It's forty below in the Northwest Territories of Canada - so cold the ravens won't fly & Richard can't go outside. He decides to ask his family & friends the question that became the title to this book. Their answers bring a whole other world into light. Brilliantly illustrated by George Littlechild from the Plains Cree Nation, this humorous quest of a youngster's mind during a long winter's day, brings out the silly & the insightful. Makes a lovely gift!

A very interesting view of the other side of the Civil War. Ash takes the reader on a trip to the South and shows how life changed after the Union Army invaded. The book gives an overall look at the entire South, showing exactly how different regions were effected. Also includes many quotes from actual residents and cites from Southern newspapers, each giving the reader a true vision of what it was like to live there during the Civil War. A wonderful addition to a Civil War collection, especially if you are interested in the South.

Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie-Smith's Women In Art considers why so much art by women finds so little public recognition. From images chosen by female artists to how men portray and perceive women's works, this provides an important study by an artist and art historian who select and analyze images of women by both male and female artists from throughout Western art history.

I used this map when I traveled to the Yukon in the summer of '99, and I'll depend on it again when I go in February of '01. Very good detail, especially when defining roads which are all year, or winter only, etc.

A treasure of information about a remote unpopulated space. Extremely helpful economic, demographic and cultural facts intertwined with folklore and culture.

This is a great book of tall tales and real life adventures. Harry Gordon-Cooper. As my mother called him a Jack of all trades. He led a remarkable life in the wilderness of the Yukon. From tales of wolfs tracking humans to the real life drama of child berth on a stricken bush plane. The book is well written with a great narrative style. You can almost picture Ira Biber and his clan. You can feel the call of the wild. A must book for all sourdoughs.

For any of us who experienced coming of age in the '60's and '70's, Joelle's Fraser's Territory of Men is likely to trigger the kind of nostalgic jolt usually reserved for reunion concerts and rediscovering love letters from an old flame. If you want to read something bland and factual, go to the dictionary. But for the unflinching revelation of even part of our own lives, not just the author's, read Fraser's book. Fraser's vignettes are NOT the self-absorbed rantings of a life unfulfilled, for this writer satisfies: she fleshes out the characters, colors the scenery, and energizes the moment...I swear I could hear the Mamas & the Papas singing California Dreamin'. I could see the trusting little blonde girl being lowered to her Aunt Kathy's Sausalito houseboat in a basket, feeling hopeful and loved.
Ultimately, this is a book about a life well-lived and the capacity of the human spirit for forgiveness (I won't tell you how or I'll spoil the final chapters).
If you are brave enough to take a look at your own experience of growing up as viewed through the eyes of a gifted writer, you must read Territory of Men.

Joelle Fraser does what few memoir writers do -- share her experiences without too much introspection and "telling" the reader. It is, above all, an excellent read. I found myself in the range of emotion -- laughter, tears, sorrow, anger, healing -- as I read and nodded in agreement. This book will appeal not only to the women (now in our 30s) who grew up through the 60s and early 70s, but also to their mothers and fathers, their husbands and boyfriends (after all, it's important to know what makes these women tick -- they/we're from a generation unlike any other, and shaped by such powerful forces that stereotypes do not apply).

Fraser's detail of scene makes this somewhat voyeuristic book come to vivid life. She's lived in places people dream about -- Northern California, Hawaii, the mist-shrouded Oregon Coast. She's lived a life that many of us lived in various forms; it's dangerous and exciting, yet unpredictable and lacking any dependable structure. It's anything but safe. Yet she comes to a point at the end where the reader understands that she's near a kind of peace with -- of understanding -- of the forces that shaped her mother's and father's lives, and then her own. It is "coming of age" but not in a hokey or too-sentimental fashion.

Many of Territory's professional reviews have dealt with the heavier topics of the book: alcoholism, abuse, a scattered and often neglectful upbringing. Those are the hard truths and provide ample opportunity for discussion (my mother also read Territory of Men and loved it, cried for the little girl Joelle was and the little girl I was, and relived her own past through it), and we had several discussions as she completed some of the essays (notably "Robin's Story"). It's a book that I wish I had a larger group to discuss with -- a book club would be the ideal setting for further exploration of this book's themes. I've recommended it to several friends, male and female, older and younger.

It's a truly excellent read.

Joelle Fraser has written an honest, poignant account of growing up on the fringes of adult counter-culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though her childhood was different than most, it was still one of exploration and education, of conquering difficulties and facing emotions. Fraser writes well, with a strong sense of people and place as she drifts from northern California to the Oregon coast to Hawaii. Her book will strike a cord in a lot of people: It's a cultural story from a child's point of view, but also spans a life from childhood to adulthood. A great read!!

Though this wasn't really a historical event, something may of happened like this. The writer mentions that between 1870-1900 was when most communities were being born, so that's the main idea of the story. This is about Teresa Angelino Viscardi, a 14 year old Italian Immigrant. She travels with her large family on a train and by wagon all the way to Idaho territory. But the journey is not easy. It is FAR from easy. They cross a river and two girl's from another wagon drown. Then the saddest thing happens! But you have to read it of course. This diary was so well written I kept thinking that Teresa and Netta, her little sister, who you come to love, were real. This is another powerfully emotionaly and exciting, and truthful Dear America Diary. Keep up the good work Dear America writers! We can't wait for more. Even though this book is sad, you MUST READ IT! Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sob. :(But most of the journey was :)

"West to a Land of Plenty" was a great book, in an 1880's diary form, on a 14 year-old Italian American girl, Teresa.

Teresa lives in a crowded, New York neighborhood with her family, when her father suddenly decides to take the family west, to a new community called Opportunity. With that decision, Teresa's changes just begin!

Going west by train and wagon is exciting to Teresa, but she is also very sad to leave her school and friends. Her pesky little sister, Netta, also gets on her nerves, and Teresa constantly tries to hide her diary from her! When Teresa begins to make friends, however, she finds that things might not be so bad, but then disaster strikes...

This was a great book, and a must read for anyone aged 10 and up! Be sure to also read "Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie", and "The Great Railroad Race", two other "Dear America" novels.

This was one of the most enjoyable books in the Dear America series.

Fourteen-year-old Teresa Viscardi, while on a history-making trek West to "Opportunity", still experiences ordinary things. She tries to keep her nosy little sister Netta away from her diary, she makes a new best friend, takes care of her baby brother Tomas, and gets a crush on the handsome John Anderson.

Then everything changes when Teresa's father and uncle leave the trail and go off on a "get-rich-quick" scheme. One of her brothers, Ernesto, falls deathly ill. With her grandmother, Teresa goes in search of her father, and finds him. They travel back to the wagon to find that Ernesto is fine, but one of her other family members has passed away from the same illness.

Teresa now addresses her diary to her lost loved one, and it helps her to handle her grief.

I liked how realistic this book was--instead of having a, "everything was just fine and great" type ending, the 3 page epilouge tells how the family arrived at their destination and made a home for themselves by hard work, and how Teresa, after some years of schoolteaching, finds her true love not to be John Anderson but a man she meets in Opportunity.

Geology is not usually one of my favorite topics. I remember slogging through John McPhee's interminable series of articles for The New Yorker and vowing to avoid the topic at all costs.

My attitude has changed radically since reading Kevin Krajick's book Barren Lands. Somehow, he has managed to convert a dry topic into a thrilling adventure narrative, weaving hundreds of years of history into this story about the idiosyncratic characters who prospect for diamonds.

I highly value my sleep, but I actually stayed up late to finish this book. My only criticism is that I would have liked to see photographs of the driven, eccentric characters that populate the book, and the actual landscape they prospected.

...is certainly not always gold...or diamonds for that matter. This book, however shines from cover to cover. There is something for everybody in Mr.Krajick's book Barren Lands. In dealing witht the overall subject of the 400+ year search for diamonds in North America, the author took me through a graphic history of adventure, intrigue and science. Krajick's style of story telling brings the tale of the search for diamonds thru-out the world to life and kept me rivited page after page. After reading of how some folks just stumbled across diamonds in their back yards I will probably always have one eye to the ground from now on.

The more recent North America activities of Fipke and Blusson, around whom much of the book revolves, is told in a personal and intimate manner, as only an author with first hand experience and contact could have related. There is also a good dose of the author's wry sense of humor and irony thrown in throughout his book. Please take special note of his tips on how to use a port-o-potty in 40 degree below zero weather on the tundra.

Probably the best book since reading Stephen Ambrose's book about Lewis and Clarke, Undaunted Courage. My only disapointment was reaching the last page.

Did you know that in about half of the states of the US people have found diamonds? Diamonds of more than two carats have been found, for example, in Ohio and Alabama, and finding them is often just child's play. Kids are the ones who pick these gems up, because kids are close to the ground and always looking for treasures. Finding a reliable supply of diamonds is much more difficult; the ones found on the ground are often chance deposits that were dropped when a glacier melted, but the glacier must have carried them from somewhere rich in diamonds. There aren't many such places, and it was a surprise that over the past decade, the Northwest Territories of Canada were deemed to be diamond mining country. The eerie, exciting, and disturbing story of how this came to be is told in _Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic_ (Times Books) by Kevin Krajick. The lure of diamonds has proved inescapable for a certain class of men for centuries, and Krajick's book tells about some of them he met while he did his research.

The Barren Lands (yes, that is the designation you will see on maps) is a half million square mile region as far north as Americans can go. There are no roads and no people, and it is called barren because it is above the northern limits which trees can reach, Since diamond exploration has started, however, it could well be populated with workers producing gold, uranium, and other minerals. At the heart of the story of exploration here is Chuck Fipke, a weird little guy who does nothing to improve the image of geologists. When Fipke was in charge of a prospecting expedition, he drove his men ruthlessly, especially his own son with distressing ferocity ("When you're not eating or sleeping, you're working for me."). Fipke was just one of a long line of explorers to the region, and their history is well covered here. The unbelievable hardships of traversing the area, or working in it, are well described in many sections of the book; bears, mosquitoes, and deerflies all supply annoyance or danger. Then there were the people. Fipke could not keep his operation secret for long, and DeBeers and other mining firms shouldered in. Fipke's team painted the plywood cubicles that held the drills with camouflage paint that would prevent detection from the air, and even ordered army-surplus camouflage nets to cover supplies. This was not paranoia; there were commercial spy planes making regular flights to see what was up.

The prospectors faced challenges from the environmentalists, who worried that the caribou, wolves, falcons, wolverines, and bears would get shoved aside by the industrialization of a previously pristine area, and the local tribes worried about water pollution, looting of artifacts left by their ancestors, and "perhaps most of all they worried that they might be left out of the profits." Barren Lands now has a hugely expensive mining factory, and will simply churn out millions of dollars worth of diamonds every year. There is a pressure to build roads and power lines to the site, which will mean more alteration of a basically natural area, but profits like these cannot be resisted. While Fipke and his partners are all now unimaginably rich, they are not unimaginably happy. Fipke alienated many of his crew, and shattered his family during the most intense of the mining preparations. He admits that putting all his energy into his mine had its price. "But that was _cool_! To do all that we did? It was _fun_!" It is not surprising that with this attitude, all the riches and all the family problems haven't made a difference: he is still out there looking for the next strike.

I recently read Far North for a book report assignment for school. I chose this book because I like Canada. I could not put this book down. It is such an exciting adventure story, and I would recommend this book for anyone who likes wilderness adventures. (Ryan Groth, age 14)

This was a great book I couldn't stop reading it, one morning I started it had to take a break for breakfast and then read it all the way until lunch when I finished it. It is about a boy who goes to a school in Canada and ends up lost in the woods with Jonny Raven and Raymond, read it to see what happens to them. This is a great book it is action packed and will keep you interested.

This book was so good, that I could never put it down. If you like books that are full of adventure and excitement, you will love Far North. Hobbs does a wonderful job of keeping up the suspense all throughout the story. It becomes a story of triumph and survival when Raymond and Gabe get stuck in the wilderness of Canada. They are all alone with a pistol, and three bullets, trying to survive the winter of the Northern Territories. If this book sounds good to you, you can also read other books by Will Hobbs, such as Bearstone, Downriver ,orThe Maze.