Kentucky Books

I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful book for people of all ages. Stephen Bishop was a great American explorer that most people have never even heard of. His adventures and discoveries deep in Mammoth cave are vividly described in a manner that will captivate the young readers of this book. This is a story of a man born into slavery who deserves the recognition he finally receives in this finely written story of his brief life. The detailed descriptions of Stephen Bishop, Mammoth cave and the turbulent pre-civil war era are enhanced by the excitement of his underground exploits and his quest for knowledge. Two thumbs up!

FL Booklover

Let's say you hear about a historical figure that strikes you as so interesting that you'd like to write a book about them. A book for children, say. When you make the decision to write such a book, two possible ways of proceeding are open to you. You can make your book a fascinating work of non-fiction that adheres strictly to the facts of the case. Or, you can take the already existing facts and use fictional dialogue to cushion the details of this person's life, thereby making it more interesting to your intended audience. Now, if you decide to go with the latter you've placed your book in a peculiar position. On the one hand, your story is about a real person who really existed. On the other hand, because you made up dialogue and situations that may never have happened in the way you've described them, your book is doomed to the fiction shelves of the library. Author Elizabeth Mitchell, when she learned the details of explorer Stephen Bishop's life, decided to go the fiction route. Personally, I feel that this was bad decision to make on her part. For while this book contains a multitude of wonderful details and facts about a fascinating man, Mitchell has couched her book in stilted dialogue and poor writing. She would have done better to stick to the facts.

Stephen Bishop was born a slave in the state of Kentucky in 1821. His owner Frank Gorin, owned the Mammoth Caves and needed a tour guide to schlep tourists in the busy summer months. Enter Stephen. Fascinated with the caves, Stephen proceeded to explore beyond the usual paths. As he did so, he would find more and more beautiful areas and hidden passages. He discovered blind cave fish (never before seen), huge gypsum caverns, and miles and miles of caves stretching under the land of Kentucky. He even created maps of the areas he had found that helped others explore as well. Though he died a short time after he was freed (at the young age of thirty-six), Bishop is remembered as being the first and most important guide of the impressive Mammoth Caves today.

The story is, as Elizabeth Mitchell rightly says, captivating. Cleverly, she has included Stephen's maps on the front and endpapers of the book. Mitchell also tells the reader, right off the bat, that she has reproduced his life with as much accuracy as possible and that the dialogue, "is not reproduced from any source". I commend Mitchell for her choice of subject. Stephen Bishop, rightly, deserves to be remembered for his great life and magnificent accomplishments. I personally believe, however, that an entirely factual book of this fellow would not have been out of place. Consider similar books about other people who lived in the 1800s. There is the book, "Phineas Gage", by John Fleischman. Here we have a beautiful non-fiction text with color photographs and engravings that is the perfect way to tell the story of a 19th century life. Think how wonderful, "Journey to the Bottomless Pit" would have been, had it been done in a similar format. When you read this book, you hear about eyeless fish and beautiful stalactites. Wouldn't it be great to see beautiful color photographs of them as well? Instead, you must rely on illustrator Kelynn Alder's black and white drawings. These pictures are nice, no question, but you can't help but wish that you could see the caves for yourself in a far more lively format.

You might argue that good non-fiction subjects have been given a similar fictional treatment to Stephen Bishop and that those books have been good. This is true, of course. There's just one small problem. Mitchell, for all that she is great at choosing the best details to highlight in her story, is not a good writer. Her language is stilted and cloying. Though the book is ostensibly written for kids between the ages of 9-12, the tone of voice taken here would be better for a seven-year-old reader. Stephen constantly is describes as being grateful to his master, proud that he has been chosen, and hoping that he'll do a good job. The wry sense of humor that Stephen had is mentioned here, but Mitchell's not adept enough to give us a taste of it. Worse, there are some truly unbelievable moments that are written solely to spell things out to child readers. Take this for example: "When he first heard the name `Underground Railroad,' Stephen wondered what kind of train could run for so many miles below ground". Mitchell doesn't seem to give Stephen much credit, and his abject gratitude and innocence makes him seem a very different person from the intelligent guide described by his contemporaries. Had Mitchell been a talented enough writer to pull off the additional passages in this text, the book might have worked brilliantly. As it stands, I yearn for the beautiful glossy-paged non-fiction text this could have been.

Will kids read this book? Not without some prodding. It's a fine story and a good adventure tale at times, but children will only ask for this if urged to do so. There is great potential in this material. I can only hope that a future author sees it and capitalizes on it themselves. A great story in a mediocre package.

This is an excellent book for young and old readers alike. I enjoyed it because it showed what people lived like in this century, but left out any inappropriate material. It read like a fiction book, but in reality was a non-fiction written about the authors experiences while living in this remote area. It includes a gun fight, general hardships endured, and facts about everyday life.

This book is a good example of how people really lived in this century. I enjoyed this book because it doesn't contain anything offensive to young readers but does include the excitement of a gun battle, true hardships these people endured, and information on their everyday life. It is told as a non- fiction work, but does carry you along like a fiction book. Excellent for anyone interested in pioneer life or as a compasison to how our life could be. ***I read the original book published in the 1940's not this updated one.

The problem with this book becomes regrettably clear if one also reads Matthew Kennedy's biography of the wonderful Marie Dressler. Lee, despite her obvious effort, is not as assiduous a researcher as one would desire. Films she has not seen in fact exist for viewing; aspects of Dressler's personal life Lee implies are lost to history are in fact recoverable; Lee cannot ascertain what became of Dressler's faithful maid while Kennedy tracks her neatly to the end of her life; etc. Furthermore, Lee makes a welcome attempt to situate Dressler within theatrical history -- which was most of her career -- but appears to have essentially boned up on the subject before writing the book. Bringing turn-of-the-century theatre to life is challenging given that virtually all we have left are photographs, reviews, and sketchy comments, but people immersed in the subject by nature have accomplished this in varous books in a way that Lee cannot quite match. The main value of Lee's book is her access to the diary of Dressler's longtime companion and her thorough coverage of Dressler's battle with cancer. Otherwise, however, Kennedy's book is much more thorough and gives more of a sense of what made Dressler such a phenomenon.

I'm unable to compare "Marie Dressler: The Unlikeliest Star" to the other biography in print because frankly Matthew Kennedy's book is too expensive for my fun-money budget (a problem I have with most books published by McFarland in general, and has no reflection on the author.) So as far as this is the only book I've ever read about Marie Dressler, I can tell you that I found it to be completely enjoyable and informative. I read it cover to cover in one evening, and it was time well spent. Betty Lee's warmhearted storytelling skills gave me what I was looking for: a better understanding of Miss Dressler's life, career and personality.

If you like to learn and think, this book is worth the read. This book is a very detailed look into the federalist papers. The question is whether the founding fathers intended the national government or the state governments to be stronger. After reading this book, I am fully convinced, that at the very least, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison intended the Untited States Government to be strong and centralized, with the state governments as a safeguard to a tyrant national government, and to be in charge of local issues too numerous for a national government to want to be involved with. I have learned a lot about not only the U.S. Government from this book, but the origin of government, and the interactions between different nations governments.

In this book, Millican asserts that Publius's main intent was to create a strong federal government that intertwined Lockean liberalism and nationalism. In regards to the traditional debate in American politics between the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, Millican clearly comes down on the side of Hamilton. If one is looking for an analysis of the Federalist Papers as a whole, this book is not for you. Millican uses all 267 pages to assert that champions of states rights have misread the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. This book should be of particular interest to the readers of contemporary political philosophers such as Michael Lind and James Pinkerton. These writers advocate the emergence of a new liberal nationalism rooted in the strength of the federal government. The scope of this book is limited, but Millican succeeds in providing a significant amount of evidence to support his thesis.

It is common knowledge that Germans were very dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty of Versailles after World War I, and that Germany's attack on Poland began the World War II in Europe. But not many know of the Versailles treaty's impact on Germany's eastern frontiers, and what the long-term historical background was for Hitler's invasion and the vicious occupation policies in Poland. Blanke's book is an important addition to our understanding of both issues.

To understand why German-Polish relations became so poisonous, one must look back into the 19th century (Blanke covers this earlier period in another book). The eastern borderlands of Germany (most of which belonged to Poland until the late 18th century) had a mixed German and Polish population, and Polish nationalists agitated to maintain ethnic separatism there in the hope of one day restoring the Polish state which had disappeared from the map of Europe in 1815. Germany tried to combat this resistance to assimilation with harsh and discriminatory methods that only alienated the Poles further.

After its defeat in World War I, Germany lost very important and very large chunks of territory that were claimed as Polish: Pomerania (the area around Gdansk/Danzig, called the Polish Corridor, which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany), Poznan, and the coal-rich and heavily industrialized Upper Silesia. The new Polish government enacted policies determined to drive the German minority out of Poland so as to remove a potential fifth column; and besides, the well-to-do Germans owned a great deal of property which could be taken away and re-distributed. To achieve a German-free Poland, every form of chicanery and harassment was commplace, with occasional resort to outright violence. Poland's minortiy policies generated more complaints to the League of Nations than those of any other country, not just from Germans but from the far more numerous Ukranians as well.

It goes without saying that nothing could justify Germany's ferocious, genocidal treatment of Poland in World War II, and Blanke's book is neither an attempt to revive old quarrels, nor a pro-German polemic. It is, however, a useful aid in developing a judicious understanding of the tumultuous inter-war period.

It is common knowledge that Germans were very dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty of Versailles after World War I, and that Germany's attack on Poland began the World War II in Europe. But not many know of the Versailles treaty's impact on Germany's eastern frontiers, and what the long-term historical background was for Hitler's invasion and the vicious occupation policies in Poland. Blanke's book is an important addition to our understanding of both issues. To understand why German-Polish relations became so poisonous, one must look back into the 19th century (Blanke covers this earlier period in another book). The eastern borderlands of Germany (most of which belonged to Poland until the late 18th century) had a mixed German and Polish population, and Polish nationalists agitated to maintain ethnic separatism there in the hope of one day restoring the Polish state which had disappeared from the map of Europe in 1815. Germany tried to combat this resistance to assimilation with heavy-handed and often discriminatory methods that only alienated the Poles further. After its defeat in World War I, Germany lost very important and very large chunks of territory that were claimed as Polish: Pomerania (the area around Gdansk/Danzig, called the Polish Corridor, which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany), Poznan, and the coal-rich and heavily industrialized Upper Silesia. The new Polish government enacted policies determined to drive the German minority out of Poland so as to remove a potential fifth column; and besides, the well-to-do Germans owned a great deal of property which could be taken away and re-distributed. To achieve a German-free Poland, every form of chicanery and harassment was commplace, with occasional resort to outright violence. Poland's minortiy policies generated more complaints to the League of Nations than those of any other country, not just from Germans but from the far more numerous Ukranians as well. It goes without saying that nothing could justify Germany's ferocious, genocidal treatment of Poland in World War II, and Blanke's book is neither an attempt to revive old quarrels, nor a pro-German polemic. It is, however, a useful aid in developing a judicious understanding of the tumultuous inter-war period.

Caroline Gordon's first novel, Penhally, was published in 1931. It is a plantation novel where the setting, the mansion named Penhally, is as much a protagonist as the main characters. Nick Llewlynn, as the eldest son, as inherited the plantation, house, slaves and tobacco fields. The novel is broken into three parts: Part I's setting is during the pre-Civil War era, but revolves around the disagreement Nick and his half-brother, Ralph. The second part deals with Nick and Ralph's nephew, John, as the main protagonist and centers around John's escapades during the War and the problems/suffering the South endured during Recontruction. The third part is more current and deals with John's grandsons, Chance and Nick. Nick, as the oldest son, as inherited the estate, but it's Chance that loves the land. Problems erupt when Nick wants to sell the ancestoral home. The novel is sometimes difficult to comprehend because Ms.Gordon doesn't always define the relationship of the characters. The only other problem is with the dialect in the beinning.

Caroline Gordon's first novel, Penhally, was published in 1931. It is a plantation novel where the setting, the mansion named Penhally, is as much a protagonist as the main characters. Nick Llewlynn, as the eldest son, as inherited the plantation, house, slaves and tobacco fields. The novel is broken into three parts: Part I's setting is during the pre-Civil War era, but revolves around the disagreement Nick and his half-brother, Ralph. The second part deals with Nick and Ralph's nephew, John, as the main protagonist and centers around John's escapades during the War and the problems/suffering the South endured during Recontruction. The third part is more current and deals with John's grandsons, Chance and Nick. Nick, as the oldest son, as inherited the estate, but it's Chance that loves the land. Problems erupt when Nick wants to sell the ancestoral home. The novel is sometimes difficult to comprehend because Ms.Gordon doesn't always define the relationship of the characters. The only other problem is with the dialect in the beinning.

Dr. Michrina is to be commended for producing an insightful, sympathetic, and evocative study of the mining folk primarily of the central Pennsylvania county of Cambria. He also strives to document the general period of depression in the coal-mining industry, 1922-1942, and especially the traumatic events of the great strike of 1927 and resulting period without union representation and protection, 1927-1933. Unfortunately, while Dr. Michrina's academic jargon enhances this as a scholarly anthropological study, it hinders it as a heritage work which would be treasured by its coal-mining subjects and their friends and family, not to mention local historians. In an ironic twist, the non-academic reader must mine through the earth and rock of academic constructs to extract the coal seams of human emotion and remembrance. Dr. Michrina expresses some awareness of this and is honest in admitting to some guilt in recording and publishing personal information given by his subjects, who were also his frends and neighbors during the years of his "field work." He is also honest about the surprising results of his investigations. For example, he found a general lack of militancy directed against the coal companies, their chief oppressors, though there are still deep negative emotions directed against both the strike breakers and the Coal and Iron Police. The latter, called 'Pussyfoots,' performed the coal companies' dirty work, with state and local authorities turning a blind eye. These acts, including rape and murder, were intended to humiliate and control the captive populations of the coal company towns, while cheating them at the company store and keeping them in abysmal poverty. Dr. Michrina also found that while the miners maintained a strong work ethic, they tended to define themselves and seek happiness not in the work place but within the home and family. Aged survivors of these times also retain a general sense of economic insecurity and continue to practice frugality in most of their endeavors. He also found a strong sense of appreciation for both United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1945, and United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) President John L. Lewis, 1920-1961, who are credited for restoring unionism, human rights, and some measure of dignity. This last element, the search for dignity, is the defining concept of the book and the chapter thereon is the finest and should be read above all else. This wonderful book, despite some flaws, is, along with Mildred Beik's THE MINERS OF WINDBER, a defining account of Cambria County's Roman Catholic coal miners of eastern and southern European ancestry. The Protestant coal miners of British and German descent still await their chronicler.

I read Barry P. Michrina's "Pennsylvania Mining Families" with great interest, since I am the son and grandson of a former coalminers and have some firsthand knowledge of the people and postindustrial-revolution landscapes of the geographical boundaries of the work, particularly Cambria, Indiana and Clearfield counties. I was very impressed with this work of anthropology that also functions secondarily as a not unimportant history of Central Pennsylvania, especially with regard to the Great Depression, the labor movement including the aftereffects of the Great Coal Strike of 1927, and the harscrabble lives of the coal-minging families of the time. Through his interviews with mostly old folks, including wives and also sons, who remember the dangers and vicissitudes of mining work -- unsafe shaft timbers, shooting coal with dynamite and the like -- Michrina sketches quite thoroughly a vanished and rough way of life. Moreover, by documenting the violence caused by strikebreakers and the quasiofficial Coal & Iron Police hired by uncaring and venal operators -- who ran roughshod over the locals in such small burgs as Carrolltown, Bakerton, Nanty Glo, Spangler and Mentcle -- Michrina explains how many immigrant and first-generation American families in the Alleghenies scraped by when food, money and employment were scarce. There's a melancholy that lingers in the witnesses' testimony. While the book affords you the chronology and methodology of coalmining in a specific time and place when Central Pennsylvania was vital to the industrial revolution, it also explains how disenfranchised many poor and immigrant families felt, how they were terrorized and how they had to fight all sides just to survive during a growth time in the proverbial land of the free and home of the brave. Today, the tipples have vanished, the driftmouths have bit closed up and the train tracks extracted, and the environmental degradation has been abated a bit from mining -- creeks don't run as orange as they used to into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. The book touches on this, too, again with verbatim memories. "Pennsylvania Mining Families" is a first-rate work of anthropology, a fascinating history and a significant contribution to the shelf on labor, particularly as it applies to coal operations. -- Jerry Roberts, author, "Rain Forest Bibliography" (McFarland & Company, 1999) "Mitchum: In His Own Words" (Limelight Editions, 2000)

This book is very well written and gives great detail of this pivotal battle for Kentucky. This was the first battle for those Illinois boys responding to Lincoln's second call for three year troops in 1862. It dominated the survivors after war writings and reunions. The author does their memory a greart service buy his throughness

While this book has been superceeded by Kenneth Noe's Perryville, it is still worth a look because it is well written, has tons of (hand drawn - and rather badly) maps, which made following the battle obscenely easy, and was the first ever written on this battle. It was also one of the few self-published books I have ever found worth reading.

In PRACTICING THEORY AND READING LITERATURE, Raman Selden improves on his earlier A READER'S GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE by delving more intimately into the byzantine pathways that mark current critical theory. In his newer effort, Selden assumes in the reader a working knowledge of literary criticism. His essays are more likely useful for the graduate student than the undergraduate in that he intersects the abstractness of theory with the concrete reality of applied criticism to specific works. His book focuses on Anglo-American theory, Russian Formalism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Reader-Response, Marxist and Feminist criticisms. Since his text dates from 1989, Selden omits mention of Eco Criticism. Yet, even when he wrote, other theories were well entrenched and one wonders why he omitted Gay/Lesbian, Postcolonial, Afro-American, and Archetypal theories. For considerations of these latter modes, I recommend Lois Tyson and Charles Bressler, both of whom write for the novice in mind.

Selden's penchant for zeroing in on the minutia of critical tidbits is both his strong and weak points. I had no problem following his sometimes meandering mode of thought but only because I have a strong background in theory. I appreciated his trenchant analyses of works that range the gamut of western literature, but I could also commiserate with those who come to Selden without previous exposure at least on an undergraduate level. Selden is at his best when he deals with topics not well addressed in other texts like defamiliarization, binaries, Barthes' codes,and reception theory. I also liked his set of concluding exercises that give the reader an opportunity to absorb an admittedly large number of abstruse terms and concepts and apply them to specific tasks using clearly identified schools of theory. Such writing tasks are self-imposed and self-analyzed. If the reader is lucky enough to have a graduate professor critique the result, then that reader will almost certainly have learned a great deal. If not, then that reader will still benefit although perhaps not as much. Overall, Selden's text is a welcome addition for one who seeks to hone the tools of a challenging craft.

This book is a great companion piece to Selden's other book A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. The theories discussed in A Reader's Guide are here applied to classics of world literature (ex. poems by Wordsworth and Keats). Works of literature are interpreted from the point of view of each of the major theories discussed in A Reader's Guide (New Criticism, Russian Formalism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Feminism, Post-colonialism, etc.). This will help literature students in writing papers from various critical perspectives.

This book was fabulous. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading. It was quick and easy reading, but it had a very strong message.

This book has a very important role in the post Civil War imagining of a different future. Child always presents optimistic endings to fantastically complicated scenarios: here two sisters from an illicit liaison are shocked to find themselves illegitimate and liable to be sold as slaves when their father dies. Most of the book details their adventures in romance and at the very end a few Civil War scenes serve to bring their stories back together. It's hard to follow the plot, but there's a lot to like about this book nonetheless. Dana Nelson's commentary is quite helpful. And Child is a very important 19th century writer.