South Dakota Books

A well-organized and informative record of West River South Dakota pioneer families and events. Easy reading with plenty of information, yet condensed enough to really enjoy. If your family roots are in Butte/Harding County, you'll find them here! What a treat!

My mother is originally from Gregory. I am eager to look into this book and see the interesting history unfold amoungst the pages.

Awesome book for those that like a lot of pictures. If a picture is worth a thousand words...this book says it all.

In the history of South Dakota, Pettigrew was one of its greatest sons. He came of age in the aftermath of the Civil War. In his lifetime, the US filled the frontier and became the world's greatest industrial power. He played his part in this rise. Here Fanebust shows us a richly detailed and well researched biography of Pettigrew's trajectory.

The Gilded Age comes alive in these pages, as Fanebust describes how Pettigrew rose to be the boss of the South Dakota Republicans, and the internecine jockeying for power within that group and at the national party level. The Free Silver movement and its intermeshing with the Populists throughout the Prairie states is given full exposition. Then, later, we see Pettigrew's passionate and astute support of the Spanish-American War.

Strange though it may now seem to some of us, Pettigrew is shown as a prominent Republican with a strong strain of socialism; often railing against banks and plutocracy. It reflects the resentment often felt by farmers against the banks and the railroads. Pettigrew was also a promiment religious sceptic; certainly not a Christian. Another contrast with nowadays, where often the Republican party has become riddled with evangilical Christians.

This is another good reading of a Little House book by Cherry Jones.

Very well laid out and easy to use. It has info on where to stay and what to do. Other books are more complete but this one does OK. I would recommend it

Tabitha's the daughter of a *very* conservative minister in North Dakota in 1899, when anthropologists are just beginning to show up looking for dinosaur skeletons. Her father's convinced these skeletons have been planted there by the devil, and forbid's Tabitha from even trying to learn more about them, let alone join an excavation team. So Tabitha dresses up as a boy, claiming to be a twin brother called Tom, and sneaks out to be on a team, with the help of an older woman friend, Abby.

When I first opened this book, I was a little skeptical, it seemed like it was going to be easy reading, and I was very frightened at the prospect of a romantic element finding it's way in there, which would cause all sorts of problems for Tabbie (since she's dressed up as a guy and all). But while it was kind of an easy read, it was very enjoyable. I could hardly put this book down Christmas morning as it's very engaging and you always want to find out how Tabitha gets herself out of each difficult situation she gets herself into (and, thankfully, they're realistic situations, and they aren't portrayed as being all her fault just because she's a ditzy girl who has no place in science, as she eventually proves she's more capable than many of the men on the expedition).

The only thing that keeps this from getting 5 stars is the end. I'm not going to give details, obviously, but several characters make complete turn arounds in the last few pages that aren't explained.

After watching the Deadwood Searies on HBO, I wanted some history on the Deadwood area and what it was really all about. This book gave me what I was looking for.

Father Joseph Zimmerman, S.J., was born on an Iowa farm near Westphalia. He worked for some years among the Sioux in South Dakota. This booklet consists mainly of letters he wrote his sister about his efforts as a missionary. It was not easy work but he accepted it in good fashion, since he knew he was helping the poor people he served so faithfully. He died Sept 21, 1954, while in South Dakota and is buried at Holy Rosary Mission in Pine Ridge. The book is an inspiration and well worth reading.

This unpretentious literary travelogue provides an excellent window into a number of top American crime writers and the (mostly urban) areas they inhabit. Williams' 1989 circuit of the U.S. is a kind of crime fiction grand tour, as he visits thirteen established and up-and-coming authors (only one of whom is female) in ten locations, each of which gets about 20-25 pages or so, as follows:

Miami >> Carl Hiassen (Lucky You, Stormy Weather), James Hall Louisiana >> James Lee Burke New Mexico >> Tony Hillerman Los Angeles >> James Ellroy, Gar Anthony Haywood San Francisco >> Joe Gores (32 Cadillacs) Missoula, MT >> James Crumley (Bordersnakes) Chicago >> Sara Partesky, Eugene Izzi Detroit >> Elmore Leonard (Be Cool, Cuba Libre, Pronto, Pagan Babies, Riding the Rap) Boston >> George V. Higgins New York >> Andrew Vachss

Williams is clearly a believer in detective fiction as social portraiture and commentary, and like myself, he's most interested in what is generally classified under the catchall terms "hard-boiled" or "noir." That is to say, crime novels about the everyday criminal world, as opposed to semi-mythical world of "The Godfather," the serial-killer world of Hannibal Lechter, or the cozy world of crime-solving cats or little old ladies. Williams tends to stay in the cheaper, and thus seedier, parts of the places he visits, and tries to get the writers to show him around, show him their world. In addition to touring the seedy side of America, Williams often takes side-trips of a musical nature--as befits his music journalist career. His contrasting of a (white) cajun fete with a (black) zydeco dance is one of the truly telling parts of his journey. The conversations with the writers are intermittently interesting, although it's interesting to note that many of them came from impoverished backgrounds and came to writing by accident. Another similarity is their rough treatment at the hands of Hollywood. Most of the writers are extremely forthcoming and open with Williams, the most notable exception being Higgins, who comes off as a pompous ass in comparison to the rest of the book's subjects.

Some twelve years after Williams' trip, it's rather amazing to find that 12 of the 13 writers are still going strong, with a string of books to their credit from the intervening years. Indeed some, like Carl Hiassen, James Lee Burke, James Ellroy, and Elmore Leonard have gotten considerably more famous. The one writer who isn't still producing is Eugene Izzi, who was found dead in 1997, hanging from his 14th-story office window in what was ruled a bizarre suicide...

Since writing this book, Williams has gone on to write crime fiction himself, including the 1983-set London novel Faithless, and a collection of stories set in the Cardiff underworld, Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub.