Burke Davis is my grandfather on my mom's side. My mom, Angela Davis-Gardner, has written two books, "Felice" and "Forms of Shelter". Burke Davis has written 50 or more. I'm 14 now, but when I was about 7 I read Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers. I loved it! I have all of his books and this is the best children's one. I recommend this to see about another side of Abraham Lincoln

This book was really amazing. It kept you on your toes and really put you in the character's place. I often found myself getting anxious,angry or sad in many parts of the book. My mom picked it up thinking of just reading a couple of pages to check what I was reading and ended up staying up until 3 in the morning reading it. Before you start this book make sure you don't have anything big happening for hours because you won't put it down. If you enjoy thinking about what it would be like to live on the other side of the law this is definitely the book for you. -Q

"Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road" by Meridel Le Sueur is, as the subtitle indicates, "A Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother." Nancy Hanks died when Lincoln was a child living in the wilderness of Indiana. Relatively little is known of Lincoln's family: there is one photograph of his step-mother taken after he was assassinated and another that may or may not be of his father, while Nancy Hanks lies buried in a long forgotten grave somewhere in Indiana. This tale has a real feel for life in the wilderness and there is a poignancy to it as Le Sueur crafts the story of a woman who died young and who could never have imagined that she was setting her little boy on the path to greatness by teaching him to read, write and cipher.

The story is told as something of an argument between the narrator's grandmother and Dennis Hanks, Nancy's cousin. Dennis might have been blood kin, but when Abraham Lincoln was born he inspected the baby and announced he would never amount to much; consequently, anything he has to say on the matter of the life of Nancy Hanks is inherently suspect. It is the grandmother who has always been outraged by the fact that while tales area always told about famous men "no one sings of the women." The Lincolns are their kin are folk that the populist and worker groups Le Sueur wrote about in the 1930's could have understood.

This story is not as powerful as Le Sueur's "The River Road: A Story of Abraham Lincoln," but it is not intended to be. This is a "the strange song of the mother of Abraham Lincoln, the young, the deathless Nancy Hanks"; the other tale tells of the crucible of Lincoln's journey down the Mississippi on a raft to New Orleans. This volume in Le Sueur's Wilderness series was originally published in 1949 and has been reprinted by Holy Cow! Press with 1990 illustrations by Dina Redman. Final note: the photograph of Le Sueur by Judy Olausen on the back cover is one of the more impressive pictures of an author I have seen.

A very informative book about genetics and the issues they bring up. I definitely recommend it!

genera

Larry Trapp hated all minorities, women, and committed his life to the cause of "white supremacy". However, as committed as he was, the work of one man, a Jewish cantor and his wife, broke through the barriers of hate, dissolving them. The author is masterful, and does a good job of describing how Trapp became so filled with rage - parents who beat him, and ravaged by a disease, diabetes, which ultimately killed him. Trapp told the cantor that he simply did not know how to change - and the cantor and his family took him into their lives. This story cannot help but touch everyone who reads it. I read the book twice, and wiped twice. It demonstrates that even the most evil-filled person may turn himself around. Trapp even went to the FBI and revealed all he knew about hate groups; he traveled to every youth group he knew, begging them not to join these groups. A unique, well-written book you won't forget.

Passage Through Armageddon offers a superb overview of the decline of Tsarist Russia and the early stages of the Bolshevik Revolution. The author, a professor at Northern Illinois University, is an acknowledged expert on this period of Russian history and he uses his mastery of the subject to paint this period in riveting detail. Passage Through Armageddon is well written and thoroughly researched but given the plethora of obscure Russian characters, it is not for the faint of heart or general reader. Readers should also note that this author tone differs from other accounts in its unflattering portrayals of the Tsar and his enemies. Overall, this book substantially enhances our knowledge of Russia's path through war and revolution in 1914-1918.

Passage Through Armageddon consists of 18 chapters divided into five parts; each part covers one year. An extensive section of footnotes and bibliography demonstrate that the author has delved deeply into Russian archival sources. There are only five maps: the 1914 East Prussian Campaign, the 1914 Galician Campaign, the 1915 Polish front, the 1916 Brusilov Offensive and Petrograd. Unfortunately, these maps are not very informative since they only display terrain and front-line traces, not strategic movements or battles. A section of 32 interesting photos complement the text.

About two-thirds of the book deals with Russia's entry into the First Word War and the role of Tsar Nicholas II in leading his country to disaster. Readers familiar with Nicholas II from Robert K. Massie's 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra will find a totally different portrayal of the Romanov couple in these pages. In Massie's sympathetic account, Nicholas was portrayed as a doting father and husband who, unfortunately, was unlucky as CEO of the Russian Empire. Lincoln wastes no ink on the tsar's family life but instead methodically lays out in detail the gross incompetence and arrogance of the last tsar. In particular, Nicholas had an uncanny ability to put incompetent men like Sukhomlinov, Ianushkevich, Bezobrazov and Sturmer in key positions where they could do the most harm. Good, honest men were discarded since they tended to voice unpleasant truths about Russia's real conditions - the tsar preferred "yes" men. Aleksandra's relationship with Rasputin - a "bogus holy man" in Lincoln's words - was critical since she coerced Nicholas into hiring and firing ministers and generals based upon the recommendations of that illiterate con man. At STAVKA headquarters, Nicholas assumed the title of supreme commander but shunned real leadership responsibilities, preferring to spend his days leisurely reading silly books or playing cards while his troops were losing battle after battle. Furthermore, Nicholas' selection of incompetent civil administrators led to a major urban food shortage amidst bumper wheat crops in rural areas. Any remaining sympathy for Nicholas is demolished by Lincoln's telling passage concerning the tsar's reaction to reports of unrest caused by hunger in the capital in 1917. After a loyal minister warned that, "the final hour is beginning to strike," and that the tsar must act, Nicholas replied that, "I can't waste time on this. I already know everything that I need to know." By the time that Nicholas abdicates in March 1917, the reader will be cheering.

Lincoln's account of Russia in the First World War is interesting and detailed. In particular, he notes that "the fall's [1914] schizophrenic mixture of victories and defeats" was odd, since Russia inflicted defeats on the Austrians and Turks, but was smashed by the Germans. The Russian army which started the war short of artillery and ammunition, was further handicapped by the foolish decision to reinforce the elderly border fortifications with large quantities of these materials - and then to abandon these forts with hardly a fight. Russia certainly suffered its share of defeats in the war, particularly Tannenberg, Gorlice-Tarnow and the Great Retreat across Poland; by the end of 1915 Russia appeared to be on the verge of defeat. Yet Lincoln demonstrates that Russia's defeat was not inevitable. Despite the tsar's moronic behavior, some good men did emerge. Men like Alekseev, Brusilov and Polivanov rebuilt the Russian armies with help from the Allies. In 1916, a revitalized Russian army under Brusilov launched the most successful Russian offensive of the war and almost took Austria out of the war, but for the inability of Nicholas to exploit success.

The last third of the book covers the revolutionary period after the fall of the tsar and the major characters are Kerenski, Kornilov, Trotsky and Lenin. Kerenski, the charismatic leader of the Provisional Government was a talker, not a doer and he mistakenly thought that the main threat to his regime came from the right, not the left. Kornilov, the military hero who sought only to restore order in the army, fell victim to a bizarre plot and was arrested by a suspicious Kerenski; however the "success" against an imagined right-wing army plot only made it easier for Lenin's Bolsheviks to overthrow the regime which now lacked an effective army. The Bolshevik Coup of November 1917 is presented as a comic-opera affair, with little fighting but much confusion. Instead of the heroic Lenin addressing grateful crowds, we see a furtive Lenin sneaking around Petrograd wearing a wig to avoid arrest but who is then barred entry into Bolshevik headquarters because he is not recognized. Trotsky is acknowledged as the ramrod of the Revolution itself, but as a naïve revolutionary who failed to impress the Germans at the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations. Indeed, Trotsky's "no peace, no war" formula prompted further German aggression and forced the Bolsheviks to sue for a humiliating armistice. The book ends with Russia's exit from the First World War and the beginning of the Civil War, a subject which the author covers in his next book, Red Victory.

is about the oppression in the different country and killing for one another.

I like this book because it teaches you how to make pirate stuff and it tells you what pirates were really like. It has lots of good pictures of their weapons, maps, flags and clothes. It also describes the different types of pirates. Errol Smith, 8, Montague,NJ

Yarr, and you can become a pirate too! I have been a degenerate menace to civilized society ever since.

This is the coolest book, every rambunctiously imaginative person should check it out.

And some of those imaginative people should write further books on becoming an intergalactic hero, knight, time traveller, robot, cowperson, musketeer, flapper, gangster, bohemian, etcetera, with similar hands on projects that result in cool props...