My travel book "Sacred Places North America (2nd ed.)" has won the BATW Gold Award (First Place winner) for the 2010 Best Travel Book for the Planet Earth category. The Bay Area Travel Writers judging committee had the following to say about the title:
"The history books most of us studied in school often presented woefully incomplete, even fraudulent, ideas of North America. "Sacred Places" builds an entirely new context, a more believable and worthy context, around our stunning homeland. It illuminates numerous cultures that thrived here millennia before 1492, and makes laughable the idea that Columbus was the first to lead European explorers to North America (he was late by at least several hundred years).
"The tour guides Brad Olsen brings along to assist in our re-education include experts in carbon-dating, geological history, cultural anthropology, and linguistics. "Sacred Places" enhances these scientific facts with an impressive array of ancient and mystical knowledge. The 108 sites we visit form an epic journey through the beliefs, rituals, and daily lives of North America's historic and prehistoric human inhabitants. And always, in the background, loom the awe-inspiring landscapes of this deservedly fabled continent."