We got copies for all of our friends because kids really seem to like it--the coloring part is really, really well done, and they like having the history stuff read to them (unless they're old enough to read it, themselves).

Highly recommended.

Even though I have lived in New England for years, I learned a great deal about Rhode Island from RIAtoZ. The illustrations are charming, and the text makes this much more than a typical kids book. It's written from the perspective of someone who knows and truly loves Little Rhody. There should be a book like this for every state in the Union!!

We had Adam come to perform his Acme Miniature Circus at our Theatre in Brookline MA. He brought some books to sell, and I wanted to comment on how great the books are. Our patrons really loved them. We get a lot of kids and parents as patrons, and they all thought the book was fabulous. We are not even in Rhode Island! The book is entertaining, informative, and well worth getting.

This Cayman photography book is the most beautiful book published on the Cayman Islands. Not only have the photographers captured the beauty of these islands, they have also captured the beauty of the Cayman people by publishing their small biographies. I have been to the Cayman Islands and I love having this book as a wonderful memory of my trip.

This is a great book for any guy who wishes to meet a female from another country! Any of your questions or concerns will probably be covered somewhere in this book. Just to mention several of the many topics discussed are: Placing & responding to international personal ads, culture differences, international introduction services, visas & marriage & making the most of your trip. The author also discusses in detail the women & environment of over a dozen countries including Thailand, Brazil, DR, Scandinavia, Cuba and others. Besides being informative, this is also an entertaining read. I mainly read this for entertainment purposes and can definately relate to it as I have travelled to a couple of the countries mentioned in the book. I recommend this book to those who are serious about starting on the path to meet an international mate or to those just enjoy international travel and meeting people in the places they travel to.

I never had troubles meeting women, but they always seemed to want to be with other men. So I bought this book so that I could meet women that maybe I wouldn't say the wrong things, or maybe because I was famous that might like that. Let me say, I really liked it. Anyone that can read it, and wants to find women that won't right away leave them, should read it. The woman that I met had to move back, but there will be many more, thanks to Fantasy Islands!

I think that Fantasy Islands is a great source for the international bridebusiness for I Agree with the book and other sources 100% that the international Marrages work out much better then our domestic Marriagesanytime.

I have read all of Russ Hall's books. They are all very good; this one is the best of the bunch. Hall mixes mystery, suspense, intrigue, and a minor revolution in the Bahamas with full characterizations and a true novelist's treatment of important existential themes. What is a good person? When does might make right? When is turning the other cheek merely cowardice? What is love and why do we even bother? All important questions. . . . Hall does not preach them. He weaves them into a thrilling narrative and character development. And the book has a truly wonderful character in it, a fellow named Rolf. Rolf is every bit the 20th/21st century Shakespearean Falstaff. A character of immense joy and mischief.

Rolf alone is character enough to merit reading this book. He's the Falstaff and potentially dangerous comic relief to a narrator who's as overwhelmed as we would be by the situations these people face when a paradise grows teeth and turns ugly. Read this book, and get your friends copies too!

This is Hall's best effort yet. The reader is swept into the tropical Bahamian world and a memorable, although eclectic, collection of characters. The action quickens as the trio set out for a day of fishing, wind up battling the elements and bad luck, only to return to the island where things have taken an unexpected turn...and not for the better. Hall writes with the authority of one who knows the Bahamian locale first hand, and has experienced many of the hardships his charactures endure. Great read.

I like to go to the Mosquito Cafe in Galveston to hear Bill Cherry tell stories. The coffee and scones are great. But the main attraction is the pure pleasure of hearing Bill tell stories about a quirky island off the Texas Coast that has been home to famous pirates, gamblers, bamboozlers and other assorted characters. The stories in this book originally were published in The Galveston County Daily News. As the editor, I can tell you they passed the muster of tough critics. These are the kind of stories islanders like to read about themselves. The stories Bill tells so well at the cafe over coffee are here in this book. It's not exactly the same as a trip to the cafe, but it's mighty close.

I've never read a book quite like this, and I doubt you have either. It's a collection of sixty essays, catagorized by subject: Love, Humor, Nostalgia, History, Hurricanes, Religion, Characters and Memories. And these tales could have as easily been written by Daymon Runyon as they were by this talented story teller, Bill Cherry.

Consider some of the titles: "Joe Pajucie, His Red Cadillac and the Four Cheap-Looking Women;" "At Miss Dorothy's: Arthur and Summer Saw the Midnight Sun;" "Baby Doll Pajamas, Spoolies and Tabu Marked Rites of Passage;" Smooching Can Make a Boy and Girl Say Things They Don't Really Mean;" and "Rose, Curly, the Priest and the Doctor above the Dime Store.

And then there's one simply titled "Homer Sectuals." It's about a circa 1954 mayor inviting some teenage boys, who one night were sitting at a drugstore soda fountain, to go with him for a raid he was staging at a public men's room on the beach. Since they had never heard the term "homosexuals" before, the boys thought Homer Sectuals was a dangerous wanted criminal, so they took the mayor up on his offer. This cops and robbers story is a scream because the homophobic mayor gets his just due.

If you've lived or visited Galveston, you may have a 10% advantage on those of us who haven't, but this book is a wonderful experience for readers everywhere, and what makes it exceptional is that these stories are totally non-fiction!

Only in America can one person grow up in a city, remember the details almost to the letter, and then WRITE about his friends, fellow citizens, interesting characters, etc. as Bill Cherry has done. He brings the past, and in some cases the present, to life in Galveston. Anyone who finds people of all kinds interesting will find this book INTERESTING! I am Professor Emeritus of Music, University of North Texas and have followed Bill's career rather closely through the years!

This walking tour has so much information that I never knew. It's nice and convenient and I've really enjoyed it a lot. I've seen books on Coney Island but none of them have as much information as this little walking tour.

This is the best description of Coney Island that I've ever seen. It's historical and yet current. The maps and information are so interesting and it has great pictures. The walking tour is very clearly described. I lived in Coney Island for years but I never really knew the history of it. I think it's a marvelous reference item for anyone. Obviously it was written by someone with a love and a lot of knowledge of Coney Island.

After the other reviews in this column piqued my interest, I picked this CDrom up in one of the Mansions stores a couple of weeks ago,and boy, am I glad I did! Great insight to the construction of the mansions including, the materials used, styles used, builders etc.. There is a brief narration for each one that gives dates & facts , along with 8 classical tunes that play at random as you wander about. The only constructive criticism is that you don't get narration for each room as you enter, just at the beginning of each VR tour. I'm sure it would've been too costly and time consuming to do that anyway. But, you can even do an auto tour where you sit back and relax, while the camera pans to different rooms, or you can do the manual tour at your own pace. Great quality! Runs smoothly with no popping or skipping, and the picture quality is terrific! You can zoom, spin, look down, up, to get a closer look at that special vase, or to look at the gilded ceiling tiles. Great for those who have never been to get an inside look, or a great momento for those who have visited the 10 mansions from the preservation society. You'll feel like you've wandered back in time to the Victorian age on Bellevue Ave.......................

This is a very cool CD showing you the various Newport mansions. You can pan around inside the rooms, looking at all the walls, even the floor and ceiling.

I like it because when you visit the mansions there isn't time enough to see them all, and with this CD I can see them all. Also, I can go back to the rooms that I like and study the details in that room. It is very interesting.

Anyway, I would recommend this CD. It makes great use of new technology and is fun and easy to use.

I just love the Newport Mansions. This CD is great because I can never remember all the details when I visit the mansions, and this CD lets you pan around and up to the ceiling and down to the carpet, also zooming in. You can see all the details that give the rooms their luxurious feel.

Also, it's great because I haven't been to all the mansions and through the virtual tours I can see which one I most want to visit next.

Now, if they could just figure out a way to get the CD to give you that musty dusty smell of the actual mansions...

Seriously, this is very cool and if you are only visiting Newport for a short time, it's worth it to see which mansions you really want to see in person.

Jilla

I was really impressed with this book. The author clearly cares a great deal about the topic, and this kind of book can easily get bogged down in absolute trivia and become dry as dirt. Luckily that isn't the case -- he keeps the story moving without sacrificing the kind of accuracy he desires. Some of this is as simple as putting things in footnotes that other others would have left in the main text, and some is an ability to stick to what's important.

Miwoks To Missiles provides the first complete history of Angel Island, covering over two hundred years of the island's history from Miwok Indian settlements to Spanish exploration and immigrant arrivals. Anecdotes, personal recollections, and source material documents make for an excellent and lively presentation essential for any collection including regional California history.

John Soennichsen's spectacular new book Miwoks to Missiles: A History of Angel Island is a must-read for anyone with an interest in Angel Island and it's history. As state park docents, we may each think we already know all we need to know about the human history of the island. But every page for me deepened my perspective and provided a wealth of new information. John is a master of making historical transition readable, entertaining and informative. The author begins with the lives of the indigenous people who used the island for fishing and hunting. He then moves gracefully through the Spanish and Mexican periods and concludes with chapters covering the more modern era: military utilization of the island during our 20th century wars, the dynamics of the creation of the Immigration Station and its many uses, and finally the effort to make the island a bit more angelic in the transition of the Island to state park status. The particular strengths of the book for me are found in the myriad of detail about the early history of the island: the travails of Lt. Ayala and the San Carlos, the voyage of the Racoon, and the "original owner" Antonio Maria Ossio. The later periods were also thoughtfully reassessed. The author's use of archival material-old photos and rare written accounts bring the island and its people to life in dramatic fashion. John Soennichsen is a first rate historian. Unlike most historians, however, our resident author has a sense of humor and is able to punch through the pretentiousness of so many of the people who were in leadership positions during the different island epochs. Filled with stunning photographs and informative sidebars, the book is a really good read that should enchant virtually everyone who picks it up. We must all be grateful to John Soennichsen for providing us with the first thorough and sensitive history of the people and places of Angel Island.

this book was great. im 13 and i enjoyed it, even though its a children's book. everything about block island is true to detail...cept for the part about how many steps there are to the south beach...i think there 183. kathleen captured peter's attitude perfectly in this book...i cant wait to see them again so i can tell kathleen in person how great the book is.

The author could have been a member of our traveling party on our very first trip to Block Island. The story is delightful to read, the illustrations are beautiful, and the content is so true! What a wonderful find and a wonderful island.

i thought that the book was wonderful. i loved to read it. its a great coffee table book and i think everyone should have one.

This book is GREAT! But I guess I'm kind of partial because I know the authors. They are good friends of mine. I would certainly reccommend this book to anyone out there looking for a great coffee table book. Its excellent.