Richard Irving Dodge was the epitome of the American gentleman upon the voyage of the Great Plains which he so deeply loved for it's liberty and infinite hunting.
The Colonel was well respected by both his superiors and the locals who he dealt with.
In this book, he reveals wonderful insights to both the culture, brutality and dealings with the plains Indians through fact, interaction and experience.
The Indian is dealt with as he should be with truthfulness.
While due to the higher standards of the day, the more graphic details of what Indians did in torturing captives is refered to as "outrages". Dodge does credit in his honesty.

the versiion i own was published in 1883,, I have read this book several times and am now reading it to my grandchildren

Colonel Richard Dodge's fascinating and probing work on American Indians, their habits, customs, and history, with a deeply moving final chapter on the "outlook" for the Indians - all written by a man who experienced life with the Indians, firsthand, during the days of the Santa Fe Trail. Interesting. Very educational.

I have not yet read this book, though I have high expectations since Monkey is one of my favorite literary characters. This is not a rating, but a warning: DO NOT READ THE INTRODUCTION. The inconsiderate translator gives away essential information -- spoilers, in other words. Argh! I hate that. I hope I can save other potential readers some frustration.

The latest addition to the outstanding "Michigan Classics in Chinese Studies" series, Tung Yueh's The Tower Of Myriad Mirrors, is ably translated into English for a western readership by Shuen-fu Lin and Larry J. Schulz. Tung Yueh (1620-1686) provides an illuminating example of Chinese literature written to both entertain and enlighten with its mythological cast of characters. This precursor to the modern novel will prove especially fascinating and informative for students and scholars of Chinese fiction as a specialized literary form.

Almost four hundred years before movies like "The Sixth Sense" shocked audiences with surprise endings, Tung Yueh's "Tower of Myriad Mirrors" was blowing away mid 17th century China with its own original brand of psyche-out plot twists. "Tower" was a gripping tale to its originally intended audience, and the story has stood the test of time and is read to this day due to its fantastic imagery and imaginative method of imparting Buddhist theory.

I read "Tower of Myriad Mirrors" for a class in traditional Chinese literature and enjoyed it thoroughly. I have an avid interest in traditional and contemporary Chinese literature, but a serious background in this genre is not necessary to understand and enjoy "Tower..." All that is needed is good concentration and patience, and perhaps a quick online look at background information on Mahayana Buddhism. The story may appear confusing and disjointed at times, but if you persevere, you will find that everything comes together beautifully in the last chapter. Keep in mind that it is imperative to read the forward - it provides the necessary orientation needed to understand the story.

"Tower's" protagonist, a somewhat wayward monk named Monkey (who has, in fact, the outward appearance of an ape) embarks on a fantastical journey in search ways to help his master reach India, where they are to procure Buddhist scriptures to bring back to China. Tung Yueh wrote this 16-chapter novella (most Chinese novels are in excess of 100 chapters) as a supplement to the famous narrative "Journey to the West" as a way to explore the psyche of the Monkey character. It is elegantly written and conjures imagry that is beautiful and exotic as well as brutal and violent.

Written in 1640, "Tower..." is an excellent example of the traditional vernacular stories that were widely used to relate the messages of Buddhism to the masses. To hold the attention and stay in the memory of common Chinese, the stories often involve fantastic imagery, scores of monsters and evil beings, beautiful women, and impossible feats of magic - all of which are evidenced in "Tower..." The Buddhist message of "Tower" is that one must strive to overcome the demons of desire within oneself - and this message is delivered by means of a fascinating journey through a dream world conjured up Monkey's mind.

While "Tower of Myriad Mirrors" is not an easy read, it is a rewarding one. This edition is well translated and provides many helpful footnotes that will enable readers not well-versed in the background of Chinese vernacular religious stories or Buddhism to understand. Approach it with an open mind and perhaps a willingness to look up some information on Mahayana Buddhism, and you won't be disappointed.

I'm guessing Nick Jans probably lives like he writes. There's nothing extraneous here. Every word has a purpose. Unfortunately, the message it conveys is one of loss. The wilderness is changing, disappearing, even in the remote areas of the world. Regardless of the message, this book is a beauty. The photography is vibrant, the prose compelling, and the sentiment touching. The wilderness couldn't have found a better voice.

This is a potent book; just 164 pages but every photo is jaw-dropping and not a word is wasted. Author is a life-long Alaskan and in most essays he is reflecting on Alaska and things Alaskan. Humorous, touching and stimulating in many other ways. Well worth your $$.

Nick Jans has done it again -- this time with pictures! Mr. Jans' previous compilations of essays ("The Last Light Breaking" and "A Place Beyond"), as well as his Alaska Magazine articles, introduced readers to his great love and appreciation of the Alaskan arctic and its inhabitants. In "Tracks of the Unseen," Mr. Jans also includes his own photographs, which ideally complement his essays. There is some content overlap with his essays in "Alaska" (photographs by Art Wolfe), but this is a more integral pairing of the essays and photos. This is a lovely book, with Mr. Jans' graceful writing continuing to transport readers to the great north.

My husband and I recently made a trip out west and used this book as our guide to follow the Oregon Trail. It was excellent! Her directions were right on the money and the book was easy to read and follow. She breaks the trip down to a day by day driving guide which was great so we knew how much time to plan. I would encourage visiting the 'out of way' options she offers. She also offers several driving options depending on your time allowance. A must have for an Oregon Trail trip!

Julie's book is very useful in traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail. Highly informative and illustrated, it includes specific as well as local information about the various sites included in the book. Well worth having and using.

A trip to the Grand Tetons this year was greatly enhanced by this book, which I came upon with a search on Amazon.com. We used it to plan a car trip from Portland and we followed the Oregon Trail home from southern Wyoming. The maps were wonderful and the information accurate. We even golfed 9 holes at the Soda Springs municipal golf course to see the swales on the 8th hole, in addition to many other stops of intetest!

Brunes has written a personable, informative account of traveling in the South Pacific useful to any traveler. The book tells you exactly what to expect as an independent traveler, how to find the wonderful local places to stay, and how to settle into the life style of the place. She writes in the uneffected style of a friend, rather than a travel writer, so you feel right at her elbow sharing the experience. She gives information, mood, inflection of the places and people that you won't find in a guide book. Whether your an on-the-road traveler or an arm-chair traveler, this book is a good read.

This is more than just a travel book. Ms. Brunes digs deep into the culture of the So. Pacific Islands. She does an excellent job of blending people, culture and adventure all while informing the reader of the information necessary to "get around". To stop here would be to do an injustice. Ms. Brunes.
shows fierce determination and courage, a grandmother travelling alone, with little resources but a lot of guts. She is truely an inspiration!

Evangeline Brunes takes us to lands which most of us are not privileged to travel.

As we admire her courage to travel alone to far-off places in the South Pacific, we also share vicariously in her wonderful experiences.

She is an inspiration to all women, but particularly to those with limited incomes, determination, and self-confidence. I hope she will write another book!

Love this cookbook. Recipes are from the Caribbean, as well as a number of Florida's best restaurants. I use this book all the time and have for years. It's fun!

I have a libary of cookbooks and "Tropic Cooking" is the one I constantly use.

This is one of the best, easy-to-follow cookbooks and guides on how to cook lowfat, delicious Caribbean foods. I was the "hit" of many dinner events with family and guests using this great guide to unique and delicious recipes. I recommend "Tropic Cooking" by Joyce LaFray for the experienced chef or the novice cook who's looking for an easy to follow, hard to find cook book to yummy Island dining.

Uncle Sam and Old Glory is an invaluable resource for the classroom teacher who wants to turn her students on to American History. Each symbol is explained in detail in an easy to read and interesting manner. Likewise, each symbol is accompanied by beautifully detailed woodcut illustrations. Not only did my fifth graders find Uncle Sam and Old Glory to be informative and interesting; but, it served as a springboard to further reading and research. I highly recommend that Uncle Sam and Old Glory be included in every classroom library. I plan to use it year after year with my fifth grade students.
Donna,... Flagstaff, AZ

I am a 3rd grade teacher and I highly recommend this book. It is an excellent resource for teaching about the Symbols of America. Each page focuses on the origins and meanings of a particular symbol in concise, yet highly interesting text. The illustrations are full color and fabulous. My students love this book and practically fight to be able to read it during free time.

This is one of the most interesting books I have read to my 9-year-old son. He enjoyed the pictures and the stories tremendously. It was also interesting to me; I learned some interesting facts about our American history while reading this book to my son. I highly recommend it to any parent and to all teachers!

It is a shame that Jocelyn's wonderful, dreamy love letter to living in Hawaii is out of print. For starters, the dust jacket is pretty enough, but the book itself is bound in a handsome Hawaiian fabric print. Inside, colors jump off the page as homes ranging from surfers' one-room beach town digs to graceful Nuuanu mansions set you to fantasizing about living in Paradise. Chapters are divided into such themes as paniolo [cowboy] homes, mountain homes, beach homes, contemporary, plantation houses ranging in style from bare bones to elegant...the entire gamut is covered. There are delightful details and tableaux pictured everywhere, showing home dwellers' tabletop arrangements, Hawaiiana collections, hand crafted koa wood furniture, beautiful one of a kind local crafts...I could go on and on about the richness and variety of material in Under The Hula Moon. I write Hawaii guidebooks for a living and spend a lot of time in the islands, looking at the outside of peoples' homes, wondering what's going on inside. Since I'm not the type to just knock on strangers' doors to ask for a tour, Jocelyn has taken me into wonderful places I would otherwise never see.from0AAnyone who has fallen under Hawaii's spell and has ever fantasized about moving to the islands will treasure this book and spend many long hours with it in a favorite reading spot. Few books have given me the years of enjoyment that Jocelyn Fujii's has, and until some publisher has the good sense to bring it back into print, it is worth the seach to find a copy.

I am sorry that I generously gave out as many copies of this far out book without saving a single copy for myself, because now I can't find it anywhere except at my friends' homes. And they all want to keep it as a reference for their visitors from the mainland.

If you looking for something that will catch your eye, and that you can just sit down, relax, and browse ... then this is book for you! It's a great book have around for others to look at and see Hawai`i through other people's eyes. It's always great to see how many different people can find the beauty in this paradise.

Editor Kristen Johnson has done an excellent job of pulling together many difficult-to-obtain source documents that are pertinent to the Donner Party. She enhances the reader's understanding by presenting detailed biographical information about each document's author, combined with copious footnotes, all of which are extremely helpful and unbiased. The tremendous amount of research required to synthesize the material is quite apparent. Johnson's volume of material helps to counterbalance some of the older, more biased works of Donner literature. This is a "must-read" for anyone interested in American history, the great western overland migration, or simply in tales of survival. Congratulations to Ms. Johnson upon compiling an interesting, eclectic mix of old and rare--some almost forgotten-documents which really improve our understanding of conflicting viewpoints of one of America's greatest mysteries. (This text refers to the hardbound edition of the book, c. 1996.)

Johnson's book is a great reference for anyone interested in the Donner Party. It is a compilation of written source materials, most contemporary to the Donner event. The book contains many personal accounts of the tragedy, given from widely diverse sources, from survivors and rescuers to "yellow journalists" of the time. Johnson's compilation is a testament to how the Donner Party story affected people of the time, and how their varying perspectives affected their opinions. Johnson avoids reader confusion with a complete set of footnotes, detailing where various writers were inaccurate or incomplete in their retelling of this amazing story of the West.

This book takes many early, hard to find, publications and compiles them into one comprehensive resource. The book has excellent annotations and summaries which place events into perspective and help give a fair, balanced view of the Donner Party tragedy. Highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in our western history and the early settlers who helped to form it. This is a great follow-up book to McGlashan and Stewart

J.B. West, the former Chief Usher at The White House, gives us an insider's view of America's most famous mansion. But this is hardly a boring house tour. Mr. West - in a dignified but very readable account - focuses on the Presidents, First Ladies, and their children, all who made this house on Pennsylvania Avenue a home. With great empathy and appreciation, he recalls the experience of working for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry and Bess Truman, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, and Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson.

Each family had their own style that the White House staff had to adjust to, from the reserved Roosevelts, to the refined young Kennedys, to the big-as-Texas style of Lyndon Baines Johnson which was in contrast with Lady Bird, his considerate and composed wife.

His portrayals of the First Families are not condescending, yet they are still very respectful. In his position, Mr. West worked closely with the First Ladies and each one had personal qualities that he grew to admire.

The accounts of ceremonies, dinners and banquets, remodelings, sudden changes, and visits by various dignitaries are all compelling reading in themselves. But we get an even more significant historical viewpoint through the description of the events that took place in The White House during crises, such as FDR's death, the attempted shooting of Truman, the Kennedy assasination, LBJ's announcement that he would not seek another term.

Surely, there were frustrations, and many of them are recorded in the book while others were avoided. For instance, I'm sure that Mr. West knew about some of JFK's White House trysts but chose not to write about them. If he would have, the book would have been even more successful than it was.

But Mr. West takes the high road, and we get to enjoy the view with him.

Well done, Mr. Chief Usher.

JB West's book "Upstairs at the White House" is a gold mine of interesting facts and anecdotes that is sure to capture the interest of anyone who picks it up. The easy, conversational style that West uses in telling of his experiences while employed at the White House gives an even more intimate quality to the already familial nature of the subject matter. Always respectful of those under which he served, West none the less shows us the faults as well as merits of those families that occupied the President's house during his approximately thirty year tenure. This is history that accomplishes so much of what good historical writing should: it is engaging, informative without being dry or long winded, and simply fun to read, enough so that this reviewer has gone back for another look more than once! If you want to know more about the White House lives of the first families from FDR to the early months of the Nixon administration, as well as fascinating stuff on the running of the mansion, this book is for you. Don't miss it!!

I have been an avid collector of president/first lady/white house books since I was a child. I have read the same facts about the first families over and over. Then I found Upstairs At the White House by J.B. West, and it immediately became a favorite. Mr. West worked with the first families from the Franklin Roosevelts to the Richard Nixons on a daily basis. He was privy to "insider information" that most people never heard about. His approach to the divulgence of his knowledge is always in good taste and respectful of the families he served. Yet, this book is packed with anecdotes and information that I had never read in any other volume. Since my first reading of Upstairs At the White House, I have found Mr. West quoted by a number of other presidential writers. I can certainly understand why -- Mr. West gave the world a wonderful window into the lives of several of our nation's first families and made them come alive for us.