Virginia Books

Wounded after intervening in a student's life, Faye Harper retreats to a childhood haunt to find respite. Rather than the expected peace, however, she quickly finds herself in the midst of a criminal investigation. Detective Aleksy Denko, also from Chicago, unofficially seeks answers in arms deal gone wrong that left a former partner dead.

Aleksy underestimates Faye's resilience, viewing her as a cream puff. Cute like Faye is not his type, although she can make him understand its appeal. What he really needs is a cover, and Faye can provide it. Unfortunately, Faye has to get involved with anything that involves risk. Too bad her own actions have already put her in danger.

A faced paced, heart pounding read, ALL A MAN CAN ASK provides unexpected twists that makes author Virginia Kantra's novels a must read. Unexpected courage and surprising compassion bring these characters vividly alive, even as drug addicted teens, stretchy bras, and romantic entanglement also intriguing elements that prove these character's all too human flaws. Indeed, the fast paced plot and the strong characterizations are nicely balanced, resulting in a tale that is at once deadly yet richly balanced by powerful emotions and physical attraction. ALL A MAN CAN ASK comes very highly recommended.

Thematic poetry anthologies are a risky business nowadays. A generation of language writing and post-avant work has productively questioned both representation and subject matter as distinct ideas. It has also contested the traditional lyric "speaker" in favor of other forms of self: fragmented, culturally determined, political. By its nature, a thematic collection walks right into the middle of these debates.

So why does this one work so well?

For several reasons. First, London as a site stands for the idea of metropolis--the place where relationships between an individual self, however constituted, and the human collective are forged, fought over, savored, and resented. Spaar has brought together a diverse range of voices and points of view about this process, sparing no tender feelings. Here is Stein's "Threadneedle Street" (on which stands the Bank of England):" I am going to conquer. I am going to be flourishing. I am going to be industrious. Please forgive me everything." Linton Kwesi Johnson's "New Crass Massakah" about the racially motivated New Cross fire resonates with the "Fire-coal sky hanging over that biblical city" from Martin Sorrell's translation of Verlaine's "Limping Sonnet." Such cross-cultural and -temporal resonances make the book both stimulating and provocative.

Another reason for the book's success is that many of its poems take London as a motif or incidental setting rather than subject. So the anthology's "theme" also works as a kind of formal constraint, like an acrostic. Thus we see Ted Berrigan and Patience Agbabi making poems out of snapshots of life-in-progress, Adrian Mitchell apostrophizing the statues in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, and the cavalier poet Herrick celebrating in Ovidian style "His Returne to London" from his "exile" in Devon. This idea of London as motif or formal device is strengthened by Spaar's division of the book into four sections named for the elements--earth, air, fire, and water--an arbitrary structure that allows her to juxtapose poems by characteristics other than narrative content or their place in an "emotional arc."

And it's those juxtapositions, along with the selections included, that give the anthology its third strength: it's full of surprises--unfamiliar poems by familiar poets; exciting newer writers rubbing elbows with the great dead, and a satisfying variety of tone. There's humor, sadness, Masterpiece Theater propriety, and raucous outrageousness. Whether you know London personally or only as a literary idea, this collection, like all good anthologies, will send you looking for more work by the poets collected here.

Clarkson's off-beat, charming life lessons, from a to z are accompanied by Vehslage's loving, humorous and tender drawings. Her signature big noses are there and so is sense of the endearing inner life of children.

This book contains orders to record deeds, wills and powers of attorney for this period, lawsuits, witnesses, records of some Orphans Courts and Courts of Oyer and Terminer not found elsewhere. The names of many individuals not found in other county records appear here. There is a detailed index, and an index of names of slaves. 291 pages, softbound.(Prince Edward County was not cut away from Amelia until 1754, and Nottoway county was not cut off until 1789, therefore this record contains the court orders for both of these present-day counties at a very early period in their existence.)

Lovely book with pleasant text and beautiful color photos of this stunning collection of American antiques. Individual pieces as well as rooms all shown in color. This is a Williamsburg Foundation publication.

The price beats what most college bookstores charge. I always reccommend purchasing online it could cut the cost of the book in half. However if your going to purchase your college book online you should visit the college bookstore and find out what the instructor requires for the class a few weeks ahead of time so you dont get stuck paying for expedited shipping.

American Lives: The Stories Of The Men And Women Lost On September 11 provides a bibliography of the men and women who lost their lives on Stepember 11th, recounting their achievements, their family ties, and how they came to be victims of disaster. American Lives is an outstanding tribute which brings to life their stories and those they left behind.

Frederick R. Brandt & John Wilmerding's "American Marine Painting" is a 152 page trade paperback. Published in 1976 by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA, this work is a catalog of an exhibit entitled 'American Marine Paintings' which occurred from September 27, 1976 through December 12, 1976 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Mariners Museum. Brandt was at that time the Assistant Project Director at the Museum, and Wilmerding (author of a 1968 work with the same title) was a consultant to the exhibition. The work includes over 70 illustrations, including 5 plates in color, which are fine examples of marine paintings, nautical themes, sea and shoring in American art. Many artists, such as Birch, Corne, Salmon, Cole, Whistler, Homer, Eakins, and Bellows, are represented.

In its ongoing efforts to make accessible the American experience in literature, the Library of America has published two-volume anthologies covering American poetry in the Nineteenth Century and American poetry in the Twentieth Century. The LOA's most recent anthology, "American Poetry: the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" is a single volume and it presents the poetry of the earliest settlers -- poems written for the most part in America before there was a United States. In its 950 pages, the volume includes over 300 poems by 108 poets, including many works previously unpublished, together with biographies of the poets and explanatory notes prepared by the editor, David S. Shields. The poems and poets are chronologically arranged.

While Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American poetry will be familiar to many, most readers will find a great deal that is new in this recent collection. This anthology is the most comprehensive ever undertaken for early American poetry. As Shields explained in an interview he gave for the Library of America, access to printing was limited for early poets. They tended to meet in clubs, homes, and cafes to exchange their works. Poetry had a regional influence, and many works included in this collection were discovered in manuscript only recently. Thus, there is the excitement of reading and learning something new in approaching this volume.

Poetry is the mirror of the hearts and aspirations of a people, and the value of this collection lies in the insight it offers into colonial America in its diversity and preoccupations. Many of the poems in the early part of the book were written by New England Puritans and reflect their theological and religous bent. There are a great many ceremonial poems, apparently preached from the pulpit as an elegy on the death of a leader. Other poems constitue reflections on America and its promise and contrast, from varying perspectives, life in New England from life in the Old England. A small number of poems are critical of the Puritans and their severity. Michael Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom", presenting a vision of hellfire to sinners was a famous poem of its day and much of it is included here. Edward Taylor's meditative verse became generally available only in the late 1930s, and a generous selection of his poetry is presented here.

As the volume progresses, various voices come into play from the middle colonies and from the South. There are comic works, even ribald poems, poems describing, from various perspectives, the settlers encounters with the Indian tribes (and some poems by the Indians themselves), reflections on nature, on urban life (I enjoyed the poem by Joseph Breintnall "A plain Description of one single street in this City"), on commerce, and on the relations between the sexes. There are poems by Southern plantation owners which reflect their early ambivalence over slavery. And there are many poems about the American revolution written from a variety of perspectives, from ardent Patriots to the Loyalists who remained, at great cost to themselves, devoted to the British monarchy.
Women are well-represented in this anthology, including the works of many women who led outwardly quiet lives, (Susanna Wright, Mary Hirst Pepperell, for example, to others who were highly active intellectually in revolutionary America (such as Mercy Otis Warren).

The poems in the volume tend to be lengthy. They use a variety of verse forms, almost all of which are in rhyme, and in many respects seem to follow patterns established by the English metaphysical poets and by John Donne or by later writers such as Alexander Pope. The poems vary widely in quality. There are many enjoyable works included but there are some which seem amateurish and which will be a struggle for most readers. The collection, on balance, seems less valuable for its literary worth than for the insight it offers into a developing people and an age. The best way to approach this book, as with many anthologies of poetry, is through browsing and through reading a little at a time rather than through working through the entire text at once.

The poets in the volume whose names will be recognized by some readers include Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), the first woman to have a volume of poetry published in English, Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), a brilliant African American woman who came to America as a slave and wrote beautifully during a short life, and Philip Frenau (1752 -- 1832) whose work spans the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Frenau and Joel Barlow (1754-1812) whose homespun poem "The Hasty-Pudding" is included in this volume are the only two poets represented both in this collection and in the LOA anthology of Nineteenth Century American poetry. The works of Bradstreet, Wheatley, Frenau, and Barlow, are good places to start for the reader wanting to work into the volume.

One of the poets included in this volume is George Berkely (1685-1753). Berkeley's idealism is familiar to students of philosophy, but he also spent three years in America in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a college. Berkeleley wrote a poem about his experiences in America, "Verses on the Prospect of planting arts and Learning in America." It concludes:

"Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way;
The four first Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the Day;
Time's noblest Offspring is the last."

This vision of America and its future is an inspiring summary of what is best in the dream of the early American settlers.

Robin Friedman

As a Social Studies teacher at a Middle School I found this book valuable as a resource to share the events and stories of the American Revolution with my students. The book is readable and provides the inside story on key events that shaped the American Revolution and our country. I recommend this book to anyone interested in American Revolution history and especially to teachers searching for insights to share with their students.