Nebraska Books

Evo Morales is elected the first Ingigenous president of Bolivia and the Indigenous people's movement of Mexico is on the march. Around the world activists and movement intellectuals have been making history by moving Indigenous peoples' struggles to the forefront of grass-roots politics. Accompanying these developments has been a lively and challenging discussion about Sovereignty in relationship to the Nationstate, global capital, cultural production, feminism and sexuality, eco-politics and so on. English-speaking activists and movement intellectuals can now access the currents of those discussions thanks to this anthology. Bringing together writings from North America, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Puerto Rico. Samoa, etc, this book is an excellent crash course in the terms of the debates around Sovereignty. Given the recent currency Sovereignty has received thanks to struggles in Latin America as well as recent writings by philosophers like Virno, Negri and Balibar, here's a book that offers an approach to Sovereignty from the perspective of Indigenous activists and scholars themselves. This book couldn't have come at a better time!

Better to read this than to read ten manuals on the subject of writing.

Blanchot evokes the non-presence of death in writing, writing's necessary complicity with death. This death, however, is not the Hegelian death that would negate and finalize the subject (cf Arendt), fixing it in a form on which judgement could finally be passed. No, true to his essay on the absence of any right to death (which appears in _The Work of Fire_ and _The Station Hill Blanchot Reader_), this death never occurs. This death is never present, happens at no particular time, and happens to no one (see also _The Writing of the Disaster_). It cannot be said to happen or occur at all. It is never present, and being so, shares with writing the latter's most unearthly, strange quality - the absense of the writer and of that about which has been written.

In addition to being the most profound book on writing about which I can write with any knowledge, this is also Blanchot's most coherent and accessible set of essays. They possess something of a centrality of purpose and, together, make up something of a book, rather than the collections which make up the remainder of his critical and quasi-critical work. This may be a failing in the eyes of most Blanchotophiles, but it provides a bridge from the normal style of scholarly exposition to his more challenging investigations, and can be recommended as a first approach for the reader who is unfamiliar with his work. Nevertheless, some prior acquaintance with Rilke, Mallarme, Hoelderlin, and Kafka will be of immeasurable aid.

Most importantly, this one stands as its own example of writing that utterly lacks completion, that is haunted throughout with a palpable sensation of absence, a sensation that is at once as appealing as it is astonishing and unsettling.

As the author's brother my view might be considered biased. This book came at the end of Elaine Jahners career as a teacher and academician. She died of cancer just before the book was published. She devoted her life to the study of how narrative and cognitive syle shapes both events in community and our very ability to comprehend and act. This is one of those books that challenges the reader to discover it's many dimensions. I found Elaine Jahner's sentences work themselves into comprehension if you work with them. You, as a reader, will discover the same thing. If you do the work to follow her process and language, at the end of the paragraph and chapter you will sit back and know that you have been somehow changed and transformed by her insightful analysis. I would encourage people to undertake the challenge of this book. After you have finished and closed the book you will understand the American West at a deeper and different level than if you hadn't opened it's cover.

With several editions of this book available, this review refers to the original 1920 publication. The book is an enjoyable and delightful account of Jedediah Smith and the men in his immediate circle who, over a period of eight years, explored and trapped the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific during the years 1823-1831. Although I did come across a few historical inaccuracies, this can be attributed to the fact that some documentation, letters, journals, etc. did not surface till later dates. For instance, James Clyman was with Smith during many of these exploits, and his "Journal of a Mountain Man" wasn't published until 1928. Dale Morgan's "Jedediah Smith And The Opening Of The West" which was published in 1953, gives the reader a more in depth study (with more historical documentation available at the time) into the character, achievements and defeats of this remarkable man. Neihardt's writing style is to be commended though, as he is very descriptive and expressive.

A very short, readable, poignant book. It chronicles a lawsuit filed by the Ponca Indians against the federal government in Nebraska in the 1870's. Nearly all of the text is contemporary material. The outcome of the trial was a triumph for American justice. For those of us whose notions of the settlement of the west are formed mainly by images of Colonel Custer, old 50's movies with battles between calvary and Indians, and the like, the narratives in this true story are full of surprises.

Lyonel Trouillot's intense, fragmentary portrayal of a night of apocalyptic violence in Port-au-Prince is harrowing and lacking in catharsis for the reader, as the two main narrators, a bordello madame (who used to be a school teacher) and a taxi driver who survives in an open sewer (though requiring an amputation) do not even hope that the viciousness will stop with the triumph of the Prophet (an abstracted Jean-Bertrand Astride) and the fall of the dictatorship (abstracted from that of the Duvaliers, père et fils).

"Does fire burn away suffering?", the madame asks. It is a rhetorical question, the answer to which is negative -- and that knowledge is not going to stop the burning, literal and figurative.

Things do happen in the concentrated, intense novel -- mostly bad things. What Trouillot wrote about was not just a single night, but an all-too representative condensation of Haitian history. Translator Linda Coverdale's useful introduction provides a succinct overview of the bloodstained history of Haiti, though I think that this portrayal of people living for being in on the kill has much wider reference than Haiti (having recently been in the Balkans...)

The realites he wrote about are stomach-turning. I don't think he should have sugarcoated them, but wish that he had marked who was narrating each of the short (2-5 page) chapters.

The interaction of the local French working with a brave person combined to make this story of individual bravery inspiring. The unoccupied area of France during the first part of the Second World War provided opportunity for some to resist against Nazi oppression. It took those who were willing to take risks for the benefit of others that provides the satisfaction of the read.

Cliff Swallows are the life passion of Charles and Mary Brown. Every summer for the past fifteen years Charles and Mary have left the University where they are teaching and journeyed to Ogalalla, Nebraska to study these fascinating colonial birds. In his book, "Swallow Summer", Charles Brown gives the reader an insight into the day to day life of a research biologist. This true story of a summer filled with birds and data collection is told in an intriguing and humorous manner.

Brown lets the reader look into not only his life, but also the life of this fascinating small bird. Cliff Swallows nest in large colonies in culverts, cliffs, and other such areas around Lake McConaughy in Nebraska. During the summer Charles and Mary deal with not only the Cliff Swallows, but also a number of young research assistants from all over the world who come to Ogalalla to study research biology with the Browns. Often the antics of the research assistants are as amusing as those of the Cliff Swallows.

Jonis Agee is "a gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the asmerican landscape" (New York Times Book Review).The main character, Honey Parrish, "not only sees the complex relationships of her town but tells us about them with humor and pathos." (Lawrence Thornton) "Divinity, Iowa is a boisterous traffic jam of human desires and follies, secrets and squabbles. Agee depicts the rural backdrop so keenly that, beneath the noise of her amazing characters, you'll swear you can hear the corn grow." (Susan Dodd)

Douglas Strong does an excellent job of explaining the environmental history of Lake Tahoe in a straight forward manner. This book puts in context the numerous issues confronting the lake and how these developed. I found the book quite interesting and very timely, given the renewed interest in preserving the clarity of the lake.