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5 comments about The Red-Eye Fever.

1. There is something in the cadence of the storytelling of The Red-Eye Fever so directly descended from the pulp novel that it took me by surprise to discover that this wonderfully crafted book was, in fact, a memoir. What leaps off the page aren't the reminiscences of a retired school marm from upstate New York, but more the flexing prose of an erstwhile Hemingway or an underdistributed Edgar Rice Burroughs.

   Simply stated, The Red-Eye Fever is a well-spun and well-muscled adventure. Its two-fisted prose provides a refreshing respite from the solipsistic meanderings that so often characterize this genre; its cinematic sense of structure plays neatly against its historical backdrop. If you're tired of the current crop of wan contemporary fiction, The Red-Eye Fever may be exactly what you are craving.




2. Ms. Dallemagne-Cookson's latgest book chronicles her amazing experiences in the Belgian Congo just prior to its independence in 1960. As a young American woman sent to the Congo on a Foreign Service assignment, she encounters many extraordinary people, including a refugee from World War II committed to crocodile hunting. She joins him and becomes part of the team that ultimately captures and kills El Diablo, a huge crocodile who has been menacing the area for many years. Her descriptions of this hunt and other subsequent hunts are truly fascinating. The reader is literally spellbound! The accompanying photographs provide further realism. The author also touches upon her personal story, relating how she meets her future husband and moves on to the next phase of her remarkable life. We owe Ms. Dallemagne-Cookson a debt of gratitude for sharing her unforgettable story with us. A must read for people of all ages!



3. Ms. Dallemagne-Cookson's newest book chronicles her amazing experiences in the Belgian Congo just prior to its independence in 1960. As a young American woman sent to the Congo on a Foreign Service assignment she encounters many extraordinary people, including a refugee from World War II committed to crocodile hunting. She joins him and becomes part of the team that ultimately captures and kills El Diablo, a huge crocodile who has been menacing the area for many years. Her descriptions of this hunt and other subsequent hunts are truly fascinating. The reader is literally spellbound! The accompanying photographs provide further realism. The author also touches upon her personal story, relating how she meets her future husband and moves on to the next phase of her remarkable life. We owe Ms. Dallemagne-Cookson a debt of gratitude for sharing her unforgettable story with us. A must read for people of all ages!



4. The Red Eye Fever

   Elise Dallemagne

   This is a well-crafted, true-life adventure story. Read it and be transported to the Belgian Congo in the 1950's, where a nice young American girl gets herself invited to go crocodile hunting. Although she has never killed an animal in her life, she finds herself having to pull the trigger on a huge crocodile that has terrorized the region for years. The story is fresh and convincing because it was written from notes taken at the time. The accompanying photographs, which the author almost lost, are priceless records of the country and the people.




5. Dallemagne's new book about the Belgian Congo rings true in every detail, and particularly fascinating are the many full-page photographs that are all through the book. I especially appreciated the colonial map of the Congo, nearly impossible to find today.
   Her descriptions of the Europeans and Americans in Africa are disheartening in their accuracy. These empirialists didn't have a clue how to assist the Congolese into democratic self-governing, and we all know the tragic result. Her adventure down river to slay the Dragon of the Kwango is a "thumping good read," and could even be seen as metaphor.
   As in all her books, the characters are utterly believable, and it is almost heartbreaking to read of the instant in time when she is told to turn Patrice Lumumba away from the American Diplomatic offices -- one of those forks in world history when things would have been vastly different if the other road had been taken. If you want to know what went wrong in our relations with the whole continent, this eye-witness account will give some insight into this sad era of the late 1950s. In addition to all that, it's a fast-paced drama with all the elements you need for an entertaining winter evening. Recommended read!

No comments about Just Dad: Highlights of the pioneer days in the middle west, 1867-1959 : collection of letters and writings.

5 comments about Gittin' Western: A True Adventure of Spirit, Mind, and Body.

1. Like the story of Jeremiah Johnson, this real life mountain man's story will capture your imagination and heart. Duanne, his family, and his "plenty woman" live the dream that many of us can only ponder. Great read!



2. Gittin' Western by Duane Wiltse is the inspiring and gripping story of one man's struggle in pursuit of his life's dream to establish a big game hunting business. Having moved from Michigan to the frontier of the Wyoming and western American Rocky Mountains, Gittin' Western tells of Wiltse's experiences with runaway horses and mules, forest fires, the bureaucratic constraints of the government, bear attacks, the assistance of New Mexico Indians, the death of his wife, and so much more. An engaging autobiography. Gittin' Western is very highly recommended as an entertaining memoir for readers with a interest in the candid story of a western life.



3. Gittin' Western describes a life style rapidly disappearing from America's West and ties directly to our western heritage. Very entertaining and enlightening read. Writing is tight, visual & packed full with honest emotion. Couldn't help but to laugh & cry thruout. When the book ended, I wanted more.
   Duane Wiltse has created a rare wonderful story you shouldn't miss.
   
   Don't think twice about buying this book.



4. A wonderful engrossing story about life in the west, told as if you were there, sharing the campfire with Duane and his compatriots. He gives personal as well a philosophical insights to his experiences, suggesting life as it used to be--and still is. I've recommended this to many people, several of whom have used it for their book clubs. A great read!



5. I wanted to finish the book the first night I started reading it but instead I strung it out over a week so I could look forward to reading more each day. Duane's spirit of adventure struck a chord in me and will inspire anyone who loves the mountains and the wild west and who has dreams and a desire to follow them. His honesty, wit and vulnerablity made for a very entertaining story. I laughed and I cried and I was sad to finish the book. Thanks Duane for sharing your life with us and good ride cowboy, good ride. Chris Nolt, Bozeman, Montana.

2 comments about On The Upper Missouri: The Journal Of Rudolph Friederich Kurz, 1851-1852.

1. Carla Kelly has done a fine job of editing this classic diary (first published by the Smithsonian in 1937) by highlighting Kurz's commentary on the Upper Missouri fur trade rather than his ruminations on art and thus making it feasible for a university press to issue an abridged version.
   
   Kurz came to the Upper Missouri as romantic, a believer in the superiority of wilderness and the noble savage over Euro-American cities and civilization. While Kurz never specifically repudiates this view, the notion fades from the journal during his comparatively brief stay in what today is western North Dakota. Certainly there is no romanticism in Kurz's description of the fur traders and their Indian clients. No modern author could publish with a university press such a meticulous portrait of native Americans as lazy, violent, thievish, superstitious, and abusers of their women and children. That's one advantage of Kurz: you can avoid political correctness and read the account of someone who was there.
   
   Kelly has also provided a useful index and 93 plates of Kurz's drawings. Kurz was a careful observer but not a great artist. In fact, if Kurz's Indian subjects--especially the women--were decked out in European clothing and hair styles, most of them would look right at home in his native Bern.



2. This journal, last published some years ago, has now been republished with the editor, Carla Kelly, removing, apparently, the philosophy and ramblings of Kurz. What remains is that portion of his journal that sticks to the subject of the Native Americans and the interaction of the "white man" in the 1800's. It is just one more piece to be added to the mosaic of the American West in the Upper Missouri. As diaries go, it's quite bland; it's simply a day-by-day description of life that has become fairly familiar through other books covering the same time and place, particularly Denig's "Five Tribes of the Upper Missouri." If you have read Denig's, Kurz's journal does not add much. However, Kurz does provide the romantic, softer, more idealistic views to counter the rougher, businesslike realities Denig had to face. The editor, Carla Kelly, would do well to publish a sequel to this journal in the form of a book with chapters of the various subjects Kurz spoke to, such as Indian women, his challenges with painting in the "wild West," the use of tobacco, Indian culture, etc. The only problem is that most of this is now well documented and she would have to be a very good writer to attract enough interest to make the effort worthwhile.

No comments about Christopher Columbus: His Life And His Work.

No comments about Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.

No comments about Your Fathers the Ghosts: Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Scotland.

No comments about Death Valley in '49: An Important Chapter of California Pioneer History.