Better than Cold Mountain, if you enjoy historical fiction from this era, you must read this book. It not only has fascinating and interesting characters, but the graphics of battle and intrigues in strategy make wonderful reading.

This book is so engrossing that I read it a second time immediately after finishing it. Through finely drawn characters and a marvelous economy of style, the author brings the Civil War home with immediacy. He explores all strata of society, and is especially effective in developing subleties in differing relationships between the races. If I could write a book about the Civil War, this is the one I would want to write, word for word.

In the new introduction Donald McCaig says that if this is your first time reading this book I envy you. If you're a dog person then this is the book for you.

A slim and witty volume with many anecdotes from Lorenz's work as an animal behaviorist. But the jewel in the book is a single chapter where he lays out how to train a dog so that the dog understands what you want of him. Train your dog in two weeks, 30 minutes a day.

A Border Collie owner, I could hardly wait to read this book, and the author's other books, Nop's Trials and Nop's Hope. A one-time visitor to Scotland who can't wait to go back, I eagerly looked forward to this book. And, I was not in the least bit disappointed on either count! The author's style is easy-going and readable, with a subtle humor throughout. His images are brilliant and I just felt like I was present for each scene that he wrote and a part of the action. Someone who has no interest in the working Border Collie might find the book dull. So also might someone who is not particularly interested in the very different lifestyle of the shepherd of Scotland. But for us who love the working Border Collie and find the life of the Scottish shepherd and his/her dog intriguing, this is an absolutely must-read book, over and over again!

This is a wonderful book any dog lover will thoroughly enjoy

When I first read Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men a few years ago, I had a delightful surprise in the middle. There was a grand photo of Viv Billingham and her remarkable dogs, including her hard-working Holly. While on a walking tour of Scotland, prior to reading this book, we had a most memorable demonstration of sheepherding at Viv's Tweed Hope. McCaig's book captures the intensity, devotion, and the "other worldliness" of shepherding and Scottish competitiveness of which we saw only a momentary frament. Unfortunately, I loaned this book to a Border Collie owner, who moved away and never returned the book. My mistake, because this book is a keeper.

I enjoyed Nop's Trials but found the story a bit depressing. The ending was satisfying though. I had difficulty with the dog's chat as they spoke like Quakers do.."thou art a good dog" etc..but I got used to it. However, this dog dialogue could have possibly been left out. The author has written very sensitively and honestly but I felt he could have used a bit more decorum in one part of the book that depicts sexual intimacy between the main character and his wife. Other than that it is a novel of some integrity and you can learn some things about Border Collies which I found interesting. A good weekend read.

Nop's Trials is one of the best books I've read. Nop is Lewis Burkholder's loyal sheep dog, and Lewis is Nop's dedicated master. Nop's Trials is the story of one man's dedication to his incredible Border Collie, Nop. Nop is stolen on Christmas Day, and is sold and given to many people. Lewis searches and brakes laws just to get his dog back. This book is a must read for any dog or animal lover, or Border Collie fan. Nop's story will make you cry, laugh, and you'll be hooked from page 1.

Actually, I read this book quite a few years ago, when it was first published.
Since then, I've re-read Nop's Trials, along with every other book that Donald McCaig has written.
While I have enjoyed all of Mr. McCaig's books, Nop's Trials is by far the best.
It's a great story that will be long remembered, not just by Border Collie owners like myself, but by any dog or animal lover.
Nop's Trials is a story that could be made into a great movie!

The word "essay" envokes thoughts of the dry historical documents that were required reading in school. That is not what Donald McCaig has written here. This book is an interesting collection of true short stories. The first chapter follows the history of the Virginia farm that McCaig and his wife purchased in 1971 and the beginning of their life there. The subsequent chapters describe the rural lifestyle of the McCaigs and their neighbors. There are stories of pleasure and of pain; stories of the hard labor and the simple rewards of farming. There are stories of humans and of animals. The chapter "The Best Four Days in Highland County", a narrative of a Virginia county fair, is the essence of the book, combining all of the elements that make the book, and the lifestyle, so appealing. Because each chapter can stand on its own, the reader can read or re-read each of them individually, and these are tales that deserve to be re-read and savored.

A primer on the very best of America. Touching and trenchant, McCaig's tales of rural life offer a richer, deeper glimpse of the American spirit than the dross produced by Hollywood. City dwellers everywhere should read this book to refresh the soul.

McCaig's writing style has matured since penning Nop's Trials. If you've read the first book, you'll understand how it almost feels like somebody else wrote Hope, yet it still carries McCaig's overall simplistic and straightforward flavor. Hope is more about Hope's handler, Penny Burkeholder, and how she tries to cope with life after her family is cruelly and suddenly torn asunder. Nop's offspring, Hope, is integral to the storyline, though not so much as his sire was in Nop's Trials. There's something bleak and distant about this book that makes it feel lonely...though it is appropriate for the story, it lacks a little of the magic and sparkle of Nop's Trials. There's less humor here, less warmth, and I'm uncertain if McCaig intended it to be interpreted this way to help the reader feel what Penny and her family endure during the telling of this tale. It's a great book, but a sad one overall. Fortunately, enough strings remain untied at the end to give hope for at least one more wonderful Burkeholder story.

This author is obviously one of the good dog people who listen to their dogs. This is the sequel to Nop's Trials. Hope is Nop's son. Lewis gave the dog to his daughter Penny to help her to recover from the death of her husband and daughter in a car accident. Penny becomes obsessed with the dog and sheepdog trials and becomes fairly successful. Wanting to be close to her, Lewis and Nop rejoin the sheepdog circuit with great success in the ring, and somewhat less with his daughter. Hope, Nop, and Lewis and his wife do well in the end, but I am disappointed in his daughter and hope that her situation will resolve itself in time.

I found this book very touching. I felt an enormous sense of compassion for Penny and understood her frantic efforts to escape from her overwhelming grief. Although her choices seemed very foreign to me, I felt that I could empathize with her. She often seemed blind to others and their needs, and their efforts to help her, because her own hurts were so enormous. But, her wonderful dog, Hope, was marvelous and, like dogs tend to be, nonjudgemental. Penny's mistakes were realistic, and I think she finally learned from them. The dawning of her ability to move on and begin a new life at the end of the book was sensitively done in the author's easy-reading and unpretentious style. I found this a book for reading over and over again. It did not leave me with the disturbing images that Nop's Trials did.

I agree that JACOB'S LADDER is a TV miniseries waiting for production; as I read it, I kept thinking "LONESOME DOVE in the Civil War." The characterizations tend to cardboard, although sometimes they're well-painted. On the other hand, at several crucial points, somebody does something because author McCaig needs to advance the plot, not because it's what that character would do under the circumstances. The book comes nowhere near generating the power of THE KILLER ANGELS or Thomas Keneally's CONFEDERATES. The latter in particular covers much the same historical ground but produces a near-overwhelming sense of the moral horror of slavery and the war, a thunderous undercurrent that JACOB'S LADDER doesn't match. THE KILLER ANGELS imagines its way into the mindset of its characters and reproduces Gettysburg as if it were happening for the first time. JACOB'S LADDER misses this kind of immediacy. If you've already read CONFEDERATES and THE KILLER ANGELS, read JACOB'S LADDER; otherwise, save your money.

If Margaret Mitchell had been as sensitive to the Black characters as to the white ones, she might have written this engrossing novel. That is, if she had had Donald McCaig's courage in taking the reader into the fire-belly of war. The scope of this book is huge, yet its focus is at the same time fine. The variety of the characters is remarkable. And there is an effortless continuum between the mythical and the factual. Donald McCaig is an author of deep intelligence and great heart. He has written the War and Peace of the Civil War.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jacob's Ladder. The characters are very real and engaging, and the historical references - battles and home life - make you feel as if you are right there as they take place.

If you like this book, you may also like Stonewall Jackson's Gold (sort of a Civil War Treasure Island, but a true story) and On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon (a postwar fictional memoir of a woman who lived a very interesting life during the war).

Ex-sheriff, Cub Hamil, is a widower and an outdoorsman of good character who genuinely cares about the people he has served. He looses the sheriff's election because he has spent more time tracking a coyote that has been killing his neighbor's sheep than he has spent politicking. When a local ex-convict is murdered, a teenage girl is accused of the crime, and newly-elected Sheriff Puffenbarger accepts the accusation without further investigation. Cub's decision to investigate the murder places him and Maggie, the new woman in his life, in great peril. When Cub discovers the identity of the killer, he becomes the hunted as well as the skilled hunter. As the story of the hunt progresses, the reader begins to realize that there is also another story. It is the story of the people of rural West Virginia. The farmers, the general-store owner, the new postmistress, and all the other characters that author, Donald McCaig, introduces us to have their own histories. With few words McCaig lets the reader know what motivates each of them. There is nothing fancy here. The people and the places are real and readable.