Tennessee Books

This is a GREAT addition to any Tennessee library. Many quotes and tidbits from all eras of Tennessee Football. If there is a negative I would ask for more!!!!!

Well worth the read for die-hard TN fans...if you love the SEC you'll like it...try out "A Tailgater's Guide To SEC Football" as well to learn more about the nation's toughest conference.

Anyone who is a diehard Tennessee football knows that the players, coaches, fans, etc. are a big part of the winning tradition at UT. Alan Ross takes some phrases and quotes from these people and creates a book that is a perfect small gift to any Tennessee Football fan!

My wife recently put out some bird feeders in our back yard and she loves seeing all of the birds coming into our yard to eat. There were a couple of birds that she didn't recognize and not being native to Tennessee, this book really came in handy in identifying them. The size of the book is perfect and the pictures are great.

This is a great field birding book. I am really pleased with the arrangement of the book, as it helps me to quickly find the bird I am looking for.

It is as complete as you could expect a book of this size to be.

One of the joys of life is the opportunity to have a conversation with someone whose life experiences are vastly different from our own. My curiosity about the real-world work life of an underground coal miner, ... plus a chance web search, led me to Black Days, Black Dust. What a gem!

In reading this book it almost seemed like I was having a 'personal conversation' while sitting on the miner's front porch. It is a true account of 40 years of working underground in the coal fields. Very interesting account of every day life in a coal town (both above and below ground). It is a world apart from today's high-rise city office worker, ...yet curiously in other ways, there are many similarities!

Easy to read & very informative.

One of the joys of life is the opportunity to have a conversation with someone whose life experiences are vastly different from our own. My curiosity about the real-world work life of an underground coal miner, ... plus a chance web search, led me to Black Days, Black Dust. What a gem!

In reading this book it almost seemed like I was having a 'personal conversation' while sitting on the miner's front porch. It is a true account of 40 years of working underground in the coal fields. Very interesting account of every day life in a coal town (both above and below ground). It is a world apart from today's high-rise city office worker, ...yet curiously in other ways, there are many similarities!

Easy to read & very informative.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, in the coal country. When a friend told me about Black Days, I thought I would give it a try. I'm glad I did. I have heard and read much of the way of life in 20th century Appalachia, but never had it tied together in a single book. If you are curious about life in the beginning of the last century; about the workings of the coal industry or simply want an insight into "How things used to be in West Virginia" try Black Days. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

BLOOD FEUD is a terrific novel! I was amazed by the beauty of the prose and the narrative's drive. It has detailed descriptions of hard country and hard characters and often is told in the poetic dialect spoken by the southern Ohio hill people. The characters are credible, intense, and larger than life. They completely capture your imagination and emotions. I'd read Thomas's earlier book of short stories, THE PHOTOTROPIC WOMAN, but although they were small masterpieces, they didn't prepare me for the epic sweep and powerful narrative of her novel. It's a historical family tale filled with life. One of the best books I've read in ages. I recommend it to any serious reader.

Thomas is a fine short story author, and Blood Feud does not disappoint. It is that rare American work in which the full horrors of the nation's class, regional, and white ethnic (as opposed to non-white races being shown as the sole victims) persecution are displayed. If its truths did not cut so sharply, it would have been more widely reviewed and better known. Blood Feud is an example that the major presses are all too often reluctant to publish fiction that isn't formulaic and isn't in stride with our eras mores and assumptions. Kudos to the University of Tennessee Press for this one.

Thomas is a fine short story author, and Blood Feud does not disappoint. It is that rare American work in which the full horrors of the nation's class, regional, and white ethnic (as opposed to non-white races being shown as the sole victims) persecution are displayed. If its truths did not cut so sharply, it would have been more widely reviewed and better known. Blood Feud is an example that the major presses are all too often reluctant to publish fiction that isn't formulaic and isn't in stride with our eras mores and assumptions. Kudos to the University of Tennessee Press for this one.

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Nicely laid out, good photographs, very clear. The descriptions and background information on patterns, very informational. Good value.

For the money you can't do better than this if you collect Blue Ridge Pottery. Although there are many patterns of Blue Ridge dinnerware not pictured the majority of the most collectible patterns are. The color photos are great and the history of the company is very informative. I have been able to identify more than 90% of the Blue Ridge dinnerware I have picked up at flea markets and estate sales with this book.

A crazy mountain man has kidnapped Owen's sister. He must find his sister Emaline and bring her home. Owen's search takes him to the Chickamauga territory and bad towns. He has some help from Jubal a run-a-slave. There is enough action to keep you turning the pages late into he night. By Ruth Thompson author of "Natchez Above The River" and "The Bluegrass Dream"

Writing as a Small BusinessQualifying Laps: A Brewster County NovelSins of the Fathers: A Brewster County NovelTravelersNatchez Above The River: A Family's Survival In The Civil WarThe Bluegrass Dream: A Wilderness Adventure of Early Settlers

I was in a camp hunting with a few friends when I noticed the book, not much of a reader I picked it up just for something to do in the quiet of the night. I couldn't put the book down in just two days I read half the book. My wife and daughter were shocked to find that I had read that much of it in that short time, but I had to leave the book behind seeing that the owner had not read it yet. Now I find it is not being published I can not find a copy of it. I have read since then two other books from the Underhill Series and recieved four more for christmas and can't wait to get started on them. I am still looking for the Canebrake Men and it looks like I'll have to wait till the next hunting trip to find out what happens. Very good book very much recommend it to anyone who does not enjoy reading.

Judd has the curious ability to ingest history so that when it is retold in his historical novels, it is expressed with an urgency and a raconteur's sense of the present, which lends his characters credence, both the fictional creations as well as the actual historical figures. This is a tale of a strong frontier lad named Owen Killefer who attempts to track down his sister after she is kidnapped by a crude, homocidal mountain man named Turndale, who wiped out the rest of Killefer's family after they had invited him to share their table. Killefer escapes using his own wits and natural suspicion -- attributes that serve him well throughout the novel, which takes him deep into dangerous Chickamauga territory, roughneck towns, and lone woods, where with the help of Jubal, an escaped slave, he is able to come closer to rescuing his sister Emaline. Occasionally Judd lapses into too-straightforward a relaying of history, but in those moments pure storytelling, you would be hard-pressed to find a writer of historical novels better able to capture the dialects, the smells of rabbit cooking over an open fire, or the scent of breath sweetened with cedar twigs (as well as the angst of fearing for your scalp in the rugged forntier) the way Judd does here.

This is a work to be carefully and reflectively read. The story itself is a simple one of a failed rescue attempt from a cavern. The various characters' lives which are written as sidelights to the main story are of what is of interest in the story. Unfortunately, to this reader at any rate, these rich characterazations are all too abruptly abandoned. Each one of these lost characters would be worthy of a novel in themselves. I feel as though the character Dorthy, for an example, is a well-developed character study but eventually is just left hanging. Worse yet, the main protagonist, Isaac, simply runs away. I found this to be most distressing.

I found this book in a used bookstore and just opened it up and started reading. Something about it got me hooked, and I just keep going. The novel is constructed brilliantly, with Warren providing large backgrounds for all of his charecters in the first 150 or so pages, and then the "experiences" of the different individuals caving in on one another. The end of the novel contains some of the most powerful dialogues scenes I have ever read. I loved this book.

Here's a book that is becoming more and more rare... a book about complex people with complex motives. Warren's poetic novel is wonderful to read just for the phrasing at times, but the characters, their history, their thoughts and actions, and their interactions are what really brings this to the top of my short list. It's a book for a book group. So many ideas so close to the surface, without being absolutely thrown in your face. Without giving away the end, I can say that you see much of it coming, but you don't care. You want to read every word to see what Warren has to say about the connections and lack of connections between people.

I love this book! It is great how lucy gets to keep Clipper! The drawings in this book are amazing! I have to say, this is one of the best horse books there is!

i have a tenn. walker horse and i think this book describes the breed perfectly and the way the book is written makes you feel like you were really there you should read this book you will be glad you did i was

It is 1912 in a small town in Tennessee. Ten year old Lucy loves her family's horse, Clipper. So she is dismayed when her father decides to get a car and sell Clipper. Can Lucy come up with a plan to keep her horse?

Hannah Ropes was a feminist of her day. Yet she believed a wounded soldier needed a motherly woman's touch. These letters are a great gift and the editing job on the book is superb. Ropes worked herself to death in Union hospitals in Washington D.C. The Union lost a good nurse and history lost a terrific writer. (In fact Ropes was a writer before the war.) She battled anyone who got in the way of good health care including going all the way to and old friend, the Secretary of War to roust out a thief in the hospital system. She poignantly describes the wounded wrecks who passed her way and the efforts made by those who cared are poignantly described as well. Ropes writing abilities were great. They are aided markedly by the brief biography of her which serves as introduction to the book. Through it, we come to know the iron will of the woman which was so beneficial to her as a nurse but which she herself down-played. For any who value "first person history" this book is a gem!

A young woman treads the hallways of the Union hospital with a mission to serve the young men that are fighting in the bloodiest war seen on this fair land of ours. While her son is out fighting the battle, her battle is at the hospital attempting to provide better care for the soldiers.

Excellent content, I just wasn't too crazy about the format that it was wrote in.

Hannah Ropes kept a diary for only one year during the time she served as a nurse in the Civil War. She actually supervised Louisa Mae Alcott and was responsible for many of the reforms in the hospital where she worked. She was a well-spoken woman who was also not afraid to stand up to her male supervisors. She cared very much for, "her boys" as she called the patients she worked over day and night. She is one of those women who has not been given credit and has not been well-known until recently. Her untimely death ended a daring career as a feminist and take-charge Civil War Nurse. This is fascinating and inspirational reading.

In his preface to this book, Irving Younger applauds Darrow's systematic annihilation of poor, befuddled Bryan. "Analysis of this kind of drama is irrelevant. One can only smile, admire, and wonder," he says. Although Younger declined to analyze Darrow's examination of Bryan, the contemporary press (most of whom staunchly supported teaching evolution) were not so reticent to judge. Edward J. Larsen, in the Pultizer Prize winning history of the trial, "Summer for the Gods," summed it up thus: "[T]he nation's press initially saw little of lasting significance in the trial [whose centerpiece was Darrow's examination of Bryan] beyond its having exposed Bryan's empty head and Darrow's mean spirit." p. 202.

Some quotes from contemporary sources found on page 207 of Larsen's book: Walter Lippman of the "New York World": "Now that the chuckling and giggling over the heckling of Bryan by Darrow has subsided it is dawning upon the friends of evolution that science was rendered a wretched service by that exhibition." The New Orleans "Times Picayune": "Mr. Darrow, with his sneering 'I object to prayer!' and with his ill-natured and arrogant cross-examination of Bryan on the witness stand, has done more to stimulate 'anti-evolution' legislation in the United States than Mr. Bryan and his fellow literalists, left alone, could have hoped for." The Vanderbilt University humanist and champion of evolution, Edwin Mims: "When Clarence Darrow is put forth as the champion of the forces of enlightenment to fight the battle for scientific knowledge, one feels almost persuaded to become a Fundamentalist."

As Larsen explains in "Summer for the Gods," Darrow's examination assumed the status of a legendary victory only after the release of the McCarthy-era morality play "Inherit the Wind," which took great dramatic license in depicting the examination as having "won" the Scopes Trial.

When a lawyer performs as mean-spirited an examination as Darrow did of Bryan, the lawyer's rabid fans are enthralled, his enemies are enraged, and those on the fence are encouraged to join the enemy. Darrow's examination of Bryan should be studied as a fine example of how not to perform a cross examination.

Finally, you don't have to hear someone else's take on one of the most spectacular court cases this country has ever seen. Decide for yourself who outwitted who in this battle of the courtroom titans. This book includes only the exact words from the cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow. A must read for all those who wish to know how the cross-examination really ran.

The public recollection of what happened when Darrow questioned Bryan in the case of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes is a mixture of topics and outbursts. Most accounts of the trial, as well as the fictionalized version in "Inherit the Wind," include the discussion of the Bible Stories of Jonah being swallowed by the whale/big fish and Joshua making the sun stand still. The crucial point of the exchange comes when Darrow forced Bryan to admit the days of creation in Genesis were not 24-hour days, thereby forcing Bryan to deny the Fundamentalist's literal interpretation of the Bible. Scopes himself called it the "great shock that Darrow had been laboring for all afternoon." However, the actual exchange does not support such an interpretation. Darrow specifically asked about the number of days involved in creation. A fuller examination of the transcript, which this volume provides, indicates Darrow was trying to get at not only the length of creation but the DATE as well, intending to get Bryan to endorse Bishop Usher's infamous calculation the earth was less than six thousand years old in order to confront Bryan with evidence of civilizations considerably older. The key to the exchange is that Bryan gives a preemptive answer, declaring the days of creation were not 24-hour days BEFORE Darrow asked the specific question, in order to avoid agreeing to Usher's flawed calculations. More importantly, Bryan volunteered the information twice, each time cutting Darrow off from a particular line of question.

Moral of the Story: When there are primary documents available, such as this volume which provides the entire transcript of the trial as taking from the stenographers record, you are better served by reading them rather than secondary sources that tend to privilege a play/movie rather than what really happened.