Texas Books

I bought this book as a wedding present for a couple from Texas that have relocated to Chicago. Up north, they think the "Don't mess with Texas" campaign is about not messing with Texans. I just thought it was a great way of showing what the campaign was really about to all of their visiting Chicago friends. It has great photos with all the Texan icons.

This is a great book for people who are living in various parts of the country and miss Texas. Sold as a coffee table book, it's a great gift idea, providing out-of-staters with the chance to bring some of Texas home to them. The famous celebrities that appear on the pages helped to establish the campaign, further contributing to its good standing. This book serves as a reminder to Texans of just how unique the state of Texas really is. Texans are known for possessing an immense amount of pride for their state, and the excerpts in this book help to explain and reveal exactly why Texans feel this way.

I am an art and photography store owner in Hartford, CT, and I was so thrilled to see this book on Amazon! The slogan just recently won an advertising competition from Madison Avenue, and is now in the Advertising Hall of Fame. I love this book because it really gives a concise but powerful retelling of the campaign. Just like the Absolut Book (about Absolut Vodka) and the several books about the milk mustache campaign, this book retells the birth and subsequent fame of the advertising campaign, and how many different tacts and approaches the firm took. Plus, it has some great pictures and examples from commercials with celebrities and the different ways the slogan caught on. Really a must have book for advertising kids everywhere, as well as artists who are interested in commercializing their work.

Don't Mess With Texas gave a very interesting explanation of the history of the slogan. I think that everyone has heard the slogan, Don't mess with Texas. According to the book, the publication is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the famous anti-litter campaign. Considering it's success I think that the campaign is definitely deserving of a book in it's honor. When you start reading you begin to realize how long this slogan has been around and it brings back almost hilarious memories of old commercials and the different faces of the campaign. How many anti-litter campaign have had the faces of legends like Warren Moon, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, George Foreman , and Leann Rimes. This book encompasses alot of the values that we as Texans hold important and shoot, it looks great as a coffee table book. I would reccomend it to any one looking to explore an interesting story and piece of Texas history turned pop culture.

As an advertising executive, the "Don't Mess With Texas" campaign is, for me, the stuff legends are made of. It was the biggest, longest-running, and most successful public service advertisement in advertising history. It's really quite astounding that a local, pro-environment campaign picked up SO much momentum and even became an important part of American pop-culture. Tim McClure and Roy Spence do an outstanding job of telling their reader everything he/she wants to know about the campaign...and then some! Everything is there--from the first seeds of the idea to the last fully developed commercial (with, of course, lots of celebrity appearances, close-calls, budgeting issues, and interesting stories in between). This is a great book. If you're interested in advertising or Texas at all, it will entertain you.

This book is an excellent resource for the less experienced gardener. It provides location specific information making it a very useful tool. Tried to use few others first without much satisfaction, but LOVED this book. The organization of topics and by month make it incredibly user friendly.

This is a very helpful book for Texas gardeners. The format is user friendly and it would be a great addition to anyone's gardening library.

Excellent book! Very beneficial to both long-term and novice gardeners.

Excellent format and the month to month guide is very useful.

Great choice.

I like the layout of this book. I read it cover to cover within the first week but have continued to use it as a reference. I like the month-by-month layout and it covers the majority of topics that a Texas gardener wants to know about. It's sort of like combining the best parts of several books...and the format is easy to read and is slightly humerous. The book covers several areas of Texas, so no matter where you live the book covers your area. There are some topics where I wanted more depth, so I used the internet or library to find more detailed information. This book also debunked some of the theories I had learned about specific gardening methods...old wives tales that were truly tales. All said, I would purchase this book again and recommend it for novice to experienced gardeners (stopping short of master gardeners, but they're the ones writing the books anyway).

Finally we have a companion to the nationwide Farmer's Almanac -

designed for our unique state - our climate and our plants.

Doug Welsh's Texas Garden Almanac is the definitive almanac on

Texas gardening, covering indepth topics such as pruning trees,

attracting butterflies, and managing fire ants.


In addition, readers will find handy quick-tips including: using

clear plastic soda bottles for mini greenhouses, avoiding the

epidemic of crepe murder (over-pruning crepe myrtles), and creating

herb gardens in mini containers.

Hundreds of delightful illustrations by Aletha St. Romain -

including a beautiful amaryllis illustration for the chapter on

December - make the book a joy for the eyes.

It is so jam-packed with information, tips, and useful

illustrations, it would make a life-long garden guide for a new

gardener. Then too, experienced gardeners would find the book a

wonderful edition to their gardening book library.

As we become more dependent on food sources from millions of miles

away, the need to garden more closely in our own area is of primary

concern. For this reason, every school should consider ordering

copies for students. And if a high school student shows any

inclination toward gardening, this would be a treasured gift.

Medium weight slick paper with fading violet and lime colored edges

make the book wonderful to browse. Every library in Texas needs

this gem.

Valerie Brown, Texas Master Gardener

I bought several books before this one and I basically wasted my money! Finally I am able to identify the odes that I have photographed in the field. This is a must have for anyone interested in dragonflies and damselflies!

I have several guides for birds, butterflies, snakes, reptiles and amphibians. I just started learn about dragonflies this year and this is one of the best guides I have seen. In fact, it was highly recommended by an individual who has a Masters Degree in dragonfly study. I recommend it for individuals just starting out with dragonflies as the photos are great but it also provides enough information (range maps) to let you narrow down and identify the more difficult species.

This field guide is the one to own. It covers not only all the dragonflies of Texas and the Southcentral US, but all the damselflies as well. The photographs are superb and this make for easy identification of species in the field. However, because of these pluses, the result is a rather sizable guide that is just a bit too heavy to really qualify as a handy field guide. If you can deal with its size and weight, it more than makes up for this handicap in thes helpful information it provides. The only drawback and the reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5, is because it is a tad less user friendly for the novice or non-professional (i.e. The species identification keys are a bit confusing). Nevertheless, it is destined to become the standard to measure all other guides.

As an admirer of dragonflies and damselflies I was quite delighted to find this book by John C. Abbott. It is a mix of the very technical and (at least in part because of the 64 plates of magnificent color photos) the very useful for the non-specialist. The range maps are invaluable as a way of adding clues for the identification of similar species. The line drawings of anatomical parts are important in separating closely related species and the glossary of terms, the check list, and the large bibliography round out a very useful or even indispensable volume for the dragonfly watcher. In short, this book is a serious guide to an area with the highest odonate diversity in the United States. "Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas and the South-Central United States" simply is a must for anyone interested in the odonate fauna of the five states involved. Its production, along with at least three earlier regional and national books on the subject, is a testimonial to the growing popularity of these beautiful and fascinating insects.

This is not a book that you can skim; rather, it is one intended for the serious student of Odonata in Texas. Written by an acknowledged expert in the field, it covers everything you might want to know about the dragonflies found in Texas.

Be warned, though, that you cannot approach this book lightly. The author uses scientific terms liberally: you will have to spend time acquiring the vocabulary.

For the serious Texas "Odo-nut" this is an absolutely essential part of your library.

I love all the Hank books, and this is a great one for the Christmas season. These books are hilarious and more important to the young reader, fun to read. I'd also check the rest of the series.

Author of "Hobo Finds A Home" editor "Of A Predatory Heart"

This is the first book our 2nd/3rd/4th grade bookclub did. It is funny! The characters are colorful and the narration by Hank the Cowdog is clever and enjoyable to read. It is a light-hearted, fun read and we were able to have a great discussion if it.

This book to me is very funny. In the book a new dog comes to the ranch and Hank has to prove to Benny that he is the top dog. Hank gets mad because Benny tries to take the dog the Hank likes. He tries to prove to his master that he is the top dog but gets tied up why Benny has the time of his life. Hank acts like he is the head of security, which is called Head of Ranch Security. Hank is in a battle to keep his job at the round off. If you want a book that is super funny, then this book is for you.

Among his many other attributes, Hank the Cowdog has an uncanny ability to keep our entire family amused on long trips. Next to The Original Adventures of Hank The Cowdog (Vol. 1), this one is our favorite. Benny, the prize-winning cowdog-for-hire, very quickly gets under Hank's skin when he bumps Hank off the job of a roundup. Erickson's voicing of Benny is oddly reminiscent of William F. Buckley Jr., and works to great effect. Add the romantic element of Hank's love interest, Miss Beulah ("Mercy!", exclaims Hank) and the perceived threat Benny places there too, and the story becomes even more interesting. All against the regular backdrop of ranch life and supporting characters Drover, Plato, Loper and the rest of the gang, and the story is one of Hank's best romps. Enjoy!

This is a great and heartwarming addition to the "Hank the Cowdog" series. Along with tons of hillarious gags, this is one of Hank's best!

ALL I CAN SAY IS " WHAT A STORY" .

This is a fascinating and disturbing tale that illustrates just how hard it is to convict somebody who has a lot of money and power. Cullen Davis, warped little rich boy dominated by his incredibly wealthy and megalomanic father, grows up to inherit most of the fortune and position. What does he do with it? He chases sex kitten type women, showers them with lavish gifts, and abuses them.

Naifeh and Smith raise the true crime genre to something close to literature here. We have the usual litany of sickies and psychopaths, the usual police incompetence, prosecutors who can't prosecute, etc. The "final justice" in the title is somewhat ironic since multimillionaire Cullen Davis is never found guilty of any of his crimes, the worst of which was the cold-blooded murder of his wife's 12-year-old daughter; the least of which, perhaps the killing of her kitten. The juries in Texas just would not convict him (although they have put a number of poor people on death row). Instead they admired him for his money, stupidly since he just inherited it. And before the book is over, he blows most of it.

We get a terrible sense here that people with riches in positions of power really can get away with murder. People look up to them regardless of their crimes. It helps us to understand how murderers like Sadaam Hussein and what's his name in Yugoslavia continue in power. It's not just that people are afraid of them, they look up to them and find ways to excuse their crimes. This is the human tribal mind at work: better our corrupt and evil leader than theirs, and better a corrupt and evil leader than no leader at all. The women in this one come off as particularly subject to manipulation by power and money, although that was not necessarily the authors' intent. They wanted to show just what a sick, sick man Cullen Davis is, and they succeed in that. But incidentally they revealed the women around him, especially his gold-digging wives, as sad, sad creatures who would be abused and wallow in it for the sake of being close to all that money and power and maybe getting a little of it. One has the sense that they couldn't help themselves.

This is a good read that will rouse your sense of indignation.

it actually happened!!!

Don't look at the facts. Facts are **BAD***!! Let's attack the victims and divert attention away from what the case was all about...the murder of a twelve year old girl and a family aquaintance.

OJ's "Dream Team" (what a joke) must've used this case as a template for OJ's defense, because the similarities are eerie.

Highly recommended.

This book is really, the most precise account of the murders and trials. Some of the other books on the murder trials of Mr. Davis are very goddy and don't focus on the facts of the case. I really think that Mr. Naifeh did an excellent job with the content and details of this novel.I hope that people will not simply judge a case or story by one book, and know that you must have a numerous amount of facts and reality before you try to judge someone or something.

At the time of the Davis murders, I was living in Fort Worth and had a second-hand acquaintance with some of the people involved. Smith and Naifeh got it exactly right: not merely the facts but the "feel" of the case. Texas is a microcosm of the U.S., with all our best and worst qualities exaggerated. The Davis case exemplified our fascination with sex and sleaze, our love/hate relationship with the wealthy, and a legal system that's as much showmanship as The Majesty Of The Law -- and the results were an ironic commentary on what we truly value. (Somehow, the fact that Priscilla Davis was a mother whose 12-year-old daughter was brutally murdered got lost in the shuffle.) The book is engrossing and truly scary, and I highly recommend it.

This book is about the events leading to the Battle of Gonzales, which was the first conflict in the Texas war of independence from Mexico (October 2, 1835).

I started reading this book to my daughters (ages 7 and 9) after dinner one evening, and we didn't put it down until bedtime more than 50 pages later. They didn't want me to stop reading, and I didn't want to stop either. The characters felt like real people, the story was involving, and just like the people of the times, we didn't know what would happen next.

Melinda Rice gives the reader a Texan's-eye-view of the looming war with Mexico by putting us in the perspective of an 11-year-old girl whose older brothers sympathize with different sides in the conflict. The characters and story have an authentic feel throughout -- I've been to the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum many times, and I found myself reading this book using the same breathy accent used by the historical speakers in their video exhibits. Rice did an excellent job of bringing the reader into history as it happens and making past events feel like they're unfolding around us.

At the end of the book there is a short historical section that gives additional information about the Battle of Gonzales.

The book should be a comfortable read for fourth graders, except for some place and people names.

The unique and historically accurate Lone Star Heroines trilogy by Melinda Rice brings real events in Texas history to life as it shows young readers how girls living at different eras experienced and contributed to dramatic events. In Messenger On The Battlefield (1556227884, ...) is set in 1835 when 11-year-old Isabelina Montoya is happy to hear that her older sister has accepted the marriage proposal of a handsome Mexican solder. But when Texas goes to war against Mexico, dividing Isabelina's family, a decision must be made as to whether they should remain true to their Mexican heritage or fight for their new Texas homeland! Fire On The Hillside (1556227892, ...) is set in the spring of 1847 and finds 13-year-old Katherine Haufmann arriving from Fredericksburg, Texas with her family as immigrants from Germany. As she struggles to get used to her new home, Katherine becomes intrigued by the mysterious fires that start appearing in the nearby hills. While the rest of the townsfolk focus on peace talks with the Comanche, Katherine decides to discover the cause of those mysterious fires. Secrets In The Sky (1556227876, ...) is set in 1943 as World War Two is raging overseas. 12-year-old Bethany Parker lives in Sweetwater, Texas, when the Women Air Force Service Pilots come to town. When one of the women dies during a training flight, Bethany is convinced the mysterious crash was the work of a Nazi spy -- and sets out to prove it! The Lone Star Heroines is an outstanding and very highly recommended series of historical novels for young readers that are each enhanced with a "Sources" bibliography for the further study and more detailed study of Texas history.

The unique and historically accurate Lone Star Heroines trilogy by Melinda Rice brings real events in Texas history to life as it shows young readers how girls living at different eras experienced and contributed to dramatic events. In Messenger On The Battlefield (1556227884, [price]) is set in 1835 when 11-year-old Isabelina Montoya is happy to hear that her older sister has accepted the marriage proposal of a handsome Mexican solder. But when Texas goes to war against Mexico, dividing Isabelina's family, a decision must be made as to whether they should remain true to their Mexican heritage or fight for their new Texas homeland! Fire On The Hillside (1556227892, [price]) is set in the spring of 1847 and finds 13-year-old Katherine Haufmann arriving from Fredericksburg, Texas with her family as immigrants from Germany. As she struggles to get used to her new home, Katherine becomes intrigued by the mysterious fires that start appearing in the nearby hills. While the rest of the townsfolk focus on peace talks with the Comanche, Katherine decides to discover the cause of those mysterious fires. Secrets In The Sky (1556227876, [price]) is set in 1943 as World War Two is raging overseas. 12-year-old Bethany Parker lives in Sweetwater, Texas, when the Women Air Force Service Pilots come to town. When one of the women dies during a training flight, Bethany is convinced the mysterious crash was the work of a Nazi spy -- and sets out to prove it! The Lone Star Heroines is an outstanding and very highly recommended series of historical novels for young readers that are each enhanced with a "Sources" bibliography for the further study and more detailed study of Texas history.

Eleven-year-old Isabel Montoya lives with her family on a ranch near Gonzales, Texas, in 1835. Isabel feels as if everything in her life is changing. Her older sister has left home after marrying a Mexican soldier, and the family is divided over the conflict between Texas and Mexico, with Isabel's two older brother on opposing sides while Isabel and her parents struggle to remain neutral. When her brothers run away from home - Joaquin to join the Texans, and Alonso to join the Mexicans - the family is devastated. And when Isabel's father is shot and may be dying, Isabel knows it is up to her to reunited her fragmented family - before it's too late. This was a wonderful novel about a young girl caught up in the beginnings of the Texas Revolution. I wish, however, that the book had been a little longer, and that the ending was less open.

The year is 1847, and thirteen-year-old Katherine Haufmann lives with her family in Fredricksburg, Texas. The Haufmanns and their neighbors are immigrants from Germany who founded the town the year before. Even though she has been in Texas a year, Katherine still thinks of Germany as her home, and longs to return. After her father joins a peacemaking expedition to the Comanche Indians, Katherine and the other residents of Fredricksburg notice strange fires on the hillside outside of town, that appear each evening at dark in the same exact two places and last until dawn. With fear rising of a possible attack, either by the Comanche or by bitter Americans who feel the Germans have stolen their land, Katherine takes it open herself to find the origin of the mysterious fires - and puts herself in far greater danger than she ever could have imagined. Based on real events in Fredricksburg, Texas, in the spring of 1847, this is the story of a spunky and courageous young girl who, in her quest for the truth, finds that her home is where she least imagined it being.

For most presses, East European studies is a dying breed, consigned to the periphery by Europe's metamorphoses and other global challenges. However, Granville (history, Stanford Univ.) examines an event that retains stinging memories almost 50 years later--the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The author explored archives accessible only after the Cold War, and had extraordinary cooperation from archivists in Moscow, Budapest, and elsewhere. Kadar, Nagy, Rakosi, Tito, Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Dulles, and other personalities, as well as arcane communist and democratic bureaucracies, are revealed through countless archival fragments. Granville is at her best telling the interwoven story of 1956. Ultimately, Granville's analysis leads to a no-fault conclusion, suggesting that misperceptions and misconceptions among all actors led to the disastrous outcome. Recommended for graduate students and above.-- D.N. Nelson, University of New Haven

Johanna Granville is one of the most industrious and talented of the scholars who have seized upon new archival opportunities to deepen our understanding of the Cold War. For _The First Domino_, the author has scoured archives in Europe and the United States in an effort to find out how the principal actors arrived at decisions regarding the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Matters, as she writes, were not as simple as they once appeared. Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders bad difficulty, for example, deciding whether or not to suppress the uprising by force. In fact, they voted not to intervene one day (October 28)before they ordered decisive military action (October 31). Some of what she has uncovered is already known: that Imre Nagy denounced some of his countrymen during his years in Soviet Russia (1930-44) and that he did not invite the initial Soviet invasion of October 23-24. But thanks to Granville's linguistic abilities, she has shed new light on the seemingly inexplicable conduct of Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka and Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. Moreover, she has helped to clarify Janos Kadar's decision to betray Nagy and the revolution. In a particularly compelling chapter, Granville examines the role the United States played before and during the revolution. She concludes that the Eisenhower Administration's talk of "rollback" and "liberation," when combined with U.S. intelligence operations and psychological warfare, may have led Soviet leaders to fear a U.S. intervention and, thus, to opt for a harder line. Above all, however, Granville reminds us of historical contingency. Those who have studied the revolution have sometimes taken the view that Hungarians and Soviets acted out of necessity. Granville herself thinks that given Hungarians' historic detestation of Russia and communism, revolution was bound to erupt; and Nagy's "trial and probably ... execution were inevitable." She should have written "were very likely," because elsewhere she observes that if the Soviets had removed Stalinist dictator Matyas Rakosi sooner, there might not have been a revolution; and that had there been no Polish crisis of October 19-20, Budapest's students might not have demonstrated on October 23. "No event," she wisely concludes, "is ever predestined; individuals can make rational choices to change the course of history at any given moment." ---Lee Congdon, Professor of History, James Madison University._History: Review of New Books_ (Summer 2004),v 32, i4: p 147.

Dr. Granville's book is without question a first-rate, well-researched monograph. She uses Hungarian documents that even Hungarians have not read, sometimes presenting them in dialogue form (Chapter 3). The books reads like a novel in some places. (...)

This long-awaited review of archival records dealing with the Hungarian uprising of 1956 is destined to appear on numerous Cold War historians' bibliographies. It is a meticulously researched study, a grand example of erudite scholarship in its truest sense. Dr. Granville's examination of declassified documents is exhaustively and exhaustingly thorough.

Johanna Granville's The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (...), a pioneering work on East European Cold War history, confirms that when President Eisenhower had his chance to redeem the Republican campaign pledge to "roll back" the Soviet occupation of Hungary, he failed and thus perpetuated that occupation for three more decades.
This is a remarkable study of Cold War history because the author, at home in Russian and other languages, has availed herself of recently opened Soviet and other archives to describe how Hungary became the first "domino" in a process that "resulted ultimately in the Soviet Union's loss of hegemony over Eastern Europe in 1989."
The Hungarian revolt resulted in more than 2,000 deaths and the flight of over 200,000 refugees to the West. It is worth noting that a far smaller group of earlier Hungarian refugees, who fled to America from a Nazi-endangered Europe, helped build the first atomic bomb during World War II.
Chapter 6 of "The First Domino" is the most fascinating, since it explores U.S. psychological warfare and covert activities in Eastern Europe during the 1950s, including broadcasts by Radio Free Europe.---Washington Times, March 21, 2004 by Arnold Beichman, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

The start of the book was slow but necessary to get some background into the characters that populate the book. Then, things really start to take off. 1/3rd of the way through, I could not put it down.

As a Texas genealogist, I found this book really compelling. As I read through it, I surfed over to Ancestry.com to pull the 1920 census from Freestone county Texas. This helped to flesh out the characters all the more. I was amazed to learn that of the sampling of the census records I reviewed (2 of 10 districts) over half of the inhabitants were black or latino. This points up another injustice that is often overlooked historically: These were taxpayers that were supporting the government that was hobbling them in every way.

While some may be amazed at what "God fearing" citizens would do in a mob, I, for one am not. I am never amazed at the violence perpetrated by our White fore fathers though I am often saddened. A land born of blood will take a very long time to shed itself of that origin. We can't do it over night and it seems as though a couple of hundred years won't be enough time either.

Kudos to Mr Akers on his well researched work.

What can cause civil, "God fearing" citizens of a small Texas community to commit such atrocities? What can cause the breakdown of rule of law and complete abandonment of American values? What can convince individuals that it is necessary and proper to burn a man alive on the town square of their community?
This book is a reminder that hatred and evil does not just live in some foreign land or some corrupt urban metropolis. It exists down the street and may be harbored by our neighbor or our drinking buddy.
While the events of this book happened more than 80 years ago, the author conveys what we Texans know; Too many civil "God fearing" people in our communities would say "he had it comin to him".
This book is important not just to Texans but to everyone to remind us that the monster is still there and can still be awakened. This book reminds us that we must be forever vigilant, not just in a small Texas town but anywhere.

"Flames After Midnight" is an expertly researched and documented bit of history that reads like a suspense novel. I was so interested in the drama of the events and people that it was easy to forget it is real - its reality of course, makes the book even more important. A great read for fans of suspense and history buffs alike.

Much of what is taught of Texas history in schools points to the proud and honorable past of our state. Flames After Midnight tells of a part of our history that we are too often reluctant to relate, but a pert of our past that we should never forget. The outrage of which should never be repeated.

Much of what is taught of Texas history in schools points to the proud and honorable past of our state. Flames After Midnight tells of a part of our history that we are too often reluctant to relate, but a pert of our past that we should never forget. The outrage of which should never be repeated.

"Foo, A Japanese-American Prisoner Of The Rising Sun" by Frank "Foo" Fujita, with Stanley L. Falk. Subtitled: "The Secret Prison Dairy of Frank "Foo" Fujita". University of North Texas Press, 1993.

This is an interesting book on many different levels. First, it is the story of a World War II Prisoner Of War. But not just any POW: Frank "Foo" Fujita was a Japanese-American, perhaps the only Japanese-American who was held as a POW in Japan. And, on the third level, "Foo" was a Texan and a member of the Texas National Guard. His unit was called up, to be sent to the south Pacific, and, after the sneak attack, on Pearl Harbor, they were diverted to Australia. The 2nd Battalion, 131st field Artillery was assigned to the defense of the Dutch island of Java, where they were overrun by the Japanese. Most of us have forgotten the American units that were part of the ABDA, American, British, Dutch and Australian forces in this theater, with, perhaps the major exception being the cruiser, the U.S. S. Houston. (See, for example, pages 345-346, where a contemporary "bird-colonel" does not believe that Fujita's unit was never in the Pacific.)

To make the story even more interesting, Sergeant Fujita was an accomplished sketch artist, and he includes contemporary drawings of himself and of the Japanese mistreating POWs. So, on this level, he has enhanced his story visually. His entire diary was in a code of his own fabrication. His diary and his drawings were hidden in a wall of a building in his POW camp; the diary and drawings were recovered after the war. This recovered material makes this book a primary source for the history of Japanese-held POWs.

Excellent primary source supported by explanatory notes supplied by Stanley L. Falk.

Foo, A Japanese-American Prisoner Of The Rising Sun is the true and riveting account of Frank "Foo" Fujita's experiences of being a Japanese American combat soldier who was captured by the Japanese during the Pacific campaign of World War II during the defense of Java in early 1942. Based on his secret prison diary, we are provided a "window in time" regarding the daily life and experiences of a prisoner of war which vividly recounts the privations of the POWs and the living conditions in Japan. The text is illustrated with drawings, maps and photographs. What is surprising is the humor that was to be found -- even in the midst of the most severe circumstances. Foo, A Japanese-American Prisoner Of The Rising Sun is a unique contribution to the annals of World War II literature and highly recommended for academic, community, and personal library collections.

I met Foo in a restaurant in Abilene, TX, sitting in a booth next to him and two other gentlemen. His book was to be released the next day. My wife, after evedropping on their conversation, introduced her and myself. Foo sold us a copy of the book....and autographed it for us. This was several years ago. We have learned he has since died. He was very warm and personable with us. His story is facinating. (His reason for being in Abilene was that there was to be some sort of POW reunion the next day.)

I knew "Foo" (he died last year) and many of the other men (my father among them) who were taken prisoner with him. This is an excellent book about a little known page in American history. Although, in many ways, Foo's captivity was atypical of the treatment most of the "Lost Battalion" received, it is a fascinating, well written book which shouldn't be missed by anyone interested in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Having known Foo since High School days and later being a sister-in-law, I read the original dairy and saw the pictures he drew of the atrocities experienced there in prison. This book is an excellent account of the way it was. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a factual story of what it was like to be in a POW Camp in Japan during World War II.

I read this book in 2 days, couldn't put it down. It is well written. Cheryl Wolverton blends reality, romance, faith, and plenty of humor. For those who like romance novels but love to laugh too, this book is for you. Very interesting. A great read.

I read this book in 2 days, couldn't put it down. It is well written. Cheryl Wolverton blends reality, romance, faith, and plenty of humor. For those who like romance novels but love to laugh too, this book is for you. Very interesting. A great read.

My favorite,{so far}, of the McCade Brothers books. Julian "Hawk" McCade has a lot to learn about families. And Susan "Freckles" Learn is just the person to teach him. This book was a lot of fun to read! The "accidents" that keep happening over and over are hilarious. But once Susan learns to relax around Julian they find that God has placed them in each other's lives for a purpose. I love all three of the McCade brothers! This is truly a good, lighthearted read, but don't miss the depth that Cheryl has woven into the story.

This book was wonderfully funny and enjoyable. Freckles, the main character is a clumsy idiot around the man she loves, and both are afraid she's going to kill him! But when she forgets to be nervous around him, she's warm and caring and very lovable herself. I very much enjoyed reading this book. There were some drawbacks for me, though....I would have preferred this book to be longer and deeper. I wanted to have more description and a better feel for the setting and characters. I also would have liked the author to have explored the heroine's relationship with her family more instead of having it tossed in at the end. But, in retrospect, I don't think the author was trying to make any profound statements, but rather give the reader an enjoyable read. And she succeeded very well. I would definitely recommend this book for a quick, funny read.

This book reminded me of my family, funny, silly and makes you smile a lot. I'm a teenager and would tell all my friends to read it. Freckles makes the story one to remember.