1 comments about Hiking Minnesota (America's Best Day Hiking Series).

1. 
   An excellent guide for hikes of all different lengths and for all abilities. Good maps and directions. Highly recommended.

1 comments about Minneapolis, Minnesota: Local Street Detail (Rand McNally Folded Map: Cities).

1. I always use Rand McNally. I never have a problem getting lost because their information is fairly up to date and accurate.

2 comments about Animal Tracks of the Great Lakes States: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.

1. Again, the pictures in the book are easy enough to use for my 3 year old. The information contained in the book is useful. We enjoy using this book and look forward to the spring and summer when we can travel further than our backyard.



2. Very basic book that misses the mark. The drawings of animal tracks are poor in quality and clarity. In a book illustrating animal tracks I would expect a photo of the animal that made the tracks. This is a great book for a youth.

1 comments about Insight Fleximap Minneapolis & St. Paul (Insight Flexi Map).

1. This is a very nice map, as it is laminated. Is easy to fold and keep clean.

No comments about Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps.

No comments about Moon Take a Hike Minneapolis and St. Paul: Hikes within Two Hours of the Twin Cities (Moon Outdoors).

5 comments about Boundary Waters Canoe Camping, 2nd Edition.

1. Reading the other reviews submitted about this book, one would think that it is either the best or the worst book ever written about the special requirements of canoe camping in the boundary waters. Well, it is neither. I take a 14-plus day trip to the Quetico every other summer, and have travelled many of the most challenging and remote routes of the park. The value of this book is that it offers one set of ideas as to the best way to go about one's business in the wilderness. These ideas are not definitive, and I flatly ignore many of them. That said, I have also adopted some of the ideas found in the book, or at least reconsidered my tried and true methods based on some of the author's recommendations. If you're looking for a book to stimulate you to think about different ways of doing things in the woods-- this is a good choice. If you're a beginner, this isn't a bad place to start, but it would be a bad place to stop. There are as many different ways to go about travelling in canoe country as there are lakes in the Quetico. Almost all have something to offer. None are perfect. This book is worth reading as part of the exploration and learning process.



2. An excellent book for anyone who is interested in canoeing, camping or the B.W.C.A. Timely information for the first timer in the BWCA or for those that have made many trips. Well written and illustrated. A must for the Boundary Water traveler!



3. Before setting out on our first trip to the BWCA five years ago, I bought Cliff's book. I read it cover to cover and found it packed with practical information that helped make my first trip (and all my subsequent trips) completely enjoyable. I've re-read the book every year since. I've followed Cliff's tips, and he's never let me down. Yes, put the groundcloth inside your tent, and you'll never have a wet sleeping bag. Use a tumpline when portaging .... it relieves a the stress of carrying a heavy pack. Don't hang your food in a tree, unless you want a bear to to find it! Follow Cliff's tips. I've heard him speak on the subject of canoe camping several times...and he brings many years of valuable experience. I highly recommend reading this book before taking your next canoe/camping trip!



4. Cliff does a great job of introducing the area and providing good basic information on canoe camping. He also stresses the importance of proper techniques to limit the human impact to this natural national treasure.



5. This is a great book for someone who has never been to the BWCA or hasn't been there in a while and needs some reminders and pointers. The book was last updated in 2000, so some of the gear mentioned in the book is a little out of date, but the concepts still apply. Jacobson does more than simply define routes, he explains how to plan routes for yourself and then how to carry them out once you enter the park. This is overall a great book and is easy to read and understand, but most likely is not enough to get you through your first trip flawlessly. I suggest reading this as a starting point and then reading more advanced books and talking to people who have actually planned and completed trips to the BWCA.

4 comments about Else/Where: Mapping — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories.

1. What a fun book!
   
   Plenty of new views of our connected world plus interviews with the authors/analysts/artists (yes, they are all three) who created the extreme maps.
   
   You would think with the advent of cyberspace that maps would recede to the background and go the way of the floppy disk. No. Mapping is transformed and redefined. Interesting discussion of mapping vs. maps.
   
   This should be a coffee table book in every building where intelligent people congregate.



2. For a book on mapping the graphics are of extremely poor quality. It's really amazing that advocates of creative mapping would have so few interesting pictures and so little engaging text. There are a few worthwhile pages but not enough to justify the price of the book. I bought it on the basis of a NY Times review without seeing the book. A mistake.



3. Studying and analyzing visual images like the beautifully produced ones in this book teach scaling, the "real" Greenwich meridian, how maps change with different datum among other things.
   The superb quality of the illustrations make this book unique and valuable for introducing students to analytic visual understanding



4. How is it that someone can rate this book with only one star? This is the best book on the subject mapping I have seen so far. The content is highly conceptual and very profound. It gives you a lot of beautiful images and well-written essays which illustrate the concepts presented very well. A true masterpiece that is wonderfully designed and produced. This is so much better compared to all those books which give you only collections of maps.

2 comments about Boundary Waters Canoe Area Eastern Region.

1. The latest edition is a step backward in quality in my opinion.
   
   I am nostalgic to be sure. That alone I am sure creates bias in my review. I still have the canvas #3Duluth Pack with the rugged leather straps from my teen years. It has a slight musty scent and one can still smell the leather to this day. There is perhaps a hint as well of a campfire when one breathes deep. And, unlike me, it still has retained its strength over all these years. Every time I pull the pack off the shelf and inhale; I am reminded of some of my fondest memories.
   
   The same sentiment is true for my collection of Beymer BWCA guidebooks. Over the years I have spent hours paging through the various routes. With the help of Beymer's books I have lead scores of youth and adults on myriad trips through the BWCA over the last two decades. Through his books, Robert Beymer, has been a true friend.
   
   Part of the fun was in the planning. I loved reading through the routes and tracing them out on the PREVOIUSLY INCLUDED 21x14 inch map that was provided in the prior editions. The map was just the right size to get a flavor of the route. The new book has essentially a worthless map printed in the pages at the beginning of the book.
   
   This new edition may have a few new updates, but has lost the charm.
   
   Here is what I miss:
   -The separate map.
   -The bold font of the lake names in the route descriptions. That was nice to help quickly trace out a route.
   -The glossy pages of photos. The photos in this latest addition are "blah".
   -The slightly slimmer field book profile. The earlier editions slipped nicely into a vest pocket. I always took the Beymer guide on every trip in case a route deviation ensued.
   - The cover. Although not hardbound, the previous editions had a sturdier cover that could stand a few water splashes.
   -Popularity rankings. I actually found the rankings a way to avoid the more "popular" routes. Some folks gravitate to the more popular entry points thinking them the "best"; others (like me) found the rankings a way to avoid a bunch of traffic. When I read, "readers can build their own personal popularity rankings", I saw it as a copout for not wanting to review the data. It is certainly not useful advice for the BWCA neophyte.
   
   Ultimately, I am sure many a coureur du bois will continue to find these books quite worthy, but for those that have the older editions - the lack of quality may be a bit of a letdown.



2. Its a shame the latests editions of these book do not include pull out maps like the older ones did. The Falcon Guide BWCA book includes a nice map for all its Suggested routes but does not have as much detail about the actual route like this book does.

5 comments about Minnesota Atlas and Gazetteer.

1. We got the atlas for an 11-day trip to Minnesota, and ended up hardly using it at all.
   I've used many road atlases, as I prefer them to folding maps, but this one was more of a nuisance due to its size and unclarity.
   I also doubt its up-to-date-ness, as a couple of roads that looked promising in this atlas turned out to be non-existing or dislocated.
   To me, the most undesirable trait was the fact that it was quite unfriendly - graphically-speaking.
   Some main roads (and even freeways) were represented similarly to smaller roads (color and width), which required really exerting our eyes in order to figure out which is what.
   We drove ~2500 miles in Minnesota, and after a couple of attempts, the atlas ended up on the back-seat, and we switched to the AAA map we had with us, luckily.
   Disappointing.



2. These state gazetteers make traveling the back roads a pleasure, and is a great value from Amazon.



3. I had borrowed this book and knew I wanted to buy it for myself. It is very detailed and for a directionally challenged person like me that is priceless.



4. Love these maps. Always buy one of the states we are visiting.. have saved many hours of stuck in construction or accident, plus allows us to visit out of the way places. recommend to anyone.



5. More than once I've found paved roads that aren't in the book, or trails that are blocked. It's got to be extremely difficult to keep a volume like this completely up to date! Still, with a little common sense (hey, this stream now has a dam on it, maybe I should portage around it?) this is a great guidebook to the dirt roads, trails, and windings of streams. There's no need for this in towns or cities, but out in the hinterlands it's the best overview guide that there is.