Kentucky Books

This is a work to be carefully and reflectively read. The story itself is a simple one of a failed rescue attempt from a cavern. The various characters' lives which are written as sidelights to the main story are of what is of interest in the story. Unfortunately, to this reader at any rate, these rich characterazations are all too abruptly abandoned. Each one of these lost characters would be worthy of a novel in themselves. I feel as though the character Dorthy, for an example, is a well-developed character study but eventually is just left hanging. Worse yet, the main protagonist, Isaac, simply runs away. I found this to be most distressing.

I found this book in a used bookstore and just opened it up and started reading. Something about it got me hooked, and I just keep going. The novel is constructed brilliantly, with Warren providing large backgrounds for all of his charecters in the first 150 or so pages, and then the "experiences" of the different individuals caving in on one another. The end of the novel contains some of the most powerful dialogues scenes I have ever read. I loved this book.

Here's a book that is becoming more and more rare... a book about complex people with complex motives. Warren's poetic novel is wonderful to read just for the phrasing at times, but the characters, their history, their thoughts and actions, and their interactions are what really brings this to the top of my short list. It's a book for a book group. So many ideas so close to the surface, without being absolutely thrown in your face. Without giving away the end, I can say that you see much of it coming, but you don't care. You want to read every word to see what Warren has to say about the connections and lack of connections between people.

after i read the Jeff book i had to read this one this was not as good as Jeff A Heart of a Champion but it was a good story of a boy who fell in love with the wildcats and never wanted to go any were eles

After reading this book, I realized that with faith, anything is possible. I really enjoyed this book, and think it is a great book for anyone to read.

This is a "must read" for all people in every stage of their Christian life....especially those who bleed the blue of Kentucky. Cameron Mills is one of the most powerful speakers and writers I've ever seen.

This book should be requried reading for all people of faith in the US - we need to understand the history of the church's complicity in slavery to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

Shattuck's work is a helpful historical overview as one seeks to understand the Episcopal Church's dealings with race. Unfortunately, his overwhelming desire to critique the Episcopal Church leaves this work unbalanced, uncharitable, and at times imprecise.

Shattuck seems to operate out of the assumption that in the history of the Episcopal Church, all white individuals were either racist or 'paternalist.' Shattuck uses the word 'paternalist' an astonishing number of times through the book, typically two to three times per page. His overuse of this word rapidly flattens out all sorts of more subtle distinctions that could be made about the diverse attitudes of individual white Episcopalians through the centuries.

Shattuck seems to have an overriding desire to point out the inadequacies of all white efforts at racial equality instead of highlighting those moments where individuals, either black or white, pushed back against the dominant racist culture in courageous ways. Attending to the former without the latter results in a narrative that feels unbalanced and, therefore, incomplete.

This work fills a gaping whole in the published histories of the Episcopal Church. Unfortunately, the author's passion for polemics hurts the overall product.

This thoroughly researched volume is much needed. Clearly written and well documented, Shattuck's book provides an excellent overview of the history of Episcopalians and race. This book helpfully points the way to possibilities for further research in this important area: the involvement of mainline denominations in race relations and social change. Highly recommended.

I purchased this book because it was required for a liberal arts class I am taking. I was pleasantly surprised. Although I have four months to read all five stories, I completed them in about 3 weeks. I have read other Wendell Berry stories so I was already familiar with the characters. What I like best about this book is the sense of community, stewardship, devotion and love. The book took me back to a simplier time when farming and community were important and a man's word was as good as gold.

The title story touched me as no story has before or since. A son behaves intimately and unlawfully with his father during the days of his death. With the son we confront stupid laws and unfeeling bureaucracy and, in the end, vital community. The poignancy of the secret burial made me weep. How the son acts out his values with fidelity and grace is a story for all to learn from and be inspired. This is horror made beautiful. Berry's writing here is beyond criticism. Read this book and be renewed.

These stories, especially the title story and "A Jonquil for Mary Penn," are among the finest I've ever read. They are stories of such moral integrity and beauty that I would include them among the best ever written by an American author, alongside the best by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Linda Hogan, and Tony Earley. All are set in the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, and all confront similar themes: death, honor, community. The story "Fidelity" is the most powerful, the story of a mountain man who, according to the most rigid interpretation of the law, kidnaps his dying father from a hospital. Although Berry is heavy-handed in getting his point across, the beauty and honesty of the story easily carried me through it. A luminous book by one of America's greatest living writers.

I have tried to inform Amazon three times that the reviews and links of this book to Visconti's book are in error.

The two boys, Henry Ware, and Paul Cotter, set out to carry powder from one settlement to another. They are attacked by Indians, and Paul is captured and taken to an Indian village. One of the scouts disguises as an Indian and rescues Paul. The book ends with a great battle between the Indians and a wagon train of pioneers.

Take a boy and make him a killer. Take some killers and put them in Kentucky. With land ahead of them inadequately defended by their American owners, the Yankee invaders knew it could be stolen. The author has written an exciting crime adventure novel that glorifies the Yankee theft of American lands. If you don't mind the good guys made to look bad for defending their land, and the racist, violent colonialism of the Yankees who ended up defeating the American landowners - killing them, and stealing their land, then you'll like this story's fast-moving plot.

Doing Homeland Security since 1492, the Americans have their hands full with Yankee invaders from the East - especially a team of five young men led by Henry Ware. These five wetbacks are called "forest runners", although they do swim across rivers in addition to running the trails.

The setting is Kain-tuck-ee "Dark and Dangerous Ground" and the Ohio River Valley about 200 years ago. The Yankees along the East Coast colonies are in rebellion to the government, which is headquartered in London, England. So when the Yankees violate treaties that the Americans have made with the British Empire and invade Kain-tuck-ee, the Americans under the Shawnee government of Red Eagle try to defend themselves against the illegal aliens.

The five immigrants led by Henry Ware baffle the American forces who try to defend the Appalachian border between Yankees and Americans. Two Yankee invaders, Paul Cotter and Henry Ware, are bringing arms and supplies to a Yankee outpost in American territory when Paul is captured by the Americans. Paul does a jail-break thanks to Henry, who has learned that the American authorities ("Indian League") is preparing to repel a Yankee invasion during winter.

The five immigrants go to the American villages and spy on them. Henry disquises himself as a Shawnee American and intercepts American war communications. Bringing those communications to the Miami Americans in Southern Ohio, they are discovered by Braxton Wyatt, a Tory Yankee on the side of the British government. The Americans have no quarrel with the British, just the Yankee invaders.

The five Yankee spies spend the winter hiding out on a "haunted" island in the middle of a lake, which is really an American burial ground. They survive the winter using many interesting survivalist techniques. And in the Spring they go back to the immigrant invaders and help them against the American authorities and the British government.

The heroes in this story are clearly the Yankee invaders. The American characters and British characters are stock characters, not developed. The villain is a violent Yankee turned Tory. Ultimately the Americans fail against the invaders.

Today, the American names are still with us - Ohio, Kentucky, Erie, Miami. But the American are gone. Where are the Miami today? The Erie? In a space of less than 200 years, they have vanished at the hands of the Yankee invaders, who the author glorifies in his book. And we wonder why the Yanks have no problem invading Afghanistan and Iraq today - it's what they do, it's what they've always done. Just ask a genuine American.

In collaboration with the University of North Carolina Press, Gary Gallagher has produced an amazingly insightful series of anthologies on various aspects of the American Civil War. This collection is one of the best. Its value is nicely summed up by a comment in the Introduction (p. xi): "Far from exhausted topics open only to increasingly minute dissection of tactical movements, the activities of Union and Confederate armies invite serious scrutiny by historians interested in a range of issues." Thank goodness that this new and refreshing way of examining the Civil War is moving us beyond an earlier romanticized guns-'n-glory focus.

All of the essays in The Fredericksburg Campaign are quite good. But for my money, the three best ones--and the ones that dramatically represent the new approach championed by Gallagher--are written by George Rable, William Blair, and Gallagher himself. All three might be seen as trying to make sense of that odd cry of exultation attributed to Lee after the massacre at Marye's Heights: "It is well that war is so terrible! We should grow too fond of it!"

Rable reminds us that the carnage from the vantage point of the soldier on the ground was nothing to crow about, and that even a momentary battlefield thrill is far outshadowed by the terrible reality of slaughtered men, wounds, amputations, sepsis, psychological trauma, and shattered morale.

Blair's essay, which deals with the effects of the shelling and routing of their town on Fredericksburg civilians, brings home the lesson that neither is there nothing in war to grow fond of from the noncombatant's perspective. Too often, military historians tend to overlook what today is fashionably referred to as "collateral damage." But in the Civil War, and especially in Virginia, civilians suffered horribly during and for years after the war.

Finally, Gallagher's essay points out that the famous Lee quote needs to be taken in context. Lee himself seems to have been extremely depressed by the Fredericksburg battle. The slaughter of Federal troops stopped the drive to Richmond, but it really gained the Confederacy (in Lee's estimation) no strategic advantage, and it hazarded artificially elevating Confederate self-confidence. Interestingly, Gallagher points out that Lee felt similarly about Chancellorsville: a "victory" that ultimately brought no advantage to the South.

All in all, an excellent collection of essays. Highly recommended.

Your review of Gallagher's book on the Battle of Fredericksburg has the date wrong. It was fought on Dec. 13, 1862, not 1863.

A great collection of essays by those historians most familiar with the Battle of Fredericksburg. Burnsides excellent biographer, Wiliam Marvel, writes a very balanced essay on Burnside and his high command that was still full of McClellan political generals and some that were inept. Burnside shares blame for failed opportunities but was primarily let down by Franklin who proved to be incapable or neglectful in providing a strong attack on the Confederate right that was necessary to attack the heights of the town on the confederate left. The objective critic of Lee, Alan Nolan, writes an essay substantiating why this battle was Lee's greatest and how Longstreet was so capable that his great critic Douglas Freeman had to praise him. A. William Greene who spent many years with the park service at Fredericksburg (he's now at the new Pamplin Civil War Museum in Petersburg) writes of Burnside's last and lost attempt at continuing the campaign, the mud march. Difficult in bad weather but made worse by the political generals who contributed willingly to his failure. The other essays contribute to the realities of war, the carnage and the effect on Civilians and how the virtually destroyed Pennyslvania Division were later to shout "Remember Fredericksburg" at Gettysburg.

Many commanders, both North and South, thought Jo Shelby to be the best cavalry general of the South. From the black plume he wore in his cap to the large sorrel horses he rode (after getting three shot from under him at Cane Hill, Arkansas, he superstitiously would only ride sorrels) to his daring tactics, Shelby struck an heroic figure. A successful businessman in Missouri before the war and a prominent slaveholder, he raised a three-regiment cavalry brigade in 1862, taught it western fighting tactics, and conducted a number of raids in Missouri and Arkansas for the rest of the war. A real thorn in the side of Union leaders, Shelby's "Iron Brigade" inflicted much damage in raids all along the western border region. Most distinguished were his operations in Sterling Price's raid into Missouri in the fall of 1864, especially at Glasgow and Sedalia (both of which he captured), Waverly, and Westport. When the war ended, he refused to surrender, and simply took his men to Mexico to fight for Maximillian. But after Maximillian was killed in 1866, Shelby returned to Missouri. His popularity only increased in the hero-hungry post-war South, which was bolstered further after he appeared as a defense witness in the trial of the James brothers, who had ridden with him during the war. He died in 1897, and his funeral was the second largest in the post-war South for a Confederate leader, after only Jeff Davis's.

O'Flaherty's approach is that of a popular, rather than an academic, historian. So much conversational dialogue is included that sometimes the book reads more like a novel than a biography. At times he over-quotes sources: for example, he includes the complete transcript of an interview that appeared in the Kansas City "Journal" with Shelby just before the James Boys trial. It's interesting, but could have been abridged. His purpose, though, seems to be to present Shelby as a hero in the Sir Walter Scott mold: brave, loyal to a cause, fair and democratic, tough on the battlefield, concerned with the welfare of his charges. In this he succeeds admirably. [This is a reprint of the original 1954 edition.]

I was particularly interested in reading about Confederate General Jo Shelby as my great-grandfather fought under him during the Civil War, serving in Co. A, Elliott's Battalion,
Shelby's Brigade. The book was fairly informative, but relied too heavily on the writings of Major Edwards, Shelby's Aide, who was not always objective, and given to hyperbole.
All-in-all though, it was enjoyable reading and gave me a lot of information about the man my ancestor served under.
I am in the process of visiting the battlegrounds where Shelby campaigned and this book will help in visualizing the various battles.

Gen. Shelby did remarkable things with his small command. His genius was unappreciated due to Jefferson Davis' myopic pre-occupation with west point pedigrees instead of ability and results. A Southerner can only sigh at the lost opportunity, if Shelby had been given command of command of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi instead of Theophilus Holmes.
This is a very readable volume about the greatest Confederate cavalryman in the war who led several different lives. About a half of it covers the war, another 1/4th the Mexico adventure, and the remaining 1/4 are split between his growing up and the post-Mexico (1868-97)years.
It features vivid descriptions of many battles in MO and AR, as well as the tale of his expedition to Mexico after the war. The details of his tactics at the Battle of Cane Hill, which he used repeatedly after that is fascinating. The author's style is a bit colorful and folksy, sorta like you're there talking to him. If you demand that your history read like a textbook that may spook you off, but if it doesn't it's a wonderful bio about a neglected figure

This book compiles "deathlore" in the isolated Pennyroyal region in south central Kentucky. It covers death omens, funeral customs and ghost stories and interactions with the spirit world. These stories are all first hand accounts compiled by the author and students of his at Western Kentucky University that were taken in the mostly taken down in the 1960's although most of these stories go much farther back than that. As an academic study on folk beliefs this was worth reading although as far as pure entertainment value I was disappointed.

I believe in omens. They are a carry over from the pagan beliefs of the British Isles but they are very personal and can often seem silly when being recounted to an outside party.

I believe in the supernatural, hauntings, ghosts or whatever you want to call this phenomenom but I also accept that in most cases people are just wrong and there is a "logical" explanation for what is happening. Also people exagerate to make the story sound better. Which is often made even worse when these stories are often told in second, third, fourth, etc person on down the line form and each person telling the story just adds more to make the story a little more entertaining. Besides that the stories are often lies from the very beginning.

Ghosts Along the Cumberland was an excellent book.It was very informative about many old traditions and folklore in Kentucky.I am from Kentucky and some of these practices and beleifs are still used today,mainly by the older people.I first read this book when i was very young and it has some really great ghost stories not to mention the history and the culture of people from this area.This is a great book for anyone who just likes a good scary ghost story or someone who has an interest in the history and culture of the people of Southern and Eastern Kentucky.I whole-heartedly recommend this book for just a campfire ghost story to someone doing research on these regions of Kentucky.

This book uses first-hand interviews and anecdotes to paint a picture of the superstitious and imaginative nature of rural America, particularly that part of America which has not been touched or moved to any great degree by the hand of progress or industrialization. This is excellent bedtime reading, full of bizarre and strangely disturbing images, like scenes from a half-remembered dream, premonitions and warnings from beyond this world. A well-organized text makes this a fun and informative read, perfect for anyone with a love of American folklore and a good ghost story. Highly recommended

Susan Shaw has done a great job of presenting the attitudes of women who are/were part of
the Southern Baptist Convention. Her extensive use of direct quotes, her selection
of photographs, and her summary statements create for this particular group of
women a picture of what we have experienced. It is positive, and not a whining, "poor me"
kind of presentation. I'm grateful that it is available.

This captivating book offers an insider's look at Southern Baptist women within southern culture. The theme of "soul competency" is thoughtfully explored through the eyes and experiences of many different women with a unifying result. "God Speaks to Us, Too" is both funny and provocative. The notion of being "raised right" is a humorous vein that runs throughout the book. From the "we speak in code" acronyms of WMU, RAs, GAs, BYPU, and others, to the carefully directed activities of coronation ceremonies and sword drills, this book is very funny indeed. And all is presented amidst the backdrop of the denomination's greatest crisis to date--the fundamentalist takeover of the convention in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This power struggle within the hierarchy, and the effect it had on the denomination and institutions of higher learning associated with it, directly influenced the lives of many different women. This is the continuing story of these women, their struggles, and their triumphs. This book will appeal to all women acquainted with the Southern Baptist tradition, and will enlighten those not familiar with this way of life. Well done, Susan Shaw!

This is a "must read" for every person ever associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Or for anyone supporting those who grieve the losses that gender discrimination has created for women who have lived the story.

Shaw speaks with authority, laced with immense sensitivity!

While no longer a Southern Baptist, despite two decades working for it's various mission boards, I was honored to be allowed to tell some of my story. As one of the older participants, the book raises many memories and emotions for me. Yet I feel connected to so many of the other women who have struggled painfully with the identity crisis and personal losses created by fearful men who have manipulated the system and scripture in order to preserve power and privilege.

I beg to differ with one of the original descriptions of this book: After hearing far too many stories of collusion with clergy sexual abuse and other forms of oppression in the SBC, I no longer respect the leaders; and long ago, I ceased to be influenced by them.

However, thanks to Susan Shaw, parts of our individual stories, as well as the very important collective story, will live on. It needs to be told so that the next generation--both male AND female--will realize that they have many options, as well as obligations for accountability, whether they choose to stay or to leave this "established church of the South."

Dee Ann Miller
www.takecourage.org

jeff sheppard is one of my fav players of all time and after i had read this book i like him even more.I laughed i cryed i was totally moved. But i might be a little partial since he used to live right down the street from me.

Jeff Sheppard is the epitomy of Kentucky basketball. This is another "must read" for anyone who follows the mighty wildcats from the bluegrass state. Go deep inside the heart and soul of this year's "Comeback Cats".

My name is Amber. Jeff Sheppard is a HUGE inspiration to me. His book is just mixed emotions to me. It touched me. Deeply. Being his BIGGEST FAN, it truely inspires me. He truely does have a heart of a champion, and now he has inspired me to dig deeper. I am a basketball player and also have the number 15. He is such an inspiration. I would love to meet him and tell him how much he and his wonderful book has inspired me. Jeff, if you ever read this, you and your book are touching and mean so much to me and my basketball career since i first heard of you. Even me starting out as a sophomore in hs and playing basketball all my life, you and your book are truely my lifetime idol and inspiration.