Customer Reviews

Moon Handbooks Nevada

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Way back in the early 90s I bought my first copy of Castleman's Nevada Handbook. I was astonished at the breadth and depth of the book, and I was delighted at the author's idiosyncratic but engaging style. I liked the book so much I actually wrote Castleman a letter of praise (this was pre-Amazon). As new editions came out every three years or so, I bought each one. (I visit Nevada annually.) Unfortunately, someone decided this new edition needed to be a mere ghost of previous editions. I can't fathom what the idea was here. It wasn't just to make room for more Vegas information, because this edition is much shorter than previous ones. Reading over comments from other readers, I notice that the positive reviews seem to come from people who never saw the previous editions. Those who'd seen earlier versions of the book are, like me, deeply disappointed. What a shame that some editor somewhere decided "Hey, I've got an idea --- let's take this great book and make it WORSE."

I have always found the Moon Handbooks to be good reference material. I had the 2001 version of the same book but of course things change in a few years time. The current version is about half the size of the old one and I have not had the time to discern the difference in the two books. Perhaps the new one is more of an abridged version. In any event it is still a very useful tool and will be used in our upcoming trip to that area.

I looked at this in the book store, saw that the first 129 pages are just about Las Vegas, and almost didn't buy it.

But it is a pleasure to read. We used it to choose an RV park along Rt 80 in Northern Nevada, and the discriptions just were funny.

We saw things that we would not of had we not bought this book.