Oklahoma Books

Metz `s thoroughly researched and well written biography details the controversial life of one of the Old West's most interesting characters, Pat Garrett - the lawman who shot and killed Billy the Kid. The story takes Garrett from his Southern childhood, to his days as a buffalo hunter on the Texas frontier, thru his tenure as a federal lawman and Sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico. Metz addresses the mysterious death of Garrett . It was in that position that he became embroiled in the infamous Lincoln County War. The book also provides in-depth coverage of Henry McCarty - alias Billy the Kid. Thoroughly researched and entertainingly written, Metz's story of Pat Garrett will stand as the standard resource work on this noteworthy Old West character. James P. O'Connor - Nov. `9

Wolf's treatment of a so ideological subject, peasant wars, shows all the tallent and capacity of a intellectual who worked mainly in the US, although he was born in Austria. This fact helps us to understand a littlle more of his work as an anthropologist aware of the importance of a renewed history. Eric Wolf left Europe after an experience in the nazi's concentration camp in World War II. In this camp, he met and had classes with Norbert Elias. Some people say this is a fundamental fact on Wolf's career, because, as we can see, the problematic of power undergoes all along his opus. In Peasant Wars, Eric, worried about the US involvement in the Vietnam conflict, tries to understand how peasant people get involved with revolution. In order to understand this fact, Eric studies six cases of peasant revolution in the twentieth century: Mexico, Russia, Nigeria, China, Vietnam and Cuba. As the analysis goes through, we can almost smell the tallent of Eric, because although he were a marxist, the study don't fall in dogmatism. This book is essential to all the people who wants to understande the contemporary world.

Marcos Mota, Department of History, University of Brasilia

Hello-I am a hort. student at LSU. I am doing a research project on companion planting. This is a new concept in this area. The first part of my project is to research text on companion planting or as is noted above allelochemics. I am thrilled to find something like this...but heartbroken that it is no longer in print. HELP! Thank you and Happy New Year. Jodi Ann Williams

For half a century, readers on peyotism have devoured La Barre's fascinating original study, which began when the author at age twenty-four, studied the rites of fifteen American Indian tribes using Lophophora williamsii, the small, spineless, carrot-shaped peyote cactus growing in th Rio Grande Valley and southward.

Continuing his research from the 1930s through the 1980s, Weston La Barre reviews topics such as the Timothy Leary-Richard Alpert "experiments" with peyote and other psychotropic substances, the Carlos Casteneda phenomenon, the progress of the North American Church toward acceptance as a religious denomination, the presumptions of the Neo-American Church, the legal ramifications of ritual drug use, and the spread of peyotism from the Southwest to other North American tribes.

This new edition of La Barre's classic study [5th] includes 334 new entries in the latest of his highly valued bibliographical essays on works relating to peyote, not just in anthropology but in a variety of fields including archeology, economics, botany, chemistry, and pharmacology. The bibliography lists important contributions in popular media such as newspapers, audiotapes, and films, as well as scholarly journals.
--- from book's back cover

"Peyote Religion" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy" http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

This is an interesting, delightful read, which will make any Southerner, and, for that matter, any American, stop and think about the way things were. As suggested by Guice in the foreword, "There is hardly a 'plain vanilla' or 'B-flat' sentence in the entire book," and, indeed, there is not, as this book reads like a story, as opposed to a typical historical record. The author quite successfully describes "what happened" in terms of the tactile, visual, olfactory and auditory. A terrific account by a fascinating historian.

Walt Coburn was my grandfather's cousin, and he wrote what he knew - cowboy stories and wild west happenings. This book is my favorite of everything he's done except for "Stirrup High" as it describes in detail what it was like to live on a cattle ranch in the late 1800's. He also details an encounter with Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce tribe en route to Canada. The items given to my family by Chief Joseph remain in the family. Walt's gift of "spinning yarns" as he would say, was mostly put to fiction, it's wonderful to see this historical item in his list of books written. Bravo cousin!

Prior to reading Plains Folk I & II, I had only driven through the Kansas plains region. However, after reading both books, I feel as though I pulled over and spent years there. The authors lack pretentiousness or the annoying desire of most to over "scholar-ize" the content. True to the context from which they write, Hoy and Isern remain down-to-earth and accessible in their approach. They manage to entertain as they present tons of information.
Most importantly, both authors are candid and authentic as they share not only folklore, but their own experiences as well. Both Plains Folk I & II are fun and informative.

PLAINS INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE by John C. Ewers is a collection of essays and articles from the author from 1967 to 1994. Ewers lacks no qualification here. He has served as the first curator of Museum of the Plains Indian on the Montana Blackfeet Reservation and has written and edited several other books related to Plains Indians.

Ewers is quick in his essays to set the record straight regarding the 20th century trend toward revisionist history. In his opening salvo, he points out that there are more American Indians alive today than there were in the mid-1800's and possibly at any time in their history. Though he readily agrees that the American Indian was dealt a lousy hand in the annals of American history, he equally points out that the "Indian - good, white settler - bad" mantra that has overwhelmed the teachings of white/Indian relations is also far from the truth. As he explains at the conclusion of his first essay, "I do not believe that Custer died for my sins. Nor do I believe that historians or anthropologists should try to expiate their sense of guilt by rewriting history of the American West so as to portray all Indians as red knights in breechclouts, or all white as pantalooned devils."

Throughout this series of splendid essays, you can almost feel yourself sitting in a lecture hall, hearing Ewers as he delivers his findings. Because the lectures were given at various times, there is to some degree, a certain amount of repetitiveness, but it hardly detracts from this fine collection of work. The essays themselves have some extent of similarity. For instance, Chapter 1, "When Red and White Men Met" covers some of the same ground as found in Chapter 3, "The Influence of the Fur Trade upon the Indians of the Northern Plains". But then, you find essays on totally unrelated matter, such as Chapter 6, "Symbols of Chiefly Authority in Spanish Louisiana".

Ewers deftly debunks countless revisionists myths throughout the book. Not the least of which is the notion that the white man disrupted some sort of harmonious utopian coexistence among the red tribes. The reader finds in elaborate detail, factual evidence to the contrary. That's not to say that Ewers holds the Indians solely accountable for their demise, but he does point out, for example, that very few Indians took advantage of the opportunity to adapt to changing times and meld into a sedentary existence of farming or ranching when that opportunity was clearly available.

This is an outstanding collection of essays and Ewers expertise on the subject matter is clearly evident from start to finish. The book concludes with 40 pages of notes and detailed bibliography providing ready resources for further study. Of the many books I have read pertaining to the American Indians, this is certainly one of the most objectively presented works I've found. A great addition to your bookshelf.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

Karl Schlesier's book is a vital work of scholarship that draws together many views of people in the Plains for many centuries. Plains Indians is a must have for anyone's private collection on human habitation of the Great Plains in the last 2000 years. Students should have access to this scholarly documentation in every library on every campus.

Rarely do archeologists recognize an ethnic identity associated with dig sites that pre-date European occupancy of the Plains. The language links charted in the book are strong indications of the ethnicities present in the Great Plains for millennia.

I use this book every semester to lay the foundation for understanding the diversity of people present in the Plains for hundreds of generations. Plains Indians as edited by Dr. Karl Schlesier is outstanding and indispensable to ethnohistorical studies that recognize the ancestral lands of people living presently in the Great Plains.