University of Nebraska Books

~An American Soldier in World War I~ is an annotated collection of letters written by George Browne, (nicknamed `Brownie,') and addressed to his girlfriend. This twenty-three year old enlisted as a civil engineer in the U.S. Army at the onset of the Great War in 1917. Having enlisted voluntarily, rather than being subjected to the draft, Browne had his choice of assignments. He chose combat engineer. He was summarily assigned to the 117th Engineering Regiment. The editor of the book, David Snead, reveals his purpose by stating "[r]eading the letters within the larger context of the war's events gives a window onto what Brownie--the average American doughboy--experienced in World War I." Snead offers an insightful perspective of the life of an American soldier during the Great War. In surmising the life experience of George Browne, the reader may better appreciate the day-to-day life of the American doughboy during this time. With his thoughtful organization and informative commentary, Snead achieves his purpose.

At the onset of the Great War, American faced difficulties with mobilization. Further it is poorly equipped and supplied initially. From George's account on November 9, 1918, one gets the picture that the American soldiers are allowed rest and relaxation to recuperate from wartime hardship. He noted, "I spent about three days right near the hospital in what they call a Convalescent Camp. Then we got on a train and rode all night. We landed in a place they call a `Rest Camp.'" He added that he was moved around again, and slept on a train and later in a Red Cross hut near the train station. Brownie lamented "this army is sure a huge and complicated machine."

Does this book, or more aptly Browne's letters, offer an accurate picture of the war experience of an American soldier? Yes. For starters, the context is important. George was, of course, Marty's fiancé. His underlying purpose in sustaining contact with his fiancée by letter-writing was to comfort her and assure her of his physical well-being. Marty naturally cared for George and vice versa. Accordingly, it is to be expected this letters and would not relate the wartime horrors of combat experience. So in that regard, the letters may be limited, as they do not particularly magnify the horrors of the war, but rather gloss over combat without too much graphic detail. However, with regard to the day-to-day life of an American soldier apart from combat, the reader may give credence to the veracity of Brownie's recollection of events, happenings and places, as he had little reason to embellish the truth.

For morbid recollection of the wartime terror, one most look to the editor's commentary in this volume. Where Brownie's letters are obviously lacking in details about the horror of war, the editor rallied to fill the void. Snead, for example, points out how an account about a "draftee" who is struck by a "shard of steel from a Germany artillery shell" and a private recalls that it "took off everything above his eyebrows..." and "seeing that slick, pink brain-pan on top of his truncated head didn't do any of us any good." But does such lurid detail have a purpose besides shocking the conscience? Quite frankly, yes, it does. In an outside source, Private Nathaniel Rouse implied how adequate preparations could avert the disaster of a gas attack: "Clear beautiful day... Had gas attacks two times last night. No harm done." But many Allies were not so lucky. If Americans were merely taught to recollect war without mention of men in the agony of death, than they would have an incomplete picture of the events and hardships attendant to war. The nostalgic reminiscence does not do justice to the hardship experienced by its combatants and casualties. As General Robert E. Lee wrote in 1862, "It is well that war is so terrible -- otherwise we would grow too fond of it."

One theme readers may draw from the book is that American soldiers were hopeful, and indeed very much optimistic for victory, in spite of the hardships attendant to the war. Another theme is that there was a deep yearning to triumph that animates the fighting spirit of the American soldier. Finally, the letter compilation illustrated how love can and does persevere amidst the trial of war, as both George and Martha were reunited, and subsequently married after the war.

The historical context that the editor provides in his commentary fills in the blank spots in Browne's letters about the realities of war. The historical recollection of facts goes a long way in helping one understand and conceptualize the nature of the Great War conflict. For example, he notes the significance of the Somme offensive, which "had a great influence on the course of the war," which conceptualizes George's excitement as the events incidental to the offensive unfolded. (For those already `in the know' about the Great War, the editor's commentary might come across as superfluous window-dressing. But context and commentary is nonetheless valuable. We see the American soldier at times experienced extreme discomfort aside from the fighting. For example, the transatlantic voyage was aboard ships amidst the most squalid conditions. Snead interjects that Browne's statement that it was "not enjoyable at all" was "an understatement." Also, the reader is reminded that the trenches were filled with vermin, and the men therein infested with lice. Here we see the Great War for what it was: excruciating painful at times and anything but enjoyable.

The penpal courtship of George and Marty showed how love can persevere even in the midst of war. On March 7, 1919, in his last dispatch of letters, George wrote Marty: "Do you still want to marry me Marty? Let's love all the more, Marty, I want to. Don't forget me Marty." The two were married shortly thereafter in August 1919. The story of George Browne represented the triumph of human spirit. George could have been just another statistic, one of the many forgotten dead, but providence seemed to have favored him, and he came out of the conflict alive.

Did Snead accomplish his purpose? Overall, yes. He does indeed provide an accurate and comprehensive recollection of the experience of the average American soldier in World War One. Although, in order to get a more comprehensive depiction of the Great War, there is something to be said about the virtue of reading a generalized narrative history of the Great War. If one is narrow in their readings on the Great War, it would be better to start with a narrative history of the war. Snead's book nonetheless succeeds in giving the reader a window into life of an American soldier in the Great War.

The Great War was a war which I would have assumed that the U.S. never entered and left to Europeans to work out. In many ways, American entry into the Great War, American inducement to keep Russia in the war and the post-war Versailles settlement made the world safe not for democracy, but rather Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. Thus the Great War was a Pyrrhic Victory, a victory won at took great a cost. But it was part of our history, and worth studying nonetheless. This book is helpful for gaining perspective alongside the generalized military histories and social-political histories from the era.

I cannot praise this novel highly enough. It taught me how to love without regret and savor the moments that make life worth living. Though originally written in German, the translation is flawless. Every single sentence is a well-crafted masterpiece worthy of quotation. Maron is able to do what so few authors can: create a story that is inexplicably human -- one to which almost anybody who has experienced love can relate.

The relationship between significant others and the construction of identity is central to the narrator's characterization. After an enthralling love affair with a married man, the narrator develops a hopeless fixation with him and is incapable of fully living life in his absence. The unreliable first-person narration gives the reader insight into the many layers of this obsession -- from selective rememberance of their time spent together to her need to preserve the most inane remnants of their relationship long after its demise. Through the use of her lover in shaping her existence, the weakness of her personality is revealed piece-by-piece as a jumbled collection of haunting memories.

Conclusion: read this book. I promise you will not regret it. (Und besser auf Deutsch! Ich las und liebte das Buch auf beiden Sprachen.)

Written in 1895,by a very respected jewish-french socialist writer this books vividly details the history of antisemitism from ancient times to the 19th century. It's narrative and descripton are essential for any serious interpretation of the eternal question of why the world has hated the jews so much. A question that sometimes has taken different form of unspoken prejudice and direct manifestation like the mass killing in the holocust.
The strenght of the book lies in it's conclusions -that the jews are hated because they are always viewed as strangers- wich have outlasted the life of the auhtor to serve as a permanent remainder of how human beings can be guided by the wrong principles in their relationships with other human beings that may seem to be different because of their values and religion.

I was fortunate enough to snag a copy of the University of Nebraska Bison printing of this classic book back in 1987. But, must admit to some surprise the University doesn't have this classic yet in print.

This "crackling, swift moving narrative" not only offers chronicle of the pursuit of the Apache marauders "across southern Arizona (Territory) and New Mexico to the Sierra Madre in Mexico in 1883", but will offer also historical reading enjoyment to any interested reader opening its pages. The book was written by General George Crook's aide-de-camp, staff officer of 16 years, John Gregory Bourke. Both this book and ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK, also penned by Captain Bourke are to be considered classics of both the frontier and Indian Wars era in the 19th century.

Captain Bourke was very much an empathetic ethnologist, having interest and great understanding of the native Americans of that time, and his writings offer great insight into the Chiricahua Apaches and others caught up in this conflict of U.S. Army cavalry and the various Apache tribes.

The towns, landscapes, people, and activities of this 1883 campaign are all written about in these pages by one who observed them first-hand. No better factual reading exits of this time, especially coming as it does from a primary source, one who both viewed and lived it. Several histories on this campaign exist but Captain Bourke's is second to none.

Semper Fi.

To read The Apache Diaries by Grenville (1907-40) and son Neil Goodwin is to enter a portal to another dimension. Through a dialogue of contemporary and historic diaries and related photographs, a vivid landscape haunted by blood, pain, fear, suffering, passion, and ancient enmities emerges. In this world all tales are entwined by tones of sorrow, loss, and a relentless quest for the understanding and peace of the dead. There is also fascination, pride, and great heroism. The plight of the Sierra Madre Apaches intrigues the youthful Grennie, destined to become a singular if short-lived ethnographer who partially chronicles their ambiguous fate. That unfinished life task is taken up by his son Neil in the research and writing of The Apache Diaries. In an effort to reach out and perhaps even touch the father who died when he was only two months old, the author recreates the journeys made by his father when he wrote the original diary entries in the 1930's. The Apache Diaries is, as intended, a dialogue built between Neil and Grennie in an exploration of the dual enigmas of the nature of the man himself and the mysterious fate of the Sierra Madre Apaches he studied. It is as though Neil, the son, hopes to uncover a mirror experience of both the true life essence of his father and the inconclusive, mysterious fate of the "wild" Sierra Madre Apaches. It is fitting that he is joined in his quest by his wife, son and his son's future wife. The Apache Diaries is a classic quest riddle, filled with real unquenchable anguish and courage mixed with evil and cowardice. It is bitterly poignant. True to life, it never resolves completely; but there is a partial lifting of the veil. The key to experiencing this strangely compelling, haunted world of the blood- feuding Mexicans' and Apaches' history is, perhaps, acceptance of the pain and wrong, the incredible wrenching anguish that is called forth again and again. But there is a second step that is as yet unfinished. One quickly learns to guess at an outline of forgiveness, perhaps ? a future resolution that still may loom yet several generations away. The deaths and the kidnappings are so brutal and vivid. Though Grenville Goodwin was a respected ethnographer and Neil Goodwin is an accomplished film-maker of Native American documentaries, the reader does not need to be fluent in either medium to appreciate the depth and complexity of The Apache Diaries. It resonates in the heart. It breaks the heart. Perhaps it remakes the heart, or the heart's vision. This is a profoundly moving book. Perhaps the book reflects the spirit of the crown dance of the Chiricahua, a holy ritual Neil witnesses in 1987 when he accompanies two grandsons of one of Geronimo's warriors on a commemorative visit to the location of Geronimo's near surrender to General Crook:

Later during that trip the Chiricahuas conducted their holiest of rituals, the spellbinding crown dance. It begins with an immense leaping bonfire. There is a line of drummers and chanters. Shockingly, out of the darkness, come the dancers. They circle the fire wearing masks with high, antlerlike crowns, short kilts, painted bodies, a thousand tiny bells, a sword in each hand - they reel, hover, sway, and as they do, they become the mountain gods. The assembled Apaches are witnessing the first crown dance held in these mountains for a very long time. It is at long last a dance for the peaceless dead, and it is overdue by a hundred years or more. (page 236)

Nancy Lorraine Reviewer

There is no other text that even comes close to this book. It is the definitive book on Arkansas politics.

What a man to admire. We should all make a pilgrimage to Beyreuth to pay our lifetime respects to this great man.

Frontier historians have long been appreciative of the path-breaking establishment of Astoria as a fur-trading post on the Columbia River in 1811 and its short history as a pawn in international rivalries. James P. Ronda, well respected for his work on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, presents in this book the first full-length study of Astoria to appear since Washington Irving's "Astoria" in 1836. The result is a fine work that is more significant than just a story of adventure in the Pacific Northwest or just one more account of a single aspect of the fur trade. It moves with a sweep and a dimension that places the little post on the banks of the Columbia River in the vortex of world events, a pawn in games of international rivalry and chance.

Ronda describes carefully the efforts of John Jacob Astor, head of the Pacific Fur Company and several other business enterprises, to establish Astoria as the capital of his far western trading empire during the first decade of the nineteenth century. That effort moved from New York to Washington to St. Petersburg to Montreal to Canton as he manipulated international politics and appealed to personal desires. Astor, motivated by a quest for wealth but fortified by a sense of national prominence, appealed to the expansionist-minded politicians of the United States to gain support for Astoria's creation. He was finally successful and in 1811 the site was settled by representatives of the Pacific Fur Company traveling in two contingents, one overland and the other by sea. For the next three years Astor and his lieutenants battled bureaucracy in several nations, international ambitions on the part of several countries, rival fur trading companies, and the economics of the business to keep Astoria in operation. They failed, and it succumbed during the War of 1812 only to become one of the British North West Company's posts for the next twenty years.

But "Astoria & Emoire" is more than a recitation of the life and death of the American settlement. Although it is little more than a footnote in most history texts, if Ronda had limited his book to the Astoria's history irrespective of other events that affected it I would have questioned the necessity of its publication. Instead, Ronda provides an excellent study in the history of international relations at several levels of governments and between private citizens. Astoria is, essentially, a case study in business and politics in an international setting. Ronda's work, moreover, is a social history. He uses some untapped historical materials to reconstruct life on the trips to and from Astoria as well as activities at the post. In so doing, he presents a very useful portrait of activities in an early fur trading establishment. He describes something of the interrelationships of cultures and allegiances between the Americans, the Indians, the French and British Canadians, the Russians, and the Hawaiians. This social portrait is especially welcome also as a glimpse of the diversity present on the early fur trading frontier.

"Astoria & Emoire" is one of several refreshing books to appear on the development of the American West. It is a commendable work, and because of the skill of its author its 344 pages of narrative make interesting reading. One word of caution, however, this is not just western or frontier history, it is sophisticated analysis of several historical trends focused through the lens of Astoria; present in it also is social history and business history and diplomatic history and probably some other types of history yet unnamed. Those seeking staid fur trade literature with the emphasis on minutiae will be disappointed. Those readers pondering broader vistas, however, will be rewarded by considering Ronda's work.

Historical atlases have long been prized reference tools for historians of the American West. They permit a wealth of information to be depicted on each page and the maps included in them have the ability to communicate not only stark spatial features but also a wide range of other types of historical detail. Francis Paul Prucha's "Atlas of American Indian Affairs" is a most welcome addition to this aspect of historical study. Long a leading historian of the Indian experience in America, Prucha now captures with great comprehension the spatial dimensions of both the historical and contemporary events of Native Americans.

This atlas consists of 109 maps divided into ten individual sections and presented chronologically. Collectively they illustrate quite well the westward movement of the Indian frontier in the nineteenth century and the continued importance of Indian ethnicity in the Twentieth. There are maps relating to tribal lands and culture areas, census information, land cessions, reservations, the Indian experience in different regions of America, the Indian wars, and cultural aspects such as Indian agency locations, Indian schools, and Indian hospitals. Prucha has kept the narrative in this book to a minimum--including only a short preface, introductory statement to each of the ten major sections, and an outstanding explanation of themes in explanatory references at the end of the book. The philosophy that less is more paid off in this book as the individual maps are generally quite easy to understand and pack a wealth of information. For example, I was especially interested to follow chronologically Indian population statistics as compiled in the census from 1890 through 1980, as well as urban Indian populations between 1960 and 1980. The growth and diffusion of American Indians throughout the continental United States during the period since World War II was especially intriguing.

For all that such a capable work as this has to recommend it, maps intrinsically have limitations. Only so much information can be displayed both in any given map and in any atlas. The question of what topics to cover, the amount of data to include, and how best to display it for ready interpretation are challenging issues. Overall, Prucha has done a commendable job of this.

The beauty of this book is portioned out equally between the skill and dexterity of Hewitt and that of her subjects. Not only does Hewitt walk with ease across the tightrope of autobiography, her entire book is, as a whole, a perfectly balanced affair. It includes the distinct, prismatic effects of each of her selected modern French female autobiographers as she shines a new light on autobiography--but it also includes how each of the autobiographers' lights reflect upon and and influence one another. The book is balanced, as well, in the experiences of the French writers, themselves; Hewitt listens and gives her attention to a wide variety of French females. feminists, anti-feminists, being French in a foreign land, being Foreign in a French land, being lesbian, heterosexual, anti-gender, a black writer, a white writer--Hewitt values the distinct spice each experience adds to the overall genre of autobiography. Although this variety makes Hewitt's book seem to be a superficial sampler of modern feminine French autobiography, nothing can be further from the truth. With concise, yet exciting language, Hewitt sometimes digs so deeply into the experiences of her subjects and how they are novel and unique, this reviewer literally had an urge to go out immediately to the library and spend the rest of her life studying autobiography. This is not to say that Hewitt's book is flawless; no book is. In order to generate her great balance, Hewitt appears to stretch the genre of autobiography too far in order to fit her specifications. In searching for non-white, non-traditionally-gendered and foreign French voices, she included the work of Maryse Conde and Monique Wittig, skilled writers, but unfortunately for Hewitt, not autobiographers. Hewitt breaches the integral attraction/repulsion of autobiography in confusing what are clearly fictions with self-references, and the autobiographical genre. Although there is no clear-cut definition of autobiography, the easiest and most efficient way to discover what is and isn't autobiography is to ask the writer. In these cases, the works of the authors are certainly self-referential, but they are clearly not autobiography. Hewitt addresses these concerns, true, but her justifications for their inclusion in a book about autobiography are not ultimately satisfying. Yet, this book is a gem, filled with fresh insights into the work of the writers she studies and very interesting hypotheses. It is a fairly easy read, clearly digestible for the non-academic, and the readers' knowledge of Hewitt's subjects is not necessary to understand and appreciate this impressive book.