With gorgeous photos and well tested recipes, California Cooking is the most important and thoroughly reliable cookbook for a modern home chef. Especially one interested in the vast variety of California and the freshness of California cuisine.
Each chapter begins by describing the mystery of a unique California region, then provides a creative menu suitable to the region's aura and lifestyle and finally gives every recipe needed to serve the complete menu with suggestions for beverages.
In the 5 years that I have used this book, it has never failed to give me dinner parties with "WOW". Each recipe is natural, fresh, interesting and uncomplicated. Each menu well planned with photos to show how to beautifully serve and garnish. It is a visual and practical gem.

This was one of the very first romance novels I ever read. I loved it!! Joan Hohl has stayed one of my favorite writers ever since. I like to read trilogies, and this has has stayed in my mind as one of my favorites!

This is an excellent book! I recommend this book to all the people out there who want to know info on California codes, laws and regulations. It would be great for those who are intrested or currently pursuing a degree in Administration of Justice or those of you just thinking about a career in Law Enforcement. This textbook covers information from the Introduction of Evidence all the way to Search and Seizure and Miranda, VERY IMPORTANT factors of todays justice system. All in all I have to rate this book a 10. Without this book, I would be totally lost and I personally can't imagine myself or anyone going out as a peace officer without having the knowledge that this book offers. SO BUY IT NOW! You can't afford not to.

This is THE book for people who need to understand the California criminal law. Because it deals with subjects, rather than code sections, it is much easier to understand. For instance, weapons laws can be found in the Penal Code, Vehicle Code, Health and Safety Code, Military and Veterans Code, Government Code and so forth. This book puts all the weapons laws in one section, making them far easier to undestand. It is an easy read, in that besides listing the laws, case laws are presented with the reasoning behind them. This is, BY FAR, the best book on the subject I have encountered and I highly recommend it for anyone who is in a police academy or taking police promotionals where an understanding of California criminal law may be important.

California Desert Trails is a classic of nature writing from near the turn of the last century, but has remained more of a secret than the subject matter of the book. Chase, a British social worker in Los Angeles, was also a photographer who made a trip in the summer of 1918 to document the region from Palm Springs south through the Anza-Borrego area and from there east to the Imperial Valley and finally to the Colorado River and Yuma. Chase's descriptions of his adventures and the beauty he traveled through put the book in the same genre as Muir and Mary Austin, while the accuracy of his scientific descriptions predate Edmund Jaeger's classic of the same region, "California Deserts", by almost 50 years.

The reader is carried along with Chase, and his horse "Kaweah", through the deserts of Southern California before much of what we have come to know the area by existed. Pre-automobile California was much the same as it had been for thousands of years, the home of Indians, native desert animals and plants, and very little else except for breathtaking beauty and solitude. Chase captures this land in a way that few writers before or since have been able to. All this notwithstanding, Chase has been all but forgotten in the century since he wrote California Desert Trails. This is sad considering his ability to describe what he saw: "When the red flood of sunset comes on those great plains and hill slopes, where no other object breaks the far expanse, while the ancient river moves silently on to the lonely gulf and the mysterious sea, and the traveler's steps halt under that old spell of evening, then the dark, upward-pointing finger of the saguaro gives an added solemnity to that impression of the vast, unchanging, and elemental which is the eternal note of the desert."

As a chronicle of a California that no longer exists, California Desert Trails strikes me as a fossil; an incredible, poignant preservation of something that once existed but which long ago ceased to be a part of day-to-day life: "A straight white line marked on the desert proved to be a macadamized road which had lately been laid for the benefit of automobilists. This gave notice that I was approaching the settlements of Imperial. Two or three [automobiles] passed us, for there is a fair amount of traffic between San Diego and the now-born towns of the valley." Chase and Kaweah tromp and trudge through places with names that are still in use, but which have changed so much since 1918 that I wonder if the pair would recognize many of them. Here is Palm Springs of that year: "On the morning of starting I had been up since four o'clock, and we got on the move while Palm Springs was yet rubbing its eyes. As we passed the Reservation there came the chatter of orioles breakfasting with nonchalance on old Rosa's early figs at forty cents a pound. The racket, checked while the thieves listened with bored amusement to the rattle of her warning bell, -- a kerosene can with horseshoe clapper, hung high among the branches of the patriarchal tree, and operated by Rosa's foot, so as not to interfere with the fashioning of baskets or tortillas, -- went on again the moment the tattoo was ended. Not so, I guessed, the slumbers of her neighbors."

Chase's book is highly recommendable, not only as historical reading, but also as an integral part of the body of literature which continues to build on the beauty and wonder of the deserts of the world. More importantly, even though some of the prose may seem plodding to us in the high-speed information age, the crafting of the book is superb, and this is what makes it such a wonderful experience. It took me almost a month to read the book because I hung on every word, and found myself turning back and forth comparing passages and noting phrases. My copy has at least 100 colored "post-it" tabs stuck on pages at points I particularly wanted to remember. I could just as easily have placed a tab on every page. I did not mark this paragraph, only because it is the last paragraph of Chase's travels, and thus easily remembered: "What sentiment does the desert yield by which it may be linked with human emotions? What analogy exists by which we may come into touch with it? The answer must be, There is none. At every point the desert meets us with a negative. Like the Sphinx, there is no answer to its riddle. It is in the fascination of the unknowable, in the challenge of some old unbroken secret, that the charm of the desert consists. And the charm is undying, for the secret is - Secrecy."

Read it before you marry- during and most importantly if you contemplate divorce. Comprehensivly written for lay persons from a Judicial perspective. Obtain the most current edition for continuing legislative changes. This is the most valuable book I've seen on the subject.

"A California Dreamer in King Henry's Court" is the story of adventurer Harold Hurgood who journeys back in time from twentieth century London to the year 1535 during the tyrannical reign of King Henry The Eighth and his Tower of London horrors. From chapter to chapter the reader travels along with Hurgood along a circuitous and sometimes dangerous route meeting interesting characters along the way. Who could not forget "John The Large" and little "Annalisa?"

And who could not be amused at times by Hurgood himself as a bard and then a knight, and then not fear for him when he comes to realize his tenuous place as a subject to the tyrant King.

The historical details and splendid dialogue of the time are well researched, from the major events and people true to life down to little things like unwashed boards for plates, and to own a Bible risked the stake.

As an author, Robert L. Plunkett is on a par with the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. "A California Dreamer in King Henry's Court" is a "must have" for science fiction and history buffs. You won't be disappointed.

The breadth of Ms Spear's talent is breathtaking... from downright hilarious to totally tragic with all gradients in bewtween... the only regret i have in reading this book was that there isn't a sequel; yet!..

This book is easy to read, the pictures are colorful, and all pertinent information is covered. Even though I have lived in the state nearly all my life, this little hardback book showed me things I never knew. It reinforced prelearned knowledge and expanded my knowledge. I helped a 2nd grader who was doing a research project, and found this particular book met all the requirements, the pictures were accurate and colorful and the information excellent. I would highly recommend this author for all her states' information-type books.

detailed listings of California Festivals with excellent cross indexing. Well worth searching for it