No comments about James Habersham: Loyalty, Politics, And Commerce In Colonial Georgia (Wormsloe Foundation Publications).

No comments about Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott.

5 comments about Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.

1. Like every American kid, I grew up knowing the names "Lewis and Clark." But (also, I suspect, like most American kids), I really knew (and cared) very little about their incredible journey, or why it was undertaken. Then, 10 years ago, I stumbled across Dayton Duncan's wonderful Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, and I was hooked.
   
   Duncan's book is a wonderful introduction to the Corps of Discovery (even the name itself is exciting, isn't it?) in that it offers information about the expedition without overwhelming the reader new to the topic, illustrates the text with fine photographs and reproductions, all of which are instructively captioned, contains a number of sideboxes and page-long essays on specializied subjects, and includes several essays from other Lewis and Clark authorities, including Ken Burns, who produced the companion film, and Stephen Ambrose.
   
   Duncan ends the book with an essay, "We procceded on," that is as reflective a meditation on the deep meaning of the Corps of Discovery journey as I've read. It also serves as an excellent preface to another of his books, Out West, a fascinating and entertaining account of his recapitulation of the Corps of Discovery's route in a volkswagon camper.
   
   If you're new to Lewis and Clark, this is the book to read. But it's also pure pleasure for afficionados.



2. The book is good and interesting (especially for someone with very little prior knowledge about the Corps), but the reading is absurd! He (I mean the narrator; the supporting cast is good) is so melodramatic as to be incredibly distracting. GOOFY. Only buy it if you are able to ignore the reader's voice and style; otherwise, order it in print form!



3. I've been looking for the audio version for a long time and found it easily on amazon. You can keep your eyes on the road and still learn something about the the most mindboggling journey in American history.
   It makes me want to follow their trail (by road of course). Fantastic set of CD's



4. This book was so hard to put down! The way the author combines the facts with the actual quotes from the Lewis and Clark journals (complete with spelling errors), the original sketches and descriptions by Lewis and Clark, old pictures and paintings, and the attention to the sequencing (i.e., he walks you straight through the entire journey and makes it flow) really makes this book come alive for me. I highly recommend it!!



5. I enjoyed this book completely...it really gave me a sense of the human experience of the journey, and made me appreciate just what an incredible accomplishment it was. The illustrations really add to the enjoyment of the book, as do the excerpts from the journals of several of the men. I also liked the background information on what goals were actually behind the exploration and how they worked to meet those goals. There's only one reason that I didn't give this book 5 stars, and that's because it lacks a good map to help understand where they were during some of the events described. But that can be found in other works, and this really is a good introducion to Lewis and Clark...it's a relatively easy read but full of interesting facts and adventures.

2 comments about Alias Paine: Lewis Thornton Powell, the Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy.

1. Lewis Paine was a dashing young man in the 19th Century. Why would Booth tempt Lewis Paine into kidnapping Mr. Lincoln? I liked Lewis Paine since I was little. Now that I'm 20 yrs old now, I still dream of him. I know he's dead already. (Don't think I'm insane for this guy.) If Lewis Paine was like he was in the 1860's today, I'll freak out. My husband's name is Lewis but not Powell. I have collected several pics of Powell since I was 12 to 13. I drove my mom & dad crazy about Lewis Paine when I was 9. Hope you like my thoughts about Lewis Paine.

   Love, Carmen




2. Without question this is the best researched study of one of John Wilkes Booth's main co-conspirators ever written.

No comments about America's Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson.

3 comments about Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and His Family.

1. This is the story of Union General Benjamin Grierson's military life. If the author had stuck to his military accomplishments this would have been a much more focused, and more interesting work. Instead the reader is treated to entire discussions of the General's extended family, spouse, children, brothers, sisters, etc. This detracts from the central theme.
   
   However, the sections covering his Civil War experiences and Grierson's western frontier service after the war are really quite well done. You will like Ben Grierson. He is a committed friend, loving father and spouse, loyal subordinate and concerned about the welfare of his troops. His Mississippi raid in support of U.S. Grant's Vicksburg victory is an amazing accomplishment and his service with the U.S. Tenth Cavalry, the black troopers commonly referred to as "buffalo soldiers" sets an example hard to emulate. Organizing this regiment after the war, it sees extended service successively in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The Tenth's accomplishments are the things of legend and one wishes the author had spent more, much more time on this amazing portion of Grierson's life.
   
   Altogether this is a fair read, one that will not disappoint.



2. 
   Benjamin Grierson's life was filled with major accomplishments and terrible tragedy. A failed merchant with a wife and two children when the Civil War broke out, he joined an Illinois cavalry unit, despite being fearful of horses. Rising through the ranks, he became a hero after leading a large force of Union cavalry on a 16-day raid through Mississippi in 1863, causing much damage to Confederate stores and property and contributing significantly to Grant's success in the siege of Vicksburg. After the war he was put in command of the Tenth Cavalry, made up of black enlisted men (often referred to as Buffalo Soldiers), and posted to the frontier west. It was here that his career languished, due mainly to senior army general Phil Sheridan's refusal to give Grierson promotions, rewarding men who had served under him during the war instead.
   
   Grierson was an honorable man and fair, and these qualities also seemed to attract enemies. He defended his black soldiers fiercely and fought the discrimination that was constantly leveled against them. He also spoke up for the Indians and favored negotiating with them rather than slaughtering them. It wasn't until 1890, the year he retired from the army, that he was promoted to brigadier general. Tragedy also befell his family: three of his children died before reaching adulthood, and two others suffered mental breakdowns as adults. Grierson often had to support various members of his family during tough times, and the financial strain was great. Living the life of a frontier army officer, often being transferred, was also difficult for him and his family. But the Leckies make it clear that the Griersons braved it all and were a loving couple. This biography tells a very moving story, and tells it well and in detail. Fortunately the Griersons were a letter-writing (and saving) family, and the Leckies were able to substantiate much of their biography with information (and emotions) garnered from these letters. It's a fascinating and poignant story. Highly recommended.



3. Benjamin Grierson, a former musician with no prior military experience, is perhaps most famous for "Grierson's Raid", which served as a diversion during General Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg Campaign in the Spring of 1863. As the result of the famous raid and other service during the war, Grierson rose in rank from major to major general of volunteers. Unlike many other citizen-soldiers of the Civil War, however, he did not return to civilian life after the war. Instead, Grierson accepted a commission as a Regular Army colonel and was given command of the newly-formed 10th Cavalry Regiment. The 10th Cavalry was one of the four, along with the 9th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments newly formed "Colored" regiments of the U.S. Army, which had white officers and black soldiers. Grierson welcomed the opportunity to command a regiment which many other white officers would have regarded as potentially damaging to their careers. Not only did he command the regiment for a quarter of a century, but he continually defended his soldiers against the prejudice that was prevalent throughout American society at the time. Grierson's rather progressive thinking also extended to his dealing with American Indians. Though he and his men participated in many of the Indian wars of the Southwest, Grierson continually sought a more intelligent and humane solution to the Indian "problem". Much of what we now see as Grierson's virtues, however, came with a price to his career and to his family. For instance, Grierson's continual defense of his men certainly played a role in his not being promoted to brigadier general until three months before his retirement in 1890. Likewise, his family would suffer greatly during the frequent moves from one gruelingly inhospitable frontier Army post to another. At least partly as a result of his career choices, Grierson's relationship with his wife was frequently stormy and the military dynasty which he had predicted ultimately failed to appear. Though his wife bore him seven children, only four sons survived into adulthood. Of these surviving sons, three remained life-long bachelors, while only one married and produced any offspring. All of Grierson's children appear to have suffered, in varying degrees, from the manic-depression that was prevalent among his wife's family, and two of his sons would have to be institutionalized.

   Benjamin Grierson, himself, emerges from this work as a tragic figure. He was a man who was ahead of his time on issues of racial tolerance and was punished, directly or indirectly, for his beliefs. Likewise, he witnessed financial catastrophe, disease, and mental illness destroy his family. In the end, the reader is left wondering if the old adage is really true, that "no good deed goes unpunished."

5 comments about Oona Living in the Shadows: A Biography of Oona O'Neill Chaplin.

1. I really like Oona O'Neill Chaplin. What a wonderful woman she was! This book quotes person after person who knew her, from all periods of her life. They say that Oona was a woman who radiated a sort of grace, who had an innate elegance that set her apart, but who did not lose a down-to-earth quality, who loved to fuss over her brood of children, who literally basked in having babies and loved having her children around her (she had eight children altogether), who possessed a radiant and fragile beauty, an almost elfin quality, a naturalness, an easy sense of humor, a lack of ostentation, with a sly calm and native sweetness, who again and again is described as creating for everyone around her a sense of serenity and well-being. People would travel to Switzerland to see Charlie Chaplin - but they came away remembering Oona. Even as a young teenager she was intellectually curious, a girl who would go out on a lake in a boat with a friend or two and read plays aloud to each other; she was popular and social, but in a shy, slightly sorrowful way; she always kind, not exciting jealousy in other girls. Was her father, the famous playwright, justified in rejecting her? No, not at all. He never tried to get to know her, and he looked at everything she did in the worst possible light. His negative view of her was contradicted by everyone else who knew her - and I mean, everyone. Oona maintained life-long friendships with women and with men, and not once in her life did she intentionally try to hurt anyone emotionally, financially, or physically. Not the slightest hint of cheating on Charlie, or of cheating anyone in any way. She helped her brother Shane and his family, her mother, and her step-"son" Sydney Chaplin. The worst that can be said of her is that she failed to intervene fast enough on occasions where Charlie was being overbearing and abusive to a child or a visitor, and some of her children felt overlooked. As to those children, probably they were a bit overlooked. But in this age of multiple divorces, I suspect that many thousands of children today are far more overlooked by their parents than any of Oona's were. And Chaplin was too demanding; she had to balance him against them and such balances will never leave everyone satisfied. Frankly, this books shows that Chaplin was unworthy of her - he was overbearing and doctrinaire in the way older men can get, and his opinions weren't very insightful or sensitive. For example, he had the "Christmas is too materialist" crotchety-ness of those who care more about feeling superior than for their children's enjoyment, while for Oona Christmas was a favorite holiday filled with presents and tree-decorating. Other reviewers here seem to think that this book fails to show us Oona. But in fact she shines forth on every page. Perhaps their problem is that they don't consider a person such as she was to be very much of a person. But this reflects the biases of our times, which discount unfairly the wonderful kind of person she was. The same people who say it takes a village to raise a child somehow devalue an individual who actually dedicates herself to creating a nurturing emotional environment for children, for spouse, for guests, for friends, and for extended family. Oona was a very special person and this book is a clear, easy way to get to know her. Highly recommended.



2. While I desperately wanted to like this book and was tremendously excited by the topic, I find it difficult to write nice things about the book. While the book has many handsome pictures, I find it difficult to pass other compliments. It would seem difficult to write a biography of somebody while avoiding talking about that person's life, yet Jane Scovell has managed to do just that.
   
   The life of Oona O'Neill had a tragic beginning as she was largely abandon by her father, Eugene O'Neill. The author of "Oona" manages to spend much of the early chapters focusing on the evolution of the O'Neill family. There is no substantial writing on the life of Oona until she meets Charlie Chaplin. Yet even these chapters focus largely on people other than Oona. While Oona did live in the shadow of her husband, why write a biography if you can not present facts about the main character.
   
   It is also quite clear that Scovell is not a fan of Charlie Chaplin. Chapter 9 seems larely devoted to bringing Charlie Chaplin's character into question. While Sir Charles Chaplin was far from a model citizen, this fact would not be a logical choice on which to focus the book. In this Chapter 9, the author suggests Chaplin slept with 2000 women. Endnote 6 reveals her source to be a not so famous historian named Milton Berle. Her source is a comedian with little documentation suggests Charlie has any significant dealings. In this same chapter she uses a letter from Oona's former love interest J.D. Salinger to further debase the actor's legacy. I am not certain what place a scorned lover's opinion has in a focused biography other than to raise character questions. Perhaps the most absurd statement of the book is made on page 173 in which another book is sited as evidence that the United States government had no interest for prosecuting Chaplin for being a communist, but "the government was more upset about his morality ...". The idea that he would have been welcomed back to the country if he agreed to be interviewed not seems proposterous, but it avoids the point of his exile entirely.
   
   With such obvious inaccuracies, it is hard to give credit for much else that Scovell writes. When Scovell does devote her writing to Oona in the waning pages of the book after Charlie's death, it is only to write of her alcholism and love interests like a tabloid photographer. This book seems targeted to exploit the legacy of Oona Chaplin and her husband.



3. Being very interested in the life of cinematic genius Charlie Chaplin, and knowing what a difficult person he could be, I became interested in the one woman who stuck by him and adored him until his death, then mourned him for years after. However, this book was a disappointment and lacked a great deal of information about it's subject, Oona. Scovell also made too many assumptions, and forced her own opinion under the guise of psychology and lacked the objectivity which one expects in a well written biography.
   The book opened with droning on and on about her family geneology, which bored me to tears, but I read on, expecting to soon read about Oona, which never happened. With the exception of brief information about Oona here and there, the book focused on Eugene O'Neil, and Chaplin himself (even worse, some of the "facts" written about Chaplin were false). Sadly, Oona was left out of her own biography.
   This book was somewhat of a painful read and lacked professionalism from it's author.



4. This supposed biography of Oona O'Neill Chaplin spends much of its time discussing Eugene O'Neill and Charlie Chaplin. Certainly Oona lived in the shadow of Charlie, but she doesn't emerge as a person in this biography. The book is poorly written. Too much repetition of points made, some really silly sentences of superficial statement. And no depth. Nonetheless, it's an interesting read because of the people and the lives narrated.



5. The subject matter is, needless to say, very interesting. But the book reads like it is written by someone whose entire literary education centered on cheap romance novels. The author doesn't seem to have any access to any of Oona's friends or family while researching this book. Almost all of her historical data seem to have been hearsay and 2nd hand. Remarkable and unfortunate on the author's part.

3 comments about My Last Chance to Be a Boy: Theodore Roosevelt's South American Expedition of 1913-1914.

1. Ornig's book is the first full account of this amazing adventure since Theodore Roosevelt was alive to tell it himself. Thanks to the author's years of meticulous research, we get to see the ex-president up close as every ounce of courage and determination that can possibly be required of a human being is exacted by this perilous expedition. Why would a man, having already carved his name in history, literally risk his life in service to exploration? The book title is informative; it was the kind of thing he loved to do. Roosevelt's passion for for life was abundantly demonstrated on the River of Doubt as he and his party encountered one life-threatening obstacle after another. If it wasn't the hostile natives who tracked them, it was the piranhas. If it wasn't a lack of food and supplies, it was flesh-eating disease.... As if fighting just to survive the forces of nature weren't enough, there was also the recklessness of some, including his own son. And there were personal conflicts among the explorers--disagreements, arguments, theft--and a murder. This wilderness adventure had it all--and it wasn't reality TV. No camera crew, no global positioning system, no one to bail them out at any point. In this age of apathy and plasticized existence, this story is all the more striking.
   
   Thus, out of this book emerges a fresh portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. We learn a great deal about him under conditions of maximum stress. We also get to know the group of explorers who accompanied him. And the generous 48 pages of maps and photographs are a real plus. Many thanks to the author for rediscovering this story and dusting it off for us with such literary finesse. For a non-fiction history work, it reads like a novel.



2. TR's 1913-1914 expedition down the River of Doubt (subsequently renamed Rio Teodoro in his honor, and later Rio Roosevelt) is an astonishing piece of history - one often refered to in passing by other TR biographers, but not often fully explored, as it here. Author Ornig tells an exciting tale well, from the multitudious details of planning and executing a massive exploring expedition in the early 20th century, to vivid portraits of the characters involved. This book would be a wonderful companion for any adventure traveller (or even armchair adventurers).

   Best of all, Ornig is no run-of-the-mill TR hagiographer (and there are plenty of them out there), nor is he interested in taking unfair potshots at the great man (plenty of those folks out there, too). Ornig simply relates events as they occured, and doesn't care a whit whether they cast TR in a favorable or unfavorable light: TR was a poor shot (due to his poor eyesight) and became grumpy and embarassed when he missed easy targets. TR was delighted with the impact on his waistline when the expedition was forced to subsist on reduced rations -- and argued against the restoration of full rations even though others were suffering. Do these facts detract from the TR legend, or add to it? I have never been a fan of Marble Men, and found that I loved TR even more after glimpsing some of his human flaws in MY LAST CHANCE TO BE A BOY. No student of TR should be without this volume.




3. Ornig provides the first detailed account of one of the most exciting adventure stories of the 20th century -- Theodore Roosevelt's exploration of the River of Doubt in Brazil's Amazon. The story is more incredible when you think that Roosevelt was a 55-year old former President at the time of the expedition. As we approach the 100th anniversary of Roosevelt's presidency, and as we consider our relationship with the earth, it is worth taking another look at this great outdoorsman. Ornig weaves together the political and diplomatic origins of the expedition and how Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and the rest of the expedition got much more than they bargained for. There's murder, there's drowning (and a question of whether Kermit Roosevelt was accountable), there's frustration, and there's a former President on the brink of death. After you read it, you'll want to read Roosevelt's account, "Through the Brazilian Wilderness." You'll enjoy that one too

1 comments about Voyage to North America, 1844-45: Prince Carl of Solms's Texas Diary of People, Places, and Events.

1. I found the book interesting, however the best part of it were the footnotes and not the actual diary.Prince Carl sounds a little pompous, not quite what one would expect of "Texas Carl" as he was known in Germany.

1 comments about Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass.

1. A decade ago no one had heard of Ottilie Assing or had a clue that she played an important role not only in shaping European perceptions of the US in the crucial years up to and including the Civil War but in her role as collaborator and lover of Douglass for almost 30 years. Then, Terence Pickett, a scholar of German literature doing research in Poland, stumbled on a folder of letters that revealed an intimate acquaintance and passionate involvement between the German immigrant journalist and the American abolitionist. Pickett cautiously called it a friendship, but when William McFeeley used this information in his 1991 Douglass biography, he strongly suspected that the relationship went beyond friendship. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., choosing his words carefully, has meanwhile also concluded that for "much of Douglass's mature career, Assing was his principal intellectual consort." Maria Diedrich's "Love Across Color Lines" finally gives a detailed and thoroughly researched account of the life of this extraordinary woman, her background, commitment to radical causes, emigration in 1852, involvement in abolitionism, passionate attachment to Douglass, and her courageous but tragic end. It is an amazing story, deeply embedded in the stormy social and political conditions on both sides of the Atlantic. One consistent theme is that Assing's commitment to social revolution, having been frustrated by the botched events of 1848-49 in Germany, plays itself out in her support of radical abolitionism, which she consistently sees in terms of a second American Revolution. Another suggestive argument develops the continuity between Assing's partly Jewish background and her attitude toward slavery and race in the US. Though Assing often expressed typical 19th-century racial attitudes, her experience of belonging to a despised minority in Germany helped her to espouse the cause of black Americans, sometimes with more radical passion than Douglass himself. Most original and interesting, moreover, is Diedrich's carefully argued idea that Assing's imagination was infused with the romanticized representation of a black African prince and a white European woman in a novel by one of her close German friends, who based it on Aphra Behn's "Oroonoko." With all of Assing's emphasis on rational social analysis, much of her relationship with Douglass must be explained in terms of the kind of romantic orientalism that shaped her imagination. As Diedrich makes clear in her narrative, the essential problem of writing this biography was the one-sidedness of the evidence. Assing destroyed all letters (hundreds of them) from Douglass; he destroyed all but 27 from her to him, and he mentions her only in passing in his third autobiography. The story that emerges is largely based on Ottilie's letters to her sister and friends, on her published journalism, and on a handful of manuscripts. But the circumstantial evidence--that Douglass and Assing corresponded more or less weekly for more than 25 years, that during those years Assing spent several months every summer with the Douglasses, and that Douglass often visited and stayed with Assing in Hoboken (seeking refuge there when he was in imminent danger of arrest after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry)--strongly suggests that her passion was reciprocated and that theirs was an intense intellectual and a fully sexual relationship. Aside from these important and fascinating details (which include the highly probable fact that Assing actually ghost-wrote some of Douglass's journalism in "The New National Era"), one of the great strengths of this book is that it places these personal matters in the larger framework of social and political conditions: the abolitionist movement, women's emancipation, the Civil War, Washington politics, the crusades for the Civil Rights amendments in the 1870s, and much more. Diedrich offers us a profound and nuanced insight into how this complex interracial relationship between two committed social radicals could develop in an America rife with political turmoil as well as racial and sexual taboos. The fact that this compelling story has remained veiled for so long is yet another reminder that these taboos continue to exert their fearful power in our own time. Maria Diedrich deserves everyone's gratitude for lifting the veil so thoughtfully, tactfully, and definitively.

   Christoph Lohmann Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, Indiana University