Nebraska Books

THIS BOOK IS TRULY A TIME MACHINE FOR BASEBALL FANS. THIS A COLLECTION OF STORIES AND BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES ABOUT 19 MEN WHO PLAYED THE GAME DURING THE GOLDEN ERA OF BASBALL. (1940-1950'S)
INCLUDED IN THIS ARE TOMMMY HENRICH, RALPH KINER, ENOS SLAUGHTER, HERB SCORE AND ROBIN ROBERTS. THIS IS ONE OF THOSE RARE BOOKS THAT I COULDN'T PUT DOWN. COVER TO COVER THIS IS A MUST READ FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS. DONALD HONIG PUTS TOGETHER A WONDERFUL COLLECTION OF WELL WRITTEN, DETAILED AND INTERESTING STORIES TOLD BY SOME LEGENDS OF THE GAME. IT IS A MUST READ.

Since there is not much information provided with the summary, I thought I'd add to it. I have the happy fortune of knowing the artist (Ken Gary) who created the thoughtful and elegant illustrations for this book, which is how I was introduced to these stories. The original Hopi narrations are on facing pages with the English translations, which is a treat if, like me, you not only enjoy folklore but also love languages. The English translation has a quiet, timeless quality, as befits this task of preservation. This book is a worthwhile and engrossing addition to any folklorist's collection.

Beethoven Forum, a work of serious Beethoven scholarship presents papers from the conference "Beethoven in Vienna, 1792-1803."

Editorial notes advise that this volume was created "to promote research in a relatively neglected area of Beethoven scholarship in its many dimensions; to engage in dialogue representatives from diverse branches of musicology; to scrutinize the usefulness of "style period" as a concept and parameter of research." That it does, and so much more.

One of the most influential German composers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Beethoven well merits this study. The ramifications of his genius are incalculable as the characteristics of much modern music stem from his creativity.

Young Beethoven was a court organist at the age of 14, a contemporary of Mozart, and a student of Haydn's. In the isolation of his deafness Beethoven composed some of the greatest works of music the world has ever known.

Beethoven Forum is a scholarly, revelatory tribute to a master.

- Gail Cooke

All of Robert Bringhurst's translations of Haida myth are essential reading. None is more strange, beautiful, majestic, nasty, and comprehensive than this third volume, which contains brilliant translations of two vast epics by Skaay, the most impressive of the mythtellers whose Haida was transcribed as well as translated by an anthropologist at the turn of the last century. Skaay was a philosopher as well as a poet--the two jobs originate together, after all--and few other books give such insight into the worlds that people made on this continent before Europeans came and imposed their own. Read and reread, and don't interpret. These are words with power.

I am a music composer and I have found the essays by Bartok compiled in this book very interesting and helpful. For example, there are several essays describing how Bartok organized many of his compositions. There are also several essays describing different types of folk music such as American, Rumanian, and Hungarian. There is an essay on the 'So-called Bulgarian Rhythm.' I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learing about different types of folk music or anything about Bela Bartok and is compositions.

It is a scrapbook. Berlin dreams included many things, art, architecture, theater, sport. In the 1950's the city's dividedness became an occasion for more riches of artistic expression.

Brecht died in 1956. His daughter took over his company--the Ensemble-- and the right to produce his plays. The Berlin of the 1920's became frozen in time. After reunification the question arose as to whether the Berlin Ensemble should be preserved.

Friedrich Ebert was the first President of the Weimar Republic. German inflation, 1919-1923, was more demoralizing than the defeat of armies. Berlin is surrounded by beautiful lakes and woods but most of the inhabitants stayed within the city's confines which produced a multitude of employment opportunities and leisure pursuits. There was also the issue of a lack of low cost housing which some of the architects and planners sought to overcome.

Berlin night life defied description. There was political cabaret. There were night clubs one does not talk about. Criminal gangs were camouflaged as social clubs. Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, and Stefan George were active. Kathe Kollwitz and Georg Grosz were inevitably involved in showing the ugliness of life in the city. Other artists included Otto Dix, Ernst Barlach, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Otto Muller, Lyonel Feininger, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The Bauhaus group influenced the avant garde.

The first public psychoanalytic institute was established in Berlin in 1921. The Berlin theater attracted the best talent. German film makers used Espressionism. Another genre of film was the mountain film. The music scene included Wilhelm Furtwangler, Arnold Schonberg, Paul Hindemith, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, Arthur Schnabel, and Kurt Weill. The Wandervogel movement was apolitical. Notes and index are provided.

Best Of The Best From The Great Plains Cookbook compiles its recipes from 88 cookbooks drawn from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. From a non-alcoholic Hot Buttered Rum to Mexican Ice Cream, this impressive, highly recommended compendium offers up wonderful selections for any family meal time or celebratory dining occasion. Of special interest to cookbook enthusiasts is the extensive listing of titles for the entire "Best of the Best" cookbook series from Quail Ridge Press.

This book details the Ward Family bloodline, which I descend from.

The book mainly covers my Great-Great-Great Uncle David Ward as well as his Wife and Children.

My Great-Great Grandfather Jacob Bechtel Ward seems to be detailed briefly in the book as well (well his father George Ward is detailed along with the number of children that my Great-Great-Great Grandfather George Ward had fathered but there seems to be a small mention of my Great-Great Grandfather using his middle name Bechtel in the detail).

I gotta say that although I am Willa's 4th cousin, I so cannot believe that this book is out of print as I think it is a very powerful book.

If anyone wants to beg for reprints please see to it that reprints are done (Willa Kabetzke passed away in 1992 but her book needs to live on for future generations to read).

Bicycling beyond the Divide: Two Journeys into the West (Outdoor Lives)

This is an adventure story that is as much about how people in all the small rural towns and parks have changed from 1985 to 2005 as it is about bicycling through the Western United Sates. This book is made up of many portraits of people met and images of the American landscape as described by a shy traveler who is a great listener and neutral absorber of everyplace he peddles through (as well as the places he doesn't make it via bicycle) as this country is no easy ride. Making this book a really interesting read.

Big Bear was a noble man who yearned for peace between the Red man and the White, but was caught up in the vortex of his time - a time when the whites pushed into the Cree lands along the Blue Canadian Rockies, when the white government in Ottawa was diffident to the fate of the Natives, when Canada's vast buffalo herds were slaughtered to near extinction, and when unscrupulous traders poisoned the Crees with Whiskey and Illness, and Cree women were forced into prostitution to survive.

Big Bear? For Americans and even Canadians who are unfamiliar with the Riel Rebellion of 1884-1885, think Sitting Bull meets Chief Joseph. Big Bear was more a medicine man than a fighting chief, and like the Nez Perce Chief Joseph, preferred co-existence with the Whites. But events, including the chaotic aftermath of the Little Big Horn, the expansion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, the arrival in Canada of American whiskey traders - and finally the savage decimation of Canada's Buffalo herds by the beginning of the 1880s pushed Big Bear over the edge.

Urging co-existence and compromise, only to see his efforts largely ignored by the national government in Ottawa, and watching his people slowly starve to death when the Canadian promise of food never materialized, Big Bear, against his better judgment, rallied his people to the side of the equally persecuted Metis, the half-French, half-Indian people led by the fiery Louis Riel. When Riel promised the Indians that they would have a sovereign entity if the rebellion succeeded, Big Bear joined Riel in his desperate rebellion against the Canadian authorities. Despite some initial victories, the rebellion was quickly crushed by the superior firepower of the RCMP and the (British) Canadian militia.

Whereas Big Bear sought only peace and reconciliation, the victorious Canadians, fearing that a successful rebellion would have seen a Metis state in alliance with the United States, as well as a sovereign Cree-Blackfoot entity as promised by Riel, sought only vengeful and reprisal. Riel was hanged, in a trial that borderlined on judicial murder. Big Bear and his fellow chief Poundmaker were sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted to long prison terms. Although the sentences were later reduced, and Big Bear released after only a couple of years in a Canadian prison, he soon sickened and died, about a year after his release. Many say, as in the case of Chief Joseph, that Big Bear did of a broken heart.

If Big Bear was the kind of warrior chief that Crazy Horse was, and had Riel's rebellion took place right after Custer's Last Stand, when the Metis-Cree-Blackfoot alliance might have even linked up with the Sioux (the Sioux and the Blackfoot were enemies, but they might have considered an alliance of convienence in a war against the hated Whites), history would have been changed - with Canada's western provinces quite possible included into the United States with the possible allowance of a sovereign Indian nation in the Northwest. "The End of Freedom" was truly an end of freedom - in more ways than one - for Big Bear and for his people.

I read this book many years ago and would love to get a personal copy. I also recommend the out-of-print "Strange Empire" by Howard.