Park University Books

This book provides a good chronicle of the events leading to and immediately following the Len Bias tragedy. Where it falls short is in its glowing portrayal of a certain University Chancellor, who prior to the tragedy knew full well what was going on in the Athletic Department, but after the tragedy pinned all responsibilty on others. This has come to light in the years following the publication of this book. In this respect the book missed the mark.

This story was a great account of the turning point of college basketball, in which the view began to shift more towards the personal and academic side of the athlete as opposed to the athletic side. I would read it all over again.

it was a well written but kind of wordy. Very interesting book!

Pardo takes on a difficult project and makes it accessable to a broad audience. Her analysis of race, class, gender and neighborhood politics is excellent. We learn that neighorhood context has important ramifications for how local politics are expressed, but still, grassroots activism emerges where inequality is found. The only weakness in this book is the occasional redundancies in the discussion, particularly where latter chapters seem to repeat earlier ones. But, as a book that expands the discussion of both gender and race in the context of urban social movements, this is one of the best. It balances case studies and well developed grounded theory well. Moreover, the book appeals to a broad audience in academic settings and the broader public.

This is a well-written and entertaining article, but beware--it sometimes plays loose with the facts. For example, it says that "Yosemite" means "some of them are killers". This is a unsupported myth that was started in 1977 by an untrained Ethnologist in the park. "Yosemite" really means "they are killers" and it was what the surrounding tribes referred to the people in Yosemite. The Yosemite people called themselves "Ahwahneechee" or "People of Ahwahnee". Ahwahnee means "gaping bear's mouth," after the gaping shape of the valley walls.

I noticed someone has used your article about the name, definition or meaning of Yosemite in Wikapedia. The definition of Yosemite IS NOT "Some of them are killers". That is false. That definition was created in 1978, by one writer working in Yosemite to explain why the Miwoks were afraid of the Yosemite Indians. That definition is not correct. I am a Yosemite Indian and I know that definition is incorrect. The real meaning is "They are killers" or "Grizzlies", not "Some of them are killers".

I take issue with the reviewer who criticizes Burns for his scholarship. This work has a clear, succinct purpose: To let the boycott participants on all sides of the issue tell the story themselves. Burns never intended for this work to be definitive, only elucidating, and it is that, and more.

This publication arose out of Burns' work editing the King papers at Stanford, spurred by a suggestion from senior editor Clayborne Carson. Burns masterfully edits and assembles the letters, interviews, transcripts of court actions, newspaper clippings, and other materials, adds just enough gloss for clear understanding, and gets out of the way. It takes skill, judgment, and respect for the sources to strike such a balance, and he gets it just right.

I'll take this approach any day over a tome by some windbag scholar who has digested the sources and wants to tell me what to think about this important, complex, seminal event in American history. Read the materials yourself, and do your own thinking. That's what Burns set out to accomplish, and in my opinion, he's hit the mark admirably. I highly recommend it.

This book is another example of "hands-off" scholarship in that it appears as if the editor never visited Montgomery but rather relied on secondary sources. Though there are numerous excerpts, the editor did not perform the necessary research which would have revealed (a) that the Boycott had its roots within the American labor movement and, more specfically, events which happened in Birmingham, Alabama, during the 1930s and (b) there probably still exists in the archives of the Montgomery Improvement Association or in at least one other place financial and other records not taken to the King Center which would have told an in-depth story using primary sources. In summary, in deciding whether to purchase this book---pass!

Mysticism: Experience, Repsonse and Empowerment may yet found a new paradigm for the study of mystical phenomena. The author, J.B Hollenback, offers a masterful review of previous theoretical approaches with a radical new understanding of mystical practice and experience. Hollenback combines a sensitivity to the role of cultural context in shaping mystical experience with an unbiased approach to the claims of mystical practioners. Thus, he avoids psychologistic reductionism and is willing to seriously consider phenomena such as astral projetion and telepathy and examine how they actually work. His thesis: Concentration, often charged with affect, leads to an empowerment of conciousness which enables the mystic to attain abilities not accessible to ordinary states of mind. This focus on the question of power brings mysticism into the forefront of contemporary discussions of power, such as James Hillman's Kinds of Power. Hollenback displays exceptional openness to the mystical practices of tribal cultures, and one of his case studies deals with a Native American Shaman. The openness, innovative claims, erudition and conceptual clarity of this book make it a "must" for students of mysticism and comparative religion. For further discussion and critique, see my review in The Journal of Religion, 78 (4) 1998, pp. 593-601.

Hollenback spends most of his book dedicated to the premise that the mystical experience is culturally and historically conditioned. What Hollenback never takes into account are the ideas of German anthropologist Adolf Bastian. Bastian recognized that throughout the mythologies and religious systems of the world, the same images, the same themes are constantly recurring, appearing everywhere. He called these "Elementary Ideas," Elementargedanken. But he recognized also that wherever they occurred, they appeared in different costumes with different applications and different interpretations. He called these provincial differences "Folk Ideas," or "Ethnic Ideas"-Volkgedanken. Now this is a very important distinction. It divides our subject into two quite different departments. Historians and ethnologists are interested in the differences, and one can study the mythologies and the philosophies of the world with an accent on these differences. On the other hand, the problem emerges of the Elementary Ideas. Why are they everywhere? This is a psychological problem, and it's a problem that separates us in our discussion of comparative forms from the whole research having to do with differences.

Hollenback, a historian, spends most of his time analyzing the ethic ideas, and ignoring the elementary aspect of the mystical experience. Put simply, he is interested in plot and ignores theme. Furthermore, Hollenback associates mysticism with persons who are clearly not mystics, namely Moses, Augustine, who is a conservative fundamentalist if there ever was one, and St. Francis of Assisi and St. Theresa of Avila who were contemplatives. He further confuses the mystical experience (elementary idea) with the relating of the mystical experience (ethnic idea).

In completion, this is a very poorly written and conceived book which amounts to a 600 page waste of time.

I was in Yellowstone in July and found this book. I was very excited because I have ready everything Lee Whittlesey has written and enjoyed it a immensely. This book, however, leaves a lot to be desired. The title and inside dust jacket make it sound like stories from early days in Yellowstone from indian legends, fur trappers, horse and buggy tour guides and campfire stories. What a fun read!! NOT!! This is a dry boring book telling of how stories came to be in Yellowstone. It reads like an encyclopedia. The fun stories I thought I was going to be reading about are small one paragraph clips with the history and background taking up the majority of the chapter. Boring!!

What a disappointment. If you want a book on facts and little on storytelling then this is the book for you. Shame on the author and publishers for portraying this book as something it certainly it not. What a waste of $28.00.

Yellowstone National Park historian Lee H. Whittlesey presents Storytelling in Yellowstone: Horse and Buggy Tour Guides, the culmination of years of research into folk tales, legends, and some fascinating true stories told by stagecoach-driving tour guides who used to be a staple of Yellowstone National Park prior to 1920. From unique accounts of contact with reclusive Native American tribes, to tall tales and humorous exaggerations, to comments on the portrayal of Yellowstone in early photos and movies, Storytelling in Yellowstone is a treasury sure to appeal to scholars and lay readers alike. Storytelling in Yellowstone consists partly of the stories themselves, though a preponderance of the text is methodically devoted to probing the tales' history, usage, and veracity. Occasional black-and-white photographs round out this seminal contribution to American folk tale literature.

This a an excellent compilation of the history and beauty of Yosemite and it's art. Amy Scott is a bright voice in the art world. I highly recommend it.

The problem that many Yosemite, Bridgeport, Bishop and Mono Lake Paiutes have with this book is that many of the Yosemite Indians are misidentified tribally. Before the book was published some of our Paiute historians contacted the Autry and Amy Scott with documentation concerning the ancestry of important Mono Lake Paiute people. We adivsed the Autry and gave them the Charlie family's 1928 California Indian Applications. Instead of identifying them correctly they went with Craig Bates book Tradition and Innovation as the source of the Indian ancestry in the Yosemite area. The problem with using Craig D. Bates book, Tradition and Innovation, is that it is full of errors. The book, in the Yosemite American Indian biography section, has Young Charlie as a son of a "Yosemite Miwok chief". In know as a fact this is incorrect. I know many of the Charlies and they are NOT Yosemite Miwoks, but full blooded Paiutes. We Paiutes who are descendant of the Charlie family would like to know where is the original source that states that Young Charlie was a the son of a Yosemite Miwok chief. Every piece of documentation, probates, land sales and 1928 California Indian Applications of the whole family the Charlies are documented as full blooded Mono Lake Paiutes. Daisy Mallory was a full blooded Yosemite Mono Lake Paiute, yet her baskets are not identified on page 109. The George Wharton photo of woman sitting with a gambling tray, page 95, is not identified. She is a Paiute. Helen Coats grandmother is not Lucy Telles, her mother Hazel, was an orphan adopted by Lucy Telles. Where and when was it identified that was a "Miwok family" by Martin Mason Hazeltine on page 93. Who identified it and when was ever noted that this grouping was a Miwok family? No one should ever use Tradition and Innovation as reference material for any type of genealogy of the Yosemite Indians because many of the Yosemite Indians in that book have incorrect tribal identification or they are implied. All of Young Charlie's and his families tribal governmental documentation states they were Mono Lake Paiutes and NOT Miwoks. We have done an extensive family research and there is no evidence that before the non-profit Southern Seirra Miwuks went federal recognition there is any proof that Young Charlie was a ever a son of a Miwok chief. Edwin Charles is not from the same family as the Charlies.

I had typed quilt into the search and this title was among those listed. Being from NY I was curious and asked for more info. At the top of the Table of Contents is the phrase "piecing the quilt" - followed by chapters that I thought were quilt block names. Although there is beautiful photography thru out the book and in hard cover version - it would make a great coffee table book - I had thought I was ordering a book featuring quilt block patterns about the Adirondacks!

The National Park Service's (NPS) 1918 statement of policy says that "in the construction of roads, trails, buildings and other improvements, particular attention must be devoted always to the harmonizing of these improvements with the landscape" (123). Linda Flint McLelland's Building the National Parks explains how this was done in the early days of the NPS. Over and over again, the book reminds readers that such improvements, especially those in the Civilian Conservation Corps era, were built so that the landscape was not injured and so they would, as much as they could, blend in to the natural environment.

The volume's explanation of the early construction of campgrounds is one of the more interesting examples of how early NPS landscaping attempted to lessen the impact on the environment. Plant pathologist E.P. Meinecke, known as the father of the modern campground, discovered that human activity caused a myriad of ecological problems and therefore applied his understanding of plant ecology to campground planning and design (279). Meinecke chose campground sites by type of soil, density of vegetation and then "divided up into individual campsites of legitimate sizes, each one offering approximately as much privacy, shade, and other advantages as the other (278). Environmentally conscious readers will hopefully think twice before camping somewhere outside an established campground.

The book presents facts and statistics well, but doesn't tell an engaging story. For instance, the volume lists the overall park visitation statistics from 1914 to 1918, which demonstrates a significant rise, but never offers any analysis on why those numbers augmented. Many journalism professors tell their students to "show, don't tell." McLelland's text tells, but doesn't show. Many pages feel like an organized list of particulars in paragraph form, offering little or no analysis. The pictures and their accompanying captions tell the best story. When investigating landscapes and landscape elements, visual presentation shows more and leaves a more lasting impression than any page of text.

Building the National Parks' title is somewhat misleading. The book also discusses landscaping in numerous state parks across the country. "Building Yosemite and Other Selected National Parks" would not be a far-fetched title as McLelland chronicles nearly every landscape decision at Yosemite and doesn't give other deserving national parks equal share. Perhaps 1916-1940 should be placed in the title after "construction," since that period is the book's focus. The last chapter covers the history of landscaping since 1940 and proves itself as a fascinating portion of the volume, explaining that the "naturalistic harmonies" in NPS landscape design once strictly adhered to have been thrown by the wayside with emphasis on functionality and safety rather than aesthetics (462-467). It goes to show that the period of 1916-1940 was truly the golden age of the national parks.

This text is fine, but I found out that the 10th ed. & 10th ed. revised are EXACTLY the same - they even have the same page numbers. So, if you have the option to use a used, regular 10th ed., I would definitely go with that.