5 comments about The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days (Bison Book).

1. "Log of a Cowboy" is as advertised, a simply written narrative of a trail drive, as straight-forward as its cowboy hero. While not great literature (or is it?), it has a freshness that makes it fun to read. The sheer labor of the trail drives made them heroic! The image of hundreds of trail herds making their way north is awesome.
   Many modernizations of Andy Adams' original novel have been made. This one is easily readable and very enjoyable. Jack Hannah's song based on it, "Trail Drive", is true to this story that tells of trail boss Flood and the trail hands' adventures in Dodge City, as they "trail 'em slow" to Montana.
   If you yearn for a simpler time, love adventure, remember "Wagon Train" and "Rawhide" fondly, or just want to be transported to another life, this book will do it.



2. I was expecting a little more excitement in this book than what I read. I was a little disappointed, to the point that I almost didn't bother to finish it. I wouldn't buy this book again if I had the chance.



3. I'd give The Log of a Cowboy 5 stars as an excellent story of life on the cattle drive trails. It's a great read...
   But, the quality of this particular edition is very poor.
   Blurry print, ink blotches, and even some unreadable sections, makes this edition a poor choice. It looks as though someone just ran the text through a poor quality copier.
   Given a price of $38.00, I would certainly expect better.
   Try any of the paperback editions, and avoid this one.



4. I have completely lost track of the number of editions and printings I have seen of this book, over the years, and a quick search with Google will produce a number of different free e-texts available on-line. However, almost every edition known to me is missing an introduction; there is therefore (1) no information about the author, and (2) no information as to whether what we have is a novel written in documentary style, or an actual nonfiction account of a typical trail drive in the early 1880s.
   
   Well, folks, it's a novel, as the largely symbolic names for the characters might indicate: Priest, Flood, Officer, Strayhorn, Forrest, Blades, Wheat, Straw, etc., etc. I finally got around to reading it, and enjoyed it. Nothing spectacular or overdrawn--- it would not be surprising to discover that every incident is based on something that directly happened to the author or one of his cowboy sidekicks during his trail-herding days. All the classic situations are here, including visits to Dodge City and Oglalla, fiendishly difficult river crossings, stampedes, rustlers, con-men and segundos, chuck wagons and remudas, saloon gunfights and card-sharping. The number of 20th Century western authors who turned to this 1903 novel to obtain some authentic details to insert into their own trail-drive sequences is probably also close to uncountable.



5. "The Log of a Cowboy" was published in 1903 and tells the story of a five month long trail drive that took the circle-dot long horns from just a little south of Brownsville up into the Indian territory of the Blackfoot Agency - a 'pasear' of nearly 3000 miles.
   
   When I came to this book, I didn't exactly know what to expect. The only other western I had read since childhood was "The Virginian", a book that seemed very fictional (although I enjoyed it greatly). "Log of a Cowboy" is entirely different. It reads more like an autobiography -- which some historians have suggested it is. Certainly there is an authentic feel to the book that is unmistakable. Rather than being over the top, the stampedes and gun battles are underplayed, although they certainly maintain their own levels of excitement.
   
   My own response to the book: I found it hard to put it down. The story was full of adventure and cow and cowboy trivia and it was just plain fun. I ended my read with a great deal more respect for the cowboy and his craft. Who knew that cattle liked to bed down on higher terrain?!?
   
   Five Stars. Despite being fiction, "Log of a Cowboy" remains a wonderful historical resource. Persons interested in the Old West should find it a satisfying read, although they should not expect a overly polished presentation. And for those who are considering this book for younger readers it should be noted that there are some very non-PC(politically correct) speech and actions. This book was, afterall, written over one hundred years ago.
   
   ~reviewed by Pam T.~

1 comments about General Henry Lewis Benning : This Was a Man.

1. While many people readily connect Henry Benning with the US military installation, the deeds and details of his life have slipped into obscurity. Even in his hometown, the historical marker that once pointed to the location of his home and briefly described him is no longer there. His home, and the entire city block on Broad Street in Georgia has been demolished. Today, Benning's old neighborhood has been replaced by Total Systems, a modern coporate office facility.

   Henry L Benning was a wise, prudent and selfless servent of causes that he felt were just. Benning excelled as a military leader and his career as an attorney is legendary. He served his home state as a Solicitor General and as a Justice of the Supreme Court. His career as a successful attorney earned him the reputation as a champion of truth and justice. He was also a devoted husband, loving father and a generous friend.

   This is an excellent research book for anyone interested in the life of General Henry Lewis Benning. The chapters in this book's pages include The Columbus Bank Cases; Succession of the Confederacy; The Battles of Gettysburg, Chickamauga and the "Riot in Raleigh"; and the East Tennesse Campaign and the Battle of the Wilderness. There are almost a hundred photographs, maps and illustrations in this book. Footnotes appear throughout the book and reference the reader to countless resources for research. A thirty-two page index is at the end of the book.

No comments about Adams: An American Dynasty.

2 comments about The 1862 Plot to Kidnap Jefferson Davis.

1. I find it hard to believe this book is not mostly fiction..it was readable..but to say that it is a true story is beyond any wild belief.The "plot" to kidnap Jefferson Davis was at best a ill conceived "dream" of the French characters of this book. Indeed if they had a true intent to kidnap the Confederate President,they would have had several back-up plans in the event all the pieces of the original plan did not fall into place. It turns out to be little more than a story of what the Confederates believed to be neutral frenchmen, traveling from Washington City to Richmond, on a lark. The story is full of the Frenchmen's value of self-worth and the feeling that the Confederates were ignorant fools that had no place in the civilized world. The trio fashion themselves as The Three Musketeers. The originals of Dumas have little to fear from these three. This book was hardly worth the read...and I do not say that about many books. It is however a short book and that is a blessing. I decided to give it another try as a evening read after having read and reviewed it five years earlier. The basics of my review stand.



2. This book is very interesting, and an easy book to read for those who do not know much about the Civil War. It tells the story that very few people know about three brave frenchmen and their plot to capture the president of the confederates, Jefferson Davis.. Including the adventures they have a few weeks before and after their plot. I would recommend this book for anyone, especially those interested in Civial War History. This book was hard to put down.

   I am definately not "into" Civial War history, but I found this to be a great book. I would make the same decision in buying it again.

5 comments about The Kennedys: The Third Generation: The Third Generation.

1. Wow, I was a little suprized at this book.I like other are semi intrigued by the Kennedy's( I go through spurts LOL) I thought that Barbara Gibson would write a true story about the family since she was so intimatley connected to them. This was really horrible!(I can understand why some of the Kennedy's don't read any books about their family after this book)She had nothing nice to say about one Kennedy...Caroline and John like the rest of our generation maybe tried out drugs(pot,ups,diet pills)but certainly were not drug addicts as it seems to allude to in the book. Caroline and John(RIP) seemed to be brought up very well. Even if you did not like Jackie, she raised two good, solid adults who by all outward appearances seem humble. So what Caroline tried to get to the head of an ice cream line by using her name....What KID wouldn't try that if it might work? LOL Somehow I dont see her doing this once she became an adult. I cant even picture her trying to cut the line, she seems like a very dignified lady, as was her mother. Ditto Maria Shriver. I saw an intimate portrait of her and she too seems humble.She was 17 when she got a little annoyed at Barbara Gibson because she would not let Maria drive Granny's car..C'mon this is the best you have on Maria, and you label her a brat. I dont see her shoving people out of the way either. What they did as kids we all did, just on a smaller stage and a smaller scale. I was a brat from 13 to about 18 and I am super glad no one is writing about me.I do feel sorry for Ethel Kennedy. From several different books she sounded obnoxious from the word go...talk about power going to your head..and you never hear any real positive stories about her children, yet I am sure some of them have contributed to the world at large. Ethel could have learned a thing or two about parenting from Jackie and Eunice Shriver. Even poor Sarge Shriver is attacked in this book as a snob!(Maybe he appeared snobby so he could not be misquoted, and he kept his mouth shut) Poor man. Anyway if you want to read a book that tears down this family as much as possible, this is the book to buy (LOL), otherwise save your money and buy one that would give a fair picture overall.



2. Having read and enjoyed Barbara Gibson's story about working with Rose Kennedy during the matriarch's later years -- and the related stories of the fun and foibles of the clan's grandchildren -- I anticipated a more in-depth chronicle here about the lives and significant contributions and problems of the grandchildren-generation of America's Kennedy clan.

   It was a bloodbath.

   Whereas Gibson sounds as though she enjoyed her job despite the frustrations of working in such self-centered and affluent milieu in her book about Rose, this book presents those same grandchildren as selfish, snobbish, hedonistic hellcats with thorough disregard for the lives of those around them... resulting from their sub-par parenting courtesy of their abused, neglected, drug-addicted folks and hell-bent-on-success grandparents.

   This is a textbook of intergenerational blame.

   The redeeming qualities of this book include its attempt at even handedness (for example, the author does note that with few exceptions, Maria Shriver did in fact earn her journalistic distinction on her own... and that Caroline and John Kennedy were basically good children, exceptions to the Kennedy rule) and its historical validity; based on my experience reading every other Kennedy biography I can get my hands on, most of Gibson's factual information is accurate.

   However, allegations that Rosemary Kennedy never was retarded ring false to me (Gibson claims Rosemary was merely unacceptably mediocre as well as dyslexic... seems to me that other Kennedy children were similarly underendowed in priority areas, but no one wanted to lobotomize THEM -- except maybe Gibson herself). The word "hate" and its relative "hatred" are flung around with reckless abandon, classifying everything from Ethel's feelings about her son David to Rose's reaction to Kym to Jackie's response to John Jr.'s potential acting career.

   The author truly seems to hate this family, to use her already overused adjective. Obviously, she anticipated a windfall of money to make such a distasteful book worth her time, or maybe her co-author bewitched her... but there are more judicious Kennedy biographies out there, ones that manage to highlight accomplishments of this very accomplished family without seeming to relish their weaknesses, proclivities, deviations, or vulnerabilities.

   Get this from the library.




3. In spite of the title, a good portion of the book is devoted to a repetition of familiar family history centering on Joe, Rose, Jack, Bobby and Teddy. This book is not friendly to the Kennedys. It will be most interesting to those who enjoy watching members of the younger Kennedy generations self-destruct.



4. This book should never have been written. It is poorly researched, riddled with inaccuracies, and so relentlessly anti-Kennedy that it induces mental nausea. Ms. Gibson has made capital out of her secretarial job, but neither her pontificating nor the scuttlebutt of "household staff" is worth reading.



5. While I don't have an overwhelming delight nor animosity towards the Kennedy family, I believe that the author, Barbara Gibson, does. Writing this book provides her with an opportunity to bash a former employer. The book is poorly written with regurgitated passages throughout. It also contains typos that should have been easily caught during proofing. Example: Anthony Shriver "was born in 1965..." Further down on the same page you will find this sentence: "In February 1965, he was quoted in People magazine..." Please! If you are going to take my money at least get your product correct.

   Bottom line - Don't waste your money or your time on this book.

1 comments about Lincoln in the Times: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, as Originally Reported in The New York Times.

1. Two of the best of Lincoln's men, David Herbert Donald and Harold Holzer, have edited a book every person interested in Abraham Lincoln and/or newspaper coverage in the Civil War era should own.
   
   While a solid effort throughout, I found the second half of this book the most interesting. The reports printed in the New York Times on the last days of the war through the assassination conspiracy and its aftermath have a striking immediacy.
   
   The report carried in the Times on Walt Whitman's talk on Lincoln given in New York City, some twenty-two years after that dreadful day of April 14, is an especially fine close to a valuable book on our nation's greatest president.

3 comments about Beerspit Night and Cursing.

1. Black Sparrow is digging deep into the heap of leftovers to come up with some "new" Bukowski. This is the worst after-he-died book to be released. Almost all of the letters are by Bukowski. That's a relief because Sheri Martinelli's letters are unreadable. The spelling, punctuation, and stream of consciousness writing style make her letters impenetrable.

   Bukowski's letters are readable, but he's too young here to have much to say. Frankly, Bukowski's early work is pretty weak. It wasn't until the late 1970s that he became the great writer we know and love. Here, he picks up on Martinelli's racism, runs with it halfheartedly, and praises her for no reason. The letters are very drunk and usually pointless. Some of the angry wisdom shines through, but not much. This is a book for diehard Bukowski fans only. It's a bad representation of his work.




2. You can't critique a collection of someone's letters on the same basis you would their published public works. But in this volume, the first thing you might wonder is why two articulate people chose to affect such an inarticulate, though sometimes inventive, style. All collections of Bukowski letters contain many cryptic and rambling missives of this sort, and I suppose they may be excused as the unedited utterings of a drunk and/or hung-over mind. But I'm led to believe that Bukowski produced a lot of work in that condition, including his better-crafted stories; so why must the letters be so sloppy? Even as first drafts, they're a bit much. And why Ms. Martinelli chose to emulate this style is another question, unless of course she was similarly indisposed. Maybe it was an accepted literary style in the '60s. At any rate, it makes the book a slow slog, although some new insights into Bukowski's nature and ideas may be winnowed with diligent application. Like many of the Bukowski-related volumes, this one seems to be more for the fan and collector than for the casual reader. There are a few photos of the two authors in the center of the book. Black Sparrow Press did its usual commendable job of design and production.



3. BEERSPIT NIGHT is an interesting entry into the volumes of Bukowski letters published by Black Sparrow. This is a venture between two people who were involved with Bukowski and Martinelli professionally and personally: John Martin, publisher of BSP, and Steven Moore, the editor of this book, respectively. The correspondence is lively, Bukowski seems to have met his match, and enlightening. Bukowski, as Moore states, reveals more of his artistic and literary leanings with Martinelli than he did with anyone else he exchanged missives with (Martin and Bukowski's widow may be the only other people to have seen this side of him). The book appears to have been a labor-of-love for Moore, who knew Martinelli, and Martin shows his usual loving care with this book as he has with every other Buk book. The only problem I have encountered so far (at only 1/4 of the way through) is Moore's decision to leave much of the original purposeful misspellings and colloquialisms of both Bukowski and Martinelli. It becomes quite tiresome, like spending hours trying to solve word problems. And, for some reason the footnotes are not numbered, so many a reader may actually pass them over not realizing they're there. Those who think they know everything about Bukowski might discover some revelations in these letters.

1 comments about Scientist, Soldier, Statesman, Spy: Count Rumford, the Extrordinary Life of a Scientific Genius.

1. I have not yet read this book; the above star rating is arbitrarily placed to make it possible to post this note and should not be taken seriously. I am sorry to note, however, that the publisher's ignorance of their own product is made evident in the following quote from their review, above: "This is the first book to examine the life of this brilliant but difficult man." That is certainly not so. The late eminent scientist and scholar, Sanborn C. Brown, wrote two biographies of Rumford: "Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford," intended for the serious reader, and "Count Rumford, Physicist Extraordinary," a shorter version intended for the younger reader that, inter alia, omits some of the details of Rumford's extensive sexual adventures. Both are excellent (and the first, at least, is listed by Amazon.) In addition, there are at least half a dozen older biographies of Rumford, ranging from good to boring, and dated beginning about 1845. Rumford's complete works have been published in five volumes. Volume 5 deals with his social innovations, and is fascinating and entertaining reading even for the technically unsophisticated reader.

1 comments about Freedom: Volume 1, Series 1: The Destruction of Slavery: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 (Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation).

1. This volume is the first of a series of books documenting the march from slavery to freedom in the U.S. from 1861-1867. The team of historians from the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland began in 1976 (assisted over the years by many graduate students) to select original documents from the National Archives that best illustrated the process of emancipation, abetted in some states by the central role played by the slaves themselves in attaining their freedom. Letters, affidavits and proclamations from slaveholders, politicians, non-slaveholders, bureaucrats and slaves--complemented by the editors's illustrative footnotes--bring to life the voices of 19th century America wrestling with a destructive institution that led to civil war. While the editors present but a small percentage of the archive's holdings, they have chosen the most powerful and illuminating documents that should be read by every American.

1 comments about Best Companions : Letters of Eliza Middleton Fisher and her mother, Mary Hering Middleton, from Charleston, Philadelphia, and Newport, 1839-1846.

1. Best Companions is a 532 page compendium of letters between Eliza Middleton Fisher and her mother, Mary Hering Middleton. The letters bridge Charleston, Philadelphia to Newport, through the years 1839-1846. This seven-year conversation, encompassed in some 375 letters, connect the cultural and social life of the North and the South even as other forces conspired to tear America part from within. Enhanced with an Epilogue, extentensive bibliography, and comprehensive index, Best Companions is intimately showcases the joys, sorrows, frustrations, and widespread opinions of a close mother and daughter. Best Companions is not to be missed!