This book is the product of years of study and of walking over the ground of Dade's massacre. Unlike Custer, Dade left some survivors to tell the tale. Those of you familiar with the enormous literature on Custer will recognize the type of book "Dade's Last Command" is, a study of a single battle from as many angles as can be researched by the author. Yes, the last stand of Dade and his men mark the official opening of the Second Seminole War, a war that made and tarnished the reputations of Zachary Tayor and Winfield Scott, whose career streatched from the War of 1812 to the Civil War. But be clear this is a battle study centering around the end of Dade and his 108 men. So don't be mislead by the book jacket description.

I have just finished reading this excellent book, and I am certain that the scenes of the march and ultimate annihilation of Major Francis Dade's column by the Seminole Indians will haunt me for a long time to come, just as the movie version of this event, Naked In The Sun, did when I saw it as a child in 1957. However, unlike that film, this book is hard, unadorned reality, with the facts more incredible than any fictional trimmings. The Dade Massacre remains less than a footnote in the popular imagination only because the fall of the Alamo occurred less than 3 months afterwards; but Mr. Laumer's book will surely enlighten those who don't know about it as well as those who think they do, for the author has combed every possible avenue of research in putting together the widely scattered pieces---and often they are mere crumbs---of this story. The suspense and high drama is quite palpable, and the reader is made to feel as if he is one of Dade's soldiers as they are whittled away first on the road, and then within their pathetic log breastwork. The saga of survivor Ransom Clark, and how he somehow managed to limp and crawl his way back to Fort Brooke---over 60 miles in three days----despite multiple wounds, is truly incredible, and would not pass muster in a work of fiction. The only thing really lacking in the book is a map of the Florida of the period---1835---that would have helped readers unfamiliar with the landscape better understand where the events were taking place. However, a collection of contemporary maps and drawings of the immediate battlefield certainly make an understanding of the action there as clear as a bell; and rare portraits of some of the men involved, on both sides, provide an immediacy and a humanity to the history.

This is a great book! researched exhaustively,and for 30 years the author writes this as if you are marching right beside the doomed column.You can hear the shuffle of the feet feel the tension as they march to their deaths,and above all you feel the forlorn hope diminish with each passing hour. A GREAT GREAT BOOK. A MASTERPIECE! I CANNOT PRAISE THIS TOO HIGHLY! A great book on a forgotten time and place. WISH TED TURNER would make this into a TNT ORIGINAL MOVIE!And follow the truth of the format. A VERY GOOD STORY!

But not that good either. This book contains writings that were all attempted after Mark Twain was over 70 years old and after his daughter had died. The majority of the book is composed of incomplete manuscripts, some of which are highly amusing. Most of the stories here start out the same way . . . he tries to get a story going which is gloomy, defeatest, and which ends in disaster. But Twain's natural sense of vigour always gets in the way and st a critical point, the stories tend to take a different turn than he had intended, thus he abaondons them. There are some interesting stories here. One of them includes the story of a slave who, through craft, turns the tables on his white master (named George Harrison, oddly enough!) and enslaves him, which is a rather interesting thought for those modern critics who continually chastise Twain as a racist. A few polemical pieces are included which are bound to irritate the Christians -- not all of these are gloomy, however, as the editor seems to think Twain intended them -- he obviously enjoys his heretical antics a great deal. Although this collection did not really impress me that much, there are several pices of writing here in which Twain shines like he has in few other works. A social statement on the Natie Americans and on growing old are also included. Although not for everybody, fans of Samuel Clemens will find this book a rare treat.

As a lazy philosopher in search of a belief system, I found this book exceptionally provocative, if occaisionally irritating. I'm generally not a fan of compilations, particularly when many of the pieces are unfinished manuscripts. However, it was wonderful to see so many of my own half-formed questions given an eloquent voice. The beauty of these writings is that though Twain/Clemmens pokes fun at or denounces the futility of the human struggle and our attempts to understand, he never gives in to his own dark thoughts. Throughout it all there is an undercurrent of hope. Contradictory, yes, but well worth look.

John Halperin takes Lytton Strachey as his model and provides four short lives of people he views as emblematic of the "second Georgian" era - King Geroge V himself, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby and Nancy Astor. The results are interesting without being particularly memorable. Halperin tells his stories in a plain documentary fashion, without much analysis and with none of the mordant wit or strong opinions of Strachey's nasty little classic. Such a straightforward approach works best if bolsered by extensive research, but the slim bibliography indicates a newspaper profile rather than an original and insightful work. All this being said, Bowen, Philby and Astor are interesting enough as people to making reading "Eminent Georgians" worthwhile. As for the good King George, it will take a much more persuasive writer to bring that admirable but dull monarch to life on the page.