Illinois Books

This book is a lovely review of formal gardens and restored prairies. All of the flowers are clearly identified so that you are not wondering what the plants are and they clearly show how flowers work together in the gardens.

More male writers could learn about courage from Jean Thompson. She should be read by every aspiring writer who's serious about being honest. We already know about the predictable thoughts and behaviors of humanity; what we need to see are the inconsistencies that make up the human experience. People of Color, like the other short stories in Gasoline Wars, places our feet at the edge of a cliff and lets our minds do the rest.

Paul Gauguin was at the heart of the Post-Impressionist movement with his lush, colorful artworks revolutionizing modern painting a the turn of the 19th Century. Largely self-taught in a diversity of media including oil painting, printmaking, and ceramics, Gauguin came to his career as a Parisian artist relatively late in life, and went on to paint subjects drawn from where he would live ranging from Brittany and Martinique, to Tahiti, and the Marquesas islands. In Gauguin, art expert Britt Salvesen drew from research developed by Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, enhanced with 79 superbly presented illustrations of which 52 are in color and 27 are duotone. Gauguin is a very highly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library art history reading lists and reference collections in general, as well as being strongly commended to students of the life and work of Paul Gauguin in particular.

I think it's a great book, Both for old and young gays.

Laura Edwards adds another dimension to Reconstruction history with her community study of Granville County, North Carolina. Edwards uses gender and political analysis to show how reconstruction politics penetrated into private life. According to Edwards, elite white men viewed black men, and white and black women as dependents in the antebellum South. The Confederacy's defeat and the subsequent reconstruction of the former Confederate states endangered this existing system. Edwards uses post-war Granville County as a case study of white elite attempts at maintaining the antebellum political system. What sets Edwards' scholarship apart, however, is her examination of family and gender relations, as opposed to strictly political evidence. The accounts Edwards uses are both compelling and effective. This makes this book an important addition to reconstruction history, as well as an enjoyable and captivating read. The book is full of new evidence, as well as interesting revisions of previously used sources. Her deft analysis of post-war women's literature provides examples of prevalent gender roles. Moreover, Edwards argues that the Knights of Labor was created in order to reinforce these same roles. This books is intriguing, but one must resist the temptation to see Granville County as the entire South. Edwards provides an effective framework, but her study only speaks for one county in North Carolina. This does not, however, diminish the importance of this book, or the influence it will no doubt have on future scholarship. Although small in scope, Edward's monograph serves as a refreshing analysis of one section of the Reconstruction South. This book is a must read for students of Reconstruction history or women's history, or those interested in a refreshing new perspective on postbellum North Carolina.

I rate this book 5 stars because it gives you all the information you need on gissing. I had to write a four page paper on him and it gave me everything I needed. I wish that there were more books in the world that gave that much information on one single, simple little subject. I haven't seen a book in years that has actually had all the information you need all in one book. I didn't have to find 6 or 7 books just to write a 3 or 4 page paper. I exceeded my number of pages and my teacher gave me an A on the paper and it brought my grades alot and he told me if I would keep writing papers like that then I would have and A in his class I am glad that I made that grade now I can complete other papers like that and get a higher grade in a class.

I would not have found this book but for the fact that the author (Gary Cook) is my advisor, professor, and friend here at Beloit College. He introduced me to the works of Mead, as well as the other great American pragmatists (C.S. Peirce, William James, etc). A better professor than writer, but for any who interested in the life of Mead, this book is a must.

George Magoon may not be particularly well known outside of specific regions in Maine, but readers will recognize him as an embodiment of distinctive character types: folk hero, trickster, local character, and wisecracker. This highly readable book shows why Magoon and a number of similiar characters from backwoods Maine deserve greater consideration within the wider scope of American history. Ives first documents Magoon's life history through the actual stories told by relatives of Magoon and through conventional historical resources, and he also situates the biography within the context of Maine's social history, particularly as it pertains to the legislation and enforcement of wildlife protection policies over 100 years ago. Ives then presents his readers with vivid and often highly entertaining stories about Magoon, many of which still remain vibrant within the oral traditions of Down Easters. The book then discusses similiar stories about Wilbur Day and Calvin Graves, two other woodsmen who also ran afoul of the law as it was enforced by game wardens one hundred years ago. Ives completes the book with an insightful and well-argued conclusion that brings together the disparate stories and historical figures by showing how the narratives can be read in relation to wider patterns of social tension and cultural change that ensued after the passage of laws that restricted hunting and trapping. The various participants in the "game war" and the specific stories are interesting in and of themselves, but Ives masterfully demonstrates how the particular examples can be read to reveal a wider understanding of the social history of wildlife management in America.

The George Reeves Site (American Bottom Archaeology: Fai-270 Site Reports, Vol 15) by Dale L. McElrath was an excellent resource during the field school I attended at this site (July 2003). It covered every type of feature we found, almost every artifact as well as expansive map coverage including the area of the site we were excavating, though it had not been excavated before. I would buy it again if I didn't already have a copy!

This book was created mostly by the people who survived the Expulsion. Much material gathered in this book has never been made public in America.It is must reading for survivors and their children, at the least.