Louisiana Books

A extremely insightful book, Dearing's exploritive probe into the heart of the beast that is Tulane University is shocking, objective, suspenseful, and distinctly brilliant. Upon reading this young author's book I realized that I had found the literary equivalent of a Babe Ruth minor league baseball card. A college student herself, the author's insightfulness shows a style, mastery of diction, and rhythm that is and of itself a tribute to the fine institution about which she writes.
Tulane University: Diverse? Just? Overrated? Greedy?
Is this a place where the young mind is cultivated, and the seeds of knowlegde sown that mixed with experience become the dangerous power that is wisdom?
What percentage of Tulane graduates are millionares? The answer is surprising.
What if anything happened when television's Red Power Ranger visited the campus?
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Institution that is Tulane University- young and old, Jewish and not, American or other, dead or alive, THIS ONES A WINNER!

I would have never gone to Tulane if I hadn't read this amazing piece of literature. Even if you're not thinking of going to Tulane or college at all, you should read this book for its insight into the human psyche and comedic banter.

ps: there's a secret message on page 35, if you switch the first and last words of every sentence in the 2nd paragraph down. It's hilarious!

this is the best college guide book ive ever seen. its incredible. its amazing. pick up a copy or five. i would read it before even looking at anything tulane has published about itsself. A++++

Purchased this for my father. He met Mark Dunkelman years ago while he was writing another book. My father is a big war buff, especially of the 154th Infantry, as his ancestors fought. Thanks Mark for another great book. You really do your research for these!

I've known Mark for twenty or so years and know when he publishes an article or book it will be a well polished,honest, accurate item. This book is another example of a true artist and his lifes work--Studying the 154th N.Y.V.I

If you love the story of the common man more than what the Generals were up to, then this is your next Civil War book. This volume remembers that the true cost of war is tapped from the lifes-blood of its participants in the ranks. When a soldier dies in battle it is always a violent death. Something nobody deserves. Let alone a young person on the very threshold of life.

I am fortunate enough to be related to one of the Soldiers immortalized in Dunkelmans book. I am proud of his finished product and feel he has at last made Captain Crosby's story known to those who wish to read it. If I had a writers talent I could not have written a better sum of the Captains life. Thanks Mark.

Thanks for these very human tales told with love, compassion and complete understanding. My guess is these tales are as close as any of us will ever get to seeing the real humans beings who fought that war against slavery. These "Lincolns men".

Buy it,read it,and mostly, learn from it.

There are no stories of generals and strategy here. The author has crafted a well written book that reminds us of the personal side of the war and of the heroism of the individual soldiers of the 154th infantry. In fact this is representative of any unit. This is nuts and bolts history at its best. This book is excellant and deserves a wide readership.

This work is a must read for anyone interested in southern history, or in demagougery in the U.S., or in southern politics! The author does an excellent job -- in a very interesting and readable narrative -- of truly capturing the colorful Eugene Talmadge, four times elected Governor of Georgia! He captures the real Gene, from Talmadge's red suspenders, to his plants at political rallies, to his outlandish, dogmatic ways -- such as the time he caused the Univ. of Ga. to lose its accreditation. As a teacher and historian, this book is one of the very best I have ever read!

AN outstanding literary piece. I would highly reccomend it for all especailly children. Eugene Talmadge's life, as expresses in this book was spent in th ebetterment of the ordinary working people of our nation.

A sweeping, incisive, colorful view of the life and times of the man in red galluses, Eugene Talmadge, famous for his slogan, "The poor Georgia dirt farmer ain't got but three friends who never let him down: God, Sears Roebuck, and Ol' Gene."

This is a really good cookbook, with relatively easy recipes and easy to find ingredients (at least if you live in Louisiana!) I have created some dishes out of the book and the end product came out great. This is not a fake New Orleans cookbook. The author is obviously a true cajun.

While living for nearly a decade on the Alabama and Mississippi Gulf Coasts, I developed a deep love for Cajun cooking. Jude Theriot defines many unique Cajun cooking terms and gives an intersting history of the Cajun quisine. This makes his fine book both an entertaining read, as well as a very useful recipe book. I recommend this book very highly!

I have over a dozen books on hiking in New Hampshire (my favorite state and place to climb) but this has to be one of the few that really gets detailed on the trail's good points and bad ones and what to watch for.
The trails are varied, some long and more of 'getting there' attitude and some short but very scenic. The authors really let you know about spots to stop at and why and other neat things to watch for.
I have done at least 12 of the 50 and plan on all if I am able in this short life, lol. No complaints about the descriptions. Also very pleased with the accurate info on parking and directions to the trailhead, which is confusing in some other books.
This is the second book to the 50 Hikes series for New Hampshire, both are unbelievable and invaluable in their information. This one takes us from Barrett Mountain in Southern NH (which by the way is impossible to find informative hiking information on)through the Whites and even one in the Far North. There are quite a few essential 4,000 footers in here, so don't miss out!

Tracy Talley~@

I found this book to be extremely helpful. It makes planning a hiking agenda easy. Great maps and detailed overviews. This book gives you the confidence to allow you to explore more of New Hampshire. No matter which trail you decide to take on...you will know what to expect. Even gives guides to "rainy day" hikes. The only drawback is that you will want to pack it with you!

One of poetry's elemental functions is to discover and preserve national identity. If you want to find out about the Greeks, you read Homer. If you want to find out about the English, you read Chaucer or Shakespeare. If you want to find out about the Americans, you read Whitman or William Carlos Williams. If you want to find out about the Poles, you read Milosz or Szymborska.

And if you want to find out about Polish Americans?

Then I would suggest that you read Linda Nemec Foster's Amber Necklace of Gdansk. At its heart is Foster's desire to discover what it means to be Polish American at the beginning of the 21st century and the difficulty of discovering this.

She asks all of the hard questions that the best of Polish-American writers and thinkers ask: What did the immigrants lose by coming here, what did they gain, what was Poland like then, what is Poland like now, what is America like, can we understand our immigrant forbearers' motives for coming to America, can we understand what they left behind, can we ever find the Poland they left behind, is the Poland of the present even remotely like the Poland they left behind? And finally she addresses the hardest question: Can any of those questions be answered?

Ms. Foster is relentless in pursuing her answers. She's like an archeologist with a deep understanding of psychology and cultural studies searching for the essential bones of her Polish-American identity. And like a scientist she brings tremendous coherence to the search. Her book, like the best contemporary poetry, has an internal order that makes it seem almost like you are reading a memoir or a highly narrative journal. Each of the book's four sections moves us closer to her conclusions with directness and urgency: the first section deals with her growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in the US, the second describes her journey to Poland, the third talks of what she found in Poland, and the last centers on how her quest effected her.

What she comes to discover, as all Polish Americans who have made the journey back to Poland discover, is how little and yet how much she is connected with her Polish past.

As Polish Americans, Foster seems to be saying, we stand eternally on this side of the border between America and Poland, and we can only cross it in our dreams. This may not be enough, but it is all we can hope for.

The thin thread of memory and misinformation that often connects many Americans to their immigrant ancestors becomes the rope that pulls the reader into Linda Nemec Foster's powerful poems about looking back. In language that is at once sensitive and utterly unsentimental, these poems dig into the past to retrieve the details through which readers can relive the poet's discoveries as she travels in Poland, filtering the experience through her memories of an American childhood in which the motherland was a distant history evident only the the curious behavior of family and neighbors who were closer to it. Even in the most prose-like of the poems, Foster's feel for language and its poetic nuances is evident in every phrase. The most marvelous thing about the book, however, is that it is easy to read. Don't miss Amber Necklace from Gdansk because you think it's from a university press and might be too esoteric. Anyone who has ever given serious thought to the question "Where did I come from?" will love these poems.

This was a great book! I was especially impressed with the interview they did concerning what would happen to New Orleans if the levees broke. (This was written pre-Katrina.)

Definately a great book for yourself or for a gift.

This is not only a very beautiful coffee table book on Louisiana's wetlands, its wildlife, and people; but it couldn't have come at a more critical time. The chapter entitled "America's Atlantis" on New Orleans predicts exactly what happened to this great American city. If you've ever wanted to know more about not just our vanishing coastline, but also about Louisiana's unique culture, this is THE book!

The stories and novellas in The Animal Girl will haunt you long after you have closed its pages. I can't shake the image of Holly Morris in "Real Grief"--part girl, part woman, hysterically laughing at her grandmother's funeral, or the thoughtful chemist in "A Small Matter," impotent in the face of real male aggression. Fulton is equally at home in the adolescent and middle-aged psyche, where he takes his readers with unsentimental and yet heartbreaking precision. These 5 stories will fill you up, and leave you wanting more.

I enjoyed this book so much that I've already read it twice. Granted, I'm a bit inclined to enjoy a book where I can easily picture the characters and their location (I've lived in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan for 12 years now). However, Fulton does an excellent job of drawing the reader into the worlds of his characters.

It's easy to feel the grief, questions, concerns that they all feel. It's easy to want to be mad at them for decisions they're making and actions they take. At the same time, though, there's a connection that arises that draws you in and just won't let go. You realize that these are people we all know, people we've met, and that the lives on the paper are ones that could easily exist in the "real" world.

Fulton does an excellent job of portraying the emotions and feelings of his female characters. He truly understands what draws them to their conclusions and does so in such a way that the reader is left feeling a bit nostalgic that they've finished reading that portion of the book.

One of my favorite parts was trying to figure out exactly where the characters were. For me, this helped a lot in terms of visualizing the scenery. However, I think I would have enjoyed it just as much without knowing this area as well as I do...substituting in the descriptions he provides.

I have already recommended this book to my friends and highly recommend it to all of you! It's offered a peak into the lives of others who could easily be people I meet every day, and did so in a caring and enlightening way.

Thank you, John!

This book has a lot of literary elements in it which in some cases can be identified very easily when being discussed in class. This book is a much easier book to read and understand because the text and the wording is easy, but not too easy. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about romance and how men see women duting that period of time.

This book has a lot of literary elements in it which in some cases can be identified very easily when being discussed in class. This book is a much easier book to read and understand because the text and the wording is easy, but not too easy. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about romance and how men see women duting that period of time.

Chappell's lively verse at its best. It questions, pokes fun, satirizes, illuminates, and provides revelations at every turn. It does what poetry should be doing in a jaded, absurd time.

Any new book by Fred Chappell is cause for celebration. In my estimation he is, word for word, page for page, the best living writer we have no in the United States.

BACKSASS finds him in particularly fine form. It is a collection of poems following the satirical mode of Roman master Juvenal in which the poet gives vent to his spleen on any number of issues, including politics, poetry, and gross materialism. My own favorite among the group is his long poem on the state of contemporary intellectual life, in which he socks it to poetasters and grant-givers and LitCrits who have done so much to cripple American intellectual life with their ideologies and their peculiar theories and their determination to elevate the mediocre over the excellent (what little bit of excellence is left). (Chappell, who has never won a Pulitzer Prize or been nominated for the Nobel, may be writing out of some personal frustration here, but it is wholly justified. He never tells anything less than the truth.) His Thanksgiving poem, of near equal length, is just downright lovely. In it we see an appreciation of those things which really matter in life - friends, good food, good conversation, etc.

Although Chappell is clearly bitter in places, he is never dour or dull. And his observations, in both free verse and rhymed, are must reading for optimists and pessimist alike.