Are you touring the great American Southwest soon? Looking for a little help finding your way around? Maybe you want to know a little bit about the people or the history? You have found the right book.

The first thing I noticed was how heavy this book is. It's over 1.5 lbs and unusually heavy for a paperback book. The reason is the heavy weight paper. The thick and heavy paper is beautifully printed with easy to read text, photos and maps.

The next thing I found so cool is the photographs. These quality photographs are large and beautiful. No tiny little thumbprint photos in this book...oh no. It's like a small version of a coffee table book.

Huge sections include chapters on history, people, places and features of the American Southwest.

• History: What happened in ancient times up to contemporary times. Migrations of people and events captured in petroglyphs. Cowboys and buckaroos are born. Barbed wire shapes the land and Native American lands are changed and relocated. It's all covered in the first 50 pages.

• People: The Native Americans... the Navajo, the Hopi, the Tohono O'Odham and Pima people. The Hispanics and the Anglos. All have plenty of discussions about family and home life as well as the struggles in the next 60 pages.

• The Art in the Southwest as well as the cuisine and topics covering the film industry and the flora and fauna have about 50 pages devoted.

• Places: The next 150 pages cover Places. What's so perfect is that every place seems so interesting. Of course their aren't any personal experiences or recommendations about best time of year to travel and when to avoid the crowds.
  
  

  And then I got to the back 25 pages. Travel Tips.
  

  • Climate
  • Customes and Passport/Visa information
  • Getting to the area by train, air, bus or car
  • A few recommended places to stay for each state.
  • A few listed places to eat per state.
  • Calendar of Events - small listings for each state.
  This book is a nice guide with unusual and interesting information. And of course the pictures!
  
  I purchased it as an accompaniment to my other guide books, not as my only guide book for the American Southwest.
  

• This guide covers the famous sites and then tells you about interesting little side trips to take in. Like a beautiful Jewish Cemetery just down the way from the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Arizona. Almost every page has a tip for sightseeing, or a map location and every page has those gorgeous photographs...I just can't get enough of them.