La Salle Books

This is the third book of Parkman's that I've read. Previously, I read Pioneers of France in the New World and The Jesuits in North America. About all three I would say a) they are absolutely amazing works of brilliant, inspired scholarship, b) Parkman's measured, objective, caring approach to the topics -- and the beauty and tone of his writing -- is extremely compelling, and c) my grade school, high school, and college education did not provide me with the gritty, fascinating facts about what REALLY happened back in the 17th Century in North America.

This is not James Michener (as much as I have enjoyed his works) packaging and making sense of history -- or the dry, intellectualized expert texts I had to read in school -- or the politically correct wholesome simplified upbeat teachings of my youth, with for example the perfect Puritans and the friendly Indians sharing Thanksgiving.

This is what really happened, detail by detail, based on exhaustive research of original texts -- letters, reports, maps, government documents, earlier histories, etc. Fortunately for Parkman, the early adventurers did a lot of writing, including many of the members of religious orders who accompanied or in some cases led the explorations.

My main takeaway from these true histories is how incredibly dangerous, unsuccessful, and unpredictable the courses of events were in these times (and probably in our time as well). In a way they are like anti-stories, or anti-history. Good often does not prevail over evil; heroes do scandalous things; scoundrels act heroic; no one is assuredly, consistently good or evil; when you least expect it there is a generous caring act; and when you least expect it, when all is going well, there is a foolish, unfortunate, destructive act that ruins all that has been accomplished, etc.

That is, while there may be certain patterns in events, these patterns themselves are constantly shifting, and the most logical and predictable outcomes almost never happen. In other words, Parkman has truly captured life in all its shades of grey and inconsistencies.

His treatment of the Indians is a perfect example. By modern day standards, it is egregiously politically incorrect. But he reveals them in all of their savagery, helpfulness, childish immaturity, wisdom, thievery, generosity, deceit, and unpredictable kindness. The commonplace cannibalism and similarly common extreme forms of repulsive torture done by Indians are carefully documented and reported throughout his texts, as well as the way their easily given friendship essentially saved the lives of most of the key European adventurers at one time or another.

These books are definitely not for the faint of heart or people who want a simplistic "Dummies Guide" to history!

While there is a new Introduction, this is the historic account of Robert LaSalle's exploration of the Louisiana territory in the 1680s. Parkman first published this treatise in 1869; it has since been reprinted numerous times. An excellent, thoroughly engrossing recounting of the exploration of the territory which LaSalle claimed for France in 1682, through which the reader not only learns of the daily travails of the little band of explorers, but also, the human frailties of the man, Robert Cavelier, known as LaSalle. This book gives life to a name from history, and exemplifies the methodical research done by Parkman in the days before telephones, faxes, and copiers. I was thoroughly impressed by the subject and the writer. Excellent; informative, totally enthralling reading-writers of today should take note! Kudos to the publishers (and Krakauer) for bringing this series (back) to life!

Parkman is that unusual combination of great scholar and wonderful writer. His books depicting the history of French exploration of North America and the conflict between the French and the British for control of North America remain the basic narratives of these events. Parkman's writing, combining narrative, psychological insight into major historical actors, and use of rhetoric that seamlessly reflects his narrative, is often superb. This particular book is almost entirely devoted to the career of the Sieur De La Salle, the French explorer obsessed with establishing French control over the Mississippi valley. Parkman provides vivid portraits of the almost incredible hardships of travel in North America, the character of politics in the French colonies, and an insightful treatment of La Salle and his associates. Parkman's powerful but restrained language often recalls the style of Tacitus.

I picked this up on a lark and found I couldn't put it down. A fascinating story, extremely well written and a pure pleasure to read. I travel extensively and found it amazing how many places I go to regularly have a direct link to La Salle. Couldn't recommend it more.

Frances Parkman was a man who lived and breathed his history. He not only researched his subjects thoroughly, but seems to have crawled inside their heads as well.

Parkman's gift for bringing people alive is nowhere more evident than in this complex story of Robert Cavalier de la Salle's attempt to realize his dream of making France a leader in the new world. Parkman's skillful examination of the man behind the story lets the reader understand why LaSalle and his ideas were the cause of such controversy. At the same time, Parkman paints a vivid picture of the new world frontier as it existed in LaSalle's time. This is a book that can be savored on many levels: as an entertaining adventure story, a psychological thriller, and a historical reference.

Parkman's prose is rich and full of details you will need to understand the complexity of the charcters and the consciousness of the times. Therefore, you should be prepared to spend time working your way through this book. Whenever I tried to hurry through a section, I found that I missed something important that was needed later on. In other words, patience is needed, but well worth it. Parkman was a true lover of history and the people who shaped it and it shows.

I enjoyed this book very much. The author writes about funny events that have happened in her life. I wanted to keep turning the pages and read about the next "adventure" in this author's life! I highly recommend this book!

I enjoyed reading this book very much. The stories are short and entertaining to read. Ileana tells funny stories about events that have happened in her life and keeps the reader wanting to turn the page and read about her next "adventure."

What a wonderful little book! It gives excellent advice on classroom discipline. Of course corporal punishment is no longer permissible. Nevertheless, the aim of corporal punishment is clear from de la Salle -- indeed one could say it is far more humane that what is passed off for correction today, remarkable both in its restraint and gentlness.

It is clear from de la Salle that moral discipline and an education on the Faith begin with a parent's or teacher's self-discipline and own example. Very short, easy to read. A life-long challenge to implement. (Of course, the section on comportment must be read keeping in mind that fashions change as de la Salle himself points out. Nevertheless, there is much to learn even here.)

In 1878 the future presidential candidate Al Smith attended St. James parish school in New York City's Fourth Ward. In Smith's time the school enrolled 1,450 students, of which the Christian Brothers taught the 650 boys and the Sisters of Charity the girls. Today we might think of 1,450 students as a healthy enrollment for a Catholic secondary school in a large city. In 1878 and for years after the youngest Catholic students in massive numbers enjoyed the privilege of first rate education in a faith-based environment. It was truly a world of "no child left behind."

The fuel for this educational dynamo was neither ecclesiastical fiat nor fiscal sufficiency. It was the vowed life and services of thousands of Catholic women and men religious who brought the religious vision and charism of their various orders and communities to school settings. The changes in Catholic education between 1878 and 2005-particularly the virtual disappearance of the religious classroom educator-are poorly understood and routinely understated. Today's Catholic elementary school faculty is lay and generally married with family. None have the rigorous training of religious formation and novitiate; few have anything amounting to college specialization in theology. While most would probably profess the Catholic faith, few have the comfort to teach as an unabashed apologist for the Catholic Tradition. "A prophet is not without honor...."

One cannot read this recent compilation from the Paulist Press Western Spirituality series without a sense that the life and wisdom of St. John Baptist de la Salle is perhaps the publisher's most practical and useful release to date. La Salle [1651-1719], a wealthy priest and cathedral canon, fretted over issues of education facing France in the late seventeenth century. As with other volumes in this series, the introduction is extremely useful in briefly outlining the nature of the problems and La Salle's biographical attempts to meet them for the Church.

The problem was simple enough and certainly one familiar to contemporary Americans: only the children of the rich were getting top-flight education. Because of the French marriage of church and state, there was no secular or public education system in place. And in this, the era of the Sun King, there was no great hurry to educate the unwashed masses anyway. French Catholicism unfortunately shared something of this view: education of upper echelon youths toward a clerical life, law, and diplomacy was useful to the Church and the state. Mass education smacked of the dreaded "D" word. Neither hierarchy nor monarchy had time for democracy.

La Salle's marriage of faith formation, education, and equality is one of great achievements of the Post-Tridentine era. No one melded these goals into a spirituality of education as La Salle did. The primary task of a Catholic educator, he wrote, was his students' salvation, i.e., getting them into heaven. [Mention that at a diocesan school meeting today.] The establishment of religious identity in a child's mind is already a form of liberation, for all stand equal before God. La Salle understood the mind of the rich [he was practically one of them], and he knew that none of his charges stood a chance in the world of commerce without some measure of grace and manners. Chapters four and five, on school discipline and general decorum, must be read in this light.

That La Salle chose only laymen for this work is a great mystery. One is tempted to say that La Salle was anticipating Vatican II, but in fact the more likely answer is his belief that the classroom was a full time apostolate. Further, he would probably have failed in his efforts to wholesale recruit ordained clergy, who on the whole were quite upper crust in his day. La Salle himself suggests this when, in a moment of weakness, he compares his brothers unfavorably to his valet. In truth the first brothers were somewhat ruffians, and La Salle took considerable grief from his family and the Church for housing such men. Much of his writing is thus directed toward the formation of the brothers themselves in the form of rules, letters, meditations and retreats, not to mention the decorum and essentials of pedagogy. A day would come when his religious brothers turned against him, arguing with some credibility that La Salle could return to his cushy canon's life whereas they had nowhere to go. La Salle thus composed "The Heroic Vow," a solemn promise that he and his most intimate followers would essentially go down with the ship.

In his writing La Salle addresses questions that plague Catholic education to this day. For example, he did not as a rule accept the unchurched into his schools. He believed that proselytizing and the reconciliation of fallen-away Catholics was more appropriately the mission of the clergy and the parish itself. On the other hand, he had a certain compassion for the hard lives of parents, and reminded his brothers that they must drill their students repeatedly in the prayers and essentials of the Faith. He examines the problem of truancy from many perspectives, and concludes that in some cases the teacher himself may be the reason. [Mention that at a faculty meeting today.] He grasped the reality of "special needs" students long before the term was invented.

If American Catholic schools are not to return to a Louis XIV-style bastion of the upper class with five figure tuition rates, La Salle's vision of the school as an egalitarian venture to save souls needs revisiting. This compilation of La Salle's writings is a most useful cornerstone for the spirituality and identity of today's Catholic schoolteacher and rekindles a sense of urgency in regenerating the mission of primary Catholic education. The seventeenth century La Salle has amazing relevance to the twenty-first century American Catholic parochial situation. Curiously, in the present political climate, La Salle's vision seems ready for a second blooming.

Very interesting reading since I was from this area. Learned a few things. Good reading.

This wonderful little book is part of the Images of America series, and focuses on LaSalle County, Illinois. It is chock full of images from the earlier days of LaSalle County, beginning with a picture of Chief Shabbona. The book is organized by subject, and contains a small index that allows you to look up pictures for specific towns.

This is a neat little book! The pictures are all crystal clear, and have well-written captions. Now, a lot of the pictures seem to be from the towns of Mendota and Earlville, but they probably had a lot of pictures in their historical societies. Overall, I found this book to be quite interesting, and I highly recommend it!

Van Grieken's discussion of the characteristics of Lasallian schools has been invaluable for my dissertation research on a Lasallian university. The book compiles information that is otherwise scattered among biographies of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, internal documents for the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and commentaries and interpretations on the first two.

In particular, Van Grieken provides more (and more helpful) information on the theory and practice of Lasallian pedagogy than I have found elsewhere.

I highly recommend Touching the Hearts of Students for anyone teaching at a Lasallian school or anyone doing research on Lasallian education and pedagogy.

Introduction by Sister Mary Peter Traviss, O.P. University of San Francisco

"...Van Grieken's Touching the Hearts of Students contributes to an understanding of the current work of religious communities who are using their expertise in operating Catholic schools to prepare the laity to assume leadership of these schools. Written in the tradition of [Saint John Baptist de] La Salle's famous instructions to teachers, the book is logically laid out with great attention to detail. The reviewer captures the spirit of the book and its message."

Book review by Brother Jeffrey Gros, FSC

"As the age of the laity emerges, providing vision and formation for Catholic schools formerly staffed by religious remains a challenge and an opportunity. Religious communities are developing training programs, literature, and inservice processes for empowering lay educators in their mission as Catholic educators, drawing on the tradition of the sponsoring community.

This volume is an important contribution to that literature. While this book emerges out of the tradition of a particular community, as the subtitle notes, the fact that it deals with the Catholic patron of all teachers, John Baptist de La Salle, and that it is designed in a practical, concrete way, gives it a more universal usefulness than just a resource for schools in the tradition of the De La Salle Christian Brothers. The book includes five chapters, a useful annotated bibliography, and three appendices.

The first chapter situates Catholic education today, as religious communities are in the process of moving into shared mission with lay colleagues and of providing support for the merging lay leadership in the schools. Developing this vision is enhanced by grounding that vision in the particular narrative which gave rise to it. The second chapter traces the life and times of De La Salle. The third chapter elaborates the educational vision that has emerged in the Church from the vision and practice of this tradition.

Much of modern Catholic education is grounded in the 18th- and 19th-century movements focused in the heritage of De La Salle. The most well known of those contributions are the simultaneous method and the vernacular language. The chapter that will be most useful for administrators envisioning programs and processes for board and faculty development is the fifth, which focuses on the vision and practice for today. After laying out 10 operative commitments for an educational spirituality emerging from the spirit of faith and zeal, the author provides a detailed reflective process for enhancing the internalization of these commitments. In each section the text delineates consequences for students, teachers, teaching activity, and the teacher-student relationship. With these brief expository segments are included appropriate quotations and follow-up questions. While the quotations here are from De La Salle and Christian Brothers literature, they can as easily be substituted by parallel material from the Church or other communities for use in other context. The tradition represented here could have been conceptualized with a more universal audience in view. The more sectarian focus on "Lasallian" schools does not diminish the quality of the volume as a resource for wider use, but it does exhibit its significance for all Catholic schools as they embody the values inherited from this patron of all their teachers. The charisms of the saints and of religious communities are gifts for the universal Church.  

This volume demonstrates how what has been developed by one leader for a particular movement in the Church becomes a resource for all of us as we move into an era of lay leadership, grounded in the faith of the Church and zeal for the Gospel. This is a book written by a teacher for teachers. It is well researched, but more importantly it is well written with a lay audience in mind. It will be both a useful tool for school administrators and an admirable model for religious communities enabling shared mission in promotion of lay leadership in Catholic schools."

Brother Jeffrey Gros, FSC, is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC.

Este es un libro espectacular y maravilloso que combina el magistral arte del autor, Walter Arp, como dibujante de aves tropicales con su sensibilidad poética. Excelentes reproducciones de los cuadros de WARP con poemas nacidos de su alma libre y errante.
----------
This it is a spectacular and wonderful book that combines the skillful art of the author, Walter Arp, like sketcher of tropical birds with her poetic sensitivity. Excellent reproductions of the pictures of birds by WARP with poems born of her free and nomadic soul.

Para este libro, el artista vnezolano Walter Arp recopiló varias tradiciones de Venezuela y las ilustró con sus dibujos y sencillas descripciones en forma poética, para asegurar que permanezcan en el recuerdo aún cuando hayan desapaerecido de la cotidianidad.
------------
For this book, the Venezuelan artist Walter Arp gathered several traditions of Venezuela and he illustrated them with her drawings and with simple descripctions in poetry form, to assure that they still remain in the memory when they have disappeared of the modern daily life.

Eve LaSalle Caram's voice is very strong; with the first line, you're swept to another place and time. I love this novel.

The book started with a brief rewiew of literatureabout Philippine English. It then proceeded with the methodology. The results were taken from careful analysis of a part of the International Corpus of English. The analysis was thorough. This is a great addition to a collection of books on sociolinguistics and World Englishes. 'The Sociolinguist of the Philippines' once again has proven her worthy of her title.

I just finished reading this book and cannot recommend it highly enough. Goodman has written a concise and accessible history of the great explorer La Salle, and Tom McNeely has done an equally good job in complementing the text with his illustrations.

Beginning with his childhood, Goodman briefly explains La Salle's titles and education before going on to portray his great expeditions and troubles. Written with children in mind, the book lightly touches upon the topic of politics within the court of France, between the great powers of the day -France, Spain, and England-- and amongst the various American Indian tribes and confederations. However, the overall tone is not so academic and the book maintains a quick pacing and a definite sense of adventure and discovery.

Nicely enough, what the author does not do is whitewash peoples or individuals. For example, I particularly like the balance Ms. Goodman maintains between La Salle as 'hero' and La Salle as a 'flawed individual'. Her portrayal of him as a determined man that keeps plugging away, despite adversity, is admirable. So is her point that it was La Salle's natural aloofness and inability to understand the weaknesses of others that inevitably led to his death at the hands of his own men.

One other note -- I would be remiss if I did not point out that there are many facts and issues that Ms. Goodman leaves out and/or glosses over. She does not mention, for example, that some of La Salle's contemporaries thought him mentally ill during the time of his last expedition. Nor does she explain that the men hated La Salle's nephew because he punished them for sleeping with the Indian women. Topics perhaps best left to older children and adults.

Five Stars. Wonderful book. Excellent writing. Good Artwork. Goodman makes history live by touching upon details, such as cannibalism by the Seneca, that tend to engage younger readers. She makes La Salle very accessible by pointing out both his strengths and his weaknesses.

pam t