Nebraska Books

I think this collection of REH westerns is some of his best work.The hero of most of the stories,Breckinridge Elkins,is,to quote Howard, "of the Pecos Bill style". The stories go beyond comedy, into slapstick tall tales. Elkins absorbs more lead,cuts, and bashing in one brawl than ten ordinary men,usually before he leaves home.His horse Cap'n Kidd is the only thing on two or four legs thats a match for him and the story "Meet Cap'n Kidd",is one of the best in the book.The character in the next three stories, Pike Bearfield is not quite as outrageous as Elkins,and the stories a bit more realistic,but Howards use of dialect and humor is still very entertaining.The story "The Riot at Bucksnort" is written as a series of newspaper articles, letters and telegrams,and is indeed a riot.In the last three stories,Buckner J. Grimes,is yet more realistic and the stories not as funny,in fact "A Man Eating Jeapord" is a good straight foward western with some humor thrown in. If you like Howard, humor, westerns, or just good entertainment I think you will enjoy this.

Robert E Howard's Western heroes create hilarious chaos wherever they go, from devastation at a crooked Election Day to the insanity produced by a young giant of a man going into a civilized town for the first time in his life. And darned near leveling the whole community. By accident.

Each & every story reads like the Saturday Night Live crew playing the Man With No Name.

Fine Westerns, don't get me wrong. But lots of laughs, too.

Robert E Howard is most famous for his "Conan The Barbarian" creation.

But this collection of Western tales proves his talent wasn't limited to that.

A great book written by a Swedish psycologist(Hedi Fried) about her childhood experience in Sighet. She was in this city for a while until she was sent to Auschwitz. She was there with her sis Livi. This is a touching story for those who survived the Holocaust and even kids and grown-ups today. She reflects on how the camps worked and every where she went. They reach Sweden and Make the city of Stockholm there new home. She was separated from her sis for a while and then reunited. Hedi Fried was lost from her parents then finds out they were gased in the gas chamber. One of the greater stories I've ever read. She tells of the pain and inhumanity of the Nazis and their leader Adolf Hitler. This book leads into Schindler's List a little bit. Hedi Fried did a great job!!!

A touching account by Swedish psychologist Hedi Fried about her childhood experiences in the Transylvanian town of Sighet and later at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Especially moving is her relationship with her younger sister Livia whom she saves from near death a couple of times. Livia repays her sister by reviving her during the liberation of the camp. Although a gripping story about the nightmares of the Holocaust, Fried has the ability to look at the lighter, funnier sides of the hellish reality. Reaching Sweden, Hedi and Livi have recovered and made Stockholm their home. Fried is now a well-known personality in Sweden, famous for her work with traumatized people such as refugees and Holocaust survivors and their second-generation children. A documentary film "Little Big Sister" was produced following the book with the narration of Swedish actress Bibi Andersson.

This is an excellent description of Nebraska geology. We have several books in this series, and we find them very informative, after you get used to the jargon. (We are not geologists!) We returned this because it was a duplicate gift.

The collaborative effort of Harmond D. Maher Jr.; George F. Englemann; and Robert D. Shuster, Roadside Geology Of Nebraska is an informed and informative travel guide to the diverse and appealing geology of Nebraska (including Agate Fossil Beds National Monument; Scotts Bluff National Monument; Toadstool Geological Park; Ashfallstate Historical Park; Ponca State Park; Indian Cave State Park; Schramm Park; and Niobrara State Park) which is quite visible and accessible to anyone vacationing or traveling in the state. From rhinoceroses in natural tombs of volcanic ash, to toadstools in jointed sandstone, Roadside Geology Of Nebraska is packed with maps, visible features seen from the perspective of the state highways, fascinating fun facts, and a great deal much more. If you are planning a trip through Nebraska and have an interest in geology, give a reading to Roadside Geology Of Nebraska for a truly memorable experience!

Anderson's journal, diary and narrative are an insightful look into his personal experiences, observations and thoughts during the fur trade year of 1834. Describing the multitude of people, places and events along the soon to be Oregon Trail , I can see why many historians reference his book for this time period. In typical Dale Morgan fashion, the editing is extremely well done, meticulously picking his way mile by mile with Anderson. Also included is the "Galaxy of Mountain Men" which are short but pertinent biographies of forty five men who influenced and helped shape the fur trade and western expansion movement.

It's kind of ironic, but of all the things offered to the reader in this magnificent book, Anderson's Journal of a trip he took west for his health in 1834 might be the least important. In fact, the Journal takes up less than 50 pages of this 430-page work. But it's all the rest that editors Dale Morgan and Eleanor Harris present that makes the book truly outstanding.

Anderson kept a diary of his trip which he used later to compile the Journal. We get the diary as well, presented in juxtaposition on facing pages with the Journal for comparison's sake. We also get a 40-page introduction on Anderson and his times and a 20-page biography of the man. In addition, we get in full the articles he wrote for the American Turf Register based on his trip and the ethnological notes he kept on various Indian tribes he encountered. Best of all, I think, is the 140-page appendix entitled "Galaxy of Mountain Men," which contains incredibly detailed biographical accounts of over 40 major mountain men, from Kit Carson and Joseph Walker to Black Harris and Rottenbelly (a Nez Perce chief).

William Marshall Anderson was born in Kentucky in 1807. His mother was first cousin of Chief Justice John Marshall, and his father, a Revolutionary War hero, was surveyor general of lands in Ohio and Kentucky. College educated and licensed to practice law, Anderson first organized a cattle import company in Ohio. But he contracted cholera in 1833, and then yellow fever, and decided to take a trip to the Far West to regain his health. In 1834 he made the trip that occupies his diary/journal at the core of this book in the company of William Sublette and a party of fur trappers.

The genteel Anderson stuck out like a sore thumb in this rough company, and he really didn't get along well with anyone except Sublette. A man used to forests and rich farm land, he was unimpressed with the treeless Plains. He was fascinated by the Indians they came across, however, which probably sparked a life-long interest in archeology. He attended the Ham's Fork rendezvous where he met Carson and Bridger and many other legendary figures. Shortly after the rendezvous broke up, Anderson returned to St. Louis with Lucien Fontenelle's party.

A full 50 pounds heavier than when he left, and with his health restored, Anderson married and converted to Catholicism upon his return. He settled near Chillicothe, Ohio, ran for Congress unsuccessfully, and then bought a farm near Circleville. After the Civil War he went to Mexico on an archeological expedition (although actually he was there to help set up a Confederate colony), contracted yellow fever again, and returned home to Ohio. He recovered and went on to study Indian mounds in Mississippi. In failing health, he died in Circleville in 1881.

This book is truly a feast of riches for anyone interested in the mountain man period of the West, and not just during the six months of Anderson's sojourn to the Rockies. Morgan's annotations of the diary/journal are minutely detailed (Morgan is the best at this kind of thing), and the added features make the book almost encyclopedic. Even the bibliography is among the most comprehensive you'll find in a book of this nature. It's a magnificent piece of scholarship. Highly recommended.

This vivid and poignant book is a must-have for any elementary classroom library. The descriptions, pictures, and over all story are exquisite.

The language used evokes the time and place in which the story takes place. The characters are believable, and the story is inspiring because it is a retelling of an actual event. I have read all of this author's books, and my children and I are always delighted. I hope she keeps writing.

I find it hard to understand why this book hasn't received more attention, as it is both beautifully written and a hilarious page-turner. Its teenage protagonist, an endearingly naive Queens Catholic-schoolboy, is on a desperate mission to lose his innocence to the world of oddball adults (jaded, entrancingly perverse, or psychotically needy) he encounters while working in the Paramount Pictures mail room in Times Square in l965. Skoyles portrays the seamy vivacity of Times Square right before its decent into hard-core inferno and that portrayal and his treatment of the various characters who influence the 16-year-old John are illuminated by the author's vision of the fascinating oddness of people, their individuality. John, an innocent voyeur, is a perceptive foil and his growing-up over the summer feels both satisfying and wistful. The book has many pleasures but most striking to me is its humor -- I simply couldn't stop laughing while reading it.

Skoyles's "Secret Frequencies" is extraordinarily funny and moving--his sense of character is unbelievably vivid, as is his sense of what is at once dark and comic in a scene. This is the best memoir I've ever read of growing up with the hopes for a New York City, a life of bars and restaurants and clothes and taxi cabs, a life the narrator glimpses the summer he travels each day from Queens to work at Paramount Pictures in Times Square. Totally recommended!

"She Rode The Rails" is based on the true life of traveling photographer, Mrs. Mary Jane Wyatt. A contemporary of J. B Silvis and pioneer photographer, Solomon Butcher, she was the only woman to own and operate a traveling photograph car on the Nebraska railroad in the late 1800's. She ran studios in Roseville, Il, and in Nebraska towns for over three decades. Mary Jane took many portraits of early pioneers and western landscapes, some of which are included in this book and published for the first time.

The story unfolds as her son, Charles Sears, remembers her life. He recalls how Mary Jane began as an unwed mother working as a lowly housemaid in Ohio to become a successful traveling photographer in Nebraska. With the support of her husband, sheriff and Burlington Missouri River RR engineer, Andrew A. Wyatt, she operated several galleries in a time when women were expected to stay home.

This book was awarded an Editor's Choice Award. The following quote from an independent review of the book:

"The author seems to have done meticulous research about Mary Jane and the time period in which she lived. The information about photography and trains is quite interesting, as is the background on real hardships Union soldiers experienced during the Civil War. This book will find its place in our national memory."

This book has received an Editor's Choice award. A quote from one of the independent reviews:

"The author seems to have done meticulous research about Mary Jane and the time period in which she lived. The information about photography and trains is quite interesting, as is the background on real hardships Union soldiers experienced during the Civil War. This book will find its place in our national memory."

This book does a wonderfull job of depicting the struggles involved in raising a family & building a farm on the great plains. Just 3 or 4 generations ago many of our own families were living the same life as the Ise's.

You can get so lost in this story that you will laugh and cry with the family as they go through the years.through birth and death rain and shine you will enjoy every line of this book.I got a real feeling of what it must have been like to settle the country, and the early years of this century. now that we are leaving the 1900's in the space age learn what it started out like.

This is an excellent account of how our forefathers dealt with the day-to-day struggles in the frontier. Excellent as history, entertaining as drama, it's hard to put down.

At 550 pages, this classic social history of the first decades of settlement in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas is informative, entertaining, sometimes poignant, and one heck of a read. For anyone whose knowledge of this period is as limited as mine, it's also full of surprises -- lots of them. Historian Everett Dick dips into a substantial collection of documents, listed in his 10-page bibliography, and organizes what he's found into 35 chapters, each on a different subject, including the sod house of the title, homesteading, prairie towns, vigilante justice, farmers vs. cattlemen, extremes of weather, Indians, hunting and trapping, the railroad, sports, education, the church, journalism, doctors, lawyers, and entertainment. And that covers only about half of them.

Settlement moved quickly and furiously across the Missouri River, while the federal government was still negotiating the relocation of the current residents, i.e. Native Americans, then spread across the territories in a surge of speculation and rapid development in a series of booms and busts. Cliches and stereotypes from movies and television quickly fall left, right, and center, as the author revels in the rich tapestry of human endeavors portrayed against a raw, still alien landscape. Law and order were virtually nonexistent, and a recurring theme in the book is the frequency of scams, fraud, graft, and chicanery of all kinds that were the order of the day. In such an environment, the carrying of weapons was universal, and differences of opinion were normally settled with bloodshed and no questions asked afterwards.

There is the land rush, featuring claim jumpers and speculators with no interest in tilling the soil or putting down roots but turning a quick buck, usually in total violation of whatever law existed at the time. There are the wild cat banks, printing their own money, all of it eventually worthless to those left holding it. There are the crooked investment schemes that raised capital for towns that were never built. Prairie communities lure railroad companies to build lines in their direction with outlays of cash. Elections are rigged, bribes paid, and blood spilled over the location of county seats. Phony local governments elect themselves into office and after borrowing money for public projects abscond with the funds and leave the area's legitimate settlers under a crushing load of debt. And on and on. It's a fascinating account of the frontier as a kind of bonfire of vanities.

But this is only one theme in the book. There are many others, and much to relish in descriptions of the daily life of more ordinary folks who are typically jacks of all trades, short of cash, either hard-working or hard-drinking, often overwhelmed by the isolation of their circumstances. It's a delight, for instance, to read of country and small town pastimes and pleasures from baseball to dances that go until sunup.

Given the book's origins in the 1930s, it tends to neglect the lives of women (an oversight that has been corrected in many more recent books), and while it seems to want to give a balanced view of Indians, it tends to focus its interests elsewhere. Unfortunately, the treatment of African Americans is somewhat condescending. Those faults aside, the book is a page-turner, especially for anyone who, as I did, grew up in this part of the world with only a glimmer of an idea of its actual history.

and the patrons of colored baseball, to them I dedicate this book."

And what a book it is.

Originally published in 1907, Sol White is not just writing from a historian's perspective of the pre-NLB era, he was a major contributor as a player, manager and team owner on some of the best clubs from that era.

With an emphasis on box scores and photographs, the great teams, players and memorable games are chronicled in this 1996 reprint of the original book - with only minor editorial corrections - a supplement & additional articles by White and other writers. The original small run of copies was poorly printed and an end note explains the reproduction process for clarity.

A lenghty introduction by Jerry Malloy not only encapsulates the key areas in White's book, but provides a better understanding of a time when Jim Crow stepped into the batter's box of the professional game.

White was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. What he gave to future generations of fans & historians through the book is a grand slam.

When author Sol White was among the 17 people who were selected this week by the Baseball Hall of Fame, I got curious about this book of his. Until now, few people have known of it. Presumably and hopefully, the Hall of Fame selection will change this.

The book, originally published in 1907, was apparently the first major attempt at a history of black baseball, written by a man who was heavily immersed in it for many years straddling the turn of the last century. As a player, he appears to have been at least excellent and possibly great -- an infielder who played all four positions and hit in the .300's with fair power. White's commentary about himself as a player is very routine and modest; most of what we gather of his playing is from the lengthy introduction written by Jerry Malloy for the 1995 re-printing.

The original book is preserved and included in this edition. Much of that original edition was "non-text" -- photos, box-scores, and delightful print-ads. The text portion is full of fascinating detail belying its brevity -- and VERY well written. Much of it is a series of dry year-by-year accounts of what happened in black baseball, really exactly like what we see in the "mainstream" annuals of the period like the Spalding guides. But there are also some sections that are quite activist, getting into the segregation issue and the plight of the black player. Additionally there are interesting sections on hitting, pitching, and managing, some of the them written by other authors. This edition also includes copies of newspaper and magazine articles on black baseball from later as well as earlier years, including an article written by White in 1930 for the Amsterdam News.

There are many wonderful old photographs of teams and individual players, of a type rarely seen elsewhere. From the photos we see that the author seems to have had a strong resemblance to the recent player Chris Chambliss, which I mention just to help give a visual image of him.

Perhaps the Hall of Fame's selection committee gave Sol White some extra credit for his writing. If so, it was well deserved. Thank you, Cooperstown, for helping to bring this book back into view.