Delaware Books

I never had the pleasure of meeting or learning from O.B. Hardison, Jr., but in just the first few chapters of this exceptional book I felt like I knew him. His character, his teaching style and the inspiration that filled his classroom comes to life with vivid recollections from his students.

I found it intriguing that his students always felt challenged by his brilliance, but yet they never felt belittled. Instead O.B. taught that he along with the students were all "comrades in learning." As a teacher myself, I was quickly reminded of what makes an instructor a great teacher. This book fluently describes O.B.'s ability to use memorable analogies; it describes his energy in the classroom and his joy of teaching. But what really strikes the reader is O.B.'s ability to connect on an individual basis with his students. He truly cared about their thoughts, their discoveries and ideas and he challenged them to be daring.

This book is an inspirational book that captures the essence of what it means to be a Master Teacher.

I highly recommend it to anyone who desires to become a better teacher whether it's in the classroom with students, with business associates, or at home with your own children.

The thing I liked best about the book was the attention to detail and the way Skeele spoke about his passion for Shakespeare's Pericles. It took an insight that not many are familiar with, but also, the book was easy to follow and understand. I would definitly recommend this book to any Pericles fan or Shakespeare buff. An excellent read. I would also read more books by the author, David Skeele.

This book is loaded with interesting photographs of what Delaware used to be like between 1920 and 1960. According to the dustjacket, "the picture appearing in this album represent one of the largest collections of original photographs on the modern history of our state." It is largely a book of photograph collections along with short explanations of life in that time period. It begins with the 1920's and photographs of the city of Wilmington, such as Market Street in 1923, the life of young business men and how they played volleyball on the First Presbyterian Church grounds, a photograph of First Presbyterian Church property at time graves wer being moved for erection of public library, Washington Street Bridge, The Wilmington Automobile Co., Tower Hill School with an old trolley that went right by it, sports in Wilmington, the Physicians and Sugeons Hospital at 8th and Adams STreets, Fire Department,Rock Manor Golf Course, The First Flower Market, Motion Pictures, The Marine Terminal, The Dupont Powder Mills, Baynard Stadium, Early Days of Radio, Warden Plumber days and New Castle County Workhouse as it looked in those days, Newark Delaware, University of Delaware, Wilmington Music Commission, YWCA Boarding Home at 25th and Market STreets from 1918-1923, News Journal Building at 9th and Orange 1928, Highway Police, Diamond State Telephone Co. at 9th and Tatnall, Life with the Automobile, The Dupont Country Club, Ursuline Academy, 16th and Pine Streets Bridge, Elsemere Fire House, Old Town Hall at 6th and Market Sts, Price's Run Swimming Pool, The Wilson Line (a ferry between Wilmington and Penns Grove, N.J.) and it's Marine Terminal, The New Castle - Pennsville Ferries, Inc., The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, The Cape Henlopen Lighhouse, Howard High, DuPont Airport, Around Town 1920s, Remember the Trolley, Bellanca Field, Wilmington, Airport, The Depression Years, THe Hoopes Reservoir, The Delaware Academy of Medicine, The Tatnall School in depression, St. Andrew's School, Yorklyn Gun Club, Governors of DE 1920-60. , Wilmington Post Office, Delaware Park, Friends School, Parking meters, Wilmington Scene late 1930's, Delaware Motor Sales, Inc., The Homeopathic Hospital, Alexis I. duPont School, Wilmington Park, Delaware Hospital, National Emergency, WORLD WAR II and THERAFTER: New Castle County Airport, The Campaign Trail, Suburbs, Salesianum School, B. & O. Line Discontinued, Wilmington High School, Green Hill Golf Course, Wilmington of 1960.

Fun book to be mesmerized at how life used to be in Delaware and how much it has changed.

A Twice-Told Tale analyzes contemporary reconstructions of the age of "discovery," exploration, and conquest vis-à-vis fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources (histories, chronicles, and relaciones). The essays included, all of which appear here for the first time, focus on two clearly defined areas of study: colonial issues, and twentieth-century literature and film. Some of the articles concentrate on texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; thus the documentation utilized belongs to the Latin American foundational period. Others direct the reader's attention to twentieth-century retrospective views of that period; in these cases, the object of analysis focuses primarily on the discursive practices of our time. Such a recurrent oscillation between colonial past and postcolonial present constitutes the essence of the book. The editors' goal has been precisely to explore the double interpretation (the "twice-told tale") of a key period in the configuration of Latin American identity.

Contents:
Section One: Recontextualizing the Encounter
"Three Visions of America" by Eduardo Subirats. "Postmodernity, Orphanhood and the Contemporary Spanish American Historical Novel" by Viviana Plotnik. "Toward a New History: Twentieth-Century Debates in Mexico on Narrating the National Past" by Victoria E. Campos.

Section Two: The Colonial Other as a Cultural Construct
"Constructing Cultural Myths: Cabeza de Vaca in Contemporary Hispanic Criticism, Literature and Film" by Santiago Juan-Navarro. "You are What You Eat: Tropicalismo and How Tasty was my Little Frenchman" by Theodore Robert Young.

Section Three: Sexual Difference and Textual Politics
"Transhistorical and Transgeographical Seductions in Te trataré como a una reina" by Wa-kí Fraser de Zambrano. "Marina: A Woman Before the Mirror of her Time in Carlos Fuentes's Ceremonia del Alba" by Gladys M. Ilarregui. "Daimón and the Eroticism of the Conquest" by Terry Seymour.

Section Four: Revisiting the Myths of Mestizaje
"From Cult to Comics: The Representation on Gonzalo Guerrero as a Cultural Hero in Mexican Popular Culture" by Rose Anna M. Mueller. "Naked in the Wilderness: The Transculturation of Cabeza de Vaca in Abel Posse's El largo atardecer del caminante" by Kimberlee López.

Section Five: The Reinvention of the Past Through Apocryphal Chronicles
"Penetrating Texts: Testimonial Pseudo Chronicle in La noche oscura del Niño Avilés by Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá seen from Sigüenza y Góngora's Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez" by Erik Camayd-Freixas. "Ana Lydia Vega's Falsas crónicas del Sur: Reconstruction and Revision of Puerto Rico's Past" by Mary Ann Gosser-Esquilín. "Cervantes in America: Between New World Chronicle and Chivalric Romance" by Luis Correa-Díaz.

Section Six: The "Discoverers" Rediscovered
"Visions and Revisions: The Americanization of Christopher Columbus in the Works of William Carlos Williams and Alejo Carpentier" by Molly Swift. "This Miraculous Lie: Lope de Aguirre and the Search for El Dorado in the Latin American Historical Novel" by Bart L. Lewis.

Section Seven: Parody and the Carnivalization of History
"A Fool's Point of View: Parody, Laughter and the History of the Discovery in Maluco. La novela de los descubridores by Napoleón Baccino Ponde de León" by Magdalena Perkowska-Alvarez. "La isla amarilla: (Re)vision and Subversion of the Discovery" by Susan P. Berardini.

This book should be of great interest not only for someone who grew up in the Catskill Mountain region of New York State and has fond memories of the area, but also for anyone who wants to learn more about that relatively short period of time (the 1870s to 1920s) when railroads were the dominant mode of transportation for both passengers and freight within the US. In addition, the book provides a good picture of what life was like around the turn of the 20th century for vacationers from NYC who sailed up the Hudson on the Day Liners to Kingston or Catskill for their train ride into the mountains to one of the big old resort hotels. An excellent read plus plenty of great photographs.

The Union Prison at Fort Delaware: A Perfect Hell on Earth by Brian Temple is one of those books that should be required reading. Author Temple, obviously a history scholar, relates tales and information about the prisoners at Fort Delaware in a genuinely interesting manner. For those of us who have the former prison at Fort Delaware in literally our own backyard, we all can fathom what it was like to be there, but for those halfway across the country, or world, this book is a damn good substitute.

This book gave a very through overview of what the UD community is like. There are a lot of interesting facts about student life that aren't included in the UD promotional literature like how much people party, and how many people take drugs versus spend all their time studying. It is especially nice to know where all of the restaurants and hang-outs are for college kids before you get to town. This made my tour of the town a lot more interesting. Walking down main street during the day I could pick out the places where college students partied at night and walk into different shops that were mentioned in the book. It is nice to see something and already have a reference bank of information in your head, almost like I already live here! I also found that the rating for attractiveness is completely warranted! I've visited some other campuses, and this one is really attractive, people take pride in their appearance! I'm glad I bought this book, it gave me a feel of what it would be like to be a student before I decided to enroll. It is really hard to get a sense of atmosphere from the promotional brochures the University sends out, and this book really cut through all of that to give me the truth! Definetely buy this book if you are considering going to UD!

UTILITY AND BEAUTY - Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America by Mark Reinberger. U. of Delaware Press, Newark, DE/Associated Univesity Presses, London, United Kingdom. 2004. 190 pp. $65.00 hardcover/8-1/2" x 11", ISBN 0-87413-760-8. photographs, illustrations, map, appendices, notes, bibliography, index.
In the early 1800s in America, composition--or "compo"--was a plaster-like material pressed into intricately carved, detailed ornaments for interior woodwork in homes and buildings, particularly mantelpieces. Robert Wellford (1775-1844) of Philadelphia was the leading maker of compo in the U. S. during this period. The neoclassical flourishes, forms, and mythological and other figures of composition along with patriotic imagery became popular in well-to-do homes along the coast from South Carolina to New Jersey because of the sense of elegance it added to rooms, but also because it was affordable by not having to be imported. Reinberger gives a full account of this American decoration which became prevalent in the early decades of the new nation. His account complemented with many photographs of varying detail deals with the manufacture of the composition, its different styles, the spread of it, and the fading of this "feminine" art form with the coming to favor of the "masculine" style of decoration modeled on the Doric Greek classical style. Wellford's career as a talented and ambitious businessman is also covered. This is a thorough work for architects, decorators, historians, and artists on the relatively brief period of a few decades when compo was the ornamentation of choice in buildings along the East Coast and embodied ideas about high style and desirable expression of the virtues and ideals of the new democracy. Reinberger is an associate professor in the College of the Environment and Design at the U. of Georgia. Historic preservation is one of the courses he teaches.

Do not leave home without this book! A must have guide when your cruising the Mid-Atlantic area for the best brewpubs and beer bars.

This excellent work sold out its first printing at University of Delaware Press and is now in its second printing-- perhaps because it offers something quite unusual: a perceptive and thought-provoking discussion, deeply informed and yet accessible to any interested reader, of, as the subtitle tells us, "British and German Writers and Activists" of World Wars I and II. Most of the writers included are women, but the inclusion of some male poets as well adds to the perspective of the discussion, and works well within the author's thesis. To quote from Professor Byles' concluding chapter, "this book is not so much about the historical-social period of the two world wars as it is about the literature of these wars and the interweaving of the connections--the similarities and the differences-- between the works of the two eras. In particular, I have been concerned with the poetry that articulates the perspectives on the historical, social and cultural realities of these tragic years in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. For it is above all in reading the poetry of these two wars that as women and men we come to understand and respond to the horror of war as the most terrifying of human acitivies." Earlier, she remarks that "it is one of the arguments of this book that the underrepresentation of international women in political life and in positions of power contributed to the climate of opoinion that resulted in two devastating world wars that killed millions." This work, by focusing particularly on the voices of women poets and activists, provides an opportunity for them to be heard again, and through its anti-war perspective provides incentive for greater representation and activism in the future. The book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The chapters are: 1) Women's Experience of World War I: Britain and Germany; 2) British Women Poets and Soldier Poets of World War I; 3) Women between the World Wars, 1918-1939; 4) Women's Experience of World War II: Britain and Germany; 5) British Women and Men Poets of World War II. WAR, WOMEN AND POETRY, 1914-1945 is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of the two world wars, in the intertextuality of poetry from opposing sides in war, in women's history, in peace studies, in poetry itself. It would be an excellent addition to college, secondary school, and public libraries. Dr. Joan Montgomery Byles is a poet herself, and a noted Shakespeare scholar, whose love of poetry is combined with her astute understanding of history. I approached this book through my perspective as a professor of English and of Women's Studies, but also from that of a woman who is horrified by war and interested in peace studies, and I recommend it highly.