A friend loaned me The Checkered Years, and after reading it, I purchased two copies, one to give away and another to lend and ultimately to keep in my library. From the day-to-day writings of Mary Dodge Woodward, the reader begins to understand the central role of weather in the life of the early Dakota settlers - the awesome cold, wind, and heat; the blizzards, drought, and flood - all matter-of-factly but beautifully described in an unpretentious diary. The diary entries give a hint of the tremendous effort it took on Mary's part and that of her family to build up a large wheat farm, and along with that, the uncertainties she faced as a widow growing old. I wish the book had more background information in its introduction and more diary entries that, even though they probably would have seemed repetitive, may have given more focus to the people mentioned in the selections.

Maggie was dumped by her fiancee two weeks before there wedding, so she has trust issues when it comes ot men. Mitch was dumped by his fiancee after she saw him comforting his assistant, which was purely inncocent, so Mitch has a thing about trust.

Maggie leaves her big city life to get away and find some peace, but when money runs low she decides to get a job. Mitch needs someone to fill in for his assistant while she is on maternity leave. Maggie gets the job.

The heat between Maggie and Mitch is undeniable, but can they each come to terms with there pasts so that they can have a future?

They story is okay. I did not find it real exciting. I wish that the ending had been a bit better. If your looking for a quick read, nothing real gripping or exciting than this book will do.

Mooney's study is often fascinating, although one has to wonder how objective and disinterested someone can be who refers to his subject as "this pathetic cult."

I regard Janet Dailey's Americana series as modern-historical comic books. No insult intended. There are many of them (one for each state) in this series of somewhat short novels which reflect the good old non pc days --- interesting for a change, sometimes.

Kit Bonner runs the Flying Eagle Ranch for her grandfather who is getting on in years and has never really recovered from the death of his wife. Generations of Bonners have run the ranch for the absent owner, an English Baron. Now the current Baron, Reese Talbot, has come to look over the ranch and clashes with Kit right from the start. Kit, who dresses, talks, and acts like a man is extremely hostile toward the charming Reese, though he can't quite figure out why.

Kit is hiding a secret which is the cause of her attitude towards life and Reese and, although they are attracted to each other, Kit finally succeeds in driving Reese away. Having got her wish, Kit comes to regret her decisons and starts to grow up a little and overcome the bitterness of her past. When Reese finally shows up a while later (as you knew he would) there is a entirely new Kit waiting for him.

A charming story that somehow worked despite the almost feudal theme that would have been more natural in a historic rather than modern setting. Taking place in an isolated small town somehow made it more believable. At times I wanted to shake Kit for her childishness but seeing Kit learn to love and find happiness with good-guy Reese was just an awshucks feel-good ending.

I can only comment on the Kansas section of this book, but that leaves a little to be desired. It seems that Knapp found the most popular trails but didn't dig too deep. Another problem is his tendency to list utterly boring rides on semi-maintained doubletrack. If someone buys a mountain biking guide book, it means they are looking for the real thing, not some flat access roads. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of alternatives to this book for cyclists in the midwest so I still have to recommend it as part of your collection, if for nothing else but the states you do not live in.

This book has beautiful pictures of around the state of North Dakota with awesome country scenes. It did show one city picture of Minot which was nice however I think to have made the book complete He should of had a city picture of Grand Forks, Fargo or even Bismark the capital. I feel most of the pictures were of the western side of the state however the book was good and the pictures were impressive.
Worth buying.

"~The Dakota King series is a series aimed for young adolescents, with a feeling of high adventure. Dakota King could really be most accurately compared with the main character to the television show "The Pretender", whereas the books give the notion the Dakota King can do pretty much anything and everything. He's like Sherlock Holmes in terms of detective skills and Indiana Jones in terms of adventuring."~ definate "participatory" theme to them as the book gives you full page clues and revealing the culprit at the end of a book via a full page picture of the bad guy and a description of how DK solved the mystery, almost making the books feel like a game. But what do you expect from educational books aimed at adolescents? character than can do anything" you find so often in comic books that I discovered. And there's that fact that Dakota King and his partner, Longh Gonh, just have damn cool names. If you know an adventure/mystery fan around 9 to 13 years of age...they might like it.

trying to bridge the gap betwwen art and anthropolgy she has done a fine job of presenting her work and making it easy to understand for a moron like myself.

This book has been mostly written by relatives of Bowman County's military men and women who served our country during WWII. Some of the individual entries are very long while others are only a paragraph. Along with the individual's information, there is a photo. The book does not have an index of names, but the stories are in alphabetical order by surname. It has only 84 pages and is in hardback. You would want one for your Family Tree.

Since I stubbornly refuse to stop reading a book no matter how bad it is, I suffered through the whole thing. Between the ridiculous premise that's completely unbelievable, the lousy writing style, and the lack of anything remotely resembling a plot, the book easily rates instant-dumpster status

Egads, these reviews are appallingly negative. "Steal this book and then burn it"? This must be one crap-fest, this wacky Indian book here. It must suck something fierce, no? I admit, the summary is probably turning you off. I felt the same way; I found it in a used bookstore and giggled. Indians in space on birchback canoes?

However, that summary and most of the reviews here can't tell you how good this book is. They don't mention the sheer inventiveness of the novel; Daniel has half a dozen good ideas weaved in and out, along with themes of imperialism and cultural sensitivity, and a sly satire of secular humanism to boot. On the surface, it seems like a future-western, with white folk facing off with Native Americans, but to be so simplistic does the novel a disservice.

Now, it is true that sometimes it seems like Daniel is stringing his book along more on pathos and cool sf ideas than by actual plot, but my enjoyment never suffered for it. I loved the exhilaration of creativity; why should mere logic come into the picture? Daniel is brilliant, and should he ever control and direct that brilliance, you can be assured that nothing less than a masterpiece will result.

I will admit that Warpath forces a tighter suspension of disbelief than many S.F. novels.

The writing, however, is superior!

I would much rather have a off-beat, or even odd, alternate universe written tightly and with a very enjoyable style than most of the poorly-written, but straight-line extrapolation, SF novels one runs across.

Daniels writes fluidly, engagingly, and I felt very connected to the characters, the plot, and the alternate universe he created. I'll admit that some fo the universe conceptualizations were hard to accept, but have you every tried analyzing the universe A.E. Van Vogt created in "Slan"? It's got more inconsistencies than one could shake a cliche at, but in the end it doesn't matter because you enjoy how it's written, and you have a good time reading it. Warpath and Daniels writing affected me that way. I want to read more, and have two Danniels books on pre-publish order here at Amazon based on his entertaining and professional writing style.