Shaw's book is an excellent short summary of the career of one of the most noted medical men to come out of the Civil War. Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire (1835-1900), a native of Winchester, Virginina, served throughout the Civil War as the medical director of the Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. He is best noted in history for his time that he served with famed Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson, better known by his nom de guerre, Stonewall. It was McGuire who amputated Jackson's arm at Chancellorsville in May 1863. Shaw's biography is one of two short biographies on Dr. McGuire, the other being by John Schildt. For a short biography of Doctor McGuire, Shaw's book is excellent. Though by far not the definitive biography (a book that has yet to be written) of McGuire, Shaw's book gives an excellent overview of the doctor's career both in the War Between the States and in his post-war work. The medical aspect of the Civil War is often overlooked and this book helps fill in a major gap in Civil War histories by providing a look at one of the major medical figures of the 19th Century, medicine, Civil War, the South, and Virginia.

"Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign" is an excellent history of the Valley Campaign of 1862. For me, the highight of this book was that it was originally written in 1880. The notes in the back of the book make frequent mention of how the author was able to contact the people who actually served with Jackson - talk about primary source material!

Speaking of notes: they are sometimes more fun to read than the main text. In addition, they contain detailed reports of battle casualties are also found in the notes section.

The one negative that I found with this book (which is a 1995 reprint of the original) is that it doesn't have any maps. The text refers to various maps (1 through 7) - but they are nowhere to be found. This isn't a big problem, but I still think the publisher should have included them.

An essential for any serious student of Jackson or the Army of Northern Virginia. Five stars plus, but not for the novice. Col. Allan was Jackson's ordnance officer, and after the war he devoted the better part of his remaining years to these two comprehensive works included under one cover. Allan intended to write a comprehensive history of the Army of Northern Virginia for the entirety of the war, but his premature death left this greater work unfinished. His work on Jackson, which primarily covers the Valley Campaign, I consider the better of the two works because of its greater completeness. Both, however, are superb, early intensely scholastic efforts on the war, fully deserving of the stature as primary source works on the Civil War. The footnotes are old-style, page by page. Read them that way; slow, but it adds flavor. Buy this one while it is available.

One of the Civil War's most recognized and majestic figures, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, is portrayed in this illustrated biography, Stonewall Jackson: A Life Portrait. The author describes how a "backwoods boy" of Virginia finds his way to West Point, struggles as a student but discovers an important part of him in the War with Mexico. And later as a teacher at Virginia Military Institute, he again struggles to find personal peace, and would only do so when war is declared between the states, and the destined "Stonewall" discovers his mark in this world. A fascinating read and wonderfully illustrated, Stonewall Jackson: A Life Portrait belongs in every library, and on the bookshelf of every historian or fan of American history.

It is remarkable that anyone could have lived to the unbelievable age of one hundred and eighteen.
More so when you consider how Tippy Pendarvis, principal character of Emerson Watkins' first novel, A Story of a Forgotten Hero-Turning Back The Pages Of Time, endured the many tragedies that beset him.

Watkins' well-crafted work of fiction focuses on an African American, who was born five years after the Civil War.
At the age of eighteen, Tippy is forced to leave his family, after being maliciously chased out of town by the Klu Klux Klan.
Eventually, he finds his way to Arizona, where he joins the famous Buffalo Soldiers.
A regiment of African-Americans created by Congress in 1866 that was the 9th and 10th Cavalries. The Cheyenne and Comanche had nicknamed them Buffalo Soldiers, and until the latter part of the 19th century they constituted about twenty percent of all cavalry forces on the American frontier.

When Tippy leaves the cavalry he is confronted with ugly racism, and as a result, he is unable to find employment. Left with little choice, he succumbs to a life of crime.

Although successful in accumulating a certain amount of wealth, he nonetheless experiences several tragedies-the first being the loss of his daughter Flossie, followed by the apparent suicide of his first wife Lizzy-Mae.
After the death of his wife, his life of crime catches up with him and he is incarcerated for thirteen months. Upon his release he undergoes a complete metamorphosis.
He decides that with the money he had hidden away prior to his incarceration, he would create a foundation for the purpose of financially aiding African Americans to attend college.

He subsequently remarries, only to face the unexpected and shocking illness, and eventual death of his second wife, Mannie.
Although initially devastated, Tippy still manages to move on with his life, and eventually remarries for a third time.
Once again, however, tragedy enters his life with the loss of his two sons, Doug, during the Second World War, and Grail, who had participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. The latter was senselessly murdered at the hands of racist lawmen.

Emerson Watkins displays an exceptional talent for story telling, and on the whole the novel is a convincing narrative that manages to blend the enormous injustices faced by African Americans with man's ability to reach for that innate inner strength.

The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson best described a hero as being: "a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness."
I guess this is what Tippy Pendarvis was all about.

(...)

The Story of Writing is a scholarly, yet immensely readable, survey of how written languages came into being. From the emergence of the alphabet in ancient civilizations to letterforms of the twentieth century, we see how the tools and materials available to the people of each era shaped the way letters and pages were created. The author skillfully turns our attention to western civilization and the Greek and Roman influence on what became the English alphabet. Later chapters bring us through the development of writing in the dark ages, the middle ages, then into the machine age with the invention of the printing press and copperplate engraving. Of this later period, Jackon writes: ''When the calligraphers were not fighting for recognition... they were fighting each other. In 1595 two English calligraphers, Peter Bailes and Daniel Johnson, took part in a trial of penmanship, competing for a prize of 'a golden pen of twentie pounds.' Johnson, a bad loser, afterwards published a manifesto protesting that the jury had been rigged, and Bailes counter-charged with a denunciation of his own.... It was a sad spectacle, for whatever their public antics the skills of these masters and of their engravers were without doubt immense. The Renaissance scribes of Italy had never needed to compete with a machine, or with the razzle-dazzle of the engraver's slick allure which placed a barrier between the pen and the page. The chain was broken, and the writing master postured on the stage of a sideshow, teaching children, producing elaborate citations and squabbling with his rivals, while the other arts drew still further away from him.'' The book is filled with both black-and-white and color illustrations of samples of manuscripts, tools, and hand-made letters. The illustrations alone make this book a valuable addition to the artist's library, as well as to the historian's. Calligraphers and others who love beautiful writing will be fascinated at every turn of the page. Teachers of language, history, calligraphy, art and design will find themselves returning to this book again and again for references and examples.

This is not your standard coffee-table photo book. Rather, it's a window into the heart of a unique college... one so totally unlike any other college in America (the world?) that it's almost mind-boggling.

I came across it while getting obsessive about my older son's college search. (He's a high school junior and totally blase at this stage; I'm going blissfully insane pouring through the 3-inch-thick college guides.) I kept reading in the college guides about Deep Spings, and every description impelled me to look for more information.

Imagine: A huge cattle and alfalfa ranch in the middle of nowhere (the California high desert near the Nevada border). A student body of 26 young men with average SATs of 1500 who literally run the place and do most of the ranch work. A faculty of a half-dozen or so (essentially hired by the students), some just stopping by for a semester; none tenured. Two years of an intense combination of studying and discussion, physical work, and incredible community spirit. Students finish their undergraduate work by transferring to a "regular" college (typically Ivy League and Ivy-quality).

The book is mostly just pictures of the students, with a short commentary by each of them. There are also a couple of good essays, one by the college's president. The black & white photos are of high quality, though nothing extraordinary. But the combination of the students' images and their own words is amazingly effective in conveying who they are and what they feel about the school and about life.

Immensely cool, but only for a select audience. Five stars if you are in that audience. Not worth the money if you are just curious.

This is a great collection of information on Pollock. One of the greatest things to note is the inclusion of material from after his death in 1956, his influence on society. This includes editorial cartoons, poems written about and inspired by Pollock and his work, as well as scripts from plays based on his life. I would have to say that if you were looking for a good introduction to the man, the artist, and the influence he had/has on contemporary society, then pick this collection up.

Should be required reading for all Canadian youth. As someone who began teaching in the Peace River District many years ago, I can state that the descriptions are very accurate, not only of the country, but of the people and circumstances. The best book I have read this decade.

I thought that the bokk "Super Sports Cars" is a very well written and descripted book with many colerful pictures that would please a young kid into autos and i would also enjoy it as an adult