A heavy drinker and trouble-maker while at West Point, Jefferson Davis went on to be a war hero, a U.S. Senator, a Secretary of War and finally first and only President of the Confederate States of America. Thin skinned, proud and convinced his position was the only correct one, he was unsuited to be in a political administrative position.

Davis' unsuitability did not prevent the founding CSA Congress from electing him to the Presidency. That was the only high point of his term in office. He fought with his generals (thinking he was better qualified than they), failed to get along with his Vice President and earned the hatred of many Southern papers. Then the war was lost. The South did not earn independence.

This was when the Davis weaknesses became his strengths. Convinced he was still right in his firm belief in Southern independence, he kept the fight and government alive long after most men would have given up. His retreat from Richmond was met by cheering and appreciative crowds of people who only months before would have jeered him. In defeat he was fearless, still dedicated and still passonate about the fight.

With out going into the long and troubled life of Mr. Davis, Ballard looks at the final days of the Confederacy in minute detail. He does not attempt to cover-up the Davis failures or chararter flaws. Instead, he shows how the stuborn leader turned those flaws to his advantage as he endured the retreat, capture and imprisonment. While in popular opinion today, General Lee is viewed as the Confederate war leader, President Davis becomes the leader of the aftermath. He never gave up on the Lost Cause, becoming the South's spiritual leader for nearly 20 years after the war's end.

Ballard's style takes us through those days smoothly, showing the transformation of Mr. Davis from revieled President to peace time leader of a nation that would exist only in the hearts of its inhabitants.

Unlike current historical works, Ballard does not write as if he is being paid by the word. Each word has a purpose. Details are not told and then retold several times. He tells the story, pure and simple, and tells it well. This is a most book for any student of the Civil War, the South, Jefferson Davis, or the Reconstruction period.

This is an adventure novel featuring MacBurnie King, an American teenager, on a life-changing journey to India. It combines a worthy message with a gripping story and appealing characters. MacBurnie persuades her class to adopt an Indian child through an agency to end world hunger, and for months she and the class exchange letters and photos with a woman named Lori working with this little boy and others like him in the Indian countryside. Then a letter from Lori comes saying that the little boy is no longer with them and they don't know where he is. This spurs MacBurnie to travel to India herself to find the little boy. From here the novel is a fast-moving adventure for MacBurnie and the reader to see first the wealth and sophistication of Indian urban life, then the unbelievable poverty of village life, with its lack of medical services, flood and drought, suffering and death. To see this from the viewpoint of the courageous and compassionate MacBurnie helps readers get some notion of the meaning of hunger and suffering in the context of a completely different culture than their own. There is enough adventure and romance to please the most reluctant reader. This novel is introduced by Mother Teresa and The Gandhi Foundation, and celebrities such as Nelson Mandela, Coretta Scott King, and Janet Jackson praise the series in the first pages, along with endorsements by such organizations as YWCA, UNICEF and Save the Children. Attached to this novel is a nonfiction work entitled India Revealed: The True Roots of Hinduism and Our World's Largest Democracy, filled with b/w photos related to India and encyclopedia-type entries on many aspects of Indian culture.

Claire Rosser, Editor KLIATT

As a dealer in Southwestern American Indian fine arts and hand crafted, traditional items, I am always on the lookout for books I can recommend to our collectors and students of the indigenous arts here in America.

The Peabody Museum Press has produced a work that should be included the library of every serious collector of traditional Southwestern American Indian handcrafted arts. For collectors of Navajo and Pueblo textiles and baskets we consider it mandatory reading. It's overview and cataloging of the highly regarded William Wright Collection is particularly notable for its excellent introduction, descriptions of the lifeways and cultural traditions of the artists, and collateral detail notes found throughout. Editor, Penelope Ballard Drooker has given us a very readable distillation of information from many sources which serves to enhance the understanding of the evolution of the state of the arts invbolved in the time frame they were collected: 1960's - 70's.

We especially appreciated the detail photography. While the reproduction of some of the images seemed a bit flat, overall they were still well -lit and shot with sufficient depth of field to convey the textural nature of many of the items very well. The color sections, especially conveyed the vitaltiy of the works pictured.

From the perspective of the serious collector, Publications like this provide us with insight and further expand our knowledge of the development and marketing of these arts as well as the acheivements of individual artists. Few of us can travel frequently enough to benefit from exhibitions of collections as broad and thoughful as the William Wright Collection. Catalog publications, when presented in as complete a manner as Makers and Markets allow us all the benefits without the miles.

We will encourage our collectors to obtain copies for their own continuing education and enjoyment.

I am not usually a devotee of the short story compilation, but found this collection by Ballard, surely the most cerebral of sci-fi authors, to be utterly compelling. Nine of the works (the tenth "Dead Time" seems oddly out of place here), are complete entities in their own right, but together, compliment each other into creating a bizarre and disturbing, but scarily plausible vision of what humankind is becoming. Civil war erupts in the UK, whilst elsewhere, cyber-recluses fester in their fortress homes. Folk experiment with practical time travel, living their lives in fleeting moments of lucidity, whilst others get married and have families with spouses they can never meet. My particular favourite The Smile, rings faint echoes of Wilde's Dorien Gray and chilled me to the bone though I read it on a hot sunny day in my garden. Ballard's visionary style is as innovative as ever, often employing startling imagery that grabs the reader at a visceral level. Myths will not be to everyone's taste. If, however, you are an adventurous soul, I thouroughly recommend this book which, although parts of which are a quarter of a century old, remains hugely valid today.

This book gives all the details that a new bread maker needs for success with whole wheat bread. It is well written and concise. It gives the instructions for kneading, rising, shaping, yeast, etc., that many cookbooks do not include but that make the difference between success and failure. The author is a little too careful, though; it is possible to have success with whole wheat bread without adhering religiously to all of her suggestions. The book also needs to be updated with a more modern view of yeast and wheat storage.

Why does Hanna have to be married by age 30? Who's controlling her life? Follow the intrigue, as well as the romance, as Ms. Ballard weaves a mystery and a love story of a plus-size woman, who is caught up in a situation that seems beyond her control. The book is easy to read but difficult to put down once started. Loved every minute of it!

Pat Ballard has a flair for writting. Wanted: One Groom is like no other I have read. A beautiful and passionate love story. With mystery and humor that would not let me put it down. I found myself reading it faster and faster, from cover to cover with out stopping. Every one I have told about this book has read it and given it an A+. Ready for a sequel! Keep up the flair.

Hanna Rockwell needs to be married by the time she's 30 or she'll lose her inheritance. But she's in no hurry to get married just to save an inheritance that her mother and brother need to live on. In fact, she's ready to start a new life somewhere without them.

Then along comes Matt! Oh, Matt! Swoon, swoon. Matt Corbett is the kind of man that most any woman would love! And he loves Big Beautiful Hanna Rockwell, just the way she is!

This is the first book that Pat published. I'm looking forward to
reading the rest!

Though most of Ballard's work contains unvarying plots, motifs, characters, etc., I was quite stunned to find that 'Super Cannes' and 'Cocaine Nights' are - albeit with minor tweaks and variations - actually one and the same book. From the backdrops to the manic idiosyncrasies of the characters, the key components in each enjoy such thorough correspondences and identity that a synopsis of one book effectively adumbrates the other. It seems Ballard's technique of thematic reiteration and repetition has achieved such perfection as to suggest that an author has finally (and remarkably) cloned his own work and slipped it over the transom. Read both books if you wish to scrutinize the sublime homogeneity of Ballard's imagination. Or pick one or the other, and feel satisfied that you've economized on money and time.

Though most of Ballard's work contains unvarying plots, motifs, characters, etc., I was quite stunned to find that 'Super Cannes' and 'Cocaine Nights' are - albeit with minor tweaks and variations - actually one and the same book. From the backdrops to the manic idiosyncrasies of the characters, the key components in each enjoy such thorough correspondences and identity that a synopsis of one book effectively adumbrates the other. It seems Ballard's technique of thematic reiteration and repetition has achieved such perfection as to suggest that an author has finally (and remarkably) cloned his own work and slipped it over the transom. Read both books if you wish to scrutinize the sublime homogeneity of Ballard's imagination. Or pick one or the other, and feel satisfied that you've economized on money and time.

In a continuation of the theme he explored in Cocaine Nights, as well as other works, author J.G. Ballard pens a mystery about a cloistered, high-tech community coming to terms with its need for recreational sociopathology.

Eden-Olympia is an ultra modern business park and insular community nestled uncomfortably among the olive groves and marinas of the Cote d'Azure and where recently a respected young doctor embarked on a vicious killing spree. New residents soon find they have little time for anything but work and begin showing mental and physical problems that threaten to overtake the would be corporate paradise. In classic ballardian form, rogue psychiatrist Wilder Penrose steps in and implements a regime in which workaholic CEO's, presidents and junior vp's are encouraged to sublimate their fantasies of criminality, sexuality and violence by taking part in "therapy sessions" of a most uncoventional type. While investigating the bizarre murder-suicide of the former doctor, protagonist Paul Sinclair soon finds himself drawn deeply into this ferment of bright modernity and dark venality.

While not on a level with some of his other work; (and his best work is awesome) and although his characters are rather remote, (as usual) Super-Cannes is still an invigorating book. Ballard's mythologizing of crashed airplanes...abandoned runways...car parks... swimming pools...and other totems of our time forms one of the more exotic contributions to literature, yet it works. A strangely lit poetry suffuses his novels, short stories and essays; and one can always count on him for an an unexpected vista. His relentless probing of the social/technological interface has yielded some unsettling prophecies. Super-Cannes is basically a parable about the future; and as Ballard views it, the future is now.

I enjoyed Angel at Troublesome Creek as a light cozy, and was looking forward to the second installment.
Unfortunately it is disappointing. There is not enough of the charming angel, and not enough mystery.
Clues appear without effort on the part of the heroine. She just follows the path laid out before her. Her reactions to learning secrets about her sister seem unreal. There is no grief, no discovery, just rotely following the clues where they lead.
The basic plot is OK, but it is great need of a rewrite to fill in the characters, the emotions, the people we are supposed to care about.

The concept is brilliant (an angel helping out) and the book was entertaining however I just wished there was a bit more of the otherwordly included in the book. So much is made about the angel when in actuality you hear or see very little of her or her powers. She doesn't seem all that angelic.Phila

Prentice Dobson is spending time at the old family house. Her father and sister have died recently, her mother has moved away to the city,her reporter boyfriend has moved to London, and she's lost her job at a magazine in Atlanta. She has lots of time to reflect on how her life is going. On a routine visit to the family cemetery, she finds that her Uncle Faris' grave has been dug up and a strange corpse is in it's place. Fill in Guardian Angel Augusta Goodnight arrives to assist her with her troubles, when she finds out that her deceased sister may have had a child, and the child's crazy grandfather will do anything to find him.

There is alot going on in this book, and the various mysteries are not necessarily connected. I read this one from start to finish in one night. The characters are wonderful and quirky, and the angel isn't too angelic. Good, fast, read!!!

Ballard's Crash is truly a piece of work! While I have never been a big reader, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed this particular book. It is a very interesting examination of how technology can prevent intimacy from person to person. Almost to say that technology is preventing people from showing and using their senses because it destroys the need for them and gives us "artificial" senses. I have recently seen the movie Crash and find that it does not truly represent what the book shows.

The series of crashes continues the "destructiveness" of the previous and we see how James Ballard, the main character is no longer able to control the results of getting back his senses, in particular, his sex drive. The book really provides some extremes of how one might try to regain his path in life and come back to the world he has known in a life with his wife. Overall, the book is very well written and allows one to visualize all that is taking place. It almost puts you in the head of Ballard and you begin to realize what technology can prevent us from doing.

I must admit that there is plenty of reason that one could find the book to be revolting, but I think that in just looking at the way it was written and understanding that it is an extreme, I think it is anyway, it is the type of book that is tough to put down. I recommend the book over the movie if you like to imagine things in your own way.

Crash is an incredibly strange book. You've probably guessed that already, since it's about people with an erotic fascination for car crashes. The book isn't nearly as disturbing as some people would have you believe - sure, it's controversial, graphic, and a very strange, but it's not as disturbing as you might think.

Ballard's writing style takes time to get used to. Crash probably has, if you put all of it together, about four pages of dialogue, tops. There is very little talking among the characters; most of the story is in the vivid descriptions and elaborate detail. The story has an incredibly amount of detail when it comes to describing the crashes and the sexual fascination that revolves around them.

Which brings me to my next point - what makes this book good isn't necessarily it's plot or characters, as the plot is not incredibly cohesive and the characters are not in any way dynamic (even the twisted "TV scientist" Vaughan can be surprisingly normal at times). What makes this a really slick and cool book is the subject matter, detail and ideas implied. "The keys to a new sexuality born from a perverse technology" is an apt description of the books theme. However, summaries of the book often talk of the character's staging of accidents. This is a red herring; after the characters get into a crash and develop this fascination, most likely they don't crash their cars again. There is much description of the implied sexual elements of vehicle collision and after-effects of it - much detail is paid to the wounds crash victims suffer, probably more than anything else. However, from the first line it is apparent that a principle character died trying to stage a crash.

Crash is a book that after you've read it, you won't forget it. The subject matter is brilliantly thought-provoking and thoroughly strange. The only reason I give it four stars is the lack of plot it has sometimes makes the book difficult to read and understand. It's really more of a four and 1/2. To close: read Crash. Whether you like it or not, you most likely won't regret reading it.

Apparently, quite a few readers might find a reading of Baudrillard's essay on this novel necessary to fully grasp what Ballard is talking about here. This is an existential exploration of life at the end of the 20th century, and how humanity finds meaning (rightly or wrongly) in it's technology. It's a highly complex read, and not for everyone.

One should realize that the sexuality described in the novel is not intended to be erotic, or for that matter "bad", or "destructive", or "dangerous"; it's transcendent. The brilliance of the work lies in Ballard's ability, like Burgess in _A Clockwork Orange_, to subvert the reader's feelings toward the subject matter, so that in the end one begins to actually understand -- even sympathize with -- the characters' behavior.

Ballard's prose here is, well... classic Ballard: languid, fever-dream language, which would act as a suitable substitute for LSD. He has one of the most unique "voices" I've ever come across, and is certainly an acquired taste, in relation to other, more mainstream (i.e., mostly unimportant) SF authors. Take a bite, though, and you may find yourself addicted.

_Crash_ is the literary equivilent of a brick to the head. I loved it.

In his newest work, Ballard covers a theme fans will be familiar with- the evolution of society. It's a tale of two resort cities. The first is one where people go off to shack themselves away in a world of sattelite dishes, security cameras, locked gates, and silence. Just down the coast is the second, it's sister city- riddled with crime, drugs, pornography, and other fun stuff. What amounts to a plot is just an excuse for these two worlds to collide, and Ballard has many interesting things to say about wealthy society's ever increasing tendency towards leisure. JGB-isms abound: There's a messianic figure (shades of "The Unlimited Dream Company"), lots of that cold sterile "Ballardian" sex that fans of "Crash" will feel right at home with, and the insular society he covered in "Highrise", "Rushing to Paradise", and others. Unfortunately it all felt rather aimless to me- but perhaps that's the whole point? Rich, bland people without motivation or direction wandering around wasting time- sort of like JGB invading Bret Easton Ellis' territory. Therein lies one of the main problemswith this book: WHY JGB wrote this- what was HIS motivation? Does he feel that crime and porn are the answer to society's ills? I doubt it. (Well, I guess you could make a case for porn...). Or does he see wealthy society's trend towards leisure pursuits a dangerous thing? It doesn't really feel like either one. The other main problem is his attempt to use the mystery novel as a structure in which to philosophize on all of this- it's just not his forte. Perhaps had he abandoned traditional narrative altogether and just presented us with a series of characters- really immersed us in their blandness instead of trying to find things for them to do- it would have made for a stronger read. I think those familiar with JGB will find it somewhat interesting, but others will most likely find it a bit of a bore.

And this is a brilliant novel of what lies under the thin veneer of civilisation that we all wear, an edgy exploration of the the violence that lies within us all. His usual sparkling, deceptively simple prose is here, together with a thrilling murder story, off-beat characters and a threatening air of menace lurking by the pools and apartments of the up-market retirement village. Ballard is tragically under-read, and I urge you to read Cocaine Nights, one of the best books of the 90s, and then move on to his other novels, particularly The Drought and High Rise, and then devour his short stories, which are nearly all perfectly crafted gems.

i have always been intrigued with the themes and topics ballards works have been dealing with. nevertheless, most of his novels could not satisfy me completely. COCAINE NIGHTS changed that. ballards' amazingly beautiful and poetic descriptive way of writing, a story about tomorrow's society set in our present, the dark side that lurks in each one of us. all of the above come together in this novel, and make COCAINE NIGHTS wahat i would consider ballards flagship work. reminiscent of FIGHT CLUB. great stuff.