Arkansas Books

I was very disappointed in the book. The author goes on and on about the History of Camark, but very little information about the various glazes used. Sorry I bought it.

Mr. Gifford writes an interesting & comprehensive history of Camark (I live in Arkansas, where Camark was produced). The book features many colorful pages with fair pricing of the items. I learned quite a bit from this book. I'm a new collector & found this book to be quite helpful to me. I have already recognized a piece of Camark I bought for $10 to be worth about $60! That's worth the price of the book!

Very interesting book! Like being taken back in time and seated right in the courtroom.

This book is not a factual account of these events.
Important testimony for Claude Handy was conveniently
left out of this book.

I can strongly recommend this heartwarming story, and if you can read it without shedding a few tears, you're a better man than I am.

As someone who was involved in this search, I believe this book is not telling the actual story. It does not talk about all of the search dogs completely falling apart and not really searching and also does not talk about the temper tantrum that led to this search. It is also so full of flowery prose and language that a diabetic would go into sugar shock. I do not recommend this book except as a work of fiction.

This book is so easy to read and everything is organized the same way in each chapter, making note-taking a breeze. Each chapter ends with quizzes and the answers are in the back to check. Also, the website offers an additional quiz in terminology and multiple choice. To prepare for my exams, I simply studied the quizzes at the end of each chapter as well as online and I got an A on every test. I learned a lot about the different sociological viewpoints of each subject studied in each chapter. This textbook is great for students.

I just wish there was a way to get reviews on textbooks. I previewed several books ultimately deciding on this text. Do yourself a favor if you are a teacher and don't touch this book. The information is presented in the most dull way and further everything is DATED. I have never become so frustrated with a text that discusses current race relations with data from the 1980's. If you are considering this text, just glance at some of the data and you will get my point.

Description from the book back cover:

Arkansas Attraction - Adam Forrest knew his life would always be tied to the Ozark countryside - mountains, trees, and the freedom of the great outdoors were his greatest pleasures. But when city slicker Ali Cameron showed her beautiful face in his neck of the woods, she threatened his world - and his sense of freedom. For love had made a fool of Adam once, and he wasn't about to let it happen again. Or was it already too late?

MEN: Made in America. Fifty red-blooded, white-hot, true-blue hunks from every state in the Union.

The author, an excellent historian (check out his other books) couldn't seem to make up his mind whether this was to be a coffee table book filled with pictures (which are first rate) or a serious history of an epic, if largely unremembered, event that had significant impact on our society. As a result, this book doesn't quite make it as either. Still, it is interesting and provocative. It just but pales in comparison to Rising Tide, a magnificent work.

I have been waiting years for someone to write a book covering the period of Steele's campaign to capture Little Rock in 1863. As advertised by the author/publisher, The Division is a very, very detailed book. It is easy to follow the action, because the author(s) have included maps for just about every phase of the campaign, and several for each battle. Each section heading is also preceded by the date and time in which the action occurred, also very helpful. Some very nice artwork is included in the book along with rare photos of some of the main characters. This book is definitely directed toward the hard-core Civil War combat reader and especially toward the often neglected Trans-Mississippi theater enthusiast. The coverage of the fighting is thorough in every regard, with maps and battle descriptions portraying fighting at regimental level and below--a real treat! But there are some negatives. First of all, the binding/printing/paper are embarassingly cheap. One can only hope the whole thing does not fall apart after a few readings. I was disappointed in the extreme that such a fine book was presented so poorly. Also, it is difficult to read the fine print in many of the maps. Though the writing overall was of a fine quality, some of the descriptive passages were laughably overblown and melodramatic--it was almost as if the authors had just finished a course in creative writing and were overeager to show their stuff. Though placed within the context of the book as a whole, this was a mild irritant. Though a level of artistic license that would be greatly frowned upon by academic historians was taken in many instances, the work is also heavily footnoted. One the other hand, the bibliography was very small for a book created from 15 years of research. Additionally, the story is told primarily from the Confederate side. It would have been nice if there was more balance. But, as this is the only book that covers this neglected Civil War campaign, it is a must buy for the dedicated Trans-Miss. historian or CW buff. I would have given it 4-stars if it wasn't for the terrible binding and the occasionally odd writing style quirks.

The twenty stories here offer little variation from those in Busted Scotch. Written in the first-person, these are again mostly from a lower-class male perspective. They often feel fragmentary in nature, rarely offering up a traditional "story" per se, they tend to be more about how people communicate and misunderstand each other. Kelman's a good writer, but I don't find his stories particularly interesting.

Maps on a wide variety of subjects are included, from natural resources, elections results, Civil War tactical maps, settlement patterns, etc. Not flashy at all, no color maps, but useful nonetheless

Joseph T. Robinson had an interesting career, being elected to Congress in 1902, elected Governor of Arkansas in 1912, in 1913 elected by the Legislature to succeed Jeff Davis (who is the subject of a really outstanding biography: The Wild Ass of the Ozarks: Jeff Davis and the Wocial Basis of Southern Politics, by Raymond Arsenault), and served in the Senate till his sudden death on July 14, 1937, having been the vice-presidential candidate on Al Smith's ticket in 1928. While the early chapters of this book, telling of Robinson's early years and his rise in Arkansas politics are interesting, the account of his Senate years is pedestrian and uninterestingly written. The author has a superficial grasp of the times in which Robinson lived, and while the book is well-footnoted and has a good bibliography, the book is actually a published thesis and was a disappointment to me. I have read a lot of senatorial biographies and must rate this one of the poorer ones.