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Cold Harbor as campaign history...
A Stand-Up Fight in an Open Field Against an Intrenched FoeThe title of my review, which comes from a quote by Lt Col Charles Cummings of the 17th Vermont, is a good description of the main battle. Cold Harbor looks forward to the grim battle lines of the First World War, where men dug in and ventured from their trenches at their peril. As the war went on, the veteran troops on both sides learned to dig in. It was the gung-ho new regiments from the North that had the heaviest casualties: They had not yet developed the basic survival skills.
Rhea's study went in for such heavy detail that at times, I yearned for an occasional editorial perspective, which this author pretty much restricted to the first and last chapters.
Robert E Lee came out relatively unsinged from Cold Harbor, but Grant has taken much of the blame for the unfortunate general staff culture of the Army of the Potomac. Remember that it was only a short time before that he took over the command, and he had to make do with prima donnas like Meade -- who comes off particularly badly -- as well as Burnside, Warren, and Wright. Even Baldy Smith, Grant's friend whom he had rescued from the country club atmosphere of Butler's command at Bermuda Hundred, spent most of the time (though somewhat justifiably) complaining about lack of food and ammunition, and contradictory commands from the top.
After I finished reading this book, I looked up Grant's own memoirs and saw an interesting bit that Rhea omits entirely: After the battle, there was an exchange of letters between Grant and Lee (which Grant quotes verbatim) in which the Union general requests a truce to collect the dead and wounded. Lee refused repeatedly, until several days later, by which time only two of the many thousands wounded left on the battlefield survived. This is a serious charge and should be addressed in any book on Cold Harbor, if only to dismiss it. Perhaps Rhea will put it in his next volume?
I was enchanted by Lee's inherent ability to create good ground for a battle by his knowledge of the countryside and his superior relationship to his staff officers. He was for certain a formidable and great adversary. Grant, on his side, was walking on eggshells. The nominating convention to select a candidate to run against Lincoln was about to take place: A complete route of the Union forces would have led to, God save us all, a President George B. McClellan.
Cold Harborhis narrative is fairly easy to follow and to comprehend. I especially appreciated the numerous, detailed maps which did not overlook showing locations whose place names appeared in the text.


DisappointedThe book was not well written and the type too hard to read.
I'm not willing to pay $100 a year for land I may never work on, and the Bureau of Land Management will reclaim the land if you don't.
The free trip was worth it!Enjoy your trip!
BLM does not have some of the forms

Disappointed...For example, we traveled to Campobello and needed to stop for dinner. One of the restaurants they listed was "known for its fish and chips". Such a description doesn't reveal whether their fish and chips are actually worth the stop. We did stop and found the fish and chips to be VERY average and the microwaved fish chowder to be very bland. A B&B we stayed at was described as having "furnishings reminiscent of a simpler time". What does that mean? We found out but that description told us very little. The vague descriptions were frustrating when we were calling from one area of Maine to make reservations in another. We weren't sure what we were going to find. One more example: We were in Acadia driving the park loop and I reached for the book in hopes that it would give a brief description of the different sites on the tour. There was a sign for Bubble Rock and I wanted to know what that was in reference to. The book was of no help.
The book is also awkward to use. The key to their symbols are buried in the book. Their reference section is also awkward and lacks a "when to go" section among other useful information. Considering the fact that much of Maine consists of small towns whose streets are too small to show up on maps of Maine, it would have been such a help to have had small town maps in the book. I think there were a couple but nothing near what there should have been. This may be the best that is out there but if that is the case, then there is room for some one else to write a much more comprehensive and useful guide to Maine.
This is one of the most helpful travel guides I've owned.
Maine an Explorer's Guide

Erotic From A Male Point Of ViewIn his daily conquests, he describes women who are almost stumbling over with desire and interest in him. This does not seem realistic to me. It seems that the author wants to make himself feel desired for having such "naughty" fantasies, as opposed to moving on to the core of the story. I don't want to know that all these different women wanted to know, or got excited knowing he was going to see a Domme. I want to know how he felt, what he did to prepare, and so on. I understand that he deals with daily life bored and unfulfilled. I also understand that it is a story filled with fantasy. However, a lot of people do practice or act out such fantasies in real life and they are not necessarily attractive, good looking or desired by every female (or male) they come accross. They are everyday people, whether attached or not, whose desires go beyond what is considered norm to most.
The sensations he described are phenomenal...however the path to getting there, or his daily situations are uninteresting and unfulfilling. Good book if you want to know "what may happen" bad if you want to be "realistic."
Insightful look through a male sub's eyesThe highly intense scenes described in this book are done so with great care and detail, with Dommes as beautiful as they are cruel. After having read this book, I gained more of an understanding of the desires that submissive men carry and how this male sub (ie the author) deals with them. A fascinating read for anyone interested in erotic power exchange.
Understanding the Submissive Mind

A terrible collection of a wonderful series
The dawning of Vertigo
Hey, Kids, Comics!

If anyone should have connected I should have....To be honest I was quite surprised by the reviews that this book got since I was underwhelmed by truth in the writing. The book's description of Israel just strikes me as very flat and though there are portraits of inhabitants and characters (ie Yekkes, refugees, British soldiers, activists) the writing does not take you to what is the real Israel.
The writing style is good but as should be clear here not in my view prose fitting to describe Israel.
I am leaving aside socio- views - take it from a Londoner, what is overwhelming about Irael is the heat, the humidity, the vitality of the people. This absolutely does not come across in the book, to my mind. I realise 1946 was different when you are mixing amongst Yekkes and camp surivors but the still the description of the Kibbutznikim in the book did not describe the energy that jumps out of peoples'skin here.
The smells in israel, the colour of the sky, the heat, nature, the sea - all these things are overwhelming to a native Londoner and certainly a cosseted girl circo 1946 but none of this comes in the book. If you have never been to Israel and want to understand what I am talking about a good start are Israeli painters of this century such as Kalishman, Shalom Reisner, Aharon, Agam, Nahum Gutman.
The professional cricital reviews to this book that I have seen are very positive, To be honest I don't know why. Perhaps because they are written by people who are looking inside the lines of the book for some kind of cathartic English literature explanation for the State's Establishment and whatever they think they should read is contained within?..
This is one book that should bear out my personal experience to an extent but disappointingly I did not find that it did capture the lust and intensity of this land and instead was a tale of a Londoner who finds herself in the Middle East and just muttered "öh."
Good read
FantastiqueAnd from these entropic maladies and elysianities, a new sense of being is engendered- the modern one, in which time looks forward rather than backward, in which civilisation marches on in a triumphant Israel, and in which the main chacater finds herself abandoning a past which will be useless to her in the new state. Divorce from anachronism, from Europe, and for Jews from a hostile world is the explicit ideology, but that is also juxtaposed with the diversity of people who come into contact with one another- and are often in conflict culturally and ideologically.
This book will be a staple in classrooms within twenty years- it has such power. I encourage a thorough digestion of its multitudinous ideas.


Errors galore in this Conservative Christian propaganda!There are too many "blatant" errors to list in this mini-review, but just for starters:
1). TR did not, as the author claims, visit his mother's Georgia plantation "10 or more times". It is well documented that TR only visited Bulloch Hall twice -once as president and once post-White House. He did not have a very high opinion of most Southerners, despite the author's claims to the contrary. His wife abhorred most Southerners.
2). TR did not force his children, particulary Alice, to attend church every Sunday. Edith was the religious task master of the family and in her quiet manner usually rounded up all kids, except for Alice. Alice was a well-known, open atheist from her teen years until she died. TR and Edith had accepted the teenager's refusal to be confirmed in the Episcopal church or any other church. Their son Archie also grew up to be an agnostic.
3). TR most certainly did NOT shower Edith with flowers and jewels. He never even remembered her birthday (though he never forgot the date of their engagement and wedding anniversay). Edith hated receiving extravagent gifts from anyone, especially her husband. They did have a very happy marriage and home life but he also known for taking off on 3-month hunting trips soon after Edith would deliver another baby.
4). TR most certainly did like to attend parties and was a professional social butterfly because he knew he would probably end up as the main attraction - just what his ego needed. The author paints TR as a man who shunned social gatherings to be with his family 24/7. Definitely not true. He LOVED being around people of all and any type, though his wife certainly like to stoke the home fires more than making the social rounds.
5). TR never made any speeches about abortion. Abortion was not on the radar screen in his time. The author uses quotes that TR said about women not wanting to get married and raise families to make it seem as though TR were speaking direcly on the subject of abortion.
6). TR believed in and preached on the separation of Church and State. He wanted to remove "In God We Trust" from the US coinnage and even pushed one of the leading artists of that time, Grant LaFarge, to create a new design. The "religious right" of his time went ballistic over this decision and he later backed down. He made many speeches proclaiming that the Church stay out of the affairs of the State. Indeed, he was a strong, "old school" Christian who did preach to the citizens the value of religion, a happy home life, and following the morals one teaches to his/her children. However, he also thought a country would head down the dangerous path if a certain religion or belief were forced upon its citizens.
I would not recommend this book on TR to ANYONE.
A mixed reviewIn some ways, the hagiographic nature of the book did not bother me overly much because I bought the book for my bright 5th grader. She was supposed to read a presidential biography for a school project. Having a treatment that deals only with the most admirable aspects of the person seems appropriate for this circumstance. Unfortunately, the vocabulary in this book is too advanced for someone in the 5th-7th grades, even if the level of discourse is not. In the end, my daughter and I read the book together, stopping every few sentences so that I could provide a synonym for a difficult word. Now you might think this is not so bad, but if an author is going to write a simplistic biography, why not make it accessible to the most likely audience? In most cases, the esoteric words were not necessary, and I could easily come up with synonyms that my daughter knew.
What finally made me decide that I really didn't like the book was that toward the end it took on a political tone, very preachy and heavy-handed. It showed that the author had a very conservative political agenda that had little to do with Theodore Roosevelt. Until the last 50 pages or so, I enjoyed the book, but the end really ruined it for me. I was VERY glad that I was reading it along with my daughter because I was able to provide some perspective to counteract the political propaganda.
My, wasn't that just bully!Grant shows that Roosevelt - once described as "that damned cowboy" by a political adversary - was more than just a cowboy. He had tremendous natural abilities, and he made the most of them. There doesn't seem to be an academic field that he didn't know, and his knowledge often impressed the experts. He seems to have lived every moment of his life to the fullest.
He was a devoted husband and father, and held strongly to his Christian faith. His Christianity and his respect for marriage and family were more important to him than anything else. His firm adherence to his principals was more important than party loyalty. He was more interested in doing what was right than in doing what was convenient, or politically advantageous.
Few men in history - and certainly few, if any, in American history - can be said to have lived as Roosevelt did. Reading about his life is the next best thing. Anyone who is interested in leadership and character will find this book worthwhile, as will anyone who is simply interested in living life to the full.


What about the Tombs
Great Starter for Historical Jesus Research
One of the best Christian apologetics I have read!Forgive me, I digress.... Back to the book.... This book covers everything from the writing and dating of the gospels, to the Dead Sea scrolls, to the Shroud of Turin. I find the evidence given by Jeffrey to be very compelling. I have been truly rewarded by reading this book. I still find myself somewhat skeptical about the Shroud of Turin, but Jeffrey does paint a very interesting picture of the shroud. Jeffrey does remain Biblical in his reasoning, so if he doesn't agree with some other scholars, that might be why. I have loaned out my copy of this book several times, and each time my friends found it insightful and a rewarding read. I would recommend this book to anyone.


Good But In Error
Novel Surrounding Predicted Future Middle East Scenario.In this account Russian and Arab forces invade Israel amid the spectre of a nuclear holocaust, intent upon the eradication of the Jewish State.
Very timely and appropriate in view of current world events and very readable.
A pre-cursor to the follow-up entitled 'Spear Of Tyranny', which is based around events following the above invasion and the rise of the Anti-Christ and his one-world government/religion.
Both books are very enjoyable and will hold your attention from cover to cover.
Winner of the 2000 Christy Award for Excellence in Fiction!

Not for serious dreamers. :)
Fun to readSo what does it mean when you dream that your best girlfriend has a purple beard?? You'll know in about 5-10 minutes if you have this book.
Good beginer bookI purchased this book a while ago and still use it. It gives you very basic definitions of what things could mean in your dreams. Everything is listed in alphbetical order, making whatever it is your looking for, easy to find.
I have noticed though that a lot of things mean the same exact thing as something else. I can't tell you how many times I have read 'this is a good omen', or 'this is a bad omen', and then they don't elaborate on what kind of bad or good thing it could be.
So if your just looking to have a little fun and not take your dreams THAT seriously then this is the book for you, but if you really want to know the hidden meaning of your dreams I would buy a book that gives a little better description for things.
Even though this period does encompass a significant amount of maneuvering, cavalry battles, small infantry engagements and entrenchments, Rhea, as in his previous works, feels obligated to discuss all of it in detail. While he does accomplish an amazingingly organized study of this amazingly complex series of movements, he loses many a reader to these details and ultimately the whole book suffers somewhat in terms of quality.
This isn't to say that this is a bad book...on the contrary, as I've previously stated, Rhea presents an impressive study, taking no liberties in his research to uncover what really happened and when. We start out with the armies facing each other at the North Anna river. U.S. Grant, having realized that R.E. Lee's inverted "V" entrenchment south of the river is indeed a trap, decides to again move "by the left flank" and steals a march on Lee by crossing the Pamunkey river with his sights set on Richmond. Lee finally discovers this and sets up strong defenses along Totopotomoy creek between Grant and Richmond. Cavalry battles at Haw's Shop/Enon Church, Bethesda Church and Matadequin Creek presage the infantry "skirmishes" along Shady Grove Road and Old Church Road.
Then "a fateful cascade of events had brought Cold Harbor to the forefront Grant's and Lee's attention. Federal commanders initially had no intention of using the place in their offensive operations. They considered the road junction significant only because Confederates might exploit it as a staging area to harass Union supply lines and thwart (Union General Baldy) Smith's arrival." Lee, sensing Grant's intention to capture the crossrads and use it as a launching pad for an invasion of Richmond, sends Cavalry to Cold Harbor to prevent them from taking it. Union Cavalry under Phil Sheridan fears that the Confederates plan to attack him there and goes on the offensive. Lee conversely thinks that the Cavalry attack is the vanguard for a major Union attack and shifts an entire infantry corps there. Grant sees this and starts his infantry there and the engagement is on.
The famous confrontations on June 1st and 3rd mark the true battles at Cold Harbor and Rhea hits his stride in discussing them: "Writers later alluded to a 'Cold Harbor' syndrome, claiming that the carnage Union soldiers witnessed in the fighting there persuaded them to shy away from assaulting entrenched positions. In fact, by the time the Army of the Potomac reached Cold Harbor, veterans had already learned that valuable lesson. Cold Harbor is where newcomers discovered what old timers already knew." Famous engagements involving the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery and the 8th New York Heavy Artillery are detailed here making these stories a remarkable companion for the History Channel's "Civil War Combat" episode on Cold Harbor. These army-wide assaults against the entrenched Confederate positions have driven many historians to indict Grant for mis-management of this battle and garnering him the reputation of a "butcher". Rhea dispels these myths: "When viewed in the war's larger context, the June 3 attack falls short of it's popular reputation for slaughter. Grant lost more men each day in the Wilderness and on two different days at Spotsylvania Court House than he did on Jume 3, making his main effort at Cold Harbor only the fifth bloodiest day for the Federals since crossing the Rapidan." What Grant and the Union army is guilty of is army-wide coordination. Time and again, they have an advantage taken away when coordinated movements go awry and the Confederates are able to capitalize...Rhea documents these in his closing chapter and discusses Grant's feeling that this was not a major defeat, but just another obstacle in his road to defeating Lee's army.
A study not for the general reader, but an essential component for historians and of Civil War history, Gordon Rhea's latest book continues his impressive documantation of the close of the war in Virginia and I would encourage all Civil War buffs to read these books.