Kentucky Books

"You see, the way a free government works, there's got to be a housecleaning every now and then." Harry Truman, as cited on the first page of the book. Well, in the U.S. Government, before you get a real housecleaning, it appears you have to build the vacuum cleaner from scratch every few years, and even then you only get the big dirt on the margins. This book is a very important book with all the more value today as we finally get serious about intelligence reform. Loch's professional and extraordinarily detailed account of the entire Church Committee investigation, its findings, White House attempts to avoid reform, and the rather bland outcomes that finally resulted, should be considered the key to understanding where we are today and why we so desperately need legislation to achieve substantive reform. Had Senator Church been chosen by Jimmy Carter as Vice President (Church was favored by the convention, with Mondale and Stevenson tied behind him), who knows what good might have come of his White House service.

This is my favorite book on early life along the Cumberland Valley (Middle Tennessee and lower Central Kentucky), especially after getting past Chapter One, which is an imaginary narration of an "early adventure" which seemed unnecessary. That is a small complaint though. The book has some really interesting information on all aspects of settlement of the area and I highly recommend it! Many of the details described are applicable to pioneer life in other areas east of the Mississippi as well, I would think.

"The Shame of Southern Politics" is a book about much more than just southern politics. It is in fact a meditation on the meaning of and the quest for justice in America. Leslie Dunbar has spent his life working for social justice, and as historian Dan Carter wrote in his exemplary introduction, Dunbar "has maintained a steadfastness that shames us all by example and he has lived long enough to remind us that authentic political movements have emerged when least expected."

Each chapter in the book has a brief author's introduction and is either a speech Dunbar delivered or an essay he wrote--and not a single item is dated. The book speaks to today and to today's problems. It has much to teach Americans about the obligation of citizenship and the role and function of a liberal in today's world.

For example, chapter two is "Civil RIghts and Civil Duties," a speech Dunbar gave in New York City in 1962 where he said: "We need to learn that free men [and women] have civil duties. That among these civil duties are the obligations to secure and exercise our own rights; to demand and defend rights for others...." What could be more contemporary? Or the last entry, Dunbar's meditation on the meaning of the year 1968 and where the United States is today, dominated by conservative Republicans: "This," Dunbar writes, "is a Republican party committed, as were the old Dixiecrats, to the interests of the wealthy and the Pentagon."

Read this book! As Dan Carter said in the introduction, Dunbar's "writings and the example he gave us are powerful weapons in helping us begin to reclaim the hope for a more equitable society...."

You will be amazed at the beauty, simplicity and artistry of this little book. You will also feel compelled to read his first book which describes his wondrous shantyboat voyage from Brent, Kentucky to the Bayous of Louisianna. Both are successful stories of love of life fulfilled by bringing it into harmony with the ancient rhythms of nature. All this is recorded in a poetic narrative which expresses the beauty of everyday life of a couple attuned to ebb and flow of great waters and changing seasons. His descriptions of his everyday routine and observations will change your view of nature and life, revealing an intimacy seldom attained. All this comes from an unknown man from the same town on the Ohio River where I was born and lived during these events. I wish I had known of then then. He was at home as much in the Bayous as he was building his shantyboat and wintering through a flood on the Ohio. He is an artist and a musician and paints a picture you feel you are there. You can feel it and hear it and, by golly, you see yourself doing it too. You will enjoy it, even learn how to get your own soft-shell crabs in the bayous and make your own flour. If you have a love of mature, it is a book you should read.

Shantyboat chronicles the adventures of Harlan and Anna Hubbard, who in the early 1950's, built a wooden houseboat (or shantyboat) out of a demolished house and drifted down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Spanning several years, the book describes winters spent drifting freely with the current and summers foraging for or growing what was needed. Much more than a travelogue, the journey is an experiment in living just outside the confines of a newly emerging technological civillization, but still in a fully "civillized" way. Their lives were hardly lived in seclusion. Instead they preferred the richness of friends, good meals gathered from abandoned or empty lands, and art: Harlan was a painter, Anna a concert pianist. The story of their days drifting is often filled with anecdotes about weather, fishing, or dogs, and slowly draws the reader in with a steady seasonal rhythm. Their time on the river represents the last days of the shantyboater, a breed of free spirit that quickly dissappeared after the second world war. Industrial growth along the waterways, large new dams, and toxic pollutants ensured the end of a tradition of free living. Today, our world continues to grapple with issues of technology and its impact on what makes us human. "Shantyboat" offers an alternative, or perhaps a perspective on what is really important.

An insightful and extremely helpful analysis of mostly British, and some American, horror literature from the late nineteenth-century. Navarette's knowledge of the field is impressive, all the more so considering that this is an area often overlooked by academics. Most professors in her field have read works like The Great God Pan only once in their lives, crammed in between cartloads of other works read in a feverish white heat during doctoral studies. Other writers, such as Robert W. Chambers, lapse in obscurity even among the professors of that era. What Navarette does is to examine works ranging from The Great God Pan to The King in Yellow, from the fin-de-siecle exoticism of M.P. Shiel to the psychological horror of a canonical writer like Conrad, and to establish a network of degeneration and decadence among these books. In the process, she reveals that the concerns of the horror literature of this period are not self-enclosed, but rather are inseparable from the relevant thought and discourse that characterized the non-horror literature of that era. As a horror afficianado and literature student, I found this book to be exactly what I've been seeking for years. Wholeheartedly recommended.

I have this book. It's factual and informative reading. Well researched and written.

Anyone who is a fan of undeground works, or is just a World war II studier should get this book. It highly details the work of the French escape lines of WWII, and the helpers who gave up their lives for the soldiers. It is a great read.

This book was truly a great find for myself and my family, this is a wonderfully interesting story of the Old West, the main character in this book is my Great Grandfather, Benjamin Holladay, my parents gave me this book some years ago, and this is the only account of Ben Holladay I can find, my Grandfather took my Dad, when he was only 13 years old out of Rifle, Co. where he was raised and put him to work helping on the freight line, evidently my Grandfather Holladay (Willard Benjamin Holladay) had inherited the freight company (what was left of it) from his father, the last any of us know about my grandfather was that the freight line just kind of died in Sacramento, Ca. and this is where he stayed. They hauled freight to the cowboys on the range and other towns along the way from Rifle, Co. to Sacramento, Ca., my father told me this book was very true according to what his father told him.

From 1900 Alberta/Northwest Territory Rocky Mountain foothills comes this story of the taming of the last of the wild west. A young minister comes among the secretive closed-off society of lumberjacks, ranchers and cowpokes who view encroaching civilization with a proud cynicism. Initially stuck with the derisive appellation of "The Sky Pilot" - his influence nevertheless brings God, goodness, and personal decisions to be viewed as serious opportunities to develop character in keeping with the rugged grandeur of their surroundings. The colorful local zanies are astounded at his non-religious manner and how accepting he is of what they thought he would be against and how challenging he is in several unexpected ways. Several characters are carefully developed; much humor - a moving story.