Oklahoma Books

A woman's reflections on life, family and the never-ending pursuit of happiness from a poor dirt farmers perspective of the 1930's and `40's.

Betty Grant Henshaw's story begins in the 1930's dust bowl regions of Oklahoma and concludes in the farming districts of California. Her father was the typical hard working man who did everything possible to keep his large family together. A true icon.

Mrs. Henshaw's stories of growing-up in these times are a keepsake insight as to how life was a colossal struggle and the smallest things were much appreciated by all.
Filled with heart, spirit and compassion.

VERY WELL WRITTEEN. BRING THAT TIME BACK TO LIFE.

A finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, Children of the Dust: An Okie Family Story is the personal memoir of author Betty Grant Henshaw, who was born into a large family of tenant farmers in Oklahoma during the terrible time of the Dust Bowl. Her father, Bill, worked himself to exhaustion striving to provide for his wife and nine children; eventually his family had to migrate to California, where he worked in the fields in hundred-degree heat. Yet he instilled respect for hard work in his children, and kept family solidarity through trying times. Highly recommended as a powerful and profound story of salt-of-the-earth people proudly doing their best to survive.

This book is a joy to read. It is a story so intimately told that one feels a kindred spirit with the author and her family. Many of us who lived through the great depression and life in the west can share some of her memories, and we can relive many of the experiences in our own childhoods.
I highly recommend this book.
Audrey DeMott

This book really brings to life what it meant to be a young girl growing up in Oklahoma during the dust bowl. The struggles the family goes through and survives as the father tries to make a living as a sharecropper are fascinating. This was a world of real poverty but also great family love. Reading a history of this time through one family's experiences is a great story.

The Ten Grandmothers, required reading for a course in anthropology, inspired a lifelong interest in and appreciation of Plains Indian culture. It is romantic without romanticism, sentimental without bathos, realistic and uplifting.

I stumbled on this book years ago, and I joyfully re-read it each year. It is a wonderful, engrossing look at a long-ago time, beautifully captured through the words of Spear Woman, Hunting Horse, and their families and friends.

Although not a novel, it sure reads like one!

My favorite parts? The chapter where Spear Girl and Hunting Horse elope, the poignant journey of Apiatan and the piece where the grandmother and granddaughter go to visit the buffalo. Truly a wonderful read!

This should be required reading for anybody interested in Indian culture, lifestyles, history. Heck, for anybody who's a student of human nature.

i loved this book. as did everyone in my family. i borrowed this book from my mom three years ago to check it out and i ended up keeping it and reading it all the time. as a matter-of-fact, i'm currently re-reading it.

for me, this was a great look into the past and at the old ways. it proved to me that the Kiowa are some of the strongest people on the plains. and i am proud to be one.

This is an absolutely superb book. It's the story of the Kiowa people, a native American tribe of the southwestern plains & Wichita Mountains, told from the point of view of individual Kiowas. The "Ten Grandmothers" are sacred bundles with special powers which are important to the spiritualism of the Kiowa.

The stories in this book are marvelously crafted, and full of life and sensation, and they spread new light on old ways. The chapters feel mythological, yet they help the reader to understand the shared culture behind the daily life of the Kiowa people.

This book was first published in 1945, when there yet remained some very old people who remembered the old-time buffalo days. Historically, the book reads very true. The events of each chapter are fixed within historical times-lines which appear in the back of the book.

The author, a woman, has gifted us with wonderful portrayals of the life experience of female Native Americans. So often, women's roles and labors go unmentioned in other accounts of the old days. Alice Marriot wrote an account of the Kiowa that includes the experiences and interactions of people of both genders.

Notable chapters include one in which a young woman of seventeen - about to be forced by her relatives to marry a man she doesn't care for - runs off during the annual Sun Dance with a young man her own age. The exacting ritual of the Sun Dance is interspersed with the tribulations of this personal love story.

Later, when their first baby is small, Spear Woman struggles unsuccessfully to fulfill all her home-making responsilibities. Her unhappiness leads to conflict between the couple, until eventually, he realizes that she has too much work to do and needs female help and companionship. Such a moving story, for people of any era.

And the author brings us forward in time with the Kiowa tribe, from nomadic life into settled agriculture. And, by knowing what has gone before, the reader can perceive how their shared cultural history and mythology has colored and formed the Kiowa response to this sweeping change in lifestyle.

I can't recommend this stunning book highly enough. What a good read. Definitely a remarkable book for those interested in Native American culture. Do read it if you are interested in the old ways of the plains tribes. An excellent book.

Having grown up in Kiowa/Comanche country for all my child and adolescent life and having been immersed in the attendant legends, though from a white perspective, I began to research Southern Plains Indian culture much later in life. During my early investigations I came upon Alice Marriott's "The Ten Grandmothers". This was the book I was looking for but didn't know it. Other research had served up books "about" the Kiowas. This was as close to a book "by" the Kiowas as could be expected given that the Kiowas had no written language. Ms. Marriott has done a superb job of not only recording these stories of the old ways, but has let the Kiowa voice come through loud and clear. As you read these stories you feel yourself sitting around the fire in an 1800s Kiowa camp listening to these stories being told first hand.

One of my favorite chapters was about the day the children made a play camp and built a defensive earthen berm and ditch (I believe the Kiowas were about the only plains tribe to employ such a defensive tactic). Later that night White Bear began blowing his "liberated" cavalry bugle as he led the victorious raiding party back to camp. The women in the camp, awakened and thinking they were under attack by the cavalry, began tearing down the camp as the men mounted and rode out to meet the enemy and cover the escape of the women and children. Not knowing about the children's ditch, both incoming and outgoing parties of mounted warriors careened into this obstacle in the darkness. Those within earshot of the melee were in a panic thinking their worst fears were being visited upon them. The next day, a rule was announced by White Bear that, while play camps are good, children were not to make play camps with ditches; only the men could make ditches.

We owe Ms. Marriott a huge debt of gratitude for preserving these treasures that might otherwise have been lost.

The Grady, Oklahoma, of 1961 was like hundreds of small towns dotting the Bible Belt. Into this setting Lisa Polisar brings a vivid reality in descibing the outwardly bland lives of her characters, until we feel we live next door to people we either pity, fear or hope will move away. Felt by superb narration, and seen through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Jake Leeds, Polisar's keen observations range from the mundane look of hand-crocheted oven mitts to a fetid basement jail cell where sadistic lawman Blackie Savage orders Jake locked up for snooping too much. The summer starts with an initiation ritual by Jake's best friend, Mikey: sleeping alone in "an empty field of coarse reeds and vile secrets" finds Jake terrorized by the moans and shrieks of a young woman. He runs from a bloody apparition of the murdered victim, sensing that if he does not get away he will end up dead like Mary Prairie. Yet, obsessed with tracking down her killer, Jake gradually uncovers a tangle of unlikely relationships that include his family and even himself. Polisar's genius at characterization and regional dialogue breathes life into the colorful residents whom Jake encounters in his search -- unaware that his dogged persistence begins to endanger his own safety.
By novel's end we are taking more discriminating looks at our own neighbors and acquaintences: what stillborn secrets might we pry out of their intimate worlds?
Albert Noyer / The Getorius and Arcadia Mysteries

Lisa Polisar's style of writing moves the reader through the story of Jake and his adventures so effortlessly that you feel that you are Jake. You will be frightened, confused, humiliated, determined and hurt as he is as he moves through this mystery to fruition.

This is a journey you will never regret taking and may want to return to from time to time for the complete escape and pleasure of the experience.

To say this is simply a mystery novel is not enough. Yes, there is a dynamic and dark plot that spreads out and thickens in a way Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud of. There is a cast of diverse characters that create a web of entertaining combinations that keep the story on the road to the inevitable. There is a foreboding sense of what is to come at every juncture. But the unique thing about this story are the brilliantly woven underlying darker elements of the typical American family.
The central character, Jake, takes this story to shocking depths and his demeanor serves to inspire us all. Jake is a classic specimen of the heartland. He knows his surroundings as well as his people. But like so many searchers, fictional or non, yearns for something fierce, and he finds it. Jake's obssession with solving the mystery Sherlock Holmes style is as much a rite of passage is it is a matter of course. The author brilliantly places Jake's deepening distress with his dysfunctional family as a springboard for his ever developing sleuth skills.
Fascinating characters add to the brilliant and efficient pace of this story, which seems to shift emphasis at various points to take in the all-encompassing supernatural nature of the tale. Much like old horror films, deliberately hiding the monster makes it all the more frightening, and the darkness in this story looms just outside the circus of Jake's life. It calls, and he answers. The author takes you on that journey and you read much about what it is to be alive, through Jake. And you thank him at the end of the story, and Lisa Polisar welcomes you.

One might describe The Ghost of Mary Prairie as a coming-of-age story, but it's much more than that.

The protagonist, Jake Leeds, faces up to the terrifying circumstances of his fifteenth summer. Virtually abandoned by his family and goaded on by friends, he sets off on a night of initiation on the wild Oklahoma prairie. The vision he experiences triggers a chain of events that forces the young man to confront his worst fears and struggle against seemingly overwhelming odds.

Polisar weaves the tale in the first-person narrative voice of a male teenager. Maintaining authenticity of voice while transposing gender from author to character is no mean task, a task that Polisar executes expertly in this tense and captivating tale. As the story unfolds, characters and scenes appear vivid and surreal, and the reader is swept up in tides of rushing adrenaline and adolescent hormones, and, along with Jake, the reader is held hostage till the end.

The suggestion of evil is always more powerful than the dissection of it. So, if you're looking for pulpy, graphic description, look elsewhere. This book overflows with implied metaphors and the powerful insinuation of poetic imagery, rendering it literary.

"It was strange being able to sense the formation of the funnel without actually seeing it. The train was moving about fifty miles per hour, and I kept changing my mind about whether our speed was helping or not....From the aisle seat, I watched a sand flurry fill the air...just like someone had yanked up a giant tablecloth. Then the howl started. The rain pounded onto the east windows with fist-sized hailstones on the other side....The train car shook like an old washing machine now. I couldn't imagine it staying on the track. Women shrieked, babies were crying, and the men all had stone-white faces....The funnel thinned out, branched apart, and then braided itself together again, spraying the empty landscape with a destructive fury of grass, rain, hail, mud, steel, and wood, catching and releasing at the same time, using anything in its path to snowball its size."

As for the "suggestion of evil," our leaders and the press broadcast daily messages of fear and future-fear, with no end in sight. This obsession with fear could well be balanced with a message about personal sacrifice, hope, and courage. For an exploration of these virtues, read The Ghost of Mary Prairie, a novel for our time.

"The Ghost of Mary Prairie" is a mystery that's being solved by 15-year-old Jake Leeds. Jakes spends a night outside as an initiation and meets the ghost of a young girl whose murder was never solved. The encounter devastates Jake and he sets out to solve the murder as a way of coping with the encounter. This comes at a time when his family's disfunctions have broken through the surface and rendered his mom, dad and unmarried, teenage sister -- who has just had a baby -- incapable of support or even kindness. His connection to his best friend Mikey is getting frayed as Jake outgrows his immature childhood pal. And Jake has just met his first almost-girlfriend who provides more confusion than comfort.

So Jake's journey toward solving Mary Prairie's murder is a combination of a search for his soul as his life crumbles -- and an escape from his ambiguous and impossible-to-fulfill responsibilities to his family and Mikey.

This is quite the burden on young Jake. But Jake is smart, inquisitive and self-reliant. Desperation has given him strength, so he's up to the task. We eagerly follow him as he unearths clues amid his broken world.

The magic in this book is Jake's voice. Polisar uses first person to put us right in the heart of Jake's ragged spirit. It's a wonderfully rich voice that tells the truth without flinching. That voice carries us well as Jake moves through painful confusion to understanding and acceptance of his family's rotten secrets as he solves Mary's murder.

Amazing collection of photos from a era that seems so long ago but still here today. Very well done! Great presentation of the people, horses and caravans.

Great book I was sad when I finished it. Beautiful photos ans nice description about the journey to Appleby fair. This would make a wonderful
TV special. Beautiful Gypsy Horses. It will be a pleasure to keep this book in my collection forever. This is definitely a coffee table book.
If you love horses you will love this book. Expensive but well worth the cost.

This book is absolutely beautiful! The pictures are incredible and the information about the Romani people is intriguing. Even if you are not a horse lover, you will be awed by the incredible landscapes and beauty of these horses. Beautifully done.

Gypsy Horses and the Traveler's Way: The Road to Appleby Fair is a delightful book. The photographs are superb, and lovers of these gorgeous colored horses will be captivated by Mr. Hockensmith's eye for detail and his ability to capture mood. The horses are heart-stoppingly beautiful and Mr. Hockensmith's portrayals of them reflect his enthusiasm for this lovely breed. The people Hockensmith travels with are presented with respect and a refreshing lack of over-familiarity so often found in the work of those who write about, but cannot really know the Romany people.
The titular road is lovingly described, as is the destination. The burgeoning popularity of the "Gypsy Vanner" has made Appley Horse Fair an increasingly popular tourist destination, and no doubt there is much to see there. Here again, we see flowing manes and tails aplenty, but there is more. The minutia of Appleby is lovingly portrayed - but not varnished with romantic stereotyping,
The book is available in two bindings. There is a slipcased special editon available from the publisher's website, (Fine Art Editions Press), and the edition offered by Amazon which has a beautiful dustjacket and an attractive cloth binding. Either edition is well worth the asking price. Step for awhile into the world of Appleby, the people and the horses there. You will want to visit again and again.

Gypsy Horses and the Travelers' Way
By John Hockensmith
Hockensmith Fine Arts
146 E. Main St.
Georgetown, KY 40324
ISBN: 1599755971
Price: $49.95
Page Count: 184
December 8, 2006
Reviewer: Ann Allyn Slessman

While this is John Stephen Hockensmith's first book, it won't be his last. This beautiful book is what most would categorize as a "coffee table" book with one exception - Hockensmith's brilliant prose. One has to wonder why this man hasn't published before now. He writes as if he is having an intimate talk with his readers. And he hits the mark if this was his intention. I cannot imagine anyone panning this book. If they did so, it would surely be an act of jealousy. You will find after reading and perusing this book that his poems continue to live within your heart and mind.

John Stephen Hockensmith is well known in the Midwest for his photography skills. He has photographed the Kentucky Derby Winners' Print and Winners' Circle prints since the year 2000. He owns an art gallery in Georgetown, KY which exhibits equine and animal images sought after by collectors throughout the world.

This book is a treat for the reader's eyes as well as a great source of information on the Romani Gypsies and their beautifully bred Gypsy Horses. The imagery is without comparison and the prose is well written and quite visual in itself. The quality of this work dictates that it will surely outlive Hockensmith.

As the reader journeys through the images and prose of Gypsy Horses and The Travelers' Way they will find it hard not to be lured by the gypsy way of life. Their mysterious cavalier ways seem quite enchanting when compared to nine to fivers. The test - can a reader find their way back home after visiting this work? Read it and find out!

I have just finished reading "In Reckless Hands". It is a remarkable book. It manages to combine extensive and impeccable research, a clear and transparent ethical sense, and an eminently readable writing style - a feat all too rare in authors, academic or otherwise. It took an enormous effort for the author to write this book. In doing so, she has given us all a treasured gift.

IRH is about the back-tory behind the Skinner case and very informative about the Eugenics Movement in America in general. Interesting and well written, IRH was very worth while from both a legal and a historical perspective.

Recommended.

I picked this up hoping for a clearer understanding of why SKINNER did not overturn BUCK v. BELL. My interest is in the eugenics movement in the U.S., and--more specifically--in what cautionary tales we should learn from our own dark history that might deter us from over-zealous embrace of genetic technologies to cure social ills.

Nourse certainly provided me with an explanation of why SKINNER did not overturn BUCK v. BELL, and she also provided valuable insights into the larger social factors that held eugenics in place--the Depression and fear of crime, as well as the more familiar anti-immigrant fervor that arouse with industrialization--and began to weaken its hold (no, it was not JUST horror at the Nazi experience).

The book is of potential interest and value to people with a wide variety of interests and competences. For a book that delves as far as it does into technical judicial interpretation, it is quite accessible. I am contemplating using it for a Science and Values course, and look forward to seeing how students respond to it. Meanwhile, I am sending it as a holiday present to several friends, and recommend that course of action.

This book on such a monumental, but to the lay person, unfamiliar, case was wonderfully written. Starting it Sunday afternoon was not a wise decision since it made closing the pages for sleep Sunday night very difficult. Fortunately I had time today to finish.

There is great attention to detail, dedication to making "legalese" easily understood by all, and an unassuming tone of writing.

I didn't think there were too many bits of Oklahoma history that I hadn't at least heard of . . . until I ran across a blurb about the German atrocities in World War II and except for a Supreme Court case in Oklahoma similar events "could" have taken place in the U.S. I was fascinated and shocked when I read this book to realize how close we were walking a similar path, maybe not for the same reasons but so many were convinced that eugenics, or at least the form of denying "undesirables" to procreate, was the answer to the decline of the world. Although many states had laws or guidelines for unwanted sterilization Oklahoma became the battleground for stopping it when some prisoners at McAlester and some local lawyers took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. I also discovered that Jack Skinner, the prisoner who was the focus of the lawsuit, even went to the same high school I did (although quite a few years before!) The book is excellent although a little tedious is spots for this reader because of the legalistic terms but it's something that's necessary. A must read for any Oklahoma history student or anyone else that appreciates the social development of this country.

"If finding out there is no place like home is your favorite type of story then you will love Means of Transit, Teresa Miller's story of why she left Oklahoma only to return and build a very successful life."

This book was a joy to read, full of Teresa's southern humor and her honest portrayal of a southern family, full of love and drama, tragedy and triumph. We understand both Teresa's dream of leaving Oklahoma and the strong ties that keep her there. The book brought tears and laughter, and a sense of family, with all of its flaws and imperfections, yet still tied together with love and hope for reconcilliation and joy. She gives us a glimpse of her enormous gift for bringing some of the greatest literary talents of our time together with those who love to read, and we are heartened by her success!

While I am not normally a big fan of memoirs, this one kept me interested enough to read it in one night. It is witty, honest, and involved enough to keep the pages turning. Miller has captured bits of life's truthes between the covers of this book.

This book is a unique combination of wit, humor, and wisdom.
The author's personal experiences are presented in a way that makes readers pull out the drawer and re-examine experiences of their own.
The book is set in Oklahoma and tells the life story of an Oklahoman, but it takes its readers far out of the state's border.
Through telling her own life journey, Teresa Miller makes you think about the questions of family, home place, and relationships with the surrounding world and with your own self.
As a foreigner, originally from Ukraine, I felt that in this book the author explores the topics that do not have borders or nationalities.
This is the book that will touch your heart and mind.

I live in Arkansas, in the heartland of America, and I remember a favorite aunt's favorite warning ("Now don't you story to me!") when my imagination took one too many means of transit during our visits! So I loved taking Teresa Miller's journey with her through those times and with those people. But this book is not just for those of us who recognize these people and places; it is for all people everywhere who have journeyed through their own heart's strange and wonderful landscapes. It is beautifully and poignantly written. I recommend it highly.

Okay, I have to admit that the only reason I picked up this book in the first place is because of all the handsome men on the cover. When I finally got around to reading it, I couldn't put it down!

It's a very amusing, quick read. All I can say is that I wish my social life was half as active and entertaining as Mrs. Leveridge's!

Wow, did she really share a sunrise with Jack Kerouac?

Although most of the book (and the reviews) focus on the marvelous youthful adventures of Brett Leveridge's lovely mother, my favorite part of the book were Brett's personal essays. His observational stories add warmth to a genre that is very often overly sarcastic and bitter.

Brett Leveridge is a terrifically funny writer; his prose is at once witty and engaging, the tales he spins warmly evocative and unforgettable.

Brett Leveridge offers a generous portrait of the delights and dangers of dating, as seen through the wise (but not hard-bitten) eyes of a young woman in the 50's. The fact that this woman is his mother does not distract from his candid appraisals of the motives of men and women during their movie-going, dance-attending searches for companionship.

He creates a remarkable movie in one's head, full of Beat poets, seducing at dawn; confident sons of preachers (whose version of 'going fast' involves way more than the moves of 'third base'); rough men, humbled by her beauty; shy men, sometimes encouraged too far.

All these experiences tie in to Karen's ('Mother's') subtle construction of her dream man; the fidelity and kindness she shows to others during her dates become building blocks for the long-lasting fidelity of her only marriage.

Leveridge's view of human nature in his Mother stories (and in his short essays) is tasteful and respectful, but not conservatively retrograde. Men who might have kept a stash of physique magazines and women who might have had their secret love in the WACS also have their role (an appropriate one, neither cruel nor cold) in this girl's journey to womanhood and marriage.

This is the rare post-modern book that one could safely give to Mom or Dad, while feeling guilty about wanting to keep it for oneself. Play it safe -- buy two.

I picked up Brett Leveridge's new book Men My Mother Dated and thought to myself, "Now who would want to read a book filled with stories about the men someone's mother dated?"

The answer is pretty evident once you begin reading these humorous and wonderfully written stories. It got me to thinking just what types of guys my own mom must have dated and of the different stories all of our mothers could tell regarding the finer points of dating.

My favorite story had to be The Eddie Cantor Six in which Brett recounts the tale of his mother having dated six men who, over the course of two weeks, all took her to see The Eddie Cantor Story at a local movie theater.

The rest of the stories or commentaries, if you will, are just as well written and some are laugh-out-loud hysterical! You simply cannot go wrong with this slim volume of essays by a man with a truly observant eye toward our current state of social affairs. You'll pick it up and won't want to put it down!

Oh...and be sure to check out Brett's Website BRETTnews wherein you will have the opportunity to sign his Guest Book and be asked that all-important question - What Is Your Inseam.

What is nice about this book is that the author brings together his military analysis of all of the jihad battles that the Islamic prophet Muhammad led as he attempted to impose his newly revealed religion of Islam upon his disbelieving neighbors. The author also notes the events when Muhammad instigated the assassination of some of those who doubted his religious credentials as being Allah's "prophet." The author's detailing of the fine minutiae as to how the various armies fed, clothed and armed their soldiers at times can be a little mind numbing in the early chapters, but it does add to one's understanding about the military tactics that were implemented before or during the battles. Being a retired army officer myself, I recognize that this military-educated author presents very sound explanations of battlefield tactics in his book, if the historical accounts can be believed. While the author subtitled his book as: "Islam's First Great General", after reading this book, and given the several near defeats of Muhammad, one realizes that Muhammad wasn't so much of a "great" general as his opponents were more incompetent. Essentially, Muhammad got really lucky from not being either killed or captured on a number of occasions while out on the battlefield; undoubtedly because Allah was over watching, goading on and blessing his "final" prophet to victory over the infidels. But what really is a break though with this book is that the author does not attempt to apologize for Muhammad's military conquests as being engaged in only for the "defense" of Islam. Instead, the author opined: "One of Muhammad's greatest legacies was a large, trained, and well-led military force motivated by religious zeal and ready to exploit the only source of pillage and loot available to Arabs whose new religion forbade attacks on one another" (p.18). The author sagely opined: "Any rules of ethical behavior applied only to the community of [Islamic] believers; those outside the ummah were held to possess no moral standing and could be killed or enslaved without moral consequences...The idea of exterminating an entire town or a tribe was beyond the imagination of those engaged in a [pre-Islamic] blood feud. Under Muhammad it became a common practice. Even murder became acceptable under [Muhammad's] new rules...[Muhammad's] new moral basis of war led to a more violent form of warfare-- political/ideological warfare --conducted on a larger scale with ever increasing casualties and consuming far more innocents than traditional Arab warfare had consumed" (p.27-28). The author concluded: "If [Muhammad] was to achieve his end of creating a new society governed by new ethical precepts, then a new military mechanism was required, one that served his strategic ends by expanding its repertoire of military capabilities" (p.29). Allah Akbar! [A nice companion book is: "War, Terror and Peace in the Quran and in Islam: Insights for Military and Government Leaders" by T.P. Schwartz-Barcott.]

What is nice about this book is that the author brings together his military analysis of all of the jihad battles that the Islamic prophet Muhammad led as he attempted to impose his newly revealed religion of Islam upon his disbelieving neighbors. The author also notes the events when Muhammad instigated the assassination of some of those who doubted his religious credentials as being Allah's "prophet." The author's detailing of the fine minutiae as to how the various armies fed, clothed and armed their soldiers at times can be a little mind numbing in the early chapters, but it does add to one's understanding about the military tactics that were implemented before or during the battles. Being a retired army officer myself, I recognize that this military-educated author presents very sound explanations of battlefield tactics in his book, if the historical accounts can be believed. While the author subtitled his book as: "Islam's First Great General", after reading this book, and given the several near defeats of Muhammad, one realizes that Muhammad wasn't so much of a "great" general as his opponents were more incompetent. Essentially, Muhammad got really lucky from not being either killed or captured on a number of occasions while out on the battlefield; undoubtedly because Allah was over watching, goading on and blessing his "final" prophet to victory over the infidels. But what really is a break though with this book is that the author does not attempt to apologize for Muhammad's military conquests as being engaged in only for the "defense" of Islam. Instead, the author opined: "One of Muhammad's greatest legacies was a large, trained, and well-led military force motivated by religious zeal and ready to exploit the only source of pillage and loot available to Arabs whose new religion forbade attacks on one another" (p.18). The author sagely opined: "Any rules of ethical behavior applied only to the community of [Islamic] believers; those outside the ummah were held to possess no moral standing and could be killed or enslaved without moral consequences....The idea of exterminating an entire town or a tribe was beyond the imagination of those engaged in a [pre-Islamic] blood feud. Under Muhammad it became a common practice. Even murder became acceptable under [Muhammad's] new rules.....[Muhammad's] new moral basis of war led to a more violent form of warfare-- political/ideological warfare --conducted on a larger scale with ever increasing casualties and consuming far more innocents than traditional Arab warfare had consumed" (p.27-28). The author concluded: "If [Muhammad] was to achieve his end of creating a new society governed by new ethical precepts, then a new military mechanism was required, one that served his strategic ends by expanding its repertoire of military capabilities" (p.29). Allah Akbar! [A nice companion book is: "War, Terror and Peace in the Quran and in Islam: Insights for Military and Government Leaders" by T.P. Schwartz-Barcott.]

What is nice about this book is that the author brings together his military analysis of all of the jihad battles that the Islamic prophet Muhammad led as he attempted to impose his newly revealed religion of Islam upon his disbelieving neighbors. The author also notes the events when Muhammad instigated the assassination of some of those who doubted his religious credentials as being Allah's "prophet." The author's detailing of the fine minutiae as to how the various armies fed, clothed and armed their soldiers at times can be a little mind numbing in the early chapters, but it does add to one's understanding about the military tactics that were implemented before or during the battles. Being a retired army officer myself, I recognize that this military-educated author presents very sound explanations of battlefield tactics in his book, if the historical accounts can be believed. While the author subtitled his book as: "Islam's First Great General", after reading this book, and given the several near defeats of Muhammad, one realizes that Muhammad wasn't so much of a "great" general as his opponents were more incompetent. Essentially, Muhammad got really lucky from not being either killed or captured on a number of occasions while out on the battlefield; undoubtedly because Allah was over watching, goading on and blessing his "final" prophet to victory over the infidels. But what really is a break though with this book is that the author does not attempt to apologize for Muhammad's military conquests as being engaged in only for the "defense" of Islam. Instead, the author opined: "One of Muhammad's greatest legacies was a large, trained, and well-led military force motivated by religious zeal and ready to exploit the only source of pillage and loot available to Arabs whose new religion forbade attacks on one another" (p.18). The author sagely opined: "Any rules of ethical behavior applied only to the community of [Islamic] believers; those outside the ummah were held to possess no moral standing and could be killed or enslaved without moral consequences....The idea of exterminating an entire town or a tribe was beyond the imagination of those engaged in a [pre-Islamic] blood feud. Under Muhammad it became a common practice. Even murder became acceptable under [Muhammad's] new rules.....[Muhammad's] new moral basis of war led to a more violent form of warfare-- political/ideological warfare --conducted on a larger scale with ever increasing casualties and consuming far more innocents than traditional Arab warfare had consumed" (p.27-28). The author concluded: "If [Muhammad] was to achieve his end of creating a new society governed by new ethical precepts, then a new military mechanism was required, one that served his strategic ends by expanding its repertoire of military capabilities" (p.29). Allah Akbar! [A nice companion book is: "War, Terror and Peace in the Quran and in Islam: Insights for Military and Government Leaders" by T.P. Schwartz-Barcott.]

Although the authors many military history books and his international recognition have been familiar to this reader, the new information provided in this book, earned my appreciation.
A new presentation of the Prophet as a military leader put the conflicts which are being played out in our days appear in a clear historical light providing precedents.
The book is a very important contribution to understanding Islam since it is the only book from the military history of this leader

Muhammad: Islam's First Great General is not a typical biography Muhammad, prophet and founder of the religion of Islam. Military historian and retired U.S. Army officer Richard A. Gabriel presents a close examination of Muhammad as a military genius, who introduced innovations that would transform armies and warfare throughout the Arab world. With a keen eye upon the connections between social, economic, and cultural environment in which Muhammad lived and the religion he founded to Muhammad's military achievements, Muhammad: Islam's First Great General is an exceptional chronicle of how a brand-new religious movement survived its tumultuous birth through eight major battles, eighteen raids, and thirty-eight other military operations in its first ten years alone. Also covered is Muhammad's masterful application of nonmilitary methods including bribery, alliance building, and political assassination, to fortify his long-term position and goals, even at the expense of short-term military objectives. Muhammad: Islam's First Great General reveals how Muhammad's talents and inspirations enabled his successors to defeat the armies of Persia and Byzantium, and establish the foundations of the Islamic empire, and is a singularly fascinating study of historical warfare and leadership. Highly recommended.

As a die-hard fan of Route 66, I have read and devoured many books trying to get from one town to the next without getting lost (which everyone does at least once!!). This book is the only one you will need when crossing Oklahoma on Rt 66. I wish more were like this for each state, I would own the whole set!! A definite "must-have" for 66 roadies.

Jim Ross has done it again. "Oklahoma Route 66" is a must have guidebook for those Mother Road travelers navigating Oklahoma's stretch of the Mother Road. The photographs and maps are fabulous. Thanks, Mr. Ross, for your exceptional research. I plan to bring my copy on my next 66 journey through Oklahoma.

One simply cannot find a better written Route 66 book than this one. If you think you're going to travel the Route in Oklahoma, don't do it without this book. Even if you're just passing though OK on a longer 66 trip.

This book is SO complete, the Oklahoma Highway Dept uses parts of it for their website section on Route 66. What's that tell ya? (See: [...])

You'll want something like the excellent "Route 66: EZ66 Guide for Travelers" by Jerry McClanahan for travelling the rest of Route 66, but while in OK, you'll put that down and use this book. Trust me. If you explored every single alignment and all the "ghost 66" sections listed herein, you could spend a week on 66 just in OK. Even if you're just doing a less "investigative" trip, you'll learn more from this book than any other.

I got to meet the author on my recent Route 66 trip, and he is a great guy, just overflowing with info about and obvious passion for Route 66. (He even lives on an old alignment of Route 66, in a house that looks like an old cottage-style Phillips 66 station!)

Get this book, you will not regret it.

Oklahoma's own Jim Ross has written a masterful book on America's Main Street. The book combines maps that are clean and easy to follow, numerous vintage images of photos and postcards that enhance the enjoyment of the book, and information about the people and places along the way. He even has included historical information about how the road came about. Anyone interested in history or in finding the road in Oklahoma (including every known alignment) will want to have this book. This is a book the novice as well as the seasoned veteran roadie will enjoy!

As an historic highway researcher and writer myself, I was greatly impressed with Oklahoma Route 66 by Jim Ross. Jim provides so much detailed information on following the Mother Road through Oklahoma that not a single scrap of any alignment has been left to anyone's imagination, right down to the original dirt roads used in 1926 and the interiim strips of asphalt laid down to connect the old road to sections of new interstate highway being constructed in the 1950s.

For die-hards like me who want to know each and every place the old road went, this book is a dream. The maps are concise and easy to read. The photos are crisp and plentiful. Just what I expected from the man who, along with Jerry McClanahan, brought us the Bones of the Old Road video and Route 66: The Map Series. Fun to read and to use, this book's a keeper.

Readers lacking a sense of irony may be dismayed to discover that the Real Wild West was only loosely hitched to reality. Spurred by the imaginations of Charles Miller and his three sons, our perception of what is the west sports the distinct brand of the 101. Take heart, though, because on the Miller Brothers' 101, the west was most certainly wild.

Possibly outlaws and certainly mavericks, the Millers rounded up some legendary talent to work their ranch and perform in their touring shows. The 101 herd of entertainers included Geronimo, Will Rogers, champion cowgirl Lucille Mulhall, Annie Oakley rival Princess Wenona, and such film legends as Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Yakima Canutt and Hoot Gibson. Black cowboy, Bill Pickett, famed for inventing the rodeo event steer wrestling spent a long career at the 101, and Buffalo Bill Cody spent his final year with the outfit.

While tooling a longstanding image of the west with their Wild West productions, the Millers also saddled up to motion pictures, oil production and an outstanding crop and livestock operation. Their story is a rodeo itself, made all the more interesting by the hints that white hats did not cover the heads of all of the 101 cowboys and cowgirls.

When the last little doggie was wrangled on the 101, the Miller Brothers' legacy did not ride off into the sunset, but continues to stampede through the dreams of would-be cowpokes everywhere. I'm not a regular patron of movie theatres, but I cannot wait until this saga makes it to the big screen!

This book goes a long way in explaining why there was so much written about the Wild West and why so much embellishment took place.Throughout history there has been all kinds of spins put on the people involved and what really occurred.Why would anyone expect anything different during the expansion of the West,particularly after the Civil War? In dramatic times of history,be it the Wild West,WW2,Crime in Chicago etc.people are craving for an understanding of events as well entertainment,and that is what we are given by the writers and the media.
Personally,I enjoy both the factual as well as the fictional
aspect of these times.
One character who often appears in books is Ned Buntline.He was a real person by the name of Edward Zane Carroll Judson,and this book does a pretty good job of telling us who he was and some of the things he did.Somebody must have written a book on him;it would be a good read.

This book was a welcome source of information on the Carson & Miller families whose genealogy I have been researching. Michael Wallace did an excellent job of getting his historical facts straight and offered some additional resources for my search for family history.

The easy style presented an engrossing story of a family moving through history from the 1850's to the 1930's and adjusting (not always easily) to the changing moores of society.

My father was a cousin of the Miller Bros. and told us children stories of his childhood in Oklahoma and attending the shows at the 101. My sister & I recently visited the old 101 ranch site and were sad to see that little is left. The Miller house in Winfield, Kansas is still standing in beautiful condition and is a private residence.

Michael Wallace is an excellent storyteller. The book gave life to my genealogy and made me feel in touch with the characters and the times. Anyone with an interest in western history would enjoy this story of a dynamic family who helped shape our images of the old west.

One terrific book -- a majestic recreation of the figures that helped define the old west and western entertainment.

If you like history and the stories of the old west, buy this book. I really enjoyed it.