Kansas Books

Everytime a think I am the only one in the world who remembers something, I happily find I am wrong. Like the rest of you, I read these books many years ago. Actually it was in the 50's and they have stayed with me. I have tried in vain to find them over the years and now to find that they are back in print has totally made my day! I would also like to see the Candy Kane series back in print as Candy was a favorite of mine, as well. I was fortunate enough to find the first in the series at a rare book store on line a few years ago. Now I am eagerly awaiting my copy of Star Spangled Summer.

In the 1940's, when I read this book, it was like a trip to another world. Did it ever exist? I wonder. The book, written in 1941, is an introduction to the Parrish family in the summer of 1939. I was in awe of the glamor and excitement of the military trappings, West Point, horse shows, formal dances.

Twenty years later, my daughter read these books, including the ones about younger sister, Tippy Parrish. The series traces the children through adulthood, marriage and their families, along with interaction with characters in other Lambert books.

When I tried to find these books for my "Army Brat" grandchildren, children of West Pointers, I learned they are recently in reprint. However, I buy them used when I can. In an old battered copy, which I read, I found an anachronism which amused me. The teenagers loved the movies of Debbie Reynolds, Grace Kelly, and Gregory Peck, not movie stars of 1941, and barely in 1947, the reprint year. I am going to check it with a library copy, when I see one.

I am enjoying reading the series in order, and know my granddaughters will too.

I read this series, and Margaret Sutton's Judy Bolton Series at about the same time, and a few year's later, Elysweth Thane's Williamsburg Series (which I highly recommend, especially for those who love historical novels). There has always been a most special place in my heart for Carole, David, and Penny and the Parrish family. I think I must have outgrown the series during Tippy and her stories because I know I didn't finish them. The Parrish/Jordan stories warmed the heart of a girl, much like Carole, an only and somewhat privileged child. Interestingly, the impact of these three series has influenced my professional life and somewhat my private one. I married young, had three children in four years, who became my family. I lost my parents when I was 18(mother) and 23(father). Later influenced by the women's movement, I obtained degrees in history and English and am finishing my career as a history department chairperson and American history teacher in a Florida high school. For pleasure, I still read murder mystery/detective stories, J.K. Rowling, and historical novels. I own all of Elwyeth Thane's books. Although some of these series reflect the racial segregation and white ignorance of the '40s and '50s, the other values of honesty and integrity are a refreshing shower on these sad/difficult times.

I first read these books over thirty years ago (as did, apparently, many other women of a certain age;)) and *still* love them. Yes, the time period is very different, but the heart of the tale (of all the Parrish/Jordan books, actually) still remains universal. We all struggle through the same gamut of emotions as young adults, trying to find our place in the world and we all (mostly) need the love and support of our family members as we work our way towards being grownups.
War was not an 'instant broadcast' thing back in those days (Beloved Walter Cronkite (if you're old enough to have read these books thirty years ago, you're old enough to know who 'Uncle Walter' is!) wasn't even on the news yet!) and it *is* interesting to gain a perspective of the world that existed without the social and technological advantages we have now.
Not to mention that, if you *do* have pre-teen/teen daughters, this is a completely wholesome and totally appropriate way to feed those dear little imaginations.
I am so pleased to see a continuing interest in this series of books by this delightful writer....it would be a shame to have such good material shelved and forgotten.

A simple story of first love. The memory of it has stayed with me for over 30 years. How often can you say that? How wonderful to find it still exists. This book will take you back to a time when love didn't seem so complicated. Although written decades ago, it still tugs at your heartstrings.

After reading the book, I purchased several copies. They make great gifts for friends who are going through struggles. The many personal stories of hope often bring just the right encouragement.

Many examples of how God is there for us in all of or problems and everyday disappointments in life, and how he turns what could be a bad thing into good.

As a grandmother, mother, and wife, the author has lived through many of life's storms. Her vulverability, humor, and ability to see beaury in every aspect of life are qualities that make this book a winner. I felt I had gained a friend for life after just the first few pages. The book will encourage and uplift your spirit.

Through stories that touch your heart, Nancy Hoag shows how God comes alongside each one of us through the storms that buffet our lives. Nancy draws on her own experiences to help the reader see God's faithfulness in ALL situations. My copy of this book is dog-earred and worn -- a testament to its valuable insights for my life.

Storms Pass So Hang On is the kind of book you will take to bed with you -- especially on long dark nights. I was hooked by the time I finished the Prologue and the first two chapters. All chapters are mercifully short, which tells me the author understands that the attention span is the first thing to go, when you're stressed. In my opinion, this book leap frogs over the usual perky devotional book which often leaves me feeling a bit guilty if I haven't triumphed over my traumas in the first 15 minutes (with the aid of a Bible verse and a wink). Storms Pass is one delightful slice of life after another, painted with a vivid eye for detail and a total lack of saccharine. At LAST, someone wrote a book for the REST of us! I've been looking for a book like this for the past ten years. Thanks, Nancy.

Cecil Murphey's "When Someone You Love Has Alzheimer's" is exactly what it claims to be -- a source of daily encouragement. It offers honest and open feelings along with a sense of companionship by recognizing that we are not alone in having those feelings. It gives Scriptures to remind us of God's presence and provision, and a short prayer to focus our attention on the One who can provide all we need -- whatever that may be for the day or situation. Ideas and adjustments for coping are given that offer hope...

I highly recommend this devotional book for anyone who is on the journey of caring for someone with Alzheimer's or related diseases. It would be a wonderful gift of encouragement.

With Alzheimer's, my first thought was, There's nothing we can do. This book helped me see how wrong I was. With his daily encouragements, Cecil Murphey reveals many ways to reach out to a loved one who doesn't even know who we are. The truth is, there's a whole lot that we can and should do.

Thank you Cecil for writing this wonderful book. It's pure love, compassion and encouragement.

If alzheimers is robbing your loved one of his or her memory, this book will help you remember you are not alone.

On a retreat with Restored To Serve, a ministry I'm involved in, we used this and two other books by Cecil Murphy to open dialogue between all of us. As we read page after page someone would say, "I really need to read this whole book."

What we got was that the books let us know there were others going through the same things we were. Those who are caring for elderly people who have their "moments" were helped and we read and found comfort in the pages of When Someone You Love Has Alzheimer's.

As with all of Cecil Murphey's books, this talented author writes with a simple beauty that speaks to the reader's heart. These brief, one-page devotionals will strengthen and encourage those who care for loved ones with Alzheimer's, and will help them through that "long goodbye."

Wings, Women, and War by Reina Pennington was a delightfully quick read. There is a lot of research and in depth coverage that is very informative. At the same time you laugh at stories of Liliia Litviak's fur collar and flowers and stand amazed at her combat exploits. The book exposes you to the lives of many women volunteers and their transformation from civilians to military pilots, navigators, armorers, mechanics, and commanders. There is no propaganda. Just pure facts based upon interviews of participators and archives. No matter what your politics, or issues with women in combat, you will find yourself captivated and surprised by many discoveries.

I recently had the occasion to read Dr. Reina Pennington's book, Wings, Women, and War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat. It was required reading for a masters program I am completing. I had my doubts about the value of this book based on many prior textbook experiences. I was extremely surprised with this one.

The book was part of a class on race, gender and sexuality issues in the military. My male sensitivities and defenses were heightened when first opening this book, but my curiosity convinced me to proceed (as well as the required reading part!). It convinced me that gender issues are important when it comes to studying things military. Dr. Pennington gave a face to and personified the women warriors and their male counterparts in the air force of the Soviet Union during World War II. This is something she accomplished while at the same time supporting her academic theoretical work this book represents. The book reads like a novel and draws the reader in to its stories about these very brave and determined Russian women. The stories are often funny; very funny. It proved to me that Russians during the war were people just like us in their humanity.

If you are unconvinced of women as warriors or want to understand something about how the Soviet Union treated women, recruited women and encounter their successes and their failures, then this book is what you need.

Dr. Pennington provides a remarkable bibliography including archival materials, correspondence and personal interviews. She spent time in Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union when war time documents and records became available. One thing that you might not find answered or answered to your satisfaction is the fundamental question about why the Soviets allowed women into combat. Like all the other belligerents involved in the war, the Soviets resisted this at first. Just like the others the Soviets dismantled their women warriors after the war. If it were not for scholastic efforts like Dr. Pennington's the efforts of women like Evgeniia Prokhorova and Liliia Latviak would be forever forgotten.

I read this book cover to cover on Friday (in the office, door shut, looking very busy). Living with WW 2 aviation everyday through the collection of fighter aircraft we restore and fly in England, it is easy to become a little blasé about the way people lived their extraordinary lives in that time. This book hauled me right up by the collar all over again.

It is remarkable - the pages turn as easily as reading the most engrossing novel and yet this is clearly a thoroughly researched review of these womens' history. I am utterly impressed. To communicate passion for a subject while speaking with such authority - the authority that can only come with knowing and understanding a subject as well as Pennington does - is so rare.

Having read almost every single book available in the narrow field that covers these Soviet women, I belive this book sets the new benchmark.

If only history could always be communicated like this!

For most Americans World War II is John Wayne, Tom Hanks, D-Day, and Pearl Harbor. The plucky British gave a hand now and then and the ungrateful French needed us once more to pull their goose-fat from the fire. Oh yes, it snowed a lot on the Eastern Front. Yet, more than a cursory examination of the Second World War shows even first year history students that the Atlantic Theatre was very much a Russo-German War, with the Western Front playing a secondary role. The Russian story of the Great Patriotic War has not imprinted itself on the American popular imagination. Even less known is the role played in that great struggle by Russia's women.

Over 800,000 women served their Motherland in World War II, nearly 200,000 of them decorated. 89 of those women eventually received Russia's highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Reina Pennington's book tells the story of Russia's airwomen during World War II with the passion of a best selling novel. Yet, the well documented footnotes and thorough Appendix attest to the research that has gone into this scholarly work.

Pennington's book focuses on three female regiments formed by Soviet hero, Marina Raskova, but also gives insight into women who served in mostly male regiments. She provides a gripping account that will satisfy those hearing about the USSR's airwomen for the first time, as well as adding new information about command struggles within the fighter regiment.

The story of 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, staffed through the entire war completely with women pilots, navigators, mechanics and commanding officers, makes any current debates about the suitability of women in combat seem like a convocation of the flat earth society. These women settled that debate long ago. Pennington quotes Soviet test pilot and HSU Mark Gallai on what it was like for the women bombers to fly their missions in the outdated biplanes to which they were assigned:

"It means coming under fire from anti-aircraft weapons of every calibre...it means enemy night fighters, blinding searchlights and often bad weather, too; low cloud, fog, snow, ice, and gales that throw a light aircraft from one wingtip to the other...all this in a Po-2, which is small, slow and as easily set alight as a match."

Yet, these women, averaging 5-15 flights a night(more in the winter, less in the summer), surviving on 2-4 hours of sleep a day for four years, managed to fly over 24,000 sorties, drop 23,000 tons of bombs, and account for 23 Hero of the Soviet Union awards.

Up to this point English language readers interested in the heroic stories of these women have had the excellent works of Kazimiera Cottam ("Women in Air War," "Women in War and Resistance")and the interesting interviews conducted by Anne Noggle ("A Dance with Death"). Yet, as important as these works are, none attempts to tell the story of Soviet airwomen as a complete narrative. Pennington weaves the individual tales of these women into a fabric that is compelling in its humanity. Hers is the story of ordinary women in extraordinary times who achieved what today seems impossible. They gave the full measure of their devotion in a valiant fight that deserves to be known. Reina Pennington's "Wings, Women, & War" does honor and justice to the stories of these women.

This is an important book which dispells the usual misconceptions about women in combat in general and Soviet airwomen's contribution in particular. The chapter on Soviet women fighter pilots is especially valuable. Through personal interaction with several surviving former members of the 586th Fighter Regiment, especially its second permanent commander Aleksandr Gridnev, Pennington has gained a lot of inside knowledge pertaining to this regiment, the most controversial of the three combat units formed by Marina Raskova, the "Soviet Amelia Earhart." This reader was surprised to encounter six misspelled Russian and Ukrainian place names in the book. In addition, the name of the first chief of staff in the 125th "M.M. Raskova" Borisov Dive Bomber Regiment has been rendered as "Militsiya Kazarinova" instead of "Militsa Kazarinova." However, these misspellings can still be corrected using an errata slip affixed to the inside of the back cover of the book.

Your Unforgettable Life isn't something you can read in one sitting because it requires you to stop and reflect on your own life, but when you're done, you'll walk away with a better understanding of what's truly important to you and you'll have a road map to get you there.

Schuchmann and Chapin have written an important book. The basic premise is that life should be lived deliberately, keeping in mind that the choices we make will have an impact on generations to come. Regardless of the legacy left to us, we can and must choose the legacy we leave to our children and to our world. I recommend "Your Unforgettable Life" as a good book-an important book. It could affect your life "to infinity, and beyond."

Don't all of us feel we want our lives to count? to make an impact? to be remembered? What if we deliberately chose how we want people to remember us for the next three or four generations? Your Unforgettable Life offers extremely helpful insights on how to make our lives matter now-and in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I've heard bits and pieces of some of the examples the authors use, but this book captures so many great perspectives in one volume. It's a book I'll be going back to again and again as I work to leave the legacy that I envision.

This book really made me think. I tend to get caught up in the big things in my life, and I want to leave a lasting impression on people. But the authors of this book made me take a look a look at all the small opportunities I have every day to leave a legacy-to make a difference in people's lives.

I tend to think that only famous people, or very important people, have legacies to leave. But we all do. Our days are filled with minutes and plenty of opportunities to make deliberate choices. Regardless of how wealthy we are, we all have the same number of minutes in any given day.

The authors reminded me that God cares about the smallest of details-the birds of the air and the hairs on my head. They helped me think about my priorities versus where I spend my time and how they often don't line up. They also helped me think about stewardship-that the money I've earned really came from God, and I have a great deal of responsibility on how it will be used. If I remember who really owns the money, then my choices and legacy will better follow God's desires for my life.

The book also helps in practical areas, such as developing integrity, taking risks, remaining loyal, and choosing our words carefully. Even a few words have incredible power to do harm or encourage someone.

Ms Schuchman and Mr. Chapin have done a great job of reminding me to put my focus on God and let my actions follow my love for Him. Through that, I can leave a legacy to my family and friends that can last, as God said, a thousand generations. The authors have encouraged me. They are not bombastic, but with humility and without judgment have made me think hard about my choices. I strongly recommend this easy read to anyone who is interested in what legacy they will leave behind.

My order was easy to make and was shipped to me very quickly and in perfect condition. I was very satisfied. Thank You!

Excellent book - easy reading as it chronicles his "miracle in Manhattan." A must reading for every Wildcat fan and great material for young and/or aspiring coaches to see "that it can be done!"

Our experience was great, no problems, book came in timely manner, and the book itself was in great condition and was great reading material.

i'm always in perspective of a successful coach.this book provides great insight into what made bill snyder the positive influence that he was.

What Bill Snyder did at Kansas State is easily, the greatest coaching job, in any sport, at any time, EVER......

Beyond belief is the only way I can even start to describe how BAD Kansas State football was before Snyder took over.

Bill Snyder is maybe the greatest coach of all-time, in any sport. This book should be required reading for ALL business leaders and employees in America. Follow Snyder's steps to success, and apply them to your own life, and you CANNOT fail. Total comittment, goal setting, respect, loyalty, persistence, serious organization, and believing in others, are key components to Snyder's winning formula. The man worked 100 hour weeks, 12 months a year to make this miracle a reality. It's amazing, and it's true......

If you're a Royals fan (like I am), if you can remember the disappointments of 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1984 (like I can), if you were on top of the world when the Royals won it all (like I was), this is a book to buy. It is chock full of memories of the 1985 Series, with little interesting facts thrown in about various player's lives after the Series, (where have you gone Buddy Biancalana is answered among others), and neat insights into the running of the Royals that year. "The Call" warrants a chapter of it's own, as does a member of neither team, Don Denkinger.

The only reason I didn't give this book a "5" is that the writing of the book itself is only average, even for a sports book. It doesn't come up to the level of some of the great true-sports authors of our time such as Halberstein.

If you are a true-blue Royals fan, you need this book. If you aren't, it is still a nice story of a team that came together at the right time to win the World Series.

The Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 1985. Most people aren't aware that the team had a few occasions when they were really good and competitive. Sure, those were many years ago, but you can't take away a World Series victory for a team that truly deserved it that year.

The opinions and memories that this book provides is worth a serious read. Every baseball fan should order this book right away.

I am a lifelong Royals fan and like many Kansas Citians, I have vivid memories of the games that year. However, I have very limited information about what this series meant at the time to the actual players. This book transcends the box scores and recaps to provide true insights to the thoughts and emotions of the players and the fans. The importance of this series to this team and city is epitomized by the graphic descriptions of players' mental impressions surrounding the key plays in that series. This series was the greatest sporting event in this city's history and this book is a wonderful way to relive the splendor.

It's a shame that any Royals team wouldn't be inspired by reading this book. Former Kansas City Royals outfielder Frank White is right, "You've only got a few chances in life when a special challenge is put before you." So I hope future Royals teams will read this book, and maybe that inspiration will help improve the franchise. It was wonderful to experience what the former Royals are up to now-a-days, and Mr. Spivak did a great job in describing the feel of all seven World Series games. Finally, "The Curse of The Call" was a brilliant twist.

As a faithfull and lifetime Royals fan, this book is amazing. The stories and memories of that faithfull series are brought back very vividly. The author does a very good job of re-creating the suspensefull moments of one of the most exciting times in Kansas City History

For those of us who live in tourist towns and see how the incredible number of visitors changes them, this is the book! It looks at a large number of places -- from Santa Fe to Maui, from Las Vegas to Aspen -- and shows in great detail how they change. It reads well too, on a par with better known authors like Robert D. Kaplan and Tim Egan. I heard the author speak here in town--I guess he lives here-- and it made me buy the book. I came away extremely impressed. This is not my usual reading. I'm more a John Grisham type. But this one rang bells for me. After I read this book, I was in Thailand on business and I found myself using Devil's Bargains as a lens for what I was seeing. The comparisons were striking and I wondered if this book might apply to more than the West. Well written and snappy, showing a lot of research, this one is a real winner, especially for anyone in city planning or tourist development.

For discerning travelers planning a western vacation this summer, or for that matter, for anyone curious about the popular allure of the West, Hal K. Rothman's "Devil's Bargains" is a must read. Rothman, a professor of western and environmental history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, provides a richly detailed assessment and critique of the development of tourism as it has evolved from the late nineteenth century to the present in the inter-mountain West. Synthesizing the existing scholarship on tourism, enhanced by wide ranging primary research, Rothman reveals a fascinating, yet disturbing, underside to the glitz and glamour of the tourist economies firmly established in western resort towns from Santa Fe to Las Vegas.

"Devil's Bargains" presents a series of provocative histories recounting the development of resort towns and tourist sites across the inter-mountain West including the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Carlsbad Caverns, Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Vail, Sun Valley, and Las Vegas, among others. The book also codifies the history of tourism under a new interpretative framework which divides the development of tourism into three phases: cultural and heritage tourism, recreational tourism, and entertainment tourism. Beginning at the turn of the century with cultural and heritage tourism spawned by the transcontinental railroads seeking to expand passenger traffic, tourism evolved into recreational tourism made possible by the automobile and a growing fascination with exercise and the outdoors in the aftermath of World War I, and culminated after World War II with entertainment tourism dependent on the Jet airplane and the dramatic expansion of widespread prosperity, a leisure ethic, and a pervasive consumer culture. Rothman focuses on the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe to illustrate cultural and heritage tourism; various western ski resorts define recreational tourism; and Las Vegas embodies entertainment tourism. These three phases of tourist development reflect the historical transformation of tourism from an elite pastime to a more individualized, democratic experience, to a mass culture phenomena. They also reveal a process of economic development, reflecting the evolving strategies adopted by western communities to replace tapped out extractive economies.

Defining tourism as the quintessential service economy, the pinnacle of post-industrial capitalism, Rothman argues that the promises of tourist industries have been embraced as a panacea for economic decline in towns throughout the West. However, as his research reveals, locals and even "neonatives" have found tourism to be a bitter pill to swallow. Although the advent of tourist economies in places such as Jackson Hole, Steamboat Springs, and Sun Valley has resulted in phenomenal economic growth, prosperity has come with a price. As the book's title suggests, in the process of reviving the economy, tourism displaces locals with outside capital and corporate control, sapping a place of its soul, and leaving in its stead a facade of hollow images and a service economy manipulated by distant corporations whose only interest is the bottom line. What has emerged in places like Vail and Santa Fe is a two-tiered class system where workers who are predominantly people of color (Hispanic, African, or Filipino) hold low-paying, menial jobs providing for the comfort and amusement of wealthy second home owners and visitors. There is little room for an established community of year-round residents when the bottom line centers on the paying visitor. Las Vegas is the exception. In defining itself as the ultimate themed destination resort constantly reinventing itself to satisfy visitors' desires, Las Vegas remains one of the last places where unskilled workers can earn a middle-class income replete with benefits and job security. Las Vegas alone, according to Rothman, has succeeded at perfecting the service economy, becoming a model of sorts for the rest of the country. "The colony became the colonizer," he writes, exporting a model of entertainment tourism for a nation entranced by the spectacles of multi-media consumer culture.

In detailing the ways in which western communities reinvented themselves as tourist resorts, marketing an idealized western ambiance and a scripted history, and in the process losing control of the very community they sought to promote and preserve, Rothman provides a rich assessment of the social and political impact of tourist-based economies as they evolved from local ventures to corporate productions. But more than that, he presents a thoughtful and disturbing critique of the promises and realities of post-industrial, post modern capitalism as manifested in the twentieth-century tourist's West.

Marguerite S. Shaffer, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

I read the book as part of a course I took, and I found the book to be too long, and somewhat dry. However, Dr. Rothman, a UNLV history professor, does make a very clear point: that tourists towns or places are dealt a "devil's bargain" in which they lose the authenticity of the place for the funds or profit that is brought in by tourists.

Overall, Dr. ROthman does drive his point home. But the same point is made in 20 different ways.

At once extremely learned and passionately engaged, DEVIL'S BARGAINS puts forward a startling analysis of Western tourism. From Rothman we learn about skiing and much else: the economic and historical forces shaping our sense of place, our connections to nature, and our troubled relationships to one another. A travel book of another sort, it takes the reader to a vantage point from which our Western landscapes can be seen most clearly.

I was born into the park service and lived the tourist experience. This book really helped me form a perspective about my early years growing up in western tourist and resort environments. Western history is fascinating, but this angle on western history really gives another intriguing dimension to america's perception of the mythic frontier.

Similar to the first reviewer I also know Steve, my wife went through the CSU MFA program with him and is a fellow member of the Minions writing group. Steve's school and open mike readings were something we all looked forward to because we knew we would soon be laughing hard enough to puke. We all hung out at the same bar trading stories and tales with one another, this particular bar was also the birth place of the "Rules of the Buffet" story.
However, I have digressed, Steve's book is full of the wonder, magic, pain, and growth we experience in childhood and teen years that makes us who we are as adults. Our youth leaves an unmistakeable stamp on us that we carry, either as a source of pride or baggage it's our choice, and it's also something we have to come to terms with. Steve illustrates this extremely well in his book. Having grown up in southern New Hampshire not at all like Kansas, I felt the same kinship with Steve's writing I have found during many long nights with Steve himself. I also found myself mourning the end of the book because it left me with no more chapters to read and hoping for another book to come out as soon as possible. Steve's writing is refreshing, sad, and inspiring, I can't recommend this book enough. Long live the Minions and late nights at Surfside.

I am an avid reader and a woman. I lean toward great contemporary fiction written by women these days, not sure why. . . so when someone handed me this hot off the press book, I flinched. I try to read male authors, and while I can glean good writing nods from the best of them, I don't reach for them again years later, Most male books don't become best friends. By best friends, I'm talking, Barbara Kingsolvers' books, Monk's The Secret Life of Bees, The Lady who wrote the Pilot's Wife . . . those books. You know . . THOSE BOOKS (I say this like a drug addict talks about his next hit). They're hard to find. The Guinness Book of Me will. I can't get it out of my head. It smacked with honest, strong writing and for the first time, I felt like I honestly got inside a man's head. Hurrah for Steven Church, his first novel. I'd be willing to bet this book is going to go BIG. Be one of the first to read it. Be the one at your reading club to suggest it. You can't go wrong. Male or Female. I can't wait to give it to my 15 year old son to read. There was "chick lit", right? What's this? "Bro Books?" I loved every single written word in it. And I can only say that about a handful of books I've read.

This book is sensitive. Church has a way of approching the sadness in his life (brother's death, for one) that is simple, but not overly sensitive. But there are enough male-bonding episodes and inevitable scars to make it a guy book. Refreshing, in a sea of chick lit. *And* he gets the girl.

I read this book in just two sittings, it would have been only one, but I have 2 small children. I pick it back up and re-read sections again and again. Steven Church is a fabulous writer. Steven Church makes me wish I could eat dinner with his in-laws and visit Kansas. I love his writing and I can't wait for more. I am buying a copy for my dad, one for my brother, and I am keeping my copy. Steven Church, write more soon.

I read this book (indeed, I became aware of this book) because Steven Church is my husband's cousin (there, full disclosure). I've met him a few times, but I couldn't say I know him. I didn't necessarily want to love this book. But I did, and I devoured it in one sitting.

So why read a memoir of someone who is not your husband's cousin, someone who has never committed a serious crime or slept with movie stars or been present at a Big Moment in History? Someone whose physical scars all come from silly accidents, someone who grew up in Kansas, for goodness' sake? The facts of Steven Church's life would hardly qualify him for a one-page piece in People Magazine.

Read this memoir because it is a true (although maybe not always factual) story. Because it is funny, inventive, touching, real, tough and beautiful. Read it because it will make you want to know Steven Church, because it will make you feel that you do. Read it because his musings about Guinness Book record-holders are as real and intimate and fine as what he tells you about his own battered heart. Read it because it is superbly crafted--WRITTEN, not just WRITTEN DOWN (I do not have the luxury of italics here).

So READ it for all those reasons, but BUY it because someday you will be proud and glad to own a first edition of the first book by Steven Church.

Since my son is taking a course at Cornell Summer College from Professor Brumberg, I thought I would read one of her books to get an idea of how she thinks and writes (a gross generalization that often works for me). I expected a scholarly but dry account of 15-year-old murderer, Charley Miller. I did not expect a dramatic and compelling historical novel that rivals today's best books. "Kansas Charlie," is extremely well researched and written in a simple, direct and contemporary style. Although she attempts to be fair and objective, it's obvious that Professor Brumberg wrote this novel to advance her own unarguably poignant point-of-view regarding juvenile justice and how little progress has been made since the Victorian Age. But, who can blame her when political maneuvering rather than an interest in solving an important social issue often blunts real progress? I'm certain my 16-year-old son is in extremely good hands.

Well Researched book for a murder case by a juvenile back in the 1890's that can be easilly related to cases that happen today. This story of Kansas Charley is well written and a sad situation where a child that could not find a place in society had slipped through the cracks of the government that should of protected him.

Kansas Charlie's life is a great reality check for someone who's read too many Horatio Alger books. I read this book very quickly. Dr. Brumberg tells the story well - the prose is lean and engaging, the historical details are perfect. (I can imagine a movie or documentary of this book). The book stayed with me long after I read it. What's remarkable is how little has changed in the last 110 years. Troubled, impulsive boys with access to guns still kill. Prosecutors' and politicians' desire for the death penalty for juvenile murderers is still politically motivated.

Kansas Charley is a fascinating book which ably combines American social and cultural history, developmental psychology, and legal studies. The book traces the story of an orphaned yboy who descends into impoverished and desperate circumstances. He ends up killing two other youths and is ultimately put to death. Kansas Charley recounts this history, but does more. The book paints a fascinating picture of 19th century social life and places Charley in context. It also does an excellent job of connecting modern day attitudes towards juvenile crime and punishment with their historical roots. This book is very timely given current debates over the fate of Lee Boyd Malvo and other children who kill. I'm a professor of U.S. cultural history and think this is a wonderful addition to the scholarship on the history of childhood and the history of American social life.

The simple title, "Kansas Charlie", belies what's between the cover of this scholarly, but extremely emotional saga. It is a sad tale that has vast implications for what we see a century later. Dr. Brumberg doggedly followed the trail of Charles Miller, accurately depicting the many stages of his personal tragedy. As a pediatrician and an advocate for children, there were times during my reading when I wanted to jump into the story and offer my help to this unfortunate youth. The author descriptively takes us back to a setting where the reader could easily say, "That was then...". Her arguement is persuasive enough where we could say, "Things haven't changed so much..."
The dockets in our juvenile courts are still full.
Despite this being a truly heinous crime, the conflict between political force and progressive social movements determined Charlie's fate. True to her profession as a historian, Dr. Brumberg succeeds very well in time transport for her readers, permitting them to gauge whether or not we've come very far in how we regard children. This is very readable history and very few readers will walk away from it without a strong opinion about juvenile justice.