I bought this book a long time ago but it's still on my bookshelf (I don't save many books when I'm done with them) and I am pushing it for my book group (if we can find enough copies). I've read it many times and it never fails to grip me. The story is pretty simple -- a boy growing up in a small midwestern city right before WWII -- but what's great about this gentle book are a)the characters -- each one a believable, fully-developed, eccentric (but not cutely so) HUMAN, even the minor characters, and b) the wonderful sense of time & place. It's not a lovely place -- it's rife with class, race and other perennial American problems -- but it's full of life, humor, love, hate -- and it has fantastic women characters. Another plus for the book is that it takes place in (I think) someplace like Duluth MN, not the usual East, South or West coast location. The novel also features Native Americans in contemporary roles (circa 1936) -- how often do we get to read about regular old people who happen to be Indians?

Reading reviews of Seamus Deane's new novel about growing up in Derry reminds me of how I haven't yet gotten over the disappearance of this brilliant book from the publisher's active list. Tommy McAllister, the main character, reads his upper midwestern world and people in it. He uses both heart and mind to probe each word he hears and gesture he sees to map out his world of loving, dangerous, sensible, and eccentric people, most of whom try to keep him safely in the dark

With all the books published on the Civil War, it's hard to
find something NEW, but this book brings to light a collection of soldiers' letters unpublished since the Civil War. Not only are the letters themselves new and fresh to
Civil War scholars and enthusiasts, but Bill Styple has done
an excellent job of editing them. The Civil War is presented
in a new light. One of the best Civil War books in many years; if you like to read about the Civil War, buy this book!

This book is a great addition to the serious Civil War reader's library. Being able to read the battle descriptions, thoughts and feelings of those who actually participated in the war is always enlightening, bringing the reader a different reality than that of the historian who writes about the Civil War with the benefit of hindsight and without the benefit of personal experience. The compilation of letters in this book - in chronological and logical order - brings alive the crucial battles in the Eastern theatre of the Civil War. The only slight deficiency is that very few letters from the Eastern soldiers fighting in Western armies are included. My suggestion: have this book at hand and read what the soldiers had to say about a specific event or battle immediately after reading narrative descriptions of the same event or battle by today's leading historians, for a complete view. Overall, a wonderful book and highly recommendable to the "advanced" Civil War reader.

Accessible, well-written, and utterly compelling history is loaded with facts and dates, but more than that, this book places each president in the context of his times. Therefore, we come to understand the era itself; with the policies, debates, and legal questions fully explored.

"Writing the Civil War" is the best analysis of the historiography of the major topics researched by most Civil War scholars today. Every essay is written by a leader in the field of study covered in it. This allows the reader to look back from the leading edge of study. I found this book to be an excellent source for new ideas about how to look at the war, and its historiography, and hopefully it will improve my own writing on the Civil War.

A well polished collection of essays on the schools of thought within a variety of American Civil War topics. Politics, economics, tactics, the role of women, blacks, and volunteers are covered by outlining the trends of the past 30 years in these fields and others. Read with Pressely's 'Americans Interpret Their Civil War' and Guelzo's 'Crisis of the American Republic' a solid foundation in Civil War historiography would be gained by the serious student of the American Civil War. 'Writing the Civil War' is written in such a fashion that a general familiarity with Civil War bibliography of the past 30 years is required; this book is probably not for the general undergraduate student or the Civil War military buff.

McPherson's research of Elizabethan England's views on contemporary Venice does a fine job of providing that context. Although his specific focus is on the Venetian setting of Volpone, Othello, and (of course) The Merchant of Venice, I also found it helpful as an additional way of putting the recent book and film focused on Veronica Franco in its proper historical context.

A frequent flaw of research into a time period that I've noticed is the overspecialization in either the literary or the historical side of that research. McPherson seems to do a better job than most in balancing the two. I hope others are encouraged to follow his lead in this respect.

Yeats Is Dead! is the collaboration of 15 Irish writers all contributing a chapter to what must be one of the strangest mysteries ever (if you can call it a mystery). Wherever outcomes would seem predictable, the next writer reverses the tide of the story. Chapter 2 mentions none of the characters that Chapter 1 does, for example, and whenever a character is being built up they seem to be killed off by the next writer. One point where its a ridiculous turnaround is chapter 11-12. Chapter 11 ends:

"Paschal Greer was all out of options. So he did what he should have done many weeks ago. He stepped, forwards, took Grainne O'Kelly in his arms and kissed her. Now there was no more need for words."

And Chapter 12 reverses it totally:

"Well, now. Flip it now. That's just the last straw, thought Sergeant Greer as Inspector O'Kelly punched him bang in the kisser just as he was about to slip the tongue in."

The book is full of mirth and its set-up allows to make what would otherwise be a less good book into a great one. 4 stars.

The first few pages almost turned me off because I thought it was a run-of-the mill mystery. But then, after leafing through the proceeding pages, I got a glimpse of Kafkaesque characters in the two stupid cops, who are arguing, philosophically and pathetically, whether the dead man, Tommy Reynolds, was already dead before one of them shot him. I got hooked. I couldn't stop turning the pages until I got acquianted with a network of psychotics and maniacs. Although each author kills more people in every succeeding chapter, the taste of violence is somehow offset by the authors' wits and creativity that revealed the authors' intention to turn Yeats is Dead into a literary piece rather than an ordinary mystery. In Yeats is dead, 15 Irish authors created their dream world, where every living person is a literati. Consider these: a garbage collector, who reveals his aversion to the language of Mills and Boon; a cop who writes poetry; some drunken old bums and a bimbo who can appreciate the value of James Joyce's missing manuscripts; and crime bosses who can enumerate a long list of Irish authors. This is a wild and fun read!

I was recommended this book by amazon.com. I just can't recall why, but I had it put on my wish list when my brother decided to give it to me for a birthday gift last summer. After going through a long horrendous, yet exciting read of another Irishman John Connolly's "Every Dead Thing", I welcomed the change to the light hearted when my fiance thought it would be cool to go ahead with a story as witty as this one. Witty is one thing, but there were some parts that was truly laugh out loud.(...)

Yeats is Dead is a story without being a story itself. Written loosley by 15 Irish authors just out there to have some good old fashioned fun. Theyd o an excellent job with the idea and all, but fall extrememly short when it comes to ending the whole story. Under each author, the characters just seem to be suffering from some sort of schizophrenia with their feeling jumping from one point to another. It's just unbelievable to conceive, unbeliveable to believe, but truly enjoyable to go through it along through the end.

The book is an excellent read at just any setting. The beauty of it being not truly knowing how the tory is going to twist and turn so that you come out with the final chapter. I think Frank McCourt just didn't know what to do with it and hastily ended it. All in all, this is a funny book that deserves all the attention. You just love reading an Irishman's (or woman) tale. When they're drunk and in the tell tale mode they're funny and when they're sober, you still can't take anything they say seriously. And that's exactly how it is with this very one book.