Clark Books

I'd never ready any of Rita Cleary's books before but was well aware that her work has long been highly regarded among the members of the WWA, the Western Writers Association. After reading Charbonneau's Gold, it is easy to see why the other Western writers hold her in such high esteem.

Above all else this is the story of the incredibly difficult journey west made by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The story is told mostly through the eyes of the less famous members of the trip, the scouts and hunters. Reading this book I was many times reminded of some of the excellent Westerns by Larry McMurtry...Cleary's book is funny, sad, always interesting, at times even sexy, and as a good novel does, it keeps you reading and turning pages.

I realized on reading this book how little I actually knew about the first official crossing of America. Lewis, who killed himself some time after the expedition, is in this book an amazing character, often brilliant and as often quite mad. Clark is the steady one, the second in command, but the leader who held the group together. In all, it is one amazing journey they are on, often lost, usually hungry and almost starving, always needing the help of the Natives...but held togther with a common purpose and a toughness not seen much these days. The Indian woman, the little Sacagawea, is also an important character in this fine read, as is her selfish French trader husband, Toussaint Charbonneau. All in all, an excellent book...highly recommended.

I had the fortune of knowing Dr. Dugan and this autobiography certainly gives you an entry into his world and the many splendid adventures on the road to his many storied medical career. Dr. Dugan's legacy lives on, in not only the patients he cared for but, in this wonderful book of memoirs!

I was excited to come across this book. As a homeschooling mom and resident of Charleston, SC at the time, this guide provided an organized tour of downtown Charleston, including key historical buildings and tidbits I hadn't found anywhere else. I recommend that this book be reprinted. It's serves as a great resource for residents and tourists.

My wife has been making the most wonderful cheesecakes from this book. I am having to run more on account of it but it is worth it.

The latest in the "Young Patriots" series of young adult novels, George Rogers Clark: Boy Of The Northwest Frontier by Katharine E. Wilie is a dramatic historical narrative of the childhood of George Rogers Clark, who would grow up to be a Revolutionary War general and famous explorer, as well as an inspiration for his younger brother William who would one day lead the Lewis & Clark expedition. Cathy Morrison's black-and-white illustrations bring this adventurous narrative to life; a tale that captures the imagination and introduces young people to American history through the eyes of those who grew up in the midst of critical events.

We offer this book as a beginning and as a set of new, perhaps unpolished, tools for the abuse survivor to consider using. It is our first attempt to communicate what we have discovered in the painstaking processes of therapy. The problems and issues that people who are very important to us have dealt with courageously and painfully in therapy are in this book. The case histories presented in this book and the processes we have discussed here come from abuse survivors whom we were priviledged to encounter in our work and study. Many of them have fought bravely and with amazing fortitude to build lives shattered by those they should have been able to trust. We are hopeful and we are astounded that these very special people can function, and most importantly, can freely give and receive love. When they succeed, we feel somehow that we have succeeded.
--- excerpt from book's conclusion

Children's Voices From The Trail: Narratives Of The Platte River Road by Rosemary Gudmundson Palmer is an astute collection and interpretation of primary sources, especially letters and journals, of young people who set forth with their parents upon the pioneer trails west and who wrote about their lives. Offering eye-opening insight into what it was really like to grow up in the 1800's frontier, beset by both natural and human enemies, Children's Voices From The Trail is a superb contribution to academic American History Studies reference collections and highly recommended for the non-specialist reader with an interest in the real life conditions of growing up in the American West.

This book is a sleeper that will ultimately find its place among the best books on race, children, and Black-Jewish relationships in post War America. Unlike so many books that relie on the invented memory of a few primary actors, this scholarly account closely follows the crisis among Blacks and Jews through the experiences of children. Besides being an excellent political biography of Mamie and Kenneth Clark, the book is a troubling journey into the lives of the children of the great black migration. Despite its seemingly narrow focus, this is a rich narrative account of recent American history.

From book's back cover:

"The Chinaberry Tree, both poignant and hilarious, is an autobiographical account of growing up in a small Southern town during the Great Depression, and of reaching adulthood in the treacherous times of World War II and the Korean War.

Humorous accounts of childhood antics and family life during these hard times are interwoven with tales of family unity, tolerance, and determination, both to survive and succeed."

This is a truly groundbreaking study that completely overturns the conventional wisdom on the Cultural Revolution. By focusing on culture rather than politics -- that is, on music, fine art, opera, films, and architecture -- the author demonstrates convincingly and in fascinating new ways, that the years of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976 -- were a period of great innovation as artists and ordinary Chinese reached back to the past and recast it in radical new ways. They did this behind formulaic acknowledgments of political orthodoxy, often with a wink and a nod and a tone. Clark brings out the complexities of the Cultural revolution, and the occasional pleasures that people made for themselves in daily life, a view quite different from the usual accounts that focus almost without exception on high politics and suffering. Moreover, its a great read.