If asked to name a World War I novel most Americans would almost certainly say "All Quiet on the Western Front". Thanks to our rather uniform public education system, Remarque's novel has earned a place in American culture as the quintessential novel of The Great War. It deserves its reputation as a landmark of 20th century literature, but unfortunately its success contributed to the disapearance from memory of Thomas Boyd's "Through the Wheat". Without moralizing about the cost of war, Boyd brilliantly depicts its horrors and their effects on the psyche of a young American Marine. If you want to understand the Combat experience -- the noise, dirt, distraction, sweat, blood, stench of war -- this is a novel you must read. It is a tragedy that it is no longer in print.

Thomas Boyd's "Through the Wheat" was written by a former newpaperman and the book is fairly easy to read. The writing style was such that you though that it was a true story being told to a friend. He was better known when he was alive for his historical novels. But I think this novel was his best.

Thomas Boyd was an interesting man who died from a brain tumor thought to have been caused by his being gassed during the WWI. He came back the war disillusioned and ran for public office in New Hampshire or Vermont as a communist. Mr. Boyd died suddenly in his early thirties and left behind a wife and a daughter. One of his collections of short stories Points of Honor(light) was made in a successful silent movie.

When Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought their infamous duel in 1804 it is quite possible that there were the two most arrogant politicians in the entire United States. I recently finished David McCullough's biography of John Adams, so I was not inclined to think highly of Hamilton and Veda Boyd Jones faces a problem in trying to tell young readers about her subject's less than stellar character. This juvenile biography provides Alexander Hamilton's resume, but without really getting into why he was so admired by George Washington and so reviled by many others, beyond the idea that he was ambitious and wanted to achieve success as a military leader. The tone is set early in the book when Hamilton's illegitimacy and the intense social stigma of the times is reduced to the declaration "This bothered Alexander because it was very unusual at that time." While later scandals in Hamilton's life are ignored completely, I do recognize that there is little value in getting into the salacious aspects with this particular age group.

Consequently, my stronger criticism is for the general way in which Hamilton's strengths are presented; they are essentially reduced to the fact he supported a strong central government. The political struggle between the Federalists and the Republicans that led to the fatal duel is also reduced to the vague point that Hamilton called Burr dangerous in the newspapers. So, on the one hand I recognize that Hamilton is a problematic figure for a juvenile biography, but on the other hand this volume misses giving young readers a solid understanding of why he was one of the most important political figures of his day despite the fact he was never elected to political office. We are told Hamilton was an excellent writer, but while there are references to the Federalist Papers and other important pamphlets, we never really get a taste of his public rhetoric. The book is illustrated with historic paintings and etchings, some of which show Hamilton. Other titles in the Revolutionary War Leaders series look at not only Jefferson and Washington, but also Benedict Arnold, Nathan Hale, Thomas Paine, and Betsy Ross.

This book is for anyone interested in the sea and the maritime history of Rhode Island, New England or the United States for that matter. It is a must-have for serious scholars of the age of sail and for armchair sailors alike as it examines the exciting and sometimes scandalous past. As Donald D. Breed wrote in the Providence Journal 2/13), "Do not look for this book on the coffee tables of many of Rhode Island's first families. On the one hand it is a scholarly almost dry history of a great many extended voyages by Rhode Island mariners. But it is also an expose of the nefarious activities of those seagoing men: piracy, the slave trade, running opium. To read it is to gain a new appreciation of why the colony was known as 'Rogue's Island.'... This is a hard book to put down, the subject matter is so gripping."