Maryland Books

The Star Spangled Banner was written by Frances Scott Key while on a boat in the Chesapeake Bay near Fort Henry during the war of 1812. S. E. Schlosser blends history and folklore in a compelling story called "Dawn's Early Light", describing the scene of the Fort Henry battle in vivid detail. There are a great many folktales associated with Maryland. Twenty six great stories are included in this book. Several of the stories involve life on the Chesapeake Bay. One I enjoyed wears the title of "Dead Man's Coat", where A waterman finds a coat floating in the Bay and brings it home only to find that the rightful owner a ghost wants it back. "Steal Away Home" is a story about a slave fleeing Maryland trying to reach Canada and the difficulties and risks it took to achieve that goal. The last story in the book "Don't Turn on the Light" should be scary enough for most readers. Overall I enjoyed reading this book very much.

An Excellent book. Very good detail on the history of the church. This is a must for anyone that has been connected with the church either by having a member or wants knowledge of the church history

Thirteen-year-old Caroline Dorsey was devastated when her father and baby sister Rebecca died in a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Unwilling to spend another summer in Philadelphia, Caroline's mother decided that she would take her two remaining children, Caroline and fourteen-year-old Charlie, and move to her father's Maryland plantation. But Charlie is determined to go to sea, and his mother doesn't have the will to refuse her son's greatest wish. Meanwhile, Caroline returns to boarding school in Philadelphia, where she receives a letter with news that Charlie has fallen off the deck of his ship and drowned. Caroline knows that can't be true. So she returns home, determined to discover the truth. I highly recommend this combination of history, mystery, suspense, and adventure.

This is a great book because it is more comprehensive than many others I looked at. It doesn't just tell you how to form your company - you also get what you need to know about employment law, your tax-payment and bookeeping systems, insurance coverage needs, website issues, etc., etc. When specifc forms or procedures are involved, the focus is on DC, MD and VA reqirements. Still, lots of common sense, nuts-and-bolts information for entrepreneurs out there in any state!

The book is a mixture of quotes from those who lived through the Civil War and black and white images of reenactors and the Antietam Battlefield. The quotes are very thought provoking and when combined with the stunning images it almost transports you back to that troubled time. A rare book you can will be able to enjoy for years to come.

The Japanese recognize those people who acheive "cult" status in their country by making them National Treasures. This book, written by Lem Ward's daughter Ida Linton is truly a biter-sweet trip through the making of one of America's truly great carved waterfowl painters. Along with his brother Steven who was primarily a carver, the Ward Brothers made a major impact on the world of waterfowl counterfits. As Ida tells the story, you live along with Lem from his hair cutting days, through the depression, and into the later years of his life, with all of it's trials and tribulations. It seems that these things shape a man, as I am sure they, with his faith in God, shaped him. If you like waterfowl carvings as I do I am sure you will be touched with this story of the Ward's legacy.

David Hein, a Professor of Religion at Hood College in Maryland, has found gold in the mine of his state's Civil War archives, in this collection of letters written by members of a prominent Maryland family on the eve of and during the war. Hein's book immerses us in civilian life as civil war approached, fiercely as a wind-driven wildfire, personified by the Montgomery County family of Allen Bowie Davis, a prosperous gentleman farmer/legislator from Rockville, then a village north of Washington.

Davis and his wife, Hester, in time became unionists who feared the consequences of a Maryland secession for their state and family. "We may not like the present administration, nor endorse its acts-but-`we had better bear the ills we have than to fly to others that we know not of,'" wrote Hester to her daughter, Rebecca, late in May of 1861. "Let Maryland remain neutral and she may ride out safely this awful storm...I fear this secession element. It would be certain ruin to all our hopes as a family, in this world."

Their son, William Wilkins Davis, was a student at St. James College, a prestigious Episcopal boy's school near Hagerstown, in western Maryland. St. James had the misfortune to lie between opposing armies that tramped incessantly through the region and staged America's bloodiest day on a battlefield a mere seven miles distant, along Antietam Creek. The boys of St. James spent Sunday afternoons in the spring of 1861 not in the library but visiting nearby union and confederate camps. Fearful parents began withdrawing their sons as tensions grew. In the spring of 1861, with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and Baltimoreans clashing with northern troops marching through their city, young Wilkins became an impassioned sympathizer for the southern cause. Letters heretofore about food, studies and illness became angry diatribes against Lincoln, Maryland Governor Thomas Hicks, and others perceived to have a foot on the jugular of southern state's rights. "I hereby announce myself, henceforth, a straight out `Southern Rights' man, and want nothing to do with Lincoln, his party or anything connected with him, or it, unless it is to help thrash him," he wrote to sister Rebecca on May 21, 1861. "I can no longer support a man whose avowed intention is to subjugate the South...and our contemptible, cowardly, lying governor winks at every thing [he] does without the lest compunction." Such words remind us that 19th century political discourse could also be ugly and coarse.

Both young Wilkins and St. James fared poorly in the cauldron of conflict. The boy took ill early in the war and, despite periods of good health, he died in 1866. The college closed its doors in 1864, an educational casualty of war.

Hein's book captures the complexity of the Civil War in a state of abolitionists, pro-slavery unionists, anti-slavery southern sympathizers and non-slaveholding secessionists. We see a pivotal Maryland through the eyes of adults and children, and the consequences of war for familial relationships, religious values and educational institutions. Hein's crisp editorial commentary knits these letters chronologically, supplying time and place for the Davis family to tell of life in the tumultuous middle of the nineteenth century. We are in the debt of this slender volume, for reminding us that a history replete with leaders and battles is incomplete absent the insights of sons and daughters, and mothers and fathers.

This book is part of a trilogy. They are all 3 wonderful books. I have all 3 in my private collection. If you like horses, you'll enjoy every minute.

Tales from the Orioles Dugout features reminiscences from thirty-five players and one manager. Players from different eras in the Orioles' history are showcased, though admittedly I read the chapters detailing the team under Earl Weaver's stewardship with the most relish. There is a collective sense that, though the pint-sized manager may have been prickly to deal with, the players in retrospect respect both him and what they were able to accomplish together. There are a number of humorous stories that I, a longtime fan, nevertheless found myself reading for the first time. There is also a touching sense of what it meant to work together as a team, rather than a collection of individuals. The book does not have any interviews with some of the greatest figures in the team's history, such as Eddie Murray and Frank Robinson, but O's fans are fully aware that while both gentlemen were great players, they sometimes were not willing to deal with the media. Regardless, accounts by Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken, Ken Singleton and a host of others make for pleasurable reading indeed. (The only puzzler is why Tippy Martinez couldn't remember that it was Joe Altobelli, not Weaver, who was his manager the game he picked three runners off first in one inning!) Overall, this book is warmly recommended.

Fun Chinese stories for kids to read--"The Cricket", "The Girl in Green", more. Good book for raising cultural awareness.