ENJOY! Each page is a large-scale color plate of one artist's work - 125 in all. My favorites include works by Mian Situ, Cyrus Afsary, Ray Vinella, Tom Haas, Ken Auster, Lanford Monroe, E Manning Crook, Oleg Stavrowsky, Stepahn Juharos, Howard Post, Paul Youngman, Martha Saudek, Judith-Moore Knapp, Sherry Blanchard Stuart, Tim Cox and Bruce Peil.

Whether it's a mystical painting of thunder maidens or plain-song renditions of cowboys taking a coffee break or a sketch of a bull rider at a rodeo or a buffalo shedding its winter coat this book is like a window on that hot, sunny world of Cowboys & Indians, desert & animals, sunsets & rivers. A glorious gallery of the Great American West.

This is one of those books that is great for both pre-teens and adults alike. It's the right mix of reality and fantasy and has some great insight about making the right choices in life.

I know there's room for a sequel . . .so C.R. West, if you're reading this, when's the next one? Don't keep us in suspense for long.

This book had a kind adventurous approach to flying from a childs point of view. It's interesting and makes you want to join in on the adventure.

What a courageous woman Bess Corey was to go into the unkown territory of mostly crude men and make a home for herself. She didn't let anyone take advantage of her, yet she was sweet. She was an honest, humorous, hardworking woman. This book kept my interest from beginning to end. The only disappointment was that she didn't write more letters! This would be a great book for anyone who wants to really understand how America was built.

I came across this book purely by accident in the library, and since the title sounded interesting, I decided to check it out just to see what the letters were like. I was expecting dry letters written by a hardened woman. Boy, was I wrong -- I love Bess! She's so funny, and her letters back home are wonderfully descriptive. At 21, she left Iowa to stake a claim in South Dakota. I'm only about a third of the way through the book right now, and she's living alone in a tiny 2-room house on her claim, getting up at 5 to walk two miles through the snow to the schoolhouse where she teaches. At night, she writes these letters home, describing her day in great detail. This book is a treasure. I'm ordering a copy for my home library right now. :-)

I was given this book by a friend. It was a surprise from the beginning to the end. I can't recommend this book enough. I live in the Rocky Mountains and see what is happening all around me in the "Last Best Place." I expected the environmental writer from the LA Times to write this book with a prejudiced point of view and?probably my own point of view. Instead it was so insightful, to so many different walks of life and belief systems that I was amazed in every chapter. I work for the park service and read the chapter on "Action Jackson" with great interest and know about the conflicts of that situation and still Mr. Clifford amazed me with his sensitivity to the people involved. This book, for the first time made me see the way people of many different backgrounds from mine view the wilderness, not necessarily all bad, not necessarily all destructive, just different. The author is a teacher of tolerance and we all need more of that in this time and in this world. I cannot recommend this book any more highly. I will buy it and give it to many people. I was inspired to not give up the fight to save the American west. Thankyou Frank Clifford.

I like a book that takes my assumptions about something and turns most of them upside down, and this book did that. To begin with, even though I had heard most of a radio interview with the author, I was expecting a book mostly about hiking the Rocky Mountains. Instead "Backbone of the World" is about a series of encounters with people who live and work along the Continental Divide. And Clifford uses these encounters to discuss the competing points of view of those with an interest in what's left of America's wilderness areas -- environmentalists, housing developers, ranchers, cowboys, sheep herders, national park service rangers, wildlife preservationists, back country outfitters, hunters, Native Americans, game wardens, hangers on in dying company towns, and the owners and employees of the mining, logging, and energy industries.

As a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford has his preferences about the fate of the wilderness, but he allows his subjects to speak for themselves without passing judgment on them. To that extent, the book is not a polemic but an array of human opinions nearly as sweeping as the mountain and desert vistas that are the subject of this book. He goes on horseback into the mountains of northern Montana with Blackfeet Indians. He spends time with a sheep herder in Colorado, who is barely scraping by. He is the guest of two ranch owners, riding along on a cattle drive in Wyoming and helping with a round-up in New Mexico, in the arid high country along the Mexican border. He goes coyote hunting with an ailing and broken former uranium mining worker in Wyoming. He visits a park ranger in Yellowstone, who spends his days busting illegal hunters. And he accompanies an environmental activist as they pony trek into the mountains of Alberta.

And as the people he interviews speak, you learn of the impact of humans on the wilderness -- overgrazing, destruction of habitat, the invasion of roads and all-terrain vehicles, the decimation of wildlife populations, the spread of urban sprawl, the expansion of the recreation industry, the hunting camps where big city executives can shoot game that have been lured off public lands with conveniently located salt licks. And over and again, there is the theme of a ravaged landscape, diminished by clear-cutting, exhausted mines, and aggressive drilling for oil and gas. At this level, the book is a quiet litany for the destruction of everything wild, pristine, and beautiful.

All this may sound like a depressing read, but I enjoyed Clifford's accounts of encounters with the people who inhabit this region. He puts a human face on the economic, environmentalist, and conservationist forces in contention over the fate of what once was a vast wilderness. The 8-page bibliography at the end of the book is evidence of his long and thoughtful study of his subject. And his writing is that of an observant journalist. The people and places he describes come alive, and like viewing an excellent documentary film, you come away with an appreciation for the complexity of the issues, a sense of having witnessed them firsthand, and your own assumptions turned upside down.

WOW this was really helpful for giving us something fun to do with the new Jeep Rubicon. Ratings are a great guide. Mostly the trails are pretty sedate - but there are are quite a few hard ones listed to keep the rest of us happy. The history of the area is also interesting. The GPS coordinates are a huge bonus, better than wandering around wondering if you are allowed to be on this trail or not. Definately recommend - it worth the money in savings on wasted fuel - and driver/navigator harmony ;-)

We were wondering if the book could be worth it but we thought we'd give it a try. WOW! This book has everything, I mean EVERYTHING you could want to know as you explore the state (directions, lots of photos, interesting history, info about animals and plants w/pics, rating systems, and GPS coordinates)!!
Love this book. I hope that I can collect the rest of the titles about the other states. My book was fun to take along on the vacation drive but I could see just sitting and reading through it at home!

It is a great book. It lack grammatical explanations, but it does provide phrases on many subjects, often those you won't find in phrasebooks (e.g. conversations with ranchers on their work). I think not only it may give you specialist vocabulary, but can be a good introduction to conversational language.

Although I speak spanish fairly well, I do not know many of the more technical terms. When my truck broke down in the middle of the Chiapas, I did not know how to begin to tell the mechanic that I finally located what was wrong and what I needed to fix it.

Without the helpful technical phrases abundant in this book, it would have taken me much longer to find the tools and equipment that I needed to repair my vehicle.

I highly recommend it to anyone traveling in the outback in Spanish-speaking countries.

Doug Lorain has done a wonderful job with this book. I've hiked extensively throughout Washington, and still found this book inspirational. All of the trips described in the book are lengthy backpacking trips. A wonderful job was done linking trails together, providing great, detailed, honest assessments of the route/terrain/difficulty of each trip. Best of all, the book is a joy to read (high praise for a guidebook). Even when not planning a trip, you'll enjoy thumbing through it, dreaming of future trips. A must have for anyone who wants to plan a great backpacking trip in Washington - period.

Dougls Lorain has gone out of his way to be sure backcountry travelers make the most of their time. From avoiding the less than scenic parts of the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail), to providing clues for off-trail/cross country opportunities, it will be difficult to go wrong with the candid advice from Lorain. Like Rick Steves has done for adventure minded European travelers, Doug Lorain provides more than most backpacking/trail book authors. An excellent book for GORP eaters who may be ready to enjoy the backcountry thru the backdoor.

As a native Montanan and one who was mandated to memorize Lewis and Clark trivia to get her high school diploma I started the book with trepidation. I was more than surprised to love this book! I have read it twice and bought one for a friend. This book takes details and facts and puts life, love and laughter into them. Read this book- it makes you feel good and brings a bit of nature inside.

Skookum. Backtracking is a skookum adventure. Long explains that in the Chinook language skookum means big or powerful. This account of a trek backtracking the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition is just that. The book is a fascinating blend of history, biology, ecology, and philosophy that took me, a confirmed lover of comfort, along on the trip.

Long and his wife retrace portions of the trail and report on the status of several of the wildlife and plant species that Lewis and Clark described in their original journals. We learn about the black-tailed prairie dog, the grizzly bear, the American bison, the Missouri River beaver, the Westslope cutthroat, the Columbia sharptail grouse, the Whitebark pine and the Clark's nutcracker, the wolf and the coyote, the White sturgeon and the Great Plains cottonwood. We learn why and how these animals and plants matter today.

Long, although his view is clear, does not resort to the adversarial language that pushes opposing forces further apart. He reminds us that, "There is too much at stake for us to give pessimism a chance. There is still too much to be lost."

Grouse dancing at dawn on some remote and windswept lek. After reading this book I want to see for myself.

This guide to Germany continues the Baedeker tradition and covers the country in depth from the North Sea and Baltic Coasts to the Bavarian Alps, guiding you through such cosmopolitan cities as Berlin, Bonn, Frankfurt and Munich, the historic towns of Worms and Ulm, the scenic calleys of Europe's great rivers, the Rhine, Main and Moselle, the islands of East Frisia, the picturesque Black Forest region and much, much more. Full color photos and maps. Facts and figures on history, art and language. A to Z coverage of places to visit and sights to see.

I have "Baedeker's Southern Germany" dated 1907 it is in excellent condition and has many folded maps within the book a great collectors addition.

Amnesty International is an organization which concerns itself with those imprisoned not because of crimes, but because of politics. For a symbol, Amnesty has a burning candle, a token of hope, enclosed by loops of barbed wire. The meaning is conveyed instantaneously. Barbed wire is easy to draw; since it is such a simple device with a simple design, only a few lines suffice to make a convincing picture. Readily identifiable, barbed wire means to us prison and enclosure. To Olivier Razac, author of _Barbed Wire: A Political History_ (New Press; translated from the French by Jonathan Kneight), it means a great deal more. His revelatory little book is actually a long, illustrated essay to show how from a ranching tool, barbed wire has come a long way as a tool for brutality and repression.

_Barbed Wire_ is not a history of the subject, but of course it is necessary to mention its origin. It is perhaps ironic that barbed wire had its beginning in the open prairie of the land of the free. J. F. Glidden was a farmer who invented barb wire for plains farmers who needed a cheap means of fencing in their land. Even as an invention for cattle control, barbed wire could not help but affect humans, and in unexpected ways. It ended the classic cattle drive, putting out of work most of the cowboys who have loomed large in American mythology. They may have lost their jobs, but the American Indians lost their culture, and it can be seen as a weapon against the indigenous peoples. Barbed wire proved a useful weapon in subsequent battles. Landscapes of World War One featured trenches supplemented with rows of the stuff. It was easy enough to cut with simple shears, but of course you had to get close enough to do so. Land torpedoes, nicknamed "wood lice" or "Schneider crocodiles" were invented to tunnel in and blow the wires up. The best way to neutralize barbed wire was to blow it up with cannon fire, but when tanks arrived, ramparts and bunkers became important again. It was the Nazis who made barbed wire a staple to represent their cold and brutal regime. Its eternal advantages, cheapness, simplicity, and easy installation, made it indispensable. When they built a concentration camp, it was the fence that went up first. In the camps, barbed wire achieved the severest example of what Razac convinces us is its use in "the political management of space." It became "the symbol of the worst catastrophe of the century." It is still used in Palestinian refugee camps, of course, and our government would rather not show the wire all over Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Of course, barbed wire can be found atop fences surrounding factories or prisons, and we do not find this use politically oppressive. Other uses of the wire within open democracies, Razac argues, have disappeared, because spaces needing control are now being watched by guards, video monitors, and electronic gates, some of which carry an Orwellian aura, but none of which have the immediate fearsome aspect of simple twisted and sharpened wire. Razac's slim book exposes plenty of history within a commonplace object, one that those who complete the book will not see in the same way again.

The book is rather short. Therefore, it focuses on only three aspects of barbed wire - The trenches of WWI, The concentration camps of the Nazis during WWII, and the use of barbed wire by American ranchers during the mid/late 1800's, ending the roaming ways of the Native Americans.

There is alot to say about the book, but the book says it best. So I'll sum it up - barbed wire is one of the most overlooked inventions of death during the last 200 years.

Highly Recommended!