I am not a fan of the English Romantics but I will make a big exception for Lord Byron. He's wild! "Don Juan," parts of which are included in this book, is bawdy and hilarious. Keep in mind that the poem was not considered fit for young ladies to read when it came out...are you tempted yet?

The Dover Thrift Editions are surprisingly well-constructed - they'll outlast, say, your Oxford World Classics paperbacks - and the poems are usually well-chosen. And they're....cheap!

This is a great collection of thirty of Byron's short poems, arranged in chronological order. Everyone should own at least one collection of Byron's work, and at this price, why not make this the one?

This is a great collection of mostly short poems by one of the greatest poets in memory. beginning with "Damaetas" and ending with "On this Day I complete my Thirty-sixth year" these 30 poems, in chronological order, represent a great portion of Byron's work, including portions of Childe Herold's Pilgramage, hebrew melodies, don juan, and manfred. great as an introduction to byron.

This the the first novel by the great critic a much neglected-novelist, Andrew Lytle. The story is narrated by an older uncle to his nephew during one long night as he tells the story of his Alabama family around the period of the Civil War. Like Cold Mountain, Lytle's research and knowledge of the customs, speech, and lifestyle of his characters is perfect. Though this was his first novel, you'll see Lytle was already a master of fiction. When you're finished read "The Fathers" the Civil War novel by Lytle's friend poet, Alan Tate.

Some of Mr. Lytle's prose can be almost too thick--The Velvet Horn. But his short stories in Alchemy are very good, well crafted but still juicy. The bio on Forrest is good also, its beginning as artistic a rendering of a portrait as I have ever read, quite unique. But in A Wake for the Living, he shows--I think to some extent like Hemingway in A Movable Feast--that he writes extremely well about nonfiction that is intimate. I would recommend his short stories in Alchemey and also this book as good first ones of Lytle to start-out with.

Cunning as the Devil was Nathan Bedford Forrest and this book indicates just how quick and clever this military genius was. Little wonder then that Lee considered this dark knight to be his finest soldier, above even the legendary Stonewall Jackson.

In terms of his impact on modern warfare, no general of the Civil War had more than Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not Grant, not Lee, not Longstreet or Sherman. This is the man. No less a general than Erwin Rommel studied Forrest's tactics and implemented them with modern weaponry when his Afrika Korps marched all over Libya and Egypt in World War II.

The reason I say this book isn't for the "politically correct" is that it was written some 70 years ago, by a man of the old South who obviously idolized Forrest and everything he stood for. As you know already, not everything Forrest stood for was good. He was 100 years ahead of his time as a soldier, but stuck in 1860 in his personal beliefs.

But...getting into the book. He was a brilliant commander who never had enough men under his command to turn the war in the South's favor. Still, he was a hero to the people of the Tennessee river valley where he won most of his victories, with good reason. When the Union troops overran these areas and placed them under military rule, Forrest made sure they treated the citizens decently. Once he even saved a group of innocent men from a flaming death at the hands of vengeful Union soldiers whom he was defeating in battle. Reading these and other stories makes you understand why he was such a hero to the author, who would have heard first-hand accounts of Forrest's exploits.

Lytle believes that the South would have won the war if Forrest had been placed in command of the main Confederate army in the west, and he's probably right. Forrest was an extraordinary individual who had more impact on the 20th century than any other Civil War general.

I never fully appreciated the intellect of Forrest until I finished this book. It peels away the myths about the man, and tells about what he was really like. I loved it, and often flip around in it from time to time. A must for Civil War buffs!