The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World (and Land)

Travel books are one of the most popular types of books in our non-fiction book collection.  Lots of people like to check out travel books before they go to a new destination so they know what sights to see and good restaurants to try.  Your basic travel book has listings for the sights, hotels, and restaurants.  The Unofficial Guides to Walt Disney World and Land are a little different.  If you are planning a trip with your family to either of the Walt Disney resorts these guide books are a must have.  The Unofficial Guides are designed to help you create a strategy for dealing with the crowds and lines at both locations.  If you use these guides they will save you a huge chunk of time and aggravation and will make your visit to the Magic Kingdom so much more enjoyable.

What the Unofficial Guides do is explain how the parks work at both Disney World and Disney Land and how to best take advantage of the ways things work.  The books explain when the best times to visit are based on how busy the parks are.  They also explain how the lines work for each of the rides and how to best avoid those lines.  They give you a clear and easy to understand method for how to get in the most rides while avoided the long lines.  You'll feel like an "insider" while you rush through the fast pass line at Space Mountain at 2pm with the free fast pass ticket you picked up at 10am.  These books go as far as providing a detailed itinerary explaining what rides you should go to and when.  For instance, go to the Peter Pan ride as soon as the park opens.  Otherwise you'll be in line for at least an hour.

What is nice as well is although they provide a detailed itinerary for what rides to do when it is also fairly flexible.  The book explains the system they use and how to use that system to develop your own itinerary as well.

Each ride is also rated for how fun it is along with how kid friendly it is as well as if you should ride it if you have issues with motion sickness.  All of the other features of the parks including every restaurant and hotel is also rated in terms of quality and price.  There are also insider tips about how to deal with disabled guests, elderly guests, babies & toddlers, large groups, and the special events that happen throughout the year.

These are perhaps some of the most useful travel books on the market.  They provide clear results if you follow their advice.  You'll end up saving literally hours of time each day by not standing in long lines.  These are travel books that will truly enhance and improve your trip.  If you are planning a trip to either Disney Land or World you MUST read these books before your trip.

Meet the Author!

Join us on October 9th at 7pm at the Deerfield High School Auditorium.
Author Cory Doctorow will discuss his novel Little Brother,
the 2012 One Book One Zip Code selection.
Register now!

 

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Joe Sacco occupies an interesting niche in the world of graphic novels.  Sacco has created his own unique sub-genre of graphic novel journalism.  In his best works Sacco visits various hot spots in the world just as the average journalist does.  But instead of writing stories about what he sees and who he interviews, he draws comics in a graphic novel form.  His work is unique as his drawings often capture scenes and faces in a way that makes the people that you read about seem more real, perhaps more human, than they would be if you were just reading about them in print.

“Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” is a collaboration between the liberal writer Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, who provides the illustrations.  It is a fascinating look at current conditions in the United States.  In the past all of Joe Sacco’s works have taken place in far flung places around the world that are desperate in some way.  The West Bank, Yugoslavia during the civil wars there, Iraq, but this book is placed right here at home.  Sacco and Hedges visit four of the most economically depressed places they can find in the USA.  Each spot seems to be a perfect representation of the problems that face different types of people in our country.  The problems of First Tribe Native Americans are shown by visiting and talking to people who live on the reservation at Pine Ridge, South Dakota.  Then we visit Camden, New Jersey, a formally thriving industrial center that is now a wasteland, which seems to represent the plight of African Americans.  Then Hedges and Sacco visit several small towns in West Virginia that have been decimated by hilltop removal mining.  The residents of these towns are all white and many remember the days when the unions were strong.  Finally they visit the town of Imoakalee Florida, a center of migrant workers who work in virtual slavery, to represent the plight of Latinos in this country.

The book shows four distinct areas in the country, and four distinct ethnic groups, and yet they are all linked by the fact that each area has been destroyed by the economic greed of corporations and capitalists.  These are the people where the social safety net has completely failed and they seem to have no hope.  This is a deeply disturbing and grim book.  It’s not light reading.  It also is unapologetic about representing an extremely liberal point of view, especially in Chris Hedges writing.  In many ways it shows how effective Joe Sacco’s own work is.  Chris Hedges is an excellent writer but sometimes his prose seems so one sided that there is little room for any grey areas or debate.  Joe Sacco’s drawings however, let the characters tell their own stories, and it’s up to the reader to interpret them in their own way.  Their two different approaches work well together and seem to strengthen their argument that something is terribly wrong with the economic structures that are in place in the USA.  There have been many reviews written about “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” that say it’s one of the most important books that has come out about the current state of our country.  If nothing else it is an amazing eye opening look into four cities in the USA that seem to be more like they are from the third world than our own country.  After reading this you might find it hard to believe that these cities and conditions like this even exist in our own country.  But they do.