This is a very useful collection of essays on a topic that has seen a major increase in scholarly interest. I found the articles on Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton and the images of women in country music to be especially interesting. There are contributions by most of the current ranking scholars in the field.

Cryin' Time is the second title in the Kate Banning Mystery series, the first being Jealous Heart.

Kate Banning has moved to Nashville Tennessee. She has a secure job with a publication and thought her amateur sleuthing days were behind her, not so, when she finds herself having lunch at the Mad Platter with a convincing executive from UpShot Records named Phil. Phil needs an amateur detective to do a background check on a future singer, and their mutual friend Henry recommended Kate. The only reason Kate accepts the case is because it seems easy and she needs the money to send her fourteen-year-old daughter Kelly to summer camp. But as the case moves on Kate finds it is anything but easy. While checking on the background of the singer Troy, his girlfriend Shay disappears. Again Kate finds herself in the line of fire and takes up the hunt for Shay even when the record label backs out and tells her to quit. If there's one thing Music City has in common with Hollywood it's that not everyone is who he or she claims to be and that is some thing Kate is about to find out.

I found Cryin' Time to be a cozy, interesting read. Country music is only one of the many types of music played in our home, so in reading Cryin' Time I recognized the famous names and songs mentioned. Ms. Tishy gives the reader a good mystery; her detailed description of Nashville's famous and not so famous sites help to bring the mystery to life. The only problem I had was when the author penned her protagonists' road directions one too many times, I don't feel they had anything to do with the plot and they seemed a bit distracting. Maybe the author should consider including a simple map in the next mystery. Also in Cryin' Time, Ms. Tishy gives us a look at the different sides of business in country music. Do you really know what a flyswatter is? Can you guess what a rack-jobber has to do with Wal-mart? Do you know why a country band is caged? I do, now.

Make room for Cecelia Tishy on the growing list of writers of intelligent mystery novels. In fact, make room at the top of the list -- she may be the best one yet. Her Kate Banning series displays a masterful use of a popular literary form to entertain and to inform. Based in the Nashville country music scene which Ms Tishy understands perfectly CRYIN' TIME, the second in the series, gives a first-hand look at a world we all know of, but know very little about. As we follow Kate's investigation from sweaty, back-office consultations to glitzy benefit events, we witness the realities of a tremendously popular performance genre. But, best of all, it's a great story. Cecelia Tishy feeds out her plot line with the even consistency of a skilled fisherman ["fisherperson?" Naw.] She never scares off the reader with frenetic pacing of the plot. On the other hand, the description of the human details in Kate's life and witty prose style ["She pumped cordiality like soda fountain syrup," "the deep-down, deep-dish curiosity"]keep us avidly turning the pages. The characterization is flawless;it draws us right into the book from the first pages. Kate avoids all the pitfalls of other women sleuths. She is independent, but not hard like Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak, likeable, but never becomes a cuddly caricature like Jessica Fletcher. Kate does her own thing with class and intelligence. The character of the American Indian singer, Troy Blackfeather, was of primary interest to me. Drawing from two familiar "Indian guy" archetypes, Cecelia Tishy crafts a believable young Native male. In his two lamentably short appearances in the novel Troy is first the committed, adoring lover and then the broken, vulnerable warrior evoking the same urge to console as does the well-known icon, "End of the Trail." A good read by an excellent writer! Be on the lookout for number three in the series!

It has been over a year since I ground my way through this book. My lack of adaptability to the Olde Worlde English may have contributed to this. I found this to be a long book about an interesting individual whose sole purpose for writing the book, I have concluded, was to leave a lasting, self-congratulatory reminder of his own life. I must disagree with a previous review that stated it was a must for any young ambitious person. I am; it wasn't.
For sheer inspiration from another person's life, I would recommend works on Lincoln, the Wright brothers (Kill Devil Hill), Richard Branson, Edison, Spielberg, Mme Curie, Bruce Lee, Iacocca and Einstein.

I'll admit that my primary motivation for reading this book was somewhat shallow--I basically wanted to read about how one of history's most successful businessmen amassed so much wealth. To be honest, the book didn't really give as many details as I would have liked on that particular interest. But what I got along the way made the book worth it.

First and foremost, after reading 350 pages of Carnegie writing about his life you feel like you really start to know him, to get a sense of what kind of human being he was, and even to get a sense of his somewhat remarkable confidence level that exists in conjunction with his pretty inspiring level of benevolence and compassion. But I think even more than getting a sense of Carnegie, you get a sense of the time he lived in. Some of the most engaging parts of the book for me were the first-hand accounts of Lincoln during the Civil War, or Carnegie's conversations with President Harrison about a small uprising in Chile. You also hear about how he handled the strikes of steel workers, an occurence I'd only read about in history books but never learned directly about from the perspective of the manager.

All throughout Carnegie peppers with his nuggets of wisdom, and you get the feeling he knows people want them really badly but that he chooses to give them sparingly.

In the end, I probably will never re-read this book, but I feel better educated about one of history's greatest industrialists, greatest benefactors, and the time he lived in after having read it. If you have a nascent interest in history, you will most likely enjoy this book; if you're looking for a "how to make your millions" from a master, I would look elsewhere.

The vanity of today's uneducated society is breathtaking. White is black and black is white and 'a little knowledge' is indeed proving very dangerous. This book (along with the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin) should be read by every American citizen - to relearn what America once represented.

For example, Carnegie Steel, the world's largest company in 1900, was NOT a corporation; it was a private partnership. The sale of the company to JP morgan (for half a billion dollars) was done on a handshake; a contract was a mere afterthought. Reputation and honesty and customer service were THE guiding principles of the era. 'Individual responsibility' was considered a good thing in those days.

America now has more lawyers per capita than any other nation on Earth. Our politicians now attempt to micro-manage every detail of our lives. You break a fingernail and sue the universe. We have become terrified of freedom. Read this book if you want to understand how America rose from a third world country to a superpower between 1800 and 1900 - without government intervention or welfare or all the millions of rules and regulations we now hold so dear. We have traded away our freedom for security. The price is higher than you think.

I probably would have never picked this book up if I didn't have to read it for my writing class. But once I got through the introduction which was a little slow but informative I really enjoyed the rest of the book. The first story Life in the Iron Mills, in my opinion is an excellent description of what life must have been like for poor people in a iron factory town. If you like to read factual stories about the early twentieth century this is a must read for you. I hope that you get as much out of it as I have.

I grew up on science fiction, and many years ago read this book and was utterly unimpressed. Over the years, at SF conventions, I would ask other fans if they had read this book. Now these are fans who could regale you with quotes from Star Trek, or Star Wars, and who often had read most of Larry Niven or Andre Norton. But "Looking Backward"? Bellamy? Many had never heard of the book or the author. Those who had read the book often shared my opinion. By comparison, all I asked had read "Time Machine" by Wells, and had seen the movie.

I think it is instructive to compare the two books. Written within a few years of each other, with Bellamy's actually being the first, why did "Time Machine" live on, and the other being relegated to a well deserved obscurity? In fact, "Time Machine" is generally considered the first famous novel that describes the concept of time travel.

Try reading the two books consecutively. Well's story is gripping and dramatic. Bellamy's seems stilted and ponderous. Part of this is just the differences in literary style in the intervening century. But "Time Machine" is still a dashing read. Bellamy's text is a thinly wrapped polemic; a hosanna to his vision of a socialistic utopia. Most of the book is a hectoring lecture as to how late twentieth century Boston is a secular paradise, with the evils of capitalism just a historial curiosity. For one thing, books on utopia do not sell well. Regardless of your personal political beliefs, a book that is soothing and tranquil lacks a certain vivacity and drama.

This book is significant today, but NOT as science fiction. Rather as a guidepost to the socialistic beliefs of a certain subculture of a past century.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the movie!

This book is a persistent favorite, and I admit to enjoying it tremendously as a school student. However, "Looking Backward" would not be read today if it weren't for Bellamy's extraordinary vision of a socialist utopia that was in stark contrast to the realities created by 20th Century Communism.

Bellamy himself wanted to distance himself from "Das Kapital", published 40 years before "Looking Backward." The godless society was not his vision; instead he created a perfect society of people who were naturally good, and, with the proper upbringing and values instilled, would report for their assignment in the work corp, deal unselfishly with their neighbors and work hard and selflessly for the common good. Obviously, Bellamy was not a student of human psychology, nor a keen observer of children, who exhibit cruelty and selfish nature pretty much as soon as they can walk.

The story is badly written as a novel--Bellamy relies on stilted conversation for exposition of his ideas and the idea of a mesmerized insomniac sleeping peacefully and unagingly for years locked away in an insulated capsule while his house burned down around him is silly even by science fiction standards. Nevertheless, the vision of symphony concerts piped in by advanced technology (radio broadcasts and sterophonic sound), the distribution of goods by automated means is extraordinarily prescient, even if these enterprises today are for profit and not free for the taking as in "Looking Backward."

Despite the fantasy, the total lack of understanding of human nature and the clumsy writing, this book is still an enjoyable version of Utopia and especially fun for younger readers.

Having never really heard of this novel or its author before, I was rather surprised to discover how immensely popular it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Edward Bellamy does an excellent albeit sometimes pedantic job of communicating his socioeconomic views and provides an interesting and informative read, despite the fact that the utopia of his fictional creation is a socialist nightmare in the realm of my own personal philosophy. It is very important to understand the time in which Bellamy was writing, especially for a conservative-minded thinker such as myself who holds many of Bellamy's views as anathema. It was the mid-1880s, a time of great social unrest; vast strikes by labor unions, clashes between workers and managers, a debilitating economic depression. Bellamy, to his credit, in no way comes off as holier than thou; his wealthy protagonist recognizes his own responsibility in seeing the world in the eyes of the more prosperous classes, basically ignoring the plights of the poor and downtrodden, having inherited rather than earned the money he is privileged to enjoy, etc. This makes the character's observations and conclusions very impactful upon the reader.

While I do respect Bellamy's views and understand the context in which they germinated, I cannot help but describe his future utopia as nothing less than naïve, socialistic, unworkable, and destructive of the individual spirit. Indeed, it sounds to me like vintage Soviet communism, at least in its ideals. Bellamy is a Marxist with blinders on. I should describe the actual novel at this point. The protagonist, an insomniac having employed a mesmerist to help him sleep through the night, finds himself waking up not the following morning in 1887 but in a completely changed world in 2000. His bed chamber was a subterranean fortress of sorts which only he, his servant, and the mesmerist (who left the city that same night) even knew about, and apparently his home proper burned down on that fateful night and thus his servant was clearly unable to bring him out of his trance the following morning. It is only by accident that Dr. Leekes of twentieth-century Boston discovers the unknown tomb and helps resuscitate its remarkable inhabitant. 20th-century life is wholly unlike anything the protagonist has ever known, and the book basically consists of a number of instruction sessions by the Leekes as to how society has been virtually perfected over the preceding 100 years. There is no more war, crime, unhappiness, discrimination, etc. There are no such things as wages or prices, even. All men and women are paid the same by virtue of their being human beings; while money does not exist, everyone has everything they possibly need easily available to them for purchase with special credit cards. Every part of the economy is controlled by the national government, and it is through cooperation of the brotherhood of men that production has exceeded many times over that of privately controlled industries fighting a war against each other in the name of capitalism.

Bellamy's future utopia is most open to question in terms of the means by which individualism is supposedly strengthened rather than smothered, how a complex but seemingly set of incentives supposedly keep each worker happy and productive, how invention or improvement of anything is possible in such a world, and how this great society does not in fact become a mirror of Khrushchev's Russian state. Such a society consisting of an "industrial army" and controlled in the minutest of terms by a central national authority simply sounds like Communism to my ears and is equally as unsustainable. Of course, Bellamy wrote this novel many years before the first corruptions of Marx's dangerous dreams were made a reality on earth. As I said, I disagree with just about everything Bellamy praises, and I think almost anyone would agree his utopia is an impossibility, but I greatly respect the man for his bold, humanitarian vision and applaud his efforts to make the world a better place. In fact, many groups organized themselves along the lines of the world Bellamy envisioned, so the novel's influence on contemporary popular thought is beyond question. Looking Backward remains a fascinating read in our own time.

I should make clear that the novel is not completely a dry recitation of socioeconomic arguments and moralistic treatises. Bellamy makes the story of this most unusual of time travelers a most enjoyable one, bringing in an unusual type of old-fashioned romance to supply the beating heart of a novel that had the potential to become overly analytical and thus rather boring reading otherwise. He also managed to grab me by the scruff of the neck and shake me around a couple of times with his concluding chapter, quite shocking me with a couple of unexpected plot twists. This great humanist of the late nineteenth century can teach us all something about what it means to be truly human, although I fear that his socioeconomic theories are themselves far too romanticized to have much practical relevance in the lives of modern men and women.