This book discusses the economic, social, and political state of Europe as it enters into a often violent and lifestyle changing period. The significance of the religious movements and the powerful, rising nation-states is clearly discussed. In addition, the leaders who made often bold and obtuse choices are given their due mention. This is a superb place to begin to understand the lives of those who helped shape this age as well as their own. If you desire to understand modern European, United States or Latin American history, this book will set the stage for you.

For those interested in the history of the music they play or listen to - specifically country, bluegrass and old time - Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers is a detailed and lively introduction to the beginnings of popular American music.

Subtitled, "Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music," Singing Cowboys analyzes American musical currents across three centuries. Beginning in pre-Colonial America, the book moves rapidly forward to the "industrialization" of country music in the 1920's that reached its apogee in contemporary Nashville.

By demonstrating how rural and urban Americans entertained themselves musically, author Bill C. Malone deftly debunks stubborn linear-inheritance theories of musical transmission. Using countless examples, he shows how American popular music has always had multiple influences.

Favorite tunes like "Coo Coo" or "Shortnin' Bread" did not descend in a straight, "pure" line from slavery. Instead, Malone underscores the significance of close-quarters housing and labor among poor whites and blacks in the 19th century. Despite overt racism, such proximity was particularly common in the south, and forged an active and ongoing interchange of style and repertoire among both groups.

The author also makes a strong case for how music was routinely "traded" between these groups and the professional minstrel troupes performing throughout the big cities and backwaters of 19th century America.

For those who feel that many of our reels and hornpipes remain intact from the British Isles of earlier centuries, this book suggests amalgamating factors not commonly addressed in theories of Celtic or Anglo-Saxon musical influences on American southern music.

Of particular importance to the perpetuation of American folk musical traditions was the Civil War. Men from all over the country circulated songs and playing styles - especially fiddle and 5-string banjo. When soldiers returned home after the war, they brought these musical influences with them.

Underscoring the role of war in cultural transmission, the author points out that American men also went to war in 1775, 1812, 1846, 1898 and 1917.

Where the book really shines, though, is in its analysis of the transition of rural music, performed largely by amateurs and "part-timers," into a multibillion dollar industry. Pivotal to this change was technology. Radio and tape recording were critical factors without which no popular music could have grown to the degree that country music did in the 1930's.

Unfortunately for posterity, there are no eyewitness descriptions of actual playing technique and tunings from earlier centuries. And of course no recordings were made until the first decade of this century. However, banjo players like "Uncle" Dave Macon, born in the 19th century, may have represented somewhat accurate glimpses of these earlier styles in their performances.

Field recordings of rural musicians were made primarily in the American southeast - and most often in the Appalachians. This seeming regional bias was primarily one of convenience: This region was easily accessible from large eastern metropolitan centers -- New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta - that housed the academics who ventured out with tape recorders to "discover" rural music and musicians.

Malone's thoughtful annotations to each chapter of Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers are a Who's Who listing the significant contributions of ethnomusicologists, historians and field recordists to music preservation. Some of those early pioneers mentioned include Bascom Lamar Lunsford, John and Alan Lomax, Cecil Sharp, and Francis Child and, more recently, Ralph Rinzler, Mike Seeger, Norm Cohen and others.

Other musical forms discussed include shape note singing, Child ballads, Tex-Mex conjunto music, German fiddling, Scottish fiddle and bagpipers, the banjo craze of the 1890s, Bill Monroe's inspired creation of bluegrass and the phenomenon of singing cowboys.

Much attention is paid throughout to the powerful role of minstrelsy in transmitting music from rural "amateurs" to professionals and back again. Pop music, after all, has always influenced rural players' musical choices and styles just as much as "mountain music" affected professional performers.

One amusing anecdote from the book highlights the frequent confusion of "genuine" traditional music with commercial recordings:

"At a conference on traditional music held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in April 1989, ballad singer Doug Wallin presented a short program of songs he had learned growing up in that citadel of old time music, Madison County, North Carolina, where Cecil Sharp had found his richest repository of traditional ballads.

"After reverently announcing that he would perform a song he learned from his mother, Berzilla, Wallin...launched into 'After the Ball,' the monster pop hit from 1896 written by Charles K. Harris. The story and lyrics were basically as Harris had written them, but the modal melody and style were Wallin's. Some of the eminent folklorists in attendance sat in embarrassed or stunned silence." [END OF BOOK QUOTE]

Ultimately, the commercialization of country music created its own influences. Song pluggers and the media would help sustain powerful fantasies, created in the 18th and 19th centuries, of rugged individuals, hillbillies, rubes, singing cowboys and lone mountaineers as enduring American cultural stereotypes.

This is a story and history of a family covering the period prior to and after the Civil war. I found it to be a unique and factual story illustrationg the economic and business impact that the civil war imposed on families and leaders of our country during the period of civil strife. Life has a way of going on despite the happenings around us. This story shows the successes and the trials of various members of the Lamar family and the impact of their decisions on the history of our nation. There are heroes, and villans, statesmen and politicians all according to your point of view , and the circustances of their action. The stories are unique in their presentation and the book moves rapidly, maintaining your interest throughout the book. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in the workings of our nation in the history of the period.

I haven't even finished this book, but it has helped me put alot of my turmoiled childhood behind me.This book has helped me see I am not alone and their is people who have over come alot more than I ever had to deal with!!! No more self pity and making excuses!! I AM A Transcender!!!! I wish this book was available in paperback, I am on an limited income at the moment, but I would like to buy several copies for rest of my family and several of my friends!!!!Thank you Donna, I gave the name of your book to my psychologist and he liked your name for us Transcenders!!!!!!

The Booknews,Inc. review pretty much says all there is to say. A fantastic book, shame it's now out of print. If you see a copy, BUY IT!

This was an excellent book offering great insight into the way American's from throughout the country view that problems that face all of us. Although he lost in 1996, if he keeps to this message I wouldn't be surprised if he wins in 2000.

Is this for real? The author leaves me wondering whether I should eat beef or not. It reminds me of War of the Worlds. How much danger are we really in. I would recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about Mad Cow Disease.

As the author of this book I shall not review it -- but I would point out that it is in print. Originally published in hard cover by the University of Georgia Press, it is now (December 2000) available in paper back from Black Belt Press in Montgomery, Alabama

While researching in the State Department files on the activities of George Cupples Carothers, who was the US State Department representative accompanying the army of Pancho Villa (Division del Norte) in 1914 and 1915, I kept coming across telegrams and reports signed "Cobb". Cobb was the US Collector of Customs at El Paso, TX, and El Paso was the hub of US intelligence gathering, a main base for reporters, and the main port of entry for supplies and munitions going south to Villa's forces as they moved toward Mexico City in opposition to the Federalistas under Gen Huerta. Likewise, it was the point for the export of Mexican products north whose sale was vital to the support of Villa's forces. Thus Cobb held the valve which could stop the flow of goods in both directions. As it was, Cobb, an appointee of Woodrow Wilson, was an enemy of Villa, but so long as the administration did not choose one of the two Constitionalist leaders, Villa, or Carranza, but had observers with both, Cobb had to let the pipeline flow, though once, he was able to choke off Villa's advance by holding up trainloads of coal for Villa's trains. As Villa's fortunes waned after the battles in early 1915 and he began his long retreat north, Cobb became more and more active in intelligence matters. Judging from the traffic he acted as a de facto reciever of messages from others as well as gleanings from his own network. This was entirely ex officio as the Treasury Department had no intel functions then except for gathering information on smuggling. It appears Cobb was one of those fellows who gravitated to the action and was unwilling to sit by and count rail cars as they rattled across the Rio Grande to Cuidad Juarez. There is much traffic in the State Department files signed by Cobb concerning the hunt for Villa after he dispersed his forces in late 1915 subsequent to the defeat at Agua Prieta, Sonora. Villa's forces finally reappeared to raid Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, thus precipitating the Punitive Expedition led by John J. Pershing. This study is everything I wanted to know about Cobb and now I will not have to write him up.:)

For my fellow reviewers who choose to simply pass this play over because of the prevelant violence, I must point out the complex, witty character of Aaron the Moor. Shakespeare either intended for this play to be a parody of Marlowe/Kyd, or he wanted to experiment with a character, Aaron, to evoke every possible feeling from his audience. And, in my humble opinion, Shakespeare succeeded at this. Aaron is, at the same time, evil and cunny, witty and horrifying, and compassionate and stoic. His final lines, as he is buried up to his neck, left to starve, are some of the best confessions ever produced by the bard. It takes a truly cruel and uncaring individual to not feel for Aaron, who gives up his life for his child's, and who hopelessly and blindly loves a cruel witch of a woman. This play is worth reading, or seeing if you should be so lucky, simply to indulge yourself in the character of Aaron the Moor.

On a superficial first reading, 'Titus Andronicus' is lesser Shakespeare - the language is generally simple and direct, with few convoluted similes and a lot of cliches. The plot, as with many contemporary plays, is so gruesome and bloody as to be comic - the hero, a Roman general, before the play has started has lost a wife and 21 sons; he kills another at their funeral, having dismembered and burnt the heroine's son as a 'sacrifice'; after her husband is murdered, his daughter is doubly raped and has her tongue and hands lopped off; Titus sacrifices his own hand to bail out two wrongfully accused sons - it is returned along with their heads. Et cetera. The play concludes with a grisly finale Peter Greenaway might have been proud of. The plot is basically a rehash of Kyd, Marlowe, Seneca and Ovid, although there are some striking stage effects.

Jonathan Bate in his exhaustive introduction almost convinces you of the play's greatness, as he discusses it theoretically, its sexual metaphors, obsessive misogyny, analysis of signs and reading etc. His introduction is exemplary and systematic - interpretation of content and staging; history of performance; origin and soures; textual history. Sometimes, as is often the case with Arden, the annotation is frustratingly pedantic, as you get caught in a web of previous editors' fetishistic analysing of punctuation and grammar. Mostly, though, it facilitates a smooth, enjoyable read.

Now that the film "Titus" is about to open, I thought I had best hear a recorded version of the complete play to keep my mind clear during what is bound to be a perversion. Of course, many consider "Titus Andronicus" a perversion anyway; and to tell the truth, I do get a little queasy during the various mutilations that make the deaths at the end a relief rather than a shock. But accepting the play on its own terms, you will find the reissue on tape of the 1966 Caedmon recording of (CF 277) possibly the best directed of the entire classic series. Howard Sackler has a bunch of professionals on hand and he lets them (with one exception) tear up the scenery. Poor Judy Dench, who has so little to say as Lavinia before the plot makes her say no more, can only make pathetic noises for most of the play until her final death cry. The evil brothers, played here by John Dane and Christopher Guinee, are not only evil but sarcastically so--and this works on a recording as it might not on the stage. Perhaps Maxine Audley's Tamora is a bit too Wicked Witch of the West now and then; but her co-partner in evil, Aron the Moor, is brought to life by Anthony Quayle in a role he made famous on stage, going even further in the outright enjoyment of his ill-doing. Yes, this play can easily raise laughs and takes an Olivier to keep the audience in the tragic mood. (Reports are that he did it so well that some audience members became ill and had to leave.)

Which brings us to Michael Hordern's Titus. Hodern is a fine actor but not a great one. He suffers well but not grandly. I am surprised that his Big Moment--"I am the sea"--is lost among all the other images in that speech. But anyone can direct someone else's play. This recording, soon to be rivaled by one in the Arkangel series, is definitely worth having for Quayle's performance alone.