This book does have a very nice blend of photographs and reproductions of sketches and interior / exterior images, but I was not impressed with the cross over into other architect's work that, in my humble opinion, do not come close to approaching FLW's ability. Overall it is a good resource, but hardly a definitive study on Wright and his structures.

This book covers more than just Wright. It also gives you some insight to others that came out of the Prairie School and others that were redefining the American style near the turn of the century. The book has wonderful pictures, but as an architect, I wish it had floor plans so I could more easily understand how the spaces worked together. It's still a nice addition to my library.

This book varies from most books on Wright and the prairie style architects in its extensive use of interior photos. Many of the prairie homes are somewhat unremarkable from the outside, while inside they have a distict beauty and grace. "Prairie Style" beautifully portrays the interior as well as the exterior of homes by Wright, his students, and contemporaries.

I hated reading this book, boring, dull, stupid, pointlessly depressing, and may I add HORRIBLE grammer is what this book is! I can't believe i actually WANTED to read this book. DO NOT READ IT!

Prairie Songs is written by Pam Conrad and illustrated by Darryl S. Zudeck. It was a 1985 Golden Kite Honor Book, and Best Books For Young Adults (ALA). It was also a 1986 IRA Children's Book Award Winner. It is about a family who lived in Nebraska and some of the hardships and joys that they experienced. New neighbors come into their ordinary prairie lives and they see many changes. Now they must teach the New York family of two the ways of the prairie. Mrs. Berryman is not used to having Indians just sneaking into her house and is terribly frightened but Louisa and her mother Clara help Mrs. Berryman to overcome her fear. Because she has many books, Mrs. Berryman agreed to give Louisa and her shy younger brother Lester reading lessons. When a man by the name of Solomon Butcher stopped by Louisa's house, he asked to take a picture of her family. Louisa was very anxious to see the picture but was told that it must be developed first and she could see it at the forth of July celebration. After Mrs. Berryman's baby died, she becomes full of despair, but the reading lessons, which Mrs. Berryman is teaching, seemed to help her in the tough life on the prairie. When Mr. Berryman must go along with Louisa's father J.T. and another neighbor Mr. Whitfield to help attend to a terrible train wreck, Mrs. Berryman must be left alone for a few days. During that time two Indians paid Mrs. Berryman and Louisa and her family a visit. This book takes some surprising turns and keeps you interested until the final page. I liked this book because I thought that it had a very good story line and it told me what life was like back then on the prairie.

Prairie Songs, written by Pam Conrad is an excellent book to read! I enjoyed this account of life on the Prairie. Louisa and her family live on the Nebraskan prairie. They are faced with the difficult day-to-day activities that people faced living on the prairie. When Dr. and Mrs. Berryman move to the prairie from New York City, Louisa is fascinated with Mrs. Berryman's (Emmeline) love for literature. Emmeline has a very difficult time making the transition from the city to the prairie. Louisa and Lester take lessons from Emmeline in return for Mrs. Dowing helping her with her laundry, etc. Louisa develops a love for literature, especially poetry and grows to love Emmeline even more. One night when Mr. Dowing and Dr. Berryman are away, Louisa and her family and Mrs. Berryman are invaded by Indians. Mrs. Berryman is incapable of remaining calm and finds herself outside in the dead of winter. As the story moves on, both families are faced with many difficulties. Indians, train wrecks, and not-so friendly neighbors make the story very exciting!

As a future teacher, I can see this book used in the classroom for discussing life on the prairie and what life was like at that time in history. The Indians in this book are not portrayed in a pleasant fashion. If you would like to use this book in your classroom, I would definitely discuss these issues prior to using with your class.

All in all, this book was very well written. I enjoyed it tremendously and would recommend it to anybody, not just children!

Definitely a slow starter, this one didn't grab me right from the beginning the way most Oke books do, but I was glad I stayed with Running Fawn until the story picked up. While far from the best in the series, _Drums of Change_ shows the huge gap between two cultures very well, as well as the confusion of a girl who is taken from one world and placed into the other. Without a doubt, there are some shining moments, but if you found it a little dragging, try another book from this series before you give up on Janette Oke.

This an excellent read. Suitable for all ages.

The entire story depicts Running Fawn as a strong woman, unwilling to give into the missionaries and their beliefs. The entire ending just doesn't go with the rest of the book, within ten pages, she went from being true to her heritage and beliefs, to a baptized christian. It was disappointing to say the least

In The Pioneers (1823) James Fenimore Cooper, who created the forerunner of backwoods heroes, depicts the clash between individualistic and communal impulses of people in the early development of a frontier settlement in upstate New York. The founder of the settlement, Judge Temple, is the personification of a bourgeois planned and stable society. He believes that laws imposed on individuals separate people from savages and are prerequisites for a civilized society. By trying to educate his settlers in practical approaches to farming and building and conservation of natural resources for practical use, he wishes to establish social and economic relations which are essential for a firmly structured society. Richard Jones, business assistant to Judge Temple and, later, the Sheriff of the county, is an egotistical jack-of-all-trades and represents a spirit of restless competition by which one pursues riches in order to climb the ladder of success. In contrast, the old hunter, Natty Bumppo, the solitary individual who lives in harmony with nature, is a frontier individualist who has a vision of a frontier society coexisting with nature. He craves traditional attitudes while fearing and despising civilization and its wasteful ways. His individualism is considered as a threat to Templeton and his natural laws eventually bring him into conflict with the "civilized" Judge and the people who are destroying the wilderness, a conflict that ultimately makes him escape the encroaching civilization and the lawless settlers.

I give this 3 stars, because LotM is included here, but the other 2 novels are slow, tedious and well, I've never finished them. Volume 2 of these nice volumes includes The Deerslayer and the Pathfinder, two exciting novels that I recommend, perhaps even before LotM. My favorite is the Pathfinder. Natty Bumpo is awesome in that adventure!

I strongly believe that James Fenimore Cooper belongs to the American and the world history. I learned the history reading his books. I have all of them and I still open them once in a while even now, forty years later.

My wife's great-great-great grand father was killed at the Battle of Prairie Grove and the detail Banasik provides goes well with what we have been able to put together. Her great (3x) uncle wrote a letter home to inform the family of his brother's death and that letter and this book go hand in hand in detail. If you want to know about Prairie Grove and Cane Hill, read this one.

Michael Banasik writes in a style that is detailed but very readable. The gist of this book deals with events in the extreme of NW Ark / SW Mo between the Battle of Pea Ridge and Battle of Prairie Grove - the two decisive battles for NW Arkansas. As a native son & student of the local history, those facts I am confident dovetail well with the focus of this book. The author does an excellent job of detailing both sides of the conflict without revealing a bias towards either. The maps are excellent & large print makes even the footnotes highly readable. The smooth chronological flow keeps the reader from getting lost. I found few mistakes - Lindsley's Prairie appears to be misnamed Lindsey's, a minor fact - and I would hope for more information on the Pin Indian troops that literally switched sides during the Battle of Pea Ridge & were the terror of civilians thru the following years of the Civil War but this work is excellent and well worth the buy.

Banasik obviously put a vast amount of effort into his work and it shows! It details the war around Arkansas for only the last nine months of 1862, but from a huge list of sources, he's gleaned nearly 500 pages of information. For some it may be a tedious read (the Prairie Grove Battle is almost second by second and comprises over a hundred pages), but for those of us with ancestors in the battle it was exciting to relive the moment by moment action. The Prairie Grove Battle hasn't been built up like the Eastern battles, but Herron's heroic march and then the amazing luck when Blunt arrived in the nick of time to relieve Herron and the fact that Arkansas was saved for the Union for another year places it as a small but relevant piece of history.

This book was recommended to me by a friend, because one of my favorite movies is "Hoosiers". Obstensibly, this is a story about a high school basketball team's season of glory, but this is the only similarity the book has to the classic Gene Hackman film.

The problem with this book is in wading through a narrative that is so matter-of-fact that it reads more like an appointment diary than a novel. The writer, who is an educator and a Ph.D., nonetheless writes in such a "just the facts, ma'am" fashion, that the reader can't ever find out what motivates his characters, except that they want to win the state championship.
There are some zestful moments, but these are far and few between, after trudging through the stilted and awkward sentences and predictable plot.

And, this is the crux of the matter: It is not the plot of "Hoosiers" that makes it a great movie, for it's just as predictable as this book by Rogers. What makes "Hoosiers" great is that it has a "fire in the belly" that conjures images of Vince Lombardi, Knute Rockne and Bobby Knight. This book has a flicker at times, but nothing that ever rages into a bonfire.

I came across this story at a book signing in San Antonio, TX and read it in a single seating. I thought that this book was well written considering this is the authors second attempt at producing a novel. I have read many books by world renowned authors that I have promptly thrown away.

Prarrie Point has earned a place in my library. I hope to have the opporitunity to reccomend this book to my children when they need the inspiration to overcome obstacles.

This story takes an 'ah-shucks' approach to greatness and I found it refreshing. As the story unfolds and the characters develop we cannot help but learn from these kids. Weather we already knew these life lessons or just needed to be reminded, this book has it all.

Taking the Dream to Prairie Point is a very good book for family reading. The book takes you into small town America. It tells a story about growing up in rural Oklahoma, going to school, playing basketball,making friends and overcoming hardships that come with living in the country.The story has many heartfelt moments and great characters. I think the book is a great read and a must for anyone who believes that hard work and a will to succeed are prescriptions for life.

The last "Indian War" in Illinois occurred in 1832 when a small band of Sauk refused under the leadership of the warrior Black Hawk to abandon their village (located under a subdivision of the present Rock Island, Illinois). They wandered up the Rock River, fighting contingents of regular army and state militia (a young Abraham Lincoln served several stints as a volunteer but saw no fighting; a young Jefferson Davis played a role in the last phases of the conflict), slipped into Wisconsin, and were finally defeated in a brutal massacre of men, women, and children on the banks of the Mississippi. Black Hawk surrendered and was taken East to meet President Jackson. After a short term in confinement, he and his companions were taken on a tour of the East Coast, an effort by the United States government to impress him with the young nation's overwhelming superiority in numbers and technology. The plan worked, by Black Hawk's own testimony, and when he returned to the Midwest he lived out the rest of his life in obscurity in a village in Iowa. He never saw his home again.
The origins of the autobiography published under Black Hawk's name has generated controversy. It was dictated to a half Native American interpreter, Antoine Le Claire, who rendered it into English, then edited by an Illinois newspaperman named John B. Patterson, who put it into publishable form. Both men swore that the result was faithful to Black Hawk's words, but the skeptical reader may be permitted some doubt; the language is clearly that of the period (surely Patterson's work), and Black Hawk himself complains on at least one occasion that his interpreter's grasp of the Sauk language did not suffice to translate a flowery speech. So what we have here, while no doubt in general faithful to Black Hawk's intentions and life story, cannot be his ipsissima verba. (It is a pity, given these doubts, that the editor of the volume, who has otherwise done an admirable job of annotation and commentary, did not compare the language of the preface, which records Black Hawk's own Sauk, with that of the text as a whole.)
Despite these doubts, there can be no question that the Autobiography affords us an extraordinary opportunity to see the impact of midwestern expansion on the native population from their own point of view, and to obtain direct access -- even if it has been mediated somewhat for non-native consumption -- into the social world of a people soon to vanish. The war itself is somewhat of an anti-climax, and deeply sad, doomed as resistance clearly was from the beginning. It is rather the self-presentation of a proud, successful Sauk warrior, endowed with considerable facilities of self-reflection and honesty, that make this book a treasure that every American should read.

As a college student from the blackhawk area, I found this book captivating. Really written for any age or education level, I think anyone and everyone should read it. A heroic story of a real man, the book is a beautiful journey through history. The story some details of Black Hawk's life before the war and describes the events behind the wars and his interpretation of them well. I would recomend this to anyone from junior high up and definatly anyone from Rock Island or the surrounding areas.

This book had a very good plot and story line. The author's quest for telling the life of many people was very different but intriguing. Three stars because the way it was written was boring or not exciting. It also made you feel as if you knew the secondary characters better than the main characters. All in all it doesn't keep you turning the pages, but if you like stories that are set on the trail, it's a good book to read.

This was my first experience reading Ms. Osborne and I loved the book. I started reading it at 10p.m. and couldn't stop until 5a.m. I really loved the epilogue where she tells about the lives of the characters up until their deaths, it gave me a satisfied feeling of closure, something that you don't always get with a book. I'm a Maggie Osborne fan for good. If you like to read about the Oregon Trail and what these brave pioneers went through this in not only a love story but rich in historical detail as well. This book is on my keeper shelf.

I don't quite know why I do this to myself. Maybe it is just the long commute. I knew within a few pages that this book was going to be one of those that you roll your eyes at the characters and even more at the author. There was very little intelligence in this book. The author practices one of my pet peves, which is to repeat information so many times (and each time it is repeated it sounds like she forgot she already told us this information) that you want to gag on the words. The author's manner of making the characters rationalize to themselves for a few pages at a time several times gets old the first time around. I have always hated when an author makes her characters contradict themselves and do stupid things for the sake of having a daring rescue, etc. I did actually read the whole book, and if this is any indication of Cheryl Anne Porters talent, I definitely will not be reading any more of her work. A real thumbs down.

I enjoyed the central story development of Kate and Cole's life. The kids were adorable as well. The author could have cut out a 1/4 of the book, though, but pulling out all the extra jargon of each character looking 'inside themself'. It seemed 50% of the dialogue was a character thinking and talking to themself. The story about Cole and his father seemed out of place and realizations hit him at weird times, like when he was in the tent and Kate was kidnapped. Is that a time to really take out your anger on your dad leaving you 20-some yrs ago? If you skim these dialogues, which I started doing, you will find the story interesting and leave you wanting to know more about this new family unit.

I sincerely love picking up a bit of realistic history along with a delightful story.
Kate's situation may be more probable that is to be expected given the times and the attitude of men. Although there were many honorable and god-fearing men, there were probably 2/3's of men who had the same morality of Edgar Talmidge. [and their acts did make them slightly insane.]

Now Cole Youngblood was about the gentlest and most honorable gunslinger that I have heard of. It is always probable that these men have many unresolved issues that drive them to lead the life that they do. Some are driven to such a life and others seem to naturally fall into a hardend way of life. Not all make it out of it into a more gentler way.

I followed Kate into falling in love with little Joey, Willy and that little rascal Lydia, but a yellow hound named Kitty?? [grin]
Lydia had a most effective way of handling Edgar Talmidge. Shame on the man!

I would like to see some pictures of the invasion [that is all I can call it] of Oklahoma but I have a sneaking suspicion that the men of that era were not very good looking [according to our images nowadays].

No matter if you find drawbacks in the mental dynamics of our characters, you will love the story and its conclusion.
Highly Recommended and definitely a keeper - good for another reading down the road.

I really enjoy Midwestern History, and I like to read as much as I can about the topic. Sugar Creek in my opinion, was rather difficult to believe - I'm not sure what it was, but as I read through it, I found myself questioning the credibility.

John Faragher brings the fascinating story about the rural American community to life with the story of "Sugar Creek." Personally, I enjoyed reading the book on rural history, but sometimes I had to simply skip a couples pages (once and a while) that covered on the Genealogy of the settlers. The book takes place in Sangamon County, IL and is a great book on local history. Faragher tries to stay true to this introduction and writes an elegant masterpiece on local history with the little resources he can find. A changeling book to write and a nice change from reading history of urban America. It is nicely organized with chapters and I felt very comfortable reading it (with a large size font and easy to high-lighted).

John Mack Faragher has brought the central Illinois frontier prairie to life in his "Sugar Creek". In the style of Michener, he begins by offering an early picture of the landscape and its earliest inhabitants. His grasp on historical happenings will stay with me forever especially with regard to how these earliest European settlers of Sangamon County, IL, moved right into the Native American's maple sugar manufacturing operation, soon after they had been killed or moved out. So much for our preconceived ideas of "Virgin Land and Untouched Prairies".

I've lived near that area all my life and can claim some of these old timers who settled the Sugar Creek area as my ancestors. So through his excellent writing I can now appreciate a little more what life was like long ago for those who came before. It is with gratitude that I thank Mr. Faragher for this well written work and am recommending it to anyone I come across with ties to the area or just an interest in frontier life in general. Julie Clark Close