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Book reviews for "Black,_Charles" sorted by average review score:

A Good Year to Die: The Story of the Great Sioux War
Published in Paperback by Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd) (September, 1996)
Author: Charles M., III Robinson
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Excelent reading!!
I have read several books about the Sioux Wars so i wasnt really sure i wanted to read another one, but Mr Robinson's book is fantastic.He writes taking in consideration that the reader doesnt know anything about the topic so he explains with good accuracy terms and places like no other author. The author is bold and right on the money when it comes to point a finger at somebody, like for example the stupidity of the Army officers.I found that the interviews and research the author made for this book are very good, especially from the indians perspective.The only thing i didnt like is the fact that Mr Robinson doesnt go into details when it comes to Crazy Horse.I would have loved to read more about Crazy Horse part in this Wars.Otherwise this is an excelente book!

An excellent recounting
This is by far the best book on the Army's conflict with Native Americans since "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". It treats the material as a campaign rather than a series of seperate battles, so that Little Big Horn is treated as part of a whole. The author also describes the personalities and deeds of several Indian characters, not just Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. This is an eye-opening recounting of an important part of US history and a look at one of the greatest guerilla forces ever to wage war against the American Army.

a first rate overview of the Sioux War of 1876
Rather than concentrate on one battle or campaign, Robinson sets the stage for the reader to follow the movement of all the actors playing a role in the drama across the seasons of the war. I used this book as an orientation to the conflicts of 1876 prior to a trip to Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas to visit battle sites while on vacation. My trip was greatly enriched by reading this volume first. You can find more concentrated studies of particular engagements and the biographies of the participants that will offer deeper insights into the war, but for one overall narrative that provides the reader with the flavor of the contemporary army and Indian experience, here's my choice.


A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman
Published in Hardcover by Univ of Alabama Pr (Txt) (April, 1997)
Author: Charles W. Dryden
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Fighting Germany and America.
Charles Dryden's book forces people to see the trials and tribulations encountered by black servicemen and women during WWII. I was shocked to read about the different encounters with 'Jim Crow' that Dryden and his peers waded through during their service years. A must for anybody curious about WWII, the Tuskegee Airmen or about the fight for civil rights in America.

A definitive study in courage
I meet Col. Dryden when he gave a talk about his experiences and his book. I then read the book a felt a tremendous respect for the author and all the Tuskeegee Airmen. Col. Dryden tells his personal story in a way that made me feel as though I was there with him the whole time. The challanges of blacks in America in his story left a powerful impact on me, the courage the author displayed is an insperation. A-Train is very well written and reads easily. It is an powerful story that left me feeling inadequate and ashamed to be white. I had the oportunity to meet Col. Dryden again and sought him out just to shake his hand again, knowing him from his book, it was hard to hide my emotions.

Every young African American boy should read this book.
Every young African American boy should read this book. It is an inspiration.


Black Confederates
Published in Paperback by Pelican Pub Co (January, 2002)
Authors: J. H. Segars, R. B. Rosenburg, and Charles Kelly Barrow
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Helps to tell the WHOLE story . . .
Probably, the discovery that more than a few African Americans served on the Confederate side in the Civil War -- and not just as servants, either -- will strike some readers as contradictory, or even unnatural. Certainly, most historians have ignored the subject. But history is history: One must deal with past reality, not subordinate the facts to modern political positions. In researching the subject, Barrow called on the readership of _Confederate Veteran,_ the official publication of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to submit information on black Southern loyalists. The results were large and diverse, based on official reports, pension applications, family correspondence, newspaper articles, and published memoirs, and from that came this anthology of historical documents and accounts, originally published under the title _Forgotten Confederates._ In fact, the most conservative estimate is that some 50,000 African Americans served on the Confederate side, compared to 600,000 to 1,000,000 white Confederates (depending on who did the counting). Few of them were "properly enlisted," of course (the Confederate Congress did not authorize such enlistments until the War was in its last days), but those who worked as servants, bodyguards, nurses, cooks, scouts, barbers, teamsters, musicians, and construction workers frequently joined the fight, whether sanctioned or not. The irony, of course, is that black Confederates served within white units, while black Union troops were carefully segregated from white troops. At least twenty-five percent of the Confederate Ordnance Department was black, and several black militia units were raised in Louisiana and Alabama. There were black Confederate sharpshooters in the Seven Days campaign in 1862, and more than 1,000 black sailors served in the Confederate Navy. And a surprising number of black faces appear in photographs of post-War Confederate reunions, many of which are reproduced in this volume. This is an engrossing collection of material and the twenty-one-page bibliography of sources for further study will be most useful to local historians.

A student of the great mind who wrote this great book.
This book is a wonderful claberation of doucments overlooked by history.The author is a great mind and I recomend this book highly for its agnolagement of our forgoten heroes.This book brings halt to all "myths".

Challenges commonly held precepts
Collaboratively compiled and edited by Charles Kelly Barrow, J. H. Segars, and R. B. Rosenburg, Black Confederates is a scholarly analysis of historical evidence of those black Americans who served the Confederacy during the Civil War. Correspondence, military records, preserved narratives and newspaper accounts present as clear a picture as possible of some seemingly self-contradictory people. Why did they fight, and in some cases, lose their lives for the South in a conflict fought to perpetuate the institution of slavery? This question is carefully scrutinized in a historical work that challenges commonly held precepts and brings to light an oft-overlooked side of America's deadliest war. Black Confederates is a welcome and fascinating addition to Black Studies and Civil War Studies reading lists and reference collections.


Buffalo Soldiers and Officers of the Ninth Calvary, 1867-1898: Black & White Together
Published in Hardcover by Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd) (October, 1999)
Author: Charles L. Kenner
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Much More Than History
Kenner's book is an excellent narrative which chronicles the actual experiences of the buffalo soldiers and the white officers who served with them. The book is a pleasure to read because it goes beyond the dates and battles, opting instead to recreate their foibles and shortcomings as well as their valor and heroism. It takes a true historian to give the rest of us glimpses into such humanity.

A superb narrative
Kenner's book is an excellent narrative which chronicles the actual experiences of the buffalo soldiers and the white officers who served with them. The book is a pleasure to read because it goes beyond the dates and battles, opting instead to recreate their foibles and shortcomings as well as their valor and heroism. It takes a true historian to give the rest of us glimpses into such humanity.

Black and white in the 1800's
This is an incredible social history placed on the backdrop of the west. When most people think of racial issues in the American west, they think about White settlers vs. Indians on the warpath. Dr. Kenner's book presents a different picture of the West. His book focuses on the world of white calvary officers and their "colored" soldiers. Dr. Kenner talks about issues from the fighting skill of these often forgotten African-American soldiers to interracial dating to homosexuality. This is an incredible story, that no serious historian of the west should ignore.


Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900
Published in Paperback by Louisiana State University Press (August, 1986)
Author: William Ivy Hair
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history as page turner
Hair's deeply insightful story of one man driven to take the most desperate of measures in New Orleans at the turn of the Century (1900) will keep you home and the TV off.

Sit back, fasten your seatbelt and go back to Mississippi after the Civil War. It's a tough place to visit, you sure would not want to live there. Eianr E. Kvaran

The Heroic and Mysterious Mr. Charles
This is a big little book well worth reading and well worth owning with a place of honor in the personal library.

Hair does a remarkable job of pulling together the obscure and little-known facts about "Robert Charles", an obscure and little-known historical figure who would have quickly made himself perfectly at home in 1960s America. More importantly, Hair's research and narrative provide a brilliant portrait of a period of American history, approaching the mystery of Robert Charles through a necessarily oblique but dead-on examination of turn of the century racial etiquette in the South; Afro-American attitudes regarding racism, self-defense, identity, militancy, and politics; state and regional economic issues; and the pathological behavior of the white victims of supremacist theories and beliefs. Although the question of who, exactly, was Robert Charles cannot be completely answered---if it could, Hair would have done it---the question of WHY did Robert Charles exist and die as he did is effectively answered through a compelling narrative that proves that history and its writing can be as exciting as any modern story of injustice, oppression, personal dignity in the face of ultimate destruction, and right beaten to ground by actual numerical, and assumed racial, superiority. Hair deserves to be honored for his detective work and meticulous research as well as his ability to make about two hundred pages do the work of some who would have said the same thing, and less eloquently, in six hundred. He should also be commended for refusing to let anything but historical facts and sound reasoning fill in the blank spaces in his history because the temptation to make assumptions in order to flesh out Charles' story must have been a consideration during the writing of the book. This is a small, well-written, rewarding examination of a historical figure and the times that he lived and died in. It's surprising to me that no one has made a movie based upon the book since it has all the drama, suspense, tension, tragedy, and action anyone could possibly hope for regarding a historical figure whose pledge to live and die like a man was a sacred vow and, perhaps, a moral lesson. For those who are aware of Robert F. Williams' place in Afro-American history, Robert Charles will be recognized both as of his time and ahead of it, helping to lay a foundation for the future struggles of others.

Considering the fact that Hair first published this book in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, I am amazed that there are so few reviewers of it. I fervently hope that the lack of reviews is not an indication of a lack of readers for this important historical work.

a fantasic examination of one slice of race history
William Ivy Hair in this fast-paced, readable book accomplishes more in a couple of hundred pages than many of our more ponderous historians have aimed to achieve in far-bulkier works. If future historians learn to write and marshall their facts as well as Hair does here, the tales of our past will remain vivid and important to young readers of the future.


Have No Fear: The Charles Evers Story
Published in Hardcover by John Wiley & Sons (19 November, 1996)
Authors: Charles Evers and Andrew Szanton
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what a book!
while I didn't agree with everything he said in the book I thought he was very honest in writing about his life and about his brother. it's defintley worth reading.

Powerful
Written by Medgar Evers' lesser known brother, this is a powerful account of the civil rights movement in the south by someone who lived it. Order it. Buy it.

Powerful men are rarely so honest -- read it.
Gives a real sense of what it's like to grow up hated, and to learn to hate, and then to painstakingly give up hate. A loving ode to Medgar Evers, and an unflinching look at Charles Evers. Humor, too.


KJV Ryrie Study Bible: Black Indexed
Published in Leather Bound by Northfield Pub (April, 1999)
Author: Charles Caldwell Ryrie
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Ryrie Study Bible
This is an excellent Bible with a lot of extras that provide in depth information without just being filler. My only complaint is that there's not more room for notes.

Excellent resource!
In the short time since my purchase of this Bible, it has become my primary carry and reading Bible.

First, the explanations are quite thorough and researched. The introduction to each book of the Bible is quite useful for setting the stage for understanding the material to follow. Timelines are also included to help place Biblical events in perspective.

The overall quality of construction of this Bible is tip notch. I feel that even with heavy use, this Bible will be around for many years.

Ryrie Study Bible
I would like to highly recommend this Bible for anyone who is interested in studying God's word. In all my years of Bible study and preaching God's word the Ryrie Study Bible is the best study Bible I have found. I have recommended this Bible to many people and they all have enjoyed it also. It will help you to understand the Bible. It has a very detailed section in the back on Doctrines of the Bible, it also has detailed maps and outlines of the chapters. If you are interested in studying God's word this is the Bible for you.


The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper 1894-1985
Published in Hardcover by Hill & Wang Pub (April, 1996)
Authors: Charles Van, Onselen and Charles Van Onselen
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Learn more from one man's life than from any history book
The daily life of Kas Maine over 90 odd years on the high veldt of South Africa says more about the history of that part of the world than all the history books and newspaper articles and military actions that could ever be recounted. I felt as though I myself had lived those same 90 years, breathed the dust, lost my crops, driven my livestock from farm to farm trying to find sharecropping work, put up and taken down my corregated metal shack, been hounded by bureaucrats, maintained my dignity and kept my family together against incredible odds. Although the place names and indigenous family names were difficult and their abundance presumed some familiarity with South Africa, I learned to visualize rather than pronounce them, and they became like one of Kas's stony fields in the story and I liked the "rough footing." A unique experience in book form.

A gripping look at an ordinary man.
I have been taking my time with this book, savouring it while I can. The rhythms of the prose and the world it describes are so seductive, that I have often found myself reading "just a few more pages" at 3AM despite having to get up for work the next day. If you wish to have a sense of what life in rural South Africa was like over the past century, I can't think of a better book (or any other book for that matter). Kas was an exceptionally gifted farmer, a traditional herbalist and healer, and a patriarch who struggled against the almost impossible odds of being a black man in South Africa. As the insanity of apartheid took hold, he and his family were forced to move from place to place, his dreams of agricultural success and land ownership gradually eroding. Yet the book also portrays the rich, multicultural environment of the Transvaal, the varied relationships between Blacks, Boers, Englishmen, Jews and Asians; the shift from a paternalistic but, in many ways more egalitarian society to a racist police state. Kas is a complex man: wise, cruel, patient, tender, pragmatic, apolitical, opportunist, and honourable. The portrayals of his relationships with his ever expanding family are as complex and engaging as one could wish from a fine novel. Van Onselen makes no apologies for him: he simply gives us the man and, above all his humanity. Perhaps his greatest achievement with this book is in bridging the gap between the Western reader and an illiterate African farmer, in underlining our human commonalities rather than our differences. Despite occasional passages that are a tad purple, the author's prose is clear and flowing. He manages to make the ebb and flow of the seasons with their triumphs, tragedies, and ignominies absolutely gripping. I never thought that I could be enthralled by descriptions of the complexities of plowing and harvesting, or the purchase of agricultural equipment, but I was. No it's not too long as the reviewer in the New York Times claimed. In fact one often wishes that one could know more about this extraordinary yet very ordinary man.

A celebration of a "real" life
I was fascinated throughout. Sounds and looks "dry" when you see it on the shelf, but so full of juicy bits that make his life very real. You cheer for him when he manages to think his way around the obstacles that apartheid and his own nature put in his way and you are continually forced to confront the "What would I have done here?" question.

Yes, it is long. But when you are through you want to know still more. What has happened to the rest of the family since the book was published? What was the effect of those years of scrutiny on their "real" lives?

I stared at the pictures and studied the faces. I have been selectively pushing the book on all the thoughtful people I know. It wakes up your brain.


Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology About Black Southerners
Published in Paperback by Southern Heritage Press (April, 1901)
Authors: Kelly Barrow, Charles K. Barrow, and J. H. Segars
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unique among the history books
I had no idea so many black soldiers fought for the South.Some were really body servants, others were quartermasters and cooks and others were flat out real soldiers. This is a piece of history that has been totally left out of the history books. This is the only book of it's kind that I know of so if you are a black or Civil War history buff you must add this one to your collection.

The Book The Racist Black Elite & White Liberals Fear
Mr. Barrow has written a most extraordinary book on some of the most noble, yet sadly forgotten, defenders of the Confederacy - the Black Confederates. He offers a quite insightful look of their service throughout the War For Southern Independence. Some of the personal accounts of these brave men of colour are wonderful, leaving us to question the bigotry of those who use revisionist tactics in portraying the War For Southern Independence. I believe the unfortunate & temporarily successful block of the racist organisation NAACP against a proposed monument in the Commonwealth of Virginia, that was to have been erected to the memory of the thousands upon thousand of blacks who wore the grey & butternut & bore the Saint Andrew's Cross of the Southern Confederacy, is such an example.

Little known history.
The common conception of black Southerners in the Civil War has described a people unified by their opposition to the Confederacy and resisting the Southern war effort, either passively and actively.
This view can only be maintained by ignoring a mass of research material that strongly suggests that black opinion, like other opinion, was represented across the spectrum, and was strongly influenced by sectional, local, and family loyalties which have largely disappeared in the modern world, but which were of paramount importance in the nineteenth century. Many blacks, free and slave, in fact, considered themselves Southerners first and blacks second, and served the Southern cause enthusiastically.
This unconventional view is supported here by a wealth of clippings, rosters, memoirs, photos, archival records, and other data to convincingly demonstrate that the matter is more complex than the simplifiers of history would have it, and to show that the actual record of the black Southerner leaves no firm ground for those who would cite his experiences for modern political purposes.
(The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)


Ryrie Study Bible/New American Standard/Black Bonded Red Letter
Published in Hardcover by Moody Publishers (February, 1995)
Author: Charles Caldwell Ryrie
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A great Study Bible
I have to admit that I am something of a study Bible collector, I'm afraid. However, with all of the Bibles I have, when it is time to teach, or put together a lesson, my NASB Ryrie is the one I reach for. First of all, I love the layout of the text. It is two-column, with the cross-references on the outside margins. When I look at other Bibles, the text layout does not seem as easy to read as the Ryrie.

Ryrie's book outline is presented in the introduction of each book of the Bible and then is found throughout the book as well. The notes, though not as extensive as some might like, are unobtrusive yet helpful.

The concordance at the back of this Bible seems to be a pretty good one and the articles on Bible doctrine are great.

I highly recommend both the NASB and the Ryrie for serious Bible students and teachers.

Excellent
This is an excellent NASB Bible. There are many notes and references that help a lot when preparing for Bible lessons or studying. Again, this is an excellent Bible.

Ryrie Study Bible is Excellent
I have used a Ryrie Study Bible for years, and the combination of the NAS translation with Charles Ryrie's notes is wonderful. The new expanded edition is filled with even more well done maps, information, and important asides to the Bible. This is a wonderful edition of the Holy Bible, and would make a wonderful addition to anyone's study.


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