Virginia Books

Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg are about six months apart but very close in distance and in personal. These are the last two great victories the Army of Northern Virginia would enjoy. The Union army would finally get a commander structure that would stand and fight as intelligently as possible. Never again, would Lee find victory through failures of the other army commander. There are many firsts in these battles and no easy answers. This excellent book covers both battles in detail and gives us the Battle at Salem Church too. I had this book with me when touring this area and recommend it to you. I would never have found many sites without it.
The series format is directions to a point on the field, orientation, a general lesson on what happened in your view, followed by first person accounts of the action. These guides are designed using the general staff training concept of a Staff Ride. This is when a class is taken to a historic location, discuss what happened and see how the terrain influences the event. Staff Rides are designed to be intensive "on the ground" training coupled with physical observation in the hopes students will gain experience for later use.
I am not saying this to frighten you away from this guide but to tell you this is not a walk about and look at the monuments type of guide. This guide will have several pages devoted to the action at this point. It may contain a critique of the local commander's actions with possible alternates.
My experience is that reading the book prior to my visit works best. This allows me more time observing the field and less time reading the book. Of the tour options, a professional guide is usually the best but most expensive choice. The park driving tour is the best choice for a quick trip through the field to get the kids passport stamp. This book is the best choice for a serious student of the battle looking for a detailed explanation.

These series of books are the best available resource for conducting ACW battlefield tours - assuming that your purpose in touring battlefields is to study and understand the applicable tactics, strategy and terrain and to develop an appreciation for the objectives and efforts of the participants. If you go to ACW battlefields to gawk and gossip as an everyday tourist then you do not need to study these guides. If you have an active interest in ACW history, military history in general or fascinating chapters in human history, then these guides are remarkable values, "Best Buys". Thorough but not intimidating, insightful and objective, with no deficiencies noted.

A beautiful book filled with mouth-watering recipes and gorgeous photographs. One which will be treasured in your library for years to come.

Gulf Coast Cooking is one of the five best Florida/Gulf Coast cookbooks out there. Well, that's my opinion. I've been updating my Amazon "So You'd Like to Guides" and I have one on Key Lime Pie. Take a look at it if you want. Anyway, I've included fifty cookbooks (the maximum Amazon will allow) in all my guides, so I've had a chance to go through my collection. And quite a collection it is, I've got hundreds of cookbooks and I go through them all the time. That's my problem, how to organize them. While going through what I wanted to include in my guides, I started separating them into piles, the ones I couldn't live without and the ones, if I absolutely had to, I could give away as gifts, you know, like if we moved into a very small place.

Gulf Coast Cooking is one I could never part with. I love the food and the atmosphere of Florida and the Gulf Coast, have spent a lot of time there, as I'm a sailing lady. I'm also somewhat of a gourmet chef. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, or galley, depending if I'm at home in the States or on our boat in the Caribbean. The recipes here will make your family, or even just yourself, if you live alone, drool. They are mouthwatering good and that's the truth.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

I recently read By Blood Possessed and enjoyed it immensely. The novel reminded me of the best of the Barbara Michaels novels, suspense with a little of the supernatural thrown in. Her second book is just as good. The story of Pat, Miss Maggie and Bell Run continues, when another ghost makes his presence known to Pat. Shortly thereafter, a skull is found in Pat's proposed tomato patch. The anthropology department of the local university is called, and a team is sent up to Bell Run. A contemporary death seems to connect the two eras, and Pat and Miss Maggie try to find two murderers in two different centuries.

One day Pat Montella, the ghost detective, will inherit Miss Maggie's Bell Run, Virginia estate as the last known descendent of the Bell family. Pat begins to "dream of a young Black male living in the mid 1870s. Apparently he was named Emancipation in homage to Lincoln's freedom speech at Gettysburg a week before he was born.

At about the same time, an unknown gravesite is found. Considering the history of the estate where many Civil War skirmishes occurred that would not be a shocking scenario. However, not long afterward, the police believe that a friend's assistant committed murder. Somehow the three events: the vision from the past, the newly found gravesite, and the murder are linked with Pat's abilities to see ghosts as the only chance of finding out the truth.

The second Montella paranormal mystery retains the freshness and uniqueness within a strong amateur sleuth story line that highlights the debut tale (see BY BLOOD POSSESSED). The plot is fun and never loses steam as Pat struggles with her century plus old visions and trying to find the connection to present events. The characters (mortal and spiritual) add depth that propel the story line forward in such a way that paranormal mystery readers will appreciate. After HANG MY HEAD AND CRY Elena Santangelo can hold her head up high with pride.

Harriet Klausner

I was impressed with this book! I can sense my kids (6, 4, & 3 year olds) are really absorbing the content of this book as I am reading it. It gives a very basic, yet thorough explanation of what the word faith means. This book does a wonderful job giving child-like examples of how faith is demonstrated in a typical day of a little one.
This is one of those books that takes a complex subject, such as faith, and describes it so a child can understand it. Also, the illustrations are adorable and very eye-catching to little ones.

This book is a wonderful description by example of what faith is. After reading it, in board-book form, to my 1-year-old I thought it should be required reading for every adult too. I only hope they have written on other topics too.

Here are some of the pages: "Faith is seeing with your heart what you can't see with your eyes. It is finding a caterpiller and believing that someday it will change into a beautiful butterfly. Faith is praying to God and believing that He is listening. Faith is knowing God is always with you, even when you don't see His face."

This book started me on a long research project which ultimately lead to my MA thesis. Companies so frequently avoid dealing with employee safety and medical problems that there is a discernible pattern. Cherniak's dedication to fact-finding is inspirational. The story is spell-binding and frightening. While the Hawk's Nest issue dates back 70 years, the situation exists today - companies still disregard the needs of employees and government proteciton agencies still avoid meaningful action.

As a safety and health practioner whose strongest ultra specific technical competency is in the area of respiratory protection, I was searching for this book for several weeks. I wanted to know the particulars of how several hundred workers could die within a few months - on a jobsite - and no one go to jail for such actions. I was also seeking this book for inclusion in evidence on several matters soon being brought before this country's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The book is the perfect length, as I completed it in about five evenings. Its style is very readable and offers its reader the perfect blend of research rolled into a documentary format. Because I have devoted countless hours at the National Library of Medicine, The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, etc. I fully appreciate the hundreds - if not thousands - of hours Dr. Cherniak devoted to research. How many boxes in musty court record archives did he examine ? Read the book's bibliography and you will have some degree of understanding of his enormous effort. Better yet, track down the original (primary) sources and read these as well. The book provides an excellent analysis of the United States corporation involved in the project. For this reason alone, it is well worth reading.

This is a wonderful book, full of inspiration and love - give yourself a gift and buy this book!

I wonderful guide to opening your heart to God and seeing others as He does. I found it to be very helpful and easy to read. Don't miss this gem.

Hearthside Cooking, now in its second printing, has been an indispensible source for those of us who practice open-hearth cooking at historic sites. Not only does it offer practical advice, it provides an excellent overview of the development of Southern (the emphasis is on Virginia, of course) foods from the beginnings of English settlement here. The recipes are all from primary sources, shown as originally written, then for the fireplace, as well as for a modern kitchen. The bibliography, as well as the content of the book shows Ms. Crump's extensive research. I highly recommend it.

This book is the "bible" of open hearth cooking. Everything a beginner needs, it is also indispensable to the cooking interpreter working at a historic site.

Very, very exciting indeed. How the Saxons were christened. A translation of the oldest living proof, that the gospel came to us very early, and it was told in the language and spirit of the old warriors - great to read that Christ was the warlord and the disciples his true henchmen. Not only for the historybuffs but very readable for the not so faint at heart - but then again no christians are.

The Heliand is the modern scholar's name for an anonymous translation of the gospels into the East Saxon language, in approximately 835 AD. An earlier translation into the Gothic language, by Ulfilas, became the gospel focus of the Arian heresy, but the Heliand seems to have been a tool of missionary efforts as Charlemagne solidified his control of the German lands. No complete manuscript of the Heliand exists, but very substantial fragments have been collated from diverse archives.
This is an excellent text of the alliterative epic, with ample and useful commentaries on almost every sentence. The Heliand is worth scrutiny, not only for linguists and etymologists but also for students of early Christian history in the northern lands.

This book was of special interest to me because an ancestor of mine was captured at Limestone Station with the 100th OVI and imprisoned at Belle Isle during the time period in which Coburn wrote his diary.

J. Osborn Coburn's diary is especially well-written, and gives detailed accounts of activities at the prison camp, as well as describing the suffering that occurred in that place. By comparing my ancestor's record with Coburn's account of an exchange of 600 prisoners, I learned that my ancestor was almost certainly one of the fortunate 600.

Unfortunately, Coburn found release from his suffering only in death, but his journal somehow survived. Now it is available to us through Don Allison's book, which skillfully combines bits of narration and illustrations,with the thoughts of Coburn. There is also a good index.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Civil War prisons.

On October 18, 1863, while serving with Co. I of the 6th Michigan Cavalry in Charles Town, West Virginia, J. Osborn Coburn became a prisoner of war. A fairly large Confederate force under Brig. Gen. John Imboden attacked and captured the town that Sunday, and over 400 Union soldiers, including Coburn and 25 other enlisted men of Co. I, were marched to Belle Isle, the Southern prison camp located on the island of that name in the James River in Richmond. A lawyer from Big Rapids, Michigan, Coburn began keeping a diary of his experiences almost from the moment the men were marched south. This is that diary, and it's a powerful and saddening testament of man's cruelty to his fellow man.

Expecting to be paroled or exchanged at first, Coburn and the others were in good spirits. His early entries comment upon the beautiful fall weather, of playing cards and checkers, and only a little of the hunger they feel when rations are cut. But release from the prison doesn't come, and as winter sets in, conditions worsen dramatically. Shelter is scarce, the men are freezing; disease is more prevalent, especially diarrhea, which begins to take lives. Basic animal instincts begin to take over: bribes and barter are used to get additional rations, the sight of men dying becomes second nature. Coburn is often ill, and much of the diary tracks his condition. Before the end, shear desperation and despair set in, entries become single sentence cries: "Same as yesterday, why encumber the pages with more ..." Coburn dies on March 8, 1864, of chronic diarrhea and is buried in Richmond National Cemetery. Of the other 25 Co. I prisoners, 17 died on Belle Isle.

Interspersed with Coburn's entries, editor Don Allison has included other pertinent information regarding Coburn's history and what life was like for POWs in the Civil War. Closer to Belle Isle, he also relates some of Confederate Maj. Isaac Carrington's Nov. 1863 inspection report of Belle Isle prison where conditions are described as "comfortable," and "healthy." Something like 40,000 men died in prison camps, North and South, during the war; reading Coburn's account of his experiences puts a human touch on what might otherwise be just an appalling statistic.

"The Hidden Galleon" is a magnet that will draw readers through its wonderful historic "connect the events" content......this beautifully illustrated adventure is detailed with archival maps and drawings and pictures that brings the reader into a fascinating adventure of the last days of the Spanish warship La Galga to its final resting place in Maryland's Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.
Author John Amrhein takes the reader on his lifelong journey to prove that the wreck of La Galga in a terrible hurricane in September, 1750 included the descendants of Chincoteague Island's pony population that attracts tens of thousands of tourists yearly to Maryland.
As a native of Baltimore, Maryland and a high school US History teacher here in Virginia with 40 years of classroom experience, I found that the book was impossible to put down and a delight to read. In truth, it brought back wonderful memories of the pony pennings that I loved so much to see whenever we traveled to Maryland's eastern shore in the 1950s.

The Hidden Galleon brings the thrill of many years of treasure hunting right into your own living room and makes you want to continue reading as you participate in the progression of the hunt. The final conclusions are rewarding and exciting.