The author is an expert on the history of Leadville, Colorado and of this ice palace. It's amazing that they could build out of ice a building you could have ballrooms inside of and restaurants and all. The original photos from the 1800s add to the book as do the lists by name of people who signed the visitors log - I'm into genealogy and looked for ancestors' names who may have been there in 1896. Names are in an index, so easy to find. The Elks (B.P.O.E.) visited as a group - I hadn't know they'd been around so long. There was a German day and an Irish day and Bikers riding in. There was ice skating and tobogganing. So, the book begins with the interesting history from planning to completion, but also the fun events and photos of those events are described after that.

Anyone interersted in Colorado history, railroads, genealogy, ice sculpture, 1800s photographs, or partying on a "grand scale" would love to read this book. I gave this book to my sisters for Christmas and to a friend for birthday gift.

Stephen covers the birth of a gold and silver boom town from the first prospects with a gold pan in a freezing mountain stream to the discovery of silver in "worthless black sands" to the greatest modern mines in the world. He documents the joys and sorrows of the miners and their families, the riches made and lives lost. He covers the details of mining - from individual gold panning and sluicing to two-man candlestick lit tunnels to modern corporate production mines. He describes hand-drilling of rock with doublejack and steel and continues to today's compressed air drills. He documents the use of black powder, dynamite and modern explosives - and the risks and deaths caused by their misuse. He tells of burros, mules and electric haulage trains. He does this all from the viewpoint of someone who has been there and done that. He has prospected in freezing Alaskan streams and done hardrock mining beneath deserts and alpine meadows. Stephen knows mining inside and out - literally. This book is more than a history of one Colorado boom town, it is a history of Western hardrock mining and the men and women who loved, lived and died mining.

Three government officials have been murdered and a Ute may have been killed on a remote part of Colorado. Jurisdiction seems to overlap between Federal, state, local, and tribal officials with everyone tripping over everyone else except the killer, who seems to have gotten away with murder. Denver homicide detective Gabe Wager has no jurisdiction so he is assigned to solve the case and end the bickering. ....... Gabe quickly realizes that he not only has to uncover a killer's identity, he has deal with all the various police authorities who have one thing in common: the desire to boss their compatriots. This leads to a lot of chiefs and one worker, Gabe. He soon realizes that there are plenty of motives and subsequently suspects. However, if Gabe does not identify the murderer soon, he will either go insane from the constant bureaucratic bickering or be killed by a murderer, who wants him out of the way. ...... Rex Burns is a great mystery writer, who always provides an intriguing and exciting novel. His latest book, THE LEANING LAND, is a fun read that refreshes Gabe Wager by placing him outside his element. The various law enforcement agencies add a Catch 22 comedic remedy to solving the mystery. Anyone who bets on reading this novel, will win their wager. ......Harriet Klausner

This is simply a great book, whether you are a horse person or not. In fact, so far I have given it to all my friends and employees, none of which are "horsey", and they all love it! It's hard to put into words what I have learned from it and what I continue to learn each time I read it. (4 times so far) Suffice it to say that it is the best book I've read in the last two years, and maybe longer. However, I must also say if you buy this because you are looking for a horse training book per si, then you will most certainly be disappointed. It isn't a training book in the literal sense. Rather it opens doors to possibilities that are available to us all not just with horses, but more importantly, in our overall daily lives. If you are looking to find better ways to help your horse through understanding and communication, or simply to help improve your life in general, then this one is for you. The lessons to be gleaned from this book are simple but very powerful. Right up there with another one of my favorites, The Tao of Pooh. I HIGHLY recomend this book.

"I want my stories to come from places and things I know in nature," Liz Caile writes. "I want to take some of my craziness and bury it ritually in the right place in the earth, to find a cure for my restlessness in plants and planets, roots and rituals" (p. 50). Before her death, Caile wrote for "The Mountain Ear" in Nederland, Colorado, a mountain town in the Rockies just west of Boulder (where I live). This book is a collection of the columns Caile contributed to that newspaper for twenty years. These essays are about living an authentic life, walking softly, and living simply.

Caile was a minimalist who practiced what she preached. "People should adapt to nature, rather than the other way around" (p. 49), she writes. She lived in a primitive mountain cabin, and prefered walking to driving a car. "So my kids learned to walk, a skill that will be one of the most valuable things I taught them," Caile says. "You can always get from here to there on your own two feet" (p. 6). She considered pavement a "form of imprisonment" (p. 103), and encourages her readers to walk. "If you live in town, walk at least to its edge, and better yet, beyond it" (p. 234). "I pray with my feet," she says. Her loving friends tell us that Liz "believed in living lightly on the earth, in using our resources carefully and thoughtfully. She believed in being conscious of the impacts of our actions, as a nation and as individuals" (p. v). The Sierra Club cup represents an ideal for Caile. "Let's face it," she writes, "the fewer dishes you dirty, the fewer you have to wash. It represents an economy of utensils that I wish we all could take into our lives. It says some basic things about our habit of consumption, drawing a line between what we really need and what is superfluous" (pp. 9-10). In her essays, Caile urges us to simplify our lives, to "act with responsibility to all species, not just ourselves" (p. 124), to commune with the power of nature, then vote, run for office, read about the issues, write and make phone calls (p. 96).

Caile's essays are organized into sections on simple living, changing seasons, environmental ethics, social values, war and peace, life at treeline, family, and walking. Each essay reveals her knack for seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. "What counts is the seeing," she reflects. "I don't know what it is," she writes, "except that if everyone were to discover the pleasures of just looking at things and listening to things, they'd probably stop spending money at breakneck speed--they might even stop working at certain jobs that, when clearly observed, appear to be counterproductive to a healthy society" (p. 14). "A moth," she confides, "only a moth, brings life to my life" (p. 73).

Caile wrote with integrity and courage. She was progressive even by Nederland and Boulder standards, confronting subjects including overpopulation, pavement, mountain bikers, mall shopping, advertising, pollution, consumption, species loss, the Forest Service, the death penalty and jet noise over Boulder in her columns. Caile's essays have a truthful ring, and she wrote from her heart. "I talk to the trees, I talk to the sky," she writes. "I talk sense and nonsense, and now and then I remember to say thanks. Thanks for the beauty. Thanks for the firewood. Thanks for the oxygen. Thanks for the ground cover. Thanks for the rain and snow" (p. 142).

This book is filled with local color, and the colors of nature. It offers us a breath of sweet, cool, Rocky Mountain air. And from Caile's TREELINE, you'll experience the most amazing views.

G. Merritt

... about Longs Peak.

On the back cover of this book is a quote from Harold Dunning, 1930: "To tell all that one can see from the top of Longs Peak would be telling too much, so you must climb it yourself..." That is true. Yet even those who have climbed Longs Peak, or attempted to do so, love to read about it. To such people, this book was dedicated. Trimble writes with passion and understanding about a subject he obviously loves.

Fortunately, he has a grasp of history, both the more recent kind as well as the sort that is written upon the rocks. He also provides an appendix on climbing ratings, notable Longs Peak firsts, and deaths on Longs Peak. For those who want to read more about the topics he touches upon, he provides an excellent bibliography at the back of his book.

The Lost Journals Of Charles S. Armstrong: From Arkport, New York To Aspen Colorado 1867-1894 is a remarkable primary source of the history of Western America. These journals chronicle the life and times of Charles S. Armstrong, a man who was one of thousands of fortune-seekers who ventured into Colorado in the 1880s. Armstrong was one of the Aspen-area's first pioneers who build a cabin, prospected for minerals, grew vegetables, fished and trapped, and much more. Offered with an editor's overview giving historical context, the journals are presented as-is day by day, with some ordinary days featuring only a line or two and others meriting vivid, descriptive paragraphs. The Lost Journals Of Charles S. Armstrong offers uniquely personal view of American life more than a hundred years gone.

I thought Love's Destiny was a wonderful book. M. Louise Quezada always has a great flair for romantic suspense and intriguing characters. I truly enjoyed it!

The pictures are really extrodinary and the text is very readable and understandable. I don't tire of looking at the photos over and over.

Read it before you go the the Rocky Mountains. Then have fun exploring the places that are described. These women are awesome and I would love to meet the author, Janet Robertson.