From The River To The Rat Race is a well written book that every parent of teens should read and have their college bound children read. We have four sons and it has become mandatory reading before they enter college and hopefully they'll read it again before they enter the real world.

I loved the line "watch your wake" because it is the seperation from the child to the adult, when one becomes aware that everything you do truly affects others.

Great book! Great lessons! Tremendous change can occur from its wisdom!

This book is not just for working people; it is for everybody. It is funny, smart and eye opening. I am going to make all of my friends buy one. Patrick True is a hidden talent as a storyteller and he shows you how you can make your day to day life better with his lessons from the river. He is an incredible writer and I hope to see more from him in the future.

This is a fascinating, easy-to-read book that you can't put down once you've picked it up. The writer tells wonderful short stories that I really connected with. I can apply his 7 life lessons to my personal and professional life. I bought a copy for my friend who is a small business owner. Also, my brother who is a sales manager is buying one for everyone on his team. I highly recommend it!

Patrick Dearen, author of several works on West Texas themes, relied upon archival holdings, county records, interviews, period journals, and family accounts to piece together this story of a fascinating character who became a builder of Texas. The author has written an admiring account of a Texan who as a family man, business entrepreneur, cattle rancher, and all-around solid citizen, left an indelible impression upon his adopted state. May his tribe increase! -- WEST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION YEARBOOK, 2002.

Mayer Halff's name may be unfamiliar to anyone unacquainted with Texas history or the range cattle industry, but he was one of the most important cattlemen in American history. . . . Every year he sent thousands of head of cattle to market. Dearen describes the vicissitudes of the business, especially in the uncertainty of the Pecos River region, where prolonged drouth ruined many a rancher and killed thousands of cattle. . . . The reader will learn a great deal here how the cattle business operated in the late 19th century and how well Halff did in it. . . . Halff had a vision of what he wanted to accomplish, and by the time of his death in 1905 he had accomplished it. Dearen does a fine job of sharing Halff's vision with the reader. -- WESTERN STATES JEWISH HISTORY.

This wonderful biography of Mayer Halff who immigrated to Texas at the age of fourteen from Lauterbourg, France in about 1850, should be read by everyone who likes the history of early Texas and of the Old West. Mayer Halff was a pioneer Jewish merchant first in Liberty, Texas, and later in San Antonio. But his most interesting role was that of being one of the first men to develop the cattle industry and ranching in Texas. Those scenes we have all seen so often in movies and television of the cattle drives and cowboys were the result of men like Mayer Halff. In 1861 Halff led one of the early cattle drives from Liberty to Lyon's Point, fifty miles from New Iberia, Louisiana. Later he participated in and helped develop the large cattle drives up to Dodge City, Kansas, and other places, in the 1870s and the years that followed. Eventually, Halff owned or leased several ranches including the huge Quien Sabe Ranch which would encompass five to six hundred square miles across Midland and Glasscock counties. During this period Halff's Quien Sabe would maintain 10,000 to 12,000 cattle. All in all a great story of an important man in early Texas.

I met Pat Lisi and his wife at a photography class for the Women in the Outdoors program last fall in Appleton WI. He taught us patiently how to use our cameras, and I ended up having my photo of a Red-Tail Hawk published! His book is wonderful. We take it with us as we travel, and you wouldn't believe how many waterfalls you pass by as you travel, without knowing you are so very close to one. Without this book I wouldn't know where they are--so now we check the book, stop by the falls, and date the page in the book as we visit. Its a great book, a great gift for anyone, especially yourself! Thanks Pat for the book, and for the photography tips.

The book proivdes a nice walk through of wisconsin waterfalls. The author also did a very nice job with the photos.

This superb piece of scientific collection reporting is as through as it is attractive. It has the handsome feel of a coffee table book must for any angler, but is pure field biology, down to the nuanced tales of specimen collection and recording.

This book excels at laying out the thousands of inter-related details that go into large dams: their geographic countenance, their economic costs and impact, the public health aspects and more. It makes links between facts that give valuable insight into the global dam market.

Sobering at times, this book also showcases many successes which give hope for a thirsty Earth.

There is no Spoon River, IL. Check your map. Several towns argue that they stake their claim in being what Masters asserted to be this mythical town. Petersburg and Lewistown, two towns of otherwise minor repute seem closest... but it is so much better we haven't an actual town... Spoon River's residents are our next door neighbors, whether we live in Central Illinois or Central Florida, or southern Alaska.

Masters has written not fables, but the essence of American life. He hasn't captured the life and times of 1915, but has instead recorded in 1915 the life and times of our present day America.

The same reason the paintings of Norman Rockwell makes sense is why Edgar Lee Masters poetry makes sense. To read the quick messages on the gravestone of one man, learning a little bit him, and something about a neighbor or two, we can learn a little about how we live in communities today.

Our lives, like Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a Wonderful Life" found out, interact and impact everyone we meet. Who we love, who we should love and who we reject. And when we die, others feel the loss. Masters has aptly put this in a humorous, yet insightful way into short verses.

The poems don't rhyme. The meter is not solid, and the poetics aren't intricate. They aren't poems like Poe's or Dickinson, not in the way they wrote American poems. Don't expect iambic pentameter-based sonnets or villanelles. Expect a conversation, and listen in.

The poetry here is in the subtle use of social nuance. In the nuances are his insight and wit. Two readings will bring to light what you miss in the first.

Buy this book, read it slow. It reads faster than most poetry book, but don't get caught in the temptation to zoom through each poem just because you can.

After you read it, see the play if it happens to be performed in your town.

I fully recommend it.

Anthony Trendl

Edgar Lee Masters was a Chicago attorney who, long before Lake Woebegone, wrote of the mythical village of Spoon River, IL. Specifically, of the real stories of the people in it's graveyard. Now that they're dead the truth can finally be told. And almost all of them lived lives of terrible lies. I was introduced to it in Jr. High, was blown away at the realization that people all around me probably had these same kinds of secrets, living with them hidden, or hoped they were hidden. Paraphrasing, "I was of the party of Prohibition (anti-alcohol), villagers thought I died from eating watermelon. It was my liver. Every day at noon I slipped behind the partition at the drug store and had a generous drink from the bottle labeled Spiritum Fermenti!" The several poems that introduce Hamilton Greene are as powerful as anything I've ever read. Do yourself a huge favor, read this book! And then imagine yourself in the Spoon River graveyard, finally able to tell the truth about your life.

I was turned on to this book after hearing the latest Richard Buckner release "The Hill", in which the musician uses the Spoon River Anthology as the basis for his conceptual music. After listening to this wonderful disc, I was compelled to read the actual work by Edgar Lee Masters. What I found was a book that was written in 1915, but that brings to life the voices of humanity louder than anything I've read in recent years. This book is more poetry than literature, but the stories of the residents of Spoon River that are collected within the pages are stories that are not soon forgotten.

This book has moved me more than anything else I've read in recent years, and I highly recommend that othes read this outstanding work of art.

Danube
Claudio Magris
2001
ISBN 1-86046-823-3

I have seen the Danube at Donauwoerth in Germany and Linz and Melk in Austria. When I came across Claudio Magris' book, I was interested enough to buy it. Magris' book about the Danube is an unusual one. It is not a travel book, but more the historical reflections of a man visiting centuries-old towns along the river from where it originates in Germany to where it ends in the Black Sea in Rumania.

Since I have visited or read about some of the towns along the Danube in the German-speaking world, I found that part of the book more interesting. I knew less about the other countries -- Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Rumania, and I did not relate as well to that part of the book.

On the whole, there are some obstacles to overcome in reading this book. The writer's style is rather wordy and rambling. In one sentence, for example, I counted seventy-five words. There are endless literary and historical references, many of which are somewhat obscure. For me, eventually they grew tiresome. The book, in English, is a translated work. At points, one wonders if the rendering of sentences such as, "That life which the photograph fixed in one of its instants is vanished forever", could not have been translated in plainer English.

Still, some of this book is good reading. Magris' story about the director of the river works at Linz who spent a lifetime marking out the confines of the upper Danube and wrote a three volume work of 2,164 pages about all the aspects of the river from the different types of rafts and barges to the poems, songs, plays, and novels that related to the river is amusing. At the other extreme, Magris' description of visiting the terrible stone quarry at Mauthausen concentration camp that the Nazis set up on the Danube, where 110,000 people died, is disturbing.

On the whole, I would say this book is interesting reading in places. Elsewhere, it drags a bit. For example, consider a sentence such as, "Are the Istrians therefore Thracians, as Apollodorus thought, or Colchians, according to the view of Pliny and Strabo, or are they Gepids? "

Perhaps, the main problem with "Danube" is that the scope and coverage of the book are simply too great. The countries through which the lower reaches of the Danube flow do not have so much in common with those of the German-speaking part of the Danube. Like the Nile, it is a very long river, and, similarly it comes into contact with a number of lands with differing cultural traditions and histories. The Danube as an organizational theme for Magris' reflections about history and literature falters in the face of the great diversity of the material. Also, there is the question of if this book is really about the Danube or more a vehicle for Magris' wide-ranging interests.

Magris's account of the journey, from its obscure and contested origins in Germany (Donaueschingen? Brigach? Furtwangen?), to the Black Sea is alternatingly scintillating and impenetrably dense. It is fully possible that many of the stylistic difficulties that occur hear arise out of the translation process.

Despite the occasional obfuscation, this is a deeply intriguing book. I picked it up, thinking that it may perhaps successfully do for the Donau (Danube) what Rebecca West's monumental "Black lamb and Grey Falcon" did for Yugoslavia, namely to serve as a marvelous compilation of historical narratives and anecdotes, sort of a "reference point for the ages". In this, "Danube" does not disappoint. There may be thousands of more readable books, but this one is rare, in that it blends so wonderfully narrative, history, and anecdote. Ultimately even the denseness of the prose may be a virtue...it reduces the reader's speed, allowing us to better digest and reflect upon its contents. I recommend it.

Claudio Magris's Danube is special to me first of all because I spent 8 years living and working in the Central European area described in the book. But it is more than just another travel book because it manages to capture the mood and feeling of Central Europe: its complex overlapping history, the melancholic pensiveness of so many of its writers and artists, the sense of hidden mystery in so many of its places. Danube manages to combine the travel narrative with philosophy, history and real sense of place. It is essential reading whether you go to Central Europe or are just interested in its complexity.

Lately, I've come to really like the writings of Thoreau. It has taken me several years to return to this author...after being forced to read excerpts from Thoreau at a ridiculously fast pace during high school. Little time to read and less time for reflection left a bad impression of Thoreau in my mind that has, as I said, only recently been overcome.

But now, upon my return, I have found "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" by Henry David Thoreau to be a very invigorating book...one to be savored and not read too quickly. Taken at a good pace, it has been a joy.

While transcendentalism still strikes me as a rather facile and egotistical philosophy, I have really come to see and appreciate the mystical quality in Thoreau's works. Like most mystical authors, Thoreau is not always engrossing--he is actually rather tedious in points, but his work is punctuated by passages of sheer brilliance.

Seeing nature through Henry's eyes has been a wake up call to me personally. This book breathes excitement and lust for life upon the reader. Even his long winded discussions of different kinds of fish serve to alert me to my own lack of wonder. This world, even in its current subjection to futility , is still a wonderful creation. Nature (and Thoreau's picture of these rivers especially) echo the declaration of the Psalmist: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1).

I highly recommend this wonderful book.

Thoreau sought the seclusion of the pond to write *this* book, not _Walden_. In 19th-century terms, this treatise is a modified travelogue based on a 13-day boat trip that Henry and his brother John took in 1839. By today's standards, contemporary editors and many an English teacher would decorate this manuscript with red ink and admonish the author that he strays too often and too far from the main subject. Bill Bryson's essays wander too, but he doesn't usually reach back and quote the Bhagavad-Gita, Homer, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. But whenever Henry takes in his surroundings, he is reminded of something else, and before you know it a serious discourse is off and running, and it has nothing to do with floating upstream or down. He expresses his opinions or offers his knowledge about fish, mythology, religion, poetry, reading, writing, history, government, traveling, waterfalls, friendship, love, life, nature, art, dreams, and science. He reminisces about a previous trip to the Berkshires and a sail down the Connecticut River. He breaks into poetry at whim -- sometimes his own words, more often someone else's. Along the way, the brothers paddle from Concord, Massachusetts, to the area around Concord, New Hampshire, and then turn around and go home. We meet some of the people they encounter along the way and get a glimpse of New England life during that time period. In some respects, the people and the land haven't changed much at all. We can see Thoreau's environmentalism when he talks about dams and their effects on the habits and habitats of fish -- concerns that are still with us today. We can laugh at his puns and enjoy his wordplay (i.e., "The shallowest still water is unfathomable" and Man needs "not only to be spiritualized, but *naturalized*, on the soil of earth.") Above all, we can explore these rivers and shorelines during a time period that we will never see personally, with the aid of a native naturalist who's in the habit of sharing his observations and thoughts.

Read _Walden_ first. And if you find you enjoy Henry's take on nature and civilization and life and living, pick up _A Week_. There are a few gems lurking in here that you might connect with.

[From Boating on the Catawba...in the
"Musketaquid"]

I will take the definite role of the
Nay-Sayer in the long line of aficianados
and idolators who insist that *Walden* is
Henry David Thoreau's masterpiece...
I will simply state that this work and
"Life Without Principle" are his great
contributions to literature, thought, and
value...

Take this quote from "Life Without Principle"
(before I get to 'A Week...'):
"To speak impartially, the best men that
I know are not serene, a world in themselves.
For the most part, they dwell in forms, and
flatter and study effect only more finely
than the rest. We select granite for the
underpinning of our houses and barns; we
build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves
rest on an underpinning of granite.
we do not teach one another the lessons of
honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or
of steadiness and solidity that the rocks
do. The fault is commonly mutual, however;
for we do not habitually demand any more of
each other."

If that is not "preaching," but in the
sense of a prophet, not a mere sermonizer,
then there hasn't been any in a long time.
But Father Mapple's sermon in 'Moby-Dick' is
right up there with it.

If I had only known of Thoreau [and I had
not read much of him (and little then)except
at the University] and had to believe that
Thoreau was just what he seems to be in
'Walden,' then I would have given the man
short shrift...because there is not enough
of any sort of heart or soul in that work
to believe that he is even human. But
fortunately, a Thoreau worshipper (or rather,
*Walden* worshipper) forced me, by his own
imperious egotism, to try to understand this
man Thoreau and his views. It is fortunate
that I did, for I discovered 'A Week....'

This Penguin Classics edition is excellent
in a number of ways -- the two most important
being the notes in the back which explain the
allusions, and ancient Latin and Greek sources
and excerpts(for those who might not know them)
which Thoreau quotes and sometimes translates;
and the incredible "Introduction" by the editor,
H. Daniel Peck.
He can say his wondrous words himself:

"There is good reason for 'A Week's open
acknowledgment of the attritions of time
and loss. Conceived initially as a travel
book, 'A Week' was immeasurably deepened into
an elegiac account of experience by a tragic
event that occurrred in Thoreau's life in
the period following the 1839 voyage. In
1842, Thoreau's companion on that voyage,
his brother John, died suddenly, and in
agonizing pain, from lockjaw.
Without question this was the greatest loss
that Thoreau ever was to suffer. (He seems
to have undergone, in the aftermath of his
brother's death, a sympathetic case of the
illness that caused John's death, and the few
entries that appear in his journal in this
period are desperately mournful.) Interestingly,
though the pronoun 'we' characterizes the
narrator often in the book, the brother's
name is never mentioned -- an indication perhaps
of Thoreau's enduring need to distance himself
from this loss. there is nothing in 'A Week'
that directly refers to the death of John Thoreau.
Instead, his memory is evoked through various
symbolic strategies. For example, the long
digression on friendship in the chaper
'Wednesday' surely is intended to reflect the
intimacy Thoreau shared with his brother. Even
the ubiquitious 'we' of the narrator's voice
speaks to this intimacy. So intertwined are
the two brothers' identities in this pronoun
that it is often difficult to tell whether a
given action has been taken by Henry or John,
or both at once."

"To emphasize the elegiac aspects of 'A Week'
is to remind ourselves that throughout Western
history, rivers -- and voyages upon them --
have served as metaphors of transience and
mortality. Yet, as I indicated earlier,
'A Week' is not solely a mournful book. Its
rivers also support a spiritual buoyancy, and
provide the setting for exploration and adventure.
Most important, however, the book's larger
structure enables it to 'transcend and redeem'
the individual losses that it recounts."

[wonderful writing here!]
"In general, the outward-bound voyage of 'A Week'
dramatizes the writer's encounter with time and
its losses; on that voyage, he pays close
attention to the shore -- which, in its discreet
scenes of spoliation and historical change,
symbolizes the passage of time. The homeward
voyage, on the other hand, suggests assimilation,
resolution, and renewal. If the primary mode of
perception on the outward voyage had been
observation (of the shore), then the primary
mode of the return voyage is contemplation.
Now we are involved in an inward exploration,
and, symbolically, our vision leaves the shore
and returns to the river and the flow of
consciousness that it represents."
-- H. Daniel Peck; "Introduction."

The real problem with this book lies not in his treatment of his dogs, but in his treatment of other mushers. It is odd that he could be so critical of so many of the other mushers from the back of the pack. While not quite an armchair quarterback, he was definitely throwing some cheap shots from the sled runners. I had a suspicion while reading this book that he was searching for a way to justify his utter lack of speed, instead of just reveling in the moment. While it is nice to hear about a musher that cares deeply about his dogs (as most do), I felt that he simply did not have the rapport with his dogs that most succesful mushers have.

This book tells the story of one man's first experience of the Yukon Quest, and the problems and triumphs he encountered along the way. Very informative for some-one like myself (an armchair musher!)covering aspects which would never occur to me i.e. arranging food drops in advance!

A real page turner, i finished reading the book in one day.

In Honest Dogs: A Story Of Triumph And Regret From The World's Toughest Sled Dog Race, journalist and family man Brian O'Donoghue shares the story of his experiences upon entering the Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race at the age of 41. Brian writes with wry humor of sharing the trail with his Alaskan huskies Khan, Hobbes, Scrimshaw, and Cyclone, as well as a diverse collection of rival racers and resident bush rats. Honest Dogs is a candid, vivid account of a punishing personal journey and relates the strategies, dreams, and disappoints of the contestants, the antics of the furry canine athletes, the sheer drama of the race, and the unworldly wilderness setting in which Brian and his dogs found themselves. Honest Dogs is highly recommended reading for armchair adventurers and dog lovers everywhere.

My only experience with Robert Crais was reading DEMOLITION ANGEL. I discovered that aside from DEMOLITION ANGEL and HOSTAGE, he has a series of books starring Elvis Cole, a California Private Investigator and his partner, Joe Pike. Unfortunately, I started to learn about the characters in VOODOO RIVER instead of THE MONKEY'S RAINCOAT.

Cole is sent to Louisiana to investigate the adoption of a well-known television actress. He later discovers that the actress (as well as her birth mother) was being blackmailed. There is a second story involving the trafficking of illegal aliens which I ended a little to conveniently. One does not get to know much about the characters in this book. I had no idea what was Elvis' past, age or even a physical description. I heard a lot about Joe Pike but people keep telling me to read LA REQUIEM, to know more about Pike.

VOODOO RIVER is formulaic in which the action tells the story and just ignores the characters and their motivations. I acquired Elvis Cole's first appearance (THE MONKEY'S RAINCOAT) and I hope with this I might change my mind about Cole and get to know him a bit better. Crais has a lot of fans in Texas.

To know Elvis Cole is to enjoy him. Once again, Craig brings his excellent dialogue, intriguing plot lines and sense of humor to life. Crais writes as well as anyone in this genre. Additionally, each time he takes on different topics in which to set his mysteries. In Voodoo River Elvis takes his "world's greatest detective" agency to Louisiana and enters the worlds of adopted children growing to middle age and immigration. Despite the change in locale away from LA, Mr. Crais does not a miss a beat. If you are an Elvis fan this is everything you have come to expect. If you have not yet met him, you will enjoy him and look forward to finding another Elvis book. Crais' writing style enhances the telling of terrific story lines.

Too bad the Booklist review gave everything away! There should be a law against the tell-everything review, whether book or film. Part of the enjoyment in reading Robert Crais's mysteries is how he builds his story. It's called suspense. Since the plot has been served up, the only other things to discuss are setting and characterization. As always, the characters are unique and colorful (and the bad guys couldn't be worse villains!) -- and Voodoo River stars an ancient and deadly snapping turtle who figures importantly in the climax (but I won't tell you any more!) This is the installment in which Elvis Cole mets the woman who may become the love of his life, Lucy Chenier. A fast-paced and exciting read.