No comments about Thomas More's Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico (Phoenix Paperback Series).

No comments about Highbrows, Hillbillies & Hellfire: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880-1930.

No comments about Lonely Planet Guatemala (Lonely Planet Spanish Guides).

1 comments about MapEasy's Guidemap to Puerto Rico.

1. A very cool map, it shows the exact locations of major attractions, hotels, and restaurants, and tells a little about them, as well as the prices. It's like a guide book and map in one! Not as awesome as Perry and Laura's Mexico maps, (cancunmap.com) but still cooler than a regular road map.

No comments about Santa Fe Impressions (Impressions (Farcountry Press)).

No comments about Mitla: a Narrative of Incidents and Personal Adventures on a Journey in Mexico, Guatemala, and Salvador in the Years 1853 to 1855: With Observations on the Modes of Life in those Countries.

1 comments about Fodor's Cancun, Cozumel, Yucatan Peninsula 2005 (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1. My husband and I took this with us on our honeymoon to Cozemel. What an EXCELLENT resource it proved to be! The reviews and suggestions were right on the money. We appriciated the personal input and specifics for sites, activities, resturants, etc - it was as though a good friend was giving you traveling advice.
   
   The book is well layed out and easy to navigate.
   
   We carried this with us during our site-seeing adventures both on and off the island and it proved to be invalueable. There is no question that our trip would not have been as outstanding had we not had it.

No comments about National Geographic Traveler: Mexico (National Geographic Traveler).

1 comments about Near Horizons: A Weekender's Guide to Easy Trips from Albuquerque.

1. As a new part-time resident of Albuquerque, I wanted to get to know the area better and explore. Picking up this book has been invaluable in providing suggestions for short trips into the surrounding area. It's like having a resident guide to ride along with you and point out the features and attractions of the area.
   
   Now instead of driving aimlessly and hoping to find something interesting, I not only know what to look for and have some understanding as to where to look and why it is important.
   
   Engagingly written in a conversational style, this is a resource well worth having whether you live in the area or are just passing through and want to know where to look.

2 comments about The wild Colorado: The true adventures of Fred Dellenbaugh, age 17, on the second Powell Expedition into the Grand Canyon.

1. Richard Maurer's new book chronicles Powell's second expedition through the eyes, words, and illustrations of Fred Dellenbaugh - a 17-year-old boy from Buffalo, NY who, along with some rowing experience on the turbulent Niagara River and a facility for drawing, had the gumption to make his dream come true. This story is very well written and quite compelling and will appeal to those who love adventure stories set in the Old West. The photographs and illustrations are remarkable. My hats off to the author!



2. I read Dellenbaugh's reprinted "Canyon Voyage" (the much abbreviated title) as a young man in the flatlands of western Kansas in the 1960's. The romance of the period of Dellenbaugh's youth, and the Powell Expeditions in particular (1869-72), stimulated in me an ongoing interest in the history of the region. I have read the edited and published diaries of most of the participants of the two expeditions, and continue to invest in an array of scholarly and coffee table books that even remotely address the subject. My annual crossings of the Colorado and Dirty Devil rivers to pursue research interests in southeastern Utah never fail to regenerate my own wish to have participated in such an epic adventure. Thus, when I saw the notice of publication of Maurer's book about Dellenbaugh on the second Powell expedition, with the expression in the title "the true adventures," I was expecting something on the order of D.D. Fowler's book about Jack Hiller's, another expedition participant. That is, a pretty serious biography of the man and a pretty faithful reproduction of the daily diary kept during his time in the field. Well, it might be the former, but it is certainly not the latter. Unlike the other expeditioners who kept diaries, Dellenbaugh's original diary has never been published. Perhaps this is because his 1908 "Canyon Voyage" was a timeline-based (albeit compressed) narrative and researchers may have believed there was nothing more of value in the original diary. While Maurer read the diaries of all the participants, including Dellenbaugh's, as well as Dellenbaugh's "Canyon Voyage" and the earlier "Romance of the Colorado River," Maurer's timeline is even more compressed than Dellenbaugh's. Consequently the book lacks the rich detail of Dellenbaugh's diary and earlier publications. For example, unlike the present book, the consecutive daily diary entries of "Looked for the Major today but of course he did not come; carried the rations over," "Looked for the Major again," and "Still waiting,"conveys a real sense of frustration at being in the same camp, on the bank of the Colorado, day after day, laying up under a boat to avoid the oppressive August heat, with nothing to do, waiting for the Major and Prof to come in so the party can continue the trip down the river through the Grand Canyon. Maurer acknowledged that in the writing of the book he "sometimes resorted to the methods of historical fiction to flesh out some of the stories" and that "footnotes would be out of place in a book like this." Thus despite having the best possible materials at hand from which to draw, this book was never intended as a scholarly work. In that context, the writing was a success. Maurer did locate some great historical photographs and drawings not published elsewhere, and that alone is an important contribution. More than that, though, the book was a really entertaining read. I can well imagine some person, like me once, never having heard of either Powell or Dellenbaugh, picking up the book and just marveling at what they did. And, interest aroused, they have an avocation.