Kentucky Books

Although this book is not of high quality literary-wise, it is very interesting. As a reader you get a realistic glimpse of how life in the Lithuanan Jewish gettho's was during WWII. I was shocked to find out that not only Germans, but Lithuanians and Poles too were involved in mass-killings of innocent people. 'The shadow of death' is a very suitbale titel, because that is exactly how the jewish people must have felt: living in the shadow of death.

While I know that genealogy searching can be difficult, please share this information where it will do the most good: with the author. As a Librarian, I depend on the kind of informative, concise, and relevant reviews that are shared on a regular basis by those kind souls who have actually read the book in question. Not having read the book, my stars are simply there so that I could post the messege. Thank you

I couldn't put this book down and didn't want it to end. Harry could easily write a sequel to this book of how he transitioned into American life. This book is very easy reading and insightful of the atrocities that happened in Lithuania. Harry I admire you.

Hello, Harry! I am your cousin, Leslie Hoffman Levenson (my mom's name was Ina Ginsberg, daughter of my grandfather Jack Ginsberg). I learned about your book on this title a while ago. I'd like to hear from you thru e mail shown at below (LEV10315@aol.com). Our cousin, Esther Ginsberg Cohen (daughter of Alex Ginsberg)also learns about you recently thru our cousin, Shelly and Marlee Ginsberg who went to the Museum of Holocaust in Wash. DC. Esther and I found each other by accident! Long story! We also found out there The Ginsberg brothers (Jack, Alex and Barney) did have sisters back in Lithuania we never knew ever existed). Please contact me and let you know that you have more cousins still living and well! Unfortunately, your book is out of print! Is there any way we can obtain that? Please don't put this on line as we the cousins are trying to locate you! :-) We are surely proud of your accomplishment for writing this book we want to read. We would love to know more about our descendents despite the history that happened. Thank you so much, Harry from your long lost cousin, LESLIE of Granada Hills, CA born in Buffalo, NY in 1948 daughter of Morris and Ina Hoffman (both still living).

wow, this book was really quite extraordinary, i loved it sooo much. i read it a few weeks ago, and now i decided to do my book report on it! so i am excited....but this book is so wonderful. it is historical fiction, and it brings together the fealings of happiness, sorrow, laughing-ness (if thats a word. lol.)and i really enjoyed it...Jessie Bovey is a bright young girl, and she is an amazing character.i loved her personality. and her grandma really is awesome there towards the end. lol. she kicks bootie. LOL. ha ha. but anyways. i would suggest to anyone who wants to read a brilliant book! well gtg. bye

I liked this book because Shutta Crum had a very unique writer's craft. It was a real page-turner! It had many of a 'big idea' and was funny at the same time. I liked the way she described the setting and the characters, it really gave you a feel that you were there with Jessica and Robert and had all the same feelings and thoughts. I think any person can enjoy this, even if they are into mystery, action, comedy...anything. This book included all of it, that's why it was so great to read.

I liked this book because Shutta Crum had a very unique writer's craft. It was a real page-turner! It had many of a 'big idea' and was funny at the same time. I liked the way she described the setting and the characters, it really gave you a feel that you were there with Jessica and Robert and had all the same feelings and thoughts. I think any person can enjoy this, even if they are into mystery, action, comedy...anything. This book included all of it, that's why it was so great to read.

This is my all-time favorite book. It's so hard to put into words how great it is! Throughout the novel I learned to care for the characters SO much, and I found myself crying, so nervous my stomach fluttered, or so happy I had the most amazing feeling inside me, like everything was perfect. It's amazing what talent Shutta has with her writing. I am encouraging *everyone* to read this book. The only warning I have...is that you'll be glued to it until the very last page. There were parts in the book where I wanted to skip ahead and find out what happened next! It is a perfect book about family, history, and loyalty. I have never read a book this inspiring and amazing in my entire lifetime. Shutta's charming words are sure to capture your heart with this heart-warming story about Jessica Kay Bovey.

I'll admit. I bought this book because the photographer, Harry Hinkle, is my cousin's husband.BUT.. I found myself drawn past the incredible photography of both Merton Thomas and Harry to the moving and insightful writing. The sheer joy of life reflected in the words AND photographs of this book, make me want to look at everything with new eyes and heart.

Thomas Merton's Gethsemani, Landscapes of Paradise by Monica Weis was, for me, a worthwhile read on a number of levels. Her premise was fascinating namely that Merton expanded his soul and grew progressively in his relationship with God by embracing not only the rules and rigors of monasticism but the mini-universe of the physical monastery, the land of Gethsemani itself. Weis details Merton's apprehension of this "paradise" with deceptive simplicity - the hills, rivers, storms, birds, smells and rhythms not only beckon him to deeper solititude but lead him into expanding realization, prayer and praise. And that for me, was the core accomplishment of the book. Weis never goes over the top. Her writing is clear and definite without strain, puffery or poetry. Rather the poetry of the book is her step by step detailing of the changes occuring within Merton himself as he allows Gethsemani - its physicality and metaphor - into his mind and heart. She traces the contours of a dynamic, poetic soul and the book shares the movement. Haley's black and white pictures of Gethsemani are simultaneously homey and mysterious; each invites a second look, a revaluation of your first response. His photography and Weis's premise go hand in hand. I remember one shot of a night sky - a black expanse spangled with hundreds of stars. It is sweeping and dramatic, far more majestic than those of woods, sheds and farm tools. Yet it locked perfectly with Weis's final chapters on Merton's (mystic) experience of a palpable unity; his sense that the world's religions have a common source and his full embrace of the METAPHOR he lived at Gethsemani. The book was my summer's morning read - a chapter a day with a cup of Starbuck's! A good way to start a day.

Mr. Hinkles evocative and enduring photographs and Ms. Weis' lyrical
text complement each other in support of Thomas Merton's enormous life. This is a precious text largely because it celebrates the courage to
simply be. One can read about Merton's contemplative life and very nearly be with him--in his light under the trees and sky and birds which
are fundamental and which were so essential to his routine, his daily
habit. Weis' text in particular is a carefully crafted essay--both probing and reverential. The book is an acheivement.

Five stars for the stunning photography of Harry L. Hinkle, and the wonderful layout of this volume, with it's telling quotes from Thomas Merton's own nature writings. His nature oeuvre is substantial, and this volume fills a need. Unfortunately, the essay text by Monica Weis is unbalanced. One is left with a very misleading idea of what this man was really about. He was not just a Franciscan icon lost in the rapture of the forests. On one level, we do a disservice to this great man in constantly perpetuating this kind of mythology. Too many reverential, saccharine treatments have been printed already. Merton was so much more; and others, beginning with biographer Michael Mott, have brought real balanced treatment to the life of this extremely complex man.

In the Foreward, Brother Patrick Hart makes mention of pilgrimages to the the places of interest in the physical and spiritual odessey of Thomas Merton. Who are these dear people who feel the need to do precisely what Thomas Merton himself so often railed against? Please desist from attempting to create an Icon of this most complex of human beings.

I have been a big fan of the Nuclear Thermal Rocket for many years. In 1966 my family drove by the Jackass Flats test site and I still have vivid memories of the AEC carpools passing us at 100mph on their private freeway from Las Vegas, hard hats stacked next to the back windows of their government-issue Chevys.

As I learned more about this program in recent years, the advantages of nuclear rockets seemed less clear to me. Is the 2x reduction in propellant weight really worth the big increase in cost and danger of a white-hot nuclear reactor? This book confirms my growing suspicions that NTR was and is a bad idea. The bare facts make it clear that this technology wasn't worth the costs even in the nuclear-friendly 1950s.

One often sees the claim that NERVA had a flight-ready design at the time of cancellation in 1971. The detailed descriptions of the many reactor tests in this book make it clear that this really wasn't so. Despite a huge amount of research, the high-temperature graphite/uranium fuel elements in these reactors were still subject to considerable cracking, corrosion and erosion. It was considered a great milestone when a test reactor lost less than 100lbs of bomb-grade uranium blown out the nozzle, mostly in the form of gas or microscopic inhalable particles.

This shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. The great nuclear physicist Luis Alvarez had pointed out the fundamental physical limitations of the H2/U-235 rocket engine in an obscure but unclassified journal as early as 1947. And the Rover/NERVA project was consistently opposed by every Presidential Science Adviser and every NASA Administrator right up to its final cancellation in 1971. Why then was so much public money wasted on a project that almost all competent observers thought was unwise?

This is the strongest aspect of Dewar's book. He has reconstructed in great detail the political deals that kept Rover and NERVA alive. It's a fascinating window into a past age of Congressional politics -- an age when a few powerful committee chairmen ruled the Hill with an iron fist, deciding billion-dollar research programs at all-night poker parties lubricated with large amounts of hard liquor. None of these men had any kind of technical education at all, and their decisions seem to have largely been based on pork barrel politics. It's no accident that the strongest supporter of NERVA was Sen. Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, home of Los Alamos where most of the NERVA funding ended up.

But I also wanted to learn all the technical details of the program, and in this area Dewar has come up short. He obtained a vast number of formerly-classifed internal project documents, but the information from them is not conveyed to the reader in a digestible form. Dewar has tried to water down the subject to make it understandable for a non-technical audience. This is really difficult to do in a complex field like fission reactor design, and some of his analogies and interpretations are oversimplified and downright misleading. A few tables summarizing the different reactor designs and their test histories would have been nice.

Dewar also adopts the annoying practice of summarizing lenghty policy documents in his own words, without including the original text in a appendix. On p.248-249, he even includes what seems to be a totally imaginary conversation between some of the major players in NERVA -- hardly an acceptable practice for serious historians.

Even worse, there are a few telling technical errors that make me doubt that Dewar understands nuclear physics very well. In an attack on anti-nuclear activists on p.209-210, he confuses Pu-239 with Pu-238. These isotopes have very different properties and safety problems.

But the biggest problem with this book is that the author is a true believer. He repeats as gospel truth all the claims made by pro-NERVA politicians, while expressing nothing but scorn for the opinions of highly qualified experts like Alvarez, Herbert York, and Jim Webb. When he states facts, he usually can be trusted. But his analysis and opinions are highly biased and untrustworthy. I hope somebody writes a better book on this topic someday -- but I'm keeping this one until that happens.

Excellent book... a must read for anyone interested in space propulsion technology which needs a 'second look' to enable humans to bridge our Solar System in the future.

Six million horsepower from a reactor the size of a 55 gallon drum. This was the promise of the ultimate in all-American 60's muscle - the nuclear thermal rocket engine. With it, you could send jumbo jet sized payloads to the Moon, or send a crew to Mars in 3 months.

James A. Dewar's exhaustively researched work (there are 91 pages of footnotes) shows both the technical and political sides of the 18 year effort to develop the nuclear rocket. Like the space program itself, the nuclear rocket program was a creature of the Washington political process.

While lacking the polish of a David McCullough, Dewar does a good job of introducing the cast of characters and their competing visions for America's technologic and social future.

Dewar's thesis is that the nuclear engine was feasible and would have revolutionized space travel, boosting mankind into a 2001 Space Odyssey. I found his viewpoint to be refreshing, especially in contrast to the dour visions of historians such as Richard Rhodes. He devotes Appendix D of the book to "safety and environmental aspects of testing."

Perhaps the most poignant vision one gets from reading the book is that of the turning of a page in American history. With the end of Apollo and the nuclear engine project in 1973 we go from an era of limitless promise, to an era of sharply limited outcomes.

To The End of the Solar System is an excellent primer on the nuclear rocket -- the history that might have been, and still waiting to be. It is a story even avid spaceflight fans may not have heard. Dewar presents a very readable account of the visionary engineers, project managers, and politicians who developed the first nuclear thermal rockets. The narrative covers the politics and engineering (with supplementary appendices) without being overwhelming. It explains why the nuclear rocket is superior to chemical engines, yet why the world failed to embrace it. The technology has lain dormant for decades, but is quietly making a revival in NASA's project Prometheus and elsewhere. Learn where it all started and where it's going; read To The End of the Solar System. It is well worth the price of admission.

The problem with this book is that it is not what it says it is. there is very, very little warfare described here--with the exception of the chapter on Grozny, Joes almost completely ignores urban combat as far as tactics, techniques, 1st person accounts of the combat, etc. It is all big picture stuff, and lots and lots of background about events leading up to the situations he describes--but again, not much on warfare itself.

This is an excellent treatment of the subject, dispelling myths and misconceptions. A fine addition to my library; and I am now procuring more of his works. Accurate histories, much research in original sources and well documented. Highly recommended.

I have read a number of books on guerrilla warfare, everything from the US Army's Field Manual on Guerrilla Warfare (FM 3-24) to Bard O'Neil's Insurgency & Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare to David Galula's Counter-Insurgency Warfare:Theory and Practice to John Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. Dr. Anthony James Joes' Urban Guerrilla Warfare is a necessary read for the student of guerrilla warfare. In this book Joes covers eight different urban settings...from Warsaw in WWII to Grozny in the 1990's. As with his other books, Urban Guerrilla Warfare manages to execute that difficult dance of providing an enormous number of facts and figures yet is eminently readable. It is hard to imagine that the 164 pages of text actually contain the hundreds of notes that they do, as it is written in a manner that the facts and figures presented don't disrupt the flow of the reading.

My personal favorite chapter (besides the conclusion) is the one on the battle for Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) during the Tet Offensive. It is impossible that, after reading the chapter on Saigon, you could still think that the US and South Vietnam lost the Tet Offensive, and that it was not a total disaster for the Viet Cong. In fact, you will walk away with the realization that the US did win the counterinsurgency battle in Vietnam...and that it was North Vietnamese regulars that defeated South Vietnam in 1975.

The conclusion chapter provides a number of critical ideas for both the insurgents and counterinsurgents in fighting in an urban environment. Ideas that would assist the US and her allies today in the insurgencies she is involved in.

In summary, this is more than a book to buy and have on your shelf. This is one to read - and to reference back to.

This work has a refreshing depth and understanding. It purview includes the insurgencies in Warsaw, Budapest, Latin American countries, etc. Owing to the comprehensiveness of the book, I limit my review to its first part.

Joes quotes Fuller, Tukhachevsky, Lord D'Abernon, and Carr as to the decisive nature of Poland's victory over the Bolsheviks in 1920 (pp. 11-12).

Joes unmasks the nature and extent of the Soviet-Nazi pact: "Stalin punctiliously sent great trainloads of food and materiel to Hitler so the latter could evade the consequences of the British blockade...Apologists for Stalin often maintain that Stalin saved Russia, and indeed all of Europe, by his pact with Hitler because it gave Russia time to prepare for war. True, he did get an extra year and a half of peace, but during this time he was helping feed the Nazi war machine...The `second front' for which Stalin incessantly clamored in 1942-1944 had already been there in 1939...What saved the USSR was not Stalin's cunning but Hitler's errors..." (p. 33)

As for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943), Joes focuses on the very limited ability of Poles to render significant aid (p. 24). The Polish Underground was not yet deployed, and it possessed a meager stock of arms at the time.

Joes provides considerable detail about the Warsaw Uprising (1944) and the 63-day agony and defeat, all thanks to Soviet perfidy. There has been a tendency for writers to be wishy-washy about Stalin's conduct. Joes will have none of it. He quotes Air Marshall Sir John Slessor, RAF commander, who called it `the blackest-hearted, coldest-blooded treachery on the part of the Russians.'" (p. 35)

In conclusion, "The Germans were responsible for the deaths of a quarter of a million civilians in Warsaw, by mass execution and deliberate starvation, but no one was arraigned for these crimes (nor for Katyn) at Nuremberg." (p. 37). "For decades after Germany's surrender, punishment continued to be meted out to Nazi war criminals. Nobody has been punished for the countless thousands of deaths resulting from Stalin's deportations of Polish civilians in 1939-1941. No one has been punished for the murders of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn." (p. 21). Well said!

Charles P. Roland in 263 pages of text gives the best overview of the American Civil War I have ever seen. Roland, in my opinion, gives the most unbiased, objective and comprehensive view of the Civil War including its origins. In "An American Iliad," he gives the major positions of the North and South on all important issues leading up to the war without being an advocate or judge.

His book is not "primarily an analytical study" but rather "a synthesis of the major writings on the war" (Preface xi). One quibble I had was his reliance on Clausewitz over Jomini, the latter being a greater influence on the war's strategy and tactics. I appreciated the academic format of the book, published by The University Press of Kentucky, which had, for me, required hallmarks including a preface, table of contents, maps and photographs, a bibliographic essay and an index. The absence of footnotes or endnotes was understandable due to the length of the book and its overview perspective, but I would have preferred being able to review his sources to enhance my understanding or for further research.

Roland's view is that the final impasse which the North and South came to in 1860 grew out of "political, economic, cultural, and social differences... [reaching] back to the very origin of the nation and beyond" (1). He does state, however, that slavery was the chief contributing factor to all these sources of tension which finally brought on war. He presents well the two, and sometimes more, sides of various arguments but concentrates on the political ones. He discusses not only the main stream ideas of the opponents but also the extremes of both sides such as the four attitudes the Senate had on the spread of slavery in the Mexican cession. Roland discusses the various machinations the politicians then went through to eventually produce the Compromise of 1850, the penultimate compromise.

My final example of his fairness is his discussion of President Buchanan's actions in 1860 giving reasons that his equivocating was not necessarily a bad thing if he was, in fact, trying to limit the damage secession of the lower South could cause. I do detect Roland's belief that war was inevitable although he never expressly said that. It may be that a logical and coherent presentation of all the actions leading to the war made it seem inevitable--a penalty of hindsight. I could find no evidence of sectional biases in his book.

American Iliad provides a well balanced introduction to the American Civil War despite its succinct length. It does glaze over the most important events, but still to limited to much more than a general introduction. For more in-depth research McPherson, Foote, Buell and Catton are the premiere scholars of the era.

This book gives a solid overview of the entire Civil War but doesn't read like a just the facts book.The book focus on the key events in both theaters of the war and has chapters on the homefronts as well as the poltical aspects of the war.

Browning's journeys through the world of apples are exhaustive, lyric and compelling. If you like NPR, or the old New Yorker, you'll love this book on the fruit of English Yeoman, Thomas Jefferson, French Nobelmen and Johnny Appleseed. You will never look at a grocery store Red Delicious the same again.

Frank Browning perpetuates my belief that journalists are writing the best gardening and plant books. Gardeners are not typically interesting writers and there is such a proliferation of mediocre gardening books on the market. "Apples" is a delightful book. Anyone who wants to grow apples or simply go to the grocery store and buy apples would be enlightened by Frank Browning's book.

Frank Browning's Apples is fascinating. Until I read the book, I never knew the complexity of growing and marketing apples, nor did I fully realize the richness of the apple's botanical heritage. Where I buy apples, my choice is the usual six varieties; the passion of this book reawakened my experience, not long ago, of a bag of winesaps purchased at a farmers market in New York State. If you love apples too, you'll be inspired and frustrated by this book. Beware: it has some botanical sections that are highly technical; these could certainly have benefited by some illustrations or charts. Nevertheless, a culinary book like this one that leaves a lingering taste in your mouth is well worth opening.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

I don't typically write reviews of the books I read, but this is one of those books that you want to tell everyone about. Gann is one of those gifted authors who can excite and illuminate anything he seems to touch; he has a musical sense of language and a power of description that you don't often see. Especially when I realize this is the author's first novel! I've marked up my copy with all kinds of post-it notes and pen marks on passages I want to recite to friends. This author isn't afraid to look at some of the ugly things we all do to get what we want; nor is he afraid to show how we fess up to our mistakes later -- if to no one but ourselves. He embraces life without putting a gloss over it. I recommend this book to anybody who cares about contemporary writing.

The comment from the novelist Lee Durkee nails this book best: Gann "turns us into children watching mayhem, transfixed, horrified, and yet filled with wonder." The author has a great gift for characterization and precise -- yet lyrical -- language. This must not have been an easy story to write, either, detailing with such apparent honesty the difficulties of a family in Kentucky during the 1970s and 80s. Still, Gabriel Toure, the narrator, is a compelling character that the reader can't help but root for, even when he is acting in the most hideous of ways. I thought this novel really exemplified how difficult our society makes it on families, and how strange the way we teach our boys to grow into men.

I'm not the type of person who writes reviews, but after reading this book, I felt I had to. From the opening sentence ("The day the freight train hit my father . . ."), The Barbrian Parade had me drawn into the story of Gabriel Toure. Gann provides us with a man as brave as he is flawed, as vivacious as he is introspective. Here is a book that is honest, unflinching and utterly enjoyable. I hope to read more from this writer in the future.

Gershon Shafir published this book in 1996 through University of California Press. Certainly it is a major contribution to undersatnding the fundamental problems of any attempt at a settlemen in Israel/Palestine. Working in the same vein as Benny Morris, Tom Segev, Ilan Pape, and other "new" historians (the name is used in both praise and derision), Shafir crafted an impressive work that attempted to cut through Zionist and Palestinian myths and examine what truly happened from 1882-1914. However, after all his impressive research, readers feel like there may be more to the story than written.

After a comparison and contrast of different styles of colonialism (he asserts that Zionism can best be understood as a form of colonialism), he reviews Zionist land policies. For Shafir, agriculture and the land is the root of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While this is certainly a hugely important issue, he neglects the urban roots of conflict in favor of his agricultural theories. Ironically, this only furthers the myth of Israelis returning to the land, whereas most future Israelis lived in cities. Without examining the urban aspects of the conflict, he only tells part of the story. Also, his work is Ashkenazi-centric (European Jewish). True, the leaders of Zionism were mostly Central/Eastern European during this period, but he virtually marginalizes the story of other Zionists.

Nevertheless, Shafir's contribution to the academic literature as it offers a glimpse into the agricultural roots that contributed to the modern conflict.

This is an excellent examination of the economic forces that have shaped the conflict in Palestine/Israel.

This is an example of a revisionist argument at its best. Gershon Shafir uses the same primary sources the major Middle-East historians have used for decades and offers up an economic, non-religious, and elegantly simple explanation of the conflict as it exists today.

A wonderful family story in a beautiful book written by a wonderful woman. From Sally flows emotion and character. Whether you drink bourbon or only water you will enjoy this book. It's been called a coffee-table book but it really is not -- it is so much more. Coffee-table books are for browsing. This wonderful story of a family, a man (Pappy VanWinkle) and an industry is one you'll not want to put down. I've had the fortune of meeting Sally when purchasing her book and she is as warm as the words she writes. Get this and read it! It reminds me of Walton's Mountain (the warm, emotional part of the TV epic) and the Sam Walton (of Wal-Mart fame) story all rolled into one!

I was fortunate to meet Julian P. Van Winkel III at a whiskey tasting in San Francisco. I tasted his whiskies, bought his sister's book (he was kind enough to add his signature to the author's), and then his wife invited me to "come see us in Kentucky". Friendliest folks I've ever met. Damn fine book, too.

This gorgeous book leaps from the coffee table into the hands of everyone who sees it, and no one has been able to put it down. A warm portrait of the Van Winkle family bourbon business--Stitzel-Weller Distillery--the story is infused with the history of the industry from the inception of bourbon making to the period of mergers and acquisitions that saw the demise of many small distilleries. The book's narrative includes heartwarming and informative first-hand accounts of working with Pappy Van Winkle. It is masterfully designed with beautiful photography and full color representations of the distillery's labels. A true delight and a bargain.