North Dakota Books

The beginning of this book takes off like a rocket. It's powerful and serves as one huge hook for the reader, who moves along with the characters as they develop into adults (and depending on the character, not very nice adults), sometimes skipping chunks of time. It's a character-driven story, but the psychological thread that run through the book give s simple narrative a lot of meat if you're paying attention. This was my first Erdrich book, and I'm about to start another, Plague of Doves. I hope it is just as good.

Of the series of dry, psychological books my aunt has lended me over the summer-The Beet Queen had to be my favorite so far of mine. I wish I could sum up these types of books better, where there are just people described through they're life-slightly off, outthere but more or less normal chacters. None really jump off the page or do anything out of this world. They're all dysfunctional. One thing I am sure...these kind of books are not my cup of tea. There was TOTALLY something missing with Karl...I had faith that this would be a good charcter...I was very wrong. Random events and people described in a book, whatever.

This book is amazing and a truly beautiful work about the human spirit. The characters are numerous and complex, and the way the book skips around in terms of characters and time keeps you on your toes and keeps the story interesting -- you never know what to expect.

It was really the highlight of a recent vacation -- I couldn't put it down.

I started this novel after reading Erdrich's Love Medicine. While it is clearly not as lyrically written, it is more accessible, and I admired Erdrich's inventiveness as she creates a very unique set of characters. I never finished "Beet Queen", quitting not that far from the end. When Celestine's child turned out to be so impossible, it was the last straw. "Beet Queen" is just too determinedly bleak, to no higher purpose I could discern or discover in reading reviews here.

I chose this book for my book club because I had read Erdrich's other novel, The Master Butcher's Singing Club, which was flawed, but still great reading. I was so disappointed in this novel. It did not meet my expectations. I expected the wise and wonderful writing I encountered in The Master Butcher's Singing Club, but was given plot twists that were just plain silly. The author ruined her opporunity to say something profound with Sita's death by throwing in dead body humor a la "Weekend at Bernie's." Although for the most part I found her characters compelling, I felt like this book had very little to say. I am less inclined to try her other novels after reading this one.

This story is about a boy who is searching for his dream to become a Dakota Indian. One night he has a realistic dream that he is an Indian fighting one of the battles with the Indians against the colonists. He wants to get to an Indian reservation where hopefully he can fulfill his dream as an Indian but he has no way of getting there until he meets a boy with a broken down motorcycle and he tries to fix it and then in the night he rides it to the reservation so he can become an Indian and fulfill his dreams.

This is a really good book. It's about a boy called Floyd. When he was young he decided he wanted to be an indian. He lives in foster homes and is always moving. This book even has some useful information in it about indians. I would recommend this book to someone who likes adventures and mischief; it's a good book.
In the book Floyd decides early on he wants to become an indian. He learns lots about them and even follows their religion. He lives in foster homes and is always moving. He is never in the same school long so he doesn't have any friends. He is starting to get sick of everything so he decides it's time to run away. He plans it all out and the leaves. The rest of the book is pretty much about what he does there.
I liked this book because it was kind of an adventure. It went lots of different ways. It went from being in one place, then going to a completely different place. It even had some useful information about indians. It's a really good book.
I think you should read this book. It's a good book for all different people. I rated this book 4 stars. This is a great book and is filled with lots of mischief and excitement.

This book is about a sixteen year old boy who wants to become a Native American. He would wear moccasins to school, had a Dakota pipe, would grow his hair long and die it black, he would also try to make his skin darker. Charley Black Crow was his Native American name and would sometimes sign his papers with that name. Floyd believed it was his destiny to become a Dakota Native American. He had a dream which showed him as a warrior. Floyd put it to heart after his dream to become a Native American.
Dakota Dream was not an exciting book. There were no parts where you just couldn't set the book down. It was very boring. The same tone was used throughout the whole story. Native American ways were used throughout the book, and I did learn a little. You also learn how life was in a foster home.
If you know your destiny this is a book for you. It will help you on the way to find your destiny. This book shows what one boy did for his. Now what will you do for yours?

In "Dakota Dream" a young boy runs away from a group home to fullfill his dream about being a Dakota Indian and living on an real reservation. Personally I like this book a lot because I think it would be cool to be a Dakota Indian. The boy one night in in a vision in his dream, he sees himself as a Dakota Indian riding on horseback to go fight the settlers. Thats when it first comes to him, that his destiny is to become a Dakota Indian. He fights his way through life going from group home to group home, not even considering the fact that his parents died when he was a baby, and never saw them before. I think "Dakota Dream" is an exciting, and one of the best books I have ever read!

My junior high age son and his friends had to read this book for school, and they were thoroughly annoyed with the self-obsessed protagonist, Floyd. They wanted him to grow up, already! I read the book to see what all the complaining was about and found myself agreeing.

The "adults" in the book humored Floyd too much; The only person who cared enough to make him grow up was the Sioux Indian Chief. One hopes that Floyd would learn something lasting from the one mature character in the book. Pick up Harry Potter or a Redwall book instead.

Much of what Fischer claims about Nazi Germany has been discounted by legitimate historians. For example, the Lebensborn program was not a stud farm for SS supermen and Nordic women to create a new master race, and Ilse Koch did not create lampshades and book covers from the skin of dead Jews.

Every significant figure in the Nazi regime, even those who ultimately had little to do with the persecution and destruction of the Jews in Europe, is portrayed as either a sexual deviant or a sociopath. I seriously doubt the most educated people in Europe would have tolerated such a regime long enough for it to plunge Europe into its most destructive war.

I guess surrendering historical objectivity is a small price to pay to make money and avoid being bullied by the ADL.

Any author who thinks that Hindenburg was loyal to the Weimar Republic is out of his mind. There wasn't a German alive who liked it and to say that somebody was loyal to it is ludecrous. He also implies that Hitler outwitted Hindenburg to gain the chancellorship. That's also crazy. Hitler just got lucky that Papen underestimated him when he used him in his plot to try to gain the chancellorship for himself (which failed obviously). In fact I don't believe that Hitler and Hindenburg had any interaction at all on the subject (except of course when he was sworn in). The matter was proposed to Hitler through Papen. If Fischer could be so off base on such a basic concept, I shudder to think about how acurate the rest of the information in this book is.

NOTE: This is not an uninformed opinion. I have compared this book with others by Burleigh, Kershaw, Machtan, and Turner on similar subjects.

My recomendation is to forget about this book and get Kershaw's book Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris. It's actually more of a biography of Hiter's power. I found it to be a much more logical, coherent, and enlightening book.

Klaus Fischer's account of Nazi Germany succeeds as a source of basic information, particularly regarding the early roots of the Nazi movement. Since this is its main purpose, it merits consultation by anyone seeking a solid basic grasp of those world-shattering events. However, the reader should be prepared to wade through some fairly archaic, and at times deeply disturbing, ideological baggage that pops up along the margins of the main historical narrative. First, Fischer's fleeting references to Marxism and Communism as historico-social phenomena are shallow, unsubtle and dismissive in a manner only possible for a scholar trained in America (as Fischer was), and thus saddled with that peculiar cultural blind spot of ours. However, this blind spot does not much compromise the narrative, beyond giving the misleading impression that the ideas of Marx are somehow "natural" (as opposed to historical and contingent) breeding grounds for totalitarianism. More disturbing by far is the extent to which Fischer's account of the psychological makeup and personal characters of Nazi party members echoes and reproduces some of the same archaic ideologies for which they themselves were so notorious. For example, Fischer makes frequent use of the term "deviance" to describe Nazi operatives, and explicitly includes under this rubric not only sadism but homosexuality! In his desire to paint the Nazis as twisted fiends, he ends up demonizing gays in much the same way that Jews were demonized by the Nazis. Equally archaic is his reference to facial physiognomy as evidence of criminal character among Nazis. Clearly, Fischer is unaware of the large body of literature (best represented by SJ Gould's The Mismeasure of Man) which documents the intellectual bankruptcy of such thinking. Both of these ideas played a role in the racist, homophobic thought complex which National Socialism inherited from the late nineteenth century and put to such deadly effect. That an historian writing in the 1990s could continue to use ideas that have been so thoroughly discredited by scientific research is unfortunate, and given Fischer's topic, gruesomely ironic. The problems noted here do not distort Fischer's account of matters of public record, but they do raise serious questions about his interpretive competence. In the end, some readers might not have the moral stomach to reap the factual rewards undeniably offered by Fischer's book.

Perhaps Fischer's greatest achievment here is in how much he tells us in so short a book. He covers Nazi and German history from the 19th century to 1945 in under 600 pages!! He shows a special gift for writing the most with the (relatively) fewest words. Even those knowing much about the subject will learn a lot from this volume. And Fischer knows what should and should not be included in a book of this kind. This work will be a valuable addition to any historical library.

I particularly enjoyed the section on the Weimer Republic and the 20's. Most books skip over this period, saying only that the Republic was democratic and flawed, and that Hitler sought to destroy it. Fischer gives us an in depth look at this society, and explains how its insecurities contributed to the disaster to come.

I only wish the book had been a bit longer. There is only so much one can include in a one volume work, I know, but a few hundred more pages would have made it truly outstanding.

For a comprehensive overview of the Third Reich, Fischer's book is one of the best single-volume works on the market. It's eminently readable on all aspects of Nazi society: the sham politics, the ruthless military ethos, the imposition of one man's psychosis on the policies of an entire nation. The opening chapter, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" is a cogent synthesis of the historical strains from which the darkest period of the 20th century emerged: Germany's anti-modernism, which stretched back to the Enlightenment; the economic breakdown, political instability, and unraveling of civil society which the Versailles Treaty wrought; and the scapegoating of two groups which Hitler believed were a mortal threat to the country--the Communists and the Jews.

I don't know why I had the misfortune to pick up this Louise Erdrich book out of all her other ones at the bookstore.

This was one of the most painful books I have ever read. The writing was stilted and unnatural. I like books that are a bit sad and melancholy and depressing, but there was something about the complete and utter negativity of the story and the characters that was too much. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I felt no compassion for any of these unlikable characters. Their constant bad choices one after another. I knew from the beginning of the book that nothing would turn out well for any of the characters especially the hapless and directionless Lipsha.

I just love Louise Erdrich's books. I didn't read her fiction until after I read her book "Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country", which is nonfiction. Anyway, I really enjoyed this book, and while it is somewhat impossible to describe the complete plot (and saying "Lipsha is in love with Shawnee" doesn't do it justice), Lipsha is developed into a sympathetic figure, and Lyman is also rounded out more. It's amazing how LE can spin an interesting narrative out of (mostly) ordinary events. I would love to read more about Lipsha and the other, younger members of the families. They seem so real now, after reading the other books such as "Tracks", "Love Medicine", etc.

This being one of Louise Erdrich's earlier works, it forms the basis and framework for the wonderful works that follow. This purchase was a gift, as it is one of my very favorite books by any writer, nevermind by Louise Erdrich, and I have an older edition permanently placed in my front bookcase (for ease or re-reads). Please, read this great book and then what follows along with the connected works by another great writer, Winona Laduke, and you have weeks, months and years of wonderful literary experiences...which will stay with you forever...I don't really want to spoil the fun, except to say that both Erdrich and Laduke write beyond the Native American genre and world: they touch the human condition and offer the experience to the reader....

I fell in love with Louise Erdrich after reading her short story "Fleur". There was something gritty and seductive about her characters.

Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks and this book are all part of a saga. The Bingo Palace is the last one in the series (i believe). There is a big sense of despair in the multiple narrators. It is almost like they know their lives cannot possibly get any better. I found the book depressing and a bit lackluster compared to the previous ones.

Erdrich's latest novel of modern native American life centers on a bright, but aimless young man. Lipsha Morrisey is adrift, one foot in America, one on the North Dakota reservation. Son of a crazy woman and a convict, the tribe has given up on the young man who once showed promise - a product of families recalled from Erdrich's previous books "(Love Medicine," "The Beet Queen," "Tracks").

Summoned back to the reservation by his grandmother for reasons that never come clear - a last chance to make something of himself as an Indian? Lipsha falls in love with the beautiful Shawnee Ray, who's slated to marry the tribal entrepreneur, her son's father, Lyman Lamartine. Lyman is handsome, muscled, skilled in tribal traditions, worldly wealthy and ambitious for tribal power and American success. He is all that Lipsha is not.

But Lipsha believes the strength of his love is a match for all of Lyman's assets. Endowed with his mother's luck, granted him in a vision devoid of love, Lipsha begins to win at Bingo. For Shawnee Ray he amasses unearned wealth, squanders his spiritual power, dreams of greatness in his future, and wastes his present in floundering and backsliding.

Although Lipsha's present is the primary focus, the novel dips into the past with chapters centered around other tribal members including both his grandmothers, his mother, Lyman, Shawnee Ray, and Zelda Kashpaw,Lipsha's aunt and Shawnee's self-appointed guardian. There's also a Greek Chorus sort of voice that speaks with the whole tribe's sorrowful wisdom.

This organization keeps a certain distance between the novel and the reader. Lipsha's obsession widens the gulf. His hunger for Shawnee Ray so overwhelms that it bores. Shawnee becomes the focus of Lipsha's every act but there's so little contact between them that passion never develops into love. Lipsha never develops at all.

Erdrich's prose is vivid and spare, always flowing, moving. Every sentence seems infused with the long history, hardship and spiritual mystery of Indian life. Her characters are enigmatic and firmly anchored in the Dakota setting. But for all this richness, the story never connects, remaining more mysterious than moving. Readers of her earlier novels, who can place this one in a wider context, should enjoy the book more than new readers who may be left cold by too-brief glimpses into too many hearts.

This book was absolutely amazing! Everything we wanted to do and everything we didn't know we wanted to do was EASY TO FIND. I spent a bit of time marking the attractions we wanted to see and the routes we wanted to take and NOT ONCE did we get lost. I recommend the trip. However, I recommend it more with this book as a travel companion. For our next trip we plan on touring the South East, don't think I haven't looked to the Insiders' Guide books to help. Have a great time!

We took a South Dakota vacation and found this book to be great reading in our preparation and planning. It covers everything from lodging to attractions to activities to history and on and on.

This book, in combination with "Exploring the Black Hills and Badlands: A Guide for..." helped us have a better vacation than I ever expected.

This is a GREAT book if you are visiting this area. It gives all sorts of information to make your trip more complete. It also gives background information and little insiders tips here and there. The only thing I would look elsewhere for is accomodations. It has good camping and B&B info but not nearly enough hotel and resort listings but you can get that anywhere. This book is worth it just for the INFORMATION included.

My family just got back from South Dakota, where we used this book. I can't begin to tell you how far this book falls short. Want info. on hiking the Badlands? Forget it. Want to know about activities and food in Rapid City? You're pretty much out of luck.

The book's organization is atrocious. Restaurants in one place, lodging in another, attractions in another. So when you pull into a place, you have to flip all over the book just to figure things out.

Basics are missing. For example, say you want to know the best things to do in the Black Hills--it's very difficult to excavate from this book. Instead you learn about real estate, shopping, and many unneeded details. Hikes in the Black Hills? Forget it? How to tackle Wind Cave National Park? Little help.

After travelling around the world with opinionated and helpful Lonely Planet guides, I am sorely disappointed with this book. This book is definately better than nothing, but look elsewhere for help with your trip to beautiful South Dakota.

We bought this book only because the Moon Handbook was unavailable. We hoped to use this as a vacation planner. The book appears to have lots of information, but for us, interested in tent camping and hiking, with some in-town activities, the information was largely irrelevant. Things worth dwelling on--such as Spearfish Canyon--are mentioned with much less emphasis than the exhaustive coverage of shopping facilities, for example. The text is incessantly cheery and reads like a school newsletter. We would have preferred the intelligent critical evaluation that makes the Moon books such great reading--and such great resources.

An ideal book for those intending to visit South Dakota. As well as giving places to visit and stay it provides an interesting insight into the history of the state. A few more photographs would be even better.

I am planning to visit South Dakota this summer and since I manage to turn everything I do into an educational project I have been reading up and writing chambers of commerce for information. This book is written in the neutral public relations politically correct style of a guidebook. (Heaven forbid we ever say anything critical about the Indians or why we're still paying $1.5 billion a year for Indian health care.)In fact I believe the author has a PR background. He conveys a lot of information but he could have made the book much more interesting. For example, the story of the trapper Hugh Glass is one of the best stories ever. Glass was mauled by a grizzly and left for dead by his companions. He vowed revenge on those who left him and literally crawls back to civilization to kill the men who left him. However, the author here really does not get into the revenge theme. I had to get that from a Chamber publication. The pictures in the book are great and I would rate the pictures five stars. However, there just aren't that many books about South Dakota. So if you are going to South Dakota it probably is worth picking up. For an interesting book about the entire Great Plains which includes South Dakota read Great Plains by Ian Frazier, which is a five star book.

At first , I didn't think this book was of much help in planning my trip but the more I read it, the more great information I found. I would advise you to read it like a novel and not just skim through it looking for specific information.

Those factoids and stats you're going to bore your friends with when you get home ... you can find them here. What I didn't find was answers to questions, such as: Where are good places to camp? What do I do to enjoy my trip to the reservation, or a powwow? Where are the best places to eat in Hot Springs? That is, things I wanted to know to enjoy the trip.

In this book, Gump compares the British conquest of the Zulu to the United State's conquest of the Sioux and finds suprising similarities. The book is extremely well written and one of the most engaging history books which I have ever read. While I do not know much about Zulu history, I am a student of Native American history and his analysis of Sioux history seems sound to me. The comparison of the Sioux and Zulu history presents the American conquest of the Sioux in a new and interesting light that helps widen the readers understanding of the conflict.

I absolutely love history and foreign relations, but this book is written in the most boring style possible. Horrible, I wouldn't recommend it. He has some great points, but you are better off reading the book reviews to get his argument.

Please disregard the 2 of 5 rating from the sleep deprived person from North Carolina. This 5 out of 5 work of comparative history will keep you turning the pages. It may actually disturb your sleep with its effective demolition of the historiography of American exceptionalism when it comes to imperialism towards indigenous peoples.

More importantly, this is NOT a narrative about the Sioux or the Zulu as "victims." Although many scholars have noted the impact of Western imperial expansion on indigenous peoples throughout the world, it is only recently that historians have begun to employ the ill-defined and problematic methodology of comparative history to understand the similarities and differences of these diverse colonial encounters.

Gump's book integrates two major themes. One theme is that indigenous societies and cultures are dynamic. This means that they are characterized by intentional action and change. Whether the forces of change are internal or external, indigenous societies are not static.

The second theme is that societies and cultures are components of particular times and actual places. There is a dynamic interrelationship between attitudes, values, beliefs, behaviors and the specific circumstances of historic events. Examining two of these 19th century interrelationships provides us with an understanding of the dynamism of indigenous peoples' cultural adaptation and resilience. The Sioux and the Zulu were as involved in the historical process of change over time as any other people. In spite of their economic and cultural marginalization, adjusting to these circumstances did not necessarily diminish their cultural values.

For a good introduction to the comparative frontier history of the United States and South Africa see Leonard Thompson and Howard Lamar's chapter, "Comparative Frontier History" in their book, The Frontier in History: North America and South Africa Compared, (Yale University Press, 1981), 3-13.

For a comparative study in race relations consult George M. Frederickson's book, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History,(Oxford University Press, 1981).

I was put to sleep three times by this book. Those poor natives. They just can't get no justice. This book does provide a new look at what an injustice western civilation has done to native people.

Bottom line the book consists of basic fundamentals in the science of organizational behavior. Each chapter had the important definitions on the margin of each page throughout the text. Summary of each chapter is in a Q & A format on the last 2 pages of that specific chapter. There are huge differences between the last two editions , so if you are wondering my advice DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON OLD EDITIONS !!
Asaad Abduljawad

This text was used at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for an honors OB course. It served the class well by providing relevant and often humorous applications of theory. However, the descriptions of the actual theories themselves were weak and vague often referring to other concepts not yet learned.

I used this book at Cornell's school of Industrial and Labor Relations in an OB course. It was ok, but I have seen better. The examples are mostly revelant, but sometimes it strays from the covered material. A good book to use to review for the final exam, but if your teacher draws tests from their own lectures, make sure you utilize the index in the back!

Whitson's third book is hard to read due to lack of continuity. I love the characters and the historical part of the entire series, so I was interested enough to keep plugging away in spite of difficulty with the flow.

Genevieve Blue Eyes is married to Daniel Two Stars and they find themselves in a tiny little rental on land that used to be theirs. Neighbors do not want "those wild Indians" living near them and make life miserable, culminating in a very, very intense encounter for Genevieve.

As a war breaks out, Daniel serves as guide for the Army and little Aaron whom we met as a small boy in earlier books, has enlisted as a "junior" recruit. It is during this war that Daniel Two Stars faces one of the biggest challenges of his life and his marriage. The ending does somewhat make up for the hit and miss writing of the book, and since I am such a fan of Stephanie Grace Whitson, I would definitely buy the next book if there is to be one.

I also found this third book to be a very satisfying conclusion to the series. I disagree with the professional review that found the characters "sermonizing"and that it bogged it down. My ideal Christian fiction is that which challenges me in my own walk. One thing I particularly liked about this series was the richness of the secondary characters. I also found the epilogue to be just the right closure to the book. The reason I give it a 4 instead of 5 is that I found the main character Jen a little
bland.

As a fan of Stephanie Grace Whitson I was not let down. Her final book in the Dakota Moons series was far better than the previous one. I really enjoy how she keeps the romance alive within the marrage of her characters and her style of writing the workings of it.

I've encountered several inaccuracies in the second edition of this book. We recently hiked Lost Cabin-Harney Peak Loop and we were expecting to hike the listed distance of 8.6 miles but the actual distance is at least 12 miles and our GPS logged 14 miles. In addition, this hike's trail contact phone number for the Black Hills National Forest Supervisor's Office is incorrect as is the phone number for the Black Hills National Forest Visitor's Center in the appendix. Of the three hikes we have done we have found inaccurate information on all of them. The directions for Crow peak did not give adequate directions from the Interstate 90 exit, for Bear Butte the book lacked current fee information. Many of the hikes do not have their elevation gain listed. This book offers a nice overall listing of hikes in different areas of the Black Hills however the book's inaccuracies and lack of useful features such as an index, hike elevation profiles, and detailed maps that include all the features mentioned in the text make it, in my opinion, less useful than I would have expected.

I live in the Black Hills and use this guide extensively. Itis well written and trails are accurately described. If you purchaseone hiking book for SD....make sure it is this one!...

Good hiking reference if you're new to the BH and hiking in general. I've found the ratings to be more for beginners or folks without a lot of hiking skill (ie. a moderate trail listed as strenuous). Good to get you oriented to the area.