I was hoping for a book about Confederate mail service in the Trans-Mississippi area, which is a pretty tight specialty area in itself, but this book goes a notch further--it's about the _stamps_ used in the Tran-Miss. 1862-65.

The book is 1984 copyright, a small press publication, so looks dated in font and layout, but there's nothing wrong with the info--if this is what you're looking for. Lots of b&w images of Civil War Confederate letters and postage. Short, but interesting, intro info. Total length about 70 pages. The copy I got was rather dirty and faded, so I don't imagine there's been a huge demand for copies!

After setting the stage in volume I, Roosevelt falls into a hero worship of the famous names of the frontier and a larger than life portrait of the average, rifle-slinging frontiersman and backwoodsman (words Roosevelt equates with superheroes). While it would be improper to say that Roosevelt strictly confined his second volume to the little details, every page seems to resound with the latest Indian skirmish, a gruesome tomahawking, a white foray or retaliation, and the daily peril of Indian attacks. The American Revolution finds frequent appearance as the guiding backdrop to this volume, with the result being the repeated treatments of the British encouraging the Indians (through payments and promises) to set upon the American settlers. Overall a more specific volume than the first, I left the book thinking the whole nothing but an endless series of Indian battles.

Did you pass it around the trailer park?

The author of this ridiculous book obviously has no sense...not to mention no class. For him to lump every single member of a fine university into one category truly tells a story. Tell me Mr. Finebaum. Did a good looking girl at Ole Miss turn you down? I have many friends who attended Ole Miss and that school has turned out many a good person. Get a life!

If you're a State fan, you should definitely read this book. It will make you laugh until your ribs hurt, then refer back to it often for more. Never before has a book about Ole Miss been truer. This book should be featured in every Library, and be present in every home throughout Mississippi.

The author of this book should be commended for his style and humor in writing this book. Looking forward to more from him. Don't keep us waiting, give us more!

Disappointing. Nothing new in it. Draggy reading. The whole thing was done much, much better by Fletcher Pratt in his 1956 "Civil War on Western Waters" (still turns up in used book stores, and well worth the search). There's no indication in Coombe's book that he was aware of Pratt's little masterpiece.

I have read 60-70 books on the Cival War. This one is awful. One wonders how long it was researched(1-2 weeks?)or why the publisher did not have it proof read. It is a simlpe attempt to capitalize on the current, renewed interest in the Cival War. Save your money.

Most people with a decent collection of Civil War naval history will have almost every source used by Mr. Coombe.

One wonders why Mr. Coombe wrote this book. There are no new conclusions drawn, no new information brought to light. A better written account of the use of the gunboats can be found in GUNS ON WESTERN WATERS, a book published in 1949. The story of USS Cairo, which was still on the bottom of the Yazoo River when Gosnell wrote GUNS ON WESTERN WATERS, is retold here, but a much better account is found in Edwin C. Bearss' HARDLUCK IRONCLAD.

This is the most general type of history and will be of little interest to anyone with more than a passing interest in the period and no other available source.

This had to be the dryest, dullest novel that I have ever read. The characters are very unrealistic and difficult to relate to. Although the idea of the civil rights movement is important, this novel portrays this subject in the dry manner. For anyone looking to be bored out of their minds this summer, pick up this book. For anyone who wants a good read, select any other title at random--it has to be better that this one!

I had to convince my mind that the story line would lead to something interesting. Boy, was I wrong. Lots of distractions with no climax.

One of my favorite books of all time. Sorry to see it's not in print right now.

THIS BOOK WAS NOT GOOD AT ALL AND I DIDN'T ENJOY IT AT ALL BECAUSE IT WAS STUPID.

This book is not that great and it makes us Reb fans look stupid for buying it.

This book is thoroughly delightful. A sequel is sure to follow, for there is much of which to make fun about Mississippi State College.

Having been an avid reader of all of John Grisham's works (inlcuding the recent "Skipping Christmas", which I actually enjoyed and can fully picture as next years' made for TV or cable Christmas movie), I found "The Summons" to be the most disappointing yet.

The story show promise in the first 50 pages, leading up to Judge Atlee's death, Ray's discovery of a cashe of cash and the introduction of the cast of characters through the funeral arrangements and initiation of the probate process. The next 250 pages frankly drag to the point of exhaustion. As a small town lawyer myself, I would say that the "Summons" is the most realistic of all of Grisham's legal thrillers, as the law can be very dry and mundane, which is exactly what I found here.

As Grisham takes us through a potentially exhilirating quest on the source of the Judge's stash, we are presented with much possibility, only to be let down at the end. I found myself looking forward to a Grisham-esque explanation of everything near the end.

Instead, the payoff is not believable (even within the fictional boundaries of the book) and presents answers that involve information that Grisham usually buries somewhere in the story, even if only a sentence or two. In fairness, I figured out the "whodunnit" part with many pages to go, put the howdunnit and whydunnit explanations were a bit weak.

I think this is what happens when you are under contract to crank out a number of books of a certain genre for a publisher. This effort seemed forced to me and I was left with a bad taste in my mouth at the end.

I hope that Mr. Grisham is once again inspired in his next thriller, since I do enjoy his best efforts.

Judge Reuben Atlee was once a commanding and powerful figure in the legal community of a small Mississippi town. Now he's terminally ill, living a solitary life, having chased away all those who might have cared for him. Ray Atlee receives a formal summons to appear at his father's home to discuss his estate along with his younger brother, Forrest, but when he arrives he finds a shock, "known only to Ray. And perhaps to someone else," as the back of the book says.

Grisham is a good writer, evidenced by the easy, interesting, and believable way he writes his characters. So I don't know why he has spent so many years devoting himself to these rambling, boring books. The plot could have been interesting but it just droned on for me and I spent most of this book waiting for something good to happen. Characterization was good as I mentioned, but at moments the main character seemed to have some inconsistencies for the sake of suspense. My decision long ago (after reading "The Chamber") to stop buying his books new and only read them if I found them used was confirmed again by "The Summons."

John Grisham is a bookseller's best friend and with good reason! His legion of fans know that they can expect to spend several hours with a likeable hero as he fights his way through an unlikely but not impossible legal situation. Readers reward Grisham (and the booksellers) by snatching up his latest novel the minute it hits the shelves, and Grisham rewards his readers by turning out tautly written suspense on a fairly regular basis.

_The Summons_ is no exception. Though thinner than most Grisham novels, it grabs the reader on the first page and doesn't let go until the bitter end. It is an easy 6-8 hour read that leaves you satisfied and entertained if wishing for a little more.

The protagonist, Ray Atlee, might have been better served by being written in the first person. Ray has issues with his distant father, his no-goodnik brother, his faithless ex-wife and women in general. This book, having been tighly edited for story pacing, forces the reader's inside knowledge of the hero to come stricly from his interactions with other characters and reactions to situations. That would be fine if there were more revealing scenes. Instead, the climax finds Ray revealing thoughts & feelings that seem inconsistent with what the reader know about him. The reader is suddenly pulled out of the story to ask himself, "Why is our basically honest hero saying this now? Is he lying? If so, why? If he's being truthful, why didn't I know this about him before now?"

But, I nit-pick. _The Summons_ overall delivers exactly what you expect. A decent man's struggle with indecent events and a ripping good yarn. Recommended.

as many other reviewers have noted, this is quite a let down after The Secret History. i've been anxiously awaiting this book, and now that i've closed it for the last time, i can't recall why. the writing was, indeed, intelligent and respectful, and the characters were remarkably developed, but where the heck did that story come from and where did the plot go? am i missing the point? i kept trying to make predictions and was so looking forward to clarification, but this ending - this whole story- was just a lot of description heading nowhere. i'm disappointed. i feel betrayed. i can't even figure out what the title means! while The Secret History left me feeling like i'd been privy to the secret lives of intellectuals - and therefore a bit of an intellectual myself (though i was only 23 when i read it) - this left me feeling like a bad judge of character. i'll keep reading the reviews to find out what deep message i overlooked. there must be one...there must!

Readers of Tartt's first book, the page-turner "The Secret History," will be pretty disappointed with this eagerly-awaited second novel. A mystery is set up at the beginning--who killed Harriet's brother some 10 years ago? Tartt then takes us through 500+ pages of lush description of the South, very well written but there's just too much of it. Like many other readers I bogged down after the first 200 pages or so and only picked it up again when my book club date was looming.

The second half was better--the long-suffering family housekeeper departs in a painful episode, and we see Harriet struggling with, one the one hand, childish anger and, on the other, very real anguish and regret that she has permanently discarded the most important relationship in her life. During this time she also loses her best friend Hely to the distractions of early adolescence. Tartt paints a very painful picture of a child who becomes increasingly isolated and sinks deeper and deeper into her obsession with the Ratliffs. Probably due to the length of the book, I forgot why she had decided who the "killer" was--it is sad that by the end she has forgotten too.

Like many reviewers, I too thought the author didn't wrap it up in any way. But the book left me thinking about what would happen to Harriet. It is clear that the illness diagnosis we get on the second to last page is going to be the least of Harriet's problems--what this child goes through undoubtedly leaves her scarred for life, and the illness probably will be viewed mistakenly as the root cause of whatever problems follow. But these musings aren't enough pay-off for slogging through this one.

I don't understand the negative reviews of this book.
It's long, over 500 pages, and yet I read it over a weekend, racing ahead to find out what happened next.
Harriet, the 12yo protagonist, is born and bred in the tradition of Harper Lee's Scout Finch and Carson McCuller's Frankie Adams (but instead of a benevolent father or a wise housekeeper, Harriet has a tyrannical grandmother with a soft heart).
The Little Friend (insipid title that doesn't do justice to the depth of the story) is everything you could want in a book: stellar writing, nail-biting tention, hilarity, coming-of-age, atmosphere, loss of innocence, love, sorrow, and marvelous characters of all social classes without a cliche or stick figure among them.
My only complaint was the total up-in-the-airness of the ending, but it wasn't enough to warrant a demerit.
Ignore those negative, nose-thumbing reviews and read this book. I got my copy from the library, but I'm going to buy it, just to have on hand.

(NOTE: ** means new paragraph. I was an English professor for 11 years; it can't be helped! :o]) **I have no doubt that SOMETHING happened at Camp Van Dorn in 1943. Only those who are blatantly racist or locked away in ivory towers can still pretend that the United States Army was not often as cruel to its African-American employees as it was to its international enemies. President Truman did not just make drastic changes to the military system because he needed a new project. He knew that amends needed to be made -- and quickly. **My consternation about this book is its stark lack of in-depth research. In part one, we learn more than we need to about Case's efforts to learn about the atrocity at Van Dorn. While the process of acquiring information is often an interesting travelogue, Case does not offer enough substance to show that the fruits of his 13 years of labor were not in fact spoiled on the vine. **I find it offensive that Case does not dispute the widely accepted version of the 364th's misconduct. I was reminded of "The Confession of Nat Turner" as I read part one. I tend to dismiss that confession because it is written by an amanuensis. We have only David Gray's word about what Nat Turner's motives were; Gray's is the only voice we hear from Nat Turner; therefore, Nat himself is actually silenced. Such is the case with the victims of the Van Dorn horror. Why should we believe that they were as disruptive as they are reported to be by people who still refer to African-Americans as "niggers"? **Case has verbatim transcriptions of the photocopied letters he places at the end of the 40-page "facts" section. Ultimately, only five pages of the facts surrounding the incident can be found in part one. I could perhaps understand why he decided to tell the whole story in novel form IF the novel were the well-written result of a full disclosure of some detailed and well done research. Alas, his work is poorly presented, and Carroll's case is not just half-baked, it is nearly raw. **It is therefore very easy for the rabidly racist and those who would deny that anything happened at all to say the book is false. I won't know about the total veracity of what seems a plausible incident until I do some research of my own, but I do know that had he written about the facts in painstaking detail, nobody would give a second thought to those who malign the truth of this incident. **I truly wasted my money on this one and would give it zero stars if I had the option!

"White MPs were called in... armed with machine guns...They shot everything that moved, until nothing did; not one defenseless soldier got away. When the shooting stopped, over 1200 members of the 364th were slaughtered." In December of 1943, over one thousand black soldiers were slaughtered at Camp Van Dorn, located just outside the sleepy southern town of Centreville Mississippi. These enlisted men weren't killed in combat with the enemy, but lined up and mowed down, unarmed, by white soldiers acting on orders from superiors in the US Army. Unbelieveable, isn't it? The first thought I had upon hearing about the incident was that it couldn't possibly be true. So, I got my hands on the book, The Slaughter, written by Carroll Case, a local, white Mississippi journalist who blew the cover off this shocking, long-rumored massacre. And as I examined the proof offered by the author in his carefully-researched text, the shock of recognition set in, even though the truth remains difficult to swallow. Nobody wants to think that a government-sanctioned Holocaust of African-Americans could have occurred during WWII. Or that it was successfully hidden for over 50 years, despite the military's ability to keep so many of its operations an absolute secret. But Mr. Case has pieced together the scenario which led to this unthinkable crime against humanity, relying on a combination of eyewitness accounts and declassified documents unearthed by way of a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. Thus, we learn, for instance, that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, some five months before the atrocity, filed an affidavit with the Secretary of War on behalf of the 364th Infantry, an all-black regiment. NAACP attorney Milton Konvitz attached to his appeal the emotional letters of several members of the 364th which eloquently but desperately complained about their mistreatment on the basis of race. The book explains that the regiment had specifically been relocated from Phoenix to the Deep South because of insubordination. The black soldiers had repeatedly complained about the unequal treatment of blacks and whites in the armed forces. So, they were shipped to a remote outpost in Mississippi in order to have their rebellious spirit broken by an even more repressive social code. At Camp Van Dorn, however, matters only went from bad to worse as the African-American soldiers still refused to capitulate. And when white officers observed that the surly attitude of these Northern blacks were beginning to infect their obedient Southern brethren, extermination was ordered as the final solution.

The Slaughter is by no means the work of a professional researcher or an academician. The author says so himself. Carroll Case is a businessman who had heard rumors and tales of this horrible massacre all of his life.

After a conversation with an employee of his who was an eyewitness to this crime, Case spent thirteen years investigating all aspects of the story and has endured personal tragedy as a result of his curiosity. He is convinced this took place because, among other evidence, he has heard eyewitness accounts. What better affirmation could there be than video tapes of this testimony, regardless of whether the witnesses are alive today?

Case brought this incident to light when no other person had the courage to do so. In his preface, he says that to write the book in the form of a novel was necessary because the facts have, to date, not been confirmed. Mr. Case offers the circumstances as he knows them to be true, and offers the rest of the world a chance to decide for themselves. This is a story written by a man passionate about his experiences and passionate about seeing the Army explain to the American people just what did go on in 1943 in Centreville, Mississippi at Camp Van Dorn.

In another of my favorite books, The Gold of Exodus, Larry Williams and Bob Cornuke did not come home from Jabal al Lawz with a fortune in gold proving they found the true Mount Sinai. They came home with a conviction and a Best Seller. We don't criticize their adventure story for lack of evidence, nor should we demand that Carroll Case produce the bodies of dead soldiers.

The Slaughter was convincing enough for a United States Congressman to demand an inquiry by the Secretary of Defense; something few books in this decade have done. In addition, it raised enough important questions for the NAACP to demand a full accounting from the Secretary of the Army. All within three weeks of the publication date of this book.

Dr. Ted Ownby of the University of Mississippi has attempted to explain the social patterns of Mississippi from 1830-1995. In doing this, he has focussed on the buying patterns of the state's public. Through analyzing extensive sources and census records, Dr. Ownby has attempted to show that the buying power of poor Mississippians and the state's econommic caste system led to political differences between black, poor white, and wealthy white Mississippians. In analyzing buying power, Dr. Ownby has failed to take into account C. Vann Winwards famous essay on Race and Economics (1956). In Winwards address he stated that the caste system was much more racial than class. The buying power of black Mississippians was not effective because they were poor, but rather they were poor because they were black. Dr. Cecil M. Cooper's 1989 groundbreaking analysis : Dollar's and Cents Segregation : Black and Green in Rural Mississippi, speaks along the same lines. Dr. Cooper has stated that Black Mississipians and poor white Mississippians had little access to wealth. However, poor white Mississippians had more access to credit. Credit was denied to African-Americans for the most part. If not denied black credit was used agaisnt black poilitcal efforts. Although Dr. Ownby's work attempts to tackle a very important issue, race and economics, he fails to give a coherrant documentation on buying power froom 1830 -1990's. His reasons for choosing those dates are also unclear. It is one in a long line of academic books that fails to drive at the real reason for race division: social class. More research and documentaion are needed for this book to successfully overcome its deficiencies.

All I want to say is this book is so boring. All I wanted to do when I was reading it was shoot myself in the mouth with a pistol to end the constant eternal boredom. I think all it was trying to do was impress a few academic kooks who live in an academic bubble. Yeah well its boring.

...American Dreams in Mississippi is cultural (not economic) history. It is not about the reasons for poverty, but rather what it MEANS to live in a state that is perpetually impoverished while also living in a nation that bills itself as the Land of Opportunity. In this book, Ownby seeks to redefine the very concept of the American Dream. As his title suggests, there are in fact many dreams. Young and old, men and women, blacks and whites, rural and city folk all experience these dreams differently, and Ownby gives a voice to them all. With all due respect to the late C. Vann Woodword (who I am certain Dr. Ownby has the highest regard for) American Dreams in Mississippi goes beyond the boundaries of conventional history, asking questions historians have never asked about the South and using new kinds of sources like clothing, furniture, cars, and song lyrics as well as literature, general store ledgers, and obscure state documents to break new ground. The chapter "Men Buying Cloth" reveals the important discovery that Mississippi women, contrary to the national stereotype, were historically not consumers. The section on slave purchases is, to my knowledge, the only study of its kind, and the discussions of blues culture and Civil Rights boycotts add a fresh perspective to those topics.

If some parts of this book require a little effort on the reader's part, it is only because Ownby's research and documentation are so thorough that he provides not just one but many examples to back up each point. As Ownby lays out in his first chapter, the book is also grounded in solid theory. More works of history should be so "dry." I urge all readers of this book -- especially graduate students in history looking for an excellent example of their craft -- to stick with it. It is well worth the journey.