2 comments about Lonely Planet East Coast Australia.

1. This book is perfect for seeing the east coast of Australia by car, but will work just as well if traveling by bus, moped, etc. A friend and I had been planning to drive the east coast, visiting national parks and doing lots of hiking, so when I saw this book I knew it was perfect. As with all titles in the LP family, it lists many places to stay/eat based on price range, which is really nice when you are traveling on a limited budget. There are many hikes listed in the book, along with museums, oddities, and points of interest along this 'classic overland route.' My only complaint about the book is that I wish the authors had listed traveling distances between major cities at the beginning of each section, so the reader doesn't have to add up each little segment on the maps. Otherwise the book is very complete.



2. My husband and I took a 18 day trip from Sydney to Cairnes, and used this book for almost all of our motels/B&B's, etc. We were looking to budget less than $100/night for rooms, and all the recommendations in this book were spot-on. The maps of towns are okay, but you'll want a full-size map to get around with and figure distances, too.

No comments about BALI & LOMBOK (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

3 comments about A Crazy Occupation: Eyewitness to the Intifada.

1. Jamie Tarabay tells it as it is without the blandness commonly associated with autobiographies. You relive her experiences with her vivid descriptions of events and her desire to provide an objective an assessment as possible of the troubles around her. She takes you through the highs and lows of life as a reporter in a region many of us never understand. I learnt so much more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after reading this book. She explains it in a way that's uncomplicated and makes sense. And her adventures sound like fun, even if ducking bullets by hiding behind a car or hitching a ride with militia is a bit crazy. It's a very good read and I strongly recommend it.



2. Ever wonder what type of person, let alone a woman, wants to live in a war-torn area like Iraq so we can hear on the radio what's going on there? Jamie Tarabay epitomizes an incredibly brave group of people crucial to an open society like ours - reporters who put their lives at risk to inform us about the real conditions and people caught up in such grim circumstances. Jamie's clear-eyed descriptions of her real-time education in the complexities of the Middle East and the intractable Palestine-Israel conflict give the reader a more balanced appreciation of the underlying human and religious issues. I was hoping to learn more about what motivates sophisticated women (and men) reporters like Jamie and Christiane Amanpour to do this type of work. Jamie's book title promises to do this, but ultimately spends more time analyzing the other type of occupation involved. I'm very relieved to hear Jamie reporting for NPR from Baghdad in the New Year - I can continue to root for and care about her now that I know better who she is. Thank you and well done, Jamie!



3. This is an amazing read. Jamie Tarabay brings home what it's like to live in a war zone in a way few other reporters have in recent memory. The combination of personal details and experiences, along with touching and poignant descriptions of the tragedy of war make this book unique in its class.
   
   Refreshingly, the reporting is unbiased and fair, unlike most of the mass media reporting we all see on TV every night. Rather than focusing on good guys and bad guys, Jamie shows us that all sides in the Middle East conflict are made up of people who are very similar in so many ways, who all have fear, and anger, and who all bleed alike and die alike.
   
   After reading this book, not only will you have come to know and understand the crisis in the Middle East much more completely, but you will also have come to know and understand the working of a young, innocent and apparently fearless reporter putting her life on the line every day for the sake of the assignment. It's easy to become a big fan of this author very quickly, and one can only hope that she will follow up this work with a similar one based on her recent reporting from Iraq. Pulitzer-worthy.

1 comments about Australia Road Atlas (Travel Atlases).

1. Although I have not yet traveled with this book, I purchased it in order to help plan my upcoming vacation. This atlas contains quite a bit of additional information on Australia that I found to be helpful. I was particularly impressed with the detail pertaining to the description and quality of roadways and the available faclities for travelers. I found the format, photography, and writing style to be pleasant; the legends were clear and easy to interpret. However, as an atlas, I would have preferred that the larger maps be printed in such a manner that they would be displayed in their entirety by simply opening the book, as opposed to be divided between different pages.

No comments about Diving Australia Second Edition: A Guide to the Best Diving Down Under (Periplus Action Guides).

No comments about Fodor's Australia 2009 (Fodor's Gold Guides).

5 comments about Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey.

1. Great armchair rideabout through the land down under! Witty and intelligent, Kanze has a knack for making one feel as if he and his wife were sitting in rockers in your den telling these tales. He is able to balance intelligence and knowledge with humor and candor of his own foibles. I want to go to Australia!



2. For one who has not been to Australia yet, reading about this wildlife journey has been great fun. The author gives his readers a real sense of the joy of discovery and excitement of the search. Along the way, he imparts a great amount of fascinating information about the countryside and the people encountered during their travels.

   I highly recommend Kanze's book for armchair travelers who have an interest in wildlife, or those who may be contemplating such an adventure for themselves. The view of Australia, its people, and its wildlife is extraordinary!




3. Ed Kanze's Kangaroo Dreaming should provide a healthy counterbalance to "Survivor II" with its kitschy evocation of aboriginal ceremony and the Australian landscape. In the popular show, the only genuine elements were the landscape of the outback itself and the glimpses of wildlife. In Kanze's clear-eyed view of the same landscape, the aborigines, like our Native Americans, displaying the "ugly and all-too-universal result of western mercantile culture mixing with a tribal society." The aborigines encountered near Alice Springs - unsmiling, clutching whiskey bottles - provide one of the human portraits that truly makes Kanze's book stand out among travelogues of natural history. But as always, Kanze's eye for flora and fauna predominates and his descriptive powers are masterful: "Suddenly, bubbles appeared in the water before me. I cocked my camera, switched on the flash, and held my breath. There - there -there - I was struck dumb by my good fortune. A black, rubbery bill wider than a duck's pushed through the surface immediately before me. It was followed by webbed feet, a hairy face with beady black eyes, and a furry brown body about the size of a muskrat's. I fiddled with the camera. The platypus was so close that my lens could not focus." The frame of Kanze's story is a nine-month, 25,000-mile odyssey he and his wife Debbie took around the rim of, and to the center of, Australia. (In fact, the author has used the sections of The Odyssey itself to parallel their journey.) Along the way they meet friendly and helpful nature enthusiasts - as well as characters they'd as soon never see again. For those of us who will visit "the America on the other side of the world" (Melville's phrase) only via the armchair, the Kanzes make irresistible, funny and erudite traveling companions.



4. I read this book just after having finished Bill Bryson's travel book on Australia, "In A Sunburned Country," and the contrast could not be more vivid. Bryson focused mainly on the cities, towns, and people of Australia, and I believe he only saw a few kangaroos in his entire sojourn there. Though he did cover some natural history, most of his work was focused on the human history and culture of Australia. Kanze on the other hand on his massive journey around Australia with his wife Debbie spent very little time in cities, trying to avoid urban areas for the most part, and saw a great deal of wildlife, including probably hundreds of kangaroos. In fact, the principal reason they flew to Australia, bought a car, and spent the better part of a year driving around the continent/country (including Tasmania) was to see a bewildering array of plants, animals, and natural landscapes in the "bush."

   The author introduces the reader to a many animals, some familiar, many not. We meet a wide variety of kangaroos, including the "big four," the common wallaroo (known as the "euro" in Western Australia), the red kangaroo, the eastern grey, and the western grey, as well as the musky rat-kangaroo, most "primitive" of kangaroos, smaller than a housecat, distinct in that hops on four feet rather than two, carries nest material with its tail, and is the only kangaroo that raises two young at a time rather than the usual one . They encounter the sugar glider, a marsupial that is strikingly similar to the flying squirrel of North America, one that feeds on the excretions of sap-feeing insects and eucalyptus resin, something few marsupials can digest. A wide variety of parrots (the continent possesses fifty-six species) also amazes the Kanzes when they encountered them in virtually any setting, from rain forest to desert to the middle of large cities. They meet koalas several times, a strange animal that Kanze informs us actually for a time grew more common after English settlement, as Aborigine hunting of them declined as their own populations retreated before the Europeans, only to suffer in turn when koalas caught the fancy of London furriers. They run into the ubiquitous termite mounds of Queensland, thousands of which tower over the landscape up to eight feet in height, vital to the local ecology as they serve the function of earthworms, which are unable to survive the monsoonal inundations of the local landscape. Interestingly, we learn that at least some termite species build their mounds with their broad fronts parallel to the earth's magnetic poles, one end pointing to magnetic south, the other magnetic north, with the mounds thus situated to soak up morning and afternoon sunshine but only present a thin edge to the blistering midday sun. They meet the potentially dangerous cassowary, a huge flightless bird able to run thirty miles an hour, jump five feet into the air, and disembowel a man with the slash of a talon. Advised to hide and freeze should they encounter one in the forest, the Kanzes run into an overcurious youngster and its protective parent at one point, a situation that could have ended in disaster. Told that if one froze they might be missed, as their eyesight is poor, a comment that to me brought to mind "Jurassic Park," a thought the author apparently shared. Kanze roots around underwater with a snorkel and mask for the elusive Arafura file snake, not formerly described until 1980, a snake with unusually loose but rough skin that uses to grip slippery fish, a water snake that hunts, sleeps, breeds, and gives birth without leaving the water. Among the many other animals they meet and describe for the reader are the manatee-like dugong, honey possums (the only terrestrial mammal to subsist entirely on pollen and nectar), Tasmanian devils, the hated alien cane toad, a wide variety of native frogs, bowerbirds, bandicoots, platypuses, flying foxes, dingoes, echidnas (also know as spiny anteaters), lyrebirds, sunbirds, and a wide variety of reptiles including sea turtles, pythons, many poisonous snakes, goannas (among the largest lizards alive today, goanna being the Australian name for a monitor lizard, the name probably a corruption of "iguana"), and crocodiles (both freshwater and saltwater varieties).

   I learned a lot about Australian wildlife and landscapes and some about Australian history and culture and really enjoyed the book, but do offer a few small complaints. Kanze repeatedly compares his journey throughout Australia to that of Odysseus and his trials that were described in "The Odyssey." While sometimes the comparisons were apt and even mildly humorous, sometimes they seemed a bit forced and even slightly tedious, with occasional asides into Greek mythology that seemed out of place. Second, many times Kanze mentions taking pictures of a variety of animals throughout his journey, yet there is only the cover picture; nowhere are there are photographs in the book. I would have liked to have seen a few pictures at least of landscapes.

   Having said that though, this is a very good Australian travel and natural history book, one I would recommend.




5. Sometimes I don't realize I have a pet peeve until I read a book like Kangaroo Dreaming. In this case, I can't stand Kanze's decision to repeatedly and painfully compare his trip around Australia to the Odyssey. It is something that would have been fine to use once, but even with all the adventures and difficulties that he and his wife face are nothing like what Odysseus faces in his 10 year journey form Troy to Greece. Kanze didn't seem to trust the story of his trip to see as much Australian wildlife and wilderness as possible, which at least to American and even one that spend several months in Australia is much for interesting then being retold a fairly well known Greek Myth. He also includes much Emerson, but thankfully not to the point that it becomes distracting. I also felt that compared to other travel books, I didn't get much of a sense of himself and sometimes don't get much about his wife save when they argue or chase down another bird.
   Otherwise Kanze has obviously read what previous writers and explorers have written about Australia, which he includes where useful, as well as facts about the unique wildlife he and his wife encounters. So don't read it for a great travel book, read it as a piece of nature writing that happens to involve travel. I agree with other reviewers, why weren't a few photos included with this book? I would have loved even just a few to refer to as he describes a particular encounter.

5 comments about Frommer's South Pacific (Frommer's Complete).

1. It is very obvious that the author of this book has actually been to the South Pacific - he is very enthusiastic about the area - and sincerely wants his readers to love it too! We have followed the book's on two trips and have found the advise to be 100% accurate. I highly recommend this book - it can be trusted.



2. Having been a resident of French Polynesia and Tahiti for over 35 years, the author-in my opinion-has produced an accurate, objective and encompassing report and guide for the American traveling public.The subject matter to review and relay is quite extensive--and this requires a fine tuned view of each island. Although I have not visited as many islands as the writer, I find the ones I know in the edition to be correct and concise--in fact, I learned details I was not aware of.
   
   It is important to remember this guide was presented by an American-with an American viewpoint and cultural value-for the American market.
   
   In closing, before coming to these islands, I highly suggest you extend your credit card limits and/or bring lots of cash as most of it probably won't be returning with you. French Polynesia is expensive--yet the lagoon colors, vibrant mountains and handsome people make it a memorable experience.



3. If you are looking for information to help you decide where to go in the South Pacific this is a great place to start. If you know you are going to a specific Island you may want to consider a book on just that Island but this is a great overview and a resource for travelling between the islands.



4. Bill Goodwin has continually updated and improved this book since the 6th and 7th editions. Why does Amazon.com retain such outdated reviews from two years ago and more? So much has been changed since the edition one of these early reviews refer to. For example Goodwin points out the best snorkeling and other outdoor activities, and tells exactly where to go to rent bicycles. Goodwin's professional advice is highly relevant to travelers of all price ranges, including backpackers (he began as one after all), and all advice is given with an eye to making the most of your money. No travel guide can possibly be up to the, minute (the time need to print the book causes this), but Goodwin provides frequent updates on his own website, [...].
   This guide is entertaining as well as useful. It is indispensable for all of us who have outgrown Lonely Planet. Please remove the out of date reviews of this excellent book.



5. This book has a 2006 copyright date in it so don't count on all the prices for hotels, dining, etc. to be up to date. We generally buy Frommer's books more for learning about the area and signts to see than for hotels and dining.Web sites we have researched don't contain a lot of great information as they are loaded with items to sell you. We have visited this area one other tiem and this is the place to go to relax and really take life easy. The book gives you some very good insight into the area and what to visit and where to spend you time. This book has some items and locations that appear in another Frommer book, Tahiti and French Polynesia. Areas in this book include Fiji, Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Rarotonga and Cook Islands, Samoa and the Kingdom of Tonga. Even if you are visiting only a couple of those islands you will find the book worth while.We first looked at major book stores in Dallas and locating copies of South Pacific books was next to impossible. Every store though did offer to order a copy for us. That meant paying full retail price and having to make another trip to the bookstore. You spend less time and money by ordering as we did through Amazon.

No comments about LUXE Australia Travel Set (Luxe City Guides) (LUXE City Guides).

No comments about Going to Live in New Zealand.