Kansas Books

This book documents the friendship and political careers of two of the Confederacy's most important statesmen. Davis does a nice job of providing historical detail while also weaving a readable story. However, at times, the prose is too informal and almost needlessly dramatic. Moreover, much of the history is quite derivative, as I learned very little new information about the men in question or the political tenets of the Confederacy. His previous book, "A Government of Our Own," is a much better historical treatment.

Davis has written many books and this is one of his better. Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens are both important figures in the Confederacy and in American political history of the ante-bellum period. The book points out the intimacy of these two and gives an insight into the background of the Confederacy. It should not replace a biography of either of these two statesmen.

Toombs and Stephen examplify the problems within the Confederate
government. These incredibly close friends of the strong Georgia delegation were powerful national political figures whose bitterness over personal issues, Toombs, and Stephens' strict constitutional views undermined the Davis administration. Stephens never seriously worked with the dominating Davis and was later opposed to the administration over constitutional issues in the face of bigger war emergencies. Toombs loses the opportunity to become the first President by his bellicose enthusiams for the office coupled with drink which lowers his place in the new government and raises Stephens' star. Excellent description of both men including Toombs rise as Secretary of State, his anti-Davis stance and his mercurial and short military career. The author also covers the end of the era of both men including Stephens' attempts to rewite history in a light more favorable to him then his actions were in reality. These two powerful men and closest of friends could not see the big picture of the war seeking their narrow views in spite of the war effort. Together with Governor Brown of Georgia, they represented a crisis of independence within the Confederacy that no doubt contributed to the fall of the Confederate government.

What a delightful little book! And frankly, I don't often use the term "delightful" in a book review. *The Union That Shaped the Confederacy* is a swiftly-paced, lightly written work that details the friendship of a pair of Georgians - Robert Toombs and "Little Alec," Alexander Stephens.

It is very important to know exactly what you are not getting with this book. You will not get a standard biographical treatment of Stephens and Toombs, and author Davis makes this abundantly clear from the outset. You will not receive great insights into the minds and thinking of these two men, but will come to appreciate the antebellum, war-time, and post-bellum periods of American history as these two men saw it.

William C. Davis does not attempt to make his subjects either heroes or villains on the Confederacy's stage. They were what they were - friends who for the most part held similar political beliefs, worked for the same ends, and became, as the war progressed, more and more bitterly opposed to the administration of Jefferson F. Davis.

Because of the nature of the work, the reader receives a slice of Civil War-era history from a perspective he or she would not likely get. Along the way, one receives insights into the functioning (and dysfunction) of the Confederacy's Executive Branch, as well as the building of the "loyal opposition" to Davis's administration. We see the strengths and weaknesses of these two prominent Georgians, as they struggled to establish a new nation out of the old.

Davis's writing style is loose and fast, and almost reads as if a good friend is telling a story of another pair of friends. To some, this may be distracting, but I found it to be just part of the story. *The Union That Shaped the Confederacy* can be read quickly, with a great sense of satisfaction. This book comes highly recommended.

Like Larry Berman's No Peace, no honor, The Vietnam War Files did not reveal anything new that has not already been known. For instance, the madman theory...or Nixon's poker face...
it seemed to work all right in the Yom Kippur War! The book is also based on selected documents to support the author's views on the Vietnam War. I own the cd-rom version of the Haldemann diaries and there are also numerous entries that support Nixon and Kissinger's memoirs that have been ignored. The fact that Anthony Summer's tabloid and propaganda book Arogance of Power is treated as a credible source doesn't help the books objectivity either.

Also, the books is obsessed with the percieved Nixon myths (mainly, trying to end the war and prevent the holocaust that he predicted would happen if the U.S. abandoned Vietnam). There are several myths about the war but very few of them have anything to do with Nixon and the war. After all, it seems that the media and historians have forgotten that it was not his war. Nixon was given the difficult task of cleaning up the mess left by JFK and LBJ.

At less than 370 pages, THE VIETNAM WAR FILES / UNCOVERING THE SECRET HISTORY OF NIXON-ERA STRATEGY by Jeffrey Kimball is a small book, compared to the size of the ax which it is attempting to grind on how poorly American policy works in those areas of the world where a quick victory is not in the cards. The longer version of the story, told in NIXON'S VIETNAM WAR (1998) by Jeffrey Kimball attempted to cover the years 1953 to 1973. The events of those years were rather awesome in leading up to the final situation, which is covered in depth in this book, described in the Prologue as carrying the analysis onward "from 1969 to 1975" (p. 3) to show how events conformed to expectations in the way Robert McNamara had expected the odds to be about even already in December, 1965, when considering how the war was going to present even tougher choices down the road.

Those who were most interested in how awful Vietnam turned out as a big step on the road to American hyperpower status will not be surprised that Kimball's epilogue to this book begins with insights on `historical myth' and `mythical tale' from those times before declaring that Nixon's and Kissinger's memoirs "were self-serving, incomplete, and obfuscatory, and they took legal and administrative steps that delayed the release of relevant documentary evidence about their policies, strategies, and motives." (p. 297). There was no good reason to tell Americans that power could make us more hyper than we already had been, but Kimball is good at finding the secrets which show how hyper the drive for American power has become.

I like books which make secret policies a major quest in the historical area, and this one laments the fact that not much has been found yet about Cambodia. History is such a dynamic pursuit, with odd quirks popping out from weird angles, that I doubt any adequate explanation of that bit of secret policy will ever be forthcoming. People who thought that Americans needed to fight in Nam so San Francisco would be safe see that argument fail when it is applied to Cambodia, South Vietnam's only neighbor south of Laos, where a peaceful situation prior to 1970 rapidly turned into a victory for enemies of civilization in any form advanced enough to unleash a massive bombing campaign, as a demonstration of hyperpower capabilities when bombs were dropping like the cards in a game of 52 pick up.

This book is most game-like in its use of card terminology for the Nixon strategy, which even carries over to "Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders had coincidentally decided that it was time to rejoin the world of nations, play the American card against the Soviet Union, and, especially, use the opportunity to get U.S. forces out of Taiwan." (p. 299). That might seem like a bit much for the Chinese to hope for, but a tape on Nam reveals Nixon saying, "Oh, I don't mean to tell, tell Thieu we're getting out in the fall. But it's moot, because we are without question gonna get out . . ." (p. 168). That was from Oval Office Conversation no. 527-16, Nixon, Haldeman, Kissinger, and John Ehrlichman, 9:14-10:12 a.m., June 23, 1971, in which Kissinger said, "Now, our cards, starting now, our cards are going to start falling." (p. 167). Three weeks before, a press conference brought up antiwar sentiment `that American intervention was immoral' (p. 160) and a tape of the following morning, June 2, 1971, reveals that Nixon was "very agitated during the conversation. Pounding his desk at one point, he vowed, . . . He would use his `card' of massive bombing." (p. 161). Since American troops were there, "it is certainly immoral to send Americans abroad and not back them up with American power!" (p. 162). Nixon might be a bit unclear about what actually happened after the French left North Vietnam, but he was worried about allowing "the bloodbath in South Vietnam that they had in North Vietnam where 50,000 of our good Catholic [unclear] of Danang [a city shown on the map facing page 1 along the coast southeast of Quang Tri and Hue in South Vietnam] were murdered, 500,000 were starved to death in slave-labor camps [pounding his desk]." (p. 162). In the next page of the transcript, it is a footnote that describes "Nixon is shouting and pounding his desk, while Kissinger is trying to speak." (p. 163). Like Khrushchev taking off his shoe to pound on a desk at the United Nations, hyperpowers believe in their ability to emphasize what they say when considering options like "We're gonna take out the dikes, we're gonna take out the power plants, we're gonna take out Haiphong, we're gonna level that goddamn country!" (p. 163).

Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of the conversations contained in pages 127-294, from Le Duc Tho's observation "It will take an unlimited time. We don't know when, or whether, it will be done. If it does not work, you will have the choice to remain in Vietnam or leave." (February 21, 1970, p. 129) to "It is a tragic situation. I am deeply troubled by what has happened . . ." (a proposed response on April 3, 1975, p. 294). Nam was unique in being a country in which the United States found itself opposing an established government with a lot of half measures which Nixon didn't want to limit himself to:

KISSINGER: Mr. President, if you had been in office '66, '67--

NIXON: --The war would be over--

KISSINGER: the war would be over, and, and, they'd be fewer casualties--
(p. 162). In '67, even General Westmoreland thought we were winning, but he was never sure the war was over. As far as policy goes, Nam is like an intelligence test that never quits for people looking for vicious evidence of American cruelty. Even Osama knows about Nam.

Much of this book is predicated on the newly released Nixon tapes; thus, it offers many new insights. However, on page 20, the author implies that the first draft lottery was held in 1971. The first draft lottery was held Dec. 1, 1969 and took effect in Jan. 1970.

Kimball's Vietnam War Files is a followup book to his award-winning Nixon's Vietnam War (1998). Both books break new ground on the history of the Nixon-Kissinger phase of the Vietnam War inasmuch as they both draw on a treasure trove of declassified documents from both sides of the conflict, clarify controversies about Nixon-Kissinger strategy, and reveal new information about the Nixon administration's handling of the war and about Communist Vietnamese strategy. The Vietnam War Files is briefer than Nixon's Vietnam War, but it includes numerous additional documents that were declassified between 1998 and 2004. Many of these documents consist of Kimball's own transcriptions of conversations between Nixon and Kissinger in the Oval Office about key strategies and decisions. There is new information about Nixon's highly secret nuclear alert of 1969, the Madman Theory, détente with the Soviet Union, the opening to China, and many other issues, including the Nixon-Kissinger decent-interval exit strategy. All of the documents in The Vietnam War Files make fascinating reading. More importantly, they demonstrate how solid, smoking-gun evidence (here reproduced in the form of substantial excerpts from paper files and transcribed conversations) can help readers break through the long-standing, politically charged debate about Nixon, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War. This was one of Kimball's purposes in writing the book: to substitute good evidence and sound logic for biased argument. The Vietnam War Files is Kimball's third book about Vietnam. His past writings have also included articles and essays about war and diplomacy. He has also interviewed some of the key policymakers on both sides of the war.

As a huge fan of sports from the 60s and 70s I had very high hopes for this book but was disappointed. The content is very superficial with much much more focus on Chief's trivia than the Chief's history. Their are numerous interesting pictures but the only color one is the one on the cover. Finally, I found the layout of the book awkward to look up the answers to the triva questions. There are tens of pages of trivia with the answers all in the back of the book without the questions repeated; you will spend the majority of your time flipping back and forth trying to match answers with questions.

Want to stump the knower of all Chiefs trivia? This is the book for you! I married a Chiefs fanatic and now I hold the upper hand regarding info. on the greatest team! Make a game of it! Thank you for the fun book Mark! We're all eagerly waiting for your next two!

Want to stump the knower of all Chiefs trivia? This is the book for you! I married a Chiefs fanatic and now I hold the upper hand regarding info. on the greatest team! Make a game of it! Thank you for the fun book Mark! We're all eagerly waiting for your next two!

Fast read, but very disappointing. I can't say that I took anything away from this book that would be helpful except to know that going through with a divorce or separation would hurt my kids. Lots of scripture to digest. Don't buy this new, find someone reselling it at a bargin price.Desperate Wives: Help and Hope for Women Considering Separation or Divorce

Thinking of giving up on your marriage? Author Brenda Clayton knows what it feels like. She's been there, and she talks about it. She is divorced and remarried --- and the second marriage hit the rocks after several years. Finding help for the second marriage became the inspiration for much of this book. No wonder the book shines with real life! This book is honest, gritty, realistic, down-to-earth. It speaks to women who are hurting and tired --- from the perspective of someone who understands it and who has experienced it. Not preachy, not theoretical, just good help. Clayton draws on the Bible, noted marriage authors, and others, but much of her advice comes straight from her own heart.

Dr. David Frisbie The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
Author of 8 books, including Happily Remarried: *Making Decisions Together *Blending Families Successfully* Building a Love That Will Last

Reviewed by Deana Hoover - Reno Gazette Journal (Reno, NV), February 25, 2007

Local 'Desperate Wives' author offers tools and hope. Romance isn't dead. But sometimes it takes a little work. Carson City author Brenda Clayton has written a book called "Desperate Wives: Help and Hope for Women Considering Separation or Divorce." Clayton wrote the book for women who don't know where to turn in their marriages. "If what you're doing isn't working, what else can you try?" Clayton says. Her hope is to give women practical tools to apply in marriage. "Divorce is not always wrong, but 65% of problems are resolvable," she said. Clayton explains that, though a person may feel frustrated, there are tools that can be used. "We have to deal with conflicts in a way that's positive and affirming. In withdrawal, nothing gets solved," she said.

From the publisher:

Desperate Wives speaks to women who have reached a place of mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion in their marriages. By looking to God in the midst of hurt and disappointment, Brenda Clayton offers a way to find healing and restoration to those who find themselves at a critical moment of choice in their married lives. She emphasizes the need to examine one's personal relationship with God, apply scriptural principles to one's life, and pray for one's marriage. She gives solid biblical direction to those in need of guidance in a difficult situation.

Amos Webber maintained a chronicle, a history. He belonged to the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. Membership in this organization provided historian Mick Salvatore with a clue to assess the "Thermometer Book" of Amos Webber, a detailed impersonal chronicle, and to find the history of the man, Amos Webber, a light-skinned African American, a soldier in the 5th Cavalry. Webber was born in 1826 in a small town in Bucks County Pennsylvania. He moved to Philadelphia when a young man and attended the Presbyterian Church. Webber's political activism was nurtured by the organizations to which he belonged. One black Presbyterian minister declared that he would preach the Declaration of Independence until it began to be put into practice. Salvatore writes of abolitionist activities in Philadelphia and festivals, such as the one held to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the West Indies in 1838. Webber underscored the significance of John Brown's activities. Webber enjoyed a niche in society akin to that occupied by the white middle class.

There was a popular interest in meteorology. By the 1830's there were a series of civilian observers organized by leading scientific investigators. Amos Webber had little formal education. His weather book served multiple purposes of weather journal, commentary on natural patterns, and a way to record his observations of the world around him. His weather books included press clippings. Webber's employer went bankrupt and the business closed in 1860. The Webber family moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. The first volume of his chronicle concluded in October 1860. The start of the second volume is a decade later. Webber was employed in a wire mill. Black collective life appeared thin in comparison to Philadelphia. In Worcester the fall of Sumter caused general excitement. In January 1864 Amos Webber reported to Camp Meigs at Readville, Massachusetts for service in Company D, Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry. Webber was rapidly elevated from private to sergeant. In the 1870's Masonic and Odd Fellow Lodges for African Americans were established in Worcester. Webber participated in these in leadership positions. After the Hayes compromise in 1876 Webber never mentioned reconstruction or its demise in his chronicles. Amos Webber died in 1904. His death was reported to the weekly meeting of Post 10 Grand Army of the Republic. Black fraternal organizations sent wreaths. Webber had intense political and moral views. He had been married for fifty two years. His chronicle was largely silent about women. He had inhabited a male world. He understood racism. His beliefs and actions included a persistent demonstration of equality.

It is very interesting to get an insight into a life of a single black man around the turn of the century. But it sure was boring to read. I you are interested in the topic, read it - but make sure you have a pillow near by becuase you will be snoring.

Sometimes one learns more about history by accident, and it tells its own tale reluctantly if we are receptive to listening. Essentially, that is what happened to Dr. Nick Salvatore one day while digging in the archives of the Harvard Library. What he uncovered led him on a journey of discovery that he had not anticipated, but by which he became completely engaged for the next several years. Salvatore, a professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, offers us a biography of a rather reluctant and seemingly unlikely subject, Amos Webber, a free African-American man who lived, worked, and journalled in 19th century New England.
Webber was a keen observer of people, politics, and the African American condition before, during, and after the American Civil War right up until his death in 1904. His penned thoughts on the Reconstruction era offer an important insight into the African American point of view during a seminal period in their journey towards freedom and equality. Through Amos Webber's writings one can sense the optimism, feel the despair and disappointment, and his continued commitment to furthering the causes of personal agency, self-determination, suffrage, equality, and the nurturing of a strong African-American Community. These are the very currents which resonate so strongly throughout his journals and which allow the reader to obtain a more insightful glimpse into the world of Amos Webber and his worldview throughout his life.
Historical biography is a difficult subject to master when the author does not have the benefit of previous scholars' interpretations as a foundation to build upon; much less when the subject of that biography has been dead for over ninety years, has no known family members or contemporaries to interview, and who's only personal affects extant are a sparsely personal, albeit meticulously kept, series of journals with which to begin working. That is precisely what Salvatore accomplished with this work. Because of his background as a social historian Salvatore was predisposed to looking at what lay between the lines; what was unsaid, and adding sufficient social context to make it an important work in the fields of: African American History, Political History, Labor History, and Urban History of the 19th century.
Salvatore succeeds in this endeavor in a way that is both historically informative and personally poignant by offering a thematic continuity to Webber's life, speaking specifically to his life, and on a larger scale to the free, northern, urban, African-American experience en mass. To illustrate his thesis, Salvatore explores such themes as: the individual as a part of the community; urban space and identity in the 19th century; the vantage of a free African-American on the issue of slavery and self-determination; and the role of Institutions and social movements in the African-American community in the 19th century. These thematic vehicles enable the reader to consider the richness and depth of the subject and elicit empathy for what so often has gone unrecognized in the general understanding of 19th century African American history.
To illustrate these varying themes, bringing to life Webber's career as a soldier, citizen and "activist," Salvatore enlists a mélange of additional outside sources such as: census records, demographic studies, newspaper extracts, the discussion of the Abolition movement; regimental histories from the Civil War, church records, and minutes from the meetings of fraternal organizations. All work in concert to aide him in contextualizing the life of his subject in a way that makes Webber's individual journal entries even more poignant than they might otherwise seem. As readers, we are offered an intimate picture of Webber's life and the African American community of Worchester, Massachusetts during the 19th century, by examining the social and political interests of the man and of his community.
Salvatore's style, while at times tersely laden with discussion of the social climate and interests of Amos Webber, none-the-less, offers a very thoroughly constructed, eloquently written, and sensitively handled biography. However, one area of weakness in Salvatore's work, whether it was due to a lack of source material, a lack of interest, or a deliberate oversight, is that there is little discussion devoted to Amos Webber's family relationships, or lack thereof. While Webber did not write about his family in his own journals, neither did Salvatore make an effort to go beyond that to investigate the matter. This reviewer finds that, while every other aspect of Webber's life was given due and thorough attention, the author would have better served his reader by giving some additional information about Webber's extended family. In the 19th century one's relationship with his or her family was a primary focus for every American.
"We've All Got History. ...It's there. You just got to look for it," a quote which Salvatore attributes to Ellen L. Hazard, a descendant of a friend and compatriot of Amos Webber's, is a hauntingly prophetic and poignant comment that encapsulates the very process by which Nick Salvatore approached Amos Webber's life. He took the skeleton of Webber's personal journal and successfully fleshed it out to encompass an entire social-cultural movement, allowing the reader to see the world as Webber himself saw it and adding a background to help better understand the importance of the role of individuals, great and small, during a time that was formative for the African-American community. We've All Got History... is very rich in detail and life, a biography that will stand as an important work in the genre of historical biography.

This book has very detailed information regarding three major POLITICAL blunders that contributed to the collapse of the Diem regime, but omits some of the more important reasons that the American supported Coup eventually ousted him, and led to his and his brother's death.

The Buddhist crisis of 1963 and the constant antagonizing overtures made by his brother, Nhu against the American's, were breezed over, despite them being prominent reasons for America finally giving up on his leadership skills.

This is probably the definitive book on the reign of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Every serious student of the American involvement in Vietnam should find this background on how we got into that mess in the first place well worth reading. It describes Diem's background, character and personality and explains why not only Diem himself but also the vast cultural differences between the Americans and the Vietnamese made for an extremely difficult relationship.

It also has current value as the United States searches for leaders we can work with in parts of the world that are as new to intense American involvement as Vietnam was in the 1950s and 60s. A better understanding of what we did wrong in Vietnam may help us to avoid repeating those same mistakes. My personal opinion, reinforced by this book, is that if we have only a lame horse to bet on then we would be better off not betting in that particular race.

Catton's many examples show how out of touch the Ngo family was with the majority of the Vietnamese people. Diem was an arrogant, opinionated bachelor, a Catholic in a nation that was 93 percent Buddhist. One of his brothers was a Catholic bishop and Catton describes "the sectarian character of the Diem regime." Another brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, served as "Political Counselor"--and enforcer. Catton describes him as the regime's "Rastputin." Nhu's wife was probably the worst female government spokesman since Marie Antoinette. Madame Nhu referred to the suicides of burning bonzes as "barbecues." When I first arrived in Vietnam in 1966 she was still infamous as "The Dragon Lady."

The author expanded what was originally a graduate student paper about the Strategic Hamlet program in 1961-1963 into a doctoral dissertation that was more focused on Diem, his government, and their developing relationship with the Americans. With that background, we should expect excellent documentation and indeed the 203 pages of text are backed up by 59 pages of notes.

However, it is still possible for a nitpicker to find a few gaps. For example, his bibliography includes the U.S. Army's Military History Institute but not its Center of Military History. "The Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group" is mentioned three times but we are not told what it was. My local guide in Plieku in 1999 spoke excellent English because he had spent a year at Michigan State University. (The downside was that it earned him a year in jail after the communist takeover.) What was the Michigan connection? Faced with being dumped by his American allies "Diem won a dramatic reprieve with a military victory over the Binh Xuyen (a mafia type crime organization) at the end of April 1955." How could he win "a military victory" over a bunch of civilian gangsters?

Catton apparently speaks and reads Vietnamese, which undoubtedly provides advantages in research and opens doors for him that are not available to most American authors of books about Vietnam. Even though the English language literature on Vietnam is vast, some of the information he provides from the many referenced books and articles in Vietnamese may well be published here for the first time

Diem continually carped and complained about the type and amount of U.S. aid but resisted doing the things the Americans wanted in return. In Stilwell and the American Experience in China, Barbara Tuchman relates Stilwell's complaints about our government's failure to demand a quid pro quo from our Chinese allies in return for the aid we provided them. We had the same problem in Vietnam. The more we did for them the less the Vietnamese did for themselves. I read Stilwell in the spring of 1972 during my second tour as an advisor to a Vietnamese Army unit in the field. Our failure to demand, and Vietnamese failure to provide, a quid pro quo was still a problem nine years after Philip Catton described this exchange between Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and Diem in 1963:

"`Isn't there some one thing you may think of that is within your capabilities to do and that would favorably impress U.S. opinion[?]" Lodge asked finally. Diem gave the ambassador `a blank look and changed the subject.'"

This is the first book that I have read about this period that really puts the Vietnamese side of this drama in center stage. I happened to serve in Vietnam during a couple of years while Diem's was President and had the advantage of speaking fairly fluent Vietnamese and have always thought that the 'Last Mandarin' image of Diem was quite off base. Catton actually manages to explain 'Personalism' , something that Diem himself had trouble doing to the people of Vietnam. The book does not attempt to whitewash any of Diem's many faults but does show Diem to actually be a modern nationalist who was determined to follow his own own agenda for nation building . It was this determination to follow his own agenda that was the major source of friction with his American backers. This book is a must read for any serious student of the war as it was the overthrow of Diem that really brought about the Americanization of the war.

Like the author, I was brought up a good, little Catholic girl. And like Dorothy, the alter ego of the author, I was even brought up in Kansas. The author indicates in her forward that interviewing and writing about people who act in [adult] films was a journey she needed to take for a number of reasons. She reports that as a result she came out of the experience as a better person and with a new friend, the Wizard of X, aka Rob Everett, aka Eric Edwards. Since I respect Ms. Alexander as a person, as an editor, and as a writer, I felt that I wanted to take this journey along with her, albeit vicariously, through reading her book.

The author interviewed many of the actors and actresses involved in the world of [adult] films, but it was Rob Everett, who appears under the screen name Eric Edwards, with whom she spent most of her time while researching this non-fiction book. It is Rob/Eric whose life the reader follows from his early days to the present. To the author's surprise and relief, she found that Rob and others who make their living by having sex on screen, are for the most part ordinary, everyday people, who for various reasons wandered into a world most of us have never entered. Through reading Ms. Alexander's fascinating account of this world, you'll gain a better understanding of this industry and the people who make it up. And, hopefully like me, you'll find the trip well worth it.

First of all, the book starts off with a very cleverly-coined and certainly attention-drawing title. However, I just wish the author would have helped the reader know Eric Edwards at a broader and more erotic level. There must be interesting details early in his porn life that could be touched upon. He must have a fascinating life than the way it was portrayed in the book. Those are done with everal people in the porn industry. The writer could have synthesized the information from the various interviews and put it in her own words, instead of quoting them verbatim. The focus of the book is on one of the legendary male porn stars named Eric Edwards. At some points, the book loses the focus. I even think the book doesn't do him a service. I expected to know more about his past and present life and career than about the porn industry. It is a pity that she didn't make the best of her opportunity to meet with or interview Eric. For someone who want to know about the inside of the porn industry, this book is an ok read. The Jack Wrangler book is way more fun to read, though.

After reading Ms. Alexander's book, I was surprised to find out the different ways I perceived people in the porno industry vs. those not involved. I really was biased and had no concept of why people were even involved in this industry. Not only is this book informative, I found it easy to read and not something I wanted to put down without a fight. I read the entire book in three days! Thanks for enlightening this reader!

KANSAS QUILTS & QUILTMAKERS sets a new gold standard for the study of American quilts. The writers whose essays make up the book treat the quilts made by Kansans with the respect they deserve. No condesension, no tales of a dreamy dreamy past. Instead, they bring to their studies inquisitive, independent minds and a knowledge of quiltmaking, history, and textiles that permit them to grasp the meanings of the quilts they study.Their conclusions grow out of hard research, not received tradition. The result is a book that should be on the bookshelf of every student of American history, cultural anthropology, material history, women's history, quiltmaking, or textile study.

In its formative years, Kansas was a microcosm of America in the tense years leading up to the American Civil War. Congress had declared its voters would have the right to determine whether the state would come into the union as a slave state or a free state. And so partisans of both sides rushed into Kansas not merely to lay claim to part of its rich soil but also to determine its future and, most believed, the future of the United States. The bloody years of John Brown's massacres were but preludes to the bloodier war that would soon consume the nation.

KANSAS QUILTS is rooted in a deep understanding of this past and of the complex state that grew out of the it. Its writers discover no single unifying principle in the quilts produced by the Kansas Quilt Search. And to their credit, they refuse to invent one.

Looked at from outside, however, one is tempted to observe at work in this fine book certain principles that seem to characterize the quiltmakers whose lives and work are its subject. Neither history nor geography favored the survival of the weak in Kansas. It was not a place where one could easily turn her back to the physical realities of life or get lost in theory. Survival depended on keeping one's eyes open and on learning to make sense of what the eyes revealed, on being able to live in bleakness so profound it sometimes led to suicide, on being able to find redeeming comfort in the ordinary. The writers of KANSAS QUILTS have these gifts. They themselves are pioneers--tough-minded, imaginative scholars who favor fact over myth and who treat with seriousness a subject too often treated with condescension, even by scholars who declare themselves students of "women's history."

It is not surprising, therefore, that the book begins not with an overview, but with the papers of a Kansas woman who estimated that she had made over 300 quilts by her 93rd birthday. In her recording of daily life, a world opens. It is a world where women wash and iron, sew, think, go to church and community meetings, bear and bury children, do business, make homes for families, and exercise their creativity through home arts like quilting.

Aided by an astonishing variety of photographs and lively prose, we who read the book are privileged to enter and understand this complex world.

The photography and selection of quilts is superb. The scholarship is sound, imaginative, and ground-breaking. And who failed to tell the world Kansans could write so interestingly?

Americans are not noted for writing interesting history, but the authors of KANSAS QUILTS AND QUILTMAKERS write interesting history.

I am not a Midwesterner, but if I had to name only 2 quilt books that changed the course of my own study of quilts and quiltmakers--perhaps even my study of women's history, both would be by Kansans--"The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt" by Rose Kretsinger and Carrie Hall and "Kansas Quilts & Quiltmakers" by Barbara Brackman, Jennie Chinn, Gayle Davis, Terry Thompson, Sara Farley, and Nancy Hornback.

Different times, different books. But both knowing what they were talking about and concerned to get it right.

Don't miss this book. It's beautiful and it's true.

While this is a goody history book on the art of quilting, I don't feel the title is a good representation of what is within the book's covers. After hearing and reading about the Kansas Quilt Project of 1986, I was anxious to get my hands on a copy of this book to see a good representative portion of the 13,000 quilts that were registered. What I found was a book with only 50 pictures (give or take a couple because I counted them) that actually had quilts in them. Half of those 50 were not even quilts "discovered" during their project, but quilts already housed in various museums that in my opinion, being a Kansan, have "been seen before". Also, of the pictures taken from the Quilt Project discovery, the majority of them were in black and white. Part of the art of quilts is being able to see their colors, can't do that with this book.

I hoped for a photographic look into the quilts made by our Mothers, Grandmothers, etc of Kansas. The authors stated that there were no unique "Kansas" quilts or quilts that set themselves off with a "Made in Kansas" look to them, so instead they showed a VERY small sample of the quilts they found, lots of pictures of people and things (no quilts) and a lot of conjecture over what ethnic group should actually take credit for bringing the art of quilting to Kansas.

This book was a disappointment to me being the Daughter, Granddaughter, and Great Granddaughter of Kansas quilters. I hoped I would see a wonderful picture book of quilts made by Kansas women. That did not happen.

My site, "America's Quilting History" is is about the whole nation, but I am constanty finding helpful information in this book as I write articles for my site. Even though this book is about Kansas it also tells the story of quilting in middle America. It is a book I have returned to again and again.

Barnes wasn't joking when he entitled this book with the word 'pedant' in it to describe his obsession with things culinary. This text is littered with illustrations of just how particular he is, not just about cooking, but also about accuracy, both in the details of recipes and what impressions he draws from other's works or opinions and how they affect him.

"Of course, this still leaves you faced with preparing 'an excellent dinner' for 'those one is fond of'. Again, listen to Pomaine: `For successful dinner there should never be more than eight people. One should prepare only one good dish.' These are his italics, not mine. Don't they make the heart lift?" (p117)

Barnes injects humour into his preoccupation with food preparation and consumption: its ingredients, how they are sourced, their preparation, their origins and any quirky historical fact associated that might add piquancy.

In this book Julian Barnes excels at two things:

1. Unearthing interesting and slightly obscure facts about people, vegetables and the mundane experiences of maintaining a kitchen.

"But then there is the other drawer - the one where items of sporadic usefulness live, the one where everything is tangled up and furtive, into which you insert a tentative hand, not knowing where sharp edges lurk. When did I last empty it? Ten years ago?" (p121-122)

2. Analysing ideas and reflecting wittily on things other than food.

"We might as well suggest that current American military zeal is a consequence of that nation's love of fast food - in which case, an infantryman's widow would probably have a lawsuit against the nearest burger outlet. And if anyone is tempted to believe in an automatic link between protein and aggression, don't forget that Hitler was a vegetarian." (p133-134)

Barnes is an idealist and experiences angst in his desire to reach perfection in the kitchen. Gladly he recognises this and employs self-deprecation, along with sprinkles of culinary history to make this a small but satisfying dish to digest. One small quibble, there are no references to the texts he refers to. It seemed rather ironic after all Barnes' plaints about cooks not revealing all the tricks of their trade in their cookbooks, that he should leave the detail of the sources he refers to out.

Julian Barnes, most well known for his elegant novels dissecting the core human issues: love, death, the role of memory, the perils of desire has a parallel alternative career as a fine essayist. He started out as a journalist, before turning to fiction full time, but still keeps up the shorter form and does it very well. His Letters From London excellently investigate a number of issues roiling around in the early 1990s period in Britain, and this collection takes a wry look at a narrower theme: the travails of the amateur cook.

Barnes turned to cooking relatively late the day. The kitchen only became a location of tense pleasure in his 30s. He is a cook very much in the strict adherence to the recipe line, worrying exactly how large is a 'medium' onion, and what is a 'glug' of olive oil? So not the Jamie Oliver throw it all in and mash it about heartily school. In many respects, this sharp precision parallels his writing style. Neat, light and elegantly balanced. He refuses to cook a squirrel 'you're just a rat with PR' on the grounds that it, well, looks rather like a dead squirrel and indulges in a minor diatribe against Nigel Slater for a recipe of pork chop that doesn't seem to fit in the frying pan. (This essay earned Barnes more letters of complaint than his polemic against the Iraq war, such are the priorities of the British middle classes).

His erstwhile love of France is also there, with an interesting disquisition on the French distaste for root vegetables and a mention of long time food goddess Elizabeth David. The writing, while always witty and stylish, never quite reaches the high essayistic heights Barnes is capable of. The format - popular column in the Guardian newspaper - probably shoehorned each piece into a fairly predictable audience remit. Nevertheless, a fine book to be enjoyed by Barnesophiles and foodies alike.

Originally written as columns for the Guardian, this collection of foodie essays is by turns hilarious and instructive, as in how many hangman's nooses (one to five) to ascribe to a meal that is going bad fast while hungry guests are whooping it up in the living room, and how the relationship between professional and domestic cook is similar to a first-time sexual encounter ("No, I won't do that"). On every page I found something that made me holler "Comrade!" I have so been everywhere this guy has been in the kitchen.

In response to one of the criticisms of this book, it should be noted that it is an adaptation of a Ph.D. dissertation, so it does read a little more difficult than most popular literature. I was a fellow student with Wyatt Evans and remember some of the process he went through in his years of research. His final conclusions are based upon meticulous research under the direction of a very demanding graduate school dissertation committee.
So, I believe the fact that it reads a little bit difficult is a significant point in its favor. It is a thorough work, the conclusions of which are not to be lightly pushed aside.

May 25, 2005
Another attempt at being kept on; was deleted (accidentally)

Many books have been written about John Wilkes Booth's participation in the Lincoln death. It is sad that so much blame was put on his shoulders.

I have been interested in Lincoln's assassination for over twenty years, mainly because they hanged Mary Surrat, the first woman to be officially killed in this manner. It was at her boardinghouse where the conspirators met to discuss and plan killing Lincoln and others in his Cabinet.

John Wilkes Booth, from a prominent acting family, was a Confederacy sympathizer. But that in itself does not make him guilty. He was denied his right to a trial. Most of the South were more than a little upset when Lincoln was inaugurated for the second time. They refused to accept him as "our" President. We had Jefferson Davis whose daughter married Zachary Taylor's daughter. I don't believe old Zach was a Rebel.

"Killing Lincoln' as a one-man theatrical presentation, written by Amy Russell, originally premiered in Toronto, Canada. I emphatized with the young actor (who I thought was an old man, as he is such a good actor) who said, "I enjoyed playing off you." I told him the reason he held my complete attention was due to the fact that I had read so much about Lincoln and also sympathized with Booth's reasoning.

Lincoln as it so happens was a Shakespeare fan and enjoyed going to Ford's Theatre. John Wilkes Booth (Brutus) as one of the most promising young Shakespearean actors of his day. Booth considered Lincoln an "American Caesar." He is sometimes called Booth "American Brutus."

He was a very handsome man and, even though he broke his leg in the leap to the stage (instead of running down the back stairs), he eluded capture with the help of a Dr. Mudd for twelve days. He was not given a chance to tell his side and the complex, misleading reasons he did what he did. That took fortitude! He did not act alone! That's a major issue. He was cornered in that barn like an animal and burned (at the stake) by the vigilante cowards.

He was never close to Lincoln as Brutus was to Jesus so the title is deceiving. He was merely a misinformed player who ended up "on his own" after the dasdardly deed. He deserves better than to be called a devil. To some, he was an avenging angel.

I bought this book because of its intriguing cover and title and because I have a fascination, like a lot of readers, with John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin. C. Wyatt Evans' work started out a lot different than the fun, mass audience-oriented book I expected. It reads like the over-analytical, pedantic works my professors forced me to read in grad school. Evans analyzes the long-running myth (both regional and national) that Booth was not fatally shot in a barn by Sergeant Boston Corbett's nervous trigger finger as government authorities claimed but had escaped and lived out his life in various ways depending on the storyteller. The suicide death of painter and drifter David George in 1903 in Enid, Oklahoma propelled the myth. George supposedly claimed he was Booth and his embalmed remains were put on display at various carnivals and exhibits for years. Evans' introduction is extremely pedantic to the point that I had to read very carefully and slowly (and sometimes several times) to follow along. A sample sentence: "Vernacular, counter, marginal, and associated terms serve as keywords in a cultural critical lexicon that employs them in a positive sense to connote the struggle of marginalized groups to preserve their identities in the face of the dominant group's rendition of the past" (p. 15). Much of the introduction reads this way and if it continued as such, I may have given up. Fortunately, Evans drops a lot of the intellectual buzz words and the rest of the book reads more smoothly. The following briefly describes the content per chapter:

Chapter 1 takes a look at the David George story; why he was thought by some to be Booth and how his corpse ended up an attraction. In addition, Evans considers the history of Enid, OK including its famous land "runs." Chapter 2 explores the history of mummy exhibition in the United States and how the "Booth" mummy fits, for example, "Booth" represented the popular (curiosity of the notorious and horrific) and traditional (celebrated dignity) models of mummy displays. (p. 55). In chapter 3, Evans explains the northern origins of the Booth legend with a history of the assassination and press coverage. Chapter 4 shifts to the south and how many southerners regarded the assassination (relief, feigned mourning) and the legend of Booth's escape (a symbol of "white southern unreconstructedness").

Finis Langdon Bates' 1907 book Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth is analyzed in chapter 5. Bates' attempt to document Booth's escape implicated VP Andrew Johnson but was done in a way to appease both North and South ("Booth" expressing regret for his deed). In chapter 6, the legend becomes a national phenomenon. The legend represented pre-modern views which clashed with the current times. He considers Lincoln's transition to national icon (p. 156), as well as Otto Eisenschiml and Izola Forrester's (who claimed to be Booth's granddaughter) contribution to the legend. Clarence True Wilson's historical and religious interpretation of the legend is examined in chapter 7. Wilson, a classic minister of reform who worshipped Lincoln, saw Booth's survival and sad existence as moral retribution for his act. Chapter 8 deals with the legend in contemporary America with the recent work Dark Union (2003) and 1977's book and film The Lincoln Conspiracy. In his conclusion, Evans states that "the legend's great lesson to the present is how subgroups in American culture appropriate deeply symbolic events for harmful purposes" (p. 218).

As a history of the myth of Booth's escape, Evans' book is thorough, insightful and extremely well researched. I think he over-analyzes the legend, however. Sure, many people through history have considered the possibility of Booth's escape and designated meaning to it. It is a curiosity and, back in the day, a political incendiary. A famous actor killing and president during a bloody war between the states with suspicious government reaction, how can this not make for intrigue and conspiracy theories? Evans makes a lot out of this legend to put forth American cultural meaning, but it seems to me that the people most obsessed with the issue are the ones hoping to profit from it either through books or by exhibiting a mummy claimed to be Booth. It is an interesting story, of course, without the analytical stuff. I'm just not convinced it is much more than an intriguing footnote to history.