Backpacking

Trail Food: Drying and Cooking Food for Backpacking and Paddling
$10.95
I have done very little backpacking and moderate camping, and I waited with baited breath for this book to arrive (fortunately delivery was very fast so I had little time to form my expectations). When it did arrive, I read the book in a matter of a couple hours. Granted, I did not read through every recipe. This book does have some good common sense information about food drying, but not much more than typical instructions of most driers supply. From there the book goes through the other issues of packing, carrying and preparing trail foods in the very briefest of manners. There are many recipes included, and I will invariably use a few of them, but this is not the information I sought as I know how to cook. The book was weak on many issues that I hoped it might contain, such as information on nontraditional means of food production, such as solar cooking. The short piece on choices between stoves and fires, and the choices in stoves was near useless, even for an beginner, but it did help to fluff out this very tiny 88 page book to a bit more reasonable expectations of what defines a book. There are many line drawings that also stand in place of the diction I expected, and the majority of them have little to do with support of the text. My biggest disappointment is the complete lack of mention of plant based foods gathered along the way. I know there are many books on this topic, but I was more than a little surprised to find a total lack herein. I guess I was looking for a useful trail book, and this is certainly not it. The space in my pack is too valuable.
If you are looking for a recipe book with other basic tips, this book will serve you very well. Strangely, what I enjoyed most are the bits of prose at the chapter heads, but of course these had nothing to do with the book's subject. If you removed these from the book, and the useless line drawings, you would have enough left over for a lengthy magazine article, not a book. I am glad to have read this book, and I will refer to the recipes from time to time, but unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket, I would look for a used copy or go with another book altogether. Like most of you, I picked this book because of its high review ratings, and this time the ratings let me down.

The Backpacker's Field Manual, Revised and Updated: A Comprehensive Guide to Mastering Backcountry Skills
$15.95
If you need to know anything relevant to the back country join The Boy Scouts or buy this book. I hate, hate, hate!, packing a book when I go hiking/backpacking but this is such a good resource I do anyway. If you have any kind of emergency this book would be a very reassuring second opinion to your plan of action. It's also a lot of fun to read some of the little tricks inside as you're winding down after dinner.

Coleman Hooligan 2 Backpacking Tent
$49.99
Having never set this tent up before, I was surprised when it only took me ten minutes to put up, in the dark. It stayed dry through the night for five nights, never got too stuffy, and easily fit two people.

Allen and Mike's Really Cool Backpackin' Book: Traveling & camping skills for a wilderness environment
$14.95
I received this book yesterday, and read the whole book by dinner time! The author, and illustrator know how to give you the information needed without the side effect of sleepiness.
I'm new to backpacking, and haven't camped for about 15 years. When I did camp it was in the west coast deserts, or redwoods. I'm now in the hot and humid Georgia terrain. I was pleased to find information on all types of trips from desert to ice, and everything in between. Also there is a resource page for any information that would go beyond what they wanted to cover.
I even enjoyed reading information I already knew. But most of all, I enjoyed finding a bunch of information that I didn't know.
This book is a great resource for the beginning backpacker.