Informative and nicely detailed maps. The cartoons are funny and the layout is like a good resume, it shows you what you want to know.

Clerly illustrates the necessary info about all lakes and places to enjoy boating. Easy to understand and use. We have purchased three editions over last ten years. Always in our boat. Suggestion, use a large zip-lock type bag to keep dry. Listen to the voice of experience. Also, it is not an effective storage method to leave on top of Jeep as you drive away from lake. Has a habit of not staying on top of car for 50 mile trip home.

This is a valuable reference and will save you disappointments in chosing the wrong lake. Call ahead to the individual facilities and ask questions. This is helpful in planning trips to the lake for your family. Enjoy.

A must for all outdoor enthusiasts but get the new 12th Edition

Steve Edwards' book was my first purchase as an avid rockclimber when I visited Santa Barbara in January 2002 to prepare for my transfer to the area. Even before using the guide to locate the local climbing I enjoyed it immensely for the history and personal flavor given by the author.

There is much more to this book than a climbing guide. It is also a personal pilgrimage. Steve experienced a golden era in Santa Barbara climbing that he describes so vividly yet knows has passed forever. His is the passion of a personal life transition that we all go through and there is both joy and sadness in the writing. His obsessive intensity and endurance for physical training is mirrored by an affection for caffeine, alcohol and nicotine that make him such an interesting character. Steve is also a movie connoisseur from his early days running a video shop in the student quarter (Isla Vista) next to UCSB and he blends this knowledge with climb descriptions for occasional flashes of brilliant humor. And I should refrain from commenting on the Reverend Speefknarkle! Steve's defining picture is buffed and honed on "Pieces of You" atop the fantastic Pine Mountain boulderfield.

The book fulfills its primary purpose as a tool for guiding the climber in locating and selecting appealing routes exceptionally well. My copy is already dogeared and marked up with yellow highlights after just one season and it has never led me astray. Only rarely have I disagreed with the grades Steve gives for difficulty and quality but this is to be expected for these subjective ratings.

In summary, this book is a must buy for any climber interested in the Santa Barbara - Ventura region yet it has deeper appeal as literature capturing one man's personal journey through the 90's. How we all wish to turn back the hands of time!

I visit the Santa Barbara area often. So I picked up this book and thumbed through and became intrigued enough to buy it. Not for the rock climbing information (although the personality and names given to each trail had me captivated); instead I became curious to know this philosophical guide writer, Steve Edwards. Formerly thinking all rock climbers were a bunch of daredevils, this guide opened my eyes to the depth of committment it takes to be a rock climber, much less, write a guide! And their love of the earth is more honest and real than most armchair environmentalists. Reading this book definitely helped me grow. I hope you will read it and then go hug a rock - and maybe even a rockclimber!

Whether served up with a tray of Bombay Sapphire martinis (shaken, two olives) or a six-pack of ice cold Oly, let this text be your companion to some of the best and most scenic climbing areas in America! Looking for steep, gargantuan sport routes that make your tendons twitch just looking at 'em? How about classic sandstone slabs with holds so fragile they may break if you merely pass gas? Or maybe you're into divine boulderfields so vast that first ascents are possible until Jesus comes back to spot you? This book has it covered. Steve Edwards has done a first class job of directing you in entertaining fashion to the climbing, history, and lifestyle that Santa Barbara climbing is all about. Read it over coffee and cigarettes not just as a guide, but as fine literature. It's better than 'Atlas Shrugged', and shorter too!

With an impending trip to Seattle on the horizon, I ordered this book and some others -- but this one is by far my favorite! Not only is it thorough, scathingly honest in its critiques, and well-organized, but it is an absolute riot to read!!! Seriously, once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down... It is always good to find a travel guide that offers up actual opinions of landmarks, restaurants, hotels, etc., rather than just what seems like a tagline from a brochure -- and this book does not hold back, whether it be to compliment or to criticize...

I HIGHLY recommend this book if you are traveling to Seattle, moving there, etc... You will be entertained from cover to cover!!!

This book is especially great for new residents of the Seattle area. The descriptions on the hot-spots are dead on. Once in town, be sure to pick up a free copy of "The Stranger" weekly newspaper.

Advice: Be careful with some of the listings in the book as they are not around any longer. You may want to consult with citysearch (or call) before making plans.

After growing up in the Puget Sound Area in the pre_1960`s before the changes took place,I saw the Seattle waterfront as one of the coolest spots on the earth,comparable to the waterfront in Hong Kong.Just a seamy world of offbeat characters& some of the best seafood you could possibly imagine.Paula has disovered all those haunts& more.This is the quintessential guide to the best of the best& I recommened it to locals & non_locals to get the most for your $$& to rediscover the way Seattle as it really was.

I just ate at Josselin's restaturant at Ceasar's in Las Vegas, 808 (Hawaii's area code). It bills itself as a Hawaiian/French fusion restaurant. It was the best food I've ever had. I did not realize that I had his cookbook until I went to the restaurant. The huli-huli chicken is great, as is the pineapple-maccadamia nut rice. The only problem with the book is that many of the ingredients are difficult/impossible to find outside of Hawaii.

When I lived in Maui, this was my favorite restaurant (A Pacific Café, on South Kihei Road, in Kihei.) This stunning cookbook, leaves me longing to be back, just so I can dine their once again.

Perhaps when I get a bigger apartment, I may try some of these adventurous recipes. Jean Marie Josselin is one of the founders of this kind of cuisine. Classically trained as a French chef, he was one of the first pioneers of "Hawaiian Regional Cuisine". He moved to Kauai and opened his first restaurant there. He used the fresh ingredients that the island provided. When he opened his first restaurant in Maui, it was an experience just to dine there. The architecture of the inside of the restaurant was rumored to cost around $250k. After a hot day out in the sun, you'd come in and sit at the bar, for a glass of wine and an appetizer while waiting for a table (since you were foolish and didn't make reservations.) The service was so good at the bar, that you decided to stay there and watch the surroundings. Across from the bar, was the line. The appetizers were being prepared, followed by the two or three chefs working on the main courses followed by the person making desserts.

Occasionally, you'd see Arnold Schwarrzennegger and his wife come in, or Helen Hunt, and maybe Dustin Hoffman would sit next to you at the bar. The food was so good, he knew you wouldn't talk to him because you'd be eating the entire time.

All of these memories come back, when flipping through this recipe book... Since I'm not in Maui anymore, I'll just have to settle for Roy's or Kaspars'. (Not a bad thing, just not quite Jean Marie's & George Gomes' masterpieces...)

Jean-Marie has created a comprehensive guide to better eating. His creations aren't for the faint of heart in the kitchen, but if you have the patience, it pays beautifully. I have always been more of a "presentation person" and found his recipies were easy to dress and enjoy equally.

I bought this book thinking it would be an interesting adventure tale. It is that but so much more. The writing is poetic and heart warming. An absolutely wonderful little book!!

If you enjoy reading about cycling and living this is a great book. I've read every touring and cycling book you can imagine, but this is the best! It really gives you a new perspective on how we ride today when you look at what these two boys had to endure at the turn of the century when roads did not exists as we know today. A truly well written adventure, great venacular dialogue, credible and yet an incredible story.

I first bought the book because of its Vashon Island connection, being a lifelong islander myself. But I quickly decided it's one of the best bicycle touring stories in my library -- the boys come alive in the writing, no dreary list of statistics and mileposts, just two boys becoming men on their ride north to Seattle. Puts a whole new perspective on that ride for anyone who has cycled the Pacific Coast route in modern times.

The Ultimate INSIDERS City Guide to Pasadena is so handy I keep it in my car! If I'm looking for parking, restaurants, or services, I pull out the Guide and find them in a flash.

I love this book! As a recent transplant to Pasadena, this has become an indespensible resource for finding everything from a late-night dry cleaner to the best coffee shops to where to tune your radio station to NPR. The maps are very user-friendly and make finding your way around town a snap! I keep one in my car at all times. I wish every town had such a practical guide. Now whenever I have a question, "I just ask Martha." It's almost as good as having her in the passenger seat. Thank you Martha! This book is a life-saver.

This book is extremly helpful getting around and finding the places I need when visiting Pasadena. It is a must buy for people moving to the area or just visiting on vacation.

Incredible pictures, written well making it easy to read and understand. Palka makes you feel like you've been in Denali, even if you haven't. Outstanding book!

Having been to Alaska I am aware of the landscape and its unigue place in our worldly environment. This presentation truly touches the key elements of the Alaskan adventure and its place in the travelers journal. I was truly impressed by the pictures and the ability of the author to portraite the imense landscape and the importance of the countryside in his work

The writer manages to combine the human interest and interaction while, at the same time,uses his experience in Denali as a teaching instrument. Makes me want to visit Alaska and Danali!

"Rolling Dreams: Portraits of the Northwest's Railroad Heritage" is a laudable homage to the Pacific Northwest's rail transportation network.

D.C. Jesse Burkhardt's 78 color images (and 12 b&w ones) are sharp, varied, and celebratory.

His grand and dynamic pictures (e.g., "Sherars Crossing," where a southbound container train crosses a trestle over Oregon's Deschutes River) are nicely matched by quiet--and even somber--photos (e.g., "Forgotten Rails," where wildflowers and fog hover above the abandoned Astoria line of the Burlington Northern).

A few of Burkhart's pictures--such as the hushed Oregon snow scene of a stretch of the Southern Pacific railway--would have been far more effective had they been larger.

And a couple of photos are a shade too dark.

But Burkehardt is a talented photographer and writer, and he has produced a fine work.

Out of the several hundred railroad books I own, only a few are returned to time after time. Rolling Dreams is one.

Rolling Dreams is more poetry than documentary. Although its subject is railroads, its techniques represent photography and (in the sense of texture and composition)painting. Rolling Dreams captures the beauty and details of railroading and the Northwest rail environment.

It captures the many moods of the weather as well as the tremendous range of railroading from large and small.

If you want a "railroad book that's more than a railroad book," add Rolling Dreams to your collection...and keep it at close to your bedside table.

For some of us, trains and railroads have an uncanny and mysterious power. The author seems to understand this, and many of his photos capture the essence of this power. Worth owning.

In "Rough Medicine," Joan Druett continues the excellence of such previous works as "Hen Frigates" and "She Captains" in bringing to her audience everday life upon the sea when ships under sail roamed the oceans. Where these other books focus on women who found themselves on long voyages, usually with their husbands who captained the ships, this new volume of easy to read history looks at life on the whaling ships of the early 1800s. These ships left port in search of whales and did not return until the holds were full of their valuable oil. If the captain and crew were lucky, it only took a year or two. To be gone four years or even five was not out of the question. Ms. Druett tells this story through the surviving diaries and journals of surgeons who accompanied the crews on these long and hazardous voyages. Along with extraordinary eye-witness accounts of whaling methods, the reader is shown that to be put under the knife in those days of rough medical techniques was scarcely less dangerous than battling whales in tiny boats. A main requirement to be a surgeon, it seems, was to be strong enough to hold down the unwilling patient. Reading "Rough Medicine" will leave you thankful to be living in our modern age, while at the same time make you wonder how archaic our methods of medicince will seem a hundred years from now. In the meantime, sit back with this good read of a life at sea, as so many of us have often wished to experience. And be glad you have all your arms and legs, and that no well-intentioned sea surgeon has hacked them off. -Doug Kelley

A thoroughly engaging presentation of nautical history on the lives and times of the early ship's surgeons on British and American naval and whaling vessels. The drawings of the early surgeon's tools, the descriptions of the surgical procedures and the stories of illness and injury makes one wonder why did anyone sign on as a ship's surgeon? Very informative and highly recommended.

My angle on this book is from an avid adventure & exploration reader's perspective. I enjoy reading the exploits of Franklin, Shackleton, Cooke, and such sea borne explorers.

One of the constants of all of the fantastic voyages of exploration is the inclusion of a physician / scientist. Almost in cliche style these doctors play a major role in the direction and guidance of the expedition. (If you will pardon the comparison, most ships doctors seem just like Bones on Star Trek.)

This book gathers together the biographies, anecdotes and histories of many of these physicians into a conherent historical theme.

Great book!! (Very readable and accessible.)

I've been making Thai Drumsticks for a Crowd for potlucks for the last two years. They're a real draw on a table full of tahini and tabouli! These recipes are easy and the authors descriptions are engaging. Not for people who are looking for serious ethnoculinary books, but easy to dazzle with.

I'm a cookbook junkie, and I have dozens of books I just look at and never actually cook from. This isn't one of them. It's stained and dog-eared, from trying exotic but not terribly difficult recipes like Pot Roast with Asian flavors, stir-fried spinach and a terrific pineapple upside-down cafe with rummy, coconutty whipped cream. A great way to cook Asian without resorting to fattening, take-out-style recipes. The small sections about markets in Southeast Asia and such are also good...they make you want to try this food in person!

I own about 200 cookbooks; this is the best.