1 comments about The Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace.

1. Big-Foot Wallace is a true Texas icon. He was on the famous Miers Expedition which explored West Texas. He also served as one of the original Texas Rangers. The reader does't know if what he reads in the story actually happend. Much of if did, but Duval added some stories to make it a better yarn. The humor is dry and understated fitting with typical West Texas sensiblity.

No comments about Military Reminiscences of the Civil War.

2 comments about Out of the Wilderness: The Civil War Memoir of Corporal Norton C. Shepard 146th New York Volunteer Infantry.

1. 
   Cpl. Norton C. Shepard was the fifth member of his family to enlist in the Union Army. He was in the 146th New York Volunteer Infantry also known as the Fifth Oneida, or Garrards Zouaves. At the Battle of the Wilderness he was wounded in the right shoulder, right side, and through the right elbow joint, breaking the bone and shattering the joint. He was left in this condition behind enemy lines.
   The story that follows tells of his conversations and interactions with the Rebels as well as his incredible survival. It is filled with details of his experience and makes for a great read.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   



2. This is one of the best narratives of a common Civil War soldier's experiences in battle that I've ever read. Shepard was a member of the 146th New York Volunteer Infantry, also know as Garrard's Zouaves or the Fifth Oneida. Shepard was one of the many casualties the 146th suffered in Saunder's Field on the first day of the Battle of the Wilderness. He recounts not only the battle, but his wounding and being taken prisoner. When I visited the Wilderness battlefield I took the book with me and re-read it as I literally walked in Shepard's footsteps on the very site where most of the narrative takes place.

No comments about The Defense of Vicksburg: A Louisiana Chronicle (Texas a & M University Military History Series, 90).

No comments about Alexander Graham Bell: Life of an Inventive Man (Biography).

5 comments about The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957-1963.

1. The goings on in this decrepit old Paris Hotel, run by an old French lady who cooked Cassoulets for the guests, were astounding. A gathering point for starving artists, especially planetary beatniks, we discover that the unbridled use of hard drugs and graphic homosexuality were a lot more common than Eisenhower would have let us in America think! *.*
   
   This book is a hoot but I want to say up front that it was seriously well-researched by the author. It's predominantly about some well-known, perhaps infamous, American Beats, most of whom (in this hotel anyway) were bisexual drug users. There were also other 'artists' from various places in the world who either lived in The Beat Hotel (the hotel really didn't even have an official name), or they 'visited' as guests of residents for varying lengths of time.
   
   The peccadillos of these characters defy sanity. There's scrying, crying, heroin use, singing, pornography generation, speculating on psychedelic inventions, poetry readings, and tons of all manner of sex.
   
   William Burroughs seems to be the main guy in this life adventure -- we hear of the untimely death of his wife (at another location) as Burroughs was smashed, playing "William Tell" with her for the entertainment of the equally drunken and high guests, ultimately putting a bullet in her forehead. He was never arrested for this incident.
   
   The chief guy whom we expect to find lodged firmly in The Beat Hotel never made it: Jack Kerouac. But pretty much every one of his dubious associates made at least a visit.
   
   This book is well-written -- a real page-turner and quite hilarious. It matters not if the reader is gay, straight, or anywhere in-between sexually... you'll much enjoy this book. And, if ever there was a clear example of 'truth being stranger than fiction', this one is it.



2. Really, I do. The book is in-depth and includes pertinent photos. The cut-ups and Gysin's paintings, as well as the total exploratory consciousness mindmeld attitude in inspiring. Barry Miles has once again succeeded in writing another great book on the Beats.



3. Perhaps 9, rue Git-le-Coeur will never be one of those addresses that everyone immediately recognizes. Yet, for a brief period of time, it was home to Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Brian Gysin, and was infamously known as The Beat Hotel.

   "The Beat Hotel" serves as an extended biographical sketch, presenting detailed glimpses into the histories of these artists - Burroughs' accidental shooting of his wife, his intense love affair with Ian Sommerville, Ginsberg's problematic relationship with his mentally ill mother, the "Howl" obscenity trials, his affairs with Burroughs, Kerouac and Orlavsky.

   What results is an often frank, always engaging depiction of the drugged out, free-loving world that produced such classic as Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" and Ginsberg's "Kaddish."

   It's to the author's credit that he achieves and exceeds his goal of increasing the reader's appreciation of these often neglected rebel artists.




4. Like, baby, I am not a big fan of the beats, dig? I was too young for it - it was dead by the time I was aware of it. And in hindsight it seems so self-indulgent.

   But.

   This book is really great. I lived in Paris for a spell, not far from said hotel (though it was long gone) and this is wonderfully interesting chronicle of ex pat life in Paris during the late 50s, early 60s, a bunch of fabulously interesting characters - reminiscent of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London (or whatever it was called) which was pretty darn clever (and if you like this, you have to read that.)




5. The first time I read this book, I turned back over to the first page and read it again. It was that good. I am a huge Burroughs fan, and I learned a new appreciation for Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Brion Gysin. The grist of this book provides insight into the day-to-day maze of creativity whose epicenter happened to be Post WWII Paris. If you are looking for a fresh, lively, intelligent glimpse into the creative process of Burroughs, Gysin, Corso, Ginsberg and others, this is the book for you.

No comments about Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Southern Biography Series).

1 comments about Things Grew Beautifully Worse : The Wartime Experiences of Captain John O'Brien, 30th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A..

1. Ably edited by Brian K. Robertson, Things Grew Beautifully Worse: The Wartime Experiences Of Captain John O'Brien, 30th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A. is the personal civil war diary of a Confederate officer who had a first-hand perspective of the battles, bloodshed, and gangrene of the Civil War, and who came to languish in Union Prisons with nothing to do save write down his experiences. Heavily annotated for the modern reader's benefit, this slim volume adds a very personal touch to a divisive era in America's history. Things Grew Beautifully Worse is a highly recommended and much appreciated addition to the growing library of Civil War memoirs and eye-witness accounts.

5 comments about Anne Morrow Lindbergh : Her Life.

1. Susan Hertog's biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh can in many ways be read as a cautionary tale: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. The overwhelming impression given by Anne Lindbergh's life is one of unhappiness. It seems clear, in fact, that she had some sort of clinical depressive disorder. She very, very rarely seems happy at any point in the book. On one hand, she was indeed the victim of a domineering husband whose own personality was full of strangeness and distortions. But she also had the opportunity to have many incredible adventures, as well as the wealth to write and live in luxury all over the world, and she seems not to have appreciated any of it. Once you have completed the book, you may want to turn back to the pages of Anne's youth, before her wedding to Lindbergh, and scream at her not to make the mistake of marrying him. She certainly might have been much happier had she married someone else. I found myself torn between pity for her and frustration with the passive stance she adopted throughout her life (and marriage). Anne's was a complex character, and it would have been hard to find a personality LESS suited to that of Lindbergh. But of course they did marry, and Anne's life was what it was, with all its tumult, and though she may have made the wrong choice we are reaping the benefit of it with the chance to read the fascinating cautionary tale of the choices she made as a woman, a wife, and a mother.



2. This book was so insightful. Anne's book "Tending Roses" is one of my favorite books and to read about the author and all that she was going thru at the time was so cool to read. She was quite a lady.



3. This is an very well researched bio of Ann and her family and all of the others players. I was a little put off by the reference to Ann as having had a blue collar life. She was surely from the privileged and wealthy. And having a $1 million wedding gift in 1930's would make her a very rich woman. Ann's life was facinating and her books have endured for more that 75 years. I do believe the author tried way too much to tell us what Ann was trying to say in her books and read more into the subtext than Ann had in mind. Ann's stories can stand on their own and her prose is memorable and appropriate. Some times a great story told well is just that a great story.



4. Susan Hertog takes full advantage of ten audiences with her subject, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She manages to capture the complexities of Mrs. Lindbergh's character and the contradictions of her marriage to an American icon, Charles Lindbergh. The fact that the Lindbergh family has largely disavowed the book doesn't detract from Ms. Hertog's insights.

   Unfortunately, the lengthy book, published almost 20 years after Charles Lindbergh died in 1974, virtually ends with his death...when Anne Morrow Lindbergh was 68 years old (she lived on until 2002). Almost nothing of Mrs. Lindbergh's life in widowhood is mentioned, which gives the unintended impression that in the final analysis, she was simply Charles Lindbergh's wife, not an accomplished woman deserving of her own biography.

   In fact, the middle-aged Anne Morrow Lindbergh became a role model for working women, albeit she was always too self-effacing to occupy a leadership position in the gender wars.




5. Having read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's diaries, her daughter Reeve's first memoir, Berg's biography of Charles, and Gift from the Sea, I was truly looking forward to this biography. Knowing that the author had interviewed Mrs. Lindbergh, I was expecting new insights into someone who, I believe, was one of the 20th century's most remarkable women. What I found instead was a rehash of all the material I had previously read linked together with lame "psychological insights" and platitudes.

   Another thing that bothered me was her considerable reliance on the published diaries without taking into account that they were edited for publication, and by Charles at that, who saw them as a way to refurbish his public image, using his wife's popularity following the publication of Gift from the Sea.

   In short, there is no depth to this book at all.

2 comments about Letters of a Civil War Nurse: Cornelia Hancock, 1863-1865.

1. I wish the press had released the other version of this book. The introduction isn't very helpful.



2. As an English civil war re-enactor, and a nurse by profession, Cornelia Hancock brings alive the horror, and difficulties faced by the wounded and the woman who choose to nurse them. The book is useful in its detail, and describes medical care at the battlefield, in hospitals, and the improvements made as the war developed. A book worth owning.