Nebraska Books

I had the pleasure of being Bryan's student at the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, and I bought his book there. He is a fantasic poet, a great teacher, and is an inspiration. He shared that it took years for him to win the Paris Review prize and get this book published -- he is an example for all struggling writers to keep trying.

I love this book, adore Bryan, and hope he has continued success. Watch for Amazon Days!

"We are all like Scheherazade's husband," wrote E.M. Forster, striking upon some fundamental wish in the human psyche to be abducted by the myth. Taking up where the DC comics leave off, Krypton Nights, Dietrich's brilliant suite of persona poems in the voices of Superman, Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, and Lois Lane plumb the depths of our human desire to make myth and to posit the existence of a God-made-man (be it Superman or the Messiah) who could save us. Whether writing a persona poem in the voice of a comicbook character or the lyric record of Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas as he does in another collection, Bryan Dietrich makes meaning out of our fascination with the psychological cariactures that loom large, in cartoon fashion, in our imagination. Against the backdrop of the heroic writ large, Dietrich counterpoints the all too common stuff of our human frailty and failure to successfully negotiate the personal and fashion a reasonable compromise with reality. Dietrich reminds us that great poems are ultimately great arguments with ourselves. Dietrich's voice, thinly clad in the bravado of Superman, reminds us that little stands between us and the disasters we witness on the news. Belief, fantasy, the will to be abducted by the fantastic: our distractions. The result is a compellingly compassionate voice that invites us to consider our guises, our masks, in the face of the possibility that no one is coming to save us and to ponder this pattern of days, our modernity, without myth.

How serious a subject matter is Superman? Serious enough for poetry to be based on him. Added to the media-crossing character's resume is now the noblest of the arts: verse - some blank and some not-so-blank. Mind you, this collection is no comic book - not that comic books don't offer fine entertainment and fine subtext in their own right - 'Kryton Nights' was the winner of the 2001 Paris Review Prize for Poetry; an organization not resigned to handing out awards to just anyone. Unfortunately, there are not so many deserving recipients in the poetry field these days; and those that do deserve are often buried amongst the countless worthless others. Only by sheer luck and my love for Superman did I stumble across this one. But alas, I have given away my first bias.

Superman is the subject of this book, which is broken up into four parts: an autobiographical set of sonnets by Clark Kent, an series of tapes recorded by Jor-El for his son Kal-El, the poetic diary of Lois Lane, and a seething rant of Lex Luthor as penciled from Arkham Asylum. For any lover of Superman, this slim volume is irresistibly fun, just for the intelligent treatment given so many fabulously fantastical characters. For any lover of poetry (or just good writing) it offers its own set of treats. From hilarious 'what if' scenarios as told by Lois in "His Maculate Erection" to the sobering final lines of "The Fourth Man in the Fire": "Being the neighborhood / god, all guts and gusto, well, it's numbing. / / But here, just another byline for a vast news magnate, / I can stumble, fumble, fail. I can always quit the 'Planet'"

As a sort of modern mythic god figure, Superman, in this text serves as a gateway to our older gods and religions; their cacophonies and inconsistencies go head to head in many of these poems. Dietrich weaves many subjects in and out of this comic world, as to blend them almost completely. The confusion of a spouse, the love of a father, the hatred and misdirected rage of a competitor, and the so-human exhaustion of a hero intermingled with countless references and sprinkled with often hilarious, often terrifying puns... it all makes for a fabulous read. Frequently blasphemous and always thought provoking, 'Krypton Nights' is the kind of book Superman deserved to have written about him, it definitively elevates his fictional status to one of a much greater (and as of yet unexplored) importance.

The edited letters and journals of Capt. Barnitz and his wife provide a gripping picture of the experiences of an officer in the early years of the Indian Wars. The book also provides wonderful insight into how Custer ran the 7th cavalry and what his officers thought of his leadership. A truly enjoyable book!

This book is composed of Barnitz' personal diary and letters written to his wife, which she conviently kept over the years. Additional information is detailed and follows the letters and diary entries in chronological order. Barnitz enjoyed writing, wrote his wife often and made regular entries in his diary. The book is full of interesting phographs, many which I have never seen before, even though I have been a Little BIg Horn buff for quite a while. An excellent biographical glosssary is included that includes the histories and significant events of many important Indian War personalities. A must for any serious Custer library.

Albert Barnitz was a Captain in the Seventh Cavalry. He was wounded and not a member of the unit by the time of its' famous defeat at the Little Big Horn. Barnitz through his letters to his wife describes life on the Plains with the Seventh Cavalry and it's Lieutenant Colonel Custer. His first hand description of events he experienced and personalities he knew gives life to persons and events from Western history. This book will interest those desiring a first person report of life in the Seventh Cavalry on the Great Plains.

Like several other biographies of this legendary Plainsman, Scout, Buffalo Hunter and Indian Fighter of the American Frontier, this book is comprised mostly of a reprint of William F. Cody's own Autobiography. What makes it a better source than many of the other reprints of Buffalo Bill Cody's fascinating 1879 acount of his early life and adventures until he reached the age of thirty-four, this volume includes an excellent foreword by another noted author and historian of the Wild West, Don Russell. His foreword makes this first complete reprinting of the original autobiography much more understandable and provides additional valuable insights into the man who coined the term "Wild West." Buffalo BIll was, without any doubt, what we often refer to as "The Real McCoy." While Cody could spin a good tale too, he was modest and humble about his own adventures. Later historians have mostly authenticated, with only minor corrections, his scary-thrilling, matter-of-fact and plain spoken recollections of his life and adventures.This is a very good read and hard to put down until the very end of the book.

Autobiographies are at the same time the best and the worst sources of life stories. You get the authentic voice, but that voice tells you only what it wants you to believe. Both these characteristics are particularly strong here because Cody's voice is such a distinctive one and because of his status as a supreme self-promoter. So this book will not give you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but it will give you a real insight into the mind of a man who in many ways epitomizes the culture of the historic American West. Some of it may shock you; Cody describes how he shot a mule who had annoyed him by running away, and boasts of how he scalped his fallen enemies. Hardly the stuff of popular myth. If you want to know how the west was really won, then reading this book (some of it 'between the lines') will tell you much.

The Wild West was an even more heroic epoch than is commonly understood. While Buffalo Bill became a self-promoter, basic facts are clear: he was a superior plains guide and scout and Indian fighter. He really was the master hunter of buffalo from horseback. He was a Pony Express rider, with all that entailed. He was friends with Wild Bill, Custer, and other notables. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield (though sadly it was removed many years later because of a bureaucratic technicality of how he had been employed by the Army, not because of any change in the evaluation of the heroic deeds.

A most fascinating book. It gives one a different perspective to hear it from a participant.END

The author saw WW2 action from Italy, through France, and into Germany. He was lucky: he was not killed, unlike many around him. In a narrative that reminds me of Dragnet ("Just the facts, Ma'am") the author tells the horror of war. Ultimately the book is more grim than fun, but a fast, worthwhile read.

I enjoyed this book. However, I wished Mr. Franklin had been able to spend more time writing about his experiences after the Italian Campaign, though it is understandable since his wartime diary ended at that point.

Two other excellent books on this subject, but not written by former Medics are Ross Carter's "Those Devils in Baggy Pants" about his service the 82nd ABN and Farley Mowat's "And No Birds Sang" about his service in Canadian Army in Italy. Mr. Franklin's book is very close to the caliber of these two classic works, and I highly recommend it.

"Medic!", by Robert "Doc Joe" Franklin. Subtitled: "How I Fought World War II With Morphine, Sulfa And Iodine Swabs". University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

When Robert Franklin was officially drafted into the United States Army, he had already given up his room and quit his job at the Associated Press. He was afraid that he would flunk the Army medical and then have no place to go. At the age of twenty-five, he entered the Army in Los Angeles and was assigned to the medical unit of the 28th Infantry Division, where he received virtually no training in being a medic. On page 4, Franklin states that he learned his "...job as a medic through on-the-job training". The remainder of the book is just as blunt, concise and clear. For example, on page 33, the author relates that a
"... friendly Sicilian had warned them that a small bridge was mined, but the lead officer scoffed and led his men across. It was mined."
This kind of understatement flows throughout the book. Another example: on page 129, Franklin was being awarded the Silver Star by General Alexander M. Patch. General Patch stood on a wooden platform while Medic Franklin stood in the mud. This was all captured in a photo published in an LA newspaper in 1944.

His writing continues in this understated pace, from Sicily to Anzio to Salerno, and, each time he helps a wounded solider down from the front, the author records that departure with the words, "...and I never saw him again". (See, for example, page 124.) There were far too many descriptions of wounded men that ended with the term, "...and I never saw him again".

There is a final two paged summary, where he describes his life after the war, his marriage to his beloved, Betty, and how she died on April 27, 2001 at 4:10 in the afternoon. He ends the book with the notice that his doctors gave him another year or two ...to which he replied, "That doesn't bother me. I've never been afraid to die, and at eighty-eight, I've lived long enough".

This book is fascinating reading! Granted, because I have umpired some Little League games (and hope to umpire more), I may have more interest in this topic than the typical reader. However, I think even the "typical reader" would enjoy this book. I kept thinking that I did not want the book to end. A sequel would be more than welcome!

The interviews are laid out well and the reading is easy and entertaining. It is tied together well so that it does not seem like a jumble of questions and answers (it is not a question-and-answer format, but more of a prose format).

You get a feel for the game that you may never have gotten before. You get to hear a little about some of the great names of baseball (Williams, DiMaggio, Robinson, etc.) from a new perspective. It is amazing how similar all the different umpires feel about some players and managers. It certainly heightened my respect for the game, especially for the Men in Blue.

Every high school player should read this book. So should every college player or pedestrian professional baseball player. Men in Blue provides sound insight from the men who made the call on what makes them mad, makes them like a player, and how they make the rules fit the situation.

Gerlach provides the fan a better understanding of umpires. It convinced me to think twice before beefing at the ump when I go to games. Although written a bit like a text book without the excitement of a novel, the messages are clear and well presented.

Must reading for any true baseball enthusiast.

Larry Gerlach has done all baseball fans a supreme favor by compiling oral history accounts from umpires who judged the game from every possible angle. "Men In Blue" will linger in your mind for weeks, as one rich anecdote after another comes to mind. Umpires never enter the game for glory; most feel they are doing a poor job if you notice them. And to a man, they say that umpiring can be taught, but never learned; you either have critical judging ability or you don't. After reading this book, your whole impression of baseball as a simple game will have no legs to stand on. Not only do umpires rule, they make or break a great American tradition.

This classic work by one of the great yarn-spinners of all time includes some wonderful descriptive information about California places and people in the early 1860s and some gripping, heartstopping tales about King's own mountaineering exploits. Even in his early 20s, Clarence King was recognized for leaderhip and intellectual ability. He served with the Army Topographic Engineers on the survey of the Western United States along the 40th parallel and was an intimate of Henry Adams and his wife in their small social/intellectual circle in Washington D.C. (See Patricia O'Toole's "The Five of Hearts"). He established his national reputation for being a shrewd, practical man of science when he discovered and exposed a stock swindle based on salted ore and fraudulent assay samples when asked to evaluate a mining promotion in Colorado. "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" is a non-chronological, semi-autobiographical reconstruction of some of King's time (circa 1862-63) with Josiah Whitney's Survey, commissioned by the State legislature to catalogue and evaluate California geologic and mineral resources. It is an entertaining and engrossing narration of one foolhardy, death-defying exploit after another. Like those of John Muir (another classic, albeit overrated talesman of the Range of Light), Clarence King's numerous renditions of his own hairsbreadth escapes from impossibly precarious positions by the power of luck, pluck and sheer physical prowess, while entertaining and enthralling, were made possible only by his own chronic rash foolhardiness, if not by tremendous powers of exaggeration. A better man was his fellow draft-dodger (the Civil War was going on back East all the while they were dancing around in the mountains of California, after all), William Brewer. Brewer served longer, harder and more responsibly than King in the Whitney Survey. Brewer also wrote a factually more thorough and reliable description of conditions in the young state of California in a series of letters home to his family in New England (collected as "Up and Down California"), with none of King's histrionics but just as entertaining in its own way. King's book does include some unique insights. One is his near-comic description of the "Piker" rubes (from Pike County, Missouri), rural folk residing in the foothills of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, which can be read as a precourser of all hilarious mountain folk descriptions, from Li'l Abner through the Beverley Hillbillies to Deliverance. But truth be told (rarely enough, one suspects), this book is mostly about the indefatigable King and his own personal exploits in the Southern Sierra. While King's literary talent was substantial, his writing (and indeed his entire public life and historic reputation) were seemingly unilluminated in any way by his own domestic arrangements. These included a life-long love relationship and common law marriage to a black woman, Ada, with whom he maintained a household including their several children. Not only did he keep the marriage secret from all of his prominent social contacts, but he kept his own notorious identity and true name a secret from his wife and children until just before he died. Still, under the constant strain of maintaining a double identity, he continued to support his family and maintained an exhausting schedule of international travel, geological consulting and writing until he died prematurely from consumption at the age of 59. (See Thurman Wilkins' "Clarence King"). You won't find any mention of King's real family anything King wrote for public consumption, or even for the consumption of his well-placed friends. Altogether, this book makes for a slightly less than satisfying cud to chew over, but it tastes pretty good the first time on the way down.

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is essential reading for anyone who both loves those mountains and wants to get a glimpse of life there before it reached the level of settlement it has today. Whether or not all the stories here are strictly factual, they are often both gripping and entertaining. Additionally, they bring the reader some sense of what rural central California life was like at that time.
Clarence King was a gifted wordsmith. His hilarious, politically incorrect descriptions of western characters are reminiscent of some of the best incisive commentary of Mark Twain. Then his descriptions of climbing in the mountains are so intense that you may even wince as you are carried along as he describes some of the most hair-raising brushes with death. Those who have been where King describes will certainly feel what King has written as they read along.
One reviewer, though entertained, seems to doubt what King says. I don't. Though there may be a little hyperbole in King's description of events, the reader should remember that at that time the average guy was far more physically fit than the average guy today. You had to be or you didn't make it, because every day in the wilderness was fraught with challenge and physical danger.
All in all, you could say that this book is a collection of bold tales well told. I particularly like the stories of his crossing the desert coming to California, of the hog farmers, of his escape from determined bandits, of his ultimate conquest of Mt Whitney, and of all the colorful characters he meets in his path both in the Sierras and at Shasta.
And though some might take him for a bigot because of some of his comments about the natives, remember that he saves the sharpest point of his pen for the most worthless characters of his own stock who abound in the California of his day. Whatever you think about what King has written, once you pick this up you'll find it hard to put down until you've finished the last paragraph.

Clarence King sure knows how to tell a good story. Whether they are true stories, well that's for you to decide. But really, it doesn't matter. You'll read of him dangling from the edge of great cliffs and running from wild west bandits, all the while keeping the reader wondering how he'll ever live to tell the tale. Overall the book is a collection of stories by a man who loved the Sierra Nevada, for it vast wilderness was his playground.

Really I would rate this book at 4 ½ stars if Amazon would let us. It is a good book, but, at least for me, it does not quite make it to 5. I felt a little too much time was spent on the history of the missionaries sent to the Nez Perce lands. I do realize though that this was an important event that caused a rift in the tribe, so it needed to be covered. When I was reading the bits about the lives of the missionaries, the book started to bog down. I was more interested in learning about the Nez Perce than the settlers. Other than that, I thought the book was good, and well written. I will definitely be reading more on the Nez Perce in the future!

Growing up in Idaho, and in my youth occasionally hearing some of the stories of the tragic flight of the Nez Perce, led me to read several books on the subject. No other story in American history is as fascinating as this one. Many good books have been written about it (along with a few that are not so good), but this one is easily the best. It is the most detailed, most accurate, and yet the most readable of all of them. Be warned, however--it is long (700+ pages), and nearly three fourths of the book deals with events that occured prior to the well-known Nez Perce war of 1877. For a shorter read about just the war itself Beal's "I Will Fight No More, Forever" might be a better choice. But for a comprehensive history of the entire region and its people, this is the best.

The appalling treatment of the Nez Perces is a sordid and shameful chapter in the modern history of the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Josephy carefully and meticulously describes the downfall of this peaceful and friendly people. His account begins slowly, but it accelerates with the momentum of a huge steam engine and thunders to a climax that left me in tears.

No Survivors
`When my parents bought me No Survivors, I could not wait to read it. First, it is a very action packed book that has a ton of old western weapons. This book is a book written about the Custer Battle. Second, it is a very good book to read if you like old western gunfights and bar fights. There are a ton of gunfights in this book. Last, this book will work very great for a social studies project. The main charactors are Custer and his gang along with Sherif Pete Wilson. The main setting of this book is in the old west when there were lots of gunfights. The main events are all of the battles and gunfights. This book tells all about historic battles and the famous phrase "Don't shoot till you see the white of their eyes." I would recommend this book for anybody who likes war books.

This book was written over a half-century ago in 1950, yet the author holds the attention of current readers easily - something not easily done in today's hectic world.

A Well written document. One keeps reading the book and going back to historical accounts to see if John Clayton ever existed because the story is so convincing and so 'possible'.

I am an amateur historian and this sent be back to the documentation of the period (1860-1878) to see what I could find... I'm still searching the records.

Very good book - I recommend it highly.

I picked this book up in a hostel while travelling through europe, at first by the cover I thought it would be silly, but after reading the cover and looking at the first couple pages I still thought so. I read it anyways and I loved it. Its the true story of a former confederate soldier, who knew many famous people and fought with and against them all, including crazy horse, sitting bull, buffalo bill cody and custer. I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't know anything about the battle of little big horn or someone wanting to know more about the ogala indians. The battle with/against custer is a important part of the book but not what the book is all about. Its mainly about a soldier who becomes a member of the ogala tribe and all the things that happen along the way. read it!

Wonderful glimpse into history from a very bright young girl. Names of those long gone are brought back to life in this narrative. Highly recommend!
T. Addison

This book was excellent. Written through the eyes of a young girl growing up in Deadwood, it makes you feel as though you are there. I live in Deadwood now and it is interesting to actually see the streets and parts of town that were written about in this book.

It was very enjoyable to learn about the west in the days of Deadwood, the place, people and adventures. Ofcourse the real thing is not as exciting as the T.V. series, but I really enjoyed it because its what really happened.

This book is an interesting illumination into the ways that mathematical structures are used in the arts. These essays provide an in-depth analysis of the methods by which mathematics are used to generate or provide "new" recombinations of existent works with which we can glean new insight. Math is an amazing tool to harness when we encounter the inevitable "artists' block". Good to read if you are having difficulty seeing the possibilities.

If you are curious about the inner workings of an infamous group of dedicated outcasts and writers with a passion for both elaborate and finite (read: calculated) creativity, I would suggest you get a copy of this book. I was engrossed from the beginning and kept finding historical "secrets" of these writing masters to titillate me. It was, simply, a glimpse at what is possible in writing.

Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all of its imaginable permutations, Tlon, Uglor, Orbiris, Tertius - Jorge Louis Borges

Warren F. Motte has collected a series of critical writing from The Ouvrior de Litterature Potentielle or Oulipo (The Workshop of Potential Literature), a primarily French group organized around Raymond Queneau and primarily concerned with methods of creating new literary structures. Their ideas offer a welcome relief to the staid and stale conviction that literary forms have been handed down from the ancients along with the rest of language, as if structures like sonnets or mystery novels are as intrinsically a part of language as vowels or nouns.

These essays illuminate the limited ways that contemporary fiction approaches the idea of form. In the limited framework of the short story structure, readers find great variation and even invention, but the actual form of the story seems as rigid a language structure as the blues are a song structure, tirelessly repeating the AAB structure into infinity; I asked my captain for the time of day. I asked my captain for the time of day. He said hed thrown his watch away.

A writer who wants to be free needs to confront the constrictions and value of literary form. Yet, literary form seems to come out of a black box, so much so that writing that somehow confounds formats, like Lawrence Sternes Tristam Shandy or Edwin A. Abbotts Flatland or more recently Ben Marcuss The Age of Wire and String seems to be inspired but frivolous oddities rather than the result of a literary method. The Oulipo, however, have developed a method for subverting expectations and for being as creative with form as writers are expected to be with content. Franáois Le Lionnais writes in the Second Oulipo Manifesto, Should humanity lie back and be satisfied to watch new thoughts make ancient verses?

Literature that satisfies a particular

form fulfills the esthetic aims of that form. For instance, the novel developed several hundred years ago as a result of an expanded middle class audience. The form typically follows a protagonists conflict with society and in the end the protagonist either achieves some kind of reconciliation with society or dies; the form of the novel performs as both a platform for an anarchic point of view but also reassures its audience that eccentricity will be absorbed in the end. A sonnet straps language into iambic pentameter, a straight jacket rhyme scheme, and limits the subject to a single sentiment. The Poetry Handbook includes this rule for the sonnet, Groups of sonnets using the same form and relate to the same theme, which is often love of a women or the love of God. The inherent value of the form exerts a hidden force on the content of the work. Form functions like a medium and in this sense limits the range of meaning expressed by language just as wood grain limits

the direction of the carved line in a wood block.

By building mazes and trying to escape them, the Oulipo have started a dialogue about ways to imagine new literary structures. By building artificial rules the Oulipo have escaped the prison of old forms.

Founded in late 1960 in France, at a colloquium on the work of Raymond Queneau, in order to research new writing by combining mathematics and literature (and also to just horse around) the Oulipo soon expanded to include all writing using self-imposed restrictive systems. The group didnt publicly publish until 1973, La Litterature Potentielle. The best known of the groups work are Italo Calvinos If on a winters night a traveler and Georges Perecs Life: A Users Manual. A truncated role call of the more familiar names includes: Noël Arnaud, Italo Calvino, Ross Chambers, Stanley Chapman, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Fournal, Franáois Le Lionnais, Harry Matthews, Georges Perec, and Raymond Queneau.

Oulipo contains the critical writings of the Oulipo, including Franáois Le Lionnaiss Manifestoes, a history of the Lipogram by Georges Perec, and Jacques Roulaurds explanation of the mathematical method of Raymond Queneau. Reading the critical writing gives a foundation in the method and the nature of the groups experiment. Jean Lescures Brief History of the Oulipo chronicles the formulation of the group as an formally informal gathering of mathematicians and writers who began to apply mathematical formulas to literary forms. The end matter of the book contains a thorough bibliography of the principal Oulipo players and their work.

Raymond Queneaus Cent Mille Millards de Poems (One hundred thousand billion poems), expresses the Oulipian ideal. It is a series of ten sonnets contrived so that each line of each sonnet can be replaced with any corresponding line of the other ten sonnets, sort of like a sonnet version of one of those childrens flip-books where you can change the head of animals. The possibilities put forth by this arrangement would be to the order of 1014, one hundred trillion sonnets. The potential text explodes into an incomprehensible size. According to [Queneaus] calculations, if one read a sonnet per minute eight hours a day, two hundred days per year, it would take more than a million centuries to finish the text.

The Oulipo seem to be most interested in discovering how to express literature by limiting the writers choices, either by the construction of mathematical formulas that produce results, formal constraints and rules that produces results, or language games that produce results, in this sense I mean results as in the result of an equation. The lipogram, where a single letter is stricken from the text, is an ancient exercise the Oulipians have appropriated for their toolbox. Ideally, each Oulipian structure would result in one potential literature, not necessarily a single text because The One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems is a single potential literature, but nearly an infinite text. For a writer, drafting an Oulipian work should be more like filling out a crossword puzzle or doing calculus homework then an act of inspiration. The muse has had her hard drive reformatted and inspiration is not to be trusted.

To practitioners approaching writing as a craft, as if the writing of stories was along the lines of knitting sweaters, this exploration seems at best frivolous and maybe a little pretentious if all you want to do is make sweaters. However, these are useful generative tools. Not only do they provide a developed handbag of new literary forms, but these tools also establish a solid framework for developing a criticism about literary structure. This book is a vital and concise introduction to the Oulipian technique.