Finally---the definitive history of The Light Crust Doughboys, one of the "big three" in the history of western swing and Texas-style country music (the other being Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and Milton Brown's Musical Brownies). But this must-have book is so much more than a book: history "comes alive" with the included music CD which features a classic Doughboys' decade, the 1940s, alongside their contemporary Grammy-recognized work. And it's in this newer work that fans can really see the legacy and enduring power of a band that's been called country music's greatest historical band. In songs like "Texas Women", "Sending Me You", "Looking Through A Stained Glass Darkly", and "Amarillo, Where The Wind Blows Free, the reader can see how The Light Crust Doughboys keep evolving as artists while always keeping a foot in the best of their Texan and American past.The Light Crust Doughboys are one of the select bands in country music history equally renowned for their instrumental as well as their vocal prowess. Long known for their eclectic approach to music, combining elements of the blues, cowboy music, old-time, gospel, and dixieland, The Light Crust Doughboys are true American ambassadors and modern troubadours of American music. You'll read here of The Doughboys' pioneering use of electric guitar and electric bass in American music. You'll read that they pioneered being a western band in Hollywood's golden age (they pre-dated Bob Wills' film debut by four years). You'll read and hear how they combined gospel music and western swing (with gospel legend James Blackwood) to develop gospel western swing. You'll read how they came up with the idea of blending Pacific/California surf and Texas western swing with Ventures' guitar great, Nokie Edwards, resulting in critically-acclaimed roots music including an Americana Christmas album! Let's all hope that this book paves the way for long-overdue recognition in the NashVegas-dominated Country Music Hall of Fame as well as "early influences" recognition in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is there a Pulitzer Prize for music history or Texana? This book and CD has earned it! And, do your heart and ears a big favor by searching for other Light Crust Doughboys' music and videos at Amazon.

The Light Crust Doughboys Are On The Air: Celebrating Seventy Years Of Texas Music by John Mark Dempsey (a native Texan and Assistant Professor of Broadcast Journalism, University of North Texas) is an enjoyable and informative study of The Light Crust Doughboys band and their Texas music, which was broadcast in the "golden era" of radio. Their long-lived radio show lasted from 1930 to 1952, and their particular brand of gospel music was nominated for the Grammys in 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2002. An enjoyable, fact-filled, enthusiastically recommended blend of biographical background and cogent musical assessment of this evolving group, The Light Crust Doughboys Are On The Air is enhanced with a music CD featuring 30 of the band's most popular and beloved songs.

This is an excellent book by the wellknown specialist Professor Berthrong. It is very readable and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject or for course text.

...This is simply a reprint of a book that was first published in the 1640s by Roger Williams, who was the founder of Rhode Island and a respected friend ("netop") of the Narragansett tribe.

That said -- this book is not simply a vocabulary, or a grammatical treatise. It also includes dozens of insights into the daily life of the Narragansett tribe, at a time when most of them lived as they had from time immemorial. Every chapter includes not only the actual vocabulary appropriate to the topic under discussion, but also several paragraphs talking about the lives of the Narragansett. Sometimes Roger Williams ends a chapter with a little pedantic poem, but hey, cut him some slack -- he was a creature of his times, as are we all.

Here are a couple of things that I wish someone had told ME about, before I discovered this amazing little volume. First and formost -- the table of contents is at the END of the book, not the beginning. It does exist, you didn't get a defective copy. Second -- for a funny, fascinating set of examples of early native american onomatopeia, look in the sections on "Fowles" and "Beastes." Evidently, the Narragansetts told Roger Williams that they called a duck a "quequecum," a wild goose was called a "honck-honck," and a horse (which they learned about from the English) was called a "nay-nay-oumewot." Maybe this is just my own sense of humor, but I enjoyed envisioning a stern, austere, Godly Puritan, wearing heavy black clothes in summertime (and the hat with the little buckle on front), sitting down with a solemn circle of sunburned sachems, and doing bird calls. I can just picture the Cambridge-educated Roger Williams earnestly scribbling notes in his notebook, while the sachems sat there, pointed at birds outside the wigwam, and went "quack quack" and "honk honk" for his edification. I thought the duck was especially funny -- "Ah yes.... we callum that birdum a quequecum, Good Reverend Williams."

That is a minor point, but it does make the book a little more fun. Basically, however, let me hasten to add that this book is far more than fun. It is ultimately VERY serious. It's one of the few remaining sources of information into the tongues spoken by the early natives of southern New England. If you are capable of appreciating this, I recommend you look for anything by Kathleen Bragdon, or Ives Goddard, who have done a lot of work trying to keep the memories of these lost languages alive. If you prefer libraries to the internet, try to find articles by the 19th century Connecticut state librarian J. Hammond Trumbull, who wrote many articles on native New England place names, and Eastern Algonquin languages in general. You may also wish to seek out John Eliot's "Indian Bible," which is incredibly hard to find in print, but was put on microfilm by University Microfilms in Michigan. The "Indian Bible" was composed, with the able assistance of native speakers, in the Massachusett dialect of Algonquin, which is very closely related to Narragansett. Another little gem is William Woods' "New England Prospect," which includes a handy little SHORT vocabulary. Also, if you're internet-savvy enough, you might enjoy seeking out the work of Jessie "Little Doe" Fermino, a native Wampanoag in Mashpee, Massachusetts, who has recently been developing language classes in the tongue of the Wampanoag tribe.

But back to this book -- it is highly informative, and a tremendous boon to students of early native Americans in New England. Two thumbs up.

The book was really great and I have read a lot of books on John F Kennedy. The book gave a human aspect of the campaign and the day to day life of the kennedy administration.

Evelyn is very different from Pepys, whom he knew. Unlike Pepys, Evelyn was a strait-laced fellow, so we get no juicy stories of his amours. He hardly speaks of his wife and consequently never mentions any arguments they might have had. He tells few personal anecdotes. He also has little to say about the great plague year or the great fire of London. Pepys gives a lot more detail on these subjects.

What he does deal with rather extensively are the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he was a member. It was hard for me to get excited about these. Nevertheless, it is good to have this book available.

John Evelyn's diary is a wonderful source-book for 17th Century England. It covers far more of the period than Peyps' diary (but is a little drier!)and gives a comprehensive picture of life in those turbulent times. Guy de la Bedoyere has done a fine job of editing this diary.

As an orthodox Catholic convert with a fondness for high quality British fiction, I had to have this book of Evelyn Waugh's gripes and barks at poor Cardinal Heenan concerning the end of the Latin Liturgy following Vatican II. As you would expect, Waugh comes off as witty, sardonic, and somewhat tenderly brokenhearted. It is rare to see Waugh in this mode, but you can tell he felt the changes in the Mass on a personal level. Modernity drove Waugh to drink & bouts of fantastic & biting satire, but in these letters he comes across like a very intelligent child who has lost it's mother. Heenan is the villain of the piece, though no fault of Waugh: the Cardinal's letters show him to be a smooth liar firmly bent on pursuing the Gospel of Trendiness with little regard for the feelings of his flock. All in all, a poignant chronicle of one man's dealings with a Bishop-as-Bureaucrat.

It is very interesting to read this kind of book. But I prefer "Ethnographic Studies of Homosexuality" and "Geography of Perversion". Especially the latter is more comprehensive survey on this topic. Nevertheless I recommend the book for those who have interest in the matter.

If your interested in upper midwest flowers and want something to take with you in the field than this is the book for you. It's armed with the common and latin name, where you're likely to find it and several have a little history about it's uses or how it was named. I've had my book for over ten years and still whenever I spot a flower I haven't seen I return to this book to find it's name and mark it as one I've found.

What a SUCK-FEST! This is the worst book I've read in a long time. The (unlucky) 13 authors seem only slightly concerned with plot continuity, and the result is like a novel with every third page torn out. Characters come and go, and come back again for no apparent reason, other than to satisfy the authors' self-indulgent egos. In particular, the chapters by Elmore Leonard and Vicki Hendricks were appallingly bad. Hendricks ignores all the preceeding chapters and suddenly changes the eponymous manatee from an aquatic pinhead into some amalgam of Lassie and the Hardy Boys. In a later chapter Carl Hiaasen openly mocks this sudden swerve in character. (Tip: avoid books where one co-author ridicules another co-author's writing) Elmore Leonard contributes a time capsule that might have been hip 25 years ago, with a black character refering to someone as a "cat", and in the very next sentence actually using the phase "shuck and jive". I am very happy I checked this book out of the library, instead of squandering 22.95 on this train wreck of a book

OK, thirteen of Miami's favorite writers are sitting around a campfire (this isn't a joke). Dave Barry kicks off a story involving a couple hit men, a manatee, a 102-year-old woman and a box containing the head of Fidel Castro, and passes it to the writer to the left. The next eleven writers circle the story around the campfire in an attempt to blend this motley cast of characters (and heads) into the literary equivalent of a refreshing Miami Beach smoothee.

Throwing in monkey wrenches, stranger characters and even more heads-in-boxes in the process, they mostly succeed in creating a wholly unbelievable, extremely offbeat and wildly entertaining mystery. Poor Carl Hiassen (of Striptease fame) is challenged with tying up all the loose ends without playing the Demi Moore card, and succeeds in delivering an ending as strange as a manatee is large.

Above all an interesting experiment, Naked Came the Manatee is also an entertaining quick read.

Booger is the answer to the walls talking. Suspend belief and enter the world of a manatee that thinks, feels and reasons like us. He becomes involved in a mystery not as a victim, but as a participant in important events. The concept of a manatee detective aiding the likes of Brit Montero in solving the case of the Castro heads is only exceeded by the writing of this by the many different writers, from Dave Barry to Carl Hiaasen. No mystery should be this much fun