I found this book to be a positive addition to my collection of rural ministry-focused material. However, I did find the over emphasis on Eco-Theology and the liberal political slant a bit overwhelming at times. Not all patriotic groups and citizen action movements are "hate groups" as presented in the text. These comments can leave a bad taste in the mouths of devoted, Christian constitutionalists working in rural ministry.

Although tooted for both the beginner and those with some experience, I found the information provided to be very basic. I'd recommend it for famliy members not familiar with the Interent and Netscape, but not for anyone who has a good grasp of the Internet -- none of my colleages or any person under the age of 25 :-)

I was very disappointed to find that the screen captures were done with a pre-release version. These are at times missing elements that are part of the final Communicator 4.5 product.

In general, I am an admirer of Amado's work, but this is not his best effort. He has once again introduced us to the cast of characters that he grew up with in his native Bahia - the miserably poor of the sertao, the vaqueros, the itinerant peddlars (one of which - a Turk again, no less - is the main character), the narrow-minded clergy, all milling around and not really going much of anywhere. The "Showdown" is a faceoff between bandits, which is a culmination of the events in this little backwater village on the Sao Francisco.

As usual, Amado is very good at providing us with a slice of life and a variety of interesting characters, but the story is a bit too thin in this work. Not up to the level of "Dona Flor" or "Gabriela."

Incidentally, the reference to a Sudbury Horse Classic in the trade reviews for this book are obviously for some other book, apparently an English mystery of the same name. No horses here, except in an incidental way.

Professor Shannon has a knack for perking our interest in politics through warm hearted writing. It's a fun little read even if you know nothing about Iowa politics.

The best part of this book are the two lists of Chivalrous and Romantic duties, taken from real medival litterature.
There are some nice adventures, too - the monster in one of them will be amusing for those who have played a certain horror game, and the murder mystery is a nice change of pace (though the main villain would not use those kind of methods, i think). The marrige adventure seed looks like its worth developing, too.
Still and all, this is just not a classic. It lacks the finishing touches and, worse, feeling of being part of a greater secret whole that makes a proper Pendragon game.
It is NOT the first book you should buy after the rulebook. However, if your Pendragon libary is otherwise complete, its worth a look.

I am a fan of Emily Kimbrough's gentle, arm-chair travel books. But I was disappointed in this one.

Here earliest book, "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay", coauthored with Cornelia Othis Skinner, is a perennial delight, a book to be read and reread, especially when one needs a little cheering up or laughter.

Here later books, written alone, don't have the same poignancy but are still enjoyable. Included in these are "Floating Island" [cruising on a barge in France]; "Forty Plus and Fancy Free" [touring Italy]; "Water, Water Everywhere" [Greece, and barging in England]. The set-up is the same: 6 to 8 close friends travel together, from 2 to 4 weeks. Ms. Kimbrough weaves together gentle observations on human frailities with low-key and non-critical sightseeing.

"Floating Island" is one of her later books, and lacks much of the zing of the earlier ones. The book relates the adventures of a two-week cruise on a barge on the river Shannon in the early 1970s.

I recommend Ms. Kimbrough's earlier books [particularly "Our Hearts were Young and Gay", but also "Forty Plus and Fancy Free"] more than this book, if you are interested in a gentle read.

If you are interested in serious armchair travel, you would do better with any of H. V. Morton's classics ["A Traveller in Rome"; "In the Steps of St. Paul"; etc., recently reissued in paperback].

Written in four parts, TWISTED ROADS details the kidnapping of seven-year-old Katrina and the ramifications of that crime. Sexual predator Roy Thornquist was recently released from a mental hospital before kidnapping Katrina as she leaves her school bus. Shockingly, two hospital psychologists had pronounced Thornquist rehabilitated. The combined efforts of the local police and the State Police and the Canadian police track Thornquist result in his capture.

Previously, Thornquist had been suspected in a sixteen-year-old kidnapping case in which the child's body was never found. In the second section of TWISTED ROADS, the victim of the sixteen-year-old crime is at last discovered. Her family struggles with reconciling themselves to the finality of the discovery of their child's body. In the third section, a millionaire forms the vigilante group Warmstorm to rid the world of sexual predators like Thornquist. The forth section proves the horrible consequences of vigilantism.

The four sections of TWISTED ROADS read much like four loosely linked short stories. Unfortunately, TWISTED ROADS falls victim to the flaws of self-publishing, even as it offers powerful food for thought. Ordinarily I do not mention formatting or other technical concerns with a book in my reviews because they do not reflect specifically on the author's writing ability. However, with this self-published novel the uneven margins with an inch and a half at the top of each page is a bit disconcerting, leaving the reader feeling as though the presentation was orchestrated to falsely present a longer book. In addition, unconventional editing choices, such as the use of parenthesis or dashes, may be distracting to readers.

Specifically addressing the content of the novel, the author would have benefited from a writing critique group that focused on "show don't tell" when creating characters and motivation. Much of the book is a series of long paragraphs that describe the events and people, with the unfortunately result of flat characterizations and a lack of tension. Nevertheless, the author presents a timely and deeply philosophical book that examines the conundrums of vigilantism and the flaws of its use. An interesting read, TWISTED ROADS comes recommended.

As a Citadel graduate, I was always irked that the college presumed to speak for all alumni in resisting pressures to convert to a coeducational institution during the Shannon Faulkner era. It seemed to me, and I'm sure to many other graduates, that The Citadel squandered a priceless opportunity to accept women into the Corps of Cadets in a sensible way, much as VMI and the national service academies did, and to participate responsibly in a society of equality under the law. After seeing women in childbirth, world-class female athletes in competition, and single mothers raising their children under sometimes heroic circumstances, I would put nothing beyond the capabilities of their gender. In fact, it was with a good deal of admiration that I noted Nancy Mace's graduation from The Citadel in 1999 as its first alumna. Nor, it seemed to me, could any victory against a coeducational student body be worth the public spectacle the school made of itself in the 1990s. In arguments before the Supreme Court, when told that admitting Faulkner would forever change The Citadel as we have known it, Justice Stephen Breyer replied, "So what?" The college has yet to answer that question to the satisfaction of society or some of its alumni.

Against this backdrop, I had high hopes for Catherine Manegold's book, particularly after hearing her articulate commentary on NPR this past March. I anticipated a scholarly treatment of the Faulkner case and how an institution reconciles its traditions with the demands of contemporary society. In that regard, I was as disappointed in In Glory's Shadow as I was of my alma mater's response to the greatest challenge in its recent history.

A fairly short book to begin with (317 pages excluding the index), less than a third of its pages are devoted directly to Shannon Faulkner. So, obviously, an in-depth analysis of her case is hardly possible. Manegold's would-be social/legal analysis compares poorly, for example, with Jeffrey Toobin's skillful books on the O. J. Simpson trial (The Run of His Life) or the Clinton-Lewinsky affair (A Vast Conspiracy), two recent volumes on other prominent legal cases with contemporary societal implications. Manegold is much more intent on recreating an image of The Citadel as an oppressive institution rather than presenting a balanced treatment of its recent history. She concedes The Citadel no virtues that I could find. Not one.

Instead, Manegold attaches great significance to the fact that The Citadel can trace its history to the establishment of a youth militia to suppress slave uprisings in the antebellum South. She also gravely notes that the Charleston workhouse for unruly slaves had "a strikingly similar design" to the architecture of the modern Citadel. From this distant past, she proposes that a "master-slave" relationship emerged between freshman cadets and upperclassmen at the school, and has been perpetuated at The Citadel up to current times. In reality, The Citadel's fourth-class system as well as its Honor Code owe far more to the model practiced at the national service academies, particularly West Point, than it does to what went on in the antebellum South.

Also troubling is Manegold's manipulation of language and imagery in a way that robs the book of intellectual honesty. Cadets are invariably described as "boys," and not very appealing boys at that. Instead, we read about "a lanky senior with deep scarring left behind by teenage acne," "awkward boys," "bony kneed studies in dark blue," "gawkish clusters," "a tall knob with acne," "a sea of acne." They are variously "pale and silent," "stiff and yellow," "rail thin," "foundering and frightened," or "hollow-cheeked." One could only assume that the kind of individuals The Citadel attracts are wimps who need to prove something to themselves or the world. Faculty are referred to as SCUM (the unfortunate acronym for South Carolina Unorganized Militia, their parent body). The Assistant Commandant is "white-haired and chinless." The emphasis is clearly on using these irrelevancies to create mood and tone rather than dwelling on fact. In other words, mock the appearance or superficial traits, and the reader's sympathies tend to follow. It's a formula that movie directors have been using for years.

Some of Manegold's descriptions border on the homoerotic, which I found puzzling. She notes that "knobs" (referring to freshmen cadets with buzz haircuts) "is a term signifying the tip of a man's penis". (To quote Stephen Breyer, "So what?") She describes hazing where "naked boys with shaved heads and shaking bodies (were) packed into the showers, flesh to flesh." I lived for four years in two different barracks at The Citadel, and never witnessed or heard of a scene like that.

Manegold's thesis that the inmates are running the asylum at The Citadel has some connection with the truth. When I was a cadet, lack of adult supervision in the barracks led to the occasional excesses that could be expected in any system entrusted to eighteen to twenty-one year olds. There's always someone who doesn't know where to draw the line. The idea was captured vividly in Pat Conroy's novel The Lord's of Discipline in the person of the white-trash Cadet Fox (based on a real person, by the way, who was two classes ahead of me). In fact, I found it surprising that Manegold didn't interview Conroy, probably The Citadel's best known contemporary alumnus, and one of its most iconoclastic. But, this is hardly a book that prizes scholarship. The Citadel may have its problems, but make no mistake, In Glory's Shadow is a caricature.

By comparison, Carol Barkalow's very useful 1990 book, In the Men's House, describes with far greater integrity than In Glory's Shadow how women coped in a hostile male domain. Now a major in the U. S. Army, Barkalow tells how she and other women fared as members of the West Point class of 1980, the first to include female cadets.

In Glory's Shadow tells of Shannon Faulkner, who attempted to become the first female cadet in the all-male military school of The Citadel in South Carolina. Her struggles for admittance raised questions ranging from Constitutional rights to standards of excellence and admittance for men and women. She eventually won her battle for admittance - but left the school after only a week, fearing for her family's safety. An eye-opening saga of modern prejudice and struggles.

The first time I saw the behaviour of Nazi soldiers in Schindlers List I said to myself "they remind me of the cadets in the Lords of Discipline". The Lords of Discipline is fictional account of the Citadel. A fact was confirmed after seeing pictures of Citadel cadets dressed up as Nazi's in their yearbook.

I found this to be a wonderful and engrossing book and I am frankly not surprised that most of the negative reviews come from Citadel attendies. In his books The Boo and The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy (who for years was villified by his alma matter) basically stated that most of those who attended the Citadel thought that it was paradise on earth and "God created it on the eigth day after he rested". Obviously some have problems with criticism of their school and can't handle it. The Citadel has always fascinated me and I was intrigued by this book which I actually read in record time. The book gives a fascinating account of the school, and the history of Charleston.

Yes this book is at times is harsh and does not reflect the school in a good light. But it isn't as if Ms. Minegold is the first to do so. Numerous news organizations among them 60 Minutes have done pieces on the school and their handling of the comming of women. To this date I really don't think that I have read one positive piece on the Citadel which does not make the school into a factory for bullies and sadists. Hopefully one day one graduate (hopefully female) will give a true and balanced acount of the school.

From what I have seen lately it seems as if the school has done some growing up and is truly trying to change their reputation.

Chris Offutt is a talented short story writer (KENTUCKY STRAIGHT, OUT OF THE WOODS), and The New Yorker magazine praised his 1993 memoir, THE SAME RIVER TWICE, as the "memoir of the decade." Although his latest "memoir of coming home" may be read as a sequel to his earlier memoir, it is not the same old RIVER. In NO HEROES, we follow Offutt back to the Kentucky hollows of his youth where, at age 40, he has agreed to teach creative writing at his alma mater, Morehead State University. Much of his memoir moves back and forth between the familiar places and faces of his childhood and the realities of his adult life as a husband, father, teacher and writer. "Depending on how you counted," he writes, "I'd been gone five years since my last visit; ten years since getting married and living a few months on my home hill; or twenty years since I'd hitchhiked into America. To my neighbors I'd never left, but merely been visiting away for a spell" (pp. 40-1).

Offutt's memoir not only shows that you can't go home again, but just how difficult it can be thinking you can. He discovers "home is a feeling, nothing more. Home is illusory, like love, then it disappears. Once you leave, you become a stranger" (p. 266). At one point, we find Offutt drinking beer with his old friends. "We lied about the present," he observes, "reminisced about the past, and utterly ignored the future. We repeated ourselves endlessly . . . I was reliving childhood from the other end . . . wishing time had halted twenty-five years ago at the apex of innocence" (pp. 163-4).

Like his other writing, Offutt's memoir will make you laugh, and it will make you cry. Although you may not find any heroes along the way, you will meet folks in this anecdotal memoir as interesting as any of the characters that populate Offutt's short stories. In a distracting way, Offut intertwines his own story with the Holocaust story of his in-laws, Arthur and Irene--my only real criticism of the book. In the end, I favor Offutt's earlier work more than NO HEROES.

G. Merritt

this memoir reads like a journal and seems to square many assumptions the writer went into a larger world to confirm. my own experience: leaving the south, making friends from other cultures, then coming back (for what?) line up almost perfectly with the trajectory of Mr. Offutts story. Progress has been made, work needs to be done.
Locals who have problems with this book, I have advice: go and be.
Chris is actually doing you a service...

As someone who is from, grew up in, and then escaped eastern Kentucky, this book has the resonance of truth. For those who haven't been there, eastern Kentucky is a land of strange ironies. It has breath-taking physical beauty, yet scenes of third-world squalor just around the corner. Its people can be generous, hospitable, and neighborly; but then in an instant can reveal themselves to be insular and narrow-minded. What Chris Offutt writes about in this book is his own reaction to these dichotomies. The good aspects of Kentucky -- and there are many -- lured him back "home," while the worst aspects -- and there are unfortunately many more of these -- eventually drove him away.

I think the book does an excellent job dissecting the harsh truths about the small town he grew up in, returned to, and then evenutally fled. The rural language nuances are right-on, and the people are stright out of the local newspaper. Interwoven into Offutt's own story is the tale of his in-laws, survivors of the holocaust. At first, this parallel tale is distracting and seems jarringly out of place. As one reads more of the book, however, the holocaust tale begins subtly to integrate its themes into Chris's own story. Eventually, this parallel story gives the book its crystalized truth: home is in the heart and mind -- it is not a physical place. Chris Offutt's father-in-law knew that the pre-war Poland he grew up in no longer existed. For him, home was where he made it, and there was no yearning to return to a non-existant "home" of his childhood. To Chris Offutt, home never seemed to be where he was. It took a painful trip to the physical "home" of his boyhood to realize what his father in law already knew: the home of childhood is never returned-to in a spiritual sense; it can only be re-visited in a physical sense. What Chris Offut found -- and what many ex-patriot Kentuckians already knew -- was that eastern Kentucky provides a better memory of home than it does a place to make one. "No Heroes" brings this painful truth home in an elegant, unsparing way. If you like your truth unvarnished, this is where to get it.

In reading some of the other reviews, it seems apparent that the present-day Kentuckians are upset at their portrayal in "No Heroes". This is not surprising. Their reaction is exactly what one would expect of the the people Offutt describes in his book. No mea culpas; no admissions that the education system is a joke; no recognition of the serious economic problems in the region. Their un-reflective defensiveness is exactly why I and people like me have no plans to return.