If you are searching for Great Grandpa's land anywhere in Mississippi, "Mississippi Road Atlas" is worth obtaining. All 82 counties are clearly marked with Township, Range and Sections. Cemeteries are also marked on many counties. Some maps are several years old but that adds to the usefulness as land changes over time.
I have already dog-eared my copy and plan to use it until it falls apart.

This book is fascinating for any blues or history lover. My husband bought it--we both read it and have passed it on--it is on it's way to a different state with a friend and we are buying another copy which we will also share with friends and family. Really makes one understand and appreciate REAL blues and what it has done to influence all kinds of music through the years. Highly recommend especially for music and history teachers as well as musicians.

This book is one of the greatest books I bought at the time when I was in the US. Pete Seeger wrote about the book: This is a great story, a great read, and has a great lesson to teach young Americans , black and white, of how you can be strongly rooted in your home community and at the same time see a sense of kindship with working people around this whole world. The battle to save the elected Loyalist government of Spain 50 years ago was the first battle in World War II. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and others may have lost a battle but they didn't lose the war, nor have lost it yet. Carry on! I want to send all my respect to the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, your international solidarity which you showed in the battle against the fascist Franco regime will never be forgotten, we will never forget you bright stars in the darkness.

This book is an encyclopedia of 1,200 United Methodist Churches in Mississippi with brief historical sketches for almost all of the active congregations. Over 150 line drawings of church buildings from every region of Mississippi add a special dimension to this book, written as a project of Mississippi Methodists' 200th anniversary in 1999. The appendix lists churches by county and year of organization.

This is an exquiste book.I would give it ten stars if I could. Ms. Parker has beautifully reproduced in her book the watercolors she painted of Mississippi wildflowers, a wonderful biodiversity of wildflowers in the state I call home. Although localized to Mississippi this mystical, poetic, yet technically accurate depiction of the wildflowers is far superior to photographic field guides, all right for the field but of no interest in terms of floral art. THIS IS NOT A FIELD GUIDE. A book to savor.Akin to Audubon, THE TEMPLE OF FLORA.

"Mr. Roosevelt's Steamboat" describes the first steamboat journey on the Mississippi. It reads like a fast-paced novel yet it is scrupulously accurate history thanks to the thorough research done by the gifted Ms. Dohan. The three-month voyage starts in Pittsburgh in 1811 and is an exciting adventure for Nicholas and Lydia Roosevelt and their two children--the second born enroute. (Nicholas was Theodore Roosevelt's great-granduncle.) Roosevelt believed in his boat and risked everything to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of steam transportation on the Mississippi. The adventure-packed voyage includes passages through dangerous falls, a chase by Indians, the New Madrid earthquake and an on-board fire. This excellently written book is a must for those who like true-action with their history.

I was impressed at the magnificent way that this book brought to light the struggle and dreams of the Mule Train participants. Their beleifs that what was transpiring would make a difference, not just for them, but for all of America. The committment of Mr. Willie Bolden, tasked with the responsibility to see that all went well. His determination and others that dispite several roadblocks insured all travelers were taken care of. The reporting by Jean Pond-Smith showed the realness of this movement without being bias or prejudicial. Her capture of the spirit of the travelers were enligntening and heartwrenching. This book brought home to me many memories that I had long ago moved to the back of mind. That I, along with with mother and three of my sisters were a part of this moment in history.

Original version published by Paul Fessler in H-Net Book Review for H-GAGCS listserv

An academic's recommendation of a book as a "good read", however, can often be regarded as suspect by undergraduates and general readers. Perhaps our overexposure to dissertations and monographs have perverted our sense of what constitutes an enjoyable and easy to read book. To counteract such biases and perversions, I asked my wife to read Hauser's book. This book passed my wife's test. If only all books published by academic presses could boast such accessibility.

Originally published in Germany in 1950, My Farm on the Mississippi was clearly written for a non-academic audience. In this brief, very accessible book, Heinrich Hauser, an opponent of the Nazi regime and wartime German refugee, turns his three years from 1945-1948 on a Missouri farm near the German-American community of Wittenberg into an engaging adventure story. This book caught the eye of Curt Poulton, a historical geographer and translator at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, who translated this work into English. Poulton argues that Hauser, as a German living among a German immigrant community in the wake of World War II, offers invaluable commentary upon this 1940s "postimmigrant America" where immigrants' native language and customs were still alive.

In 1939, Hauser, a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, escaped from Germany with his Jewish wife and two children. After unsuccessfully trying his hand at farming in upstate New York and then at city life in Chicago, Hauser and his wife yearned for the romantic fresh air of the proverbial American heartland. With no prospects or firm destination, Hauser set off for St. Louis and points southward in an old 1928 Packard in search of his dream farm. South of St. Louis and just north of Cape Girardeau, Hauser and his wife began passing signs to "Stuttgart", "Dresden", "Altenberg", and "Wittenberg". In Cape Girardeau, Hauser spotted a "Dr. Schultz" and paid this German-speaking physician a visit to inquire about the region and the German-sounding places. Working through the German-American subculture, Hauser soon bought a farmstead south of the town of Wittenberg, Missouri on the Mississippi floodplain.

Hauser recounts how his wife Rita and son Huc struggled to make the farm a working proposition for the next three years. Most of the profits, however, were used to provide care packages and other aid to their German friends and relatives back home. During the rest of the time, his family survives horrific floods, raging forest fires, and a comic shipwreck. During the summers, his son Huc devised plans and adventures such as making a boat with an outboard motor in ways reminiscent of a Little Rascals episode. By 1948, however, low crop prices and homesickness convinced the reluctant Hausers to return to Germany and abandon their Missouri farm.

Nevertheless, Hauser offers a useful window into this German-American society on the banks of the Mississippi. As Hauser notes, it is this region's rural isolation that permitted its German culture and language to survive both World War I and World War II and beyond. Hauser knew he was among his own kind when he saw women working the fields---a practice Americans generally avoided. In the local bars, these German-Americans would add salt to modify the sweet American beers like Falstaff and Budweiser. When the war in Europe was over, Hauser's family celebrated with a crowd of itinerant German-American lumber workers playing "schottiches" and singing songs such as "Am Brunnen vor dem Tore" and sea tunes like "In Hamburg da bin ich gewesen". Also particularly interesting (and useful for immigration and ethnicity courses) are Hauser's recollected interactions between these German-Americans and the nearby African-Americans.

Just as Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America offers an outsider's critique of early nineteenth-century America, Hauser's observations present a valuable perspective of postwar America, its rural traditions and ethnic relationships. Hauser is an "outsider/insider" within the postwar German-American community. Though an outsider as a recent German refugee, he can speak the language (both linguistically and theologically). This allowed him to enter into the culture and bring a unique perspective to bear upon it.

Because this book was originally written for a German audience unfamiliar with many aspects of American society and culture, Hauser's narrative is particularly instructive to an American audience today. For many undergraduate students in particular, Hauser's emphasis on the basics of everyday American life proves more fascinating to American readers today than when it was originally published. Approaching the daily life of the post-World War II America from the cultural distance of a foreigner is in many ways similar to the approach of today's readers and students separated from that cultural landscape by the passage of fifty years. Thus, Hauser's cultural observations, which may have seemed less interesting to an American reader in the 1950s when the work was first published are met with a much different perspective.

Without Poulton's sparkling translation, however, these observations would have lost much of their power to English readers. Poulton's work arouses comparisons to other recent and notable translations such as W.C. Kuniczak's translation of Heinrich Sienkiewicz's monumental Trilogy beginning with the novel "With Fire and Sword" (popular Polish nationalist fiction written during the late 19th century-a useful assignment for courses dealing with 19th century European nationalism, by the way). Poulton remains faithful to Hauser's intent to provide his readers with an adventure story. So dependent upon narrative flow and colorful description, this value and attraction of this work would have been irreparably harmed by a poor translation.

Readers interested in this approach should also see the superb collection of immigrant letters in News from the Land of Freedom by Kamphoefner, Helbich, and Sommer (Cornell University Press, 1991).

Native American Legends Of The Great Lakes And The Mississippi Valley is an outstanding collection of legends, tales and myths drawn from the Native American peoples of the Great Lakes area, the Midwest, and the Mississippi River valley. This rich and diverse collection reveals the central beliefs and reflects the guiding principles of Winnebago, Ojibwa, Menominee, and other native tribes, providing the reader with insights into their outlook and aspirations. Native American Legends Of The Great Lakes And The Mississippi Valley is a welcome addition to personal, academic, and community library Native American Studies reading lists and reference collections.

As a Mississippian, I found this book fascinating. It reveals little known facts about native americans of Miss. and the south. For anyone interested in Native Americans or Mississippi history.