Very good book, it covers just three days in the whole thing, but you always want to finish it in one setting. I highly recomend this book.

This book is a real touching one. The suffering of all the characters was passed to the reader and worried him also. It was a great book because it taught great lessons of love and especially of life. It also taught about how surprising the morning of the Japanese attacks in Hawaii were and how clueless the people were of what was happening. I hope you also enjoy the book and learn as much as I did about the terrifying morning of December 7, 1941.

A 6th grade student

Twelve-year-old Janey, her parents, and her four-year-old brother Michael have left their home in Kansas to live on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. It's December 1941, and Janey's father, a welder, has been hired by the military to work at Hickman Airfield, near Pearl Harbor. Janey loves the beauty of her new home, but she is terrified by the threat of war between the United States and Japan, which could lead to an invasion of Hawaii. On the peaceful Sunday morning of December 7, without warning, Japanese planes attack. Janey and her mother and brother are separated from her father. They are forced to evacuate their home, but Janey is determined to return - because she knows in her heart that her father can't be dead, and that she will see him again. This was an excellent new book in the American Diaries series that captured the terror of the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, as faced by the many civilian families living on the island.

When I returned home from work Monday, I had a wonderful surprise. My pre-order of "Dancing with Granny" had arrived. I sat down and read it from cover to cover in about 3 hours. It made be cry, laugh, and get mad. The remembrances of the author's "granny" brought back wonderful memories of my Irish and German grandmothers. The picture painted of the author's Granny was very vivid. I,too, am from a large, very close bonded family. I come from the Midwest and so have not ever encountered any prejudice like that encountered by the author and her family in Mississippi, and even up North when the author went to college. It made me angry to believe that people would treat other people that way. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and anxiously await Frankye's next one.

if you like a book about the bygone years you will love this book. especially about the family. i enjoyed the book so well i hated to see it end.

I am from from MS - yet did not experience some of the details listed in Dancing With Granny. I never worked in or visited any cotton fields but, heard about tough times from some family members. I can relate to most of the language and upbringing that was a way of life for most blacks then. I am thankful to God that times have improved. It is a reminder of what our parents endured and for us to remember where God brough us from.

This book and its companion, Count Frontenac & New France Under Louis XIV represents one of the US's first great histories. Detailed, but lively written with only a few give-away phrases to let the reader know that this history was written over 100 years ago, these 2 volumes are a must read for any serious US/North American history buff.

This multi-volume edition of Parkman's magnum opus might appear initially daunting, as it covers more than 1,200 pages of material. Suffice it say, however, that the rewards are entirely worth the effort of fording your way through this majestic work.

Parkman triumphed over numerous personal disabilities (extremely poor eyesight and recurring pain in his limbs), to produce some of the most important and transcendent histories of the 19th century, works that secured him a place in the American Pantheon, beside Prescott and Bancroft. He has been interpreted both as an example of literary Romanticism by some, and as a supreme pessimist by others. His objective as an historian was to "while scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton with flesh." This notion is reflected repeatedly throughout these volumes. His style is highly descriptive, borrowing as it does from his numerous treks to the sites he writes of. The Jesuits, trappers, governors, nuns and explorers he depicts come across as flesh-and blood, breathing, human beings, engaged in real activities. He has little place for abstraction, and never dwells overlong on minutiae. The ramifications of particular pacts or treaties, for instance, are subordinate to actual events and places. When he takes the reader into an Indian log-house, he/she can practically taste the smoke as it permeates the air.

When it comes to Native Americans, Parkman is far from sentimental. In fact, he bridled at the notion, common in 19th Century Romanticism (particularly Rousseau and even more conspicuously in Chateaubriand's ), of the Indian as noble savage. Parkman's earlier book on the Oregon Trail stemmed in part from his experiences amongst the Sioux on the Western Plains. The Indians depicted in these pages are, for the most part, more savage than noble. The Iroquois are especially ferocious in their raiding parties and in their methods of reprisal. Those who fell victim to their wrath were in for days and nights of unspeakable torture. Parkman describes these scenes almost too vividly. But as he himself would note,
"Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time." There are some academics that would argue that Parkman is not as objective as he would like us to think. He has a fairly consistent Protestant, Bostonian, Brahmin bias as regarding Catholicism, for instance. His view of Native Americans is hardly what could be termed politically correct. However one may feel about his viewpoint, one can not dismiss his power of depiction, or the scope of his genius and enterprise. When taking into account the fact that he produced volume upon volume of history, under the most debilitating circumstances, there can be no denying that he qualifies, as perhaps no one else, as "The American Gibbon." For the reader who wants to relive history at its most vivid, Parkman provides the goods. He paints in realistic detail the struggles, adventures and misadventures, the faith and foibles, great tribulations and monumental victories of an exceedingly noteworthy cast of characters. There are the infinitely stoical, but often-scheming Jesuits. There is the monomaniacal, driven, but honest-dealing and ultimately tragic figure of LaSalle. Champlain is another noteworthy figure, truly heroic in stature. The most heroic figure, however, may after all be Parkman himself. Shaped as he was by the notions of greatness fostered by such writers as Carlyle, it was a state he strove consciously to achieve. This collection, along with others in the Modern Library series, indicates that he achieved his goal. Thanks to The Modern Library for making authors such as Parkman accessible once more.

Francis Parkman's account of two centuries of French colonization in North America is a true classic -- undoubtedly superceded in many of the details of its scholarship, but unsurpassed as a Romantic narrative history of two eventful centuries. The publisher is to be commended for making the complete epic available in two affordable volumes. The reader will find the pacing leisurely, and high interest inevitably cannot be uniformly sustained, but patience and perserverance will be richly rewarded.

I received all 3 books as a birthday gift & finally got around to reading them this summer. Once I started, I couldn't stop! The characters are so real & believeable that I felt like I knew them. The changes they evolve through with life's circumstances are admirable because they seem like real folks going through real trials. Loved the plot between Mabel Rae & Drew....

Not only did I love this book but I felt almost as I was apart of this family that went through trails and tribulations. It was wonderful! Insprirational! If you read this one you must read the other two.

What a touching story! The fact that this series is based upon actual events makes you believe that love can conquer all. Kudos to Ms. Stokes and her family for letting their story be told in such a wonderful way! Thanks!!! DON'T miss the other two books in this series.

These photographs show proud and dignified human beings living in a culture that once really existed in America (believe it or not). You will not find pictures of people being chased by dogs or being subdued with fire hoses. You will not find pictures of lynchings or cross-burnings...

I am a Greenville native who just sat down and shared this book with my mother who still lives in Greenville, Mississippi. She remembers the photographer and we both knew people mentioned in the book and some of the people in the pictures. It is a great depiction of early Black life in the Delta and tells a compelling story of the photographer,
Mr. Anderson. It shows that not all black Mississippians in the early days were cottonpickers living on plantations. The town of Greenville has a rich history, this book gives a minor glimpse of it. I wish the photo index had of had exact names of the people in them, that would have made it even more personal and touching.

Separate But Equal is a unique gem. A combination of historic photographs and personal essays, it chronicles the lives of an African American working middle-class living in the Mississippi Delta during the years of segregation.

H.C. Anderson snapped the deceptively simple but beautiful photographs, and they are a revelation. Through the lens of his camera, he documented a segregated but proud society aspiring to its own version of the "American dream." Anderson provides us a personal glimpse into the lives of children and families celebrating special events - beauty contests, weddings, proms, birthday parties - and they are truly dressed for the occasion!
One of the more striking photographs depicts a mid-wife who has just helped deliver a baby in a family home. The bedroom floor is covered in newspaper, as the new mother looks on from her bed, covered by a clean crisp white sheet. Although the photographs primarily focus on the every day lives of their subjects, there are also powerful photographs documenting the burgeoning civil rights movement, and a grim reminder of the fate suffered by some individuals who chose to play an active role.

The essays accompanying the photographs provide insight into Greenville's history. As seen through the wide-eyed amazement of a child, noted writer Clifton L. Taulbert paints a vivid picture of his youthful visits to the prosperous and magical Greenville, the "Queen City of the Delta." Taulbert along with Shawn Wilson provides the reader with a fascinating insider's view of the process involved in bringing this book to print. In a personal and touching essay, Wilson reflects on how the search for an old photograph of his mother, long since deceased, led him back home to Greenville and Mr. Anderson. It was there in Anderson's now defunct photography studio, that Wilson discovered the wealth of photographs comprising Anderson's life long work. Reluctant but trusting, the aging Anderson handed over his photographs so that Wilson might share them with the world. In doing so, we have the opportunity to view images of a rarely explored segment of society, one that combines both the struggle AND celebration of life during the period of Southern segregation.

This wonderful book would make a great holiday gift for those that love history or photography!

An influential collection, partly responsible for the late 1940s resurgence of interest in America's greatest author, this construction of Faulkner's narrative world is certainly no substitute for any of the novels. But it has its uses: readers who don't plan to read more than 3 of Faulkner's best novels may find some of Cowley's excerpts a reasonable consolation; Cowley's chronological ordering not only clarifies Faulkner's fictional world but exposes its organic unity; with the exception of "Barn Burning," most of the essential short fiction (including the frequently excerpted "The Bear") can be found here; the concluding commentary and genealogy which Cowley elicted from Faulkner himself is both helpful and a kind of Faulknerian literary piece in its own right.

A slight "down side" (apart from some questionable excerpting and over-emphasis on chronological at the expense of "narrative" time) is Cowley's somewhat "dated" aesthetic judgements (though at times refreshing, since the author was applying them to a "non-canonical" writer).

As for "Burn Burning," it's readily available, free of charge, on the Internet.

The Portable Faulkner is a wonderful intro to Faulkner, but it's just that--an introduction. It can't do whan the entirety of one of Faulkner's novels will do, and in some cases I recommend skipping a bit in the Portable Faulkner until the corresponding novel has already been read (for example, Dilsey's section of The Sound and the Fury shouldn't be read in the Portable if you haven't read The Sound and the Fury. Trust me, TSatF is a book where you don't want to read the last chapter before the first three).

Better than an introduction, the Portable Faulkner also serves as a very interesting companion to those already familiar with Faulkner--it does the great service to readers of putting Yoknapatawpha stories in chronological order, which is an interesting perspective we may not otherwise get to see.

However, above all, there are two reasons why I bought this book.

First, it includes the Compson Appendix. If you've read a copy of the Sound and the Fury that didn't include the Compson Appendix, you need this. It's something that has to be read after the Sound and the Fury to capture the whole of Faulkner's story.

Second, it includes Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech, which is wonderful, especially as a complement to reading the books themselves, and which is very nice to have in book format like the Portable Faulkner.

The Portable Faulkner is THE way to be introduced to William Faulkner, arguably the best of 20th century American novelists. Cowley arranges whole work and excerpts chronological for Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County; it should be noted that Faulkner did not write his body of work chronologically. By arranging the work in this way, Cowley does us a great service in seeing Faulkner's great creation as an ordered whole.

The drawback to this work is in its goal -- to make more understandable Faulkner's creation in his mythic county. The drawback is that, by design, none of Faulkner's other work is included, such as The Fable.

The Portable Faulkner should be viewed only as an introduction, a tantalizer. Upon seeing the greatest of the work, we can then proceed to the work in its entirety.

The book is about a serial killer that has killed many victims in the south, ranging from Lousianna to Mobile. When Brett finds out that the killer has killed one of his old girlfriends he feels compelled to get to the bottom of the case. While searching for the killer, Brett and Paige find themselves in a situation that may eventually cost them their lives.

This story is about a serial killer and maybe another killer. Brett & Paige are Officers of one of the Law enforcement agencies tasked with dealing with this serial killer. They find themselves vicitims of this serial killer in a way you would not believe. The truth must prevail. There are plot - subplots and more subplots in this book. It is exciting, thrillings and keeps you guessing. One thing you will do after reading this book, is, re-evaluate who your real friends are ?

Underrated (and somewhat unknown) Charles Wilson has done it again! "When We First Deceive" is a superior novel about a small Mississippi town's attempt to hunt down and stop a serial killer that taunts police with mysterious clues. When one of the deaths turns out to be the former lover of the town's young police lieutenant, things heat up fast!

Husband and wife law officers, Lt. Brett and Officer Paige Dunnigan, are the central characters in this pot boiler. Wilson, however, does a fantastic job of developing other characters quickly and effectively in this extremely fast "read". You find yourself almost meshing into the storyline because you get to know these people so well!

Not being one to give away much of a plot when I write these reviews, let me suffice to say that this book will have you scratching your head throughout. Just when it appears that the crime will be solved, another "twist in the road" appears. Who is it that's really responsible for the deaths; the local cororer, the FBI agent, the sheriff, or perhaps even Brett Dunnigan himself?

If you've read any other books by Charles Wilson then you already know that he's a master storyteller. If this is your first Wilson book, then you're in for a great treat and you'll quickly find yourself looking for some of his other works as soon as you're finished. Especially recommended would be "Nightwatcher"!

I was very impressed with this book. It was obviously well researched and includes numerous quotes from survivors. Historical documents enhance the first hand accounts.

The details of the boat trip including the explosion are vividly written. This is the best book I've read about the Sultana Tragedy.

The sinking of the steamboat Sultana was the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. History. Strangely, even though it occurred at the end of the Civil War and most of the dead were returning Union POWs, it is an almost forgotten event. Author Salecker recalls the bureaucratic bungling and corruption that helped lead to the diaster as well as a harrowing account from the survivors. This is a good history book that sheds light on the memories of the dead and the survivors.

Very well researched and composed. One feels as if they are right there with the soldiers and civilians as they struggle for survival not only from the flames that are engulfing them, but from the mass of humanity that is in the frigid waters of the swollen Mississippi.

Very vivid accounts of suffering with physical and mental challanges in a time when the soldiers should be almost at their happiest moment - going home.

Another reader of this book has written: "Foote's primary weakness as a novelist is that he seems to be unable to find his own voice." This is a remarkable comment, since one of the intriguing aspects of the novel is precisely author Foote's use of voice! In the "Voices" chapters, he alternates points of view from each of the characters. He also uses time shifts with great effectiveness, as at the end of the novel, when we shift forward with a preview of what will befall two members of the kidnapping threesome. The kidnapping itself is suspenseful, yet perhaps more exciting is the character development, for the kidnapped boy's father undergoes a profound revelation. It isn't nearly so much the content of this novel as it is its style which makes it a good read, and a worthwhile one. It illuminates a difficult time in American history, yet it is intimate and finely drawn.

Although Shelby Foote is thought of as a historian, he has always considered himself, first and foremost, a novelist. "September, September" is the story of some rednecks up from Mississippi who have come to Memphis, Tenn. to kidnap the son of a prominent black family. As a background for this story, Foote has chosen the month of September, 1957 when the South was in turmoil over the forced integration of Little Rock Central High School. Foote has meticulously researched his novel with a historian's eye for detail: the weather in Memphis on specific days, who won the Miss America pageant in 1957 (Miss Colorado, Marylin Van Derbur), and the release of the Edsel by Ford Motor Company.

Foote's primary weakness as a novelist is that he seems to be unable to find his own voice. Although the book is skillfully structured and well written, the plot is somewhat tired and predictable. There are very few surprises. Foote has somewhat adopted the structure used skillfully by his mentor William Faulkner of telling a little bit of the story at a time from the point of view of different characters. Foote's steamy descriptions of sex and lovemaking and rivalry among two men for the affections of the same woman are reminscent of Erskine Caldwell.

For all it's failings, "September, September" is an excellent novel. Shelby Foote, the excellent American historian, is also an outstanding American novelist.

this southernistic view of greed and crime is a truly well written thriller!!foote has once again showed his talent as a novelist and and a true artist of the english language!