Michigan Books

Once again Johnanathan Rand has scored a hit with our young reader, age seven. He has enjoyed all the Chillers books he has read, both the American Chillers and the Michigan Chillers. Living in Michigan we were fortunate to have met Mr. Rand, who was absolutely terrific, taking his picture with our son and signing all our son's Chillers books. This particular story appealed to him because living on the Bay, as we do, we see the big ships as they travel through and so he could visualize the story as it unfolded. Now he can't wait to to read the next mystery and wonders, if the next time he goes go fishing, he can catch an alligator, too!

This book is an engaging read, light, yet highly informative. It is instructive with a fresh perspective on nature. You'll learn about plants and animals that you have probably taken for granted for years. Mary has researched to the nth degree, but delivers with a childlike sense of discovery. It will be hard for you to put it down.

This is a superb book. Stavros (Steve) Frangos is a regular contributor of articles on Greek-American history to the National Herald, a Greek-American newspaper published in New York. He probably knows more about Greek-American history than any other writer active today, and he writes well. This short but authoritative book includes an excellent bibliography.

This is an excellent read for any college basketball fan. I was at MSU during the Kelser-Johnson reign and knew a number of players in the book. Kelser filled in many behind-the-scenes stories I'd heard about as well as games and incidents I'd always wondered about. The format is a little ackward, and there's some fairly obvious blowing of one's own horn, but it still delivers what's promised--a behind-the-scenes look at a fascinating team's road to the NCAA championship, potholes, bumps and detours included. I also found interesting contasts to today's game and the 1979 "dawn" of the Final Four's evolution into the National psyche. You don't need to be a Spartan to enjoy this book.

The English title is slightly misleading in that the entire focus of this book is the League of German Girls. It makes clear the great attraction of the organization, one which leaves the participants with mixed feelings even today. Not only was the League a place for idealistic youth, it gave girls an opportunity unknown elsewhere in Nazi Germany to develop leadership skills. It offered poorer and rural girls opportunities for entertainment and travel they would have been unlikely to experience otherwise. It also served the Nazi goal of diminishing the influence of parents over their children. Even so, this book shows that participation and amount of political indoctrination could vary by locale. It is fortunate that this work was translated into English so that more readers can understand this important facet of Nazi history.

I grew up at the same time and about 50 miles from the author's setting for this book and could identify with many of her experiences. I especially could relate to her school experiences and enjoyed having those memories evoked to be re-enjoyed. I think Carol Brisson Zechlin would have enjoyed taking the fictional bus trip my characters took in The Dream Catcher Tour as they were drawn from people I knew and loved while growing up in the Upper Peninsula.

Books such as "Growing Up Yooper" are a valuable contribution to the rich cultural history of this special place in the North country.

This wonderful book is listed by Amazon as number 1,190,000 among their bestsellers. This is a tribute to Amazon.com. It is amazing that they don't bother to carry it. But I come not to praise Amazon but to bring this work to light.

The author has set forth his own reason for writing the book and I think it's well worth looking at in some depth:
"We have sometimes found men who have supposed sins here in their protest abhorrence of slavery, evidently bent, nevertheless, In discovering something in the Bible to shield it from the unlimited reprobation. It has filled us with astonishment and sadness, unengaging in the argument, to discover a manifest desire that she may be in defeated in your endeavor to produce from the sacred Scriptures an indisputable indictment of slavery. And even when the demonstration has been presented, they have resorted to sophistry as special pleading to evade its power. Such men come to the Word of God not desiring to find the verdict against slavery, though with preferences leaning in its favor, and on the lookout for something to justify the oppressor, rather than to vindicate and righten the oppressed." -- p.22.

The title of the book may frighten some readers with this reference to Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. The author does not give us pages with either the Hebrew or the Greek script. There are minor references in the original writing which are then translated but these did not detract from the ease of reading the text. The work was published in 1860 when slavery was a main topic. A look at the contents of the book will give us some idea of its scope and its purpose. The emphasis is on the Old Testament with a little over a hundred pages focusing the New Testament or the Greek Scriptures. The first 144 pages deal with the lexicography mostly of the Old Testament, and you might well question the author's cotention that there is no word for slave, overall this is a very enlightening and interesting section of the text.

My personal reason for getting this book is its dealing with the fugitive slaves and how they were to be treated. Some examples of this coverage and read the chapters described here:
Chapter 22 statute forbidding the delivery of fugitives
Chapter 39 evidence of the epistle of Paul to Philemon
By 1860 the despised Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was in effect for a whole decade and many are many respected members of the clergy and publish many pages and words in Scriptural defense of this law, particularly depending upon the apostle Paul's 740 word epistle to Philemon. For anyone interested in this segment of religious and American history the chapter covering this makes the book is worthwhile. As evidenced by the position the book has in Amazon's rating of bestsellers, this is not a book that everyone would enjoy. However, it is a well-written and interesting view of the thinking of the times.

I liked this book because it presented very well the history of the family and how they coped in the Detroit-area city of Hamtramck. I grew up in Detroit, my grandparents lived in Hamtramck and the author is from my parents' generation. I read this book to get some understanding of what life was like for the Polish immigrants who came to the area. The book gave me a lot of information and understanding about that timeframe.

Well written and an excellent story. Stephen Gifford Simmons was the youngest brother of my ancestor, William Simmons. What a sad end to someone who didn't utilize all of the advantages he was born with. It is a testament to what alcohol can do to anyone.

George Wylie Henderson (1904-1965) is best known as the author of OLLIE MISS. Though both a critical and popular success during his lifetime, he has languished among academics as a "minor novelist." Editor Nicholls speculates that "Henderson's individualist ethos and his debt to Booker T. Washington" would not have appealed to the black aesthetic and feminist movements of the 1960's and `70's when the canon of the Harlem Renaissance was being solidified. A migrant to Harlem from Alabama with a Tuskegee education, he also arrived on the scene a bit late.

Collected here for the first time are sixteen stories which originally appeared in mainstream publications: nine from the Daily News, and seven published in Redbook. The editorial parameters of each publication make the two sets of stories quite different in terms of length, style, and to some extent, subject matter. But all of the stories - whether set in the rural South or in Harlem - are compelling, simple and well-crafted, bringing characters to life in a way which reminded me of Zora Neale Hurston.

Which is not to say these are simple characters, caught as some are in the social upheaval of the Great Migration. For example, in the title story, Henderson tangibly, poignantly captures the ambivalence of the young bride Obelia, who has one foot planted in the "new world" and the other equally rooted in the old.

This brief collection left me wanting more. According to a catalog found in Henderson's papers, there were at least fifteen additional stories but sadly, they're unpublished and lost. Which makes this collection even more of a treasure!