Whitson's third book is hard to read due to lack of continuity. I love the characters and the historical part of the entire series, so I was interested enough to keep plugging away in spite of difficulty with the flow.

Genevieve Blue Eyes is married to Daniel Two Stars and they find themselves in a tiny little rental on land that used to be theirs. Neighbors do not want "those wild Indians" living near them and make life miserable, culminating in a very, very intense encounter for Genevieve.

As a war breaks out, Daniel serves as guide for the Army and little Aaron whom we met as a small boy in earlier books, has enlisted as a "junior" recruit. It is during this war that Daniel Two Stars faces one of the biggest challenges of his life and his marriage. The ending does somewhat make up for the hit and miss writing of the book, and since I am such a fan of Stephanie Grace Whitson, I would definitely buy the next book if there is to be one.

As a fan of Stephanie Grace Whitson I was not let down. Her final book in the Dakota Moons series was far better than the previous one. I really enjoy how she keeps the romance alive within the marrage of her characters and her style of writing the workings of it.

The book gives a good overview of the areas with many addresses. Anyhow I found it a bit too black and white. It gives useful maps, but no coloured pictures from the areas, which would make it a bit more pleasant to read.

I highly recommend this guide to anyone who will be traveling in the Northeast as well as Canada. This guide gives you everything from upcoming events for the year to where to stay & eat. The maps are easy to read and follow. I have been a reader of the Mobil Guide for many years and it is continuing to give the most accurate, up-to-date travel information. This is the MUST-HAVE for the Northeast traveler.

Adams is not widely available in my native UK and I cannot say I am experiencing any sense of cultural deprivation if this entry in the Carl Wilcox series is typical of its quality.
Wilcox has had a colourful past--veteran of WW1,former convict and now an itinerant sign painter in the Mid West in the Great Depression and a man who has established a reputation as a sskilled investigator Why then does he come across as so dull in the book?
He is asked by a relative in North Dakota to dig up evidence that will exonerate a friend who is suspected of murdering her husband.Suspects are not exactly scarce--there is the nubile neighbour and her mildly retarded daughter;his partner in a clothing store known to be resentful of the deceased's less than hands on approach to business,and members of a dance band he once lead some of whom feel they are being held back by his less than dynamic leadership
Wilcox questions suspects,sleeps around with several female charcters and teaches his nephew to fight and bored me into a light coma in the process
Turgid,Unexciting .No sense of place or period.
Its boring and no condemnation can be more damning

It's a good time for Harold Adams, whose novels about itinerent sign painter ex-cop Carl Wilcox had been languishing, garnering critical raves but little in the way of sales. Walker & Company, a publishing house becoming known for literate, sometimes off-beat mysteries, has released four books so far in trade paperback and published new ones in hardback. This is a series well worth investigating.

Wilcox reminds me of every boy's favorite uncle, the one who's a black sheep to the women of the family for not settling down, who stops by when he needs a bed and a few square meals, bringing with him a whiff of sin and a few great stories. He travels the small towns of the Dakotas and Minnesota during the Depression, taking on sign-painting jobs for grocery stores and law offices when they're available, and camping by the side of the road in his modified Model T. When the jobs are few on the ground, he'll take on a murder investigation.

In "A Way with Widows," his sister asks him to come to Red Ford, North Dakota, to help clear a neighbor of killing her husband, who was found on the stairs of another woman's house. In "No Badge, No Gun," a minister who has heard of Wilcox's reputation as an investigator asks him to solve the murder of his niece, found dead in the basement of a church. Wilcox's investigating style consists of wandering around town, talking to people, gathering threads of facts and weaving them into a plausible story. He's suspicious, but not cynical. Told about the perfect character of a churchgoing man, he observes, "Nothing in this world raises more doubts in my mind than apparently perfect young men."

Yet Wilcox is also a flawed man. He makes mistakes and is perfectly capable of being turned by a pretty widow with something to hide. His attempts at seduction sometimes succeed, but more often fail, which makes sense at a time when a woman's reputation could be affected by who she's seen with.

One hopes for better things for Adams and Wilcox, but if it doesn't happen, it won't be the fault of the publisher. Like most of Walker's books, these are beautiful to look at -- details from Edward Hopper's paintings appear on most of them, which is a nice change from the usual blood and skulls that passes for art on most mystery covers -- and the $8.95 price tag is more than reasonable for these absorbing tales of small-town crimes of passion.

I've read numerous books on John Lennon and this ranks among the worst. It is just another cash-in rip-off in the line of Albert Goldman, Fred Seaman etc. Green wants to convince the reader he had a very close relationship with Lennon, could see inside his head, and pretends to remember their discussions accurately, word by word. He depicts Lennon and Ono as completely unbalanced, insecure, restless, child-like characters who never knew what they really wanted. And of course, the tarot-card reader Green was always there to give wise, fatherly advice so that those two poor creatures wouldn't have messed up their lives completely. If you really want to understand Lennon to the extent it is possible, I suggest you read Anthony Elliott's excellent psychological analysis "The Mourning of John Lennon".

Green's book is a little different from the others trying to "cash" in on Lennon. His account is a benign one that doesn't offer up startling negative images for the public to gulp down. It really reads as if he's just trying to relate his "memories" of John- memories which do not really say anything new- everything here Lennon has hinted at or said in interviews before his death. Also, Green admits it's a definitive portrait, that John could have acted totally different away from him. his biggest problem is that he uses extensive conversations in quotes that anyone knows he could not possibly have remembered, but even there, he says he doesn't say it's verbatim, he's just recreating an "essence" - so as long as you put all of that in the forefront of your mind while you read it- it's enjoyable- Lennon seems clever, funny, compelling, and as I said, there's nothing here that John hasn't already revealed about the way he was.

I'm not quite sure why previous reviews have been so low.
I have read many Lennon bios, Goldman, Seaman, May Pang, Ray Coleman, Giuliano.
I find that this bio is quite refreshing, in that John Green seems to be a person who did not yield before the 'John and Yoko' force...he seems to have held his own, and wasn't afraid to face up to them. It seems that Yoko was almost 'beholden' to Green, and that he was a person she (and John) would not try to beat down with her (their) relentless quirks. This is a clear and cleverly written account of John's last five or so years. There are intriguing accounts of Yoko's obsession with a South American witch (ending, in this book, with a kinda hysterical discussion of Yoko's wondering if she was signing a pact with the Devil, only to beg Green to sign his own name, to which he later replied, 'My name, Yoko? no, I signed YOUR name!').
Another account that stands out is John's visit to a 'new-age' (in 21st century terms, remember this was the early 70s) store, in search of proper ceremonial objects for his and Yoko's renewal of their wedding vows. John's sarcastic response to the store's solemn owners made me laugh out loud. I think Green did a very good job of showing Lennon's various sides...from the witty, sarcastic (public-loving) John, to the emotionally crippled, loner, stay-in-bed til I wither, side. The most revealing aspect of the book (and this can be confirmed by May Pang's book 'Loving John') is that Green kept trying to get John to really take responsibility for his life...he kept telling him that he could really do something, make music, be alive, if only he'd take responsibility for it. And, alas, it seems that John chose to wallow in paranoia and nothingness for too long...
all we have left is the legacy he left us when he started back to work in the early 80's...
all in all, this book is a definite must-read for Lennon fans who truly want to know what went on during the post 'Lost-Weekend' (a myth in itself, see May Pang's book) period.

I'd also add a consideration of author Lazarus's viewpoint, which Stripes rightly says is distorted by Lazarus's attempt to vindicate his father's role as an attorney for the Lakota tribes. I am a third year law student who sees himself as a Peace Corps Volunteer sent from the "real world" to the world of law. Legal education is worse than most in its warping effect on students' judgment. I am also reading Lazarus's "Closed Chambers", about the Supreme Court for whose Justice Blackmun Lazarus served as a post-graduate "clerk" in 1988-9. This latter book was written recently and is generally well-balanced and hopeful. By contrast, the Black Hills book was written while and soon after Lazarus completed his education, and shows signs of the preternatural or premature jadedness that not only infects law schools but seems to be part of the curriculum. I'll let Lazarus speak for himself (from page 230-1, as far as I've gotten in the book): "Tough and technically precise, the motion to vacate reflected an unmistakable contrast between the tribe's old and new counsel. Gone was Case's [the "bungler"] essentially romantic view of the legal process and his sentimental confidence that the government's overriding sense of fairness would lead it to a just settlement with the Sioux. Instead, Sonosky, Schifter, and Lazarus brought to the Sioux claims a hard-nosed view of the law and a degree of skepticism about the federal government. To them, the law was a two-edged sword to be wielded boldly and carefully in the service of clients. The legal system was a battlefield where the better cause did not always prevail. And the federal government was sometimes an ally, sometimes an adversary, but rarely the impartial purveyor of justice. The lawyers differed in their attitude towards their clients as well. To Case--the frontiersman's son inspired by the melting pot image of America--the Sioux were warriors to the last man who, nonetheless, wanted to assume their rightful place as members of an integrated national family. Sonosky, Schifter, and Lazarus, by contrast, heirs to a Jewish sensitivity about issues of ethnicity and discrimination, believed deeply in the New Deal's promise of cultural pluralism and Indian self-rule. They thought Indian law generally, and the claims process specifically, should be directed not towards ultimate assimilation but towards obtaining for Indians every penny to which they were entitled under law and guaranteeing to them a degree of independence in the direction of their own destinies." I think the heirs of the European usurpers should give the heirs of the original inhabitants of the continent a tenth of the current land/wealth. If the latter heirs want to buy a chunk of California and set up a gated community or a new state, feel free. The trend in Indian law seems to be the steady encroachment on Indian "independence". The father Lazarus's representation of the Black Hills claim netted 17 million dollars, what, five hundred dollars per survivor. No wonder the tribes voted to reject the award or settlement. Old Case's wheedling of the various courts, which younger Lazarus depicts as deaf to any call for justice anyway, at least had the merit of believing that Right means something in this country. If you don't believe that your opposite number cares about justice, what is your basis for persuasion? Public humiliation? Dazzling ambiguities to batter her or him into silence? Veiled threats (that you couldn't carry through on anyway)? These seem like the public's view of "lawyer's tricks". I say all this with younger Lazarus's later "Closed Chambers" in mind. Despite a couple of rough edges in its early pages, it is a passionate and philosophical study (so far, as of page 260) of a nation struggling to govern itself under law. There are no particular bad guys, no Case fall-guys for Lazarus's righteous indignation to exhaust itself upon. The later book is more of a Shakespearean tragedy, with the worst characters having redeeming (or redeemable) qualities. In a phrase, Lazarus has lost, by the time of this later book's writing, the "scorched earth" mentality that carried him into his earlier work. I suspect he got that mentality, largely, in law school. I think, as elder bungler Case might have said sheepishly,that that's a damn' shame and not necessary. If law is indeed a conversation, you can't have a conversation with someone if you are constantly calling him or her, in your mind or under your breath, a damn' fool. Speaking of Jewishness, I believe the Old Testament, one of the Wisdom Books, says somewhere that the person who calls someone else a fool (a rakah?) will not be forgiven. That's not an epiphany--it's the experience of neighbors who distrust anyone who badmouths an absent neighbor: what will this guy say about you when your back is turned? If you're not a good citizen, you're not going to be a good lawyer.

This book offers good historical narrative, but also justifies the actions of the author's father. It lacks balance in its perspectives.

The author's father, Arthur Lazarus, was one of the principle attorney's who won the largest, longest running Indian land claims case in US history. In 1980 the US Supreme Court upheld a judgement in favor of the Sioux of $17.1 million plus interest for loss of the Black Hills. However, the check has never been cashed; rather, the judgement money continues to draw interest. The Sioux now reject their legal victory that awarded them "just compensation" for loss of sacred lands, arguing that only restoration of these lands to the Sioux will end the conflict.

In _Black Hills / White Justice_, Edward Lazarus describes the legal efforts of Oglala attorney Mario Gonzalez (one of the leaders in the land restoration movement) as a Lakota Don Quixote who lacks a sense of reality. This bias affects much of the story that Lazarus tells in this history.

Never the less, there is no other book that offers a comprehensive overview of the history of US-Sioux relations through more than two centuries. The book is well researched and well written. It is a good primer.

The story in this book begins as the Sioux begin their rise to dominance on the northern Plains as they acquire horses and guns. The focus then shifts to the interactions of the Sioux with non-Indians from early traders and explorers to government officials, soldiers, settlers, and finally, bureaucrats and lawyers. In the focus on this relationship, the book offers little insight into the internal dynamics of Sioux culture, but it says more about the legal relationships between tribes and the federal government than many other books.

The subject of this book is appealing to South and North Dakota rail fans, but just-doesn't-quite satisfy. It is a general overview of the history of the Milwaukee Road in these states, and contains a good number of pictures, but it falls flat. The focus is more on freight operations than the passenger trains. Most disappointing was the lack of coverage about the Aberdeen, South Dakota Milwaukee Road depot and operations. The Aberdeen facility was the largest depot in South Dakota, and the "Hub City" of the railroads in the Dakotas merits more than minimal coverage in a book about this subject. Couldn't the author have located more photographs from the Milwaukee Road Historical Association, the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce, Dacotah Prairie Museum collection, or publicized with a news release or even advertised for the general public to submit historical photographs for this book? The text is OK, it's good that an author actually took interest in writing a book focusing on the Dakota operations, and the available photographs are interesting, but overall, the book is unsatisfying and a disappointment.

Rick Mills' book tells the story of the construction, heyday and decline of the Milwaukee Road Railroad in North and South Dakota. The text and photographs pay the ultimate tribute to the men and women who constructed the Milwaukee Road and built the Dakotas. Throughout the book, rare and unique photos document the building of "America's Resourceful Railroad". Especially interesting are the photos which document the passage of the last Milwaukee train across the northern main line. The book goes on to cover modern operations on the Milwaukee lines after the State of South Dakota purchased them to prevent abandonment.

Who likes being adopted nobody does especially Tall bear when his kola White hawk abanded him at a butte that had a eagles nest on a little tree.His kola who lied to the village that Tall bear was killed by the eagles.

I like this book because it reminds me of two buddies in my class.The part I dont like is when Tall bear kola abandens him at the butte.My opinion about this book is that its a good book it talks about friendship. I'll recomend this book to anybody who likes reading books by the athur PAUL GOBLE.And to people who likes reading novals from Tomie Depola.

Stephen Ambrose educated me about something I hadn't known. Former 1972 democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern, was the pilot of B-24 Liberator bombers in the second world war. The book is largely about McGovern and his experiences learning to fly, joining the Army Airforce, and his subsequent bombing missions over the Third Reich from 1944-45. Most people who remember McGovern think of him as a pacifist who opposed the Vietnam War. This is the other side of McGovern that probably few people suspect exists. Ambrose's book reminds me a bit of some of Studs Terkel's books. He largely obtains a narrative from McGovern and a few other people interviewed for the book and tells the story through their eyes. If narrative history is not for you, I would recommend you skip this book. This is not a book that deals with the "why's" or other complicated questions of history. Its history seen through the eyes of a flyer in his early twenties who was called upon by his nation to drop bombs on enemy targets in hopes of halting the German war machine. Its not particularly essential reading (many families have their own war stories) but it is interesting. Few people in generations since really understand the responsibility that World War II dumped on so many young Americans in their late teens and early twenties. For example, I found the stories about the difficulties involved in flying a B-24 to be amazing. Only in the last few pages of the book, does Ambrose deal generally with the affects of the bombing campaign on Germany. His conclusion was that to the extent the campaign concentrated on the petroleum industry and railroads that it was a success that helped tremendously in shortening the war. Other aspects of the campaign such as attacking ball bearing plants and German industry generally were surprisingly unsuccessful and the Germans found ways to keep up production. This is a good book for those preferring a personalized narrative account of experiences in the war. Mark

Stepheen Ambrose's best works still remain those he did on World War II, and more specifically, the Army. In this effort, Ambrose focuses his attention on future politician George McGovern's involvement in World War II as a B-24 pilot, along with his crew and unit.

The book details the crew's coming together, training, off-duty life once they reach the Italian base they'll fly from, and the missions they flew. Obviously, the overall story will appear somewhat similar to other books that discuss the air war against Germany, like Astor's The Mighty Eighth, or other such efforts.

On the plus side, McGovern is a true gentleman warrior throughout, and his exploits deserve telling, as do nearly all of the stories about the grand crusade of World War II. The action is well written, and the book itself is enjoyable. The true downside is that after going through many of Ambrose's works, I guess I expected a bit more.

I have read other books by Stephen Ambrose, including "Citizen Soldiers" and "D-Day", and this book ranks as one of his best. In World War II, the B-17 was known as a "glamor plane". It received all of the attention and it was the plane that everyone wanted to fly. But thanks to Ambrose's excellent narrative, I realized that the B-24 was just as important in the bombing campaign against Germany. The B-24 was faster, carried a bigger bombload, and had similiar armament to the B-17.

I particularly enjoyed the stories of the crews who flew these big bombers. The book focuses on George McGovern's crew, and follows these boys from flight school all the way to the surrender of Germany. They were a very close crew, and the enlisted men especially looked up to McGovern. Ambrose writes about a particular instance in the book where a bomb got stuck in the rack and would not fall. Finally, the crew is able to jar the bomb loose, but to the crew's horror, it falls directly on a farmhouse at noontime. McGovern is haunted by this unfortunate accident throughout the war, but McGovern was actually able to meet the people that lived in the house after the war and found out that everyone was fine.

Filled with action and excellent narration, The Wild Blue is definitely worth reading.

In mystery writing--as in all fiction writing--when you pull apart the hardcover buns, there should be a sizeable slab of conflict inside. Sure, depending on how the author or readers like it, condiments such as plot, characterization, and blah, blah, blah, can be added to enhance taste. But conflict is the "beef" of all fiction. Harold Adams' book has small meat.

The writing is tight, the history and scenic descriptions accurate and well-done, but everyone gets along. A stranger dies in the beginning, but no one is ever threatened again. The protagonist gets along with his wife, the local cops, the local residents, even the suspects. What's the point? There's no urgency. I only turned the pages out of curiosity to find out when something good might start happening. It didn't.

Okay. I'm exaggerating. The book is not that bad. Give it three stars. Lovers of pure whodunits may give it four. But for me this was no Whopper. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

As a fan of the Carl Wilcox series and having read all the previous novels, the author has done his readership damage by marrying Carl off! Part of the glamor of this series has been the sort of sexiness of a well-meaning, intelligent bachelor who solves murders in very interesting and creative ways in an era before today's technology. Carl has shown his interest in women through out the series and that idea of romance draws the reader in. As a female, his allure as a bachelor detective took me in -- always wondering about whether there would be a conquest or not. For me, the best Harold Adams can do is write out Hazel, Carl's wife, in some calamity that Carl can deal with and solve!

Harold Adams has written a tremendous series of books about Depression era bum/detective Carl Wilcox. This is not his best, but if you love the series and like Wilcox, the book is fun to read.

First time readers should start further back in the series. In this one there is no real "bad guy" to hate; Wilcox is married(!) and on his honeymoon.... this leaves setting and writing style as the major draws. They work for me, because I like the series, but would probably not sell a first time reader.