This book is just fine for someone who wants to crack the surface on these canines, but is lacking for anyone wanting significant information. After all, a book can cover only so much information in a mere 22 pages! The pictures, however, are very nice, and the smaller boxed text (there are five) are interesting. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a wealth of information on Coyotes, Foxes, and Wolves, keep looking - this book has little that could not be found in any decent book on the subject.

Being a pretty busy person, and usually hating to read travel guides, I find that the DK Eyewitness Guides are the only ones I can stand reading - in fact, I find them enjoyable.

Their main force is that you don't have to imagine whether a destination would be something for you - the guide shows you what to expect, where others just tell you about it. That is the series' main force: They are very easily digestible.

That said, an Eyewitness Guide can't stand alone, so my wife usually acquires a Lonely Planet guide for the place, and I read the Eyewitness Guide, and the two complement each other nicely.

This guide to the US South West I bought in preparation for a vacation there, and although it had always been a dream destination for me, I can only say that I looked forward to it more and more for each time I read the book!

One has to know that the book covers quite a large area: The complete states of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as Southern Utah, the area around Las Vegas, and a little bit of Colorado. This means that for most people, myself included, there are parts of the book which doesn't apply at all to the trip one is planning. As an example, a rather large (in my opinion) section of 38 pages (or 17%) is dedicated to Las Vegas. For an area guide like this, it can't be any different - one just has to know this.

Although the overall quality of the book makes for a very attractive read, I still miss more detailed information, such as approximate entry fees. The area maps of the attractions could be better, too, as I often found myself wondering if a road marked on the map would be accessible to normal cars, or four-wheel drive only, etc.

Although I liked the book and found it a great preperatory tool, as a travel companion it leaves a lot to be desired: The maps aren't detailed enough and it's a little too evident that this is a first edition. There's just one too many errors to make you completely comfortable with it, but the errors are in the details, and for the large overview, it can't be beat.

My overall conclusion would seem to be, then, that it is a very attractive book that gives one a good general feel for the area.

This is Arnow's companion volume to her SEEDTIME ON THE CUMBERLAND. While SEEDTIME focuses on physical aspects of pioneering, i.e., food, clothing, shelter, the struggle against Indians and governments, FLOWERING emphasizes social institutions and activities that required the early settlers to interact with other people as a society, i.e., communication, education, industry, and trade. Home life as a focal point is reiterated, and the transplanting of Old World culture into the Cumberland River region is stressed. Primary sources, as well as some unpublished materials, are cited. The treatment, however, seems somewhat romantic and not critical, almost like a novel. In essence, Arnow is telling the story or stories of these early pioneers. The material is structured topically.

Tibet Handbook with Bhutan, by Gyurme Dorje (Footprint Handbooks, Bath, England, 2nd edition 1999, 952pp plus maps).

The greatest strength of this book is that it is the only guidebook to give a substantial account of all parts of the Tibetan plateau, both inside and outside the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region. For that reason it is, despite its conspicuous faults, indispensable for the traveller to Tibet whose itinerary extends beyond the familiar lands of central Tibet. The book is not to be confused with "Tibet Handbook" by Victor Chan.

"Tibet Handbook with Bhutan" is a guide to all Tibetan regions governed by the People's Republic of China, with additional chapters on Bhutan and the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. It would have been useful to include the Tibetan borderlands in Nepal and north-west India Ä although it is no doubt expedient politically to imply that no part of Tibet lies outside the territory China governs.

At 650 grams, the new edition (paperback) is almost twice the weight of the first, hardback, edition - a curious development for a travel guidebook.

The book includes useful background information about Tibetan religion, iconography and history. The bulk of the book deals with the regions of the Tibetan plateau by devoting a section to each one of the 158 counties into which the People's Republic of China divides it. This approach turns out to be surprisingly intelligible.

There is extensive information about religious places, and buildings and their contents. There is much less information about other matters such as topography, agriculture, educational facilities, military establishments, and political structures. It is as though, in a way, those things belong to a different Tibet.

The book enjoys the benefit of the author's experience as a scholar and tour guide. It also suffers the limitations of that experience, and is often short on practical details for the independent traveller. It is written in a concise style that betrays no trace of personality.

The second edition has been expanded considerably, mainly with valuable information about counties where information in the first edition was inadequate. Unfortunately, the author has not taken the opportunity to check the much more extensive material carried over from the first edition. If he would make time to do that, he would find innumerable internal contradictions within the text and between the text and the often wildly inaccurate small county maps. Almost any numeral, particularly distances, should be treated with suspicion. The relationship between the county population figures and those in the 1996 edition show impossible fluctuations; they go unremarked, but indicate that at least one of the sets of figures is worthless, and perhaps both. The inherent confusion in the existence of both Tibetan and Chinese names for the same places demands a consistency of usage in a guidebook which this one does not quite manage to attain.

An indispensable book, with the scope to become much better.

The chapters of this publication are intently focused, it seems, on downplaying the role of a greater Chaco community across the San Juan Basin. Intra-valley development is the mantra of this volume. While there is no question that local development is significant an attempt at exploring the mechanics of interaction with neigboring groups, much less with a central canyon, is generally ignored. This creates a one-dimensional approach leading the reader to believe that people living within the basin were culturally confined, locally. The last chapter of this volume, which is authored by Steve Lekson is alone worth the price of the publication. Lekson is allowed to "Think Great" and encourages a broader view of the San Juan Basin, beyond local and regional boundaries.

Much has been written of the feud yet in this book I found a "good read" along with a very historical study. Also inside the front and back covers you will find a family tree graphic to help you trace possible relations.

I read the 2nd Edition, Revised, of this book and the account of Nevada from 1860 to 1900 was exciting because Nevada was a weird and exciting place during those years. but I did not find the account of 20th century Nevada too interesting, even tho the book devotes full attention to the political history of the state, which I would ordinarily have thought would guarantee my finding this a good book. For a really good state history, read History of North Dakota, by Elwyn B. Robinson. I found that state history (I am not from either Nev. or ND) unputdownable.

Contains the main narrative of the Coronado expedition by Pedro de Castaneda, who was one of the soldiers on the expedition and wished to separate the stories being told from what really took place. The Seven Cities were supposedly a kingdom of riches and on the word of a friar an expedition was launched to seek them out and this relates what they went through, albeit very briefly. Also includes other letters and shorter accounts that all tell about the same story. Gets a lower rating than it probably should because I found the translation did not flow easily. It is also not nearly on par with the much more vivid accounts such as Conquest of New Spain about Cortez, the Relacion of Cabeza de Vaca, or La Florida about De Soto. Contains no maps but a great deal of endnotes.

Eller opens the eyes of the reader as he talks about the events that formed Appalachia as we know it today. He tends to romantacize somewhat but gives the reader the hard facts that have affected the Appalachian region and its people.

Chapter 1, sentence 2: "The West had long privileged scopic enterprises and visual modalities, and by the mid-nineteenth century an observational visualist hegemony became a persistent focus of modernism in social, scientific, and aesthetic endeavours - and certainly of anthropology." The photgraphs are new and wonderful; Professor Faris's text is no match for them. First, it is largely unreadable (see sample above). Second, what I could read was tediously PC (that "hegemony" should have tipped me off!). Third, it adds very little to my knowledge of the "juxtaposition of cultures" as promised on the dust jacket. Where was the editor who should have read this manuscript with an active red pencil? Ok, perhaps this is just an extreme example of scholarly writing - not intended for the general reader like myself. If so, too bad. Professor Faris has succeeded in turning a tremendously interesting selection of photographs into a book that is dense and unenlightening.