Yosemite, the Southern Sierra Nevada & Death Valley

David Page may have invented a new genre - the literary travel guide.

His book starts with natural and cultural history - "Contexts" - the back-stories to the remarkable places he describes in graceful language.

Page has skied, climbed, walked or driven to all of these places and this shows in the how-to-get-there chapter called "Into the Hills".

Each area chapter, Death Valley, Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra, Mammoth Lakes, Sequoia Kings Canyon and Yosemite, has more context stories and exhaustive listing of places to eat and stay, and things to see and do. The book is crammed with details: you can get rattlesnake empanasas at the Furnace Creek Inn, the location of the only Indian restaurant between LA and Carson City in Nevada, where to check the white-water flows on the Kaweah River, the temperature of Keogh Hot Springs and much more.

Describing the highest, lowest, snowiest, driest, sunniest, and arguably some of the most beautiful places in the US, this book is a splendid resource for exploring a remarkable land. This is a book worth reading, even if you never get to visit these places. But I hope you do.
- Bill Becher