This is a great book for all basketball fans and all Kentuckians. For those who do not understand Kentucky, or who do not understand basketball, this book will make both of them much more understandable. Truly, there is nothing on Earth like the subculture of Kentucky basketball.

What a great book exploring the UK basketball phenomenon! Anyone who questions the importance of this program to its fans should read this book! You may not come away a fan, but you'll certainly understand those who do! WOW!

...and then I had to read this book after losing a bet (on the 1999 UK/Indiana game, which Kentucky won). As a hoosier fan, it pains me to say that I actually loved this book, and any book that can take the arch enemy of a program and make him/her see the light is a remarkable work. Reading through this book, I actually realized that there were tears in my eyes on several occasions. How could this be? I'm a hoosier--a sworn enemy of the Kentucky Wildcats--and yet, after reading this book, I found myself actually (choke!) liking them! My congratulations to Lonnie Wheeler on an unbelievably good book, and my hat's off to the Kentucky Wildcats--the best program in college basketball!

I found this book, a lovely little story about courtship the old-fashioned way, quite delightful. It's a wonderful peek into a young girl's joy and anguish as she first experiences love-and the resulting hard decisions she must make about her future. You'll especially enjoy the emotion-filled letters from Miss Cornett's beau, Patton Caudill. This love struck young man's amorous letters would melt the heart of any young lady, even one being pushed by father to spurn this suitor's advances.

Compiling great-grandfather's love letters in book is woman's tribute to her ancestors. Cathlynn Richard Dodson knew little of her great-grandmother, possessed the same heart-shaped face as hers, and even less of her great-grandfather, who died before her birth. Her desire to understand their story and where she came from sent her searching for answers a decade ago - from genealogy records in Dallas to the Appalachians. Eventually, the trail led her to the courtship letters that Samuel Patton Caudill penned to his "Darling Dora." These "missives" became the foundation for Ms. Dodson's novella, Miss Cornett's Courtship, set in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains in 1904. From letters that were too fragile to handle, Ms. Dodson's mother transcribed them for her daughter. The resulting self-published book mixes her great-grandfather's heartfelt, old-fashioned letters with a somewhat fictionalized story line. The plot is no more complicated than a paperback romance novel - boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back - but the letters are the real prize. In a syntax long out of use, Patton's words are romantically overwrought by today's standards. But in the context of the time, they're charming. Such as this plea: "Say dear, how many moons must rise and set ere I can claim you as my own and my arms may entwine that supple waist, my eyes look squarely into yours and a love be exchanged between us that will remain unsevered through all eternity . . ." A 25-year-old Patton wrote this from his home in Whitesburg, Ky., to Dora, six years his junior, in Poor Fork, Ky. After reading the letters, Ms. Dodson knew a story lay in their words. The problem was, she knew so little about her great-grandparents. From her own visits as a youth, Ms. Dodson recalled an independent, gray-haired woman who spoke little and made brown-sugar candy. Her diminutive frame hardly looked strong enough to hold the cast-iron skillet slightly off the heat while she stirred the concoction. Her heart-shaped face was still evident, but her doe eyes were covered with thick-framed glasses. This image of her great-grandmother gave precious little insight into the coming-of-age woman captured in her 1905 wedding photograph, where the bride and groom stand shoulder to shoulder: she in her high-collar blouse and he with his Clark Gable ears poking out. Her great-grandfather was even more of a mystery. Because he died from a heart attack in his 40s, she couldn't find a living family member who remembered him. Patton had no more form than his flat images on the black-and-white stills. Ms. Dodson's journey to piece together her family story had begun long before learning of the letters. Every day, she'd spend her lunch hour in the genealogy department in the downtown Dallas Public Library, where she worked in the late '80s. Here, she'd search census and cemetery records to trace her family tree and to find the Kentucky cousins, whom she had heard about growing up but never met. She hoped they could tell her something about her great-grandparents and other family members. Then she placed an ad in the Harlan Daily Enterprise, which was the closest newspaper to the town where her great-grandmother grew up. A cousin responded with a letter. After several correspondences, Ms. Dodson and her mother traveled to Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains - to the valley cradled by Pine and Big Black peaks where Patton courted Miss Dora. She learned of the white mules, which pulled a flat-bed wagon carried Dora and her sisters over the hills for the education that her father insisted on. They visited the family cemetery and the home site where Dora grew up. Nothing remained of the two-story Victorian home with its wraparound porch and swing. Next door had once been her parents' store, which sold general merchandise, dry goods, groceries, shoes, stock feed, lumber and caskets. After returning home, her mother remembered about the faded courtship letters with the 2-cent George Washington stamps. The story of her maternal great-grandparents was now beginning to fill in. Still, when Ms. Dodson sat down to write Miss Cornett's Courtship, she knew time had claimed far too many details to create a truly nonfiction work. To reconstruct the story, Ms. Dodson used family memories and added a few might-have-beens. For example, no one knew where the couple met, but because Dora's father was very involved in church, Ms. Dodson felt they probably met in the chapel on Sunday morning. So that's how she wrote it. "The book was my way of creating a history for both of them since I didn't really know them," Ms. Dodson says. Letters mentioned socials they were to attend, and an apparent misunderstanding where Dora must have accused him of being a "naughty flatterer." Not knowing what a "naughty flatterer" meant, Ms. Dodson decided it could mean another woman had been in the picture. Since he mentioned a cousin Polly, who had given him a kiss (a Hershey's Kiss), Polly became the other woman and the incident with the chocolate was added. "I'm fascinated by where fact becomes fiction," says Ms. Dodson. Among the letters' most endearing moments was when Patton fretted about approaching her father for her hand. He chastised himself for having run away at his first attempt. About his second try, he proudly wrote: "I didn't back down the second time, did I dear? Your Papa's answer pleased me so well I haven't ceased thanking him yet." The first copy of the book, hand-bound, was a Mother's Day present from Ms. Dodson to her mother. After several requests, she made copies for other family members. It's based on a true story." Her mother has commented, "I know that must be just how it happened." Ms. Dodson says that when Dora, who lived until age 83, was asked why she never remarried after Patton died, she responded: " 'If I did, then I'd have to take care of him.' I tried to have that independence come through in the book."

This is a love story that is sweet and pure, and is an over-all wonderful story. The characters are real and the letters around which the story is woven are actual letters from a real family. Simply wonderful!

I mention Carver and O'Connor because they are the only writers I can draw any kind of parallel to when I read the way Joey Goebel crafts characters and their thoughts so masterfully, so completely -- and yet allows his dramatis personae to serve, in some capacity, as allegorical entities. Like O'Connor, this young writer also has the knack for being humorous and tragic at the same time, and he puts words together with the same deft skill.

However, it is unfair to compare Joey Goebel to any writer, because he brings something new and different to the table. I've heard punk rock, but I don't know that, before The Anomoalies, I had ever read punk rock. Punk Rock with literary gravitas. Joey is railing against the closed minded, rural western Kentucky environment, against pre-judgement in general, and against the clicques and cretins who laugh at people for being different.

Sometimes that difference is a sword that can cut the ties that bind an individual to the mundane existence we all muddle through. I think Joey Goebel has done that. I believe he soars with this novel, in which the overriding message is to chase the dream.

I think readers will agree -- it is good that Mr. Goebel chased his, and that wise publisher gave him a chance.

This book is fantastic. Joey Goebel may have just created a new type of literary genre-Punk Rock Literary. The characters in this novel are so bizarre you might pass on the novel at the description, but I beg you to go forth and read!

The story involves the most insane group of rock band members one could ever conceive (a party maniac who happens to be a senior citizen and a nymphomiac? A Middle Eastern fem? An eight year old nihilist?). C'mon - just the characters alone are worth the read.

I found the novel easy to read and enjoyed every moment. This is great writing from an up and coming author. For those of you who thought Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club was a book that couldn't be matched, read The Anomalies! Buy this baby!

Take the 1980's away from Bret Easton Ellis, add a bit of Joey Goebel, a smooth layer of punk rock, and you get the rather delicious, Anomalies.
I do not know much about the midwest. I was born and raised in Philadelphia, but what I gather from Mr. Goebel's insight is that it is nothing like I had imagined. This book completely changed my sterotypes (cornfields and hillbillies). Goebel makes the characters so interesting I hope to find the time and money to travel to the state of Kentucky.
If ever there is a chance to talk cops with Luster, be a pyro with Ember, go through "phases" with Aurora, be old and young with Opal, or observe men in their bathing trunks with Ray...you can count me in. These characters are written in just that fashion, you can't help but to want to meet and be intrigued by all of them. They do not pass through your mind, instead they continue their earsplitting band practice inside your head even after you put the book down...and this is not a bad thing.

The author was a former member of the punk band The Mullets. Somehow, by word of mouth I suppose, I had heard of this band. I wonder if they ever made it this far north? If so, I can only slap myself in the nostrils over and over and over again for not going to hear the fine words of this author. This fresh, loud, memorable author, Joey Goebel.

I have read Wendell Berry's nonfiction, but I am a newcomer to his fictional Port William community. Reading this book is like a visit to a simpler life in rural America. Set in 1986, this novel tells the life story of Jayber Crow (1914- ), orphan, doubting preministerial student, bachelor barber, grave digger, church janitor, and progressive pacifist. Although an ordinary man, Jayber is a truly memorable character who, from his later years, reflects upon his life with clarity and poetic insight. "I am a pilgrim," he says, "but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a staight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order" (p. 133).

This book is about many things, but should be read mostly for the sake of experiencing Berry's really fine writing. It is the story of Jayber's unrequitted love for a married woman, Mattie Chatham. It is a fictional memoir about faith, loss, farming, and finding one's place in the world. "I will have to share the fate of this place," Jayber writes about his declining community. "Whatever happens to Port William happens to me" (p. 143). It is also about bearing witness to dying farms and small businesses.

Jayber's memoir is filled with page after page of profound insights. For instance, about growing old and loss he writes: "I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of the loss) found everything, and is ready to go" (p. 353). Examining marriage, Jayber says: "I saw too how a marriage, in bringing two people into each other's presence, must include loneliness and error. I imagined a moment when husband and wife realize that their marriage included their faults, that they do not perfect each other, and that in making their marriage they also fail it and must carry to the grave things they cannot give away (pp. 193-4). About the pace of modern life, he observes: "The people are in an emergency to relax. They come for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above their motors. The look neither left nor right. They can't slow down" (p. 331).

Although somber in tone, Jayber's story reveals that wonders do happen in life. Jayber learns we live our lives with questions, the answers to which must be lived out "perhaps a little at at time" (p. 54), or which may take longer than a lifetime for us to find. "This is a book about Heaven," Jayber explains. "I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see through the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like a reflection of the trees on the water" (p. 351). This book is Berry at his best, and one of the best novels I've read this year.

G. Merritt

In his preface to "Jayber Crow," Wendell Berry admonishes reviewers against finding either a "text" or "subtext" in his beautifully crafted novel. Berry then warns reviewers who "explain, interpret...or analyze" his work will face exile on a "desert island in the company only of other explainers." Faced with these restrictions and prohibitions, this reviewer will lavish praise on the author's sense of place, his gorgeous use of language and his admirable celebration of the American character.

Borrowing thematically from Mark Twain's "Huckelberry Finn," "Jayber Crow" is a twentieth-century version of an American everyman's journey of understanding and self-acceptance. Twice orphaned Jayber Crow never makes much money, never owns his own home, never marries. Yet this gentle self-made spiritual giant who savors his life while trimming men's hair truly loves his Kentucky home of Port William. Crow is a living embodiment of a Jeffersonian sensibility towards land; the protagonist extols the linkage between a respectful, near-reverential stewardship of the natural world and a sense of human fulfillment and grace. Berry's Kentucky is not a cliched Arcadia. Nature is often unpredicatable and tormenting. What redeems and renews the relationship between humans and land is respect, modesty and connectedness, three qualities Jayber Crow exemplifies his entire life.

It is not an accident that the man Crow admires more than any other, Athey Keith, epitomizes man's symbiotic, custodial relationship with the living earth. Nor is it accidental that the person who most tries Jayber's belief in the human condition, Troy Chatham, represents not only human cupidity, but alienation from and exploitation of the natural world.

Berry's physical descriptions of water, earth, plants, animals and climate are sensual delights, lushly detailed and enormously evocative. Place mingles with the idea of home; the physical absorbs the spiritual; the specific event gains universal significance. Because Berry imposes a modesty on Jayber Crow, readers discern a profound compassion for human frailties and a renewed faith in the imperative of connection. The novel is at its best when Berry reveals our common needs and drives for attachment: to our spiritual essence, to our brothers and sisters, and to our fragile, forgiving planet.

Echoing Serwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," Berry's novel also selects a common man to serve as the unspoken but ackowledged subliminal repository of a town's secrets and identity. Jayber Crow, unassuming barber, shares and shapes the identity of Port William, either through his ministrations to men's hair, as gravedigger or as church sweeper. Regardless, the people of his community reveal themselves to him, and Crow perceives them as eminently human, flawed, incomplete and wonderful. The author's ability to represent the masaic of our national character through the people who form the boundaries of Jayber Crow's life is simply extraordinary. Nowhere is Berry's hopes for our national survival better manifested than through his depiction of Mattie Athey Chatham. Under the author's skilled handling, Mattie evolves far past a love interest into a symbol of redemption and reconciliation.

Wendell Berry holds an esteemed position as an interpreter of who we are, what we believe and what we hope to represent. "Jayber Crow" cements Berry's reputation as a celebrant of our democracy.

I bought this book because I like everything that Berry writes, but I wasn't expecting anything too great. A story about a barber in Port William? Seemed a little strange to me, but because it was by Berry, it was worth a read. This book turned out to be a great surprise, true to Jayber Crow's observation that all of the good things in life have come as a surprise. This novel follows the thread of many of the stories we have read about the Port William membership. Many of the familiar characters are here. But it seems that all of the threads of Berry's many works are woven here into a fine and beautiful tapestry. Berry's major themes about stewardship, sense of place, the importance of caring relationships, sense of scale, etc, are all here in a great story of learning, love, and forgiveness. This is a book about much more than just Where. It is also a book about who, what, why, and especially how. Jayber Crow chronicles the changes that modernity and industrialism bring to small town America. Country people were trying to get away from "demanding circumstances." But they "couldn't quite see at the time, or didn't want to know, that is was the demanding circumstances that had kept us together." The changes that are chronicled here apply to urban life as well as rural life. Great neighborhoods and family/neighbor networks were also part of the life of the great pre-industrial cities. A very large part of the answer to modern decay is the restoration of rural life, but we cannot ignore the cities. The question for us is how to follow Jayber and "lay our claim" on a place, rural or urban, and make it "answerable to our lives." Right living, in all of the details laid out by Jayber, is a large part of the answer to modern problems. A barber turns out to be an ingenious stratagem for storytelling and the dispensing of Berry's distilled wisdom. And it is a most unusual and gratifying love story as well!

I throughly enjoyed Kentucky Bad Boy. Being David's daughter, I grew up listening to his stories and am overjoyed to finally see my father sharing them with others. Quite often oral history is lost and stories shared are forgotten. Thank you, Pop, for a most unique look at growing up in the mountains. Kentucky Bad Boy is an enjoyable book to read - laugh out loud funny - but most importantly, it will evoke memories of your own childhood. I know there are more stories to tell, and I look forward to reading them!

Captivating! A "read at one sitting" type book. This author does not tiptoe around non-traditional country beliefs, but more appropriately uses them as steppingstones to produce a very alluring tale. He has taken romance, humor, despair, hope, hardship, and even witchcraft, and blended them together, using as his catalyst, the perception of a youngster growing up in eastern Kentucky. Reminiscent of Steinbeck and Twain, "Kentucky Bad Boy" is down-to-earth and intriguingly entertaining. Not unlike fine Kentucky bourbon, Mr. Rains has taken the best ingredients of storytelling and blended them together to produce an outstanding book. I will be awaiting more from this writer.

I recently read 'Kentucky Bad Boy' and got many laughs out of it. This book was very enlightening as to what life was like for this young man around the depression era Applachian Mountains, a boy who found much to do with his time--not always good things! In not giving away the plot nor the surprises the book hold, I can only say that it is hilarious,honest,and like a breath of fresh air compared to much on the market today. I liked the stories Mr. Rains put into the book that told some of the family's 'dirty laundry' so to speak. I also liked the telling of the capers of he & his younger sister Esther, many of which got them into much trouble, but elicited much laughter for me and my daughter. This book is certainly worth a read by anyone who is looking for humor and truth in a short biography. I hope Mr. Rains writes more and makes this a series of books starting in his Native American mothers time up to the present day.

This is definitely one of those books that you don't lay down until you read the last word. It goes everywhere with you and your family wants you to hurry up and finish so they can have you back! It was a book that had me hooked from the beginning. It reminded me of the old mining stories my family use to reminisce about. The detailed info about the mining terminology was very interesting. Do you remember the Little House on the Prairie shows? It made me think of that time period. The characters in the book were so realistic and believable. When I read books like this with so much detail, they make me feel a part of the script. They also make me regret getting to the last page. This book was great and once I finished reading it, it was on my mind for days. It's nice to be able to find enjoyment and comfort in a book like this when you need an escape from the everyday happenings of the world. Grab this book and escape for a few hours! Very enjoyable, where's #2!?! Keep up the fantastic work Lisa and Dale! I love Dale's childrens books, they are great, too.

This is one of those books that I will read more than once. I love the characters and the plot and the all around feeling this book gives. I am certain that I will read Turn back Time to my children and be excited to explain the history to them. I definitely cant wait for the next one.

My husband and I both thoroughly enjoyed reading "Turn Back Time" and we have passed the book on to my mother to read and our daughters. The only bad part was when I got to the end and ran out of book but didn't want it to end. The story about this delightful family is so interesting that we can't wait for the sequel to come out.

This writer does more to explain the Appalachia of my parents and grandparents than anything I have ever read. I am a college professor too but I was born and brought up in the north. I never understood my parents' love for the area of their birth. Frankly, I was ashamed of it and always resisted going "home" as they insisted on referring to East Tennessee. Creeker has given me insights into the strengths of Appalachia without glossing over the weaknesses. I appreciate that. I hope this author is continuing to write about her roots because I am finally interested in discovering mine. This book is well-written and I just passed it along to my mother. Thank you, Linda Derosier, for your honesty and your willingness to let a city girl finally learn about "our people" in your Creeker.

Just before Christmas my husband and I saw this author speaking on BookTV and he called and ordered Creekers for me. I am glad I saw and listened to her before I read the book because I could clearly hear her cadences as I was reading. In a most unique writing voice she takes us along on her journey from an Appalachian Creek, to which she forever remains loyal, out into the wider world beyond. Though she speaks lovingly of her home in Appalachia, along the way this writer manages to show us the time and the place and the people without a hint of sentimentality or condescension. I particularly enjoyed her description of the metamorphosis brought about by her education. Her story is by turns funny and painful, sometimes simultaneously! Both my husband and I enjoyed this book, which is not the usual occurrence, though he liked the first half while I preferred the last half. We look forward to more work from this talented writer and we agree that she really should put this book on tape!

If you've ever thought about the consequences and significance of your life, your family and your home, then you are like me. And, if you're like me, then chances are pretty good that you'll count Scott-DeRosier's "Creeker" among your favorites. This is an interesting and gripping autobiography of a woman who is living the kind of life we all hope to live; it made me laugh out loud, reflect on the choices in my own life, and it moved me to tears -- all qualities of a book to be read more than once. In addition to all these strengths, Scott-DeRosier shared her Appalachian Mountain memories lovingly and candidly. Through her you will see what you've never seen before, respect people you might not have thought about before, and find reasons to hope for renewed community in our own lives. There was so much familiar in Scott-DeRosier's life story that I recognized those universal questions and truths that resonate in my own life, in all our lives no matter where we come from.

Chris Offutt is a great short-story writer. You come out of a story of his thinking you have just read something small and simple, and it isn't until some time later that you realize what you've really been shown: a true emotional panorama, drawn with the most clear and efficient of lines; a sort of semantic loaves-and-fishes, where a comprehensive truth has been packed into an impossibly small space. Offutt has got a highly selective, quietly explosive palette; words you use a hundred times a day are coiled into powerfully emotive combinations. His characters are tack-sharp and of few words, and when they speak they seem to do it with the weight of heroes. Offutt's written a lot of good things, but the short story is presently where he's at his most powerful, and some of his best are in "Out of the Woods," particularly the title story, and "Melungeons," and "Tough People."

Presently you won't see Chris Offutt's name on any bestseller's list, but please don't let that discourage you from reading his wonderful work. In "Out of the Woods," Offutt follows the lives of ex-cons, alcoholics, gamblers, and drifters as they struggle to find direction and purpose.

Offutt's characters share one common thread, they were all born and raised in Appalachian communities in Kentucky. Reared in a culture in and of itself, these Kentuckians face harsh realities as they try to carve out a path for themselves in mainstream America. Most grapple with a strong desire to get out and see the world yet simultaneously they fight the urge to return to the comfort and security of home. In "Moscow, Idaho," a young prisoner on grave digging duty aims to turn over a new leaf and wonders if he will ever find a woman, a good job, and a town to settle in. "Two-Eleven All Around" is the story of a man who is so desperate for attention from his girlfriend, that he stages his own arrest in hope that she will hear about it while listening to her radio. These tales combine perseverance and heartbreak into poetic prose.

There have been comparisons of Offutt's writing to that of Raymond Carver's. Only in my opinion, Offutt is better. Carver's characters tend to present with a flat affect, but Offutt is able to take the reader subtly and deeply into his characters minds. Chris Offutt excels at what he writes about because he lived the life of his characters. He grew up in a small Appalachian community and at the age of nineteen he meandered across the country where he went through more than fifty jobs before returning to home and raising a family. Chris Offutt has come full circle and there is no doubt that he will find himself a place in the world of literature.

It's been a long time since I've read-- and re-read and re-read again-- a book that affected me as deeply as "Out of the Woods." It is beautiful story-telling, and I am grateful that someone with his gifts also has the access to share them with us. As a reader of fiction, I am not concerned with "authenticity" or "verification"; I am simply concerned with reading a good story. Thank you, Chris Offutt.

When he died in 1891, historian Draper left unfinished this massive biography of legendary Kentucky frontier hero Daniel Boone (1734-1820). Now Belue, who teaches history at Murray State University in Kentucky, has transcribed and annotated Draper's rambling manuscript, whose florid, hagiographic prose should not deter readers from some real merits. First, Draper, an indefatigable researcher, drew upon thousands of documents as well as interviews with white, Native American and black frontier dwellers to re-create Boone's colorful exploits, including his blazing of a trail through the Cumberland Gap; his construction of Boonesborough, the first permanent settlement in the "Far West"; and his dramatic rescue of his daughter Jemima and two other girls from Indians. Second, Draper's tome is a treasure trove of early Americana, covering Indian-Anglo wars and relations, the fur trade, the British presence and trans-Appalachian life, flora, and fauna. Third, the 76 period drawings, engravings, photographs and maps offer revealing glimpses of both whites and Native Americans. And finally, Belue's entertaining and informative chapter notes diligently correct Draper's romanticization, offering instead a lifelong wanderer from home and family, a failed land speculator, an adventurer who watched his son tortured to death by Cherokees but who still sought accomodation with the Indians. Regrettably, Draper's text breaks off in 1778, but a chronology, epilogue, and appendix sketch Boone's later exploits.--Publishers Weekly, September 14, 1998

I simply cannot tell you how critically important this latest offering is from Ted Franklin Belue. For close to 150 years, ninety percent of everything you've ever read in regard to the longhunter and the frontier Cumberland and Ohio valley experience was documented via information contained inside this book! Except...you couldn't just simply read it until our friend from Kentucky's Murray State University (the famous author and historian) Mr. Ted Franklin Belue, got his hands on it....Draper always intended to transform this incredible wealth of primary and secondary documentation into a book, but it never happened....Well, thanks to the Herculean efforts of Belue, we common folk now have unlimited access to "the entire motherlode"! Draper's THE LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE....There is much never-before-published information on Boone, his lifestyle and those who were associated with him. But this is just the tip of the iceberg!....There is a great deal more information on Boone's contemporaries and the world around them....Basically all the legitimate reliable documentation we have on the classic Virginia/Carolina longhunter came from and is contained within this book!....No longer need we be content with the little scraps and quotes. At last (thanks to Ted Franklin Belue) we now have "the source": Draper's THE LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE. Handsomely hardbound with a beautiful dust jacket, the huge 600 page book is filled with all sorts of appendices, early maps, and period and contemporary illustrations--never before published photographs from the Dresslar and Grant collections. The book literall overflows with numerous first-person narratives and biographies of frontier notables, including the entire diary of Dr. Thomas Walker's monumental 1750 exploration of Kentucky. Folks, if you have an association with the 18th century frontier and you'd like to become infinitely more knowledgeable about the people who actually lived there and what actually happened in those places and times through their own telling--you need this book. Now that this gem is available to the public, I can't imagine anyone who considers himself a serious student of the 18th century West not owing a copy of Draper's THE LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE.--John Curry

In 1856, the eminent historian, Lyman C. Draper, temporarily laid aside the 800 handwritten page biography of Daniel Boone that he had just recently completed. So far, Draper had documented the famous American frontiersman's life only through the year, 1778, and he fully intended to renew the project one day to cover the forty-two additional years of Boone's life. But that day never came, Draper went to his grave in 1891, and his unfinished manuscript was filed away and largely forgotten in the collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. One day in 1990, Ted Franklin Belue, a history professor at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, was studying Draper's manuscript on microfilm. Here, according to Belue's own words, was a national treasure, "known only to a few, filled with tales of Boone, frontier lore, Long Hunters, Indians, wild exploits, hunters' skills, genealogical data, descriptions of native flora and fauna, miscellaneous Americana, trans-Appalachian history, and much more." It took Belue eight years to transcribe, edit, and annotate the monumental manuscript. The result is an equally monumental book. More than 600 fact-filled pages tell the story of Boone from his birth in Pennsylvania in 1734 to his residence forty-four years later in Kentucky. Draper's original biography is much enhanced by Belue's interesting preface, his own extensive notes which shed a great deal of additional information on Boone in light of modern-day research, a chronology of Boone's life, a fine selection of period illustrations and maps, and an index. The Life of Daniel Boone is a book that anyone interested in America's "first West" will read with relish and appreciation. It is a testimonial to a man whose name-even today, nearly two hundred years after his death-is one of the country's most recognizable. But, beyond its tribute to Boone, the volume presents a gold mine of information about everyday life on the trans-Appalachian frontier, the mores and lifestyles of the region's first Anglo settlers, and a number of mini-biographical sketches about some of the key players of the times. --James A. Crutchfield