Elliott Books

This book made me turn to gardening and the art world. He is fantastic and I strongly ( emphasis on strongly)recommend buying his books including Victorian Cottages. The next month after I had read his book I retired and followed my love to gardening and art. Since then I have bought 5 Allingham's and many others. My gardens have transformed I was on Gardener's world.

David Elliott's magnum opus, "The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta 1930 - 1975," is quite simply the best book there is about the Vietnam War. It is also one of the longest, at 1547 pages, which may limit its appeal to non-specialists.

The principal strenths of this work are two:

1) Where most scholars of the Vietnam War have focused their efforts mainly on American sources, Elliott draws the majority of his evidence from Vietnamese who fought for the Viet Minh or the NLF. In particular, he uses 415 in-depth interviews of prisoners and defectors conducted as part of a major RAND project during the war (Elliott himself worked on this project). He also relies on about 100 Vietnamese-language post-war histories. Together with a judicious selection of English-language works and some US government data, the Vietnamese sources provide an evidentiary base that overlaps very little with existing studies in English.

2) Although he does not ignore the larger strategic currents of the war, Elliott focuses like a laser beam on the local revolutionary processes of a single Vietnamese province. Although he carefully synthesizes his evidence into an overall narrative, Elliott allows the full complexity of events to shine through at every turn, often in the first-person recollections of the revolutionaries themselves.

My reservations about the book mainly concern the theoretical context in which it is situated. Elliott's intended audience appears to be a narrow group of Southeast Asia and Vietnam War specialists. He shows little concern with the far more interesting and recent generalist literature about civil war processes by e.g., Elizabeth Wood, Stathis Kalyvas, or Roger Petersen. Debates about, e.g., whether or not the Vietnam War "could have been won" are extremely stale, and a scholar of Elliott's magnitude shouldn't be wasting his time on them.

This is not a book for the casual reader, and it is not a book for someone whose main concern is about what Americans did in the Vietnam War. However, for anyone who takes a serious scholarly interest 20th century Vietnamese history or the systematic study of political violence and civil war, Elliott's book is indispensable.

There is just nothing around like these guys. They are terrific!!! I never tire of them.

J Paul Muxworthy

Well, I thought I had already written a review, but I think it got lost somewhere, cuz it's been a couple of days and hasn't shown up yet. I really want others to know how good this book is. I liked this book of poetry and I highly recommend it. I picked it up to read on the way to work cuz I was glum and needed something to distract me. By the time I got to work I was much cheerier! Even the most serious poems have a way of laughing at themselves. They're accompanied by the poet's line drawings, which are an editorial comment on the poems themselves.

If you're looking for poetry that is NOT part of the mainstream, then pick up a copy of Wall Nuts.

another winner from warhammer. If you enjoy being the center of attention, you'll like this game.
partly difficult.

Water's Way is a stunningly photographed, and exquisitely written glimpse of life in the Chesapeake region. The book celebrates beauty, both in the natural and human worlds. Author Tom Horton's essays are insightful, humorous, and well-crafted. His words flow like the many creeks and rivers that he describes on the Delmarva peninsula. Dave Harp's photography defines the people, animals, and landscape in such concert with Horton's words that the book should be considered the National Geographic of the Eastern Shore. This a worthy addition to anyone's coffee table.

This was a wonderful book that showed the strength of Wendy's spirit and faith in the Lord. I could not put it down - I read the entire book in one sitting. I recommend it to everyone I meet. It reminds us to have faith in the Lord and to praise him even when things are not going as we wish.

What next Ms. Elliot? is a gentle story of how life doesn't always turn out the way we think, sometimes it's better. This book tells about an overlooked but quietly powerful segment of the American population, retired women. These women are caring for their parents or grandchildren (and sometimes both), helping in schools, libraries and beginning new careers. A must read for any woman about to retire.

This is a great book for teens to read. Most people don't know that there are teens in the bible. This book recounts the stories of 14 teens in the bible and gives a lesson at the end of each one. They will SURELY challenge you to look into yourself and most likely change you in a postive way. It is powerful and it speaks to teens on their level in an interesting way that they can understand. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK! (P.S. Adults can read it too. If you didn't know that there were teens in the bible, read this book to find about them and their stories.)

I first encountered "Whylah Falls" in my first year university English class several years ago. It has since, never left my bedside. It has since, never left my own mind as I continue to develop my own style. I was fortunate enought to attend a seminar that Clarke, and had the chance to pose a few questions. I asked him "How is it possible to maintain such intense expressive inspiration over 153 pages?" He replied that for him, the inspiration has never left him when writing the book, and remains with him everyday. And its true. George Elliot Clarke is Atlantic Canada's most inspired writer today. And this book is the beginning his era.

The story surrounds the Clemence family living in the fictional village of Whylah Falls, Nova Scotia, on the not quite fictional Sixhiboux River (see the actual Nova Scotian River The Sissiboo). The return of the wayward poet X to Whylah Falls triggers events the move the family and the village folk from poetic lust (Selah), romance (Pablo and Amarantha) and tragedy (the Death of Othello). A tragedy, I might add, of Sophoclean and Shakespearean proportions but without Sophoclean or Shakespearean pretentions-- which are lost within the sincere context of the character's simple and sweet rural maritime lives.

I especially enjoy "The River Pilgrim: A Letter" which is Clarke's ode to his own influences-- Ezra Pound and his bluesy rendering of Li Po's "The River-Merchant's Wife". And Clarke is able to create literary snap shots of the surrounding landscape, religious spirituals and love in pieces like "Each Moment in Magnificent", "solitude", "A Perspective of Saul", "Revelations" and "To Pablo".

Clarke tells the story through inspired poetry and prose which is bluesy, bold, and as intoxicating and compelling as the dark rum drank by he Othello. His writing speaks with a tongue that can only be understood with the heart and history of a maritimer. But for those non-Atlantic Canadians, this book puts Clarke's own past into words. He puts the frozen history of African-Canadian experience in Nova Scotia in motion for everyone to experience and know, if only for a short while.

His characters, speak not for themselves, but for the ages-- times lost in the rural life for Atlantic Canadians.