Hillingers California

Over 150 charming and irrepressible stories covering all 58 California counties, drawn from a variety of likely and unlikely sources, including such vignettes as: a visit with Jack London's daughter; a chilly excursion into California's Switzerland; a profile of Death Valley's good Samaritan; Christmas in Yosemite; a look at that empire known as Disneyland; a view of Mt. Shasta, the sacred mountain; trips to an iron zoo, a Samoan cookhouse, a ghost town, a moaning cave, a mystery house; along with many more delights. Hillinger elaborates on the myths and legends that have grown up around particular people and places of California, along with profiles of famous characters associated with the state, such as Robert Louis Stevenson. But it's not the rich and/or famous that make this book so enjoyable -- it's the quirky descriptions of strange and surprising nooks and crannies throughout the state that many people in those very counties may not know about. These are beautifully rendered human interest stories by the author of Charles Hillinger's America, and like that book this will surely appeal to everyone, whether or not they happen to live in California. It's a book filled with lore and wisdom, history and anecdote, biography and fable, geography and myth. Included are numerous black and white photographs of the places visited by Hillinger, an author known as "the Charles Kuralt of print".