This comprehensive work is certainly not light reading, but it offers a degree of detail about the history of Mobile that is unavailable in other histories of the area. The author is careful to cite original documents, where available, to verify the information. The reader is reassured of the authoratative nature of the work. It is particularly helpful in substantiating information in less extensive narratives.

It took two readings of this book for me to appreciate its value. Only the first half deals with a trek with Kit Carson. I expected more. Carson plays an important, but secondary, role in the story as a whole. The authors descriptions of New Mexico, Santa Fe, and the trail to Independence in 1868, after parting with Carson, acts as a supplemental piece to 'Wah to Yah' and other first person accounts of earlier Sante Fe Trail tales. His accounts of New Mexican priests is a perfect preface to Paul Horgan's 'Lamy of Santa Fe,' first Archbishop of Sante Fe, who was French. The author's style is flowery but vividly informative. It was better the second time around in my opinion, but worth the trip.

This is a very good overview of some of the early 'trespassers' and their trips to Tibet from the perspective of the author who has been there during current times. It is a good chance to understand some of their fascination, wishes and dreams and to see how they compare to our own wish for a Shangri-la. This is especially true as the author had access to the actual diary of one of the people.

The pictures by the author's daughter are done with great charm and help convey the wonderful culture that has been nearly destroyed by Chinese occupation. This book should definitely be read.

Portrait of an Artist With Twenty Six Horses is an excellent read if you enjoy non-traditional, non-linear fiction. There is something happening linearly in the book - a young man is dying and coming to grips with his death - but within that loose framework Eastlake ranges far and wide, among various episodes and incidents in the man's short life. Eastlake is digging for the poetic, subjective meaning of the episodes, what they were to the man as they unfolded but which he couldn't have known at the time. It is a young man understanding for the first time that he did not understand, which makes his accounts sad, beautiful and funny. The book is funny throughout, even as the man gets closer to death, and Eastlake manages to sustain both the humour and the unfolding death without one undercutting the other. He manages to intertwine them without cliche or any such "heart-warming" blunting of death. Beautiful book. Excellent dialogue. Set on the New Mexican portion of the Navajo Reservation.

Potsherds, it seems, are as important to archeologists as bones to anthropologists. They both last. They both tell part of the human story. Somewhat in the tradition of Osa Johnson's famous chronicle, *I Married Adventure* of the previous generation, Florence Lister takes the reader along with her family through five continents and many years in search of ceramics, ancient and colonial.

Florence and her husband Bob, both archeologists, with their two young sons in tow, pursued pothunting in such diverse places as Glen Canyon in the American Southwest before it was inundated by Lake Powell and the Aswan High Dam area in Africa before it also went underwater. From the 1940s to the 1990s, they did a great deal of contract archeology, i.e. investigating areas such as dams, highways, pipelines and the like that contain historical debris such as potsherds, bones, tools and tiles before they are swept away by modern civilization. The Listers contributed considerably to the body of knowledge about connections between pueblo Indians of the American Southwest and those of Mexico and Mesoamerica as well as trade routes that brought colonial pottery from Spain and Italy to the Americas. The hard science is made more lively and interesting by the personal details.

For example, the JFK assassination occurred when the family was in Wadi Halfa in Africa. Their Nubian servants insisted on sending a cable of condolences to Mrs. Kennedy, who had played an active role in the "Save the Monuments of Nubia" campaign. Near Escalante in Utah, they uncovered more evidence about the disappearance of Everett Ruess. They discovered dishes Cortez used and roofing erected by Columbus' party. They found Genoese pots in Spanish ports, investigated porcelain in Japan (at the "climbing kilns"), T'ang pottery in China, amphorae in Greece and, like detectives, discovered old paintings depicting pottery that had found its way from Seville in Spain to the Americas.

This book sort of grows on you. At the beginning, the language is a bit stilted and self-conscious, but after the author gets into the groove and finds her zone, you begin to participate in the exciting life the family led (not without some danger; they got mugged in Jamaica and got into another tight spot in Morocco).

If you're at all interested in archeology (incidentally, the American spelling is "archeology" and the British is "archaeology") you'll relish this account and remember both scientific conclusions and personal anecdotes. If you're not at all interested in the subject, you won't even be reading this review anyway. But for the former group of people, it's a good, informative, and exciting read.

Very readable book about the Texas War of Independence with Mexico. Although a fictional book, it accurately shows the real issues in the Texas War. The "heros" of the Texas Revolution such as Fannin and Bowie were shown to be men who made serious mistakes in the war. Some of the issues surrounding the "war" such as slavery were documented. While I have read several books on Texas History, this book brings out new information and facts through the fictional setting. The horror of Goliad was accurately protrayed in this book. This is truly a book that is hard to put down once it has been started. There are touches of Jean Auel in the author's writing style. It is obviously a well researched book that even documents in detail the early use of "natural" medicines

This book is a must for any true Red Raider! While I wasn't around when Tech was admitted to the SWC, I know what a huge impact it had for all of the athletic programs. The great thing about this book is that it chronicles not just the football or basketbal teams, but all of the athletes and teams in a variety of sports. If good photos and memories are what you are after, this is the book for you.

Although the battles of the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater garner most of the historical interest, the battles in the West were arguably more significant. In "The Road to Shiloh: Early Battles in the West," David Nevin and the Editors of Time-Life Books cover General Ulysses Grant's campaign in Tennessee in 1861-62 in five chapters: (1) The Struggle for Missouri covers the Battle of Wilson's Creek that proved pivotal for the control of this border state; (2) The Go-ahead General details the path by which Grant came to command the Union Army in the West (including that infamous photo of Grant with a fully cultivated square-cut beard); (3) Clash at Fort Donelson relates how Grant followed up his successfully attack on Fort Henry with an attack that would give the Federals control of the Cumberland River; (4) The Devil's Own Day covers the first day of the Battle of Shiloh, in which the Union army was almost routed during one of the bloodiest days of the war; this chapter includes Theophile Poilpot's 400 foot long panoramic painting of the battle for the Hornet's Nest; and (5) An Incomplete Victory tells how Grant and Sherman defeated Albert Sidney Johnston's Confederate Army on the second day of the battle, suggesting that even if a tourniquet had saved Johnston's life, the battle would still have been lost.

Like all of the volumes in the Time-Life Civil War series, "The Road to Shiloh" provides dozens of contemporary illustrations, photographs, paintings, and the like. My one complaint is that if you read these volumes a lot, and it is hard not to, they tend to fall apart. The cover ends up being a nice gray folder. This was rather unfortunate because I brought this particular volume with me when I visited the Shiloh battlefield. The rest of Grant's Western Campaign including the siege of Vicksburg is covered in the "War on the Mississippi" volume of the Time-Life Civil War series.

While not as famous as Lewis and Clark, Henry Schoolcraft conducted the first of his many expenditions with similar care and attention to detail. One needs to excuse some of the poetic descriptions. The book gives an excellent insight into the very early development of the region shortly after the Voyage of Discovery.

The author has considerable personal research with Schoolcraft's travels as a college professor leading field trips on portions of the expedition. The most helpful is the author's appendix which keys the days of travel to current day locations.

For anyone studying the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks, this is a must-have. It provides the only contemporary vision of this part of the United States prior to the rapid development in the years prior to the Civil War.

Beautiful Photography and top level info make this an excellent guide to begin planning of your trips to the national parks of the southwest.