West Virginia Books

This book is a good start, but so much has changed in post 86 Fiesta... items, colors added and discontinued, prices. An update is desperately needed. Also a bit less "filler" as far as stories and dramatic exposition and more emphasis on actual introductions and discontinuations in the new line. Also, so many competing lines are similar... a back of the book section showing other contemporary dinnerware lines that currently compete with Fiesta.

My biggest suggestion would be a chapter showing comparison of old versus new items to show the evolution of design...1.e. the old casserole versus the new one, old cup next to new one. Many collectors of the new do not appreciate where the design evolved from

Also, the only decaled ware shown is...well.. the less said the better about what is shown... where are the artistic and popular patterns like Sunporch, Happy Pumpkin and Moon Over Miami?

This book is better than the Collector's Encyclopedia of Fiesta. So save yourself about $... and buy this book instead if you want informations on POST 86 Fiesta.
It is full of pictures and has easy to use information boxes with every mold/piece. You know what colors they came in, mold and item numbers and lots of detailed informations.
The downside to this book is that you only find one picture per item (mostly) limiting your view by only offering one angle.
The price list is extensive enough to not leave colors out.
I personally enjoy the authors style of writing thoroughly with his light humor. Mocking Martha Stewart a little, because he seems to think that she's a stuck up snob that only wants the Super Old stuff and abominates the new colors for the most part. He tells funny stories about TV and where he's seen fiesta. However, a little more history and facts would sometimes be nice. I assume, people buy this book for information not funny short stories.
I thoroughly enjoy that fact that he includes uses for some odd pieces. Looking at some candle holders they could be anything. He explains what the item was meant for and what else it is commonly used for.
LAst but not least... unfortunately it seems like this author was not given the same acces to limited pieces and photographs in is therefore lacking some details on limited ed. pieces.

I'm both a collector and a bibliophile, and this is the first time I've ever thought it necessary to this say about any collector's book: In my opinion, this book stinks. A shame, as it's clear that the author has in-depth knowledge to impart. Unfortunately, it's clouded by the author's apparent dislike of dealers, fellow collectors, and the Homer Laughlin China Company itself.

The book designer's work is exuberant and cheerful, much as is Fiestaware; however, the author's text is mean spirited. I don't think I've ever seen an odder combination. I hope for better things from the obviously knowledgeable author in the future.

The idea for a book dedicated to Post-1986 (P86) Fiestaware® is a terrific idea and I was pleased to order it.

What a poor execution! Racheter's attempt is inconsistent, sophomoric and diseased with his unceasing attacks on Homer Laughlin China Company. (Who cares why he hates Homer Laughlin? Not me!)

The (little) new information and price guide for some P86 colors - the book's innovative features - are overshadowed by the pointless commentary.

Unfortunately the book isn't worth keeping for the pictures either... Don't buy this book!...

Great learning tool about fiesta dishes. Good pictures showing colors and their names. Quality book.

Anyone with any rudimentary knowledge of West Virginia history will appreciate this work by Barbara Rasmussen. A basic trait of most humans is that they will take care of the land they own and depend on for their existence. They will also have a sense of community unlike the many industrial giants that took advantage of not only West Virginia but many other parts of our country. West Virginia history is sadly filled with exploitation of the state's people and resources. Industrialism in West Virginia proved once again that without a sense of responsibility for helping your workers grow both personally and financially you breed a population of dependents and you end up with socialism. This lead to the Great Depression and we are just now climbing out of the socialist mess it left behind. I recommend that you read Rasmussen's book and decide for yourself where the truth lies.

This appears to be the senior thesis of a struggling C or D student. The writing is very poor and it appears that the writer decided what conclusions she would reach and then fit all the facts to reach that conclusion, and failed to consider other sides of the issue. A very one-sided, polemic and unintellectual book.

The work of a biased amateur with no sense of the true West Virginia. The methodology is poorly conceived and rigged to yield the author's desired outcome. This book is a classic example of how not to do history.

Living in the part of Virginia that this novel is set in and surrounded by the remains of plantations, homes and towns that are a part of the story really helps to understand just what the Lees had to survive to even exist. I cannot imagine getting on a horse or in a carriage and going from Williamsburg to the Rappahannock let alone Philadelphia. I think the authors did a very good job of bringing to light just how difficult living in Virginia was and just what type of person thrived here. They also brought up the differences the Virginians who lead an agricultural lifestyle had with the Northern states whose population was more city oriented and how that eventually lead to the Civil War. All in all I enjoyed the representation of the lives of these people but do agree that not all of them were as beautiful and handsome as depicted.

I've always been interested in the Lee family of Virginia, especially Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot, the Declaration of Indpedence signers, so I ordered this book, hoping it would give me an insight into the world the two lived in. The book did, in a way. Some of the best points were when the authors described the society of Old Virginia, the relationships between the Virginia families, and how the colonists lived. Thankfully, the authors did a good job of portraying Richard H. and Francis L., but after that, the book sort of went downhill. I definitely did not enjoy how the authors portrayed Henry 'Light Horse Harry' Lee. He came off as some whiny, simpering man, and it really annoyed me. But, other than that, this book is a great insight into the society of Old Virginia and a fair look at the Lee family, and their roll in our history

Tidewater Dynasty is a fictional account of the Lee family. It is based upon historic dates and facts. The glimpses of the Lee family are not true to life. All the Lee husbands are good looking, intelligent, perfect husbands, unselfish, ... All the wives have the same traits. There is one Lee who does not comform to the Lee image. I suppose he embodies all the bad traits of the Lee family so that none of the others had any.

I agree wholeheartedly with the other review of this book. However, I have faith that it one day will be valuable tool for me. For now, it sits on my shelf.

Unless you are familiar with the Fostoria line, this is not the book for you. As a collector who is just acquainting herself with glass, the arrival of this book is met with great disappointment.

Most pieces are unmarked, so a good reference to the patterns and color shades is valuable. Of the 240 pages, only 48 contain color pictures. The majority of the patterns are represented by black and white catalog clippings and silouette line drawings. Some patterns have no visual representation at all.

There is also a small section dedicated to reproductions with the warning that no value can be given to reproduced items. However, there are no tips on how to spot a reproduction.

Perhaps those already familiar with the patterns would find this a valuable tool, as the listings of pieces in each pattern appear to be complete and the patterns are sensibly listed in alphabetical order.

McCormick takes an old story of academic incompetence and prolongs a myth of internal McCarthyism and academic persecution generated by Mundel and others. Mundel was incredibly made a Department Chairman when she was a new academic with little experience in art and only a handful of semesters teaching at any level above graduate assistant. She had no history as an academic administrator. One does wonder how she magically garnered a Chairmanship on such thin talent and expertise. Such an appointment would otherwise be soundly criticized. No doubt Mundel had been exceptionally jealous when Schroder won the Hallmark Art Award in 1950, the year before this imbroglio.

Clearly McCormick never interviewed such key players as Schroder, whom he defames in this book, although Schroder was alive at the time of writing, still painting and recently retired after decades as a professor at the esteemed City College of New York. Schroder was in fact a lifelong liberal himself, and, with his wife Caroline Damerau, a civil rights worker before Mundel ever came to Fairmont. His wife Caroline had come to Fairmont upon their marriage at the end of World War II, having worked for Wild Bill Donovon in the OSS and for FDR himself and for the Democratic National Committee in Washington.

The Schroders were not jealous manipulative people, nor were they McCarthyites. Schroder was experienced as artist and teacher and on his way to becoming a major artist in America until his own career was derailed by this darling cause celebre of the Left and Mundel and Hand's own incompetence and pettiness. He was later honored for environmental excellence by the Hudson River Fisherman's Association and established one of the first wetland preservation parks, one of many causes he championed long before they came into fashion.

Far from teaching art as a trade, Schroder eschewed Bohemianism and its drugs and alcohol as trivialization and enervation of real painting, talent and human value. He taught art as a profession and as a spiritual glimpse into the inner workings of people. At Fairmont he pioneered an art program for returning GI's, encouraging them to release the angst, shock and inner conflict resulting from what they had seen, done and experienced in military service. He himself had been unable to serve, suffering lifelong heart defects and other effects of malaria and rheumatic fever, contracted as a child in Africa where his father had been station master and builder of schools and hospitals and, unfashionably early, envionmentalist who had warned of the coming environmental destruction of Madagascar. The family had a long liberal tradition.

McCormick does more than a disservice to these people and irresponsibly perpetuates gossip, pettiness and confusion of post War, Korean Conflict small town Appalachia isolated in an academic colony in West Virginia.

[...]

To correct the biographical details:
After attending Augsburg College and the Minneapolis School of Art (both located in Minneapolis, MN), Schroder graduated from Luther College in 1943. While at Luther, he also served as assistant faculty member in the Art Department which he helped develop. In 1944, he earned his MA degree at the University of Iowa where he was a student of Philip Guston.

Schroder taught art at various colleges and universities including Stephens College (Columbia, MO), Illinois College (Jacksonville, IL) and Blackburn College (Carlinville, IL) before joining Fairmont State College (Fairmont, WV). He left Fairmont in 1960 for the University of Cincinnati and later joined The City University of New York where he taught from 1965 until his retirement in 1986. He served as artist-in-residence at Mercy College (Dobbs Ferry, NY) after he retired until his death on April 26, 1990.

Should be required reading at Fairmont State College. Having moved away from WV in 1950, the year of my graduation from FSC, I was unaware of this hysterical scandal until an old friend sent me a copy of it on its publication. For shame, Fairmont! Wonder how many copies of this book might be found in the library at Fairmont State? One hopes at least one...

I was going to write a review, but then I saw that C. Blomberg had already said pretty much everything that needed to be said. But in the interests of recording a second opinion, I agree with everything in the other review except the praise of Levi's writing style. The book's cover blurbs give the same praise, but I didn't find the writing lyrical, poetic, or any otherwise praiseworthy. I did find the entire book badly organized and poorly edited. It seems to have been planned and written by taking the author's notecards, tossing them in the air, and then typing them in according to which landed closest to the desk. It relies far too much on prior knowledge of the subject (which might be fine for an in-depth scholarly work, but not for something that purports to be a gentle overview), does not treat non-Christian non-men with the depth it claims to, does not give the history in any coherent timeline, and in fact, does not tell any coherent story at all.

I wrote the following as a book response paper for a class.

Peter Levi's "The Frontiers of Paradise" was easy to read, but when finished I did not feel either confident that I had learned anything, nor entertained. The book was essentially the idle musings of a man who though he had sincere knowledge of Christian monasticism from his own experiences, and through his sister, a nun, did not appear to be a scholar of religions in more than the most casual way. I enjoyed his flights of fancy, the verbal ballet of excellently crafted sentences, yet felt that they'd been assembled haphazardly so that after the ballet I didn't know the story and was confused as to why the characters had appeared on stage at all.

The most serious flaws of Levi's book can be addressed by reading his very own introduction and then assessing whether he's accomplished the goals he set out for himself. "... discuss the most important historical turning-points in some detail, but to show as much as possible by examples, which have been picked for the light they shed..."(p. 9). In addition he said referring to monks from outside Christianity "I have tried to compare and contrast all kinds [of monastics]..."(p. 9). In explaining what he meant by that, he also pointed out that he had "paid particular attention to the position of women, to monks as others see them, and monks as they see themselves."(p. 10) I am not sure if talking about how monks see themselves has anything to do with comparing and contrasting all kinds of monks. For the purpose of my review only the mention of women in the preceding sentence will be evaluated. As a sort of afterthought Levi also claims that he has concentrated on the "more interesting" differences between different sorts of monks. To detail why I felt this book was a failure, I will address and attempt to demonstrate how he has failed to explain the historical turning points (or shed light with his examples), how he has failed to address all different sorts of monastics and how he has barely skimmed the surface of the subject of women monastics.

First Levi claims he will discuss the crucial turning points in the history of monasticism. It is true that he used many examples, and if he had only ever explained the significance of those examples, I might now have had `light shed' on my understanding of the history of Christian monasticism. Instead, I feel more confused. In order to understand Levi's examples I had to make extensive use of internet information sources. Clearly if one mentions the same terms or individuals over and over in a book it would be best to explain at least the first time, what they mean and why they are important. For example, in the second section, titled "History of Monks" one part is named "Pillars". Here Levi begins "St Stymeon Stylites got his name because he lied for the final forty years of his life, in the fifth century AD, on the top of a tall pillar at Antioch."(p. 44) In the following three pages though Levi provides us with some examples of Stylites and an overview of their history, teaching us that they were "treated as a special order of religion" (p. 45) and asking questions of their role and importance, he does not adequately answer even his own musings, but instead returns to examples without even the courtesy to close the section by speculating as to the disappearance of the Stylitists. What I learned from the Pillars section was that there were Stylites, and what they did was not a ritual. Some of them became very famous (with details of the spread of discussion on Stylites), certain Stylites endured certain horrifically uncomfortable experiences on their pillars and women couldn't go nearby them. As for reasons to become a Stylite, they may have chosen their spots as a way to prove their superiority over the `pagan' religions and they may have been similar to roosters in wanting to crow at sunrise from a high spot. Levi actually offers both of the previous sentences explanations for Stylitism back to back in a single sentence! This is how unflappably trivially his book seems to address what could have been a serious topic. Controlling himself for a moment, Levi suggests that their visibility must have emphasized their message, however the most that he explains their message is to say that they "...surely bore witness deliberately against the values of the world." (p. 48) After this brief foray into explanatory writing Levi returns to the mishmash and describes the strange examples of a few more men who probably thought that sitting on the top of a column brought them nearer to God. Unfortunately, since Levi has told us he'd discuss the important historical turning points, he has failed to prove to us that Stylites were a turning point (and not just a temporary hiccup) much less what would make them important. This passage certainly cannot be said to shed light on the subject, it merely shows an example of extreme weirdness in the history of western religion.

The next point Levi claims to address is that of being broader than Christianity, Levi supposedly is talking to us about all sorts of monks. The laughability of this statement can be proved merely by reading the table of contents. The first part of the book has chapters named "Monkishness, Monasteries, The Setting, The Calling and The Ruins". In order to see in these extremely open ended chapters what sort of inclusiveness he's accomplished, I will pick randomly the middle on, "The Setting". In this chapter we see reference to "Indian holy cows" (p. 24). Perhaps I was being unfair. Let me check another. How about "The Calling". This chapter includes a section on Shakespeare, and a poem from Robert Southwell. There is no mention of anything beyond Europe. In Part Two of the book there is a chapter called "The East". It is all of one and a quarter pages, and flat out states the author's inability to write anything on the subject at all, "admitting to uncertainty... history depends on its available sources, and these are better and fuller in some areas than in others."(p. 35) He continues to explain that there isn't good documentation of the non-Christian religions in the east, a "fact" that I certainly know to be nothing of the sort. He says he's "incompetent to trace what happened in Japan..."(p. 35) and begins the next paragraph with a highly questionable statement "The basis of Indian monasticism is the rejection of this world..."(p. 35) and seems to be confusing Hinduism with Buddhism, or at least the order of their appearance. In this short section he has managed to spread disinformation, and instead of the sorts of examples of individual monks he chooses from the Christian tradition, he's lumped all of the eastern traditions together without mention of a single character besides Guatama Buddha. We can clearly see that he doesn't have the education necessary to include something outside the Christian tradition in this book and hence shouldn't have claimed to be doing so.

Levi claims that he'll discuss the position of women in monasteries and in monasticism. Although, he throws in a few words here and there, praising the nuns, or mentioning the fact that there were nuns at such and such a monastery or that nuns have historically had it harder, in his chapter on Holy Women again we can see that his inclusion is nothing more than a haphazard nod in the direction of his sister, who is a nun. Though the "Holy Women" chapter is eight pages in length, in a book of 205 pages is certainly not enough. The chapter, as is promised by the title, retells a shortened version of the lives of several exemplary women monastics, including Bridget of Sweden, mother of St Catherine, Etheldritha and Jutta. It is only on the last page that Levi attempts to make a point about women's religious orders. He admits a lack of knowledge, "I know nothing about women's manuscripts except in the case of Hildegard, and the suspicion that the nuns at Winchester would bear investigation." (p. 106) and makes some sweeping statements capped with "I have no idea why this should be..." (p. 106). In other words, we hardly feel confident in his assessment of women monastics and the chapter has not a single word of women outside the Christian tradition.

Overall, this book was a large disappointment to me. Despite his lyrical sentences, the lack of organization and follow-through made the entire piece of work feel like the pet project of a slightly senile old man, not that of a scholar. The one piece of credit (aside from the well-crafted sentences) that I will give him though is his ability to pick out the "more interesting" differences between different types of monks. Though I couldn't see much of a difference between some of these sects, in his vivid descriptions of worms crawling on bodies, digestive tracts like camels, and using manuscripts to block beer barrels I felt the sort of morbid fascination that causes one to read a tabloid newspaper. In this way, he definitely has picked out the more interesting and vivid examples, and for that I must give him credit.

The authors practice all the arts of yellow journalism. Present are scare tactics, lots of loaded words and phrases, and accurate but scary facts that are out of context and unrelated to the questions the book is supposed to be about. For instance, that fluorine gas is lethal is has nothing to do with the concerns the book is meant to be about. This is just as stupid as suggesting table salt is bad for you because chlorine gas was used in WWI for killing troops in the trenches.

And there are subtle but apparently intentional inconsistencies that seem to be alarming. Consider the cover photographs with a picture of a non-stick coated cooking pan next to the word "Lethal" in large and contrasting colors. Yet buried toward the end of the early chapter a brief statement that they are not the cause of alarm.

The tactics used in the book are just plain sophomoric and dilute and detract from the seriousness of potential problem. They certainly skewed my opinion about the trustworthiness of the materials presented. There are legitimate public questions about the presence of perfluorinated materials loose in our environment that need answering. This book is worth reading if you've never heard of PFOA or C8, but don't stop reading with this book.

-Not what I expected ..Not enough written text..But some pictures I'd not seen Pretty Good what there was of it...

It's unfortunate that my home state--a state with such a rich cultural history and some fascinating facts and stories could be condensed into such a dry, boring, uninformative book. Most of the things about WV that I was excited to read about weren't even in there. I read a review somewhere that stated it contained "everything there is to know about West Virginia" -- HARDLY! The nepotism and intellectual inbreeding of the state is clearly evident in what was added and what was not added to this "encyclopedia." What is missing is the down in the dirt, REAL history of the state. I'm not sure if they were trying to cast West Virginia in some kind of whitewashed light, or if they are just that naive, but the editors have done us a serious disservice in trying to contain such a wild, beautiful state in this pathetic volume. The only reason I gave it two stars is that it is about my favorite subject, even if it is skewed.

I love all things Fiesta, but this book is terrible. My main complaint is the "quality" of the photographs. They are so grainy-- sort of clear but fuzzy at the same time. And the color is way off. I mistook several pictures of gray Fiestaware for lilac at first glance! So forget about his "comparison" of the greens because it will not help you. What gets me is that any crap digital camera would have done a better job but from the reflections in the dishes it looks like he had a professional shoot the pictures. By the way, I also completely ignored the text (even though it is in LARGE print), since the Huxfords' book and the HLCCA's book cover everything. The bottom line: don't waste your time or money.

First off Fiesta is beautiful, but the photographs in this book are terrible!!! Not one photograph shows an accurate depiction of the subject. Many photographs seem blurred or fuzzy.
Pass this by and get "Fiesta, Harlequin, and Kitchen Kraft Dinnerwares" by The Homer Laughlin China Collectors Association. You will not ne disappointed....unless you purchase Warman's book.