This superb reference volume examines the English regional chair (particularly windsor and ladderback types) as a vernacular tradition of craft and design. It is more comprehensive than any other book ever written on antique furniture. A work of the very highest calibre by a most respected, insightful and dedicated scholar. Study in this field, often inspired by this extraordinary work, is still continued with great enthusiasm. It simply cannot be bettered!

Frances Brooke is one of the many witty and engaging eighteenth-century women writers who have long languished in the shadow of Jane Austen. This new edition of her novel offers a well-deserved opportunity for Brooke to steal some of the spotlight back from the illustrious Austen. Her heroine, Maria Villiers, will delight literary readers with her naive ambition to win fame and glory as a dramatist and author in the London market. Maria's adventures in the city, her near misadventures with seduction, and her blossoming romance with the "brave, generous, sincere" Colonel Herbert are all sure to amuse readers who have long enjoyed Austen's works, and the introduction provided by this edition offers an excellent sense of the context in which readers should view the author and her work. The Excursion is a great, quick, fascinating read!

This book is unique in its subject matter. It helps today's reader understand the importance of the entire cotton production, trade, and manufacture.

Ms. Willoughby writes that the cotton trade's impact rippled over many other segments of the national economy and she quotes from another writer that this fiber has been called the most significant ingredient in the economic life of the whole nation [United States] before 1860.

The book describes the connection of cotton to currency and to banking and shows in detail how the banking system was vastly different from our present financial institutions.

The author stresses that much of the cotton business depended on the reputaions of individual men from the planter to the final purchaser and she gives short biographical descriptions of many key individuals.

Transportation facilities were vital to the moving of the cotton from the farm or plantation to the mill. The book describes the importance of vessels and shipping in every phase of the process and also the part that the early railroads played in making important changes in the entire ecomomy.

I would give this book a 10.

I was truly captivated by this incredibly well-written book. As I read, I felt as if I was part of the cotton industry. I could feel the dry Texas heat on a Corpus Christie farm, and I yearned to learn more and more about the plight of the American Cotton grower. If you are only going to purchase one book on this year about the American Cotton Grower, this is the one to get. A must read for any Cotton fanatic.

I really liked this book. For me it started slow, but by a few pages in I couldn't get enough. If you are interested in what farm life was like in Texas in the 1920's, this is for you. It goes into great detail about (obviously) planting and harvesting cotton, small town entertainment, churches, schools, food... the list is endless. Best of all, I talked to my grandparents, who grew up then verified it all. Want a good book about day to day farm life? Want to know what farmers used a hog's scrotum for? Buy it.

This book is a very interesting short explanation of the processes involved in making blue jeans. It uses simple words, but is not a dumbed-down narrative. It's great for that budding process engineer in your household - the one whose favorite question isn't "Why?", but "How?"

The book is illustrated with a variety of stock photographs, many with children as the focal point. This helps grab and maintain youngsters' interest.

Since blue jeans are a common item in most kids' lives, this overview of where they come from can serve as a springboard for many interesting discussions of where other everyday things come from.

The book does contain some unfamiliar words, but at about one sentence per page, the book will not frustrate newer readers - probably 2nd grade level or advanced 1st grade level. It's also a great book for reading to younger kids.

Highly recommended.

In this volume, Joseph Reidy traces the development of Central Georgia from the period of its earliest settlement following the Revolutionary War through Reconstruction, focusing on economic, political, and social changes. Prior to 1830, most Georgians were yeoman farmers seeking self-sufficiency, owning only a few slaves with whom they lived and worked in a familiar manner. During the cotton boom of the 1830s, large planters moved into the area, establishing the plantation system, large numbers of slaves, and the ganging method of production. The depression of the 1840s allowed the planters to make gains at the expense of yeomen, as they bought up land and slaves at low prices from debt-burdened farmers. The process of planter consolidation and domination continued into the 1850s when cotton prices rose. Reidy argues that to respond to increased demand, rather than practicing scientific agriculture to increase output, planters in central Georgia simply increased the workload of their slaves, hiring additional overseers from the newly dispossessed white lower class. The increased tensions between planters, struggling yeomen, overburdened slaves, and the new landless poor whites played out in the Secession crisis and period of Reconstruction.

Despite their claims that a slave republic was the only form of government capable of producing harmonious social relations, planters were aware that the growing poverty in the region undermined this argument and threatened to turn the yeomanry and poor whites against them. Evidence of this division could be seen in the growth of party politics, with planters, town dwellers, and immigrants preferring the Democratic Party, and yeomen and poor whites turning to the Know-Nothings. Planters hoped to alleviate social tensions by funding poor relief, public education, and internal improvements that would bring new jobs, but the yeomanry, while approving in theory of public works, rejected them out of opposition to the higher taxes such projects would entail. Once the Civil War broke out, planter actions only furthered the destruction of the social and economic relations they had hoped to save, as planters refused to devote all resources to winning the war at the expense of current profits. They continued to plant cotton when grain was needed to supply troops and would not contract out their slaves to war materiel producers at low prices, resulting in rising prices for yeomen families who could not maintain self-sufficiency with their household heads away fighting the war and decreasing purchasing power for white laborers. Planters were unable to feed or protect their slaves from Union troops, destroying slaves' faith in paternalism and forcing them to take care of themselves, which prepared them for independence following emancipation.

Following the war, planters hoped to exercise the same control over free blacks as they had over slaves, but with the help of the Freedman's Bureau and Radical Republicans, free blacks negotiated for more control over working conditions, their families, religious institutions, and rights as citizens. While facing legal discrimination at every turn, they were in many cases able to negotiate contracts as sharecroppers, educate their children, exercise their right to vote (though not to hold office), and establish their own churches and political movements. Yeomen also benefited somewhat in that they now had unprecedented ability to hire black laborers, but were harmed by new laws limiting hunting and fishing on unenclosed lands, which diminished their ability to subsist as much as it did that of freedmen. Both black and white non-planters increasingly turned to wage labor, marking central Georgia's transition to a capitalist economic system. Planters lost a good deal of their political and economic dominance, but maintained as much of their social power as they could under the newly bourgeois order.

Historian Gordon Cotton's From The Pen Of A She-Rebel: The Civil War Diary Of Emilie Riley McKinly is the fascinating and informative story of Ms. McKinly, told in her own words, as she and her rural Southern neighbors witnessed the depredations of the Civil War. What made Ms. McKinly unique was that she was a Yankee by background, yet she personally embodied deep sympathy for her Confederate neighbors. Extensively annotated vignettes bring to life the travails of living under Union occupation, and paint a vivid picture of a corner of America that was uprooted and changed forever by the surge of history. An epilogue provides as much historical closure as is available concerning Ms. McKinly and her neighbors after the war. From The Pen Of A She-Rebel is a unique and welcome addition to the growing body of Civil War literature available for readers and students today.

Cotton Mather (d. 1728) was called "the Lord's remembrancer" for his love of memorializing the first two generations of Puritans in New England. This classic is his magnum opus. If you want to know about the people who founded arguably the most important region in colonial America and you want to learn about them from their own point of view, then this book is a must. But even for the lay Christian who wants to find spiritual lessons for living a committed life, this book is full of such lessons lived out in the lives of real people. For example, Mather's account of how a Puritan pastor (presumably himself) ministered to a condemned prisoner being escorted to the gallows not only exemplifies Puritan theology in practice (showing the relationship of law and grace) but is a priceless example of the Puritan idea of counselling.

The book is so long (well over a thousand pages in two volumes) that you can use it like an encyclopedia: sampling little stories from here and there, refering to various people. The Banner of Truth version (I believe), also title "The Great Works of Christ in America", comes with inserted illustrations of various personalities and footnotes translating the frequent Latin quotes. It's my prefered version.

Thomas Boaz's "Guns for Cotton" is a short but highly recommended resource on how the Confederacy was able to arm its forces. Indeed, rather than being a ragtag army of myth, Boaz indicates that British supplies ensured the Confederacy was well-armed and well-stocked until nearly the end of the conflict. As late as October 1864 one Richmond bureaucrat believed his army was "the best clad in the world."

The book should raise questions in the minds of those who have romantized the Confederacy. They were not ill clad or armed; indeed they were sometimes better provisioned than their Northern opponents. And the entire strategy (if there was one) of Lee seems completely disconnected with the need to protect vital ports such as Wilmington, NC, where British materiel was offloaded.

The book contains valuable photographs, illustrations, and maps. It also contains endnotes, recommended readings, and a bibliography. The index could have been more comprehensive, but it is adequate.

The book is recommended to Civil War buffs (including re-enactors), individuals interested in international policy and foreign affairs history, and military logisticians.