Mary flies to Scotland to marry her fiance, Gareth, only to find he has signed on with a group trying to bring about some kind of healing in Northern Ireland.

So off they go to work in that battle-torn country,where nobody wants to comprimise because each side thinks they, alone, are in the right, have been for hundreds of years, and cannot forgive the wrongs done to them over that time. As Mary and Gareth's own personal adventure moves forward, Mary learns the history of Northern Ireland during the last 350 years as they visit various historical sites. The Scottish Presbyterians were being persecuted and emigrated to Ireland where they started presecuting the Irish Catholics. Then the English Episcopalians started persecuting them both. Every once in a while, they would realign themselves, but never for a moment forgive anyone not of their stripe. The results were massive bloodlettings leading to more massive bloodlettings.

Although both stories are fictional, Mrs. Crow has done a masterful job of intertwining the stories against an historical background. And she has done her homework. She even has a bibliography in the back of the book. She traces one family who came from Scotland in 1649 to the Easter Rising of 1911. This is all juxtaposed against Mary and Gareth's modern day story, both having related experiences.

For fans of historical fiction, this is a winner! The author knows how to involve her readers in the story. It also helped me see a little more clearly the background of the harsh feelings in that beautiful country.

"How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill gives the more ancient background of Ireland.

Mrs. Crow also wrote "The Fields of Bannockburn," which tells the very early history of Scotland.

This book tore at my heart as I read through the bitter history of Ireland. A must read for all who have even the smallest bit of Irish blood. The passion of the Irish people is absolutely amazing.

This novel is an incredible tribute to those who work to do the Lord's will no matter what the circumstances. How hard is it to hope, love, and give mercy to those who hate you? Ireland has a sad history, and this novel points to the only way humans can overcome their hatred and fear- by giving their lives to Jesus. I reccomend this book to anyone who desires to understand forgiveness and/or the history of Ireland.

I have used this book several times to find absolutely romantic restaurants and bed & breakfast inns. Their ratings have been "right on." Definitely recommend for anyone wanting to find a truely romantic place.

My husband and I have used this book multiple times for weekend getaways, etc. We even used it to find a romantic place to stay outside of Yosemite. Very helpful guide! Doesn't only list the extremely expensive - lists low-budget places (hotels, restaurants, etc.) as well.

This book is extremely useful as a general guide for (1) the best places to stay and (2) the best restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. The title is misleading in that even if romance isn't the goal, the guide is useful in finding a classy place to visit. Explanations that accompany each entry are detailed and points out what's great, what's not great, prices, and everything that you'd want to jot down if you were investigating the place yourself.

Excellent in all respects. I highly recommend it.

A brief note on the 5th edition. I actually bought the 4th edition a while back and recently bought the 5th edition thinking that I needed to get an "update." The editor in the 5th edition claims that there have been a number of updates since the 4th edition. However, I've sat down, spent a better part of a day, and compared a large part of each book, literally side-by-side, and I don't see any difference in the content! The only differences I do see are the use of different fonts, a slightly different page layout, and bigger type size (making the page count higher, which may be the only for the change in type size). Frankly, there's no reason for this 5th edition to have been published at all! If you happen to see the 4th edition in a bargain/used bin, get that instead. There's really no reason to "upgrade" to the 5th edition if you already own the 4th edition. Don't make the mistake I made and automatically "upgrade."

Bodie Gone by Bill Hyde is a well-researched, clever first novel that deserves to be widely read. The story is a historical novel, where the main character is Tex Garland, a cowboy with gold fever and on his way to Bodie, California, wrapped by a science fiction novel, where the main character is Frances DeQuill, a newspaper reporter on the trail of the story of a lifetime. Without giving away the suprises, let me say that my 4-star rating is based on the fact that the two parts of the novel didn't quite work together for me. The historical novel with a different ending would've been fine with me -or- a better connection between the historical story and the science fiction ending. That said, I enjoyed the story immensely and would recommend it to any fan of the history of the 1800's, the history of gold in western North America, the history of California, and the history of Bodie. Despite some minor sex scenes, the book might be appropriate for outside reading in an American or California history class in a high school. I recommend you take your own trip to Bodie with Bill Hyde's Bodie Gone.

What a book! Geology, celestial navigation, astronomy, science fiction--all wrapped up in a large cast of real figures from the history of the west. This book is great fun. Anyone who is interested in the west and likes also to ponder the "what if's" and "could be's" of life will find this novel to be a great pleasure as well as a thought provoking read.

Frances "Tip" DeQuilol is an affluent housewife, mother, and occasional writer for the local newspaper. She is also obsessed with trying to unravel the mystery of strange things that had happened in the nearby ghost town of Bodie, California. Her attempts to chronicle the stories of eight strangers who had struggled to reach Bodie seeking gold, love, adventure or revenge, she comes to find herself being locked up in the Bridgeport jail. but nothing can deter her from investigating a sequence of troubling and unlikely events to their startling conclusion and expose a cover-up that someone wants left buried with the rest of the Old West. Bodie Gone is a terrific, thoroughly entertaining debut novel for author Bill Hyde.

In 1977 in the mountainous backwoods of Northern California, logger Jake Colby is struggling to feed his wife and three children as he is out of work especially since a mining company has bought the rights to the area. Independent, Jake rejects any government assistance. Instead he is willing to poach though it is against the law, but his wife Dale, a devout Jehovah Witness, feels he will be breaking more than just man's law.

However, starvation of her children leads to Dale encouraging Jake to shoot a deer. Meanwhile their youngest child seven-year-old Justy fears her family is falling apart. Reared in faith, she takes a vow of silence until her dad can obtain permanent work rather than the occasional grave digging odd jobs he performs. As transplanted urban hippies rally against the mining interests, the Colbys worry more about their next meal than stripping the environment.

BY WAY OF WATER is an insightful look at the late seventies in a remote area of the country. Through the Colbys and other residents, readers observe a world where the environmental and industrial interests fostered by governmental self-promotion lose sight of a tree in their dispute over the forest while long time locals just struggle to obtain sustenance. The characters make the story line work with their slowly simmering dreams of a better world though Justy at times seems like the most adult person in the novel. Though no Steinbeck, the great author must be proudly looking down at Charlotte Gullick for providing a strong character study that brings the area vividly alive to the audience.

Harriet Klausner

This author's voice reverberates my upbringing in Northern California. I too have witnessed a drastic shift in the ways families make ends meet. For anyone who wants to know what it is like to grow up in rural northern California, where logging was once the major source of income, this is the book. The emotional journey is so intense I couldn't put it down.

To try and do this book justice...Gullick's writing on difficult issues such as violence, poverty, and how children process these things in their lives goes beyond comprehensive. She creates vivid pictures for the reader with her eloquent words and descriptions. There are scenes in this book that will never leave you. I read this book cover to cover, unable to tear myself away from the gripping story of Justy and her family. The depth of characters allows the reader to fully appreciate the challenges and emotions that are so strong throughout the book. Watch out Steinbeck!

Me and my family love to hike and evey weekend we are always trying out new places. When trying out new trails we had no idea what to expect. But now with this book we are able to find great trails with beautiful backdrops, and have a good idea of whats instore for us. We always have a good idea where we are going for the weekend and we know what to expect. I hope this book will help you as much as it has helped me and my family.

I bought this book after our daughter was born, to serve as a guide to the great outdoors. The book delivered on its promise, we went on two or three hikes in Yosemite valley with our 3 year old daughter. The descriptions in the book helped us pick the hikes and the directions to the trailhead were very helpful. I have also tried several hikes in the San Franciso bay area and always found the directions to reach the trailhead very helpful.

We love to hike and found this book to be fun and easy to read. The directions to the hikes are very precise and clear. We just bought the book and have already gone on three of the hikes.

It's nice to find a travel guide with subjective (rather than gushing) descriptions of all manner of things ranging from cities to hotels to vegetarian specials. This guide is chock full of phone numbers and web sites and price guidelines and has proved to be a helpful (and fun)resource.

In preparation for a trip to Ireland, I think I read every current guidebook out there. This was the only one I took with me. It is very thorough, well written and designed, and goes a several layers deeper than its competition.

While planning a return trip to Ireland, I looked a every current guidebook I could find. "Footprint Ireland" is the only one I will take with me on my trip. It is very comprehensive, provides clear descriptions without tourist hype, and includes the practical detail you need to make the best use of your time (ferry schedules, opening hours, etc.) It also provides good information on local walks, short and long, an important part of any successful Irish visit. By far and away, it has more helpful information, well presented with good design, than any other guide I found.

This book presents a fascinating view of Mongolia, written by an American who has seen and done much more than the typical American tourist. I would agree with others who commented about the strange combination of a highly literate author and a non-native English-speaking editor. This didn't detract from the book at all for me; it merely deepened my curiosity about Don Croner. Who is he? Why would an author who took pains to design the Book and cover, painstakingly draw the book maps, and even select the book's typography- (for heaven's sake!)- allow the most basic grammatical errors to creep into the manuscript?

Most good travel writers, like Paul Theroux for example, bounce the stories of their journeys off of personal revelations. This invigorates their travelogue and allows readers to identify with them as they travel. "Hmmmm," we say, turning the page, "I too would have found that funny, or alarming, or interesting, because I have parents who were hippies in the 60s, or because I once lived next to a Chinese gardener." But although Don Croner's narrative is chock-full of thick description, it contains maddeningly few personal glimpses. We find ourselves reading passages of intelligent observation or wry humor without any knowledge of the writer.

Croner's reticence about himself merely feeds his readers' eagerness to gather together what few facts we can find on him: He's a self-described American of European descent, tall, thin, speaks Russian fluently, and identifies with the American National identity but not at all with American mass culture (although he's very knowledgeable about mass culture). He's a voracious reader, and tends toward history books, but will probably devour anything in English that crosses his path. Like any experienced traveller, he will eat anything, sleep anywhere, and showers when he can- hot, cold or no water. He has a technical background and holds down a favored job- some type of employment with access to sufficient official connections to secure all those visas he needs for moving about a part of the world still notorious for difficulty in procuring travel docs. He either grew up abroad or is an ex-runner who blew out his knees when he was younger, because Americans simply do not walk for enjoyment as much as he does. His editor has learned english from a book or institute of British english, not American english, and displays "spell-check literacy"- that is, has run a computer spell check over the manuscript so that there aren't any glaring spelling errors. What errors there are result from incorrect word endings and grammar errors- stuff that would make it through a spell check.

At any rate, Croner's contribution is his description of places rarely seen, his speculations on the movement of historic personages, and his curiosity about native-held beliefs. With regard to this last point, he queries the locals incessantly in order to differentiate folklore from faith, to separate romantic legend from divine action. An interesting read from several perspectives.

I was very surprised to find this book about my wonderful country Mongolia, and I am very proud that a foreign person would take such interest in my country Even when a child I heard about the famous mountain Burkhan Khaldun, but I have never gone there. Now Don Croner goes to this mountain! I have visited the museum of our Bodg Khan, but I did not know the story of Zanabazar. Now I read about it in this book by a foreigner! And my mother's mother was born in Zavkhan aimag, near Uliastai town, which is in the book. For me, this is a very interesting book. Please, if you want to know something interesting about my country read this book.

Having traveled in Mongolia myself I can well appreciate Don Croner's persistence in getting to some of the less well known and seldom visited places. This is a well written book and very informative. As another reviewer noted, Don Croner does not say much about himself, but I find this kind of a relief. So many authors these days use travel as a backdrop for their ramblings about themselves, which oftentimes are not all that interesing. Don Croner concerns himself with - surprise - Mongolia. The chapter on Zanabazar, the first Bodgo Gegen of Mongolia, is especially good. Since this book was written the Ninth Bodgo Gegen has indeed returned to Mongolia, although only for a short visit. I highly recommend this book.

When reading this book cover to cover, I found it lacked a climax and character development. It was also particularly lacking in plot.

As a reference, this is a great book. Just don't try reading it cover to cover like me. It's best used to just thumb through, or to look up a particular area of travel.

I recently had the opportunity to test and verify some of the information in this book by embarking on one of the routes. I found the mix of information and history informative.

The book is durable and convenient in size to take along with you. And, seems a good value for the price. I plan on keeping this book on hand as a good reference for when I next take a road trip in Northern California.

I used this book for a drive from the Bay Area up to Sacramento. We would have taken I-80 if we'd not read about CA 160 through the California Delta. The book also came in handy for a day trip down California Highway 49, with very specific instructions about where to turn and what to see. It would be nice to have color photos of each sight (Dorling Kindersley style) but otherwise this is a great companion.

From lesser-known pocket beaches and family-owned wineries to sporting adventurers and English country pubs in out of the way places, Richard Harris & Ray Riegert's AAA Hidden Highways Northern California outlines both the human and natural wonders to be found off the beaten path in California. Packed with maps and destination-oriented travel advice, this takes a well-known region and offers new twists and turns.

This is a somewhat unusual book because it may appeal to two age groups: Toddlers and Pre-Adolescents. The former will like the big colorful pictures and happy ending; the latter may appreciate the references to Italian culture and folklore. The plot and conclusion may be somewhat boring to children between these ages, and the very ill father may upset some toddlers. Still, very young children may enjoy the human-animal interaction and the happy denouement.

A well-loved father becomes very sick; bird song seems to cheer him. Most of the birds leave as winter comes, save for one white one who continues to sing. This bird climbs up in a chimney stack to stay warm and keep the father's spirits up through his eventual recovery. Nicely illustrated, with big, "folkish" drawings effectively highlighting an Italian village.

There are three main characters in this book; Duca Gennaro, Gemma, La Colombia. Duca Gennero is a duke who has a huge house in the middle of the town. He lived alone with his daughter Gemma. He would let anyone in the town come into his house for anything they needed because Duca Gennaro was a kind and wise man. He was also known for his good advice that would bring people in. Everyday, he would ask Gemma how her day was and what she learned. They would go into the courtyard and listen to the birds sing. Gemma's favorite bird was a pure white one, that she named La Colombia.
Then the winter came and the birds flew away to somewhere warm. Duca Gennaro always would reassure Gemma that Spring would be here soon. Then Spring came again and Gemma and her father listened to the birds sing. Duca Gennaro got sick after one hot summer, a year later. He would ask Gemma to open the window, so he could hear the birds sing. Soon the winter came, and the birds were ready to leave. Gemma made them baskets to live in and feed them too, so they would stay tho sing to her dad.
Christmas came and all the children it the town came to Duca Gennaro's house to get a Christmas present. All the birds flew away because it was too cold. La Colombia was the only one that stayed there. The Duke was still sick. His friends knew that he loved the music from the birds, so they decided to play some music for him. The Duke wasn't happy because he wanted to hear the birds sing. It got even colder outside, but La Colombia still stayed. La Colombia flew up to the chimney to make a nest for himself.
Will Duca Gennaro get better? Will Spring ever come? What will happen to La Colombia? Read the book to find the answers to these questions.
I really enjoyed this book because I think that Tomie de Paola is a great author and illustrator. He writes books that the whole family can enjoy!

Days of the Black Bird is one of Tomie de Paola's children books. There are birds in this book. The birds make nice noise in this book. But they go away in the winter and they come back in the spring. The girl in this book tries to keep one of the birds so she will always hear nice music. She makes a nest to comfort the bird. My favorite part is when the white bird goes in the chimney. When the white comes to sing he is covered in soot and looks funny. I would recommend this book to children in the K2 and the 5th grade because it's appropriate and if your learning about Tomie de Paoloa then this would be a good book. This is just one of Tomie de Paola's books. If you want to read more of his books just go to the library.

The Osprey Order of Battle series presents the military enthusiast with a microanalysis of famous battles, in this case devoting six volumes to the pivotal Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. This sixth volume (the Gettysburg books do not appear sequentially in the series) is devoted to the disposition of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on July 2, 1863, while the seventh volume does the same for the Union Army of the Potomac. This book provides comprehensive organization diagrams, an analysis of operational objectives, and most importantly where each unit was at what point during the second day of the battle, including both the "tooth" combat elements and the vital "tail" support troops. The operational analysis is quite excellent and surprisingly concise. There are dozens of detailed maps, charts and photographs, providing a greater depth of coverage on this most analyzed Civil War battle.

Clearly this material will be on interest to those who want to study what happened in Gettysburg in minute detail, but I think the chief utility of this volume is for war gamming enthusiasts, who want to be able to position troops accurately for recreating the situation and trying to achieve a different objective; I have used the information to generate a brigade level version of the Battle of Gettysburg with the Civil War 2 computer game and I suspect it would be of even greater use to those who have the massive Gettysburg board game and want to give Lee another chance at taking the Union flanks on Day 2. Of course, given the advantage of hindsight, I have found that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine fail to hold Little Round Top and the Confederates turn the Union left flank. The Order of Battle books meet their objective in providing the most detailed information ever published about the great battles of history. In addition to Gettysburg this series has also covered the 1759 Battle of Quebec (interesting choice) and the WWII Battle of the Ardennes in 1944 (i.e., the Battle of the Bulge).

This is another excellent entry in Osprey's "Order of Battle" series. This book covers the Confederate operations at Gettysburg on the 2nd day.It lists commanders,units,and companies of the Army of Northern Virginia engaged that day. While books by giants like Coddington and Pfanz are for serious students of the battle ,I found this thin volume a refreshing,enlightening,and fun read.The author's frank language at interperting the dozens(it seems) of Confederate mistakes are refreshing as well. In one case critisizing the 15th Alabama's Oates post war contention about making Big round-top a fortress against attack as ridiculous,because Hood's division was trying to destroy the Union left,not get attacked.I never thought of it that way before! I only wish the authors had more company names listed. They might had researched the Internet as many detailed unit histories are found there,thanks to grass-root efforts by CS enthusiasts. However,this book is more than worthwhile for all interested in Lee's unforgetable Army and the South's great struggle for independence.

Gettyburg July 2 Confederate is a worthy successor to Gettysburg July 1 Confederate. The book is an improvement over the July 1 volumes,in part because, the July 2 volumes provide a more detailed map of the battlefield. Jim Arnold and Rebecca Weiner have put together a book historians, reenactors, and military enthusiasts can enjoy. The book show the second day of Gettysburg from the Confederate perspective, and effectively demonstrates the limited intelligence Lee had of the Federal positions and units. The Book starts off with a look at the strategy of the battle from the army of Northern Virginia's perspective. Then each of the three corps and it divisions are studied operationally. Within the divisional studies, units are further broken down by brigade, regiment, and company. Many of the companies are named. Unfortunately, some detached units, such as the 13 Virginia Infantry Regiment and the 21 Virginia Infantry Regiment Company "F" are not even acknowleged.

The only other errors appear to be the result of mistakes on part of the layout editor and not the authors. These are trivial, and should not besmirch such a splendid work. This work is important for it encapsulates the grand strategy of the campaign, the strategy of the army and corps, the tactics used by the divisions, brigades and regiments in an attmpt to effectuate this strategy, and finally, the role of logistics in suppying the army. The authors deserve to be commended for this work and I look forward to the future volumes covering July 3.