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Book reviews for "Jackman,_Robert_William" sorted by average review score:

Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, 1862
Published in Paperback by DaCapo Press (1995)
Authors: William, Colonel Allan, William Army of Northern Virginia in 1862 Allan, and Robert K. Krick
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Col. Allan's Classic Work
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.


The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics)
Published in Paperback by New York Review of Books (09 April, 2001)
Authors: Robert Burton, William H. Gass, and Holbrook Jackson
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Not so much a book as a companion for life.
Don't be misled by the title of this book, nor by what others may have told you about it. In the first place, it isn't so much a book about 'Melancholy' (or abnormal psychology, or depression, or whatever) as a book about Burton himself and, ultimately, about humankind. Secondly, it isn't so much a book for students of the history of English prose, as one for lovers of language who joy in the strong taste of English when it was at its most masculine and vigorous. Finally, it isn't so much a book for those interested in the renaissance, as for those interested in life.

Burton is not a writer for fops and milquetoasts. He was a crusty old devil who used to go down to the river to listen to the bargemen cursing so that he could keep in touch with the true tongue of his race. Sometimes I think he might have been better off as the swashbuckling Captain of a pirate ship. But somehow he ended up as a scholar, and instead of watching the ocean satisfyingly swallowing up his victims, he himself became an ocean of learning swallowing up whole libraries. His book, in consequence, although it may have begun as a mere 'medical treatise,' soon exploded beyond its bounds to become, in the words of one of his editors, "a grand literary entertainment, as well as a rich mine of miscellaneous learning."

Of his own book he has this to say : "... a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I confess all..." But don't believe him, he's in one of his irascible moods and exaggerating. In fact it's a marvelous book.

Here's a bit more of the crusty Burton I love; it's on his fellow scholars : "Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers."

And here is Burton warming to the subject of contemporary theologians : "Theologasters, if they can but pay ... proceed to the very highest degrees. Hence it comes that such a pack of vile buffoons, ignoramuses wandering in the twilight of learning, ghosts of clergymen, itinerant quacks, dolts, clods, asses, mere cattle, intrude with unwashed feet upon the sacred precincts of Theology, bringing with them nothing save brazen impudence, and some hackneyed quillets and scholastic trifles not good enough for a crowd at a street corner."

Finally a passage I can't resist quoting which shows something of Burton's prose at its best, though I leave you to guess the subject: "... with this tempest of contention the serenity of charity is overclouded, and there be too many spirits conjured up already in this kind in all sciences, and more than we can tell how to lay, which do so furiously rage, and keep such a racket, that as Fabius said, "It had been much better for some of them to have been born dumb, and altogether illiterate, than so far to dote to their own destruction."

To fully appreciate these quotations you would have to see them in context, and I'm conscious of having touched on only one of his many moods and aspects. But a taste for Burton isn't difficult to acquire. He's a mine of curious learning. When in full stride he can be very funny, and it's easy to share his feelings as he often seems to be describing, not so much his own world as today's.

But he does demand stamina. His prose overwhelms and washes over us like a huge tsunami, and for that reason he's probably best taken in small doses. If you are unfamiliar with his work and were to approach him with that in mind, you might find that (as is the case with Montaigne, a very different writer) you had discovered not so much a book as a companion for life.

Chock full of curious lore and strong prose
This purports to be a medical textbook, and many of the obviously learned author's quotations are from half-forgotten late mediƦval medical writers. A plausible translation of the title into modern terms would be "A Study of Abnormal Psychology." The application of Scholastic methods to this topic --- so similar, and yet so different, from contemporary academic discourse --- creates a curious impression. He invokes astrology and theology in forming his psychology.

But in fact, Burton uses this arcane subject to go off on a profound and lengthy meditation on the melancholies and misfortunes of life itself. The author, it seems, was easily distracted, and his distractions are our gain. The passages on the Melancholy of Scholars, and the Melancholy of Lovers, are themselves worthy of the price of admission.

His prose is unlike anything before him or since him. It has some kinship to the paradoxical and simile-laden style of the Euphuists, but his individual sentences are often pithy and brief.

This seventeenth-century classic ought to be read by anyone interested in the period, in early psychology, or in the history of English prose.

"A rhapsody of rags."
Don't be misled by the title of this book, nor by what others may have told you about it. In the first place, it isn't so much a book about 'Melancholy' (or abnormal psychology, or depression, or whatever) as a book about Burton himself and, ultimately, about humankind. Secondly, it isn't so much a book for students of the history of English prose, as one for lovers of language who joy in the strong taste of English when it was at its most masculine and vigorous. Finally, it isn't so much a book for those interested in the renaissance, as for those interested in life.

Burton is not a writer for fops and milquetoasts. He was a crusty old devil who used to go down to the river to listen to the bargemen cursing so that he could keep in touch with the true tongue of his race. Sometimes I think he might have been better off as the swashbuckling Captain of a pirate ship. But somehow he ended up as a scholar, and instead of watching the ocean satisfyingly swallowing up his victims, he himself became an ocean of learning swallowing up whole libraries. His book, in consequence, although it may have begun as a mere 'medical treatise,' soon exploded beyond its bounds to become, in the words of one of his editors, "a grand literary entertainment, as well as a rich mine of miscellaneous learning."

Of his own book he has this to say : "... a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I confess all..." But don't believe him, he's in one of his irascible moods and exaggerating. In fact it's a marvelous book.

Here's a bit more of the crusty Burton I love; it's on his fellow scholars : "Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers."

And here is Burton warming to the subject of contemporary theologians : "Theologasters, if they can but pay ... proceed to the very highest degrees. Hence it comes that such a pack of vile buffoons, ignoramuses wandering in the twilight of learning, ghosts of clergymen, itinerant quacks, dolts, clods, asses, mere cattle, intrude with unwashed feet upon the sacred precincts of Theology, bringing with them nothing save brazen impudence, and some hackneyed quillets and scholastic trifles not good enough for a crowd at a street corner."

Finally a passage I can't resist quoting which shows something of Burton's prose at its best, though I leave you to guess the subject: "... with this tempest of contention the serenity of charity is overclouded, and there be too many spirits conjured up already in this kind in all sciences, and more than we can tell how to lay, which do so furiously rage, and keep such a racket, that as Fabius said, "It had been much better for some of them to have been born dumb, and altogether illiterate, than so far to dote to their own destruction."

To fully appreciate these quotations you would have to see them in context, and I'm conscious of having touched on only one of his many moods and aspects. But a taste for Burton isn't difficult to acquire. He's a mine of curious learning. When in full stride he can be very funny, and it's easy to share his feelings as he often seems to be describing, not so much his own world as today's.

But he does demand stamina. His prose overwhelms and washes over us like a huge tsunami, and for that reason he's probably best taken in small doses. If you are unfamiliar with his work and were to approach him with that in mind, you might find that (as is the case with Montaigne, a very different writer) you had discovered not so much a book as a companion for life.


Gunner With Stonewall: Reminiscences of William Thomas Poague
Published in Paperback by Univ of Nebraska Pr (1998)
Authors: William Thomas Poague, Monroe F. Cockrell, Bell Irvin Wiley, and Robert K. Krick
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Gunner With Stonewall
Gunner With Stonewall is a typical and valuable first hand account of life in wartime. Filled with intersting atecdotes and personal details, it is closer in perspective to Henry Kyd Douglas' "I Rode With Stonewall" than Foote's or Catton's histories on the same period. This lends and air of timelessness and similarity with WWII- and Vietnam-era first -hand accounts. Written many years after the fact, the book contains some minor innaccuracies ultimately clarified by the Editor. All in all, considering the dirth of books about Confederate Army Artillery, it is a good read that diserves a place on the historian's bookshelf.

Acerbic and interesting first-person memoir
Poague reminds me of Porter Alexander in his occasionally acerbic tone and his willingness to tell it like he thinks it is with regards to generals and their foibles. Maybe it's an artillery thing. Also like Alexander, he's refreshingly bloodthirsty -- no Gordon-esque blandishments about chivalry here. His account of the death of Federal Gen. Kearny contrasts interestingly with other accounts I've read, and his description of the surrender at Appomattox is particularly evocative.


The Challenge of the Medieval Text: Studies in Genre and Interpretation
Published in Hardcover by Columbia University Press (1985)
Authors: William Thomas Hobdell Jackson, Joan Ferrante, and Robert Hanning
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Collectors & Special Collections: Three Talks
Published in Hardcover by Library of Congress (2002)
Authors: Alice D. Schreyer, William S. Reese, and Robert H. Jackson
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Contemporary Essays on Greek Ideas: The Kilgore Festschrift
Published in Hardcover by Baylor University Press (1998)
Authors: Robert Baird, Stuart Rosenbaum, and Elmer H. Duncan
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Human Resource Management: Student Resource Guide
Published in Paperback by Thompson Internl (2000)
Authors: Robert L. Mathis, John H. Jackson, and William D. Kelly
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Mahlon W Locke: The Foot Doctor (Canadian Medical Lives Series)
Published in Hardcover by Dundurn Press, Ltd. (1991)
Author: Robert Jackson
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Mr. 5BX, Canadian fitness pioneer : a biography of William A.R. Orban
Published in Unknown Binding by Sono Nis Press ()
Author: John J. Jackson
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Players of Shakespeare 2 : Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company
Published in Hardcover by Cambridge University Press (1988)
Authors: Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood
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