This book is a good source for young readers to learn about the wondrous creatures that are manatees. The book is extrememly informative, and the illustrations far surpass any other I have ever seen. As an enviromentalist, I strongly reccommend encouraging any and all children you know to read this and other books about manatees, their endangerment, and protection efforts.

What a nice way to preview a vacation! This guide gives you a variety of things to do while in West Virginia, many of them low to no cost options. Some may be well known but many are fun, interesting things to do only known in the area. I enjoyed browsing through it before my vacation and found it a handy reference during my trip.

I ordered two copies of this book for golfing buddies but opened up a copy out of curiosity and couldn't put it down until I got to the end. DiPerna's prose is beautiful to read and will entrap any reader who appreciates a well-constructed phrase with sharp language. Paragraph one, Chapter one, sucks you in.

There are many good trails within the book, but sometimes the maps are quite as good as they could be. Most of the trails are in VA, not really close to DC. It is a good book to have on the shelf!

Comprehensive endeavor at showing how African Americans lived in a border county... race relations issues are weakly framed and the complexities of them are glossed over.... There was actually very little effort to enforce Virginia laws against free blacks before the Civil War and Ms. Rice posits local elites as being repressive and this was not the case. She also ignores the issue of miscegenation which was an important aspect of relations in this particular county. Ms. Rice also does not focus on the role of the Mason Dixon Line and the differences free blacks encountered between Pennsylvania and Virginia/West Virginia. The photographs are MAGNIFICENT and make the book worthwhile, regardless of any minor flaws.

The book is organized by county. Cohen does a good job of concentrating on the militay operations. The book does a wonderful job of pulling out little known sites as well as the more famous sites. The book has been of great help in my travels.

I very much enjoyed reading Tim McKinney's Civil War Chronicle "Robert E. Lee at Sewell Mountain". I read the book because several of my ancestors and their relatives were members of the 19th and 27th Brigades of The Virginia Militia (from Southern West Virginia). The book chronicles the conflict of Union and Confederate troops in West Virginia during August through October of 1861. The author provides a good description of the feud between Confederate generals Floyd and Wise - an important factor in the logistics of the Confederate retreat. The book emphasizes the cold rains, which nearly immobilized both Union and Confederate Armies. The author provides several good photographs and sketches to help document his chronicle. The book includes an extensive bibliography.

Phil did a great job researching material for this book. It's worth buying. Unfortunetly, Phil passed away in Hinton, WV early February 2003 while conducting reseach for his next book.

Enjoyed the book so much since I was born and raised in this area!! Found out things I never knew about the valley and it's people.....

Chuck Kinder's Snakehunter is not your typical coming of age fiction and the protagonist, Speer, is anything but your run-of the-mill boy.

After his father's death, Speer and his mother find they must relocate from city-life to rural West Virginia, to the hometown of his mother. Speer is thrust into his strange mountain family; including a pair of overbearing, sometimes well-meaning aunts; an abusive overweight cousin who calls himself Hercules; a goodnatured uncle who serves as a buffer to the family friction; a grandfather whose past, legend has it, included murder; and Speer's beloved intellectual cousin Catherine, a happy-hour-all-day gal with, at least initially, a placid boozer's imagination easily accessable to Speer.

Sounds straightforward enough, huh?

Enter Kinder's manipulation of time and place. He brings the reader back and forth over a twenty year period, without breaking the stories pace or cohesivness. He also uses sociological examples to give the story unique perspective on a wide range of "interesting" tribal traditions.

Kinder's language is beautiful, especially dealing with scenery and nature, which serves as a nessessary backdrop to this well told story.

Snakehunter is a feast of form; it prompts one to wonder: How did Kinder weave this tale together without allowing the seams to show through? Snakehunter's form was possibly ahead of its time in the cynical years surrounding the Nixon administration (1973). Read this novel tomorrow. Appreciate its freshness, its language, its warmth, its grit, its honesty and, most importantly, Kinder's guts.