The 200-mile trail along the Minnesota edge of Lake Superior may be the best hike in the United States. Almost anyone would agree it's among the top 10. And Guide to the Superior Hiking Trail is the best guide.

It has all of the details you need to know to hike the trailk in safety. Plus, it has information about geology, scenery, habitat, birds and animals.

This awesome trail is broken down step by step with great hints, tips and ideas as to what to see where and when to go. Definitely not your typical boring trail guide, and it has VERY readable maps. Over two hundred miles of the North Shore are clearly described...so get off the computer and head to Duluth!

Anyone who grew up in Nebraska, either in the Sandhills or anywhere along the Platte River would identify with this book. She is a wonderful descriptive writer and takes you to the place she wants you to see. It also brings to mind long ago memories of times you may have experienced by the similarities associated with her writings. A friend gave me this book and as they say, "The best friend is one who gives you a new book as a gift". She was, of course, right. I loved it.

This book was so much more than I had anticipated. I initially bought the book because it's about an area of the country that I know well. I found it to be a moving narrative about recovery and growth. It's about coming back from the edge. The author does a masterful job of explaining the healing power of home. I look forward to what she writes of next. This is a book by a woman that will be very readable by women, but not limited to women. Highly recommended.

A wonderful story about the love one young man has for his family

I picked up this book because of a jacket blurb by Reynolds Price, who calls it "a grave and beautiful surprise." Price is right. There are no spectacular events in Wil Haygood's story of growing up as a black kid in love with basketball in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1950s and 1960s, but his accumulation of little ones -- living with his dependable grandparents Willie and Emily, going to movies, throwing rocks at a house once lived in by James Thurber (and that Haygood himself would later live in), moving out with his mother and sisters, meeting his half-brother Macaroni (whose end, after a career as pimp and petty thief, will surprise you), transferring from school to school to play basketball, being the first in his family to finish college, trying to make it in New York as an actor. For Haygood himself, this is a success story; he ends as an author. For his family, the success is less obvious, but it is there: they left Alabama in the 1930s and 1940s, got jobs in Ohio, invited brothers and sisters and cousins to live with them while they got on their feet. Not everyone makes it -- there are deaths and jail sentences -- but this is a cheerful book, a hymn to families and grandmothers and sisters who encourage, help, or send money. Best of all, Haygood is a fine writer, able to portray his scatterbrained mother sympathetically and to convey his gratitude to the people who helped him along the way (one is the father of singer Nancy Wilson).

Hidden Montana appears in its third edition to cover inns, tours, drives, and outdoors explorations throughout the state. From Glacier Park to Yellowstone, this is packed with lesser-known byways. Recommended.

Braeking the state up into sections, the author does an excellent job of describing and presenting the various highlights of each. Equal treatment is given to popular and off-the-beaten-path areas, with sufficient detail for each. It made my recent visit more enjoyable!

The Hiking Guide to Kansas is a high-quality guide to hiking trails in Kansas. There is no stone unturned. If you are going to be hiking in Kansas, you better bring this book with you! It is THE hiking guide for Kansas throughout the entire world!

I have always loved hiking in Kansas, but there has never been a really good book with the extensive detail that "Hiking Guide to Kansas" gives. The maps Young makes are very accurate, and the trail descriptions by Kate Hauber are excelent. I fully recommend this book to anyone who loves the outdoors in Kansas and wants an outstanding guide book.

This wonderful book is "a must," not just for hikers but also for nature lovers. More than an accurate and detailed guide, the book affords readers lush visual imagery through the descriptions of a skilled writer who, without doubt, loves the trails he treads.

I have been enjoying canoeing, kayaking, and camping in Missouri all my life, but every page of this book told me something I didn't know about my favorite state. This book is guaranteed to make the reader start making trip plans. This is a great gift book because it is a catalyst to further adventure.

I haved lived in St. Louis for most of my life, yet I never knew there were so many beautiful parks hiding within our city. After reading "Hiking St. Louis", I feel as though I have made a new discovery right underneath my nose. The hiking trail directions and maps will make it easy for me to find these nearby treasures and enjoy them during their best seasons. I look forward to pulling out those old hiking boots this upcoming Fall season.

This trail guide is so easy to follow. It gives just a little history of an area and then exact and detailed directions of each trail. This book is for a local and tourist or newcomer to the area. I loved Cliff Cave Park and the overlook of the Mississippi river, which I had always wanted to find. And I loved Belle Fountaine and Coldwater Creek with the Wpa ruins and giant staircase. The overlook there was spectacular too. I am discovering so many new places and some of the harder trails I have been shown how to make them easier. Ellisville has a very interesting trail system, on which I took my bike, being a paved trail, but mostly wooded. I love the information about available restrooms, suggested seasons difficulty of trails, etc. I will purchase this inexpensive book for many of my friends, relatives, and business partners because there is so much valuable information about the wooded trails all within the St. Louis area and it is in the format of a hiker-friendly book that is easy to carry.

This was one of the best books I've ever read....I heard stories about Oklahoma through my great grandma, and my grandma, but this book just validates those stories...and for a real treat I recommend the sequel to this book "Sons of Thunder".

I thought this book was more than excellent. I don't read much but this book was one that I could not put down until I finished it. I think it would make a great movie script! If you want to relive the Great Depression Era through a small boy's eyes you need to read this one. The author, Bonnie S. Speer, knows how to write. I have read other books she's written.

When I was a child I read Little Britches, Man of The Family, and Horse of a Different Color. These books/stories are timeless. Any parent who wants to give a good example to a child about resposibility should obtain these.

Ralph Moody again weaves an artful picture of true life in the real world of the early twentieth century. His easy going style and colorful portrayal of each character give a real livng account of day to day life with a constant optimism that many of us miss in our cynical world. A great read aloud family book aong with the rest in the series. Moody gives character qualities that are rarely found in the novels of today and are much needed especially for todays young men.

Put this one on your 10 - 14 year old's reading list but don't forget to read it along with them.

I embrace these spaces as I travel through Southern Illinois, thanks to Gary. How about a book on Indiana!

My husband is from Oakland Illinois, the 'gateway to corn country' We moved to Texas nearly 10 years, and at one point bought Mr. Irving's book for my father-in-law, who brokers corn from his office at the elevator in Greenview, IL. Every Christmas we return to Illinois, visiting relatives in towns like Petersburg, Arcola, and Hindsboro - the kind of towns that form the heart of Illinois, and the heart of this book. This past Christmas, flipping once again through the familiar images of Mr. Irving's book, I was struck by the elemental and easily underestimated beauty of the midwest. Sure, Illinois is flat and seamingly plain - but it does have it's own mysteries. You can see time passing by standing outside a desserted, sagging barn, where only the whirring of bird wings and the sound of a far-off combine interrupt the silence. In the corn fields, growth is something you smell rather than see or hear, and the smell is green and yellow and rustling; walk a few feet into the rows and you will learn the true meaning of solitude. You can lay on a hillock and the sky will wrap itself around your peripheral vision. The two-lane highways ('the hard road' to locals) snake between bean and corn fields, past the barn handpainted with the sign "Chewing (tobacco) serves to steady nerves!", and through towns that all have a single flashing stoplight and a town square w/ parking on the slant all around. If you've been away for awhile, you drive slowly on these roads - in part because of the deer, in part because of the Amish, in part to safely pass the combines rolling along on the shoulder, in part to wave at passing cars (you almost always know the driver, or know someone who knows the driver - in the cornfields of Illinois, everyone is either friend or family once-removed), but mostly you drive slowly because of the plain beauty of the farmhouses and elevators and the hypnotic horizon of the sky. My love of the ocean was born on the Illinois plains - the undulating cornfields, the far horizons, the renewing sunrise - the ocean is my way of staying in touch with the land I learned I actually loved only after I left it. Mr.Irving's book illustrates the poetry of life in the corn belt under the Illinois sky.