No comments about Neither True Nor Divine.

1 comments about Etta Place: Her Life and Times With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Women of the West).

1. "Etta Place: Her Life and Times With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" by Gail Drago is a great overview of information concerning not only Etta, but also Butch and Sundance. The author has done her research well, citing the most current information known to date of these colorful outlaws. While she cannot really tell us who Etta Place is, she give us some food for thought on her character.
   I would suggest this book to any fan of Etta, Butch, and Sundance. It is a great review of information that is solid.

3 comments about Jesse James Was My Neighbor.

1. Homer Croy wrote this informal biography of the James boys of Missouri, first published in 1949. The author uses homespun sources for many of the stories and anecdotes of Jesse and Frank, the Younger brothers, and their nefarious associates. Mr. Croy lived near Jesse's base in northwestern Missouri, hence the title. Croy was born the year after Jesse died, and considered himself almost a contemporary. He traveled to various towns and farms interviewing folks who remembered the Widow James and her famous sons. The result is a casual history, and reminds one of sitting on a front porch in small town Missouri while the old people spin tales. Lest one doubt the credibility of the sources, Mr. Croy takes care through newspaper archives and other, more objective sources to verify the facts. He also briefly examines the influence of Frank and Jesse on dime novels, art, and movies. Croy is forthright in his biases, but also keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Out in Missouri, folks truly admired Jesse and Frank, especially their low opinion of banks and railroads. It's doubtful that Jesse James was really an Old West Robin Hood, but the book never seriously suggests that as a fact. We can believe that Jesse's killer, Bob Ford, was a coward, and that Pinkerton men were considered polecats. Decent folks just didn't stand for that type of behavior. The book won't give the reader any particular insight, beyond the obvious, of the James boys and their motivations. Nevertheless, it's an entertaining blend of fact and folklore. Good light reading for students of Western history. ;-)



2. I first read this book in grade school, UMPTEEN years ago, when , mostly to annoy my Mom, I set about reading every book I could find on western outlaws. After my "Billy the Kid" era, I moved on to Jesse James. First I read the "scholarly" books with the ooky pictures of dead outlaws and Jesse's scary one-armed mother (her hand was blown off by a bomb lobbed through the family door by the Pinkertons.) Then I found Homer Croy, who tells roughly the same stories, but with a wonderfully humorous and personal writing style. Stylistic, yes, and probably more legend than truth. But of all the books, this is my very favorite. I was so happy to learn it was back in print. I assume that Mr. Croy has passed on, but he hasn't, I'd travel to wherever he is to buy him lunch. Perhaps not a "great" book in the sense of, say, WAR & PEACE, but a great book nonetheless.



3. A well written book by a fellow NW Missourian, Mr. Croy interviewed many eyewitness's to the actual James gang robberies. It is easy and fun to read. A must have book.

No comments about Behind Enemy Lines: Civil War Spies, Raiders, and Guerillas.

No comments about Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic.

5 comments about Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself.

1. I took a Whitman seminar from Dr. Loving, and this was our textbook. It is very dy, and very full of detail. I love Whitman's work, and reading this biography really helped me understand more about it.



2. The poet died in 1892. In life he became notorious and a positive influence on the reformers of the day. The author states he supplied the model for the count in Bram Stoker's DRACULA. The first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS was 1855, the last 1881. Whitman was not as solitary as previously assumed. For the poet the Civil War became a marriage ceremony of sorts. At forty three Whitman was too old for the rigors of combat. In 1862 Whitman went to the front in search of his brother George. Subsequently traveling to Washington D.C. he began his career as a wound dresser. Whitman immersed himself in the pathos of the terrible struggle.

   Whitman's capacity to love was the dynamo of LEAVES OF GRASS. He was a former printer, second son in the family. Whitman's ancestry was essentially Dutch and English. He concluded his formal schooling at age eleven. Between 1836 and 1841 Whitman taught at eight district schools on Long Island. By 1855 Whitman had read Emerson. In 1840 he made the prophetic announcement that he was thinking of writing a book. The tone of Whitman's early writings is moralistic. Whitman wrote a temperance novel entitled FRANKLIN EVANS.

   Whitman was a privte poet who made public his boundless affection for the one in the many. Whitman was no New England reformer. His utopia was not an agrarian retreat. In the 1840's Whitman dressed in a conventional way. Whitman loved Indian names and thought the nation was losing something through its policy of Indian removal. At the same time he had Darwainian confidence that the Indians faced extinction. Whitman was appalled by capital punishment. He saw the matter within the context of the haves and the nave-nots.

   The Bible was an influence later on his poetry. Whitman was editor of the BROOKLYN EAGLE 1846-1848. Whitman saw slavery as a social evil. He never became an abolitionist in a political or formal sense. Whitman lost his job and traveled south to New Orleans. He worked at the CRESCENT but later separated from that publication possibly by mutual agreement. His favorite poet was William Cullen Bryant. It may have occurred to him at this time that he was wearing out his opportunities in journalism. Travel beyond Long Island and New York City had fed his imagination at least.

   Whitmam, a product of "charity schooling", was socially and economically different from Emerson and others. Whitman was involved in Free-Soil politics. He became the editor of the FREEMAN. As the paper adopted a softer tone, Whitman was pushed out of the editorial office. LEAVES OF GRASS began to take shape in his mind in the 1850's. Parallels abound between Emerson's first two collections of essays and Whitman's first three editions of LEAVES OF GRASS. Whitman was interested in problems of democracy and the development of genius. He probably heard or knew of Emerson's address "Natural Aristocracy." Whitman was awash in romantic ideas about art and the artist.

   Whitman's favorite composers of opera were Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi. Italian opera emphasized the human voice over the orchestration. It is because of Italian opera that LEAVES OF GRASS may be read aloud. BEL CANTO sent Whitman into moments of rapture. LEAVES OF GRASS is a solitary act. The terms leaves and grass are printer's lingo. The use of leaves in a book title was common. Whitman felt that the genius in the United States was always in the common people. Emerson wrote that famous letter on July 21, 1855 greeting Whitman "at the beginning of a great career."

   Whitman blurred the difference between poetry and prose. Whitman took the single line as the rhythmical unit. James Russell Lowell supported Whitman's poetry with reservations. Richard Moncton Milnes was a notable English supporter. Alcott left a full account of a visit with Whitman in 1856. Emerson thought the poet should use self-censorship on his Children of Adam poems for the 1860 edition. The only contemporary response to homosexuality and the Calamus poems was a letter of the English critic John Aldington Symonds in 1890. William Dean Howells and Henry James did not like the poetry in DRUM TAPS or any of the other offerings of Whitman. William Rossetti arranged for an English edition of LEAVES OF GRASS.

   Whitman was a commencement speaker at Dartmouth in 1872. In the 1870's he moved to Camden and suffered the first stroke. Ill health did not prevent him from being productive in later life. His last essay treated Elias Hicks, a Quaker artist, who had been an influence on his work. This critical biography is excellent.




3. In this latest biography of quite possibly the most important American poet, Jerome Loving takes on a Herculean labor: to present the facts about a man who endeavored to create himself as an icon, and who has been taken up by a dozen causes and ideologies as one of their own (some have regarded Whitman as a religious figure on par with Christ, a homosexual liberator, or a proto-communist). The result of a great deal of combining and comparing, winnowing opinion, propaganda, and rumor, is a cautious, complex, and detailed view of the facts of Whitman's life.

   On the issues currently 'hot' in debate about the poet (his homosexuality or lack thereof, his attitudes towards immigrants, women, and African-Americans), Loving doesn't succumb to the temptation to either sanctify his subject or make him simply a partisan of the current opinions, but rather weighs and presents the evidence in as close to an impartial manner as I've seen. The lack of a simplistic, overarching narrative to Loving's life of Whitman (the kind of narrative found in many other bios) is true to the facts of life and scholarship--sometimes we can't know. I've found this book scrupulously up-to-date; it corrects many factual errors found in earlier Whitman bios. It is required reading for any Whitman scholar, and a good read as well for those interested in knowing more about the Good Grey Poet than his poems tell us by themselves.




4. After reading Loving's book on Whitman it only enhanced my spirit to read and analyze more of this Poet's life and poetry. I decieded to write about Whitman in my class at college and used Loving's book as a research means together with other books form the university library. I feel as if I know more about good "Old Walt" then I do my own family. This was truly a good read. Enjoy!!!



5. As a probably a-typical reader (I've not read Whitman's poems very thoroughly or very recently), I was nonetheless very interested to read about his life in incredible detail. Loving chronicles Whitman's movements to and fro - professionally, geographically, and artistically. His ability to deliver the flavor of the era via exposition of the political and social issues is quite good, however, at the "juiciest" of moments you sometimes feel disappointed. For example, there is quite a bit written about Whitman's Free Soil politics vs. abolistionist and how that ultimately destroys his friendship with his stalwart supporter O'Connor. The information is conveyed -- but I feel that I am missing some of the passion -- of their relationship to begin with -- and then of the heated argument they reportedly had. Perhaps this information was unavailable.

   I could conclude that Loving did not wish to guess -- but on several occasions in the book he speculates freely and without tons of support. I guess I would have prefered more freedom to speculate by the scholar.

   Still - if the reader is seeking a landscape upon which to speculate this should indeed be ample.

No comments about The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls: A Story Drawn from the Letters of Pamelia and James Fergus.

1 comments about The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States.

1. A very detailed history of the telegraph in the US. I covers the first "data" network in the US. You can understand how telegrams were sent, and passed around, and how much it costs to send the earlest "electronic" messages.

No comments about Ashbel Smith of Texas: Pioneer, Patriot, Statesman, 1805-1866 (Centennial Series of the Association of Series, 11).

1 comments about Killing the Messenger: Journalists at Risk in Modern Warfare.

1. When a Japanese sniper killed legendary journalist Ernie Pyle during World War Two, it was largely incidental and accidental when reporters died while covering warfare. In today's world, however, reporters are often the selected targets of political and religious terrorists seeking to maximize the reach of their message and the impact of their actions. In Killing the Messenger: Journalists at Risk in Modern Warfare, Herbert Foerstel examines why the practice of covering war has changed over time, becoming arguably more dangerous for reporters. War itself has, since World War Two, changed from conflicts between established nations to violent squabbles--often ethnic or religious in nature--between disorganized armed factions in remote regions of third-world countries or revolutionary uprisings against the governments of those nations.
   Foerstel interviews reporters who have been kidnapped, tortured or seen their fellow journalists--both American and foreign-- killed while doing their jobs. Those he interviews tell of how the strategic political entanglements of their native nations can make it difficult for reporters to be trusted by their suspicious sources, especially in Middle Eastern conflicts, where, in many minds, "America" equals "Israel," which, to many Muslims, is the political and religious equivalent of Satan. Kidnapped Chicago Tribune correspondent Phillip Caputo, for instance, tells of how it was almost a fatal mistake to carry two old Israeli business cards into Lebanon while covering the fedayeen in 1973. On the other side, sources tell of Israeli and American soldiers "accidentally" destroying equipment or killing correspondents seen as purveyors of propaganda.
   Foerstel discusses reasons why journalists have gone from enjoying "hands off" status--as they had during the Viet Nam war--to being prized targets. Not listed among the reasons are that they are symbols of "freedom," as some would have us believe. The reasons in reality are, sadly, much more cynical. First, reporters have monetary value. Kidnappers believe they can bargain for ransom with the media outlets for whom the journalists work and, indeed, have been paid handsomely in the past for the safe return of reporters. Next is publicity. Kidnappers know that reporters suddenly disappearing make world headlines and that any political message attached thereto gets broadcast and rebroadcast. Another reason news gathering has become more dangerous is the loss of objectivity. Reporters in the west have, especially since 9/11, felt compelled to take sides in global conflicts, echoing the "civilization versus terror" party lines of the Bush and Blair regimes. This has not gone unnoticed in the Middle East where the pro-West advocacy is seen by many as an anti-Islamic hostility. Finally, there is the dangerous and arguably stupid practice of intelligence agencies around the world using press credentials as cover for its operatives. The execution of journalists can be the only expected result as paranoid revolutionaries and terrorists find it hard to believe that a reporter in a sensitive area is who he says he is.
   
   In the final section of the book, Foerster examines some suggestions from the journalistic community regarding ways to keep reporters safer while they cover events in combat zones. The challenge, reporters say, is to stay safe without compromising news-gathering. Some suggestions are realistic "hostile environment" training, the use of "fixers," who are essentially local residents of dangerous areas who know the ins and outs of setting up meetings with newsworthy persons or getting into (and out of) hostile areas, better security training for American journalists (who have long lagged behind European journalists in this regard), and embedding reporters with military units charged with their safety. Some have even suggested--to the chagrin of many journalists--that journalists be armed and charged with their own protection.
   Killing the Messenger is thoroughly researched, very well written and the interviews, especially those with reporters who have been the victims of kidnapping and torture, are compelling. A recommended read.