Mississippi Books

Another reader of this book has written: "Foote's primary weakness as a novelist is that he seems to be unable to find his own voice." This is a remarkable comment, since one of the intriguing aspects of the novel is precisely author Foote's use of voice! In the "Voices" chapters, he alternates points of view from each of the characters. He also uses time shifts with great effectiveness, as at the end of the novel, when we shift forward with a preview of what will befall two members of the kidnapping threesome. The kidnapping itself is suspenseful, yet perhaps more exciting is the character development, for the kidnapped boy's father undergoes a profound revelation. It isn't nearly so much the content of this novel as it is its style which makes it a good read, and a worthwhile one. It illuminates a difficult time in American history, yet it is intimate and finely drawn.

Although Shelby Foote is thought of as a historian, he has always considered himself, first and foremost, a novelist. "September, September" is the story of some rednecks up from Mississippi who have come to Memphis, Tenn. to kidnap the son of a prominent black family. As a background for this story, Foote has chosen the month of September, 1957 when the South was in turmoil over the forced integration of Little Rock Central High School. Foote has meticulously researched his novel with a historian's eye for detail: the weather in Memphis on specific days, who won the Miss America pageant in 1957 (Miss Colorado, Marylin Van Derbur), and the release of the Edsel by Ford Motor Company.

Foote's primary weakness as a novelist is that he seems to be unable to find his own voice. Although the book is skillfully structured and well written, the plot is somewhat tired and predictable. There are very few surprises. Foote has somewhat adopted the structure used skillfully by his mentor William Faulkner of telling a little bit of the story at a time from the point of view of different characters. Foote's steamy descriptions of sex and lovemaking and rivalry among two men for the affections of the same woman are reminscent of Erskine Caldwell.

For all it's failings, "September, September" is an excellent novel. Shelby Foote, the excellent American historian, is also an outstanding American novelist.

this southernistic view of greed and crime is a truly well written thriller!!foote has once again showed his talent as a novelist and and a true artist of the english language!

This was yet another flashy novel. The author is too concerned with showing how clever he is to be bothered with a plausible plot or believable characters. The central character in particular was totally unbelievable. As much as I wanted to like it, it grew dull and dissonant about half of the way through. The ending was totally absurd ( and not in a nice way).

Thank goodness this baby came back into print! I echo what the guys below have said, and add only that if you've read other greats in this genre--The Great American Novel, The Celebrant, Shoeless Joe, Sam's Legacy--this will stand proudly along side them, and should be next.

In my misspent youth there was a confection that kept calling itself a gum and a candy. In fact, it was neither. "The Seventh Babe" is the literary equivalent of that product. It proports to be a baseball novel, yet how many novels on that genre tell us of a Neverland of baseball players, living outside of time and practicing the purest joyful form of the game. It might be a fantasy, yet the elements of out national pastime shape it's direction more then any dragon or demon. Did the baseball strike of a few years ago kill your love for the sport? Here is the remedy! Real yet magical. Jerome Charyn has show us there is no voice quite like his.

Ive read quite a few ghost story books the past few months and I found this to be one of lesser quality. The author uses actual dialect with the storytellers accent, I found it most annoying making it a hard read at times.( I dont speak or read southern backwoods uneducated jibberish!! ) Some of the stories told were interesting, although I much prefer real ghost accounts over urban legend type. Instead read any of the books by Troy Taylor, Coast to Coast Ghosts, or Ghosts Of Key West.

Shadows and Cypress: Southern Ghost Stories is the best collection of ghost stories I've seen. Many have been gathered from the old WPA collections, and many have been collected in the oral tradition. Dr. Brown is an expert on the classification of folk lore. His expertise in this area is evident. The collection includes selections suitable for use by all ages.

Shadows and Cypress: Southern Ghost Stories is the best collection of ghost stories I've seen. Many have been gathered from the old WPA collections, and many have been collected in the oral tradition. Dr. Brown is an expert on the classification of folk lore. His expertise in this area is evident. The collection includes selections suitable for use by all ages.

My favorite part of this book was the first 49 pages where Jerry Clower becomes the story. This long interview with him takes you on a journey beyond his charming wit and storytelling.

Clower, in his modesty and ole boy ways, belies how fascinating his own story is. Stepping beyond the yarns he spins on stage, he takes you on a trip through the South and introduces you to a string of people he has met along the way.

Join Jerry in a chat with William Faulkner or Will Davis Campbell (Will D. Campbell, author of Brother to a Dragonfly).

Take a nostalgic visit to Jerry and Homerline when they were tenants at primitive artist Theora Hamblett's home in Oxford, Mississippi.

Clower loves to tell a story and he's made a career out of doing it well. But the best story is the one he admits he has been privileged to live.

"Stories From Home" is pricless.

All the stories from years back are here, in this book! Also, an enlightening interview with Clower. I bought this for my dad for Father's Day and plan to find my own copy. If you want light-hearted, meaningful reading about times past, this is the book for you. This compilation is well-organized i.e. Ledbetter family section, coon huntin' section, etc. Find one of these and put it in a safe place. These are hard to come by and are definitely something to treasure.

I first read one of these stories in an airline magazine. I figured the sample was the best of the bunch, but ordered the book anyway. Story after story, Jerry Clower immerses you in the life of the deep south and tells you stories that you will think about for years afterward-- and you'll laugh with each recalling!

This book is an excellent summary of the domestic and international politics at play in the ongoing drama of the 1790-1804 revolution in St. Domingo (the name for what later became Haiti.) The author describes the southern fears of American slaves being inspired to revolt like the St. Domingans and how these fears tempered the sentiments of key Revolutionary fathers like slave-owning Thomas Jefferson, who for some reason continues to get a free ride from modern historians despite his clear and balatant racism. The book to a lesser extent is concerned with developments in Revolutionary France, but provides enough background to appreciate what was happening on the island itself. The primary concern of the US in the beginning was trade and profit with the revolting slaves. Later, when relations with France became tense as a result of naval insults to our merchant vessels, passive support for the rebels became a key component of America's strategy. Later still, when it seemed that Napoleon had grand designs for a North American Empire centered in Louisiana, prolonging the ongoing quagmire in St. Domingo served the purpose of exhausting French resources to the point the ambitious First Consul threw up his hands and sold the young Republic a huge swath of land that began our Manifest Destiny. After the French withdrew from Haiti, US interest dissolved, with no enthusiasm at all for recognizing the first example of blacks overthrowing their white owners. Indeed, not until after our Civil War started did this country finally and formally recognize Haiti as an independent state (some 40 years after France itself did so.)
All in all, a must have for any student of the early American and French Republics, the Napoleonic Wars, Haiti or slavery.

Scholars, novelists, and playwrights have examined the slave revolt that violently and abruptly ousted the French plantation system on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue during the 1790s from the viewpoint of the slaves, in the context of the French Revolution, through the eyes of the charismatic leader Toussaint Louverture, and from other perspectives. Treatment of U.S. foreign policy toward the embattled colony has received chapters and articles within larger studies. Gordon S. Brown, however, commits a full-length study of American policy toward Saint-Domingue in his accessible work, Toussaint's Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005).

Brown's thesis is straightforward: competing U.S. economic interests between northern merchants and shippers and southern slaveholders "determined the main lines of America's Haitian policy" (6). He sustains this economic view throughout the work while introducing the reader to the myriad of American, Dominguan, French, and British voices that influenced the resulting and fluctuating policies. Brown handles the complexities of U.S-Dominguan diplomacy while never losing focus on the overriding economic determinants. Toussaint's Clause follows the chronology of events and provides the reader a firm overview of the revolution, which lasted from 1791 to 1804.

Internal American policy debates are the stars of this work. Brown's use of primary source correspondence and extended quotes reveals how early American power players like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Timothy Pickering confront the issues of domestic politics, southern slavery, and the French Revolution. He highlights the influence of French ministers and touchy relations with Great Britain on American thinking toward the island. Brown concludes that U.S.-Dominguan trade played an important role in almost every policy discussion of what to do about the rebel slaves.

Though three presidential administrations enacted different policies toward Saint-Domingue, one thing is clear from Brown's work: at least one administration maintained a full-fledged foreign policy with an island of black ex-slaves some 65 years before the end of slavery in America. John Adams and his cabinet maintained diplomatic correspondence with Louverture, provided the black regime financial assistance, and the nascent U.S. navy engaged the forces of Louverture's Dominguan rival Andre Rigaud during a hostile struggle for Saint-Dominguan leadership. Brown explains eighteenth-century American diplomatic involvement with a black colony in terms of international politics and trade economics. A primary force behind the policy was careful consideration of its implications for northern merchants and its impact for southern slaveholders. The work helps us better understand the importance of trade and slaves (as commodities and laborers) in the early republican economy.

Only one other author has written a monograph that primarily examines U.S. foreign policy toward the French slave colony Saint-Domingue. Tim Matthewson's A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic highlights the role of slavery in the political thinking of American policymakers. Brown's Toussaint's Clause addresses the discussion of economic interests in America's Dominguan diplomacy. Economics and slavery are important policy factors in U.S.-Dominguan relations. They are not, however, the only ones. More remains to be written on American diplomatic relations with the black regime of Saint-Domingue.

Brown's book does not do a lot of things, such as delve into the intricacies of the French Revolution, provide an in-depth understanding of Louverture's valor, or examine slave life on Saint-Domingue. Other works, however, speak to those subjects. The contribution that Brown makes is crafting a readable historical narrative which illuminates the role of the United States, not as only player in the revolution of black Dominguans, but as part of a cast of more powerful global actors. Toussaint's Clause is not heavily sourced and would be a useful tool for undergraduate students and general readers. Anyone who reads the book will be a step closer to understanding why a nation whose governmental leadership included white slaveholders would finance and assist a regime of black ex-slaves in their quest for independence. For one book, that is no small feat.

This short, articulate survey of the the newborn United States' issues with the St. Domingue (the putative Haiti) touches on virtually everything: The French Revolution; the Louisiana Purchase, the early Federal-state struggles in the United States; the founding fathers' ambivalence about the institution of slavery; the often overriding role of the private sector in American diplomacy , Caribbean piracy in the 18th and early 19th century. All of this and more seen through the lens of the Haitian slave revolt and the vagaries of the historic changes in French (and western) society engendered by the French revolution. A great read that makes one hunger for more of all the issues discussed.

This mystery starts out good enough, with Trixie and the Bobwhites travelling to St. Louis and taking a boat trip down the Mississippi, but the plot requires Trixie and Honey to abandon their usual good sense, and some of the twists in the story are far-fetched. However, this book does have Dan taking part in the adventure, and it's a real treat to have him doing more than just staying home while the other BWG's have all the fun.

Very well written. It has all the elements of a good mystery. Trixie and Honey were always getting into scrapes, but this was by far their scariest. But, as usual it was the BWG's to the rescue. Great reading for kids.

This book is fabulous. This is one of my favorite Trixie Belden books

Dr. Keith Cunningham's book "Two Zuni Artists" is a valuable resource into the life and art of the Zuni culture. The book includes personal interviews with Zuni artisans and insightful information about their ceremonies and culture. Along with the Zuni research, is a story. The story follows the lives of a family of artists and their struggles and accomplishments. The book's subtitle "A Tale of Art and Mystery" is definately appropriate, although you must read the book to find out the mystery. Included with the text is a multitude of plates and pictures that depict actual Zuni art and Zuni life. The characters from the story are also pictured in the book. I highly recommend this book to those people who are familiar with Zuni culture and to those who know nothing about it. Overall, a very interesting and insightful book.

Dr. Keith Cunningham's book "Two Zuni Artists" is a valuable resource into the life and art of the Zuni culture. The book includes personal interviews with Zuni artisans and insightful information about their ceremonies and culture. Along with the Zuni research is a story. The story follows the lives of a family of artists and their struggles and accomplishments. The book's subtitle "A Tale of Art and Mystery" is definately appropriate, although you must read the book to find out the mystery. Included with the text is a multitude of plates and pictures that depict actual Zuni art and Zuni life. The characters from the story are also pictured in the book. I highly recommend this book to those people who are familiar with Zuni culture and to those who know nothing about it. Overall, a very interesting and insightful book.

This book starts out as a conventional anthropology treatise, examining the life-work of a Zuni fetish-carver and his mother, a potter. Cunningham, a professor at Northern Arizona University, does a nice job of interviewing the artists, putting their work in context, and sketching the history of Zuni from prehistory to the present day.

What sets this book apart from dozens like it: when the aging parents of 'Helen', the mother, die, the ensuing family crisis causes Helen to fly off the rails into confused mysticism, which ultimately leads to her exile from Zuni. It's a sad and dramatic tale, familiar (to a degree) to anyone who's lived in a small, isolated community. The difference is, Zuni culture isn't American culture: Helen's store is closed by tribal police, and charges and counter-charges of witchcraft poison the atmosphere.

It's a sad and familiar story of family conflicts, mental illness and how a society treats its misfits (not well). This is not at all what one expects from a university-press art book. Very nicely done, and recommended reading for anyone interested in contemporary Pueblo art and culture.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

I have read "How I Found the Strong" by Ms. McMullan and enjoyed this book even more. My grandchildren loved it. The author's writing skills get better and better. Write one for us older readers!

Addy is abandoned by her mother when she is only 12, yet she has her head on straight enough to muddy through the forces of good and evil which close in around her. Not unlike Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird," Addy rises to the truth when she needs to and acts with courage and determination, with a maturity that most adults around her fail to exhibit. Torn between her family's bad reputation and her own need for independence, Addy shows that being abandoned by your family can be a positive when the right surrogate parents are at hand. Great post-Civil War snapshot of the Deep South, complete with white sheets and very mean men. Suitable for middle- or high schoolers and an easy airplane read for me.

Margaret McMullan's WHEN I CROSSED NO-BOB is a beautiful, lyrical and uplifting novel for young readers (though adults will surely enjoy it, too). The story begins several years after the end of the novel's prequel, HOW I FOUND THE STRONG, at Shanks' (Frank Russell) wedding where twelve-year old Addy O'Donnell (of the famous and feared O'Donnell clan) is abandoned by her mother. Frank and his new bride take Addy in and Addy does everything she can to fit in with her new family. But Addy's past, in the form of her father, comes back to claim her and bring her back into the fold. Addy must conquer her fears and search deep into her soul to find the courage to do the right thing. It's a terrific story.

Theodore's Roosevelt's "The Winning of The West" volume one is unlike most modern histories. His is a story of the founding of the American Republic West of the Original 13. This volume is of the late Colonial Period. He is unafraid to make very harsh judgements, attacking both the American Indians and the Pioneers, although it is clear who he favours. He does have many prejudices, but, to be honest, most Historians do. President Roosevelt's were just of the less respected, today at least, kind. The whole series is very much worth reading, and is a worthy investment of capital and time. Ryan M.

Roosevelt does quite well to capture the essence of what went on during the period when the colonists began westward. The point made by the editor that it is indeed a wonder that this work was ever created at all is well taken when one considers Roosevelt's involvement with so much else in his life while he produced what, for the time, was a very scholarly opus.

One must be patient with the narrative; it tends to be choppy. One must also be patient with, or at least understanding of, TR's view of the world and especially his notion of upon whom the greater glory of the westward expansion rests.

All in all, it is seemingly a must read (as is the entire series) for anyone having either an interest in the history of this time, or an interest in TR and his works.

Before Roosevelt begins sensationalizing in the second volume, he describes the utter wilderness of the region and characterizes both the individual settlers and Indians who would play decisive roles in the settlement and migration of whites westward, and also gives sweeping portraits of the Indian nations encountered during our westward expansion. The hardships of the settlers due to the ruggedness of their new mountain home, their self-reliance, the cold winters, the need to fell forest for pasture and tillage, the daily peril of Indian attacks, and the distant relations with their origins to the east complete this wonderfully written and diversified study of early American frontier life.

This book covers so much about writing. Ellen Gilchrist lists many interesting non-fiction and fiction books which she uses to teach in her creative writing workshops. she has written about her experiences of teaching creative writing or 'rewriting' as she emphasise 'writing is rewriting' to her students.
In each and every chapter, she tries to get across some point helpful for those who want to write.

This book of short essays is divided into the sections "Life," "Writing," and "Teaching." For a fan of Ellen Gilchrist's fiction, like me, it's wonderful. She gives out little tidbits that reveal which parts of the Rhoda stories are autobiographical, and tells stories about how particular characters came into her head. Her essay about reading Shakespeare aloud every Sunday with friends made me want to get out the plays and go through them all next year.

The journal of her teaching duties at the University of Arkansas is also inspiring...and hilarious. She really does care about the students, but skewers their dumb notions and their immaturity, too. She's old-fashioned--computers and genre writing get no sympathy at all--but doesn't quite fall into crotchety with it.

There is very little nuts and bolts advice about writing. Read the best stuff out there, and listen to those who went before you; stay off drugs, and rewrite your work: that about covers it. Think of this book as more of a visit with Ellen Gilchrist than a book about writing.

If you're not already a Gilchrist fan, you'll get more out of her fiction than out of this book. "Rhoda: A Life In Stories" would be a fine start. As a book on writing, for writers, Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life" is more substantial and better crafted.

Ever since a friend recommended "Starcarbon" to me 8 or 9 years ago, I've been a great fan of Ellen Gilchrist's work and have purchased all her books. Her characters are unforgettable and I have learned so much about human nature from them. Her writing makes me wish I was from the South!

I would recommend this book to any fan of Gilchrist's writing, any aspiring writer, any teacher, or anyone who is interested in knowing what makes writers "tick" ("Falling Through Space" is another wonderful window into Gilchrist's life and mind). She is an inspiration to me and makes me believe that someday I can claim the name of writer for myself.

Thank you Ellen for sharing your stories with us. I can't wait for the Nora Jane collection.