North Dakota Books

Off the Beaten Path-rather a so-so account of "what to see/do" in the Dakotas. I personally like the Moon Travel Series better as the format is easier to read and more consistent.

Great source for additional possibilities when visiting the magical Dakotas. However, restaurants and lodging lean heavily to those who have plenty of money in their purse/wallet. For most of us, I would research these areas further. But it is outstanding for many possibilities to make a wonderful trip even better. Just don't expect it to cover much roadfood, wacky attractions or budget motels. VERY worthwhile still.

Who likes being adopted nobody does especially Tall bear when his kola White hawk abanded him at a butte that had a eagles nest on a little tree.His kola who lied to the village that Tall bear was killed by the eagles.

I like this book because it reminds me of two buddies in my class.The part I dont like is when Tall bear kola abandens him at the butte.My opinion about this book is that its a good book it talks about friendship. I'll recomend this book to anybody who likes reading books by the athur PAUL GOBLE.And to people who likes reading novals from Tomie Depola.

This is another of the dozens upon dozens of small collections of poetry I have collected over the years. Falling Leaves is a collection of 34 poems by Corbin A. Waldron. Waldron was a native of North Dakota and was in fact was name Poet Laureate of North Dakota by the state legislature in 1957.

During his life Waldron, who was known as "Dakota Cal" wrote several books of poetry, with Lines and Lyrics from Dakota being his best known work.

Now I love the state of North Dakota, love it's almost frightening wildness and its wonderful history. Were it not for its horrible winters I might quite well want to live there. To many Corbin Waldron captures this almost sacred spirit, the loneliness, wildness and isolation of this wonderful state. That being said, I must admit that Waldron is not my favorite poet. It is not that it is bad poetry; it is just that it has a certain amateurish ring to it that for some reason annoys me. I know of any number of armature poets that are much better. I have always suspected that part of his fame is that he was quite an influential lawyer in that state and was quite well liked; or so I am told.

There are certain pieces which I feel are quite good such as Monument to Sitting Bull and Missouri Mecca are certainly good by most standards, but for the most part, his work simply is not my cup of tea. I suspect that being a native of the Dakotas would make a difference here, and poetry, above so many other things, is certainly a matter of taste.

For a regional writer, I suppose Waldron's work is okay, it is just something I cannot get into.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

I learned some things from this book, but it does amble on like a boring textbook sometimes. The stories of the the families were very interesting. My great-grandma's cows in N.E. SD ate cockleburs during the depression, and trying to hit water during a well drill was distressing.

Carl Wilcox helps host a 10-year reunion in this installment of the series, but it isn't long into the reunion of Corden's undefeated football team that the popular quarterback Harmon "Heart" Turner is found dead in a shower, killed by what turns out to be a slingshot. The mayor asks Carl to look into it, because of his reputation for solving murders. Carl digs into the past, and finds out that somebody is carrying a long grudge about the actions of four of the players and the coach's daughter. Good mystery, with a few surprises.

trying to bridge the gap betwwen art and anthropolgy she has done a fine job of presenting her work and making it easy to understand for a moron like myself.

I can only comment on the Kansas section of this book, but that leaves a little to be desired. It seems that Knapp found the most popular trails but didn't dig too deep. Another problem is his tendency to list utterly boring rides on semi-maintained doubletrack. If someone buys a mountain biking guide book, it means they are looking for the real thing, not some flat access roads. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of alternatives to this book for cyclists in the midwest so I still have to recommend it as part of your collection, if for nothing else but the states you do not live in.

I bought this book for my daughter to bring to Guatemala to give to her host family. I thought it would be good because it was written in English and Spanish. The book is very colorful with nice pictures, but unfortunately who ever edited this book forgot a few facts. The biggest of which is a two page spread on the state fish. It says the state fish is a northern pike and it has a drawing for children to learn to draw the state fish. Too bad the fish they are actually drawing looks like a steel head trout and nothing like a northern pike. There is even a color pic of these so called northerns, but they don't look anything like the dark green and white spotted fish I know a northern should look like.

The other big error is the map in which major cities of the state are listed. It puts Stanley and Medora, boths towns of a few hundred people as major cities, while eliminating both Minot and Dickinson, which number in the thousands (yes, these are the big towns in North Dakota)

I emailed the publisher about these issues, they never got back to me. It seems to me, that a book like this, should have the basic facts correct.

This guide is adequate as an introduction to the trails. I used it in pre-trip planning. The descriptions for trails within the TRNP units are skimpy on details such as total elevation gain and GPS coordinates. Ultimately, I left it in the car when I went backpacking. Maps and aerial photos would really enhance the guide. It also largely ignored the issue of water in the back country of the park, although it does mention sections of the MDH trail where water is an issue.

Clay Jenkinson's "A Vast and Open Plain" should be a great read - it includes day by day journal entries of the five journal keepers of one of the greatest expeditions in American history: the Corps of Discovery, who traveled from Saint Louis, up the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains, and then down to the Pacific Ocean - and back again, fighting weather, hostile inhabitants, rotting food, and uncharted wilderness. But I have two major problems with the book.

First is the endless notations by editor Clay Jenkinson. From his 35 page introduction (bear in mind this is a LARGE book, with rather small print in two columns) to his footnotes which frequently occupy more than half the page, he is everywhere, and the book tells more about him and his strong opinions than about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Second, with few exceptions, the three journalists who were not Lewis and Clark frequently seem to have compared notes; it is the rare day when one of them (usually Ordway) says something that no one else says, or even uses different wording.

One of the interesting things in the book is that weather observations are made each day (although temperature readings cease after the company's thermometer breaks); Lewis and Clark and their men apparently didn't realize either how hot or how cold what is now North Dakota could get, nor the number of mosquitoes that would plague them (when they leave Fort Mandan in April of 1805, there are days when literally the only thing remarked upon is the mosquitoes).

Another point of interest are the personal letters and the lists of provisions and trade goods provided in the book. The letters give a better idea of the inner life of both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark than their journals do; the journals, after all, were intended to be presented to President Thomas Jefferson when they returned to Washington, D.C. The list of goods, and the descriptions of whom they were for, and to whom they were ultimately given, tells us even more about the men of the expedition.

The journals entries make clear the feelings of the Americans towards the Native Americans they met along the way. By today's standards they were incredibly racist and intolerant, treating the people they met like (rather dim) children, and mocking their religious ceremonies. They seem to ignore the fact that without the help of those people, the expedition wouldn't have survived. But hindsight is generally clearer than the view on the trip, isn't it?

For historians and college students, this book might be a good gift. But for people looking for a good story, there are better Lewis and Clark books available. I realize that Jenkinson's intent was only to show what happened to the Corps of Discovery on the days they were in what is now North Dakota. But even the native North Dakotan feels cheated out of "the rest of the story" when the Corps moves into Montana and the entries end until the return in 1806.

If you're a Lewis and Clark fanatic and don't mind endless footnotes, and the wretched and inconsistent spelling of the journal keepers, this is the book for you. Most of us will find ourselves endlessly bored or annoyed, and only occasionally fascinated.