Inaccurate geography.
349540
The summary of this book indicates that it is set in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.  However, the main location - Westcliffe is located in the Wet Mountain Valley, not the San Luis Valley.  The Sangre de Cristo mountain range is between the 2 valleys.

As an example, the author mentions the "nearby" Great Sand Dunes.  Per MapQuest, driving distance between Westcliffe and the Great Sand Dunes is 137 miles.  http://www.mapquest.com/maps?2c=westcliffe&2s=co#c390695ca3558982cecb830e

This error makes all re-searchable data suspect.
4058194
Interesting story line of some possible characters never included in historical accounts... certainly fictional but illustrative.

As a director hard Texas, the geographical locations were never correct.  It looked more like west Texas than the Piney Woods and South Texas.
4354125
Bit more than it can chew.  A lot of space to France, for instance, while not enough detail about other places like Switzerland.
4017380
This book was recommended reading for a group dealing with race in our families.  From the start I had trouble buying into the story because of inaccuracies in the portrait of 1974 Wisconsin.  The town could not have been as small as she portrayed if they had a meat and a shoe factory, a medical center and a gun shop.  It is more likely that the trailer park for the poor families would have been in town and not out in the country where they would not have had access to stores and work.  Deer are hung with their front legs in the air and hind legs down.  And in that part of Wisconsin in 1974, it would have been unusual not to have Native American children be a part of a racial story in that type of Wisconsin town.  I kept getting hung up on the inconsistencies and was never able to buy into the story.
2805284
the map pictured is not always the one you get...company said it is billed as a world map...not any certain part of the world...oh well, at least it is our world...
4264852
I have taught high school geography for 10 years and this book covers the basic facts for all the countries, but I do not believe this is what geography is all about.  The real "fun" in geography is applying the facts to the real world.  Why does Pakistan and India not get along?  Why might the U.S. be willing to go to war with China over Taiwan?  What does Latin America and South Africa have in common?  How has physical geography influenced how Europeans have related to western Africans?  Facts are great but geography is about using the facts to answer the big questions.  This book does not make the jump from facts to application.
3901881
The whole point of a map of this type is to have the entire state on one page.  This map has about 1/3 of North Carolina on the back of the map.  Why not make the map slightly smaller and put it all on the same side?  They actually have an extra 1/5 of the map they could use by moving the city explosions to the back.  Just makes no sense.
687601
I think the geography ruined this book for me.  If you live in the "Deschutes Valley," you are NOT going to drive your horse drawn wagon to Farewell Bend for church.  She does her shopping in Prineville.  It's 245 miles from Prineville to Farewell Bend.  The author must have meant (just plain) Bend.  It's about 30 miles or so between Bend and Prineville.  Farewell Bend is such a place, but not anywhere near Deschutes County.  Add that to some many other inconsistencies, and sad to say I think the book had a lot of potential, but didn't come close.  Did the author not have anyone take a look at this?
1689858
This Travel Book seemed perfect for my son who is obsessed with learning about other Countries! Unfortunately, the information and "facts" they included are WRONG. They had the wrong flag for the Country of Georgia (they included the flag for the state of Georgia instead). And they stated that the official language of the Phillipines is Filipino (it's Tagalog). My 5-year-old son pointed all of these things out to me, who knows what else they got wrong. How embarassing! I will be writing to the Publisher about this.
468314
A political world map should be a political map as currently recognized by the UN.  This map is not.  As another reviewer noted, and it was my bad for not reading it, this map is MISLEADING AND INCORRECT.  It shows the Jammu & Kashmir region as a separate nation (white color) and had China absorb two northeastern Indian nation,  The COMPANY MUST BE BOYCOTTED - and I say that not merely because I am an Indian and am offended by what has been done on the display, but importantly, this is about education of children, and they must not be mislead.
174716
Almost mechanical writing and plotting. The miraculous saves, like the binoculars kept during the well drop of the two prisoners, was not to be believed. But what really sunk this for me was when one of the characters said that if Hoover Dam was sabotaged, Las Vegas would be flooded. Check your topography. The Colorado River flows over the dam southward. Las Vegas is north of Lake Mead. Las Vegas would not be impacted by such an event. Also, I think the depiction of females is trite and far from believable in this age. I have read most Clive Cussler books, but the credibility gap in this one is huge.
1692644
I find "Kansas Off the Beaten Path" (5th edition) to be an interesting guide to Kansas sights and attractions, but it seems to be loaded with inaccuracies.
Page 4 - "The term Huron is not really the name of a Native American Tribe..."  Wrong - there is a Huron tribe.
Page 7 - "The Great Mall of the Great Plains - Kansas City"  This is in Olathe - not Kansas City.
Page 38 - "Wealthy old Marblecrest Street has a panoramic view of the Marmaton River valley..." Marblecrest is neither wealthy nor old, and very little of it overlooks the river valley.
Page 38 - "The Good Ol' Days...is a celebration of life from the 1840s through today...."  It is the recreation of an 1899 Street Fair.
Page 39 - "The Bourbon County Fair takes place the fourth week in July..."  If you come then, you will miss it.
Page 41 - "Hollister Wildlife Area, 8 miles southwest of Fort Scott on Highway 69...."  It's several miles off Highway 69.
Page 42 - "...Darnaby's Berry Farm and Country House...."  It has been closed for several years.
Page 51 - The account of the Civil War battle:  "...a total massacre of the Fort Scott troops."  This is incorrect.
Page 130 - The account of Squaw's Den Battleground:  "Their escape took them through eastern Kansas...."  their route was in western Kansas.
This could be a really good guide to out-of-the-way attractions in Kansas, but I could not trust its accuracy.  If there are as many mistakes in the rest of the book as in the portion with which I am familiar, I question its value.  A book in its 5th edition should have those inaccuracies corrected.  The authors need to recheck some of their information.
2729284
the narrator mispronounced the names of the places.  When you grew up there that is disgusting
49324
This is a book about masturbaters.  Self-tuned Americans, whose errant ways are seen all the more sharply by their setting in a remote, community-oriented village in the Papua New Guinea Highlands.  They do  outrageously small b bad things there that no sane person would do-or,  probably has done.
I think Gillison' point is that these are types  whose shadows many of us would do well to recognize in our selves.
I am  an American who lived many years in PNG, and I enjoyed the book.  It has a  sense of PNG's exotic people, place and, especially, smell.  But I would  have rated it higher if Gillison hadn't sabotaged it so frequently with  blatant errors of geography and basic fact.  From the outset:  Port Moresby  faces on the Coral Sea, not the Pacific.  The Eastern Highlands are  northwest of Port Moresby, not east.  Lufa is not on the Highlands Highway.  No one in PNG lives at even close to 12,000 feet altitude.  No one would  take 3 tenderfoot Americans, including a 6-year-old girl, on a 3-day jungle  trek to a village that had both an airstrip and a heliport.  Malaria was  not a disease of  the Highlands in the 1970s, when this story is set.  If  Gillison has this basic stuff wrong, you keep asking yourself, how many  other facts has she screwed up?
"The Undiscovered Country" is fiction,  of course.  But if you want to get off the fact track, use a fictional  country.  Please.
1192967
Ms. Rimington has written a reasonably good spy story. But, that someone in her position, would not know the geography of Europe, is almost beyond belief... The Caravan network in the novel was moving Middle Eastern illegals at Esztergom, Hungary across the Morava River?! She might as well have written that the heroine of the book took the taxi in London, from MI-5 to MI-6, for lunch across the Seine...  What is this? Are we British Old Boys (girls) who are proud to know nothing?... Oh, Stella, Stella...
4473886
Materially, the rug is exactly what I expected. It's medium weight with a nice rubber backing to prevent sliding in the classroom. However, it has a major flaw: the geography is atrocious. States are misshapen; rivers and lakes are shown where none exist; most of Oklahoma has apparently merged with Texas, while its northeast Tulsa region has seceded to form an unnamed green region of presumable anarchy and despair.
1787910
The inaccuracies start with the cover.  The picture is not of the cliffs of Moloka`i but the Amalfi Coast of Italy.  The use of the word "true" in the title is an insult to the remaining residents of Kalaupapa.

I am fortunate to know some of the individuals interviewed in this book.  When they were shown the proofs, they attempted to correct the misinformation both about their lives and the history of Kalaupapa.  Their attempts were rebuffed.

See the NY Times article of 3/27/06 entitled "Book on Leprosy Settlement Draws Fire"  for more details.