Great book about Thomas Chaplin and His history on St. helena Island. Really gets you to know what life was like in antebellum South.

A captivating account of antebellum life on a Sea Island cotton plantation. This is a genuine depiction of innocent people pressed into unremitting labor under the most onerous conditions right here in the United States of America! It's not "Gone With the Wind." If you believe the Civil War wasn't about slavery, read this! Tombee House still stands today. Just drive to the southern end of St. Helena Island and look seaward. Read the book, then go visit the house -- it's a haunting experience!

Tombee provides an amazingly immediate view of the life of a "typical" slaveholder and cotton plantation owner in the years leading up to the Civil War. The book is divided into two parts, Rosengarten's commentary on Chaplin's life, and Chaplin's diary. If you read only one part, read Rosengarten's. You can feel the heat and the haze of the steamy low country in summer as the slaves toil and Chaplin frets over his life and finances. And you watch the story unfold knowing the Civil War is about to stamp out slavery and a tragic way of life. This is great history!

This book has a lot of good information about the history of amusement parks. Unfortunately, I found absolutely no mention of cotton candy anywhere except in the book's title. No crime, I suppose, but it's a little disappointing--I needed to find some history and process of making cotton candy.

I highly recommend this book because it's filled with fun and intresting facts for growing minds. It covers everything from Coney Island to the present. In my opinion it's 64 pages of fun and learning. But don't take my word for it,read it yourself.

This novel, like "The Death Ship," does not have atraditional narrative structure. And like "The Death Ship" this story is narrated by Gales, a crazy American who goes through life doing one lousy job after the other. From cotton picker to cowboy, from baker to wanderer, Traven once again takes Gales through a trial-by-toil world.

Of course the book is entertaining and it's even insightful (especially if you've ever had a job in Mexico); but what worked so well for "The Death Ship" doesn't seem to be as effective here. It lacks the tough satire that his first novels has.

Also, if you've read "The Night Vistor and other stories" you'll feel a little ripped off, since about 40 pages overlap between these two volumes. But if you haven't, then you're in for a pretty good treat.

I mean, nobody sweats like Traven.

Well, what's there to say? It was written by the same talented writer who wrote Treasure of the Sierra Madre. You won't be disappointed. Traven delivers. Easy read. I read it in a day. The man is always for the underdog--who can't relate to that? The only thing that bothers me at times is Traven's political [views]. Man obviously had an ax to grind--well, ok, I suppose, everyone has an ax to grind about something. But when it comes to poltics and religion--well, two subjects that just sicken me--because you can never get anywhere with that stuff. You can talk about that b.s. until you're blue in the face and still end up nowhere.

Other than that--yes, I highly recommend the book.

When reviewing adaptation of Doctor Who stories into book forms, I indicate whether they are straightforward adaptations or not. Donald Cotton's adaptation of his own script is very much not a straightforward adaptation.

This book is narrated by the Greek poet Homer - who wrote 'The Iliad', about the siege of Troy. This book is also about the siege, and it certainly isn't 'The Iliad'! Homer didn't even appear in the original version of the story.

The Doctor, Vicki and Steven arrive towards the end of the siege, and the Doctor, who leaves the TARDIS alone, is mistaken for Zeus, king of the Greek gods and taken into the Greek camp. Steven and later Vicki also leave the TARDIS, and all three are caught up in a variety of difficult circumstances.

This story contains a very strong streak of humour. Some of the Doctor's suggestions for how to get past the walls of Troy are quite funny. Homer's narration, which is full of anachronistic references, is also amusing (in a way that the TV serial never could have been).

If you like your Doctor Who deadly serious, then this certainly isn't the story for you!

'The Myth Makers' no longer exists on video tape in the BBC's vault. It will therefore be welcome when the soundtrack is released on CD (scheduled for January 2001).

Sadly, most of the target Doctor Who novelizations are by the numbers affairs. Not very well written and very bare bones. But, in regards to the three seasons of Doctor Who episodes that were destroyed by the BBC, they are our best and only way to experience the missing adventures. Happily, The Mythmakers is an exception. A humorous tale of the Doctor and the Trojan War: Cotton has chosen to have the story be narrated by Homer and a funny fellow he is to. While being instructive historically, The Mythmakers is very clever and witty. Cotton is sending up the Iliad but, in a way that requires some knowledge on the reader's part of history rather than the Bill and Ted method that requires nothing at all. The characterizations are very good with Odysseus, Paris and, of course Homer getting some choice dialogue though no character is shorted. The regulars are handled well with Steven Taylor being particularly a revelation. What a good companion he was. Cotton also skewers poor Vicki mercilessly and, though she doesn't really deserve it, it is hysterical. In fact, even without the Doctor Who connection, The Mythmakers is one of the best and certainly the funniest books I've read this year. If only the other writers had been so ambitious in their novelizations.

Reviewed by Gregory F. Rose (University of Tulsa) in _Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature_ vol. 6 no. 2 (Fall 1997). This notice was submitted by Envoi.

The progenitor of the Salem Witch trials documentary materials collected. This is a fine work of historical scholarship. Check the academic libraries around you...this is the historical foundation of modern right-wing personality / morality cults.

To try and summarize this book in a few short lines would not do it justice. There are many aspects to this account of colonial regime in Mozambique whose sole reason for being was the extraction of raw resources from the land.

The reader is introduced to the physical landscape of Mozambique, which in itself was as responsible for the success or failure of the Cotton Regime in the differing regions as any human agency. More land under cultivation meant production so the Regime sought to extend the planting of cotton to new regions, irrespective as to whether these places could sustain intensive agriculture. In the north, under-development and isolation helped local residents to resist the Regime more effectively than those in the south. It was in the south where Cotton Regime was to alter the social customs of the local population by forcing out migration of males.

This exodus of men left the majority of work to be done by women and children. This started to blur the lines in regards to what had been gender specific jobs before the Regime. As Issacman says; women were perpetually on the front line in peasant struggles against the Cotton Regime.

There are many things that I am leaving out in this review. Issacman goes into detail about how the Regime tried to control peasant access to their own fields to produce food for survival. These moves inevitably lead to food shortages as cotton fields were moved further away from villages in order to more easily control peasants. In this the Portugeuse were aided by local chiefs who would be rewards with people to work their own cotton fields.

What I found to be one of the most interesting aspects of the book was Issacman's assertion that the peasants were not helpless victims of the regime. That they did indeed find ways to "cope", a term which is distinguished from "resisting" by the author. Coping strategies are seen to have the unintended affect of proping up the Regime. This can be seen as a strategy akin to a work slow-down in a contemporary labour environment. For the peasant growers in Mozambique these options were thus very limited, such as escaping the regime by fleeing to neighboring countries, holding back some of the labour, or by boycotting the system at strategic moments. Issacman saw these "Hidden" protests as the weapons of the weak.

Thus, there were to be no great rebellions or revolts. The structual position of the cotton growers was not to change. These forms of resistance are seen by Issacman as a type of safety valve, which perpetuated the system of exploitation.

Frederick Law Olmstead travelled extensively throughout the south during the antebellum period, as reflected in this book. He considered the effects of slavery on both blacks and whites and found it to have pernicious effects on both. Although written prior to the Civil War, the book (actually a series of extensive selections from the three original volumes based on his newspaper articles written during his travels)provides a rather indepth and refreshing look at well-known history and looks at the diverse roles played by blacks, white southerners, (and northerners!) in slavery. He also examines their views on the slave issue itself: some nascent Southern abolitionists and colonialists, as well as advocates of slavery, appeared rather intelligent and some otherwise. Many considered slavery an insoluble problem and others defended it as a necessary evil which benefitted blacks and whites alike(!). After completing his tour (including a rather interesting situation in which a black slave seriously injures a biracial runaway, has him clapped in irons and sent to jail - much to the amusement of some white southerners - & an enlightening discussion, especially in light of Talty's research showing persons of pure white descent, including adult foreigners and children who were originally indentured were kidnapped or illegally sold into slavery, of how demeanor would be an adequate determinant of whether or not a "white" slave was really free or not), he provides a critical analysis of slavery and its effects on the south.

Cotton Mather was the son of one great Puritan preacher, Increase Mather, and the grandson of two others, John Cotten and Richard Mather. This juvenile biography by Norman Jean Lutz for the Colonial Leaders series focuses on how Cotton Mather tried to live up to the responsibilities of his family heritage, graduating from Harvard at the age of 15. Although probably best known for being a clergyman, young readers will get a better sense of Cotton Mather as an author of more than 400 books ranging from sermons and poetry to books teaching about science. His two most famous and popular works were an 800-page volume "Magnalia Christi Americana" ("The Might Deeds of Christ in America"), which told the story of the first 80 years of the Puritans in New England, and "Bonifacius" ("Doer of Good," known popularly as "Essays to Do Good," which had a profoun impact on Benjamin Franklin. Lutz also covers Cotton Mather's involvement in the Salem Witch Trials, for which, she argues, he has been unjustly criticized, and the Great Awakening. Actually, there is relatively little about him as a Puritan or as a preacher and, ironically, more about him as a man of science, who supported the new idea of innoculating people against small pox. A lot of time is also devoted to his family and the tragic deaths of his first two wives and most of his young children. I suspect that in most contemporary American History textbooks Cotton Mather is probably mentioned only in passing, so young readers and teachers will certainly find much more about him here and get a sense for how he was something of a proto-revolutionary. Other books in the Colonial Leaders series look at Benjamin Banneker, Anne Hutchinson, William Penn, and Peter Stuyvesant.

Grubbs traces the plight of Southern tenant cotton farmers, both black and white, and the effort to provide tenant farmers with job security and financial stability through unionization. The book begins with the economic and agricultural fallout of the Civil War and on to the movement's initial organization, the New Deal, and efforts to join the AFL-CIO. In 1934 two young Socialists organized the Southern Tenants Farmers Union (STFU) near the town of Tyronza, Arkansas, in order to gain fair wages for tenant farmers who were kept in perpetual destitution.

This is a good book about agricultural labor, even if it can be a convoluted read due to its inherent political complexity. "Cry from the Cotton..." is well-researched and copiously noted. Grubbs has used a variety of sources, from government documents, local and union newspapers and magazine articles, to oral interviews, telegrams, and the STFU papers (housed at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill).