I came across McFadden's "A Trip Around Lake Erie" about eight years ago, when a clerk at Schwartz Booksellers in Milwaukee recommended it. In the days before amazon.com, I spent a couple years collecting the trilogy, which took me to bookstores in Minnesota and McFadden's hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, which really is as dirty, dreary and burnt-out as McFadden describes it.

McFadden mixes fiction and non-fiction together as he tells the story of his family's road trip in a Volkswagen camper around Lake Erie. He later wrote about their travel adventures as they toured the Lake Huron area. He had planned to write about trips around each of the Great Lakes, but then his kids grew up and he got a divorce. Ten years after he went around Erie and Huron, he finally tackled Lake Ontario alone, except for a three-man film crew that followed behind him and tried to stay out of his tale.

The reader is never sure whether McFadden is telling the truth or making it up. It doesn't detract from the story. Actually, it's a hoot when you come across the surreal parts of his tales. At one point in "A Trip Around Lake Erie," dead fish somehow migrate from the beach at Point Pelee to every room in the McFadden's Hamilton, Ontario home.

Each short chapter (many lasting less than one page) is a sly little poem. A movie scriptwriter had told McFadden that to make these books more saleable, he should have someone chasing him. McFadden doesn't need such Hollywood conventions. His stories of the road and his many digressions (including bicycling kinesiologists and a brown dachsund named Schenley, because his owners like the whisky)are a fanciful read in themselves.

I hope McFadden eventually makes it around Superior and Lake Michigan. Even if he doesn't, there's enough humor and magic in this fine trilogy to keep you smiling for years.

I also recommend a fourth McFadden road trip, "A Typical Canadian Family Visits Disney World," which is a hilarious long poem that is not included here, along with his other novels, poems and essays.

Translated from French into English by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, Gilles Havard's The Great Peace Of Montreal Of 1701: French-Native Diplomacy In The Seventeenth Century focuses on how the persistent, bloody, and often desolating wars between the French and their Native allies on the one side, and the Iroquois confederacy on the other was brought to a conclusion in the summer of 1701. 1,300 represents of forty First Nations (which ranged from the Maritimes to the Great Lakes and from James Bay to southern Illinois) met with the French at Montreal and, after a month-long ceremony, signed "The Great Peace of Montreal" which ended the Iroquois wars. The treaty, Gilles Havard persuasively argues, was the culmination of the French colonial strategy of native alliances and adaptation to Native political customs. The treaty process illustrates the extend of cultural interchange between the French and their Native allies and the crucial role the Native Americans would later play in the French conflicts with the Iroquois and the British. The Great Peace Of Montreal Of 1701 is a scholarly and invaluable contribution to both Canadian history and Native American studies.

This book will cause you to rethink your beliefs about wilderness, native Americans and ecology. Sajo and the Beaver People should be a children's classic if it is not already!

Despite its age, there is no better guide available to the nuts and bolts of how the Canadian political system works. It is also the best available political history of Canada during the 1970s. Too many today fall into the trap of either idealizing or condemning the Trudeau era. This presents a marvelously detailed yet succinctly understandable examination.

A Bela Coola Indian Chief of the isolated West Coast of Canada, Clayton Mack lived by salmon fishing, ranching, trapping and eventually became the most famous big game hunting guide in his area. He guided the rich and famous including Thor Hierdahl and Joe Brooks. His stories are simultaneously riotous and poignant tales of life amongst grizzlies and the often bizarre 'white hunters' who preyed upon the majestic bears. Written from taped interviews with Mack the book preserves his voice and conveys the essence of life as a native in a land dominated by white people. Honest and unromanticised stories about hunting, the Norht Woods and life as a Native. A unique book.

The novel, written for kids 9 and over, is primarily about the upheavals that occur in the life of an Indian-Canadian family when the grandmother (Naniji) visits from India. The protagonist is Tara a lively and sensitive 15-year-old. She is initially resentful of her visiting grandmother because the grandmother seems to disapprove of Tara's mother's somewhat Western ways and indeed of the Canadian ways of the whole family: the kids don't know Hindi, nor about Diwali; they don't play the sitar and, worst of all, know nothing of the family's role and sacrifice during the Indian Independence movement.

This is too much for Tara: "This is the world I live in. But how do I fit? I'm not one of the true natives, the First Nations, and not one of the whites who marauded the globe colonizing, who tell the history of Canada from when they arrived. I'm too dark for the Samanthas and the rednecks, but not dark enough for Tolly, or Indian enough for Naniji, too Canadian, too Western. Always too something. Never just right."

Tara reads a paper at school about Naniji's role in the Indian Independence movement. The most evocative part of the book occurs when Tara alternates between wanting to read the paper to her class, and not wanting to because of how her friends will react to it and to her (how it will affect her acceptance within the group). She reads the paper anyway. As she had feared, some of her classmates do "shutter down" - close up by seeming to brand her as "other". But, unexpectedly, some of them actually congratulate her and thank her for introducing her to an aspect of history and of herself of which they had been unaware.

Her mother and Naniji are proud of her - that is, until Naniji hears Tara proclaim how she, Tara, is a "regular" Canadian. At this point Naniji "shutters down" because she cannot countenance the fact that her granddaughter is a proud Canadian - what of the family's heritage, sacrifice and history back in India? What of their allegiance to India?

"Naniji catches me staring and tries to smile. She's stiff, but it's not like before, with the criticism and disapproval and the hostility. Her eyes - they are hurt."

The resolution of the conflict within the family and within Tara's own mind is handled by Ms. Gilmore with great maturity and eloquence. She articulates opposing points of view with clarity and grace. Without talking down to the reader, she addresses sensitive issues such as race and color, assimilation and alienation, head-on. This is important especially because these issues are hardly ever addressed in a safe, non-ideological way, without putting one or the other side down as the victim or the aggressor, the turncoat or the conservative.

I highly recommend this book - not just for kids in this age group, but even for their parents and grandparents. In fact, I would go so far as to say this book should be made required reading for all kids (on any rung of the assimilation ladder) because it will create a better understanding and awareness of the inner script that guides our public lives.

To read more of this review, go to desijournal.com

This book has been more helpful to us in many different areas. It explains everything from how and when to prune to how and when to fertilize. It shows both common name and scientific name in the table of contents to quickly find what you're looking for. If you are looking for a book that explains how to take care of everything available in the cold northeast, this is the book for you. Gardeners can't go wrong with this book.

This is a great resource for someone considering architecture school. It lists biographical information on every architecture school in the US...a very valuable resource.

The descriptions in this exhaustive guide are brief, but excellent. It covers the terrain within a long weekend's outing from Vancouver. It assumes that you know what you are doing and do not require trails to walk on. If you can navigate through the bush using a topo map, compass, and altimeter, then this is the best book for you. For more detailed info on hikes with trails, use the book "103 Hikes".

This book is an exhaustive, complete list of pretty much every summit in the region. It covers approaches and routes in a summary-type fashion, e.g. "follow west side of creek to 3000 ft., then follow NE ridge, keeping to the left of conspicuous gendarme. Some parties may wish to rope up for the final 500 ft., which is class 3". It doesn't hold your hand, but the advice is good, and if you are experienced (or corageous!) then this is more than enough info.

There are detailed descriptions for climbing and mountaineering routes. For popular climbing areas and peaks, i.e. the Tantalus Range, Sky Pilot, etc. there are photos with the routes marked on them.

If you are interested in transportation or aviation history, and you travel, this book will become an essential part of your research and travels. We found the book necessary in finding the museums, and in just identifying the fact that there were these exciting museums where we we going. It is very complete and easy to use.