It was all too easy for a Yankee like me who grew up during the Civil Rights struggles to be smug about who lived on which side of the Mason-Dixon line and who as such was more "enlightened" on the issue of race. Particularly raised as I was by a father who called people like Huie's characters "Rebs". It was another thing entirely to be told later in life by an African-American friend of Alabama roots (where this book is set) that she'd rather live down there than up here in western New York--white people of her home state were less "two-faced" (her words) about the race issue than we were up here. This book was the first book I ever read that puts a human face on people connected with the Ku Klux Klan. In recent years, I've come to realize that the Klan gave America our earliest experience with terrorism. From right here at home, not foreign shores. But "The Klansman" presents all of its characters on both sides of the issue as people with real feelings. A bit disconcerting for a kid like me who had a good guy/ bad guy perspective from popular entertainment, which is to say the bad guys are monsters, not people. But then again, Nietzsche once suggested that life's most valuable lessons are anything but easy. This book's anti-hero is Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb, a complicated sort of guy who on one side is a Bull Connoresque uniformed soldier for the cause of segregation, but on the other side is a caring husband and father. His teenage son Allen is an embyonic New Southerner whose generation today is in power in states like Alabama. His wife Maybelle doesn't care so much about political issues as she does about the well-being of her family. His best friend is landowner Breck Stancill, whose family traditions lie in the anti-segregationist direction, but in truth, Stancill is a helper of the needy regardless of race. In leaner years, Big Track himself was a beneficiary of that, and is torn between his loyalties to the segregationist cause and his more personal feelings of obligation and gratitude to Stancill, who by his own admission has served as a surrogate older brother to him. Military historian Gwynne Dyer once said that the only way to make a fighting man out of a civilian brought up to believe that it's wrong to kill people is to suggest that the enemy aren't really people. To this day I retain my hostility to racism, but Huie has created a cast of racists here that I can't with any conscience claim aren't real people. Actually, I'm a bit surprised that this book is even available used. After all, not every book that deals with a hot button issue of a particular era can cross the gulf of time into status as a "historical novel". Maybe Huie is no John Jakes, but Churchill did say that if you don't learn from history you'll end up repeating it.

Huie, now deceased, writes a very exciting novel about a Klan-ridden Alabama community during the timeframe of the civil rights movement. I haven't ever been to Alabama, so I can't honestly say whether or not it was at all reflective of small-town situations in that state during the late 1960s. However, the picture it paints is not terribly dissimilar from those I've seen in non-fiction writing about the period.

The language is harsh and the scenes are described with shocking vividness; this book isn't for the faint of heart and contains a lot more sorrrow than joy. Such were the times. However, it does present a wide cross-section of interesting characters, and avoids painting a picture of complete good vs. complete evil--just about all the characters display faults and redeeming qualities, rather than a cast of nothing but saintly, unselfish civil rights workers or hog-nosed adder-mean racists. It doesn't take deep reading of this book to see how racial prejudice is often manipulated as a power tool.

If you can find a copy, and you're interested in the topic, don't let it get away.

The Pilgrims are vastly overrated as colonial forefathers: most of them died within weeks of stepping onto shore, and those that survived largely remained inconsequential, except for two facts. They married into the larger and far more successful Puritan group who arrived 10 years after they did, and they got a better myth built around one of our national holidays. William Bradford's history is a charming, paranoid vision of coming to America and trying to make it here. The Pilgrims' history is largely one of peaceful co-existence with the Indians, except for the year after the first Thanksgiving, when the only Indian in sight was the one whose head decorated the pike outside Plymouth. A great book to debunk a largely false national myth, the true story is far more compellingly bittersweet, especially as Bradford tries to come to grips with the failure of his colony. The turkey incident alone is worth the price of the book (trust me -- it's hysterically grotesque).

this is an amazing book, ranking up there with Buber's 'Ecstatic Confessions', Kapleau's 'Three Pillars of Zen', and the 1960's film 'Holy Ghost People', as being a valuable collection of authentic religious experience. Thankfully, African Americans have preserved the experience of the Holy Spirit described in this book in Gospel Music. The traditions described in this book deserve to be revived and preserved, i.e. 'the mourner's bench', and singing in a circle out in a field at night. It seems to me this book helps to show that we are all slaves to the world and society until freed by the holy spirit.

Volumes III and IV are available from The Jewett Family of America, Box 254, Rowley MA 01969 Contact Ted Herrmann, Publisher, at 201 569-6611 or Ted Loranz, V.P. at 508 429-8750. Library of Congress No. 95-81192. Original Volumes I and II were published in 1908.

Description: Two volumes, hard-bound with title stamped in gold. 1,758 pages, hundreds of illustrations, Jewett genealogical data concentrating on period 1908-1995, with newly assigned JFA numbers of family members. The alphabetically arranged INDEX covers every name found in BOTH volumes. There is some detail on the Norman origins of the Jewett name and some history of the Jewett Coat-of-Arms, including derivation, French roots in Jouatte, Jouett, Jowitt, etc. Also contains a copy of the orignal Charter of the Jewett Family of America from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1910.

Size 6-1/2 x 9-3/4" emulating the size and style of the first two volumes I and II by Dr. Frederick Clarke Jewett, printed in 1908. Endpaper illustrations include a map of the original Ezekiel Rogers plantation established at Rowley, MA in 1639; a Civil War political cartoon; pen and ink wash drawing by William Samuel Lyon Jewett of New York Harbor in 1871 entitled "Sail and Steam"; and a reproduction of original sheet music written for the first National JFA (Jewett Family of America) Reunion in 1855.

As a student at St. Lawrence University, it has been to my privlege to have studied under the tuteledge of Prof. Sondergard and to have conversed with students of prof. Berger. As a student, I would observe that, is this books is anything like the way they teach, it will be a supreme accomplishment for all three.

a cliff notes version of radiology no fluff, all pearls. besides, my son wrote it!

Mr. Wolters RIGHT TURN; has been an excellent research source for me. His depiction of events is accurate and written without bias. I would love to get my hands on his first book; NEGROES AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

What makes this book interesting is that it was written between the murders and the trial. Huie knew who the murderers were, how they did it, and never expected a guilty verdict.

The book introduces you in detail to Michael (Mickey) Schwerener and all the details leading up to his murder. This detail will help you understand exactly why and how these murders took place.

This latest edition includes updates by the author to compare his early speculation against the results of the trial.

this appears to be the last book written by william h. whyte, author of the organization man. it's a lovely memoir about his days as a battalion intelligence officer on guadalcanal, serving under an amazing character named wild bill mckely, who was just a little drunk during the entire campaign. it's a warm, humorous, and at the same time deeply analytical account of one of the great decisive battles of world war 2. i loved it.

In the colonial stage of America's discovery, Europeans' conception of America appeared to be positive because at this stage the subject was the exploration and settlement of America and that was why Europeans received exaggerating accounts of the New World and its manifold opportunities. The colonizers' tracts and the travelers' accounts exaggerated the romantic attractions of the New World. The vast and abundant resources of the New World were admired, in a propagandistic and persuasive discourse. Both the Puritans and the colonizers (which were often one and the same) wrote exaggerating accounts of their adventures to lure Europeans over to the New World. Mourt's Relation (1622) was written to persuade Europeans that life in Massachusetts was a venture in a plentiful land. The book overlooks the calamities of the first winter and overstates the rich resources of Massachusetts. Yet, it is an excellent read.

This is an excellent book. The unknown author ("Mourt") describes in detail the accounts of life during the settlement of the Pilgrims. "He" describes the account in a day-to-day style, accounting for making food, building houses, and encounters with the indigenous peoples. The Pilgrams' travels to find a home and the actual settling are fascinating and well described. I will never think of the Pilgrims or indigenous peoples the same way again. Overall, this book is very insightful.

The language is archaic, I feel I must warn you. But if you can get past that, and you like colonial history, you'll love this one. It will give you a much better idea about the Pilgrams, far beyond the over-dramatized and unrealistically happy Thanksgiving story.

This delightful little book describes the first year of the Pilgrims in America. Written to make life in Massachusetts sound like an adventure in a bounteous land, the book ignores the extreme hardship of the first winter and instead focuses on the rich resources of Massachusetts and the relationship the Pilgrims developed with the Indians. Here, the book drives home two points: (1) Europeans had long come to North American to fish and trade. These activities left a mixed legacy that the pilgrims had to overcome. (2) The Indians were everywhere. In fact, the first trip by the Pilgrims to visit chief Massasoit was motivated in part by this fact: Indians families were coming in great numbers to Plymouth to look at the English and interact with them. This was keeping the English from focusing on their farming. A wonderful book!