Travel Books

The book came exactly as described... inside looks brand new, the outside was a little "worn" but I expected that. And it came very quickly. Again, very pleased.

Book was delivered in exact condition as described. Would not hesitate to buy from this seller again. Deliverly time was quicker than originally told. A definite plus.

Let me qualify this by saying for a number of years I taught Garde Manger at a Le Cordon Bleu school. I probably own every text book on the subject as it has remained near and dear to my heart as I moved back to the restaurant world.

This is probably the BEST text on this subject I have seen; so much so that I plan to look into their other books. Running the gamut from cold appetizers to a primer on ice sculpting to a discussion of centerpiece carving, this book provides clear concise examples of each process. The full color pictures are fantastic and a welcome addition to the instructions provided. If I was teaching again, this would be my textbook of choice.

I am a current culinary student & at last I have found a book that is a perfect learning tool for my studies. This book is perfect, it has it all, great illustrations, good lay out & very clear instruction. Modern Garde Manger was obviously written by guys that know how to teach their subject. The chapters on meats, game, poultry & fish are the best I have ever seen. This book is truly five star material & I know I will learn so much from it.

Finally someone has written a cooking instruction book that is suitable for the professional and home chef. This book is a must have for anyone serious about learning to cook. It fills in all the holes that will allow you to interpret and adjust recipes from other sources by providing you written and visual instruction along with interesting recipes from around the world. While it was written for the culinary education market this is really the first book any new cook should own. Great wedding or housewarming gift, a valuable reference for years.

I'm going to love poring over this book over and over again. It's impossible to look through it all at once, anyway, it's so big and the visual onslaught is overwhelming. Being a middle-class, Great Plains middle-aged person, I will never see these apartments and rooms myself, but it's fun to see how world-class artists, musicians, actors, directors, designers and financiers like to decorate their homes. Some of them, I swear, are compulsive collectors - stuff *everywhere*! Most are beautiful rooms, lending lots of ideas or at least daydreams for one's own home.

The photography is lovely; the text is in blocks of English, French, and German, so if you want to practice your French or German, this is a fun way to do it. If you're a Francophile, like me, it's entertaining and educational peering through those windows out to the Parisian sights.

My only complaint is how huge the book is; it's not a lap-book, that's for sure. It is definitely worth the money, in my opinion.

This is the 4 wheelbuilding book I have read. And simply the best. A must for a Wheelbuilder.

Despite Jobst Brandt's engineering background, the book is written in a pleasent, easy to understand, straight forward style. The illustrations are plentiful and beautyfull. Layout, illustrations, typography, subject matter and writing style are matching each other very well. This book is not only about building bicycle wheels, but also about understanding how the wheel works, and why some wheel designs are better than others. Jobst Brandt has performed a lot of experiments and therefore dispels a lot of myths based on research. The book is too terse in my opinion, regarding spoke length calculation and hub measurements. It is not that the information isn't there, but complete beginners, who perhaps aren't using math equations very often, must find it intimidating. In that regards, Roger Musson's ebook "Wheel Building" is much more practical and easy to understand. But Jobst Brandt's book is still better than any other source on wheelbuilding I know of. Finally, the most important myth Jobst Brandt dispels is that you have to some kind of special talent to build wheels. Jobst Brandt demonstrates that wheelbuilding can be easy and that everyone can do it with good results. So go get a truing stand and a spoke key and start to build your own wheels.

Having taken apart my mountain bikes wheel thinking it would be easy to fix, clean, and put back together, I found it an impossible task. This book solved that problem almost instantly, two attempts and the wheel has been rebuilt and it's working perfectly. That said, if you only need like I did to build/repair a wheel, thats only one chapter. The amount of technical detail contained is way over the top, and probably unneccessary for most people, not to mention the pages at the back of pure numbers, which I readily admit to having no clue what they relate to.

Unlike some reviewers who would like to see Brandt describe and bless novel spoking patterns, I concur with his recommendation of traditional spoking. The traditional tangent tension-spoked wheel is one of the most elegant and efficient structures ever devised. A wheelbuilder may choose a rim, hub and spokes at will and so, construct wheels of many kinds that are not available commercially. With skill and care, an amateur may build wheels of professional quality. The traditional wheel may be built to the desired degree of ruggedness vs. weight, and if damaged, can often be made usable with an emergency repair or adjustment.

Brandt's advice faces challenges from within the bicycle industry, which is always looking for a new selling point. Wheels with low spoke counts, trendy now (2006) are more tolerable with deep-section aero rims than with shallow rims and can make sense for racers, who are willing to sacrifice reliability for a very slight increase in performance -- but for most bicyclists, it is much more important not to get stranded or crash than to increase speed by half a percent.

Some of the newer types of wheels may sell because they look different, but provide little actual advantage. Wheels with thick aluminum or polycarbonate spokes decrease weight slightly but at a major expense in air drag. Graphite spokes have a very poor record of reliability and safety, though graphite-epoxy composite material has been used successfully in rims and in single-piece formed wheels. Still, brake shoes wear graphite-epoxy quickly, so a metal braking surface is preferable. Don't get me talking about paired spokes, which make a wheel look as if it has fewer spokes -- but require a heavier rim, because longer rim segments are unsupported. The inward pull of the spokes is, after all, about 10 times the lateral pull.

I have built some wheels with radial spokes, but I caught one with a cracked hub flange quite by chance shortly before it would have caused a nasty crash. Since that time I have been very careful which hubs I will spoke radially. As usual, Brandt is correct with his warning on this topic.

There is one serious error in Brandt's book, and I am astonished that it has not been corrected through 3 editions. A graph, on page 39 in the 3rd edition, shows the change in spoke tension with lateral loading of the rim. The left spokes are shown to go into compression. They can't, as they simply flex once they are slack. It might also be asked whether this graph reflects the influence of spokes that are differently stressed as the load is applied at the bottom of the wheel. To do so would require a more complicated mathematical model than I think Brandt was able to command.

I also disagree with Brandt's advice to tension spokes until the rim begins to deform. It can then deform further due to increased stresses during riding, and loosen the spokes. I have seen a new wheel which failed after a few miles for this reason. Spokes should be tight, but should leave a margin of safety. If the rim deforms before the spokes reach their optimum range of tension, then they are too thick for it, or it is too weak for them.

I would really like to see this book updated with today's more sophisticated finite-point analysis, including analysis of stresses in the novel low spoke-count wheels. But for people who are willing to build conventional wheels -- the better choice anyway for most cyclists -- this book is a valuable and fairly comprehensive reference.

I've had this book for well over a decade. Way back in the early ninties it was a great book. However, things move along and even if one does not like nor agree with the current deep dishes and low spoke counts the fact is that the upper end of the market has gone this way. And the low end of the market will seek to follow, abliet with many many more wheel failures than the high end. So what is my complaint? This is a book for the purist whom wants to put a wheel together from first principles and have a deep understanding of the what they are ridding on. While I commend those that wish to go that way and am myself not an advocate of counts below twenty-eight and deep dishes, the bicycle wheel is evovleing (or is it devolving?) and as such it is comon to buy paired and completed wheelsets. So even if these new wheels have quite a finite life span when compared to the "ultimate bicycle wheel" they are still "bicycle wheels" all the same. Thus in 2007 the "Bicycle Wheel" should cover the gamut of what is available and how to deal with the new (but perhaps "silly").

Full of good ideas, good list of tour groups (must go on a tour) especially locally owned. Good information on what to do, costs, etc.

I bought this guide before my first trip to Bhutan, and it helped me immensely in planning my tour. It contains detailed information about the country--history, culture, geography, and facts for travelers. And it gives accurate information about the trekking routes and cultural tours. As is typical for Lonely Planet publications, this one is interesting and well written, and I found the information to be relevant to my trip. It is not easy to travel to Bhutan (there are many government restrictions), and this book made everything easier. I had such a successful, fun trip that I've been back several times (www.jachungtravel.com), and I still refer to this edition of the guide. It's packed with good information, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to go to Bhutan.

Lonely Planet is unbelieveable! They continually pump out the HIGHEST quality guidebooks, and they've done it again with this edition covering Bhutan. I have spent a good portion of my life researching, and hording information on Bhutan, and have found Lonely Planet's guidebook to contain everything and more that the traveller could ever want...with two exceptions. I think that the lack of the U'cen script in the language chapter is a serious mistake. Lonely Planet has the capacity to print in the U'cen script as they did so in their Tibet edition. My other qualm is with the sparse coverage of the smaller and admittedly FAR less visited dzongkhags (districts) (i.e., Daga, Samdrup Jongkhar, Pema Gatshel, Zhemgang, Tsirang, etc.). Lonely Planet, resolve these issues and your book will be the best it could be.

In anticipation of a trip to Bhutan in 2008 I was looking for a travel guide and opted to buy Lonely Planet's. I read it cover to cover and found to contain very good information, advice, tips, descriptions, recommendations, etc. I travel extensively worldwide and Bhutan will be a novel adventure. It brings back memories of my trip to Tibet in 2000. I highly recommend this guide.

Hello!

I'd been searching for a book on Bhutan which could provide me with a little bit of everything about the country viz. the history, geography, people and the culture. I have searched for books on Bhutan in several book stores around. It was so hard to find one in English but I think this one will do.

May be, finally......... I have found the book I'd been looking for.

We are planning to move to PDX in about two years. We know the city somewhat, but this book is giving us some good information.

THE NEWCOMER'S HANDBOOK FOR MOVING TO AND LIVING IN PORTLAND: INCLUDING VANCOUVER, GRESHAM, HILLSBORO, BEAVERTON, AND WILSONVILLE is an exceptional book for relocators. However, even non-relocators will find it very enjoyable. It features great coverage of the city of Portland, including the very desirable West Hills and Bridlemile sections, as well as its incorporated suburbs, yet it also covers unincorporated areas such as Oatfield (which is, for mail delivery purposes, part of Milwaukie), Dunthorpe-Riverdale (which has both Portland AND Lake Oswego ZIP Codes), and Cedar Mill (which has a Portland ZIP Code), as well as the often-overlooked towns of Wilsonville and Happy Valley, and Vancouver, Washington and its suburbs. Many great ideas for education, dining, house-hunting, shopping, health/fitness, and recreation are included in this book. DON'T PASS THIS BOOK UP UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!!!!!!

I just visited Portland for the first time and was glad to have purchased this book before doing so. Great neighborhood profiles and all kinds of additional information. My favorite travel series so far- better than Frommer's.

Does this book cover the fact that native Portlanders (and Oregonians for that matter) do NOT want new people moving here? If you move to Portland, don't be surprised for it to feel like everyone is so very friendly......and then BAM! all of a sudden you figure it out. They actually are nice people, they just don't want anyone else to have a slice of the good Portland pie. They have valid concerns, because with the arrival every day of more educated and/or financially capable people, the natives are getting priced out of their housing market, out of places where they grew up. Seriously, if you meet a rare native, they will NOT let you forget that you're talking to/looking at a native.

How about does this book cover the bike-culture snobs in Portland? Don't arrive riding just any old bike, and don't think just because you don't own a car makes you fit in.

Seriously, I hope the book helps you out, but you can't really know until you're here and you figure it out the real way. Like the rest of us.

There are scores of books that help you explore San Francisco. Go with one besides this product. Though the book offers a pithy, colorful guide to the commercial and recreational places of the city, it's really no more than a glorified yellow pages. Instead of putting everything in alphabetical order, the editors merely group places according to the neighborhood.

Bottom line: if you live in Laurel Heights and are looking for the nearest post office, this book is helpful. If you want to easily find great, economical Burmese food or a dog park, this book isn't your best resource.

I bought this gift for by boyfriend, since his parents moved to chicago and while he is not in college in CA he will be in chicago. He was so excited that i gave him it. At first i was looking into buying the Moleskin Chicago edition, but this is SOOOO much better. it has great maps and little blurbs about fun restaurants, museums, bookstores and more. It has sections of fun things to do with children too. overall, i think its a great resource that is small enough to fit in a purse or backpack and packed full of great information. i wish every city had a book like this.

The NFT series are the best city guides produced, in terms of the amount of information covered, detail of the maps, and quality of the product. However, this truly is not a guide for tourists - the book is geared towards helping natives get around the city and find what they need. It does not contain lengthy reviews of tourist destinations, although some recommendations are sprinkled throughout the book. If you are looking for a book to help you navigate your city, this is it - a perfect car companion. If you're just visiting Chicago, the NFT guide won't be very useful to you.

For someone who has been searching for a thorough guide book on the restaurant management like me, this book is a gem! It's packed with invaluable advice, practical tips and thorough guidelines on virtually all essential aspects of the restaurant business. It is well organized and written in such a clear, simple language. In short, an extraordinary guide in many ways!

Memoir of a Canadian Teacher in Bhutan

Jamie Zeppa, an English teacher from Canada, in 1999 wrote of her life experience in Bhutan from 1989 to 1992. With the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) financed overseas education program in Bhutan, the slightly over 20 year old teacher changed her whole life to take a chance at living in a completely different part of the world. Practically without knowledge of the culture she was going to impact and loads of useless baggage she transferred to this tiny Himalayan kingdom convinced of reaching the Shangrila. The cultural shock of the small village posting, the solitude, the breathtaking but initially frightening environment, the incapacity of connecting to such a different population almost drove her crazy at the beginning. But due to her strong ego and a particularly ironic and self-mocking attitude she slowly learns to cope and understands the life philosophy of these simple but practical people. "Anyone can live anywhere" she wisely concludes. The beauty of the landscape and the joy de vivre of her students conquers her heart and starts a transformation that not only converts her to Buddhism but leads her to accept a new challenge in a superior school in a bigger city.
The college students and colleagues contribute to her re-evaluation of her Western cultural heritage and the deeper comprehension of the Eastern way of life and open her vision of the true nature of Bhutanese culture and difficult political situation. With magisterial delicate tones Zeppa describes the political and ethnological undertones of the Bhutanese youth and the gender discrimination of women.
Unexpectedly she also falls in love with one of her students and bravely decides to make a life commitment to her new found values.

This diary/novel is well written, funny, full of quaint and memorable episodes and a pleasure to read. It conveys all the puzzlement of cultural shocks in the pre-globalization era and shows how the concept of "sustainable economy" was already evident at the beginning of the 1990's. The book contains a plethora of useful information to understand modern Bhutan.
The "spirit of place" is conveyed with grace, the personal experiences gain an universal value and it is possible to identify with the Author.

If you like these types of memoirs I suggest reading Louisa Waugh's "Hearing Birds Fly", a similar experience of a British teacher in Mongolia.

Many here in America and maybe elsewhere (I never lived anywhere else so can't say) are taught to be believe or come to believe that material comfort, good education and a high-paying job are of great importance. People spend their lives striving for these things without considering the importance of family, friends, love and the personal satisfaction that comes with having a job you enjoy. I think that Ms. Zeppa found these things in her journey to Bhutan. I wouldn't go to say that Bhutanese culture promotes those things but certainly being away from her native surroundings gave Ms. Zeppa the chance to experience this. Maybe that's the great thing about places like America and Canada, we all have the freedom to find for ourselves how we want to live. If it takes a journey to the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, so be it.

this book was absolutely amazing from start to finish. i was so fascinated and excited by what she would write next... i looked forward to every page and slowed down towards the end because i never wanted it to end! anyone who didnt like this book is insane!!!

This is a travel memoir, but it reads as much more of a personal journey. She goes from the western world into an isolated eastern world that is also very poor. She learns and learns, sometimes is very naive, sometimes very wise. Where she ends up was a surprise to me.

In Beyond the Sky and the Earth, Jamie Zeppa presents an overall intriguing and insightful account of her experience as a schoolteacher and college lecturer in the remote kingdom of Bhutan. Published more than ten years after the author originally left for Bhutan, the book succeeds in presenting a fascinating view of the author's early experiences in the country. In the first two-thirds of the book, Zeppa's vivid images and careful attention to detail are possible only as she writes sincerely from her heart. One believes that her only motivation is to share her love of the Bhutanese and her gratitude for the privilege of living there and being loved by the children and villagers of Pema Gatshel. The reader feels a part of Zeppa's lovely world.

The reliability of Zeppa's account is bolstered by her consistent address her own imperialist mind. Most of us White people living in the Western world have inherited a perception clouded by a pervasive sense of superiority to other races and cultures. Zeppa is mindful of this fact, and sincere in her efforts to unlearn racism and imperialism. Zeppa wrestles with her desire to perceive the Bhutanese in romantic sentiments, and to impose her values upon them. Zeppa provides an interesting account of her personal despair over the social and political unrest she witnessed in Bhutan, some of which played out among students at her university.

In the final third of the book, however, Zeppa's sincerity begins to waver as the details give way to rushed summaries of particular events. Suddenly a year and a half has passed, and the reader is no longer invited into Zeppa's world. Although one doesn't doubt the veracity of the events reported, the tone of the events and the words spoken savor of emotional editing. The brief paragraphs of conclusion Zeppa offers to tie up her story indicate a difficult relationship with her Bhutanese husband and a host of regrets. One gets the impression that the story of the love affair, which hurriedly takes over the last part of the book, is presented for the benefit of Zeppa's spouse, meant to send some message about "the way it used to be." In any case, the reader is left behind. In the second edition of this book, it is hoped that Zeppa will rewrite the last 80 pages or so, and even (gasp!) go over the 300-page limit to present more fully, and more honestly, the story of the second half of her tour as a lecturer in Bhutan.

The book contained a great amount of side trips along Route 66 that made the journey even more fun and adventurous. Follows the westbound route.

I used it as a companion to the Route 66 EZ Guide by Jerry McClanahan.

I have been planning a motorcycle trip on Route 66 for some time. Having collected several reference books, maps and DVDs, I was intrigued by this offering. I was surprised at the amount of points-of-interest information the author provided, however, this is certainly not a one-book-does-it-all piece. This is a great reference to have with you while traveling Route 66, or simply in deciding what you would like to see on your journey of the Mother Road. I will certainly take it with me on Route 66.

This book was a disappointment to me, rather than being a step by step guide as you travel was more of a read through type book. Obviously good for reference but wouldn't be the only book I used for a trip. Good point of the book is the pictures, bad point is the lack of detailed maps.

I have read this book along with reading Route 66: EZ66 Guide for Travelers simultaneously. I find reading them together you get a little more information out of them. We are leaving for our trip in May and will bring both books with us. This book has a wealth of information and very easy to follow. I am very excited to take our trip because of all of the exciting information I have read about. The author has great experience and has driven this route many times. I feel confident we will have a wonderful trip.

The book was great for pointing out things to see along Route 66. I highly recommend it; however, I really, really wish that it included more directions and approximate mileage to find the items listed in the book. The Giant Ketchup bottle was about 20 miles off the beaten path. The Cherokee Indians Trail of Tears was close by route 66, but there were no directions on how to get there, so it took several hours and wrong turns to find something that was only 5 minutes away. An icon to indicate directly on route 66 or not would have been terrific and saved a lot of eye-strain trying to find things. We did somehow manage to find most of the items listed in this book in conjunction with route 66 specific maps.