No comments about The Sad Story of Burton, Speke, and the Nile; or, Was John Hanning Speke a Cad: Looking at the Evidence.

No comments about Vida Del Muy Magnifico Senor Don Cristobal Colon/life of the Magnificant Man Christopher Columbus.

No comments about Around the World - On Expenses.

No comments about Christopher Columbus.

5 comments about F/V Black Sheep.

1. I'm a commercial fisherman.
   This book's not too bad, but mr. Williams seems to be in love with mr. Williams.
   Parts of the book reflect what the life of a fisherman is, while other could only be fiction.
   You're interested to know what kind of men are fishermen?
   Read this book and you'll know what they are not.



2. Mark Willims tales are genuine and heartfelt, giving the reader the ability to hear the cry of the gulls and smell the stench of the gurry as it sits baking on the dock in the summer sun. I gave this to family and friends as a gift, and the comments I've heard range from funny and witty to surreal and amazing. With my hand on my heart I can testify that the reader will be transported into Williams' world.



3. Books have been written about Gloucester,men of the sea,law enforcement and growing up in a blue collar town.This book has a bit of all that thrown in with a combination of imagination and background only this author could generate.Life according to Mark... and there is nothing wrong with that. Recolection married with real time is a great combination with this read!



4. F/V Black Sheep is not like The Perfect Storm and not like The Hungry Ocean and The Lobster Chronicles. This is the story of a guy who grew up on a beach in Gloucester, Massachusetts and became a lobsterman. You can smell the salt water and hear the waves on every page. It starts out when Williams was a rebellious kid working for his father in a fish-packing plant on the waterfront. It takes the reader through his first, formative years into his life working on the Atlantic ocean. It has adventure, humor, an intimate knowledge of the natural world, wisdom, keen observation, and some great, frightening parts.
   
   Williams writes very well. His style is clear, concise and humorous with a poetic sense of the world. There were a few sections, particularly in the fight scenes in the early stories, where there is considerable exaggeration but when you remember they are told from the perspective of a 12 year old, it is understandable. His best story from his early years is Little League, an excellent story about a boy put to the test. Williams' respect and love for his father is genuine, palpable and makes the first half of the book very poignant.
   
   The second half of the book is about his life as a fisherman. While he writes with attention to detail and acute observation about the natural world, his attempts at romance are the weakest parts. The women he has trysts with seem like fantasies, with one interesting exception. Though his girlfriends come off as unbelievable, in one unforgettable story he personifies heroin as a beautiful snake-woman trying to seduce him. This description is so seductive it had me nailed to the page. He is at his best in Fog Birds, The 10:21 Wave, White Squall, and other stories that are both exciting and give a genuine sense of the world he lived in. His story Garand Afternoon is so powerful it left me shaking. I also appreciated The Old Soldier about a World War II veteran he meets. The end of the book is unforgettable.
   
   All in all, I found this a book of high merit by a writer of considerable skill. I hope he will continue to refine his talents and write more.



5. This is a good book about the day to day life of a real New England lobster man. It starts out with some stories about the author's life as a kid growing up in Gloucester. His stories about working for his dad in a fish packing plant and playing baseball are funny and entertaining but the best part is later in the book when he tells stories from his fishing days. I especially liked the ones where he talked about big storms and things that he pulled up in his traps. If you read The Perfect Storm you know about the way they write the names of fishermen who get killed on their boats on the wall so the part at the end where he goes to see the place on the wall where his name would have gone is especially moving. His writing is very clear and clean. I read the whole book in two days so it certainly kept my interest. I never realized how dangerous the lives of lobstermen are. I knew fishermen went way out but some of these stories are scary. Good job.

3 comments about Lost Lion of Empire: The Life of 'Cape-to-Cairo' Grogan.

1. Grogan was the classic empire-building type - arrogant, brave, ruthless and autocratic. Like Colonel Dyer, who won notoriety at Amritsar, Grogan believed in the 'iron fist', the 'strong arm' of the law and the other eupehmisms for the ruthless application of overwhelming force against all those who dared to differ from his ideas of the supreme value of the British Empire.
   Yet even today some reactionaries, like Edward Paice himself, Niall Ferguson and Lawrence James, are swollen with hero-worship of these appalling thugs, and creeps like Blair and Brown tell us that we should admire the Empire.
   Books like this actually tell us quite a lot about why the Empire has gone and show us what a good thing it is that it has gone!



2. A well balanced, excellent read about a great man in a great time who loved both Africa and the African.



3. Parts of this book will appeal to many people. Taken as a whole, however, I'm not sure how many people will find this to be a satisfying "read." The first part of the book deals with Grogan's trek from South Africa to Cairo, which was undertaken to explore the feasability of a transcontinental, albeit South-to-North, railroad route. This portion of the book is filled with lots of hunting, rivers full of crocodiles, cannibals, and tropical disease and fever. This is well-written and nicely paced and will appeal to "armchair adventurers" everywhere. The second part of the book, comprising about two-thirds of the total, deals with Grogan's attempts to turn Kenya into a "going concern" and productive outpost of the British Empire. Within this section, there's lots of political infighting between Grogan, his Kenyan detractors and British bureaucrats on the homefront. Grogan is depicted as farseeing and savvy, whilst his enemies- in and out of government- are depicted as jealous or narrowminded. Although I am not a scholar and, before reading this book, knew nothing of Grogan or the development of Kenya, my impression is that the author may be a bit too close to his subject. Grogan is portrayed as being a bit too perfect- even when he is "pulling a fast one" (my terminology) on his competitors, Mr. Paice can't help admiring his charm and gift for blarney. Even Grogan's penchant for womanizing (which included keeping a mistress in a separate household with their illegitimate child) is pretty much laughed off as the activity of a handsome man who was "over-engined." Grogan's wife, Gertrude, is given high marks for putting up with the shenanigans and maintaining a stiff upper lip. Still, in fairness to Grogan, he had a vision for Kenya and he worked tirelessly, and often while hampered by a lethargic and/or hostile Colonial Office, to develop the economic potential of the country. So, for the reader interested in Kenya, there are some nuggets to be found here. But I think the first part of the book won't hold much appeal for that reader, as the second part may not appeal to the reader expecting a pure adventure tale. Another problem with the book is that we don't ever feel we have a good understanding of the people around Grogan- his wife, children, mistresses, rivals, etc. The book is a bit "Grogan-heavy" because it concentrates almost exclusively on his thoughts and actions. However, despite these criticisms, if you sift through the pages you may find enough interesting material, as I did, to make you feel this book is worth your time.

2 comments about Daniel Boone: An American Life.

1. I blame television. When reading _Daniel Boone: An American Life_ (University Press of Kentucky) by Michael A. Lofaro, I realized that I didn't know anything about Daniel Boone. I thought he wore a coonskin cap and was a contemporary of Davy Crockett, and maybe fought at the Alamo. I discovered at the end of the book that Lofaro blames television, too. Boone's fame to my generation comes from "...Fess Parker playing the lead in _Daniel Boone_, a historical disaster for baby-boomers who still confuse Boone with Crockett" because Parker sequentially played one then the other in the mid-fifties. Lofaro had insight on my own ignorance, and his book is shot through with impressive scholarship that takes Boone, as much as possible, from myth and tall tales (and television-inspired error) and puts him into realistic historical perspective. There is plenty here that is inspiring, and fit for legend-making, and also plenty to show that Daniel Boone had essential trouble in managing to get along with society. And also (_pace_ Davy Crockett), Boone hated coonskin caps.

   He was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, to devout Quakers. His rudimentary schooling shows up in many excerpts from his writings here; for instance, it seems to be true that on an East Tennessee tree he carved the inscription "D. Boon cilled a Bar on tree in the year 1760." Boone did indeed become an accomplished woodsman and hunter, and was always less fit for the life of frontier farming. He had a pattern of reaching out to new lands; he had a wanderlust, to be sure, and encroaching civilization always meant that he had to move to new frontiers to hunt game, but he was always eager to apply the simple solution of moving away when having people live around him was just too complicated. He would be on the move all his life. He fought for the British (along with Washington) in the French and Indian War, and then against the British in the western version of the American Revolution, which consisted mostly of fighting Indians. He had prodigious skill in the outdoors, and there are many stories here of heroism and craftiness. Although he could always win battles against Indians, he could not win against lawyers, and was often in court because of disputed boundaries he had surveyed. He was guileless and always assumed that treating someone honestly would get him honest treatment in return, an assumption that he never seemed to learn was unwarranted.

   Boone was amazed that he became famous. There was a bogus autobiography printed in 1784, that was translated into German and French, and made Boone internationally known. He was painted by the young John James Audubon. James Fennimore Cooper based much of Natty Bumppo on him, and in a note to one of the Leatherstocking Tales said that Boone headed out from Kentucky to Missouri in later life "because he found a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded." Tales of Boone's dry wit became staples. He did indeed, when asked if he had ever gotten lost in the wilderness, reply, "No, I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days." He blazed trails, most notably through the Cumberland Gap, and then was dismayed that they became widened for wagon travel and further encroachment by civilization. Ending up in Missouri, he spent his last years hunting buffalo and trapping beaver. He died at 85, as the nation was pushing further west and the wilds were more speedily declining. Lofaro's informative biography puts the brilliant pioneer and naïve citizen at the center of a complicated and longstanding war between settlers and Indians.




2. This book tells how Dniel showed honesty and cofidince. Everything about Daniel Boone is in this book. If you have a report due on a leader this is want you want. I prefer this book to anyone.

5 comments about The Way of a Ship CD: A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail.

1. The way of a Ship / Terek Lundy
   
   This purchase was a mistake and I am simply unable to start the reading, although I tried.
   I am collecting/reading "the real thing" on the saile era,written by those who were then involved.( Am finding texts in English, Dutch, French & a bit in German - unfortunately, I do not read Swedish/Finnish ).
   Maybe Mr Terek Lundy is an excellent author, but this book is not what I was looking for.
   
   R Grommé



2. The Way of a Ship is a strangely structured book on an interesting topic. Derek Lundy tells a good story, but it is spoiled by the other information interleaved in it.
   
   One of the authors forebear's was a sailor on a square rigger that sailed around Cape Horn. That is what sparked his interest in the story. He describes this as well as some of the research he did for this story. Fortunately these interruptions are short.
   
   He then goes on to interrupt the story with lessons on the economics and history of sea transport at the time of the story. He also describes the social life of the people who made up the crew on these ships and has some comments on the types of ships being built as steam ships over took sailing vessels. There are also interludes of historical information about Joseph Conrad, Richard Henry Dana and Herman Melville.
   
   While they are reasonably well written and are interesting by themselves they just serve to confuse the fiction. They look very much like filler to me. The story that makes up the central theme of the book is a well told sea tale with a sympathetic protagonist. However the story cannot survive being lumped in with all these other distractions. The reader has to be motivated to read yet another sea tale to bother with this one.



3. I find it curious that some readers found this book wanting. I would admit it had its slow times, but over all I was very impressed.
   
   Besides a reasonable story line of the fictional voyage, the author had lots of the sea history of steam vs. sail, rounding the "Horn", navigating, scurvy, etc. I liked it all and appreciated the author's connection with long-lost relatives.
   
   My recommendation: if you like "fictional history" from that era this is a good choice.



4. This is made-up fake stuff by a wanna-be. Why not read the real - try Marryat's "Mr Midshipman Easy", etc. Marryat joined the Royal Navy in 1806 (yes 18) and fought against the French in the Med. He wrote this book in 1836 (yes 18) - it and other sources were used by Forrester to create the Hornblower character. Read this book and compare situations to the early Hornblower actions - like identical.



5. But only about 240 if you remove all of the quotes from Conrad, Dana, Mehlville, etc.
   
   Truly a letdown.

No comments about Road to the Sea: The Story of James B. Eads and the Mississippi River.

No comments about Colonel Richard Irving Dodge: The Life And Times of a Career Army Officer.