If you are one of those workaholics like myself, this CD is a great way to get out and see the country. The author's have done a great job in making a supurb quality program that let's you have an out-of-office experience ! This CD is packed with great audio, video, textual information. If I could take the time for a vacation, I'd use this before the trip as coming attractions. Bob Zwick Maypearl Texas USA bob@cottagemicro.com

This book is a great guide for visiting the most popular national parks in the United States. It provides extensive information on parks such as Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, Olympic, Yosemite and Zion. Repanshek details the pros and cons of each park with candor with helpful comments about what to expect from the weather, wildlife and crowds.

Each chapter focuses on a different park. Within each chapter, he covers such topics as: geology, attractions, directions, fees, safety precautions, hikes, ranger programs, lodging, dining options, and other essentials such as post offices, lost and founds, etc. He writes in the first person, and often makes amusing commentaries about his own experiences and expectations. He does a thorough job covering each park - one can sense from reading that not only has he personally visited these places, but that he has returned to each a number of times and writes with the experience that is so valuable to those on a limited time schedule. He acknowledges that while each park could be a vacation of its own, many people can only spend a day or two at each place. To accomodate such travelers, he includes a section in each chapter on what to do if you only have one day to explore the park. This can be an incredibly useful tool if you are on a tight time schedule.

Frequently in travel guides, one gets the sense that the author is either an avid outdoorsman bent on roughing it, or a once-a-year vacationer who would rather die than sleep in a tent. Not so here - Repanshek clearly addresses both groups. He details all the available campsites in a park, along with his opinions on how clean/quiet/developed each site is; but also lists hotels and motels in the surrounding areas, ranging from the cheapest to the swankiest of lodgings. Same goes for the dining options. I personally appreciated this a great deal - my trip was primarily a camping excursion, but every once in a while we decided to splurge on decent hotels and were grateful for his frankness in describing what we could expect for our money.

My only gripe with this book is that it only covers 15 parks. Of course, due to its level of detail, it would be difficult to cover more. My hope is that Kurt Repanshek considers putting together two or more separate guides, for the Eastern and Western National Parks. He has a great eye for detail and leaves no stones unturned in his comprehensive tour of the American parks. I highly recommend this guide!

I FOUND THIS BOOK VERY USEFUL AS I TRAVEL AROUND ON MY VACTION TOURS. I SUGGEST ALL OWN A COPY. PAUL

American Impressionists and Realists were farther apart in time than they were in what they painted. In fact, with both groups their art grew out of training in Paris; liking for modern French painting; and building an American art that would support American nationalism by faith in the future, the present, and the good old days. They both went outdoors, to the growing system of parks and places for holiday outings, as in Impressionist William Merritt Chase's brightly colored "Prospect Park, Brooklyn," with its Gustave Caillebotte-type compressed backgrounds, exaggeratedly converging spaces, and splayed foregrounds; and in the rugged "Central Park in winter," where Realist William Glackens painted sharply contrasting light and dark side by side and wavily-formed lively children into vigorously brushworked snowy chill. Both groups chose personally meaningful, over nationally significant, places to paint, as in Impressionist Childe Hassam's "Late afternoon, New York: winter" brilliantly light-touched and delicately paint-stitched in one overall tone and Realist Robert Henri's energetically darker-toned "Street scene with snow." Or historical landscapes, such as "Gloucester harbor" through Impressionist Willard Metcalf's dazzlingly wide-banded high-key color for bright summer sun-lighted skies and under Realist John Sloan's late afternoon powerful glow, low sun-cast strong shadows, and storm clouds over Fauvist-type intensely colored and heavily pigmented industrial cranes and wharves. In fact, they both tended to be city painters, as in Childe Hassam's "Rainy day, Boston," with its "Church of St-Philippe-du-Roule" plunging perspective, empty central foreground, masterly controlled narrow tonal palette, and two streets panoramically joined; and in "Bleeker and Carmine Streets" by Impressionist George Luks, as the intersection for overcrowded immigrant slums, ramshackled cold-water flats, and boardinghouses in heavy impastos and somber palette. Both were also aware of how nature was part of doing business in the city, as in the hothouse flower sales of Childe Hassam's lightly brushed "At the florist" and John Sloan's gritty, realistically colored, and vigorously brushed "Easter eve." Both groups were concerned, too, over how industrialization was changing American life, but with Impressionist J Alden Weir's Willimantic Linen Company's "Factory village" naturally fitting as a picturesque river valley industry in the middle of lushly fresh fields while George Luks hunched his driver over the reins to a horse-drawn "Butcher cart" on a slushily dark Manhattan street. Both cared about how people fit into the changing American life so they likewise went in for portraits, as in William Merritt Chase's "James McNeill Whistler," with the sitter's style of broadly applied paint, low-key palette, and thin washes; and in Robert Henri's "George Luks," with the sitter's coarsely provocative painting style of crudely bold slashing strokes and richly dark colors. Both groups had similar concerns about how people were interacting with each other, as in the children playing at Childe Hassam's privileged "Lake for miniature yachts" under the gaze of near-by adults and at John Sloan's "Backyards, Greenwich Village" around the beckoning responsibilities of hanging laundry. Or as in adult time out, with the music of the James Whistler-type sobre paletted "At the piano" by Impressionist Theodore Robinson and of the Honore Daumier- and Francisco Goya-type exaggeratedly expressive "Spielers" shown frenetically dancing by George Luks. Or with a French-styled drawing viewers into the woman in black's box as a figure leaves the upper left corner box in Impressionist Mary Cassatt's "At the opera" and up along with craning spectators at the acrobat inching along the tightrope in "Hammerstein's roof garden" by William Glackens. Or with a surprising sympathy for the performer passed down from Jean-Antoine Watteau's "Gilles" to William Merritt Chase's hunchbacked jester pouring a bracing drink and John Sloan's harshly lit clown making up. So authors H Barbara Weinberg et al's book, with its gorgeously illustrated and nicely organized text, trailblazes looking at the similarities in the art by the 26 artists participating in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibition on AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM AND REALISM.

Very helpfull to find great parks & info about them. The photographs are not large but there great & very usefull to pick places to see because you don't see many state parks on some maps. There are many great state parks that you may miss without this book.

I laughed, I cried; two thumbs up! A science-based book, complete with citations of all the current literature, coupled with a readable, flowing style of writing. An important repository of all the scientific knowledge of these species in this region and issues affecting them (e.g., fire, climate change), yet engaging even to younger amateur herpetologists. Or, of interest to anyone who simply loves Yellowstone and the Tetons.

Carole and her committee have put together an excellent book for using the amusement park as a physics laboratory. There is a complete teacher guide, practice problems, instruction for how to construct and use accelerometers, suggestions for making measurements, practice (at school) lab exercises, and a student workbook. The best part is the resources. This includes the excellent reprints from The Physics Teacher journal giving important background on the rides and experience. This compendium of reprinted articles alone is worth the price of the book.

This book is a must, and can be used with other books and texts.

Present an amusement park study evfen if you cannot go on a field trip! This book supplies sample data that can be used if a trip is not feasible. Student pages include tutorials on triangulation and accelerometers and information for selected rides. You also get a field trip planner, tests, answers, formulas, and a trig. table. Extensive question bank is geared for multiple levels of difficulty.

Well-researched and gorgeously illustrated, this book manages to convey its author's enthusiasm for the Southwest's remarkable ruins without sacrificing scientific detail and even skepticism. He takes a well-known subject, Mesa Verde, and let's us see it with new eyes, while illuminating some of the least-well-known and most intriguing sites in the region. Few scholars and fewer tourists venture beyond Mesa Verde intothe obscure corners of the San Juan River valley, but William Ferguson shows how rewarding the trip could be. Above all, it is refreshing to read an enthusiast's book that does not indulge in unsupported speculation about the lives and beliefs of the prehistoric people of the Southwest.

Eliot Porter's beautiful photographs of wildflowers, trees, and mountain streams are an interesting juxtaposition to the often caustic prose of Edward Abbey, who writes the main body of the text, and Harry Caudill, who writes the epilogue. This book is Abbey at his best, showing that he can write well about a landscape other than the American southwest. He describes the landscape of the Southern Appalachians in their stark reality: the billboards and phony saloons of industrial tourism, the abandoned stores and churches, the paved roads catering to the rich and sedentary, the forsaken Cherokees. His story is a truthful and compassionate account of the tragedies of the region, as well as a powerful argument that capitalism has failed. This is not the place to start with Abbey--"Desert Solitaire" or "Abbey's Road" would be a better choice--but for those who are already familiar with him, this book will not be a disappointment.