Kansas Books

C. Robert Haywood has written a wonderful book on one of the founders (of perhaps two or three men) of Dodge City, Kansas. Wright made millions from cattle and spent it all. Four wives, and 45 years later he died in Dodge City, broke and not famous. He was one of the men who hired Wyatt Earp and was a backer of Bat Masterson, among many other more famous (infamous) Western heros. As President of the Ford County (ie, Dodge City) Historical Society, I assure the reader that no better history of that period has yet been written, except perhaps Robert Wright's own 1913 book on Dodge City. (out of print). Wright is an amazing man, from a family which included a grandfather who was Clerk of the US Supreme Court and a greatgrandfather that was president of the US during the period before the constitution. Great book. (Little known fact: Wright has, in 1999, a greatgrandson, age 80 and a grandson, age 49, still living. That doesn't happen often, but with forty years or so between wife number 1 and wife number 4....) George Laughead Jr.

C. Robert Haywood has written a wonderful book on one of the founders (of perhaps two or three men) of Dodge City, Kansas. Wright made millions from cattle and spent it all. Four wives, and 45 years later he died in Dodge City, broke and not famous. He was one of the men who hired Wyatt Earp and was a backer of Mat Basterson, among many other more famous (infamous) Western hero. As President of the Ford County (ie, Dodge City) historical Society, I assure the reader that no better history of that period has yet been written, except perhaps Robert Wright's book on Dodge City itself. (out of print). Wright is an amazing man, from a family which included a grandfather who was Clerk of the US Supreme Court and a greatgrandfather that was president of the US during the period before the constitution. Great book. (little known fact: Wright still has in 1999 a greatgrandson age 80 and a grandson, age 49, still living. that doesn't happen very often, but with forty years or so between wife number 1 and wife number 4, etc.) George Laughead Jr.

Nate Evans has created a Grahame Base, Dr. Seuss- type book that is a fun read for young and old. Lessons about boasting, cynicism, greediness all rolled up into one fun book. Bongo and Lu have their work cut out for them as they help Prof. Yahoo find "animals" for the queen's zoo. The fact that the Professor has lost his glasses is of no concern to him! One last slip at the end of the day saves the day.

Does Nate Evans have any more books I should know about?

Both me and my children have enjoyed this book a ton! The wonderfully bright illustrations and the rhyming story are fun to read over and over again!

Being a direct descendent of Julia German & having known her as a child I have lived with this story my entire life. Arlene's book however makes this true American tale of courage and survival come alive even for those of us who thought we understood it. Highly suggested reading for historians who want to realize the truth as it was on both sides of the Anglo-Indian issues of that time and/or as an inspirational experience for readers of all ages. There's history here for the reader to experience on every page. Thank you Arlene for bringing the definitive non-ficitional illustration of these events to the general public.

THIS BOOK IS A VERY GOOD PORTRAYAL OF THE GERMAN FAMILY.THE FOUR GERMAN SISTER WERE CAPTIVE OF GRAY BEARD THEIR NAME WERE CATHERINE 17 YEARS OLD AND 12 YEARS OLD SOPHI,ADDIE AND JULIE THE YOUNG ONE'S . CAREFULLY RESERCHED. WHERE WAS CATHERINE IN 1880.

For police chief Susan Wren, trouble started the day Hollywood decided to go on location to shoot a film in her small Kansas town, making her tiny force stretched to the max. However, Trouble with a capital T does not start until stuntwoman Kay Bender, a ringer for superstar Laura Edwards, is killed during a shoot.

During the initial inquiries, Susan learns that Laura has been the victim of several threatening notes. Susan also finds out that her current boy friend, police officer Ben Pankhurst, used to be Laura's spouse, disqualifying him from the case. As Susan digs deeper into the lives of the personalities involved, someone else is murdered. The police chief wonders if she can control her jealousy over Ben's former relationship and if Laura is the ultimate target of the killer.

The fourth Susan Wren mystery is an intriguing who-done-it because it brings much insight into the personal lives of the recurring cast. Though the interspersing of the killer's thoughts into the action seems to cause some inertia, MURDER TAKE TWO remains a well-written, often times humorous novel. Wren fans will have plenty to crow about as they soar like an eagle with Charlene Weir's latest book.

Harriet Klausner

Murder Take Two, by Charlene Weir, is the fourth in a series of high-voltage mysteries. Weir is a master of tight, clean prose; characters the reader can care about; and intricate, twisty plots. Susan Wren, a former San Francisco police officer, becomes police chief of Hampstead, KS, when her new husband, the former chief, is murdered. Initially Susan wants the post because she is driven to catch his killer. Now, three years later, she wonders what is keeping her in this small town where she is still the outsider. Realizing that one part of the answer is something she would prefer not to admit even to herself--her attraction to second in command Ben Parkhurst--she tries unsuccessfully to stamp out her interest in him. In Murder Take Two, a Hollywood film crew is on location in Hampstead. When a stunt double is killed, Susan learns that the movie's leading lady, the lovely Laura, was once married to Parkhurst. Susan orders him off the case, but with Laura begging him to protect her, he can't stay away. As Susan struggles with her jealousy and Parkhurst's insubordination, an appealing young officer, Yancie, follows a string of bizarre episodes to the book's explosive ending. This series has everything going for it: fascinating characters, a sense of place so real you find yourself slapping mosquitoes, and ingenuous, complex plots. Don't miss it.

It helps me to undetstand my self better and find may wy bag home. It would be good to have this book translated in german. I would sell it many times in my bookstore. How can I order as al seller?

It helps me to undetstand my self better and find may wy bag home. It would be good to have this book translated in german. I would sell it many times in my bookstore. How can I order as al seller?

This book fills a big gaping hole in economic history. There are probably hundreds of books on Nixon and Vietnam, China, and Watergate. But very few exist on his other policies, including his economic policies. This is especially strange considering that his Administration presided over the final destruction of the gold standard, first sustained budget deficits, and the beginning of the Great Recession of 1970s.

Thus, this book is extremely useful. Almost month-by-month it describes the swinging pendulum of booms and busts that resulted from Nixon's economic mismanagement and the world economy's response to it. This is a very thorough work, meticulously documented. The author carefully documents endless cases of sacrifice of economic policies to blatantly short-term political goals.

It's also a good narrative, it weaves all the facts and explanation together, and it's organized very well. I found it very easy to read and understand it. It sheds much light on the economic causes of all those strange events of the 1970s. It's also a great companion to a more general history of USA during those years.

Over the last decade or so, there has been a substantial rethinking of the Nixon presidency.... Until the appearance of Allen Matusow's new book, however, Nixon's economic policies had not received a similar reassessment. In a very readable and well researched exploration of Nixon's economics, Matusow makes a compelling case that Nixon held no principled position whatsoever and that his economic policies were overtly and explicitly driven by his attempts to create a new electoral majority.... The Nixon presidency, as seen through Matusow's account, becomes an excellent case study in public-choice economics and the failures of interventionism.Three major strengths of Matusow's book deserve special mention. First, he has made extensive use of archival materials that were inaccessible until recently. By using the presidential office files, Bob Haldeman's extensive notes, and the various books and recollections of Nixon's associates, he has assembled a large amount of material from a variety of sources to document various meetings and discussions in great detail. The result is a very ugly view of the politicization of economic policy that puts one in mind of the old saw about not wanting to know how sausages or laws are made....A second strength of the book, of special interest to economists, is Matusow's careful documentation of the role played by well-known economists in the Nixon administration. Arthur Burns, Herbert Stein, Paul McCracken, Milton Friedman, and others all have starring roles in the drama. Except Friedman, none of them presents an appealing picture. Matusow extensively documents the ways in which Nixon's economic advisors were quick to sacrifice principles, particularly free-market principles, for political expediency.... Matusow makes extensive use of Friedman's Newsweek columns to illustrate the ways in which Nixon's policies did not correspond with the Friedman's free-market, monetarist line....The book's third strength is Matusow's use of economics. In more than three hundred pages of analysis of Nixon's economics, I found very few places where Matusow made an obvious error of theory or history.... But in most cases he handles the economics nicely, especially in his discussions of inflation, where he keeps the behavior of the money supply always at the forefront, and the energy crisis, where he does a fine job of documenting the various government interventions that precipitated the crisis and the horrendous policy mistakes that exacerbated it.... Matusow deserves particular praise for his discussion of Bretton Woods and the gold window, in which he deals with some complicated issues in international monetary economics and does a good job of rendering them comprehensible....Matusow has carefully and cogently documented Nixon's use of the instruments of power in pursuit of his own political goals and illuminated the disastrous results (double-digit inflation and the worst recession since the 1930s, not to mention a legacy of interventionism that has continued to the present) that Nixon's economics engendered. Matusow's book, though not couched in such terms, is an excellent case study in public-choice economics and is recommended to students of public choice and recent U.S. economic history.

A well-known author once commented, "You can't go home again." A valid observation, in a sense, but I contend that Deryl Leamng did go home again, as exhibited in his book, and discovered himself.

The book affords the reader not only a trip down Dr. Leaming's "memory lane", but provides incredible insight into the framework of the times. The reader is drawn into the carefree, unsophisticated lifestyle of the author's early years growing up in a small, southwestern Kansas town. We follow him through humble beginnings fraught with tragedy and significant change. Yet, with all the disorder in his young life there is never any indication of resentment or reproach. Quite the contrary, we read about happy-go-lucky times spent with family and friends who appeared to alleviate most of the hardships.

Throughout the book are glimpses of events within the immediate locale as well as the big world "out there somewhere" and how they were relevant in the life of the author. Dr. Leaming begins each chapter with lyrics from songs of an appropriate time period which sets the mood for that reminiscence. He also cleverly inserts a myriad of items at the end of each chapter, which are pertinent to the indicated years, to give the reader a glimpse into the significant contrast of lifestyles then and now.

This "Tale" is definitely one person's story but it goes far beyond that by documenting for the reader the constancy, constitution, and courage of the people of those times in America. I have a feeling that the author took that "trip down memory lane" for self-contemplation and discovery. Very courageous of him!

My mom n' dad were dust-bowl babies, so I grew up tongue-lashed about being "spoiled" and how my ungrateful generation didn't know how good we had it.

So I stopped listening to mom n' dad's more-than-once-told tales of how tough life was during the Great Depression. Now, after reading this "One-Told Tale in Three-Part Harmony..." I think I get it. And (to rip off William Allen White) I know "what's the matter with Kansas."

It wasn't all doom, gloom and dust clouds way back in 1930s Kansas. Life was slower -- much sloooooower. People commuted by foot and time was measured in hours, not milliseconds. Health care wasn't terribly advanced, but American butts weren't super-sized, either -- and there were no diseases of opulence like bulimia.

And Kansans weren't whining about abortion clinics or joining the local militia -- they were busy trying to survive. A liberal Democrat named FDR drew their appreciation and "big-government" was almost a term of endearment. The author brings all this into a new light and gives a deeper meaning to today's well-worn phrase of the moment, "family values" -- that when times are hard, we survive by our love for one another.

But this book is not a political rant, it's a memoir, penned (apparently) by someone who lived the tale, and whose heart was warmed (and sometimes hurt) by manifold moments of caring and generosity; moments which transcended the austerity of the Great Depression and the stark, wind-baked plains of Kansas.

A well-written account of the early years of US involvement with Ho Chi Minh in the second world war. It is a sad commentary on what might have been. Had the US not abandoned their ally to cruel colonialism, the US and Vietnam may never have suffered the long costly and unnecessary war they did. It seems an all too common tale of strange cold war bed-fellows and betrayel.

This book goes far to provide the background to the recent history of Vietnam and the United States. Ho Chi Minh is not portrayed as a saint but neither is French colonialism. In the portrayal, the nationalist rather than communist undercurrents of the Vietnam war are expounded and explained. A worthy addition to the history of twentieth century Vietnam-US relations.

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh, by Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, was an unexpected pleasure. Books written on the OSS or the British equivalent in World War II, SOE, so frequently fall headfirst into a muddy miasma of internal politics, blame and counter-blame, and a fixation on minutiae that they often obscure more than they illuminate. Thankfully, Bartholomew-Feis gives a well-written and lucid account of the OSS in Viet Nam on the cusp between war and peace in 1945. She steps neither into the "Ho was a nationalist and if only they had listened to the OSS then the Vietnam war never would have happened" camp nor into the "Those naive fools helped Ho get to power and brought communism to Southeast Asia" camp, for which every reader should be grateful.

At first, her book gives one pause. She starts off with dual mini-biographies of Ho Chi Minh and F.D.R. and one wonders where on earth she will go with those. However, once she actually gets from contextual background to Vietnam itself, and begins to display the depth of her research and understanding, the book is on much firmer footing. The OSS encountered the Viet Minh in an intelligence-gathering context, so she focuses first on the intelligence networks in Vietnam and how the Allies used them (introducing the reader to a fascinating "free-lance" intelligence network that gave intel to the British, US and Chinese), then shows how the OSS gradually was introduced into this intelligence context. In the process, she illuminates the tensions between the French in Vietnam and the Vietnamese Communists, between north and south Vietnam, and between the Japanese occupiers and both the French and Vietnamese.

Bartholomew-Feis does a good job describing the various OSS missions into Vietnam at the end of the war and the personalities behind them. What is perhaps most striking is how few, how young, and how junior most of these American personnel were, yet the great responsibilities they had in representing their country in matters relating from intelligence to strategy to policy and diplomacy. Almost as fascinating is how, virtually without exception, all of the Americans (conservative and liberal alike) were impressed with Ho Chi Minh, who must positively have oozed charisma. It is quite interesting to compare the personal relationships between the American OSS representatives and Ho and his close collaborators on one hand with the much more bitter, taxing, and dysfunction relations between the British and Tito (see Dedjier's diaries on his views of the British, for example) or the British and the Albanian communists or the British and the Greek communists. Perhaps the only real comparison is with Mao Zedong who managed to win over a bevy of Westerners from left-wing reporters like Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley to Marine officers like Evans Carlson. In any case, it is quite interesting to see how genuinely friendly the Vietnamese were towards the Americans, more so than almost all of the other communist movements with which the OSS worked.

Bartholomew-Feis does write, rather often, of how the Vietnamese "manipulated" the Americans, yet some of the incidents of which she writes sound not so much as a deliberate underhanded manipulation so much as they seem a genuine (if perhaps temporary) convergence of interests. She is on firmer footing when she describes how the Vietminh used their rather tenuous official contacts with the United States as a way to gain status and legitimacy. The Vietminh were quite clever in that regard.

Overall, Bartholomew-Feis does an excellent job in covering a difficult and--given the fact that any book on this is heavily burdened with foreshadowing to begin with--sensitive subject. It would have been nice to have seen more use of Vietnamese sources but overall the book is well-researched and Bartholomew-Feis demonstrates a considerable grasp of her subject.

I have read scores of books on the OSS and SOE dealing with various resistance movements in World War II and I think this is definitely one of the better ones. Scholars and general readers interested in intelligence gathering during World War II, the origins of the Indochina War, Vietnamese nationalism, and the end of the Second World War will all be interested in this well-written study. I recommend it.

My kids love this series! The story is suspenseful and easy to read at the same time. I'm always looking for good books that will keep my son's attention. As a reluctant reader, my son needs stories with a tight plot and lots of action, and it's sometimes hard to find books he will like. But he really loves the Prairie Skies series. And I know it will help both my kids understand this period of history a lot better.

Here is another book by Hopkinson, but this time a chapter book story for older elementary. This story is about a boy whose family is fighting in the Civil War and his personal experience with finding a runaway slave. The book contains interesting pencil drawings to illustrate the story. Besides the obvious bridge to Civil War history, the availability of multiple books by this author could enable an author study in this case.

Pioneer Naturalist on the Plains.. is more than the story of Elam Bartholomew. His diaries not only gives the reader an insightful look at this remarkable man, we are given a spectacular view of pioneer life. The book does what novels cannot. We see and feel what is like to live the pioneer life through the eyes of Elam. As he carves out a life for his family on the wild frontier, the reader lives his triumphs and tragedies. Anybody interested in the true pioneer spirit of America will find this book a fascinating read.

elam bartholomew kept copious quantities on notes his entire life about the daily adventures of living in western kansas. his life span encompassed travel by horse, then train, then automobile not to mention the advent of electricity and a sod home. a deep and abiding devotion to god country and family propelled this tough individualist thru life. his hobby of plant life and cultures turned into his live work. but his dairy entries on a daily basis opens a window to the reader to feel and experience life on the frontier of america