Nebraska Books

If you are Jewish, from Generation X, or fulfill both of these criteria, you will find this book quite charming. Shukert's writing is witty, irreverant, and full of wry humor. The book explores some of the finer moments of growing up Jewish in small town America. I'm recommending this book to all of my friends.

I loved this book so much that over the course of the 2 days I was reading it (couldn't put it down, also didn't want to finish it) I read excerpts of it outloud to people in my apt, a restaurant, a bar, and even a Chase bank. Since finishing it I have recommended it to friends, parents friends, hair stylists, and dentists alike and I recommend it to you. I haven't enjoyed a book as much as this in a long time.

This book is so friggin funny that it aggravated an old war wound from all the laughing I did. It's like some painfully intimate HBO screenplay where no taboo goes un-turned.

Wise beyond her years, Rachel Shukert's Have You No Shame? is at once a calm testament of long-since, learned from experiences and an ecstatic, orgasmic and immediate confession of a twenty-something. Her stories are vivid, emotional and hilarious. She came from Omaha to conquer the world. Have You No Shame? is great start. BRAVO!

This is the funniest book I've read in years, and captures my generation better than anything I've encountered to date. Rachel Shukert's hilarious Jewish family picks up where early Philip Roth left off. Her sense of humor is relentless, and her "experiences" make the David Sedaris prose that we were all so recently shocked by look tame by comparison. To top it all off, I found myself very attached to the leading lady, and totally heart broken at the book's conclusion.

Every once and awhile a reader is forturnate to come by a book that might seem uninteresting but upon reading it finds it to be one of the best books ever. Such is HOLDING STONE HANDS which I bought several years back from University of Nebraska as one of their sale books. Turned out to have been one of the wiser buys of my time.

One of the very first things that struck me as I began this book was the flat out courage it would take to do what the author has done. Leave home, leave safety, walk upwards of 1500 miles, live, eat, and sleep out of doors much of the time. Another thing that quickly came to me was the interest people, mostly Cheyenne, still held for this historical happening. And they wanted to aid the author in his quest.

I have read some on this subject but things such as the Northern Cheyenne life coming to an abrupt end in December, 1876, was a surprise. Also that Lone Wolf's name was not that but 'Lone Coyote', or that Dull Knife's name was not that but 'Morning Star'. Also that both of these heroic and historic personages of the Northern Cheyenne, each in his own way, ended life mostly an outcast. Remembered today, yes, but only in a tempered way. Many still find fault with some decisions Dull Knife made. And with Lone Wolf murdering a fellow tribesman, his later life of blindness and isolation had to be very unrewarding.

No matter the reason for reading this wonderful book, a reader has struck a true classic of western history. And the main thrust of the book goes beyond history to be one of mission and people. Great reading as usual from University of Nebraska Press.

Semper Fi.

As my title states, this is a very powerful book. Mr. Boye walked the trail that the Cheyennes travelled in their tragic journey to get back home (from Oklahoma to Montana). Along the way the author meets up with two Cheyenne men who travel with him for the better part of the journey. When they leave he meets a mid-20s Japanese man who travels with him for a while. Why is this Japanese man touring the American West? Read the book to find out. Despite my praise for this book, my rating is a 4.5 out of 5. Why? I will give two examples (not that there are many more):
1 - On p. 225 he states that hundreds of Indians were killed at the Battle of the Blue Water (the number was about 86 and his own source--Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue--states 85).
2 - Following Little Wolf's capture his followers shortly after became scouts for General Miles to fight the Sioux. Boye only mentions his surrender. He should have gone on to include this important detail.

Having said that, the book is still a very good read and I really enjoyed his journey and his dramatic retelling of the Cheyennes' escape from Fort Robinson. I would like to know more about the film made by some Cheyenne's as mentioned in the book. Final verdict: Recommended.

I'm not much for history as it is taught in our schools, but this book is great. It is a perfect blend of history, present day (in the form of the author's trip), and thoughts and stories from the author's personal life.

I recommend this tome to anyone that likes travel stories. Especially if you dont know, or want to know more about, the Cheyenne Exodus. Expensive, but worth the money.

This is a story of heartache and strength, of hope and struggle...it is the story of a man's love of the land and a people's fight to keep their homeland. Boye is a gifted and talented writer whose words flow as he leads us from page to page, back into the past and then gently into the present. He is a writer that truly cares about his story and the people that inhabit it. He opens his heart and the words come tumbling out. A wonderful MUST READ for all nature lovers and history buffs.

This is a magical walk through a dark time in American History...Alan's own experiences are so materfully intertwined with history on this voyage, the past truly comes alive as you feel every step and face every fear. With each step, with every encounter along the way, you can feel the ghosts of the Cheyenne people walking in your own shadow. Make no mistake, HOLDING STONE HANDS is a Masterpiece...you'll feel the pain of endless walking, the anger for what the Cheyenne people were forced to endure, and the sorrow for the pointless death as they tried to make their way to the only land they would ever call home.

I read this book when it was first published and always wanted to get a copy. I've read it again and it still makes me laugh. The homespun characters make me want to live in Centralia (at least for a while). The stories concerning the Indians get a little preachy but are only slightly annoying. For someone that wants to relax with a little light reading, this is well worth your time.

A classic, especially if you grew up in a little town in the Midwest. I keep re-ordering this book because I have to keep replacing it because I keep giving it away to everyone I meet that I know will love it. Unless you grew up in the big city, you know the people Roger Welsch writes about in this book, only you never realized how funny - or how endearing - they were. Or maybe you did, but you just didn't know how to tell other people about it. Roger does.

This is life and this is fun! Beautiful pictures of Great Plain - Small Village life written -so well!- by an expert.

Writing from a narrative center somewhere between Mark Twain and Garrison Keillor, author Roger Welsch memorializes the town and inhabitants of Centralia (aka Dannebrog, pop. 356), Nebraska, in what he calls "Bleaker County." Centralia itself is either the center of this windswept prairie state or the center of the universe, depending on who you ask in this small town. It's located not far north of the Platte River and its farmlands, and not far south of the Sandhills, with its population of cattle and cowboys. Life in Centralia gravitates toward the Town Tavern, where many of these story-essays take place, and we meet Welsch's fictionalized friends and neighbors: Lunchbox, Goose, Slick, Woodrow, and Cece -- the regulars. There are also his wife Lily, daughter Jenny, an Indian friend Cal, a kind-hearted bachelor uncle named Grover Bass, a film crew from public television in Lincoln, a mean cuss named Royal Cupp, a rip-tearing adventurer, Luke Bigelow, and many others.

Welsch has an appreciation for the quirky, cock-eyed, and audacious. Like an endlessly curious anthropologist, he's equally fascinated by the everyday and the out-of-the-ordinary. He's a humanist, romanticizing his characters even while he's treating them with tongue-in-cheek irony. He's also willing to show that they can stoop to the unforgivable, or that they do not share his appreciation for people from other ethnic backgrounds. There is a range of tones and sentiments in the book, from comic farce to tenderness and awe. My favorite essay, "Racing Horses at the Centralia Fourth of July," ranges across all three, as his young teenage daughter teams up with a burly cowboy to take second place in a relay race. I laughed and had tears in my eyes by the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and happily recommend it to anyone with an interest in small town life on the Plains. As a companion volume, I'd suggest the short stories of life in a rural Minnesota community in Kent Meyers' "Light in the Crossing."

In "It's Not the End of the Earth,..", Roger Welsch does an excellent job bringing out the humor of small town life by simply telling stories about his friends in Centralia, NE. He has a witty way of giving value to each of the members of this rural community bringing to light the peculiar habits and expressions that make them all unique, interesting, and memorable. I applaud Prof. Welsch's folkloric expose' of the kinds of everyday things that I used to laugh about with my dad - some of my favorite things.

A beautiful book...snapshots threaded together with lyrical prose, rich and textured. With soul and heart. You'll dog-ear pages, you'll underline revelations, you'll keep it on your nightstand, you'll want to share it with the world...but only if the world gets their own copy. You won't dare part with yours. And you shouldn't.

Without hype or hysterics, this is a memoir of the perfect form. Deceptively simple in its prose structure, the many emotions, the many stories and the many desires build to a very powerful story. A must read for format and for the story.

Peggy Shumaker is an English professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the author of several books of poetry, including Blaze and Underground Rivers. Her poetry background is evident in every carefully sculpted sentence of her memoir, Just Breathe Normally. This book is more than just pretty prose, though. It's a gripping account of one woman's struggle through a potentially life-ending accident and through her chaotic childhood. The wounds are on the body and in the mind. This is a book I will read again and again to decipher how Shumaker makes her magic happen. Clearly, this is a seasoned writer with an intriguing story to tell.

The beginning sets up the hardy Norwegian stock that Shumaker descends from, and, more importantly, the history of women in her family marrying because they were pregnant. In the case of her great-grandmother, a birth resulted in her death, and with her mother, it figuratively ended her life. The impact of this history is felt in Shumaker's decision not to have children and to marry later in life. Sadly, another child almost ended her life; a careless one driving a three-wheeler on the same bicycle path on which she and her husband were cycling.

The title of Just Breathe Normally relates to her mother's lifelong asthma, as well as Shumaker's own problems breathing after her accident. The image of breath ripples throughout. One of my favorite passages is this one about her mother's asthma: "The reason she quit eating. The reason she loved quiet more than her own kids...The reason she didn't want to be here. The reason she left. The reason we buried her breathless." So many passages are lyrical, succinct, and see into the heart of her characters and their situations.

Aside from difficult breathing, Shumaker's life-threatening injuries also resulted in sight and memory problems. This off-kilter feeling is used throughout the book, as well as switching time periods between her accident, present day injuries, and her childhood. This fluctuating time mimics the way memory and breathing work. In trying to piece the details of her accident together to understand it, Shumaker says, "It takes months before my mind can see these nuggets not as separate chunks, but as part of one vein, as story." This sums up her memoir's structure as well, and those little sections add up to a satisfying whole.

The heart of Just Breathe Normally is about Shumaker's unstable childhood with a wonderful, supportive grandmother, and young, immature parents that couldn't stay together. Even though these character types are familiar, each of them manages to surprise throughout. Shumaker is a generous narrator, towards the boy who almost ended her life with his careless driving, towards the mother who neglected her, and towards her absent father. There is no whining about her life or her circumstances, and there isn't a single false note. This is a narrator who knows herself, and her family, and lays it all out for us in rich details and vivid writing.

Her parents' marriage is introduced as My Father's Wives #1; a clever way to set the tone, as well as her father's future marriages. Shumaker describes her absent father as, "We grew around the empty place his absence left in the family. When he was in the house, everybody felt crowded. It felt like having company that hadn't called first." But even the father surprises towards the end of the book.

The section of "Mother's First Words After the Birth" is also powerful:

Because I was her first, no one listened when my mother cried...So I was almost born between floors, my mother clamping shut her thighs, some panicky orderly pinning her shoulders to the gurney. My father, a lanky teenager dreaming of a shovel-head Harley with a suicide clutch, paced...Face to the wall, my mother spoke from far away. "I'm sorry it isn't a boy for you, honey"...Imagine being the woman who would think, just after giving birth for the first time, that. Imagine her saying it out loud to her young man. Imagine her writing it down in the baby book.

Just Breathe Normally is what a book should be: moving and multi-layered. There is a surprise in the ending, which I won't ruin, but after knowing it, the previous passages become even more interesting. Pick up Just Breathe Normally, it just might change the way you breathe, and think.

I thought Peggy has an awesome way of writing..at once a prose poem and then a flowing narrative. I had a hard putting this book down it was very engrossing and powerful. Thank you Peggy for a moving memoir. I really like the poem she quotes at the end of her book--it isn't hers but it very well could have been. I won't quote it here but the poem will stay with me for a long time; I have written it down as not to forget what it says and what it means.

At first glance the simple, short paragraphs trick you into almost missing the very profound thoughts and deep feelings of the writer. This is a marvelous read!

I recommend it to anyone that is interested in learning more about the life of the original Americans.
Apreciate the fast delivery and the good condition of this book.

great book! buy it!! Everything is wakan. find out why!

Lakota Belief and Ritual is a book rich in oral history. It was recorded at the a time when there were First Nations members who had the personal experiences of a lifetime and whose tradition was an oral tradition. Dr. Walker (a physician and anthropologist) collected and preserved this oral history in the face of the destruction of most First Nation's cultures through the intervention of the European cultures.

The narratives are all excellent and there are 90 + documents containing those first-person narratives along with several photographs.

The Bison Books edition has an extensive (and very valuable) series of appendices, including an extensive (modern) bibliography.

The original Walker papers (or the majority, at any rate) are now part of the Colorado Historical Society collection.

A first rate piece of work by the editors, DeMallie & Jahner, working from the primary materials created and preserved by Dr. Walker and his family.

An invaluable work. This book -or at least excerpts- should be part of any text on U.S. History. The inclusion of First Nations culture in our textbooks is rare, indeed.

James Walker went to the Pine Ridge reservation in 1896 (as a Christian) to serve the indians as a Medical Doctor.

18 years later when he left the reservation; he had adopted the Sioux form of Spirituality, and had become a wicasa wakan (holy man). He was trained by George Sword, and other medicine and holy people.

Some of this material is very dry, and dificult reading because a large part of the book (expecially the rituals and myths) were translated into English from the Language of the Sioux. But if you have a sincere wish to understand this form of Spirituality; this book is well worth reading.

I do wish to confirm one statement in this book by wicasa wakan (George Sword). "Any pipe can be used in a sacred manner" I could NOT agree more! I have used a meerschaum pipe, a pipestone (catlinite) pipe, and a briar pipe. The condition of the heart and mind is far more important than the kind of pipe one uses.

I encourage questions and comments about my reviews; Two Bears.

Wah doh Ogedoda (We give thanks Great Spirit)

This book is the litmus test for subsequent interpretations of the Lakota religion. Since the true authors felt that their culture was disappearing, they were extremely forthcoming with their information to Dr. Walker. All Lakota expressions of religion that follow this revelation of the Lakota medicine men are in fact derivative of it. Some have questioned the qualifications of the "informants" within Lakota society, but I have seen no contemporary Lakota belief or ritual that deviates from the broad strokes of this book. If you truly want to learn about traditional Lakota religion, start here, and then move on to Raymond J. DeMallie's edited texts under the title The Sixth Grandfather.

I grew up in Nebraska and return to the Sandhills whenever I can. Unlike nearly every other part of the US, this area is not crossed by an interstate highway, and the resulting isolation allows you to feel a little of the vast distances that used to be the West. To experience these rolling hills of grass, with not a tree in sight, especially in stormy weather, is to feel yourself totally absorbed in a great sweep of landscape - a living carpet of flora and mostly unseen fauna. Jones' book does much to recreate that experience in words. And he deepens the experience with his knowledge of geology and history, explaining how the Sandhills came into existence and in more recent times became peopled by the Plains Indians, cattle ranchers, and homesteaders.

Jones is especially knowledgeable about the birds that inhabit the Sandhills - noting those that are long-time residents and those that have been introduced over time with the changing ecology. It is amazing, as I have heard it myself, to hear a chorus of birds from every direction, all hidden by the grass and not a tree in sight. He also provides an accounting of the white-tail deer and pronghorn that range across this land, undeterred by barb wire fences. His stories of the Indians, the Pawnee, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Ponca are respectful and poignant. He also takes time to visit the grave of writer Mari Sandoz and to describe her life as the daughter of a Panhandle homesteader. This is a fine collection of essays for anyone who enjoys good nature writing. Readers may also enjoy Ian Frazier's "Great Plains."

When I read this for the first time, I said "I've read this before....". Then I realized it's very much in the style of William Least Heat Moon. Good for laying on a hill, watching the clouds, listening to the birds and animals.... and that's just what the book is!

Stephen Jones notes in the book that the Sand Hills of Nebraska make up one of the few "dark spots" on those wall posters featuring a satellite view of the United States at night. It is, truly, a wide open space, and he does the landscape great justice with his evident love for the land, its wildlife, its people and history.

For those who think Nebraska is simply home to a football team and endless acres of corn, "The Last Prairie" should open some eyes.

Jones is a prose poet. He makes the Sand Hills live and breathe right there on the page. An excellent, deeply-felt homage to one of America's little-known (thankfully?)great natural treasures.

Mr. Jone's admiration, appreciation and concern for this very special ecosystem shines through this lovely book. In it, he intertwines Native American myth, Plains history and well researched scientific data into a cohesive and readable overview of the Sandhills of Nebraska.

Through his eyes, we visit and experience a landscape of beauty, solitute, history and rich wildlife. It is, in turns, thought provoking, humourous, enlightening, yet never preachy. Steve is most respectful of the current private owners of these lands, and integrates their ongoing stewardship into well reasoned suggestions to insure the long-term integrity of this fecund habitat for posterity.

The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal is an astonishing blend of nature, myth, and love of the land--richly textured with wry wit and something very close to wisdom. It's so deeply rooted in love and its own particular landscape that it transcends locality and becomes universal. In other words, it's a classic, akin to Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Writing, details, and a sensibility to treasure.

This book is about the expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War, whose impacts still last in the present of the 21st century. In this book, the effects of the decisions of the Allies at the Potsdam conference are described in a detailed way as well as the tragedy of these decisions. In a very good documented and researched as well as extensive manner, the author characterize the problem of the expulsion which based on the decisions of the "well-regulated and human" resettlement of 16 million German and led to one of the biggest postwar period crimes in which more then 2 million German lost their lives.
Alfred M. de Zayas is able to illustrate in an objective way the facts of the holocaust on the German independent of any ideology and without putting the blame on so. nor looking for excuses so that a dark but fast forgotten chapter of the 2nd World War will bear in remembrance. This topic is most times tabu for German. A lot of German still suffering ( physically and psycological) from that history and they fear to be considered as a NAZI if mentioned that issue but it is necessary to deal with that subject and to accomplish comprehension which is useful for underlining the efforts for peace.
This book prompt me to do some research on that subject but also to other related documentations of the 2nd World War among other things of de Zayas. He gave me understanding but also the impulsion to get closer to that topic. This book is a must to understand the German history completely and to be able to deal with that. The first German version of that book was published in 1977 under the title: Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen, Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Folgen.

This book is about the expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War, whose impacts still last in the present of the 21st century. In this book, the effects of the decisions of the Allies at the Potsdam conference are described in a detailed way as well as the tragedy of these decisions. In a very good documented and researched as well as extensive manner, the author characterize the problem of the expulsion which based on the decisions of the "well-regulated and human" resettlement of 16 million German and led to one of the biggest postwar period crimes in which more then 2 million German lost their lives.
Alfred M. de Zayas is able to illustrate in an objective way the facts of the holocaust on the German independent of any ideology and without putting the blame on so. nor looking for excuses so that a dark but fast forgotten chapter of the 2nd World War will bear in remembrance. This topic is most times taboo but it is necessary to deal with that subject and to accomplish comprehension which is useful for underlining the efforts for peace.
This book prompt me to do some research on that subject but also to other related documentations of the 2nd World War among other things of de Zayas. He gave me understanding but also the impulsion to get closer to that topic. This book is a must to understand the German history completely and to be able to deal with that. The first German version of that book was published in 1977 under the title: Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen, Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Folgen.

Abraham Lincoln once said that "history is an agreed upon set of lies": I believe every word. The atrocities that were committed by the Allies to helpless civilians should never be forgotten and should be included in modern textbooks, lest we be damned to repeat such ethnic cleansing. Let us see history for what it is, not what others wish us to believe. I applaud Mr. De Zayas for having the intestinal fortitude to step forward and offer this intriguing account of the horrors of revenge.

It's very difficult to find much information, especially accurate information, on these expulsions. This book is a very responsible portrayal. Of course the Germans in a way brought this nightmare on themselves, but its hard to really justify the hypocricy and historical distortions of the Poles and Russians. I wonder whether these border adjustments can stand the light, now being allowed, after 45 years of Russian occupation? The current dysfunction of these regions begs for German investment, dispite the ambivalence of the current residents. At least this book brings to light, for those few who have read it, the hypocrisy of the allies.

Abraham Lincoln once said that "history is an agreed upon set of lies": I believe every word. The atrocities that were committed by the Allies to helpless civilians should never be forgotten and should be included in modern textbooks, lest we be damned to repeat such ethnic cleansing. Let us see history for what it is, not what others wish us to believe. I applaud Mr. De Zayas for having the intestinal fortitude to step forward and offer this intriguing account of the horrors of revenge.

I prefer the new Mermaid text to those in the anthologies primarily because the notes are on the same page as the text. I don't think the background to the play in the introduction is quite as thorough as it could be (the Oxford being more complete I think in that regard), but his notes are helpful and his history of production, though short, is revealing. I tend to side with those that attribute this play to Middleton, but who knows? The play itself is a wonderful mixture of the melodramatic revenge plot with a surprisingly comic over-view of the world in which it takes place.

PreShakespeare, but a lot of fun to read! I enjoyed it very much--- has to do with a man who is carrying around a murdered girlfriend for almost ten years-- he is planning revenge on the king...

This dark tragi-comedy resonates with the dramatic potential of Hamlet, but and edge particular to Jacobean Drama. A play which is still relevant today (many students related it to "The Godfather"), and brimming with cinematic violence, lust, deception, vengence, and, with all this, communicated through beautiful poetry.

Brian Gibbons, editor of the New Mermaids second edition (1991), describes The Revenger's Tragedy (1607) as a minor masterpiece. Judged against contemporaneous revenge plays like Hamlet and King Lear (and even Titus Andronicus), the term 'minor' certainly does not imply inferior. Minor or not, I agree with the four previous reviewers: The Revenger's Tragedy deserves five stars. Also, it is much easier reading than most Elizabethan and Jacobean plays.

Despite its title, The Revenger's Tragedy is no more bloody than Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (fifteen years earlier) and it is certainly not as insanely gruesome and brutal as Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (1594). No dismemberments and no cannibalism. Bloody, yes. But not excessively so.

Nonetheless, we learn of a murder, a rape leading to a suicide, and yet another aggressive seduction (or rape, if need be) that is in the planning stage. So ends Act 1. Revenge and mayhem follow.

The plot is not unduly complex. Vindice desires revenge for the poisoning death of his betrothed, Gloriana, by the lustful, aging Duke. Vindice also indirectly blames the Duke for his father's death, though "he died of discontent, the nobleman's consumption". Vindice is perhaps obsessive; he has retained Gloriana's skull and sometimes speaks directly to her.

In disguise he provokes discord between his enemies and leads them to plot against each other. (This ruse reminds me of Malevole's subterfuge in John Marston's play, The Malcontent.) A poisoned skull, a mistaken execution, and a murderous banquet highlight the later acts. The play concludes with an ironic twist, possibly added as a moral lesson, or simply to surprise the audience.

Hats off to either Cyril Tourneur or Thomas Middleton, or whoever may have authored this fascinating revenge play.

Update July, 2007: I recently encountered reference to this lesser known play in a murder mystery. Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972, wrote sophisticated mysteries under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s. Thou Shell of Death (1936) is a revenge murder patterned on The Revenger's Tragedy. In the first scene Vindice speaking to the skull of his dead mistress says: "My study's ornament, thou shell of death, Once the bright face of my betrothed lady ...."

OK. The jury has more or less decided that "The Revenger's Tragedy" is not by Cyril Tourneur after all, but by Thomas Middleton. This is on strictly scholarly grounds. Either way, it scarcely matters, as this play is strictly sui generis. It's like nothing else either Tourneur or Middleton ever wrote.

The best way to think of it is as standing in a relation to the classic Jacobean and Elizabethan tragedies of Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster and Middleton sort of like the way Quentin Tarantino's early films stand in relation to previous Hollywood classics. Whoever wrote this, they were Taking The P*ss. The play starts in next-to-top gear, and accelerates into warp speed fairly quickly. Few other plays of the era (this is roughly contemporaneous with "King Lear", to give you an idea) are so ruthlessly efficient. The basic plot is put in motion by two brothers, Vindice and Hippolito, who are a bit cheesed off because the egregious Duke (of wherever) killed Vindice's wife cause she wouldn't put out. From here proceeds a bizarre and increasingly unlikely series of revenges, climaxing in a frankly chortlesome mass slaying. Vindice is the juiciest role - a bit like Shakespeare's Richard III, he guides the audience through the action, but with far greater economy and far less wrangling of conscience, not that Crookback Dick is noted for his remorse.

By the end, the stage is littered with bodies, and Vindice and Hippolito cheerfully go off to execution, with barely a qualm in sight. This is truly the most cynical and the funniest of all Jacobean tragedies. Whoever wrote it, be it Cyril or Tom, was thinking along the same lines Howard Hawks was on when he (Hawks) turned "Rio Bravo" from a Western into a chamber comedy. It's all thoroughly reprehensible, and great fun. You want depth, try John Webster.

There aren't many four-hundred-year-old plays that I laugh aloud at whilst reading, but this is one of them. Pace the opinion below, it couldn't have less to do with Jonson's careful layering of reality if it tried. It's a brisk, bleak, savage cartoon. Full marks, whoever you were.

Black Elk Speaks

I ordered the book for my friend Kayla. When I found out that she was writing a paper on American Indians, I insisted she read what I feel is one of the most amazing insights into a facet of the mind they, the American Indians know well; that of the Medicine Man, their Shaman. Black Elk Speaks opened my mind to a world I knew of only in reading other books on sages that have entered realities unknown to most of us, sages from other parts of the world. Our culture generally discourages any practice that helps an individual get beyond the mental confines of the world we know. In this book, we read about a people, in this case one man, that makes it his and their life-style or "Way" where the exception in the norm.

Robert Yanasak

These are the original records of a series of interviews about spiritual awakening that resulted in the classic book "Black Elk Speaks." When Black Elk describes his vision, it is the most beautiful, the most profound assessment of human experience that I have ever encountered. Black Elk speaks in the language and symbols of his culture, so a reader who has knowledge of his way of life will better understand what he was trying to convey.

This book is the most powerful book I have ever read. Black Elk exudes a spiritual connection that is unparalleled. He also was a man of service. He speaks with a poetic sense of the world that has been killed by science, rationalism and money lust. If we could recover the spiritual sense, this indigenous way of being, that this man had the world would be rich. This book is better than the book "Black Elk Speaks" by Neihardt, because Demallie publishes the interviews verbatim (Neihardt's influence is limited), he provides many footnotes and writes a 100 page introduction and biography on Black Elk using material not contained in the interviews. Demallie also discusses issues that arise from what Black Elk says.

I felt this book was a constant page turner. If your interested in native american literature this is a wonderful book to have in your collection. Find a quiet place burn some sage and cedar and begin your journey with the sixth grandfather.

In reading this book on Black Elk Speaks I was overwhelmed. It seemed like the book was meant to land into my hands. When I began to read this novel, I understood. My feelings about vision quests, and soaring with the creators helpers has been an enlightenment to me for being here. I see things that I read in Black Elk Speaks and I understand. I understand what it is like to want to save the people and to have this heaviness come over you when they don't understand you. I have heard your message and I understand.

This book is a wonderful for all who are inspired to serve their own churches, a biography of Bishop Harold Jones of South Dakota, the trials and trbulations of a man making a name for himself within the Episcopal church, still leaves a lasting impression on clergy that knew this wonderful man, a man who can wonderfully sing lakota hymns ( told to me by a priest i know, who knew him well) and preach the gospel with great reverence. Bishop Jones is still talk of the South Dakota Episcopal Diocese now and the future, a role model for all who takes compassion, people and God as a way of life.

I am an Episcopalian Christian and a native of the state of Montana. As such, I was unable to finish "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (Dee Brown) because of what is sometimes called white guilt. I did finish Cochran's book,"Dakota Cross Bearer." In fact, I could hardly put it down.

Some may prefer "Bury My Heart" over Mary Cochran's book, because of Brown's righteous and radical anger, absent from Cochran's voice.

Like Brown's account, this story speaks sorrowfully of the shameful history of betrayal of Native Americans, even by the church. It touched me deeply because it recounts the the open-mindedness of many Lakotah people toward the god of the Europeans who were displacing, impoverishing, and trying to stamp out the cultures of tribes throughout the west. While many missionaries in this account had benevolent intentions, the fruit of their labors was a mixed blessing at best.

Mary and her husband, The Rt. Rev. David Cochran (former bishop in the Dakotas) were entrusted with the story of the Lakotah people and prejudice in the church from Bishop Harold Jones' point of view. His lack of rancor in living through many insults and challenges is a powerful witness to the best in the Christian faith tradition, and even more so, the best in his tribal traditions. The picture of life on the Lakotah reservations during the early 20th century was fascinating. For example, Lakota women took the lead consistently in raising the funds necessary to start new churches. They had almost no money and were phenomenally ingenious!

I will never stop grieving what happened to the native peoples of the west as my people invaded their homeland. Bishop Jones' spirit will help me live with it.

Dakota Cross-Bearer: The Life And World Of A Native American Bishop is the biography of Harold S. Jones, a Dakota Indian born in 1909, who joined the Episcopal Church and rose in its ranks to become the first Native American bishop of a Christian church. Offering key insights into twentieth-century missionary activity among Native American communities, revealing instances of dispute and discrimination amid the Episcopal Church, as well as the demands of clerical training and the relocation in service of the institution, Dakota Cross-Bearer offers a view like no other into the life of an unusual but no less dedicated man of the cloth and faith.

What a find this book is!!! Having spent time this summer working on the Pine Ridge Reservation among the Lakota, I was thrilled to read a book containing not only historical facts, but "real life" detail. The joy, humor, sorrow, endurance, and faithfulness of this man of God (and those whose lives entwined with his) truly touched me. This book may be sucessfully used for historical, theological, sociological, or devotional purposes. Make sure to read and reread Fr. Deloria's (Tipi Sapa) testimony concerning Jesus, several times. It is the most compelling witness I have ever heard. It is no wonder that the little one, who listened to this wise man speak, grew up to be a Bishop.

Mary E. Cochran presents the story of Harold S. Jones, who in 1921 became the first American Indian bishop of the Episcopal Church. While much of Jones's narrative is in the third person, whenever possible editor Cochran allowed Jones to present his story "in his own words." Raymond A. Bucko and Martin Brokenleg's introduction does a good job of contextualizing Jones's story. The volume sheds considerable light on missionary activities among American Indians in the 20th century and offers welcome documentation of the complex interactions between Christian missionaries and Native peoples of the Plains. Choice, vol 28, no. 7 (March 2001).