Mississippi Books

For those who ride on motorcycles in the state of Mississippi, this is a great book to have in your saddle bags. It gives interesting insights into who, what and why things occured.

I have found Mississippi to be a beautiful state with warm people, fun food, rich history and lots to offer. If you have time to read entire chapters of this book before your visit to Mississippi it will certainly provide helpful information. The book provides back stories and insider tips. However, this guide is not well organized or efficient to use. There is no easy summary of must sees - or quick ways to find a particular destination. Also, it can be difficult to find sites highlighted in the book if you are not familiar with local roads - you almost need to plan ahead of time and prepare mapquest maps. While the authors did tip me off to some very worthwhile diversions that augmented my visit (e.g. the Natchez trail is fantastic) and gave me back-story on some of the towns which I appreciated, it was often more work to get at this information than I would have hoped for from a travel guide.

When you live in Mississippi, you are immensely flattered when you discover that someone has written an entire guide about your state. Although I have never understood why, the travel industry seems to have ignored the wealth of things to do here.

This book is great because it's extremely detailed and also provides the history (or what I like to call the "back story") on alot of the sights and attractions in the state.

The book divides the state into sections, giving meaty attention to each part of Mississippi. At the end of each section, Kirkpatrick provides a list with contact information for each attraction, hotel, and retail outlet discussed in the section. Bits of state trivia are also interspersed throughout the book in little shaded boxes. This helps to liven up the reading, and is fun and educational, to boot.

Living in central Mississippi, I can definitely vouch for the veracity of that section. Kirkpatrick hits all of the highlights (and some of the lowlights!).

If you're interested in visiting the REAL Mississippi, not just the casinos and the antebellum homes (though Kirkpatrick certainly covers those, too), buy this book.

As a former employee there I was anxious to get this book and I was not disappointed when I did. LOTS of great memories rushed forth, the pictures of Skip Manley made me long to see the old man again, he always bought drinks. I wish she was still open, it was one of the best concert venues in North America and rock bands LOVED playing there as it had the only air conditioned outdoor stage in the world. Great home made food backstage for the bands too (courtesy Cindy Huckleberry and sisters.)

If you ever went to the Mississippi River Festival as a visitor, student, or worked there as an employee, you know what a special place it was. This book takes you back to that place in time from the minute you open it to the time you close it. It's filled with excellent photos showing the mant great performers, guests and other people who made it happen. If you were there, you know. If not, I'm sorry you missed out.

While I purchased this book for an older sibling, I read & eyeballed through it prior to sending it to him. A deluge of fond memories engulfed me, and I reminisced happily about the many nights we spent at MRF.

This classic work by one of the great yarn-spinners of all time includes some wonderful descriptive information about California places and people in the early 1860s and some gripping, heartstopping tales about King's own mountaineering exploits. Even in his early 20s, Clarence King was recognized for leaderhip and intellectual ability. He served with the Army Topographic Engineers on the survey of the Western United States along the 40th parallel and was an intimate of Henry Adams and his wife in their small social/intellectual circle in Washington D.C. (See Patricia O'Toole's "The Five of Hearts"). He established his national reputation for being a shrewd, practical man of science when he discovered and exposed a stock swindle based on salted ore and fraudulent assay samples when asked to evaluate a mining promotion in Colorado. "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" is a non-chronological, semi-autobiographical reconstruction of some of King's time (circa 1862-63) with Josiah Whitney's Survey, commissioned by the State legislature to catalogue and evaluate California geologic and mineral resources. It is an entertaining and engrossing narration of one foolhardy, death-defying exploit after another. Like those of John Muir (another classic, albeit overrated talesman of the Range of Light), Clarence King's numerous renditions of his own hairsbreadth escapes from impossibly precarious positions by the power of luck, pluck and sheer physical prowess, while entertaining and enthralling, were made possible only by his own chronic rash foolhardiness, if not by tremendous powers of exaggeration. A better man was his fellow draft-dodger (the Civil War was going on back East all the while they were dancing around in the mountains of California, after all), William Brewer. Brewer served longer, harder and more responsibly than King in the Whitney Survey. Brewer also wrote a factually more thorough and reliable description of conditions in the young state of California in a series of letters home to his family in New England (collected as "Up and Down California"), with none of King's histrionics but just as entertaining in its own way. King's book does include some unique insights. One is his near-comic description of the "Piker" rubes (from Pike County, Missouri), rural folk residing in the foothills of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, which can be read as a precourser of all hilarious mountain folk descriptions, from Li'l Abner through the Beverley Hillbillies to Deliverance. But truth be told (rarely enough, one suspects), this book is mostly about the indefatigable King and his own personal exploits in the Southern Sierra. While King's literary talent was substantial, his writing (and indeed his entire public life and historic reputation) were seemingly unilluminated in any way by his own domestic arrangements. These included a life-long love relationship and common law marriage to a black woman, Ada, with whom he maintained a household including their several children. Not only did he keep the marriage secret from all of his prominent social contacts, but he kept his own notorious identity and true name a secret from his wife and children until just before he died. Still, under the constant strain of maintaining a double identity, he continued to support his family and maintained an exhausting schedule of international travel, geological consulting and writing until he died prematurely from consumption at the age of 59. (See Thurman Wilkins' "Clarence King"). You won't find any mention of King's real family anything King wrote for public consumption, or even for the consumption of his well-placed friends. Altogether, this book makes for a slightly less than satisfying cud to chew over, but it tastes pretty good the first time on the way down.

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is essential reading for anyone who both loves those mountains and wants to get a glimpse of life there before it reached the level of settlement it has today. Whether or not all the stories here are strictly factual, they are often both gripping and entertaining. Additionally, they bring the reader some sense of what rural central California life was like at that time.
Clarence King was a gifted wordsmith. His hilarious, politically incorrect descriptions of western characters are reminiscent of some of the best incisive commentary of Mark Twain. Then his descriptions of climbing in the mountains are so intense that you may even wince as you are carried along as he describes some of the most hair-raising brushes with death. Those who have been where King describes will certainly feel what King has written as they read along.
One reviewer, though entertained, seems to doubt what King says. I don't. Though there may be a little hyperbole in King's description of events, the reader should remember that at that time the average guy was far more physically fit than the average guy today. You had to be or you didn't make it, because every day in the wilderness was fraught with challenge and physical danger.
All in all, you could say that this book is a collection of bold tales well told. I particularly like the stories of his crossing the desert coming to California, of the hog farmers, of his escape from determined bandits, of his ultimate conquest of Mt Whitney, and of all the colorful characters he meets in his path both in the Sierras and at Shasta.
And though some might take him for a bigot because of some of his comments about the natives, remember that he saves the sharpest point of his pen for the most worthless characters of his own stock who abound in the California of his day. Whatever you think about what King has written, once you pick this up you'll find it hard to put down until you've finished the last paragraph.

Clarence King sure knows how to tell a good story. Whether they are true stories, well that's for you to decide. But really, it doesn't matter. You'll read of him dangling from the edge of great cliffs and running from wild west bandits, all the while keeping the reader wondering how he'll ever live to tell the tale. Overall the book is a collection of stories by a man who loved the Sierra Nevada, for it vast wilderness was his playground.

I really enjoyed this book, although the ending left me a bit surprised (and not in a good way). The story seemed to turn into a soap opera plotline right at the end. Up until then everything was believable. The book is still a good read and the characters come alive in your mind. It was hard to put down. I guess I need to see where the story goes from here.

I have to admit that Helen Black never really caught my imagination. In the first couple of the Helen Black mysteries, she seemed like a cookie-cutter ex-cop private detective with a chip on her shoulder. Been there, read that.

The years went by and I didn't miss Helen Black, though I know a lot more books were published in the series. Recently, however, I saw a rave, positive print review for Moving Targets. That particular reviewer sometimes hates books I like, but so far has never liked a book that I didn't also like. Could this be the same Helen Black by the same Pat Welch?

It is, but it hardly seems possible. Where atmosphere sadly lacked in the earliest books, Moving Targets is drenched with it. Literally. I broke into a sweat just reading about summer in Mississippi. The swelter was inescapable and wonderfully conveyed on the page.

Helen, too, has come alive as a character I've never read in the small press mysteries before. She has indeed hit bottom, and makes mistake after mistake. Her judgement is sadly impaired by alcohol, the heat, clothes that refuse to fit, and an urgent desire to end her non-voluntary celibacy.

The core mystery was also compelling. Like with VI Warshawsky, it starts small, but rapidly unravels into something big. Soon large men with little brains are chasing Helen through the heat, and Helen is wondering how she got into a mess that started with a family photograph. She fails to resist a predatory seductress and doesn't care that it's her last friend on earth's lover she's rolling around with. But, in her last shining moment before a horrific conclusion, she finds the decency to resist the advances of a woman far too young and unstable to know what she's really doing.

Helen Black hits bottom and Pat Welch hits top form in taking her there. After not caring if I ever read another word about Helen Black again I am panting for the next one. Ms. Welch, get busy!

I was really glad to see this book on the list of finalists for the annual Lammy awards. It's a intriguing mystery with real ambiance and complicated character development. In fact -- and this is a pretty high compliment from me -- it reminded me of JM Redmann. If you like JM, then you'll like this Helen Black mystery. I hope that Pat Welch will write more like it, and soon.

Overseas American is an amazing story of a boy growing up under very difficult family circumstances and learning how to meet his own spiritual and physical needs. As an "overseas American" I found it fascinating to find we had many shared experiences growing up in Latin American and in returning to the United States. I highly recommend this book.

Gene Bell-Villada's memoir is a poignant view of a boy growing up in the midst of cultural, linguistic and scholastic confusion. In addition, he convincingly captures his child view as his parents flounder and eventually dissolve the family unit. This frank and instructive tale is a much needed addition to the "third culture kid" literature as more people find themselves the offspring of cross-cultural and inter-racial marriages brought up in world venues not connected with either parent and devoid of anchoring safety nets.

Having grown up an "overseas American," I found this book to be an honest, perceptive and touching account, resonating with some of my own experiences. It is also a tale of a harrowing home life (more accurately, lack thereof), of poignant self-discovery and redemption livened by a wry sense of humor. A compelling personal story with universal appeal. Highly recommended.

Porgy is a classic tale well known to most. I purchased the book with mixed emotions. One part of me was apprehensive about an Anglo-Saxon's interpretation of one "segment" of the black community is the early 1900s. Another part of me wanted to know the full story that has captured the hearts and minds of so many people of various backgrounds, as long as I can remember. Needless to say, I'm very glad I read the book.

Given the popularity of this story, I'm not compelled to analyze any aspect of it. I will just suggest that you read it for yourself. The book is short, sweet, and full of life. By the time you get to the end, Porgy and Bess will have softened your heart and made you glad for investing the time. However, be mindful that the book only depicts one segment of the community...by no means does Porgy reflect the experiences and struggles of all, or even most, of Charlestown's early 20th century "Negro" society.

Great! It was a tremendous aid in my preparation for a role in Porgy & Bess!

Spured by jazz, blues, and the legendary "Harlem Renassiance," the 1920s saw a sudden general curiosity about African-American culture, which many considered outside the mainstream and therefore exotic. A resident of Charleston, South Carolina, DuBose Heyward observed the black underclass of the city and in 1925 published PORGY.

The novel was both a popular and critical success, but then as now many note that Heyward was writing from the outside: although his observation was acute, and although his portraits were generally both positive and sympathetic, Heyward was a white man. Given the social climate of the era, he was therefore not fully privy to the culture he scrutinized, and in consequence many have considered PORGY well-intended but intrinsically flawed and somewhat patronizing.

The title character of the novel is a crippled black man who lives in a slum named Catfish Row in the "Negro Quarters" of 1920s Charleston. Heyward paints the slum in colorful terms; no less so are the characters. Unable to work, Porgy exists as a beggar, using a goat cart to travel the area, and so pitiful is his physical condition that his earnings allow him enough for his room, his food, and the occasional crap game. At one such game a stevedore named Crown murders a fellow player--and in time Crown's woman, Bess, stumbles destitute into Catfish Row and Porgy takes her in.

Most readers of PORGY are likely to come to the novel from the celebrated opera PORGY AND BESS and will be quite surprised to discover that while Bess does indeed figure in the novel, neither she nor her romance with Porgy forms the focus of the book. In 1927 Heyward and wife Dorothy adapted the novel to the stage and substantially altered the plot, and it was this play, not the book, which so captured the imagination of George Gershwin. The novel is quite different and the conclusion is bathed in pathos rather than optimism.

Although it is indeed flawed by its "looking from the outside in" status, PORGY deserves more attention from the reading public than it presently receives. In a very real sense, the book opened the door to literature--by both white and black writers--about the African-American community, and thereafter the subject would become increasingly mainstream. It also captures many of the customs of the culture it observes which would have otherwise gone unrecorded. Historical significance aside, it also remains a touching work, filled with memorable characters, graced with Heyward's poetic turn of phrase, and intriguing in its effort to catch the Gullah-inflected accents of the 1920s South Carolina Africa-American community. Recommended, particularly to those interested in how "white" America perceived "black" America in the early 20th Century.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I found this book on the shelf, signed and dated by the author, at the Memphis Library (Poplar and Whitestation Branch). If you have never lived in the South (and by South I mean, DEEP South), you might not "get it." The novel is a comical picture of the South written with a Steinbeck flair. These people almost do not exist now, but travel deep into the nameless counties of Tennessee or Mississippi, and you'll find a few of their counterparts. There's nothing quite like a Mississippi redneck in the "Memphis Area," and what a portrait the author paints! It's the truth in the outrageousness that tickled my funny bone.

Unforgettable farce set in the old south. You won't meet a stranger bunch of characters this side of Swing Blade. A book that makes you laugh becuase it is so outragrous.

Mean, mean, mean comic vision of Southern life ala Crews and Faulkner. Perhaps the darkest funny book I have ever read. It's a shame it is out of print. For an excerpt from the novel that is easily available, see Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor.

Ms. McCarty is exactly the type of person to which we, as parents, teachers, or librarians, should be exposing our children. This short book tells the story of how an uneducated black woman, who worked at only menial jobs, saved enough money to establish a college scholarship fund. There are important lessons about work ethic, education, saving money, and particularly about faith in God. This story should be read aloud to third grade and up. The book also includes information on setting up savings accounts.

This biography makes the reader realize that hard work can bring riches to one's life and I don't mean just money. Anyone who loves her job and saves money can accomplish anything. Kids should read this book and take Ola's message to heart. Find something you enjoy doing and make that your life's work!

I was so proud when this biography about the life of Oseola McCarty made the Texas Bluebonnet Reading List for 2000-2001! While reviewing this book for the library and sharing it with the kids of this book club, I thought that Oseola's attitude -- working hard, saving money, getting a good education, and sharing with others -- is exactly the kind of examples and values that we want to share with our children. Whenever I hear her name today and think about her generous gift to the University of Southern Mississippi, I am reminded that there is still honor, dignity, and value in doing work that brings pleasure. This wonderful biography about a remarkable woman's spirit is an inspiration to us all!

Sam Myers was more than just a great harmonica player, singer/songwriter and drummer. Sam was the consummate Blues performer. Once the drummer behind Elmore James, Sam went on to have quite a successful career as frontman for Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets and more. The Blues Is My Story is one of those books that is easy to read, entertaining, informative and downright delightful. Sleep well old friend. This book belongs on the bookshelf of every Blues Fan.

Fans of blues music may recognize the name of Sam Myers, who grew up blind in the Jim Crow South and became a blues musician in Chicago, joining Elmore James's band as a drummer and eventually fostering bands and recordings of his own - but it's unlikely the general public will recognize it. Therefore, The Blues Is My Story is a specific and recommended pick for collections strong in blues music history, offering a history to accompany Myers' memoir of his experiences and providing such audiences with plenty of blues history and music insights in the process.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This volume is a labor of love by Jeff Horton, who met the subject in the late `90s. It is an "as told to" book which entailed many hours of tape recorded interviews with Sweet Sam Myers, a beloved musical émigré to Dallas from Mississippi and a great man, blues singer and harmonica player.

I am a Dallas musician who spent nearly 20 years visiting with Sam and playing blues with him in Dallas nightclub jam sessions. Based on this experience with him, I can give these perspectives on this much anticipated book:

It is a well-written compendium of Sam's stories about his life and associations. That being said, Sammy could ramble, he could both embellish and sound-bite his stories, and he told many of them until they were well-worn coins, the stories becoming things in themselves and perhaps evolving in this way and that from the events they described. With a more thorough vetting of the manuscript, certain details of Sam's verbal accounts might have been sharpened and corrected beyond the ability of Mr. Horton to do so.

But in any "as told to" biography, you give up some things and you get some things, and with The Blues Is My Story what you get is a narrative that is faithful to Sam's own voice. (Rest assured this involved much more than mere transcription of taped interviews by Horton, as Sam could and usually would "take the long way `round" in getting to his point, which surely required Horton to spend many hours cleaning up sentence structure and eliminating verbal side trips. But in the end, if you knew Sam Myers, you will agree the book is reminiscent of Sam's way of speaking and thinking.)

The stories of Myers' childhood are beautiful and revealing, and the reader gets a good sense of the man's determined character and how it coped with his blindness when he was a kid, and continued to do so throughout his life.

Some of the accounts of Sam's Chicago period are a little general and lacking in detail, while other details, such as the names of nightclubs and city streets are remembered as if they were visited yesterday. His recollections of his most legendary employer Elmore James are personal and give useful glimpses into Mr. "Dust My Broom", yet other books have conveyed more on the life and amazingly diverse interests and skills of James.

A chapter is devoted to Sam Myers' attempt to answer the unanswerable question "What is the blues?", and Sam can't quite answer it either, but his thoughtful beating of the underbrush gives the reader one more layer of insight, this one coming from a man who lived the blues as fully as any man has.

The book is enhanced by humble, warm and wonderful chapters from Dallas friends Hash Brown and Anson Funderburgh, the first of whom gave Myers an off-duty blues home in Dallas where he would always be loved and respected, and the latter of whom gave Sam Myers' career a new life in the band Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets Featuring Sam Myers. Without the association with Anson, Sam was in danger of fading away into obscurity by the 1980s; with it he found himself a beloved figure to blues audiences around the country and the world, and he was able to finish his life with the pride and satisfaction that come with a considerable celebrity and a long list of honors and awards.

Every man's life is a mystery full of unanswered questions, and Sam Myers came wrapped in his own secrets, many of which remain safely obscured in Jeff Horton's book. But what remain in this spoken autobiography are the things that Sam deemed suitable to stand the light of day, and by lovingly studying these, you can read between the lines, or, if you spent enough time sitting in bars and restaurants and loafing in parking lots with the gentleman, you can supplement Jeff Horton's well-written account with your own memories of the man's intelligence, humor, wisdom, irreverence and steady faith in himself, and of his contentment at being a real deal, old school blues man.

Sam Myers died of a cancer surgery related complication in Dallas a short time before the publication of this book. His passing brought forth a tremendous flood of affection, appreciation and grief from the hundreds of northeast Texans whose lives he touched with his seasoned and affectionate soul. His body was then taken home to Mississippi for burial, where the outpouring was repeated. This new book adds yet another worthy tribute to a departed friend.

This book takes us on a journey into an almost unknown side of the American Civil War. While historians have argued over which great land battle was the so called "high water mark of the Confederacy", the author makes it obvious that events taking place on the high seas and in the halls of European power had a greater impact on the outcome of America's bloodiest war.
The late historian Shelby Foote stated that you can't understand American history without understanding the Civil War. I would add that you can't understand the Civil War without understanding the naval and international aspects of that conflict. This book is the best on that subject.

I have just finished this volume and have found it to be one of the best-written books of all that I have ever read (I read Dickens's Bleak House several weeks ago and, though the story-telling is marvellous as always, the English, the grammar, the punctuation, even the spelling, leaves much to be desired); one of the most thorough histories I have ever read; and one of the most moving and patriotic stories I have ever read. And, leaving aside any bias which the author must have had, it is also a tear-jerking tale of what might so nearly have been for the Confederate States of America but for the perfidy of some Britons and some Americans. U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward comes out of it all with a thoroughly tarnished reputation, as does Britain's Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell. James Dunwoody Bulloch was one of the great heroes of The Old South and a truly remarkable author!

When news of the firing upon Ft. Sumter by General P.G.T. Beauregard reached James Bulloch, he offered his services to the Confederate government at once. He was assigned by President Davis to build a navy on government account. This book is Bulloch's narrative of his experiences.

The strongest element of this book is that it sheds light on what would otherwise be very little known facts of the war. Bulloch's contacts with Stephen Mallory and other high ranking Confederates give rarely seen insights into the service he and his fellow agents performed. It is important to note that Bulloch's work is not about the sea exploits of the ships he contracted, but about the work that was done in making financial arrangements and fitting the ships for sea. The author goes into a great amount of detail in all the contracts that he undertook while in Europe. He also adds accounts of other agents when needed, but always stresses to the reader that those accounts are second hand.

The reviewer's main complaint with this work is that a large section is devoted to the Geneva Arbitration occurring after the war. Bulloch seems to be rather defensive in regard to U.S. complaints made against him. Although fairly readable, this section of the book is not really necessary for understanding Confederate operations and does not advance the narrative. Another small complaint is that Bulloch will sometimes tell the reader of key elements far in advance of the narrative time frame. This can be frustrating, as what would have been an exciting twist in the plot has been alluded to eighty pages beforehand.

Only the above mentioned flaws kept this book from a five-star rating. It is a readable account of Confederate operations in Europe and highly recommended for any person who wishes to further their knowledge of the aforementioned.