After Chancellorsville: Letters From The Heart is a collection of the Civil War correspondences between Emma Randolph and Private Walter G. Gunn of the 11th New Jersey Infantry as Dunn. They began their exchange of letters when Walter went off to war and Emma was a young girl not yet twenty years of age. Water was carried from the bloody battlefield of Chancellorsville to a hospital in Baltimore. And it was their that he relayed to her the everyday events that comprise an intimate, eye-witness account representing a compelling and informative account of the hardships he endured while in the service of his country. Emma's letters were of the familiar things of home that Walter so badly needed to counter the horror that he lived through -- and almost died from. In time, the grew to love one another and planed a life together after the carnage and slaughter of war was ended. After Chancellorsville is an engaging and much appreciated contribution to the growing body of Civil War literature left in legacy for the benefit of future generations.

After Chancellorsville: Letters From The Heart is a collection of the Civil War correspondences between Emma Randolph and Private Walter G. Gunn of the 11th New Jersey Infantry as Dunn. They began their exchange of letters when Walter went off to war and Emma was a young girl not yet twenty years of age. Water was carried from the bloody battlefield of Chancellorsville to a hospital in Baltimore. And it was their that he relayed to her the everyday events that comprise an intimate, eye-witness account representing a compelling and informative account of the hardships he endured while in the service of his country. Emma's letters were of the familiar things of home that Walter so badly needed to counter the horror that he lived through -- and almost died from. In time, the grew to love one another and planed a life together after the carnage and slaughter of war was ended. After Chancellorsville is an engaging and much appreciated contribution to the growing body of Civil War literature left in legacy for the benefit of future generations.

Among all the hundreds of books about the Civil war, very few show the human dimension of men away on duty and the folks back home. Here Private Walter Dunn of New Jersey, wounded at Chancellorsville and with a minie ball still in his shoulder, is sent to a hospital in Baltimore. He works as a medical orderly as the wounded stream in from Gettysburg. And he renews his correspondence with Emily Randolph back home in Plainfield, New Jersey ( he lost her letters to a Rebel scavenger on the battlefield) Emily is an unforgettable young woman, playful, optimistic, dutiful, and serious, a fine observer of the people and the activities at home (among them the Lincoln reelection campaign). Walter, in turn, is in a vantage point for interpreting the events of the war, particularly as Baltimore lies vulnerable to Confederate attack. There is an interesting love story here, but more than that, the book is outstanding in reaching daily life and customs during the war. A fine addition to Civil War literature.

This is not a technique book nor is it a typical pattern book, it is a recipe book, all the ingredients are given and you are assumed to have the skills.

This is a book I would recommend to anyone who has at least one year of quilting under their belt. Sure a beginner can handle it but it isn't geared to the fresh start.

One of the great advantages the book offers is a color representation of the pattern and then in the recipe area you see the block in gray scale. To view a block without color gives you the freedom to choose if you want to work in monochromatic or several colors, your minds eye isn't limited to a picture provided by the author. There is so much to be learned letting your own natural choices free to assign the colors.

My friendship quilting group uses this book as well as the follow up book "Around the Block Again" as a primer for selecting different swap-a-block patterns, or for charity blocks. It is ideal where each member can choose their favorite pattern in a block size that others can use as well.

Buy this book and you will have YEARS of joy from all the possibilities.

Around the Block is one of the first reference books I bought when I began quilting four years ago. I have found it to be percise and accurate with its easy to follow directions. The book takes all the guess work out of dimentions as it offers instruction for several finished block sizes. My copy is dog eared and my most favorite reference book. Thank you Judy Hopkins!

I think this book is particularly useful for people who like to make sampler quilts. Rotary-cutting directions for all 200 blocks are listed in 4-5 different sizes. I'm using the patterns now to make a row-by-row quilt in which the blocks contained in each row are a different size. I highly recommend this book!

I've bought many books trying to understand this passage in my and my daughter's life, and I needed to buy only this book. It confirmed with text what I was feeling and thinking and gave me a better perspective of her teenage life, which I had either forgotten or not come to grips with in these millennium years. I say the same about Wonderful Ways to Love a Teen, a companion book.

I just love this book. It has so many enlightening ideas on how to avoid blow ups and relate to each other with understanding. All it takes is a little thought before speaking. I think there are many mothers and daughters who would like this book, especially because it gives both the teenager's and the mother's viewpoints and feelings.

Wow! How close can you get without actually being a part of something. This book really gets you involved and does a great job of relating the feelings that are there between a mother and her daughter. A must buy, 5 star book.

Courageous, breath-taking insight into the shabby workings of the white male mind. This is a truly great book. Chicago's life is an inspiration to all of us. I'm giving this book to both of my daughters.

Is there a more gifted artist in the world than Judy Chicago? While men continue to pretend that women artists do not even exist, Chicago has fought all the male paradigms and WON! Her gut-wrenchingly honest writing will inspire a lot of fear among males who are trying to keep women from showing their work, but every once in a while I feel that women have nothing to worry about as far as that goes: because artists like Judy Chicago continue to astonish all with her brilliance!

It seems that while Women continue to produce some of the most important art work of our time, there are many men in the art world and in criticism who wish to pretend that the most courageous Women's voices are not heard. I salute Judy Chicago for combatting what these men have perpetrated upon us as artists and as Women. She is so courageous, so forthright, never one to shy away from speaking the truth at all times even as she questions 'truth'. Her experiences with her Black lover are also fascinating, and it seems that now that Women and African Americans are joining to fight patriarchal assumptions/proscriptions, we are better able to appreciate the efforts of Judy Chicago to proclaim the relations of artistic struggle and the struggle of civil rights. A WONDERFUL artist.

While it's true that Jordan's technique seems a bit thick with "borrowings" from Charles Wright, her actual material (and her treatment of it) is wildly original. This book is shocking, heart-wrenching and, at times, almost unbearably beautiful. An urgent and necessary voice.

Judy Jordan's first book, "Carolina Ghost Woods," is a clear-eyed, gut-wrenching, soul-renewing tour de force. This book won the 1999 Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets, AND the National Book Critics Book of the Year award, AND the Utah book of the year award. These awards are all richly deserved, by this fabulously rich collection of poetry.

The influence of Charles Wright is in evidence here, particularly in very long lines, a few of which have "low rider" parts of lines in effect "underlapping" part of the same line, in order to extend the line, and draw it out as a line of poetry, and in the emphasis on landscape, teeming with natural beauty. Jordan also has developed her own version of the "low rider," in which the underlapping part of the line does not underlap any part of the first part of the line, but simply drops a line below the first part of the line, and continues horizontally, where the first part of the line leaves off. But, the effect is all Judy Jordan's. These poems do something that no other book of poetry does, and no astute reader could read this poetry and fail to be deeply moved by it.

These are poems that grieve the constant occurence and effects of violence, and of loss itself. My favorite poem in this book is "Help Me to Salt, Help Me to Sorrow," which opens

"In the moon-fade and the sun's puppy breath, / in the crow's plummeting cry, / in my broken foot and arthritic joints, memory calls me..."

Calls us, and calls us, and calls us... to horrendous, unspeakable loss ... the loss of the speaker's mother, and others close to her, the loss of a safe, civilized society for a poet to grow up in, and the loss of anything so profound as faith, to be grieved and consoled by landscape, and nature's astonishing beauty, and prayer. The attention to landscape and nature, the desire for healing, and the poet's brilliant use of language all combine to create a ghostly and powerful (though partial) redemption through grief and natural consolation ...

The ONLY bone of contention I have with this book comes with the very last poem in the book, which IS the entire fourth (and last) section of the book, which is about a dream of ... nuclear radioactive devastation ... to me, this poem is not as strong as any of the other poems in this book, and it is a false note to end on ... this book could not have simply ended after the third section, it would have been too open-ended, but Jordan's end of the world ending of this book creates a disjointed effect, as in "Huh? What does this have to do with the rest of the book?" Maybe to Jordan the answer to that question is clear, but the inclusion of the last poem, and placing it at the end, in my opinion, does not answer the question. ALL of the other poems in this book are astonishing ... they just need a fitting end section of the book to complete the book.

The title alone, "Carolina Ghost Woods," is enough to draw me in, and make me want to open this book. The poems are a tour de force, and the cover art of Carolina Ghost Woods on the front cover is just beautiful ...

This book was my first exposure to this astonishing poet, and I eagerly look forward to seeing more of her startling work ...

Having said everything I need to say, I HIGHLY recommend this book of gorgeous, marvelous poetry to EVERYBODY!

By happenstance we were introduced to this wonderful volume on an airplane, sitting next to author, Judy Jordan. She allowed me to leaf through her worn copy. While reading I asked her questions that were possibly painful, so moved was I by such honest and harsh and beautiful reflection and observation. Her words wrestled me into my own honesty/my own memoirs of observing violence/ of the solace of winter and of the woods and geese. The writing does justice to itself. This book is a gift of insight. No superlatives can I use other than to say, this is one of my all time keepers.

The first line of this book caught my attention and held it throughout the entire book. Its a fast paced, action, suspense, and wonderful love story that kept me turning the pages. Niall Burke seeks revenge for the deaths of friends and goes undercover, supplying the IRA with firearms.Fionnha (Fio) Brennan goes to Ireland to get away from an abusive ex-fiance, and meets Niall and his family on the plane. Niall's mother talks Fio into staying at their guesthouse, and while there Fio and Niall's attraction to each other grows stronger.
There is danger, a slight mystery, and wonderfully hot sexual tension between hero and heroine that will satisfy every reader of this story.
Id recommend it to anyone who loves romantic suspense this fast paced.

I just finished reading "Celtic Rendezvous" and absolutely loved it!
After walking in on her fiance in bed with another woman and realizing what a jerk he is, and with the help of an inheritence from her aunt, Fionnha decides to travel from the US to spend a year in Ireland. She ends up being invited to stay with the family of Niall. She is being followed and Niall, who has his own intrigue going on, becomes her protector....and more.
If you like romantic suspense a la Nora Roberts, Cherry Adair and Suzanne Brockmann I'd highly recommend Judy's book.......it's a great, fast paced and steamy story! This is the first book I've read by this author and after reading that it's going to be a series, all I can say is: When is the next one coming out?

This is a wonderful novel, especially if you like Ireland. The story is fast paced and quite sensual.

I can't wait for the sequel!

A sensitive writer tracks the passage of her parents into decline and death. Most of the material was seen by them, which may have taken away some rough edges, but what remains is enhanced by that ethical and psychological process. Most of us addressing this stage of relationships--as middle aged children or aging parents--will benefit from Judy Kramer's contribution.

After seeing Judy Kramer on the Today Show, I immediately bought her book. Her experience touched my heart and opened the flood gates of tears as I remembered walking a similar path with my own mother less than 2 years ago. She paints an accurate picture of the shift from child role to caretaker role, of the balance between wanting someone you love deeply to live on, and courageously acknowledging that it is time to die. Her sharing of the months after her parents death is especially poignant as the shock waves of realization continue on for the one who has experienced loss long after the rest of the world resumes their routines.

I highly recommend this for someone who has experienced a parental or significant loss as well as those who are anticipating and facing difficult end of life decisions.

When I saw Judy Kramer on the Today Show discussing this book, I knew I had to read it. I have just gone through an experience remarkably similar to the one she writes about. We lost my mother in May and have gradually "lost" my father to dementia though he is still living. Ms. Kramer's description of her experiences parenting her parents and finally letting them go struck emotionally close to home. To know that others share the huge continuum of emotions that accompanies this type of journey is reassuringly helpful. While the book was at times difficult to read (or to put down), it gave me insight and understanding into myself and my relationship with my parents and siblings.

I encourage anyone facing a journey into old age, whether themselves or with their parents, to read this book. Prepare yourself -- it's deep, emotional and sometimes disturbing to discover the universality of feelings about the life and death of one's parents. We sometimes feel we are going through things like this alone but "Changing Places : A Journey With My Parents into Their Old Age" shows us that we are not.

This is a beautifully compiled collection of short stories from Mississippi authors, including the writings by both of the editors. Tucker's short story, "CLara's Star," reminded me of much of my Mississippi past, even though I left Mississippi, reluctantly, almost forty years ago. This is a beautiful book and I am still enjoying it. A Mississippi past is helpful, but not mandatory, to become thoroughly engrossed in this book. I cannot recommend this book any higher. It is unfortunate it is so difficult to find.

Maybe Welty, Morris, Hannah and other such names sold the book, but the works of Wheelock, in Christmas Lights and Isonhood, in Morning Stove seems to have captured what the true meaning of Christmas is in our hearts. Need to hear more from them.

This is a beautiful collection of stories, not just for the Mississippian or the Southerner. With greats like Faulkner and Welty and Spencer in the crowd, it should have a wide appeal. But to my mind, the lovely, bittersweet story of Caroline Langston testifies to the fact that modern writers from Mississippi are as talented as ever, and write with as much poignancy as those from the past.

The experiments in this book are very basic and simple fun activities that are easy to follow and which children -even adults- will enjoy. The book simplifies and explains many fundamental scientific concepts that we encounter daily. The scope of these experiments is very wide , from daily science to weather, chemistry,... which are all implemented with very readily available items. This is a book that will keep inquisitive children motivated and busy for hours, they will especially love the science tricks. The second book : "365 More Science Experiments with Everyday Materials" complements this book. One should get them both!

I purchased this book for the science division of our home schooling studies. It is laid out very well and it's easy to understand.

Using materials most people have around the house you can simply flip to the beginning and follow the headings for ideas.

What can you use straws for? Try out the section on "Clutching at Straws", make an Oboe, balance scale, spear a potato, etc.

Would you like to know other uses for lemon juice? Start on page 36. Keep going- check out soap suds, strings, paper cups, experiments with temperature, etc.

Basically you get it, you could spend many great minutes or hours teaching your kids through hands on learning.

Many of these can be done by an older child with very little help- a perfect solution to the "I'm bored" problem.

Please- turn of the TV, electronic games. etc. and let them use their brains- actively.

This is a wonderful book, one that every household would benefit from.

I've picked up many books which claim to demonstrate science with "everyday materials." Most times the "everyday materials" are not something I keep on hand. Like cheesecloth. Who keeps cheesecloth on hand? But the demonstrations in this book really are simple and really do include basic household supplies. I've used the book with my five year old and have found the demonstrations and explanations to be thorough enough to engage his interest. And I've enjoyed myself too!

My son loves this book, all the different kinds of cars and trucks are fun to look at, and the rythm of the story is great for reading aloud. I hope the paperback edition maintains the foldout "centerfold" of the original.

This can't be out of stock! As a children's librarian, I found this to be a wonderful book. Lots of repetition and vehicles, with big clear pictures. What more could you want? Even parents get into the spirit of the book, yelling 'Stop,' and 'Help' in the appropriate places. Hope that this is not a prelude to out-of-print

I work as a Toddler teacher in a daycare with children whose age range from 14mos to 2yrs and this is thier favorite book. I was so glad to see that it was here because I have looked everywhere for since our copy was recently ripped by one of the childern. I can not tell you just how much the children love this book. If I could give more stars I would.