gardener west of the Cascades you'll definitely find useful and readable information in this book. It includes an introduction to soil science, when to plant, what varieties grow well here, which seed companies are reliable and trustworthy, information on dealing with pests, and a section on the cultivation of each vegetable. Steve Solomon started the Territorial seed company, though he's no longer associated with it, and was growing most of his own food when he wrote this book. His approach is primarily organic, though not evangellically so. This is a good book for both the "corn and tomato" gardeners as well as somebody who is aspiring to grow a significant fraction of their own food. This is a regional book--probably one of its strongest points, since gardening is different in different bioregions. The regions include the Willamette Valley, SW Washington, Oregon coast and Southern Oregon, Puget Sound, Washington foothills, Yoncalla Valley, along the Umpqua, and northern California, with probably the most emphasis on the Willamette Valley and SW Washington. This is the book I begin every planting season (or seed purchasing season) with!

I bought two books for my trip to the Smokies. This book and Johnny Molloy's "Day and Overnight Hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park" I tried to use both books, but I consistently returned to Molloys. The Albrights book would be all right to use if you wanted to sit down and read it from cover to cover, or at least a section of the park you want to explore. It is nearly impossible to flip through and find any specific trail. Beside this, their tone especially in the introduction put me off from this book. I think its designed to encourage anyone to try hiking, which is good, but for someone that has hiked for years, it treats me, the reader, as a simpleton, who has never stepped off the pavement in my life. This book is useful, but not as useful or concise as Molloy's guidebook.

Forty-two walks are detailed in this guide to hiking the Great Smoky Mountains. Numerous other walks are briefly listed at the end of each chapter. Hikes are listed geographically in 11 areas, with two to six hikes per area.

The description for each hike includes the distance, difficulty (easy, moderate or strenuous), elevation (including elevation changes), location of the trailhead, and a description of the walk itself. The descriptions are sometimes rather wordy, but do often include interesting historical or natural information. A trail map is included for most of the walks. The appendix includes a thorough bird list.

We found many very interesting walks in this book. Some of the walks listed are the more popular ones, but there are enough of the infrequently visited trails for those who don't want a lot of company on their excursions.

As the book mentions, it frequently rains in the Smokys. We found ourselves in the rain on several of our walks. However, the book itself doesn't take getting damp as well as I'd like. Yet, even though it's been wet several times, the our copy is still very usable.

As do many books with subjects attempting to cover the entire "Pacific Northwest," this book focuses primarily on a certain area of the PNW. In this book's case, it's Oregon (no offense at all to this wonderful state). The photos are all small, black-and-white, and obscure. There are MANY photos of feces in this book. While it's helpful to know feces identification, it's more important to identify mammals by species identification. Perhaps I'm lucky, because I get to see more actual animals in the wild, rather than only their droppings. Some mammals in the book are not even pictured at all. Some of my friends have never even seen a nutria (coypus) or a marten in the wild, so pictures of them (and other animals) would have been helpful and more aesthetically pleasing to them. I've seen wolves in eastern Washington and a brown stage black bear in western Washington which the book does not address. On the other hand, the bat and shrew sections were extensive and thorough. Overall, the book is interesting and is scientifically well-organized. Included is ample, specific information on habitat, behavior, and breeding.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest and want to identify the wild mammals you see, this book is very helpful. However, there is a lot more to the book than just good descriptions of mammals. Stories about each creature bring to life the animals you may never encounter. Chris Maser is clearly fond of his subjects and tries hard to help the reader get a feel for their lives. It is fun to just open this book at random and read a few pages about vole or bat you never knew existed. I have several mammal identification books. This is the best one.

There are some great rides in the 2 books he wrote. This is some kind of bible for the washington state. Be aware that those books are 10 years old!!

Be careful if you buy this book. It is 10 years old and many of the trails have been closed. If you are looking for a place to start in Washington it covers almost the entire state.

If there's certain kinds of books that must be consistently updated, it'd be reference books, especially place references. I keep this book near and dear to my heart because it has great hikes, particularly ones that have small campsites that once the day-hikers go home are quiet and nice. But thee lack of an update is glaring. For example, the Table Rock (Molalla River Valley one) hike has a poor description of how to get there, as rapid growth in the Willamette Valley has changed the roads and towns on the way. Also, the trailhead is now around three or so miles earlier, since the road gave out in 1996. I cannot group this book with the outdated trash though, since it manages to capture a good idea, and also most books overlook Table Rock, period.

Well, the title says it all, really, I hardly need to write anything else. This book brings together most of the big names in conventional arms control and introduces the issues better than most books on the subject; considering the paucity of content in this field, it is perhaps the best such introduction available.

But wait, there's more! This book goes into sufficient detail to appeal to the more advanced reader as well. I found this invaluable in writing my undergrad thesis, and still found it very useful for my MA. Additionally, anyone doing any serious writing on the subject may have to justify their subject matter, considering how badly conventional weapons are neglected in the arms control literature, and Pierre's first chapter provides a very strong case for prioritizing this issue.

So whatever level you are interested in, if its conventional weapons you want, this is a MUST.

This short story collection, while it cannot lay claim to any spectacular, classic stories, is solid. It is an enjoyable read for those who have read and enjoyed Zahn's work. Unfortunately, like most of his work, it is out of print and shows no sign of resurfacing (the biggest shame on this front is the fact that "Spinneret," probably his best book, is long out of print). If you like Zahn, you'll like this; if you haven't read anything by him yet, try to find spinneret.