Brinkerhoff's little guide is just the right size for stuffing into the pocket of your cargo shorts or daypack, and it covers a fair sampling of short and easy South Salt Lake City and American Fork area hikes especially suited for hikers with limited abilities or families with small children. Also, the brief hike descriptions, with trailhead info, trail notes, distance and hiking time estimates, are generally helpful and reliable. But this book falls short of its potential, for it could easily have been greatly improved without sacrificing its convenient size or adding much to its cost simply by adding a few more details to some of the hike descriptions, extending the coverage a bit to include a few more popular and spectacular local hikes, and especially, by improving the trail maps.

Having hiked every trail in the book, many with this text (and others) in hand, I routinely found myself correcting or supplementing Brinkerhoff's cursory trail descriptions and hand-drawn maps (which are currently little more than wiggly dotted lines with a few essential features like paved roads, trailheads and lakes) with such things as as elevation, distance, topography and terrain notes, maps of converging trails, and occasionally, minor corrections. Admittedly, some of the trails covered in the book don't actually require anything more than instructions to the trailhead, but most of them connect with other trails the reader might want either to follow or avoid, and in such cases better descriptions and maps would be a genuine help. And since the book is so small (and admirably so, for it is by far the most portable of the many Utah trail books available), it could easily have been expanded to cover a greater number of short and popular local trails--like Ensign Peak, Provo's Rock Canyon, and a host of candidates from Sandy and Millcreek Canyon. As it is, despite the title, the text really only covers Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons and American Fork Canyon (with the inclusion of a single trail in Pleasant Grove under the American Fork Canyon section).

In my opinion, improvements of the kind I have mentioned would have made the book a much more serviceable text without adding significantly to either its bulk or price, and thus, should have been included. As it stands, I recommend "Best Easy Day Hikes SLC" as the best available short and cheap guide to easy Wasatch area trails, but a serious hiker will prefer something like David Day's "Utah's Favorite Hiking Trails," Steve Mann's "100 Hikes in Utah," or John Veranth's "Hiking the Wasatch," all of which are infinitely more informative and helpful--but also bigger and pricier. Or buy this for it's convenient size, and then supplement the applicable entries before your trip with important details from the bigger and better books. Hopefully, a reworked edition will soon save you the trouble.

This book is a must have if you're a hiker near the Salt Lake City area. It's great for the novice hiker, families with smaller children, or nine-to-fivers like myself trying to pick up a quick hike on weekdays before or after work. All of the routes in this book have two conveniences in common. None of the trailheads are more than an hours drive from the bottom of the canyon, and none of the hikes are more than a few miles round trip. This makes it really easy to knock of several hikes a season. Most of them average about one hour of hiking time. Brian Brinkerhoff also does a great job of describing what kind of terrain to expect. Some of the included hikes are paved for easy wheelchair and stroller access, or for the ease of beginning trail runners worried about their ankles. Several on Brinkerhoff's list includes highlights such as waterfalls, alpine lakes, and even some mining ruins, concentrating on the little and big cottonwood canyon areas.

In late nineteenth century New Zealand, William McQuiggan, a victim of child abuse, strikes out at those who love him such as his wife Myra. William finds solace only in alcohol. However, while working in the hated fields, a drunken William sees a vision. He decides to go on a quest in search of God.

William leaves behind his pregnant wife and journeys across the Pacific to Utah where he joins the Mormons. When he concludes that religion as bogus, he tries the Jehovah's Witnesses, but feels that movement is a sham. He next heads to Illinois to join Dr. Alexander Dowie's Zion City utopia before souring on that faction. While on his American adventure, his wife and twin children finally join him and soon more children follow. He becomes further unhinged until he returns home in a last ditch effort to reach God through his own church.

Stephanie Johnson paints a dark work of historical fiction in that there is little hope beyond bleakness even for those who believe in God. The story line is vivid as it describes several locales, the era, and religions with clarity and depth. William is a wonderfully drawn character whose slow descent into a self-made hell makes BELIEF work though readers will tire of the abused Myra traipsing after her man.

Harriet Klausner

This book is a great guide for people who are going to make a trip to Utah to do family research. The perfect Tool for genealogoligists.

This is a great source of info. If you're tired of the usual, give this book a try and then you'll fly. Everything from nuts to bolts. I rate it a 4 because 5 seems too high, a 3 too low. I now have a job and am loving life, because I'm on my own two feet, well sort of, one foot. I lost the other due to gangreen, and a little thing, well lets just call it an unfortunate mishap. Anyway buy this book, and if you don't like it sell it! May the paint continue to stick to your walls, and your billfold be full.

Rodger MilHouse Thirstin the 3rd. Sr. Hot Dog Baker Hot Doggie Dog Dog 55 East Hot Dog Cir. Salt Lake City, UT 84101

William Chandless was an Englishman who, in 1855, set out as a teamster, hired to travel to Salt Lake City. In this account of his travels, Chandless describes his journey across the Plains westward, as made by the emigrant and the cattle-driver of that time. The second part of the book is of a different subject and nature than the first. Chandless writes a chronicle of his meeting with the Mormons, his observations, and his opinions. An interesting first hand account of the early Western migration in the United States and of the unique society to be found in Utah at that time.

Unless you know a lot about Mormon history, and about the Hoffman bombings, this book can only confuse. It's poorly written, a long recitation of facts and supposed facts. It reads like an attempt to defend the Mormon church, rather than provide any history or narrative. It's unfortunate, because it's certainly a fascinating subject.

After reading this, the only thing I wanted to do was re-read A Gathering of Saints, Robert Lindsey's book about the same period.

This is one of several books written in the wake of the murders and forgeries committed by Mark Hofmann in the early 1980s. Hofmann forged hundreds of documents, but it his forgeries affecting Mormon history is the focus of this work. Several of these forgeries went to the heart of Mormon origins, and were done in an apparent effort to embarrass The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In financial trouble, Hofmann murdered Steven Christensen and Kathleen Sheets to delay discovery of his duplicity.

Turley begins his account by reviewing the canonical account of the Church's origins and a history of other prominent forgeries intended to discredit the Church. Turley then goes over the history of the Hofmann case. An appendix lists all known documents acquired by the Church from Hofmann. Unlike other writers, he had access to a wealth of Church documents. The result is a well-documented account presenting the Church's side of the story. Though he is hardly objective in his account, he avoids the sensationalism characteristic of the so-called true crime novel. His tone is mainly that of a scholarly historian.

The Hofmann case is extremely complicated, involving Church officials, Mormon historians, document dealers, journalists, law enforcement officers, attorneys, and others. Turley attempted to keep the major characters in focus, but the reader is still liable to get lost. I found myself going back over previous material several times to keep everything straight. Fortunately, this book contains an index.

Complicating things further, Turley often digresses from the narrative. Sometimes, the digressions are faith-promoting stories more suited to Church magazines. In others, they seem like personal attacks against real or perceived enemies of the Church. Turley also occasionally pauses to score an apologetic point. Turley should have omitted these things entirely or relegated all of this to the notes. This material is not very appropriate to what is supposed to be a scholarly history.

Hofmann said he was not afraid of being caught by divine inspiration (316). Some people have raised the question of why the Church's "prophets, seers, and revelators" did not detect Hofmann's forgeries. To his credit, Turley does not attempt to answer this question. While this is perhaps an interesting theological question, it would be out of place to try to answer it in a historical work.

This book exists in relationship to other books on the Hofmann case. Turley has relegated most of the direct interaction to the notes. Discerning Turley's intent concerning these books is not easy without reading them. It seems clear he wants to refute the work of Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith (The Mormon Murders [New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988]). Other sources tell me this work is most distorted account of the Hofmann case. Richard Lindsey's A Gathering of Saints (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) is not mentioned as often. Turley may be correcting misconceptions, but does not accuse Lindsey of willful distortion.

Though Turley perhaps comments on Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts' Salamander (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988) the most, the relationship is harder to discern. Some Latter- day Saints portray Signature Books as an anti-Mormon press, but Turley is rarely dismissive of the book. At times, he may be trying to refute it. Sometimes he treats it as though its perceived misconceptions were due to lack of information available to him. At other times, he accepts its information at face value. It will be interesting to see if and how the second edition of Salamander deals with Victims.

The weaknesses aside, Turley has given us a well-balanced account of the Hofmann case. What it loses in complexity is more than made up for by its thoroughness. It is remarkably free from speculation, and highly recommended for those looking for a book placing the focus of the Hofmann case there it belongs: on Hofmann's victims.

The first reviewer to this book is probably robert lindsey himself, or at least some one who's trying to slyly sway the opinion of some unsuspecting shopper toward the 'anti' end of the spectrum.

I thought the title of this book looked promising, so I bought it. I confess that I'm disappointed. The idea is nice - to use the mathematics of fractals for musical analysis. But unfortunately, throughout the book, the mathematics is naive and flawed. If the level of musical analysis had compensated for this, I would have forgiven it, but it doesn't.

I'll give some random examples. On page 6, he introduces the concept of a Cauchy sequence, but unfortunately he thinks that if the distance between successive terms in a sequence tends to zero then the sequence is Cauchy. Although he does not claim to be making a precise definition, this error leads him to state at the top of page 32 that the sequence of harmonics of a fundamental is a Cauchy sequence, which is clearly false.

On page 175, he tries to apply Nyquist's theorem to a sum of sine waves, but apparently he has not understood that sine waves at precisely half the sampling frequency do not survive the sampling process, it is only frequencies strictly below this that survive. So he simply admits confusion that Nyquist's theorem doesn't seem to work!

There is certainly an interesting area here to be investigated, and maybe the real point of the book will be to make us more aware of the possibilities.

As a fractal music hobbyist, I have been dismayed that there are so few resources that attempt to apply knowledge of fractals to music. Many books devote time to the concepts of chaos - but most applications are aimed at drawing pretty pictures. None throw more than a passing glance at musical applications.

Charles Madden is truly breaking new ground here. This is the only attempt I know of that tries to pull a lot of the fractal topics together within the realm of music (e.g., self-similarity, attractors, randomicity, fractal dimensions).

The book is far from perfect. Some of it is hard to follow, so it helps to have already read and understood some of the other works on chaos & fractals. It also helps to have a good layman's knowledge of music theory. This book does not explore music based on the more complex shapes (e.g., music created using the Mandelbrot set or Julia sets). Finally, if the other reviewer is correct, some of the math is kinda sketchy... So the book is slightly flawed. (Mind you, many have also criticized Mandelbrot's works for mathematical inconsistencies. Maybe it's an honor!)

BUT... This is the only book of its kind. Enough said. With a little bit of background in music & in fractals, the reader will find plenty of new ideas & fresh perspectives on old ideas. What more could you want from a book?

A guidebook should do two things. First, it needs to present a lot of factual information about places in the area it describes. Second, it must evaluate the places in a way that is useful to its target audience. This book meets the first requirement: it gives some historical information about the Salt Lake area and it describes many stores, restaurants, hotels, and other locations that will interest travelers. It also talks about health care, education, and other topics that are useful to people considering moving to SLC. Unfortunately, this Insider's Guide fails the second requirement by describing pretty much everything in glowing terms: if you believe this book, everyone is nice, the restaurants are all good, and you can't stay in a bad hotel. Compared to the more useful and frank evaluations found in the better guidebooks such as Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, or Let's Go, this book is definitely second class.

I was attracted to this book because the topic is seldom addressed in children's literature. However, I found the story to be under developed. When characters are challenged, they underreact. They almost seem to step out of the story, treat the situation frivously and move on. The dialogue does not always ring true. Needs a good editor to give it some umph! Lots of potential but it does not deliver.

When a non-Mormon family moves into the big house next door, Emmy hopes they will have a girl just her age, which they do. As Emmy and Miranda test the waters of friendship, their mutal ignornance about each other's lifestyles provides the author with ample opportunities to explain Mormonism and the concept of plural marriage, as well as demonstrate the unfairness and judgmental attitutes of non-Mormons. The Mormons come across as rather righteous in their belief that they are following the will of God, while the Gentiles come across as narrow-minded and willing to persecute those not like them. The Gentile attitude forces Emmy's father to go into hiding or risk being jailed because he will not renounce one of his wives and sets of children. Miranda's serious illness prompts Emmy to figure out where her father is hiding and go to bring him back so that he can give Miranda a healing blessing. In gratitude, Miranda's father helps Emmy's father escape again. The unresolved plight of Emmy's family is rather unsatisfactory. Black and white illustrations are adequate. Didactic and too neat by half, however, these subjects are underrepresented in fiction for young readers.

---S.Thorup

I would not recommend this book to anyone (except maybe to the neighbor's dog, to chew on). While the story idea seems good on paper and I was looking forward to learning a little bit about Mormonism, this book falls spectacularly flat.

The main problem is that this book refers too often to events that happened in other books in the series. The author does not explain events and characters that must have happened in previous books and the reader is left confused as to what is going on.

As for the Mormonism, it is not explained well at all in the book. I didn't really learn a thing, except Mormons can't drink caffiene. The religion did come up in the story, but nothing was explained. The reader is expected to know it all already.

Also, the book is dry and uninteresting. I had to force myself to finish it as it did not get better with time. The characters kept finding new leads to their mysteries, but it was not explained how they found these people. It seems as if major details were left out (for example, why they decided to dig where they did) and other parts were not explained at all. I can think of many other things you could better waste your time on.