I read this book when it was published in 1989, and was so moved by it I am compelled to write a review 8 years later. An outstanding story about duty and honor that will be a real treat to anyone who was part of the war or is interested in military fiction. Navy Lt. Stuart, on assignment with the Army as a land-based "spotter" for Naval gunfire, is a rich character through whose eyes one sees the drama, intrigue, and emotional anguish experienced by those who served with honor and dinstinction in this unpopular conflict. This is remarkable and serious book -- not simply an "action" novel -- a book that will fill the reader with many of the same emotions as experienced by Lt. Stewert. Although the novel apparently was not commercially successful, Mr. Leib has done a great service to those who served by writing this book. I have not been as moved by anything I have read in the past decade, and regard my mint condition, hard-cover copy as a prize possession.

One of the best war books ever written. The insight to the characters makes you feel like you were there. Having read quite a few Vietnam war books, this one rates as the most memorable. I highly recommend this book!

This is the finest novel about the Vietnam War I have read. I wonder why Mr Leib stopped writing. I found this book in a box of give away paperbacks in a funky little store on the Sacramento River Delta. I have been hooked ever since. With some books I look back in laborious effort to keep track of characters and actions. With this book, I eagerly review sections for character connections and to review the "lay of the land".

Mr. Leib provides us a compelling view of Vietnam, how the conflict ebbs and flows and the believable and extremely insightful story of the lives of the men. He gave me a perspective I never had even though I lived through this time in our history. This should have been a NY Times bestseller.

By 1963, the Rhodesian Cobra is an established assassin with Lumumba among his victims. His current assignment in Havana is to kill Castro, but he purposely misses shooting a cigar instead. When the Cubans catch him, Cobra explains that he intentionally missed. He proves his boast by reconstructing the shot using a "volunteer" from Texas, Rupert Justice Tolliver as the target. Cobra successfully demonstrates his abilities. The Cubans send him to meet J. Edgar Hoover's South Florida contact Fernandez who provides Cobra with his next job. In late November in Dallas, Cobra carries out his assignment. To escape the country, he joins the Marines.

Over the next three plus decades, Rupert becomes a TV evangelist and governor of Texas. Cobra buys a large farm in his homeland that he finances with an occasional hit. By 2001 Rupert is the president while Cobra continues to work his farm. Rupert believes that he is the world's savior and begins a religious war as described in Revelations. The international financial community panics and hires Cobra to kill Rupert. However, Cobra is unaware that the real brain behind the presidency is the First Lady and she has no compunctions to walk both sides of the conflict to gain what she wants.

BEHOLD A PALE HORSE is an exciting political thriller that keeps reader attention from start to finish. The story line never rests as the 1963 scenario ties back into the 2001 potential apocalypse. Though the characters are not going to gain any empathy, the audience will admire Cobra's chutzpah and gasp at Rupert's obsession with Revelations. Franklin Allen Leib had forged a triumphant tale that will send his fans searching for his previous novels.

Harriet Klausner

a wonderful tale of the apocalypse set from dallas in 1963 to washington and brazil in 2001, when the third millennium really begins. characters-president tolliver, his wife clarissa, his pursuer, cobra--excellent. highly recommended. roger.

This is an exciting book. You have a hired killer who took part in the original Kennedy assasination. The other character is a Texas Governor named Justice Tolliver who moves to the Presidency. The hired killer named Cobra has an interesting biography and an impressive list of hits. The President and his first lady are as wild as they come. They have shady land deals, the President was also a draft dodger. This book has every kind of scenario that you could ask for. The plot is outstanding as well. This will be one of the better books that you will read this year. You will be wondering if Cobra is sucessful in his newest assignment. You this book. It is a thriller.

I remember Della Reese from back when she was a regular on Chico on the Man. Actually, I must remember her from before then, because I remember as a teenager the horror and disgust I felt when she was on Merv Griffin or some talk show like that talking about the glass door she walked through and needing 800 stitches; I remember because not long after that, I nearly walked through a screen door myself. (Mother decided at that point that perhaps I should be tested for eyeglasses; it was discovered that I was badly nearsighted...but I digress.)

Anyway, I recommend this book to anyone who wants a concrete example of how God guides a person if you let Him...there is a tendency to take what a celebrity says with a grain of salt, because of the nature of the business where people willingly lie to promote themselves...I feel this woman speaks the truth as she knows it. This is the first biography I've read in a long time where I had a hard time putting it down. It's written in straight, no-nonsense language, Della's language, and I applaud the choice of co-writer because she did an excellent job of staying out of the book; unfortunately she's not given much credit other than a line or two in the acknowledgement...but as an amateur editor I know that sometimes you can be so caught up in grammar and political correctness that you lose the spirit of the piece...not so here.

I wish Ms. Reese would write another book...one that sort of puts these and instructs the rest of us on how we might be as strong as she is...one that puts her ministry in writing for the benefit of those of us who cannot come to LA and study with her at her church!

I was led to read this book about Della because my husband and mother always spoke of how Della sang in the Paradise club in Idelwild, Michigan. My mother-in-law spoke of knowing Daddy Braggs and I was curious about how she would relate to or even mention those days. Upon reading her book I find those were some very important times in her life. I have always had a great respect for Della but I was able to piece those stories together and really appreciate a truly great lady. She struggled as so many others who had gone on before her and she was able to over come innumerable odds to arrive at the pennacle of her great success. After reading her book I was able to look back at the Angels in my life and praise God for every one of them. God bless Della and continued success with Touched by an Angel.

Della Reese, one of the stars of the hit TV series, Touched By an Angel, has written a delightful and inspiring book about her life and how her "angels" helped along the way.

I thought this was a very inspirational book on her life and her work. It was interesting to read about how various people or "angels" entered her life at the right moment to help her along her journey of life.

It helped me to stop and think for a bit about my own life, and how various "angels" come along and help me pursue my dream.

This book is a must-read, not only for Ms. Reese's fans, but for anyone who is looking for a role model or inspriational person.

The book is very easy to read and can get the reader engrossed pretty quickly.

I love this book more than any others, and those thousands of others include: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, all of Michener (sorry James!), Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck. Even more than I loved Moby Dick. I believe that Raintree County is the greatest American Novel, and it would be hard to dissuade me. But you also have to read Shade of a Raintree when done, to keep the saga going

When averring that Raintree County is such a "Good" book, I find myself searching for words to accurately convey my meaning. The lyrical gift of Mr. Lockridge is "good," though not great as is the case with the brilliant Thomas Wolfe, the American novelist his writing most resembles. The story, complete with flashbacks, is engaging through all its over 1,000 pages. The philosophical sections are good as well, and the "Perfesser" Stiles is one of the most comically and wittily astute Menckenesque characters in all of American fiction.

One thing that I certainly do NOT mean by "good" is that the book is some sort of sentimental whitewash of American history and archetypal American characters. They are presented here in all their selfishness, avarice and mean-spiritedness. Yet, the novel ultimately has such a Whitmanesque all-embracing quality that these human traits dissolve into the rich tapestry of the story, which I found a page-turner despite its length.

Ultimately, the novel of which this book most reminds me is not an American, or even English, one at all. It is Tolstoy's War And Peace. These books both narrate the human capacity for evil and good, for love and hate, the chaos caused by the greatest war either of the two countries had fought at the time, the enduring value of friendship, all spread out over a vast panorama of intricate relations. In short, Raintree County is America's most epic novel: Not the greatest perhaps, but the most epic.

But there's something more: At one point in the book (p. 934 in my edition) Shawnessy reflects that, "A human life had a dimension that wasn't perfectly understood." Through reading this book, one somehow comes away with the feeling that one has at least brushed against the boundaries of this mysterious dimension.---No small feat, this.

On November 11, 1998 I wrote a review of Ross Lockridge's son's book: "In The Shade of the Raintree," that said much that could be added to advantage to my review of "Raintree County" itself.

Accordingly, I am doing a second review of "Raintree County." It is relevant in that it is also written in the light of several other reviews that followed mine and a couple that preceded it that had not been posted for some reason when I wrote my initial review. (I would love to think I was the catalyst for getting this remarkable book at least a little of the attention it deserves.) I am happy to see a near consensus in the reviews now appearing here about a couple of things: (1) that this book should be covered in Lit. Courses and (2) that it is indeed recognized by at least an elite, as that fabled literary phenomenon: "The Great American Novel."

I was and am immensely impressed by a writer like Ross Lockridge, Jr., who could craft a thousand plus page novel that is more of a lyric poem. Yet, at the time of its publication, some reviewers lightly passed it over as prolix or superficial, notably competing author Hamilton Basso, whose review, one suspects, might reveal that he'd have cut his arm off to be able to achieve Lockridge's pinnacle of word-use that sweeps our minds away like a Pied Piper demanding we follow him.

I followed this Pied Piper gladly, into a nostalgic tour of magical long gone years and fascinating people departed forever. Moreover, we were never far from the realization that those during the Civil War were raised to "give their last full measure of devotion," to the highest cause, preservation of "The Last Best Hope of Earth." We need to be rededicated to that cause today.

At some places in Lockridge's monumental tribute to America, in the hands of this genius, the cumulative effect transcended words, as only music can do. He tugged me into a wonderful, tragi-comic trance-like dream of pure thought where still lived a world of America's heritage. Ross Lockridge undoubtedly fathered that elusive thing: - The Great American Novel.

I thought as I read a son's account of his father and his work on this remarkable book that its history of creation should remind us it's time to take a second look and face the truth that we were granted a short stay among us of a literary angel, who bequeathed us a treasury of jewel-like words and images beyond price.

I wrote in my review of Larry Lockridge's remembrance that I would review its inspiration, the book Raintree Country itself, when I had time. I added: "In any case, I want to record my discovery of the conundrum of the book, Raintree Country, a mysterious message buried in its maps that no one I have ever encountered had noticed." I did that. Contrary to Ross Lockridge's deliberately (?) misleading words, we could look for Raintree Country on the Map and it 'would' be there.

Finally, I must say that the movie, like most, was - in my opinion - the usual uncomprehending travesty of story mangling and miscasting. Only Flash Perkins was properly cast, in my opinion. I don't think the producers had any more idea of what they had grandly muffed than a baby has of the consequence of throwing its bottle out of the crib. Maybe someday an English production company of the caliber that gave us "I Claudius," and "Lily" and "The First Churchills," will redo this classic.

I read this book back in the early 1970's, having stumbled across it in a yard sale. This is one of those books that engenders a response in me that is difficult to articulate. It reduces the whole Cold-War struggle to its ultimate absurdity and horror. War reduced to a series of buttons to be pressed by men and women at the bottom of Strangelovian mine shafts. Thought provoking and as morbidly fascinating as watching an autopsy. Depressing, you bet. By the time you finish this one you'll be reaching for the extra-strength Prozac or a razor.

Believe it or not, I first read this book when I was 10. It is one of the scariest books I have ever read. Needless to say, it had quite an impact. I came across a copy of it about five years ago and bought it. The sense of devastation at the end is total! Now that I am an adult, however, I think Roshwald over does it with his anti-technology bias. Being in the military, I can tell you that the type of totally automatic systems depicted here (i.e., the atomophone) would never be fielded. Even so, it provides a powerful warning to those who think a nuclear war is winnable.

I read this book over 30 years ago and it has stayed with me all these years. If there was ever a nuclear war most people that died would never know who started it or why it happened.

Franklin Rast's memoir Don's Nam is a coming-of-age story set in the context of the Viet Nam war. A lot of these have surely been written, and quite a few published. This one, however, is unique. It's subject and structure make it the ideal introduction to the Viet Nam experience for the uninitiated.

The "war" part of the book has an unusually effective structure. The author was a lieutenant (translation: a member of the one class of officers who actually had to get out in the field and do the dirty work) in the transportation corps during the war. He tells the story of leading repeated supply convoy trips into the depths of Vietnam's jungles. Sometimes these are funny. Sometimes they're routine. Occasionally they're harrowing. Whatever the details of the individual trip, however, the familiar context of truck driving, an almost mythical American activity, is always there to "anchor" the story to something familiar, even as events veer into the exotic, the bizarre, or the terrible. The recurring element of sudden, unpredictable danger characteristic of war stories isn't undermined in this book by the sense of unreality that readers with no military background often experience when they read of such events.

And in between the convoys there is downtime at the base. Here the familiar American culture,60s style, reasserts itself, incongruously enough, in the middle of a Far Eastern jungle. As officers, non coms, and men interact through the course of the memoir, Rast gradually uncovers the incredible tensions that existed inside this insular world - above all the clash of interests and values that took place every day between "lifers" and draftees. The memoirist, an unusual combination of north Louisiana "good old boy"/ROTC zealot and budding '60s cynic, moves adroitly between the lifer and draftee subcultures, and it is amusing to watch his language, and even his attitudes, change to meet the demands of the moment.

In these scenes, as always, the dialogue in the book is excellent! Mr. Rast has a fine ability to reproduce everyday American speech, especially the half-humorous, half-hostile exchanges of men who live and work together in constant fear of their lives. He also masters the much more difficult task of rendering the voices of the VietNamese whom he encounters with clarity, sympathy, and dignity. In fact, this is one of the joys of the book Rast's exploration of a culture and people that he does not know yet always respects.

What finally becomes apparent as one reads Don's Nam is that the memoirist who manages to pull off these difficult feats is an unusual man. He's full of contradictions. He's a regular guy from the redneck part of Louisiana who possesses an abiding interest in philosophy and eastern religion. He's an extravert with has a natural ability to relate to people of all classes and nationalities, and at the same time he has an alert and questioning mind that takes everything they say with a grain of salt. In the course of the book he builds a preliminary understanding of the world and the war from all of their inputs, particularly that of the Vietnamese, and learns to live with the ambiguities that remain

Leonard W. Martin Editorial Excellence (freelance editor of literary, academic, business and legal manuscripts)

Even though I was just a young kid when America was fighting the war in Vietnam, the subject always fascinated me. Guess I've read about every book regarding Vietnam that shows up on the bookshelf, each time getting more of the same thing-firefights with statistics, people who got killed or wounded coupled with how many of the enemy we wiped out in the process; frustrated military leaders held back by the red-tape, evasive politicians misleading the public into thinking the war was to support a democratic Saigon government. This is all just great but somehow the true feelings, bitterness, sorrows, fears, humor and doubts evaded my conception of the war until I read Rast's story from his diary along with the pictures he took. The events he describes stayed with me and they stuck, I felt like I was right there with him and I kept going back to chapters in the book and rereading them with different feelings each time. Theres a little bit of all of us in his characters and the situations and emotions they display: maybe that is why it feels so real to read and see something about the war I never experienced before.

What a remarkable experience. "Don's Nam" was an eye opener for me. I am a retired Navy Veteran of twenty-years. I enlisted into the Navy after the Vietnam war, and didn't know much about it. What an eye opener. It's a book that you don't want to put down. Don's vivid accounts of events and experiences was remarkable. Orient Express is must reading for everyone who has even the remote interest in the Vietnam War.

The part interested me most is the relationship between Billy Graham and the presidents of the United States from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, which takes one third of the book and covers half of the century of the U.S. history. He talked their charactors and family lives. Only Billy Graham has this kind of experience. You will learn those presidents from a different angle, a Christian leader's point of view. It is a very unique book. Regarding Christianality, if you do not have time to read the whole book of 735 pages, you can read the last chapter, chapter 40: The Best is Yet to Be, which concludes his faith and philosophy. It touched me that someone asked him if he thought God was unfair, allowing him to have Parkinson's disease. He answered: "Suffering is part of the human condition, and it comes to us all. The key is how we react to it, either turning away from God in anger and bitterness or growing closer to Him in trust and confidence."

I found Just As I Am captivating from the moment I picked it up, and was unable to put it down. I read Just As I Am while I was convalescing at home for four days after an ankle injury at work. This was four of the most enlightening days I have ever experienced. Starting from the quaint surroundings of a North Carolina farmhouse, I was soon taken on a journey around the world, as Mr Graham described his many fascinating travels and crusades. Rev Graham not only describes his experiences for us, but by each chapter's end he capsulizes the lesson's he has learned during his trips and meetings with people of all walks and stations of life around the world. I was struck time and again by the depth of meaning Billy Graham finds in each of his life's experiences, his clarity of vision, and his ability to poignantly and keenly express what he has seen and learned. It becomes readily obvious why he has been taken into close company by many heads of state for the past 50 years of his ministry. This is a book not to be missed by any serious thinker.

Billy Graham's latest book offers a fresh and personal insight to his life and his life's work. It is truly amazing how God has worked in this wonderful and dedicated man's long life. Yet, he continues to wonder "why"? Why would God take a young man from Charlotte, NC and transform him into the greatest evangelist since Paul? Most interesting is his relationship with his wife, his family, those he worked and works with, presidents and leaders throughout the world. It is facinating to read of his burden of countries closed off from outsiders, yet, in time, God opened the door to Billy Graham to spread the Gospel in those same countries. In this day of dishonest and insincere TV evangelists, it is refreshing to read of one so intent on giving God alone the glory. At seventy-eight he admits that he will not be here much longer. I will miss him even more now having read his book. May we all follow his example

This book, along with C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, are two of the best books ever written about love and loss. L'Engle's characteristic style of inspired wanderings brings you back gently and eventually to her main discussion of her courtship and 40-year marriage, and to the inevitable and tragic ending thereof. While certainly saddening, this book is not about wallowing in grief, but is a celebration of the non-traditional (in many ways) life that she and Hugh built together, and how the strength and love of their relationship rippled outward to affect all they came in contact with: children, god-children, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.

I agree, this book is such a real treat. Ms. L'Engle is such a wonderful writer; the way she expresses things makes it all "clear". I love the way she urges you to see the beauties in life, love and happiness. This book not only inspired me to begin playing the piano again; it is the ONLY book that has ever made me cry upon putting it down. This book could change your life. Ms. L'Engle, thank you for changing my life. And Alexandra Stoddard (author), thank you also for not only changing my life, but for introducing me to such a wonderful author! :)

This book, along with C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, are two of the best books ever written about love and loss. L'Engle's characteristic style of inspired wanderings brings you back gently and eventually to her main discussion of her courtship and 40-year marriage, and to the inevitable and tragic ending thereof. While certainly saddening, this book is not about wallowing in grief, but is a celebration of the non-traditional (in many ways) life that she and Hugh built together, and how the strength and love of their relationship rippled outward to affect all they came in contact with: children, god-children, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.

Hardy Boys, Hunting for Hidden Gold is one of the best books I have read in my life. It combines mystery, adventure, and suspense all crammed in one book. The Hardy Boys series is a really great series. I usually don't like mystery books but this one is really good.Unlike some books that have boring parts. Hunting for Hidden Gold doesn't have any boring parts. That is very good. I really don't like parts where they just talk and talk about boring things that don't interest me. The Hardy Boys have been around for awhile and people still read them. Hardy Boys can be read by all ages. it is not really hard to read. In the whole Hardy Boys series there are 58 books. I am looking forward to reading more books from the series. Hunting for Hidden Gold is a sort of long book. It is about 150 pages long. That is not too long but it is not very short either. Since it is long, it gets lots of action in it. If it was any longer, it would have some boring parts in it. In conclusion, this book deserves five stars.

... This book is excellent; definately one of the top three of the series. The action starts on page 1 and doesn't let up until the book is finished. Hunting For Hidden Gold has perhaps the best mystery out of all of the books in the series and is written quite well unlike most of the books put out after the early 1950s. The book is very exciting, as quite often Frank and Joe are chasing, or being chased by, the criminals. Definately one of the best, no Hardy Boys fan should miss this one.

If you like to explore secret passage ways or disguise yourself as someone else, if you like to go on adventures and fight the bad guy while solving a mystery, than this is the book for you. I have read several of the Hardy Boys Mysteries that happened before this and this was one of my favorites! Not only will you read just how the boys escape from the bad guys but also you can learn some nice, cunning tricks to make your enemy run!

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