Actually, I wrote the book! The last I heard Windsor Press has gone out of business and there were 10 copies left at that time. I believe copies are still available at the Middle Georgia Historical Society on High Street in Macon, GA, and maybe at The Golden Bough, a specialty bookstore in Macon, GA. K. Simm

Mountain Born, Mountain Molded by Larry G. Morgan is a wryly written personal memoir of growing up in the Nantahala region of western North Carolina from 1945-1955 as the fifth in a family of ten children. Childhood memories, simple games kids played long before popular culture became overloaded with atrociously [spendy] collectible toys, and the refreshing wonder of the great outdoors are all recalled in this memorable, nostalgic, and highly recommended narrative.

Spent several weeks in Cajun Country last winter with this book as our guide. Found a LOT of wonderful, out of the way places and experiences that we never would have known about otherwise. My New Orleans "born and raised" friends didn't even know about many of them. This is a wonderful area to visit -- we camped, but ate most of our meals out to really get the "local flavor" (I'm getting hungry just remembering). This book does a good job of describing all the local foods, too.

Good directions to all the "little places" and good descriptions of what you'll find there. If you go to any of the dances (and you should!), be sure to call ahead and find out what the current start time is. In the Christmas season, try to catch one of the many "boat parades" on the bayous -- they're not listed in the book, but just ask around and people will tell you when and where.

This well-written book was invaluable for our family's week in Bayou country. It has a dry humor ("on the Bayou, land is a recent occurrence..."). It covers geography, history, culture, and then gets into where to stay, where to eat, where to dance, what to see, and what to do. It's pretty up front (about one town -- "don't get hungry here...").

Everything we tried that was recommended in the book was great fun. One of the eateries was not so much wonderful as wonderfully different, but we were glad we went just as well.

Some of the details are a little out of date, but I think that's due to their specificity. If you say that a tiny bakery makes sweet potato pies between 11-3 on Thursdays, but the one owner-baker decides to change to Wednesdays, there's not much to be done about that. Even so, that only happened once in the entire week.

We had this book and the Delorme LA map, and that was a perfect set of resources for us. We had a great time, and I'm confident it was due to this book in particular.

Highly recommended.

We used several guidebooks to plan a long weekend in southern Louisiana in connection with a family wedding in Lafayette. This was the most useful of the books.

The author gives a star to especially noteworthy attractions, hotels, and restaurants. We went by these stars to plan our trip and had a great time. Even our new Cajun cousins-in-law were impressed with the selections we made.

A close second as a guidebook was "Louisiana Dayride - 52 Short Trips from New Orleans" by Shelley Holl.

Two final notes: Neither guidebook covers the city of New Orleans itself; and every guidebook we read had the wrong area codes for many telephone numbers (Louisiana has 2 brand-new area codes -- 225 and 337)

Poisoners are always premeditated killers.

The act of poisoning another person, particularly over a long period of time, bespeaks of what the law describes as a "malignant heart." The idea of watching one's handwork slowly overtake and painfully kill a victim is almost too cruel for imagination. But when the victims include her own young daughter, then the murderess may be assured of permanent infamy.

In 1958 Anjette Lyles went on trial for killing her nine-year-old daughter, as well as a couple of husbands and a mother-in-law using Terro ant killer, which as we learn is 94% arsenic. This happened in Macon Georgia, not far from the rural middle Georgia town I spent my summers as a child. Anjette ran a restaurant, a courthouse kind of place, where she fed the very judges, prosecutors and even some of the jurors who would later condemn her to Georgia's electric chair. Being taking to the big city as a boy always meant that her restaurant would be pointed out and the tale of her perfidy retold.

My complaint about this book is that it doesn't tell enough. Spared execution because she was supposedly too insane to be put to death, Anjette spent the remainder of her life at the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville.

The author failed to come to grips with the fact that in 1972 capital punishment was effectively (though temporarily) outlawed when the United States Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia. And while Ms White makes a good case of psychiatric malingering, the fact remains that Anjette Lyles remained in Milledgeville even after she no longer faced execution in the event she was determined to be restored to sanity. Further the degree of insanity necessary to avoid the death penalty being imposed is quite high. Essentially a condemned must not be able to understand that he or she faced execution , the reasons for it, and the consequences of it. Anjette seemed to be qualified in every way for the ultimate punishment, even if she was an obvious sociopath.

This will not be the definitive book about Anjette Lyles, though it is a good start. The definitive book has yet to be written, but when it is, Anjette Lyles will be assured of her proper place among the serial killers of the twentieth century.

I never knew much about the book til I seen it in the library where I used to live. The title alone was what brought me to pick it up. It was odd for a title. Yet, once I read the inside sleeve..I knew I had to read this book. Checking it out at the library, I immediately got into reading it and couldn't put it down. Neither will you. It's a book about Voodoo, Arsenic, and a woman named Anjette Lyles. Definitely worth checking out if you're into true crime books.......

I bought this book for my wife, who was dying to get a copy of it. After she finished it, I picked it up a couple of days ago and could not put it down. Jaclyn Weldon White does an outstanding job of detailing one of the most well-known Georgia murder cases of all-time - the Anjette Lyles case. Do yourself a favor and read this book - it would make one helluva movie.

General Shuffer gives an excellent report on the facts of his life and the major players in it. As a man of color, it was no small feat to move up the ranks in the military where, not only were the top brass graduates of elite military academies, but they were all white as well. General Shuffer writes well of the challenges he faced and how he dealt with them. And that is very inspirational. When one finishes the book, however, one knows the facts of the General's life, but not the man himself. What did he feel as he lived the events of his life? How did he come to his decisions and why? What was going on in his heart as he faced death so often on the battle field? The sequel needs to flesh out this wonderful story with the stories behind the facts.

For that reason I give this book four stars.

Having served in the generals command in Panama, I was spellbound by his "true story. The general reveals a personal and professional side that leaves one speechless. His struggles to the top and his final call to god make me respect the general even more.

I found this book to be truly inspirational.General Shuffer takes you on a fast- paced journey from his roots in Klan-ridden east Texas to service as a Catholic Deacon in west Texas. In between was 35 years of Army Infantry in which he went from Prvate to General,Fought in 3 wars on the front line and had 11 kids in his spare time.He shares too his conversion to the Catholic faith. Enjoyable reading- I highly recommend this book.

This book was excellent and informative. However, readers should know that it is written in a research style, almost like a text book (sometimes putting the reader to sleep-and the reason I am only rating it four stars), as opposed to being written by an investigative reporter (and reading like a thriller). The book is extremely well documented. The author was intimately involved with helping lawyer Gray (Rosa Parks' lawyer) prosecute the case against the federal government, by providing much of the documentation given in this book. He began work on the book while a student in Harvard's bioethics program in 1972, and only subsequently becoming involved with lawyer Gray.

The book is a complete history from the conception of the experiment, until its termination, including the viewpoints of ALL participants. In addition to learning about the experiment itself, I learned a lot about life in the rural American South, which I had not previously known, and a lot about the disease of syphilis that I hadn't known. Some examples: I didn't know that 30-40 percent of blacks in the rural South were infected, nor that the disease crosses the placental barrier, which caused a lot of syphilitic babies. The book includes pictures of syphilitic skin lesions, and discusses multiple complications of the late stages of the disease.

The book also delves into the moral and racial issues extensively. There is an updated chapter at the end comparing the syphilis crisis to the AIDS crisis, and discusses why so many blacks are distrustful of doctors and hospitals-this experiment simply being one of the most recent examples of how this segment of our society as lied to, and taken advantage of.

What was MOST shocking to me about this book was that I was born in 1955, and this experiment continued into the mid-1970's. The FIRST time it was questioned on moral grounds was about 1962, and throughout the 60's, most doctors did not even QUESTION the morality! The story was broken the same day as Sargent Shiver's having obtained psychiatric counseling-the latter story I heard about extensively, and the former not at all! Before buying this book, I had never even heard of this medical experiment, and I just can't believe things like this were taking place IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA until the mid-1970's!!!

Jones has written an outstanding book which will likely make all readers question the ethics of human experimentation and why doctors choose the patients they do. The book covers the history of the Tuskeegee experiment, a study of the effects of untreated syphilis, or "bad blood," on poor black men in the South, from the 1930's to the 1970's. All of the players in the story, from the doctors, to the nurses, to the patients themselves are discussed in outstanding detail.

The syphilis study was unquestioned when it began, as many doctors did not render treatment for syphilis, which could often be much worse than the cure. However, the experiment continued for almost forty years after the development of penicillin, which would have provided a ready cure for most of the subjects and not risk exposing their wives and children to infection. The experimenters took a great deal of trouble to ensure that their patients did not receive effective treatment for syphilis anywhere. The book's additional chilling reminder is that, on top of all the human suffering caused by this study, it had no scientific value whatsoever, as many of the subjects had been treated in some way, and there were other studies on the effects of syphilis.

The concluding chapter is newly written to detail the linkages between the Tuskeegee experiment and the current AIDS crisis. This chapter discusses the reasons why many American blacks think the virus is targeted towards their communities.

I loved the loving care with which this book was written. The horror of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was that there truly was no evil intent on the part of the doctors involved, and all believed that the "patients" truly benefitted, receiving health care they otherwise would not have received for other ailments that they could not have afforded treatment for otherwise. In fact, the Tuskegee "patients" received health care for aches and pains that neither their neighbors nor even their wives and children were able to access, because of their "privileged" status as part of the "government study." Placing the story squarely in the context of its time, Jones does not excuse those who bear the responsibility for the choices they made regarding the men involved in the study, but attempts to explain to the best of his ability why those in authority made the decisions they made, even to the point of placing a black nurse in the pivotal position of overseeing the consistency of the study and maintaining contact with the study "subjects" while the doctors themselves were rotated every year as part of their own "educational" history. Even Tuskegee itself was run by black doctors who chose to look the other way when they knew, had to know, the detrimental decisions that were being made. That is how power works. That is how it worked then, and that is how it works today. Is it because of Tuskegee that the Public Health System lacks credibility? Or is it because of the ongoing and persistent ignorance and incompetence of the Public Health System itself? The system is infested with politics, funding fiascos and unethical practices. It didn't start with Tuskegee, and it certainly didn't end there. This is a very important part of the story, and should be mandated reading for anyone who wants to understand the controverted manipulations of the Public Health System. It is only the beginning, however. Don't stop there.

Discipling the African American Male is a valuable book for strengthening the lives of all Christians. As a female reader of this book I found issues that related to Christians in general. But, the book magnificantly depicts the characteristics of black males and shows them ways to overcome their personal issues by diverting their attention to God. All women should read this book because it helps you to understand black males and gives sound advice on how to empower them.

Discipling The African American Male by getting and keeping them in the church does an excellent job of addressing critical issues of our times. The book is an excellent resource for religious leaders and anyone who wants to strengthen their ties with family, church and community.

I bought this book on a visit to the fort itself and read itduring return visits while on vacation in the area. Branch writes aneasily readable, interesting, and enjoyable book that stands well alone and compliments visits to the fort. Both the book and the fort are great references for enthusiasts of American Coastal defense.

F0rt macon is a peaceful place now but you can imagine all the horrorof the war espesially the broken jail houses broken bricks dried blood gory undergrown hides to go in while battle

The theme is similar to Les Miserables, only instead of France during the 1800s it takes place in Texas during the 1970s.
Jean Valjean is now Eddie Macon, a fugitive from Huntsville State Prison. Javert is Marzack, a "hounder", a prison detective who tracks down fugitives. Eddie's only chance is to reach the Mexican border after a grueling cross-country run where he can be reunited with his family.

His obstacles will be numerous, the danger great. There will be the rugged Texas countryside, where death could be a snakebite or shotgun blast away. There will be the manhunt, capture meaning an additional twenty five year sentence, forever dooming his hopes of a normal life. Finally, there will be the hateful Marzack. Having the dubious distinction of leaving Marzack scarred from an earlier escape attempt, he knows Marzack will never rest until Eddie is captured or killed.

This is a good book, very exciting, very intense. It was eventually made into a movie that starred John Schneider and Eddie Macon and Kirk Douglas as Marzack.

I recommend it.

Mr. Livingston's research is excellent, but the writing and somewhat sloppy copy editing detract from what could have been--should have been--a moving and important story about one of the great tragedies of the Civil War. I recommend for any serious Civil War enthusiast who can add his own experience to complete the greater canvas, but the casual reader might be confused as to the movement of the action and the place of the various characters.

David Foster History Editor Augusta Magazine

Augusta, GA