Davis Ford has compiled a labor of love, this by capturing the thoughts, ideas and personas of an era that is quickly leaving us. Just as Tom Brokow has referred to those who participated in WWII as members of a great generation, so are those whom Dr. Ford memoralizes in his book. You can almost hear the campfire crackle as the cowboys discuss their lives in a time soon to be remembered only by the false pictures generated by Hollywood of men who are truely of the ages. Everyone who has even sat astride of a horse, or watched John Wayne in action, needs to read this book to hear the true story of the American west and the men who made history, and won a country, in their own quiet way. This book will be read 100 years from now by those who want to know the true story of the American west and those that left their own personal brand on our country.

In his excellent book, The Last Cowboy, Davis Ford creates a colorful mosaic not only of Leroy Webb but also of many other authentic cowboys - as well as the development of an entire region. The format of the book enhances the story with quotes encased in barbed wire, action pictures, regional maps and appropriate quotations interspersed in the text. The Last Cowboy is an outstanding chronology of an era told through ancestral history, geographical details and economic facts woven into telling the life story of Webb. It is a pleasure to read this well-researched and well-crafted history, augmented by humorous anecdotes and the personal observations of the author.

A wonderful book full of the rich flavor of the U.S.-Mexican border. Different writers bring the reader to the border through different reports about the region. Excellent book for border culture lovers. Different writers, different flavors of border culture.

From El Planeta Platica journal - Subtitled "Reports from a didsappearing line," this book may be one of the best collection of border essays and insights. I've heard of the Cinco Puntos Press for several years, but never came across their publications until recently. The editors have wisely chosen to include some of the best writers from the region instead of the usual hash of academics. Writers, such as Maz Aguilera-Hellweg, talk about cross-cultural childhoods. Debbie Nathan eloquently describes her city - El Paso - with free trade and cholera. The ever-present Gary Paul Nabhan documents his trek looking for night-blooming cacti. When I wasn't laughing, I was crying. How often can you really say that about a book?

Not just a great collector's item, but a well written story that one can't put down. The pictures draw you in and the writing makes you want more from this author. Their is too little written on this region that boasts a terrific rail history. There's something indescribable that keeps you pulling the book out and looking at it again and again.

Some well needed LVRR material from upstate New York. The pictures of the branch line action are GREAT.I keep on going back for more!!! I would like to see another come out with more photos of the upstate region.

Rosove stays modestly in the background and lets his explorers, who were often excellent prose stylists, speak for themselves. He quotes judiciously from diaries, ships' logs and published accounts of journeys so desperate that explorers ended up eating the rawhide lashings of their sleds, as well as their sled dogs (whose livers contained so much vitamin A that the Australian, Douglas Mawson nearly died of hypervitaminosis, and had to watch as the skin sloughed off his feet in damp shreds). "Here is the sanctuary of sanctuaries, where Nature reveals herself in all her formidable power," wrote one explorer, Jean-Baptiste Charcot. "The man who penetrates his way into these regions feels his soul uplifted." Behind the somewhat mawkish title, lie astonishing feats of bravery, endurance and resourcefulness that make the exploits of modern astronauts seem almost routine. Indeed the parallels between the Antarctic and outer space are eerily similar, with the icebergs resembling asteroid belts that could shatter a ship's hull in a moment, condemning all aboard to death, beyond any hope of rescue. Two of the ships used were actually named Discovery and Challenger. In 1773 the continent was first glimpsed by the British explorer, James Cook, who fully recognized the dangers of the ice: "Surrounded on every side with danger, it was natural for us to wish for day-light. This when it came, served only to increase our apprehensions, by exhibiting to our view, those huge mountains of ice, which in the night, we had passed without seeing." Cook beat a retreat and predicted that "no man will ever venture farther than I have done; and that the lands which may lie to the South will never be explored..." Cook was wrong, of course, but the effort of exploring Antarctica took almost superhuman courage. The explorers came on ships with names like the Erebus, the Terror, the Fram, the Pourquoi Pas?, L'Astrolabe, the Resolution, the Relief and the Aurora. They climbed mountains and volcanoes. They advanced gingerly over chasms spanned by treacherous snow-bridges. They drank snowmelt mixed with dog's blood and slept in caves carved out of ice. They froze to death, starved to death or fell to their deaths in crevasses hundreds of feet deep. They returned to glory, or to oblivion, changed forever by their sojourns on the frozen tip of the planet. Rosove includes the big names like Robert Scott, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. But he goes well beyond these giants and includes 20 more explorers, people like James Clark Ross, for whom the Ross Ice Shelf is named; Jean-Baptiste Charcot, who joked that the Antarctic was one place where you never needed to worry that you left your umbrella at home, as it never rained; and Wilhelm Filchner, a German explorer who adapted the auxiliary engine of his ship, the Bjorn, so that its boiler could run off seal blubber and whole penguins, which were flung into the furnace like cordwood (already dead, one hopes). There is a first-day-of-creation quality to the book. We look on as a great region, whose entire existence was unknown 228 years ago, gradually enters the sphere of human knowledge, and is intellectually assimilated, mapped and named. Beyond the people-names, like the Weddell Sea, the Bellingshausen Sea and the Adelie penguin (affectionately named by French explorer Jules S.-C. Dumont d'Urville after his wife), we visit Cape Disappointment, the Danger Islands, Port Circumcision, Deception Island and the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Behind each name lies a curious story, an amusing anecdote, or a history of horror. Over all looms the spell of the continent. "Great God! this is an awful place...!" exclaimed the crestfallen Robert Falcon Scott, who fought his way to the South Pole in 1912, only to find that Roald Amundsen had beaten him by a few days. Scott went on foot. Amundsen used dogs and, when he reached the Pole, shot 24 of them and used them for food on the return trip. Scott never made it back. Others were awestruck by the region's beauty. A member of Shackleton's expedition marveled at the walls of a thousand-foot-wide crevasse, which "were splintered and crumpled, glittering in the sunlight with a million sparklets of light. Towering above were titanic blocks of carven ice. The whole was the wildest, maddest and yet the grandest thing imaginable." The place could drive people insane, or nearly. Scott's decision to pull his sleds with horses and manpower, instead of dogs, proved suicidal. Shackleton spoke of an eery "fourth presence" that seemed to guide his party of three across the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia. He refused to elaborate. "The utter desolation, the awesome, unearthly silence pervading the whole landscape - all this combines to form a scene which is worth many a sacrifice to behold for once, although living alone in such surroundings would undoubtedly end in speedy madness," wrote Henryk Johan Bull, after reaching Antarctica in 1894. Rosove keeps a cool head, writing about this cold, unmooring place. In "Let Heroes Speak" Rosove approaches each story methodically. He gives us the names of all the expedition members, with a bit of background on each. He often follows them beyond the Antarctic into later life, with fascinating results -- Ross, the hero of the great ice shelf, died a recluse and a drunk. Each journey's preparations are described meticulously, the outfitting, the provisions, the stores, the ship. Rosove is precise about dates and geography. The maps at the back are clear and useful. This is consequently a lucid, useful reference book on the Antarctic that reads like an exciting collection of short stories.

This is a fantastic read.

It's about Antarctic explorations beginning with Captain Cook in 1772 through Ernest Shakleton's final effort in 1922, and all those in between -- notably Ross, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson, et al.

The subject matter is interesting, of course, but that's not why I am recommending it. After completing the first couple of chapters, I read on because there was nothing else I could do. It is that riveting. Even where I knew the outcome of a particular expedition in advance, I found my heart racing with anticipation. Frankly, it is one of the most exciting books I have ever read.

Anyone who enjoys true (supported by 26 pages of notes and bibliography) adventure books, along the line of Perfect Storm, Into Thin Air, Ship of Gold, etc. [ this seems to be a popular genre at present ] will love "Let Heroes Speak".

(Planeta.com Journal) -- Lines in the Water (University of California Press, 2002), a beautifully written ethnography of rural fishermen and their families. The book's subtitle "Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca" specifies the center of action, but the scope is much broader and deeper. It's actually hard to find the words to say how delightful this book is. Author Ben Orlove is an environmental science professor at the University of California, Davis, and his book is based on three decades of trips to Peru and Bolivia. The book is a showcase of fresh writing and a major contribution to the literature about South America. Orlove provides a frank account of the role academics themselves play. He includes himself in this story and shares candid observations -- from his reactions to office politics to daydreaming about museums. This book is highly recommended. Eco travelers visiting Lake Titicaca would do well to read this book in advance.

This is a gem, written with great respect for the indigenous people who live aound Lake Titicaca, well-annotated and with wonderful photographs by the author. Orlove has broad interests - anthropology, economics, natural history, environmental issues, to name a few, and a talent for accessing interesting memories. He conveys his astute observations in clear and vivid prose.The book is organized nicely - I especially liked the material in the final chapter, entitled "Paths", which offers an antidote to the sad fact that roads and highways are so often destructive to local people and to biodiversity. Paths, literal or metaphorical, also provide valuable linkages and essential connections among the various components of this remote but very interesting and community with ancient roots. Orlove provides the reader with a sense of having traveled those paths for a short while with him.

I read 40+ pgs of this book in the bookstore alone. I just moved to Nogales, AZ in January and I have found this book to be very helpful in providing me a background of the Ambos Nogales areas. The book is very well written and keeps you interested from cover to cover. Living in the area and being able to directly relate to the book is a plus, however anyone interested in the US-Mexico Border would find this book to be a spectacular read. Enjoy!!

must also read Miriam Davidson's "Lives on the Line." Maybe I'm a bit biased since I live here in Southern Arizona twelve miles north of our border with Mexico. But Davidson writes such sweet, firsthand-experience prose about other realities I see here -- like the Mexican migrants who have, for decades, crossed the border to keep Americans fat and sassy. The risks they now are taking have become obscenely dangerous, with the US spending billions upon billions to protect-- futiley -- our southern border.

Davidson's book is the first one I've read from cover-to-cover in one sitting since I read Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." She's actually the better writer who shares the same themes.

But one does not have to live near the border with Mexico to understand that our friendly, much older, south-of-the-border nation's problems are really ours.

Besides, the Mexican border is now up in Minnesota -- isn't it, really?

This is a must read.

Fun, serious, and thoroughly readable. Chris Bolgiano weaves grounded environmentalism and ecological awareness with history and stories/case studies to bring our awareness to a complex subject. This book presents solid Appalachian forest information to the reader in a manner that keeps one reading. Forests are complex, there are many approaches and techniques to sustainability, and Ms. Bolgiano seems to get to most. Simply, I found this book a delight to read and I learned so much from it.

Those of us who own and/or treasure portions of Appalachia's forest will find in Chris Bolgiano's concise 200 pages a wealth of useful information. She interviews a wide spectrum of foresters, loggers, strip-miners, nature lovers, and other "shareholders"---bringing us up-to-date about the use (and too often the abuse) of what might be the most diverse temperate forest in the world. When Bolgiano visited mountaintop- removal stripmine sites, she found that over 99 percent of the natural diversity had been destroyed---but that western elk had been imported to the stripmined land as a sort of fig leaf to cover the devastation. She describes ways that land can be put in trust and legally protected against such abuse--including against abuse by future owners. One of the book's main themes is sustainable logging---which can best be done with horses rather than machines, and which increasingly now rejects the "high-grading" system of timber selection in favor of "low-grading"---thereby leaving the best trees in place to reproduce. These practices are spreading fast in Appalachia with the help of Smartwood certification and also thanks to professional forestry consultants such as Appalachian Sustainable Development, based in southwestern Virginia. In first-person prose that often sparkles, Bolgiano relates her adventures while visiting all sorts of people whose lives and livelihoods revolve around the forest. She embeds a major delivery of crucial history and current facts in a light-hearted telling of her personal adventures. Her book is not only a pleasure to read but highly informative. It's a major resource for anyone who wants to pitch in and try to save some special part of the Appalachian region from becoming a national sacrifice area. -Paul Salstrom

As a native of Seward County (Seward High School, 1984) Mr. Kooser has provided me with a wonderful trip down memory lane. But even if I was not, I would still have enjoyed the book immensely. Mr. Kooser weaves together some of the everyday tasks of living in rural Nebraska into a basket full of life. The book is a wonderful escape from the life I now live (city life, frustrating job), back to the life I remember and plan to return to. It is very easy to read, with the individual stories flying past as I turned the pages. I must admit I was disappointed when I finished it - only because I didn't want to leave the place where Mr. Kooser had invited me. I wish it had been 10 times as long. A wonderful book !

When so much of best-selling nonfiction today is so sensationalistic, Ted Kooser's memoir is refreshingly down-to-earth. It is moving, nostalgic, and as beautifully written as his poetry. Although it is entirely set in Nebraska and Iowa, it is a book I would recommend for readers from anywhere in the country.

This book from Lonely Planet is, as always, the ultimate choice of guidebook for travelers. It provides excellent and up-to-date information which any type of traveler will find invaluable. Despite the fact that Antarctica is probably the least visited of the many regions of the world covered by LP, the authors have managed to put together an outstanding agglomeration of data and advice, well edited and excellently written. But... furthermore, on top of being an excellent travel book, this LP guide is also (like many other LP guides, but even more outstandingly) a great book about Antarctica's reality: the place itself, the peculiar or unique characters of this wonderful land, etc. Truly wonderful material is provided in this book, ensuring excellent reading for the armchair traveler, or the Antarctica beginner alike. Its many chapters and additional text boxes about a variety of topics, contain and provide extremely rich information on matters from history to politics, from geography to biology. All in all, a masterpiece.

Lonely Planet have been setting the standards for travel guide-books for a number of years now.

Jeff Rubin's guide-book to Antarctica is a treasure, first of all because guide-books on Antarctica are still very rare indeed, secondly because it is exhaustively comprehensive in its detail and yet so readable.

Antarctica is a unique place. The last true wilderness remaining on earth. A land where diverse and warring nations co-exist together to work, study and explore in peace. A land where Man can watch Mother Nature act alone, undisturbed. The highest, windiest, driest continent and yet the one containing the most water. Jeff Rubin gives profound insights on this last continent, this last true frontier. This book is packed with facts about history, geology as well as environmental issues (by Dr.Maj de Porteer) and antarctic science (by Dr.David Walton).

This book also contains a wildlife guide with more than sixty entries packed with pictures and with information essential for those who want to go and observe the wilderness of Antarctica.

Practical tips on when, how and with whom to go is both up to date, independent and as complete as one can get.

Plenty of information on the main Antarctic gateways is also provided as well as my most treasured part of the book - the chapter on the Sub-Antarctic Islands packed with information which is very diffuclt to find anywhere else with details on such isolated islands like Bouvetoya - the most isolated land on earth, Ile Crozet, Ile Kerguelen and many many others.

There are more than 20 maps in this book including, believe it or not, a map of non-existent islands. Throughout his book Rubin adds boxed text which provide to-the-point information on varied subjects ranging from Helicopter Safety, Taking Photos in Antarctica, Why one should not collect anything from Antarctica, Glaciology, the Aurora Australis and How to cope with isolation.

It is a pity that Rubin does not deal with such sensitive issues such as the exploration of the undergroung lake Vostok and attempts by many groups to ban sampling from this lake so as to avoid contamination.

A selection of photos is also present in this book, although unfortuantely not even one new photo has been added when compared to the first edition.

This book is a must for all those who are going to Antarctica as well for all those are interested in Antarctica but who do not have the good fortune, or the necessary finances to go to the most beautiful place on earth in person. Instead through Jeff Rubin one can practice on a regular basis armchair tourism. The only pity is that here in Malta the temperature is 35 degress Celsius. To feel truly there, I need a 2 metre tall freezer so as to at least feel what is it like to be in a very hot Antarctican summer day!

THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS BOOK IS THIS: Most of the numbers I've dialed have AN ACTUAL PERSON answering the phone at the other end!

The author is obviously as annoyed as the rest of us by electronic prompts guiding us tediously through a matrix of services we don't need.

Great stuff. Now write one for Manhattan and make me really happy.

THE BEST THING ABOUT L.A. COMPASS IS THIS: Nearly all the numbers I've called have AN ACTUAL HUMAN BEING ANSWERING THE PHONE! The author is obviously as irked as the rest of us with electronic voices guiding us tediously through a matrix of services we don't need.

Topics and numbers, that's what I want, and someone on the line who can help. Great stuff. Now just give me one for Manhattan.