Illinois Books

First, let me say that I'm not much of a history reader, no matter what the subject matter. And war stories really isn't my thing either. So how was it that I got into reading "The Butternut Guerillas" by Larry Underwood? Rather easily, if I do say so myself. Early one morning (like 5:00 A.M.) I was into my early morning 2-mile walk on the bike path with my two walking buddies, and one of them is a history nut. By chance, he got to talking about the Civil War and mentioned this book to me. He talked about the story and how these men that were Yankee soldiers and called the Butternut Guerillas played a major part in the Civil War, under the leadership of Benjamin Grierson. And their company was mostly from southern Illinois. Now he had my attention. The first thing I asked was if the non-fiction story was boring, because if it didn't grab my attention right off the bat, I wasn't going to waste my time. "Not at all. In fact, I think you'll enjoy the heck out of that book. I did," Big Ed replied. Then I asked if he thought the local library had the book, and of course, he knew that it did. Later that day, I found myself in the library, picking up the small hardback. I'm the world's worst about thumbing through a book, looking at introductions, prologues, dedications, and even to the end of the book for final words. Needless to say, at the end of this little book was a roster of the Sixth & Seventh Cavalry Regiments from Illinois. Men's names from Hardin County, White County, Saline County, Pope County, and names that were familiar to the area, even names from different towns. And you must remember, this was in 1863-65. I was amazed at the names, so I read nearly every one of the field and staff members, when I ran across the name John W. Rogers, Saline County, Illinois. And I immediately knew this was my grandfather's brother. My very own great-uncle John W. Rogers. Little was said about this man while I was a young girl growing up, and when I tried to ask, I was simply told that "Uncle John was kind of the black sheep of the family". I guess everybody has one of some kind or the other. Regardless, Uncle John is buried in the family's cemetery plot and I put flowers on his grave every Memorial Day, even though I never knew him. He didn't play a big part in the book because he was simply a Yankee soldier, not one of the Butternut Guerillas, but now I couldn't put the book down. And believe me, without a doubt this is one of the best-written Civil War stories that has probably ever been told. I was totally amazed at the dialogue and how well Underwood told the events that transpired. In fact, I almost felt like I was there with those guys. This book is EXCELLENT. I can't believe that it hasn't been reviewed before. If you're a history nut and like to know how the events of the war transpired, this book is a great insight. The next time I'm honored with Big Ed's presence on the bike path, I'll have to tell him so.

In this first comprehensive analysis of several recently uncovered sites in the American Bottom region, Mehrer focuses on household archaeology to shed light on the daily lives of the Mississippian people. He examines the objects of daily use - domestic and ceremonial buildings, storage and processing pits, mundane and exotic artifacts - to reconstruct the framework of everyday life and to show how the routines of early native people changed with time. New findings reveal the changing roles of households in their communities, exposing a social order more complex than previously thought.

This is an amazing book, the result of many years of paddling places no one else does, as well as all of the better known paddles in Northern Illinois. It will become the Illinois Paddler's bible.
Not only does it give details on over eighty possible paddles, but there is a tremendous wealth of historical information. There will never be another book like this. Buy it!

This is the definitive look at the last year of General Grant. Pitkin writes well and the book is well-researched, factual and reliable. The narrative begins when Grant bites into a peach in the summer of 1884 and thinks an insect has stung him in the throat. In fact this was the first signal that he was suffering from throat cancer. Pitkin guides the reader through the maze of pain and suffering Grant endured while writing his magnificent memoirs. You will learn about his near-death episode in April, 1885 when the doctors believed he was about to die. Instead Grant miraculously ralied and lived another three months, enough time to complete his book.

Also included are descriptions of the important personal relationships in Grant's life. You will meet his four children, his devoted wife, and Mark Twain, the man who adored Grant and who became his publisher. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a renewed appreciation for Grant's valor, courage and tremendous ability to withstand pain in order to provide a financial legacy to his destitute family. I highly recommend this book, it's exceptional.

Carl Ruggles was an crusty ol' opininated prejudiced, cantankerous, stubborn man. Most of his durationally short sculpted-like music reflects this. The overwhelmingly powerful symphonic poems, The Sun Treader or Men and Mountains. There you will find large robust,full-bodied brass and lyrical lines,in octaves and unisons to enhance their sheer power. Yet Ruggles has miniatures, his Portals a mere 63 odd measures for strings alone, or his mysterious Angels for muted trumpets and trombones is even shorter than that. He has only one single work for the piano, Evocations, which he revised his entire life. Marilyn Ziffrin was quite brave searching for Ruggles alone in retirement, barely able to hear at his home,she found him eating,crumbs falling on his sweater in the clapboard Cut Leaf Maples Motel in Arlington Vermont. He wouldn't allow her a tape recorder so she took copious notes. But it wasn't until a full year later returning from work at The University of Chicago that her story begins of one of our most fascinating American pioneers. Ziffrin tells a good story following the Ruggles throughout there lives in various places, New York, Winona, Minneapolis, Florida,and Arlington. She captures the details of the everyday, Carl chomping on his cigar while searching for dissonant tones and resonance on his rented piano. Harmonies we learn were incidental, Ruggles was a contrapuntal composer who wrote in his own invented atonal language. He had distinguished friends as well, Robert Frost, Charles Ives, Leopold Stokowski, and the pianist John Kirkpatrick who became the executor of his Estate.In reading this comprehensive work, we learn of American history as well, and how one coped with the Depression years. Ruggles was a consummate painter with over 300 paintings which are part of museaum collections in Detroit, but primarily privatly owned. The two disciplines fused together for Ruggles, he said he "painted" music, as well as supporting himself with its sale.

Linda and Raymond (her husband?) explore the beauty and history of the historic Carnegie library in Rural, Central Illinois. This book is the definitive source of its kind. Linda is to be commended! Bravo! A must read for the library enthusiast.

Casing the Promised Land by H.L. Goodall, Jr. (the first in an ethnographic trilogy) is an interpretive ethnography that consists of a collection of stories over the course of eight years (and written up in two) that seeks to construct a perspective (not to be confused with Truth) in a larger effort to encourage discussion and debate (particularly) among academics who usually have clear ideas about what `science' is or should be (e.g. this debate is especially apparent among the quantitative/qualitative divide).

This collection of essays frames ethnographic organizational `mysteries' focusing on communication scholarship within the context of personal experience as researcher. Goodall weaves together a strand of multiple narratives as researcher and ethnographer, husband, professor, etc., that collectively constitute an `experience,' albeit an experience that in its totality can never actually be fully understood or even known (which is precisely the point). The experiences chronicled in this text spotlight the poetics of humans communicating but also highlight the space outside where meaningful communication takes place that cannot necessarily be accounted for.

Here Goodall, an authority on rhetoric and communication, seeks to complicate our thinking about organizational communication and technology especially in the rural South as well as make a case for the importance of interpretive ethnography in the academy. Goodall makes no qualms about his general dissatisfaction with the social sciences and much to his credit this book highlights through storytelling the great necessity for ethnographic research as well as noting the limitations and shortcomings that often result, a point few positivists are willing to concede. It is within this space that we can learn to be better researchers, writers, intellectuals and human beings so to test the general shortcomings of growth and creativity that we all no doubt experience. Stated otherwise, we as academics are not nor should be confined by the limits of a particular research design or methodology that all too often seems to thwart our creativity (although not our promotion to tenure) in so many ways.

This text provides the researcher with yet another way of doing research differently outside of the constraints of the establishment. This book was very entertaining and highly recommended for both the novice and the seasoned researcher.

The first work that has explained the revolutionary change in the relationship between Catholics and Jews in the past century. It explores the various ramifications that have taken place in the attitudes among Jews and Catholics towards each other. It's established an example that may help to introduce new ways to resolve tensions between religious faiths. It contends that the breakthrough between these two religions establishes a model that can be studied among other faiths as well. Feldman discloses the clues for greater interreligious harmony.

Anyone wanting to bypass the fees of a lawyer, and having to deal with any family law problem, needs to get this book and all of the updates. It's easy to understand, easy to read and well indexed to find the help you need for every problem.

Here in two parts is the history of western philosophy from the
Pre-Socratics to the modern age by the sharpest mind in America
today, Dr. James Allyn Diefenbeck (Harvard PhD 1950). If you do
nothing but read the table of contents you should be impressed
with the depth and breadth of Dr. Diefenbeck's logical argument
which destroys causal determinism and establishes human freedom
once and for all. Here is an author who taught philosophy at
Southern Illinois University for thirty years: an expert on Plato, Aristotle, the stoics, St. Augustine, Thomas Acquinas,
Francis Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Robin G. Collingwood, Vico, Ortega y
Gasset, and Benedetto Croce, among others. If you have tried the
rest, now try the best in the west.
"Pete" Diefenbeck, born on July 6th, 1917, was an undergraduate
English major at Williams College in Massachusetts. He went to
Harvard for their PhD program in Comparative Literature, but the
war broke out and he became a US fighter pilot and flight instructor who later flew ninety missions against the German Luftwaffe, escorting Allied Bombers over Germany. Dr. Diefenbeck kept secret that he was shot down over France in 1944 until just before his death last July 16th, 2005. The Distinguished Cross and Air Medal was found in his drawer. He had blown up his plane and had to hide from the Germans as he walked back to American lines, borrowed pieces of uniforms because his had been cut up and burnt, and got a ride into Liberated Paris wearing a Colonel's jacket! Undoubtedly THE luckiest man on earth, who came back from that horrible war, changed his major to the PhD program in Philosophy at Harvard and worked four more
years, writing his dissertation on the the history of western philosophy. He began teaching at SIU-Carbondale in 1951.
This book should become a classic in western philosophy. It
certainly, along with his other books, represents a high water
mark in philosophical literature, poetry of the intellect. It deserves to be read, re-read, and taught in every philosophy department on earth. After reading it, one might try his other book: Wayward Reflections on the History of Philosophy.
And, after that, his Subjective Theory of Organism, which is
based on activity (atomic, molecular, cellular, sexual, and
evolutionary); and his book on Politics, Rights, and Economics
which has an interesting criticism of Hobbes, Marx and Thoreau.
At eighty-six years of age now, Dr. Diefenbeck should be considered a National Treasure. A world traveler, unimpeachably
authentic, an impeccable dresser, a gourmet cook, an honest
philosopher, whose home is a living museum, Dr. Diefenbeck is one of the kindest gentlemen and noble scholars you should ever
meet. (And probably the most neglected since R.G. Collingwood).