5 comments about Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives.

1. Carol Bleser and Lesley Gordon did a wonderful job with this book,delving into the personal lives of several famous civil war figures, along with black and white photographs of the couples.Some of the marriages in the book include the Shermans, Grants, Lee's, Custer's , Stonewall Jacksons, and many others. With so many figures from the civil war this book gives a wonderful overview of some of the more famous marriages and there family life. With so many figures to choose from I think the authors did a suberb job with the couples they featured. This is a book not to be missed.



2. Carol Bleser and Lesley Gordon did a wonderful job with this book,delving into the personal lives of several famous civil war figures, along with black and white photographs of the couples.Some of the marriages in the book include the Shermans, Grants, Lee's, Custer's , Stonewall Jacksons, and many others. With so many figures from the civil war this book gives a wonderful overview of some of the more famous marriages and there family life. With so many figures to choose from I think the authors did a suberb job with the couples they featured. This is a book not to be missed.



3. Carol Bleser and Lesley Gordon did a wonderful job with this book,delving into the personal lives of several famous civil war figures, along with black and white photographs of the couples.Some of the marriages in the book include the Shermans, Grants, Lee's, Custer's , Stonewall Jacksons, and many others. With so many figures from the civil war this book gives a wonderful overview of some of the more famous marriages and there family life. With so many figures to choose from I think the authors did a suberb job with the couples they featured. This is a book not to be missed.



4. Carol Bleser and Lesley Gordon did a wonderful job with this book,delving into the personal lives of several famous civil war figures, along with black and white photographs of the couples.Some of the marriages in the book include the Shermans, Grants, Lee's, Custer's , Stonewall Jacksons, and many others. With so many figures from the civil war this book gives a wonderful overview of some of the more famous marriages and there family life. With so many figures to choose from I think the authors did a suberb job with the couples they featured. This is a book not to be missed.



5. This collection of twelve essays explores the personal lives of prominent Civil War military commanders and their wives. The writers paint vivid pictures of how family life and the war were interwoven. The most striking thing to me is the great variation between the relationships of the various commanders and their wives, all within the Victorian societal structure. I think this book makes great reading for everyone, regardless of a person's interest in history.

3 comments about Kit Carson and His Three Wives: A Family History (Calvin P. Horn Lectures in Western History and Culture.).

1. We love to visit Santa Fe and the surrounding area, and we cannot escape traces of Kit Carson -- there's a large monument near the state capitol building, a museum, countless parks and roads and signs. This book brings Carson's domestic life into focus, and creates fascinating insights into this heavily studied icon of the Old West.
   
   Carson's first two wives were Native Americans. His courtship in 1835 of Waa-nibe, an Arapaho whose name meant "Singing Grass" or "Wind Singing," may have included a duel with a French trapper, Joseph Chouinard (Chouinard may have been killed). Waa-nibe, whom Carson called "Alice," bore two daughters before dying, probably in 1839 from birth-related complications. Carson took the elder daughter, Adaline, to Missouri to live with relatives and to be educated. The younger daughter, whose name has not survived, died in a domestic accident at age three.
   
   Carson married a second time at Bent's Fort in 1840 to a Cheyenne named Making Out Road. I've taken my title of this review from his words at The Battle of Valverde, but in the singular voice, they probably would have been good advice to Carson during this marriage. It lasted only a little over a year, producing a daughter who died soon after birth. Making Out Road divorced Carson, possibly out of jealousy over a Taos girl who would become Carson's third wife. Making Out Road may not have been completely to blame; Carson was her third husband; following marriage to two Cheyenne; she remained married to her fourth husband, Charles Rath, a Dodge City merchant for the rest of her life.
   
   Carson converted to Catholicism just after, or possibly even before, Making Out Road divorced him. In 1843 he married Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of a prominent Taos family. She was fifteen, nineteen years younger than Carson. The couple had eight children of their own, and they adopted two or three Native American children. The couple died within a month of each other in 1868.
   
   The book is well illustrated with photographs, drawings, and maps. There is an excellent time line of Carson's major activities, from his birth in Kentucky in 1809 to his death in Colorado in 1868. There are many footnotes. Simmons has written 40 books and many articles on Western history, much of his writing devoted to the Santa Fe Trail, and this is a particular well done example of his work. We enjoy his columns in the "New Mexican" when we visit one of our favorite cities.



2. Nobody in his era survived more adventures and did more hard traveling than Kit Carson. His dispatch duties during the Mexican War totalled 16,000 miles -- most of that by horseback. In the first six years of his marriage to his third wife, he spent only six months at home in Taos. Carson was restless, and also uniquely qualified to play a major role in the far-flung events taking place across the Western U.S.
   
   That is by way of saying that Carson was hardly domesticated. Based on very limited information this book looks into Carson's life with his three wives. With the first, Waa-nibe, an Arapahoe woman, he seems to have enjoyed domestic bliss. After she died he took up residence with Making Out Road, a beautiful and willful Cheyenne woman in what proved to a relationship from hell. After escaping from -- or being thrown out of the teepee by -- Making Out Road, he married Josefa, a Mexican woman of respectable family from Taos.
   
   It was apparently a good marriage -- although Carson was rarely there and, moreover, never earned any money. In the census of 1850, when he was 41 years old, the value of his property totalled just over $200. Carson, however, apparently was a loving and responsible parent. He put his half-Arapaho daughter in school in Missouri and raised not only his own children in Taos but adopted several Indian orphans.
   
   This is a good book, as much about the comings and goings of Kit Carson, as it is about his family relationships. The author tells of the fate of his wives and children and has included a number of photographs of family members. There's a large literature about Carson and little information about him that has not already been explored, but this book gives a different slant on his life than other biographies.
   
   Smallchief



3. Kit Carson lived a life that many young men would have liked to have lived. He seemingly was in all the right places at the time that a nation was being born. He grew from a simple kid to being an American Patriot.
   Simmons book cpatures the real Kit Carson, the man, the family, the life and times--it is not a novel, it contains 35 pages of documented footnotes--by one of the best historians of the west.
   At a time when the slave trade was still happening, he raised several Indian children, along with his own, by buying the kids from the slave traders. It is a book that helps anyone understand time and place. The book has been nominated for a national award.

5 comments about Jack and Jackie: Portrait of an American Marriage.

1. This is a little light and PEOPLE magazine-y in parts. But every now and then the author slips the needle in and lets you know he knows more than he's letting on. The catty remarks by Gore Vidal spice things up. I particularly liked the account of Kennedy's personal physician, Dr. Max Jacobson -- the legendary "Dr. Feelgood." Four times a week, right up until the assassination, the Doc was shooting Kennedy up with a special concoction; 25% vitamins and 75% pure dexedrine. Isn't it nice to know we had a speed-freak tweaker in the White House with his twitching fingers on The Button? (Funny how they didn't teach me these stuff in 6th grade History class.) Beneath Jack Kennedy's "vigorous, youthful" facade was a sickly man. And the same can be said for the whole shiney, air-brushed "Kennedy myth" and the rot just underneath the surface. They don't call it "the Kennedy curse" for nothing. Truly, the Kennedys are one of the sickest families to ever inflict themselves on the American body.



2. A fast read. Many details and secrets that probably would not have been published if either of them were alive.



3. This book brought to light so many things that I never really knew. Concerning, love, drugs, children and affairs. It was a great book, but I found the last 20 pages or so to be the most captivating. This book left me with a sad feeling, because the Kennedy's were finally beginning to truly love each other when JFK was shot. This just goes to show that life isn't always fair. This was a great book that I would recommend for anyone to read.



4. A fabulous account of the childhoods and marriage of Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Fantastic pictures of the famous couple. A Wonderful read!!!! FOR QUESTIONS OR DICUSSIONS ON JACKIE ONASSIS, PLEASE E-MAIL ME AT MellissaLD@aol.com. HPOE TO HEAR FROM YOU!!!!!!!!!!



5. As someone who was born in 1977, all that I know of the "Camelot" era has come to me second and thirdhand. This book was great at setting to rest some of the myths surrounding this famous couple and also presented some information I hadn't seen anywhere else about their private lives in the White House. I discovered many things about Jackie's life growing up that I did not know previously, and how those events factored into her decision to marry JFK.

   Sometimes the author's narrative style can be jarring ("'And what would be wrong with,' she asked coyly, 'that?'") but I do not find the dialogues related to be unrealistic. It was rather like reading a transcript of an extra-long episode of A & E's "Biography" television show. The book is an engaging account of a typical high-society marriage with a tragic "what might have been in this marriage" twist resulting from Mr. Kennedy's assasination so soon after the death of their baby brought the two much closer together.

No comments about Wives of the American Presidents.

1 comments about Butter in the Well: A Scandanavian Woman's Tale of Life on the Prairie (Butter in the Well Series).

1. One of the best "first settler" accounts I've ever read! Hubalek's story of Swedish immigrant, Kajsa, who settled in Central Kansas was riveting. I couldn't put it down until I had read the whole book. Stories of rattlesnakes coming through the dugout ceiling, prairie fires, the joys of newborn babies and the heartaches of losing loved ones.... Reading Hubalek's book shows that starting life as a homesteader was very tough, and the story was so real that I was working the sod right with her. Be sure to read the whole 4-book series, and her other two series as well.

1 comments about Mark Twain: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies).

1. Samuel Clemons lived 75 years; fifty of them writing under the pseudonym Mark Twain - while numerous critical works about his writings abound, surprisingly there are very few in-depth biographical coverages that reveal Mark Twain's personal life. Biogapher Connie Kirk uses established Twain resources and adds new research and perspectives gleaned from Twain's personal letters and her discussions with family members: the result is an in-depth modern survey of Twain for new students of his works.

1 comments about Women in the American Civil War.

1. Compiled, organized and edited by Lisa Tendrich Frank, "Women In The American Civil War" is a two volume compendium focusing specifically on the women who played vital roles from the home front to the battlefield during the four years of the American civil war. Largely unknown, these women and their contributions are now showcased and presented for the benefit of scholars and civil war buffs with an interest in civil war history more than 300 alphabetically organized entries identify the individual women, their organizations, battles, and women's roles that are associated with all aspects of the civil war conflict. Featuring fourteen contextual essays covering the lives and experiences of women in both the North and the South, both slave and free, immediately prior to the outbreak of war, during the years of conflict, as well as after the Confederate defeat, "Women In The American Civil War" is further enhanced with contributions by more than one hundred experts in the field of civil war historical research, original documents (including letters and diary entries) that personalize the historical data; a detailed chronology of Civil war events while highlighting those particularly affecting women; and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Thoroughly 'user friendly', "Women In The American Civil War" is a seminal and important contribution to the growing library of Civil War reference literature and an important, core addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library collections.

1 comments about Hospital Days: Reminiscence of a Civil War Nurse.

1. This must be the best book on the Civil War written by a woman! The layout is incredible. Every one should read this book

No comments about In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography.

No comments about General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans.