North America Books

Kenneth Wiggins Porter apparently died before he finished the manuscript for this one and so it fell to others (Alcione M. Amos and Thomas P. Senter) to edit and update this book. It's hard to sort out the contributions of each but the result is a well documented narrative of the Black Seminole from the early days in Florida to the early part of the twentieth century. Built mainly around the rise and life of the still little known Western hero, John Horse, a man of mixed blood (his father seems to have been a Seminole tribesman, perhaps of mixed blood himself) and an African mother who was an escaped slave in pre-Civil War America, it details the formation and development of a unique tribal people in America's history.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that thousands of Africans fled the chattel bondage of South Carolina, Georgia and, later, the states of Alabama and Florida in the 18th and early nineteenth centuries, forming communities that existed under the protection of the Florida Indians (themselves exiles from internecine conflict in Georgia and Alabama within the Creek nation or from white Americans who set out to suppress them under Andrew Jackson). The exiled Muscogulge peoples (the proper name for the Creek as suggested by J. Leitch Wright Jr. in his own well documented work "Creeks and Seminoles", University of Nebraska Press) initially kept slaves, a practice learned from the whites, but did not have the economy to use them as the whites did. And so Seminole slavery evolved in a very different fashion. While purchasing or receiving some slaves as gifts from whites, the Seminole treated them as status symbols and pretty much let these people operate independently. Gradually, escaped slaves joined the Indian communities and built up their own communities under the influence and protection of the Seminole chiefs. They were seen more as vassals than slaves by the Indians who left them to their own devices and basically expected them to hunt and raise their own crops to feed themselves, only remitting an annual portion in tribute to the tribal chief.

Free to come and go as they pleased, the blacks developed their own eclectic tribal culture, partly in emulation of the Seminole and partly reflecting the lives they had lived in bondage to the whites. Into this world John Horse was born around 1812. He was still a boy when Andrew Jackson violated international boundaries and Spanish sovereignty in Florida to carry his war against the defeated Creek Red Sticks in Alabama into Florida. Driven by a fear of the free and growing black communities under Seminole auspices, Jackson and other whites sought to wipe these people out. They had other goals, too, including forcing Spain to accept American expansion into East and West Florida and pushing the Creek Indian renegades (the Seminole) out.

John Horse seems to have been a child on the Suwannee River in northern Florida when Jackson appeared and burned the black and Indian villages. Later John appears on Florida's western coast around Tampa Bay at around 14 years of age where he is documented as trying to cheat the local army commander over some turtles. From these creatures, called gophers by the locals, he took his lifelong nickname, Gopher John. The story of the Black Seminole follows John's career as he came to the fore in the second year of the Second Seminole War (which lasted for seven years), becoming an important sub-chief and leader of the Seminole-affiliated blacks.

Taking part in many of the major battles, he is first documented in a fight at Okeechobee though he may have been present earlier at Dade's Massacre, the Battle of the Withlacoochee, of Camp Izard and of the Great Wahoo Swamp. In the fighting, the American military soon realized that the black fighters, though fewer, were fiercer antagonists in many ways than the Seminole warriors, no doubt because they had more to lose. While the whites were mainly interested in driving out the Indians, relocating them to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, they were keen to use the war with the Seminole as a pretext to capture blacks for re-enslavement since the new republic had banned importation of new slaves from abroad.

John Horse honed his tracking and fighting skills in that war but was finally convinced of the futility of the effort and was among those blacks who decided to take a chance on the promises of then U.S. Army general in charge, Thomas S. Jesup, that blacks who freely surrendered would not be re-enslaved but sent with the Seminole to the West. Unfortunately Jesup, whatever his original intentions, soon came under pressure by the white population of Florida to allow re-enslavement of many of the blacks. When this became known, John Horse and various Seminole leaders raided and freed some 700 Indians and blacks who had voluntarily surrendered and were awaiting transfer to the West near Fort Brooke in Tampa.

Jesup seems never to have gotten over this loss and repeatedly thereafter used trickery and deceit to capture and imprison the Indian leaders though he continued to hold out the promise of freedom to their black allies in order to wean this group away. John was one of the few remaining black leaders by 1837 (the war had begun in 1835) still free and actively resisting and was finally persuaded to accept Jesup's terms. Thereafter he was sent, with others, to Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma. There the Seminole blacks found they had new problems for the Creek were already there and the Creek wanted to reassert control over the Seminole who had originally been part of their polity. But the Creek had adopted the institution of chattel slavery from the whites and insisted that the blacks with the Seminole had to be re-enslaved.

John Horse spent some time back in Florida working as a scout for the Army there against his old allies and eventually was instrumental in convincing many of them to come in and accept deportation, too. But when John was ultimately obliged to return to Indian Territory in the West, he found a situation that was untenable for the blacks. John, who was half Seminole himself and had papers freeing him issued by the U.S. Army leader he served, General Worth, as well as freedom from the Seminole tribal council, could have stayed on without fear while the other blacks were forced back into slavery. But he refused to do so and advocated strongly to see that Jesup's decree was fulfilled by the American government. Jesup, to his credit, did the same. But the slave interests in the region, including planters and slavers in nearby Arkansas, would not abide a community of free blacks so close by. More, many of them coveted title to the Seminole blacks.

When the U.S. government refused to sustain Jesup's decree and, instead, decided to force the black Seminole back into servitude, John found an ingenious way to save many of his people. Allying with the Seminole chief Wildcat, an old ally from the Florida war, he took a contingent of blacks and Indians in a dash across Texas to freedom in Mexico. Pursued by Creek warriors determined to re-enslave them, Arkansas slavers, and hounded by Texas Rangers who supported the slavers, attacked by Commanche intent on preventing their crossing the Rio Grande to take up arms in defense of Mexico's borders, John's and Wildcat's combined people managed a successful exodus, crossing the Rio Grande in the dead of night on make shift rafts -- just ahead of the Texas Rangers.

In Mexico John Horse and Wildcat proved a daunting team though Wildcat died early on in a smallpox epidemic and John became the revered leader of the "Mascogos" (as the Mexicans called the black Seminole). Through a tumultuous career, he led and defended his people. This book tells that story as it closely follows the battles and struggles of this forgotten American hero, John Horse, a man who risked his own life and freedom many times to defend the lives and freedom of others.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga
and A Raft on the River

As a descendant of Florida's Apalachicola Indians removed to Texas in 1834, I know the Black Seminole as my kin. Porter's narrative parallels our oral tradition and enhances it with photos and maps. Facts presented are well researched and documented with scholarly precision. Historic accuracy is near flawless. Language of the text is readable and the style captivating. No dry history here! Porter brings this forgotten segment of Florida's mixed blood Seminoles to life in seventeen easy chapters. Like a piece of tender, seasoned vinson, it leaves the reader filled but wanting more. No worse injustice could be done to Professor Porter that compare The Black Seminoles to another text. The power of the Porter pen has no peer. Without reservation, Porter's text is a unique gift to all of us. sixwomen@nettally.com

This is a classic. Every serious historian of African Americans needs to have this book. I am a descendant of these people and much of what is in the book confirmed what I have been told since I was a boy. Thanks to those tireless warriors who coompleted this work for without them, it would have remained hidden away.

This account of a people dedicated to freedom is a must read.

I didn't even know what the heck "entrepreneurship" meant before I read this book. It's kind of a long word and I don't have a very good, like, vocabulary. Geez, I even had to look at the title to see how to spell it here.

See, I didn't learn how to read until I was about 10 years old. I was always the "dumb one", you know? So as soon as I could muster up the courage, I skeedadled to South Carolina because I "fit in" here. The real reason I even bought this book is because when somebody saw me carrying it around, they knew that I had got some learnin. It's a big book, and if you want to impress your co-workers, I highly suggest that you carry it around with you and throw around the word, "entrepreurship" a lot. So as you can tell, this is a good book to buy. The end.

When I first sat down to read this book, I was pretty sure I would fall asleep within seconds of starting it. How do I know this: I always fall asleep when I read books about entrepreneurship and I also have a case of narcolepsy. This being said; I was pleasantly suprised that I read it cover to cover in just one setting. I was like "Dizang" (Of course, I speak facetiously. I actually said "Wow".) There is so much about the field of entrepreneurship that I did not know. Who knew SME stood for "small and moderate sized enterprises". Let me tell you, I do now. Little nuggets of wisdom such as this one await to be mined from this book with ease and without the use of nitro, pick axe, or migrant workers.

The only bad portion of the book was that there was no article concerning the term "entrepreneurship". I think it would have been nice to have seen the orgins of the word and how it relates to the current state of the field. I would also like to see why no entrepreneur has entrepreneured a short word for entrepreneurship. I think there is money to made in this field for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit. Let us face it the word is just to long to use that often. I make the following suggestions: money-makership, bill-bankership, and ching-chingship.

I agree with all the statements of Colonel Alan about the quality of this book. Che Sara, Sara. Viva Entrepreneurship.

I have been making excessive use of "The Blackwell Handbook of Entrepreneurship" of late. I have to say, this is the finest handbook of entrepreneurship I have ever come across. I am a consummate student of entrepreneurship and I have often grappled with the trouble of carrying four, five, sometimes even ten books on the subject with me at one time. My back was aching and my arms were tired. Now that I have discovered "The Blackwell Handbook of Entrepreneurship", this is no longer a problem - all the entrepreneurship I need in one convenient package! Marvelous!

They are all here: Dennis De's "SME Policy in Europe", Barley and Stockley's "Entrepreneurial Teams and Venture Growth" , Bengt Johannisson's "Networking and Entrepreneurial Growth", and of course the all time favorite, "Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in the Study of Firm Growth" by Per Davidsson and Johan Wiklund! In other words, all the modern classics that the modern innovator needs.

Because I feel so strongly about "The Blackwell Handbook of Entrepreneurship", I wish to lend it my strongest endorsement. It has proved to be a tremendous help for me in my research. Kudos! Bravo! Good Show! Amore! Hooray! Right On! Je Temme! Yo La Tengo! Encore!

Hagan is great. once you read her you will be like me and turn into a serious addict. her words are mesmerizing and captivating. give this a try and you wont regret the choice or the cost. also read savings

Hogan has tapped into her ancestrial history and brought to light the importance of connection back to nature and how much we need it in our lives.

Hogan takes her readers through history and rewrites/transforms the mythology of our beginnings. In short it seems that Hogan says Nature was here before man and can live without man, man however, cannot live without nature and now, with the destruction that man has caused and continues to cause to nature, we are dependant upon each other to survive. It is our job, mans, to correct our errors, that we may all continue to live in the centuries to come, that our children's children may enjoy the beauty and wonder of towering trees, mysterious animals, and colorful flowers, along with the flowing waters of rivers, lakes and the ocean at large.

Hogan is amazing in her works, a must read for any reader. With her works, the possibilities are endless.

Loss, redemption, ruptures and healings. From the roots of a native perspective, Hogan chants vivid stories in poems that illuminate and heal. With true magic, she opens us to greater depth and vision through the power of words that haunt and whisper and eventually compel us to change. Raise yourself up and read this collection.

This is probly the best non-fiction book I've ever read. it's packed with information and the illustraitions are beautiful. In the back of the book, there's a "glossary of owls" with short essays of a few types of owls, containing their size, call, latin name, what they eat, etc. This book is definitly a must-have.

The pictures are amazing and they have a page for many of the different owls. Each picture is filled with detail and the author gives lots of information. If you have a research project due on owls this is the book to get.

This is a great, easy to understand, thorough book on North American Owls. I have worked rehabilitating owls and in doing educational programs with non-releaseable owls for five years. I'm using this book as an educational tool, I have bought copies to share with other wildlife rehabilitators. If you love owls and want to learn more about them, this is a great source of knowledge, the art work is beautiful the text covers just about everything that a person could think to ask. Dianna Sue Bryant

I got some strange looks while reading this book on the subway, because I was laughing out loud. The writing is so smart and funny. It really rings true. I can think of examples of every bird/boy in the book. I am going to buy a copy of this book for all of my single friends! I love it.

Girls: If you're like me, "normal" dating guides leave you feeling nauseous. This tongue-in-cheek guide finally treats dating (or "mating") with the levity it deserves. Wonder which bird you're nesting with? Want to seek out your dream bird in his natural habitat? Whether you're dating or in a serious relationship, finding out which bird you're naturally attracted to--or identifying the one you're with--will help you avoid ruffled feathers. After reading "Boys of a Feather," I discovered that I'm continually pursuing a swan but what I really should be after is an eagle. Now when I meet a guy I can't help but try and determine which species of bird he is, which if you think about it, makes the whole process that much more fun. It's kind of like picturing your date in his Calvins. Whether or not you subscribe to Amy and Meg's theory, this book is a hoot.

This book is a sensational read. Very indepth, very interesting and easy to understand. Amy did a fabulous job on this and I want my copy signed. This is a nationally known writer and reporter for a very distinguished publication and I can see she used all of her learned skills to make this book well worth buying.

Man, I love anything with crazy visions in the sky - particularly the first chapter of the Biblical book Ezekiel - but the vision in this book is a neat thing to read about too. I just don't get why the buffalo was referenced at the end. Must be a Native American custom to end all stories with some mentioning of a buffalo.

I'm sorry to say I still like non-sacred dogs more than sacred dogs, but I have a very good reason for doing so. Sacred dogs are much more expensive.

I loved this book when I was little, and I still love it now. It's great to see that it's still around. It's a wonderful story with even better illustrations for children and adults.

Children and adults will enjoy the colorful illustrations and tale of how the Native Americans acquired the horse. Lovely!

Soennichsen has brought Mr. Bretz alive. The other excellent books about Bretz talk in detail about what he did, but the author completes the circle. Even if this is your first book about Bretz, you will come away with a good understanding of Bretz's work.

I heartily recommend this book.

Bob Bushnell

[[ASIN:1570615055 Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood]This is a wonderfully written story that brings an area, a story and a man vividly to life! I looked forward to this book because I had really enjoyed Soennichsen's last work, and he did not disappoint!

Author Soennichsen brings to this work both the science of a significant geologic event and his considerable skills as a biographer. The result is a captivating account of J. Harlan Bretz's lifelong determination to convince a doubting scientific establishment that one of the postulates of their field was in error - that the earth's physical condiditon today could result at least in part from a catclysmic event, rather than only from predictable slow processes. While I knew the story of the event well from other readings (particularly David Alt), Soennichsen brought to me the character of the man who withstood the barbs and arrows of doubt and lived to see vindication.

It has been over ten years already since this anthology was first published, but the writings, photos, art, and interviews contained within it are still as stimulating, inspiring and necessary as when Behar's beautifully edited book first came out. Despite what was hoped for in the mid-90's, relations between Cuba and the United States have worsened and it seems that the possibility for dialogue between the two countries has narrowed even further. But at least we have the dialogue that Behar has so elegantly revealed in this volume.
Bridges to Cuba presents a diversity of perspectives in an attempt to piece back together the fragments of what politics and exile have divided. An excellent interview with poet Nancy Morejon succinctly summarizes this project. Morejon says, "the miracle that we could hold a conversation. That we could confront each other. Without imposing exile as a precondition, and without us imposing the precondition of being revolutionary islanders... it was only through [Cuban] culture that we could establish those links, recognize each other" (134).
The conversations are physical, between Cubans on the island and exiled Cubans, as well as intertextual. Fundamentally, however, this book converses with the reader, challenging his or her notions of the Cuba that resides in the popular imagination. Until the embargo is lifted, this book is the closest the average American reader can get to Cuba.

I had the pleasure of being a student of Ms. Behar and she is a wonderful woman. It's no surprise that her book is as informative and exciting as the class. I only wish I had asked her to sign it...

Bridges to Cuba is a collection of art, poetry, personal essays, and fiction written by Cubans on both sides of the straits of Florida.

A magnificent attempt to bring together all who are Cuban by birth, to share the complexities of what it has been like to be separated these many years. The submissions in this book capture magnificently the diversity of experiences, thoughts, emotions and conflicts caused by the separation of Cubans from each other, and for many, from the land of their birth. Having been born in Cuba and having lived in the U.S. for the last forty years, the contributions in this book spoke personally to me in a way that nothing I have ever read before has done. But the beauty of this book and the gift Behar has given, is to present the challenges and emotional depth of separation that all us feel in our lives. Each contribution gives us a different perspective, a unique view of the subject, and a deeper understanding of what it is like to be separated from that and those which we love.

Ruth, thank you.

This was an excellent book! It is a vivid, comprehensive and sweeping biography of a most important and influential man of the early American West. At the age of twenty four, Thomas Fitzpatrick started out with Ashley's expedition of 1823 as a fur trapper going up the Missouri River. The following year he discovered South Pass, then was part owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. After the fur trade declined, he guided the first wagon train west over the Oregon Trail, then acted as guide to Fremont, Kearny and Abert on their expeditions. Later,he was appointed as an Indian Agent for the government and in this position he was most significant in facilitating relations with the Plains Indians. Leroy Hafen's writing is to be commended. He was an excellent author/historian. This is an easy book to read, and there is so much history to this remarkable man, Thomas Fitzpatrick.

This book is the result of a historian's dissertation on this little known now, but once well-known figure in the expansion of the west. Fitzpatrick discovered the Southern Pass, mentored Kit Carson, and is buried in the Congressional Cemetary in Washington DC. I'm not a fan of historical novels, or much of a student of history. But, this book described the way of life of the great western explorers of the 19th century in fascinating detail. Chock full of facts that I never learned in school history, this book sheds light on a poorly represented but important part of US history by tracing Fitzpatrick's life as reconstructed from historical documents and interviews with surviving ancestors. I highly recommend this book.

Most historians of the fur trade period of the old West regard Thomas Fitzpatrick as perhaps the greatest of all the Mountain Men, certainly among the top three or four along with Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger, or perhaps Joseph Walker or Kit Carson. Hafen thinks of him as almost a god and writes glowingly of his exploits and character.

Fitzpatrick was born in Ireland (quite a few Mountain Men came from Irish or Scots-Irish descent) in 1799. He came to America by the age of 17 and was a member of Ashley's first venture up the Missouri in 1823. As a trapper he led parties into every region of the Rocky Mountain west, returning frequently at the end of the trapping season to St. Louis with that year's catch, only to return again a short time later with the supply trains for the designated rendezvous. He was owner for a while of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, which he later sold to the American Fur Company. When the fur trade fell victim to a change in hat styles, Fitzpatrick became a guide for emigrant wagon trains and in the trade that existed along the Santa Fe Trail. He injured his hand (so the story goes, Fitzpatrick never gave a full account himself) in an encounter with the Blackfeet in 1836, and it was by the name Broken Hand that the Indians ever after called him. In 1843 he was guide with Fremont on his second expedition to Oregon and California, and guided Kearny to Socorro, NM, at the beginning of the Mexican War the following year. He became Indian Agent for the Central Plains tribes and organized many councils with them (including the famous Ft. Laramie council of 1851). He died in Washington, DC, there on Indian affairs business, in 1854.

Leroy Hafen was one of the greatest of the "old school" historical writers of the old West. He was an "on sight" researcher, tramping the same ground his subjects did, seeing what they saw. His footnotes, which often identify locations of vague references found in trapper journals or clarify and correct old diary entries, are often as fascinating as the text itself. He is a thorough and careful historian; nothing gets by him without the greatest of scrutiny. His admiration for Fitzpatrick comes through loud and clear: he calls him "an epic figure - unique and incomparable." Hafen is out of the old school of narrative historians (Parkman and Lossing come to mind), and he is a joy to read. History is never so enjoyable as in the hands of these writers. It's an excellent book, informative and entertaining. Highly recommended.

Don't be fooled by the first part of the title; for this book is really about Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto. Pritchett studies Brownsville in details, but never forgets to see the bigger picture, which should be of interest for any historian or social scientist. Pritchett is very good at giving you the facts, the analysis and the feelings as well. This book is not just about a ghetto in Brooklyn, it is indeed about urban change and inequality.

As someone who lived not far from Brownsville in the 1950s and early '60s, I can say this is an exceptionally accurate book. It is well-written and is the best attempt I've seen yet at explaining the phenomenon of the changing urban neighborhood. Not only does Pritchett provide many well-reserached, well-thought-out answers but, just as important, he raises insightful, penetrating questions. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American urban history, particularly as it relates to New York City.

New Yorkers see constant small changes in their city, and the cumulative effect of those changes can remake the character and composition of a neighborhood almost overnight. That is what happened in Brownsville during the late 1950s and early 1960s. What had been an entirely Jewish neighborhood of sidewalk synagogues and old-world customs became an entirely black and Latino neighborhood. Pritchett captures that period of change and the various players -- community activists, business interests, government agencies and politicians -- masterfully. He tells a poignant story of idealistic neighborhood leaders who fought for integrated public housing to meet the needs of their community and were instead given massive projects built to house the city's poor who had been displaced by urban renewal. This is a great book for anyone interested in New York or urban history generally.