DogFriendlycoms East Coast Dog Travel Guide or The Journals of Lewis and Clark

DogFriendly.com's East Coast Dog Travel Guide

Author: Tara Kain

Get the full and complete Dog Travel Guide to the East Coast from DogFriendly.com, used by millions of people annually for pet travel information. Want to read about our Top-200 "Must See" Dog-Friendly Places on the East Coast, plus over 6,000 more places to visit with your dog? From New England and New York through the Mid-Atlantic States and down to the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, you'll find a variety of great dog-friendly lodging, B&Bs, campgrounds, RV parks, pet-friendly attractions, parks, beaches, hikes, dog parks, outdoor dining, highway guides and more. Our highway guides for I-95 and other highways list accommodations by city and exit. Also includes a section on Canadian cities Toronto, Montreal and Quebec. From resorts like Key West, Bar Harbor, Cape Cod, the Adirondacks, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Hilton Head and Jekyll Island to cities New York,Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Orlando and Miami this guide covers everything to do with your dog. And whether you are traveling with a small or big dog, we focus on places that allow well-behaved dogs of all sizes and breeds.

STATES INCLUDED - Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Also covered are the Canadian Cities of Toronto, Montreal and Quebec.

TOP 200 "MUST SEE" DOG-FRIENDLY PLACES - Read about and visit some of the best places to bring your best friend. From places that welcome pets with open arms to some great places to visit that allow pets. Find hotels that pamper your pet, first-classoutdoor dog-friendly dining, popular sightseeing spots, great shopping centers that welcome your pooch, and some of the best dog-friendly beaches and hikes around.

LODGING - From standard accommodations to upscale resorts, you'll find dog-friendly hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns, cabins, vacation rentals, and upscale resorts. This guide includes both chain and independently-owned specialty accommodations that welcome your four-legged friend. Pet policies like pet fees, weight limits and restrictions are included. And the lodging we list allow dogs in non-smoking rooms.

CAMPGROUNDS AND RV PARKS - In addition to hotels and motels, you will also find dog-friendly campgrounds and RV parks that welcome dogs. Stay at campgrounds that offer dog-friendly trails nearby or within a short walk of your campsite. Plus pet-friendly camping cabins and RV parks for the not-so-ruffin'-it getaway.

ATTRACTIONS - Enhance your travel experience by visiting popular sightseeing areas, taking a dog-friendly boat, train, gondola or carriage ride, visiting a dog-friendly winery or farm, taking a guided walking or ghost tour, shopping in a retail store, walking through a historical area or museum, enjoying a National Park or even visiting a pet-friendly amusement park.

PARKS, BEACHES, HIKES AND DOG PARKS - Visit local, state or national parks and view huge waterfalls, hikes, canyons, windy mountain tops and sandy beaches. Pet policies are included, such as where dogs are allowed off-leash and where they need to be leashed.

OUTDOOR RESTAURANTS Dine outdoors with your best friend by your side at sidewalk cafes or upscale restaurants that have pet-friendly patios. Choose from a variety of restaurants and cuisines.

HIGHWAY GUIDES - Finding dog-friendly lodging along the road is now easier with our Highway Guides. Includes a lodging and campground guide for Interstate 95. Also included are highway lodging guides for 12 other East Coast Interstates I-10, I-40, I-64, I-70, I-75, I-77, I-80, I-81, I-85, I-87, I-90 and I-91.

Also includes:
- Public Transportation that allows dogs including city buses, trains and boats.
- Pet Travel Tips: Be sure to read our sections on Preparation for a Road Trip and Etiquette for the Traveling Dog.
- Internet Updates to let you know what has changed since the book was published.

Look this: Punished by Rewards or Creating Competitive Advantage

The Journals of Lewis and Clark (Mariner edition)

Author: Meriwether Lewis

In 1803, when the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the great expanse of this new American territory was a blank — not only on the map but in our knowledge. President Thomas Jefferson keenly understood that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward and that a national "Voyage of Discovery" must be mounted to determine the nature and accessibility of the frontier. He commissioned his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an intelligence-gathering expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, made the first trek across the Louisiana Purchase, mapping the rivers as he went, tracing the principal waterways to the sea, and establishing the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. together the captains kept a journal, a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the Indian tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River. In keeping this record they made an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, writes Bernard DeVoto, was "the first report on the West, on the United States over the hill and beyond the sunset, on the province of the American future. There has never been another so excellent or so influential...It satisfied desire and created desire: the desire of the westering nation."

Booknews

A new edition using the Thwaites text of 1904-1905. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Two Years Before the Mast or New York

Two Years Before the Mast (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Author: Richard Henry Dana

Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars

Biographies of the authors

Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events

Footnotes and endnotes

Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work

Comments by other famous authors

Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations

Bibliographies for further reading

Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

When doctors told Richard Henry Dana that an ocean voyage might halt his impending blindness, the nineteen-year-old Harvard undergraduate dropped out of school and became an ordinary deckhand on the brig Pilgrim. The perilous journey from Boston, begun in 1834, took the ailing yet determined youth past Cape Horn and around the Americas,concluding in the Mexican territory California.
 
This expedition inspired Two Years before the Mast, a first-hand account of "the life of a common sailor" and a work that combines history, philosophy, and personal experience. Published in 1840, the book convincingly re-creates life at sea—the beauty and adventure but also the cold, danger, and backbreaking labor. Dana's depiction of the inhuman conditions suffered by seamen at the hands of capricious, brutal, and even mad captains and ship owners was so stark that the book fueled urgent cries for reform. It also was deeply admired by Herman Melville, Dana's most famous literary confidante.
 
Dana eventually became a lawyer, devoting himself to fighting for the rights of sailors—and slaves—in court. He went on to help form the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, work for the federal government during the Civil War, and serve on the Massachusetts legislature.

Anne Spencer is the author of Alone at Sea: The Adventures of Joshua Slocum and three books of sea stories and folklore for young adults. A documentary maker for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she lives in Toronto.

Interesting textbook: Eyewitness Italian Travel Phrasebook or Eyewitness Travel Barcelona and Catalonia

New York: A Pictorial Celebration

Author: Rebeccah Welch

Travelers and armchair tourists will welcome this lavish tribute to the city that never sleeps. It covers every exciting inch of New York, from the South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge to the Empire State Building and Grand Central Station, from Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yankee Stadium. Distinguished scholar Rebeccah Welch tells the story behind every fascinating piece of architecture, park, and memorial, while Elan Penn captures everything from the African Burial Ground to the stunning skyline in awe-inspiring images. In addition, historical photos and drawings present important moments in New York’s life, including the inauguration of the Statue of Liberty.

The Motorcycle Diaries or Im a Stranger Here Myself

The Motorcycle Diaries: A Latin American Journey

Author: Ernesto Che Guevara

These travel diaries capture the essence and exuberance of the young legend, Che Guevara. In January 1952, Che set out from Buenos Aires to explore South America on an ancient Norton motorcycle. He encounters an extraordinary range of people-from native Indians to copper miners, lepers and tourists-experiencing hardships and adventures that informed much of his later life.

This expanded, new edition from Ocean Press, published with exclusive access to the Che Guevara Archives held in Havana, includes a preface by Che's daughter, Aleida Guevara. It also features previously unpublished photos (taken by Che on his travels), as well as new, unpublished parts of the diaries, poems and letters.

"A Latin James Dean or Jack Kerouac."-Washington Post

"For every comic escapade of the carefree roustabout there is an equally eye-opening moment in the development of the future revolutionary leader. By the end of the journey, a politicized Che Guevara has emerged to predict his own revolutionary future."-Time

The publication of this new, expanded edition of The Motorcycle Diaries coincides with the release of Robert Redford's new film based on the Diaries. This film and another forthcoming from Steven Soderbergh in Fall 2003 will provoke even greater "Che-mania" and increase sales of all Ocean's titles on Che Guevara.

Table of Contents:

	Preface	1
	Preface to the first edition	4
	Ernesto Che Guevara	5
	Brief chronology of Ernesto Che Guevara	7
	Map and Itinerary of The Motorcycle Diaries	11
	Introduction	15
	So we understand each other	31
	Forewarnings	32
	The discovery of the ocean	34
	... Lovesick pause	35
	Breaking the last tie	38
	For the flu: bed	40
	San Martin de los Andes	44
	Circular exploration	47
	Dear Mama	50
	The seven lakes road	51
	And now, I feel my great roots unearth, free and ...	53
	Curious objects	55
	"The Experts"	57
	The difficulties intensify	60
	La Poderosa II's final tour	62
	Firefighters, workers and other matters	64
	La Gioconda's smile	67
	Stowaways	73
	This time, disaster	76
	Chuquicamata	79
	Arid land for miles and miles	82
	The end of Chile	84
	Chile, a vision from afar	86
	Tarata, the new world	89
	In the dominion of Pachamama	94
	Lake of the sun	98
	Toward the navel of the world	100
	The navel!	103
	The land of the Incas	105
	Lord of the earthquakes	111
	Homeland for the victor	113
	Cuzco straight	115
	Huambo	118
	Ever northward	123
	Through the center of Peru	126
	Shattered hopes	129
	The city of the viceroys	133
	Down the Ucayali	140
	Dear Papi	145
	The San Pablo leper colony	146
	Saint Guevara's day	148
	Debut for the little Kontiki	152
	Dear Mama	153
	On the road to Caracas	158
	This strange twentieth century	160
	A note in the margin	163
App	A child of my environment (Speech to medical students, 1960)	167

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

Author: Bill Bryson

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me").  They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth.  The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

Jeff Stark

There are two sorts of columnists worth reading. One is the expert -- someone like Robert Christgau of the Village Voice, a guy who's breathed music for 30 years and knows more about the subject than Billboard does. The other kind is simply fascinating -- someone like Louis Lapham of Harper's Magazine, who can make a connection between Louis XIV's court and Reagan's cabinet one month and write on cultural commodification the next.

Bill Bryson, the author of the set of columns collected in I'm a Stranger Here Myself, is neither fascinating nor an expert. He's an American who wrote travel books and newspapered in England for 20 years before returning to New Hampshire with his wife and family in 1996. He's also the author of the 1998 bestseller A Walk in the Woods, a travel diary that details his aborted attempts to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail.

The best parts of A Walk in the Woods worked because not much happened along the trail; in order to fill in the holes, Bryson became something of an expert, studying and researching people, flora, fauna, history and park politics. There's none of that rigor in I'm a Stranger Here Myself, a coattail collection of columns, originally written for the British magazine Night & Day, that examine the minutiae of American life in neat four-page chunks. In one piece the subject is a small-town post office on customer-appreciation day; in another it's the tedium of highway driving. Nostalgia accounts for several essays about motels, drive-in theaters, small-town living and the beauty of Thanksgiving.

An editor of mine once told me that any writer you give a column to sooner or later ends up writing about television; he believed that writers are lazy people who would rather turn on the idiot box than get out of their bathrobes and report. Bryson starts writing about television in his third column. (He misses coming home drunk in England and watching lectures on Open University.) That column sets up a trap that he falls into for the rest of his book: Almost all of his subjects come to him. An article in the Atlantic Monthly becomes a column about the ludicrous drug war; a box of dental floss works itself into a confused meditation on consumer warnings and born worriers; a catalog prompts a thousand words on shopping. His laziness is contagious: If you read several columns in one sitting, you get to the point where you start skipping over weak leads ("The other day something in our local newspaper caught my eye"; "I decided to clean out the refrigerator the other day").

Bryson tries to make up for his reportorial torpor with jokes, as if he thinks we're more likely to enjoy a few strung-together paragraphs about barbershops if there's a zinger about Wayne Newton's hair at the end. He also relies on several crutches to get him through his weekly deadlines. Having returned to the States, he trades in the English smirk at absurdity for cudgeling exaggerations -- "help the National Rifle Association with its Arm-a-Toddler campaign" -- and he wraps almost every piece with a tacked-on paragraph that

To be fair, he's occasionally funny. (In a story about snowmobiling: "The next thing I knew I was on the edge of the New Hampshire woods, wearing a snug, heavy helmet that robbed me of all my senses except terror.") And in a few columns -- one on sending his son off to school, another about why autumn leaves change colors -- he actually invests either himself or his resources enough to give the work emotional or intellectual ballast.

Those moments are dismally few. When Bryson's editor at Night & Day persuaded him to write a column on American life for a British audience, he probably imagined something like Alexis de Tocqueville channeled through Dave Barry. What he got instead was the observational humor of a second-rate Seinfeld leafing through the mail in his bathrobe. -- Salon

Library Journal

After living in Britain for 20 years, humorist Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, LJ 4/1/98) moved his family back to the United States and settled in a small New Hampshire town. His British editor convinced him to write a weekly newspaper column about his impressions of America. "Mostly I wrote about whatever little things had lately filled my days--a trip to the post office, the joy of having a garbage disposal for the first time, the glories of the American motel." This book is a collection of those pieces, charting Bryson's progress "from being bewildered and actively appalled in the early days of my return to being bewildered and generally charmed, impressed, and gratified now." While featuring his trademark humor (fans find Bryson hysterically funny, while others think he's snide and sarcastic), I'm a Stranger Here Myself seems a bit slight and choppy. Because of Bryson's popularity, this will be in demand, but steer first-time readers to Notes from a Small Island (LJ 4/1/96) or The Lost Continent (LJ 7/89). [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/99.]--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"

San Francisco Chronicle

Bryson has never been wittier or more endearing than in these pages....Painfully funny and genuinely insightful.

The New York Times Book Review - Elizabeth Gleick

...Bryson [has] found his shtick, and he's sticking to it....Bryson's America is often wonderful but bewildering in all its vast, commercialized contradictions....The saving grace...is that even when Bryson attempts to crack old chestnuts...he can be a genuinely funny fellow....pleasingly cranky...

USA Today - Bob Minzesheimer

I'm a Stranger Here Myself is...like being in stop and go traffic with a bemused, entertaining writer...[He] finds most of his material in encounters with modern life.

The Wal Street Journal - Flatley

In [this] wonderfully droll book...Bryson sets hes tart pen to chronicling the absurdities and virtues of the american way of life...Mr. Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense...But in addition to all the fun he pokes at Americans, he also writes with true warmth about the kindness of his neighbors...It should be said that a familiarity with the British way of doing things will help readers truly appreciate some of the funnier jokes. But most of the time, Mr. Bryson's barbed punchlines hit their mark.

Kirkus Reviews

Waggish observations on everyday life in the US from bestselling Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, 1998, etc.), a guy who can find the humor in a bag of hammers and, often enough, the lesson too. Returning stateside after decades in Britain, Bryson was tapped to pen a weekly column for the British Mail on Sunday about life in America. What he offered was not a vast systematic picture, but rather quick sketches to reveal what unnerved and exhilarated him upon his return, what appalled him and what made him happy. And that is just what he delivers with these two-to-four-page broadsides, the revelatory minutiae that distinguish the US from all other countries. Take running shoes: "If my son can have his choice of a seemingly limitless range of scrupulously engineered, biomechanically efficient footwear, why does my computer keyboard suck?" He wants to know why a letter in the name of a certain toy company is reversed—"Surely not in the hope or expectation that it will enhance our admiration?"—or whether the executives in that company carry business cards saying "Dick _ Me." There are snorting jabs at the post office and car mechanics and hardware salesmen and, in particular and at length, his own moronic behavior (like "wrapping a rubber band around my index finger to see if I can make it explode" to test his body's tolerance of extremes). While this collection of almost six dozen pieces has a broad streak of guffaw-aloud humor, there are also occasional, spot-on critiques—as of the patent absurdity, "the zealous vindictiveness" of the US government's war on drugs—and a lone, touching item on sending his eldest son off to college that is so unexpected and disarming itcomes like a blow to the solar plexus. Truly and beguilingly, if you are a jaded resident of the USA, Bryson can rekindle your wonder and delight in the life and land around you. ($75,000 ad/promo; author tour; radio satellite tour)

What People Are Saying

Mary Higgins Clark
Nightmarish suspense.

Within the Frame or Small Place

Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision (Voices That Matter Series)

Author: David DuChemin

Within the Frame is a book about finding and expressing your photographic vision, specifically where people, places, and cultures are concerned. A personal book full of real-world wisdom and incredible images, author David duChemin (of pixelatedimage.com) shows you both the how and the why of finding, chasing, and expressing your vision with a camera to your eye. Vision leads to passion, and passion is a cornerstone of great photography. With it, photographs draw the eye in and create an emotional experience. Without it, a photograph is often not worth—and can’t capture—a viewer’s attention.

Both instructional and inspirational, Within the Frame helps you on your photographic journey to make better images of the places and people you love, whether they are around the world or in your own backyard. duChemin covers how to tell stories, and the technology and tools we have at our disposal in order to tell those narratives. Most importantly, he stresses the crucial theme of vision when it comes to photographing people, places, and cultures—and he helps you cultivate and find your own vision, and then fit it within the frame.

What People Are Saying

Joe McNally
"If the book simply stayed right there in the realm of how-to, go-to advice, it would be a wonderful book indeed. But it crosses the line from useful to inspire because David opens up much more than his camera bag. He opens his considerable heart and mind, both of which belong to a masterful storyteller driven by an acute sympathy for the human condition, coupled with an intense curiosity and respect for both the differences and the sameness of the world."--(Joe McNally, photographer, author of The Hot Shoe Diaries and The Moment It Clicks)

Scott Kelby
"David does something here that few have ever done-he not only shows his absolutely captivating images, he shows the thought process behind those images, as well as how to start capturing the types of images we all long to take. People will be talking about this book for years to come. It's that good!"--(Scott Kelby, photographer, author, President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals)

Small Place

Author: Jamaica Kincaid

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ."

So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up.

Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.

Library Journal

Kincaid here examines the geography and history of Antigua, where she was raised. We first see the island through the eyes of the typical North American tourist, who aims to exchange his or her own ``everydayness'' for that of someone without the same privilege. But rather than interpret Antiguan experience for outsiders, Kincaid lays bare the limits of her own understanding. She asks us to grasp the crime of empire in a new way, stressing that it can be understood only from a post-colonial point of view: surveying 20 years of a corrupt ``free'' government, she finds the inheritance of colonialism to be a commercial and governmental enterprise that serves individual interests. Antiguans, she effectively demonstrates, are ordinary people saddled with an unthinkable but unbreachable past. Mollie Brodsky, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

What People Are Saying

Jamaica Kincaid
"How do I write? Why do I write? What do I write? This is what I am writing: I am writing "Mr Potter." It begins in this way; this is its first sentence: "Mr. Potter was my father, my father's name was Mr. Potter." So much went into that one sentence; much happened before I settled on those 11 words....And then? I grew tired of that sentence and those 11 words just sitting there all alone followed by all that blank space. I grew sad at seeing that sentence and those 11 words just sitting there followed by nothing, nothing and nothing again. After many days it frightened me to see nothing but that one sentence and those 11 words and nothing, nothing and nothing again came after them. "Say something," I said to Mr. Potter."
— Writers on Writing, The New York Times, June 7, 1999

Israel Is Real or Walt Disney World for Kids 2009

Israel Is Real

Author: Rich Cohen

“It’s a great irony that Israel was more secure as an idea than it’s ever been as a nation with an army.”

In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it—by taking what had been a national religion, identified with a particular place, and turning it into an idea. Jews no longer needed Jerusalem to be Jews. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city. In this way, a few rabbis turned a real city into a city of the mind; in this way, they turned the Temple into a book and preserved their faith. Though you can burn a city, you cannot sack an idea or kill a book. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a

temple. And unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. The creation of Israel has made Jews vulnerable in a way they have not been for two thousand years.

In Israel Is Real, Rich Cohen’s superb new history of the Zionist idea and the Jewish state—the history of a nation chronicled as if it were the biography of a person—he brings to life dozens of fascinating figures, each driven by the same impulse: to reach Jerusalem. From false messiahs such as David Alroy (Cohen calls him the first superhero, with his tallis as a cape) and Sabbatai Zevi, who led thousands on a mad spiritual journey, to the early Zionists (many of them failed journalists), to the iconic figures of modern Jewish Sparta, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon, Cohen shows how all these lives together form a single story, a single life. In this unique book, Cohen examines the myth of the wandering Jew, the paradox ofJewish power (how can you be both holy and nuclear?), and the triumph and tragedy of the Jewish state—how the creation of modern Israel has changed what it means to be a Jew anywhere.

The New York Times - Tony Horwitz

Rich Cohen's book accomplished the miraculous. It made a subject that has vexed me since early childhood into a riveting story. Not by breaking new ground or advancing a bold peace plan, but by narrating the oft-told saga of the Jews in a fresh and engaging fashion.

Publishers Weekly

Reading the Bible and Jewish history "both literally and symbolically," this eclectic and passionate, wide-ranging history of Israel and Zionism by the author of Tough Jews decodes the story of Jonah in the whale's belly as the Diaspora Jew in Nazi concentration camps. Cohen catalogues the accomplishments of first-century Jewish scholar Jonathan ben Zakkai in the way Willie Dixon catalogues a man's deeds in a blues song, and summons Kierkegaard and Allen Ginsberg as he muses about Abraham, a crazy old man willing to murder his son to earn God's blessing: "Everything in Judaism is a repetition of this scene," Cohen asserts. Of Herzl, he says it was his career writing whimsical newspaper essays that made his mind fluid and open to the vision of Zionism. He sees Ariel Sharon as a tragic Shakespearean character who was driven to dismantle the settlements in Gaza out of a great love for Israel. Finally, Cohen does not believe that the Holocaust justifies the state of Israel-or that Israel needs to be justified. Cohen's idiosyncratic yet often lyrical take on Israel is sometimes exasperating but always deeply felt and refreshing. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Cohen (contributing editor, Rolling Stone) produces journalism on many subjects, but his books are all about Jews: Jewish gangsters (Tough Jews); Holocaust survivors taking revenge on Nazis (The Avengers); his own family (Sweet and Low); and now the entire Jewish nation. He does a marvelous job of getting the highlights of the actions of dozens of characters over a few thousand years of Jewish and Zionist history into a few hundred pages, while exposing the reader to points of view other than those of the author. More than a hundred books and articles are cited in footnotes or listed in the bibliography. VERDICT While Cohen clearly identifies with "the Jewish Nation," this is not just a defense of Israel like Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel and other books that set out to answer Israel's many critics. In a very personal effort to understand the how and why of Israel's history, Cohen helps the reader toward that understanding. Recommended for all interested readers.—Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll., CA

Kirkus Reviews

An accessible primer on a complex nation and its faith. Many of the facts about Israel are well-known. It's a Jewish state in the middle of an Islamic region of the world; its enemies question its right to exist; many European Jews have emigrated there in the decades following World War II; and its status in relation to Palestine and the rest of the region is complicated, controversial and often violent. Rolling Stone contributing editor Cohen (Sweet and Low: A Family Story, 2006, etc.) takes a long, idiosyncratic view, explaining the history of a people and its religion from the time Zealots revolted against their Roman occupiers to the rise of the Zionists, who helped build the current republic. "If this book is working the way it's supposed to," writes Cohen, "then each individual story will read like the history of Israel, and the history of Israel will read like the life of a single man." Along the way, the author brilliantly illustrates how Israel, once among the most powerful nations in the world, would likely have been destroyed if not for the efforts of a few forward-looking rabbis. While the smoke still rose from the remains of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the nation was transformed into an idea, which gave way to a centuries-long diaspora. Cohen soars as a storyteller, using a captivating cast of characters-including Josephus, the traitorous first-century historian; Theodor Herzl, the slightly crazed Zionist visionary; Ariel Sharon, the soldier and statesmen-to explain the mishmash of politics, ideology and psychology that have gone into the reification of Israel. Now, writes the author, Israel is under threat of destruction once again. A must-read for those who want tounderstand the context of the modern Jewish state.

What People Are Saying

Rich Cohen's passionate, engaged, thoroughly modern book is-dare I say -- a revelation. --Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Cohen is a masterful and slyly provocative writer who marches boldly into the most controversial issues posed by the existence of Israel. Blending historical narrative with contemporary reportage, Israel Is Real makes an argument that cannot be ignored. Along the way, Cohen establishes himself as being among the most talented essayists of his generation. --Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill

A fascinating big-picture account of Israel from its distant past to what happened last week. Rich Cohen tells this story central to mankind with skill, passion, common sense, and wit. --Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains

The best book I've ever read about Israel (that troubled state), and the last word on it: all the stories, all the figures, all the fires, all the battles, all the exiles, all the personalities, all the strikes, and all the gutters. Rich Cohen has delivered the full big thing, a monumental book, the best I've read and expect to read for a long time. As the priests in the old city would say, it has hava: it's full of life. --David Lipsky, author of Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point

Nobody has yet written about our Middle East heartbreak with such range and lucidity. Rich Cohen has kept an account of the wanderings; he's kept a record of the tears. Israel Is Real is the definitive book on Israel. --Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng

Rich Cohen's book creates a vibrant portrait that offers reasons Israel -- surrounded by those who want to exterminate it -- deserves to survive. --Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler

Walt Disney World for Kids 2009

Author: Birnbaum Travel Guides

Children are perhaps Walt Disney World's biggest fans. On playgrounds and in classrooms, there's always excited talk about who went to Walt Disney World and what they did each day-or minute. It has become almost a rite of passage to visit America's most popular travel destination, and kids can be wonderful sources of information.

Every area and attraction of Walt Disney World is covered, with kids' honest reactions and impressions included. There is a whole chapter devoted to each of the theme parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Disney's Animal Kingdom. Another chapter describes the rest of Walt Disney World, including Blizzard Beach, Typhoon Lagoon, Fort Wilderness, Downtown Disney, and dining spots with kid appeal.

The book is updated annually, and the 2009 edition features lots of new tips and attraction reviews from young "Disney Experts" around the world. We'll tell kids how to catch "Wildcat fever" at the rollicking new show, "High School Musical 2-School's Out!" And we'll give young readers the inside scoop on the newest WDW attractions, including the thrilling Toy Story Mania!

Harley Davidson Ride Atlas of North America or The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2009

Harley Davidson Ride Atlas of North America

Author: Rand McNally

Rand McNally and Harley-Davidson hit the road together with the second-edition Harley-Davidson® Ride Atlas of North America. Designed especially for Harley® riders, the atlas comes loaded with motorcycle-friendly maps, rides, and on-the-road resources. Makes a great gift for any rider!

What's inside:

• Specially-designed maps with an easier-to-identify road hierarchy that helps get riders off the beaten path
• Reliable, detailed Rand McNally maps of each U.S. state, major U.S. cities, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico
• On-page listings and on-map spottings of Harley-Davidson dealerships
• Ride log to record road trips
• 25 new scenic rides (including four legendary rides) across North America including descriptions of each ride, special route maps, full-color photographs, side trips, and thousands of miles of scenic roads
• Riding distances between hundreds of cities
• State and provincial motorcycle laws
• Border crossing information for Mexico and Canada
• Contacts for U.S. state parks and profiles of America's 10 most popular national parks
• Information on Harley-Davidson factory tours, Rider's Edge® - The Harley-Davidson Academy of Motorcycling, Harley-Davidson Authorized Rentals, the Harley Owners Group®, and motorcycle shipping

Details:

• 8.5" x 11"; designed to fit into a saddlebag
• 320 pages (284 pages of maps)
• Tear-resistant, water-resistant cover with more durable pages

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2009 (Unofficial Guides Series)

Author: Bob Sehlinger

More than 4 million copies sold! This series is the only one that offers evaluations based on reader surveys and critiques, compiled by a team of unbiased inspectors.

• Hotels, attractions, and restaurants in all price categories

• Extensive information on shopping, nightlife, and sports

• Easy-to-use, two-color design

• Detailed, 2-color maps

From the publishers of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World

"A Tourist's Best Friend!"
—Chicago Sun-Times

"Indispensable"
—The New York Times

Five Great Features and Benefits offered ONLY by The Unofficial Guide:

1. Exclusively patented, field-tested touring plans that save as much as four hours of standing in line in a single day

2. Tips, advice, and opinions from hundreds of Walt Disney World guests in their own words

3. Almost 250 hotels rated and ranked for quality and value, including the top non-Disney hotels for families

4. A complete Dining Guide with ratings and reviews of all Walt Disney World restaurants, plus extensive alternatives for dining deals outside the World

5. Every attraction rated and ranked for each age group; extensive, objective, head-to-head comparisons of the Disney and Universal theme parks

Susan Belsky - Library Journal

Reading this massive guidebook to Walt Disney World may take as long as actually visiting the theme park. "Your book reads like the operations plan for an amphibious landing," wrote one quoted reader. The highlights of this tome are the touring plans, which are developed by a computer program calculating average waiting times, ride duration, and time of day, among other factors. These plans help to avoid the "joy" of lengthy lines and crowds during the hottest part of the day. There is extremely detailed information on accommodations, including which rooms to avoid. Restaurant reviews include typical menu items and prices and most crowded times. Wondering whether a small child will be frightened by Snow White's Scary Adventures? Will Expedition Everest make Dad wish he had passed on the chili dog? Don't worry; each attraction is analyzed for fright factor and motion sickness potential. "Unofficial" means that the authors can offer critical assessments of ticket plans and attractions and can also include hotels and restaurants outside of Disney property. Sea World and Universal Studios nearby are also reviewed here thoroughly. Recommended for all public libraries.

Table of Contents:

Introduction.

PART ONE Planning before You Leave Home.

PART TWO Making the Most of Your Time and Money.

PART THREE Accommodations.

PART FOUR Serenity Now! A Look at Disney-area Spas.

PART FIVE The Disney Cruise Line.

PART SIX Walt Disney World with Kids.

PART SEVEN Special Tips for Special People.

PART EIGHT Arriving and Getting Around.

RENT AT THE AIRPORT OR OFF-SITE?

DOOR-TO-DOOR COMMUTING TIMES TO AND FROM THE DISNEY RESORTS AND PARKS.

PART NINE Bare Necessities.

PART TEN Dining in and around Walt Disney World.

WHERE TO EAT OUTSIDE WALT DISNEY WORLD.

WALT DISNEY WORLD BUFFETS AND FAMILY-STYLE RESTAURANTS.

THE BEST (AND WORST) DESSERTS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD.

WALT DISNEY WORLD RESTAURANTS BY CUISINE.

PART ELEVEN The Magic Kingdom.

PART TWELVE Epcot.

PART TH I RTEEN Animal Kingdom.

PART FOURTEEN Behind the Scenes at Walt Disney World.

PART FIFTEEN Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Universal Orlando, and SeaWorld.

PART SIXTEEN The Water Parks.

PART SEVENTEEN Beyond the Parks.

PART EIGHTEEN Shopping in and out of Walt Disney World.

PART NINETEEN Nightlife in and out of Walt Disney World.

Appendix, Indexes, Touring Plans, and Reader Surveys.

Our Dumb World or A Course Called Ireland

Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition

Author: Scott Dikkers

The world's most definitive fake world atlas: a repository of all known information about the planet Earth (except where covered by clouds).

Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition features incorrect statistics on all of the Earth's 168, 182, or 196 independent nations. It also features maps, including a fold-out world map at actual size. Readers will learn about every country from Afghanistan, "Allah's Cat Box," to the Ukraine, "The Bridebasket of Europe."

Today's news-parody consumer cannot possibly understand made-up current events without the context of fake world history and geography. That is why The Onion is publishing a world atlas: to help us. Our Dumb World is an invaluable tool for any reader interested in overthrowing a weakened government in East Asia, exploiting a developing nation in Africa, or for directions to tonight's party at Erica's. It is a reference guide to 250,000 of the world's most important places, such as North Korea's Trench of Victory, the Great Human Pyramid of Egypt, and Saudi Arabia's superhighway, the Mohammedobahn.

About The Onion
Every week, three million readers turn to the world's most popular news organization for a much-needed dose of Onion news and entertainment coverage. In a history spanning 15 years, six popular books, and 10 Webby Awards, The Onion has attracted legions of loyal fans drawn to its fearless reporting and scathing commentary on world events, human behavior, and journalistic convention.

Publishers Weekly

The first all-new publication from the Onion's stable of mad satirists since 1999's Our Dumb Century, this globe-spanning volume raises the bar for topical humor. Known for their savage, irreverent newspaper parody, the Onionstaff delight in playing up stereotypes and skewering perceptions, and they have picked an enormous playground in which to do so; this skewed world atlas compiles enough fictional facts to tickle-and probably offend-just about everyone. Profiling every country in the world-from the United States ("The Land of Opportunism") to Greenland ("The Largest Land Mass on Earth") to "The Who Cares Islands"-this handsome parody is visually indistinguishable from genuine reference materials, but with jokes crammed into every inch, from topographical maps ("Largest Mayan Casino in Mexico") and tiny vital statistics boxes (Syria's ethnicity: "Anti-Semitic Semites") to historic timelines (Ireland, 1387: "Luck of the Irish runs out") and photo captions ("Emergency shipments of food, water, and Bono reach Sudan"). The group's humor can demand a rarified kind of knowledge-as in the entry for Nicaragua, which revolves entirely around the now-ancient Nintendo game Contra-ensuring that some jokes will fall flat; for anyone with a cultural pulse, however, the hit-to-miss ratio will be high. Eminently browsable and compulsively rereadable, this is an essential book for fans of Stewart, Colbert and (of course) the Onion. (Oct.)