Jack Thompson Books

We found the book amusing, absorbing and thrilling; a page turner. We hope the author will be writing a sequel soon.

Susan M.

Jack Palmer's book on Vernon Dalhart, the "first star of country music," is wonderful. It is arguably the best written thus far of someone known to posterity almost exclusively through his records. In addition to existing published primary and secondary sources, the author had access to family correspondence and materials in record company files. Fortunately for us, Palmer has a scholar's mind. He knows how to conduct research, organize his material, construct useful footnotes, and --- a bonus for the reader --- he writes well. Another bonus: the book is enhanced by an exhaustive discography compiled by Robert Olson.

I read every word, every footnote, every matrix and take number, and all the recording dates. I can't imagine anything the author might have done to improve the book. On a scale from zero to ten, this is a perfect ten.

What kind of life did Marion Try Slaughter have before he became Vernon Dalhart? What kind of career did he have before he began recording? What was his repertory before he turned to what we now call "country music"? What was it like to travel on the Edison Tone Test circuit? Did he conduct his career intelligently? How did he relate to the performers he worked with and the composers whose songs he recorded? How did he relate to his family and others in his personal life?

I won't tell you. Buy the book; now, if not sooner.

My parents are divorced and reading about how other kids dealt with it really helped me get back on my feet even though they've been divorced for like four years. Reading about how other kids got out of bad situations made me feel lucky because now I know how much worse they have it opposed to me. I know it's hard to deal with these things at first but too many kids dwell on how it stinks to have divorced parents and they don't use this time to try to do something to help yourself or something. If you want to make a difference get off your butt and try to make that difference.

We just got this book and have been reading one story per day, right after dinner while we're still sitting at the table. The children love it and so do we. The real life stories are very inspiring and help the children focus the positive. Helps give them "can do" attitudes. Highly recommended for pre-teens.

Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul is by kids from all over, but printed by Jack Canfield, Patty Hanson, Mark Victor Hanson, and Irene Dunlap. Kids sent in stories about death, friendship, achieving dreams, obsticals, love, attitude, choices, wisdom, changes, tough stuff, etc. I am in the 6th grade and I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see how other kids are going through stuff just like you. There are parts in here that make you cry, laugh, angry, and even want to make you dissolve! If you are between the ages of 8 and 20 you should read this book. The reason I love this book is because you can really relate to what other kids wrote. Another reason is because it's not a story that's made up, but people who free-willingly wrote stories that changed their lives. I know anyone would love this book.

At our school site the Daily Bulletin is read by administrators. It combines important news with a brief selection whose purpose is to focus student attention on the importance of making right life choices. Unfortunately the anecdotal references and language used would be appropriate perhaps with students of two or more generations past and their point or moral is lost as students and many of the younger teachers are wondering who Horatio Alger or Thoreau or Rousseau are/were? Some teachers are starting a movement for a new text adoption and would wish to use any of the Canfield stories, albeit in an abbreviated form. We feel these narratives would resonate so much more effectively with our students.

My dad had bought for me the book "Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul". I enjoyed the book because the stories were real. Now, I like looking at people's opinions for books after I read them. I like to see negative opinions first. Now, I would like to say that I except these people's comments. I would like to explain something. There are many people in this world who have different reactions to different things. Some people are sensitive to sad stories more than others. Some people are afraid and worried about sad stories\ scary stories than other people. So... just because you, your daughter, you son or anyone else is afraid or sensitive about some story doesn't mean it's a bad book. It just means that you or your relative shouldn't read these kind of stories. I want to say something about the book. I'd like to say that I am also sensitive to sad stories but these stories here teach lessons. Like about death. Always say "I love you" to your loved ones because you never know what can happen between now and tomorrow. "Chicken Soup" has stories of knowing between right and wrong, stories about good friends and so many other stories with lessons. Though, I'll confess. There are one or two stories that are not for our age and things that I'd rather not hear but when I get to the next story I try to forget the bad story and I do because the good stories have so many feelings and emotions in them that I forget about all the bad stories that I read. I reccommend this book to anyone because this book has lessons that us, preteens need to know about.

This book is pretty good, I think it assumes a little more knowledge than I began with though.

The Leatherfolk Anthology is full of valuable information and first person accounts from within the BDSM community. This book goes beyond the scope of a how-to-manual with more theoretically based essays designed to inform people not directly involved with BDSM and challenge people in the leather community itself. This book is probably not for anyone who doesn't know what "vanilla sex" means or is other wise sexually non-deviant.

The stories in this book communicate the history and a chronology of the SM and Leather community through various individual's experiences, thoughts and impressions. After reading Thompson's compilation I felt I had a deeper understanding and curiosity for the intricacies of the leather/SM community. The voices are from all over the spectrum and give insights into various multi-layered identities. The editor's determination to portray the chronology and the ancient origins of SM give important foundations for the contemporary commentaries by members of the community. I am a student in a Gay and Lesbian Ethnography class and this was my favorite book over the entire semester and I learned so much through the varied perspectives and historical foundations. It inspired discussions and reflections on sex and how it tends to function socially and personally outside of the SM community and how there is a lot to be learned from that community regarding communication and respect. I must also mention that the piece by Dorothy Allison was one of the most passionate, poetic and evocative excerpts I have read from a lesbian perspective!

The classic work on the leather underground provides a history from the 1940's to the present, resource lists, and 20 black & white photos.

This book sat on my bookshelf for quite a while before I finally sat down and read it cover to cover. I was amazed and impressed by what I read. This anthology features essays by some of the most well-known authors in the leather community including Dorothy Allison, Geoff Mains, Mark Thompson, Guy Baldwin, Pat (now Patrick) Califia, Gayle Rubin, and Joseph Bean. The essays offer a "glimpse" into what "is" the leather community. Topics covered include leather history (from the 1940's through the 1990's, including an excellent essay on the Catacombs, a now legendary San Francisco male fisting and SM playspace), scene politics, spirituality, and numerous other topics about consensual power play.

As other reviewers have pointed out this book is not a "how to guide," but it is of equal value to "SM teaching manuals" in that it gives the reader a "feel" of what this community is about. Those looking to get a better idea of what it is to be in the leather community should read this book, not just for the historical and/or sociological essays here, but just to get the sense (that this anthology conveys) of what the leather scene is about.

I once had the pleasure of sharing a flight with the author Jack Bass. The man is a walking encyclopedia of anecdotes of South Carolina history and political lore and he was quite entertaining. Reading his take on Thurmond, who he knew well, is similar to an actual conversation with Bass. Put it to you this way, reading this book is like listening to some old-timers reminisce around the cracker barrel in front of the general store. Not a scholarly work,but an enjoyable one. BTW, I wish he would have gone into detail about Thurmond''s meeting with Coretta Scott King. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to hear what the former supreme segregationist had to say to the widow of Dr. King.

In Ol' Strom, Bass and Thompson tell the whole story of Senator J. Strom Thurmond's remarkable march across 20th century politics. But they don't do anything else. While it is interesting just to read about a politician so long-lasting that he ran for president in 1948 and still holds office today, the book does not attempt to delve into the meaning of Thurmond's extraordinary tenure. Thurmond's political career is a mirror of the evolution of the South from Dixiecrat to Republican, from racist to mainstream conservative. The authors opted not to tell this story, however, and stubbornly insisted on offering just a journalistic account of Thurmond's life.

Insightful, provacative...You may not like Strom, but this book
will make you view him in a different light. This book doesn't take sides. It does give you a view of someone many have thought of as a not very bright, but who has outlived or outsmarted most of his critics. A very good view of politics in South Carolina. Mr. Thurmond won my grudging respect in this book by taking care of his constituents...without regards to race or religion. Well documented facts by the writers!

Strom Thurmond is widely viewed as a simple racist with just one cause- to fight against civil rights. However, OL STROM helps to explain that while Strom was historically on the wrong side during the civil rights battles, he was and still is a man of character and integrity.

Like him or not,OL STROM makes a strong case to support Strom as "the century's most enduring American political figure". Strom Thurmond was on the cutting edge of the white souths move from the Democratic party to the Republican party with his 1948 presidental bid. He still holds the filibuster record and well being in the Senate for longer than any one in history.

Unlike some of of the hardcore racists, Strom reached out to African-Americans in his later years. At the same time, Strom never "admitted" his earlier positions on civil rights were wrong. Strom still clung to his "States Rights" view which seem to open the only hole in his intergrity. Only Strom knows what's in his heart.

OL STROM also gets into more details, regarding his personal affairs, such as his biracial daughter, that others bio have glossed over.

Strom is not so much "a" southern politian, as he IS the south!

Myself and other progressive young southerners who were previously appalled by his well-known Segregationist tactics could not have even imagined Strom Thurmond himself fathering an interracial child, only to gleefully keep his family and other in racial subordination supposedly for their and/or country's own good.

Sure, I was previously aware of slave-owner-slave stories which basically told the same tale in eighteenth century language, but I did not believe somebody intentionally kept their family in segregation today. There has been much discussion about conscience, character, and morals within the public sector and what quantities of these ingredients are required of 'good' public servants versus those that simply keep getting re-elected for tradition sakes---but Thurmond's life (long overdue for an examination) lacks all three components.

After former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's death, a woman Essie Mae Washington came forward with revelation that she was Thurmond's half-daughter. Her mother was a teenage African American worker in the Thurmond home, and he was a wealthy young adult whose activities were apparently concealed for fear of dominant society retaliation. If word of Thurmond's 'extracurricular' activities had leaked out while he was living, (especially in the segregation era) it would have been the end of his political career.

I don't doubt that the incident (and others) in question happened, or Strom's legendary libido (ironically while courting voters from 'family values' crowd who made a national crisis out of President William Jefferson Clinton's consensual affair with a twenty something adult woman). Apparently because Ol'Strom forces himself on women far less powerful than himself, this is not only appropriate conduct but an expected public service perk that he was not in a hury to give up. Throughout his 'distinguished' life, Thurmond regarded women as objects for his convenience and entertainment, unable to consider us full and three-dimensional people.

I am not shocked by the lurid details contained within this volume, but I sincerely hope conservatives and/or Republicans understand what allegations are in here before continuing to pretend only one political party houses ravenous libidos. Letting neither his switch to the Republican party or increasing age stop him, Strom remained the consummate womanizer, quickly falling out of step with an era that (at least in public relations) saw the importance of treating women as professional equals.

Thurmond's death was one of the 2003 newstories, but it is ultimately telling of his supreme inhumanity that none of the Sunday talk shows devoted significant time to memorializing his influence on the nation. Good riddance!!

Mapmaker's Eye is the amazing biographical chronicle of the adventures of David Thompson, a Canadian fur trader, explorer, and cartographer respected as a hero in Canada yet largely unknown in the United States. From 1801 to 1812, Thompson established two effective trade routs across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and surveyed the 1,250 mile course of the Columbia River. Following his exploration days he transformed the mathematical notations from his dozens of journal notebooks into the first accurate maps of the northwest quadrant of North America. Some of his mapwork was even used by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Award-winning author Jack Nisbet presents Thompson's story in detail yet fully accessible to lay readers, along with a handful of black-and-white and color illustrations. Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis.

Mapmaker's Eye is the amazing biographical chronicle of the adventures of David Thompson, a Canadian fur trader, explorer, and cartographer respected as a hero in Canada yet largely unknown in the United States. From 1801 to 1812, Thompson established two effective trade routs across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and surveyed the 1,250 mile course of the Columbia River. Following his exploration days he transformed the mathematical notations from his dozens of journal notebooks into the first accurate maps of the northwest quadrant of North America. Some of his mapwork was even used by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Award-winning author Jack Nisbet presents Thompson's story in detail yet fully accessible to lay readers, along with a handful of black-and-white and color illustrations. Amazing epic tale of a life rich with discovery and analysis.

David Thompson was a fur trader, explorer, and meticulous geographic surveyor. He was, and is, the English and Canadian counterpart of Lewis and Clark. He visited the Mandan villages on the Missouri River in 1798. He crossed the Continental Divide in 1807 and spent five winters on the west side of the divide trading with the Indians. He explored the Columbia River from its origin to the Pacific Ocean. He kept complete journals. He was a better writer than Meriwether Lewis, although not Lewis' equal as a naturalist. He took astronomical readings and did his own computations of both latitude and longitude. Because of this, his maps were much more accurate than those of William Clark. Later in his life, Thompson helped survey the boundary between Canada and the United States. Thompson's story is also the story of Charlotte, his half-Indian wife of 57 years who bore him 13 children. She and the first few children traveled with him in his explorations, including his first crossing of the Continental Divide. Jack Nisbet is also the author of "Sources of the River," another book about David Thompson. "The Mapmaker's Eye" is a bit more readable and is better illustrated

All of The Whole Story books are fantastic. My eighth graders love to read these because they enjoy the sideline information and pictorials that help them to better grasp the story. I bought a classroom set and have already requested for our school to invest in Tom Sawyer by this same company. Great Idea!

This is not a good version for a classroom setting. The cover doesn't reveal this.

The call of the wild, by Jack London is a great book for all ages. Buck (the main character) is a tame dog in Santa Clara California living with Judge Miller, a man that everyone new and enjoyed. This changed when a rush for gold in Yukon made men need strong dogs to pull their sleds. Buck was a very strong dog and as a result, was kidnapped. He was then taken to Yukon where there was harsh snow and was very cold. He was treated poorly until he met John Thorton. John Thorton was very kind to Buck but then one day he died. Buck was left in the wild and became friends with a wild animal. I personally like it because it is always telling you what is happining in great detail. Jack London also got right to the point making it easy to understand.

The call of the wild by Jack London is a great book for all ages. Buck (the main character) is a tame dog in Santa Clara California living with Judge Miller a man that evryone new and enjoyed. All this changed when a rush for gold in Yukon. These men needed strong dogs and because of the fact Buck was strong he was kidnapped. He was then tuck to Yukon where there was harsh snow and was very cold. he was treated poorly intill he met John Thorton. John Thorton was very kind to Buck but then one day he died. Buck was left in the wild and became friends with a wild animal and learned to live in the wild.

After reading "The Call of the Wild" or more precisely, after being transferred to another place and time, or even more to the point after being totally submerged into the being of this animal, I'm left completely awe-struck by London's work.

To see what Buck saw, to feel the forces and the instincts that he felt... that is the power of this book. Here's a passage from the third chaper to illustrate what I mean:

"At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after super, Dub (a member of the sled-dog team) turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while the dogs plowed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All the stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill--all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He as mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move."

As we reach the bicentennial of David Thompson's crossing of the Rocky Mountains, it appears that "Sources of the River" is becoming the definitive popular reference. The book deserves it. Like all of Nisbet's books, this one is very well written and enjoyable to read. The book covers Thompson's entire life but focuses on the five years he spent in the Rocky Mountain region of Canada and the United States. That period includes his exploration of the entire length of the Columbia River, the first non-Indian to do so.

Because David Thompson was a contemporary of Lewis and Clark, reviewers are inclined to compare them. This is only partially valid. The latter was a military expedition sent on a mission of exploration. David Thompson was a fur trader working for a commercial company. He had the desire and talent to explore, but trading had to come first. Thompson was the point person for expanding the fur trade across the Rocky Mountains and into the Columbia River drainage. As he advanced his trading territory, his journals recorded an expanding knowledge of the territory and its inhabitants, plants, and animals. Thompson was a geographer and surveyor; his maps are much more accurate than those developed by Lewis and Clark.

Thompson was a rugged individual and this book covers the challenges and hardships of the fur trade. The Indians were an important element in both his trading and his exploration. This book chronicles those relationships. Thompson took a Cree wife who bore him thirteen children and they were together until his death at age eighty-seven.

In addition to the well-researched historical account of David Thompson, we are treated to an occasional aside from Jack Nisbet, often describing his visit to one of the sites important to the history. This book deserves its wide acceptance.

This book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through a time when what lay west of the Alberta Rockies was merely a faint whisper of great rivers, mountains and forests that beckoned the tough and determined fur traders of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies. Of course, the prize that each of these competitors sought to find first was a trading route to the Pacific Ocean. There was word of a great river's estuary located to the southwest across the mountains, but the rivers west of the Rockies all flowed northward! David Thompson, after whom the Thompson River in British Columbia was named and perhaps the most unsung of the great North American explorers, was faced with a mystery to solve. And he did so -- surviving bitterly cold winters in the unforgiving outdoors without today's Gore-Tex garments and GPS gadgets. He followed the stars tenaciously and spent may hours out in the elements making and checking his triangulation calculations the old-fashioned way --longhand.

I read this book several years ago and remember well how it readily took me away from today's comfortable but harried world. It's well recommended to anyone with an explorer's bent who would like to join Thompson's party as he searches for the route west of the Rockies in Canada's early back yard. He certainly has earned my respect as one of the great, devoted explorers who opened the West. Nisbet brings his personality to life in a very readable, interesting book, obviously the product of a great deal of detailed research by the author.

Based on David Thompson's own account of his explorations of the western North American continent, this is a perceptive tale of hardship and adventure. Jack Nisbet has the intuitive ability to cut to the heart of the subject, not just how this area was discovered but how the discovery influenced the native people and the natural history of the area. His own brief but discerning anecdotes about his interactions with the land and its people provide counterpoint and context for the main narrative.

The writer follows the life of David Thompson from his birth in London in 1770 and his education at a charity school to his apprenticeship with the Hudson's Bay Company and arrival in northern Canada. His major life work was to explore and map what became known as the interior of British Columbia, eastern Washington, western Montana and northern Oregon, focussed on the Columbia River and its tributaries. He crossed and re-crossed the Rocky Mountains through passes known only to native people and he established trading posts and trading relations with native people so he could supply the Hudson's Bay Company, and later the Northwest Company, with the furs they sought. Later in life he "retired" to montreal and later to Ontario where he became astronomer for the International Boundary Commission, guiding the U.S.-Canadian survey of the 49th parallel from Quebec, via the Great Lakes to Manitoba.

This is a story well told. It doesn't bog down in tedious detail yet still manages to convey the day- to-day routines as well as the excitement of discovery and the hardships faced by explorers in harsh terrain in an often bitter climate. The book has an immediacy and depth that are seldom realized together in an historical narrative.

Based on David Thompson's own account of his explorations of the western North American continent, this is a perceptive tale of hardship and adventure. Jack Nisbet has the intuitive ability to cut to the heart of the subject, not just how this area was discovered but how the discovery influenced the native people and the natural history of the area. His own brief but discerning anecdotes about his interactions with the land and its people provide counterpoint and context for the main narrative.

The writer follows the life of David Thompson from his birth in London in 1770 and his education at a charity school to his apprenticeship with the Hudson's Bay Company and arrival in northern Canada. His major life work was to explore and map what became known as the interior of British Columbia, eastern Washington, western Montana and northern Oregon, focussed on the Columbia River and its tributaries. He crossed and re-crossed the Rocky Mountains through passes known only to native people and he established trading posts and trading relations with native people so he could supply the Hudson's Bay Company, and later the Northwest Company, with the furs they sought. Later in life he "retired" to montreal and later to Ontario where he became astronomer for the International Boundary Commission, guiding the U.S.-Canadian survey of the 49th parallel from Quebec, via the Great Lakes to Manitoba.

This is a story well told. It doesn't bog down in tedious detail yet still manages to convey the day- to-day routines as well as the excitement of discovery and the hardships faced by explorers in harsh terrain in an often bitter climate. The book has an immediacy and depth that are seldom realized together in an historical narrative.

David Thompson. A man of untiring capabilities for exploring, surveying, trapping and trading in western Canada. From the age of fourteen, he gave twenty seven years of his life towards these goals, of which not too many men could begin to attain.
His duties for the Hudson's Bay Company and later the North West Company were to map, trade, trap, locate future trading establishments and discover a passage to the Pacific for commerce. Herein exists tales of endurance, perseverance, stamina and survival in unexplored regions of Canada and the U.S. Pacific Northwest from 1784-1812.
An extremely well written book by Jack Nisbet, along with very good, easy to read maps by Jack McMaster in order to follow the whereabouts of Thompson.

This book gives a major role to Jack Pumpkinhead, a character who never really had one in the Baum books. In this story, Jack must test the capacity of his pumpkin seed brains, and he really does come up with some clever ideas. With the help of the Red Jinn (who becomes a more important character in later books), he eventually manages to save all of Oz from a restless and ambitious baron. As is usual for Oz books, this one contains a lot of clever new creations, including an Iffin, a baron with a never-ending beard, and a runaway Christmas tree intent on finding new ornaments. There are also many new magical items, and some well-written sequences, including the description of the main characters' entrance into the fortress city of Baffleburg. While not one of the best or most important Oz books, it is definitely a fun read.

excelent. I am interest to read this book, because it that can made me seriouslly to anticipation juvenile delinquency, especially about kid behavior.