This is more than a book of maps. It lists state parks, campgrounds, places to canoe, etc. I think it works best when using another book in conjuction with it.

Don't get me wrong; it's a great book of maps, but it's a book of maps, not a guide. There is no information other than location, and you have to scour the maps for that. True of all Gazeteers.

There is a factual error in this book. W. B. Carter was the brother of Samuel P. Carter, not the cousin.

In one of the best books written to date on the subject of partisansip and guerilla warfare in Eastern Tennessee during the Civil War, Noel Fisher gives the reader a distinct feeling of what it must have been like to live in a mountainous region that suffered not only from the Civil War as a whole, but from its own civil war as well.

From my perspective, as a descendant of a Unionist veteran of the East Tennessee region, I could empathize for my ancestors as well as for other who espoused the Unionist cause. Descendants of the Confederacy will likewise feel for the deprivations their ancestors faced.

The book is remarkably balanced and makes good use of many primary resources. Perhaps its one fault lies with the fact that I was hoping for more personal experiences of the outrages that both Unionists and successionists suffered and inflicted upon one another. For this, I still have to be content with "The Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis" by Daniel Ellis and with "History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry" by Samuel W. Scott and Samuel P. Angel. Perhaps at a later date someone will write the definitive history of the Civil War in the rugged reaches of East Tennessee, but until the, this will suffice.

The traditional picture of the Civil War, all the men of the North doing battle against all the people of the South, is a wildly inaccurate one. There was considerable Confederate sympathy here and there in the North. And bands of Unionists all over the South continued armed resistance to the Confederate government from secession until the end of the war. These battles were particularly brutal in Missouri, western Virginia, and in East Tennessee.

This book examines Tennessee's civil war. It looks at East Tennessee's difference from the rest of the state, starting from the colonial period and extending to the present day. It chronicles East Tennessee's unsuccessful attempt to follow West Virginia's lead and become a separate state. It documents the Confederate government's inept and occasionally brutal handling of the situation. And it looks at the postwar period, when Unionists in Tennessee took their revenge.

Vital.

The title might make this seem like a fairly comprehensive waterfall guide for three states. It does cover waterfalls of Georgia better than any other book I know of. It's section for Alabama is relatively short. I'm less familiar with Alabama and don't know whether that means the book's coverage is sparser there, or whether there are far fewer waterfalls (or at least far fewer public-viewable ones) in Alabama. But as for Tennessee, the book's title is a bit mislesding to the extent that it would seem to claim general coverage for waterfalls in that state. There are whole good-sized waterfall-rich portions of Tennessee that are completely left out. The north part of the Cumberland Plateau is one part left out and the other is the northern district of Cherokee National Forest. Those areas are more or less as waterfall-rich as their more southerly counterparts that are covered in the book. Also omitted from this book is the Tennessee portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but another book by the same author does cover waterfalls of that park. Another drawback of this book is that it has no index. But the upside is that, in the areas it does cover this book provides good directions to the waterfalls in question and maps in most cases. The maps show contour lines, which makes the trails easier to follow for those who know something about reading topographig maps. For the falls it does cover, it is therefore a good guide. It also has in the middle a section of beautiful photographs, most of them in color. Possibly it is the most comprehensive waterfall guide for Georgia, and I wouldn't konw about Alabama. But as for Tennnessee, there is a much more complete waterfall guide that covers all parts of that state that have waterfalls, and that is WATERFALLS OF TENNESSEE by Gregory Plumb.

The title might make this seem like a fairly comprehensive waterfall guide for three states. It does cover waterfalls of Georgia better than any other book I know of. It's section for Alabama is relatively short. I'm less familiar with Alabama and don't know whether that means the book's coverage is sparser there, or whether there are far fewer waterfalls (or at least far fewer public-viewable ones) in Alabama. But as for Tennessee, the book's title is a bit mislesding to the extent that it would seem to claim general coverage for waterfalls in that state. There are whole good-sized waterfall-rich portions of Tennessee that are completely left out. The north part of the Cumberland Plateau is one part left out and the other is the northern district of Cherokee National Forest. Those areas are more or less as waterfall-rich as their more southerly counterparts that are covered in the book. Also omitted from this book is the Tennessee portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but another book by the same author does cover waterfalls of that park. Another drawback of this book is that it has no index. But the upside is that, in the areas it does cover this book provides good directions to the waterfalls in question and maps in most cases. The maps show contour lines, which makes the trails easier to follow for those who know something about reading topographig maps. For the falls it does cover, it is therefore a good guide. It also has in the middle a section of beautiful photographs, most of them in color. Possibly it is the most comprehensive waterfall guide for Georgia, and I wouldn't konw about Alabama. But as for Tennnessee, there is a much more complete waterfall guide that covers all parts of that state that have waterfalls, and that is WATERFALLS OF TENNESSEE by Gregory Plumb.

The book's table of contents serves as the index: all 125 waterfalls are listed. At $9.95 this book is an exceptional value (8 cents per waterfall).

This is not in the same league as McCarthy's later masterpieces. The prose is unnecessarily difficult. The writing is often murky, and it is difficult sometimes to tell exactly what is happening. But the story is original, and it is worth reading if you are a McCarthy fan. This is an early work, and as such it is a fascinating look at genius in its developmental stage.

I am a big William Faulkner fan and after reading the great four (Absalom.., As I Lay Dying, Light In August, and The Sound...) tried All the Pretty Horses a few years ago. Everyone said it was great so like a good prisoner of the "you must read this syndrone", I started it. I found it incredibly beautiful in terms of prose style and language but after 100 or so pages I did not really care about the characters. I thought it was my fault and not McCarthy's so I left it and decided that I would reapproach it later on. It is now three years later and I figured I would read his first book before I started the now completed Border trilogy.

This is a tremendously artful and in many ways wonderful book. Nobody since Faulkner has as dense and intense a prose style. You must have an unabridged dictionary beside you to really get everything he gives you. The reason I write this review is for those who want a deep, meaningful book and are thinking of reading this like I was. If you are such a person and do not have alot of time on your hands, I would suggest going elsewhere for one reason only. Another Amazon reader talked about the plot of this novel as being extraordinarily inconsequential. I think that this is McCarthy's point. It is a story about the land and people that personify independance. It is about an age of rural Southern life that no longer exists. It is not supposed to tie it's points up in ribbons and to keep you passionately turning pages unless your there for the art of it (of which there is a considerable amount).

My frustration was that when I finished this, I got it and appreciated it but was not particularly moved in any way. I read the last three chapters again to see if I was an idiot or if this was just an erudite, muted text. I came out of it thinking that that's exactly what it was. If you haven't read the four big Faulkner's or All the Pretty Horses, start there, this is a book written by a master but it left me too lukewarm to give it more than three stars.

Having read all of McCarthy's other books already, I came into this knowing what to expect as far a style and content. And I was not disappointed. McCarthy can better develop a character in two sentences than most authors can in two chapters. The vivid description of the mountains, the people, and their culture puts the reader right there in the story. These harsh, terse, and somehow always beautiful images will remain in my mind for a long, long time. I found this story a little more abstract than most of McCarthy's other works, yet I was able to see his message in the end. Required reading for any McCarthy fan.

This is a serious book, and well written, yet it fails to move me. It lacks an intelligence that cares about what is going on, if not the narrator, then the narrator's creator. Marius's narrator is such a dull, immature, self-centered character that it is difficult to get interested in what happens to him. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about what happens in his own life. He doesn't care about his mother and sister in Greece. He just wants to sit in his little room daydreaming about his college chums.

At one point, the older version of Paul reflects, "I am angry at the stupid innocence of the young man I was then, which makes me in this later time want to slap him across the face and shout at him and tell him to grow up, to be different, to be somebody else." Indeed, but this doesn't happen until page 373. Throughout the entire first part of the book, Marius presents Paul's mumbling "I do not want to talk about it" stance as heroic. It is difficult to understand why everyone in this Tennessee town courts this silent foreigner. Paul will say ponderous things like, "After he [Bernal] died, I never did mathematics again." (Page 155) Well, why not? What has Bernal's death got to do with Paul doing mathematics? Are we supposed to think that Paul is sacrificing his supposedly great talent as some kind of offering to Bernal? Actually, the statement is not true. Paul goes to work as a chemist in which capacity he must use mathematics to some extent. Very few people continue to do theoretical math once they are out of college. It is just a silly adolescent sort of thing to say. But you do not get enough acknowledgement from Paul the elder, sitting at his kitchen table years later, that this is a very foolish young man.

On the other hand, Marius does present a very complex story coherently. I only question his narrative strategy. The narrator is such a stumbling block it is surprising that Marius didn't see the limitations of such a narrow approach to his subject. For instance, Marius intends to address the bigotry faced by immigrants to small American towns after the War. These Tennessee people hold themselves above the descendants of Virgil and Homer, and yet cannot even tell a Greek from a Belgian! That circumstance could have been used more effectively, however, if Paul were just a little more Greek. Why have him give up his bazooka? That was one of the few interesting things about him. Or, the fact that he has taken this rather menial job would mean more to the reader if, at the same time, he were thinking of problems in theoretical mathematics.

The parts of Marius's book that I enjoyed were those where Paul is confronting these odd Tennesseans and trying to figure out the rules of this particular game. If we had a Greek mathematician trying to fit into a small town in Tennessee at the turn of the century, that would have been an interesting book. I could not understand at all the fixation on Bernal and Guy. Maybe Marius intended these characters to be "symbols of the past" or something equally abstract and silly, but they just don't work. I think here the problem is that we know all too well these feelings of nostalgia for carefree days of drinking beer in the student union. To raise this banal itch to such level of personal agony seems a bit bathetic.

Sensitively portraying the aftereffects of World War I on the people of Bourbonville, Tennessee, this robust, dramatic novel is a triumphant celebration of the power of writing to create whole worlds and then lead the reader in exploring them. Spanning the years from 1890 - 1930, the novel moves back and forth in time, leisurely building detail upon detail until an entire community, several generations of its important families, its important businesses, and its religious and social organizations spring to life, tied together, as small communities often are, by custom, gossip, and a shared past, not all of it pretty. As the war wreaks its changes on the fabric of society, the author explores life's big themes--what makes life meaningful, how we connect with each other, how we deal with death of loved ones, and how we face the future--adding an extra dimension through the symbolism of Greek legends, especially that of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun.

Main character Paul Alexander (formerly Kephalopoulos), a Greek by birth and Belgian by education and social preference, arrives in Bourbonville, not fully recovered from a head wound received during the early days of the war. Through Paul, an outsider who speaks to the ghosts of his two best friends, the reader comes to know a variety of local characters--a grassroots industrialist who runs the car works foundry for the local railroad, a leading family whose members realize that their agrarian way of life is ending, a delightful moonshiner, the last of the family doctors who were truly part of the family, a brilliant black man whose technical achievements as a member of the French armed forces gave him a taste of life denied him in postwar Tennessee, and various members of Paul's own family back in Greece.

Weaving together such diverse topics as the Spanish American War and the battle for Cuba, the early anti-war movement, the growth of railroads and industry, the early women's movement, the Ku Klux Klan (easily the most dramatic part of the book), strikes and the labor movement, Bolshevism, evangelical frenzy, and the interest in foreign travel, the novel is an expansive treatment of some of the early influences on 20th century thinking, and, as such, is fascinating. Its comprehensive thematic development is equally striking. It is somewhat less successful in its characterizations, which are not always consistent, and in its melodrama, which while emotionally seductive, tend to divide the book into separate and somewhat disconnected units. Still, for those who enjoy big books which offer a treatment of equally big ideas, this is a captivating novel, great fun to read.

This is one of the finest books I have read in some time. The book traces the life of Paul Alexander, a Greek by birth who fought as a member of the Belgian army during World War I. Wounded during the war, he comes to America and obtains employment as a chemist for a railroad car manufacturer in the small town of Bourbonville, Tennessee. In Bourbonville, he progresses from being the town curiousity to being a friend, father, business leader and farmer as he mentally recovers from his shattering war experiences. Instead of telling the story in a strictly linear fashion, Marius flips effortlessly back and forth from Paul's days as a university student in Belgium and his post-war life in Bourbonville. Marius is subtle enough to tell the reader just enough background to explain Paul's actions and emotions. We learn of Paul's complex family history, his friendships with Guy and Bernal, two university students, and of his first love, an older woman employed as a dressmaker. What we are not told much of are the horrors of his wartime experience, other than that he watched all his university friends die one by one in combat, and that he himself was badly wounded at Antwerp. Much of the book is a description of how he comes to terms with his wartime experiences, having watched the disintegration of all that was familiar to him. When we first meet Paul, he dwells in the past because he cannot conceive of a future. The ghosts of Guy and Bernal follow him in his post war experiences, both comforting him and haunting him at times. In the end, when he has internally resolved the conflicts of his early family troubles and his wartime memories, and truly comes to appreciate his life in the present tense, Guy and Bernal bid him farewell. The astonishing thing about this book his how well it ties together the threads of many different plot lines and themes. This book is as much about life in the South at the beginning of the century as it is about the ravages of war. The themes of racial tension, religion, xenophobia, intolerance in its many forms and the effect of industrial development in the South are all explored and weaved together seamlessly. The characters are beautifully developed and their stories told with a true Southern flourish. This is a moving and powerful book.

I bought two books for my trip to the Smokies. This book and Johnny Molloy's "Day and Overnight Hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park" I tried to use both books, but I consistently returned to Molloys. The Albrights book would be all right to use if you wanted to sit down and read it from cover to cover, or at least a section of the park you want to explore. It is nearly impossible to flip through and find any specific trail. Beside this, their tone especially in the introduction put me off from this book. I think its designed to encourage anyone to try hiking, which is good, but for someone that has hiked for years, it treats me, the reader, as a simpleton, who has never stepped off the pavement in my life. This book is useful, but not as useful or concise as Molloy's guidebook.

Forty-two walks are detailed in this guide to hiking the Great Smoky Mountains. Numerous other walks are briefly listed at the end of each chapter. Hikes are listed geographically in 11 areas, with two to six hikes per area.

The description for each hike includes the distance, difficulty (easy, moderate or strenuous), elevation (including elevation changes), location of the trailhead, and a description of the walk itself. The descriptions are sometimes rather wordy, but do often include interesting historical or natural information. A trail map is included for most of the walks. The appendix includes a thorough bird list.

We found many very interesting walks in this book. Some of the walks listed are the more popular ones, but there are enough of the infrequently visited trails for those who don't want a lot of company on their excursions.

As the book mentions, it frequently rains in the Smokys. We found ourselves in the rain on several of our walks. However, the book itself doesn't take getting damp as well as I'd like. Yet, even though it's been wet several times, the our copy is still very usable.

Before getting to details about the book, let me first say that this book does not describe 50 rugged mountain hikes as the title "Tennessee Mountains" would suggest. Rather, it describes 50 hikes of various difficulty in eastern Tennessee (i.e. points south and east of Cookeville). This region includes Big South Fork, Fall Creek Falls, Great Smoky Mountains, and Cherokee National Forest.

Hikes range in distance from 0.5 mile to 11.2 miles, with the average being around 6. Each hike contains excellent directions to the trailhead, always starting from an easy-to-find town. Each hike has a trail map, usually taken from a USGS topographic map. The maps are therefore excellent. As in most of the newer 50 hikes books, there is a summary table in the front of the book that allows you to find a particular hike of interest easily. The author's writing style is pleasant and friendly but well-informed. She brings a lot of practical, "first-hand" knowledge to the table with her writing.

All of the ingredients for a great trail guide are present, but I have to say that rather often I felt underwhelmed after reading about a hike. What I mean is, based on the trail description, I did not feel excited about hiking the trail myself (although I am an avid hiker who has personally hiked a few of them). This result may be due to poor trail selection (there are hundreds of trails in eastern Tennessee, and Doris had to choose just 50) or a poor job of "selling" the hike. Great trail guides create interest in hiking by either describing great trails or making the reader think they are describing great trails, but this guide does not do either one on a consistent basis.

In summary, I would recommend this work to people who want information on trails in eastern Tennessee. This book makes for an excellent source of information, but disappoints as a source of reading for the reason mentioned above. Therefore, this is a very good guide that just misses being great.

Well organized reference. Detailed and accurate information. Includes "tourist traps" to avoid.

expecially for anyone in the East Tennessee area about the history of the area.

This book was a life-saver for a woman who married a man used to country cooking! The author grew up about half a mile from where we live and his memories of how life used to be around here are fascinating. The book is full of humor and, of course, plenty of wonderful country recipes (I didn't even know there was such a thing as wilted lettuce until I met my husband's family!) Great read for historical value even if the recipes aren't what you are looking for.