Travel Books

This book was amazing! I received it almost a month before I was going on a 5 day adventure to Yellowstone. I planned my whole trip using this book and it was amazing the things I saw and learned. Yellowstone has little sign's that will point you in the right direction but this book sent you places that most people have never seen! While out on my adventure I showed and recommended the book to many people. They were all amazed at the things in this book and went right to the Yellowstone bookstore and purchased it. I found that 5 days was not enough to view everything in this book and Yellowstone.

I am one of those people that like to know everything about a place before I go and I'm just sorry that this was not the first book I bought.
If it had been the first book I bought I wouldn't have needed any others.
Great maps. Great descriptions. I can't say enough good things about this book.

I highly recommend this book. This author provides great history along with useful information in enjoying the park. There is a logical division of areas within the park and she references you to the next map(location) at the end of each discussion. It is an easy to use reference. She gives information about the surrounding towns and immediate areas outside of each park entrance which decreases the need for additional guide books. I highly recommend this book.

I brought this book for my family RV trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton last month. It helped us plan our routes, learn bits of history and science, and pick camp sites. The mile markers and corresponding information bits were very useful as we stayed mostly on the grand loop. I highly recommend this book, particularly to first-time visitors.

At first my man thought it was stupid of me to purchase this book. I say at first because after he started to read it he said, "Hey that book you bought is really good!" Anyway we used it quite a bit while we were at Yellowstone and also Grand Teton National park as well. A great purchase and an item we will be sure to use many times in the future.

National Geographic travel books never disappoint. Each scenic drive description is brief out of necessity, but they might prompt the reader to seek more information elsewhere for targeted areas. Not really suitable for armchair travel though.

Lots of information. Easy to use. I will be able to avoid printing information from the "America's Byways" web site before we depart on a road trip.

Even with exorbitant fuel prices, America is still the best bargain for travel bargain. Thies book proves it, over and over. The photography is simply superb, all in color, and gives the reader a wonderful opportunity to anticipate what might be found along each route discussed. While certain routes, e.g., Woodward Avenue out of Detroit, going north, would not have made my list, this is a minor quibble, since the Guide is intended for folks who have NOT been on the highways discussed.

The writing style is clear, informative, and easily read by anyone. The book is very well organized, and the remarkable photography closely follows the text.

In short, whether you intend to visit one state, or several, this book is an absolute must in terms of planning your trip. It not only describes the routes themselves, but attractions that closely border them. I have probably travel thirty or forty of the routes described. In almost every instance, after reading this book, I wish I had had it with me when I made the journey.

[[.] It is very nearly a perfect travel guide to a lot of America. Even if your travels are confined to an armchair, you will enjoy this book endlessly for what it will teach you about America's geography and history.

Highly recommended, but don't loan it out.

This is a great book for travellers who like to do the unusual and beautiful instead of the zoom to their destination.
The condition of this used book is fine for a person who has bought it to USE!

Even with exorbitant fuel prices, America is still the best bargain for travel bargain. This book proves it, over and over. The photography is simply superb, all in color, and gives the reader a wonderful opportunity to anticipate what might be found along each route discussed. While certain routes, e.g., Woodward Avenue out of Detroit, going north, would not have made my list, this is a minor quibble, since the Guide is intended for folks who have NOT been on the highways discussed.

The writing style is clear, informative, and easily read by anyone. The book is very well organized, and the remarkable photography closely follows the text.

In short, whether you intend to visit one state, or several, this book is an absolute must in terms of planning your trip. It not only describes the routes themselves, but attractions that closely border them. I have probably traveled thirty or forty of the routes described. In almost every instance, after reading this book, I wish I had had it with me when I made the journey.

This book earns a definite five-stars. It is very nearly a perfect travel guide to a lot of America. Even if your travels are confined to an armchair, you will enjoy this book endlessly for what it will teach you about America's geography and history.

Highly recommended, but don't loan it out.

Pat Battaglia has a gift for challenging the reader with his verbal and numeric teasers. With each page skillfully crafted to whet your appetite for his next challenge, he offers an array of puzzles that make it difficult to put the book down. Many of the mind benders are so cleverly done, with a nice balance between difficult and easy, he almost compels you to turn the page to find out what lies ahead. When you miss the obvious, the frustration mounts and yet you push on, desperately wanting to decide for yourself, "Am I smart, or WHAT?" The book is excellent fun !

I just adored this book and enjoyed every single puzzle in it. As one reviewer points out, this is a book for word puzzle enthusiasts. It might be compared to Will Shortz's "Puzzlemaster Presents" series. What I love about this book is that it can be done without the aid of a dictionary, as it uses a vocabulary from common cultural literacy (e.g. types of candy bars, etc.). I also appreciate the fact that the references aren't dated like some game books are, which can lead to frustration when I am asked to rely on my knowledge of stars from the eighties. Overall, I simply loved this book for the accessible but challenging fun it provided. I hope that Mr. Battaglia will be gracing us with another book of this type soon!

I am a huge fan of brain teaser books. I have a huge collection of these types of book. BUT after reading this book I say that this book is not as good as it seems in the review. If you think that you will find many Logical and mathematical riddles, this isn't the book for you, but on the other hand if you are into word games this might be a great book for you .

The item was shipped as promised, on time and looked like knew. I would definitely buy products from this seller anytime.

This extrordinary book takes you deeper than a basic quiz book. It challenges your way of thinking and seeks the reader to apply diverse and lateral thinking in order to come up with what turns out to be, the most obvious answer. It challenges the mind far more that you may think and even challenges you to think. An excelent book to improve spatal orrientation, visual ques and logical thinking. Want to improve your cognition and perception? This would have to be the way. Further more, it is great to use to encourage family members to do the same and simply - THINK. A must try to anyone wanting to indulge the brain in lateral thinking.

The eloquence of composition surely necessitated infinite use of superlatives and verbs, resulting in a requisite painstaking remostrance to the reader, thus fettering the effusion and disembogulation of the document. In other words, wouldn't it have been better to just leave all of the fluff out of the book and just write as if the reader is someone other than the Queen of England? If you can weed through all of excessive use poems and verbs, it's a halfway decent book

This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.

UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.

Let us Now Praise Famous Men, in all its poetry and prose, reminds me of an epic, like the Hindu Mahabharata or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The lyrical narrative reveals just as much, if not more about Agee, than his subjects. His writing style excludes his subjects as readers.

His prose, which tends to be lofty and cerebral, is also beautiful and brilliant. But, I often wondered, who he was
writing for? The New Yorker audience? The distance in his observations often left me feeling cold. I imagine these hardworking sharecroppers exhibiting some joy, some evidence of warmth, of hope. But I had difficulty finding it in Agee's voice.

The length of Agee's sentences and paragraphs were long, each containing an entire scene, and I labored through them, hoping sleep would not steal me from a passage I might not finish. It was as though Agee too, was afraid sleep would come and steal him from his mission, and so kept hacking away at each sentence, adding commas and colons and semi-colons, lingering his thoughts across the page.

Whatever level of consciousness Agee existed, I could not hang with him for any more than a couple of sentences, as I would fall off the page and have to find my way back into the scene. Where was I? You get the picture...

Agee also uses parenthesis and colons, often not giving his parenthesis a mate: (This struck me as rather unusual and often, cold and detached--more like a voyeur. Did he fabricate his own method of communication using punctuation or was this being done elsewhere at the time? I felt left out of his thoughts when he did this, like when two people are communicating via sign language and you can't make out a word they're saying. Was he doing this in a way to urge us to "think," to stretch beyond the ordinary conventions and try something on that is foreign and unfamiliar, like his subjects and their hardship?

Excellent editon of this wonderful, classic work. A series of visual and verbal snapshots of the South as a third world country, the South of the 1930's.

James Agee's painstaking and honest masterpiece is an exercise in empathy. It is a beautiful, tortured writing that speaks to both the deplorable conditions of the Depression-era souther sharecropper and the humanity of trying to present them in a favorable light.

Agee's writing style is at times erratic-- which helps to give the book its character. It is often self-doubting, as Agee calls himself a spy and frequently second guesses his role in accurately reporting the families' lives. Beautifully done and a groundbreaking classic in ethnographic fieldwork-- a must read!

It's hard to say how good the map is until I actually go to Costa Rica. It looks very detailed and the waterproof material is really nice. I had expected it to be thicker and harder to fold. Overall it looks like it's going to be a good one.

This map provides a good scale with the detail that you want in a sturdy, easily useable format.

Very nice and user-friendly map of Costa Rica. Complete data on cities and villages of the country, and detailed scheme of the bigger cities on the back.

This map was an excellent resource to us as we traveled around Costa Rica. Even the curves in the road are near perfect. Very useful.

This map was great for our trip to Costa Rica. We rented a car and drove from San Jose to Monteverde. Once in Monteverde, it was very useful because it showed every possible landmark (hotels, restaurants, etc.), which is useful because it was not obvious how to find for example the Santa Elena Rainforest without this map.

I've walked in Israel and the West Bank before the Intifadas, before the barriers, and subsequently tried to make some sense of the mistakes and the historical horror show that has occurred. I think that the Arabic term "al Naqba", the catastrophe, truly best states what has happened, and what continues for all those who live there.
For everyone who shares the author's love of the land or has any respect for human dignity, this book will make you despair over the tragedy of it all.
Some books on the subject have challenged me, all have upset me, but none have effected me as viscerally as these personal ruminations on the irretrievable loss of the landscape itself.
It's beautifully written. Read it and weep.

I have just made arrangements to go to Palestine and experience walks in Palestine in the midst of a brutal occupation! This is how powerful this book!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher when I was teaching a university course on cartography. The textbook for the semester had already been selected, so I used this book originally as a second resource while preparing lectures. By the end of the semester, I found myself using this book as the primary source for topics and explanations and suggested it be used in future semesters.

This book explains concepts such as projections and coordinate systems in ways that are easy to understand, particularly for new students. The explanations are thorough without bogging down in details. The figures are large, many take up a full page. They are helpful, relevant, and excellently reproduced. The chapters on terrain representation, contours, and topographic features are exceptionally good (there are almost 40 examples of terrain representation) The remote sensing and GIS chapters are brief and introductory, but those are topics best left for other books.

I was a little skeptical when I first saw this book, since it appeared to be a somewhat thin, and we were using Robinson's book, which is basically a standard. But, I would recommend this to any map student, teacher, or user. It packs a lot of information in its pages. I still use it as a reference (...).

When you've been working in a field for 30 years it's really difficult to drag yourself backwards and review data you already know, so when I signed up for a GPS (Global Positioning Sattelite) software course I looked at "Map Use & Analysis" by John Campbell as something I could just skip over, but since it was required reading I finally got it out. I was really pleased with the depth of material and the extremely clear explanations of all those mystifying cartography words. Anyone who has no idea about mapping or is a begining student will be able to use this book. The format is excellent with terms higligted and the index and dictionary are well coordinated. I feel that this book is such an excellent reference that I am buying a copy for myself. The only negative thing I have to say is that the illustrations, which are plentiful seem to wander several pages ahead of text, but they are carefully numbered and correspond exactly to the descriptions. Well done! Les L. Johnson

If I were stuck on a deserted Island like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, and I could only have one book, it would be this one. It would help me to get off the island and determine my global positioning! Lots of help.

My son loved the book; Jack and Annie's adventures are amazing. You have to have read the series from the beginning to understand everything is going on. I am an adult and i still enjoy these stories, great books.

My 1st grader hates to put it down, he would rather read Magic Tree House books, than play video games. He even reads them to his class and explains the story for show and tell. In his kindergarten class the teacher would also let him read the Magic Tree House books out loud, not to give her a break, but to promote reading out loud. Great books!

I am not sure what else my 6 yrs old son has stayed with for so long! We read a chapter every night at bedtime. He looks forward to it every night. He has enjoyed very book and he gets excited for the next one. We are up to #26 now and he shows no sign of losing interest!

He has learned about earthquakes, Roman empire, Shakespeare, Indians, American Revolutionary war, etc.

Excellent series...entertaining and educational.

This whole series is absolutely "the best" ! In our family, children under eight have loved listening to each of them as read-alouds, and as they get older, they've devoured them again while reading on their own. Each one is a guaranteed hit as a birthday or holiday gift too.

Good Morning gorillas
Good Morning Gorillas is by Mary Pope Osborne. In this magic tree house book, the main Characters are Jack and Annie is in the rain forest. This book is about jack and Annie meeting a little gorilla who leads them to his family and becoming close friends. What I think the author is saying is you can become friends with animals. I can't tell my favorite part because it's the end and I don't want to give away the ending. But even though it was sad I loved it. I think it would be a good book for people who love animals.
-Michelle, 9

I think this is the best book written on the topic of third culture kids. The book is insightful and answers questions that are just under the surface for both kids and those who love them.

This book discusses emotional and identity development of children growing up in foreign countries and re-entry issues. This is an excellent book for those who have lived abroad during the developmental years 0 - 18 and for parents. A must read!

This book was recommended to us and I would recommend it to anyone living outside their own culture with kids. The information is very valuable to helping children adjust and understanding how growing up outside their culture will affect them.

If you have lived in a country other than the country your parent(s) are from for a significant period of time as a child and then had to move back (or to another, very different place)...this book is for you. Like many other tck's, I have always felt out of place and just thought I was different or weird. I could never understand why my parents never had the same sentiments. Now I understand that the way I feel is a normal outcome of the way of life I had as a child. This book is also a great reference to those serving in the military with children, moving constantly both within the US and around the world. It puts the missing link in place and explains the complex emotions that child tck's experience as adults. It all makes sense now, and I can even understand why I married a Frenchman and why we're planning on moving back to Europe!

Being a child living in between a passport culture and another culture which one is daily relating to, needs not be a negative experience. There are certainly some unique issues for such cross cultural dwellers but with good preparation, communication, support systems, family functionality, the life of TCKs can be incredibly hopeful and beneficial.

Pollock and Van Reken have created a very readable and enjoyable account of the lives of a third culture kids. Clearly they have much knowledge and exposure to TCKs and have pulled together their many thoughts and reflections to give us the full picture of such an experience.
The book is both practical and insightful with many lists and suggestions for families. The personal vignettes and testimonies make the explanations more real. Though, it would have been more helpful to have more background information about the testimonies to place in proper context.
I appreciate the attitude of the book that there are challenges as well as great benefits and the choice lies with individuals to take responsibility for their own actions. Often reactions to life reside inside themselves rather than in outside events and situations. (p.181)
The book paints a nice picture of the TCK's family and experience but it gives very little guidance in actually helping and counseling such kids who may not have positive outcomes from their time abroad. It would be valuable to have a second volume of specific counseling techniques, interventions, and therapy guidelines to better serve TCKs and ATCKs who struggle from a less than ideal experience.

McDonald's Restaurants are to be found world-wide and books have been written on their business success and approach - but GOLDEN ARCHES EAST: MCDONALD'S IN EAST ASIA is something different, providing college-level readers with a blend of cultural insights and business savvy as it traces McDonald's role in five Asian countries. Chapters provide the author's first-person insights as he journeys to five Asian countries and asks questions on McDonalds management, promotion strategies, and impact on local culture. Also included are reflections on food and marketing within these nations, making GOLDEN ARCHES EAST essential for any overseas business or Asian holding.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Golden Arches East: McDonalds in East Asia is an absorbing read that delves into more than just eating; it grapples with the big issues like the impact of local vis-à-vis the global by looking into the interplay of McDonald's in five Asian economies. Watson, et al come to the conclusion that in several spaces - particularly in Asia - McDonald's has been amalgamated into the local communities. McDonalds has integrated so well that the distinction between local and foreign has blurred. So disentangled is the distinction that McDonalds is no longer considered a foreign restaurant and arguably in many cases - such as the ones explored in this book - no longer functions as one. This is an essential book because it accurately portrays and cognizant of local nuance how a transnational culture is developing. Golden Arches East: McDonalds in East Asia is a must be read for anyone interested in globalization studies. It is accessible and to the point that is can, should be, and will be used for courses in Asian studies, Political Science, and Sociology.

At a time when academics frequently write impenetrably this book is a breath of fresh air. Golden Arches is very engaging and is deals with one straightforward question: how do countries act in response to McDonald's, and conversely what does the relation say about those countries? The inquiry is not petty. The book is an exploration of McDonald's in Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, Seoul and Tokyo. Undoubtedly, McDonald's has had a huge effect in Asia, impacting manners and values and also the way people interact. The most informative part of these studies is its exploration of how McDonald's changed each country. While Americans might see themselves as the bright light of global democracy and human rights its impact in countries in East Asia is proving to be more empirical.

Bathrooms in Hong Kong restaurants, according to this study had undergone a tremendous transformation. Riding into town with the McDonalds penchant for cleanliness, the other restaurants seem to have followed suit. It might seem like an exaggeration but Watson et al credits McDonald's for assisting in elevating the cleanliness and safety standard in public rest rooms in Hong Kong. Another thing that is happening in Hong Kong is the "disciplining" of the users. According to Watson et al the carceral community takes care of its own. Self reflective of exaggerating McDonalds impact in the milieu, Watson et al claim that even if McDonalds did not indeed take the active role in creating a form of queuing discipline - it s perceived to have done so .

Moving onto the perhaps the marquis section of the book, Japan's values have been changing for decades, becoming steadily more casual, and according to Watson et al McDonald's may be assisting as vehicle in that process. This proves at least one thing - that there is nothing primordial or essential about cultures but that culture and societies change, reinvent themselves, and reify their existence by the re-enforcement and performance or cultural play. To the chagrin of conservatives, this is reality. According to Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Japan has a long standing taboo against "tachigui," (standing while eating) but that seems to be steadily breaking down. Ohnuki-Tierney suggests that perhaps the catalyst of this change is McDonald's - whose stores in Japan just did not accommodate sitting - there were no chairs. In Beijing, restaurants where known for their noise and dirt. But according to Watson et al, customers at McDonald's branches in Beijing spoke in hushed tones and were cognizant of the changing conditions regarding spitting and rubbish.

All this might look like American cultural imperialism - as is examined in the section on Seoul. However it is difficult to conceive of even the most zealous anti-American in East Asia disapproving of American exports like efficiency, smiles and clean rest rooms. The real potency of Golden Arches East: McDonalds in East Asia is that the writers place in context not just the food side of McDonald's, but more importantly the and social and cultural impact of McDonalds on these ever changing societies. These are loaded tales of the mundane and everyday. In short, this is a rare academic engagement that should reside in all libraries and spawn similar studies.

Miguel Llora

Most books dealing with the spread of American pop culture (and pop business) influences these days like Disney, Coca-Cola and McDonald's have very little good to say about the growth of any of them in previously unexposed markets. That's why, perhaps, it comes as surprising that "Golden Arches East" comes out with a mostly positive look at the effect McDonald's had had throughout East Asia.

In this book, five authors look at the impact McDonald's has had in five different East Asian entities: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Much of the early chapters is given over to looking at the material aspects of McDonald's in East Asia: the marketing aspects, the reconceptualization towards a standard Asian consumer, the effect on the Asian food industry, etc.. All of this makes for very fascinating reading and shows just how marketing has to be changed from country to country (or even region to region). Likewise, it deals with very nuts-and-bolts issues of how McDonald's has impacted the lives of the average Asian consumer - and the impact is bigger than you'd think.

However, later chapters (especially those dealing with Taiwan and Korea and the Afterword) move to more conceptual issues of McDonald's - issues of modernity. Americanization and cultural identity. In an anthropological context (which is what this book tries to maintain), these are all very important, but somehow the later efforts seem to either fall flat or fall back on the line used so often in studying Asia these days, "But things are changing now".

While the overall message of this book is positive, there are the standard overtones of just how much the world has changed in the past half-century. I really recommend this book for the nuts-and-bolts stuff in the first two or three chapters, but the later didacticism tends to fall a little flat. Nonetheless, this book offers useful information to both the business student and the cultural anthropologist. If either East Asia or McDonald's interest you, I recommend giving this book a shot.

I tasted McDonald's french fries in East Asia. That tastes better than in the US. American french fries are overfried.

An interesting tale of an importnat American icon. But, this book has little understanding of the local competitors that McDonalds and other foreign multinationals face in East Asia, many of whom are quite formidable. I recommend "New Asian Emperors" by George Haley et al. to understand the complex business environment in East Asia.