North Dakota Books

Clay Jenkinson's "A Vast and Open Plain" should be a great read - it includes day by day journal entries of the five journal keepers of one of the greatest expeditions in American history: the Corps of Discovery, who traveled from Saint Louis, up the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains, and then down to the Pacific Ocean - and back again, fighting weather, hostile inhabitants, rotting food, and uncharted wilderness. But I have two major problems with the book.

First is the endless notations by editor Clay Jenkinson. From his 35 page introduction (bear in mind this is a LARGE book, with rather small print in two columns) to his footnotes which frequently occupy more than half the page, he is everywhere, and the book tells more about him and his strong opinions than about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Second, with few exceptions, the three journalists who were not Lewis and Clark frequently seem to have compared notes; it is the rare day when one of them (usually Ordway) says something that no one else says, or even uses different wording.

One of the interesting things in the book is that weather observations are made each day (although temperature readings cease after the company's thermometer breaks); Lewis and Clark and their men apparently didn't realize either how hot or how cold what is now North Dakota could get, nor the number of mosquitoes that would plague them (when they leave Fort Mandan in April of 1805, there are days when literally the only thing remarked upon is the mosquitoes).

Another point of interest are the personal letters and the lists of provisions and trade goods provided in the book. The letters give a better idea of the inner life of both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark than their journals do; the journals, after all, were intended to be presented to President Thomas Jefferson when they returned to Washington, D.C. The list of goods, and the descriptions of whom they were for, and to whom they were ultimately given, tells us even more about the men of the expedition.

The journals entries make clear the feelings of the Americans towards the Native Americans they met along the way. By today's standards they were incredibly racist and intolerant, treating the people they met like (rather dim) children, and mocking their religious ceremonies. They seem to ignore the fact that without the help of those people, the expedition wouldn't have survived. But hindsight is generally clearer than the view on the trip, isn't it?

For historians and college students, this book might be a good gift. But for people looking for a good story, there are better Lewis and Clark books available. I realize that Jenkinson's intent was only to show what happened to the Corps of Discovery on the days they were in what is now North Dakota. But even the native North Dakotan feels cheated out of "the rest of the story" when the Corps moves into Montana and the entries end until the return in 1806.

If you're a Lewis and Clark fanatic and don't mind endless footnotes, and the wretched and inconsistent spelling of the journal keepers, this is the book for you. Most of us will find ourselves endlessly bored or annoyed, and only occasionally fascinated.

This book has been mostly written by relatives of Bowman County's military men and women who served our country during WWII. Some of the individual entries are very long while others are only a paragraph. Along with the individual's information, there is a photo. The book does not have an index of names, but the stories are in alphabetical order by surname. It has only 84 pages and is in hardback. You would want one for your Family Tree.

This is an informative book which is also an easy and pleasant read. However, it lacks heart. It tends to be a listing of events rather than the story of the events.

This book is absolutely, downright strange. The persona used to be a radio wave, and is friends with an American Indian who travels the galaxy in a bark canoe. They live on a freezing planet, called Candle, where a host of strange things occur. Despite this highly original story line, the book is ruined because it is written in a style that makes it close to impossible to comprehend. Major events occur with very little introduction and not much explanation. Most of the book seems to be the persona whining about one thing or another, or talking about some esoteric technology (not yet developed yet obviously) which leaves the reader 100% mystified.

I will admit that Warpath forces a tighter suspension of disbelief than many S.F. novels.

The writing, however, is superior!

I would much rather have a off-beat, or even odd, alternate universe written tightly and with a very enjoyable style than most of the poorly-written, but straight-line extrapolation, SF novels one runs across.

Daniels writes fluidly, engagingly, and I felt very connected to the characters, the plot, and the alternate universe he created. I'll admit that some fo the universe conceptualizations were hard to accept, but have you every tried analyzing the universe A.E. Van Vogt created in "Slan"? It's got more inconsistencies than one could shake a cliche at, but in the end it doesn't matter because you enjoy how it's written, and you have a good time reading it. Warpath and Daniels writing affected me that way. I want to read more, and have two Danniels books on pre-publish order here at Amazon based on his entertaining and professional writing style.

Since I stubbornly refuse to stop reading a book no matter how bad it is, I suffered through the whole thing. Between the ridiculous premise that's completely unbelievable, the lousy writing style, and the lack of anything remotely resembling a plot, the book easily rates instant-dumpster status

Good grief... how do you justify having Indians paddle about between the planets in canoes as the basis for a modern SF novel? There's usually plenty of elements and devices in the plot of any SF novel or story that you just have to let go of - there's no sense wasting any of your mental energy trying to determine the legitimacy of the physical sciences portrayed within their pages. Just take a break from reality and enjoy the book, that's what reading SF is all about. But Indians in canoes traveling between the planets? If it had been marketed as juvenile SF, I wouldn't be so harsh about it, but it wasn't, so I'm not cutting it any slack.

Anyway, as my previous statements imply, the book combines many of the common elements associated with native American Indian culture, animal gods and the like, being one with nature, canoes (yeah, right), and lots of stupid white people, into one seriously bad SF novel. What was sort of funny was that even though these space traveling white folk were living on a distant planet, they totally lacked any real technological capability? They were using sheet fed printing presses to publish the local newspaper, and culturally still seemed to fit the backwater image of the average southern hillbilly with a racist attitude towards anything that didn't look Caucasian. Maybe they traveled there using rafts made by binding tree limbs together?

The real unfortunate thing about reading this book was that I had to review it for a local newspaper. The editor for book reviews was a friend of a friend of the author. So with no real way to slash the author for writing a complete piece of garbage, and not damage my relationship with the book reviews editor, I did what I had to do. I wrote a pretty basic review of the book that did little more than outline the plot elements, collected my fee, and never went back for another book to review for fear of getting a reputation for delivering nothing for something! THE END...

Egads, these reviews are appallingly negative. "Steal this book and then burn it"? This must be one crap-fest, this wacky Indian book here. It must suck something fierce, no? I admit, the summary is probably turning you off. I felt the same way; I found it in a used bookstore and giggled. Indians in space on birchback canoes?

However, that summary and most of the reviews here can't tell you how good this book is. They don't mention the sheer inventiveness of the novel; Daniel has half a dozen good ideas weaved in and out, along with themes of imperialism and cultural sensitivity, and a sly satire of secular humanism to boot. On the surface, it seems like a future-western, with white folk facing off with Native Americans, but to be so simplistic does the novel a disservice.

Now, it is true that sometimes it seems like Daniel is stringing his book along more on pathos and cool sf ideas than by actual plot, but my enjoyment never suffered for it. I loved the exhilaration of creativity; why should mere logic come into the picture? Daniel is brilliant, and should he ever control and direct that brilliance, you can be assured that nothing less than a masterpiece will result.

Make no mistake, Kahl is no hero. By his actions he disgraced his military record and the country he stood for. Corcoran certainly provides a thorough backgrand into what was happening to the rural communities in the eighties and how such times made farmers like Kahl ripe for recruitment by right-wing paramilitary zenophobes. Kahl and the Posse stem from the same roots that created homegrown terrorists like Tim McVeigh. For Kahl, a man who had served his country in WWII, the treatment of rural America in general and farmers in particular, must have been a bitter betrayal. While some have critized the local sheriff and federal agents for the way they handled the arrest, it is important to note that Kahl had a choice, to go peacefully or to take up arms. He chose violence, and in the end, there were no winners, only victims.

The shoot-out at Medina which inspired this book is a fascinating study in both the rural tax protest mentality and the little Caesar enforcement federal mentality.

The author takes the perspective of Freud, who does a reasonable job of analyzing the former, while glossing over the later. Both deceased marshalls, an Arkansas sheriff and Gordon Kahl would be alive today (or pehaps dead of natural causes) had Kenneth Muir simply followed the advice of his predecessor that Kahl was a pipsqueak best ignored.

Yes, the marshalls were just doing their jobs, but no, the arrest of Kahl was not a high priority. We could fill our jails and our cemetaries in short order with every two-bit bigot and loudmouth, but Kahl grew into a legend only after the arrest attempt went awry.

A far more balance perspective of the incident can be read in the book "Its All About Power", from two local law enforcement officers who tried to do their job of preventing trouble rather than making a statement.

Sadly, a deputy marshall with a young family from Bismarck who was just doing his job ended up paying with his life by following the orders of a Little Caesar superior who refused to take the good advice of his predecessor Bud Warren, who has been unfairly maligned in the drama.

Bitter Harvest is about a man who gets accused of something he did out of self-defense. He goes though racism and torture. This man murdered three men out of self-defense. This book was all about how people are so prejudice that they cannot even look passed their feelings about others. Bitter Harvest was based on a true story.
I enjoyed this book because it was a true story about the passed. About racism and how people hated each other. This is something that I really find interesting to read about. How people lived in America in the 60's or 70's. Bitter Harvest had tons of exciting adventures put in to the story. This is what people thought when they were apart of this story.
He reason I chose this story is because it is about crime. It is also about trust and truth. Also I loved the cover. I thought it would be interesting. It was believed that it would be about World War 2. Even though it wasn't it was still okay. Anyways all of these events are true with plenty of depth.

Bitter Harvest attempts to tell the story af Gordon Kahl, a man who combined the patriotism of the founding fathers with bigotry and paranoia. Kahl's life culminated February 13, 1983, when he engaged in a shootout with federal law enforcement near Medina, North Dakota. The LEO's were trying to serve a warrant for Kahl's arrest relating to a parole violation in Texas. Kahl, who earned less than $10,000 a year and had failed to file for at least seven years, had originally been charged with tax evasion after he appeared on television urging others to do the same. It is not certain who fired the first shot, but within seconds Kahl had killed two officers and wounded two more. Robert Cheshire, a deputy marshal, was killed when Kahl blew the already wounded man's head open from point blank range. The only indisputable fact of the shootout was the incompetency of the government. Kahl had sworn repeatedly that he would not be taken without a fight, was well armed, and surrounded by friends and family. Yet the officers apparently had no plans for a shootout, and the marshal in charge didn't even bother wearing his bulletproof vest. He was killed by a single shot to the heart.

The author, James Corcoran, is hardly unbiased in his treatment of the story. Corcoran attributes rural sympathy toward Kahl to prejudice born out of poverty, and doesn't seem to consider the possibility that some of what Kahl said might be true. Especially unforgivable is Corcoran's treatment of Kahl's death. He provides a "factual," official narrative in which Kahl and a sheriff shoot and kill each other. Corcoran later mentions, in a single paragraph, that the state Medical Examiner concluded that both men were shot from behind, and that a spent casing from Kahl's rifle was never found. Corcoran makes no attempt to fit this into
his narrative, or provide an alternative sequence of events.

In closing, Bitter Harvest is a disappointing effort to tell a fascinating story. The ideas and actions of Gordon Kahl are a noteworthy part of America's past, and may very well reappear in it's future.

Gjerde's premise is interesting--there were two groups of immigrants to the upper mid west in the mid to late 1800's. One was "Yankee" from New England and the other foreign, particularly Germans, Swedes, Norwiegens and some Irish. The latter formed isolated, insular communities and tried to reconsturct communities based on a shared religous, cultural and linguistic commonality. This was looked on with alarm by many Americans, who worried that these folks would not assimilate and were dangerous to traditional American republicanism. Unfortunatley, Gjerde sounds much more like a sociologist than a historian, esp. when he comes to describe the "tension filled" families of those from Europe who (to Gjerde) were too hard on their spouses, made their children work without paying them for it (horrors!) and perhaps had loveless, unemotional relationships with their spouses (though Gjerde provides no credible evidence for this last concoction.) He also has a Berkeley professor's view of the farm----he continually describes the work as onerous, arduous, brutal, drudgery, etc. He never considers the joy and satisfaction from working the land, even if it is at times hard. I suspect the nearest Gjerde has been to a farm is the produce section at his food coop.

Although there are some merits to the book, Gjerde's poor use of evidence (relies on novels as factual evidence instead of, well, facts!), his overuse of academic jargon, ridiculous depiction of children and the family, and omiting a discussion of populism make this book one to avoid.

Gjerde has written a useful book for understanding the conflict immigrants experienced while trying to recreate their native cultures in the American Middle West amid the materialism and individualism they encountered in the process. Gjerde terms it "complementary identity": the immigrants (German, Irish, and Norwegian are who Gjerde focuses on) viewed themselves as Americans enjoying traditional republican freedoms while practicing their native traditions and rituals. The tension resulted in large part because there was no way the immigrants could keep American commercial values from invading their communities, no matter how isolated they were. The main weakness of the book is its structure. The chapters start out dense and abstract and end the same way with hard to grasp conclusions. The guts of the chapters, though, are easy to read and contain enjoyable examples from diaries, letters, and newspapers. Another weakness is that Gjerde paints a picture of the American migrants as being materialist nativists of all one mind set, which is simplifying the situation too much. Having limited knowledge of the subject matter, I found the book enjoyable if at times difficult to read.

This historical piece depicts life on a Bonanza Farm in the Red River Valley of North Dakota during the early 20th Century. Details prove that Swenson did much research on the topic. The characters add a simple charm to the book. The writing style and dialogue of the characters, however, detract from the story line.

This being about the only Dakota-English dictionary still in print makes it good enough. But there are a lot of words you will not find in here, and forget about help for which tenses to use. It is limited, often frustrating, but it is the only one. I also had to purchase the English-Dakota dictionary, because for some ridiculous reason (most dictionaries provide both (Forgein Language)-English & English-(Forgein Language)translations in ONE book) this dictionary only goes one way, so you have to buy another one to get the rest! Annoying & Expensive!

This book was recommended by the superintendent of the T.R. Nat'l Park. It might suffice for an elementary school level, but I expected a bit more.

This book was a huge disappointment. Extremely overpriced---much of the book consists of obsolete lists of restaurants, veterinarians, campgrounds, etc. Lots of generic, re-hashed information on things like dogs and guns and decoy layouts, with very little in the way of helping nonresidents understand the unique habits and habitats of North Dakota game birds.