5 comments about Founding Fathers: Uncommon Heroes.

1. The book is wonderful but this particular printing was missing the epiloge. I wanted this especially and wished that I had known there were two versions of the book.



2. This book will not impress anyone who is out of high school. It is written at a very low level with poor objectivity.
   
   To be fair, the author is a layperson with no formal advanced degree in the subject of history. However, it shows and the book is a big waste of time especially when Ellis et al. are putting out the real deal on this subject.



3. This book seemed to be written over a weekend to catch the 'Founding Fathers' craze. It was poorly written, very large print (I assume to stretch the page count), and it seemed to be a rehash of other's work. I wouldn't buy it. 'Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation' is a much better read.



4. This Book was a big disappointment. The narrative and narrator were uninspired. It was geared to a third grade level and probably wouldn't have held a nine year olds attention long.



5. Wonderfully written, this book holds the reader's attention from beginning to end. This book is not only for history buffs, but for anyone who wants a fascinating glimpse of the lives of our founding fathers. Written in the form of short biographies, it makes it easy to put down and pick up again without having to re-read the previous chapter. The timeline in the end also makes it easy to put all of the events into perspective. This will be required reading for my own homeschool children, and should be required for all young adults.

5 comments about The Man Who Warned America: The Life and Death of John O'Neill, the FBI's Embattled Counterterror Warrior.

1. The book is not news to anyone who reads any New York newspapers. It is a cut and paste job from ON's drinking buddy. Better reporting done by author Peter Lance. Of course, nothing written by me detracts from the dedication and true grit of John O'Neil.



2. John O'Neill was a problem. A bull in the china shop. He was a womanizer and he was an exceptionally poor fit at the FBI, but if we had listened to him 3000 people, including him, would not have died at the World Trade Center, the pentagon and on three airline carriers. There seems to be less and less room in America for the mavericks. This book is no white wash. It paints the man in full warts and all. But at the end of it we realize that it was this wildman who was right and all the politicians, hypocrites, sanctamonious twits and stuffed shirt beaureaucrats who drove him from the FBI,or didn't pay attention to him were wrong. The execrable Barbara Bodine who single handedly ruined his mission to Yemen comes in for special criticism. She probably still doesn't think she did anything wrong. We are becoming a silly nation. We've become obsessed with beauratic rules, political correctness on the left, phony piety on the right, and we can't get anything done anymore. Don't read this book merely as a tragedy but look it as a wake up call



3. John O'Neill grew up in Atlantic City, NJ watching the FBI on TV on Sunday nights. All he ever wanted to do was be an FBI agent and serve his country. The son of working class folks who ran a taxi cab business he dedicated himself to be the finest and fulfilled his childhood dreams. Jonh went to my high-school and lived 5 minutes from where I grew up, I never knew him but after reading this fine Murray Weiss biography I feel I know him as a brother. This book will infuriate you as John O'Neill tries to warn everyone in the government of an impending doom with Bin Laden, who he studied and profiled, much to his chagrin no one listened. How ironic that after so much frustration with the FBI bureacracy and a Clinton Administration consumed by the presidents personal travails that John O'Neill resigns to take over security operations at the World Trade Center one week before 9/11. He perished in the collapse of the towers after he was safely out. He ran back in to try to save people. This book will move you, John O'Neill's story will stay with you. Did he have his own style and personal troubles, sure, but his life is what you will remember, his dedication to his job and the fact that maybe if a few more higher ups had listened to him this tragedy could have been averted. With men like this, you'll believe our country is in good hands as far as the war with terrorism is concerned. It's upper management we should be worried about.



4. John O'Neill was the most dedicated member of the FBI who committed his life to fighting crime and, ultimately, terrorism. His efforts were discouraged by bureaucracy, ignorance, and the Clinton administration. Read firsthand in this book how he was so close to saving much anguish, sorrow and death in the United States but was stopped in his tracks by others too inept to acknowledge the vision he had for stopping the unfortunate acts of terrorism in New York and Yemen. The cruelest irony is that he died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in charge of security after he retired from the FBI due to frustration.



5. This is an interesting book on an unusual subject. People like John O'Neill are not usually the subjects of biographies. He wasn't anywhere near prominent enough, and that usually means that someone like O'Neill winds up being a footnote in a book about someone else. Instead, O'Neill was the FBI agent in charge of International security in New York City, and spent much of the 90s as the guy in the FBI who was the most interested in and focused on capturing Osama bin Laden. Ironically, he retired in mid-2001, and took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center. He went back into the South Tower on 9/11 and was killed when it collapsed.
   
   O'Neill, according to the author, was a complex, driven man, a visionary who was one of the first US officials to decide that Osama bin Ladin was worth watching and perhaps capturing. While his FBI career was, in terms of his job performance, impeccable, he had two major weaknesses. First, he was occasionally forgetful, and violated various FBI rules and protocols. In the mid-90s, when Louis Freeh was running the FBI, any violations were punishable, and almost certainly would have a detrimental affect on a person's career. O'Neill was once caught letting a girlfriend onto an FBI secure facility, and giving her a ride in his car. On another occasion, he lost a briefcase full of classified material that shouldn't have been out of the office. Both of these incidents impacted his career and chances for promotion. Second, he had a penchant for chasing multiple women at the same time, concealing each liason from all of his other girlfriends. When he died, each of the women was surprised to find out that there were other women in his life.
   
   Much of the book is devoted to O'Neill's pursuit of bin Ladin, especially the investigation of the bombings at the African Embassies in 1998 and the Cole bombing in 2000. While O'Neill wasn't involved directly in the Embassy bombing investigations, he was in charge of the Cole bombing investigation. However, for whatever reason he ran afoul of the local US ambassador, a woman named Barbara Bodine, who started out asserting her control of the investigation and insisting that the Yemenis were offended by O'Neill, and that only she could smoothe things over. This was before O'Neill had met any of the Yemenis yet, but she insisted it was the case. By the time the investigation concluded, Bodine was so sure that withdrawing the FBI investigators was provocative that she ordered Marine guards to keep the FBI agents in the embassy, and had to be told by her superiors at the State Department to let the agents go. After she'd been transferred back to the States and 9/11 happened, the Yemenis became more helpful, and eventually began cooperating extensively with the US. Ambassador Bodine stuck to her guns, however, and even badmouthed O'Neill in an interview after his death.
   
   You have to wonder about this part of the book. Author Weiss was a friend of O'Neill's, and he clearly sides with him against Bodine. It's difficult to see how she could justify what she did (even if O'Neill was despicable, letting her opinion of him subvert this sort of FBI investigation is inexcusable). I expect that somehow she saw through his private life in some fashion. Weiss says that she had been introduced to O'Neill in New York before she became ambassador to Yemen. Perhaps she saw him at a restaurant with a woman other than the one who was escorting him the night they were introduced to each other.
   
   Regardless, this is an interesting book, even if the author, a journalist, occasionally makes a mistake around the periphery of his story. The one I noticed was the author saying that USS The Sullivans was named for some brothers killed on a "carrier" during World War II. The Sullivan brothers were killed on USS Juneau, an Atlanta-class Light Cruiser. Other reviewers have noted mistakes on the edges of the story, but they don't (in my mind, anyway) detract from the main message of his story.

No comments about New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.

No comments about Abraham Lincoln: A Life.

4 comments about The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir.

1. Daisy Bates work is a very important document from the era of civil rights. Although it is not an actual account of one of the nine students who integrated Central High, it is very close. Bates was right there directing the operation, making sure the students were protected, and made sure that the children were encouraged to go ahead with their duty. I don't think I would have been able to send those kids in to that school, with all those hateful students. I hope Arkansas and the citizens of Little Rock apologize every day for what they did to those nine children.



2. THE LONG SHADOW OF LITTLE ROCK is an interesting book. The story of Daisy Bates, civil rights activist, newspaper writer, officer in the NAACP, is a story of hate and bitterness and constant battling against the whites in her state of Arkansas. It is supposedly the story of the intergration of Central High School in 1957 by 9 black youths under the sponsorship and "guidance" of Mrs Bates and the NAACP yet it more often reads as a chronicle of Mrs. Bates's successes and failures and her importance in the intergration. It is a one-sided view of an important occurance in the civil rights battle.

   The reader must always keep in mind that the book was first published in 1962 (there is a preface by Eleanor Roosevelt) as the civil rights movement began taking on a more violent tinge. If you read it knowing the time period it was written in and the circumstances in the country and in the civil rights movement you can get through the pervasive hate and bitterness. Even Mrs. Roosevelt, herself concerned with the civil rights issue, comments on the bitterness of the volume.

   It would be interesting to read Melba Beals WARRIORS DON'T CRY in conjunction with this book - because perhaps then the real truth of the Little Rock experience would be known. Beals did not care for Mrs. Bates and her experiences at Little Rock are covered in a very brief paragraph in Bates' book while other students, such as Minnijean Brown, enjoy pages of coverage. It makes you wonder whether Beals's story is true or a conglomeration of all the acts committed against the other students and if Mrs. Bates truly was concerned for the children at Little Rock or the press coverage.

   A good read but one that must be read with the knowledge of the times, the attitude of the times and an open heart. Mrs. Bates recently died - and her book is an important read in the study of civil rights despite the anger, hate and bitterness of the writing.




3. Daisy Bates was an integral figure in the integration of Little Rock Central High School. As president of the State Conference of NAACP branches, she was very active in the fight for black rights. Hers is an eloquent account of a highly volatile situation. She effectively compares her views with other accounts of people that were there, and the writing is very fluid and moving.



4. bla

5 comments about A Beautiful Mind : A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr..

1. I read this book about two weeks ago, and I couldn't put it down. Maybe my opinion is biased because I have schizophrenia myself, but I found this story to be particularly encouraging in terms of my own recovery. The genius John Nash refused the coercive treatments of psychiatry and recovered naturally as some people do. I think it's sad that John could never reach the height of his mathematical genius again, after his illness, but it's still a hopeful story because he made a complete recovery, in my opinion. This book explains the mysterious and challenging symptoms of a misunderstood illness, and it also tells a tale of a person with the classic schizophrenic personality. It seems Nash was predisposed to the illness, and his behavior leading up to his first episode is characteristic of they typical schizophrenic. The difference between Nash's story and those of so many others with this difficult illness is that John was a true genius, became mad, and then recovered through sheer willpower. I think this book challenges the prevailing biopsychiatric model of schizophrenia and demonstrates that people can indeed recover without the use of toxic psychiatric drugs. You can also learn a lot about the politics of the Nobel Prize in this book.



2. I saw the movie and loved it, BUT the book is much, much better. I am a physician and have treated patients with schizophrenia. This book is a must read.



3. I assisted Nash with the C programming language at Princeton and was a source for the book.
   
   I found the book accurate, well-written, and readable. The part of the book that talks about the period in which Nash's economics prize was considered was indeed one in which this very private man was under a microscope, and my supervisor warned me to be very sensitive to his condition.
   
   Sylvia Nasar knows her craft very well. The book is narratively organized, and she doesn't need to do dramatic flashbacks or grabbers to get you to keep turning the pages. It's a man's life, in America of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s...to the early nineties, by which time Nash had become the Phantom of Fine Hall.
   
   But, Phantoms have a story too. Anyone interested in the human side of math and science, anyone interested in psychology, anyone who is impressed by women who both "stand by their man" and get a career of their own, will enjoy reading the story.
   
   The book is much more detailed and far more accurate than the movie, which had to take liberties with the truth to be entertaining. It includes Nash's other common-law wife Eleanor and a son by that marriage, which was very different from Nash's relationship with Alicia.
   
   The book is long but will probably be very rewarding for most readers.



4. John Forbes Nash Jr. is one of the most intriguing personalities I've known or read about. A precocious math genius and one of the few persons responsible for the establishment of game theory, he succumbed to mentally-decapacitating schizophrenia at around the age of 30. I think Sylvia Nasar succeeds wonderfully in recounting the personal aspect of Nash's life such as his various eccentricities and the effects his mental illness had on both himself and those around him, but when it comes to the science and theories the book is a wee bit disappointing. Of course this book is a biography and is therefore more concerned about his life than his work, but a lot of interesting examles could have been been used to more clearly illustrate Nash's theories that I was quite surprised Nasar didn't give at least a few of them. Until his theories are better understood, the enormity of Nash's genius could not be fully appreciated.
   
   Recommended for its storytelling, but if you'd like to grab the gist of the technical stuff read his published papers or game theory textbooks.



5. In Sylia Nasar's award-winning biography, A Beautiful Mind, which chronicles the life of mathematics genius and Nobel laureate John Nash, she divides his life into three acts (though the table of contents does not): genius, madness and reawakening. Act one, his genius phase, covers the first two parts of the book, and lasts for the first 29 years of his life. Act two - madness, which takes the form of schizophrenia - covers the next two parts, and lasts until he is 62. Act three, his awakening, covers his remission from schizophrenia, his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics in 1994, and his life at Princeton up to the present. The book was made into an Oscar-winning motion picture by director Ron Howard in 2001 and stars Russell Crowe. Both book and film are phenomenal, as are the man's life and Crowe's portrayal of it.
   
   Particularly interesting about act one of Nash's life, and part one of Nasar's book, is the discussion on game theory. Game theory, up until the time of Nash, was based upon the idea that only one player in a game can win and everyone else must lose. But Nash broke with tradition in his doctoral thesis by theorizing mathematically the results of a game in which everyone won, regardless of the number of players. His thesis became the basis of modern economic theory, and the reason for his eventual Nobel prize.
   
   Nasar does an exceptional job explaining game theory and the workings of the mind of a genius, and especially Nash's original idea, which he called "the Nash equilibrium," and introduced in 1950 when he was only 21. Nash theorized that a game could be both competitive and cooperative - as opposed to the "winner take all" stakes of purely competitive games like chess - and could result in a desirable balance of power, rather than the undesirable condition of domination by a single power. In other words, when a player considers both his own good and the collective good of the other players, the results are better for everyone. This allowed gaming theory to be applicable to economics, politics and other sciences.
   
   In Ron Howard's film, he illustrates this beautifully with the scene in the bar in which all the boys want the beautiful blonde who walks in. Russell Crowe's character, Nash, explains to his friends that if they all go for the blonde, they will all lose, because they will offend the blonde's friends, causing them all to strike out. But if each of them goes for a different girl, they will all score. This is the moment Nash realizes he has found the original idea for his doctoral thesis.
   
   Socially, Nash had no friends growing up. This is ironic for a person whose greatest contribution to science was a theory of relationships. It is also interesting in that it illustrates something about the environment needed to develop into both a genius and a schizophrenic: isolation. As Nasar puts it, "His overriding interest was in patterns, not people." I don't think a lack of interest in people is required for genius, but I do believe an interest in patterns is. It was his ability to see patterns in numbers that led Nash into numerology and decoding imagined ciphers for the Pentagon.
   
   Howard does an excellent job showing Nash's ability to recognize pattern in the opening scene when Russell Crowe insults a fellow student's tie after recognizing several patterns in it that are reflected in the layout of the punch table. He does it again when he is able to pick out the pattern of an umbrella in the stars for his love interest and future wife, Alicia, played by Jennifer Connelly. And when he is decoding for agent Parcher, played by Ed Harris, the patterns that he sees in the numbers and words "light up."
   
   Until he meets Alicia, who would stand by him through his illness and help him overcome it, Nash's relationships are cloaked in mystery and innuendoes. It is not important to get into them here; but let me just say that the homosexual community was vocally disappointed by Howard's choice to leave them out of his film. I believe he was right to do so, if for no other reason than that they would have added nothing to the story; but more because no one is certain of what those relationships consisted. Nash himself did not consider himself a homosexual, so it may be that they were merely codependent. Regardless, they would undoubtedly have been immature and ego-centric, as all his personal relationship were before he met Alicia.
   
   Alicia brought something to Nash's life that he had never experienced before: another focus besides himself and mathematics. Before her, his world revolved around the fact that he considered himself a mathematical genius. Now there was someone else to consider. Alicia drove a wedge into an otherwise self-focused, isolated life. She was the person that would recognize his slipping into schizophrenia - although she didn't know what it was at the time - and she was the one that would bring him back. Connelly is wonderful in the role of Alicia. Howard uses their relationship in the film to turn an otherwise straight thriller into a love story. It is this combination that makes A Beautiful Mind very much like a Hitchcock film; and yet, because it is true, it is even more interesting.
   
   Ron Howard is masterful at blurring the line between what is real and what is not in Nash's world. We are never really sure until the day of the storm, when Alicia goes out to get the laundry off the line and discovers what is in the garage. That is an exciting scene, especially when combined with the scene of the baby's bath, and then with the scene following in which Parcher (Harris) holds a gun on Alicia and tells Nash that she is threatening the mission. The conclusion that Nash voices, as he tries to prevent Alicia from leaving, breaks the tension: "She never grows old" (talking about Charles' niece Marcee). That is when he shows he realizes that something is wrong in his world.
   
   How he deals with his problem is what makes his "a beautiful mind." Once he is diagnosed with schizophrenia, he is given the usual drug and shock treatments. But he realizes that the treatments being administered to save his mind are also destroying it. With Alicia's consent and help, he tries to overcome his problem using the power of his own mind. It is because of her love and support, and the support of the mathematics community, that he succeeds.
   
   There is a key scene in the movie - the scene when he receives the recognition of his colleagues in the faculty dining room in the "pen ceremony" - when Thomas King tells him about his being considered for the Nobel Prize. Nash explains to King how he overcame his schizophrenia. He says it is like having an appetite for something but, rather than feeding it, choosing to starve it. He said he had an appetite for certain things in his life that weren't real. They are still there - talking about Charles, Marcee and Parcher - but he doesn't acknowledge them. Thus, they no longer have the power to affect his life.
   
   To me, this is the take-away from both Nasar's book and Howard's film. We all have appetites for things that are not healthy, not real - fantasies in which we play "what if" scenarios in our heads. Like Nash, we can choose to ignore them and go on to lead happy, healthy, productive lives. Or, as he did during his mad period, we can indulge and become involved with them, allowing them to affect and ultimately destroying us. Like Nash, we have power over our own thoughts, and, thereby, over our own lives. If we choose well, we, too, will have beautiful minds and beautiful lives. It's up to us.
   
   Waitsel Smith

5 comments about American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.

1. I wish this book had been read widely before the 2004 election. And even more, that it had been published before the 2000 election. It puts a whole different perspective on the forces that have brought us to such unhappy consequenses in the USA. I found this book to be highly informative, knowlegeable and chilling. A good read even though it is too late to change history. And a valuable lesson as we march into the next decades. Dynasties are anti-democratic.



2. From the Preface of his book Kevin Philips says-"My original ambition was to identify and explain the Bush-related transformation of the U.S.presidency into an increasingly dynastic office,a change with profound consequences for the American Republic,given the factors of family bias,domestic special interests,and foreign grudges that the Bushes,father and son,brought into the White House."
   Mr.Philips fulfills that ambition in this book.
   
   He delves into the family history and alliances,from Yale to Skull and Bones and in some cases to the O.S.S. and eventually the C.I.A.
   
   He explains "Texanomics" quite well. A kind of low-tax,low-service,high economic stratification brand of Southern economic conservatism.
   
   G.W.Bush's allegiance to big business and the astronomical tax rebates to companies like G.E. and the ever famous Enron are detailed in the book. Also discussed in the book are G.W.Bush's ties to Ken Lay and his lobbying for energy deregulation. I didn't know that Enron had been a large supporter of the Republican team in the Florida recounts of the 2000 presidential election.
   
   "George W. Bush is in a class by himself when it comes to prevarication. It is no exaggeration to say that lying has become Bush's signature as president."- The American Prospect quoted in the book.
   
   Mr.Philips tells how the Bush-Cheney pairing in the White House is historical in that it brought two former energy company executives together.
   
   The author gives a clear description of what the military-industrial complex is and it's history.
   He details the major part petroleum has played in past as well as present wars. It's historical significance in the outcome of World War II can't be argued.
   
   This book explores the religious aspect of the junor president Bush and his relationship with evangelical voters in contrast with his father's relationship to the same group of voters.
   
   This is a very detailed book about the Bush and Walker families and the businesses they were involved in as well as the transformation of both president Bushes from business to their eventual presidencies.



3. I was a little disappointed after reading the title that it wasn't easy potshots at the world's most worthy target, but rather a fact-based, rather dry account of the last century's rise of dynasty, military-industrial complex, and of course 4 generations of Bushes' feeding frenzy on said trends. But call me lazy.



4. A historically accurate review of the Bush multi generational quest for both national and international financial and political power with evidence that politics were a means and wealth the ends; as we continue to see in current events concerning that family today. A must read for anyone who wants at least a basic understanding of how insatiable thirst for absolute power and base, crass greed are at the heart of what and how the United States of America came to be and is currently run. When President Bush said to a group of the richest Americans during his re-election that:"...some refer to you as the 'have mores'; I refer to you as My Base." He wasn't joking; that is his brotherhood, his extended family, the real and only Americans in his world view.



5. Good stuff here on the Bush Family and their many shady dealings going back to the 1800's. I mean it really is amazing how interwoven this bunch is with so many of the worst elements of the worlds power brokers for over a 150 years. If this book has a weakness its, although it brings up many of the the nefarious deeds and dealings of the Bush crime family, that it barely touches on or completely ignores the worst of the worst that the Bushs have been linked to over the years. It also tries a bit too hard to try to draw a parrellell between the Bush gangsters and European royalty by making them into Americans version of a royal family. Still recomended reading though.

5 comments about Machine Gun Kelly's Last Stand.

1. The telling of "Machine Gun Kelly's Last Stand" is at once fast-paced, eerie and suspenseful. Stanley Hamilton's eccentric characters are plucked from the pages of history to recreate their nefarious deeds. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and Hamilton fills every keystroke with tension.



2. I wrote my masters thesis on the Urschel kidnapping case and spent a year reading thousands of related books, articles, historic documents and public records. Hamilton's book was by far the most exhaustive and most accurate account. The few errors in the book are errors that actually exist in the public record (Kathryn Kelly's eyes were green, not hazel; her middle name was not Mae, and a few other minor facts.)
   
   In addition to being accurate and complete, it was also well-written and interesting to read. It's novel-like qualities included excellent character development and conclusions about each player that helped "close" the story. If you want to know the Machine Gun Kelly story, this is the book to read.
   
   BTW: A few interesting facts were not included in the book, such as: 1)the Urschel kidnapping trials were the first in U.S. history to be recorded on moving camera; 2) the Kelly trials were the ONLY federal criminal trial EVER to have news cameras in the courtroom; and 3)Kelly's accomplices were the first criminal suspects ever transported by airplane.



3. Stanley Hamilton's account of the Urschel kidnapping is very good in this book. He has some new information on George "Machine Gun" Kelly, which has not be published previously. This book is good reading and should be in your library of crime books. A great job!
   
   Mike Koch, author of "The Kimes Gang."



4. Having read many books on gangsters you come across some real turkeys but Stanley Hamilton's account of Machine Gun Kelly's crimes was very well written without the usual padding out that some writers tend to use.

   It is a very informative account of the kidnapping and aftermath which kept me gripped until the end.

   The book's ending was, for once, a surprise and I would recommend this title to readers who like True Crime to be based on facts and not the fiction.




5. Stan Hamilton has written a great narrative history in which there are surprises, odd twists and unexpected heroes. It is a fine well-written book in which neither Kelly nor his foil, J. Edgar Hoover, are the most fascinating charcters' but rather that role is reserved for the smartest of victims, Charles Urchel, and the powerful, conniving Kathryn Kelly. I will not give this one away, but will tell you that this book delivers one first rate couple of evenings of reading which not only tells a strong story but gives an insight into the world of 1933 --gangsters and bootleg gin. You will love this book!!!!

4 comments about The Life of Francis Marion.

1. Sean Busick has done us all a wonderful service by bringing back to print William Gilmore Simms's Life of Marion. It's a classic work of historical narrative suitable for most readers. Not only does Simms provide a interesting account of the life of one of early America's most courageous figures, he captures the complicated and often turbulent world of Revolutionary South Carolina.



2. Few "giants" of the American Revolution have deserved more attention and praise than Francis Marion. Unfortunately, Marion, the brilliant general and statesman, has not received the attention he rightfully deserves. Simms classic biography is a remedy to this predicament, and Dr. Busick's erudite introduction to this new edition allows for an even fuller understanding of a true American hero and his contribution to American social and political life. Reading Simms on Marion, guided by Busick's careful and terse introduction, we can recover the military genius and personal affability of the man Tarleton called the "old fox."
   
   H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Ph.D.
   Chair, Social Sciences; and Professor of Political Science, Brewton-Parker College, Mt. Vernon, Georgia
   www.drleecheek.com
   Author of _Calhoun and Popular Rule_ (University of Missouri Press, 2001 and 2004).



3. I wanted to read a contemporary book about General Marion. This is an interesting book but was written in 1844. It is undoubtedly accurate but I found it difficult to read for a nonhistorian.



4. This is well written Narrative of the life of a real hero and his participation in the revolutionary war

No comments about Reminiscences of My Life in Camp: An African American Woman's Civil War Memoir.