This is an excellent translation, very well researched and footnoted, with an extensive bibliography. The editing work is flawless. Every detail is well done, including good paragraph breaks for easy flow, good fonting, and quality binding. It makes the full depth of these important sermons available in a very readable format.

This is not a conventional narrative of Coltrane's life, or even his recordings. Rather, it is a detailed discography both of released albums and of the many many unreleased recordings that circulate among collectors, and of a large number of recordings that sit in vaults around the world, largely inaccessible to anyone outside the recording industry.

Much of the information corrects the liner notes on releases from various labels, and, in fact, many record companies use the information in this volume when trying to figure out what they have in their vaults. The results are not always perfect: The new Coltrane 7CD box set from Fantasy of live recordings contains several errors in the liner notes. Without this book, you wouldn't know they were there.

The author is part of the Coltrane Syndicate, a group of Coltrane scholars including Wolf Schmaler and Michael Delorme, as well as David Wild (who has also published work on Coltrane's recordings). They are in fact authorized by the Coltrane Family to acquire and document recordings that cannot be released for various legal reasons, so this book is just about the only way to learn about recordings and recording dates (especially live dates) that help patch together Coltrane's works and times.

In addition to all the objective information, there is also a hefty selection of photos, and, even more so, album covers and posters for events, that really serve as a kind of giant scrap-book for the late master.

There is -- and there is unlikely to be -- a better book published on the subject.

"On February 18, a young African-American army veteran, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was shot at a voter registration rally in nearby Marion, Alabama. He died a few days later. SCLC [The Southern Christian Leadership Conference] announced a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, fifty-four miles away, to protest Jackson's murder.
"On Sunday, March 7 [1965], late in the afternoon, John Lewis and SCLC's Hosea Williams led nearly six hundred marchers from the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which leads out of Selma toward Montgomery. They could not see over the steep span until they reached the middle of the bridge. There on the other side was 'a sea of blue,' Lewis remembered: 'Alabama state troopers.' Behind them were row upon row of white civilians deputized that morning by Sheriff Clark, many of them on horseback. Lewis looked down to the muddy water one hundred feet below. 'Can you swim?' Hosea Williams asked him.
" 'No,' Lewis answered. Neither could Williams."

Lewis and Williams then knelt to pray and passed the word back for all the marchers to do the same. As history recorded--both in words and in famous, stomach-churning photos--the troopers attacked the marchers, fracturing Lewis' skull with a billy club. Two weeks later, after a federal judge had ruled that the march could proceed, a line of marchers that swelled to twenty-five thousand people made that journey to Montgomery.

As a child on Long Island, I watched the television reports and read the magazine articles about the march. The bravery of the marchers and the media's coverage of those atrocities performed by the troopers under the direction of their boss, Governor George Wallace, turned the tide of national opinion--the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law a few months later.

That young black man with the fractured skull, a disciple of Gandhi and King, had already been putting his body on the line for years prior to that Bloody Sunday thirty-seven years ago. Estranged from his family for his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, arrested more than forty times in his determination to change the way African Americans were treated in America, John Lewis eventually became US Congressman John Lewis, currently serving an Atlanta-centered district in his eighth term. Lewis has served most of those years as a deputy whip in the Democratic caucus.

In a solid, clearly-written biography for middle grade students, Christine M. Hill presents the story of this lesser-known American hero. The author relies heavily on Lewis' own autobiography (WALKING WITH THE WIND, Simon & Schuster, 1998) as well as articles by and about him. We follow Lewis' life, starting with his childhood as an Alabama sharecropper's son, his preaching his first sermon at sixteen, and his training to sit on the bus as a Freedom Rider--where he would be severely beaten for the first of many times:

"On the night before the trip started, John Lewis dined out for the first time. Growing up in Alabama and going to school in Nashville, he had never eaten in an elegant restaurant. He had never sat with blacks and whites together, conversing pleasantly over dinner. He savored the unfamiliar, but delicious Chinese food. He admired the handsome, silvery serving platters. But none of the volunteers could forget the next day's purpose. 'It was like the Last Supper,' Lewis said, 'because you didn't know what to expect, going on the Freedom Ride.' "

That ride has taken John Lewis a long distance--from a segregated school all the way to his present job as the country's highest ranking elected African American. JOHN LEWIS: FROM FREEDOM RIDER TO CONGRESSMAN is an excellent, and in-depth introduction to one of my own living heroes.

Richie Partington ...

John Quincy Adams blends history and biography in presenting a new study of the statecraft and life of John Quincy Adams, policy-maker in the early American republic. It's recommended reading for high school and college undergraduate students, as well as any non-specialist general radeing studying early American history and politics.

This is a truly lovely book: beautifully produced in paper-back with quality materials (so a joy to handle), interesting and insightful commentaries written in styles that aren't bound up by artistic jargon, and a wonderful, comprehensive collection of images in colour, put in meaningful order. I highly recommend it.

A truly fascinating read of exploration and attempted location of the mythical water passage across the western U.S. from the geographical perspective. From the mid 1600's up to and including the Lewis and Clark expedition, geographical mappings of the west were theoretical and conjectural, leading to misconceptions and inaccuracies in cartography and images of unexplored lands. With loyal support and backing from Jefferson, Lewis and Clark set out to locate the legendary water route across America for U.S. commerce, while at the same time collecting and taking notes on cartography, botany, zoology, geology, ethnology and natural resources, along with postulating future agricultural possibilities for the nation. Although the image of a fabled water passage was shattered and the idea of a totally agrarian society was somewhat fragmented, the Lewis and Clark expedition did succeed in being the premier stepping-stone for western expansion and maintained the imagery process of the west right up to the present time. A spellbinding read.

Lewis and Clark, A Prairie Dog for the President, is a fun read that's nicely paced. Author Shirley Raye Redmond uses whimsy and humor to tell this historic event: President Jefferson sends the eager Lewis and Clark off to explore the West. The vast young nation has never been fully explored. The president wonders how long it will take to get to the end of it and what they will find. One of my favorite parts is the banter over what to name the barking prairie creature they discover and send back to Jefferson.
"You can call it a ground rat."
"No, it looks like squirrel. I'll call it a barking squirrel."
"Squirrels don't bark. Dogs bark. We should call it a prairie dog."
"That's it!" Lewis and Clark agreed.
Later it starts all over again, when the President asks, "Is it a gopher?"
The illustrations by John Manders are just as pleasing. I like the facial expressions on the people and animals, especially the mischievous smile of the prairie dog. Manders is skilled at portraying action and emotions. And like the author, his sense of humor is so much fun. A buffalo and bear pose to be sketched. A buffalo won't fit in a shipping crate. Prairie dogs pop in and out of holes, eluding capture. A poor scout is so weighed down with "presents" for the President, he must be hoisted onto a boat.
Together, Shirley Raye Redmond and John Manders have created a delightful book.

For any kind of reserch paper on Lewis Carroll, this a good book to look through. This book is like Anotated Alice, yet different. It includes some annotations, but is still mostly about his life. How many people knew that the Lewis Carroll based his books on a real Alice? Going even further, how many people know that he used a different Alice in the sequel? You can find all this and more in the book. For example, some people may not know that Charles Dodgson had O.C.D. And his best friends were little girls? The things that are in that book are amazing, and very helpful. Cheers!!!!!!!! : )

This is a wonderful book that I recommend to anyone who has been or is planning to go to Mammoth Cave. I recently took a trip to Mammoth Cave and found it difficult to take pictures while taking the tours. I purchased this book and found that many of the sites that I wanted a picture of where in this book. The picture were much better than I could ever take!

This most recent compilation of John and Matt Lewis Thorne's Simple Cooking newsletter continues their intelligent, friendly, delicious writing about food and a real life.This book ends with "Last Gleaning," about the final illness of John's father, and the role food and eating played in their sometimes difficult relationship.John Thorne has been compared to MFK Fisher, and there is some validity to the comparison, to an extent. They both write very very good prose, and they both write about hunger other than the visceral. However, there are differences. At times, Fisher's writing seems exclusionary, and Thorne's never does.To clear up a point of potential confusion: "Matt" is a nickname for Martha. They are married. She acts as editor, and does add an occasional essay or aside. Her contributions make a good writer even better.