Reed Books

I don't currently own this book, but it's number one on my Christmas list! I have reached multiple renewal limits at the local library with this title. The large number of artists included in the book provide a variation in painting style as well as informative text regarding the artist and his/her work. The color plates have been well chosen to give the reader an appreciation for the masters of watercolor painting. I have returned again and again to Awash in Color as a reference for my own paintings.

Be the first person on your block to own this book. It is a classic about A. B. Frost.

In his first novel, A Ballplayer's Choice, Reed Lengel gives young adults special lessons in dealing with ethics and honesty in this well-written, fun story.

Mike Mazar loves baseball; he eats, drinks and sleeps it, but an unusual summer challenges Mike and his best friend, Rafa Ortega. Coach Chew, head coach of Tampa's Little League All-Star Team, wants Mike and Rafa on his team. Desperately. Both are exceptional players, but Mike isn't old enough to meet the age qualifications. Chew amends Mike's birth certificate so that he qualifies for the team. Mike plays along, after all this is his dream. Mike begins to feel that all isn't right when he watches Chew cheat an elderly couple out of a few dollars for a couple of doughnuts. Then during the big game, Mike misses second base. What does he do? Go on to third and win the game or go back and risk losing the championship?

Mike's decision is met with a meeting with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and a change to the batboy at a Yankees pennant game.

Even non-baseball lovers of the sport will enjoy watching Mike's decision-making process and come to grips with events that will change his life. The story is fast-paced and the characters are exceptionally defined. The secondary characters, Rafa, his sister, Maria, and Mike's sister, Erin, lend an air of realism to Lengel tale.

On the down side, Rafa's deceased father, who was considered the greatest player in Puerto Rico, is reminiscent of the late Roberto Clemente. Young readers probably won't make the connection, but parents, librarians and reviewers will probably see the resemblance.

A Ballplayer's Choice is an excellent novel for both boys and girls who love the sport. While the lessons are obvious to adult readers, younger readers will identify with Mike and the problems he has to face, and long the way, will give them something to dream about.

I found this book not only extremely informative for making bassoon reeds but also for many techniques in playing. My instructor recommended it and her instructor before that. It has been around for awhile but is still a great resource.

David W. Reed. The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged . Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press (May 15, 2008). 122 pages, 4 maps (on CD), notes, index. ISBN: 978-1572336179 $33.00 (Hardcover w/DJ).

How can an essential "cornerstone of Shiloh historiography" remain unavailable to the general public for so long? That's what I kept thinking as I was reading this reprint of the 1913 edition of David W. Reed's The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. Reed, a veteran of the battle and the first historian of the Shiloh National Military Park, was tabbed to write the official history of the battle, and this book was the result. Reed wrote a short, concise history of the fighting and included quite a bit of other valuable information in the pages that followed. The large and impressive maps that accompanied the original text are here converted into digital format and included in a CD located within a flap at the back of the book. Author and former Shiloh Park Ranger Timothy Smith is responsible for bringing this important reference work back from obscurity. His introduction to the book also places it in the proper historical framework.

Reed's history of the campaign and battle covers only seventeen pages and is meant to be a brief history of the subject. The detail is revealed in the rest of the book. And what detail there is!

Reed's order of battle for Shiloh goes down to the regimental and battery level. He includes the names of the leaders of each organization where known, including whether or not these men were killed, wounded, captured, or suffered some other fate. In a touch not often seen in modern studies, the author also states the original regiment of brigade commanders. In another nice piece of detail following the order of battle, staff officers for each brigade and higher organization are listed.

The book's main point and where it truly shines is in the section entitled "Detailed Movements of Organizations". Reed follows each unit in their movements during the battle. Reading this section along with referring to the computerized maps gives one a solid foundation for future study of Shiloh. Forty-five pages cover the brigades of all three armies present at Shiloh. For other examples of this approach, I recommend Bradley Gottfried's Brigades of Gettysburg and Lanny K. Smith's book on the Union Army at Stones' River. The latter author takes Reed's technique to another level, following units throughout the entire Stones River Campaign! Smith promises a second volume on the Confederates as well.

Wargamers will love the "Abstract of Field Returns". This section lists Present for Duty, engaged, and casualties for each regiment and battery in an easy to read table format. Grant's entire Army of the Tennessee has Present for Duty strengths. Buell's Army of the Ohio is also counted well. The Confederate Army of the Mississippi is counted less accurately, usually only going down to brigade level and many times relying only on engaged strengths. That said, buy this book if you are looking for a good reference work for help with your order of battle.

In what I believe is an unprecedented move in Civil War literature, the University of Tennessee Press made the somewhat unusual decision to include Reed's detailed maps of the campaign and battle in a CD which is included in a plastic sleeve inside the back cover of the book. The cost of reproducing the large maps and including them as foldouts or in a pocket in the book must have been prohibitive, necessitating this interesting use of a CD. The maps were simple to view and came in a PDF format. All you'll need is Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free program, to view these. It will be interesting to see if other publishers follow suit. Maps are an integral part of military history, and this solution is far better than deciding to include poor maps or no maps at all. The Read Me file that came with the CD relays the following information:

-----
The maps contained on this CD are scans of the original oversized maps printed in the 1913 edition of D. W. Reed's The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. The original maps, which were in a very large format and folded out of the pages of this edition, are of varying sizes, up to 23 inches by 25 inches. They were originally created in 1901 by the Shiloh National Military Park under the direction of its historian, David W. Reed. They are the most accurate Shiloh battle maps in existence.

The maps on the CD are saved as PDF (Portable Document Format) files and can be read on any operating system (Windows, Macintosh, Linux) by utilizing Adobe Acrobat Reader. Visit http://www.adobe.com to download Acrobat Reader if you do not have it installed on your system.

Map 1. The Field of Operations from Which the Armies Were Concentrated at Shiloh, March and April 1862

Map 2. The Territory between Corinth, Miss., and Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn., Showing Positions and Route of the Confederate Army in Its Advance to Shiloh, April 3, 4, 5, & 6, 1862

Map 3. Positions on the First Day, April 6, 1862

Map 4. Positions on the Second Day, April 7, 1862

Complete captions appear on the maps.
-----

Timothy Smith has done students of the Civil War an enormous favor by republishing this important early work on Shiloh. Relied on for generations by Park Rangers and other serious students of the battle, The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged has been resurrected for a new generation of Civil War readers. This classic reference work is an essential book for those interested in the Battle of Shiloh. Wargamers and those interested in tactical minutiae will also find Reed's work to be a very good buy. Highly recommended to all.

Thank you to Tom Post of the University of Tennessee Press.

What a great book! I compare the times back in the 20's and 30's to now and find it interesting that an orphan could have such a great chance to be the best he could be and with such excellence expected of him. Yet today it is hard for me, a single mom, to get my own children to be so energetic about learning. Is it that there are so many distractions? Maybe it is the fact that he had the space to dream and the teachers and, in most cases, mentors able to take the time to sustain such a "village". Yet we all have the chance and choice to make something of ourselves and to be the mentors to others. Who knows what others will say of this generation in 80 years?
The book is very well written and thoroughly researched for someone who is 87-90 years old. What a treasure for his descendants! Makes me proud to be his daughter.
P.S.: My dad completed a book signing on November 1 and a Pacific Brass Band concert November 2. He contracted pneumonia and died November 11, Veterans Day, 2003. He smiled when he lifted the book knowing we could enjoy his memories forever. He sincerely wishes all of you would write your own memoirs. It is a true family endeavor. Blessings.

I implore everyone who's considering reading this book to do just that. You will be outraged at the underhanded deceitful things big food manufacturers do to keep America over fed and undernourished. Mister Stitt is an insider, not some outside antagonist making accusations, that alone makes his words more than believable. Although this book was published in the 80's, I believe its words are more true today than they were back then. Obesity is an epidemic in this country and I for one believe there is more to it than people not eating right and exercising. We have more over-processed, chemical laden foods being sold to the public than ever before. Yet, we act like obesity, cancer, heart disease and other health problems happen with no logical explanation. Mister Stitt explains how food manufacturers deliberately add chemicals to food to make people eat more. All of a sudden those days when I ate uncontrollably began to make sense. Stitt blows the whistle on this billion dollar industry and I commend him for doing so. America had better wise up and do it quickly because our health is under attack and it has been for some time. One of the biggest terrorist organizations ever exist right here in the United States and they are "The Food Giants." Their acts may not be as blatant as those of 9-11 but they are no less devastating. Read this book, and you will never look at food the same way again. You won't be dissappointed.

This book is quite simply one of the best ways to see a complete picture of what America is by way of poetry. Even though the selected poetry is obviously limited to the Before Columbus Foundation Book Awards, the selections are wonderful. This fact only validitates the necessity and power of the book series and the extremely woderful editing of the anthology. What's more, the editors take turns in introducing the poets and their poetry.

As someone who grew up in rural Utah, I did not readily take the opportunity to read a varied set of voices. When I bought this book while I was in the Army, I felt that I truly began my education in reading multi-cultural voices in poetry. I had heard names like Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka (both included in this anthology) but suddenly I was reading Larry Neal, Ai, Etheridge Knight, Tato Laviera, and Jayne Cortez.

My favorite selections from this book are from the poets Larry Neal, Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka, and Frank Stanford. Each poem from these selections (and really the whole book) is powerful and essential to the education of Americans. My copy of this book is dog eared and worn because even after eight years I still read from it at least once a week. If you can get a copy of this book, do it.

Very appealing booklet on "Man's Tendency to go from Place to Place in Quest of a Higher Standard of Living," and covers barter, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, the first money. Many photos and tender drawings from the 30's! So perfect for homeschooling or collectors of early textbooks. Great deal, recommended. Scarce.

Reed's review of world power behind the scene is quite detailed with many quotes from world political figures and he details the intrusion of global zionism and communism into government at every level. Of particular interest I found references to "the Group for a New World Order" prior to 1951 when the book was first published. Reed's disclosures make it apparent that our present world chaos is not happen-stance but carefully planned and that those with money and property are little more than serfs and those without are in reality slaves. The dialogs and cronicle read like a diary and one feels like he is there observing the action in person.