2 comments about Scotland For Dummies (Dummies Travel).

1. I am planning a family trip to visit my parents homeland. Scotland for Dummies has helped me to learn a great deal in a short time. I love the Stickers to highlight the places you want to go. The cheat sheets should prove valuable too.



2. Good book and very informative for planning a trip to Scotland (especially for someone who's never been).

No comments about Birnbaum's Walt Disney World Without Kids 2009 (Birnbaum's Walt Disney World Without Kids).

5 comments about The Rough Guide to Greece 12 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. If you like self-depreciating English humor, you'll like the Rough guide to Greece. This book is densely packed with informative and interpretive pages. Not like the Fodor's, etc. which are mostly pretty pictures and ads disguised as recommendations. Even the most biting commentary turned out to be true. I consider this book to have been crucial to a very sucessful vacation/tour.



2. A terrific guide to both the Greek mainland and the islands. Spent several months trawling around the country, at first with several guide books, Fodors, Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, etc., but finally found that the Rough Guide knew the country best, and made for a more entertaining travel companion, so I ditched the other books about three weeks into the trip. Absolutely the only book for Greece if you (a) like good food and nightlife and (b) have a serious interest in the cultural context of Ancient Greece. Plus their commentary on modern Greek history was very helpful, must admit I didn't know much about it until I arrived.

   You can't go wrong with this book.




3. Most of my friends often recommend the Lonely Planet books, especially for those of us who can't mortgage our homes for one-night stays in hotels listed by Frommer's and Fodor's guides. But I went with Rough Guide for my trip last summer to Greece, and while some of the maps weren't as detailed as they could might have been, most of the recommendations were spot on.

   Many nightspots get renovated; names get changed, etc. That's something the editors can't really help with. But any restaurant or bar I went to (listed in the guide) was above-average, if not better than they claimed.

   The historical data was also well-balanced; so you're not bored to tears with it, and yet it's detailed enough to keep you reading through it. Bonus marks for the great inclusion of the Greek music coverage (flawed, but excellent), and the price of the book is decent.




4. We just came back from a 3 weeks, modest-budget, partly backpacking, partly car-rental trip around Rhodes, Crete, and Peloponnese. We deliberately stayed off the beaten tracks as much as possible. We used this guide along with French "Guide du Routard" and Michelin guides. I picked this guide against the Lonely Planet one based on an excellent experience with the Corsica rough guide last year.

   This Rough Guide was above all very practical -- it simply is amazingly detailed, and what's more, it's mostly right. The rooms , hotels, and restaurants suggested were spot on. Very few outdated entries.

   This guide also includes much relevant background info on Greek history, politics, food, an so on. This made for a much more interesting trip.

   The paper was very thin yet high quality, making this guide even more worth its space in my pack.

   This is definitely not the guide for organized tours -- the authors make no secret of their disdain for package tourism and the spoiling it often brings. But, for the independent traveller, this is the best guide I have found in English or French.




5. This review compares the Lonely Plantet Greece (4th Edition) with the Rough Guide Greece (8th edition). We spent 2.5 weeks in July, 2001 in Greece, our first visit, and these were our guide books.
   A relucant 4 stars to each, and a slight preference for RG. We certainly found the books serviceable, and they gave us good ideas of where in Greece we wanted to go. But they were much less valuable in their listings for individual destinations. They were the least valuable compared to the other LP and RG travel books we've used (Portugal, Italy, Thailand, Tokyo).

   As usual, they both overstate their hotel rankings which to me make sense only if you've been sleeping out on the beach from necessity, and now have finally scraped some money together for a room. An exagerration, but I've lost patience with gushing praise for facilities which are usually no better than serviceable and sometimes less than that. And, we're not into spending money on fancy accommodations. Occassionaly the books are on the money, but often not.

   On the smaller islands RG usually had more accommodation listings, but occassionally LP did. There were at least two instances when LP had none, just saying that rooms were available.

   The ferry schedules in the books, pretty much consistent between them, bore little relation to reality, even though we were there in the high season.

   I want to complete with my usual gripe about these and other guide books: we don't know which restaurants and hotels were actually visited by the writers (and by which one) and when. To paraphrase from my review of RG Portugal:

   LP is out front in saying that its reviewers do not stay at all the hotels or eat at all the restaurants they list. I would like it if the reviews would be initialized by the reviewers with the date. This would allow us to learn each reviewer's tastes and standards, not to mention seeing which places they actually visited.

   One LP writer (not I think an author of this book) in discussing restaurants wrote: "As one of those LP writers I can tell you that it is not physically possible to eat even a 'little bit of a meal' in each of those restaurants :-) What we all tend to do is eat at a broad cross-section within the norms of natural eating times and visit the other restaurants and talk to the owner or even the diners if it can be done discretely. In the same vein we don't sleep at every hotel!"

   Talk to the owners for your evaluation! Says it all.

5 comments about Birds of Ecuador Field Guide.

1. This is really the only option if you're traveling to Ecuador to bird and it's a great book as those before me have said. It's very hefty, both in information and in physical size. It's overwhelming sure, but so is birding in the tropics. The plates are pretty good, though some are laughably awkward, the raptors for instance. I didn't choose to bind the plates separately in my copy when I went, I carried the whole text in my backpack. It was heavy and sort of obnoxious to keep pulling it out to refer, but what are you gonna do?
   
   Those are really the only complaints, and by and large it's well worth the money and there's nothing else you would choose to take to Ecuador. I'm certainly glad I have it.



2. This is an exhaustive book with brilliant drawings - but not a field guide. Forget what the publishers say about two volumes and this one being the field guide. It's hideously impractical. It's over 700 pages, thicker than your fist, and a HEAVY load to be lugging around and getting it into an out of your backpack, especially when hiking or navigating slippery jungle trails in the sweltering heat. That said, I don't know of any other field guide and let's face it, we birders need a field guide. As many others I have had the plates with the drawings taken out and bound into a 'new' book, and brought only that with me. It's suboptimal, but hey, what can you do.



3. The book is an excellent guide. I could see the pictures and description of the birds I was lucky to see in my last trip to Ecuador.



4. Actually, this is volume 2 of a set of two books. But it is this volume that is meant to be taken to the field. For the first time, there is a full set of very useful color plates for one of the core South American countries. It is certainly a great accomplishment to have all the species pictured in color and on a more or less consistent standard. However, I do not agree with other reviewers who rave about the plates. Too many of the bird pictures have an overall flat appearance, with the color rendition being too simplistic or too bold. And while a good number of the birds are depicted in good or even in unnecessarily large size, others would have benefitted from a larger sized rendition. Just because a species is small does not mean it has to be depicted in a diminutive size, unless there are larger species of the same group on the plate. Thus, while the plates are most useful, it is nevertheless disappointing to see that the overall standard (except for the plates being all in color) is rather lower than what was already published decades ago e.g. in "Birds of Colombia".
   The book has excellent range maps and very helpful comprehensive texts. However, a somewhat more compact layout would have allowed for a smaller overall size of the book. The way to do it is being demonstrated in the book itself. The texts facing the plates use the suggested compact layout most convincingly. Spanish bird names are given in the main text, but, unfortunately, there is no index for them.
   
   (This is an adapted review I originally published in 2002 for the so-called slipcased two-volume edition. As it concerned the fieldguide, but disappeared, here it is again.)



5. I used it in Sumaco, Podocarpus and Mindo area in Ecuador in 2003 while working on Golden-winged Manakin display behavior stuff... and this was a perfect book!... illustrations use the page space very well, love that!...

5 comments about Wisconsin Atlas and Gazetteer.

1. Once again DeLorme has put together an extremely valuable resource. Backroads, lakes, trails, all seem to be accounted for. I spend nearly all of my time in Burnett County and could not find anything missing or incorrectly labeled.

   I use this book as a companion to the Minnesota Atlas. Both are well organized. It helps when weather watches and warnings are issued, the small crossroads and hamlets mentioned on the television are often confusing. These atlases are very helpful.

   Finally the book is fun to read. Just browsing can teach one much about what is located where in the state. These books are very well done.




2. Excellent source for finding all of those back roads that lead me to those favorite fishing streams. Also great for navigating my way through the bigger cities.



3. This gazeteer is very useful for planning outdoor trips...canoeing, camping, etc. It even includes wineries and seems to be very accurate so far.



4. This map is the thing to have if you live in Wisconsin and plan on going anywhere outside of your stomping grounds. The backroad details are a great tool if you ever get detoured off of the course that you know. My wife was on her way to work (3o miles away) one morning when a fatality traffic accident rerouted traffic off of the freeway into the windy backroads of southwestern Wisconsin. There was a trooper at some dinky road directing all of the traffic onto it. From that point, there wasn't any help to guide her way to a place she could get back on the road she knows so well. She called me from her cell and I tried to give her a route from what I could find on mapquest until she got too far into the sticks and we lost connection. After a couple of bad guesses on which way to go, eventually she managed to find a county road and made the right decision and got back to the freeway. From that point on, we made sure that one of these is tucked under her car seat not only as insurance for these situations, but as a guide to any time we travel a decent distance. Very detailed and accurate. A must have.



5. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread! You can find your way into or out of anywhere with this atlas! Just love it... especially when navigating around construction, road closures, and flood damaged areas. I love how it has every little country road listed in it... you can literally navigate anywhere. And I'm a person who usually gets lost at the drop of a hat.

5 comments about How We Crossed The West: The Adventures Of Lewis And Clark.

1. A very good book about the Lewis & Clark expedition. The illustrations were vivid and the best part of the book. I would recommend this book



2. The adventure and thrill of the Lewis & Clark Expedition is brought to life here in a story that both children and adults could appreciate. In beautiful and carefully rendered folk-style illustrations, and with descriptive text from the actual journals of the participants, the book has the appearance of something that almost could have been written in the early 1800's, when the expedition occurred. Rosalyn Schanzer's personal interest in the subject, especially the journals and the Indian tribes, seems to bring out the best in the storytelling, which primarily illustrates the first 1 1/2 years of the Corps of Discovery's journey to the Pacific Ocean. The story is accessible and easily understood, yet the attention to detail should satisfy those trying to learn, and even researchers in this important chapter in early American History.



3. Wow! This is a wonderful book. An engaging layout, colorfully descriptive illustrations, captivating text, and numerous extra little tidbits of information all combine to make this a most enjoyable and informative book. And that's not all! Perhaps the best feature of all is the fact that the text, while slightly adapted for the younger reader, is taken from the original writings of Lewis, Clark, and other members of the Corps of Discovery. All in all, this is a can't-miss resource for studying the Lewis & Clark Expedition with children. My 12-year-old enjoyed it every bit as much as my 9-year-old... although I'm not sure how either of them could have enjoyed it more than I did!



4. We ordered this to complete a reading requirement for my child's project. It was packed with information yet illustrated nicely and easy to read.



5. I bought this book because our family is planning a summer vacation to Montana. We wanted to refresh our memory of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. We all enjoyed the diaries and illustrations in the book. It is the right amount of information to keep the story moving and keep all readers interested. It is full of interesting details of this famous journey.

5 comments about Where Are They Buried? How Did They Die? Fitting Ends and Final Resting Places of the Famous, Infamous, and Noteworthy.

1. I love how I read about each person's career and accomplishments of their lives. And myths about their deaths and the real reason for their death exposed. Also where they are buried or perhaps they had their ashes scattered. Very interesting.



2. Short descriptions on the deaths of famous people. I would have liked a little more detail regarding the circumstances of the deaths, and less about the location of the graves. Still a great read and would recommend it to anyone!



3. 
   Just as the title of this book said, this is a book about where famous persons are buried and also how they died.
   
   I'm having so much fun reading this book because it gives a nice background about the famous person that died. Also, I did not know how 80% of the famous people in this book died, so those facts are a nice addition to the book (a sort of BONUS) .
   
   There are other books out there that describe where famous people are buried, but I like this book the best because of the added BONUS of telling the reader how the persons died and some nice information about them,while they were still alive.
   
   Very informative.



4. Excellent coffee table/bathroom reader. Full of fascinating obscure facts most are curious about when they pick up the book.



5. I love this book, not only does it give you a bit of background for each individual, it also tells you about their death and a desription of te funeral. But to me the best part are the specific instructions on how to find the grave of your favorite star, historian or literary figure, even to telling how to get into the locked private section of Forest Lawn to see Humphrey Bogart's final resting place.

5 comments about The Best American Travel Writing 2006 (The Best American Series).

1. It is a little bit hard to review this book because I have read most of the series and like them all. This is no exception and I thought that there are a few things that I can add.
   As always a good/great selection of material and most/all are great reads. As has been stated elsewhere if you do not like one, you can skip it. However, I never skip a story. I sort of think that I might not finish one, but then I do and am glad that I did.
   Not only do I like the stories, but I think of the book as a study guide for an aspiring travel writer. Thus far I have limited my travel writing by sneaking it into other nonfiction wrting that I do (I recommend this technique). I may never seriously go down the travel writting road, but the idea helps me notice things that I might not otherwise.
   Here is a specific tip. Be sure to read the forematter of the book--the foreword and introduction. They are good reading too.
   One small point. Compared to the others in the series that I have read, this edition would have to qualify for an R rating because of the story about prostitution in Costa Rica. I liked the story--and you can, of course, skip it if you do not like it--but I fell obligated to mention it. There was one other place (that I forget right now) that made me think the same thing.
   As soon as I finished this book, I went out and bought one from the sports series!



2. I wasn't able to travel this summer, so I was more or less stuck in my small town in the middle of Oklahoma. Luckily, a handful of well-chosen books escorted me to exotic--and some very familiar--ports of call, this book, 2006's Best American Travel Writing being one of the most memorable. This is a wonderfully diverse collection of writings, featuring what many of us think of as "exotic" travel narratives, as well as my favorite kind of travel writing, essays that question the nature of travel and what we learn in the process of leaving the familiar behind.
   
   One of the gems of this collection is Alain de Botton's piece, "The Discreet Charm of the Zurich Bourgeoise." I, too, am fascinated by the comfortable, efficient towns and cities in the world, ones that are rarely tourist destinations, but are fascinating in their own, discreet way. This piece is very similar to his book, The Art of Travel, as he juxtaposes Pieter de Hooch's paintings and their seemingly unremarkable domestic world with his love for the sedate charms of Zurich. It won't appeal to the National Geographic type of tourist, but this is what makes travel writing such a vital genre to me--and why I buy books like this.
   
   Other high points include Sean Flynn's portrayal of American sex tourists in Puerto Rico, Ian Frazier's beautiful memoir of small town Ohio, Michael Paterniti's remarkable piece about befriending a Ukranian giant, Kira Salak's tour of modern-day Libya, George Saunder's enthusiastic (and humorous) account of Dubai, and by far the most laugh-out loud selection of all, Christopher Solomon's "Let's Ski Korea," which is everything you expect and more.
   
   I always delight in these Best American... volumes, and the Travel Writing remains my favorite to read and re-read. Tim Cahill did an amazing job in selecting these works, and I look forward to "traveling" in them whenever the simple pleasures of Ada, Oklahoma become rather less poetic.



3. Enjoyed getting to experience other cultures through the eyes of the traveler while myself being the armchair traveler.



4. The David Sedaris selection about flying makes this book worth buying. I was on an airplane while reading his chapter and was laughing so hard that my seatmate kept giving me weird looks.



5. I bought this anthology based on the strength of its user reviews on Amazon and LibraryThing, plus my positive experiences with another title in the series The Best American Science and Nature Writing. However I had serious trepidations, after all isn't modern travel writing mostly just light touristic pieces found in `Reader's Digest` or the local newspaper, barely hidden attempts at selling us packaged vacations? Was I ever wrong and pleasantly surprised, the 2006 collection turns out to be one of the best books I've read this year. There are 26 essays and not one is bad, they are all fantastic and at least 4 of them are classics. Normally in anthologies like this I'm happy when a third are favorited enough to mark the page for re-reading later, but here it's almost 100%; marking the pages is superfluous.
   
   The guest editor for 2006 is Tim Cahill, founder and editor of `Outside` magazine, so it is perhaps not surprising that, as a professional editor of a magazine that caters to travel writing, he was like a Saudi Sheik with unlimited funds on a shopping spree in Paris, able to pick and choose from the best the world has to offer, the only limit being 320 pages. But how does he pick the "best"? "In choosing pieces for this anthology", he says, "I've looked for the best *stories* I could find", [emphasis added] - clarifying what he means by story, "if I can't find a story, I often feel I'm being beaten over the head with an encyclopedia. Stories are the sole written instrument that can bring tears to our eyes, or make us laugh.. and they are more fun to read. Story is of the essence. " This collection then is a testament to Cahill's ideal of travel writing as story, and it succeeds brilliantly. Cahill also posits that America is currently in a "Golden Age" of travel writing and after reading this collection I might agree.
   
   If you read only one travel writing anthology this would be an ideal place to start. Even if your not interested in travel writing as a genre, most of these pieces were not written as strictly travel writing, or for traditional travel magazines. The articles are mostly by well established and known journalists and novelists and non-fiction authors in top-tier magazines like `National Geographic`, `The New Yorker`, `GQ` and others. I look forward to reading more from this series, but based on admittedly shallow investigations of user reviews, none of the other volumes in the series look as good as this one. Perhaps 2005 was just a very good year for travel writing, perhaps Cahill has an unusually good talent for picking the best articles, or perhaps since this is my first experience with the series, and my initial low expectations - whatever the case this volume will be revisted in later years and has earned a satisfying place on my bookshelf.

5 comments about Brussels (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. I have had great experiences with the DK Guides. I use it extensively in my trip planning and this is the guide I take on the trip.

   This guide provides execllent information about local sites throughout Beligium. It gives very clear guidance concerning what you can find and access information. It also helps you to locate the sites with indexed maps and diagrams.

   I have found that this and the other DK Guides are bit weak in providing guidance about what to see. That is, it offers little qualitative information--everything sounds equally wonderful. And we all know this is not necessarily the case.

   So I always find another guide that has more opinions and recomended tours to determine what to see. I espiecially look for guided the provide suggested walking tours. This has worked out well for the most part. I use other guides to plan the trip and the DK Guide in the country.

   It has very usable maps although sometimes too limited in scope and you may require a local map to get around beyond the central city. Also, because the book is a bit heavy and too large to fit in a jacket pocket after the first day or so I leave it in the hotel and rely on the local map when walking about.

   The one topic I find most reliable is DK's restaurant recommendations. The two places I tried in Brussels were fantastic and offered everything that the guide described. I have had equal success with DK's restaurant recommendations in other cities/countries.

   I think this is an indispensible travel guide as long as you know what you are using it for--planning or background info, etc.




2. DK guides are by far the best for any trip -- their black-by-block walking guides just can't be beat.



3. This was an indispensable tool my navigation of Belgium. I also purchased the Top 10, published by DK just so I would not miss anything. I liked the large maps and the clear directions to the venues. The pictures were GREAT. This book greatly enhanced my journey.



4. Perfect for Belgium. Brussels, Bruge, Antwerp are all well done. The quality of the DK series makes them the pick of the class, but heavy. It's the only guilde that emmanates a feel for the area's architecture. I used the hotel section comparatively with other guides. It finished slightly ahead. What is unusual is a non-tourist perspective is part of the review mix. I am an intelligent successful high tech businessman and not particularly interested in clowns staying away from people that are. To me travel is not an entertainment video. It is a mix of pleasure, leisure, and learning while keeping in reasonable cost effective contact with the world that enabled me to make the trip. This is the one area that could use improvement. "Internet access" is a meaningless description. What's the cost, how fast, what mode, where, and how often is it available? For decades the hotel telephone has been the ultimate rip off tool. Now it's morphed into the cell phone realm. Despite what you have read international calling is still very expensive. When Best Western doesn't charge for the identical serice that Hyatt, Hilton,
   Marriott, etc. do is it very clear whose happiness is primary despite what the brochure says. A lot more help on this would be most appreciated. Kudos to DK for giving local food a serious look. The inclusion of small, medium and high end places is a refreshing and useful change. For some reason no mention is made of the "ladies of the evening" displaying their virtues through sidewalk level bay windows along the street parallel to the Brussels airport-to-central station route about five minutes before it ends. After a long flight it provides a little spice that was missing in the airline food.



5. We recently took a trip to Belgium, where we intended to visit Brugge, Antwerp, and Brussels, although in the end, we dropped Antwerp in favor of spending more time in Brugge. I bought a copy of this book on the advice that it had a lot of coverage beyond Brussels.
   
   Like most EyeWitness guides, the photos, sketched 3D area maps, etc. were all brilliant for identifying points of interest and notable details. The suggested walking tours also proved to be a great resource, since these cities are best visited simply by wandering the streets rather than heading straight for key destinations.
   
   My only qualm with the book is that (as the title suggests) it is heavy on Brussels. This was a little disappointing, having heard that it included adequate coverage of the other cities in its subtitle. Nearly 75% of the book is dedicated to the capital with the other cities receiving only around a half dozen pages each. If you're planning to spend a lot of time in Brugge, Antwerp, or Ghent, I'd recommend finding a book with more focused coverage. If you plan to spend a lot of time in Brussels, with daytrips to one or more of the other cities, this book would probably be great.

5 comments about Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast.

1. This book is a must read for all politicians, Louisianians, environmentalists, engineers and concerned citizens. The author does an exceptional job in portraying the life of families inhabiting Louisiana's coastline and the devastating impact the leveeing of the Mississippi river has had not only on the people who earn a living fishing these waters, but the devastation of this ecologically fragile zone. The loss of land to the ocean is staggering! The solutions are simple to implement (let the mississippi overflow its banks) but phenomenally costly. Do read this book and come to Louisiana to see a vanishing world.



2. Sitting in a Plantation-Roker chair, on a wrap- around pourch ten-ft. off the groung below, gentile motion and the incoming sea-breeze's off the Gulf Coast at the edge of Biloxi Beach,Mississippi. Looking across the blue water of the bay so far till it touches the sky, framed in silhouette, the ever moving of fishermen and their shrimp-boats and small skiff-sails, darting back-n-forth. The Ole-House is post-war period 1800's southern design, with quarters in the back yard, and a rear entrance for delivery's. Our Bedroom is just behind me through a screen shuttered door's, with the orignal guillotine window's next to a Bolster- canopy bed. Full private bath to the side claw foot tub and pedistal sink's, window looking to our west onto the courtyard below and limbs extend up from the three-hundred yr. old oak tree...Aug.10,2004;Just-a-memory now!!! Thank's,Sully 08'.



3. I flew through the book in about 2 hours. The author offers no real depth into the causes of the problems related to the sinking eroding bayou country. This is mostly a personal uninteresting account of travels through the area. If you want accurate well researched information related to the Mississippi and it's flood plain and delta, read Rising Tide by John Barry.



4. Last year, I went down to Houma, Louisiana, to help with hurricane relief. Entering bayou country was a US experience like none other I've seen. I came back and read this book. Tidwell's reporting paints a detailed picture of a unique American life fading every day into history. Wetlands the size of Manhattan are disappearing daily. Tidwell vividly explains why that matters as much as the preservation of the Amazon Rainforest or ANWR -- both environmentally and culturally.
   
   The language, food, family life and environment are all captured dead on in this book. Often, it is a depressing read, especially when you remember that this book pre-dates hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There also is very little here about New Orleans, which I appreciated. If you can look past the bright white light of New Orleans, you'll see that Southern Louisiana is so much more than party beads and booze.



5. Yes i was very dissapointed with my purchase with Amazon.com! I ordered my book over two months ago and still have not yet received my order. I needed the book for my summer reading assignment for college. Because I did not recieve it in time to read it, I am not able to pass my college class. I will never again purchase a book i need online.