Virginia Books

Identical triplets are the subject of this interesting book. Told in first person by triplet Darren, the text gives young readers a feel for what it is like to be raised as an identical multiple. The first person narrative works well and kids will have fun identifying the boys in the color photos throughout. This thorough volume includes an "answer key" to identity in the photos, a glossary, resources for parents, and an explanation of the biology of multiples. Well done!

When Harley Jean Davidson gets a call from her Aunt Darcy to investigate the arrival of illegal artifacts that have appeared in her shop, Harley wants to turn her down but can't afford to turn down the money she is offering. Figuring that her Aunt has done a little too much drinking, Harley agrees to look into her Aunt's business partner, and her first peek into the shop after hours, leads her to the dead body of her Aunt's silent partner and into a deadly situation that gives her no choice but to find out who is behind it all.

As Harley looks into the death of her Aunt's business partner and the illegal artifacts, she discovers another dead body. Even though the best thing to do would be to let her lover Mike handle it since he is an undercover police officer, Harley can't back away when she is being stalked by someone who very well could be a killer.

Deadly Design is the second book in the Harley Jean Davidson Mystery Series and a fine addition that will keep readers wanting more. Harley is a great character who grabs your attention and keeps you wondering what she will do next while she effortlessly manages to get herself into one impossible situation after another.

Virginia Brown has added to the dynamics of this series with many colorful secondary characters and the explosive chemistry between Harley and Mike. I truly enjoyed this story and will be eagerly awaiting more adventures in this great series. 5 Angels!

By Tammy
Fallen Angel Reviews

Death Benefit is one of the best accounts of a suspicious death, its investigation, and the trial of the perpetrators that I have had occasion to read.

Death Benefit unfolds like a well thought out work of fiction rather than a dry narrative of "just the facts Ma'am." Heilbroner's book captures your attention and refuses to let it go until you have read the last page.

One of the more interesting aspects of this case is that the person who first uncovers the crime is an attorney (Steve Keeney) not a member of law enforcement as one would expect. Keeney, who besides working for a law firm that could have sprung from the pages of a John Grisham novel, is a corporate attorney. Keeney agrees to help (pro bono) a fellow church parishoner. The woman's daughter was accidentally killed falling from the cliffs at Big Sur in California. The Monterey coroner's office has not listed a cause of death and the insurance company will not pay the mother's claim until they receive the death certificate.

Keeney expects fully that at most he needs only clear up a bureacratic oversight instead he unravels a previously undiscovered diabolical trail of arson, fraud and murder, that will make your hair stand on end, dating back to the 1950's. And all perpetrated by the rarest of killers - the female serial killer.

The murderess, Virginia McGinnis(superficially a seemingly normal wife and mother) and her brood of children are perhaps some of the most evil people you will ever run across in print. I would recommend this book highly to anyone interested in reading non-fiction crime. I would also recommend it to my friend Rhonda whose nagging contributed to the brevity of this review. (LOL)

Woolf is an outstanding essayist. This work edited and put together by her husband Leonard Woolf is her last volume of essays. It contains essays on a wide variety of subjects beginning with her careful depiction of the 'Death of a Moth' and containing essays on Henry James, Madame de Sevigne, the historian Gibbon, Sara Coleridge, George Moore, E.M.Forster, . She also has essays on 'The Art of the Biography''A Letter to a Young Poet' 'Middlebrow' 'Craftsmanship' ' Professions for Women' 'Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid'.
One of her most revealing set of insights is given in the essay on 'The Art of Biography' There she defends the aesthetic supremacy of her own mode of writing, the novel.

"It seems, then, that when the biographer complained that he was tied by friends, letters and documents he was laying his finger upon a necessary element in biography; and that it is also a necessary limitation. For the invented character lives in a free world where the facts are verified by one person only- the artist himself. Their authenticity lies in the truth of his own inner vision. The world created by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more wholly of a piece than the world that is largely made of authentic information supplied by other people."

Woolf makes an especially beautiful description of the distinguishing character of a writer whose greatness she defends, Henry James.
"For ourselves Henry James seems most entirely in his element , doing that to say what everything favours his doing , when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that time, the shadow in which the detail of so many things can be discerned, which the glare of day flattens out, the depth, the richness, the calm, the humour of the whole pageant- all this seems to have been his natural atmosphere and his most abiding mood."
Her stylistic brilliance and acute aesthetic perception pervades these outstanding essays.

Deaths from a variety of sources:
the newspaper Alleghany Tribune, years 11 July 1879 to 1883
the newspaper Clifton Forge & Iron Gate Review, 11 April 1890 to 25 August 1893
Records from the Alleghany Court. From pages of Several books, several that found were not complete. Also from Coroner Records in Alleghany Court.
Records taken from the newspaper Alleghany Sentinel, 11 July 1890 to 17 October 1890.
Records taken from the newspaper Clifton Forge Review, 1. September 1893 to 19 February 1897.
Mortality records for the year 1850 from the State Archives. These were taken at the same time as the census. All Records dated July through December are for the year before the census. Since most of the census were taken in June and July of the year of census. This is true of each set of Mortality records.
Mortality records for the year 1860.
Mortality records for the year 1870.
Mortality records for the year 1880.
Death records of Alleghany County people found in Botetourt County Records.

Each entry contains the following:
Name in full (any numbers where found)
age
birth (place and/or date)
color
sex
married
death date
cause of death
place of death
father
mother
person reporting death


Example:

Wilson, Sarah J. (300) age 14 yrs., b. Alleghany County, Va., white, female, d. 1 Nov. 1859, cause heart disease, on Casteel Run, Alleghany County, Va., d/o James M. Wilson, father rept..

In the early records, the cause of death was often spelled as the person writing down the information thought they were spelled, The author left these as she found them, often misspelled, but accurately transcribed.

The idea that stages of life are "socially constructed" comes from two sources, Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood, and Margaret Morganroth Gullette's recent pathbreaking "deconstruction" of middle age: Declining to Decline. --Sandra Lee Bartky, Mother Time

Robert Lewis Dabney was many things: a theologian, a professor, chief of staff of Thomas Jonathan Jackson, and most important of all the Virginian. Dabney resisted the effort to turn Virginia into a part of the Southern Confederacy, but once that happened he, like his boss Stonewall, became a staunch supporter of the Virginia's right to secede. This highly esteemed clergyman is regarded by some as the greatest mind to come out of Confederacy and this puts him on the same footing with men like Judah Benjamin. Dabney's Defence was published in 1867 at the two years since the war had not robbed them of any of his vigor in defending his state. The layout of the work follows the usual pattern: American slave trade, the legality of slavery, the history of emancipation, the Old Testament argument, the New Testament argument, the ethical argument, the economic effect of slavery, and the conclusion. I don't see the need in this review the code cover all of these topics in any kind of depth, but the author will speak for himself.

His introduction addresses the future historians view of this horrible conflict.
"To the rational historian who, two hundred years hence, shall study the history of the nineteenth century, it will appear one of the most curious vagaries of human opinion, that the Christianity and philanthropy of our day should have given so disproportionate an attention to the evils of African slavery. Such a dispassionate observer will perceive that, while many other gigantic evils were rampant in this age, there prevailed a sort of epidemic fashion of selecting this one upon which to exhaust the virtuous indignation and sympathies of the professed friends of human amelioration. And he will probably see in this a proof that the Christianity and benevolence of the nineteenth century were not so superior, in wisdom and breadth, to those of the seventeenth and eighteenth, as the busy actors in them had persuaded themselves; but were, in fact, conceited, overweening, and fantastic."

Professor Dabney gives the usual Old Testament justification of slavery, the Mosaic law, the curse of Ham, etc., but it's more to the point to look at the New Testament arguments for and against slavery.

In this Dabney sites and criticizes the abolitionists theologians of his day particularly picking on Albert Barnes.
"Mr. Barnes alone says, it is not proved that Onesimus was a literal slave at all: he may have been a hired servant or apprentice. Here, as will appear more fully, he expressly contradicts himself. But as to the assumption, we reply, that Onesimus is called, v. 16, doulos, a name never given to the hired servant: that he is sent back to his rightful owner, a thing which necessarily implies his slavery: that St. Paul intercedes for him; and that he recognizes his master's property in his labour. The whole company of expositors, ancient and modern, until Mr. Barnes, have declared that Onesimus was Philemon's slave."
Like all proslavery proponents Dabney spends a great deal of effort proving his contention that the Greek doulos is only used for slaves as "domestic slavery" was practiced in the South.

He moves onto an interesting discussion of what the Golden Rule really means:
"But as leading Abolitionists continue to advance the oft-torn and tattered folly, the friends of truth must continue to tear it to shreds. The whole reasoning of the Abolitionists proceeds on the absurd idea, that any caprice or vain desire we might entertain towards our fellowman, if we were in his place, and he in ours, must be the rule of our conduct towards him, whether the desire would be in itself right or not. This absurdity has been illustrated by a thousand instances. On this rule, a parent who, were he a child again, would be wayward and self-indulgent, commits a clear sin in restraining or punishing the waywardness of his child, for this is doing the opposite of what he would wish were he again the child. Judge and sheriff commit a criminal murder in condemning and executing the most atrocious felon; for were they on the gallows themselves, the overmastering love of life would very surely prompt them to desire release. In a word, whatever ill-regulated desire we are conscious of having, or of being likely to have, in reversed circumstances, that desire we are bound to make the rule of our action in granting the parallel caprice of any other man, be he bore, beggar, highwayman, or what not. On this understanding, the Golden Rule would become any thing but golden; it would be a rule of iniquity. . ."
this is the typical absurdity to which such discussions are brought by the proslavery faction.


In his economic defense of slavery Dabney follows another Virginian, Edmund Ruffin, when he states:
"Taking mankind as they are, and not as we may desire them to be, domestic slavery offered the best relation which has yet been found, between labour and capital. It is not asserted that it would be best for a Utopia, where we night imagine the humblest citizen virtuous, intelligent, and provident. But there are no such societies on earth."


Dabney also echoes Ruffin in his conclusion to this work:
"A righteous God, for our sins towards Him, has permitted us to be overthrown by our enemies and His. It is vain to complain in the ear of a maddening tempest. Although our people are now oppressed with present sufferings and a prospective destiny more cruel and disastrous than has been visited on any civilized people of modern ages, they suffer silently, disdaining to complain, and only raising to the chastening heavens, the cry, "How long, 0 Lord?" Their appeal is to history, and to Him. They well know, that in due time, they, although powerless themselves, will be avenged through the same disorganizing heresies under which they now suffer, and through the anarchy and woes which they will bring upon the North. Meantime, let the arrogant and successful wrongdoers flout our defence with disdain: we will meet them with it again, when it will be heard; in the day of their calamity, in the pages of impartial history, and in the Day of Judgment."

Anyone familiar with Colonial Williamsburg will want to learn about this period of its history. Major Civil War figures such as McClellan, Longstreet, Sumner, and Pickett were present, yet the details of the Battle of Williamsburg and the lengthy occupation of the town by Union forces are not widely known. This book compiles the facts and tells the story with excerpts taken directly from the memoirs, journals, and newspaper accounts of those who were there. This is not a fictionalized novel. The movements of the troops are well chronicled, and it is interesting to read the various perspectives on the strategic importance of the Battle of Williamsburg. Anyone interested in Civil War history will treasure the details offered in this book. In my mind, the images of the town's honorable aspirations and its historic significance as represented by the College of William and Mary, Bruton Parish Church, the Mental Asylum, and the care offered the wounded of both sides, were graphically contrasted with the harsh realities of slavery, and a bloody war.

Cualquier negociante emprendedor necesita de esta informacion con y desde una perspectiva global, especialmente ahora que ya el liderazgo mundial del mercadeo y economia de participacion real se han extendido a otras partes del planeta de forma homogenea y ya no solo gira al rededor de los USA.

The book is well written and very well documented. I am a descendent and I also helped supply info for my branch of the family. The Reverand Miller was a very interesting man. The book is still available from the author or me.