Bordewich's study of contemporary Indian politics stands out from the usual polemics, presenting humanity instead of stereotypes. More importantly, it focuses on the present and future of native Americans, not just the past, and does justice to the complexity and diversity of American Indian tribes. Borderwich's book was obviously a labor of love. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the most important issues and questions facing Indians and non-Indian Americans alike.

As a Caucasian who lived on two South Dakota Indian Reservations (Rosebud and Cheyenne) as a child, and whose father was an Indian Agent, I approached this book with some trepidation. However, Fergus Bordewich has crafted one of the most studious, readable and important books ever written on this subject. His research is exhaustive, yet related in a way which is entertaining and informative at the same time. There is grist for thought for anyone who has ever had an opinion on how the "Indian Problem" ought to be solved. This will be painful at times to proponents on all sides, as Bordewich's carefully balanced research points outs mistakes and avarice, both willful and accidental, by many. His conclusions will not be universally accepted, as many of his proposals are sure to be viewed with suspicion by one side or the other. Particularly noteworthy are his thoughts on "sovereignty." He points out that the Native American's general view of sovereignty does not match the definition, and fails to recognize that true sovereignty means total independence from the existing US government. This book is recommended for any student who is doing serious research about any aspect of the Native American in contemporary America. This book also is just plain good reading for anyone with an interest in how Native Americans have reached their current position in the American society.

"Killing the White Man's Indian" is perhaps the best book I've read on Native Americans. It treats the subject even-handedly while exploring critical issues of "Indian Country." The book is beautifully written, well researched, fairly presented, and highly informative. It is an excellent read for any student of Native Americans.

This book is part of a fabulous series that puts ancient history in an entirely different perspective -- it is written like a modern newspaper, only presented as though it is written during the time of ancient Greece (or Rome, Egypt, etc.)

Though the humor is lively and intelligent (great inside jokes for serious history students), the humor is never at the expense of historical accuracy -- these books are actually good background material for the study of ancient cultures. If you are fond of Ancient Greece, you MUST read this book.

I bought mine and a school book fair,(The price here is much better) It tells of all sorts of things that happened in Greece years back, I also recomend the rest in the series, including The Roman Record, and The Egyptian Echo.

This is going to be a "must have" book for any kid, teacher, or parent who is interested in Ancient Greece. Whether you have a little background or have studied the subject extensively, you will find something to interest you--or at least to tickle your funny bone. (The inside jokes are hysterical.) Though too short to be a definitive source book, this will be a great supplement for anyone looking to study Greek history.

A very entertaining read. Wonderful writing style. Chapters tend to be short and begin with a short quiz. The author interjects humor into what is often a boring subject. The final portion of the chapters consist of templates for use in your own work.

Very useful from a practical point of view as well. The focus of this book is on the big picture ideas. The author lays out the important conceptual steps which are vital for success. The more technical details (such as using software) are well covered in other books and this one does not go into those in detail.

Some of the great take aways from this book include; estimating the probability of success of a project, practical strategies for saving projects gone awry, how to review proposed projects before the expensive work begins.

I am very glad I bought this book.

After working for various consulting companies I have discovered that the best have established processes that are based on project management and customer satisfaction, and the worst have no processes at all. This book provides a recipe from going from worst to best.

This is the second of Mr. O'Connell's books that I have read. The first was Running Successful Projects, in which he provides excellent advice on how to effectively and skillfully manage projects. In How to Run Successful High-Tech Project-Based Organizations he extends these practices to organizations, and does so by providing a step-by-step approach and a performance model that is the basis for company-wide processes.

He gives ten steps that every consulting or service company needs to incorporate, and does so in a clear and methodical manner. The steps themselves are easy, the barrier is leadership and management from the top. Unfortunately, Mr. O'Connell doesn't address how to get management on board, but that is outside of the scope of this book. My personal view is Mr. O'Connell advises and the wise will abide.

I thought that the two strongest chapters in this book were the organization-wide status report, which is sorely missing in too many companies, and the program for project-based organization. The organization-wide status report is the key to achieving teamwork because it communicates to the entire company and makes everyone a stakeholder in the company's success instead of relegating them to a cog in an impersonal machine. This, by the way, is one of the most basic tenets of good leadership, and the lack of leadership is why too many consulting companies are in chaos, have abysmal records for execution, and poor client satisfaction.

Part three of this book offers the real roadmap to success: treating your organization as a project. This is a unique approach and is really an excellent foundation for strategic and tactical planning. I saw how this aspect of Mr. O'Connell's approach provides the essence of a vision, mission statement and values.

This book, if read and taken to heart at the right level in a consulting company (or any other kind of company that delivers services), can make the difference between achieving world-class status and extinction. There would be less material for Dilbert cartoons if everyone read this book and applied the information.

Really it is a great book to read. All High-tech Project managers should read it. Easy to read, well organized, direct to the point approach, makes it an useful book.

The more I learn, the more my skin crawls when I hear references to the "vanishing Indian." If anything, it is even more evidence that our mainstream media is telling us what they want us to believe. Oh, it was a valiant effort made in the creation of "the land of the free and the home of the Brave," but it was not successful. Attempted genocides are rarely, if ever, completely successful. For that, we can be grateful...but just barely.

From the book:
"We, the Indigenous Peoples of this red quarter of Mother Earth, [have survived] 500 years of genocide, ethnocide, ecocide, racism, oppression, colonization and christianization. These excesses of western civilization resulted from contempt for Mother Earth and all our relations; contempt for women, elders, children and Native Peoples; and contempt for a future beyond the present human generation." (Taos, New Mexico, 1992)

Native Americans kept this country and the living forms within it pristine for thousands of years before it was "discovered" and "civilized." In 200 years it has been desecrated, vandalized, poisoned almost beyond repair, in the guise of "Manifest Destiny."

It's incredible to even consider "Patriotism" without considering the roots of its "success." One Nation, "Under God":

"In New England, zealots such as Cotton Mather encouraged the Puritans to regard the Indian as a principal actor in the cosmic drama that governed even the smallest details of life, a 'spetial instrument of God' to punish errant souls in the eternal struggle between good and evil. In such a climate, killing Indians became not merely warfare but the cleansing of sin itself.' ... The degree of violence that was woven into the texture of early frontier life fairly boggles the mind of our, in some ways, far more delicate age. In the 1650s, Dutch colonists brought back eighty decapitated Indian heads from a massacre and used them as kickballs in the streets of New Amsterdam."

"It was widely assumed by Americans that Indians were destined to vanish before the onrush of civilization, a view of things that conveniently allowed cynicism to blend with sentimentality...It was as if the Indians' disappearance were the result of some force completely beyond the human power to stay, like a tidal wave or a change of seasons."

The stories are horrendous, and should be required reading for anyone who claims to be a Patriot. This is not to say that Patriotism, in itself, is wrong. Not at all. Just that it should be an informed Patriotism, one that accepts responsibility for its history with an investment in a better and healthier future.

"Between 1850 and 1859, the federal government reimbursed the State of California $924,259 for what was basically freelance murder. ...In April of 1852, miners at Orleans Bar, 'after meeting to discuss the Indian problem, voted to kill on site all Indians having guns,' a local newspaper reported without comment. The next month, near Weaverville, 153 Wintuns were slaughtered in reprisal for killing five cows that belonged to a white man. In 1853, at Yontoket, several hundred Tolowas were murdered in the midst of their harvest dance. A survivor described it, 'The whitemen built a huge fire and threw in our sacred ceremonial dresses, the regalia, and our feathers, and the flames grew higher. Then they threw in the babies, many of them were still alive.' ...Until the 1880s, California courts barred any kind of testimony from 'Indians, or persons having one-fourth or more Indian blood in an action in which a white person was a party.'"

"Professional slave hunters raided Indian villages with impunity, seizing women and children for sale to miners and to brothels in the gold rush towns. In the mid-1850s, a pubescent girl sold for about $300 and smaller children for as little as $50."

Yes, the roots of child sexual slavery go deep into our history.

But the book is more than horror stories and balanced history. There is a future here, and a challenge to the belief that the "savage Indian" has been wiped from the face of the earth. Historical guilt has its limitations, and that is not the purpose of the book. The history of Indian law under federal policy and Indian education opened my eyes to an expansion of Indian culture that I found heartening and exciting. "More consistently than any other in the nation's history, Indian policy has embodied the nation's unending struggle to apply moral standards to the conduct of public policy."

America is not the only nation to attempt to wipe out indigenous tribes, and that is another course of study. The difference, in America, as the book points out, is that America continues to struggle with that history -- and that is something to get Patriotic about. It is a record that, though flawed, is unequaled by any other nation in its dealings with aboriginal peoples.

The book raised a question about tribal sovereignty that was new to me, and that I continue to struggle with long after having read the book. Does it move them forward, or hold them back? Would mainstreaming the American Indian be empowering? Or would it take from them what remaining culture they have left? That is the ultimate question of "celebrating diversity" vs. the "melting pot" theory of America. It is not limited to Indians. And it is a concept we must struggle with, perhaps to the point of redefining what it means to be "mainstream" in America.

Another concept that made me think was the lack of "civil rights" legislation under reservation law: free press, free speech, and separation of powers. If Federal Law is "hands off" reservation land, where to Indians find justice if their governments are corrupt? For that matter, where do we? Perhaps the question is not, who should have the power, but how do we as a nation challenge corruption?

"What are the limits of federal powers? How can tribalism be squared with the legal and moral dictates of equal protection under the law? What is the role of the states in Indian Country and of the tribes in constitutional democracy? What is the civil juristiction of tribal courts? How can the United States support tribal regimes that reject fundamental aspects of American democracy? What is the basis for asserting that reservation Indians shall have representation in state government but without taxation? On the other hand, what is the basis for asserting that non-Indian residents of Indian Country shall not be represented in tribal government yet be subject to tribal law, courts, and taxation? How can we, as Americans, tolerate double standards?"

Good questions, all of them. And Bordwich doesn't answer them. But he certainly gives us plenty with which to mull them over and discuss them. The important thing is that we not ignore them. The Indians aren't. And we are all in this together.

There aren't many books about Native Americans that tell the truth the way it should be told, truth without bias or idealism. The author has done a commendable job in supporting his information with excellent references. While reading this book, I found myself shaking my head in agreement because it addresses facts and issues that need to be addressed more often in the manner in which they are presented. This book will turn the reader from a romantic to a realist.

This exquisitely crafted memoir so powerfully conveys the author's terrible loss that at times it's almost excruciating, but like the loss itself, the project is redeemed by Bordewich's remarkable writing, suspenseful narrative and indefatigable reportage. It's not just an investigation of his amazing mother and the gaping hole she left in his life, it's also a profound meditation on memory and loss, not to mention a vivid portrait of its times. The book deserves a much wider audience.

Fergus Bordewich gives us a beautifully written book that intertwines his mother's story with his own story of obsession, alocoholism and recovery as he comes to terms with her death. LaVerne Madigan was a classical scholar at New York University in the darkest years of the Depression, a member of the Communist Party and writer of sonnets. After her marriage, she was anything but the typical suburban mom, sharing with her young son her love for Latin phrases and compassion for minorities. She took him with her on trips to Indian Reservations as she crisscrossed the country for her job as executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs. To him, she was a fearless woman who could accomplish anything. Her death in a horseback riding accident when Bordewich was 14 left him devastated. Bordewich takes the reader on a journey first of despair, depression and near suicide and then of recovery. An accomplished writer, he decides to research his mother's life and that of her parents and grandparents, separating truth from family legends. He walks in his mother's footsteps, fingers her papers and sniffs the stains her coffee cups left behind. In the process, he finds healing. He gives us an emotional and engrossing story readers won't want to put down.

This is a very enjoyable and informative guide to the 61 natural areas in Pennsylvania, which are usually far from the beaten path of the cities, major highways, and even well-known hiking trails. Fergus spent a whole year personally exploring every one of these areas, and proves it with his first-hand descriptions. Therefore this book is based on real experience, and was not written by someone who has never been to the places they're writing about (such as the error-prone Longstreet Highroad Guide to the Pennsylvania Mountains, which I can't totally recommend). As an extensive hiker in PA myself, I've been to some of these natural areas and can attest to Fergus' accuracy. He focuses on the flora, fauna, and topography of these natural areas, and tips on how to get to the more remote ones that may not even be accessible by trail, all in lively prose that walks the fine line between poetic and overly sentimental. Fergus tends to avoid the bad news on some of these areas, especially pollution, which would make the chapters on Little Tinicum Island (near Philly) and Sheets Island Archipelago (almost within sight of Three Mile Island) more informative; plus the complete absence of maps is a problem for the larger natural areas. But still, this book greatly succeeds in making the outdoorsy Pennsylvania fan yearn to visit these hidden secrets.

The landscape of Pennsylvania has endured such intensive logging, mining, and urbanization over the years that it's a wonder any wild places still exist within its borders. But they do, and Charles Fergus has hiked in all 61 of them. The natural areas he's talking about here are located in state forests and have few recreational amenities, so they're open only to foot traffic. Habitats range from the tidal waters around Little Tinicum Island in the Delaware River to the forested crest and tower at the top of Mount Davis in Somerset County, the highest point in the Commonwealth. Many of these areas gained governmental protection within our lifetime, and I'm sure other natives will learn about sites they never heard of before. Basic road atlases don't usually acknowledge these places. Fergus provides detailed directions for access, writes about the uniqueness of each site, and recommends the best seasons for visits. His commentary is accompanied by black and white photos and may include smatterings of geology, history, anthropology, botany, and zoology. Wildlife ranges from bears and bobcats to salamanders and the tiny critters they feast on. There are bird migration routes, sites for butterfly aficionados, many tall trees and rare plants. A path falls onto land where chips of indigenous tools can still be found, and another turns onto a trail made more recently by an illegal all-terrain vehicle. A map, list of resources, and list of forestry addresses contribute to the usefulness of this guide. Scanning just a few pages will have you reaching for your boots and daypack in no time.

In A Rough Shooting Dog, Charles Fergus made me think: about nature, about hunting, about dogs, about birth and death and the cycles of life. Most importantly, he reminded me of the simple joy I had as a child when I experienced the sights, sounds and smells of nature. Thanks, Charles, I'm about to hit 40......and I had almost forgotten.

Those of us who hunt over dogs love our dogs. Few of us can articulate that love as well as Mr. Fergus has done in this book. Gracefully written, sensitive, honest, and plainly passionate, this is a book you'll want to read slowly. To read it quickly would only mean coming to its end too soon. A keeper.

"Barrow's Boys" is a fun and fascinating read. It has everything: edge-of-your-seat adventure, history, and, most important, a host of fascinating characters. Don't miss it!

That line from a Kipling poem kept coming to mind as I read this book. The 30 major explorations that are chronicled here beginning in 1816 and ending with Leopold McClintock's expedetion of 1857, all however pre-date Kipling. Nevertheless the sentiment remains and it is very clear that BARROW'S BOYS - mostly Royal Navy officers who were "mothballed on half-pay" and "yearned for something" [to do] - were both some of the best in 19th century England and were indeed the right people to send forth. As the book's subtitle says they were sufficiently daring and had ample fortitude and there was the odd element of outright lunacy. The latter is best illustrated by Gordon Laing (the madman of Timbuctoo) and the hero John Franklin - better known as the man who ate his boots! Both men are subjects of appropriately titled chapters in this book.

The man behind these adventures, "the father of exloration" as Fleming calls him, was John Barrow, 2nd Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804 to 1845. He was the guiding force for the expeditions; organizing, equiping, and generally administering their every detail. Where the voyages went, who led them, what crew and supplies were needed, these were all Barrow's decisions. Fleming is quite plain in stating that although "Barrow inevitably plays second fiddle to his explorers" both in history and in his book, he nevertheless "remains the driving force behind his minions' more thrilling exploits."

Barrow's character is summed up as one of "ambition, intellect and remorseless application." Fleming highlights the many explorations Barrow sent out as part of his personal quests which he vicariously satisfied through his men. In pursuit of the source of the Niger River in West Africa and the Northwest Passage through the Arctic, Barrow spent money and material and sent men with not-quite reckless abandon but with a definite unwillingness to accept defeat. The remorselessness is shown in that failure and loss were simply reasons to sweep aside the unsuccessful leaders (if they returned alive) and equip another expedition to try again.

As the book goes on we see the seemier side of Barrow's ambition. The man was "determined to make his name somehow." After the multiple unsuccessful attempts for the Northwest Passage between 1818 and 1827, by John Ross, William Edward Parry, and John Franklin (who died trying), Fleming is at his most critical when he says the following about Barrow: "Perhaps no man in the history of exploration has expended so much money and so many lives in pursuit of so desperately pointless a dream."

Britain's long tradition of celebrating it's failures and making heroes out of victims dates from before these events right up to Dunkirk in WWII. This is strengthened by the idea of noble sacrifice for God, King, and country. The first man to go down with his ship was undoubtedly an Englishman. This goes a long way to explain why, even after so many failures and stories of pitiless deaths in the deserts of West Africa and the icy North of the Arctic, Barrow was allowed to continue sending men forth. Even more significantly there were always volunteers ready to test their mettle as the best of England's breed.

I happened to pick this book up perusing in the history section of the local bookstore. I have always been interested in the stories of famous explorers and figured I would give this one a shot.

I was already fairly familiar with most of the explorers of the Northwest passage. (Having myself been to the territories and seeing some of the places they explored) However I can safely say that I still learned some new things about these famed individuals.

Not only that but this book was a fun read and I mean fun. There is nothing like reading a history book and having it feel more like an adventure then a history lesson.

No complaints from me, what are you waiting for pick up a copy of this baby!!

I bought this book to read about Barrow's role in John Franklin's career and several Arctic expeditions, but was pleasantly surprised to find information on aspects of Barrow's enthusiasm for exploration that I don't believe I'd ever really heard about before.

The same (really remarkably influential) gentleman who sent the Royal Navy into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage also sponsored several expeditions into Africa to discover, among other things, the course of the Niger river.

This book forms a very nice summary of the history of the Royal Navy's attempts to discover that all-important Northwest Passage, giving form and coherence to series of expeditions that otherwise rather boggle my brain. The most pleasant surprise for me, however, was reading about the African expeditions; new information for me, and engagingly presented as well.

You will find it well written and striking a nice balance between presenting sufficient information to communicate the gravity of the issues faced by "Barrow's boys," and overwhelming the casual reader with too much information.

The history of the interactions between Barrow and those Rosses is particularly engaging, and tempts me to revisit M.J. Ross' very thorough joint biography of Captain John Ross and Sir James Clark Ross (Polar Pioneers : John Ross and James Clark Ross).

An interesting book, beautifully written, and full of unexpected wry humor, light but not light-weight; I enthusiastically recommend this book to persons interested in British polar exploration, the Franklin expeditions, and the decades-long animosity between Barrow and Captain John Ross.

This was a well written book on the many Polar and African interior explorations that were sponsored by the British in the first half of the 19th centry. From trying to find the North-West Passage above North America to searching for the legendary "city of gold" called Timbucto in Africa this book kept me interested throughout. Never before or for that matter since has such a group of explorers been assembled. The man responsible for these quests was John Barrow, a man who had a dream of mapping uncharted areas of the world. He set into motion the largest and most expensive series of explorations in the history of mankind. This is a story of courage and determination like no other that I have read before. This book recounts the stories of men who spent years stuck in the freezing cold in their dreams of being the first to find a passage across North America. The book also details the adventures that other men had in their quest to map the interior of Africa. Other stories of different areas in the world that were explored are also included. John Barrow might not have been as successful as he would have liked but his dream inspired later explorers and set a benchmark that carried on into the 20th century.

For 41 years John Barrow manipulated the Royal Navy and the British Government to pursue his own fixed ideas on geography.
His mistaken belief that there was an open, ice-free sea at the North Pole, a permanently clear North-West Passage and that the Niger emptied into either the Nile or the Congo, caused the deaths of unknown numbers of men, the loss of ships, the expenditure of a king's ransom and the physical and mental breakdown of many of Britain's elite officers.

This is the story of that prolonged tragedy; the irony of it is that it fathered the most amazing feats of endurance and privation, that they are regarded today as the pinnacle of human endeavour - only the similarly ill-equipped expeditions of Scott come close.

Barrow's 'Boys' are his hand-picked officers (strangely, they were usually totally ill-suited to the tasks he set them) who are either ambitious, incompetent, zealots or plain insane (or any combination!) and Barrow goes out of his way to ignore all the best advice from those with the real experience, to either under- or over-equip the expeditions, seemingly never hitting the right balance.
The internecine rivalry of the officers, the badly-picked crews, the obstructions of companies and kings, all combine to produce farce after explorational farce. On top of this, each failed expedition only fires his zeal, perversely convincing him that he is right, so off goes another doomed expedition.

If anything tells us that inhabitants of ivory towers have no idea of the real world, it is this book ... Get it and enjoy!

If you've ever thought about a fisherman's life on the banks of a trout stream or knee-deep in the Bahamian surf, or just contemplated why the seasons change colors, you might want to hitch a ride with Jim Fergus.

The self-described "hook-and-bullet hack" -- in fact, one of the most thoughtful hunting and fishing writers in America, a field editor for Sports Afield magazine -- travels "The Sporting Road" like Kerouac with a fly rod and a 12-gauge, where every stream is a stream of consciousness. As you cruise the blue highways from Washington to Florida, Fergus muses about hunters' patient wives, sharptail grouse, bamboo fly-rods, the coming of snow, bonefishing, Native American culture, lives worth living, the perils facing small towns, good dogs and good friends. There's a certain poetry that emanates from somewhere deep down, an echo of a primitive time, brought up-to-date by Airstream trailers, Coleman grills and, for better or worse, Eddie Bauer.

This is a good book for non-hunters and non-anglers, the most militant of whom assume avid sportsmen have little conscience or intellect. Fergus proves otherwise. He is an eloquent spokesman for the sporting life, not defensive and clearly thoughtful. If you've ever wanted to understand the allure of frigid mornings in high-plains cornfields, or soggy nights on the banks of an unknown river, or why a hunter would drive for two days for a fleeting glimpse of a bird too small for dinner on its own, read "The Sporting Road."

Unfortunatly, for me, I was well past middle age (55) before I ever ventured into the woods with a shotgun looking for some game.

I was very excited about my first hunt and after three days of not seeing any game, I realized that during that time, I had changed ... from a novice hunter to a man in love with the outdoors.

I may not have seen any game but I saw the trees (seemed like the first time) ... and the grass, the river, the lake, the fields, the sun and shadows, the clouds drifting overhead.

I listened to the wind, the sounds the trees make when they rub together, the rustling of the grass.

In spite of the fact that I carried a weapon and moved thru the woods in a preditory mode (or maybe because of it) I experienced a sense of peace and wonder that I hadn't known since I was a child ... and I loved every moment of it.

I felt safe, at one with my surroundings ... I felt like I belonged there.

Reading this book brought me back to that place ... and it made me long to get back in the woods as soon as I can.

This book spoke to my heart.

Thank you Mr. Fergus.

Jim Fergus is one of the few outdoor writers who has succeeded in "crossing the line" that very few of this literary ilk have ever accomplished -- Hemingway, as example, for one. He is no "hook and bullet writer." He is an American writer and, with his best-selling ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN, an American novelist. Jim's talent lies in his ability to place himself, the storyteller, at a distance in order to come up close and personal with the people, places and inspirations that surround him. In this book, as in HUNTER'S ROAD, what he encounters while on the road, hunting birds, with his companion Lab, Sweetzer is his own, personal, high adventure. In recounting these things, Jim does so with the perception of a child -- full of excitement and wonderment -- yet crafted with care by the masterful wordsmith that he has proven to be. It is a potent combination -- and what makes all of Jim's works so unique and compelling. A MUST READ.