Oklahoma Books

This reprint of a 1972 book is the best (and only) source of information on 35mm cameras and photography (which was called 'miniature' format back when most cameras used glass plates and/or large sheets of film). There is a short history lesson of photography from just before 35mm cameras became popular through the 1960s, then information about the cameras forms the bulk of the text.
Information on American 35mm cameras from this time period (~1920 - 1960s) is hard to find. This book describes the companies and their products. There are many photos, but they are of low quality (copies of copies), but when you are the only source who can complain? And at almost 350 pages this is a lot of information for the money.
A great book about a neglected subject. Highly recommended, despite the poor quality illustrations.

This is an excellent book about Indian identity. I had the opportunity to work with Jim Hamill at Miami University. He writes with experience and passion. Congratuations, Jim! I loved the book.

Fenton is the reigning expert on the Iroquois and has published extensively on a multitude of subjects relating to them. This is his life's work and it is a tremendous achievement. Not a book to curl up to, nevertheless it is a must for anyone who professes interest in American history. Worth owning.

[...]. This sort of complete ignorance and hate is shameful enough--far more offensive and dangerous than any pornographic or adult material which Amazon would ban automatically--but why should Amazon allow it's review sections to be forums for political agitation?!!! If one young person reads this and believes it, Amazon is complicit in the perversion of a mind.

Extremely good research and veridic in all aspects, it has helped me in a very extensive way in my own research about my country. My congratulations and thanks to the author of this book Mr.Peter Gerhad
Jose Casas

This is sixth collection of Justice Brandeis' letters edited by Urofsky and Levy. This long collection, with 634 letters, covers some 630 or so pages. It contains only the Brandeis side of the correspondence; as the authors explain in their helpful introduction, they suspect FF destroyed his correspondence with LDB sometime in the early 1940's after the Justice's death. The book is particularly useful given the rather sensational twist given to their relationship in Murphy's "The Brandeis/Frankfurther Connection." Much as in their other volumes, helpful annotations abound, which explain terms and events, and add to the context of the letters. There is also a thorough index. The topics covered (from roughtly 1912 until August, 1941) demonstrate LDB's vast area of interests and expertise and his contacts with the notables of the day: Harvard Law School; Zionism; Croly; Laski; The New Republic; the "futility" of the Sherman Act; Roscoe Pound; Sacco-Vanzetti;Taft; Wilson; FDR; Cardozo, and Charles Beard. Issues of Supreme Court jurisdictional reform, intra-court politics, some key decisions (e.g. Whitney, New State Ice, Erie RR, etc.), and personality profiles of various Justices all add to the richness of the correspondence. To top things off, most of the correspondence simply is interesting and affords the reader with an unique insight into LDB's thinking and activities.

Well written study of Donne and related topics for feminist studies. An excellent read.

Rather than a comprehensive book about modern guatemala or a human rights thesis this is an anthropological study of violence.

There are 10 different case histories all written by different people who are among the top guatemalan scholars. In these case histories is information and analysis that isn't available in most books and it covers some areas of the country not always touched on by scholars. The whole thing is held together by an exellent 35 page introduction and a final chapter of conclusion with a wonderful chronology of events. Over all an exellent book for serious students but maybe not for beginners.

This is a study about the mayan people that provides exellent incites from the perspective of social anthropologists and ethnographers as opposed to activists or journalists. The contributors have spent enormous amounts of time with their subjects and know them well.

.............socks

Ever since I read "Native Son" in the early 60's I was overpowered by the sheer scope and magnitude of its reach in telling the story of a black man in racist America. The provocative prose with which it is written and its naked force upon the reader is like a shock wave, even today. Although the memory of that story remained with me throughout my life, it wasn't until this month that I came across a newly-published biography and decided it was time to indulge my fascination for Richard Wright. I was repaid a hundred-fold with a painstakingly resourced biography which not only revealed the incredible life story of a black boy raised to "know his place"in the racist South, but his rise to become a self-made intellectual author, speaker,and poet, as well as a voice for Black America. His success as a leader in Chicago's Communist Party of the 30's and 40's, which he joined primarily to attain a voice in what was then the only intellectual community open to blacks, his assessment later of that party and break from it, his numerous romantic liasons, his marriage and children, and his final period of liberation from Jim Crow America to become a resident of France are carefully delineated by Hazel Rowley with a firm grasp of her subject and a mature, objective voice. There is no doubt that Wright's history is every bit as important and fascinating as his literary work. It is a life lived to the fullest by a man who did not stint to speak the unspeakable about his views on racism in his own country, as well as abroad. Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Native Son, is perhaps the archetype of possible outcomes of a life devestated from birth by the sanctioning of unparalleled racist oppression. It is well to read Wright's magnum opus before one can truly appreciate the biography of this complex, outspoken, and ingenius personality.

While Clarence Darrow is often on the lips of those who reach back into history of the greatest trial lawyers of all time, Moman Pruiett tops them all. The historical aspect and the outrageousness is better than any fiction - 303 acquittals in 343 murder cases by allegedly mastering the art of jury tampering and deceitful testimony.), this is a gem of a story that every lawyer should read about. It's not about a lawyer who plays by the rules by any means - and this isn't fiction either.

One of the interesting aspects is that he didn't decide to become a lawyer until after his own second conviction (which he served two years), felt that he had been wronged, and swore out the vendetta to empty the jails "and turn thieves and murderers loose . . . in a perfectly legal way."

One of the great stories in the book: The lawyer, Pruiett received a message from a distant state late in his career saying "I have been charged with murder. Have $5,000. Will you defend me?" Pruiett's immediate reply, "Am leaving on the next train with three eyewitnesses."

It was a different time and different place. Famed Law Professor Gerald Uelmen (also of OJ "Dream Team" fame) wrote a good article about Pruiett in the early 1980s and mentioned him in a '99-'00 law review article "Who is the Lawyer of the Century."