You will not be finding this book on the shelves at Provo City Library. Being a native Californian, I picked up this book thinking I would get a nice overview of the state I now call home. I know enough about Utah to realize how poorly written and edited this book is. My time reading this book quickly changed from a learning experience into a brief episode of entertainment. The laughter began on the second page where a photograph that is obviously of downtown Salt Lake City is captioned as "Mount Timpanogos...rises just north of Salt Lake City"! I have lived here long enough to know that is false! The next section that I found humorous was titled "Utah's History and People". This part was full of confusing sentences and repetitive information. Also, did you know that the first Mormon settlement was called Desert? Amazing the difference one little letter 'e' makes, isn't it? Later on there is a photo of some women on horseback. The women and horses are dressed quite colorfully in ethnic costumes, yet the caption states, "The women in this photograph are dressed like the Mormon pioneers of 1847". To wrap things up, there's a section called "Utah's Sports Teams". The only professional team mentioned was the Jazz (what about the Grizzlies, the Bees, Real Salt Lake, and the Utah Blaze?), then the author moved on to university sports. BYU's women's cross-country team was mentioned along with the University of Utah's women's gymnastics team and their various ski teams. Last time I checked both school's had mentionable football, basketball and even volleyball teams. I think you get the idea. This book does contain some facts, but to prevent false information being provided to our patrons, we have taken this book out of circulation. However, take this review as a warning in case you stumble across this book at another library or a store.
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