Campbell Books

I have known the author for a while and I can tell you he is an extremely enthusiastic teacher of Campbell's Hero's Journey. This is a great introductory work, but if you really want to understand the Hero's Journey check out one of this guys workshops.

When I read this book, I actually did it because of I had to read a book for school. But when I actually started read it, I realized what a well-written, good, nice book it is. It is about a kid called Barra, he seems to know an angel and thinks the angel could help a man that lives at his place and who is to die of illness. But actually the angel helps Barra, maybe in another way that Barra thought. The best thing on this book is that the dialogues are written in spoken English, or Scottish. I liked it a lot.

It would be easy to make the case that Gen. Ambrose Burnside had his best day of the Civil War (1861-1865) on November 29, 1863 in Knoxville at the Battle of Fort Sanders. It would be equally easy to make the case that Gen. James Longstreet had his worst day there (except for that terrible day at the Battle of the Wilderness in May, 1864 where a "friendly fire" minie ball struck him in the throat, exiting from his right shoulder, severing several nerves in his arm).

After the Chickamauga Campaign (August-September, 1863), General Braxton Bragg, commanding the Confederate forces around Chattanooga, felt that chasing General Ambrose Burnside from Knoxville back to Kentucky would ease the pressure on him at Chattanooga. On November 14, Bragg dispatched an expeditionary force to Knoxville under Longstreet with his 12,000 infantrymen and General Joe Wheeler's 5,000 cavalrymen. Burnside had about 23,000 troops in East Tennessee, of which 14,000 were stationed at Knoxville.

On the same day, November 14, Burnside rushed southwest from Knoxville to evacuate his Federal troops from Loudon, believing Longstreet would outnumber him and overwhelm his Knoxville fortifications. Both generals felt that the first to reach Campbell's Station on the Kingston Road would block or capture the other. In a rather brilliant maneuver, Burnside's federals met the Confederates there on November 16. Burnside's main column arrived at Noon and Longstreet's lead units 15 minutes later.

Reeves' book has the details but, briefly, at nightfall that day Burnside, expecting more attacks at daylight, successfully pulled his troops back and into the formidable defenses at Knoxville. The Federals had lost 318 killed and wounded of the 5000 engaged and the Confederates 174 killed and wounded. But the Confederates suffered as much by losing the race to Knoxville.

That loss set the stage for the Siege of Knoxville and the eventual defeat they suffered on November 29 when the Confederates made their dawn attack on Fort Sanders where Gen. Orlando Poe had engineered almost impregnable defenses. (Yes, that's the same Orlando Poe who would serve on the Lighthouse Board and engineer the giant locks at Sault San Marie on the Great Lakes later in his career.)

In 20 minutes the battle of Ft. Sanders was finished. In those few minutes Longstreet had lost over 800 men, Burnside only 13. Longstreet took a few days to assemble his wounded and retreated through Strawberry Plains and Mossy Creek (present day Jefferson City) to Russellville, where he spent two miserably cold months before he proceeded back to the battlefields of Virginia. The Union army controlled Knoxville for the remainder or the war. The armies had stripped East Tennessee of its foodstuffs and livestock. Guerrilla warfare, hunger, and deprivation marked the period.

Reeves has supplied details of a chapter in the story that had been largely missing-- the details of the Battle of Campbell Station with an excellent text, imposing color paintings of the battle scenes, including Paul Long's outstanding painting, Orlando Poe's detailed maps of the overall ring of defenses around Knoxville, and excellent maps of the scene of the two major battles (Campbell Station and Ft. Sanders).

The book is 8-1/2" x 11" in size with a transcription of an article that appeared in the December 7, 1863 issue of the New-York Daily Tribune, as well the Siege of Knoxville, the Battles of Chattanooga and Chickamauga, and other action. The book is well edited and produced without typos that distract this reader when they occur.

By profession Charles A. Reeves is a cartographer. Real students of the battles should Google "Reeves Maps" and purchase the 17x22" version of Poe's map of Knoxville and its defenses (Map #164) and a detailed Ft. Sanders map (Map #253). They are the type of period War Department maps that permit real study of the battles. This Reeves' book and his maps are highly recommended.

J.C. (Jim) Tumblin, Past-President
Knoxville Civil War Roundtable

Not only a good review of what a changed world looks like and Heroes who have already paved the way - but also a great source of 'how to get there'. This book will take your cozy life and challenge you - shaking you to the core... getting to the things that matter - the treasure of a life well lived instead of a wealthy life squandered.
I'd read this book over and over.

I bought this book after looking at it for about 20 seconds. I was not disappointed. Its' main topic is making tassels out of beads, however in the course of describing, making, and displaying her creations in this book, there arise a lot of different and unusual tricks, techniques and ways with beads. This book is great if you want to make beaded tassels; if you work with beads and need some new ideas and inspirations; or, if the creative well is running dry and you need to graze in some new territory. I do work with beads in peyote, sculptural peyote, Ndebele, brickstitch, squarestitch and wired floral work. I found the instructions in this book for the beading techniques quite good, however, if you have no experience in the above techniques and intend to learn the techniques from this book I don't think that will work. You do need prior knowledge with at least peyote stitch and brick stitch to make many, but not all of the tassels described. Other than that, which is more of a heads up than a critisism, I would highly recommend this book to any and all beadworkers and creative persons everywhere. An excellent and valued addition to my beading bookshelf.

I have done a few beaded projects: I tried bead knitting a small bag and I made a really stunning tomato pincushion with beaded crochet. This book covers those techniques in the glossary/instructions in the back, but the main focus is on various beading techniques to make really beautiful jewelry.

Most of the jewelry are bands of woven beading, using needles and various seed beads such as Japanese seed beads, Miyukis, Delicas and bicone crystals, for example. But there are also semi-precious stone beadwork mixed with beads and silver tubes (Heishi) and so forth. The book is divided into bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and rings. The stitches involved are peyote, brick, right angle weaving, bead embroidery, crochet, stringing and wire work. Quite an assortment of techniques.

The beaded rings were quite interesting; most of the time, we expect to see anything but a ring in beading. However, the "scrunchie" ring done with elastic and heishi metal beads and Swarovski crystals looks like a project that a crafter might find just the thing to get into beading.

The necklaces include a stunning pearl net choker and a one-to-many strand necklace that looks like ones you see made by famous costume jewelry designers.

Ther are 40 projects in this book, enough to keep the most avid beader busy for hours, and all of the projects looked like something you'd wear fashionably, i.e, not-home-made looking

My daughters are now in college, but sometimes will respond to a quesiton with, "Beats Me, Claude." We still can quote some of the lines from this wonderfully written and illustrated book which is part of a series. I purchased it for my daughters as a surprise Christmas gift!

There are a tremendous number of stories about George "Beau" Brummell in many sources, many of which I read on my way to this book. Many authors have a highly negative attitude toward Brummell, having already decided he must be a bad person because he did not have any serious calling in life, and encouraged others to not be serious--his most heinous crime to the Victorians, who got to filter his image through a glass of prim righteousness. They kept his myth alive, though, through loving to use him as an example of how the frivolous will and must come to a bad end. (This, of course, ignores the many equally frivolous dandies who had happy later lives, like "Apollo" Raikes or Lord Alvanley.)

Campbell takes an even-handed approach to her subject, digs back to primary material, and admits to the many areas that will simply never be accurately filled in at this late date (Brummell's own memoirs were lost). For example, she found and reports the actual source of "Wales, ring the bell": a story involving a very drunken young Navy man, not Brummell at all. She discards all the later myth, where every amusing story of caddish coxcombery was unfairly attributed to Brummell, as a way to add importance to the joke.

Her most valuable service may be to not take Brummell's wit any more seriously than he and his audience did. Too many judgemental authors grimly report stories like "champagne blacking" or "put in with a damp stranger" to show how pea-brained, arrogant, or utterly air-headed Brummell was, rather than noting that his hearers were amused, even to laughter, by his purposeful exaggerations. He was, in his own way, an entertainer, whose power and position rested on his ability to amuse and excite admiration in a terminally bored social set.

She repeats many original impressions by people who actually met him, again countering myth with original sources. She also gives excellent short sketches of his particular friends and patrons, who are often ignored or dismissed as mere fashionable fribbles by writers whose only interest is, at heart, political history, rather than the life of the times.

The book contains a number of illustrations: all those known of Brummell, those of his particular friends, and scenes such as interiors of the Royal Opera and Brighton Pavilion. How that facing page 113 ever crept in to a work by so careful researcher amazes me (I'm inclined to think the Art Department dug up every visual reference to the Beau and did not check with the author). This engraving shows a ball at Almack's, in which one figure is supposedly Brummell. But several gentlemen wear black satin stocks (unheard of during Brummell's reign), and the ladies' Psyche knots and tight bodices down to a nearly natural waist scream 1830s, when Brummell had last been to Almack's in 1816!

If you have any reason to wish to see the ultimate icon of dandies as he was in his time, not as French "dandyism" or Victorian anti-Regency propaganda created false images with his name on them, find a decently priced copy of this book or get your library to bring it in through Inter-Library Loan. Seeing Brummell clearly shows the society he moved in clearly, making this a most amazing and illuminating book if you have done much reading in the period.

This books deals with the revolutionary aspect of the career of Sir William Nicholson, the period in which he and his brother-in-law Jonathan Pryde produced work under the name "the Beggarstaff Brotherhood. The book is excellent and was able to find examples of the commercial work these two remarkable men produced is gratifying. The use of line and color was probably nothing short of a revelation, considering just how overblown most contemporary work was. The only flaw to this otherwise excellent book is the lack of examples of this sort thing, the better to illustrate just how revolutionary the Beggarstaff Brothers actually were. Still this is a marvelous study of two innovative and influental artists.

For those who have even a small collection of GA Teacher's Annual Lesson Commentary books, this Index is a must. It provides rapid location of all Subjects, Topics and Scripture references. Worth its weight in gold!