Daniels' poetry is just prose, and his prose is, well, just slop. This book is just plain awful.

I like Jim Daniels' stories because they are about real characters. And, he tells his stories with an honest voice. Too often when I read short stories, I feel that the writer is trying to impress me. I don't know if it's MFA programs or what, but many fiction writers seem to put craft, style, and experimentation over character, story, and authenticity. Not Daniels. He's about the character first. When he's got someone's story in his hands, he treats that character with dignity. He tries to tell the character's story as honestly as possible. He doesn't let overly crafted writing get in the way of that telling. Too often craft and style are the writer saying, "Look at how clever I am." But, when Jim Daniels writes about a character he wants the reader looking at that character only. He shows real respect for his characters.

Tough characters, sparse writing with an outcome that is rich and full of heart. The stories stay with you.

At first glance, Halfway Home sounded like it would deliver emotional satisfaction--a woman discovering who her grandmother WAS as a woman, not as the crotchity old grandmother she remembered her to be. And yes, I'm sure the life of Mae Kirwin was interesting, but not worth a whole book, at least not the way it was presented. The presentation of information was choppy and never carried my attention. The author made too many assumptions. My English professors would have needed another red pen because of all the holes and blanket assumptions she made throughout the book. The research Logue performed definitely deserves to be commended, she worked hard to discover her grandmother. However, she never really delivered what I thought she would, I finished the book saying, "So what?" Finding your roots gives you a direction I think, I love hearing stories about my ancestors and appreciate knowing who they were in relation to me, I hope Logue is able to say the same. What this book could have been versus what it was left me unsatisfied. I wouldn't recommend it.

Mary Logue takes us by the hand and shows us, thread by thread, as she unravels the story of her grandmother's fascinating life on the Minnesota prairie. A memorable and highly readable memoir/biography. Anybody who has ever wondered about where they came from will appreciate this story of a granddaughter's search for her roots.

Mary Logue gives her readers a tender and intimate peek into her family in this tribute to her Irish grandmother Mae Kirwin. She also shows us the importance of recording family stories and how to be persistent in digging up details. The loved ones of our past and present deserve more than just being listed with birth and death dates. The stories and little anecdotes about those people are what bring them to life again. They also give us a look into what life was like long ago, in this case, the life of a small town in Minnesota. I was especially touched by the way Ms. Logue wrote about the untimely death of her grandfather and how that event had a profound influence on the way her grandmother raised her children and lived the rest of her life. I also enjoyed how the author, a mystery writer (Blood Country, Still Explosion) compared family research to solving a mystery. Anyone who has done genealogy studies knows that you have to have clues to follow. Trails of "evidence" help uncover the hidden stories in your family's history. At the end of the book Ms. Logue provides helpful tips for others seeking to write a family history.

This book is not meant as a precise historical account of the journeys of Lewis & Clark, but a study of the Missouri River and its surrounding areas as the explorers saw them, vs. how these areas have changed since then. Also, the portion of the Lewis & Clark journey west of the Rockies is not included, as the book sticks to the Missouri River. The most blatant changes in these ecosystems are the straightening and channelization of the river itself, which has led to massive environmental (and economic) damage for a pathetically small amount of barge traffic; plus the conversion of vast prairies to farmland which has led to serious losses of native flora and fauna. The book becomes a messy mixture of travelogue, as Botkin describes how to reach key areas of the river, and musings on the environmental health of these areas. While Botkin has had well-deserved success in environmentalist circles, his attempts to draw up naturalist ethics and morality significantly weaken this book. A lack of focus and the squishy writing of a college freshman are also damaging. Botkin is prone to god-awful metaphors, starting the main narrative awkwardly with "Rocks are nature's books; minerals are its words" and populating the rest of the book with more groaners like "Rocks Tell Stories and Soils are Nature's Braille" (subtitle of chapter 25). His attempts to wax philosophical on mankind's modern lack of connection with nature, while correct in spirit, are also unsuccessful in the writing department. See the awkward comparison of a pelican's spiraling flight path to society's shifting concerns for the environment in chapter 6, or the predictable comparison of prairie dog towns with an ideal human society in chapter 32. This book had the potential to be a real winner as both a travelogue with a historical twist and as a treatise on environmental philosophy. Unfortunately it merely flirts with those two strengths without really nailing them, and is sunk overall by weak writing.

This is a fantastic book for anyone visiting the Missouri river.

Book has handy maps, illustrations and reference points for the person making a modern day trip. Notes by Stephen Ambrose and Robert Redford at beginning and end of book commend book as well!

If you are only mildly interested in Lewis and Clark before reading this book - afterwards you'll be completely astounded by their feats!!

Nothing is as constant as change on the unfettered Missouri River. Few stretches of the Missouri remain as Lewis & Clark observed them. The river, as Botkin observes, is "nature's landscape painter". The canvas is continually changing in response to the forces of a river draining one-sixth of the U.S.

Botkin presents us with the story of the first navigation of the river by Lewis and Clarke, through the river's channalization by the Army Corp of Engineers, to present efforts to restore and interpret the river.

But, this book is more than an inventory of facts and issues. It contains vivid illustrations of nature's interrelationships and wry observations on the irony of man "improving" nature.

This is a very practical, pragmatic, yet poetic book.

Let us begin straight to the point. You do not want to read this book. Trust me. It is totally uninventive, poorly written, characters look like they just got out from a movie of a 'F' production, story is dull, and it doesn't keep the reader attracted to the book. I do not know for the other Gifford books, but this one definitely shouldn't be called a book, and especially shouldn't be sold to anyone. Only reason this book got two stars is a hint of an atmosfere that you could sniff somehow but it constantly keeps losing itself. If you still want to buy this book, than the main story is: Ava Varazo is a member of a Mexican revolution and in an attempt to find the money (steal it) from a American bordel owner, she meets Mudo DelRay, after she cheats him and locks him in the trunk she returns into her village La Villania where she continues to struggle against goverment. There are few more characters in the book, and all of them somehow crosses paths with Ava (some on a broader scale).
And the final warning, to not buy this book, read it if you must, but do it in the library (you'll need just few hours).

Whoa! There's a lot going on here in paucas palabras. We're in one of those border nightmares where Texas, Arizona, and Mexico all ooze together into some kind of sharp southwestern guisado with enough lard and chiles to singe your lips and leave a brownish cloud around your cabeza. Add jeans that are too tight, old cars, bad norteno music, and chicas that are muy guapa and hot to trot -- and you get Barry Gifford, the Sage of Big Tuna, at his very best.

I've seen David Lynch's WILD AT HEART and LOST HIGHWAYS, both based on Gifford books, but straight Gifford hits you right upside the gut with a haymaker.

The hot relationship between DelRay Mudo and Ava Varazo is interrupted when the latter blows away her pimp, Indio Desacato, and runs off to La Villania (Nasty), Mexico, to take up with an obscure political cause. Everything goes to hell when Cobra Box, her associate, goes to Bad Leopard, Idaho, to buy guns. Nobody ultimately gets together with anybody: just overheated bodies caroming around in a ranchero beat with the occasional gratuitous sex or violence. As Cairo Fly put it in his diary that closes the book, "Is it possible for a person's soul to stray away or be stolen and without it the person has no peace in their heart? I feel I am one of those now."

There is something mesmerizing about Gifford's staccato chapters. Try too hard to follow the story, and you wind up like Thankful Priest with a bullet in your head in some godforsaken south of the border hellhole. No, man, just keep going to the beat. Sometimes, you fall off the edge of the world; sometimes you get good Tequila with your chilaquiles.

I've got to get me some more of those Gifford books -- if this one's any indicator.

Gifford's fiction is often an unholy pastiche of styles and devices, and this technique is perfectly suited for his memoir PHANTOM FATHER... I highly recommend it. Deserves a space on a short bookshelf that includes Angela's Ashes and The Liars' Club.

Unfortunately, I read this book after reading "Chicago Haunts" and "More Chicago Haunts", the fabulous books by Ursula Bielski.
This book is not even in the same league.
The photographs look grainy and xeroxed, the type is obnoxious, and the layout is juvenile.
And that's just the beginning.
Kaczmarek, who is a fine ghosthunter, I'm sure, is NOT an author. From his incomplete sentences ("Obviously victims of an unfortunate accident.") to his anti-climactic stories, this book is not nearly as fun as Ms. Bielski's, and the tales are not nearly as artfully woven.
For a delightful and educational book on Chicago hauntings, skip this one and instead buy Ursula Bielski's fine works.
Kaczmarek sacrificed quality for quantity, and it's obvious.
One wonders how most of the stories even appear in a book on hauntings.
For example, Chodl Auditorium is given a half a page, and the gist of the story is that a drama teacher died and "supposedly haunts" this auditorium, although it "may be an urban legend" started by the schoolkids. Not one example is given of ghostly activity in the auditorium.
This is the worst kind of filler that many books on hauntings have. Speculation and hearsay are passed off as legitimate haunting activity, causing skeptics and non-skeptics alike to roll their collective eyes at being given so little credit by an author.
If this were the only example of this writing, I could easily overlook it. However, more than half the book seems to be this sort of thing.
Save your money.

This is the follow up to his first book. There are more locations and stories, all new and exciting. I really liked reading this book, there so much information. It's written for anyone who holds an interest in the paranormal. Your told stories from all over the Chicagoland area, from Real Life haunted houses to the little-known stories. There are places that people have only talked about, and finally a book that sets the story straight. So many dark-tales, first hand accounts, and ghostly encounters. If you liked his first book, you better get this sequel.

This book is a great follow up to his first book.You will find different locations that were not mentioned in the his first book. There is tons of useful information from Capone's Hideaway & Speakeasy to the "Gate." The book is filled with little known stories, many I think are appearing for the first time. He also has a collection of Real-life haunted houses that he has investigated that are in this book. This is the President of the team of researchers that was featured on Discovery Channel's "REAL GHOSTHUNTERS." With over 25 years experience, these books were long overdue. EXCELLENT!

My Aunt Geneva brought my heritage to life in her vignettes of her childhood days in her book Barefoot in an Oklahoma Sticker Patch. Through her shared experiences one can appreciate the struggles and triumphs of her great generation. Many of the vignettes are filled with the emotions of the times but laced with the humor and pride of the family. As her niece, "sticker patch" has strengthened my family respect, enhanced by family pride and inspired me to leave a similar legacy to my chldren and grandchildren.

A timid socially deficient young girl becomes a prominant, intelligent, teacher, educator, and community servant through grit and determination and the strength of family during the depression when the thing she did was persevere and walk through those sticker patches.

The book is akin to "Angela's Ashes" except it is from an American, Oklahoman vantage point.

This book was okay. . . that's the best word I can think of to describe it. I did like the emphasis on the "leave no trace" philosophy. The dictionary of terms in the back is funny, and there are some good photographs. It is somewhat hard to find specific places, without reading it cover to cover. In the future, as well, I think Mr. Floyd might benefit from better editing. . . there were more than ten glaring grammatical/spelling errors. All in all, not a bad effort. I'd buy it again.

I found that this climber's guide had many things that my otherclimbing guidebooks did not have. Moving to Missouri from Colorado, Iwas hoping to find more than "moo-moo cows and piggys." Well... I have found, with much help from this guidebook, that Missouri has some hard stuff and a wide variety of rock types. I give the author two thumbs up; this guide is bomb in comparison. Thanks for the great beta! Oh checkout the Glossary in the back of the guide. It's hilariously too true...

This book is a great resource! It has profile of each town on the trail, including the services available. It also includes lots of interesting history, as well as many off-the-beaten-track points of interest. However, things along the trail change every year, and this book is almost due for another update.

I have only seen two other guide books devoted to Missouri's Katy Trail, but this one is hands-down the best. It covers the Katy from west to east and has a wealth of historical information on the towns along the trail. There is also a fold-out map of the trail and a table of mileages between points along the trail. Good information is given on services available along the trail. The only serious criticism I have of the book is that I'd like to see more detail given to the directions for getting to the trail from I-70 at each access point along the trail.

Overall, this is an excellent trail guide to the Katy Trail and an excellent book in general.

My family was recently transferred to North Dakota with the Air Force. Before we moved we wanted to learn more about it, since we had never been here. It was very difficult to find ANYTHING in print about North Dakota. I finally found an older copy of this book in a book store in Anchorage, AK, and then went on-line and ordered the new edition.

While I think this book is pretty decent, I wish I could find a book with more pictures. While North Dakota is hardly considered a popular tourist destination, there IS some pretty scenery. I think this book would be better if they added some sections with pictures. Otherwise, the book is pretty good. I would recommend it to anyone considering travel in North Dakota (or South Dakota, it also has a section on that state), but then again I have not come across a single other book that focuses on North Dakota as much.

I really enjoyed reading all about the Dakotas. I plan on traveling to learn more about my roots. This book will really help me plan my travels.

This guide has inspired me to explore my own home state! I admit that until I picked up this book I hadn't heard of many of the towns and areas featured and now I want to see them all. The reading is easy; the author writes as if she is your best friend and wants to share a great local travel secret she has just discovered.

I have already sampled a few of the sites featured and found the recommendations pleasantly accurate. This is a great book to keep in the car for reference whether you have time for a whole day or only one short stop. Buy it as a good investment in your travel pleasure.

I thought this book was great. It was very useful. I've spent a good deal of time in Indianapolis, but never really explored many of towns described in the guide book. It even includes day trips to Ohio and Kentucky.

The book is divided in to geographical locations, with each area including one to seven day trips.

The directions are, for the most part, easy to follow, and the restaurant, shop and hotel listings are informative and as up-to-date as possible.

Anyone looking to explore the great state of Indiana, and beyond, I highly recommend this book!