David Thompson was an explorer and cartographer of great magnitude. These personal journals document his explorations in the Canadian Rockies and northwestern U.S. from 1800-1811. His responsibilities were to discover and map new trade routes for the North West Company across the mountains and eventually to the Columbia River Basin. The journals depict the many hardships he and his men endured while on several exploratory trips: the impenetrable mountain snows; surviving severe winters of -30 F; the trials and tribulations of building trading posts, canoes, sleds; the demeanor of local Indian tribes; lack of food; etc. As Dr. Belyea says in her introduction, "David Thompson's Columbia journals require of the reader a perseverence that is well rewarded..the journals are dry and difficult..and the reader must work hard to create his or her own pattern of understanding". It is a worthy book from an exceptional man. The seven reproductions of maps by Arrowsmith, Thompson, etc. are quite poor in quality and I would therefore suggest an atlas for those unfamiliar with the geography of the area so as to follow his whereabouts.

I have used the author's guide to Coastal California as well. Both of these are pretty good books. This author truly knows these regions, gives good advise and accurate descriptions. The problem is that it needs to be updated. The prices for the hotels are grossly inaccurate and many of the recommended restaurants have long gone out of business.

Additionally, there is an error in the book. There are detailed directions to get from Portland to the Columbia Gorge Scenic Hywy. and they are WRONG!

These detractors aside, this is a very well laid out and comprehensive book. When you read the book you will get a very good sense of what to expect. There is also some neat historical info. heading each region's sections. That is a nice way to introduce the next area. The maps are great and the tours are fun. The gift of this book and the other I mentioned by Dorper is that I think he really knows the area. It is not a quick or glossy overview of the area, but more of a feel of what a person who has lived and loved that place would tell you about it. It also benefits from the author's gifted and colorful writing style... never dry! The pictures are spectacular and do the area justice. A very good guide and a very beautiful place to visit.

This slim volume allows readers to understand the events and context of the Dutch possession, settlement and colonisation of Mauritius. It is clear, simply written and perceptive. It contains many new, previously unpublished facts about the colonisation, including the records of living dodos decades after they were thought to already to be extinct. A good read. Essential reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in the first century of Mauritius' history.

I personally have just finsihed a course in college with the author Craig Mishler. I also completed a project by going to an Athapaskan Fiddling festival and that is when I read the Crooked Stovepipe. This book goes in great detail about Athapaskan fiddlers and dancers and there orgin. The author went to every village mentioned in the book and took notes and made observations. The author is a white man and has no realtion to the alaska natives which is intersting to recieve the observations from a white man. Mishler focused on the Upper river style of Athapaskan music and just slighty touched upn the down river music. This book is a great read and very interseting. It is intersting because it shows us that fiddling is not only down in Nashville on the Grand Ole Opry but it is done in many different cultures and parts of the world. For each culture there is there own style of music.

This book gives an interesting and factual account of the life of Daniel Boone and his adventures in the wilderness. The information in this book is written in a way thats easy to understand. It keeps you interested all the way through. You will learn about the many close encounters Boone has with death. This book also tells about Boone's life with the Indians in captivity. Their are many pictures in this book that help to give you a better picture of what is going on. The book begins by describing Boone's parents and early life. Here I learned many things I didn't know about Boone. Then the book tells of Boone's life after his marraige to Rebecca Bryan, and their settlement in Kentucky. It is here that you will read about Boone's expeditions with his fellow settlers and their deadly encounters with the Indians. One interesting story the book tells is how Boone rescues two of his daughters from Indian captivity. The book then tells of Boone's life after he moves away from Kentucky. Finally it tells of his tragic death from acute indigestion caused by eating too many sweat potatoes. Their are so many interesting things you will read about in this book. For example, it tells of Boone's son and his friend being skinned alive slowly by Indians. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about US explorers, or adventures in the forests. It is also a great book for book reports and projects because it has excellent pictures and key facts. In the back of the book their is even a timeline summarizing Boone's life. Anyone interested should definitely read this book!

This is a great true adventure story about the modern-day north by the New Yorker's intrepid reporter of Inuit Journey and Fishing with John Fame. In this outing she booked on for a season with a slightly manic crew of grizzled arctic hands whose specialty is ploughing roads across the frozen tundra so convoys of freight trucks can get into the isolated communities and mines of the Cnadian barren lands. No end of hair-raising adventure and gruelling ordeals, all leavened by humorous interplay between the gruff expedition leader, John Denison, and the all-thumbs city-girl repoorter.

Here's an excellent book about logging and lumbering in the greater Tacoma, WA area. It traces the arrival of those hardy men and women that carved a living out of this wild and untamed area. The author was personally involved as a child and spent a number of his early years in a variety of jobs from the ground up. It is also an excellent testament to the vision of some of those early lumbering businesses that started tree farms and re-forested large tracks of land long before it was a government requirement. If you're interested in the techniques of logging with the various apparatus or riggings and what each is called in the woods, this is the books for you. One thing you'll learn for sure is that no self-respecting logger would ever call himself a "lumberjack" and the only place you'd hear someone call "timber" as a tree falls is in the movies.

Despite the subtitle, this is not a typical folklorist collection of myths. Cameron modifies these stories and imbues them with her literary style and philosophy of life. She ably merges contemporary themes with the traditional tales of the Pacific coastal Indian of Canada - which is another refreshing aspect of this book, as most published Native American myths and legends focus on Plains and Southwest nations. The result of Cameron's masterful storytelling is a set of alluring, eerie and sometimes humorous stories. Particularly interesting is "The Bearded Woman," something of a feminist fable. Also fascinating is the central story "Dzelarhons," which is an epic spanning many generations and several different yet somehow related women named Dzelarhons. Among other things, this story serves as something of an allegory for history and human relations in general.

I found this book to be what I think to be a first rate primary resource. It includes a copy of a ledger kept at the post (relating what post employees were issued what items and for what amount of credit)as well as a journal of the beginning portion of the canoe trip to the rendez-vous at Grand Portage. There is some discussion of what traders were trading with which tribes, who was arriving and departing the post for whatever reason, and evaluations of some of the local tribal cheifs, as well as a brief glossary of aboriginal terms used for some of the trade goods. As a primary resource that sheds light on the day-to-day occurences at the post, and later, on the trail to Grand Portage. I consider this book to be invaluable to those doing research, or to anyone who is curious to know about the daily routine at an outpost and doesn't want generalizations. The book goes into specifics, and that is one of the reasons why I liked it.

Carlos Schwantes, Pacific Northwest Historian at University of Idaho, and G. Thomas Edwards, American West Historian at Whitman University have co-edited this valuable book. Experiences in a Promised Land explores topics related to the states of Washington and Oregon,from the time of discovery to the modern age. Twenty-three scholarly articles in the book cover a wide range of subjects, including American Indians, women in the West, labor, and the environment. Six of the essays were written specifically for this project; the others have been reprinted from journals. With the exception of a few old classics, the collection of articles represents current scholarship of the region, and a conscious effort to move past the traditional reliance on political and ecoomic history,