Illinois Books

I bought this book about a year ago, and I'm working my way through all the hikes. So far, every one (I've done about 15 of them) has been enjoyable. I found that I recently had to purchase a binder for the book because it's so much easier to rip out the pages and take them along on your hike. The author does tend to patch together pieces of different trails, so you really do need the description and map along with you for each of the trips.

One side note for dog owners - double check before bringing your dog to some of these places - IL Beach does not allow dogs on their trails, but the book says dogs are allowed, on a leash. That was kind of a long drive to find that out the hard way.

I almost finished writing my review, hit the wrong button and lost it. Just to sum up, you will not find information so thorough, accurate and well-written on the subject. Mr. Villaire is the closest thing to a personal guide.I've lived in Chicago all my life and am pleased to have discovered and rediscoveredl so many worthwhile nature areas. Author Ted Villaire is obviously passionate about sharing his information with fellow nature lovers. Everytime I Google one of the recommended hikes, I find little that adds to the info found in the book. And forget Mapquest- this book gets driving directions right every time. The book is hardly pocket-sized, and the detailed trail guides will have you pulling the book out of your backpack often. My solution is to copy the pages and take those with. (Whoops- did I just confess to copyright violation?)

I bought this book as a referrence for a planned trip. I was so pleased with the graphics and format that I am buying more books in the series. The maps and desciptions are clear and informative. The hikes seem do-able for casual day hikers.

The title of the book caught my eye, and the book itself more than lived up to it! I live in downtown Chicago and was looking for hikes that could be done as day trips - the 60 hikes included are within this distance. The book makes it easy to search by type - for example, river hikes, lake hikes, hikes for wildlife viewing, hikes with children, and then also by distance (1-3 miles, 3-6 miles, and 6+ miles). Each hike has a trail map, directions, a full description, and key info at a glance (e.g. length, configuration, difficulty, scenery, facilities, and even exposure - shady, sunny etc.).

This book is fantastic! The information is very helpful and the pictures are some of the best I have seen in any collectors book! This book has given me the knowledge to amass a 600+ piece of Abingdon Pottery!
(P.S. Joe and Joyce Paradis have also written a book about the early days of Haeger Pottery that is equally as good as the Abingdon Book! I highly recommed both books!)

Abingdon pottery is one of the hidden treasures of the Midwest that Joe Paradis has now shared with the rest of the world. I found the book after I had acquired a few pieces. It explains the unique quality of the product, such as the weight and the gloss. Paradis includes cross-referenced lists by item name and stock number. It is very comprehensive, readable, and the photography is excellent.

As an avid pottery collector, I have an ever growing collection of Pottery Collector's Guides. Abingdon Pottery Artware is one I refer to over and over again. Clear pictures of marks, stamps, labels and bottoms and an extensive price guide organized by mold number and alphabetized by mold type making identification a snap. This guide is filled with color pictures that I have found to be true to life glaze colors, each picture also includes mold numbers and production dates. One of my top 3 favorite collector's guides!

Abingdon Pottery has been a little know piece of Americana until Joe Paradis and his outstanding book came along. Paradis covers the history of the pottery works, from the days of sanitary fixture making to the Depression when Art Pottery was made. Also discussed are the unique features of the actual pottery with excellent illustrations and interviews with the surviving members of the Depression Era staff. This book is a must for both collectors of Abingdon Pottery and those interested in American pottery in general.

The Library of America's collection of original Lincoln source documents in two volumes is a wonderful addition to the library of any person interested in this portion of American history. The two volumes represent the best scholarship available today in terms of organizing and duplicating Lincoln's own words as they are found in personal letters, speech transcriptions, notes, memos, and other forms of written communication. This is a collection that is a fascinating look at the inner thoughts of Lincoln as he progresses from a congressional candidate in the 1850's, then as a candidate for President in 1860, and then as he prosecutes the war of the states until the time of his assassination.

The Library of America represents a rare and welcome to the world of print publishing. Funded from a continuous trust that is structured to keep every single volume perpetually in print, the Library prints only on the finest paper, using only the best inks, and implementing the best binding technology available. These books are true library quality, with ultra-high quality paper from Germany and bindings from the Netherlands, and truly represent the finest book quality typically seen in today's book world. The perpetual trust of the Library nevertheless keeps the price of these volumes at a reasonable level, with most volumes available between $20 and $40 dollars. Once you handle one, you'll undoubtedly see what a real value this series represents.

Lincoln's writings and recorded speeches are incredibly interesting to read. These works provide remarkable insight into this most unusual of people, and posterity is pleased that so much of these items were saved and eventually collated for later review. Can we make ourselves belief that this is largely a self-educated man who writes English prose at a level rarely seen even in the most educated of individuals? Following the logic posed in many of these letters, coupled with the piecing insights into human nature that Lincoln seemed to exude, can give us an experience that extends our thinking and challenges our views. Because Lincoln is canonized in history, we really don't understand the real man all that well. These personal writings of Lincoln help de-mystify the true person behind the persona, and make us see the man, not just the legend.

The writings of Lincoln are pervaded not only by an enormous intelligence and great power and feeling for the language, but by a wisdom and humility. Reading just a small part of the speeches and letters collected here gives the feeling nonetheless that the political leaders and the American public of that time were far more demanding, disciplined and intelligent than the public is today. Can you imagine anyone today having the patience to listen to six three- hour debates as was the case with the Lincoln-Douglas debates?
Another aspect of reading this work is simply learning and knowing more being more in the presence of America's greatest President and perhaps most exemplary moral figure. In this sense the feeling is that this volume is for those who truly admire Lincoln and wish to know his thought in greater depth.
Lincoln was not simply America's greatest President he was also the President whose writing and thought were unsurpassed. This volume gives further evidence of the greatness which most will know of from his even more famous works, the Gettysburg Address, and 'The Second Inaugural '.

Abraham Lincoln was a great President. Where he falls on your list is a private judgment, but most put him at or near the top. It is true that there is a more vocal element of detractors nowadays, but those voices tend to also advocate versions of America that most of us would not recognize nor care to legitimate. This volume begins with Lincoln as a young man of twenty-three beginning political career.

The letters are quite interesting and cover a range of topics. It is interesting to note his private correspondence on various topics such as the Mexican War and compare those notes to his public speeches. While he is clearly a politician and aware of the need to garner votes, he uses his powerful intellect to find the line that will hold to his principles and still be convincing to the electorate.

This volume culminates with the seven famed Lincoln - Douglas debates when those two candidates contended for a seat in the Senate representing Illinois. Remember, this was before Senators were directly elected. These were debates to win popular support, but also to show political viability so when the public selected the legislature, the legislature would choose the preferred candidate for the Senate. These debates received national attention, which pleased both candidates. The format was this: first speaker for one hour, response by the second speaker for an hour and a half, the first speaker responds for a half hour. They alternated who spoke first with each debate. They went after each other directly with challenges, personal attacks, interruptions, and appeals to the crowd. Can you imagine any of our candidates even attempting such a risky format nowadays?

As I read the debates, Douglas seems to be a panderer and clearly supporting slavery in a way that seems odd for someone seeking office in Illinois. However, he was really positioning himself for the Presidency. Stephen Douglas did become Senator while Lincoln did not. However, two years later, Douglas did not get nominated as a candidate for President and Lincoln won the Presidency.

This great volume has a chronology of Lincoln's life and notes on the texts and an index.

I bought both volumns of this over the summer. I first bought Libary of America's publication of Jefferson which is a must have. Then Franklin. Those two are extremely good and I highly recommend them to anyone interested in raw historical material.

Now as for the volumes on Lincoln, don't get me wrong; they are also extremely good. As with all of these books, it is a rewarding reading experience to peruse collections of un-edited letters and speeches in their chronological order.

These volumes have every conceivable bit of correspondence imaginable. Lincoln apparently preferred the short letter, as there are several single paragraph letters to generals on the field and the like. He also wrote with simplicity and suprising bluntness. Volume 1 has a number of early speeches and famous debates which give you a sense of the lawyer turned politician. These of course are very lengthy. But also in volumes 1 and 2 there are numerous short letters which include urgent notes to General McClellan and others that would have made me quit the post had I been the receiver! In contrast there are letters revealing Lincolns more sensitive personal side.

I'm rating Lincoln's volumes just behind those of Jefferson and Franklin because there are no references detailing the circumstances for each writing. I felt a little lost not knowing what the impetus was behind the letters and correspondence. This is a departure from the Jefferson and Franklin books, which provide very detailed notes.

Finally I should say that Library of America's books are of very high quality for more than their authorship and reading content. All are bound nicely and printed on bible paper-like acid free paper. They are of exceptional quality just as books. I would say they are the best quality available.

Additionally, Library of America is a non-profit organization with the aim of distributing the work of America's essential writers without commercial gain.

This book is a fascinating, engaging read. It feels more like a great story than a history book, but is a really interesting insight into the beginnings of WSM, the early history of radio, country music, the Opry, the start of many a famous name in broadcasting, and Nashville itself. Thoroughly enjoyable, I would recommend this to every reader I know.

Havighurst has compiled a tremendous amount of information on this subject into a story which comes to life. I can't imagine any one writing a more definitive work on WSM and that era. He has succeeded, for this reader, into making WSM a living, breathing character unto itself within this story. I'm not even a huge country music fan but no matter, Havighurst's storytelling style and obvious passion for telling this story won me over early on. Once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. He made me feel as if I was right there in the early days of radio, watching and listening as all the early pioneers of the industry shaped the airwaves. Great read for anyone interested in how radio began and evolved and it's impact on not only country music but the world as well.

I believe Air Castle of the South is an important book, in that it goes far beyond the history of a musical genre. It sheds light on the mindset of those who first dabbled in a revolutionary new medium. The innocence, curiosity, and zeal of some of radio's brilliantly naive pioneers is painstakingly recorded, as is their evolution from enthusiastic hobbyists to full time broadcasters. But this accessible read is not just a nostalgic indulgence. It's full of insights for the era-changing times we are in now, where the Internet is opening new doors of opportunity for those willing to rethink the why, the what, and the how. As a performing artist who came up through the ranks playing on country music radio shows, including the Opry, Air Castle rekindled my affection for the charm and simplicity of those shows. As someone who grew up listening to a transistor radio in bed late at night with an earphone, it renewed my love of the medium of sound; where the absence of force-fed visual images allows one's imagination to create them in the theater of the mind. Thank you, Craig Havighurst, for this invaluable work. It is clearly a labor of love.

Just finished Craig Havighurst's magnificent history of WSM. It's a read that you hate to see come to an end.

What a GREAT station WSM was in its golden age which extended into the TV era while other stations of its size threw in the towel and got rid of its live musicians and the stuff that made bigtime radio great.

The book comes to a sad ending--the rash sacking of TNN and Opryland--and I kinda felt like I was finishing the final pages of "Gone With the Wind."

Anybody with an interest in Bluegrass, Country, Nashville, big time radio, the Ryman and/or the roots of country music and broadcasting has to read this book.

I read "Aleck Maury, Sportsman" when I worked at Southern Illinois University Press, which published the novel in its Lost American Fiction series. I reread it several years later with even more pleasure. The novel reads like a memoir, but has its own deep springs. I do not know of a more sensitive portrait of a person, and the prose is as lovely as the loop of a fly line uncurling on a fine cast. Because fishing is a topic of both novels, "Aleck Maury" reminds me distantly of "A River Runs Through It"--also a fine and pure novel, but not so fine and pure as "Aleck Maury."

"It is, in a sense, a prose AENEID, written with so much economy and constraint that the reader is only aware at the end that he has been following the wanderings of a hero." -Andrew Nelson Lytle, New Republic (1934)

A minor classic that is too often overlooked. The pure aesthetic beauty and simplicity of Gordon's language is a revelation.

This highly regarded but not widely known masterpiece chronicles the life of Aleck Maury from his earliest forays into opossum hunting and flyfishing to his latter days of quail hunting and fishing in old age. His lifelong quest of excellence in the field conflicts with his commitments to family and social responsibility. The novel is based on the author's father. Ms. Gordon was the wife of Allen Tate, the noted literary critic and poet. The Agrarian context and concerns of Tate are evident in her work, though her writings are unique. She shows herself here and in her other novels to be a master of her craft.

This important study is highly astute in its analysis--and very accessible. Ratcliffe is a first-rate thinker and writer.

Three great geniuses are presented here. Where would we be without the unbelievably courageous Mary Daly? And Virginia Woolf is still an important early voice, especially as presented by Jane Marcus and other brilliant radicals. As for Rich, is there a more brilliant writer in "America" today? I think not.

This book dares to include three of the very greatest writers of the century. Mary Daly is the incredibly courageous voice of contemporary radical feminism, Woolf is still valuable for her essays, and Adrienne Rich is a truly visionary poet who has changed the way contemporary discourse is conducted. A wonderful book.

It's a little hard to see how Mary Daly can even be mentioned with a great genius like Virginia Woolf, especially when one considers that Woolf was able to make a new rhetoric apart from patriarchal language, while "theorists" like Daly have only succeeded in questioning contemporary discourse. Nevertheless, a worthwhile book that, when dealing with a major figure like Virginia Woolf, deserves to be read.

"An exceptionally fine piece of scholarship on an exceedingly complex figure and subject. Walters has done a superb job of assimilating an enormous body of scholarship on various aspects of Franklin's personal and intellectual life and an even more daunting body of Franklin's own prose. A remarkably clear, straightforward, and patient account of the extremely vexed issues surrounding Franklin's religious thought." Ronald A. Bosco, editor of The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kerry S. Walters has written one of the best studies of 18th century religion yet produced. Benjamin Franklin is a difficult subject, in part because as Walters puts it, Franklin "wrote both too much and too little about his religious thought." (p. 4) Different historians read the same documents and come up with radically different interpretations of their meaning. Walters, however, has produced a nuanced study, sensitive to the wider religous context in which Franklin lived his life, and profoundly learned too in the cultural and intellectual developments of the Atlantic enlightenment. By meticuously locating Franklin within this larger context, he has written a work which sheds insight both into Franklin himself, as well as the larger society in which he lived. To do this in 151 pages of lucid and economical prose is quite a worthy achievement.

Walters argues that Franklin's religious views developed in tension between two ultimately irreconciliable religious traditions. On the one hand was the Calvinism of his native Boston, the faith of his father, with its sophisticated Augustinian piety. On the other hand was the "New Learning" which captivated so many polite and cultivated men and women on both sides of the Atlantic, the faith of men like Isaac Newton or John Locke, with its concomitant liberal Christian emphasis on the capacity of human reason to arrive at religous truth. As a young man, Franklin wavered, adhering first to the one and then the other.

As a mature adult, however, Franklin came to accept the ambiguity of his earlier commitments. "Recognizing that a Newtonian-inspired deism was spiritually impoverished, but unable either rationally or emotionally to return to the orthodoxy of his boyhood, he was at loose ends for a few years," Walters argues. But in 1728 Franklin found a way to reconcile the contradiction. "The solution he arrived at--his doctrine of theistic perspectivism--enabled him to escape from the mechanistically sterile cosmos into which he had drifted without falling back into a Calvinist worldview whose central tenets he found unacceptable." (p. 12)

As Walters explains, Franklin's perspectivism stemmed from a belief in an inaccessible God, which humans symbolically represent to themselves in order to establish an emotional and intellectual relationshop with the divine. This means that while God *is*, there are various human representations of God as well. "These anthropomorphized conceptions of the divine," Walters writes, "serve as the foci for personal adoration as well as sectarian theologizing." (p. 10) The result, then, is a commitment to religious toleration because human representions of the divine are culturally and historically bounded. Human religous traditions, to the extent that they share the same purposes, contain some worth.

In arguing for this understanding of religion--an understanding which arises from the tension between the two religious traditions within which Franklin was working--Walters can explain Franklin's religous statements with a cogency missing from earlier accounts. While Walter's statement of Franklin's perspectivism may sound superficially anachronistic, that is a misreading of this work. This is a terrific exercise in intellectual and relgious history, and Walter's demonstrates convincingly the historical origins in Franklin's thought of the theology he discusses.

I've read a lot of books about Franklin, but this one is in a class of its own. It's a psycho-biography (kinda) that traces Franklin's religious development from his early childhood through the rest of his life. Nope, he's not the deist we learned about in school. Instead, he's what Walters calls a "perspectivist." If that sounds boring or dry, think again. The book reads like a novel. I definitely recommend this one. It puts a new spin on old Benjamin. My only objection is that sometimes you have to wonder how much of this is Walters, and how much Franklin. So it loses one star.

I really like this book, even though I'm not sure I agree with its spin on Franklin's religion. Walters argues that Ben is a "perspectivist"--basically, a proponent of religious fictions that he knows have no objective basis, but which he thinks are necessary for psychological health and social stability. The case is well presented and nicely written. (Would that all historians wrote as well!) But I can't help thinking that Franklin comes out more of a twentieth-century existentialist than he is--complete with religious angst and identity crisis. What the heck, though. This is one good book. My guess is that it's going to make a lot of people mad--especially those good American Christians who want to think that all the "Founding Fathers" of the USA were also Christians. As Walters demonstrates, it just ain't so.

For all that Maxwell's prose is beautiful and evocative, his approach is meticulous and his viewpoint almost clinical. What fascinates him most is that, unlike the big events recorded in newspapers and histories, the stories of ordinary people are recorded mainly in the memories of living persons. Those memories are not only ephemeral, but mutable and prone to editing and embellishment. Great family deeds are magnified; misdeeds are forgotten and their perpetrators and their histories (good and bad) shunned. The most poignant moment comes in Man in the Moon when the narrator, who had known his black sheep uncle mainly through the disparaging comments of his family, decides to visit him, and comes to see in him a core of goodness and dignity.

There are a total of seven stories here, all gems. They are recollections of Mr. Maxwell's Lincoln, Illinois. Published in 1992 when the writer was 84 years old, these beautiful stories possess a nostalgic, almost elegiac quality as Mr. Maxwell remembers friends and family members long dead. We meet Miss Vera Brown, Maxwell's beloved fifth grade teacher who dies of tuberculosis at twenty-three and Billie Dyer, a local Black lad who became a doctor, among others.

In "With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge" for Eudora Welty, Maxwell's longtime friend, he recounts a childhood prank that teaches him never again to be taken totally by surprise by cruelty, in this instance his and the other boys'own. My favorite story is "The Man in the Moon." The title refers to a picture of Maxwell's Uncle Ted, a handsome and carefree young man, and an unnamed young woman posing on a crescent moon in a photographer's studio. Uncle Ted was one of those folks with good looks and brains-- we have all known someone like him-- who never get their lives together. This story contains a wealth of wisdom. Mr. Maxwell says it far better than I can paraphrase. About Ted's luck, the writer says "Looking back on my uncle's life, it seems to me to have been a mixture of having to lie in the bed he had made and the most terrible, undeserved, outrageous misfortune. About Ted's death: "He must have been in his early sixties when he got pneumonia. He didn't put up much of a fight against it. Edna (his wife) believed that he willed himself to die." Finally on old age: "The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters."

For forty years Mr. Maxwell was a fiction editor at THE NEW YORKER and published a relatively small number of novels and short stories for one who lived into his nineties. I'm sure we will never know, however, how much readers have been enriched by this master's pruning of other writers' unwieldly prose.

This lovely collection of events in Maxwell's life are charmingly rendered and very poignant.

"Love" the story of the death of his beloved fifth grade teacher from TB at age 23, was only 4 pages long but touched me in ways that an entire book might not have done. It was sad but not sappy.

In "My Father's Friends", he discovers many things when he visits his father's friends to tell them of his father's death. He relates the biographies of these men in a most subtle and loving way.

The story of his uncle, who never accomplished much, evoked such sadness for a life lost and never found.

Like the other reviewer, I cannot understand why this book was classified as fiction when he writes of his father, mother, stepmother, brother, etc. and relates events that really happened. I know this because I just listened to an audio interview with Maxwell and he mentions many of these events. But I got my copy from the library, where it was in the fiction section.

I was impressed at how well the seven pieces that comprise this book, reminiscences of the author's boyhood in Lincoln, Illinois in the early twentieth century, hang together to create an almost novelistic sweep, a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts. They were originally published as separate pieces, mostly in "The New Yorker", but I wonder whether the author had this collection in mind from the start.

The labeling of this book as fiction puzzles me. As far as I can tell from internal evidence, it's acually a non-fictional memoir. An introduction by the author would have been welcome.

Fans of William Maxwell's fiction interested in learning about the author's background will find this book very enjoyable.

There are so few real books being published these days, and even fewer being reviewed. The Blue Hour should be on everyone's list of the best books of the last fifty years, and that list should be long and varied. But this book has never gotten the exposure it should get, and it's sad that our best writers are so little admired and so little known. If you do one kind thing for yourself--if you are a lover of good fiction--give yourself the gift of this book; you won't be able to forget it, and it's wonderful even to reread!

I could see myself back in my parents' home as they entertained their friends, back then in the fifties. The mood is captured perfectly,and, as seen through the eyes of a little girl who is about the age I was at that time, it really touched me. The plot moves almost dreamily, but very inexorably, and I was drawn into the lives of the family members. It was the kind of book that made me want to sneak away from the day's work to keep on reading. I recommend it.

I read this book after finding it in a used bookstore a couple years ago and absolutely loved it. It was one of those books that I am always in search of--the type that you are still thinking about three days after you have finished it. In fact, I liked it so much that I wrote to the author to let her know how wonderful I thought it was, and received a reply from her thanking me for my note. (She had said how she had a horrible day and then opened my letter and felt at least a little better.) If you want to read an emotionally moving story, then I would certainly recommend that you buy this book!

This is a very touching story of a family grasping to belong, but not quite making it. They try living beyond their means, almost living out a fantasy. Yet, only their surrounds alter. The family and marital difficulties are still there and the financial issues only add to these troubles. In the end true happiness and contentment are still just out of their reac

This is a beautiful book, lavishly produced on fine paper, with 46 colored plates and many black and white photos. This is the story of Ami Argand, inventor of the greatly improved oil lamp in 1780. Argand lived an interesting life, and knew some of the main characters in the industrial revolution, such as James Watt, Matthew Boulton, and the Montgolfier brothers. His story had been mostly forgotten, though, and Wolfe has done the world some good in bringing it back to life.

The lamp Argand patented was actually an important invention. It was no small thing to bring a much improved, cheaper source of light to the homes and shops of an industrializing West. The Argand lamp became the standard configuration until about 1850 when the kerosene lamp more or less replaced it. Many of them were real works of art, eagerly sought by collectors today. They were more or less on the edge of what could be mass produced at the time, and Argand experienced many trials and tribulations in bringing it to market. Even the renowned Boulton factories had trouble producing them.

This is a wonderful tale of the Industrial Revolution, and I much enjoyed it. Thank you Mr. Wolfe!

Tremendous book. Beautifully researched and filled with staggering illustrations. I bought it as a reference as I collect lamps. As a reference and piece of scholarship it ranks with the work of Florence Montgomery, John Bivens and Catherine Lynn. What was the most pleasant surprise is that it is beautifully and compellingly written. A truly fascinating story of a fascinating man who lived during a fascinating era. No serious collector of lighting or 18-19th century decorative object should be without this work. Any major decArts library would be remiss not to own it. At $59.95 it is probably underpriced.

John Wolfe portrays the poignant story of a brilliant, gentle, and naive 18th century inventor, Ami Argand. Wolfe's exhaustive research rewards the reader with an intimate view into the life and thinking of Argand and other 18th century luminaries. This book engages your sense of histroy, science, intrigue, and lighting. I really enjoyed it.

An invention of an oil lamp has revolutionized the world. Finally, a lamp has been created that produced a good light without the annoying smoke that has plagued the social life of people over thousands of years. The value of the inventions is immediately recognized and the demand for the new lamp is overwhelming. A commercial opportunity of enormous proportion has emerged. Can a single person protect his invention and satisfy the demand for the new light against the competitive spirit of free market? It is the year 1784, the rumblings of the French Revolution, of the Napoleon wars, and of restructuring of the social systems are not yet heard. It is the time of technical innovations. The steam engine has already advanced manufacturing industry and the dream to conquer the air has just become a reality, the balloon of the Montgolfier brothers graces the sky. John J. Wolfe's book provides an initiate picture of Ami Argand, the Genevese citizen who perfected distilleries for Brandy, invented the two-air draft burner for oil lamps, and assisted the Montgolfiers in flying balloons. Its is a also the story of greed, deceit and unhappiness, and a story of an unfortunate hero and of successful villains. For the first time, an authoritative account is given for the life of Argand; a brilliant scientist who is immortalized by his invention, the Argand lamp, but also a person who sought recognition and wished to persevere in business. The combination of a spell binding story and never published pictures of early lighting promotes this book as a must for students of history, technology and lighting.