This boook includes, well, a thousand interesting facts about the South. Being Southern myself, I never knew what was in a mint julep (along with 90% of the rest of the South). This is a book that you can pick up, flip to any page and just read. Everything is interesting, and you might learn something, too. Recommended!

Slowing down along all those back roads of the world that is the South is the only way to appreciate the unique outlook of the southern spirit where life and events are often taken with a grain of salt due to the fact that the important things were the same yesterday, and the day before, and all the days before that. Emotional health is probably the most valued commodity, and perhaps the most scrutinized quality of southern communities. In many cases, it is the most important development to watch and gauge since much of the south is far from the pyramids of power that are often created in locations like New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago or Los Angeles. It is eons away from foreign influences of Paris, London, Asia or Japan. The living is easy and the sun is hot requiring local dynamics to be the most valuable in terms of acceptance. It gives a new meaning to the idea of majority and minority but not necessarily confined to color. To know the south, time spent there is a must. Southerners appreciate the meaning of home grown and honor their own perspective on life, which sometimes isn't the same as it is in other parts of the country. Rebel yells have a different meaning than up north and don't always reflect the civil war years. It helps to understand Hank Williams, Jr. and some of the other country singers who have it in their blood. 1,0001 facts about the south can only help people appreciate this unique part of the country where life is meant to be savored, not swift. It is greatly aided by a partner of commensurable sentiments.

Born in Texas of Texan parents, but raised outside the South (except for six years or so in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, which aren't nearly as Southern as they used to be), I've always felt self-consciously removed from what I'd like to consider my heritage. Thanks to John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed's great book, I've not only discovered I'm more Southern than I realized, but know a lot more about that section of the country than I did before.

'1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South' is a book anyone can open at random and start reading anywhere. But if you read it straight through, systematically, I'm willing to guarantee almost anyone they'll discover things about the South they never knew before.

This book is not a fancied-up version of 'You Know You're a Redneck When ...'.

The Reeds are serious researchers and writers, and they look at the South through the lenses of history, geography, ethnology, linguistics, religion, art, music, literature, architecture, cooking, politics, economics, and more. There are the obligatory sections on the Confederacy and the War, of course, but the Reeds understand, as other historians and writers have also noted, that the CSA was a period of barely five years out of more than 400 years of Southern history. (One of the things everyone should know about the South is that there were European settlers in Virginia, Texas, and Florida before anyone save Native Americans had set foot on Plymouth Rock.) This is one of the things that made '1001 Things ...' a far more satisfying book for me than was Michael Andrew Grissom's 'Southern by the Grace of God,' which had a tendency to view everything through the prism of the War.

There is an enormous amount of interesting material in this book, ranging from the difference between 'Cajun' and 'Creole,' to the differences in habits between Southerners and folks in other parts of the nation (northerners subscribe to more dog magazines but Southerners own more dogs), to regional differences in linguistics and cuisine (finally I've found someplace that explains regional varieties of barbecue, though as a loyal son of Texas I have to agree that brisket, not pork, is the proper barbecuing meat [#647]).

Among the other interesting things I learned: 80 percent of Southern parents teach their children to say 'sir' and 'ma'am' to adults (mine sure did), whereas only 46 percent of non-Southern parents do [#148]; 80 percent of Southerners also admit to using 'you-all' or 'y'all' occasionally as the second person plural, whereas most non-Southerners almost never do [#147]; one of the characteristics of Southern writers is that many of them only discovered their 'Southernness' when they lived outside the South [#472 -- hey! Like me!], and that Southern artists, or at least artists from the South, include Jasper Johns, Charles Willson Peale and Rembrandt Peale, John James Audubon, and Robert Rauschenberg, among many others.

My favorite living writer, Florence King (author of 'Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady,' among much else), said of this book, 'Every page is a treat!' As usual, I agree with her absolutely.

I haven't read a book in a long time that I actually really enjoyed every chapter. Biling's doesn't confuse the reader with battlefield strategy or complicating the obvious. He doesn't reflect on battle scenarios with upmost detail after 20 years either. This is a great book for anyone looking to learn about daily soldier life. Bilings captures the daily grind and life of being a Federal soldier while offering humor and straight forward realities that get the mind ticking. The stories make truth stranger than fiction and is a welcomed charge of quick information. It is easy to suggest this book to younger readers as well as the information is clean,concise and well written. I would definately recommend this book for all as many ages can benefit from this educational and entertaining book of soldier life.

There are numerous histories of the Civil War and some have become classics. Most of these focus on battles and great heroes. Billings, however, a Civil War veteran, writes about the daily life of the average soldier. We learn about the soldier's motivation to fight, camp discipline, diet, housing, medical care, recreation and just about everything else that comprised the life of the Civil War era soldier. Billings' book is serious yet he manages to write in a lighthearted tone, replete with levity. This is a great book to round out a Civil War buff's study of the great conflict.

I would have loved to had this book when I was a child. The non-linearity of the chapters makes it a perfect "browser's book" -- a book which you can pick up and flip open to any page and read interesting, amusing and humorous accounts of day to day life in the Civil War army. This is one of the most fun books I've picked up in a long time.

What remains in my mind after reading Meadow Boy to our children is the light in John Roberts' illustrations. They radiate with a magic and meaning that need no words. The brief text, written on two levels (you must read one or the other to fully appreciate its flow), is delightful in its own way. But the illustrtations remain after the book is closed. We would love to mount them on the walls of our children's rooms as lullabies for the eyes.

I can't give you a wordy, erudite critique of this book. I just know what I like. This is it! The pictures are beautiful to look at. And, if you want enjoyable reading for a child, or an adult for that matter, that doesn't 'talk down' to them, get this book.

Meadow Boy once again revs up the promise for family books that fall outside the cookie cutter standards of big publishing houses. This first offering from Pentultimate Publishing neither panders to kids' cartoon mentality nor to adults' harried expectations. Author Reed Parsley and illustrator John Roberts defy conventional children's book wisdom on many levels. Parsley's text is divided on each page into poetic headlines that flow naturally from page one to conclusion. And beside each of the illustrations, narrative poems ease you into the soul of the artwork, which by any measure, is wonderful. For a quick bedtime read, the headlines take you from the kernel of a daydream to its fully popped possiblities within us all. For those joyous, pokey family interludes, the poems both stand alone and add layers to the rapturous artwork. The illustrations offer an art gallery-like opportunity for your children to experience provocative art. Nature as story teller, messenger of beauty, background comfort, psychic shelter and pre-eminent friend, Roberts' pictures transport on many different levels. Overall, Meadow Boy is tinged with a sense of pervading melancholy, perhaps for the time we no longer have to savor such published beauty as evidenced here.

Mr. Reed sure can write. I don't always agree with him; to turn around what he says about Steve Earle Reed's politics are suspect. And more importantly how can he believe that Randy Travis is better than Earle and Dwight Yoakam? Still even when I didn't agree I enjoyed it. The essays on country music and Ted Kennedy are worth the price of the book by themselves. Best of all it's wonderful to see someone defending my home region who isn't a confederate flag waving ....

I've long been a fan of John Shelton Reed's "Letter from the Lower Right" in Chronicles magazine, and gave very high marks to "1,001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South," which he wrote with his wife. But for some reason, I had never made an effort to track down and read any of the collections of his essays. I see now what a mistake that was. I wish I'd read this back when it was new.

It was some consolation to find that the articles and essays here assembled were definitely worth the wait. Reed is a very funny writer, but he's not a "humorist" or humor writer in the sense of, say, Dave Barry or even (to move outside the region) P.J. O'Rourke. You'll definitely get a laugh out of many of these pieces, but you'll also find them deeply informative. Reed is, after all, a serious researcher and thinker, and the two indisputable facts that define his writing -- that he loves the South, and he *knows* the South -- feed off one another.

Granted, many of the essays here are more than a little dated (some date back to the Carter Administration), and I'd love to know how things have changed in the thirteen, fifteen, or almost twenty-five years since some of them were written. But that's no doubt just one more reason to track down Reed's more recent collections.

Southerners, including expatriates, will nod knowingly at much of what Reed says, and will get a kick out of seeing themselves depicted so accurately in print. I hope they'll also take to heart his commitment to preserving many of the things -- from culture to accent -- that make the South truly distinctive. Folks from other parts of the country will find that Reed has not only made that sometimes-puzzling region a little easier to understand, but has made the trip a remarkably pleasant one.

This book cannot be recommended too highly to anyone with the slightest interest in the South. It is, in every sense, a delight to read and will easily withstand repeated readings.

This is the third of John Shelton Reed's books that I have read and its style sits somewhere between that of "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South" and "My Tears Spoiled My Aim". The book comprises a collection of dispatches culled from Reed's contributions to newspapers, journals and magazines between 1979-1990. Most of these are 1,000-1,500 words long. The book begins with observations on two of his favorite themes, Southern identity and the New South, before moving on to Southern culture, food, politics and religion. Reed is a favorably prejudiced but acute observer of Southern manners, quirks, oddities and behaviour.

The dispatches are written to entertain and don't disappoint. I found plenty at which to laugh out loud. However, this is not to say that Reed is not surreptitiously engaged in a secret mission to raise his readers' awareness of the character and virtues of things Southern. There's plenty enough here even to make a Yankee laugh - especially some of his more elliptical humor. I particularly liked his comment on Ted Kennedy: "For my part, I rather like the fellow. He's certainly the closest thing to a good old boy that Massachussetts will ever produce - which isn't to say that he ought to be president, merely that I think he'd make a pretty good drinking buddy as long as somebody else did the driving."

Reed is exceptionally good at capturing the spirit or the essence of something and making it seem familiar to you. I have never visited Bob Jones University but, in just over three pages, Reed made me feel I knew what kind of place it was. He does the same for a number of Southern characters and institutions.

Reed is a gifted cultural interpreter who appraches his topics with respect, affection and good humor. It's tempting to say that Reed is a popularizer but that belies his considerable writing talents. Whilst everything is written in an engaging style, Reed makes few concessions to his readership - he delights in his use of language and deploys an extensive vocabularly that would make some of my students reach for their dictionaries.

All in all this book is an unqualified delight. Go buy it now - you won't be disappointed.

Jill Bossert has captured the essence of this fascinating artist from his immigrant beginnings to his lavish life style at the height of his career. It's a captivating story of a time when illustrators lived the life of celebrity equal to today's most famous movie stars. Bossert's sensitive descriptions of John La Gatta's work shows she's knowledgable about the art of illustration and that she appreciates the fact that La Gatta's work is worthy of acclaim.

This book communicates an era when illustration dictated taste and artists were as famous as rock stars. I recommend it to anyone interested in American popular culture. The reproductions are first rate, very high quality.

John La Gatta bridged the enormous gap between the disciples of the Pyle-Wyeth school and the candy box illustrators who eventually closed down a great century of American illustration. Unlike the photo-dependent noodlers who followed him, La Gatta carefully chose his models and worked directly from life, a fact clearly evident in the pieces selected for this well-crafted book. I would have liked an index and another signature or two to accomodate larger reproductions of his earlier work from the 1920s and 30s, which I feel would have more than justified a higher cover price. This book is a bargain considering the importance of John La Gatta and his place in the history of this uniquely American art form. La Gatta and his tasteful style of illustration are to art what Ellington and the American Songbook are to music.

I am from Brooklyn, New York and spent four years in a rural Virginia town. I was informed I was the third Jew to have lived in the town. Too bad, this book didn't exist when I lived down there. I just read it and couldn't put the book down and stop laughing. I learned about Professor Reed from the book Culture Shock USA, The South. An invaluble book for those who want to do business with Southerners, or move down there and become "Damn Yankees" (as my Alabama cousins call them). (You know you are liked, when you are promoted to Damn Yankee). To the reviewer from Birmingham, England. Explore the South and enjoy!

A Brit like me needs all the help he can get when it comes to understanding the South - and John Shelton Reed is the man to supply it. Readers may find the review from a reader in Vermont a little misleading - this book is not written for laughs although it is often very amusing. Reed is no Bill Bryson - but neither is Bryson a John Shelton Reed.

The book is a wonderful collection of short esssays that illuminate and explain "Southern-ness". Pinning down Southern characteristics - or indeed even where "The South" begins and ends - is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. However, that does not prevent Reed making the attempt with humor and considerable scholarship.

Most of the chapters have previously appeared in journals or are based on such papers. Reed's tone is light and entertaining even though the underlying purpose is serious. Perhaps the most overtly scholarly is the opening chapter that deals with the geographical extent of "The South". It is well adorned with plates taken from a very wide range of academic journals showing the incidence in the contiguous states of various factors suspected of reflecting Southern-ness. All the usual suspects are here: self-perception, cotton cultivation, incidence of lynchings, members of Baptist chruches, and 'Southern Living' readers. However, Reed has other less familiar indicators of Southern-ness such as where kudzu grows, ratio of active dentists to population, states mentioned in country-music lyrics, ratio of homicides to suicides, or chapters of the Kappa Alpha order.

It makes for fascinating reading and a shifting pattern of where the South is. Other chapters deal with such disparate issues as the depiction of Southern women in Playboy magazine, violence in country music, the Southern diaspora, and life and leisure in the New South. Reed's real achievement is to disguise his scholarship as an entertaining and informative read.

This is a very different kind of book from Reed's 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South. That was more an eclectic collection of facts, both familiar and unfamiliar, grouped loosely around broad themes. It was more for dipping into than reading straight through. The present book is more limited in its aims and obliquely explores a few specific questions in greater depth.

All in all, this is an immesely enjoyable book that is full of surprising revelations about the nature of Southern-ness. Some of the material on which it is based is getting a little dated (the bulk of sources are from the 1970s and early 1980s) and we can only hope that Reed is moved to bring out a new edition.

John Shelton Reed does it again in this hilarious book. I have finally become addicted to his writing which is some of the most accurate and funny I have seen in quite some time, since I have been in academia for most of my life now. Anyone living in the South or those who have left and remember it well (like myself) will love this gem of a book.

There is a lot of good information in this book, but most of it can be found toward the beginning. The tips on predicting the weather alone could be worth the price of the book. However, the maps of the various waterways were absolutely terrible. I would recommend this book for a general overview and lots of tips and tricks for paddlers, and the two "Canoeing and Kayaking the Streams of Florida" guides for detailed information on specific waterways.

Book Review- Paddler's Guide to the Sunshine State by Sandy Huff

Coming from a whitewater paddling background, my first thought on looking at the river descriptions in Huff's book was, "Hm, not very detailed." On further reflection, though, this makes sense. Details of how to run rapids aren't needed in Florida, and the lack of details makes visiting the waterways described much more of a voyage of discovery- as paddling should be.
Huff has logically divided her book into three major sections. The first part contains tips for paddling in Florida, and includes chapters on gear and clothing and how to pack it, staying healthy, staying safe, and camping in Florida with sections on cooking and camp activities, all delightfully written by someone who clearly has had an abundance of paddling experience.
The second section describes in detail all the wildlife you might encounter on any trip on Sunshine State waterways, and your best strategies for safely dealing with those critters (Do NOT feed the wildlife!). Aunt Sally from Ohio will survive her first alligator encounter if you follow Huff's advice. There is even a short chapter on fishing.
Finally, the last section contains descriptions of over 200 trips on 91 waterways across the state. Every description contains all the information you'll need to make that trip: a map, where to put in, where to take out, the length of time and/or mileage involved, skill level needed, and local emergency phone numbers (great idea!). The descriptions are also keyed to the corresponding DeLorme atlas page numbers, and include a brief outline of what you can expect to encounter, all written in a tastefully understated manner.
It's difficult to find any flaws in this book, or figure out how to improve upon it. For every Sunshine State paddler or anyone who wants to become one, Huff's book is a must read.

-John Kumiski

If you want to have just one book on paddling in Florida then this is the one to get!! It has easy-to-read maps, web sites, addresses and phone numbers for further information. Paddling a river or creek is more than just knowing where to put in and take out. Sandy gives you all kinds of information on the area, fishing, wildlife, weather, safety and much more. I must have every book there is on paddling in Florida but they're going on the bottom shelf because this is the one I'm going to reach for when planning my next adventure!!

This is a fine starter book for the first time home owner. In the first few pages, I had the answers to the three major problems I had been dealing with! Nice and straightforward catch-all book on working over existing stuff or putting in new.

I picked up this book in Home Depot back in 1997. At a glance I found out how to take out a load bearing wall, something I needed to do. I bought the book, and with it I had the confidence to take on a major remodel of my house. The book has everything, from framing an addition to fixing a leaky faucet. I consult it often. Right now (03/2002) I'm using it to build a shed. The language is clear and concise and the book doesn't waste words. I recommend it highly.

I, recently, purchased this boook (my brother said he had one, and it was great). I flipped through most of the book -- it isn't the kind of book you sit down and read straight through. I've done a fair amount of handyman stuff around the house (I just replaced the motor in my dryer - which wasn't too difficult once I had the right parts). Well, as I flipped through the book, I would stop and read sections which interested me. There are well-written sections on, basically, everything about a house and what is in it. After spending about an hour scanning the book, I said to my wife: "You could build a house with the information that is in here!" It is one of those "I'm glad I bought this book" books. A great book to have if you're looking for stuff to do around the house; it is a real "Home Improvement Encyclopedia."

I'm not a big poetry buff but Qabbani just grabbed me. He's an amazing poet who spills his heart throughout this book.

So powerful, so sensual, so incredible. His poetry is earth shaking and primal.

Don't let the fact that his words have been translated from their original Arabic dissuade you from believing that somehow the work isn't as honest as it should be. Qabbani's work is so powerful it hardly matter shwat language it is in. In short, easily read dollops of wit measured out with a voice of quiet urging, he has given us work that transcends time and politics, while being above-it-all.

"If you know a man
who loves you more than I
guide me to him
so I may first congratulate
hom on his constancy
and later, kill him."

If poetry ever had a Luther Vandross, it was Pablo Neruda. If it ever had a Barry White, it was Qabbani.

i m french so i say it with my word : c'est trés beau !

This book covers very well some of the most important people in American History. N.C. Wyeth,Howard Pyle, Dean Cornwell,Harvey Dunn, Frank Schoonover and Philip Goodwin have illustrated the turn of the 1800's to 1900's with the same spirited passion that bred our great country. It's this great passion that is given to the pictures that they created that seperates their work from photographs which are just taken. Looking at the Illustrations shows you that Pyle was successful in creating an American art which will always be a foundation for Illustrators to follow.

Visions Of Adventure surveys the arts of N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine artists, providing a lavish display packed with color plates and paintings by Pyle, Wyeth, Dunn, and others. Histories and backgrounds of each featured work accompany the fold-out and full-page illustrations and make for an excellent review. Highly recommended.