1 comments about Lincoln and the First Shot (Critical Periods of History).

1. A great breakdown of events leading up to Ft. Sumter, and a great analysis of the early relationship between Lincoln and his cabinet, esp. Secretary of state Seward (who at this early date mistakenly thought Lincoln was a puppet he could manipulate). All in all a fascinating read and a must for good civil war libraries.

5 comments about Kerouac: The Definitive Biography.

1. ***First of all, please note that I strongly disagree with the Publishers Weekly review posted above. I think it's way off-base.***
   
   I bought this book because I wanted to know who the REAL Jack Kerouac was. Once I got through "On the Road," that challenging, maddening, yet beautiful 1957 autobiographical novel, I wanted to get a close-up on the soul and the life events of the book's author. "Kerouac: The Definitive Biography" fit the bill.
   
   This is a very good, level-headed, thoughtful, careful, judicious, lowlights-and-highlights, warts-and-all study. Indeed, it is not a perfect book. I wish it had been twice as long, and twice as rich in details, testimonies, and anecdotes. (That would have been a 1,000-page book, which certainly would have been nixed by any publisher.) But this biography is certainly fair-minded and thorough.
   
   The real problem--although it's not the fault of the biographer--is that Kerouac's life was so achingly heart-breaking. It is automatic, but entirely reasonable, to quake at the fact that Jack Kerouac inspired thousands and thousands of young Americans to want to be just like him, when in fact he was an angry, lonely, alcoholic loser.
   
   Paul Maher's book is a lucid, fair-minded, well-worded monument to all that shined and all that fizzled in Jack Kerouac's far-too-short life. I recommend this book highly as "one-stop shopping" about Kerouac's life. This biography is an effective, admiring-but-not-fawning portrait of a great American artist who lived short and suffered long.



2. This is a new biography about 500 pages long covering virtually all of the life of Jack Kerouac. It is written by a long time Kerouac "fan and student", a local Lowell, Mass. High-school teacher Paul Maher. Basically it is a sold and well written book. I do have a couple of very minor problems about the biography concerning the level of detail. I think for many it is almost too much detail about the non-creative side of his life, and it might have been better to have a bit less detail about his marriages and more details on his books and how they evolved and fit in with his life - but that is just my personal preference and many will like what the author has done. That is why I am giving it 4 stars not 5.
   
   The book starts of with the Keouac family in New Hampshire around 1720 and a good part of the book explores his family and childhood, especially his Lowell years. The author has included a nice collection of black and white photographs taken of Kerouac during the different stages of his life including some family photos. Pictures of his family in Lowell with his older brother and younger sister make Jack appear almost normal. Later we see him in a bar scene and other scenes wearing for example a rustic plaid shirt and pictures with his wives.
   
   The book appears to very complete and covers his parents and their problems, his creative and free spirit growing up, his scholarship to Columbia, navy career, three marriages and his famous friends or associates including Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, the latter being his traveling companion in his famous novel On the Road. This was the famous "beat" movement - as most people are well aware. There are quite a few Ginsberg and Cassady references sprinkled through the book, and there are a lot of details on his marriages.
   
   Jack led an intensive life, often clashing with authorities, traveled widely, and moved a lot then died young at the age of 47 from a failing liver caused by too much drink. He left his mark in the literary world as a remarkable writer with a unique style. The book covers a lot of ground, both good and bad mainly on his personal life and especially his Lowell Massachusetts connection. The book is divided into many short chapters, each covering a short segment of his life, such as trips to Mexico, Denver, etc. and how he was changed by success - he did not like it. Having read some other biographies where I could compare at least two different authors of two different books, it is clear that any biography is dependent upon the author and his bias. Not being a Kerouac expert it is beyond my ability to and most readers to make those distinctions in the present case, but it seems accurate and relatively neutral in tone. It gives the good and some bad, and is not just a fawning positive fan book.
   
   Solid job, lots of detail for Kerouac lovers, 4 stars, possibly 5.



3. I loved this book, couldn't put it down. Jack Kerouac's life was fascinating. Paul Maher came through with an extremely readable book, even though he had to insightfully digest a mountain of documentation to write it.



4. Paul Maher's "Kerouac: The Definitive Biography" is by far the most comprehensive and detailed account of Kerouac's life ever written. Unlike previous biographers, Maher has chosen wherever possible to rely for his work on Kerouac's own journals and letters. As such, this biography takes a necessarily different slant to other accounts. Whatever the perils of this approach (Kerouac, like all of us, had a propensity to mythologise his life in his private writings as much as in his novels), this book uncovers a wealth of new information that was previously unavailable.
   
   Maher makes no claims to being a literary critic, so this biography is not the place to look for in-depth analysis of Kerouac's novels. (For that, Tim Hunt's "Kerouac's Crooked Road" is unmatched on "On the Road" and "Visions of Cody", and Gerald Nicosia's "Memory Babe" is great for a `big picture' analysis of the relationships between the life and the work). However, if you are looking to understand the forces that shaped Kerouac, his French-Canadian origins, small town upbringing and Catholicism, there is simply no better place to start.
   
   Because of the unprecedented access Maher has had to the Kerouac archives, this biography uncovers a personal Kerouac that we have not seen before, and much detail on the final years of his life that previous biographers have not revealed. I read "Kerouac: The Definitive Biography" in conjunction with "Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954" and found it entirely consistent. Indeed, I wished that Douglas Brinkley had chosen to include more in the edited journals. As long as Kerouac's life continues to attract as much attention as his work, biographies will continue to be written. But it will be a long time before one as comprehensive as this is published.
   
   P.S. The small matter of the editing inconsistencies in the footnotes is to be addressed in the next printing. This is a minor distraction to an otherwise excellent work, and the only reason I didn't give it five stars. Thoroughly recommended



5. To raise a bit of contention about the ridiculous Publisher's Weekly review written by disgruntled and snotty Ron Hogan of www.beatrice.com fame, my biography of Kerouac does not attempt "serious literary analysis" because it never claims to be, at any point, a critical biography. It is a cultural biography exploring Kerouac's life, his world, and those events which serve as the creative underpinnings of his "Duluoz Legend" (in particular, the importance of Lowell, Massachusetts in his writing and his Franco American social mores and Roman Catholic upbringing). Toward that end, I feel i have achieved what I had set out to do. Also, I relied on Kerouac's journals, letters, and notebooks for the bulk of my research thus, the "methodological" process of my research that Hogan feels to be problematic was aptly chosen. Since, I have faith in Kerouac's veracity in documenting his life and times in his personal notebooks, I felt that they were dependable enough to use for a consistent narrative. Lastly, Hogan's contention that I rejected Vidal's story (note, William S. Burroughs called Vidal an "inveterate liar") and fully accepted Kerouac's claim of the numerous women he had successfully bedded just shows how clueless he is about this subject matter. A humorous anecdote toward this point is that Hogan gave an overwhelmingly positive review for Kerouac's Windblown World which documents numerous successful scores by Kerouac in wooing women into their bedroom. Note: I had no choice to add stars with my statement, so it might as well be five.

5 comments about Girl Singer: An Autobiography.

1. I appreciated how frank Rosemary Clooney was about her breakdown, and how she pulled herself together afterwards. I'm always interested in turning points, and this was a significant one for her, leading to a sane, normal, intelligent life.



2. Rosemary Clooney was one resillient lady. From her broken-home childhood, her singing glory days, her difficult (if not impossible) marriage to Jose Ferrer, her substance abuse problems, and then final happiness with her old sweetheart are covered in unvarnished, no-nonsense prose. I really liked this book, and could not put it down.
   
   Rosie, you wrote a great book--and, I miss you!



3. This book was absolutely remarkable! Anyone interested in Rosemary Clooney should read it. I read this book for a history project and I could not stop talking about it! This book is one of the few that have really ever had a major effect on me. Rosemary's life is like a fairytale: tough beginnings, with a heavenly ending. The book did an excellent job in explaining everything that happened in her life. It was also made better because it was an autobiography. I love it and highly recommend it!



4. We lost a tremendous talent and treasure this past summer with the death of Rosemary Clooney. I am so glad that I read this book before her death, because I felt as if I got to know her. Ms. Clooney told her story, from her tulmultous childhood, to her heyday as a "girl singer" and recording star, and to her breakdown in the late 1960s. In the last 10 years, she was known more as George's aunt than her own talent. This book solidified for me that she was a great talent, and a very interesting person. Nothing is glossed over.



5. Rosemary Clooney's life wasn't all a picnic in the Park. Her autobiography is straightforward - like herself, it is not grandiose, but it is no shrinking violet, either. While reading this book, I also got "Songs from the Girl Singer: a musical autobiography " a 2 CD set. Like Girranimals, the similarly titled companion pieces have the same picture on the front so that the purchaser will know that they go together. Buy `em both, they won't disappoint!

   Her life and music are all here - without gloss or pretension. And from her debut with sister Betty, with a local Cincinnati big band, to her meteoric rise to solo national celebrity for "Come On-a My House," a song she never really liked, to sing with Bing in "White Christmas," to the ascension of Rock & Roll (which, she said at the time "wiped out music as we know it,") to her resultant (?) breakdown and triumphant "comeback," to her introduction to a new TV viewing generation as the Coronet Paper Towel lady, to her appearance with nephew George Clooney on ER, Rosemary never learned to read music!

   More pictures (including one of the Great Dane, Cuddles,) would have been nice, but the set is a treat. Get it! God Bless You, Rosemary. 5/23/28 - 6/30/2002

4 comments about Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship.

1. And thus we are presented with the personal letters of the two roots of modern literature, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, the former's influence to be found in every Grisham book that tops the charts, the latter in his most diluted form in the paperback romance read by the housewife in Des Moines. It was inevitable that, on what starts as a fairly even friendly competition, we see Hemingway become the unreachable success and celebrity, and the communal feeling of the 20's letters gives way to silence through much of the thirties, Fitzgerald a troubled alcoholic who no one wanted much of. But Bruccoli winds us through the dead spaces, keeps us updated as to their whereabouts and gives us revelations through their letters to others (i.e. Fitz's review of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' as a tiresome boy's adventure, Hem's betrayal of Scott in 'Snows of Kilimanjaro). He does a fine, unhysterical job of setting the record straight, as the ying and yang of 20th century writing descend from friendship into the petty bitchery that plagues all us mere mortals.



2. It's fair to say more books have been written about F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway than either man wrote, and arguably the most fascinating topic concerns their rocky friendship.

   Matthew J. Bruccoli is considered the expert on Fitzgerald, having written and edited more than two dozen books on the writer. His classic, 'Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship' is the result of 15 years' research which includes a fascinating and careful analysis of a newly-released batch of Hemingway's letters to and about Fitzgerald.

   The book covers the length and breadth of the writers' friendship, from when they met in 1925 in Paris following publication of Fitzgerald's third and best-known novel, 'The Great Gatsby', and a year before Hemingway published his first, 'The Sun Also Rises' (thanks partly to Fitzgerald for introducing Hemingway to his publisher, Scribner's).

   Bruccoli covers enormous ground and in great detail, exploding many myths regarding the writers' stormy friendship up until Fitzgerald's death in 1940. He shows that while Fitzgerald was the older and more successful of the two authors at the time they met, from the beginning to the end, he assumed a subordinate role to the gregarious Hemingway.

   Bruccoli sums up the writers' relationship this way:

   "On the evidence of their correspondence, Hemingway emerges as a better friend than his self-portrait in 'A Movable Feast' shows ~ until 1936. Both men were savers and preserved most of their letters to each other. Fifty-seven letters or telegrams have been located; 28 from Fitzgerald, and 29 from Hemingway.

   "Fitzgerald and Hemingway functioned differently as letter writers. Fiztgerald's letters are carefully written and have his characteristic warmth of expression; they have no direct connection with his literary work. Hemingway's letters are informal and discursive. In addition to imparting information, his letters document the Hemingway image. They had a literary function: Hemingway was an almost compulsive letter writer and used correspondence as warm-up or cooling-off exercises for his literary work."

   When it comes to relationships, writers generally have a poor score card, as Bruccoli concedes:

   "The mortality rate of literary friendships is high. Writers tend to be bad risks as friends ~ probably for much the same reasons that they are bad matrimonial risks. They expend the best parts of themselves in their work. Moreover, literary ambition has a way of turning into literary competition; if fame is the spur, envy may be a concomitant."

   In addition to analyzing anecdotes and the writers' correspondence, the book also includes a number of photos, a timeline of events covering both of their lives as well as an appendix of Fitzgerald's 'Notebooks' references to Hemingway which were printed in 'The Crack Up'.

   'Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship' is a detailed and exhaustive examination of the friendship of two great American writers. It offers a fresh insight into their working lives and creative rivalries.

   -- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'. For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com




3. This book is a gem and should be on the reading list of any fan of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Much of the contents are anecdotal recollections of Hemingway regarding Fitzgerald who he regarded as immensely talented but weak and dominated (by Zelda and the bottle). A variety of letters between the two help to bring to life the closeness that was in evidence in the early friendship before Fitzgerald's decline and Hemingway's enormous success (followed by his growing intolerance of the waning and less successful like FSF). This book also does not attempt to hide the sometimes incomprehensible mean -spiritedness of Hemingway when despite all his success (largely aided by the early support of others he later cast aside) still felt enough threatened to throw his drowning friends an anchor.



4. This has new stuff that wasn't in Brucolli's previous book on the two authors SCOTT AND ERNEST. I read that one, and when starting FITZGERALD AND HEMINGWAY, thought I'd read the same book, but with a few added facts. Well, there are tons of new facts in F & H that are EXTREMELY interesting to the Fitzgerald and Hemingway fan. I recommend this book highly. I've read much of it more than once.

2 comments about Finn Burnett, Frontiersman: The Life and Adventures of an Indian Fighter, Mail Coach Driver, Miner, Pioneer Cattleman, Participant in the Powder River Expedition, Survivor of the (Frontier Classics).

1. 
   This is a reprint edition of the 1937 first edition, published by the Arthur H. Clark Company. It tells the life of Fincelius G. Burnett, better known as Finn, who became a much-traveled frontiersman and Indian fighter and later a true friend of the peoples he skirmished so often with.
   
   Finn left his home state of Missouri for the West in an attempt to avoid getting drafted into the Union army. He became a teamster on the 1865 Connor Powder River expedition, witnessing the hanging of Oglala chiefs Two Face and Black Foot at Ft. Laramie, which set off a rash of white-Sioux hostilities. The expedition reached the Powder River country of Wyoming, where Ft. Connor (later Reno) was established. He participated in a number of skirmishes with the Sioux, usually as a member of Frank North's Pawnee Scouts throughout the summer and fall of 1865. In 1866 he helped build Ft. Kearny on the Bozeman Trail, and was there during the Fetterman massacre (he was on the detail that retrieved the dead bodies). He participated in the Hayfield Fight near Ft. C.F. Smith in 1867, and then changed hats from Indian fighter to gold miner during the South Pass gold rush. It was during this time that he forged a friendship with the Shoshone chief Washakie, becoming the agricultural agent at Ft. Washakie; it was also here that he befriended Sacajawea, the famous woman who was with Lewis and Clark (some dispute this was the same Sacajawea). He settled on a ranch west of Lander, WY, a gift from Washakie, and died at the age of 90 in 1934.
   
   Beebe's account of Burnett's life is robust and (to use a term that would've been perfectly acceptable back in 1937 when the book was published) "manly." It's straightforward and concerned with getting the facts right and allowing them to speak for themselves. Anyone interested in affairs of the High Plains West, especially during the 1860s-80s, should find this book worthwhile.



2. Biographer Robert Beebe David provides the reader with a straightforwardly narrated account in Finn Burnett, Frontiersman, the biography of an extraordinary pioneer of the American frontier. In the upper Plains and northern Rockies, Finn Burnett was at first a staunch battler against Indians, but later befriended them, including famous individuals such as Washakie, the Shoshone chief, and Sacajawea, known for her role in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Part of the Stackpole Books "Frontier Classics Series", Finn Burnett, Frontiersman is very highly recommended reading for students of American frontier history.

No comments about Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent.

2 comments about Bad Hand.

1. This was a good book. General MacKenzie WAS the great American Indian/bandit fighter which spawned the myth(?) of the American West in the next century (John Wayne played MacKenzie's role in "Rio Grande"). As for his place in history, he was not shot down in his prime the way the inept Custer was, and as a result, he has all but been forgotten in Western lore (his going mentally insane didn't help matters either).

   The book reads easily, flows well and the author doesn't bog you down with unimportant details. I recommend this book to anyone with a mild-to-high curiosity about the Indian Wars and the history of the American Southwest in the late 1800s.




2. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Coverage of Ranald Mackenzie is rather sparse and this book does a great job of detailing the man's entire life. Mackenzie was one of the many frontier heros who did not gain the notariety of other Indian fighters, but he was one of the most successful. Mackenzie showed the ability to learn from his mistakes and adapt tactics as necessary. He also served in all the theaters of Indian warfare (Northern Plains, Southern Plains, US/Mexico Border, and Arizona). This book is easy and entertaining to read and will hopefully help us remember an Indian fighter that history has tried to forget.

4 comments about A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (Religion & American Culture).

1. As a student of the civil rights movement, this is a must read. The book explores the life and times of a great man who made it possible for Rev. King and others to make the changes that were made in Birmingham. Andrew Manis has written a great history book that covers not only Rev. Shuttlesworth's life but you get a sense of what people felt during this horrible time in U.S. history. You will see how Rev. Shuttlesworth had "set the table" so that Rev. King was able "serve the dinner" in Birmingham. Without Rev. Shuttleworth's persistence, President Kennedy would never be able to have said, Eugene Connor was the best thing that happened to the civil rights movement.



2. The story of Fred Shuttlesworth is a powerful, dramatic story that everyone interested in the black freedom movement should read. Manis' compelling portrayal captures the spirit and spirituality of a great unsung hero. The book has been honored by the Lillian Smith Book Award, the South's oldest literary prize, and deserves a wide reading.



3. A compelling portrait of a real unsung hero. Emerge Magazine says it well: "The greatest battles of the civil rights movement come alive in this biography of the man Martin Luther King Jr. called "one of the nation's most courage freedom fighters." Manis is to be congratulated for bringing us this powerful story.



4. This is a real page turner of a biography--a book you can't put down. The contest between Fred Shuttlesworth and "Bull" Connor is classic, full of violence and poignancy. Manis has done the nation a service by putting his magnifying glass on Fred Shuttlesworth's heroics, and rightly explained them from the context of black religion. This book should be made into a movie!

1 comments about Nancy Reagan: On the White House Stage (Modern First Ladies).

1. Benze has managed to demonstrate important connections between Mrs. Reagan's experience as actor and her time as first lady. While other biographies of Mrs. Reagan of course mention her action experience, Benze's approach is unique in integrating the two.
   
   He also has used both interviews and primary source material from the Reagan library to supplement his familiarity with other biographies of Mrs. Reagan.
   
   An excellent read.

No comments about Archy Lee: A California Fugitive Slave Case.