Arkansas Books

Mr. Ciardi gently and deeply embraces aspects of relationship that are subtle and quiet. He seems to whisper his heart's secrets to his readers. I've owned this book for over ten years and am now giving it as a gift. My copy is tattered around the edges from my frequent readings. It is a book to keep close by, and like a good friend or love, each time you read it, something new is revealed.

"Portrait of America" was a popular video documentary series in the mid-eighties, a product of collaboration between Superstation/Turner Broadcasting Corporation and Ambrose Home Video. Well-researched, each video is divided into 5 segments covering most unique historical, social, and cultural aspects of each state. Watching such an interesting documentary, each being roughly about 50 minutes long, without advertisements and other interruptions seems to be a privilege in these days!

David Fitzgerald is one of Oklahoma's top photographers and this book just makes you want to travel to all the wonderful spots he's captured on film!

One of the best Civil War photographic histories I've seen. Contains hundreds of rare VERY rare Arkansas Civil War era photographs. The photos are explained in detail, not just captions. The quality of the books is excellent with thick glossy paper, clear photos, and well written text

I feel that joint writers Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin did an excellent job with the writing and pictures exhibited in The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine. It's hard to believe that the demand for integrated schools occurred less than a century ago. The novel depicts civil rights activist Daisy Bates and her quest to integrate the public schools of Arkansas during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She stood behind the nine African American students who our nation dubbed the "Little Rock Nine." The book provides pictures of Daisy's life including eye opening shots of the abuse the nine students as well as Diasy herself endured from Little Rock's public just to gain equal opportunity to education. Readers will become inspired by and appreciative of Daisy's work.

If you like romance mixed with some very good history this is the book for you. The love stories in this book are great. I fell in love with the families and felt their pain as they suffered through so many trials during the Civil War. A very good book.

This is Clarke's fifth book and certainly one of her best. The Heroic Life of Al Capsella, Clarke's first novel, is probably better known and funnier in style, but shows a real depth and maturity which is missing in that earlier and lighter novel.

This book is filled with many characters and story lines, and each one is interesting in its own right. We meet William, the hopelessly romantic poetry reader, Daz, the no nonsense-hard-headed, school girl, 'winner', Mrs. Sheila Thredlow, the demented occupant of Sunset retirement home, Fat Joanna, the socially tortured school girl, Stan Almond, the boy who came to collect his sister after the dance, Valentine O'Leary, the biggest Pig at Mimosa High, Karen Leonard, the sporty netball player, and still more. We are given portraits of their life in such a way that we quickly know them and are intrigued by them, and gradually, as the novel progresses, each of their separate stories will become knitted together in an artful and informative 'tapestry of life'.

On the surface the novel is about love: romantic love, family love, love between friends. On a deeper level it is about the lies we tell ourselves to make ourselves happy, at least for a little while. The story of Mrs. Thredlow is one of the most charming and sad tales I have read for some time. This story depicts life in its strange ambiguity, full of bitter/sweetness.

Jaz turns out to be the main character so this could be classified as a girl's novel, but there is material in there for boys too. is excellent for teenagers, but adults will find it an interesting read as well.

This is a wonderful book by a humble statesman. His unwavering sense of duty to public service is inspiring.

You'd never know from the dullish title, but this is an interesting, well-written, authoritative book of Western history. The subject is the upper Arkansas River valley around the present city of Pueblo -- not one of the West's most storied locations. There are a number of famous people who pass through the pages of this book -- Kit Carson, John Charles Fremont, Francis Parkman, and the Bents -- but the main characters are unfamiliar and have unalliterative, forgettable names: George S. Simpson, for example.

All the disadvantages aside, Janet LeCompte has written a small masterpiece about a handful of ex-mountain men, Mexicans, and traders who established several communities along the Arkansas River from 1840 to 1854. In the latter year, the Ute Indians killed most of the traders, thereby erasing Pueblo's claim to being the first White settlement in Colorado.

Most of the histories of the west are expansive, looking a big men and events. "PHG" is micro, focusing on a relatively unimportant region, and deriving its importance from a reconstruction of daily life among the Anglos and Hispanics at the isolated settlements. The author says the book is about the men and women who struggled to make a good life "out of the wild Indians, stubborn soil and thin grass of the difficult valley." Their failure, unnoticed as it may be in the larger scheme of things, is the drama of this homely story.

Smallchief

When people think of the great generals of the Late Roman Republic, most think of Pompey The Great and Julius Caesar but there were other more obscure men who were just as great in their military prowess such as Lucullus. Another one of those men was Quintus Sertorius, the last Marian general who successfully repelled every commander sent against him in Spain for almost 12 years. Phillip Spann does a great job at bringing this facinating character out of obscurity: recounting his exploits and exploring what his true motives may have been.

Quintus Sertorius was a Sabine knight (equites) and a rather stoic man who tended to follow the path of moderation. He was extraordinarily brave and showed much endurance in war. While fighting the Teutones and Cimbri under Caepio, he was severly wounded, lost an eye, and still had enough strength to swim across the Rhone with his armor on. He also had a very strong affinity for nature and animals making his Celtic retinues in Spain see him as a man blessed by the gods. His greatest qualities would indeed be demonstrated in Spain where he came from Italy to escape from Sulla and form a resistance movement in 83 B.C. It was there that he would fight Sulla's forces led by Metellus and Pompey for the next 12 years. He outwitted his opponents with brilliant guerilla tactics all over Spain and Morrocco with a loyal following of Celtiberian and Mauretanian warriors who saw him as their new Hannibal. His military prowess continued until his death undiminished as he was eventually betrayed and assassinated by Marcus Perperna, his 'noble' co-commander who resented being surpassed in prestige and authority by a mere commoner.

The primary source on Sertorius is Plutarch and most of Spann's work is based on this narrative source. Spann also gathers all of the fragments of information on Sertorius recited by Cicero, Sallust, Pliny, etc. The amount of information Spann gathers for this work is impressive even though he makes some mistakes typical in classical studies. For example, in reciting Sertorius' early career, he states that Sertorius served under Quintus Servilius Caepio in Narbonese Gaul but he later confuses Caepio with a relative of the same name. Apart from these minor errors, Spann does a great job at retracing where Sertorius carried out his campaigns, the Celtiberian tribes he relied on, and speculating as to his political motives. Spann follows Plutarch's comments that Sertorius was tranquil and peaceful man who found himself forced to fight the Sullan forces for his own survival: arguing how he knew he was on Sulla's proscriptions and so essentially a dead man. The only way he could survive was to fight Sulla's armies until the bitter end. Spann's theory as to Sertorius' motives significantly deviate from those of previous scholars who saw Sertorius as an idealist or a champion of the populares. Spann dispels those myths by pointing to the fact that Sertorius mainly supported Cinna but strongly opposed recalling Marius; he indicates how Sertorius led his army to kill all four thousand of Marius' blood thirsty freedmen who had carried out the massacres in Rome. Spann argues that Sertorius aligned with the Marians because Cinna and his party were the only ones that could advance his political career against Sulla. Sulla was a bitter opponent of the equites who, like Sertorius, generally supported Cinna and/or Marius. Sulla had denied Sertorius the tribunate and supported the conservative cause of the patricians whose efforts in controlling the Senate would lead them to civil war against the supporters of Cinna and Marius.

This book is extremely valuable in the area of classical studies as there are few studies of this incredible character. Most books on late republican figures focus on Caesar and Cicero. There are even few books on Pompey The Great available in print. Spann has done good work in flushing out the facts on Sertorius despite some of his minor mistakes. I strongly recommend this book to any one interested in classical studies or one of Rome's greatest but most obscure generals.