University of Nebraska Books

The book is kind of dry at times but it's a very interesting account of the climb. The equipment they had was nothing compared to today. Now a days climbers won't go up without their fancy 400$ leather or plastic boots with clip on crampons, ultralight ice axes.. These guys went up with leather moccasins with 5 layers of wool socks in them and their ice axes and crampons were hand made from existing tools.

All in all a definate read if you are interested in the history of mountaineering.

This is a well-written tribute to those who made the trip. Their success is amazing, given the equipment they had at the time. I really felt like I was with them. Any climber/outdoor nut should read this.

This Beowulf Handbook disappointed me at first sight, for various aesthetic reasons. First, the printing quality: the text appears set in a 1990's-style laser-printout font (probably Times New Roman...) with thick, somewhat fuzzy letters as a result, making the text look like a xeroxed lecture-note handout. And there are no colour pictures, only 13 b/w drawings, all lumped together at the end of the book outside of the text part which they should illustrate. For such a high-prized book, and 35 USD for a paperback college textbook of 359 ugly pages IS expensive, you would expect the publisher to have put much more labour of love into the production -especially of a work in the humanities where you expect readers to have above-average sensibilities to aesthetic values.....
That said, this compendium is a very systematic treatment of the main questions that you need to address when studying Beowulf, as the chapter titles show: here I have to write them out myself since that lousy publisher, Universiy of Nebraska Press, even failed to activate Amazon's great "Look inside this book" feature which normally allows you to see the Contents page for yourself.
1. Introduction: Beowulf, Truth and Meaning.
2. Date, Provenance, Author, Audiences.
3. Textual Criticism (by veteran Germanist Robert D Fulk).
4. Prosody.
5. Diction, Variation, the Formula.
6. Rhethoric and Style.
7. Sources and Analogues.
8. Structure and Unity.
9. Christian and Pagan Elements.
10. Digressions and Episodes.
11. Myth and History.
12. Symbolism and Allegory.
13. Social milieu.
14. The Hero and the Theme.
15. Beowulf and Archaeology.
16. Gender Roles.
17. Beowulf and Contemporary Critical Theory.
18. Translations, Versions, Illustrations.
List of Abbreviations.
Works Cited (pp.377-431 so this is a LONG section).

An innovative and helpful innovation in this book is that each chapter begins with a very short summary, 8-10 lines at most, followed by a section entitled Chronology (usually 1-2 pages long): this is a list where each line starts with a year, and then states (again very shortly, 1-2 lines), what was written about Beowulf that year. An example from chapter 9, Christian and pagan elements:

"1986: Karl Schneider argues at length that the poem is camouflaged paganism with only a deceptive Christian overlay."
"1988: Charles Dahlberg reasserts strongly the Augustinian interpretation of the poem".

Most students will be thankful to the authors for compiling these brief tabulations, literally saving thousands of them from having to wade through dozens of pages of German or other outlandish texts ! You can follow the waves and trends in research on Beowulf as they evolved over time almost at an eyeglance. And they do refer to European works in other languages than English, which is alas becoming a rarity among English-speaking scholars today. These features alone are, I was tempted to write "almost worth the price of the book" as the saying goes, but again I have to refer to my first paragraph above where I outlined why I think it is really too expensive for the graphic product that it is, despite its obvious virtues.
This is not a poor work and so perhaps for what it offers inside could be a 4-star work but I definitely have to deduct a star for the poor typographical craftmanship combined with the hefty price asked for it. This is why I only gave it 3 stars. But I am still glad that I now own this book.

"A Beowulf Handbook"--edited by professors Bjork and Niles--is an open door to a genuine treasure-mound. The volumes many scholarly writers describe the origin and chronology of, as far as I can tell, every important branch of "Beowulf" critical thought. Three centuries of interpretive battles rage between these covers. The index and bibliographies are a joy and, by themselves, worth the price of admission.

However, his writing style was a bit too loaded with un-needed color. It was a bit too "dime novel" for me. I appreciated "We Pointed Them North" far more for its true to actual life account of the times than I did this here author. Nonetheless, it is an account of the times that is still interesting to read.

This is a great book for anyone interested in western history. Mr. Bronson gives an eyewitness account of the last Sioux Sun Dance which by itself makes the book worth reading. His eyewitness account of Dull Knife's heroic fight to lead the Cheyenne 700 miles from their Oklahoma reservation, where they were starving, to the nortern plains where they were finally captured ranks as one of the greatest stories of courage ever told. This man was alive, and intelligent enough to write about a time in our history, when our country was changing. His writing records this time the way Charlie Russell did with paint and canvas.

I picked up this book for my college class on the study of Native Americans from Civil War to present. Even though this is an educational biography on boarding school life, it is actually quite intriguing. Brenda Child completely covers the topic with very interesting material. I won't say that Boarding School Seasons is one of my favorites, but if you are interested in the topic of Indian boarding schools, then you will actually be suprised at how easy it is for this book to keep your attention. If you are viewing this book for a college course, then your class shouldn't be too hard. This is one of the few college required texts that I actually managed to enjoy

This short, easy to read book presents a basic overview of boarding school issues which occurred throughout the U.S. during the boarding school era. Brenda Child's book concentrates on the Red Lake Ojibwes who attended boarding school at Flandreau specifically. The book also uses personal stories of students and their families in vignettes preserved through letters sent to and from Flandreau. I found this book well-written, readable, and recommended as an overview of the boarding school era.

In his excellent introduction to CHANGING MILITARY PATTERNS OF THE GREAT PLAINS INDIANS, John C. Ewers credits Dr. Secoy's book with the revelation that "the Indian Wars" had been going on for quite a while before the US Army got involved. This is a point most people tend to miss including me.

I was vaguely aware that "intertribal warfare" had gone on, but tended to consider it a side-show to what Robert M. Utley described as "Frontiersmen in Blue." Secoy's book set me straight and introduced me to a dramatic and under-appreciated chapter in the history of the American West.

CHANGING MILITARY PATTERNS OF THE GREAT PLAINS INDIANS was first published in 1953. It's been around a while, but hasn't been read as widely as it deserves to be. A more recent book by Anthony McGinnis entitled COUNTING COUP AND CUTTING HORSES came out in 1990 and makes a good companion to Secoy's earlier work.

Secoy writes like a professor. His style is a bit plodding compared to McGinnis', but I did not find it as dense as some scholarly works tend to be.

Secoy's book is well footnoted and includes a good bibliography and such interesting appendices as "The Use of the Flintlock Muzzle-Loader on Horseback," which add greatly to book's appeal for those interested in weapons and tactics. I was unable to verify many of Secoy's footnotes and would agree with a previous reviewer's comment that he uses a lot of obscure sources. That doesn't necessarily weaken his research. Ewers is one of the leading authorities on Plains Indians and he praises Secoy's research in the book's introduction.

I grew up on the Great Plains among many of the same tribes that Secoy discusses and his comments and research coincided with my own experiences and observations. I did review MEMOIRS OF A WHITE CROW INDIAN but did not see the same problems referred to in the previous review.

I would agree, however, that Secoy's word choices sometimes suggest comparisons with conventional cavalry battles during the Civil War instead of the "sparring" Thomas Leforge observed. Secoy's book isn't perfect and it won't be the last word on the subject, but it is a valuable addition to your library if your interested in intertribal warfare and the Plains Indians. I liked it and gave it five stars.

This book, first published in 1953, tries to impress with terminology such as the Post-gun -- pre-horse military technique pattern and the Post-horse -- pre-gun military technique pattern, and too frequently the author's writing style clouds what he is trying to say (at least this was the case for my simple mind). At 103 pages it is my opinion that he tackles a topic that needs more data to support the conclusions set forth. And there are times that the author selectively uses source material to make his point. One glaring example is on pp. 76-77. Here the author talks about a "large-scale, formal [intertribal] cavalry battle" that "might last for hours, or for most of the day." His example comes from the recollections of Thomas H. Leforge as told to Thomas B. Marquis (Memoirs of a White Crow Indian). Leforge related an 1873 battle between the Crows and the Lakota. In such an encounter there was lots of long-range firing, daring rides across the enemy lines, taunts back and forth, and perhaps several one-on-one combats that might result in nothing more than each warrior trying to count coup (not to belittle such an event which took quite a bit of bravery). But as for Secoy's large-scale cavalry battle (reminiscent of the Civil War), it just didn't occur (especially as it relates to the example he cited). There is some interesting information that can be gleaned from reading the monograph, such as on p. 83 where he convincingly shows how and why the Apaches went from allies of the Spanish to their long-time enemies. Overall, he quoted so many hard to find titles that it is difficult to know how accurately he used them in his writing (which must be questioned in light of the misuse of Leforge's recollections that I presented above); and his constant use of hard to grasp terminologies (instead of easy to understand straightforward explanations) really deters from the book's usefulness. The book is rather inexpensive, short, and he does present some interesting ideas, so I'd recommend it if intertribal warfare and the introduction and spread of guns and horses is of interest to you.

This book addresses a subject which is, or should be, a concern for all of us: the preservation of our quality of life and the integrity of our planet. During his journey up "the grape vine" R. Camuto introduces us to a fascinating and diverse group of people, purists, poets, musicians, winemakers and lovers of the earth all of them, for whom quality, tradition, and the love of "terroir" becomes an art and a "raison d'etre". Often humoristic, this foray into an industry which is fast becoming spoiled by "big" money puts in proper perspective three essentials in the life of modern man: maintaining the quality of life, reclaiming the pride an individual takes in his trade and a growing awareness that preserving the integrity of the planet has become equivalent to self preservation. C.M.Smith

When I lived in Napa, I saw the sad, inevitable industrial takeover of the wine community. Now the moneymen mass produce thousands of acres of mediocre cabernet or zinfandel in the Central Valley and slap a label with the word "Napa" on it to inflate the price. They doctor their mediocrity with wood chips and flavored yeasts. Some regions of France are losing their integrity to this bottom feeding mentality. Robert Camuto, like Kermit Lynch and director Jonathan Nossiter (Mondovino), seeks out the people who are wrestling the soul of wine away from the people and places that would sell it to the highest bidder. Corkscrewed hits it on the head with his uneasiness at the rote tasting sessions at Vinexpo. From there he takes us with him on his voyages of discovery, not as an expert but as a wine lover. He conjures images of the real, the genuine, the natural and the heartfelt in each of his visits to various wine regions in France. His comical, bacchus-possessed visit to the most over-the-top wine event in the world, the auction at les Hospices de Beaune, makes you realize that the Burgundians have somehow maintained their integrity in spite of the world wide clamor for pinot noir. His journey with the peasant (et fier d'etre!) in the Ardêche and that region's rediscovery of chatus, provides hope. The stories and survival of these intense, impassioned winemakers are essential for any wine lover.

A provision in the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty assigned all the lands west of the Missouri River in present-day South Dakota, including the Black Hills, to the Sioux. But rumors began to emerge that the Black Hills were rich in gold, and in 1874 the government authorized a "reconnaissance" to check out the rumors. George Armstrong Custer, headquartered at Ft. Abraham Lincoln near Bismark, ND, was put in charge, and from July 2 through August 30 he led an expedition to the Black Hills that indeed proved the rumors to be true. In this short book Donald Jackson tells the story of the expedition.

Perhaps once THE book on the expedition, now it's best utilized as a supplementary text next to Grafe & Horsted's amazingly superb EXPLORING WITH CUSTER: THE 1874 BLACK HILLS EXPEDITION, which is a detailed, eye-popping, near mile-by-mile account of the expedition. Jackson expands somewhat on the scientific corps that accompanied the expedition as well as the prelude and postscript to the trip, but generally relates in words what Grafe & Halsted reveal in maps and photographs. One interesting sidenote is the baseball game played by the troops on July 31 in what is today downtown Custer, the first baseball game played in South Dakota. The results of the expedition ushered in a gold rush and another disaster for the Indians whose lands were once again invaded. Jackson is a well-known and excellent western historian and this book tells the story of Custer and the 1874 expedition succinctly and well. Recommended.

This book first appeared in the early 1970s which, in hindsight, was at the dawn of an era that witnessed the publication of a flood of new books on Custer that has continued over the years, most noteworthy being those from Utley, Louise Barnette, Michno on the battle, etc. For anyone wanting the full details of the Black Hills Expedition, CUSTER'S GOLD was easily trounced in 2002 with the publication of EXPLORING WITH CUSTER with its wealth of then-and-now photographs, abundant quotes from primary sources, and a fine narrative to pull it all together. That book suffers though from a lack of an index!

That said, for someone looking for a shorter and less costly recounting of the historic 1874 expedition, this well-written book answers the call. Especially noteworthy is the chapter entitled "The Misery of Private Ewert" that draws from his diary to illustrate the hellish conditions endured by enlisted men as they marched across the prairie towards the beckoning Black Hills. The author lets his anti-Custer bias show on occasion but that is in small measure compared to some writers. Unlike the recent EXPLORING, there is an index. Recommended.

Despite its age, "Desertion During the Civil War" remains the standard introduction to the topic. The book's major shortcoming is touched on in William Blair's introduction to this reprint: "Lonn relied primarily on the 'Official Records.' Although adequate for the time, this would be considered merely a good beginning today."

The "Official Records" are the most complete and impartial documentation of the Civil War, and the necessary foundation for any serious research. But they were never edited for accuracy, and many reports were condensed for space, and the information about the South was especially spotty in the 1920s. Modern historians are severely cautioned against relying on them without corroborating evidence.

Historians from Prof. McPherson on down have been saying for years that there needs to be a fresh study of desertion, especially in the Confederacy. But that would require a couple of people to spend the rest of their natural lives sifting through tens of thousands of provost marshals' reports and muster rolls of thousands of regiments.

So we're left with Ella Lonn. Her analysis of the "disease" takes into account both North and South, as well as mentioning the Napoleonic armies, Wellington's experience in Spain, the U.S. military before 1861, and the Franco-Prussian War.

Part of her thesis, now much-shaken by better information than was available in the 1920s, was that the South had a serious desertion problem for much of the war, and that it spiraled out of control in the last months. She wrote that the North seemed to get its own desertion problem under relative control about the same time -- largely by draconian measures.

Her conclusion is that one out of every seven men deserted from the Union Army, and one out of every nine men deserted from the Confederate army. Though the Union lost proportionately more to desertion, she feels the South suffered more because of the initial difference in manpower, and that desertion ultimately was instrumental in the South's failure to achieve independence.

Lonn concludes that Union desertions helped prolong a war that the South was losing, because the news of them gave the South hope and allowed it to cling to a dream of eventual victory long after that was practically out of reach.

Lonn seems to be writing with an eye on her own time, in the wake of World War I, which brought up a great many of the ugly things in American democracy that we think only emerged during the Cold War. She alludes to it often, and seems intent on pointing out that the horrors of war -- any war -- are more worthy of note than the characters of men who desert from armies.

I was prompted to read this book after having read "Cold Mountain" and having someone complain to me about the hero of that book being a deserter. How could someone write a book glorifying desertion! That got me to wondering and led me to Lonn's book. I found it very informative about many aspects of desertion, including: the reasons men deserted, what happened to them if they were caught, the means the governments (both Union and Confederate) used to persuade deserters to return to their units, the bounties paid to capture deserters, and many more aspects that I had never considered, most importantly, the effect it had on the outcome of the war. She also examines the effects of desertion on the civilian population, and how the stigma of desertion became what it is today. Some chapters were a bit redundant (she covers both North and South), and the sections on the numbers who deserted and from which states, etc. bored me, but overall I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Civil War.

A slender tome with a title that veritably calls out from amongst the stacks, M. Benabou's Dump This Book While You Still Can! is a satisfyingly unusual work of prose. There is no traditional plot line to speak of. In fact, the entire book revolves around a singular setting - a bachelor's Parisian apartment - and features a cast of vibrant characters, of whom only one (the narrator) plays a prominent role.

The story itself (if we may refer to the narrative as such) revolves around the simple act of reading, only made not-so-simple by the rather obsessive narrator. An obscure, unfamiliar book surfaces in the narrator's home, which opens with a hostile diatribe against reading any further: "Come on, dump this book. Or better yet, throw it as far as away as you can. Right now. Before it's too late." Being the literary (and charmingly pretentious) sort, the narrator initially takes umbrage with this form of address and dutifully scoffs the author's feeble attempt (he says) at gaining one's attention. Before too long, though, the narrator decides that his visceral reaction is somewhat extreme, and begins to dissect the text for depths previously unseen.

And it is this struggle of which the book's primary conflict is comprised. It is, in fact, quite challenging to discuss more without spoiling the story for those who have not read it (as made evident, unfortunately, by the otherwise wonderful and enlightening introduction by Warren Motte).

M. Benabou plumbs the human condition in this brief tale through the somewhat detached viewpoint of a lonely man who does not see his own predicament. Written in an academic (yet ironic) vein, Dump This Book presents a character study of a special kind of bibliophile, by way of a memorably wry voice.

The comedy of Bénabou's book about reading, Dump This Book While You Still Can!_, is more arcane and the regret more conventionally the loss of a nubile by very elusive female (Sophie) than his (briefer) black comedy about not writing, _Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books_ (also published by Nebraska) The quotations from a wide array of western literature are less amusingly apt and less numerous than those in _Why_.

The attempts to find hidden meaning in the manuscript goes on too long. Still there is some entertainment of Nabokovian/Borgian kind. (Canetti's _Auto da Fé_ popped into my mind often in reading both books, though _Auto da Fé_ has a sustained narrative rather than the many startings over of the Bénabou metafictions on writing and reading have.)

The typeface is unusually and uncomfortably small in both of these books, which are not very long and have fairly large margins. Both have useful introductions explaining who Bénabou is--a task he has taken up more directly in a sort of autobiography also available in English from the University of Nebraska Press.

This is a wide-ranging albeit somewhat meandering conversation between two eminent scholars that I found to be worthwhile for the questions that emerge from its pages. Central to the discussion is the question: how much did the "Bolshevik threat" contribute to the rise of Nazism? Both historians agree that the fascist movement, and Nazism in particular, was fueled in some degree by the fervor of anticommunism - and vice versa, for as Furet points out, no less was communism positioned as antifascism...perhaps to hide its philosophical and socio-economic bankruptcy from the world. Benefits from the rivalry accrued on both sides in typical cola war fashion - each brand attacking and asserting its superiority over the other thereby distracting devotees from the realization that both taste like malted battery acid.

The divergence of opinion on this point of Bolshevism's influence becomes a matter of accentuation. Nolte's position emphasizes the apparent reactive character of Nazism and stresses Bolshevism as the actualizing catalyst, while Furet points to doctrinal roots which precede the October Revolution. The conversation goes on to raise other important questions which touch on issues including origins and traits common to the two ideologies, as well as their mutual interdependence.

On some points I found Nolte more convincing, on others Furet. Ultimately I think what makes this collection of correspondence work well, apart from the refreshing iconoclasm of the two men, is the complementary way in which their opposing approaches and interpretations seem to fit together, creating a fuller picture. If I were a publisher of scholarly books I think I'd try to cultivate more yin/yang dialogues like this. Among its many virtues this book provides an education on how to have a passionate and respectful salon-style conversation and is a delight for that reason alone. It also advances a laudable approach to historical analysis - the "geneological" method, as the authors call it. The book's weakness is its lack of depth; it isn't nearly as penetrating of its subject as I'd like it to be. Still worth the read.

This book is made up of correspondence between the French historian Francois Furet (best known for "The Passing of an Illusion") and German historian Ernst Nolte (best known for "Three Faces of Fascism" and more controversial later writings such as "The European Civil War"). The correspondence takes the form of a stimulating, respectful debate, sparked by Furet's footnote on Nolte's interpretation of fascism in "The Passing of an Illusion."
Furet takes the position that fascism and communism are parallel movements with common roots. Nolte takes the view that fascism was a reaction to communism. The two positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, however, and there is much agreement between the two. Tzvetan Todorov, in the preface, finds Furet's arguments more convincing. This reviewer, however, was more impressed by Nolte.
The books main shortcoming (and the reason I'm giving it four stars instead of five) is it's length. At only Ninety-one pages, excluding the preface and forward, it might leave the reader unsatiated, wanting more.
But if you prefer quality over quantity, and don't mind a high price/page ratio, you will not be disappointed. Ninety-one pages of Furet and Nolte is worth a lot more than a thousand pages of David Halberstam drivel.