I spent over 6 weeks traveling in New Zealand, driving from the Bluff in the South to the Cape in the North, and this Guide proved to be very useful. It is better illustrated and more narrowly focused on top attractions than the Lonely Planet which i used on my previous trips. The Lonely Planet was also excellent, and it was better on history and geography, but this Eyewitness Guide made choosing easier. Highly recommended.

My husband and I are planning a trip to NZ and this book has everything! The photos are wonderful and layout of the book lends very well to designing a travel itenerary. There are maps of everything, from a map of the entire country to very detailed maps of specific tourist sites. The only other thing you would need is a detailed road map of the country.

As an airline employee, I have found my new bible. This book is an excellent (pictoral) reference guide, skipping the usual 2 page historical write up on every attraction. It is very concise, has pictures of the area/attraction with an accurate two paragraph description of the place depicted with maps included. I purchased two other New Zealand books prior to this one, and borrowed 5 additional ones from a friend. This book was equivalent to having all 7 books in one. I would give the book a '10' if it contained the hours and admission prices to the attractions/events, however, it does not. I would also recommend to venture beyond the hotel/restaurant section listed as we found many fine establishments beyond their limited list. A great line of books to have if you want a quick overview of things to do in other countries. Once you've determined what to visit, then purchase the book with the historical write-ups.

Sue Cowing's anthology offers gorgeous affiliations. Each double-page spread pairs remarkable poems with stunning visual works. So marvelously diverse are the images that it is hard to keep in mind that they are all drawn from the works of only one museum, The Honolulu Academy of Arts. The editor's deft choices give this lovely book its distinctive excellence. The volume in its entirety is a wonderfully composed and elegantly orchestrated picture poem. It is a collection to savor and to return to often for refreshment.

A buffet of poetry--not the tired old poetry we've munched again and again, but fresh ideas from fresh poets, mainly from the Pacific area. A meaty soup of eclectic art, as diverse as a Grecian urn and an Eskimo seal sculpture. A book to relish from time to time, too rich to be eaten at one sitting. A book to ponder, to chuckle over, to dream... I especially enjoyed the wise folk sayings such as, "Water..needs no feet..heals itself," from the Philippines and "One dog barks at nothing, ten thousand others pass it on." from Japan. The Chinese, speaking of butterflies, say, "Lives one day..what does it know of the seasons." Ancient wisdom, modern applications. This is a book for all ages--of people and of times. In Hawaii, it won the coveted Po'okela award.

Good parties should introduce us to someone new and worth meeting. This lovingly put-together anthology of poems and visual art is The Party for the End of the Millenium: John Keats and Kobayashi Issa talk fire and water with an Australian aboriginal bark painter and an Inuit sculptor. Sue Cowing, an award-winning author herself, hosts an exhilarating party, having invited poets and artists from New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Hawai'i and other Pacific lands to join more well-known guests like Marc Chagall and Elizabeth Bishop. It's a pleasure to see what connections are made, but the true rewards come when you begin entering into conversation with these dazzling sensibilities yourself. And though there's no "children's poetry" here in the conventional (condescending) sense, the poems have been selected so that the lucky child who stays up late and wanders down into this celebration will feel included and full of wonder. Highly recommended

This book breaks all the boundaries - combining Photography, digital media and narrative to capture the wild spirit in us all. Makes me want to buy and camel and set off!

I bought this book while on a visit to Australia in 1990 and read it on the flight home! I was completely entranced by this woman's tenacity and determination to complete her often difficult but life expanding trek ALL ALONE! I had lost this book in a fire in 1993 and felt like I had lost a friend - I am soooo happy to see it is back in print! The incredible photos that accompany the journey are worth every penny!

I bougt this book in Italy and I knew a little part of Australia. Buy it, you will found marvellous photos in the book and cd-rom also! FANTASTIC.

An avid collector of Himalayan subject matter, I have also been lucky enough to have wandered around the upper Langtang Valley on several occasions in the last few years. Not only is Tilmans book still accurate in many respects, but it is also highly amusing at the same time. Fact, folklore and quotations are fantastically woven into a single, almost epic tale of discovery. It is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, and yet one might feel a certain sense of guilt at particular comic moments. Where Tilman describes one of his porters as "slow in mind and weak in leg, and not, one suspects, long down from his tree", it is an hilarious turn of phrase, but in our modern standardised and easily-scandalised society one feels the need to look over one's shoulder to make sure the PC police aren't looking.
I would heartily recommend anyone to read the book, particularly if it is available, the Nepal Himalaya single edition, - great, great books for travelling minds (and soles..) so long as you can cope with the mountain of salt required to see some of Tilmans less emphatic points.

Tilman and Shipton were the first humans to enter the Nanda Devi sanctuary, a valley surrounded by some of the greatest Himalayan peaks. They were indelibly marked by the experience.

Not only is Tilman's book brillantly written, but his chapter on "Two Mountains and a River," which focuses on the Swiss/British expedition to Rakaposhi and the Kukuay Glacier illustrates all the problems and hardships my uncle, Hans Gyr experienced during his quest for conquering the Rakaposhi in the Karakorum. Thanks to Tilman, I know now so much more about these few trying weeks in snow and ice. I recommend this book to all who like not only mountains, but solitude and the ultimate challenge.

Having been a collector, affectionate reader, and on-the-field user of Lonely Planet guidebooks during my numberless and continuous travels, I can indeed witness that this one is one of the best. Some guidebooks try to cover too much, e.g. all of West Africa or all of Central Asia, and don't do the job so well (inevitable and still better than carrying one book for each country, but to the detriment of the quality). Another common problem, is the author's favourable bias towards the country she or he is covering, as if it were the most marvelous place on Earth - I think here of the LP guidebook to Libya. In other books still, some regions are covered more in-depth than others: the Indonesia guidebook only has seven pages on East Timor, which would in fact deserve a whole chapter if not a whole book on its own ! Instead, in covering the fascinating land of Papua New Guinea, this author has done an excellent job, and not much else really needs to be added: this is indeed the Lonely Planet standard, that is to say, an excellent standard. For those who may not be familiar with it, this means excellent, up-to-date, accurate coverage of all areas of the country, with information (primary basic facts as well as further data for perfectionists) about accommodation, getting around, eating, entertainment, etc. Despite the vastity of this land and the difficulty of getting to the most remote areas, the author has managed it. The chapters on history and culture, especially in this guidebook, I find to be extremely well-written and researched. This one is indeed an excellent tool not only for the traveller but also for the armchair traveller who may wish to know more about PNG without necessarily going. It is extremely enjoyable and pleasant to read, thus combining the unrivalled qualities of a guidebook from Lonely Planet, with great information and facts about the mysterious land of Papua New Guinea.

Even though this edition is already some years old it is still THE guide for independent traveling in this awesome country.

I was traveling in 2000 for about 8 weeks in PNG and found the book a real help for getting around in a country that is far away from being touristy. Whether you are looking for a bus stop, the next spots for hiking or diving, hotel information or information on culture and religion this book has it all in detail.

Especially in this kind of less developed country every bit and piece of information in this book is worth every cent you spent for it.

We traveled to Mt. Hagen and Port Moresby last March for the first time. What a great and beautiful country, and what a perfect travel guide to orient you. While this book is nice enough to have on the shelf, ours is worn from use... and usefulness. As a bonus, it's also well-written and a great book to read!

Lonely Planet has again done a superb job combining art, graphics, maps and information in exactly the right proportions. There are a collection of excellent color and black & white photos and graphics. The history and cultural background is extensive owing to the three experienced traveler-writers. They make great use of side-bars to highlight special features and information (a trade mark of most Lonely Planet materials).

All the regions are treated pretty equally and include useful maps that otherwise would be tough to find anywhere.

If you could only buy one book in preparation for your trip, you would not have any problem making this your "Bible". It is also a great size at 5 x 7.25 x 5/8's inches and printed on high quality paper.

I will always look to Lonely Planet as my first choice in travel books.

I bought a number of guides to Australia and studied each before leaving. They were all helpful in planning my trip, but Australia Handbook stood out for its coverage of the country in general as well as all the usual hotel and restaurant recommendations. As well as balancing this coverage, I found the book to be up to date and, with everywhere I traveled, anyway, coverage was thorough. Many guidebooks I have used in the past concentrate on the big cities, but this one led me further afield to the kind of places only locals would usually know about. By the end of my trip I was relying almost entirely on it for places to stay and eat, and couldn't find a fault in the choices provided.

I highly recommend this book to anyone traveling to Australia.

We purchased this book before leaving for a six-week trip Downunder. It contained all the information we needed for pretrip planning as well as wealth of information on the country itself. Once in Australia I found it an indispensible aid for choosing what we wanted to see in the limited time we had. The accommodations and restaurants recommended were also spot on, and it was obvious to us as soon as we started traveling that the book is extremely well-researched.

Australia is truly a wonderful place, so it may sound cliched, but this book really helped make our trip everything we had dreamt of. I highly reccomend this book to anyone heading Downunder. It is well worth the investment.

I bought several traveler information type books before my transcontinental trip to Australia last year. This was BY FAR the best! After only a few days, I "packed" the others away.

I purchased this book in anticipation of a trip to Hawaii, wanting to learn more about the cultural roots. This presentation was exceptionally beautiful (amazing paintings), simple in its presentation, and left the reader feeling a part of it all. I highly recommend this book.

If you have a desire to glimpse the glorious past that was Hawai'i, then this is your ticket. Ancient Hawai'i is both broad and deep without being overwhelming. The book is lavishly illustrated, which helps stimulate the imagination, and the text is very well written. It is easy to see that this was a labor of love.

My favorite section in the book was titled Reciprocity, in which the author distilled the ingenious economic system of Hawai'i to less than two pages, and still managed to convey the complex social trait of the Hawaiian culture, uku.

It is with this sense of uku that I wish to say mahalo to Herb Kane for his gift of pictures and words, and also pass his gift onto you, the next reader.

There is simply no one alive who could do what Herb Kane has done for the understanding of precontact Hawaii. We should all be grateful that such an accomplished artist also possesses considerable research skills and the ability to display them. One gets all three in this splendid paean to Kane's ancestors.

ANCIENT HAWAII is a beautiful and understandable look at Hawaii before the arrival of Captain Cook. One would have to travel the world to see this collection of Herb Kane's paintings and drawings, and spend hundreds of hours in the library to get this sort of understanding and feeling for the precontact Hawaiian world.

Herb Kane is the real thing. The book is for everyone.

Excellent book! Some events bring me back to my childhood years growing up in the Bay area.

I love the essays of Frank Chin. I just wished that the editor would put in "Racist Love" in this anthology. Anyway, this book is a treat because you'll have a commentary of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR. Over and over again I've heard Chin mention how well ART OF WAR reflects Asian thinking. Well, it's now available to you guys, written by Frank Chin himself!

This book is a work of art. I loved every page of it. Thank you Mr. Chin

The best travel books are first-person, and Ms. Brewster's book is charming and insightful. A first-hand look at one woman's attraction to an amazing country!

Barbara Brewster's book "Down Under All Over" gets inside a vast country, and let's us see, hear, see and smell it with plenty of detail and first-person account. The book has made me want to see Oz. The author's relationship with the people there has touched me as well. After all, what travel is about, when all is said and done, is the folks you meet. I highly recommend this book.

This book made a perfect vacation read. On a domestic trip I read it a little each day for a week, and every moment it was like I was down under. Brewster takes us through quick stops throughout the continent, telling of her hitchhiking adventures, soulful solitary moments, profoundly happy and inviting stays with local friends and acquaintences, and unique cultural experiences, both during her more recent return trip to Australia and her original stay 20+ years ago. Interested in going, I checked the book out from the library along with some travel books on Australia, and it really brought some neat vicarious experiences into my life. I'm checking into getting some of the music she mentions, especially 'Gondwanaland'. Definitely a recommended read to those wanting an enjoyable look into some of Australia's life!

A boy journeys through the rain forest and begins to fantasize about the plants and animals that lived there millions of years ago. At the end of the day, he begins to wonder how it could change in the future.
The forest in this story really exists in Australia. The artist uses relief collages for the illustrations in this book. Many of these "collage constructions" have been exhibited in art galleries around the world. This story makes the reader think about how civilization can affect Mother Nature. Finding the hidden pictures is sure to delight readers of all ages.

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This is one of Jeannie Baker's early books, first published in 1988. It's good to see that it is still in print.

"Where The Forest Meets the Sea" is truly a work of art. It is an ideal companion to her most recent work "The Hidden Forest". It is fascinating to see how her style and technique has evolved and become increasingly sophisticated over the past 12 years.

Jeannie has an unashamedly environmental message to deliver, with her simple story lines dealing with the fragility of very special, ecologically unique areas. She doesn't push too hard with the rhetoric but lets her beautiful, ultra-lifelike, 3 dimensional images provide the perfect supporting context.

Having recently seen an exhibition of Jeannie's work that provided the images for "Hidden Forest" it is clear that it is the visual power of the images that is the most effective means of convincing people of the value of a particular environment.

In the dark forest scenes there are hidden dinosaurs and aboriginal figures providing a mystical quality to the book. The message that comes through is the timelessness of the natural environment.

We are reminded at the end of the book of the potential for man to radically change the environment for the worse. It takes books like this to provide us with insights and observations that will prevent this from happening.

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Jeannie Baker is a collage artist, and has created a beautiful book from a huge array of natural materials. The photographic illustrations of the collages have enormous texture.

An Honour Book in the Australian Children's Picture Book of the Year awards. It conveys a message of the need to care for the natural environment, and warns against the over-development of wilderness areas. Raises important issues in the most exquisite way.

Well-loved by children, and deserving of a place in every school, public and home library.

A beautiful depiction of an exquisite wilderness, the Daintree Rainforest of far north Queensland.

Also recommended for older children and adults who enjoy and appreciate innovative illustration and the art of children's books.