Kentucky Books

Reading Mr Stuart's books takes me back to a simple world of my father and mother. Both were from the area and many of the charaters are real for me. I will always hope the world Mr. Stuart gave us will endure in each of us. Truly a remarable man. And one of my 3 1/2 year old grandaughters favourite sleepy time books.

I bought this book sight-unseen as a gift for my 77-year old mother since she lives not so far from Mr. Stuart's neck of the woods and I thought she would enjoy it (I'd read several on Mr. Stuart's short stories when I was going to school). One minor comment: while the text certainly isn't 'phone book' tiny, I wish they'd used a larger text and made two volumes out of it if necessary. Still, I don't want to be too critical of a good effort, so I'll give it 4. Mr. Stuart was quite an inspiration to the teachers in my hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee.

I have read all of Cameron Judds books. He is, without a doubt, my favorite western writer. I wish he would write some new books. It's been a while...

This is a well done book putting a nice spin on the life of Daniel Boone. It brings together historical facts from the time of this early pioneer and adds a host of interesting fictional characters and adventures. Nothing like a 12 month trapping and hunting excursion to make a guy homesick...well, at least for a couple days or so.

I was impressed with this book. Definitely a recommended read.

It is very interesting and it gives you so much information about the fairy tales and the mass media industry.

I really love Jack Zipes, and this is one of his helpful books for folklorists, and amateurs who enjoy reading fairy tales. It presents a variety of 'radical' theories about the meaning and construction of fairy tales. Many of the theories are no longer quite so radical. The book also gives you a good overview of feminist theories about the tales, some of which will surprise. Among other things, that fairy tales are not always about the subjugation of silly blond princesses. I reccomend this book as an intro to folk and fairy tale theory.

And Ms. Archer stands a good chance of becoming one of my new favorites!

It's also interesting to read a 2nd book by an author and see visible growth in their style and writing skills. I found her previous work Bewitch a little uneven and slow. By comparison the humor is sharper in "Cabin Fever," and the hero is a little more alpha. (Especially when he physically throws the heroine's sneaky ex-husband out the front door of a house).

I loved the secondary characters, too. Yuri, the Russian stepfather to James Adler Sullivan, was such a terrific character that I would have liked to see a "prequel" (even as a short story) about how he romanced James's mother, Barbara "Bibi" Adler-Sullivan. Ms. Archer, if you read this, maybe you can post it on your website or include it as a bonus in the back of your next book!

Snowbound in a cabin for 3 days, Charlie & James get to know each other over bottles of blackberry wine that Charlie's father kept stored in the old cabin. Charlie is sweet & shy, and the wine seems to loosen her up enough for her to seriously consider having a fling with James. I liked the fact that this was a very BIG deal for her, and she seemed to truly struggle over the decision. James is a sexy guy, but he's not a pig...he doesn't want to take advantage of Charlie or hurt her.

I liked the fact that the two of them seem to dance around each other for a while before they finally end up together. The invasion of the press (James is famous), his family, her family, and her ex-husband all complicate things. But a lot of scenes are very funny, and it's fun watching the two of them finally work things out and come together.

Since one of my books is cited two or three times by Nickell, I may be considered biased. But "Camera Clues" is a good training ground for would-be investigators who want to learn how to study evidence before formulating hypothesis.

Nickell is rational, honest and uninterested in the sensational exploitation of celebrated crime photography. He also understands and delivers a fundamental truth: Every good photo analyst knows what he or she measures rather than what they see. In investigating the Kennedy assassination in particular, most so-called experts seem to have forgotten this sage truth.

Finally, it's a pleasure to have someone call my book "sensible." Hell hath no fury like conspiracy addicts scorned, and "sensible" is quite a change from some of the other names I've been called over the last decade and a half. Thanks, Joe.

_Camera Clues_ is an excellent reference for gleening clues from photographs and for serving as a basis for continued library-research into the multitude of topics covered. This book is an excellent launch pad from which to delve into the history of 19th century photography in general; some history of photographic equipment; some history of photographic technique; the interactions between general history/context and photography; as well as the more modern topics of trick photography, faked photographs, photographs used as legal evidence, and special effects. Even more important than the excellent summarization of information in this book is the extensive bibilography, as this book is written with full college-level expository-writing endnotes.

I have been restoring and copying my family's 19th-century photographs. Starting out from a basic exposure to 19th-century photographs on paper, glass plates, and metal plates, I learned much about the history of 19th-century photography from this book which is otherwise lost knowledge to the common person in this (almost-)21st-century world. I am actively using the bibliography for further investigations into focused topics.

If there were ever another edition, I would suggest more, more, more of the same, pulling in more history, more explanation of various discarded photographic technologies (e.g., carbrotypes, Lambertypes and the restrictive licensing of their patents), more context, more techniques of tracking down negatives from photography studios of old, etc. I find that there are 2 separate audiences for this book: 1) historical photograph detectives for geneological/etc work after the death of subjects in the photographs and 2) modern trick photography for establishing truthfulness, such as for a legal case. I think that both audiences hunger for greater treatment. I would request splitting this book into 2 volumes, where each volume is double or triple its current size, focusing in depth on the specific needs of those 2 disparate audiences.

The views contained in this feedback are the personal opinions of Dan'l Miller and are in no way connected with his employer or any other organization.

Kentucky even though it was south of the Mason Dixon Line was a border state. They felt the pain where their families were torn apart. Kentucky wanted to remain neutral but Mill Springs on the Cumberland River was the first on the Union's Western Campaign. Bragg and Buell marched their armies around Kentucky and met in Perryville where there were eight thousand casualties. Bragg leaves the state but John Hunt Morgan, whose mother was a Hunt from Alabama, continued to terrorize our state with his raids. This is history and the author gives a good account of it. By Ruth Thompson author of "The Bluegrass Dream" and "Natchez Above The River"

Writing as a Small BusinessQualifying Laps: A Brewster County NovelSins of the Fathers: A Brewster County NovelTravelersThe Bluegrass Dream: A Wilderness Adventure of Early SettlersNatchez Above The River: A Family's Survival In The Civil War

This is where brother literally did battle against brother. Kentucky is called a border state (although it is a Commonwealth and not technically a state). As such, they fielded armies for both sides and while their Yankee troops were ruthless and effective, such Rebel outfits as Morgan's Raiders redefined military strategy.

Hard to miss with this wealth of interesting history.

I am currently working on my family genealogy and most of my relatives hail from this area of Kentucky and Virginia. This book mentions many of the units my relatives served in, which includes both Union and Confederate. I found the book to be filled with good information about the major battles and some of the smaller ones. The author gives good background on most of the major commanders, to include some of the Confederate commanders of several small local units. Occasionally individual soldiers are mentioned. All of the information is taken from well-documented sources.
I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the Civil War and how it affected the people of eastern Kentucky and western Virginia.

When most of us close our eyes and try to picture the Civil War as it happened, I imagine most of us see long rows of uniformed men advancing toward one another with appropriate flags waving above them, in an open field lit with sunshine. We seem to picture the war as one great Pickett's Charge. All the men are true and brave, ready to die doing their duty. Of course, that's not the way it was. And that vision was especially untrue in the regions tucked away from the commerce and the traffic and the war's main events.
The ridges of the Appalachians separated people. They defined borders between states, between free and slave, and for a while between a country trying to save itself and another wanting to begin on its own. Those mountains and the narrow valleys between them offered plenty of shade and shadows in which people of all sorts could seek refuge. Where they ended in northwestern Pennsylvania the lumber camps became havens for well-armed bands of Union deserters. Farther south, along the Kentucky-Virginia frontier, mixed bands of deserters from both sides hid in the forests and preyed upon the locals. "Volunteers" stepped forward under the shield of being soldiers to steal from whomever they didn't like.
As Brian McKnight points out in this regional study of the war near the Cumberland Gap, although lightly populated, this area had points of military significance, the gap itself being but one. It was here that James A. Garfield first proved his worth in the field, managing his men so well that he quickly gained promotion to brigadier and appointment as Don Carlos Buell's chief-of-staff. McKnight, who teaches at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, located right in the center of the area covered by his book, does a great job of showing all the facets of the war as they happened there. He shows you the military side, but also the partisan and civilian sides, which was significant in this mountain country where grudges were quickly formed and rarely forgotten, and an assassin in the dark could just as easily dole out justice as could a judge or jury. This was, after all, where the Hatfields and McCoys would carry on their own private war not many years afterward.
In his thoughtful introduction, the author provides a good historiography of other regional studies of the partisan war fought in other places in the Appalachians, as well as in Missouri where it was, perhaps, at its worst. And he correctly points out that the war around the Cumberland Gap has never been adequately covered before. It has now, thanks to his efforts now available in this excellent book.

My wife and I got this cookbook as a gift about ten years ago, and it has become a holiday staple. The book automatically falls open to certain pages, such as the Hungarian gulasch, the Viennese tenderloin, and a new favorite that we made yesterday, the Raspberry torte. The recipes in the book have simple names, but they do not taste like run-of-the-mill food. We get compliments every time we serve them.

My husband and I stayed at the Inn in 1993. We bought this cookbook after sampling the "Welcome to Snowvillage Inn" chocolate chip cookies that were placed in our room in a little basket. They were WONDERFUL, as was all of the food we dined on during our stay. This continues to be one of my favorite cookbooks including the recipe for Potato Leek Soup and Kate's Last Minute Artichoke Spread (EASY!) and the Tomato Cognac Soup.
It's a great and delicious reminder of the terrific stay at Snowvillage Inn!

The third of the Charlie Resnick procedurals, this one brings the quality back up after the somewhat disappointing Rough Treatment. This may be because the stakes are raised back to the level of the first book Lonely Hearts. In this one, someone is slicing up hospital workers, and the motivation is a rather interesting one. There's also a side plot involving a man who won't take no for an answer. There's the usual business with some delving into the messed-up private lives of the police, Charlie takes in a wino jazz saxophonist, and has his ex-wife turn up again. Whets the appetite for Off Minor.

Police Officer Charlie Resnick is assigned to investigate a series of vicious assaults on the staff of the large English hospital. The culprit is a pro with a surgeons scalpel as he carves his victims in such a manner as to end their medical careers. Tim Fletcher is the first victim, but others quickly follow.

Charlie soon realizes that the slasher is not only good with the knife, he understands the inner psyche of his victims and their families. A desperate Charlie concludes that only a medical person could do the professional incisions of the attacks and only a medical person could so understand where to place the maiming so as to destroy the victim both physically and mentally. Charlie knows he must stop this serial slasher before the body count requires astronomical numbers to keep track.

If not consistently the best, the Charlie Resnick British police procedurals are one of the top five series on the market today. CUTTING EDGE is a reprint of a classy novel first released in 1991. The who-done-it and the police elements are well written and fun to read on their own account. However, what makes this novel and the eight tales worth reading is John Harvey's insight into the personal lives of his characters to the point that the reader feels good about being a peeping Harriet.

Harriet Klausner

I blame television. When reading _Daniel Boone: An American Life_ (University Press of Kentucky) by Michael A. Lofaro, I realized that I didn't know anything about Daniel Boone. I thought he wore a coonskin cap and was a contemporary of Davy Crockett, and maybe fought at the Alamo. I discovered at the end of the book that Lofaro blames television, too. Boone's fame to my generation comes from "...Fess Parker playing the lead in _Daniel Boone_, a historical disaster for baby-boomers who still confuse Boone with Crockett" because Parker sequentially played one then the other in the mid-fifties. Lofaro had insight on my own ignorance, and his book is shot through with impressive scholarship that takes Boone, as much as possible, from myth and tall tales (and television-inspired error) and puts him into realistic historical perspective. There is plenty here that is inspiring, and fit for legend-making, and also plenty to show that Daniel Boone had essential trouble in managing to get along with society. And also (_pace_ Davy Crockett), Boone hated coonskin caps.

He was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, to devout Quakers. His rudimentary schooling shows up in many excerpts from his writings here; for instance, it seems to be true that on an East Tennessee tree he carved the inscription "D. Boon cilled a Bar on tree in the year 1760." Boone did indeed become an accomplished woodsman and hunter, and was always less fit for the life of frontier farming. He had a pattern of reaching out to new lands; he had a wanderlust, to be sure, and encroaching civilization always meant that he had to move to new frontiers to hunt game, but he was always eager to apply the simple solution of moving away when having people live around him was just too complicated. He would be on the move all his life. He fought for the British (along with Washington) in the French and Indian War, and then against the British in the western version of the American Revolution, which consisted mostly of fighting Indians. He had prodigious skill in the outdoors, and there are many stories here of heroism and craftiness. Although he could always win battles against Indians, he could not win against lawyers, and was often in court because of disputed boundaries he had surveyed. He was guileless and always assumed that treating someone honestly would get him honest treatment in return, an assumption that he never seemed to learn was unwarranted.

Boone was amazed that he became famous. There was a bogus autobiography printed in 1784, that was translated into German and French, and made Boone internationally known. He was painted by the young John James Audubon. James Fennimore Cooper based much of Natty Bumppo on him, and in a note to one of the Leatherstocking Tales said that Boone headed out from Kentucky to Missouri in later life "because he found a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded." Tales of Boone's dry wit became staples. He did indeed, when asked if he had ever gotten lost in the wilderness, reply, "No, I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days." He blazed trails, most notably through the Cumberland Gap, and then was dismayed that they became widened for wagon travel and further encroachment by civilization. Ending up in Missouri, he spent his last years hunting buffalo and trapping beaver. He died at 85, as the nation was pushing further west and the wilds were more speedily declining. Lofaro's informative biography puts the brilliant pioneer and naïve citizen at the center of a complicated and longstanding war between settlers and Indians.

This book tells how Dniel showed honesty and cofidince. Everything about Daniel Boone is in this book. If you have a report due on a leader this is want you want. I prefer this book to anyone.