This book should be read right after reading James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Mem. Unfortuantely I read it over four years before I read Agee's work. When I read this book--in Feb 1996--I wrote to myself: This is a book Newt Gingrich and the crazy House freshmen should read--people who are so intent that those who cannot make it on their own should not make it.

Unfortunately, the synopsis left out that this book won the Pulitzer for Non-fiction in 1991. Maharidge and Williamson followed the footsteps of James Agee who had profiled sharecroppers during the Depression. They found their decendants, and showed that while cotton and sharecropping had died, rural poverty for these families had been passed down to new generations. The front section of the book is a series of photographs by Williamson, and they are tremendous. Moreover, in their reporting, they filled a gap left by Agee by finding a black family of sharecroppers to add to the others profiled. This is a tremendous book. It works on multiple levels, giving both the sweep of Southern social and economic history and bringing it down to individuals. Beyond that, the book is a metaphor for our own time. "If we understand the death of cotton," Maharidge writes in this book, "we understand many things about modern America." This is a tremendous work, highly readable and moving. The recognition these two craftsmen received for it is well-deserved

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First introduced to "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans through a PBS Documentary, which inspired a dash to the library to read the book iteself, it wasn't until years later I went back to the library to see if anyone had ever followed up on the story. Confronted with the then new computerized "card catalog" system, I wondered how I might search for any related writings when it dawned on me what a perfect title would naturally evolve from the verse the first book title was taken: ..And Their Children After Them. Imagine my amazement when I tried that title, and there it was! Maharidge and Williamson have followed in Agee and Evans footsteps to give readers "the rest of the story" of the tenant farmers' families and grandchildren, as well as the stories of Agee and Evans themselves. I congratulation them on an excellent book, and offer thanks to the families and their descendants for sharing their lifestories. Their lives did not take the path predicted for them by Agee: life refuses to be harnessed by prediction. Some went farther than anyone could have anticipated, while others came to a place, if possible, even worse than expected. As a second generation American, descended from Polish and Prussian immigrants who lived comparable lives, but who were blessed to own their own land, I identified closely with these stories, from the first page of "Let Us Praise" to the last page of "And Their Children".

There are about five other critical studies of Agee, and Prof. Spiegel's is by far the best. The others approach hagiography; Spiegel is balanced, and although he clearly adores Agee, he does not view him through rose-colored glasses. To top it off, Spiegel's writing is elegant and stylish, while the other studies would make good Encyclopedia Britannica entries.

Amazing. James Agee's place in American literature is set. He shines!

Dr. Biswell takes a highly technical subject and writes in a style that is both entertaining and easy to understand. It is a subject many people have little true understanding of. Yet our land management policies that have lead to years of fire suppression impact so many of us.

As far back as the 40's, Dr. Biswell was in the field proving that controlled burning is both healthy and necessary for the fire-dependent ecosystems of the West. We are now seeing how decades of fire surpression has caused huge fires in Montana and elsewhere in the West during the 2000 fire season.

Anyone living in or near an urban/wildland boarder should read this book. It will awaken you to the realities of the danger many of us live with. This book should educate and encourage you to speak to your local land managers about taking proactive measures to protect your homes, lives and communities.

As someone who has taken a professional interest in this subject for some time, I would say this is the best book out there.

James Agee was short for this world, having died in his mid 40s. In that span of time he wrote a famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and a couple of classic screenplays, AFRICAN QUEEN and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. This collection of magazine film reviews and essays is in many ways the leftover part of his work, and yet it feels like enough to make a reputation on. His reviews span just one decade, the 1940s. Many of them tackle foreign films that may be unavailable for all I know.

Interesting to me is that he spends three weeks discussing Chaplin's MONSIEUR VERDOUX, which is a most unusual movie and mostly forgotten today. This might be because he saw it as his only chance to write a poignant piece on the greatest living film artist, or it may be because he identified with the plight of mankind theme that Chaplin was reaching for. You can pick another reason, yourself, but it was a bold decision, because most critics panned the film (according to him) and most readers probably couldn't even see the movie in their small towns. It was as if he knew he would be writing for posterity. Like all critics, he cultivated his darlings. He saw much in the work of John Huston and was very skillful in his sizing up of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. I was impressed that he predicted the all-time classic nature of the film, but also understood the studio system gimmicks that took away from the genius.

You don't have to be literary minded like W. H. Auden to enjoy this book. You'll like it, if you like movies.

Ever wonder what causes a movie reviewer to *become* a movie reviewer? When I was a ten-year-old kid just getting into classic movie comedies, I went to the library and checked out the book AGEE ON FILM solely because it had references to Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields. Thus was my introduction to high-quality film criticism.

James Agee made his reputation writing sterling movie reviews for Time and The Nation magazines in the 1940's. Among other glories, he wrote a much-heralded essay titled "Comedy's Greatest Era" that helped to bring silent-comedy icons (most notably Harry Langdon) out of mothballs and caused them to be re-viewed and discussed seriously among film historians. He later went on to work on the screenplays of a couple of gems titled The African Queen and Night of the Hunter.

Unfortunately, many people who regard the critics Pauline Kael and Stanley Kauffmann have either forgotten Agee's work entirely or have assigned his own work to mothballs. But among the faithful are film director Martin Scorsese, who serves as editor of the "Modern Library: The Movies" series of film books. The series has recently reissued the AGEE ON FILM book, and re-reading Agee's work (or reading it for the first time, if you're lucky enough) proves that film criticism can make for reading material as compelling as any fictional novel.

Agee passes the acid test for any film critic: Even if you don't agree with him, his writing is so lively that you can't help enjoying it. His work ranges from three separate columns (three weeks' worth, in print terms) to Chaplin's much-maligned (at the time) MONSIEUR VERDOUX, to the most concise, funniest review ever: Reviewing a musical potboiler titled YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME, Agee replied in four simple words, "That's what *you* think."

If you want to see what high-caliber movie criticism meant in the pre-Siskel & Ebert days, engross yourself in this sprawling book. It'll make you appreciate the decades before every newspaper, newsletter, and Internet site had its own minor-league deconstructionist of Hollywood blockbusters.

James Agee wrote film criticism in America at a time when the American film industry hardly deserved his attention. His celebrations of silent film comedy, of Preston Sturges, of John Huston [for whom he later wrote the script for The African Queen], and of the handful of worthy foreign films that he managed to see are what make this volume worth reading. Besides Agee's beautiful prose and above all his compassion. Interestingly, Agee was a fan of Frank Capra's comedies (It Happened One Night) and bemoaned the director's decent into serious social films (Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Meet John Doe). His negative review of It's a Wonderful Life, which has never been in print since it appeared in 1946, reveals the extent to which Agee was perhaps too far ahead of his time, and even of ours.

Can't quite give it 5 stars because Agee's self-indulgence does get to me (Evans, though is flawless). The indulgence I speak of is not so much the Agee's overdescription of his own mental states, though this can be intrusive and less than profound, but the too frequent willingness to let language and imagination take flight from reality, when reality, ultimately, is what is so compelling here. Imagination and trustworthiness unnecessarily depart ways, as Agee at times prefers the poetic to the truth. Nonetheless, the decision not to hem in those very flights of empathetic understanding that may depart from specific reality surely allowed him to give the essential breath and life to the portraiture. The perhaps more accurate, but much less illuminating, 1989 followup by Maharidge & Williamson (discussed below) is a useful contrast - all facts, rather little life. And one after all knows, reading Agee, that he probably hasn't quite got everything right; despite the book's inescapable flaws, it (and the marvelous photos) achieves the much deeper task of bringing these people to life and making outsiders understand their dignity in the face of poverty, even where that dignity is expressed in perverse ways (though sometimes seeing dignity when further investigation or more honest reporting, as Maharidge found with the Rickets, would have acknowledged more distressing truths).

But just adding a review to point the curious to a 1989 followup, And Their Children After Them, by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, which traces what became of the Gudgers, Woodses, Rickets, and their descendants (they keep the pseudonyms, though the names are elsewhere widely known - Burroughs, Fields, and Tingle (or Tengle)). The newer book certainly does not have the poetry of the original, and it is out of print, but it's worth checking out of your local library if you're left haunted wondering whatever became of the people Agee made you care so deeply about (and how much he got right).

I don't agree that the writing is fantastic. I think that at times it bogs down and can be very boring. But the images Agee leaves with you are matched by the photographs of Evans. They are unforgettable. Read the chapter where Agee takes an entire household inventory. Amazing! I've always wanted to know--what happened to these people? These specific families...where are the children now? Did that one little girl live to adulthood? Did any of them "make something" of themselves? Fascinating questions...possibly disturbing answers.

What is this thing?!?!? - As John Hersey says in the introduction (page xxviii), "There had never been, and there will never be, anything quite like this book."-On the back cover, a dashing Agee is pictured with a glass of what one presumes to be a shot of the strong stuff in his hand. Appropriately, because the writing resembles nothing so much as an (at times) divinely inspired inebriety. He bounces from one form of writing to the next (poetry, descriptive prose, vituperative essay) without so much as a feint of a segue. There is really no narrative form to speak of. It seems clear (to me at least) that Agee didn't know himself what he was doing at times, and the striking pictures of Evans never seem to connect in the way they should with Agee's prose. It's rather like the characters in James Dickey's Deliverence stumbled out into a swath of impoverished farmland to write a book and take some pictures rather than into a soon-to-be dammed up river to take an ill-advised canoe trip. (One is not surprised, somehow, to learn that Agee was one of Dickey's great literary heroes.) ....And yet, for all the muddle, or perhaps because of it, the book has a disconcerting charm that will not let one be. I don't know where to pinpoint it or how to analyze it. But it's there, like some mischievous elf standing before your eyes who will not leave no matter how many times you open and shut your eyes and shake your head...There is a paragraph in the "On The Porch" section toward the end of the book, describing a girl in the dawning of her sexuality: "A phase so unassailably beyond any meaning of tenderness and of trust, so like the opening of the first living upon the shining of the young earth in its first morning..." In the book's finest moments, in Agee's best sections of writing, we feel this painfully fleeting innocence and bliss wafting over the lives of the simple and hard-bitten tenant farmers, a presence almost physical amidst the cruel hardships they endure. Perhaps this is part of the book's mysterious hold on generations of readers.

Forest Health and Protection is an excellent book which include an actual vision the three aspects very important in forest ecosystems. It is a contribution in the forest protection.

I came to this novel after reading extensively in the film criticism of James Agee, who was easily one of the great reviewers the genre has seen. As one critic pointed out, in his criticism, Agee takes the reader into the film, and not to concerns extraneous to the film, like so many reviewers (such as Pauline Kael, who writes beautifully, but whose comments sometimes seem to have very little to do with the film in question).

After reading his film criticism, I have to confess that I was somewhat disappointed by this novel. It was good, but it did not stand out in any way. So, if all this volume had to offer was the novel itself, I would be able to recommend it, but without too much enthusiasm.

But thankfully, that is not the case. In addition to the text of the novel A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, the volume contains as a sort of preface one of the most extraordinary short pieces in 20th century American fiction, the amazing "Knoxville: Summer of 1915." This piece was not written as part of the novel, but the editors of the volume wisely included it because both dealt with Knoxville. Also, the piece is so amazing that I am certain that they also wanted to include it so that it would not so easily get lost.

I read A DEATH IN THE FAMILY once. I have probably read "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" a good dozen times. So, if the idea of purchasing a book for the sake of a mere five pages seems extravagant, ask yourself, how many books do we reread bits of even a couple of times?

The piece, which was turned into a marvelous composition for voice by Samuel Barber, records the impressions of a typical summer evening, with the narrator a young child. The descriptions are so precise and tactile, that the reader almost feels as if his or her own impressions are being recorded. And despite being merely the record of an average evening moving from late afternoon to dusk to evening, Agee is able to make of it something universal and sad and metaphysical. There are many, many fine moments in this piece, from the first paragraph {beginning "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child") to the absolutely amazing final paragraph (ending: "Those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am").

I am not sure how strongly I would recommend this volume if it were for the novel alone, but anyone who loves great writing needs to own this volume so as to own one of the great short pieces in American literature.

A Death in the Family is a timeless novel about the impact death causes within a family. The story is told through Rufus Follet, a six-year-old who loses his father in a car accident. This novel beautifully illustrates the numb reaction of family members to death.

Agee uses the technique of flashbacks to give the reader background on some of the characters. Agee died while perfecting A Death in the Family and had not yet inserted these sections, so the publishers placed them at the beginning of each part of the novel. Because these flashbacks are not inserted logically, they are somewhat confusing, but they are not worthless. Flashbacks develop Rufus' personality and his longing to be accepted. They illustrate his relationship with his father and why he reacts in the manner that he does to his father's death. These flashbacks also reveal what life was like before the accident and how that happiness died along with Jay. They also give a detailed description of a middle class neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1915.

The story also illustrates the conflict between a man's wife and immediate family after his death. This conflict is portrayed through Jay's brother, Ralph. Ralph is an undertaker and wants to take care of Jay's body because he feels responsible for the death. It was his drunken phone call that caused Jay to drive out to see his family. Mary does not want Ralph to be the undertaker because Jay's body is already being taken care of and she does not want to move it. Ralph's feelings are hurt, but he can not do anything because a widow's wishes are more important than those of the family.

Agee takes a critical tone towards the Catholic religion and especially with its priests. My favorite scene is the episode where Mary can feel the presence of her husband in the room. It brings up the conflict between Mary's father and her brother Andrew, who do not believe in God, and Mary and her aunt Hannah, who are strong believers of Catholicism. Agee showed his view of priests through the children's reaction to Father Jackson, the priest that visits their mother. The children listen in on their mother's conversation with the priest and feel that he is trying to hurt and defeat her. The children also fear the priest, and Rufus feels that his father would have killed him if he were still alive.

One of the most poignant scenes in the novel occurs when Mary has to tell her children that their father is dead. Rufus understands almost right away that his father has died and he will never see him again. But his younger sister Catherine has a little more trouble. As their aunt is explaining the details of their father's death, Catherine asks the innocent question, "When's Daddy coming home?" My eyes welled up at reading this scene.

I liked this book because it portrays an event that people can relate to at some time or another in their own lives. Agee did a wonderful job at giving the story the numb feeling that members of a family often feel immediately after a death. The characters are well developed and I found it easy to relate to them. I would recommend this book to those who have recently suffered a loss.

James Agee's "A Death in the Family" is a moving novel about the struggles of a family trying to cope with the tragic loss of one of their own. The story, set in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a relatively easy read, despite the fact that some parts are unfinished. Rufus, the protagonist of the story, is shaken from his childhood innocence by the sudden death of his father. He does not fully comprehend what death is and how it will effect him, but by the end of the story he begins to understand.
Religion is a major theme in "A Death in the Family". It also causes many disputes within the family and eventually leads to Rufus' confusion abvout what death really is. Another major theme in the novel is the childhood viewpoint that the story is told from. This helps you to understand what Rufus feels and allows you to sympathize with him.
James Agee uses flashbacks in "A Death in the Family" to give the reader some background information about the family. This helps the reader understand what Jay, Rufus' father, was like. This also helps the reader feel the depth of Rufus' loss. Agee also uses symbolism in the end of the book to convey the thought that life goes on.
"A Death in the Family" is all in all a very moving novel. The lack of vulgarity and profaneness is a nice change from most books. I would recomend it to anyone.