Regions Books - Page 5

Not For Tourists Guide 2009 to New York City (Not for Tourists: New York City)

Jane Pirone

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

NYC A&E Recommends 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

From nycartsandentertainment.com
What attracted me first to the Not For Tourists Guide to New York City (2009 now on-sale) was, frankly, protecting my status as a New Yorker. OK, so I'm a transplant and maybe on permanently shaky ground, but nonetheless here 20 years and I still want to know everything I can about the city I love. Other guidebooks may help you know the city by suggesting "Walk north up Fifth Avenue from Rock Center and pass big-name stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Henri Bendel, the NBA Store, Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Bergdorf Goodman, FAO Schwarz, and The Apple Store. You'll also see Trump Tower from the popular Apprentice TV series" (Frommer's), but I've already got the 101 material under my belt. I understand such guides serve an essential purpose (and I've used more than my fair share in other locales), but here my interest was piqued by the "sightseers verboten" selling point of the NFT Guide. It seemed to promise that I wouldn't have to hear about The Apprentice.

What was also on my mind before I dipped into the handbook was the question of whether the ancient technology of a book (instead of the internet via my pda, laptop, or desktop) was still the way to go. I love books as much as ever, but this kind of reference material was supposed to be the first casualty in the book's alleged decline.

So, I got started, took it with me as I walked to work, on the weekend when I went out with the wife & kids, kept it at the ready on my bedside table. Let me first say, regarding the "Tourists Need Not Apply" aspect, it's wonderful for any kind of user, whether you take pride of ownership over the City or not. On my second question, it simply is richer and more helpful than information you could try to cobble together in an hour at your computer, plus it can answer the unexpected questions that arise when you're on the town. Its size makes it almost as portable as my Treo and it is made with durable covers and an elastic band (to bookmark or keep it neatly compact). The interior contains full color maps and charts.

There are detailed street maps for all Manhattan, parts of Queens and Brooklyn, and Hoboken and Jersey City. All other areas (including the Bronx and Staten Island) are covered more quickly and with broader maps. The thorough maps cover the city in a grid format, with (for example) Map 14 detailing the Upper West side from West 59th to West 86th, Central Park to the Hudson. Accompanying Map 14 (and every other map) are lists of essentials in the neighborhood, be it coffee stops, banks, farmer's markets (with schedule), 24-hour pharmacies, hardware stores, etc. This aspect of including "points of interest" that relate to daily life is what especially makes this a city dweller's guide.

After the neighborhood break-down, there are themed sections on Parks, Sports, Transit, "General Information" (again, with resident-friendly information, such as locations for post offices, hospitals, libraries, FedEx, and Wi-Fi hotspots), and Arts & Entertainment (restaurants, shopping essentials, and museums, among others).

OK, so it's comprehensive and user friendly, which is reason enough to recommend it for you and your out-of-towner guests. But one particular reason I really like this guide is that it's a great source of information about what I'm looking at, walking by, and living near. On my shelf at home I have a copy of The Encyclopedia of New York City by Kenneth T. Jackson which I frequently consult at random or on a particular question. Though it's obviously not the case that the NFT Guide could supplant that kind of resource, it helped me experience the city with a similar spirit of discovery. It gives basic information about the city's history. It made me realize that I could go by the Old Police Headquarters while easily making a stop at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, and helped me figure out the names (and other details) of buildings I walk by several times a week. The information is necessarily brief, but the Not For Tourists NYC Guide for 2009 really opens up so much of the city that may have been hidden to you, whether it is of a practical, intellectual, cultural, or entertaining nature. Who would have thought that such brevity could unlock such richness? --Thomas Murphy, News Director
www.nycartsandentertainment.com

Editorial Review:

Not for Tourists guidebooks are map-based, neighbourhood by neighbourhood guides designed to lighten the load of already street-savvy residents, commuters, business travellers, and yes, tourists too. Each map is marked with user-friendly icons identifying the services and entertainment centres that you look for as you make your way through town: everything from post offices, car parks, restaurants, bars, DIY stores and gyms to information on hotels, airports, public transport and parks. Whether you're a seasoned resident, a returning visitor, relocating, or someone who is completely new in town, Not for Tourists guidebooks help you make the most of your time in the city, while you're in it.

Route 66: The Mother Road 75th Anniversary Edition

Michael Wallis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Take the trip! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Everything you would like to know about Route 66. This book and it's author served as the main source of infromation & inspiration for the Disney/Pixar classic animated movie "Cars". A must have for the motoring history buff.

Makes Route 66 come alive 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

As a child my family traveled between Tucson and NW Missouri over a number of years to visit relatives. I vividly remember neon signs, interesting signs, gas stations and diners along the way. This book made those memories come alive. The author brings in the history behind place names and the stories of the colorful and interesting people who created the various attractions along Route 66. I don't know when I have enjoyed reading a book more than this one. Michael Wallis, thank you.

Editorial Review:

America's Main Street is celebration, Michael Wallis hit the road again, revisiting people and
places that made the Mother Road on American icon, and uncovering new treasures. A love
letter and a tribute, Route 66: The Mother Road takes us on an unforgettable journey through
the secret corners and hidden towns of America's most famous and beloved highway.

The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate

Michael Wallis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The best-selling author of Route 66 and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer celebrate America's first transcontinental highway in all its neon glory.

It began in 1913 with a glorious new highway—stretching across 3,389 miles and 13 states—that connected the bright lights of Broadway with the foggy shores of San Francisco. It was a magnificent and meandering road that enticed millions of newly motoring Americans to hop into their Model Ts and explore the fading frontier. The Lincoln Highway. It was the road of Gettysburg, Pretty Boy Floyd, Notre Dame, the Great Salt Lake, and the Gold Rush Trail. Once a symbol of limitless potential, it is now undergoing (as Route 66 did twenty years ago) a miraculous revival. With hundreds of new and rare photographs provided by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Michael S. Williamson, this ode to a bygone era guides us across the true spine of the country, exploring vintage diners, Art Deco buildings, and funky roadside attractions, all waiting to be discovered. 300 color illustrations.

Tales of the Road: Highway 61

Cathy Wurzer

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Editorial Review:

Highway 61 traces approximately 440 miles through Minnesota, from Pigeon Falls at the Canadian border south to La Crescent. Along the way, the road hugs the North Shore, zips through St. Paul, and navigates bluffs along the Mississippi River. While places such as Split Rock Lighthouse or Sugar Loaf Mountain offer well-documented stopping-off points, observant travelers may wonder about historic buildings , abandoned sites, and decaying structures they see along the way.

In this companion book to a new Twin Cities Public Television documentary also called Tales of the Road (airing in November 2008), Cathy Wurzer unearths stories about these places and more as she travels down the road and into the past, spotlighting famous and fascinating locations, many of them little remembered today. Learn about bootleggers crossing the St. Croix by ferry or importing hooch from Canada onboard vessels designed in White Bear Lake. Visualize--or maybe even visit--the quaint tourist cabins, supper clubs, and lodges that served tourists who began motoring up the road in the 1920s. Take stock of historic and current industries: Russ Kendall's Smokehouse in Knife River, a rutabaga plant in Willow River, the pottery factory in Red Wing. Each tale is illustrated with historic and current views to show how much-or how little-Highway 61 has changed. Here's one road trip you won't want to miss!

Cathy Wurzer is host of Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio and cohost of Almanac on Twin Cities Public Television. She has been honored with four Emmys for her work on Almanac.  

Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own

Doreen Orion

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A pampered Long Island princess hits the road in a converted bus with her wilderness-loving husband, travels the country for one year, and brings it all hilariously to life in this offbeat and romantic memoir.

Doreen and Tim are married psychiatrists with a twist: She’s a self-proclaimed Long Island princess, grouchy couch potato, and shoe addict. He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman. When Tim suggests “chucking it all” to travel cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen asks, “Why can’t you be like a normal husband in a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?” But she soon shocks them both, agreeing to set forth with their sixty-pound dog, two querulous cats—and no agenda—in a 340-square-foot bus.

Queen of the Road is Doreen’s offbeat and romantic tale about refusing to settle; about choosing the unconventional road with all the misadventures it brings (fire, flood, armed robbery, and finding themselves in a nudist RV park, to name just a few). The marvelous places they visit and delightful people they encounter have a life-changing effect on all the travelers, as Doreen grows to appreciate the simple life, Tim mellows, and even the pets pull together. Best of all, readers get to go along for the ride through forty-seven states in this often hilarious and always entertaining memoir, in which a boisterous marriage of polar opposites becomes stronger than ever.

The Journals of Lewis and Clark (Lewis & Clark Expedition)

Meriwether Lewis, William Clark

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 19th Century -> Antebellum

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1803, when the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the great expanse of this new American territory was a blank -- not only on the map but in our knowledge. President Thomas Jefferson keenly understood that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward and that a national "Voyage of Discovery" must be mounted to determine the nature and accessibility of the frontier. He commissioned his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an intelligence-gathering expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, made the first trek across the Louisiana Purchase, mapping the rivers as he went, tracing the principal waterways to the sea, and establishing the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. together the captains kept a journal, a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the Indian tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River. In keeping this record they made an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, writes Bernard DeVoto, was "the first report on the West, on the United States over the hill and beyond the sunset, on the province of the American future. There has never been another so excellent or so influential...It satisfied desire and created desire: the desire of the westering nation."

STREETWISE® Compact Washington DC (Streetwise (Streetwise Maps))

Michael E. Brown

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Subjects -> Travel -> United States -> Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

DC Map 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a nice map because it is plastic coated. It is normal map size which makes it a bit big to carry but has all the landmarks noted pretty well.

Don't leave the hotel without it! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

We used this guide everyday of our trip to Washington, DC. The subway guide was especially useful. I never felt lost, and didn't waste any time trying to figure out where to go. It was such an important thing to have each day, we double checked each time we left the hotel to make sure we had it. I highly recommend it.

Easy To Read 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This map is very easy to read, and a great tool for getting around DC. The laminated cover keeps it durable, and the size makes it easy to pull out and look at anywhere. I recommend it highly.

Compact, convenient, helpful 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Perfect for carrying around for quick reference to the DC area. It is sturdy, and won't rip apart. Having the metro map is a huge plus.

DC Map 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This map was too abbreviated to meet our needs so we returned it to Amazon. We used our Rand McNally map to enjoy our visit to DC.

Editorial Review:

Compact map of Washington DC Folded 6.75" X 3.25 Unfolded 6.75 X 18.5

Anti-intellectualism in American Life

Richard Hofstadter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Contemplative Life 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Largeness of mind (my definition of intellect) is very rare. Hofstadter deplored the narrowing of the American mind that resulted not just from the democritization of the university (and knowledge) but from the reformulation of its mission to suit American interests. The life of the mind suffers when the only nonpartisan value existent is market value. Knowledges that produce wealth are the ones that are held in highest esteem. Knowledges that produce no measurable material gain are considered irrelevant. By making market value the only standard in American life, the economic becomes the only horizon for Americans.

Since we have very few homegrown philosophies other than utilitarianism and pragmatism, most Americans see "thought" as a European import and a threat to our national sovereignty and security.

Actually there is one other standard in American life besides market value: egalitarianism. Most Americans have to work for a living and it is the perceived connection between the life of the mind and a life of leisure that invites scorn from the hard working sectors. But anti-intellectualism does not really serve the working class because its the intellectuals who are engaged in the serious social thought that might actually improve the lives of the under represented and under privileged. Most people cannot even imagine an alternative to current social and economic arrangements (that are held in place by the real elites of this nation, the corporate elites, who also have government on their side) because they have not been educated but indoctrinated into a certain way of life that they are told is "unpatriotic" to criticize. This is not freedom.

Most (thankfully, not all) "thinking" that we see on television, cable, and the internet is simply partisan bickering. Media is an ideologue-o-sphere.

The university is not much better. It is under pressure to corporatize and to mainstream and to treat students like clients. Problems within the university are not all to be blamed on the market, some of the problems are internal, but a university credential (especially in the humanities) has ceased to really mean much. I met very few large minded thinkers at the university. Largeness of mind is not really something that is valued at the university. Its certainly not what is taught there. Knowledge has become politicized and (many, not all) research projects so specialized that teaching and learning are no longer seen as edifying but as narrow and trivial pursuits. Professionalization, ie initiation into fraternities of shared interests (and the crafting of partisan knowledges and partisan knowledge communities), and not learning itself, is what goes on behind once-hallowed walls. The mission of the university used to be to provide a setting for the cultivation of the contemplative life, now its just another institution with its eye on self-preservation and the bottom line.

One of the leading thinkers on matters of educaion in our time, Gerald Graff, suggests that we "teach the conflicts" in American life. But I think this simply reifies the notion that there are not really large shared interests only self-interest and special interest groups with arguments to make and causes to promote and this is what the profession has become. But this approach does not promote broad-mindedness. A moment ago I mentioned one type of intellectual who works to promote true economic egalitarianism, and there are others who work to promote other forms of egalitarianism (ie gender, racial, ethnic, queer). In this country intellectuals do social work, so anti-intellectualism does not make much sense in many respects and it is this misunderstanding of intellectual work that leads to mistrust of it. This is important work and this is noble work but it is political work and political work that much of the nation, the culturally conservative, does not believe should be education's end. As a social progressive, I think this work needs to be done but leveling the playing field and promoting fair play and tolerance for all members of society--the realization of democratic principles--should not be seen as the singular end of education.

The body politic, focused as it is on the economic, must be liberated from the self-interest that has stood in the way of true democracy.
But the political project, as important as it is, is not the only project. There is also the life project of the individual, and the cultivation of a broad-mindedness that fosters not just the collective but the individual good as well.

It is very difficult to say exactly what it is that intellectuals do because they are engaged in many different kinds of projects (in the arts and sciences), but what the best ones do is open up new public and personal horizons. Cultivating the contemplative life does not mean indulging in useless vanity projects (although there is plenty of that in academia) but in enlarging the reach of the mind and our definiton of the possible.

Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future

Greg Melville

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Is it possible to drive coast-to-coast without stopping at a single gas pump? Journalist Greg Melville is determined to try. With his college buddy Iggy riding shotgun, this green-thinking guy—who's in love with the idea of free fuel—sets out on an enlightening road trip. The quest: to be the first people to drive cross-country in a french-fry car. Will they make it from Vermont to California in a beat-up 1985 Mercedes diesel station wagon powered on vegetable oil collected from restaurant grease Dumpsters along the way? More important, can two guys survive 192 consecutive hours together?

Their expedition on and off the road includes visits to the solar-powered Google headquarters; the National Ethanol Council; the wind turbines of southwestern Minnesota; the National Renewable Energy Lab; a visit to one of the first houses to receive platinum certification for leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED); an "eco-friendly" Wal-Mart; and the world's largest geothermal heating system.

Part adventure and part investigation of what we're doing (or not doing) to preserve the planet, Greasy Rider is upbeat, funny, and full of surprising information about sustainable measures that are within our reach.

Weird Washington: Your Travel Guide to Washington's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Weird)

Jefferson Davis, Al Eufrasio

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I Knew We Were Weird! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I got hooked on these "Weird" books the moment they started coming out. They were just unbelieveably fascinating, fun, and educational. I had always hoped that my wonderful state, Washington, would get the 'weird' treatment, since the state doesn't always get that much attention. My hopes came true and this book was released. I snatched it up as quickly as I could. What do the pages hold for the weird and wonderful that is in Washington?.

Like all of the other books, it is broken up into chapters, each with it's own identity. You have "Fabled People And Places", "Local Heroes And Villains", "Bizarre Beasts", "Ancient Mysteries", "Unexplained Phenomena", "Personalized Properties", "Roadside Oddities", "Roads Less Taveled", "Haunted Places", "Cemetery Safari", and lastly, "Washington Lost And Found".

I have lived in this state my entire life. I knew of a few things, but not a whole lot. So, imagine my surprise and fascination when I read up on all these interesting things in my state. For instance, you will hear about the exorcisms that took place at the Monaghan Music Hall building at Gonzaga University in Spokane; The mysterious Indian princess at Pike Place Market in Seattle; Soap People of Crescent Lake; Maury Island Ufo incident; Bigfoot; Ghosts of Thornewood Castle; Bobo The Gorilla, and much, much more. Most of these I have never read or heard about in my entire life here. Reading this book was such a learning experience, and it is sure to intrigue fellow Washingtonians who may not know of this history either. Then again, it's great for anyone, locals or not. There are a few things here I am familiar with : Sylvester The Mummy in Seattle; The Troll Bridge, also in Seattle, and a few others. However, there are some things I would of liked here but are not included. How about the giant red Radio Flyer in downtown Spokane?. The supposed haunting of the Fox Theater and Davenport Hotel?. Weird Washington 2, anyone?.

The book is well written and the pictures are great, as they always are in the "Weird" books. Authors Jeff Davis and Al Eufrasio obviously love their state, and they did an incredible job of capturing the weird and wonderful here. It took a lifelong Washington resident like me on an amazing road trip of which I have never been on, and learned a lot of great things along the way. Some I knew, and some I became shockingly aware of. It's a wonderful and worthy addition to the "Weird" canon of books, and I recommend it to everyone, Washingtonian or not.