Michigan Books

Robert Gurval is a great writer. In a field of dry style and stale ideas, Dr. Gurval is a welcome change. If this book is in your field, you really should read it. His book is well organized, complete, convincing and stimulating.

Having studied Arabic at degree level and now teaching the language as a non-native speaker to foreigners, I would thoroughly recommend this book to advanced learners of Arabic. It is the best one I have come across at this level. It can be used independently by the student or as a teacher resource.What makes it so good is the way vocabulary and idioms are recycled. Also the teaching methodology is vey sound. One slight problem is that I have not been able to get hold of the accompanying tapes from the UK.

I live in Michigan and still got a lot of new information from this book. Highly recommended.

My four-year-old grandson and I read this book together and he absolutely loved it. This is a wholesome story that inspires the imagination of young children. I found that reading the Adventures of Dalbert Juan allowed my grandson to ask very real questions about his own life and to make comparisons with events that happen to him in preschool and in life with other children. We have gone on to read all the other books by Laurie Bury. I definately recommend it to families and feel that this set of books should be in every kindergarten and preschool.

Africa & Africans In Antiquity is a fascinating and informative compilation of ten scholarly essays surveying and showcasing historical research and archaeology currently underway in Egypt, North Africa, the Sudan, and the horn of Africa. The contributors take issue with Afrocentric scholars with regard to the racial makeup of the Egyptian populations of antiquity. What emerges is the picture of a region that was an ethnic and cultural mosaic populated by Phoenicians, Berbers, Greeks, Egyptians, and Nubians. Africa & Africans In Antiquity is an impressive and very highly recommended contribution to Egyptology, archaeology, and antiquarian studies.

African Americans is a superb and balanced portrayal of the history and current situation of African Americans in Michigan. The book is well written, objective and extremely well researched. The solutions proposed are realistic and well thougt. The analysis is logical, presented well and understandable. This is the best book I have read concerning African Americans.

This book is well worth the cost! Like most titles published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, it is both pleasing to the eye and rich with background information on the various regions represented. For the African art collector, this book is invaluable due to the clarity of the photographs presented and the dating and description of each object. While it is not the finest book I have in my collection, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is seeking an additional work to expand and enhance their African art library as well as their knowledge of African artifacts.

This book is the foundation of the research of the Gullah dialect as a serious subject. Being an Afrcan-American himself. Dr. Turner won the confidence of Sea Island Gullah speakers in the 1930s and won their confidence in providing a window to their lives and folkways. The result was this book, which was probably the first that did not patronize Gullah speakers as being backward and ignorant as some (sadly) still do today.

The central section of this book, which deals with linguistic similarities between West Africans and Gullah speakers, is primarily for linguists. But the chapters on Dr. Turner's acquaintance with the Gullah speakers anmd his collection of their tales of slavery, religion, and life expereinces make for interesting reading for the layman. Overall, a great window into a subject that had long suffered from mockery and ridicule. It shows the Gullah speakers in their pride and dignity.

Prolific and veteran poet Conrad Hillberry is back with another deftly composed anthology. "After Music" is filled with meditations on anything and everything from conflicted Mexican priests, exhausted and depressed grocery store clerks, and so much more. Five sections create the book, separated by theme - Sweet Grease, How the Juices Leap, Steering by Pheromones, One Match Flaring, and Bird with Downcast Beak. "After-Music" is highly recommended as a book poetry lovers with relish and deserves a place on every community library poetry shelf. Christmas Night: Let Midnight gather up the wind/and the cry of tires on bitter snow/Let midnight call the cold dogs home,/sleet in their fur - last one can blow//the streetlights out. If children sleep/after the day's unfoldings, the wheel/of gifts and griefs, may their breathing/ease the strange hollowness we feel.//Let the midnight draw whoever's left/to the grate where a burnt-out log unrolls/low mutterings of smoke until/a small fire wakes in its crib of coals.

After The Smoke Clears: Struggling To Get By in Rustbelt America by Steve Mellon (a journalist and staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) is an informed and moving chronicle of the rise and fall of the steel and mining industry in America. A tale of the communities surrounding the employment bounty of the steel mills, and the struggle to survive when the closure of this employment bounty left a void in people's ability to support themselves, After The Smoke Clears is a compelling and highly recommended saga of twentieth-century American history enhanced with black-and-white photography.