No comments about Dozier's Waterway Guide Southern 2008: Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and Bahamas (Waterway Guide Southern Edition).

No comments about Waterproof Mexico Map by ITMB.

No comments about Spanish All Talk Basic Language Course (4 Hour/4 Cds): Learn to Understand and Speak Spanish with Linguaphone Language Programs (All Talk) (All Talk).

5 comments about Into a Desert Place: A 3000 Mile Walk Around the Coast of Baja California.

1. I have traveled many times down to Baja, his descriptions reflect my impression of the people and places.



2. This book was the perfect gift for my husband. He keeps talking about his dream of going in the desert, walking, exploring, being away from civilization for a while,... but he's never done it. This book author DID IT!



3. Baja is an adventure, even if by air in your own airplane. Hopscotching from place to place on a peninsula that stretches almost a thousand miles south of California, is quick and efficient but, as always in a single engine aircraft, the prospect of an off field emergency landing is on the pilot's mind.
   
   In Baja, where an arid, desolate landscape, and rugged mountains stretch endlessly below the wings and dry riverbeds host cactus and rattlesnakes, nature ups the ante. These inhospitable thoughts are a memory of my flying adventure to "The Baja" in October 1993, but they are nothing in comparison to Graham Mackintosh's incredible journey on foot following the coastline.
   
   As luck would have it Graham was in Mulege (about midway down the eastern coast of Baja on the Sea of Cortez) and attended the well known Hotel Serenidad's pig roast fiesta with us on Saturday evening. In response to our questions, Graham (this was before I read the book) told us how ill-suited and inadequately prepared he was for his adventure. But his appearance belied an iron will, unyielding perseverance, and an indomitable spirit. It took two years to achieve his goal, then another two more to write the book. My fellow travellers and I sat in awe as he recounted his tale.
   
   The inscription he wrote for me in my copy of the book shows his humility. He very generously referred to me as "A Fellow Baja Adventurer," but I know there is no comparison in our experiences. Thanks Graham, I wish you well. Is there a movie in the works?



4. This book is an wonderful read. Graham Mackintosh somehow manages to convey the beauty, loneliness, danger, and culture of Baja in a way that is absolutely captivating. I have spent a fair amount of time in Baja myself working with the fishermen, and I thought his portrayals of these interesting folk was spot on and entertaining. I normally don't write reviews, but I could not put this book down, and good books are few and far between in my opinion! Besides being a great adventure story, this book has another side, which in a sense describes the author's spiritual awakening. He's not there, as are so many foreigners, to amuse himself in Baja as if it were a giant playground; rather he immerses himself in the land and the culture in a way that even most of the locals have failed to do!
   
   Baja is a magical place that you simply can't appreciate from the comfort of your hotel room, RV, or (God forbid) your off-road vehicle. This book will hopefully inspire many people to seek out solitude in one of the last places in the world you can still find it.



5. I have to say I completely disagree with the 4- and 5-star reviews of this book. In fact, I am astounded by them in some ways. About the only positive thing I can say about this book is that the descriptions of the landscape and the people the author encountered on his journey are interesting and seem pretty accurate, especially for the timeframe of his walk (1980's). But the author himself comes across as an ill-prepared, narcissistic tool who despite his protests to the contrary seems to have little respect for the land or the wisdom of local peoples and cultures.
   
   I am not saying that the only people who do adventure travel should be well-honed experts. Everybody has to start somewhere, and even the most experienced of adventurers will make mistakes and have accidents. But in this case, the author did very little research, did not bother to gain any practical skill or experience prior to his journey, he blatantly disrespected the land and disregarded the experienced advice of Baja locals, and ultimately he behaved more stubbornly than the mule who helped him during the final leg of his trek.
   
   Here are some examples from his book:
   
   - The author claims that he is the "one in a million" traveler through Baja who does not pollute or damage the land. Nearly in the same breath he describes throwing his dead flashlight batteries as far into the ocean as he can. He scatters his empty food cans and packages with no thought other than ensuring the garbage was away from his campsite. He tosses a full jar of rancid butter into the sea. Really? If the author had ANY common sense or had bothered to learn anything in advance, he would have known that butter wasn't such a good idea for backpacking through a Baja summer. More importantly, why should the ocean have to absorb his mistakes and be his private dump? A few chapters later he describes with disdain the amount of garbage he finds washed ashore in one particular bay, and he criticizes Mexicans in general as not having much concern for trash disposal. The author's hypocritical actions add to the pollution, and he fails to even acknowledge this.
   
   - The author repeatedly disregards the advice given to him by locals, stubbornly claiming that he will proceed with his original plan. He mentions doubting the accuracy of their information several times. This arrogance leads him repeatedly into situations that cause him injury. Laying at the bottom of a cliff, bloody and injured, he decides that his best course is to climb back up and take the same route. Two pages later he falls back down again, further injuring himself and destroying some of his equipment.
   
   - At one point, the author claims that the desert tells him that it exists solely for him and that he should take whatever he needs from it, which he repeatedly does with glee. The only reason he even needs so much from the land at that point of the book is because he didn't prepare well enough or act rationally enough to prevent his then-current predicament.
   
   If everybody who went backpacking, climbing, or otherwise journeyed through wild areas behaved like this author, nature would be a trash heap full of dead fools. this guy lived to tell his tale in spite of himself, not because of himself.
   
   I obviously did not like this book at all. I did not find this story to be inspiring in the least. Honestly, I cannot believe that anyone published it. If you are a true adventurer, this book will likely frustrate or anger you. If you are an armchair adventurer, choose virtually any other similar book and you will get a far better story. And if you are seeking an adventure travel role model, please choose someone who journeys with greater humility, respect, and common sense.

2 comments about Silver Cities: Photographing American Urbanization, 18391939.

1. "One may view this book as a study of American attitudes toward the city as revealed in one of its most important media or as an ongoing history of an urban art form," writes Hale, a professor of art history and director of the American Studies Institute at the U. of Illinois - Chicago. The nearly 250 photographs relating to American cities from the pre-Civil War decades to the eve of WWII are roughly divided into the four stages development, maturity, transformation, and diffusion. Earliest photographs from the 1830s and '40s capture plainly the crude, clustered buildings sprouting up in open spaces, as in uncomprehending witness to what was unfolding. Photographs from the latter 1800s reach into the impoverished, fragile, hectic lives of immigrants flooding into the cities. Jacob Riis's photographs figure prominently in this period. Into the 20th century, the photographs again change in subjects and perspectives to go along with modernism's tenets of Promethean, prodigious, growth, large-scale enterprises, and celebration of technology and design. Springing from the "discipline [of] American cultural history," this revised and expanded edition of the 1884 publication not only contains additional photographs, but also related added text reflecting the growth of government sponsorship, mass-market reproduction, the place of women and African-Americans, and the diminished presence of "individual studio practice." Yet despite this last new topic, Hale also in one part brings out the "photographic studio as itself [in italics in original] a part of the developing American urban fabric." Like the earlier edition which has now become a collector's item, this revised edition is patently the leading study on photography as it took cities as subjects and reflected evolving attitudes toward them.



2. Students and enthusiasts of photography and its history have long considered Peter Bacon Hales's SILVER CITIES indispensable. First released in 1984, it was one of the first, most readable, and most visually interesting, of a crop of new histories of photography that saw the medium as part of a larger sphere of cultural history. This new edition is really welcome-- much longer, even more lavishly illustrated, dramatically revised, beautifully redesigned. Hales has incorporated many of the ideas and discoveries of writers since the book was first published; he has added many new illustrations and changed the old ones, and he has pushed the book well into the 20th century, treating photographers like Walker Evans, James VanderZee, and Edward Steichen. The writing is better, too-- more conversational and fluid, easier to read. If you have a copy of the old SILVER CITIES, you'll have to buy this one, too. If you don't, this is a real eye-opener of a book.

5 comments about Malinche's Conquest.

1. I really enjoyed reading this book. I have since bought several copies for friends and family members. It is a wonderful look at the way that society views one of the most important women in the Americas in the past 500 years. People are quick to judge her as a traitor or whore, but after reading more about her life as a slave and the conditions around her, I feel that she was an incredible survivor who became the mother of a new generation of people. This book which chronicles Anna Lanyon's journey through Mexico to discover who Malinche was, inspired me to learn more about the Conquest and Mexico's history, as well as more about who the flesh and blood woman "Malinche" might have been. I have since read, "La Malinche in Mexican Literature - From History to Myth", and "The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz. I recommend it highly.



2. For a brief moment in the 16th century, a teenage slave was the most influential woman in the world. Malinche, to use one of her many names, was the translator and go-between in perhaps the pivotal cultural drama of the last millennium - the moment when the Old World represented by Hernan Cortes, conquered the New World in the form of Montezuma's Mexico.

   Anna Lanyon, an Australian backpacker, stumbled onto the story of Malinche while travelling in Mexico in the 1970s. Intrigued, she returned home, studied Spanish and Portugese to literary translation level, and revisited Mexico in search of this enigmatic woman.

   So few are the clues, and often so contradictory, that Lanyon works like an archeologist with a soft-haired brush to bring Malinche's life into relief from its bedrock of myth.

   In official Mexican history, Malinche is the "betrayer". Her name forms the root of a modern-day word for traitor. Lanyon finds a teenager blessed with intelligence, intuition and a sharp instinct for survival. Her options were few. Given as a sexual slave to the conquistadors, Malinche became Cortes's concubine, adviser, and mother of his first child. She died in obscurity, probably before she was 30.

   But those close to her admired her. Lanyon makes the point often forgotten in facile renderings of the conquest: to vast numbers of people in what now is Mexico, Montezuma's "Aztecs" (more accurately, the Culua-Mexicans) were the feared and hated enemy. Malinche was therefore not a betrayer so much as a warrior, within her own context. But even more than that, she was a woman, condemned to slavery as a child, "assigned" to alien men when not yet 20, who simply did the best she could.

   While the full personality of Malinche may be irretrievable from what history has left us, Lanyon does great work in debunking many of the myths about her and in exploring how national myths come about. And tantalisingly an impression emerges of this accidental figure of history: a woman we would like to have known, a woman from the lowest rungs who took a hand, for better or worse, in changing the world.




3. Not only was it great to find a book on Malinche, but also a book that looks at her in a light other than as the evil betrayer we all thought she was. I started the book thinking "How could she have done that?" and ended up feeling sorry for her predicament in life. Or at least understanding why she made the choices she did. This book wasn't just a defense of her actions, but it explained why she became the enemy she has become and who and why made her that way. She was used while she was alive for political purposes and she was manipulated and used for political purposes hundreds of years after her death also.



4. In a world of information technology and instant gratification, I admit I skim over books to grasp only the information I need in the least amount of time. In looking for information on Malinche, I didn't think that I was interested in reading about the author's journey in piecing the puzzle together. I just wanted her to get to the point!

   I was so wrong! Beautiful story, priceless information, and a rare balance of sensitivity to the subject while maintaining objectivity.

   Highly recommended, especially to Latina women.

   Thank you, Ms. Lanyon, for your priceless contribution to history.




5. This is a very good read. For anyone interested in history, interested in learning about a remarkable woman, interested in just good writing, try this book. Lanyon covers it all including Malinche's seminal importance to Mexican history. The author also explores the development of Malinche as traitor, an idea that many are now taking another look at. It began in the 1800's with an elitist nationalist movement that needed a scapegoat to rally round. At any rate, Malinche's life is one that even the most jaded can marvel at.

2 comments about Fly Fishing New Mexico.

1. This guide book is designed to be an easy quick reference guide to fly fishing New Mexico. You won't find the extreme detail you'll find in many guide books, but you'll find everything you need to have a successful fly fishing trip in New Mexico. It's new and up to date and full of excellent references, such as fly shops, guides, regulations, and accessability. A must for a trip to New Mexico



2. Gives some great info. for someone who's coming from far away. Looking forward to checking out the streams when I get out there.

1 comments about New Mexico Map (State Maps-USA).

1. All the route information you could want while traveling through
   the State Of New Mexico and then some.
   Excellent !

No comments about Moon Mexico City (Moon Handbooks).

1 comments about Berlitz Hide This Spanish Phrase Book.

1. This book is great for someone who wants to be able to talk to the locals at a casual level, and know some of the slang for the area. If you are looking for some instruction on sentence structure or anything like that then this is not for you. It is strictly a phrase book, with a small dictionary in the back. I did love how there were little info boxes of related facts about spanish areas, all of which would be very helpful during travel. Plus, this book is geared toward the younger crowd, with lots of phrases about the social scene, drinking, and meeting people (and hooking up). Its very fun!