Kentucky Books

Containing a collection of essays and practical suggestions for applying ideas from folklore to everyday life, this book is an important contribution to those engaged in education as well as the delivery of social services. There are great ideas about using the everyday culture of various communities for intervention work in a variety of employment settings. Teachers will find useful ideas and a well-written bibliography on the use of folklore in the classroom. Park and recreation workers will find a good resource for developing projects and programs that use locally-based cultural resources for their programming. The book contains ample ideas that can be used by those in medical fields, prisons, libraries, refugee services, and other organizations that work to deliver services to the public. The book also contains a good introduction to the history and practice of studying folklore, and the excellent bibliographic references will provide readers with a variety of resources for further developing the approaches offered in this volume.

This book is a must have. It gave excellent information about doctors in my state. The information was clear and concise, telling what, when and why the doctors where disciplined and if it was by a state or federal agencies. This book gives consumers the basis to make better decisions when choosing a doctor by knowing if they have ever been disciplined and why.

Gary, Indiana-The Forgotten City. I'm a big fan of Robert Catlin, and I'm a writer. We're talking about a book that took a lot of guts to write, going up against racism and corporate power. Gary is the strangest city in the United States and few people really grasp it's existence. This is not just an urban planning book, but a compelling story of corporate planted town where it's fathers had every intention of creating the concrete and steel shell that it is today. If you think that you've seen some bad places in America, you haven't seen anything until you read this book.

The town of Hazard in Perry country, Kentucky is one of the more isolated in the country. In the days before the construction of the railway travel was very difficult, basically only by river.

In 1911 the railroad was coming to Hazard. Uncommonly the railroad hired John G. Kinner to photographically document the 1910 survey and the acquisition of the right-of-way for for the Lexington and Eastern Railway Company. He continued as the official photographer during the construction of the railroad.

Now, almost a hundred years later, the director of the local museum has collected almost two hundred photographs to form the core of this book. As best I can tell, these represent the only collection where the photographs from a single photographer cover the advent of railroading. Only in the last few pages that cover more modern years have other photographs come in.

This series of books from Arcadia tell the story of railroading in one community. They are photographic records of our history, and they are excellent

This book is an intelligent portrayal of the important role of black women journalists in shaping historical events, a role which has been largely ignored or forgotten by many. This book serves not only as a necessary historical record, but as a lasting tribute to the triumphs of these eleven women.

"I am afoot in the woods," Wendell Berry writes in one of the eleven essays included in this 1981 collection. "I am alive in the world, this moment, without the help or the interference of any machine" (p. 247). Berry is a novelist, poet, essayist, and Kentucky farmer. This 340-page book contains essays first published between 1965 and 1980 in books that have since gone out of print. Considering that Edward Abbey once called Berry "the best essayist now working in America," it is unfortunate that any of his writing has fallen out of print. Our world is poorer as a result.

With the eyes of a poet philosopher, Berry finds lessons everywhere within the world (p. 247), whether in the "illuminating and suitably humbling" powers (p. 15) and "moods" (p. 225) of a river ("The Rise," "A Country of Edges"), or in his sweet, solitary walks in the woods ("An Entrance to the Woods," "The Unforeseen Wilderness," "The Journey's End"). When a man goes into the woods on foot, Berry tells us, the wilderness receives him as a student. "And what it begins to teach him is how to live beyond his expectations; if he returns often and stays long perhaps it will teach him to live without expectations" (p. 247). Observing, too, that with the rise of industry, and the disintegration of marriage and community, our spirits have become separated from the world ("The Body and the Earth"), Berry encourages us to care for each other, and care for the earth (p. 304). Written in the tradition of Thoreau, Stegner, and Dillard, these essays offer a good introduction to Wendell Berry's early writings, and you should get your hands on a copy of RECOLLECTED ESSAYS before it becomes impossible to find.

G. Merritt

see Choice reviews online June 2007 issue

I bought this book some 20 yrs ago and find it to be the absolute authority for those wanting to build their own longrifle.My copy is right next to my gun bench and is referred to many times during the construction of one of my rifles.If you must decide between two or more books to buy on the subject , this is the one. Tim Hamblen- Secretary, National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association

This is an extraordinary book, probably one of the most readable "homegrown" geneaologies in print. It was clearly compiled as an act of love. Mrs. Smart appears to have spent a considerable part of her adult life gathering information about her mother's family (The Rector Family of Wayne County, Kentucky). This Rector family descends from the 1714 Germanna Colonists of Fauquier County, Virginia. Her book tracks the descendents of Samuel Rector and Rutha Simpson, who emigrated through the Cumberland Gap into Wayne County, Kentucky and were married there in 1807. Their large family and many descendents are documented in this book well into the mid-1970's. Mrs. Smart's special talent was in doggedly pursuing all leads. She has sections on related families that are quite interesting. Please note the book was published by The Wayside Press, Charlottesville, VA in 1975.

This book provides an excellent historical overview of Western Kentucky University athletics through the late 1970's. Western Kentucky has one of the winningest basketball programs in history. From the early days under the legendary Coach Ed Diddle right on through the 1970s. A must for any Hilltopper fan!