I've loved Johnston's books as I have read them all; however,the books with Titus Bass have come to be a truly special experience that is rare. Titus Bass is the kind of man you what for a friend. A person to trust and count on when life isn't going perfect. It's both sad and happy to read (even though not real)about a man of the mountains that you'd wish to share his time and space; proud to call him friend. Now, excuse me while I read them again and again...

Captivating, exciting,shocking, I cannot put the book down. Johnston is the master storyteller. Titus Bass is like an old friend, every book in the series is wonderful reading, giving us a realistic window into the past. I now await the sequel.

The problem with prequels is that eventually they bring you up to a time that you've already covered. Such is the sad case with "Crack in the Sky". The book is one of the best in the Titus Bass saga, and it's sad that it ends with the events that begin the first Titus Bass novel (though the fourth chronologically), "Carry the Wind". Each of the Titus Bass series are books I'll read over and over. There have been some great mountain man books in the past (A.B. Guthrie's "The Big Sky" comes to mind), but Johnston's are among the very best. Pick any Titus Bass novel and dig in--by the end of the book, you'll know this character through and through. You'll experience the harshness and reality of life on the frontier and in the Rockies during the early part of the 19th century. You'll also enjoy the simple but boisterous pleasures of that time. And you'll experience the bloody battles that were fundamental to survival. Viva Terry C. Johnston! Please find a way to give us more Titus Bass novels like this!

Sloterdijk adheres to the theories advanced by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, but begins where Kant left off by exposing the force behind dynamic individualism. In other words, the a priori of Kant becomes the a posteriori here--the experience alone mitigates life. Rather than dwelling endlessly on mathematical knowledge, as Kant did, Sloterdijk's epistemology more nearly resembles David Hume's. Indeed, in shaping his discussion of logical versus factual propositions, knowledge by acquaintance is always knowledge based upon what Hume called "impressions". The 'cynical' aspect of the title derives from the "enlightened false consciousness" Sloterdijk finds in modern society.

Sloterdijk's categorical imperative centers on the phenomenology of reason and judgment, without the excess baggage one finds in Kant. Describing an arc, for example, Sloterdijk reveals the nuances of and reasoning surrounding a curve, bending the parallax of the necessary optical effect.

Sloterdijk's humor is not lost, either, for his critique blends the effusive as well as effective. I highly recommend this book.

"Mistrust is the intelligence of the disadvantaged," or "In any form of erudition, intelligence risks its life" or "emigration has become a fact of mass psychology"--these are among hundreds of aphoristic statements that make Sloterdijk's wide-ranging studies and well-reasoned observations on cynicism, Diogenes and the search for truth, Nietzsche, Marx, and the contemporary human situation so striking. He's had enough of nihilism (and all its intellectual and industrial applications), and tells you why. And the book's illustrated with extraordinary aptness--everything from medieval woodcuts to Pasolini. In short, he clears a space to think--a rare event. To read a present-day Lucian who can shake hands with Kierkegaard, read this book.

I totally agree with the other reviewers...we definately need to know what happened to Goldie, Blue and Markie Dare! I read both Dare to Love and Dare to Dream and can't wait to read another Dare book!

I LOVED BOTH "DARE TO LOVE" AND "DARE TO DREAM" AND WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THEM TO ANYONE WHO IS TIRED OF THE COPY-CAT TWO DIMENSIONAL HERO THAT SEEMS TO BECOMING MORE AND MORE COMMON WITH ROMANTIC HERO'S IN ROMANCE NOVELS. MY ONLY COMPLAINT IS THERE IS A DEFINITE NEED FOR AT LEAST ONE MORE BOOK ON THE DARE FAMILY ESPECIALLY LITTLE MARKIE!! SO PLEASE, PLEASE MS MCGOWAN LET THE FANS OUT OF THEIR MISSERY AND WRITE ANOTHER ONE SOON!

Yet another winner with the Dare family. I had hoped for the same quality in Dare To Dream that I received in Dare To Love ... I did and I'm hooked! This book is one of those that is impossible to put down. Rich in detail and humor. I hope Ms. McGowan lets us know what happens to the rest of the Dare family in future books.

This book was fun to read. Not long, not too deep, characters easily described. The plot was simple and easily explained. A good story and written in the L'amour style, clean, no sex just a story you could tell your young grandson.

Hey folks, here's another classic L'Amour. It's great. Keeps you wanting to turn the pages. We have a strong character here with good morals, and that's what I like to see in a Western. Why give us some sleeze ball as a hero? This is fiction, right? Dark Canyon compares very favorably with the best writing of Elmer Kelton, Kirby Jonas and Elmore Leonard!

--James Drury

Like the majority of Louis L'Amour fans, my favorites are his old standby westerns, and this is one. This is a classic L'Amour style western with good strong characters and very little bad language, a good message and minimum violence. Anyone who likes realism but not in the extreme, this book is for you. If you like it, also read Kirby Jonas's Legend of the Tumbleweed. They call Jonas the New Louis L'Amour, and these compliment each other really well.

I was born into the park service and lived the tourist experience. This book really helped me form a perspective about my early years growing up in western tourist and resort environments. Western history is fascinating, but this angle on western history really gives another intriguing dimension to america's perception of the mythic frontier.

At once extremely learned and passionately engaged, DEVIL'S BARGAINS puts forward a startling analysis of Western tourism. From Rothman we learn about skiing and much else: the economic and historical forces shaping our sense of place, our connections to nature, and our troubled relationships to one another. A travel book of another sort, it takes the reader to a vantage point from which our Western landscapes can be seen most clearly.

For discerning travelers planning a western vacation this summer, or for that matter, for anyone curious about the popular allure of the West, Hal K. Rothman's "Devil's Bargains" is a must read. Rothman, a professor of western and environmental history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, provides a richly detailed assessment and critique of the development of tourism as it has evolved from the late nineteenth century to the present in the inter-mountain West. Synthesizing the existing scholarship on tourism, enhanced by wide ranging primary research, Rothman reveals a fascinating, yet disturbing, underside to the glitz and glamour of the tourist economies firmly established in western resort towns from Santa Fe to Las Vegas.

"Devil's Bargains" presents a series of provocative histories recounting the development of resort towns and tourist sites across the inter-mountain West including the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Carlsbad Caverns, Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Vail, Sun Valley, and Las Vegas, among others. The book also codifies the history of tourism under a new interpretative framework which divides the development of tourism into three phases: cultural and heritage tourism, recreational tourism, and entertainment tourism. Beginning at the turn of the century with cultural and heritage tourism spawned by the transcontinental railroads seeking to expand passenger traffic, tourism evolved into recreational tourism made possible by the automobile and a growing fascination with exercise and the outdoors in the aftermath of World War I, and culminated after World War II with entertainment tourism dependent on the Jet airplane and the dramatic expansion of widespread prosperity, a leisure ethic, and a pervasive consumer culture. Rothman focuses on the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe to illustrate cultural and heritage tourism; various western ski resorts define recreational tourism; and Las Vegas embodies entertainment tourism. These three phases of tourist development reflect the historical transformation of tourism from an elite pastime to a more individualized, democratic experience, to a mass culture phenomena. They also reveal a process of economic development, reflecting the evolving strategies adopted by western communities to replace tapped out extractive economies.

Defining tourism as the quintessential service economy, the pinnacle of post-industrial capitalism, Rothman argues that the promises of tourist industries have been embraced as a panacea for economic decline in towns throughout the West. However, as his research reveals, locals and even "neonatives" have found tourism to be a bitter pill to swallow. Although the advent of tourist economies in places such as Jackson Hole, Steamboat Springs, and Sun Valley has resulted in phenomenal economic growth, prosperity has come with a price. As the book's title suggests, in the process of reviving the economy, tourism displaces locals with outside capital and corporate control, sapping a place of its soul, and leaving in its stead a facade of hollow images and a service economy manipulated by distant corporations whose only interest is the bottom line. What has emerged in places like Vail and Santa Fe is a two-tiered class system where workers who are predominantly people of color (Hispanic, African, or Filipino) hold low-paying, menial jobs providing for the comfort and amusement of wealthy second home owners and visitors. There is little room for an established community of year-round residents when the bottom line centers on the paying visitor. Las Vegas is the exception. In defining itself as the ultimate themed destination resort constantly reinventing itself to satisfy visitors' desires, Las Vegas remains one of the last places where unskilled workers can earn a middle-class income replete with benefits and job security. Las Vegas alone, according to Rothman, has succeeded at perfecting the service economy, becoming a model of sorts for the rest of the country. "The colony became the colonizer," he writes, exporting a model of entertainment tourism for a nation entranced by the spectacles of multi-media consumer culture.

In detailing the ways in which western communities reinvented themselves as tourist resorts, marketing an idealized western ambiance and a scripted history, and in the process losing control of the very community they sought to promote and preserve, Rothman provides a rich assessment of the social and political impact of tourist-based economies as they evolved from local ventures to corporate productions. But more than that, he presents a thoughtful and disturbing critique of the promises and realities of post-industrial, post modern capitalism as manifested in the twentieth-century tourist's West.

Marguerite S. Shaffer, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Our trip to Tuscany was a dream come true. We met friends for lunch just outside of Florence. Our friend recommended Diary of Tuscan Chef, and as soon as we returned home I ordered it. It is a treasure trove of wonderful stories as well as outstanding recipes. The Roasted Rosemary Potatoes reflect Italian simplicity and depth of taste. Outstanding!

I love this book. Ive been to tuscsany and ate at many restaruants including vipore and this is the closest you can get to tuscan cuisine. I highly recommend buying this book for yourself and your friends.

I have tried several of these recipes and find them to be very good with balanced flavors. The book does what the author says it does; i.e. gives us good Tuscan recipes, true to the region, with ingredients that are readily available in the United States.

Digging Up Butch and Sundance is as engrossing as any fictional detective story, thanks to Anne Meadows' exceptional writing style and dogged pursuit of the facts. She brings to life the men behind the myth, and deals with a wealth of confusing and conflicting accounts with clarity and intelligence, spicing her story with numerous fascinating details about her and her husband's countless trips to South America in search of the truth. While her final answers may not have solved the mystery of the outlaws' fate with 100% certainty, she has done more than anyone else to come to a solution, which is certain to satisfy all but the most of skeptical of critics. May be the most complete (and accurate) book about their final days, and is likely to remain so. Highly recommended.

We loved the Butch and Sundance we saw on the screen. Their humor, looks and everything else. But sadly, we gained not quite enough information on the two except their robbing career, loves and their escape to Bolivia.(Ha!)
So, for those of you who want to know more about the two outlaws, I strongly suggest Anne Meadows book, DIGGING UP BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.

I am not quite done with the book yet. It's a big read. But from what I have read so far, I have learned a lot about the two. Anne Meadows takes us to a home and other places where Cassidy and the Kid were said to have stayed and visited. She gives us detailed information about their lives, robberies and even room to doubt about their final fight. There has been speculation about whether or not they died in the last battle in Bolivia and whether that battle even occured. I haven't reached that far in the book yet, but I like it so far and encourage anyone who is interested to read DIGGING UP BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
Anne Meadows did an excellent job in writing this book. Don't pass it up!

Meadows, an exceptionally skillful writer, takes you along on a fascinating adventure to uncover the remains of two of the old west's most colorful outlaws. You feel you are right there at the side of the author and her husband every step of the way as they try to solve the mystery of the famous outlaw pair's last days. It's a trip well worth the taking. Highly recommended.

DREAM WEST captures the spirit of the turbulent mid-1800's and the nearly forgotten stories centering around the remarkable Captain John Charles Fremont (the Pathfinder). This was a refreshing look at one of America's great explorers who pioneered and mapped much of America's western regions. This book includes such historic characters as: the legendary explorer Kit Carson, and Fremont's wife the famed novelist Jessie Benton Fremont, her father the famous Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, cameos appearances from almost every famous politician during the mid-1800 through the Civil War (Lincoln, Grant, Polk, Clay, etc.).

John Charles Fremont was one America's most magnetic personalities. Just to list a few of many remarkable accomplishments, such as:
* He was California's first Governor (albeit for a very short period).
* After California's statehood is approved he was the first Senator for California.
* Became rich during the famed gold rush. Later lost it in a swindle.
* On the Republican ticket as an antislavery advocate he ran for President in 1956,. In fact he becomes a perennial presidential candidate.
* He achieves the rank of major general during the Civil War where he loses most of his battles and resigns.
* Later he becomes a Governor of Arizona and passes much ground breaking legislation.

The only complaint I have with this book (very minor) is the author's lenient treatment of Fremont's war record. In fact Fremont was demoted because he couldn't beat Stonewall Jackson. He lets Fremont off rather easily. Notwithstanding, John Charles Fremont truly was an extraordinary man. This story captures his spirit.

The people come alive in the book. Exciting to read about the life of the old west.

Author of the romantic historical, The Rebel's Pledge, a 5 star rated novel of the colonial period.

Dream West is one of the best novels I have ever read. It is powerfully and skillfully written. The story is based on truth about the brave men and women who forged westward. Dream West will move you, inspire you, and enrich your knowledge of America's history.

What a fun and funny novel. Filled with wonderfully quirky small-town characters...I really loved the "singing sheriff" as well as the wonderful romance. I hope more is on the way!

"Drive Time" is a short, spritely novel that reflects the roller coaster world of small town radio. The reason this book was totally absorbing for me to read is that, like the author, my husband and I have extensive experience with this side of the broadcasting business...and in the same time period. The characters are not charicatures, but real people with wonderful quirks and a broad range of emotions and behaviors. We have known adventures and people just like these! The story doesn't bog down with heavy insider technical lingo which helps every reader follow the story and yet learn some of the nuances of the business and the leaps and bounds of technical changes that have came along as the story unfolds. My only disappointment with the novel is that it could have been even more descriptive and longer. Perhaps the author will bring us "Drive On" as a sequel that will be as poignant and hillarious.

Petrina Aubol's "Drive Time" has it all. This book is interesting, funny, adventurous, and romantic. The quick witted charcters help move the story along as the strong-willed Marissa fights for her independence. In her struggles, Marissa finds her true love who helps her through it all and eventually ushers in her ultimate triumph. A great lesson is given at the ending, as Marissa gives in to the desires of her audience.

I feel most fortunate to have read such an amazing novel. I also feel sorry for anyone who passes up the opportunity to read such an hysterical yet deeply moving story about a woman who reaches for more and has a good time doing it.

This book is probably as good as any other general overview of philosophical ideas. It covers epistemology, ontology, religion, freedom, ethics, political and social philosophy, and art. Donald Palmer includes some people quite a lot (Plato, Marx, Freud, Sartre) while there are many philosophers who are not mentioned at all, but considering the number of philosophers and their numerous ideas, this may not be a fair objection.

What makes this book different from others is that it is very light reading. It isn't condescending, or excessively simple, but Palmer writes in a conversational manner and with a frank, sometimes humorous tone. And you see how no philosophical ideas, however convincing, are free from being challenged and scrutinized. This may not be a book you refer to time and again, but for a relaxed and entertaining introduction to different branches of philosophy, Palmer does a fine job. Tedious and confusing language is something you won't have to worry about.

This topical introduction has hundreds of humorous illustrations drawn by the author. Writing in an engaging conversational style, he presents the issues typically covered in introductory courses, but with unusual clarity. I used the first edition several times as the core text for my Introduction to Philosophy class with great success.

Those who have read the first edition will miss the wonderful handwritten script. It has been replaced by a font called Tekton that is, unfortunately, somewhat tiring to read.

There is no better philosophy I textbook. This textbook is fun and very easy to read yet teaches. If you are just a high school student loving philosophy, or taking a class, buy this book. High School, College, This philosophy book kills all other introductory philosophy books. (Most usually just have excerpts anyway). Use this book with Sophie's World or "The Big Questions"