Montana State University Books

Swartout's book succeeds on a couple of levels--it manages to draw some of the more interesting and colorful characters out of MT history while keeping the bigger picture fully in mind. At times the writing is a little wooden, the tone a little self-important...but the essays are definitely worth a read. Especially valuable are the insights into the lives of Montanans that are often ignored...

Montana is indeed a state of extremes. Temperatures can go from seventy below to a hundred-and-ten in the shade. Montanans historically elect Republicans at home and send Democrats to Washington DC. Western Montana was built on mining and lumber. Eastern Montana was, and is, farming and cattle. K. Ross Toole also wrote "Montana: An Uncommon Land." Since their publication, every book on Montana references one or both of these two books.

True to his subtitle, Toole writes about matters of such scope that they polarized people, leading to tension and conflict. He talks about the boom and bust that drew homesteaders to the state and then drove them away. He portrays the strife between management and labor, as well as manager against manager, which lead to the "War of the Copper Kings." Montanans sent young men to the World Wars in record numbers and mounted an inquisition of unprecedented proportion wherever they sensed even a hint of disloyalty. Economic pressures created both millionaires and paupers. The combatants in these epic struggles furthered their positions by employing the press, the universities, and whatever else was at hand.

Each of these clashes had consequences reaching far beyond the borders of the state. Corporations such as Anaconda, Standard Oil, and most of the national railroads took part in the battles. Many of them emerged severly wounded. Politicians rose and fell. Fortunes were made and fortunes were lost. By shining a spotlight on the differences that made a difference, K. Toole has helped to clarify the forces that molded history.

Admittedly, "A State of Extremes" is dated and looks at Montana history from a restricted perspective. For a more balanced view of Montana history, you can turn to "Montana: A History of Two Centuries" by Malone, et al. However, do not deny yourself the pleasure of enjoying K. Ross Toole's books.

This is a remarkable book. It is a primary account of a child's life growing up in Montana and Canada in the early part of the twentieth century. Margaret (Peggy) Bell's life spanned some 94 years, from 1888-1982, and her story is as exciting and troubling as any account one is likely to read, fiction or non-fiction. That the book is edited by Mary Clearman Blew makes it not only highly readable but lends it undeniable credibility.

Bell's account of growing up on the high plains of Montana and Canada is a rare, first person account of life on the frontier with it's numerous hardships, grinding poverty, and ultimate struggle to retain her mind and spirit that will break your heart and make you shout for joy...sometimes within a few paragraphs or pages. In a straight forward, honest, almost stoic manner she describes the many life lessons she learned and discusses a subject that is rarely seen in print in the literature of the period: the abuse, sexual and otherwise, she experienced at the hands of her uncle and stepfather. This is an amazing book that chronicles the life experiences of a resilient woman in a man's world that lived to understand who she was, where she came from, and what it all meant. That she could tell such a story without self pity or sentimental, touchy-feely themes is remarkable. Brutally frank, honest and ultimately uplifting.

Readers have to understand that this was just the first book written on the battlefield archaeological project that spanned a number of years. The work culminated in a second work, Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Reexamined

Several other co-workers and collaborators have also published on their work on the archeological and forensic pathology of the battlefield.

Don't judge the conclusions of this work too harshly. As a geoscientist, I would much rather put faith in hard forensic evidence and statistical analysis, than recreations of events based on hearsay, ax grinding, faulty remembrances, flag waving, hero worship, personal bias and any other self serving motivation humans are subject to. Fox uses sound scientific analysis to lay out a time line and sequence of events that has at least been accepted by the National Park Service.
But there will still be experts with thier opinions based on conjecture and arm waving sallying forth to do battle and tilt at windmills.

This book would be helpful for research but it is too technical for the lay reader.

Reading accounts of the Battle of the Little Bighorn sometimes leaves a mass of confusion to the reader. Even visitation to the site does not always enable oneself to clearly picture the events of that day. This book, which does not attempt to explain why things happened does much to set the scene and completes the picture that is painted by the numerous accounts of what happened. The reader may find this book to be dry, perhaps repetitious in some place, but in the end, will appreciate the information that is provided. Be aware that reading this book will forever cause the reader to imediately reject any printed material on The Battle of the Bighorn, that is not properly (and correctly) researched. This book is a good reference for any library.

IT WOULD BE MORE INTERESTING TO READ THE BIBLE BACKWARDS, VERY BORING PAPERWEIGHT - WASTED $ 16.00. ONLY A FEW PICTURES, VERY SMALL DRAWINGS AND TOO MANY WORDS.

This is an excellent book because it cuts through the partisan pro Custer, anti Custer views that are the main theme in almost all the books about the battle written to date. I highly recommend all the books written by Fox on this subject because he has no pre conceived ideas or biases. He bases his interpretations on the physical evidence remaining at the site and draws his conclusions from that evidence.

I found the flavor of this book to be somewhat disturbing in that it consistently sought to portray women as victims of oppressive men--this is a tired philosophy as far as I am concerned. Yes, women were victims, but resulting from the norms of the era in which they lived, married, raised families and worked. My own mother would have been prohibited from keeping her job as a clerk at the local five & dime store in 1934 by the local clerks' union had she married--married women were not allowed to hold union-protected jobs. My mother and her love eloped and kept their marriage a secret so that she could continue to work and help raise money to start their new household. Unfortunately, her husband was killed in a car wreck 2 months after their secret marriage, and then the whole "world" knew of their marriage, but as she was suddenly single again, she was allowed to keep her job. Yes, women were beaten by their husbands, and all sorts of dire things happened in family life in Anaconda. However, there are just as many, if not more, happy stories of good families, loving and respectful husbands and employers. These stories are also important to ensure the presence of honesty in the mosaic that is Anaconda's history.

Unfortunately, women's stories although numerous, were most often limited to mere phrases or to one or two brief sentences--how much nicer and more valuable it would have been, I think, for the writer to have concentrated her researcher's energies on capturing more in-depth knowledge of these women.

There have been a few books written on Anaconda's rich history, but this book reveals areas "whispered" about but not previosly written about. As Ms. Mercier mentions in her book, it was a "City of whispers". The book covers controversial events, such as women working in the community, women's roles at home, and the male dominated working class. The book explains how the Unions came to be dominate in the community and why they were needed. It also covers the Union battles with each other for control. It also talks about the Urban Renewal Era and how the community attempts to survive after severe employment cut-backs as a result of the Anaconda Company's blunders in management. Ms. Mercier spent years interviewing people now deceased, and has added insight how things happen in a one company town. I think she tried to cover both sides of the controversies, but there were some areas that were skimpy with information. In all,it is good reading not only for locals, but for anyone interested in the roles of women in a working class community and the problems that arise in a "Company Town".

This could have been a brilliant book - the subject certainly has spectacular prospects - but it was not to be. Fifty years on there are few survivors of the legions of the Kempeitai, and even fewer survivors of their victims. It could have been a timely piece of scholarship. Instead we are treated a poor collection of anecdotes which lack suffcient breadth and analysis to be evidence of anything other than the incidents they describe, not the Kempeitai as a whole, nor their operations. More disappointing is the author's unconcealed antipathy towards his subject, as a result of his father's wartime experiences. If you need a book on the subject then consider buying it, but otherwise look elsewhere.

For reasons that are very difficult to understand, when the subject of war crimes in World War II comes up, it almost always involves the actions of the Germans. Even though the Japanese were just as brutal to the population of the areas they occupied and even more brutal to enemy POW's, it is a subject that is rarely discussed. In Japan, formal acknowledgements of the war crime actions of the Japanese during the war are rare and tepid.
The Kempeitai were the Japanese version of the German Gestapo, feared by all, including their fellow Japanese. While it is impossible to thoroughly chronicle their actions in only 167 pages, Lamont-Brown gives a good overview of the role the Kempeitai played in the war. They routinely executed civilians and captured allied personnel and on occasion even ate their flesh. Japanese medical personnel carried out horrific medical experiments on humans and were later granted immunity by General MacArthur in exchange for the records of their experiments.
This book is an example of one that should be read by more people. It is sad and unfortunate that more people do not know and appreciate the actions of the Japanese during the Second World War. Those who suffered through it remember it well, but shortly they will be gone and it is up to historians to keep the memories of their suffering alive.

The author talks more about atrocities than the counter intelligence role that the organization played. The only intelligence type stuff they discuss is the Ricard Sorge(Soviet Master Spy in Germanys Tokyo Embassy) capture and interogation. The author does catelouge the atrocities committed by this organization well though(Hence the title Japan's dreaded military police). The author explains the disgusting things that this organization did like make sex slaves out of Korean and other Western Women captured by them during the war, decapitating allied airmen, biological experiments on POW's, stuffing prisoners in Bambooe baskets and liteing them on fire. He also explains the sickining fact that many in this organization went unpunished.

I'm all in favor of books like this. As time goes on and memories fade, more and more Americans have come to regard the Japanese as victims of World War II. Sure, they bombed Pearl Harbor, but was that any reason we should have dropped an atomic bomb on them?

In fact, Imperial Japan and especially the Imperial Japanese Army (it's worthwhile to distinguish between the two) ran a killing and torture machine that in many respects was the equal of Hitler's Germany. The Kempeitai did much of this work. Officially, it was only the army's police force, but it was feared by Japanese civilians, by the captive populations of Asia, and especially by prisoners of war.

Unfortunately, Lamont-Brown is a professional writer of books, with 50-odd to his credit in a bit more than 30 years--a British Martin Caidin, if you like. Nobody can turn out books at that rate and spend the necessary time in research. As a result, this is mostly a collection of anecdotes and unrelated themes--whatever Lamont-Brown turned up, he shaped the book around that, or so it seems. So it fails both as a serious history of the Kempeitai and as an indictment of the Japanese way of making war.

But it's the only one we have, and therefore worth reading. However, if your interest lies mostly with the fate of Anglo-American prisoners of war, then a better book to start with is Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese.

Japan's military police were as evil as the more well known german geatapo. The daily lives of the military police and their prisoners is glossed over. More detail is put into the administration and organization of the military police. The book is very dry reading and not much of a story. Time moves quickly in this book, with not many pages devoted to any one area or incident, but with only 168 pages i suppose that is to be expected. An interesting title, reduced to very boring reading, i am disappointed.

This was a really great read - well researched, well written, and very thought provoking. Even if you are only generally interested in the history of race and ethnicity, this slice of New Mexican history will fascinate you. And for those of you with an interest in the Southwest, this will be a particularly good read.

In Coyote Nation Professor Mitchell struggles to make his case that in order to create a new racial order in New Mexico, colonists had to resort to racializing the intimate recesses of the human body. While it is easy to appreciate that the conquest of New Mexico might not have been as simple as more dichotomous regions, the arguments in Coyote Nation are tortured and repetitious to the point of fetishism. It may be true that New Mexico had the unique problem of having an established Hispanic elite, but it does not follow that we must perform a post mortem gynecological endoscopy to figure out what happened. Mitchell never makes a compelling case for the necessity to deconstruct every pimple, wart, and bunion on the frontier. Concentrating on the racial ephemera of every vaginal discharge, stool sample and cavity search, to the exclusion of a socio-economic analysis is to substitute a biopsy for an audit.

That is not to say that social history is not useful in learning about the past. But the social universe in New Mexico was a function of the racial, cultural and economic commonalities among European Americans whose pedigrees may have varied slightly but whose relationship to modernity is quite similar. The demographics and economic stratification were unique. While it may be useful to contrast the process of colonization in California and Texas with New Mexico and the contemporaneous imperialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, Mitchell neglects to superimpose his analysis on these areas and thus he makes the undergraduate mistake of comparing apples to anuses.

No one can be astonished to learn that the dominant settlers had white, Northern European, Victorian sensibilities. It can hardly be surprising to discover people have been sexist, racist, paternalistic, clannish and yet able to compromise when their physical and financial well-being was at stake. Mitchell looks at trials, newspaper accounts and scholarship to support his project of corporeal colonization. But where else could racial and sexual discrimination be found? Regardless of how we assess the motives of the authors of the Dawes act, is it so far-fetched to think that the indoctrination at Native American boarding schools would include the removal of long hair? We could hardly be expected to Americanize, and modernize subordinate people by handing out Tomahawks and eagle feathers.

Many of Mitchell's examples hinge on the tactics of frontier lawyers, prosecuting and defending (often marginalized) persons against the hyperventilated backdrop of rape cases. To grant elevated status to legal histrionics, exclusively in the area of bodily comportment, ignores the circumstances and constraints of desperate courtroom battle.

Sexuality, gender politics and racial stratification are invaluable axes to focus cultural analysis. And while it's fascinating to have learned that the age of consent to New Mexico went from to age 10 to age 14 and that not all Mexicans were alike, there was little else to recommend Mitchell's soft porn theory of history.

My father was born in 1881, came to Montana in 1910, and was 58 years old when I was born. While growing up, I spent hours sitting in the log cabin on our ranch, around some men hunkered down by the corrals, or sitting on the veranda of the hotel in Broadus listening to old ranchers and cowboys tell tales such as one finds in this book. Admittedly, some of the truth gets stretched to make the story better or simply because stories tend to grow with passing years and multiple retellings. All were based in fact and I believe that most were quite close to the original events. We are indebted to Bob Kennon and Ramon Adams for getting Bob's memories down in print. Joe Beeler's careful art work and the actual photos lend an added dimension.

The book joins a number of other sources relating the experiences of cowboys who helped bring cattle up the trail from Texas and raise cattle on the northern plains. Together they paint a reasonably complete picture of the life people lived in that time and place. Although the title relies on Montana's Powder River to enhance the book's catchy title, the bulk of the book is about Kennon's experiences in the "wide open spaces" north and west of the Powder. It pictures the transition of a life from a young and reckless cowboy to a married and successful rancher; from open range to fenced homesteads and ranches. Along the journey Bob served as forest ranger, brand inspector, frontier lawman, and even doorkeeper of the Montana state senate.

In plain but illustrative language Kennon tells us about the events, activities, and places that made up his life. He describes life in some of the early "wild west" towns. Especially noteworthy are his descriptions of the people he encountered in his wide-ranging path through life. Every chapter of the book adds to the total; for this reviewer to cite any particular of Bob's accounts would be misleading. If your interests include Montana history or cattle ranching in the late 1880s and early 1900s, you will enjoy this book.

I was born in Red Lodge and graduated from Red Lodge High School in 1960. I learned some facts which I did not know about the early days (1890-1940) of the town. I feel that the author over emphasized the town's officals with respect to throwing out the indians and the cowboys, and then bringing them back into the history for the economic salvation of the area. She should have praised the officials for rescuing a dying coal town, but of course that would not have been what her PhD thesis was trying to prove. I also think that she over emphasized that the Festival of Nations did not include all ethic groups, but only the enthic groups that were represented in the area. What else could they have done? Overall, the history should receive a grade of A, the social science should receive a grade of C+.

This is an informative book which is also an easy and pleasant read. However, it lacks heart. It tends to be a listing of events rather than the story of the events.