2 comments about Flight of the Condor: A Wildlife Exploration of the Andes.

1. This book is not just about the South American bird of that name. It is about that part of South America which this outstanding creature dominates from the great heights it is able to reach. Commencing with a chapter called The Islands of Tierra del Fuego & Cape Horn, the reader's journey commences in the southern-most extremities of South America. From here we begin the trek northwards by visiting; The Magellan Straits, North Patagonia, San Rafael Glacier, the rainforests, volcanoes and monkey-puzzle forests of Chile, the Humboldt current, the Atacama desert, the High Lagoons, the High Plateau, the Puna and the Altiplano.
   
   This book recounts one of life's real adventures and allows the reader a rare treat with outstanding photographs placed alongside a rare understanding of the countries visited, their peoples, their flora and fauna in addition to such wild landscapes - where only the Condor is king.
   
   An essential addition to the bookshelf for anyone with an interest in South America.
   
   NM



2. Granted that this is an interesting book about the exploration of South America from the tip - Terra delfulgga to the Brazilian rainforest should be in the bookself of all nature conservationists and students of wildlife.
   This book was published in 1982 in conjection with a 3-part documentary of the same name - Flight of the Condor. It was aired on the PBS for three weeks. Too bad, this most revealing and amazing video is now no longer available. I would urge the PBS producers to re-introduce this 3-hour documentary in the form of a convenient DVD disc.
   The pipe music of South America is both haunting and unique which accompany the video and is worthy of viewing it again and again in the privacy of one's home, provided you can get hold of it...!
   I appreciate the writer and as well as the cameramen who produced the book as well as the documentary which has won several prizes. I was fortunate in that I still have it recorded on my video but I would like to see the producers make a DVD disc of it. It is highly educational and a true classic on the difficult terrain, plants and unique wildlife of South America.
   In the meantime, if you can't get to see this fabulous video, as least, go for the book which is equally amazing and timeless on the wilds of South America. A fantastic journey from the pages of the book. So go for it, folks.
   Cheers...!

No comments about New York: A Pictorial Celebration.

No comments about Daytrips Florida (Daytrips).

5 comments about Cruising Guide to Western Florida (Cruising Guides Series).

1. This much-needed guide provide a wealth of useful information for the cruising sailor. Written in an enthusiastic and readable style, the author invites the reader to explore the varied cruising grounds of Western Florida. Of great value in this coastline of difficult channels is the detailed information given for each approach, including low water depths in shoal channels. Another feature is a listing of the charts (by number) to cover each area. Photographs and non-navigational charts are also shown throughout the book. Altogether, an informative and useful guide.



2. CLaiborne, like all his books, does an outstanding job. There is little to guess at, and he takes no chances in describing areas. If he says it is shallow, it is shallow. If he says do not go there without risk taking, then heed his advice. It would be nice if this book covered all of west FLA, but you have to buy another to cover the upper part.



3. Claiborne Young is his usual, informative self in compiling this excellent guide to cruising the Western Florida Region. He provides ample information including photos, detailed descriptions, waypoints and specifics useful to both sailors and power boaters. I highly recommend this book to anyone planning to cruise the beautiful Western Florida waters.



4. We picked this up for a week-long sailing charter out of Tampa. There is way too much information in here and no really good maps. (Certainly not any larger maps.) We wanted to locate good anchorages for day-fun and overnights.... This caters mostly to people who are looking to dock at a marina. I found the book confusing and not well indexed.... I was hoping for a bareboat charterer's guide like we have found for the Virgin Islands -- This is not it.



5. Mr. Young's cruising guides continue to impress us as the most useful and comprehensive available, particularly when linked with his excellent web-site.

1 comments about River of Doubt.

1. The author provides a fine framework for interpreting and understanding events that lead to the expedition and those that occurred both during and after the expedition. The Rondon-Roosevelt expedition traveled over a harrowing 1000 miles on and along the Duvida River. Over the course of the expedition illness, starvation, duplicity, and murder are countered by sheer willpower and the strength that human character can assume when faced by adversity.

1 comments about Lewis & Clark: A Photographic Journey (Lewis & Clark Expedition).

1. A pair of professional photographers identified and photographed many of the key places where events mentioned in the Lewis and Clark journals took place. In the text, they recount the journey and use carefully-chosen quotations. This is an attractive book. It may not capture the whole of the journey, but, in part because it is pared down, it would serve as an excellent companion for the many families who will retrace at least parts of the journey in the next few years.

No comments about Fodor's South America, 8th Edition (Fodor's Gold Guides).

5 comments about Searching for El Dorado: A Journey into the South American Rainforest on the Tail of the World's Largest Gold Rush.

1. I want Marc Herman to be my travel guide, whenever I sit back in my armchair -- or whenever I enter a new land. His easygoing style is seductive, but the energy of his insight into the culture is what makes him so appealing.

   How can a country so full of gold have so many problems? Journey with Marc and find out; and have a blast along the way.




2. Fantastic (and very accurate) accounts of his encounters with the local folk and descriptions of the places he passed through on his journey. Made for a racey, entertaining and somewhat exotic read. Alot of first hand information for anyone thinking of travelling through Guyana indeed!



3. I was puzzled when my friend gave me a copy of this book; had I ever expressed an interest in gold or indeed in South America? The mystery was solved when my gaze rested on the author's name, an old university friend. Not knowing much about Marc's politics or his writing style, I was a afraid that the book would be some tirade against big business and globalization. Refreshingly, I discovered an engaging search for answers in a country that seems to only have questions. The book is interesting, provocative, and well-balanced journalism. But even better then that is Marc's humorous description of his own journey, his adventures, and his eye for details. I am not sure I reccomend traveling "Marc-style" but I sure do enjoy the product of his adventures!



4. There are basically 3 kinds of travel writing
   
   1. The writer visits an exotic location, finds the scenery appealing, the locals quaint and whimsical but good hearted, has some sort of personal ephiphany, and writes a condescending, patronising book about all the amusing things that happen to him. Possibly he later sells the film rights. Call this the "My autumn in Europe" type book
   
   2. The writer maximises to an adsurd level the level of discomfort in order to have a "real travel experience" and is found quaint and whimsical but good hearted by disbelieving locals. Call this the "Down The Nile on Crutches" type book
   
   3. The writer goes somewhere he knows little about and actually learns something, which he manages to pass on to the reader
   
   Thankfully this is the third type. Herman doesn't find Guyana quaint, he finds it on the brink of collapse with little prospect of future improvement, increasingly hopeless. Its unlikely that this book has done anything to boost the fledgling Guyana tourist industry - indeed he'll be lucky if they let him into the country again
   
   Herman reveals the extent of the Amazon gold rush, but also its utter futility, with neither big multinationals nor small miners able to turn even a small profit. But he also reveals the desperate lack of choices that will continue to drive so many down the mines to the deteriment of both their, and the nation's health
   
   Herman vividly brings to life the people he meets in his (genuinely) arduous travels and while his writing is often laugh out loud funny, it never belittles its subjects.
   
   Before reading this I knew little about Guyana or about the gold rush. I now feel like I do. I heartily recommend this book



5. _Searching for El Dorado_ by Marc Herman is an intriguing look at a land of contrasts, the South American nation of Guyana. Though the nation has potentially billions of dollars of untapped gold and a large percentage of its citizens are employed in the gold-mining industry, it is one of the very poorest nations in the western hemisphere. The various ways in which gold is mined are all destructive and dangerous yet the consequences of stopping the mines could possibly be even worse.
   
   There are two main ways in which gold is produced. One way is used by large foreign-owned internationally-financed mining corporations, mines which employ professional geologists and millions of dollars in heavy equipment. The other is used by small-time local miners, sometimes working in small groups, often independently. These are subsistence operations and are run with only a few crude tools, often by uneducated if not illiterate men.
   
   Local miners can produce gold from the creeks and rivers. River-mining uses slow rafts that float low in the water, made of scrap metal and of questionable seaworthiness. Located on the center of these rafts is an engine and pump, connected to a hose that goes over the side. A diver (breathing through a small rubber hose gripped in his teeth) takes the hose to the riverbed, dredges the bottom, and the other miners (usually there are about five or six) collect the riverbed mud, which is treated with mercury, which bonds with the gold in the sediment and forms heavy nuggets which drop out of solution in the mud. The mud is strained to remove these nuggets and the rest of the mud is dumped back into the river.
   
   Land mines are created when miners cut down a patch of trees and dig holes ten or twenty feet across in the forest floor. Men would then enter the clearing and wet down the bottom and the sides of the hole with water from buckets or high-pressure hoses (the water drawn from a nearby river or swamp). Other miners would haul out the mud and place it in a long box where it would be treated with mercury.
   
   With either method, once the nuggets were obtained the miners would use a blowtorch on them. Most of the mercury would boil and rise as vapor though some could be saved, often collected in a rag which was later wrung out. What would be left would be small amounts of gold, often just a few ounces resulting from tons of mud being collected.
   
   The small-time miners had it hard. The work was very physically demanding. There were no police (indeed, the mining was often illegal) and the miners had to keep their gold on them in the form of cheap, badly made jewelry or gold teeth. Miners were occasionally robbed or more often forced by other miners off of particularly rich patches. They would also have to compete with miners from other countries, such as Venezuela or Brazil (border control being almost nonexistent in the jungle) or being preyed upon by corrupt police (more often a problem in Venezuela than Guyana). The mercury was very toxic over time and eventually many got sick from that as well as catching malaria.
   
   Herman viewed a large mining operation at Omai, located on the Essequibo River, four hours south of the Guyanese capital of Georgetown. At the time of his visit it was the largest gold mine in South America. The large gold mines can afford machinery to process hard rock in addition to mud; Omai blew huge chunks of rock out of the ground, took the several ton boulders to their mill, and ground down the rocks into sand in huge rock tumblers nicknamed "cyclones." However, instead of using mercury they used cyanide, which much like mercury could draw or leech out all the gold dust from the sediment, though apparently cyanide pulls out more gold than mercury does. This type of operation is very expensive, and as a consequences mines could and did close if the prices of gold on the world market fell too much, and also made Guyana dependent upon foreign companies (as Guyana did not have the money to operate its own mines).
   
   Both methods have their pros and cons. Omai and other mines require large lakes of very deadly cyanide (which occasionally did spill), while the local miners only need small amounts of mercury. However, cyanide decomposes in direct sunlight while mercury can stay in a region for centuries (mercury used by the California gold rush still is causing problems). Unfortunately cyanide is too expensive for local miners to use and is also more deadly (cyanide can immediately kill you while mercury does not). By and large however, environmentalists, if forced to chose, would rather have a single massive cyanide mine than fifty teams of untraceable local miners using mercury throughout the jungle.
   
   The mines and mining caused many problems. Miners spread diseases such as dengue deep into the rain forest to the detriment of Amerindian groups. Fights often occurred, either between local miners or involving Amerindians and/or the big mines.
   
   For all their effort, most miners were very poor (a nation of "gilded paupers"). For instance, a crew of six might work for an owner, the owner getting 70% of the gold, the crew 30%, split six ways. Each man might get 5% of the week's gold, which might be half an ounce, working out to wages of about a dollar or two U.S. a day.
   
   Unfortunately, gold-mining is a declining industry. The value of gold has been declining for two decades and changes in the jewelry industry and in international currencies has increasingly made gold a commodity exchangeable for money rather than money itself.
   
   Guyana though has few choices. Mines make up one-fifth of the national economy and mining is often the only job open to thousands of people.
   
   The book is not all grim, as Herman did provide many amusing stories of his travels.

1 comments about Greensboro (NC) (Black America Series).

1. I recently purchased this book for my godmother who went to school with my Mom (who was from Greensboro) at A&T in Greensboro. It was wonderful to sit down with her and relive some of the experiences she and my Mom had in Greensboro. The book gave me one more glimpse into my family history.

No comments about Brookline (PA) (Images of America).