I am a Kindergarten teacher and collect many alphabet books. I am always on the look out for books that not only teach letters but other curriculum content as well. This book has an abundance of scientific information about various animals that are native to North America. It also has a map of the parks which helps children learn about the difference in climate with in our country. The text is laid out so that a portion of the information can be easily shared with younger kids or more detailed information can be shared with older kids. This book is a great resource.

This is a wonderful book with beautiful illustrations. My son, age 10, especially liked learning about the National Parks, while my daughter, age 7, wants to use the paintings as models for her own drawings. The text, which is attractively designed for more than one reading level, is nicely balanced with information about both the featured animals and the parks where they can be found. While it provides a satisfying read, the book also raises interest in learning more. I now want to visit the National Parks I haven't yet been to. There is a map showing the locations of the featured parks at the back as well as contact information for the parks and other organizations.

This book basically explains why pronghonr are the coolest animal on earth. Big, mean, fast predators a really long time ago selected for fast moving animals. Pronghorn have really good eye sight and live in really open places. They have really intersting reproductive adaptations. They are a really neat animal.

This book is based on almost 20 years of experience from the National Bison Range. This book is very well known in the science community and very respectable. I know of classes that use this book. Its a dang good book.

An epic thriller of unmatched profundity! The debris-slope has never been so slippery, the carbonate never so fine grained! While Sheehan more than "deposits" his prose, we would be truly remiss to ignore the writing contributions of the eclecticly-minded "et al," who makes us question our very basic assumptions about the Devonian Age, especially undermining our generally held beilef about the so-called "Antelope Peak." After reading this work you'll be looking forward to enjoying the best days of the antelope, disabused of your notions that the antelopes better days had passed.

As for the climactic ending, I won't spoil the surprise, suffice it to say that Isolated Carbonated Bodies do not stay isolated forvever, especially those composed of stacked debris-flow!

Dear Amazon.com,

I am the author of Visions of Antelope Island and Great Salt Lake. Thanks for listing my book with a photo of the cover illustration.

You used to have a form where the author could comment on his book, but I cannot find my way to it. I would like to relay to you some comments from published newspaper and magazine reviews of my book. How do I send you this information?

Thanks again, Marlin Stum

I am not a hunter. I won't even step on a spider, and open windows to let flies out. But as a food writer I am a big fan of game - both wild and farm-raised. Just don't ask me to catch my own. The new book, "Wild About Game" by Janie Hibler, is a cookbook plus more. Between the classy covers Hibler has produced a veritable treatise on game: how it is raised; information for each species on handling, seasoning, and best preparation tchniques; a varied group of both traditional and 90's recipes; nutrition data and mail-order game sources. What else does one ask from a cookbook? Recipes such as "slow-roasted duckling with red currant sauce", "venison with mustard-pepper marinade", and "pheasant with herb dumplings and chanterelles" are as comfortable for the home kitchen as in any five-star bistro. Just as nice as the recipes are the photos, historical prints and drawings, and petroglyphs that illustrate "Wild About Game". This reference-cookbook belongs in any complete culinary library.

This is a great book to use for anyone interested in wildlife painting, specifically hooved animals such as deer, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, zebras, etc. Obligatory information such as surfaces, grounds, brushes, acrylic paints and gathering reference material is provided. Each animal gets its own chapter and each chapter follows a standard format. First, anatomy and how to sketch the featured animal is shown, then mini-demonstrations that show close ups of key features such as the head, neck, eyes, legs, etc.

The format of each demonstration is clean and easy to follow. There are numerous reference photos of the various animals as well as photos of the painting process. The close-ups of painting things such as fur and antlers is particularly helpful. The final chapters show step-by-step demonstrations of the environment as well as the animals and the author supplies ideas for how to compose your own original paintings from reference material. I would like to mention that although the author uses acrylic these painting techniques work just as well for other types of opaque paints. Even though I use acrylic paints myself I plan to use these techniques for some wildlife paintings using casein as well. The only painting media I use that might need other techniques than those demonstrated here are watercolor and pastels. Overall, an excellent book for any beginning wildlife painters reference shelf.

This is a fairly simple book, but it's ideal for someone who wants a good overview and introduction to pronghorns (which actually are pretty "wondrous" animals in a lot of ways) but doesn't need a lot of technical details. Well illustrated (with black-and-photographs), it provides a lot of interesting information on their evolutionary background, habitat and range, physical features (including some things that surprised me, although I live near pronghorn and thought I knew a little about them), herd behavior, and so on. Even though it's actually a "children's book" (apparently aimed at about the junior high or early high school level), most adults would probably find it a very informative and interesting introduction. I'm an adult who's interested in pronghorns and I have a couple of other books about them as well, but I think "Wonders of the Pronghorn" actually gives the best introduction without getting either too simplistic or too technical.

I must say that I was somewhat dissapointed with this book. I expected more depth from the characters than what they could give. I miss characters like Lipsha, as complex as the stories of which they were a part. As usual, all the characters are tied to one another in a knot which has no beginning or end. Unfortunately, the depth which they lack makes this, as another person commented "hard to follow". Erdrich ties them together for the sake of having them tied; many of the connections among them are forced at best. The big, loose, loopish, way in which the story is written makes this the most authentic piece of Native American Fiction Erdrich has ever written. Had the characters been more developed, it would have been one of her best.

Lousie Erdrich's writing wraps the reader in intricate strands of symbolism, characters and shifting time and place. Stories are woven, questions are raised and as time passes answered. The strands begin to straighten out and make sense. Re-reading the book to get it all straight is a treat and a gift. I will gladly settle into Erdrich's writing over authors who leave no question marks or connections to ponder any day.

The power, danger and wonder of intense love is but one of the journeys the reader will take in this book.

This is definitely one of her best works yet. It is a spellbinding and powerful book.

Scott Carrier runs to the edge of a high, dry place and observes: "Here it is, Reality; but the reality of what?" The answer comes back as the echo of laughter in the hills. Haunting and wonderful.

Scott Carrier's collection of essays, Running After Antelope alternates sections about travel's to Cambodia, time spent interviewing the mentally ill, and beatnik hitchhiking adventures with brief, intercalary chapters, indexed by year, which describe his passion for animal of the title. Carrier is consumed by the idea of being able to run with these creatures, to track them and perhaps outrun them eventually. On several occasions we meet Scott's brother, a scientist who studies the respiratory systems of mammals. Their relationship is often engaging, as is Scott's relationship to the antelope themselves. Indeed, the author's voice, so easy to read along with after hearing it so many times on NPR, dominates the landscape to such a degree that the reader never really gets a clear view of the vistas, natural and metaphorical, that he attempts to exposit in these brief essay. As individual works, the essays are like existential snapshots of a hell always just below the surface. The best essay in the collection, The Test, describes Carrier's time as a field interviewer for the mentally ill. He meets several, decidedly disturbed individuals - a man who tells Carrier that he can read his mind with the help of a crystal he carries, a woman who was put on medication because she claims sex with angels, and an eighty year old man who responds to every question with a plaintive "I can't remember". Carrier's job plunges further into the heart of darkness when he decides to take the test himself, only to discover, half way through, that the results aren't going to be good. As starling, even heartbreaking, as this essay is, the fact that it is followed later on by a rather lighthearted, Charles Kuraltesque piece about hitching a ride across country with an aspiring art dealer - who incidentally, believes his brother to be a genius of the art world; I wonder if Carrier considered making a stronger parallel with his own brother - and then by two pieces of travel journalism in which Carrier, promisingly enough, rents a motorcycle to transverse the countryside, and then, after getting lost on his way back to the palatial hotel, promptly returns it. The rudiments of Carrier's dark vision of things not quite in their proper place (especially the author himself) do make themselves known from time to time, event these weaker essays. The problem is that the reader's focus is split between the narrator's neurosis (and it is a fascinating one) and the decidedly journalistic intent in many of these essays. The divide never seems to converge at any point, despite the contextual format which leads the reader to believe otherwise. The lack of tonal cohesion between the various pieces, though distracting, should not dissuade a good, long sitting with Carrier's book, however. The precision of his prose style, which sometimes boarders on the baroque, has been honed by years freelancing for public radio. As such, the writing is meant to stimulate the mind's eye. In an early essay, Carrier describes the quite, natural splendor of his Utah:

There are little birds in the trees, and big birds on the rock walls of the canyon - red rock walls in the shadow of the afternoon sun. A dirt road comes around and down and crosses over the stream, and in the pool below road a pale snake slides silent into the water and swims to the other side, holding something rather large in its mouth.

Assonance aside, these sorts of passages, brief and almost haiku-like, crop up throughout the book and provide the necessary calm and elegance to counter Carrier's dark and often morbid musings. It is strange that Scott Carrier, the brooding, almost transient voice so often heard amongst the wacky and the cranky on This American Life, should become a representative belle letterist for this new century. However, the hodgepodge of modes that make up Running After Antelope - memoir, travel essay, nature writing - seems a perfect fit for the era of the translucent computer and gourmet fast-food. Appetites change and morph throughout even a single sitting of reading. To this end, Scott Carrier's short collection of flawed but very often beautiful and haunting essays should provoke even the most distracted of readers.

I have always liked Scott Carrier the most of all of the producers on "This American Life". Something about his voice, writing style, and introspection. I found this book to be a non-fiction Jesus' Son, maybe lacking the manic moments that Denis Johnson pens but the sadness, naiveté, and poetic prose is all there.

I can't disagree with the other reviewers that say this book is original and intense. However, I'm struggling to find out how my running can benefit from Heinrich's advice. The problem I have with the book is that it's disorganized. It starts off comparing the physiology of animals and humans' running ability, and ends with Heinrich's triumph at the big ultramarathon. I'm not sure what message the author and publisher are trying to convey to me. I was totally enthralled though with the discussion of the physiology of animals. I guess I was hoping for more details on how a runner can best prepare for an ultramarathon.

A truly wonderful book. Heinrich's exploration of endurance and running in the animal kingdom, coupled with his own efforts to prepare for and win an ultra distance (100-kilometer) race, is extraordinarily revealing. As a life long (66 year old) runner, I recommend this book without reservation.

Anyone (like myself) who likes to run longer distances (and likes ~bugs~ to boot) will just plain enjoy reading about Heinrich's passion for the simple, elegant and primordial sport of running. Heinrich has woven his autobiography with scientific inquiry...his vocation (biology) is what gives this book about his avocation (running) an interesting bent. Heinrich talks about antelope, birds, toads, dogs and cats etc. and investigates what those animals can teach us about running, and what humans do or do not have in common with these animals regarding stamina, endurance, and even focus. I think that this book gives the reader / runner something to think about and be inspired by in an abstract way rather than serving as a ~step-by-step process~ on how to be a better runner. This is not some boastful read for the old-fart jock club (which by age I would qualify for), but an inspirational life story ~and~ scientific investigation regarding the human spirit, our primal / animal need to run (well, some of us anyway) and the drive to pursue our dreams (that goes for all of us!).