4 comments about Diving Micronesia (Aqua Quest Diving Series).

1. Throughout the world of diving, there are a few Divers who are able to provide their Publishers with excellent material for their Guide Books and Eric Hanauer is one of these.
   
   "Diving Micronesia" measures 10" x 7" and is another guide in the medium size format favoured by Aqua Quest. This is a worthy addition to a first rate series of books - throughout which, these publishers have maintained the highest standards in terms of quality of information and photography.
   
   As with each of these guides, this book is clearly laid out with chapters on the overall subject area (complete with all the relevant information required), an overview of diving in the South Pacific and specific detail with regard to the individual countries visited (Guam, Mariana Islands, Yap, Palau, Chuuk (formerly Truk Lagoon), Pohnpei, Kosrae and the Marshall Islands (including Bikini Atoll)). Chapter 1 begins with a précis of the region's geography and history coupled with details of the present day. This is followed by a map and all that essential information such as credit cards, cuisine, currency, dress, electricity, getting there, entry/exit requirements, mail, telephone, time, post - and anything else the prospective visitor wishes to know.
   
   Chapter 2 is an overview of the Diving in general and includes all the relevant information the diver requires - such as: facilities, water/weather conditions, visibility, flora and fauna and lots more besides.
   
   As one might expect, there then follows a chapter dedicated to each of the aforementioned countries within the catchment area of this book. Being separate countries spread over a large area of the Pacific Ocean, these chapters contain a wealth of information on diving and non-diving topics. The diving details commences with a map of the specific island complex where all the relevant dive sites are clearly numbered and displayed. This is followed by a description of each site with adequate narrative, relevant depth and grade-of-diver information.
   
   With everything lavishly supported by underwater and surface photography of the highest standard, the book then concludes with Appendices containing Emergency Information and what appears to be a very thorough list of local (South Pacific) diving contact details.
   
   With a total of 92 dive sites to set the heart racing, the book also includes 3 dive sites from Bikini Atoll. Clearly the Publishers were leaving the very best to the very last by including the USS Saratoga (the only diveable Aircraft Carrier in the world), HIJMS Nagato and USS Apogon which combine to form three of the world's most important dive sites.
   
   For me, it was nice to find a book where some of the world's most historic sites from the WW2 Pacific theatre of War were placed together - rather than allowing, say, Truk Lagoon (sorry - just can't get used to that new name.), or Bikini Atoll to dominate the book.
   
   Altogether, a well-rounded book with everything supported by some pretty stunning and imaginative photography. For anyone considering a trip to the South Pacific, I do believe this is the only book you will require - and it is one for which I have been waiting for some time...
   
   NM



2. A thorough explanation of the Micronesian islands and what to expect, both on land and under the water, on each of them. The history is fascinating. Our first visit to Micronesia, so we'll see how true the information the book presents is!



3. Diving Micronesia was an easy to read guide book that will not go into great detail , I certainly did not base my travel on it , I would definately recomend the lonely planet guide by Tim Rock , it is much more informative



4. great book with excellent coverage of different dive sites all over micronesia. the only problem i have is that it has not been updated since 2000, but that is only a minor thing.

4 comments about Australia.

1. If you want to go or have ever been to Australia this is a must have book. It will intise you to visit or will remind you of all the natural beauty this amazing country has to offer. Peter Lik is a truley amazing photographer I have been to his galleries in Cairnes and Port Douglas in Australia and his work is breath taking. www.peterlik.com Also you can see what an amazing deal this is here at Amazon.com, this book usually retails for $70 US. Wonderful Masterpiece Peter!!



2. i just got this book as a present, and we're getting ready to go. very reminiscent of galen rowell's work (high praise) with lots of dawn/evening atmospherics. but this one is full of double page panoramics - nothing is lost in the crease - of the incredible australian landscape. get another book if you want people, animals or cities.



3. This book offers a fantastic opportunity to view some of Peter Lik's best known work - panoramic images of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Twelve Apostles, the Great Barrier Reef, and other Australian icons. To view the full range of Peter's books and posters visit PortraitAustralia.com.au



4. These are photographs of aspects of this vast country that many Australians never see. Contrast the reds of the desert with the greens of the rainforest. The magnificence of Uluru with the tranquillity of Dove Lake. The ageless beauty of the rain forest with the beauty of our beaches.
   
   Australia is a beautiful place. This collection of photographs by Peter Lik makes that beauty more accessible to all of us.
   
   Highly recommended to those interested in images of Australia.
   
   Jennifer Cameron-Smith

5 comments about Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria's Jewish Past with Its Last Wandering Shepherd.

1. Sam Apple, author of Schlepping Through The Alps: My Search For Austria's Jewish Past With Its Last Wandering Shepherd, first encounters Yiddish folk-singer Hans Breuer at a concert and slide show in New York. Breuer, as Apple points out, is not just your ordinary run-of-the mill Yiddish folk-singer, rather he is truly a wandering Jew and as he reveals in his book, "If you ever happen to be hiking the Alps and you see a man singing Yiddish songs as he watches a dog chasing a sheep in a raincoat, no need for concern."
   
   Apple, who grew up in Houston and now makes his home in Brooklyn, was quite intrigued by this forty-five year old Austrian shepherd. The result was a one thousand word article that eventually has being turned into a witty yet insightful book, wherein much of Apple's research was accumulated while traveling in Austria as an apprentice to Breuer.
   
   During their first encounter in New York, Breuer mentioned to Apple that he wanted to bring Yiddish to the uninitiated in the Austrian Alps. When asked if he wanted these individuals to remember their Yiddish neighbors, his reply was: "I want to make them confront for the first time in their lives this culture that their uncles and fathers destroyed." With this in mind Apple decided to voyage to Austria and find out for himself what it was like to be a shepherd in the twenty-first century and to make sense of Han's Jewish identity or as he states, what it really meant for him to sing in Yiddish. He also wanted to learn about sheep, Yiddish music and anti-Semitism.
   
   Apple's engaging narrative is what Yiddish speaking readers would probably classify as a good "meinsa," something akin to an old wife's tale only this story is actually true. Apple beckons us to follow his meandering through the Alps following a herd of sheep, a shepherd, his mistress and young lamb herders, while picking up along the way various shepherding tips from his mentor and learning about Austria's past and present political landscape.
   
   During the course of his apprentice with Breuer, Apple learns about Austria's post-war anti-Nazi legislation that led to the sentencing to death of several Nazis and the conviction and incarceration of thousands of low-ranking Nazis. However, a few years after the enactment of this legislation, a general amnesty came into effect and all but a handful of the worst offenders were free to live happily every after. In fact, the government's constant line about complaints about Austria's behavior during the Holocaust was that if you have one take it to Germany.
   
   Quite telling of Breuer's psyche is that he associates the Austrian countryside with fascism and anti-Semitism. When he encounters people along his shepherding path, he believes that they are all staring at him with cold eyes, aware that he is not one of them. Apple notes that Breuer enjoys being a living part of a dying tradition, where Yiddish and shepherding are relics of another time- nonetheless he takes great pride in both. Moreover, he is not quite sure how much of his own romanticizing of wandering and Jewishness has drawn him to Breuer. However, what he observes about Breuer's shepherding is "the rejection of modern society in the aftermath of the Holocaust. In his Yiddish songs I inevitably listened for the millions of missing Yiddish voices that should have been singing along."
   
   Apple does an excellent job of capturing the flavor of the Austrian Alps with its little villages and inhabitants who seem to either have collective amnesia pertaining to their past or consider themselves blameless. Although he never does find as many anti-Semites as he originally feared, Apple does provide his readers with some serious insights, spiced up with enough lively and sometimes humorous commentary that will unquestionably keep readers turning the pages all the way to the end.
   
   Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures



2. To paraphrase comic Jeff Foxworthy, if you find this engaging travelogue entirely humorless... you might be an Anti-Semite. (Reading it might be a good self-test.) Although Jewishness and Anti-Jewishness are portrayed throughout, Mr. Apple's writing is so genuine and fluid that anyone with an appreciation for English will enjoy its exceptional quality. While comparisons have been made to Woody Allen, author Sam Apple might better be described as the Hunter S. Thompson of Generation X. Perhaps "Rolling Stone" would do well to engage him to cover the upcoming Presidential election--and those uncomfortable with Jewishness (Jews and non-Jews alike)--would find it less frightening to enjoy a bright new literary light. Meanwhile, try this one: reading through it is no schlep.



3. I read this enchanting book when it first came out and could not put it down. Reading it for the second time, I can't help but wonder, "why isn't this a movie?" This rare, heartwarming story told with such humor and wit could easily translate into another media form. It's definitely time to replace "The Sound of Music" with a new travel guide through the Alps. After all, a shepherd, a nice Jewish boy, and a beautiful girl could make the hills come alive again. Hollywood, where are you?



4. There are two stories here. Which one dominates your reading will depend in part on your tendency to optimism or pessimism at the moment that you read. The grim story that hangs over everything is the fate of the Jews in Austria. There were a quarter million Jews and people of Jewish parentage in Austria in the 1930's. After the Austrians decided to kill or expel their Jewish neighbors, there were almost none. Today, the Jews of Austria number about 10,000-most of them in Vienna.
   The comedy is the story of Hans Breuer, a folk-singing grand-child of the radical sixties. In the middle of the world's most developed economy, he makes a living as a shepherd: a Jewish shepherd.Sam Apple, the author of this book, plays with the nature of the shepherd's life, the mercurial personality of Hans Breuer and the odd business of being Jewish in a country where killing Jews was a bit of a national sport.
   Having spent a great deal of time in Vienna, I can tell you that Apple gets a great deal of this right. He certainly gets all of it funny, or at least wry. He concentrates on lingering old-fashioned anti-semetism and ignores both the small philo-semetic counter-trend and the more genteel neo-jew-hating of the left.
   Apple spends a great deal of his time talking about himself and so the book is also partly a memoir. The self that he reveals is game for the adventure of being a shepard for a while, but also comically neurotic and thereby a bit unattractive.
   On one of my last trips to Austria, I went to a Hans Breuer recital. It was at a bar in the countryside. Half the audience was out from Vienna, the other half local people having dinner. Breuer seemed to think he was in a concert hall and between songs went back in the kitchen to silence the cooks. It was an awkward moment, but one that seemed to fit.
   
   Lynn Hoffman, Author of The New Short Course in Wine



5. A chochem is, in Yiddish, a wise person. Sam Apple, the writer, is a lot wiser than Sam Apple, the character he creates, a woody allen-ish hypochondriac awkwardly trying to write a book about a wandering Jewish Austrian shepherd. Apple also scores a literary triumph in his portrait of the one-of-a-kind Hans Breuer, the shepherd.
   
   Post-modern in its best sense, the book makes wonderful and surprising connections between the search for justice and reconciliation in post-war Austria, the history of domesticated animals, Yiddish song, sexuality and the fine points of herding 675 sheep through mountains, forests and small towns.
   
   I sat down to read for a few minutes and stayed in the chair for most of the day, following the hapless Sam as he tries to live the life of an alpine shepherd with Hans, Hans' estranged wife and devoted girlfriend, his sons and various eccentric friends like Austria's giant champion scythe-wielding grass-cutter. More is revealed when Sam spends time in Vienna meeting politicians, survivors of the Shoah and anti-racist activists, including the beguiling Irene, a welcome romantic interest whose fling with Sam forms a revealing counterpoint to Hans' tangled love life.
   
   Through these varied landscapes, Apple's voice is funny, knowing and refreshingly humble. He gracefully mixes and blends the
   Jewish, picaresque, storytelling tradition of Sholem Aleichem and S.Y. Agnon with the irreverence of Phillip Roth and the eye for quirky detail of Bruce Chatwin He's a young writer whose first book jump starts what I imagine will be a surprising and exciting career.

No comments about The Pacific Islands: Environment & Society.

5 comments about Lonely Planet Australia (8th ed.).

1. the book had an artistacal view and in depth information in some areas, but most over all the book was a very lacking biography type. it needed more info on the perpetual level and needed to be more ribbed. but otherwise a funny, yet witty book. 3 stars



2. I was relatively disappointed with LP's Australia offering - I've been told that The Rough Guide is better. The book provided information typically found in LP guides, but was inadequate in numerous areas - particularly in providing comprehensive lists of tour operators and hostels. As with most LP books, it was short on advice and in-depth information on places, but provided valuable basic information on destinations. It was certainly better than not having a guide, but I missed out on some great opportunities because the guide's information was inadequate.



3. I have made four trips to Australia using various versions of this guide. You have to remember that it started off as a backpacker's/ alternative travel guide and has kept the strengths (in depth coverage of offthe beaten track areas) as well as the weaknesses (concentrates on low end travellers) of that approach. It needs to be not just revised and updated but also completely rewritten from scratch. The book is also geared to the traveller who is already in Australia. For example, it is extremely sparing in giving out email addresses and, after all these editions, still does not give the Australian postcodes for places. In its attempt to cover the entire country, it has also gotten very bulky and inconvenient.

   I like Lonely Planet and its guides, but I think that it is time for them to either abandon or change the focus of this country-wide guide. In the meantime, I am relying on their series of Australian State guides for my next trip.




4. Because Australia is so big.. and there is just so much to see no single book can possibly cover the whole country. That's why lonely planet has published so many titles pertaining to this country.

   I think the intention of this book is to give insight into what is available where... then select the relevant lonely planet guide for the area that most interests you.

   A lot of people don't know what is where in Aus, as an outline to learn... I think this book serves anyone very very well.

   It's much cheaper to buy this book.. and choose where you want to find out more about... than buying the complete series of lonely planet guides in the Australia range.




5. CHECKED IN THE STAFF WERE AMAZING VERY HELPFULL POLITE AND READY TO SERVE YOU AND FULL OF HELPFULL KNOWLEDGE ON ALL THE LOCAL TOURS IN THE AREA AS WELL AS OTHER TOURS IN AUSTRALIA CLEAN AND VERY AFFORDABLE GAMES ROOM TV/CABLE SWIMMING POOL THE BEST THING ABOUT THE HOSTEL IS THAT IT WAS ONLY FIVE MINSTO THE CITY AND THEY GAVE YOU A FREE MEAL EVERY NIGHT AT A RESTURANT COME NIGHT CLUB VERY GOOD PLACE GO AND HAVE A LOOK OR JUST PHONE THEM ON (07)40410249 FROM TWO HAPPY POMMS BACKPACKING AROUND THE WORLD MY RATING FOR THE PLACE IS 5 STARS

No comments about Insight Guides Sydney Smart Guide (Insight Guides).

5 comments about The Pillars of Hercules : A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean.

1. Well, I just enjoy listening to (reading) what this guy talks (writes) about in his travels. An example (just one of many, many) is about the Mafia Monks. Seriously! Their nefarious activities "never prevented their hearing confessions, saying masses, or preaching at funerals - in one case, the monk in question saying a funeral high mass and preaching piously over the body of a man he had ordered killed." And I like the way he talks to ordinary people on the street and gets their point of view. Yes, it's a topsy-turvy world, but it sure beats the artificial world of fiction. I just visited Las Vegas. People wasting their lives chasing the jackpot, the fantasy world. Well, to each his own. But Paul Theroux tells it like it is - nutty, maybe, but that's the reality.



2. I have read five of Paul Theroux's travel books: The Great Railway Bazaar, The Kingdom by the Sea, The Old Patagonian Express, Travel Fiend and now The Pillars of Hercules. I can say without a doubt, that this is my favorite travelogue of his. The book is concise and knowledgable and shows erudition lacking in most travelogues.
   
   It is a total learning experience. I have looked up more words in this book than in most books I read. And I really appreciate that. He doesn't write books for people who are looking to read about the surface of a culture, or who just want the interesting bits revealed to them. He writes books for people that are truly interested and will take the time to learn all that he supplies the reader.
   
   And I think this is his crowning achievement!



3. As expected, another wonderful travel book from a master, this time spiced with some biting observations of the moneyed tourist class.



4. Please don't waste your time with this book. Theroux proves to be narrow minded, constantly negative, and regularly insensitive or incorrect in his portrayal of each region's history (his summery of modern Greece in particular was just painful). Which is a shame because he traveled to many very interesting places, he just seems to have been mostly interested in complaining about the pan handelers that bothered him in each of them. The start really says it all, when he decries the horrors of middle-class beach tourism (very original) and then proceeds to travel up the Costa del Sol in Spain, one of the heaviest beach resort areas in the world. I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that he didn't like it, lol. Further, everything is shaded by a disdainful and superior attitude towards everyone he met...except fellow writers of course who were always "well respected". Maybe this overawes and "educates" some people, but as an intellectual myself who has traveled to some of these places also it just seems like the kind of elitist crap that gives the educated a bad name. Maybe his other books are good, he can certainly write, but I'll never read them after this one.



5. I instantly became intrigued the minute I opened up this book. It is a wonderful chronicle of one man's adventures as he circumnavigates the shores of the captivating Mediterranean Sea. I could really imagine myself being in his coat pocket as he made his way around and about the many countries that form the shores of this mysterious sea.
   
   The author is a very genuine human being and comes across very sincere in his recounting of his unconventional route about. As a fancier of history, culture, foreign politics, and geography this book had me quite compelled through and throughout. I didn't want it to end!
   
   The book has staying power. Right there on my shelf as it would be a hard one to let loan or otherwise part with.
   
   I'm very glad I found it, and will no doubt seek out other books by this author.
   
   And I am very anxious now to make my own way into the Mediterranean!

2 comments about The Lost Island.

1. Van Cleef does an excellent job in his description of the joys of working with the French bureaucracy. It is a case of the bureaucrats defending their turf just to prove they can. This should be particularly poignant for anyone who has had the bad fortune of working within the system, of trying to do what can't be done because there is no bureaucrat willing to take the responsibility of saying "yes".
   
   Ample historical background is given for Amsterdam Island and Van Cleef provides an interesting memoir of what life is like for the government employees doing their tour of duty on the island. All inhabitants of the island are government employees. The great flaw in the book is the lack of photography. Any book dealing with the remote regions of the world, especially the southern Indian Ocean islands, should have photography. Photography is necessary to establish some idea in the reader's mind as to the environment of these islands. Jean-Paul Kauffmann's Arch of Kerguelen suffers from the same flaw. The reader has no idea of the desolation to be found in this region of the world. I would recommend Andre Migot's The Lonely South circa 1956 (the US edition is Thin Edge of the World but it lacks some of the text and photos of the original) for anyone interested in a good read on Kerguelen Island.



2. I liked the book!
   
   Excellent description of Amsterdam Island. The "sterile man" goes to fecund island motif meant nothing to me.
   
   Being a fan of Bovetoya, the two page mention of what really is the world's most isolated island was wrong. He dissed it because there is virtually no way to reach, and live on, that island.
   
   It was a good fun read and I finished it in two days. Reccomended for all armchair explorers who want to experience the southern seas vicariously!

No comments about New Zealand: Mountains to the Sea.

No comments about Fodor's Citypack Sydney's 25 Best, 3rd Edition (25 Best).