I have continued to read Mr. Maybury's books and the first five have filled me with knowledge and wonder at how uninformed I have been in the past about simple and basic issues that touch, influence and determine the coarse of a persons life each and evey day.

I have learned a great deal from his obvious intellectual prowess and his all encompassing views on many subjects and how they mesh together to form, affect and manipulate this world we live in.

One gets a sense of awe at how little they can trust those in power but how immensly important is it is that those without it stick together and ensure we be ever vigilante in our observations of elected officials. Those people we used to call public servants but who hav become nothing but self-indulgent life lont politicians. In other words they have become exactly what our Constitution and Bill of Rights were designed to prevent.

In this book, "What Would Thomas Jefferson Think About This?" I have found yet another source of knowledge that I must thank Uncle Eric for. Yet after reading the great book "John Adams." I do not find that I have the awe and inspiration that allows me to make Jefferson my number one hero. Yes, he is a great man and I believe he was one of the greatest founders, however I find that I still place him behind George Washington and Adams on that account.

It is my philosophy just like it was Reverend Johathan Mayhew's and John Adam's that "The people, are required to obey their government's law only when it is in agreement with Higher Law. And if the government violates that charge, it is our duty, and we are bound the fight it with every resourse at our disposal."

In a related topic Mayhew was a true Reverend, and it is unfortunate that the term has been turned into such a basphemous title today for those who use and claim the name are anything but Reverend.

In any case this 6th book in Mr. Maybury's series is yet another collectors item and gives the reader a sound foundation by which to judge the literature they choose to obsorb and contemplate in creating their own ideological awareness and positions of items of critical importance to our country and our people.

This book is a very good resource for everybody who wants to get informed about lilies in general. It's biggest advantage is it's very accessible language, even beginners won't have a problem to understand. It covers all important topics and is richly illustrated, though it sometimes suffers a bit of the "coffee-tablebook-syndrome".

It is a perfect work for beginners and advanced hobbyists who want to be well informed, but don't intend to use much too advanced techniques. For those it is quite usable and a very valuable source of information. Only experienced collectors and professionals might sometimes feel a bit unsatisfied.

"The Gift" is a book I'd recommend to others. It helps one realize that there's a lot of living to do no matter what the circumstances. It's a page turner

I just started reading this book a few days ago, but I all ready feel as though I'm on my way to becoming a pro at playing gospel music. Robert makes learning simple and easy without all the lingo that can sometimes deter an aging mind. I hope to purchase volume 2 in the future!

Garry Wills "Inventing America" is a interesting and unconventional take on the thought of Thomas Jefferson and his authorship of the Declaration of Independence. Wills rejects the traditional "Lockean" view and instead puts forward a different and, I believe, valid hypothesis. Wills finds the philosophy of the Declaration in Jefferson's reading of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, Francis Hutchenson, Thomas Reid, David Hume, and Lord Kames. These thinkers beleived, along with Jefferson, that man had an inate "moral sense" which man him human and governed the affairs of society. Wills book starts out slow when talking about the Decalrations beginnings, and the early Enlightenment influence, but picks up when he relates these thought to Jefferson.

Chapters 16 and 22 are particularly good since they deal with Jefferson's views on slavery. Wills correctly shows Jefferson always thought blacks fully human with a moral sense and integrity. Although he found their intelligence possibly below other races he never rejected their humanity nor their right "as a people" to be free. Chapter 22 show the fallacies behind modern critisism about simply "freeing" the slaves. Wills shows how unrealistic and quite impossible a wholesale emancipation in colonial Virginia would have been. Instead Jefferson wants freedom and education for the blacks, in their own nation, colinized to Africa where they could live free "as a people". Overall a great book.

Jefferson is often praised for his writings on personal freedom, democracy, and civil liberties. This book exposes the complexity of Jefferson. In other words, he did not really practice what he preached. He was a champion of civil liberties on paper, but not in practice.

As President of the United States, he showed a disturbing disregard for basic civil liberties. He showed reckless disregard for the 4th amendment ban on unreasonable search and seizure, and he was no friend of the first amendment and a free press when he was attacked by oppostion newspapers.

Those who worship Jefferson will find this book disturbing. Some will even call it a hatchet job. I disagree. Although Levy does attack Jefferson on civil liberties, he praises Jefferson's strong stand on separation of church and state.

Although Levy is a professional historian, this book should appeal to non-academics. It is a quick read and it makes a strong (and controversial) point without going into mind numbing detail. It is nice to read some history with an edge.

Finally, we can admire the principles that Jefferson stood for while acknowledging that he was far from perfect. I think that is the broader point of this book.

This is a biography of an obscure figure from the American Civil War who had a famous name. Jefferson Columbus Davis was no relation to the Confederate president, and stayed loyal to the Union, rising the the rank of brevet Major General. He's probably best known as the culprit in the murder of William Nelson, another Union army general, in 1862. There was, however, more to Jefferson C. Davis than that, as this admirable biography shows.

...

Jefferson C. Davis was from Indiana. He enlisted in the army young, and participated in the battle of Buena Vista as a private in his Indiana volunteer regiment, distinguishing himself so much that he was considered for an appointment to West Point. When that fell through, Davis was directly enlisted in the regular army as a second lieutenant of artillery, and spent the years between the Mexican war and Fort Sumter studying and learning to be a soldier. He was part of the garrison of Fort Sumter, and this notoriety positioned him for a brigade command of Indiana state troops. He led them through the battle of Pea Ridge, and never looked back, concluding the war in command of the Fourteenth Corps during the March through the Carolinas, and during the battle of Bentonville. After the war, he was Alaska's first military district commander, and briefly fought the Modocs on the California-Oregon border.

The authors do a wonderful job of bringing Davis, and his many contradictions, to life. He was a demanding soldier, and a hard taskmaster, but he appears to have generally been a fair and decent person. There is the one incident where he shot Nelson dead, but the authors lay out the course of events, and frankly the whole thing sounds provoked. Nelson was disliked by a lot of people, apparently, to the point that when he was shot, there weren't very many calls for his killer to be brought to justice. The whole thing is laid out in considerable detail. And where Davis emerges as a surprise is in his competence as a soldier. Though his troops were routed at both Stones River and Chickamauga, at Pea Ridge it was Davis who stopped Louis Hebert's attack on the Union left, and at Jonesboro it was Davis who broke the Confederate front. At Bentonville he again held off the main Confederate assault, though with some help. Frankly I was surprised: he turns out to have been a pretty good general, and generally well-liked by the troops, even though he *never* praised anyone for anything, and apparently thought bravery nothing extraordinary. In his defense, he was brave himself.

There is one shortcoming in this book. There is a lack of maps to illustrate the text. The authors try to detail battlefield maneuvers from Buena Vista to Bentonville, with no tactical maps at all, and only three general area maps, none of which are particularly helpful. Only one of the maps even deals with the Civil War. This unfortunately makes the text a bit hard to follow at times. Other than that, I would highly recommend this book for the Civil War scholar. It's definitely worth the money.

This volume on "The Jefferson Memorial" by Joseph Ferry for the American Symbols and their Meanings series is as much a mini-biography about Thomas Jefferson as it is a look at the history of the memorial. Ferry begins with the idea of finding A Fitting Tribute for Jefferson and covers some of the early ideas for doing so when Congress established a Commission to plan, design, and build a memorial. The architect John Russell Pope submitted the deisng, based on the Pantheon of Rome, which Jefferson maintained was the perfect model of a circular building. However, Pope was given the task without the Commission holding a nationwide competition, which would have struck Jefferson as undemocratic, but which we today would recognize as the way politics works in Washington, D.C.

A Notable Career covers the highlights of Jefferson's ear political life while The Politician deals with his two terms as President and afterwards. The Memorial tells some interesting tales of the planning and construction of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, including how several Japanese women chained themselves to cherry trees that were to be destroyed to make room for the memorial and the statute of Jefferson by Rudolph Evans showed up four years after the monument was dedicated on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth because of metal rationing during World War II. The final chapter looks at the Words of Jefferson, which makes sense since some of his most memorable words, including a quotation from the Declaration of Independence, are carved around the statue in the memorial.

Consequently, young readers of this book will find it is half about Jefferson and half about the Memorial. I was a bit surprised at this balance after reading the volume in this series on the Lincoln Memorial, however if students pay attention they can make the connections between Jefferson's life and some of the specifics of the memorial. The book is illustrated with some of buildings designed by Jefferson, including his home at Monticello, so you can see the influences on the memorial. What there is to know about the Jefferson Memorial is pretty much in this book, such as the fact the statue looks right at the White House (although there is no explanation for the things behind the feet of Jefferson's statute; the last time I visited the memorial the guide was making a point of asking if anybody knew what they might be and I was hoping the answer would pop up in this book).

Other volumes in this series look at other buildings such as the Alamo and the White House as well as symbols like the Bald Eagle, the Liberty Bell, and the Pledge of Allegiance. There are twenty volumes at this point, which means, given the standard class size in elementary schools throughout the land, that teachers could have students work individually or in pairs and account for all of these American symbols for class posters or reports.

This book really gives the reader a sense of what Hamilton and Jefferson were REALLY like. They had disputes and were mistrustful of eachother. There wasn't any school-boy stuff going on here. I recommend this book if you're interested in history and are in college. Good book!