Travel Books

My interest in this book was piqued by the favorable comparisons made between this and Assassination Vacation. While this title was a good (if a little dry) read, the writing lacked Ms. Vowell's ease. Because of the scattered nature of the trips required for this book, a smooth narrative flow does not exists, since months, if not years, separate the chapters.

This is a good library candidate, but nothing I would keep in my permanent collection.

For those of you that enjoy reading about esoteric yet important topics
such as Nuclear Community this is a great read! Similar in many ways to the works of J. Bamford who writes extensively on the NSA.

It takes the reader from Livermore CA and Nevada to Oak Ridge and Russia.

A highly recommended well written book albeit too esoteric of a subject for some.

Makes this reader wonder what is our current real reason for nukes as the USSR is a thing of the past.

Enjoy!!

As the whimsical title indicates, this is sort of a radioactive version of P.J. O'Rourke's "Holidays in Hell." The authors, a husband and wife team of journalists, spent several years touring the nuclear weapons archipelago of the United States and made side trips to Kazakhstan, Russia, and Iran.

In my opinion, the best parts of the book by far are the ones that deal with the facilities in the US such as Los Alamos, the Nevada Test Site, "Site R," and the Congressional Doomsday Bunker at Greenbrier, West Virginia. The authors interviewed a fair number of people at each place and that makes their destinations come alive (as someone who has been to Los Alamos and the Nevada Test Site, I can attest to the accuracy). I also thought the chapter about the men and women who man the ICBM silos shed light on a world and career field that I knew little about.

The book does have some weak parts. The authors pretty much got the run around while in Russia (which is to say no admission to any sites that are involved in Russia's ongoing nuclear weapons programs). Given that fact, I would have ditched that chapter and added more about American sites (perhaps the Pantex Plant in Texas). I feel the same about the trip to Esfahan, Iran (where the authors are smart enough to realize that the Iranians were putting on a propaganda display). I also think the authors gave the Iranians too much of a benefit of a doubt about their nuclear program's peaceful intentions (if you build and operate nuclear facilities that you don't declare to the IAEA as required by the Nonproliferation Treaty, it's hard to come up with an innocent explanation).

I also think that the book would have benefited from a complete chapter talking about the various hair-raising accidents that have taken place with nuclear weapons (such as the recent one involving the B-52 that flew across America with no one realizing it was carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles).

Finally, I think the conclusions of the book aren't very strong. The authors make a pretty good case for the idea that the raison d'etre for our nuclear weapons complex has partially evaporated with the end of the Cold War. And I give them kudos for not demanding that we relinquish nuclear weapons. But they didn't seem to be very concerned with the fact that we might still need a fair number of nuclear weapons on alert in order to deter a Russia that seems to be resembling the Evil Empire of yore more and more every day and a China whose leaders have casually talked about how the threat of them incinerating Los Angeles might deter us from going to the aid of Taiwan.

I particularly believe that this is the case with the "Reliable Replacement Warhead." The authors aren't overtly hostile to the idea of fielding such a new weapon. But they don't really seem to realize that if we are going to be able to preserve a credible nuclear deterrent force, we better have weapons that we can count on to perform exactly as they were designed, instead of the aging ones we currently have.

But in the end, the light that the authors shed on this little known in the post-Cold War era topic make book well worth reading.

My 9 yr old son loves the Magic Tree House series. I've purchased every book and have also pre-ordered books that will be released in Sept. When he's finished with each story, he gives my husband and I an oral book report. He has also learned various interesting historical facts concerning the book's theme. According to my son, there are clues throughout the stories and always a moral/lesson at the end of each story. The thing that I find funny is that he has learned that boys AND girls can actually be buddies and it's not creepy!

My four year old son is in love with this chapter series! A friend suggested it to us since he seemed ready for a more advanced reading material at bedtime. My husband reads him a chapter every night...sometimes more because they don't want to stop. It's become a great tradition for them, and something they both look forward to. We love that there are so many in the collection! Start with number 1 and just continue. :)

My daughter could not put this book down once she started reading it. She loves the MAGIC TREE HOUSE series so much!

We paired this with the Discovery Kids Magazine on Pompeii and found out that this book is a great way to find out about Pompeii and what happened, not just as a tourist attraction. It really puts kids in the moment of the time period. Every detail, down to the arrangement of the city was accurate. You can actually find a map replicating Pompeii and show your child where Jack and Annie went. Wow. Talk about subject integration! You know it is a great book when you can go down the list of Bloom's Taxonomy and use the book to create activities for every level.

We are leaving today to buy every book in the series.
Perfect for homeschooling.

My 1st grader hates to put them 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. When he was in kindergarten, the teacher would also let him read the Magic Tree House books out loud, not given her a break, but to promote reading out loud. Great books!

a long slightly boring recitation of life with the bush people. there are flashes of very interesting insights about people and western civilizations impact on indigenous peoples.

This is a detailed, fascinating, and even beautiful account of the author's field study of the Kung! Bushman. Along with the Australian aborigines, the Bushman of the Kalahari desert, who inhabit an arid tableland in southwest Africa, are considered one of the two most primitive cultures in existence. The Bushmen aren't native to the Kalahari but were forced there as a result of conflicts with the white man and other tribes after the 17th century. Thomas gives a detailed account of their way of life and how they are able to survive in one of the most desolate places on earth. The Bushmen are very short of stature, averaging only 4 feet, 10 inches tall, and their skin has a yellowish tinge that is different from the blacker skin of their surrounding neighbors. The Kalahari has no surface water, and the rare rainfall immediately dries up. One of the few ways they get moisture as well as food is the tsama melon, which grows underground. The tsama melons are so important that the rights to a particular locale are inherited, which is unusual among the Bushmen. To survive in this harsh environment, the Bushmen have become expert botanists and can identify over 300 different kinds of plants, and they hunt antelope with poisoned arrows. Marriage among the Bushmen can occur at a very early age, but for women it is considered inappropriate to become fully sexually active and to marry before the age of 12. After having been almost completely wiped out between the 17th and the 19th century through conflicts with other tribes and the white man, there are now about 50,000 Bushmen inhabiting the Kalahari.

Years later, when I saw the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, I recalled my first encountering the Bushmen in Thomas's wonderful little book. Several years after that, I had the opportunity to hear Jamie Uys speak, the south African director of the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and he also described what it was like to work with and live in the Kalahari with the Bushmen during the making of his movie. Both he and Thomas commented that there was something very likeable about the Kalahari Bushmen, who now live very peaceably in their little arid paradise with relatively little conflict and strife. Well, paradise isn't exactly the word for the inhospitable environment where they live, but nevertheless the Bushmen came across in both Thomas's and Uys's accounts as overall quite happy and content with their life. Ever since reading this book, I have thought it ironic to consider that the more advanced cultures in other parts of the world, including those of us in the modern western countries, who are considerably more advanced, probably live no more happy and less stressful lives than the primitive Bushmen. Of course, one must be careful about the "Noble Savage" fallacy, but in the case of the Bushmen it seems to be true. This book is an updated edition of the one I read many years ago in college. Overall a classic study that takes its place alongside other great anthropological classics of Africa like Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, about the pygmies.

I could hardly put the book down. The writings were simple and descriptive. I have always found Tribal life very interesting and of all the books I have read hearing the Author's firsthand account was amazing. Listening to the people's tales and day to day life is something I am going to miss now that I have finished the book.

I read 'The Harmless People' for my anthropology class and I enjoyed it. I liked the writing style and the story kept me interested and learning the whole time.

The Bushmen are well known - and intriguing - to phoneticians, because Bushman languages, along with Bushman-influenced languages such as Zulu and Xhosa, are the only ones in the world with linguistic clicks. As a teacher of phonetics, that was my own original motivation for reading this book. I also thought it would be useful background to have before visiting South Africa. Finally, I met a very friendly and kind Nama-speaking Bushman in Minnesota once, and that further piqued my curiosity about his home culture.

This book is truly a rich, firsthand resource on what traditional Bushman life was like in the 1950s. The Bushmen may be praised for their cleverness at being able to live in a land with very little visible water; but in this book you will learn that in fact many Bushmen died of thirst and hunger, not to mention disease, when times were unusually hard.

One half of the book is dedicated to each of two Bushman groups with whom the author and her family stayed for extended periods, the Gikwe, and the !Kung, of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" fame. It was fascinating to read about how they courted, married, divorced, gave birth, chose names, cared for children and the aged, went through puberty, gathered and hunted, interacted with animals, told stories, died, and dealt with the spirits of the dead. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Bushman music, e.g. singing accompanied by playing on the stringed guashi, the bow, and the te k'na (mbira/kalimba/thumb piano), and the ritual dancing that sometimes went with it. Thomas states that music is by far the strongest of the Bushman arts.

Mentions of some of the effects of intruding white people on the Bushmen's lives may give you pause. The Bushmen treated their white visitors with great openness and kindness. You can praise the generosity of the white chroniclers when they give gifts of food, clothes, and other useful items, and feel relieved when a formerly powerful hunter with a gangrenous leg is taken to be fitted with a peg prosthesis. Yet Thomas also mentions that some Bushmen had been tracked down and taken into slavery by people who had followed the tracks left by Thomas's family's vehicle on a previous visit. And other Bushmen had their guards down when whites came to kidnap them to do forced labor - the Bushmen welcomed them, expecting them to be as friendly and harmless as Thomas's clan.

Thomas goes to great pains to depict the people she observed as accurately and honestly as possible, consciously avoiding the "noble savage" trap. Bushmen shared everything - because it was expected and it would cause great jealousy, conflict and bad relations if they did not; they did not take anything they knew to belong to another; and they had a strong sense of family and cared for those unable to care for themselves. But they practiced infanticide if a baby was born while the previous one was still nursing, since there would probably not be enough milk for both to survive. They could also be vain, jealous and petty, and they could be cruel in razzing people with obvious weaknesses - like any other humans.

You will pick up new Bushman-specific vocabulary reading this book, including words like kaross (the skin wraparound which was a Bushman's usual attire), veld food, pan (a water hole), scherm, gemsbok, tsama melons, bi root, and tsi nuts.

Thomas includes two family tree diagrams at the front of the book to help the reader sort out the relationships between the characters in her accounts. I found these most helpful and referred often to them.

Beyond providing informative content, Thomas is an engaging writer. This is all the more impressive since she wrote the book in her early twenties.

Thomas's book is one of the very few sources of detailed information on the Bushmen. I read the original edition from 1959, so I haven't seen the updated parts on how the Bushmen were doing by the 1980s. Although a lot of what I've heard about Bushman societies today is rather negative and depressing, I look forward to finding out more, and hope the various Bushman groups manage somehow to preserve their remarkable languages and the best of their unique cultures and traditions.

I opened this book in pleasurable anticipation of a good read but almost from the first line became irritated by De Botton's use of similes and adjectives, many of which border on the absurd. The decline of winter is `like that of a person into old age'. Cloudless skies are likened to `signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has passed sentence'. A steely grey sky has - of course - to be `ominous'. But not just ominous: it has to be `like one in a painting by Mantegna or Veronese, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes.' and so it goes on. At times I was reminded of the laboured similes in a Rowan Atkinson comedy. Page 17 is a prime example of De Botton's laboured, Victorian style and deserves a lengthy quotation:

`Awakening early on that first morning, I slipped on a dressing gown provided by the hotel and went out onto the veranda. In the dawn light the sky was a pale grey-blue and, after the rustlings of the night before, all the creatures and even the wind seemed in a deep sleep. It was as quiet as a library. Beyond the hotel room stretched a wide beach which was covered at first with coconut trees and then slipped unhindered towards the sea. I climbed over the veranda's low railing and walked across the sand. Nature was at her most benevolent. It was as if, in creating this small horseshoe bay, she had chosen to atone for her ill-temper in other regions and decided for once to display only her munificence. The trees provided shade and milk, the floor of the sea was lined with shells, the sand was powdery and the colour of sun ripened wheat, and the air - even in the shade - had an enveloping, profound warmth to it so unlike the fragility of northern European heat, always prone to cede, even in midsummer, to a more assertive, proprietary chill.
`I found a deck chair at the edge of the sea. I could hear small lapping sands beside me, as if a kindly monster taking discreet sips of water from a large goblet. A few birds were waking up and beginning to career through the air in matinal excitement. Behind me, the raffia roofs of the hotel bungalows were visible through gaps in the trees. Before me was the view that I recognized from the brochure: the beach stretched away in a gentle curve towards the tip of the bay, behind it were jungle-covered hills, and the first row of coconut trees inclined irregularly towards the turquoise sea, as though some of them were craning their necks to catch a better angle of the sun.
`Yet this description only imperfectly reflects what occurred within me that morning, for my attention was in truth far more fractured and confused than the foregoing paragraphs suggest. I may have noticed a few birds careering through the air in matinal excitement, but my awareness of them was weakened by a number of other, incongruous and unrelated elements, among these a sore throat that I had developed during the flight, a worry at not having informed a colleague that I would be away, pressure across both temples and a rising need to visit the bathroom. A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making its first appearance: that I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.'

De Botton never loses an opportunity to demonstrate how much he or his quasi-anonymous companion `M' has read. While a single cloud hangs `shyly' above the bay, the mysterious `M' (is she head of MI6?) puts on her headphones and begins annotating Emile Durkheim's On Suicide. She would.

The author's idea of travel seems to consist in boarding planes, catching trains, filling up at gas stations and hiring cars. He seems to have a horror of engaging with the real world of people and chatter and tears and sweat, as opposed to the worlds of art and literature and posy criticism. His is the infuriating voice of the tour guide that gets between you and a work of art, the voice that tells you what to think, the voice that prevents you making up your own mind about the works of Hopper or Van Gogh or Wordsworth or Ruskin.

The book is little more than a hotch-potch of regurgitated university lecture notes interspersed by some very amateurish attempts at descriptive writing. `A black-eared wheatear is looking pensive on a conifer branch ... humans and sheep stare at one another in wonder. After a moment the sheep sits down and takes a lazy mouthful of grass, chewing from the side of her mouth as though it was gum ... Another sheep approaches and lies next to her companion, wool-to-wool, and for a second they exchange what appears to be a knowing, mildly amused glance.'

Here's some more, and I promise that this will be the last example of the purple slush you will have to wade through when (or if) you read this book:

`The rain, which continued to fall confidently despite the promises of the landlord, gave us a sense of the mass of the oaks. From under their damp canopy, rain could be heard falling on 40,000 leaves, creating a harmonious pitter-patter, varying in pitch according to where the water dripped on to a large or a small leaf, a high or a low one, one loaded with accumulated water or not...'

De Botton does not teach us how to travel so much as how not to travel. He stops the hire car to look at an olive orchard but he can't be bothered to get out of the car and walk through it. He reads a brochure in a Madrid hotel, but is too timid to go out and rub shoulders with the locals in one of that city's many wonderful restaurants, preferring to dine on a bag of crisps in his bedroom, flicking over the pages of travel brochures.

In his section on Ruskin, De Botton demonstrates a fundamental misconception about art, which he seems to think can be reduced to words on paper. As a graduate of the University of Cambridge he seems to have a pretty impoverished knowledge of aesthetics. Has he never read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation? Has he never read Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism? Has he never attended to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations or appreciated that abstracts (like `beauty') cannot be objectivised, let alone searched for?

De Botton is not a traveller; he is a package tourist, and not a very adventurous or imaginative one. He's the guy who asks the tour guide the question to which he already knows the answer. Can you imagine Bruce Chatwin describing clouds as seen from an aircraft window? That's what De Botton does. Can you imagine T.E. Lawrence comparing a view of the desert with what he saw in a travel guide? Can you imagine Hilaire Belloc sitting in his hotel room eating a bag of crisps instead of mixing with the locals? Or Turner staying inside because there was a nasty storm outside and he didn't want to get wet?

There were moments when I felt so impatient with the banalities of The Art of Travel that I felt like flinging the book across the room. The impression I came away with was that De Botton sees art not as an end in itself but as a means to an end. Through art, he can become an `expert', and as an expert he will be able to publish books, figure in television documentaries, become a celebrity and make lots of money. Art for art's sake? Travel to travel sake? Forget it: anything and everything De Botton sees he has to analyse to death.

But it is not only the banality, the purple patches and neo-Victorian writing that mar The Art of Travel: it lacks direction and unity. To the last page, I could never make up my mind whether it was about art or travel. Lifting pictures of art works from the Internet and printing them in black and white - or in this case grey and grey - simply didn't work for me. I looked at them, but only because I felt I had to. I felt they were an insult to the great artists who painted the originals.

De Botton has achieved what I would previously have thought impossible: he has managed to make art and nature boring. Even from a purely academic point of view, the book is pretty well useless as it has no bibliography. That is idle and unforgivable.

Basic Flying Instruction: A Comprehensive Introduction to Western Philosophy
Seven Stories from Blackwood's Magazine

So Alaine de Botton discovers on his trip to the Bahamas. I read and reread this book for such lines--sly takes on old chestnuts, in this case, Wherever you go, there you are.

Each chapter's title page includes a list of places discussed and the "guide" employed in that chapter. Chapter 1, "On Anticipation," lists Barbados and Hammersmith, London, as the places and author J.K. Huysmans as the guide. Another chapter, "On Eye-Opening Art," has Provence as its place and Vincent Van Gogh as its guide. (Oh, and there are pictures! Black and white, as befits the stately and philosophical tone.)

In listing his "guides," de Botton admits that one's perception of a place is always filtered--through paintings, literature, guidebooks, or a personal account by a recently returned friend. And in fact de Botton writes of "the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality."

This book will have you running to your notebook to copy down great line after great line. A travel writer myself, I recognize the Art of Travel as the perfect anti-guidebook, a guide about WHY we travel, and a meditation on how humankind's search for happiness -- "in all its ardour and paradoxes"-- is most poignantly revealed in how we travel.

I highly recommend this book for those who love travel and art (or both). Whether you're a traveller or a dreamer this book will have something for you. The book contains two themes. The first is travel itself. How we experience it, our memories of it, where we travel, and what we encounter. The other theme is about art and how it shapes our travels, how artists have travelled and viewed/dreamed of travel.

I found the book very original. The author juxtaposes his own experiences with those of famous artists, poets, and thinkers. Each chapter is devoted to an aspect of travel. Whether it be experiencing the sublime, disappointment, meeting the exotic, or the method of your transport.

The book is not overbearing and neither is the author. You can tell he has travelled, but this is not a "look at all the countries I have collected in my travels" type of read. His involvement is to introduce the same or contrasted feelings or experiences someone more famous has encountered.

To conclude, this book will have you up and ready to travel in no time, or at least, looking at the map dreaming about your next destination or adventures.

There's a certain self-effacing charm about Alain de Botton's writing that creeps up on you and which eventually becomes irresistible. Not one to shy away from big topics (love, philosophy, status, travel, Proust) he manages to bring you to fresh insights on each theme in a completely charming, highly readable fashion.

I've also seen him a few times on a BBC series about different philosophers, and the same charm is evident in person. He just seems like an altogether smart, together, sweet guy. It appears that he is quite successful, despite the disparate and commercially unpromising topics he chooses to write about. I hope that he is, because his seems to me to be a talent that deserves to be rewarded.

These essays are well-written, quirky, and rewarding.

It's always a nice thing when you read something spot on that's either close to what you believe or something you have experienced. De Botton is quite good at that, as in being able to phrase insights and observations you never realized were there bur are. I expected this one to be more about the actual travelling. To me the book should have been titled 'The Art of Looking At Things That Seem Unfamiliar, Bleak Or Uncommon At First Sight But Do Possess Certain Qualities If You Are Willing To Take Your Time To Look' but I guess that is a bit to long. Then again, it doesn't really matter for De Botton manages to make this one a breeze through read anyway, and while at it, actually gives you the idea you read something that mattered.

Just returned from a 2 week trip to South Africa - this book was very helpful in finding places to stay, things to do, how to keep safe, etc. I took "The Eyewitness Guide" with me too, but that book was not very helpful.

I would also recommend you talk to someone who has been there and make sure you have local contacts. This is a crazy but beautiful country. Have a wonderful trip!

I have been to South Africa before and am heading back and needed more information and this book is very thorough and helpful.

An excellent reference book for anyone visiting Southern Africa. We only found a few minor errors but the recommendations on where to go and what to see were very useful.

We're looking forward to going again and will certainly take this book along. We didn't have enough time to see it all.

I travel extensively and am a fan of Frommer's guides which I generally find to have a nice assortment of options in varying price ranges. The volume on South Africa however, was a great disappointment. If Frommer's were to be believed, you had to pay $200 and up for a decent hotel room. Fortunately I have often traveled in South Africa, enjoyed its reasonably priced accomodations, and knew such prices were nonsense. I stayed in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and other top destinations in season for less than half that much. The guide also overlooked destinations a bit off the beaten path and proved of so little use to me that I didn't bother to pack it home with me. I strongly suggest the Eyewitness guide instead or just surf the web for tons of great information from the South African Tourism Board.

We visited South Africa for 20 days in July 2000, driving from Cape Town to Kruger. Before we left we sat down at a large book store and reviewed all their South African travel books. This one looked the best and proved to be very useful, particularly for accomodations. Some of the prices had changed but the standards and services were exactly as described. This is a great book for travellers who are above the backpacker/budget level but not up to "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

It was great, very informative. I love the Frommer's travel guides, I buy one for every trip I take.

I thought that Frommer's Peru was very helpful and quite accurate with the exeption of one restaurant in Cusco, Greens, which had moved and become vegitarian. It's descriptions and opinions were enlightning, if not at points overcautious. I would have liked more on Lima. The bood discouraged travelers from going there, but I thought it was very nice in Miraflores. Highly recommended for anyone considering going to Peru.

We used the chapters on Cusco and Sacred Valley-Machu Picchu on our last trip to Peru and we found many outdated information and incorrect addresses. I understand there's the 2008 edition is out so buy the new one instead or consider another publisher. Friends of ours had the Fodor one and liked it a lot.

It appears to me that the first reviewer may have a chip on his shoulder and ought to have stayed home, wherever that is. As someone who was raised in Perú and return often, I believe that the author of Frommer's Perú did a very good job, especially considering that most guidebooks don't include much about how tourism is endangering many heritage sites in the country. Neil Schlecht obviously cares and let's readers know, politely, that they need to walk softly through this beautiful nation.

I loved the fact that I recognized many of the places he recommended - La Casa de Melgar in Arequipa is indeed a marvelous place to stay, for example and it was a thrill to read his section on Cajamarca, my second favourite Peruvian city, after Arequipa.

I liked his Best of Perú section, although I believe that he missed on the best markets/shopping section and would have liked to read more about how tourists are also endangering the textile and folk art traditions given that they want cheap shopping. For example, more and more textile artists are using synthetic yarns and dyes because they're fed up with visitors bartering them down to pennies for an object that took weeks, if not months to make. Take a moment to consider that the folks who make authentic Peruvian textiles and folk art need to eat, feed and educate their children and have a right to have their work and themselves treated with respect and dignity - heads up to the first reviewer!

Perú is, in many ways, like India in that one could travel there every year for the rest of one's life and not see everything. Personally, I would follow Schlecht's advice and get off the "tourist trail", into the north, the central highlands - the Mantaro Valley, Tarma, the Chanchamayo Valley for a taste of the *real* Perú, not yet the flavours of the month.

Good for you, Neil Schlecht and good for Frommer's. I hope that you will continue to publish Frommer's Perú and update it frequently.

For the last seven years I have lived in, and traveled throughout Peru. Frommer's keep surprising me with new relevant information about Peru. Kudos. Especially informative is Frommer's first section: "What's New in Peru". In Frommer's the Cusco, the Machu Pichu and the Inca Trail section alone take up 100 pages and the information is excellent. If you are going only to these locations then this portion of the guide is reason enough to buy Frommer's.

In the world of Peru guides (this year I have reviewed five) there are two types of guides; those guides that are written for the wandering/explorer/backpacker who wants travel to the normal visitors' sites, but will also go `off the beaten track' (Footprint, Let's Go and Lonely Planet [see my reviews]), and then there are the guides for the traveler who like comfort, have money and will visit only the main tourist attractions: Cusco [Machu Pichu], Puno [Lake Titicaca], Arequipa [Colca Canyon], Lima, Iquitos and the lines at Nazca (Fodor's [see my review] and Frommer's).

Disappointing is Frommer's recommendations of restaurants in Cusco. At least half of those that were recommended bombed out, and the rest were fair to good; but none of the Cusco restaurants deserve the `star' rating of exceptional that this guide liberally gives.

Cusco has, at most, two or three restaurants that deserve `kudos' and your money, but because cooks (and the occasional chief) change as frequently as table napkins it is best to ask a professional Cusquena (doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) where they recommend eating. Take care when asking the local guides for restaurant recommendations, as they will normally direct you to a tourist restaurant and thereby get a free meal and commission from the restaurant.

Frommer's is much better than Fodor's in many aspects, and in comparison to all the guides, Frommer's excels in providing you with the important and essential information needed to plan your trip (entry requirements, health, travel resources, when to go, suggested itineraries, recommended reading, etc.). Thus, if you are staying on the tourist route then you will do well to have this guide in your knapsack.

I have no questions and hesitations when it comes to Tom Strienstra. I regard his ratings highly and the information provided are very helpful.

I love this camping guide! I have purchased several (4+) editions of this book to have the most up-to-date info available. I refer to it often and highly recommend it to all campers as a great resource guide.

I just got back from a road trip that we pretty much had no plans for. All i had was a map and this book and it served us very well. Ratings were all pretty accurate and directions and prices in line as well.

Tom Steinstra is one of the most enjoyable outdoor writers California has produced. Reading his work is simply a treat. He is at once amusing, self deprecating, and, most important, thorough and accurate. This new edition of California Camping combines the best of his writing in one volume and should be your first resource when looking to camp throughout the state.

Besides a must read introduction covering such topics as how to avoid getting blisters and getting lost, strategies for keeping camping costs down, and how to limit bear access to your precious food supply, this book covers nearly every campground in the state from the Redwoods in Northern California to the Anza Borrego Desert in San Diego County. The book is divided into chapters, each of which covers a unique geographical province of the state. (These provinces match those found in Steinstra's popular book 'California Hiking' coauthored by Ann Marie Brown.) Each campground description includes a set of icons detailing nearby activities such as fishing, hiking, hunting, mountain biking, and swimming. The description also includes a list of scenic highlights near each camp. Finally, driving directions and the fees you can expect to pay are included. (Note: fees at state parks in particular go up regularly. Some prices listed will be outdated shortly after publication.)

Some people have had a few problems with previous editions of this book. There is, for example, considerable disagreement over the "scenic" ratings Stienstra assigns to each campground. I think these are for the most part accurate, though one could always quibble with the details. (In Humbolt Redwoods State Park, for example, I would rate Burlington an 8 and Albee Creek a 7: Steinstra reverses these ratings.) As a rule of thumb, the more urban the site is, the lower the scenic rating. A KOA near a city will not get as nice a rating as a state park. Readers should be aware that noise level is not included in the scenic rating, and this can detract from the experience. To his credit, Steinstra notes locations where readers of past editions have complained about noise level.

For me, the main benefit of this book is that it lists numerous free forest service and BLM campgrounds. Camping fees have gone up exponentially in the last few years (along with the cost of gas to get to the campgrounds.) I really appreciate Steinstra's careful listing of the obscure and remote campgrounds that are still available at no charge throughout the state. Although free, they are priceless, and readers looking for a nice base camp in California's many wilderness areas will find this book very useful. But then again, if you are looking for a place to park your RV or trailer, this book is also helpful. One of the great joys of comprehensive guides is that they contain something for everyone. Unlike most such books, this one is also very readable. Be sure to get it and have fun exploring this great state.

I have been a fan of Tom Stienstra's California Camping book for over 12 years. First purchased the 8th Edition from Foghorn Press. This particular edition from Moon is not nearly as well set up as the Foghorn Press editions.

The individuals maps are not as detailed, and much smaller print is used. The gridded "Chapter Reference Map" at the beginning of the Foghorn edition has now been replaced by a "California Regions" map not as useful. Foghorn edition also had a "Chapter Features" list of each numbered and named campground on each map, this is missing in the Moon edition. The foghorn edition also had a foldout California map in the back, quite useful if you forget to bring a map and this is also missing in the Moon edition.

As the previous reviewer took exception to the "Scenic ratings" this was not an issue for me personally as this is only a subjective classification. What might be a 5 for some, might be a 10 for someone else. Beauty after all IS in the eye of the beholder. Over the years I have seen many classify McArthur Burney Falls as a beautiful place. I was there once it was hot, dusty, not much of a falls and in my humble opinion not very pretty at all. Anyway, you get my point on that, I would never visit a place solely based on someones view of it.

All in all the Moon edition is useful if you have nothing else, but I for one am glad I retained my old Foghorn Press 11th edition, and oh Tom, if you happen to read this, please go back to Foghorn, and that format for the next edition

I had to read it for college, and honestly, it was quite redundant. I can summarize it in one sentence:

"They did not accept me when I went to Africa to find my family."

Chapter after chapter go on and on about how lonely she feels in Africa, which seems obvious to me because she has nothing in common with Africans besides her skin color. If I go out and buy a tub of paint and change my skin color, will I have anything in common with her? No. They grew up on different sides of the planet, with totally different governments, economic situations, weather conditions, and culture. What she was searching for was family, and she didn't find it in Africa. Skin color doesn't equate familiarity or a connection.

As Whoopi Goldberg said, I am not African-American. I did not live in Africa, I wasn't born there, I visited there, once, but I am as American as anyone else.

That being said, I'm sure she is a nice lady.

This is a story of rejection of those of us forced into slavery by force and not by choice, by those who ancestors were in colluson with the eurpeans. This is also a realization that what is the most important is the acceptance of being a stanger in a strange stilen land as european america, but also to know that one cannot go back home as what we were, but how we are now. Knowing that wherever we (Africans) are i n the world, one thing is for sure, we are and will always be part on Mother Africa, and the spirit of our Mother will always accept her lost childrens.,

A deeply moving combination of history, personal memoir and deep reflection,particularly on the heroic and aspirational legacy of slavery as seen by this wonderful writer.

Saidiya Hartman takes us on a journey that is intense, tough and thoroughly rewarding. Impressively, she learned as much about herself as she did about the past she sought, even more.
The beauty of going with her on this journey is that the reader has the same magnificent opportunity, hypnotically led by the author, to ponder and to gain personal insight perhaps too long submerged.

Lose Your Mother is a story that weaves geneology with African American history. It's intimate and powerful, touching and complex. Universally connecting, it is a story of alienation and hope.

I loved how easy this book was to read. Conely is great at setting examples and painting pictures with his words. I would recommend the book if you are interested in Maslow's theories or if you don't even know who Maslow is, because he makes a great point in how to create a successful business enviroment.

Chip Conley's philosophy of business is also a practical guide to success. He shows you how to find self-actualization through helping others - in this case, by providing your employees, customers and investors with what he calls peak experiences. He uses an unusual framework for his recommendations about workplace culture: psychologist Abraham Maslow's well-known "hierarchy of needs," with self-actualization at the highest level. The book is nicely organized, with "peak prescriptions" and reading lists at the end of each chapter. getAbstract recommends it to managers and workers who need a boost.

As Chip Conley explains in the Preface, "This book is about the miracle of human potential: employees living up to their full potential in the workplace, customers feeling the potential bliss associated with having their unrecognized needs met, and investors feeling fulfilled by seeing the potential of their capital leveraged." I agree with him that all great leaders know how to tap into this "potential" and actualize it into reality." Moreover, I also agree with Conley that great leadership can - and should - be found at all levels and in all areas of an organization. So, what motivations do people need to achieve peak performance, especially in collaboration with others? In this volume, Conley responds to that question, suggesting that there are many valuable lessons to be learned from Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs." For present purposes, it can be abbreviated as follows:

Survival
Security
Self-Actualization

With regard to the first two, I am reminded of a time when Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a lecture on transcendentalism in Concord (MA) and then agreed to answer questions. A farmer stood up: "Mr. Emerson, how do you transcend an empty stomach?"

Maslow believed that the hierarchy of human needs is best understood when viewed as a triangle, with basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) at the base. As those needs are at least partially fulfilled, we ascend the pyramid to higher needs (e.g. security, stability, social connections, affiliations), fulfilling them along the way. As Conley explains, "At the top of the pyramid is self-actualization, a place where people have transient moments called `peak experiences'...A peak experience -- comparable to being `in the zone' or in the `flow' - is when ought to be just is." Or as Maslow himself suggests, "They are moments of ecstasy which cannot be bought, cannot be guaranteed, cannot even be sought...but one can set up the conditions so that peak experiences are more likely, or one can perversely set up the conditions so that they are less likely." However, as the Concord farmer reminds us, basic needs must first be filled. That is as true of individuals (who fear being terminated) as it is of a company's owners (who may have no choice but to file for Chapter 7).

In this volume, Conley offers a step-by-step process by which to build a great company. After acknowledging Maslow's influence on his thinking (and in process explaining Mallow's core concepts) in Part One (Chapters 1-3), he examines three "relationship truths." In Chapters 4-6, he explains how to create base motivation, loyalty, and trust for employees. In Chapters 7-9, he explains how to create satisfaction, commitment, and "evangelistic" fervor for customers. And then in Chapters 10-12, he explains how to create trust, confidence, and pride of ownership for investors. In Part Five (Chapters 13 and 14), Conley explains how to coordinate the three separate but interrelated "relationship truths" to create a "self-actualized life" for each of those involved. Although that may prove to be an unrealistic goal, it is worthy of pursuit nonetheless. Whereas a mountain has a finite height, Maslow's pyramid does not. No individual and no organization can ever become fully actualized. There will always be room for improvement because achieving one goal creates opportunities to achieve others. Revealingly, Conley describes himself as a Himalayan Sherpa who guides his reader to up to the summits of Nepal or Tibet. What he implies is that his role has another, in my view more important function: To guide his readers to insights that will enable her or him to chart a proper course when embarked on a never-ending journey from one peak performance to the next.

This is also true of a company whose culture that must constantly adjust to both internal changes (e.g. its workforce) and external changes (e.g. in its competitive marketplace) while in pursuit of greatness. Consider these comments John Kotter and James Heskett share in Corporate Culture and Performance that suggest a causal relationship between a strong culture and peak performance: "Corporate culture can have a significant impact on a firm's long-term economic performance. We found that firms with cultures that emphasized all the key managerial constituencies (customers, stockholders, and employees) and leadership from managers at all levels outperformed firms that did not have those cultural traits by a huge margin. Over an eleven-year period, the former increased revenues by an average of 682 percent versus 166 percent for the latter, expanded their work forces by 282 percent versus 36 percent, grew their stock prices by 901 percent versus 74 percent, and improved their net incomes by 756 percent versus 1 percent." My guess (only a guess) is that in all of the peak performance companies, the words "culture" and "character" are synonymous.

It is no coincidence that, year after year, many of the same companies on Fortune magazine's list of those that are "Most Highly Admired" are also among those most profitable. However, as we all soon learn once embarked on a business career, there is a "bottom line" to an individual's personal character as well as to an organization's financial performance. Maslow suggests that when reaching the summit of self-actualization, there is a recognition that "this is the real me." Bill George calls this one's "True North," "the internal compass that guides you as a human being at your deepest level. It is your orienting point - your fixed point in a spinning world - that helps you stay on track as a leader. Your True North is based on what is most important to you, your most cherished values, your passions and motivations, the sources of satisfaction in your life. Just as a compass points toward a magnetic field, your True North pulls you toward the purpose of your leadership."

Self-actualization awaits each person who reads this book. Let the journey begin. Bon voyage!

Chip needs to talk to my boss and your boss ... our company culture is soo lacking and if we followed Chips methods I know the culture could be great. That would make our customers, employees and investers happy too.

Instead of "the beatings will continue until morale improves" why not take the team to the beach and throw around some ideas!

Great read for executives, managers and people in startups. Buy this book help spread the happiness ;)

Bill

Loved it. I can't wait to read it again. I bought a second copy and gave it to my CEO.

What is so wonderful about this book is that its lessons can be applied to anyone with passion for making things better. While I may or may not be an executive one day myself, the concepts of self actualization resonate in sales and pretty much all areas in business.
A must read for anyone serious about business and how the human element is motivated for success.

The book hasn't been used yet for our group discussion at work, but I've looked through it and I'm excited about the book. Its easy to read and understand.

It provided me with the guidelines I was searching for. I needed a model for structure.

I used this book to teach financial management of restaurantes to pupils in a culinary school. It was very usefull and I highly recommend it, especially the chapter where you find the different forms of calculating the price of a dish.

I am an accountant and this books gives me great ideas to share with my restaurant clients

This is an excellent book that must be a part of your business library. As essential as any cookbook