University of Nebraska Books

I've asked myself more than once why my mind turns to Scandinavian literature around Christmas time and it is not simply the arrival of snow evoking memories of a childhood in Minneapolis. (My family is not Scandinavian in recent history, though we certainly had many friends and teachers who were. They had a subdued difference that was intriguingly hard to describe, so similar, yet quietly distinctive... even Garrison Keillor doesn't quite do it justice.)

Aside from a fascination with the perspectives provided from life outside the "Anglo-Saxon Bubble", I think I found it today as I read Hallberg's book on page 80: "...the difference between Iceland during the Sturlung Age and Europe or America during the First World War is enormous ....Whereas the coldly objective attitude of the sagas produces the effect of naturalness, it seems in the prose of our day to be more like the manifestation of a violent reaction against sentimentality and ineffective, impotent idealism. For this reason, the hard-boiled style [of detective stories and other modern literature] not infrequently has a trace of hysteria which is foreign to the saga style, with its calmly matter-of-course epic authority."

In this age of seeking diversity in exotic cultures as far from the old Anglo-Saxon Americans as possible, it is often those close relatives like the Scandinavians, the Dutch, the Germans, and the Welsh who help us see more clearly who we are and how we are connected in a web reaching back several millennia. This web itself is distinctive. The Japanese don't have anything quite like it (or at least won't admit that they do). But many other parts of the world do, and it would help us understand them better, if we understood our own complex origins better.

James Rawley does a magnificent job breaking down the civil war into 7 major turning points. We all understand the impact that any civil war has on a country and how it becomes a turning point in that countries history forever. What rawley does is tries to answer the question of why the american civil war ended the way it did and how easily it could have favoered the other side. He takes an in depth look at the Trent Affair, Bull Run, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lincoln's last election during wartime,the Boderland states, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the battle of Antietam. All of these he lists as major turning points and gives concrete, specific details to back up his thoughts. He gives quotes from the time and from speeches given throughout the country and also dips into news articles no only from the U.S.A., but also from Europe. It is very simple reading and also enjoyable i would recommend it to anyone.

This book is a well documented diligently researched history of the hunts that resulted in the near elimination of the buffalo. Starting with the acquisition and sale of Buffalo robes from the Indian, to the hunt for meat followed by hide hunting and finally the gathering and sale of the bones.
I found this book to be an easy and enjoyable read with copious footnotes.I was familiar with the names of some of the most prominent participants but the authors research revealed many I had not heard of.
Methods and quantities of shipment of the various parts including the hide,horns,tongues, meat and bones were almost beyond belief.
Anyone interested in our old west times should enjoy this book.

Anyone who has ever read "Black Elk Speaks" should put this book "Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow" on their must read list. Written by a woman who was there during the interviews, this book sheds much light on the arguement of whether "Black Elk Speaks" is fiction or non-fiction. It also explains why "Black Elk Speaks" could not have been written exactly as Black Elk had told his story to Neihardt. The book also touches lightly on interviews leading to the writing of "When the Tree Flowered" also by John Neihardt, as well as "The Sacred Pipe" by Joseph Epes Brown. This book is a must read for anyone interested in Lakota culture.

The American and Canadian Wests are politically, not geographically, different. For a long time, the national boundary was vague and sometimes disputed. Curiously, few scholars have taken a cross-boundary viewpoint in studying the events and issues of the region's history. This book represents an effort to remedy that scholarly astigmatism.

The book is divided into six parts: Defining the Region, Defining the Border/ Colonizing the Borderlands with Trails, the Law, and Ranching/ Seeking Sanctuary on Both Sides of the Line/ Farming, Industry and Labor Relations in the Borderlands/ Crossing the Medicine Line in the Twentieth Century/ Natural Resources, Conservation, and Environmental Issues in the Borderlands.

Designed more for the specialist than for the general reader, the book is nonetheless quite readable, and would be a good addition to the library of any student of the history of the settlement of the North American West.

Bravos of the West, (originally titled Death of the Bravos) is an informal history of the old West, from 1812 to 1878, largely mined from oral tradition. "By and large, what went on in the early days of the American West transpired while historians were looking the other way...", writes Myers, and rather than attempting a scholarly treatment of the subject, he has drawn on the oral tradition to create a rollicking tale of the mountain men, scouts, Indians, bandits, filibusters, and shootist who lived and died there during that wide open and wild time.
Following a rough chronological order, each chapter sketches the story of one of these Western bravos, some well known characters, others more obscure. A substantial portion of the book is about the various mountain men and the fur trade, covering such legends as Jed Smith, Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, Old Bill Williams, Joe Meeks, and many others. Sam Houston and the rest of the men who made Texas are covered well, as are those who blazed the Santa Fe Trail, and those who opened up and settled the Oregon Country. There is hardly a significant event or person in the time period that he covers that Myers does not bring to life through his lively prose. Myers skillfully weaves all of these separate stories into a great tapestry of the claiming of the West for the American nation.
Myers knows his subject well, as most of his life was devoted to researching and writing about the American West. Yet he is primarily a storyteller, not a dry academic. His writing is playful and idiomatic, and if you let yourself fall under his spell, you may find you are searching out his other books regardless of subject.
Bravos of the West falls somewhere between history and legend, and hence must at times be taken with a grain of salt if pure historical accuracy (is there any such beast?) is what you are looking for. But to learn of the many amazing people whose stories combined to win the West and create an American mythology, John Myers Myers' fascinating book is just the thing.

Theo Logos

For those of us today that would like to think that the role of the US Army should be only fighting wars, you need to read this book. From the very founding of our nation, our Army has served as both an instrument of waging war and an instrument of waging peace.

This book goes a long way to defining the Army's role in the settlement of the Old Northwest. The author reviews the Army's roles in public works, the building of public roads, its taming of the wilderness, its scientific achievements and its role as frontier policeman.

This is a short work but a very good companion to Robert Utley's Frontiersmen in Blue. In times of peace, the American military's impact is every bit as important to the development and protection of America as it is in time of war. This excellent little book reveals that the Army has always been an instrument of America's development and most likely always will be.

Don't let the title of my review prevent you from reading this book. This is probably the best, perhaps only source of this many Native Californian myths in paperback. If you do buy this book, you MUST read the sixty page introduction. It will help you navigate through the stories better. If you are new to reading Native American myths, my advice would be to read 'Teach Yourself Native American Myths' by Steve Eddy before reading Californian Indian Nights. Doing so will help you to absorb the many meanings contained within these myths and give you a better appreciation for them. Also, read them at night!

Once again Brian Dippie has created a book with great depth, educational value and wonderful easy to read text. This book is important to those of us that want to further our knowledge about Indian Galleries and the role these artists played in the west. I would highly recommend this book.

This is a dark comedy, written in the late 1950s and set somewhere in the middle of the author's home-state, Nebraska. It's also very much a mid-century view by an American author, somewhat still under the literary shadow of Faulkner, as well as the shadow of the Bomb. The characters are Nebraska-born and only vaguely aware that the world they grew up in no longer exists. Frontier violence long a thing of the past for them, they are troubled by the reemergence of violence in their midst -- particularly the killing spree of a young man (based loosely on Charles Starkweather), who murders 10 people before he is captured, and a high school student who runs down two others because he's "tired of being pushed around."

The book is told from the point of view of 10 characters, most of whom are members of an extended family who gather to observe the 90th birthday of the family patriarch. Born when the West was first settled, he has lived his whole life in a hotel along the railroad tracks of a prairie town, Lone Tree, which like the tree it's named after has been dead for many years. The old man is the only resident. His three grown daughters, their husbands, and offspring are joined by a boyhood friend of theirs and a young woman he has met along the road. They bicker, bring up old grievances, and carry on in their idiosyncracies like a cast of characters in a farcical 1950s sitcom.

Almost plotless, the novel interweaves the characters' various obsessions, revealed in their almost aimless conversations, quirky behavior, and the time-worn grooves of thought in their respective streams of consciousness. Morris, meanwhile, touches on many themes, a central one being the struggle to maintain hope in a world where so many events, large and small, discourage it. After converging for a day and moonlit night in this ghost town once full of frontier promise of growth and prosperity, the characters climb aboard a moth-eaten covered wagon and strike off westward to who knows what promised land.

Readers of contemporary authors like William Styron and Richard Yates will find a familiar resonance in this densely written, closely observed, slow-paced novel. I recommend it to anyone interested in America's postwar generation of writers who, like Jack Kerouac, saw through the sunny surface of those often complacent years to the shadows underneath.