University of Nebraska Books

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.

More Walser in English is ALWAYS a good thing - few pleasures can surpass going to the bookstore & discovering that a new volume is out, though it makes me unhappy that I heard nothing about this being published. Walser is somebody who matters. This is a collection of small pieces, some purely fictional, some not quite so fictional; some were published while he was alive & some are from his manuscripts. They're all over the place, but there are heartstopping moments of beauty scattered through him all - his short version of "The Robber" makes me deeply, deeply happy. Also includes a current (2005) bibliography of translations of Walser as well as some critical work on him. Thank you UNebraska Press for publishing this book.

Few writers have created such a unique voice that embeds within a reader the world of the writer's character(s) and their life/lives. The Walserian World as some have quiped, where the reader comes away from the work with a different world-view, as though the reader is looking at the world with Walserian eyes. Robert Walser is such an amazing, unique writer; whose writing exists at so many different levels with it's simpleton-clever-profundity. And Christopher Middleton translations of Walser's work is "A Species of Mime." Unfortunately, this book has been in print for over 6 months and I didn't even know about it. I just picked it up yesterday and read most of it last night. Makes the "flash poems" of today read like pathetic missives to an unknown reader.

Many of the current books written about the West are by natives of the area that have typically lived on a family farm or ranch. They provide intimate details about working the land and lament the daily changes occurring in what many consider the last, best place to live in the United States.
Freemna-Toole is different. She is a sixth-generation Californian and comes to the last free-flowing stretch of the Snake River in Idaho not knowing the impact it would have on her life.
In lyrical, poignant prose she provides an intimate portrait into her search for her own place in the world. It has a profound effect on her life when she finds it in the new, and old, West. Little did she know that her friendship with the owner of the last homestead ranch on the middle Snake River would lead her to encounter the dilemmas facing both natives and newcomers alike in the West.
Her account of having to re-examine her views on environmentalism in light of rural traditions and values is worthy not only for its sensitivity but for its examination of an issue that is at the heart of one of the monunmental changes taking place in the West.
The unavoidable impact of tourism and recreation growth in a pristime and spectacular landscape is noted along with a recognition that is rarely seen in print from a lover of the area, namely that it may be than such tourism will serve to preserve some of the landscape that otherwise might be sacrificed on the altar of economic development.
I heard such an argument made by river guides on a recent trip down the Grand Canyon. They argued that while increased tourism unquestionably places great stresses on the environment, the same tourists, once exposed to such grandeur, are more likely to oppose proposals to develop, dam or clear cut such treasures. Thus, tourists may be the lesser of evils and easier to contain than the alternatives.
There are also chapters on the author's struggle between leaving her family roots in Los Angeles, with all the guilt and uncertainty that predictably creates, and struggling to understand the almost magical pull of the rural West. She writes about her introduction to traditions and a culture that view private property rights, politics, animal treatment, family loyalties and death in a manner that is radically different than the ones with which she is familiar.
Throughout the book are wonderful scenes and descriptions of her young son's introduction to a rural environment and the impact it has on his life.
The book is an excellent memoir about one woman's journey into an enviroment that is harsh, controversial, spectacular and, for an increasing number of people, the end of a long search for a special place that is as much about spirit as geography. A moving, honest, well-written book.

This book will be of interest to natives of the Northwest, as an outsider assesses what it is about their culture that is worth embracing. It will be interesting to city folk to watch one of their own forsake the freeways and the smog of California for a green and peaceful place. During her ten-year indoctrination into the ways of the West, Freeman-Toole faces physical and emotional hardships with heroism and common sense. A first book by the author.

The famous Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, said, in effect, that the Hispanic world did not come to America, America came to the Hispanic world. No book reveals this with more clarity and accuracey that this one. It represents 400 years of history of what is now the American Southwest. The author writes with the dramatic eloquence of a seasoned novelist creating a history book that is, of all things, a "page turner." It reveals epics, sagas, villans, and both noted and anonymous heroes. It is a shame so many of our educational systems do not teach this history becasue it is the story of millions of Amerians and fully one-third of United States territory. If anyone has ever looked at a map and wondered why so many mountains, cities, villages, rivers, plains, states, and people have Native American or Spanish names, this book will answer those questions and more, it will help them appreciate Mr. Fuentes' insight.

The famous Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, said, in effect, that the Hispanic world did not come to America, America came to the Hispanic world. No book reveals this with more clarity and accuracey that this one. It represents 400 years of history of what is now the American Southwest. The author writes with the dramatic eloquence of a seasoned novelist creating a history book that is, of all things, a "page turner." It reveals epics, sagas, villans, and both noted and anonymous heroes. It is a shame so many of our educational systems do not teach this history becasue it is the story of millions of Amerians and fully one-third of United States territory. If anyone has ever looked at a map and wondered why so many mountains, cities, villages, rivers, plains, states, and people have Native American or Spanish names, this book will answer those questions and more, it will help them appreciate Mr. Fuentes' insight.

this story is amazing. all though I am not of native american background I have some friends that are and fortunetly, they are related to the Sioux and Cheyanne tribes and they say this book is one of the best of it's kind.

Bless Mari Sandoz for saving much of the traditional Plains culture in this very accessible short novel. It is the time before Custer; whites are just beginning to become more populous along the Oregon trail. The main character, Lance, is a boy looking for his role in a band of Oglala Sioux, whose main struggles still involve the enemy tribes of the Rees, Pawnees, and Crow, as well as the battle against hunger. It is his nature to stray from the fold, which goes against the strong tribal value system of doing nothing that will endanger the people. He adopts an enemy as a brother; catches horses; survives a winter alone; participates in the buffalo hunt; attends the Sioux tribal meeting on Bear Butte; falls in love; "buries" his mother in a tree-burial; and finally wins the tribe's--and his sweetheart's--approval for his keen vision in a revenge raid on the Pawnees. His talent is in watching and recording in pictures the people's stories: a comparison could be made to Sandoz and the Oglala historians she worked with. This book renders a topic of inherent interest in beautifully crafted sentences. There is much to learn in its pages.

"Intelligence, a sense of humor, rightness of heart, observant sympathy for nature, and gentle sensitiveness are manifest throughout this book," said J. Frank Dobie, who wrote an introduction for it. In 1894 Carl Benedict was still wet behind the ears but crazy to get away and work on the range. In the summer, he hooked up with the Figure 8 Ranch to round up cattle in the Texas Panhandle. Out of that experience came this book, published fifty years later, about what it was really like to be a cowboy in some ornery country checkered by canyons and gyp water springs. A Texas cowboy classic

Carl Benedict was broke when he decided to write this short book about his first year tending cattle on the Texas range; he says he "had a wild hope that it would make me some money." Whether it did that I can't say (though my doubts are strong), but the book has had a decent success. It was first published by the Texas Folklore Society, which seems the perfect venue for it: it is simply told, straightforward, unpretentious, and has the wide-eyed innocence of many a tall tale.

Benedict became a cowboy for the Figure 8 outfit on the Texas panhandle, and we get his impressions of herding cattle, duststorms, thunderstorms, crossing streams, going to town and dancing with the ladies, favorite horses, types of equipment - everything another cowboy might be interested in hearing. And that's the book's triumph: Benedict writes for an audience that he assumes will be just like himself. He's honest and ordinary - and wonderfully fresh. It's a classic in cowboy literature. [Gyp water, by the way, is the sulfur-like water found in some water holes, to be drunk only as a last resort.]

"To a Distant Day", the third installment in the Outward Odyssey series ("Into That Silent Sea" and "In the Shadow of the Moon") fully deserves to stand alongside the first two wonderful books hopefully already on your library shelf! However, my initial response to the release of this book was not with the same excitement as the first two books; this wasn't going to be a book about the astronauts and the right stuff, telling us more about their fantastic journeys through new and exclusive personal interviews. In fact, most of the heroes that Mr. Gainor writes about are deceased, but that doesn't stop him from bringing these early pioneers to life. The author recreates the colorful history of how rocketry came to be, and how it grew into the backbone of how we flew to the moon, and more. This is a part of history that I ignored up to now, but after reading "To a Distant Day" I need to read and learn even more about the people who designed and built the first machines capable of breaking earth's grasp. We flew to the moon standing on the shoulders of these early pioneers and geniuses who, in spite of their own idiosyncrasies and vulnerabilities deserve their place in history. This book is very well written and just as difficult to put down as the first two books; it's your loss if you don't read it. Thank you Mr. Gainor!

I was looking for a book covering all rocket developers of the 20th century, showing how they interacted, competed and learned from each other. That's exactly what this recently-published book delivers.

Its strength comes from the demonstration of these interactions. Learn how the early pioneers such as Tsiolkovsky and Goddard went as far as they could alone, independently of each other, often rediscovering physical laws and each others' work and not even realizing it. Learn how Von Braun's being hired by the German Army prior to WWII ultimately led to Neil and Buzz setting foot on the moon, as well as the establishment of the "military-industrial complex." Learn how the long-mysterious Soviet "Chief Designer," Korolev, rose from imprisonment at a Stalinist gulag to orchestrate the Soviet space effort that very nearly beat the US to the moon.

If this book has any drawbacks, I'd say it's a little short. However it does provide an excellent bibliography in its "sources" section for those interested in further reading.

Hervey Allen's memoir is certainly one of the finest personal narratives of World War One, and perhaps the best American memoir of that war. In my opinion, it is a neglected classic. The narrative covers his unit's march from the area around Chateau Thierry in July 1918 to the Fismes/Fismette area in August. The book begins with Allen's unit on an almost bucolic road march through unspoiled French countryside, and ends with its virtual decimation in Fismette. As the title suggests, the closer Allen and his comrades get to Fismette, the more intense the action, until they are literally facing the fire of a German flamenwerfer attack. The story ends abruptly; in a preface to the second edition, Allen compares the ending to a filmstrip burning out suddenly.

Allen, a novelist and poet, was a keen observer; he gives the reader a vivid picture of what it was like to be an AEF soldier in France. Particularly compelling are his descriptions of the shattered homes, farms, and buildings that his unit occupies as it moves forward, and what they tell him about the original French owners, and the Germans who, in some cases, have left the premises just minutes before.

Hervey Allen is at his finest in this carefully crafted memoir of his time as a soldier in France. While he is best known as author of the sweeping historical fiction Anthony Adverse, which was a best seller in the 1930s(and later a pretty mediocre movie), he proves in Towards the Flame that he is also able to communicate great depth with an economy of words. This book illuminates that far away time in which young men went off the to fight the Last Great War for reasons that now seem so trivial and also gives a wonderful sense of the French countryside from the perespective of a young soldier. I believe that this book is a hidden treasure of American literature that deserves to be rediscovered.

My son ended up having to read this book for a college history class. I picked it up and thumbed through it and was immediately drawn into Lummis' explanation of the fluidness and even reverence with which the New Mexican of his time could curse all things. I read this book in one day.

This true (I guess) narrative of Lummis' hike in the late 19th century westward to California has it all: Frontier adventures, bungled robberies, hunting, winter survival, humorous observations of human nature, confessions of weakness, personal examination of bigotry. Lummis' wit is liberally sprinkled throughout this book and his sarcasm isn't bitter, but sassy and refreshing. He truly came to love the people he ran across, and I can't help but imagine that the hospitality he frequently found himself receiving from others was a reflection of his worthiness of it.

Highly recommended as a piece of cross-genre Americana. Lummis' prose isn't buried in the 19th century, although some aspects of his wordsmithing bear the marks of that age. This is an accessible work for the literate modern reader.

Lummis was a real character with a 'perfect body and awakened mind' who walked from Cincinnati to his new job in Los Angeles in winter of 1884-1885. His adventures are terrific and his self-confidence supreme and enabling of his success. He was open and accepting of all people, flamboyent, bombastic and an asset to the development of Los Angeles, its library, the Southwest Museum and the peaceful relocation of the native Americans to reservations. (He had been appointed to that task by his Harvard classmate, Teddy Roosevelt. Clean, funny and very well written!

A very good, concise history of some of the mountain men and fur trapper/traders of the early American West. It is along the same line of thought as Robert Utley's "A Life Wild and Perilious". Whereas Utley's book is more of a chronological history of the fur trappers, this one is based more on geographical location. Each chapter is devoted to an individual character and the life of that person. Many of these early trapper/traders' lives interweave with each other and therefore you have more of a tendency to remember who knew who and who did what with who, etc. After reading chapter after chapter, it humbles one when looking back at these mens' lives and how much they accomplished, whether it be in how many places they traveled, what sort of trade they were involved in, their relationships with the Indians and each other, how some were involved with the initial founding of the west, etc. It is simply amazing what went on so long ago. I have much respect and admiration for these men.

I believe five separate collections of mountain man biographies have been published now by Bison Books, all containing biographical essays culled from LeRoy R. Hafen's ten-volume series THE MOUNTAIN MEN AND THE FUR TRADE OF THE FAR WEST, published between 1965 and 1972. This was the second of the five. Sixteen biographical essays are produced here, detailing the lives of some of the most important figures of the early American West, including Etienne Provost, Milton Sublette, James Clyman, James P. Beckwourth, Robert Campbell, and Lucien Fontenelle among others. The essays are written by various experts of the Fur Trade period. The biographies read like long encyclopedia articles, and relate as much of each man's life as is generally known (including specific movements across the West on yearly trapping expeditions); footnotes abound. The book, as is the entire series, is an excellent research tool, as well as a great jumping off source for more specific investigations (many of the trappers written about kept journals or wrote accounts of their experiences). Anyone with an interest in the pre-Gold Rush American West will find this book (and the series) indispensable. Highly recommended.