Kentucky Books

My Grandmother, Emma Bell (Vaughn) grew up in this town before it was intentionally flooded over. She is mentioned as the author's classmate and the daughter of my great grandfather, Reverand Bell (the author describes sitting distractedly trying to listento his sermons)...she doesn't mention his firey red hair or quote any of his sermons, but even though he had died before my birth in the late fifties, she gave me a true glimpse of my sweet Nana's childhood and her staunch but loving mountain country upbringing. She makes me think my great grandfather was kind but serious, thus backing up Nana's stories of a great man!

It is from the pages of this well written and easy to read book that I can envision my gently used old victorian furniture being donated to my great grandmother's household since she was the preacher's wife of The Christian Church in Burnside, Kentucky. I can imagine the hardships of moving all of their belongings out of the mountain town to dry land and a new house somewhere nearby.

As a young man many years ago I found this book in Paper-Back. It was the funniest book I can ever recall reading.

Each morning when he was a boy growing up along the banks of the Ohio River, my dad used to row across to a small farm on the Kentucky side to buy milk. Though the maps in our childhood history books portrayed the river as a nearly impenetrable boundary between North and South, ON JORDAN'S BANKS reveals its true nature as more of an Information Superhighway by comparatively studying African American life in the Ohio River Valley as a region. The book covers the period from 1861 - 1890 (and a bit beyond to the Great Depression in the epilogue.)

Drawing primarily on secondary sources, Bigham finds surprising similarities between the north and south shores during both the antebellum and postwar eras. He explores the wide ranging forms slavery (and freedom) took in various areas...for example, it seems that some slaves in Louisville possessed greater liberties than free blacks in Cincinnati. He examines the development of churches, schools (both integrated and segregated), benevolent societies and the social strata within black communities and across racial lines. He explores the evolution of free labor. And he shows that the fight for civil rights and suffrage knew no boundaries.

At times I felt statistics stalled the narrative, but this is a minor complaint and I'm not sure it could have been handled differently; there is simply an overwhelming amount of information packed into this fascinating book. I recommend it to Ohio River history buffs as well as to African American Studies.

This book explains why Peter Perlman is one of the nation's best trial lawyers. Perlman shows that speaking to a jury is something that involves communication at the human level, not at the legal level.[...]

Don McNay...

There are several books about Oprah on the market but for an intellecutally engaged reader this volume is among the very best. The Oprah Phenomenon is a terrific collection of well crafted essays covering a range of topics. The book includes essays on Oprah and race (including the appeal of Oprah to white women), Oprah and femininity (including Black femininity) and Oprah and literacy (including what her television work has done for America), to name a few. I teach courses sociology courses on topics including gender and pop culture and can easily see this book being used in such courses, as a vehicle to address a range of social issues. The book also would serve the general reader, interested in the Oprah Phenomenon.

Confession time: I've never actually made anything from the recipes here, but it sure is a fun cookbook to read, with its delicious assortment of foods and anachronistic terms for measurement ("peck" "bushel" "half-dollop"). This eighty-year-old cookbook full of hundred-plus-hundred-year-old dishes is a regional secret and a favorite for fans of the Mason-Dixon Line sort of southern cooking found pretty much only in a place like Kentucky. I have one of the rare first editions of this classic that my grandmother acquired on a trip to Louisville during a Derby week in the 1950's. It's the sort of book I wouldn't sell for almost any price. I really love the idea of the dishes in here, and like to think back on the era when cooks actually had the abilityto make these sorts meals with their all-day preparation times. This is a low-fat fan's worst nightmare with its meat and gravy heavy, fried food loving tone, but you know, its author lived well into her nineties and ate like this every day, so today's modern nutritionists really don't know as much as they like to lead on. Out of Kentucky Kitchens is full of charm and vanished Commonwealth graces. It augments any pantry bookshelf, whether for a serious cook or casual fan like me.

This is the product of six years of research and work with homeless rural children and families. But while Vissing does her homework and musters the facts, the book goes beyond the statistics. This is not a scientific study of a problem -- this is a person talking about people.

The book is full of photos: of children hungry; children playing; a pregnant young woman on a park bench; a mother in a homeless shelter cradling two toddlers close to her, with a determined look on her face; a teenage girl nodding off to sleep at a coffeeshop table with dawn lightening the window. Fourteen University of New Hampshire photography students worked with homeless children and families for six months in 1991. The results are incorporated into this book. Also available is a twenty minute, award-winning, videotape, "I Want to Go Home"

Just as the book goes beyond the statistics to show human beings suffering, it goes beyond the suffering to show solutions. Vissing spoke, in her initial study, with about three hundred people from school and community groups about programs to help the homeless. The first results were discouraging; for example, "Almost none of the communities had special summer programs for homeless children. I became convinced that 'homelessness' was not a term that most agencies used when serving children." But by the end of the book, Vissing has a program for rural communities to "'take the bull by the horns' and rely upon themselves to address the causes and consequences of homelessness." In the back of the book is a lengthy personal story -- fourteen pages -- of a child who grew up in poverty, abuse, violence and a rootless existence. Her story is searing and heartbreaking. But it has a very short postscript. ".. employed full-time and planned to attend college the following fall. Each member of the family seemed emotionally, financially, and socially secure, because of their own determination and because they had found help when they needed it."

This book vividly illustrates how our families and our communities have been shattered. It also vividly illustrates how they can be mended.

Effie Marquess Carmack (1885-1973) grew up in the tobacco-growing region of southern Kentucky known as the Black Patch. She married at an early age and, because of economic necessity and religious commitments, moved with her husband to Utah, back to Kentucky, then to Arizona, and finally to California. Along the way she became committed to preserving the rural, southern folkways she had experienced as a child. She became a folk poet and self-taught artist. In the 1940s she began writing her autobiography. Effie's story is a charming memoir of her spirited childhood on a poor tobacco farm. She describes a wide variety of folk practices from healing and crafts to children's games. A convert to the Mormon Church, her account of southern Mormon missions contributes to the little-known record of the Mormon church's attempts to establish a presence in the South. Out Of The Black Patch is a fascinating, engaging, candid, informative autobiography.

The book is a great account of The Hilltoppers- a step back to memories of a good era.

Daniel Tobin,published poet and Professor of English,offers exceptional insight into the work of Heaney.This book offers both an excellent overview and a fresh perspective on the deepest meaning of Heaneys poetry from 1965 to the present.Tobin advances Heaney scholarship to a new level,and makes it meaningful to student and scholar alike.