Bay Area Trails Confidential:
Janet and Bob appeared on the monthly webcast, Bay Area Trails Confidential, hosted by Rodney Paul of Rodney SF Tours, on Aug. 2, 2023. Check it out the show on YouTube (60 minutes).

Rich Walkling, Planning Director & CFO, Restoration Design Group Inc., Berkeley:
“Berkeley Walks kept me sane during the pandemic. With the shelter-in-place orders, the closure of popular parks and trails, and other limits on travel and recreation, I needed an outlet to keep my mind occupied and my body exercised. Berkeley Walks was the perfect cure. After living in Berkeley for over two decades, the book gave me new insights into Berkeley history and lured me into neighborhoods I had not visited before. The book and its walks satisfied my need for constant exploration and led me to appreciate the finer granularity of these extremely local journeys. Every walk was a new adventure. On behalf of my family, my dog, and myself, thank you for providing this outlet and keeping me sane, healthy, and alive.”

“What to do, see and eat in California’s nine best college towns”, by Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16, 2022
”Local guides: Janet L. Byron and Robert E. Johnson: Co-authors of “Berkeley Walks,” a book offering self-guided walking tours through the city (a new edition is in the works)

“What to do: Byron likes the Big C Trail. “From the top of the Berkeley campus you can hike to the Big C that overlooks the stadium,” she said. The round trip is just under a mile and yields wide views of the city and bay. “A lot of students like to go up there,” she said. “I’m not saying what the students do, but there are a lot of beer cans.”

“Johnson urges campus visitors to pause at Cal’s imposing Doe Memorial Library, designed by John Galen Howard in 1911 and outfitted with three memorable reading rooms: the Morrison Library, North Reading Room and Heyns Reading Room. “Each is entirely different, and each is spectacular,” Johnson said. (Meanwhile, the campus Bancroft Library has Twain’s letters, notebooks and manuscripts.)

“Beyond campus, Byron gravitates toward the rock parks of North Berkeley, a series of several boulder-strewn lots in residential areas that were considered unbuildable and donated to the city. She also endorses the city’s network of public paths and steps. The Berkeley Path Wanderers Assn. (berkeleypaths.org) maintains a detailed list of more than 120 pathways, with maps.

“Where to eat and drink: This is no secret, Byron and Johnson say, but they recommend that stretch of Shattuck Avenue that some people call “the gourmet ghetto.” (There’s debate about that term, just as there’s debate over what to do with People’s Park.) Besides the much-celebrated Chez Panisse and the worker-owned Cheese Board Collective, the area includes the original Peet’s Coffee (2124 Vine St., opened in 1966) and the relative upstart Cafenated Coffee Co. (whose beans come only from women’s coffee farm cooperatives in the Americas and Africa).”

“Berkeley Walks’ book exposes different facets of the city,” by Frances Dinkelspiel on Berkeleyside (Dec. 17, 2015)
"The response to the book has been tremendous. Books, Inc. on Shattuck Avenue has sold 92 copies since its publication in late September, making Berkeley Walks 'the second bestselling book for non-fiction,' in the store, according to Christopher Griffin, a bookseller. It is selling better than the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Only an adult coloring book is selling better, he said.
'That’s very good,' said Griffin."

Snapp Shots: If Berkeley's Walls Could Talk — New Book Covers It, by Martin Snapp in the Berkeley Voice and Contra Costa Times (Nov. 11, 2015)
"Want a great stocking stuffer to give your Berkeley friends this holiday season? Have I got a book for you!"

Annalee Allen: Berkeley's guided walks rekindle childhood memories, by Annalee Allen in the Contra Costa Times (Nov. 13, 2015)
"Naturally, reading the section on Elmwood, I learned something new. Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham spent a summer (in 1971) in a home on Derby Street. They were on a break from Yale Law School, say the authors, and they shared the apartment of Hillary's mother's half-sister. Hillary clerked for an Oakland attorney, while Bill "hung out, reading and exploring the area." I can just picture it."

Berkeley by Foot: Put on your walking shoes and learn a lot with a new book about where to ramble in Berkeley as your guide, By Lisa Fernandez in the East Bay Monthly (November 2015)
"Theirs is the first walking book of Berkeley that's "all encompassing," meaning it focuses on the city as a whole, including history, architecture, a little opinion (especially on buildings that seem out of place in the neighborhood), maps, names of trees that line the street, and just the right amount of juicy gossip to keep Berkeleyans popular at cocktail parties."

Five-star review on Amazon - Kathleen Haley, Nov. 9, 2015
This is a really helpful, charming, knowledgeably written, multidimensional book. I've done several of the walks, splitting them up when I have less time to do them in their entirety and then coming back to resume them as time permits. On each walk I make dozens of memories because of this book and the situations it allows me to stumble into. I take it out on Sundays or late afternoons, when owners of houses, dogwalkers, and walking groups are likely to be crossing paths with me, and either they spot the book in my hand or they sense the adventure I'm on, and we strike up delightful conversations tangential to the material in the book. The book has made me triply curious about all the different plant species, native and non-native, that inhabit the Bay Area; it has also made me into an avid novice architectural historian, which I never would have predicted. Admittedly, I really walk around each house pointed out and described in the book and try to notice every detail the authors remark on. Several times homeowners have come out and taken me on a guided tour of the backs of their houses, their yards, their creeks, and other notable features, and we have even consulted the _Berkeley Walks_ book together when their house or area was on the tour. I love the book's well laid-out maps and the sensible progressions of the walks that go along clearly with those maps. The walks are also helpfully distinguished according to the level of challenge their topography and length present to walkers. The things these authors notice are the things not only I would want to notice on a walk, but have always had in my sights to know more about--as a result, the book feeds my hunger and curiosity in many different ways. It has become my pedestrian bible of sorts!

Welcome to Berkeley: Let's Go for A Walk! blog post by Janet Byron on Every Body Walk website (includes top 10 sites of historic interest in Berkeley)
"Whether you live in Berkeley or have the opportunity to visit the city, Bob and I encourage you to get your recommended 30 minutes per day of walking by taking a spin around our town!"