Missouri Books

Trowbridge's Kong poems are great examples of the relevancy and potential of contemporary poetry. Although Kong's power as a cultural icon is basically antique, Trowbridge creates a fresh and complex personality who tells the story of his Hollywood lifestyle in the form of poetry vignettes. The book almost reads like a comedic novel.

There are many hilarious moments in the collection, including Kongs power lunch with Godzilla and his try-out for the Chicago Bears. But the book is more than a few good laughs. Each poem reveals more of the persona Trowbridge has created within his simple, effective verse. It's like a clebrity bio without all the whining and impossibility of authenticity. Kong represents the American idea machine at its biggest, and Trowbridge knows just how to manipulate the figure to teach and entertain.

Also available in a hardcover edition, The Complete Book Of Kong by William Trowbridge is a unique and highly recommended collection of poetry celebrating that famous giant ape of the silver screen, King Kong. Trowbridge presents a varied and lyrical depiction of this fearsome beast and the forces he symbolizes, in a reader engaging and refreshingly adventurous series of imaginative verse. Kong's Crush On Madonna: It was that steel/brassiere, leveled/at my heart. Cupid's/twin warheads,/heat seeking,/armor piercing.//Her eyes locked on./She counted down./I had ignition,/lift off.

The life and fate of the Eighth Wonder of the World is the playful and poignant subject of Trowbridge's latest collection. Each of the poems is written from the point of view of Kong (the gritty 1933 version, not the fluffy, disco Kong of 1976). Kong takes mambo lessons, tries video dating, meets Godzilla in the commisary (''I felt this could be/ a big step for me, though at first/ he just sat there drumming his talons,/ nursing a vat of Courvoisier''), all attempts to get his life in order after Fay. (Sadly, no mention is made of MechaniKong.) The jokes are there (many riffing on Kong's size and strength), but Trowbridge takes the conceit to surprisingly serious and sad places. When Kong competes on Let's Makes a Deal, Trowbridge writes, ''the great door opened/ to reveal a big TV with a La-Z-Boy recliner/ and a woman dressed, I think, for mating./ Cheers swarmed like biplanes. 'Am I human now?'/ I asked, feeling bare, and somewhat smaller.'' Altogether, Trowbridge puts the big oaf of an ape in perspective and paints a picture of a melancholy titan just as vulnerable as the rest of us.

Christopher Phillips provides the reader with a fascinting insight into the character of Nathaniel Lyon. Rarely in reading a biography has the reader come away with such a clear and precise understanding as to what the central character's personality was really like.
By providing this insight into Lyon's character the reader can clearly understand what motivated Lyon to take the actions he took in the troubled 1860's in Missouri. Lyon was a not very likable individual, He brought a zealot's zeal to virtually everything he believed in or did regardless of the conseqences. In the end this zeal brought about his own death. A great read...two thumbs up.

This paperback* is useful as a cheap (book can be purchased at a deep discount) means to get an idea of what occurred in Missouri during the first part of the Civil War. Phillip's attempt to psychologically profile General Lyon with today's sensitivities provides the reader with comic relief in this account of some of the darkest days in our history.

*note: one needs to be able to read between the lines of Phillip's politically correct revisionist slant on history.

Damned Yankee provides a surprisingly detailed study of the life of U.S. Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon. Author Chistopher Phillips probes deeply into Lyon's background, family, and military career. The product is a fascinating portrait of a determined and disturbing figure.

Nathaniel Lyon seized the initiative in Missouri, never allowing the determined secessionist governor an opportunity to guide the state out of the Union. While Missourians overall desired neutrality and elected secession convention delegates who soundly rejected secession, the elected state government leaned far more Southern than strictly neutral. From the moment of his entry onto the scene in St. Louis, Lyon worked tirelessly to frustrate Southern ambitions on the Federal arsenal. He butted heads with his more passive superiors in St. Louis; and he successfully conspired with various political figures to usurp and replace these impediments to his perceived mission.

Lyon is a unique personage with an intensely individual interpretation of right and wrong. The author's central theme is that Lyon sought to punish those who strayed from what Lyon perceived to be the right path; and the author is effective in presenting his case. Lyon's disagreements with superiors and fellow officers were frequently intense, often to the point of insufferable insubordination. His punishment of subordinates for infractions was also extreme to the point he was successfully court-martialed for excessive punishment.

The events in Lyon's career I found most disturbing related to his sanctioned and authorized reprisal massacres of Native Americans in California. This certainly makes his declaration of war in Missouri far more threatening: "Better, sir, far better, that the blood of every man, woman and child within the limits of the State should flow, than that she should defy the federal government."

As a military commander and organizer, Lyon proved incredibly capable. Here was a commander with the bold aggressiveness of Grant, the self-assured intensity of Forrest, and the discipline of Stonewall Jackson. However, he also possessed huge flaws such as an inability to get along, political inflexibility, and subversive intrigue that likely would have undone him had he not perished at Wilson's Creek. His eccentric and caustic beliefs were likely to produce outrages.

The author does a fine job of presenting the various viewpoints and back and forth of central characters. When he does present his own conclusions though they are not always convincing. The argument that Lyon was the irritant that leading to much of the eventual conflict in Missouri falls particularly flat, as does the pronouncement that without strong Federal action Missouri's pro-Southern governor and government would still have been unsuccessful in their aims.

I'm also highly skeptical of the author's characterization of Lyon's reasoning for fighting at Wilson's Creek as being a punitive crusade. Lyon was right that he must use his force or lose it. He was also correct that if he retreated without a fight he would give the secessionists control of southwest Missouri. I can't fault the logic of forcing an engagement before determining whether or not to retire in such a circumstance.

There are a few errors in the descriptions of events in Lyon's Civil War campaign, but overall they are well presented. I will note that I was disappointed the author did not point out Lyon's quartermaster Justus McKinstry was later successfully court-martialed for his activities in disrupting Union supply. No doubt that would have detracted from the author's case against Lyon's circumventing of a clearly broken supply system in St. Louis.

Despite the above observations about the author overselling points of his case I agree with his central theme. This is a well-researched book and provides a complete profile of Nathaniel Lyon as a soldier and a man.

I can't recall ever reading a memoir similar to David Hamilton's Deep River. I don't know if that's because I've just haven't read the whole range of this kind of literature or because his book is unique. What I do know is that I enjoyed it, that I found myself reading it again, that it is beautifully written and that it is still kicking around inside of me.

The book is not organized around any immediately recognizable principles. Yes, all right, there are sections where Hamilton leads us to believe that he is now going to concentrate on the issue of slavery in western Missouri, or on the movement of pioneers through western Missouri, or the Civil War as it affected western Missouri, as well as, of course, on his memories of growing up on a farm next to the Missouri River. But the problem is, or perhaps I should say, the delight for the reader is, that all these various themes keep slipping into one another, folding in and folding out, forming a kind of fabric. The reader starts with one thread and then is diverted to another, and then another, until he meets the first thread again, now somehow changed.

Contradictions abound. Hamilton's careful scholarship is hedged with cautions than none of these "facts" may be supported by careful scholarship. He floods us with handed-down stories of the region, but asks us the question: How is he to compose a readable book except by choosing the most readable stories -- whether they are true or not? His detailed, graphic and beautifully written accounts of how he learned to hammer a nail, dig a fence post hole or which objects his uncle carried in the back of his pick-up truck, are set against a sweeping historical and pre-historical panorama that takes us back past the Missouri Indians to possible evidence that this land was inhabited by humans 35,000 years ago.

And on and on. Although I have read nothing else of Hamilton's (he is a professor of English literature at The University of Iowa and the editor of THE IOWA REVIEW), I suggest that this book can most successfully be approached as poetry writ large, and in reading it, above and beyond its engaging parts, we are being offered Hamilton's very personal take on the nature of reality.

A very interesting book. Thoughtful and fun. Amazing sentence structure - I do not remember reading anything quite like it - it was rather refreshing. I note that the author is a Prof. of English at U of Iowa - I do wish I had had someone like him teaching fourty years ago. Hope we see more of his work.

DEEP RIVER is about much more than a Missouri bottom-land farm, although that farm and the author's family who worked it are central. Hamilton delves back in time to the days of Indian tribes and of slavery, and along the way spins some great stories about Frank and Jesse James, Blind Boone (a virtuouso pianist), and other colorful characters. He gives a memorable account of growing up in rural Missouri and of his school days. I found the book absorbing, and relished the author's shrewd insights and morsels of wisdom. It's the nearest thing to Thoreau's WALDEN I've seen in a long time, and it too deserves to last. Not incidentally, Hamilton, for many years the editor of THE IOWA REVIEW, writes like a dream.

Doniphan and his ragtag force of Missouri ruffians represent all that is admirable in the non-professional military ideal. They proved what a citizen army can do when led by competent citizen leaders. The end of the story is a bit of a tragedy in that Col. Doniphan comes to see the Mexican war as a war of aggression and sees himself and his men as pawns in that evil game. As a true soldier, he carries the fight for peace to the end.

This is an awe-inspiring tale of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances inspiring heroic actions. At the same time it is a biography that traces the effect war and political intrigue the individual. Col. Doniphan's military campaign journey and political journey show us how men can change. He and his rugged men rightly wear the honored title of "American Xenophon."

"Doniphan's Epic March" explores the experience of the 1st Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican-American War. A volunteer unit formed in June 1846, just after the declaration of war against Mexico, the 1st Missouri formed an integral part of the Army of West led by Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny. Under the command of Alexander William Doniphan-an able young Missouri lawyer, militiaman, and politician-the 1st Missouri performed admirably in the conquest of New Mexico and northern Mexico in 1846-1847. He led it on an epic march of 3,600 miles throughout the Southwest, commanding it to victory over two larger Mexican forces at El Brazito and Sacramento. Joseph G. Dawson III, on the faculty at Texas A&M University, tells this story with enthusiasm and pungency.

The significance of Dawson's work rests on his analysis of the role of citizen soldiers in the wars of America, using Doniphan as a case study, both in the context of combat operations and in military governance of captured territory. In many respects Doniphan was a Cincinnatus at the plough, answering the call of his people to defeat perceived enemies. As such he was like many other Americans both before and since. Dawson explores this issue in relation to the nineteenth century American military establishment, an establishment that gave Doniphan, and indeed all other non-career officers, grudging respect at best. In a rare episode, the Army even invited Doniphan to address the cadets at West Point in the aftermath of the war. Dawson concludes that such citizen soldiers as Doniphan have been an important source of strength for the United States throughout its history. Yet they have received scant attention and even less analysis by military historians.

Dawson also uses Doniphan to evaluate the role of the military in governing conquered foreign provinces. This was something that the United States did not have to deal with before the Mexican-American War. But the acquisition of New Mexico and California by invasion of the Army of the West raised important questions about the status of the peoples residing there and the form of government to be established. Doniphan's legal background made him an ideal advisor to Kearny as he dealt with these questions in relation to New Mexico. With the mission of bringing New Mexico into the United States, Doniphan counseled Kearny to swear its residents to allegiance to the conquering nation and to establish a civilian government as expeditiously as possible. Kearny did just that, and Doniphan wrote both an oath of allegiance used throughout the territory and a law code that served well the now U.S.-controlled territory of New Mexico. This approach, championed by Doniphan, set a precedent that has continued.

"Doniphan's Epic March" is a good book. It is solidly researched and well written. Most important, it offers broad conclusions about the role of volunteer officers in American military history.

Dr. Joseph Dawson's new book is an outstanding study of perhaps the most grueling and longest campaign in American military history. Following in-hand with Dr. Roger Lanius' superb recent biography of the Mexican War's quintessential citizen-soldier, Alexander William Doniphan, colonel of the 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteer Regiment, this is a regimental history well-done and well-told. Dawson's strong military back-ground, meticulous research, and smooth and vibrant writing style brings color and passion to a great military venture. The reader is carried away in the struggle, the dust and grime of the march, but it never loses the focus of the winds of Manifest Destiny and the tidal-wave of national expansion. Glory and gore fill the pages as Doniphan, the most unlikely hero of the war, leads his rag-tag, motley command of Missourians hundreds of miles deep into Mexican territory, winning two major battles on the way. His ability to paint the difficulty and drudgery of the march, the courage and sacrifice of the men, and the unfolding national events in Washington and Mexico City are all woven into the fabric of splendid prose. The only area that may be considered a shortcoming is the last chapter that spends so much time and ink on the sectional crisis over slavery. Here, the flow loses some focus from the previously straight and direct narrative of the war and Doniphan's march. Joseph Dawson succeeded is telling the story of a great but little known military operation that is rivaled only by Alexander and Napoleon's feats.

excellent legal tale with a timely theme at its center: how drugs are brought to market. a foreign takeover of a small pharmaceutical company offers insights into the origin and importance of trademarks and the fda approval process. smooth, confident narrative tone and engaging characters.

john grisham style with john. very tough to put this book down. keep up the rachel gold series.

Real life lawyer Kahn does a good job with his female lawyer character, Rachel Gold. Her raunchy friend, Benny, keeps Ms. Gold from taking herself too seriously. For people who know St. Louis, the book is full of local references...you always know where Rachel is about town. I had several good laughs in this book, in my opinion, the best of Kahn's Rachel Gold books.

Gives a chilling account of the most powerful series of earthquakes to rattle North America and warns they will come again. Told in the context of how the temblors effected contemporay people, places and events, but also offers an excellent historical perspective. Contains startling information that more people should know. A text book that reads like a good novel.

If this book doesn't shake you up, nothing will - except maybe a real earthquake, and it would have to be a strong one at that. Here is a book that has everything. History, adventure, inventions, folk lore, scientific revelations, and earthquakes of course. All of it told very well.

You would like to know about the largest U. S. earthquake in modern history, of course, or you wouldn't be looking at this review. But would you also like to know of the connection between a Roosevelt and the first river steamer? Would you like to know about the overall relationship and some particular relationships between American Indians and the settlers? Or a lot more about Thomas Jefferson? Would you like to know what life was like on the western frontier near the Mississippi? Or a lot more about the Richter scale? Or probably more about geography than you might know now? And of course more about geology? I could continue this inquiry for much longer. But why should I? Just get the book and read it to take a delightful journey through Americana while learning about earthquakes (as well as what you can do about them).

If this book doesn't shake you up, nothing will - except maybe a real earthquake, and it would have to be a strong one at that. Here is a book that has everything. History, adventure, inventions, folk lore, scientific revelations, and earthquakes of course. All of it told very well.

You would like to know about the largest U. S. earthquake in modern history, of course, or you wouldn't be looking at this review. But would you also like to know of the connection between a Roosevelt and the first river steamer? Would you like to know about the overall relationship and some particular relationships between American Indians and the settlers? Or a lot more about Thomas Jefferson? Would you like to know what life was like on the western frontier near the Mississippi? Or a lot more about the Richter scale? Or probably more about geography than you might know now? And of course more about geology? I could continue this inquiry for much longer. But why should I? Just get the book and read it to take a delightful journey through Americana while learning about earthquakes (as well as what you can do about them).

I've read many memoirs by World War II veterans. I doubt if any memoir will ever top "With the Old Breed," by E.B. Sledge, but this one certainly ranks in the top tier. With humor and a remarkable degree of candor, Kingsbury tells what it was like to be 18 years old and find yourself in front-line combat, among men you had barely met. There's no padding here, no lengthy passages of background information about the big strategic picture--just a straightforward, well-told, well-edited story that paints a remarkable portrait not just of one young man but of the entire generation of reluctant citizen-soldier draftees who fought and won World War II. Highly recommended.

This book takes you back to World War II in great detail. You could almost feel their emotions as the soldiers slept in foxholes and fought the battles. I loved reading the story of their courtship as their love grew while Richard was fighting for his country. It made you aware of what those young 18 year old men went through defending our country.

This book provides a fascinating look at the reality of being drafted just out of high school in 1944, and immediately facing active combat duty at the front-lines during world War II. Excerpts from the many letters written between Kingsbury and his girl friend (later to become his wife) provide a romantic thread throughout the book, as well as supplying detail of how life was during the 1940's. The stories ring true, and reading this book gives you a real appreciation of the sacrifices made by our fathers and grandfathers to preserve our freedoms. I strongly recommend this book.

Too bad the joke about reviewing a book about reviewing books is already taken, so those professional reviewers (at Publisher's Weekly, see above) really do have an edge over us amateurs. Gail Pool can thus rest assured that the market for her services, which she sees as endangered, will not be diluted to the point of total dilettantism, as I sensed from her slight animosity towards online reviewers who can afford to do it for free (I, in particular, take exception and offense to her statement that reviews spare in numbers are "probably" placed by the author's friends).

Aside from occasional pokes, however, it would be unfair to call Pool's plight a rant, since she does give good reasons for her concerns. It was about time someone who knows what they're doing spoke up about the caprices of the media machine that make and break careers, in this case inflationary, over-the-top, often misinformed book reviews, and, at the heart of it, the schemes that get an author reviewing space in the first place.

Fortunately, she does not leave it at that, but also offers viable guidelines and approaches that might very well serve the overall quality of literature, if not the book industry, which appears to be the underlying problem. Since, presumably, Pool is too experienced to bear any illusions that she is stronger than the system, the most valuable message of "Faint Praise" has universal appeal: be independent-minded if you can, do not take the path of least resistance by becoming just another particle of mass culture, and read, read, read--carefully.

Informed and informative, "Faint Praise: The Plight Of Book Reviewing In America" by Gail Pool (a freelance journalist, reviewer, and review editor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an impressively insightful, deftly written, accessibly articulate, expertly knowledgeable, and decidedly analytical survey of the multifaceted and complex world of book reviewing today. Getting a book reviewed can result in prestige for authors and their publishers, improved sales, and a raised public awareness of a particular title struggling for attention against thousands of competing books. They can also bury worthy and literate titles in a sea of inane and flawed books that are published by the tens of thousands every month. "Faint Press" provides a descriptive and comprehensive introduction to the institution of book reviewing, including such issues as why bad reviewing happens despite good intentions, why so many intelligent bibliophiles, knowledgeable readers, and gifted authors can fail at the art, craft, science, and business of writing book reviews. "Faint Praise" takes the reader behind the scenes and shows how books are chosen for review, the context in which book reviewing takes place, including a book review culture that is shows little interest in literature, a surprising antipathy toward criticism, and a vulnerability to the 'seduction of praise'. It's a sad fact of contemporary publishing that reviews so often degenerate into unmerited hype. Very highly recommended for both academic and community library Literary Studies collections, "Faint Praise" should be considered mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to become a book reviewer, and is especially valuable reading for authors, publishers, academicians, and the general reading public.

This book about a surprisingly complex subject manages to be both authoritative and highly entertaining. It is compelling reading for anyone who relies on book reviews and essential for anyone who writes with the hope of being published.

This is a well written, but extremely brief, account of the Lost Battalion of WWI. The story, with myths & mistakes removed, is pretty amazing. Robert Ferrell clearly knows the details and larger picture, but only offers glimpses of this knowledge in this tiny little book. It's well written and worth reading, but may only be of interest to someone already familiar with the Great War in general and the Lost Battalion in particular.

A force of raw Americans, cut off by German troops, in the last full month of World War I, makes for a compelling story line. Ferrell gets all of it. Ferrell has done scrupulous research. He apparently scoured all of the relevant archives and surfaced notes, records, letters and material previously unreported. He corrects errors from previous works on the subject and tries to place the entire story in context. His writing is clear and straightforward if a bit too academic. His multi-layered maps are useful in attempts to zero in on the battlefield, but the maps themselves are sketchy, absent topographical detail, and show none of the movements. "Boundaries" appear, and while much of the time the 'battalion' was lost, the run up to the 'lost' five days needs more dynamic mapping and more than the background personalities of Pershing and Alexander. There is still too much of a sense that the men found themselves surrounded, fought herocally from being overrun, and then the media created a plethors of false heroes and images for the battle. Some pictures of the brush-filled "pocket" finally give the setting a three-dimensional feel, but it is too little, too late to make this battle late in the war very colorful. Two airmen of the nascent 'air force' earn Medals of Honor trying to supply the men. Three men on the ground also earn Medals of Honor, including the bespectacled leader, Major Charles Whittlesey, portrayed in a recent film version by Ricky Schroeder, a film worth watching for dramatic, three-dimensional effect.

The book itself is small and short. Eighty-eight pages include eleven pages of photographs. Three appendices, including one devoted to a battalion roster, cover 27 more pages. This is a quick, even brief, pretty dry read. The sad, even ironic fate of Whittlesley is worth more of an explanation.

A must read for the history aficionado with a sense of history, military terminology and brushy French terrain.

Five Days In October: The Lost Battalion Of World War I by Robert H. Ferrell (Professor Emeritus of History, Indiana University, Bloomington) is the incredible story of five hundred American soldiers comprising elements of two companies from the 77th Division who were entrapped on the side of a ravine in the Argonne Forest by superior German forces from October 2 to 7, 1918. The courage displayed against overwhelming odds as they fought under siege in the midst of rifle, machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire both day and night, with nothing to eat after the morning of the first day, and with water that was highly dangerous to obtain, is among the finest examples of the American troops under fire as is recorded in the annals of American military history. With Five Days In October, Professor Ferrell offers new material that was previously unavailable in earlier treatments of this event and reveals what really happened during those horrific days in the Argonne Forest. Although "Lost" is not an accurate description because American high command knew where the men were, during the five days the men were on their own Five Days In October will elaborate striking details of the ordeal, and includes the findings of court-martial records and 77th Division files that contain full accounts of the taut relations between the Lost Battalion's brigade commander and the 77th Division commander providing the most complete account now available. Five Days In October is an impressive work of scholarship and a welcome contribution to the growing library of World War I Military History.

As a pastor's wife, I had little trouble relating to London and Kathie. As I read, some characters made me want to wring their necks. Some, I wanted to hug. I loved this book right up until the end.

I came across this book by accident and this is one of those times I am grateful for those kind of accidents. I believe everyone who attends church and expects a lot from the minister or pastor should read this book. Even though it is written for back in the 1920's, everything that happened at the First Baptist Church in Linden, MO, still happens today.

I have always thought of a humanist being a bad thing but it is only when it is by itself. Quoting the book, page 175; "Religion is humanity and Jesus is love, and that's all there is to it. But people don't want that truth. It's too simple. They want the privilege to hate without losing the luxury of love." Page 176; "You see, London, it's man, not God, who tries men. Too often we shout that God is Jehovah and forget that His best name if Providence. We never learn that serenity comes only with surrender and that man is not a free agent. He can enjoy only the rights he is willing to give others." I found these comments to be profound.

After reading this book, I was still awed at all that the Wingo's had to deal with in the pastorate, but more than anything, realizing this "stuff" is still happening today...the date is the only difference. Reading the Bible and applying its word should make us different and hopefully better and so should reading this book.

Mr. Street's descriptive style of our inner spiritual struggles, fears , and pride was powerful. It was a hard book for me to put down. It was like a spiritual documentary from a time long ago, but seemingly so close to home!