Poems in a present tense expanded by the poet's personal history and deployment of ambiguous metaphor. The tones of these diverse poems are often not happy, but they are content. The language is vernacular and low-keyed. These qualities make the clarity and depth of emotion revealed in the best poems all the more remarkable. To be read along with the author's "Beyond Love," (San Francisco, 1968), if you may find it.

It's always nice to see an old classic back in print. Originally planned as a continuation of Charles Patton Dimitry?s _Louisiana Families_ series (published in 1892), the authors augmented that work by extending the coverage to English, Scots, and Irish family lines, as well as adding French and Spanish families omitted by Dimitry. There's a great deal of compiled material here, but no source citations. It would also have been useful to include an every-name index in place of the original index which lists only "stem" surnames. Likewise, the prose can be a bit florid for modern tastes, but Louisiana researchers will want to begin much of their research on new families with this volume.

I thought this book sufficed, but wasn't fabulous. I strongly preferred Moore and McCabe's "Introduction to the Practice of Statistics" better than this book, although it didn't have a business slant to it. Moore and McCabe are certainly the way to go, though, for stats, if you have a choice at all.

This series of books is a must for anyone interested in modern political thought. It is as interesting as "Crossfire" with more substance and depth. The editors' political experience shows in the selection of authors and pieces chosen. Though I'm sure the editors have their own opinions, both sides of each issue are well represented. They have carefully culled differing points of view from intelligent people who make their arguments persuasively. Highly recommended.

I didn't like the book - but the girls in my class are crazy about them! They are the perfect series for second grade readers. The content is age appropriate and cute.

My girls have read all four of the Katie Lynn titles. When I called the publisher, I was told there wouldn't be any more of them. That's too bad. This is a great series. Our girls have read each title several times. They've baked the cookies just like Katie Lynn does.

This is not a 'reading' book; it's purely a reference book. The book is alphabetical listings of death records and obituaries from various Missouri newspapers. The print is _tiny_ so the book is thin, but there is a huge amount of information in it. Browsing through is interesting as causes of death, and methods the person used for suicide, are included. I downchecked the book a bit for the lack of introductory material explaining exactly how the book's format relates to the original newspaper listings--how much is exact quotation? how much is the author/compiler's inserted comments? how much info was excluded from each listing?--and for the extremely tiny print size. The listings seem trimmed down to the basics.

For broad historical research purposes, the price of the book may be worthwhile. For someone doing genealogical reseach looking for a single person, the price may be a bit high as you may be able to get the individual listing from other sources.

I am apalled at the tone that this book sets. While admittedly well researched, the author has gone to utmost lengths to disparge the memory of one of the greatest ever combat generals on all fronts.
The ultimate accolade is when one's enemy admits to your greatness. In this "Georgie" was fortuanete. The German Army High Command thought him dangerous, Stalin was impressed, Eisenhower and Marshall repeatedly "saved" him for greater things, but Professor Hirshon is not impressed.
Prior to D-Day, his presence in pretended planning tied up German divisions that could have been used in D-Day. His breakout and pursuit post D-Day was beyond compare. Turning the Third Army around and getting onto the offensive during the Battle of the Bulge even today is considered the ultimate in handling and Army at War. But that doesn't cut ice with Professor Hirshon either.
One presumes that the decision to install his statue at west Point was made by a committee of morons.
We are indeed luck that Patton's nanny and her closest blood relations to whom some form of oral history could have been passed on are long dead or not accessible to Professor Hirshon, or else he might have raked up something about how Patton didn't eat his food when he was three or maybe wet his bed.
Whether Professor Hirshon likes it or not, George Smith Patton Jr., General, USA was and will remain a military icon, one of the best combat generals that the world has ever seen. A master in exploiting and executing the expanding torrent theory.
The only reason this bok gets one star is because of it's subject. PATTON

Despite what Hirshson claims in his preface (over 12 yrs of archival research!), this book does not break new ground in Patton historiography. While he does uncover (or actually use) some new materials such as letters and diaries of John Wood, the 4th Armored div commander, most of his primary source is the same used by earlier biographers of Patton from D'Este all the way back to Farago. Unfortunately, his interpretations of the same materials are, to be kind, adventurous and certainly open to criticisms. One ex. is Hirshson uses Liddell Hart's claim that Patton didn't think mobile exploitation was possible in Normandy. From this bit (and as Mearsheimer showed, Liddell Hart was not above self-serving revisionist history), Hirshson claims that Patton was not nearly the armored warfare visionary his previous biographers claimed (a tough proposition to sell no doubt). He conveniently forgets the fact that Patton was talking about the terrain immediately after the beachhead (namely the bocage country) and the two month long struggle validated Patton's prediction.

Another disturbing part of the book is Hirshson's claim that Patton's war speeches were responsible for American atrocities. This is just inane. Any serious reader of Patton's own works understands that Patton more than anyone else realized the difficulty of converting democratic citizenry into fighting men against an experienced Wehrmacht. Even more disturbing is Hirshson's focus on Patton's anti-Semitic views. While his views were deplorable and unjustifiable, they're hardly unrepresentative of his social peers (namely top American military generals). Considerable amount of this focus is present in his concluding chapter without really connecting how his views impacted his military conduct. He attempts to connect this to Patton's military governorship of Bavaria, but most Patton biographers and military historians would agree that it was Patton's political naivete and ignorance (after all, his political views were conservative to say the least) situated in a position where he was least suited.

His work sheds some new light on John Wood, a Patton friend and his first 4th Armored commander. However, in the overall Patton historiography (despite Wood's accomplishments), Wood's importance is a minor one. Overall, a disappointing work that does not come close to superceding Blumenson's annotated Patton Papers or D'Este's monumental biography. However, I do believe there are plenty of Montgomery admirers in UK who would love to scoop up this book.

Hirshson's Patton: A Soldier's Life is the only book I have read on the life of Gen. George Patton. Hirshson's book is a result of massive research and for that alone the author is to be commended. If the subject of the book were someone other than the colorful Patton, this would be a very arduous read.

Like many who are drawn to the character of Patton, I think most would give credit to the movie in which Patton was wonderfully portrayed by the late George C. Scott. I can not intelligently say whether this book uncovers any new ground-breaking information on Patton, but the book is still worth reading.

Patton believed he was destined to play some integral part in a major war. You get that sense from the book and the movie. It is hard to comprehend that someone could actually wish for war, but Patton probably more than anyone fits this description.

Reading from letters written by Patton are all very informative as they would be about any figure in history. I especially was interested in what he thought of other generals. I knew he had some disdain for Gen. Montgomery, but he apparently was not too impressed with Eisenhower either. He even considered Gen. Bradley of the higher caliber of mediocrity.

While this book likes to deal with Patton's faults and controversies, as any good book should, even Hirshson admits Patton was probably the greatest tactician of the allied commanders.

Patton was clearly not a beloved general like a Washington or a Lee, but he was feared and respected. Patton had attributes that are worthy of rebuke, but he knew how to fight and strike fear into the hearts of the enemy.

The editor, Andrew Ross, describes this book as "an expanded edition" of a special issue of the journal "Social Text". Potential readers should be warned however that it is also an expurgated edition, from which Alan Sokal's celebrated parody of of recent socio-cultural jargon has been suppressed. One understands Professor Ross's chagrin at the cruel and unusual joke that Professor Sokal practised on him. However, the unadvertised deletion of Sokal's contribution is a hoax on the buyers of "Science Wars" who naturally expect to find in it the one item of the original publication that has received worldwide attention.

The subsequent reviewer found the current tome missing in scholarship, merely by not having reprinted Sokal's piece from the social text issue of the same name (science wars). If one cared to read through the book, however, one would notice a number of quite specific reasons for this: among these that the book is meant as a counter argument to Sokal, Levitt & Gross's readings of their fave foe: pomos and other dangerous 'leftists' (what does this mean?). It is no secret that these authors are fired by a profound hostility and unwillingness to engage with the material with which they are dealing. This has already been shown ad nauseam in the litterature (see for instance Callon's review in social studies of science). Nevertheless this book stands as a nice response to some of the worst nonsense that has come out of the sokal/gross tradition. Specifically one should not miss Hart's devastating analysis of Gross et al's 'scientific neutrality' and their analytical abilities in Higher Superstition. Other pieces such as Mike Lynch's are good too; some however, are merely perpetuating the current stand off in a nasty 'war' (among these both of Ross's pieces). So is this review, I presume. That said, I should stop. Read both sides before you judge, you might get to know a good bit about rhetorical wars from the putatively neutral and objective scientists (sokal, gross, koertge etc).

Informative, but contains nothing extremely extaordinary for the price of $250. Almost all of these letters can be found by themselves, and are not nearly as expensive. I would not recommend this volume except for those who have a very profound interest in the life of Lois Riel and his personnal thoughts. It also pricey for it's inherent value to the average from interested readers. Overall, I enjoyed reading these letters, although it seemed to drag at times.

I spent quite a bit of time with this book as it was required for a class I was taking. It tends not to go into enough depth or have specific enough examples.