I found this book to contain numerous examples of poor directions to the trailheads and summits. I have completed summit hikes in 35 counties and have been sent to impossible to find trails in many instances. In two attempts in yolo county I have been unable to find the trailhead. Local conditions can change by season and over time but this book desperately needs to be updated. In fact if the author would contact me I would be willing to help however I can.

This book will really get you hooked on highpointing. It needs a little updating, but the information in it is good.

If Gary Suttle is reading this, hey, why not come out with another issue?

Without question one of the better guidebooks in print. I particularly like the maps, which are taken directly from the USGS topographic maps of the areas involved. It should be noted that many major California peaks are covered in this book, including Mount Whitney, White Mountain Peak, North Palisade, Mount Shasta, and the 3 major peaks surrounding the LA basin. (San Gorgonio Mountain, San Jacinto Peak and Mount San Antonio)

This book has proven very helpful to me on hikes to California county high points, and I highly recommend it for anyone contemplating similar expeditions. It is also useful to those simply interested in learning more about the history and topography of the county they reside in.

I've just moved to Utah and on the drive into the state I purchased this book at a visitors center. I couldn't think of a better way to explore my new state than while hiking to the highest summit of each of it's counties. Huff and Wharton do an excellent job of weaving stories into an informative guidebook. There area history section has greatly added to the value of the book, and has helped me learn plenty about the state of Utah. My biggest complaint is that the distances stated in the book are often grossly erroneous. For example, the Bridger Peak distances are off by ~50%. You'd think distances would be double checked before going to print, but these apparently were not.

A great book that is well written and easy to follow. Ms. Huff's articles are a definite bonus! She normally gives a general history of the area in which the peek resides. She goes "above and beyond" by interviewing inhabitants of the area/county and gets his/her view of the area's historical significance. In some articles, she even discusses how each peek or mountain range was formed geologically. The maps are ideal as are the accurate distances to different landmarks. This book is a must for any reader/hiker/outdoor enthusiast who wants hike Utah's highest peeks by county!

Black Sun is the 4th in the Plainsmen Series and the 4th book of Terry Johnston's that I have read. Since reading it, I have read the next 4 books in the series. Terry Johnston brings the old west to life with his descriptive writing. He has researched this period of time and knows what he is writing about. Black Sun was like the other books that I have read of his in that once you start reading, you can't put it down. He is successful in taking his reader captive and transporting them to the old west to be a spectator of the adventures of Seamus Donegan and his friends, fictional and real life. I highly recommend this book and the others in the Plainsmen Series.

According to Kate McCarthy, there are "convergent" pluralists and "nonconvergent" pluralists. Perhaps the best-known member of the convergent camp is John Hick, whose 1989 "An Interpretation of Religion" and 1995 followup "A Christian Theology of Religions" may be the best expressions of convergent pluralism out there.

Thinkers like S. Mark Heim ("Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion") and Stephen Kaplan represent the nonconvergent camp (I've reviewed Heim's "Salvations" on Amazon.com, so I won't go into it here)-- pluralists uncomfortable with common-essence approaches to the questions of religion, salvation, and ultimate reality.

Kaplan's book enters the pluralism debate rather late in the game, but it's easily one of the most original philosophical contributions out there.

Like Heim, Kaplan wants to posit a model that allows for multiple salvations. Unlike Heim and Hick (and almost everyone else!), however, Kaplan takes the game further and wants to set these multiple salvations within a framework of multiple ontologies-- a plurality of ultimate realities.

Hick (1995) scoffed at the notion of numerically multiple ultimates, and one has the impression that his position is based on common sense. [NB: Hick's position on "the Real" has been described as Kantian, but it also possesses traits of advaitic nondualism, making his position more subtle than it seems at first blush.] But Kaplan thinks that it is both possible and meaningful to present a model that coherently allows for a plural ontology and soteriology.

To this end, Kaplan relies heavily on the work of David Bohm and the principles of holography to present his "holographic" pluralistic proposal. A lot of space is devoted to explaining some basics about holography in order to make the analogy more intelligible to a nonexpert.

We learn a great deal about the "implicate order" and "explicate order(s)"; we gain some insights about research into the irreducible diversity of mystical experience, as well as the ins and outs of contructivist epistemology. We see the holographic model applied to the "monistic nondualism" of Gaudapada (advaitic Hindu), the "process nondualism" of Vasubandhu (Yogacara Buddhist), and the "dualistic theism" of Richard of St. Victor (Catholic Christian), and we come to understand that these worldviews simply apprehend holographic reality in ways that prioritize certain aspects of it while deemphasizing others.

Kaplan constructs his argument well and deals ably with possible objections to his model. But does he convince?

For me, the answer is no. One grievous problem with Kaplan's model is that it relies on a linguistic gambit: you have to agree that "ultimate," far from meaning "greatest" in an exclusivistic sense, means something more like "last in a series," which harks back to an older meaning of the word. Kaplan contends that this move is necessary because then "ultimate" is understood more pluralistically: different paths take you to different summits. Kaplan doesn't truly address the philosophical issues of ultimacy in its normally understood sense; he neatly avoids them.

But there is another difficulty: while Kaplan's model propounds multiple ontologies and soteriologies, these elements remain subsumed under a SINGLE OVERARCHING METAPHYSIC (a fact Kaplan admits at several points in the book).

This, to my mind, is no different from the so-called "trap" into which John Hick has supposedly fallen. In fact, every nonconvergent pluralist who propounds a philosophical model inevitably must confess the model's hidden unitive aspect. For Kaplan, it's a NUMERICALLY single metaphysic that ties the various ontologies together. For someone like Heim, it's a single ontology with multiple soteriologies (cf. Heim's "travel analogy" in "Salvations"). In the end, people like Heim and Kaplan end up being, if you will, crypto-convergent pluralists. Their models demand that the various religions widen their playing fields to acknowledge previously inadmissible possibilities. And given most religious folks' demeanor, absolutely NONE of these models will prove acceptable... except perhaps to similarly-minded pluralists (Heim actually anticipates some of this in "Salvations").

Despite my feeling that Kaplan's model is unconvincing, his book was a great read, and there's no denying it's one of the few truly innovative philosophical moves in the ongoing discussions about religious pluralism. To that extent, I recommend it highly. Like my copy of Heim's "Salvations," my copy of DPDS is full of scrawled marginalia. Yours will be, too.

I had a wonderful girlfriend once who introduced me to her passion about Everest. That passion rubbed off on me and now I am hooked on the stories from Everest. For me, this book was the perfect followup to Hillary's High Adventure. The pictures in this book brought it all home. They made it feel like the pictures were taken yesterday, save for the old equipment. With this being the 50th anniversary of Hillary's climb, this book had a large focus on that climb and rightfully so.
PS - I also was checking the book to see if she had made it up the mountain.

I am from a small town in Eastern Kentucky where, when I was growing up, coal mining was king. Though I've never set foot in a coal mine, I am here to tell you that this book captures the essence of life in the hills.

This is an outstanding novel. It is far, far better than the tepid musings of that better known and celebrated mountain scribe, the liar Chris Offutt. It is a damned shame that "Those that Mattered" is out of print.

Description: The World's Great Mountaineers on the Future of Climbing, celebrating 25 years of the Banff Film Festival. Size is 251 pages w/ contributor bio and many mountain photos, measures 9" by 12", softbound, published by National Geographic in association with The Banff Centre for Mountain Culture. From the back cover: "An extraordinary tribute to the art of mountaineering with many of the worlds greatest climbers, a book both unique in scope and unprecedented in authority. Looking back at the climbers milestone's and forward to new challenges, these founding fathers, contemporary superstars, and their chroniclers explore every aspect of the sport and offer thoughtful, personal, and often provocative vision of what mountaineering truly means to the men and women who test their spirits and hazard their lives in the risky but rewarding world of high adventure."

Contributors include Reihold Messner, Ed Viesturs, Wade Davis, Sir Chris Bonington, Catherine Destivelle, David Breashears, Greg Childs, Leo Houlding, Sir Edmund Hillary, Lynn Hill, Yvon Chouinard, Jeff Lowe, Todd Skinner, Kitty Calhoun, Will Gadd, Thomas Hornbein, Royal Robbins and 15 others weighing in on 11 topics crucial to the future of mountaineering, from Himalayan climbing and the ethics of adventuring to ice climbing and rock climbing, plus a history of the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

Personal opinion: Interesting read with the individual bios and mountaineering history, great information on philosophical approach to the climbers world. Easy to read sections without losing focus, each climber stands alone, can move around rather front to back. A good reinforcement to belief, you can do anything you want.