On September 17, 1868, Eugene Carr's Fifth United States cavalry guided by "Buffalo Bill" Cody, surprised and attacked Tall Bull's village of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers at Summit Springs, Colorado Territory. In one of the hastily abandonded lodges, a ledger book was found which had been initially captured by the Cheyenne during their retalitory raids following the Sand Creek massacre four years earlier. In the book were drawings of events of great valor done by Cheyenne warrior/artists.

The authors have reproduced the pages of the original ledgerbook in their original size and have added very detailed explainations of the drawings.

This book is very well researched and produced. David F. Halaas is the Colorado State Historian and Andrew Masich is a past president of that organization.

Circle of Stones, An Investigation of the Circle of Stones by Richard A. Schwartz is one of those rare finds which leads you into the past with both intelligent thought and historical fact and imagination. This book takes you through many credible theories of how a mysterious circle of stones came to be.These theories are supported by interesting ethnographic facts and historical data. But the main attribute of Circle of Stones is that you can see that the author took the time to carefully and lovingly write this jewel as a tribute to those who have come before us,both Native American and American Pioneers.

This is the most useful guide to collectable china that I have found. It is not only an exhaustive reference guide to Homer Laughlin's "Virginia Rose", but provides much information about other types of china as well. This book provides details and information that you can't find elsewhere.

As an Engish Gardener "displaced in Kansas" this book was a delight. Anyone who wants to plan a garden large or small should turn to this little gem written over 80 years ago. Miss Jekyll was the definitive garden planner, her ideas of colours and seasonal planting will inspire you to create a beautiful garden of your own. Quite the best of her kind.

The Contests at cowlick is a very cleverly written book, even adults still enjoy it. The whole book is written so artfully that it is easily characterized by the most un-dramatic readers. It is a great book for both children and adults, it makes for great drama too. Ever want a skit for kids, thats not a cheesy one, but simple enough that they can perform it in a little under a month? The contests at cowlick is a multi-purpose book. I reccomend this book to anyone looking for great wholesome entertainment.

"A superb calaloo of a book whose ingredients of autobiography, historical narrative and the anthropologist's pursuit of the origin of folk memories reconstruct the life of a Martinique fishing village. Richard Price has a remarkable grasp of the literatures of the Caribbean, and draws on this resource to explore the underlying insanity of the colonial experience, as well as the bewildering complexities of the post-colonial world where memory is erased or invented according to the demands of a market modernity."
--George Lamming, author of In the Castle of My Skin, Natives of My Person, The Pleasures of Exile, Season of Adventure

"A wonderfully readable fusion of anthropology and memoir about culture, colonialism, and madness in the Caribbean. Price practices what a lot of postmodernists preach; the book's graceful writing and innovative form, tossing the reader back and forth in time and space, is supported by solid and original scholarship."
--Lucy R. Lippard, author of Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America

"By beautifully crafting elements as disparate as biographical data, sociological studies, literary sources, and archival documents, Richard Price's research is more fascinationg than a piece of fiction."
--Maryse Condé, author of I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, Crossing the Mangrove, and The Last of the African Kings

"An engrossing and compelling book. . . . Richard Price continues to build a body of work that in seriousness and self-revelation goes beyond even the work of Clifford Geertz. But he is more than an anthropologist and stylist; he is a moralist, one who demands to be taken seriously. He enters the discussion of modern culture with Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques but he is able to carry it further than the master, because he has kept his intellectualizing anchored in the experience of cultural and social difference."
--Roger D. Abrahams, author of Singing the Master and Afro-American Folktales

"Price does it again. Mixing eras, genres and voices, he carries the reader through the contradictory streams of historical consciousness in the Caribbean island of Martinique. The result is as complex and as enticing as the sea it evokes."
--Michel-Rolph Trouillot, author of Silencing the Past

This dictionary of the vocabulary of the Old Canaanite, Phoenician, Punic, Moabite, Ammonite, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions is a state-of-the-art tool for specialists, yet it is so extraordinarily well organized and its material is so clearly presented that even those with no more than a nodding acquaintance with Semitics will find it easy to use.

And many non-specialists _should_ use this dictionary: they will find it immensely useful. For example, rabbis and pastors will find that when used judiciously it can provide as rich a store of illustrative material for messages on the Hebrew scriptures as Moulton and Milligan's _The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament_ does for sermons from the New Testament.

The dictionary's greatest defect, in my view, is a relatively minor one: the authors' imperfect mastery of English sometimes leads them astray. For instance, the dictionary states that in Imperial Aramaic _bl'd hn_ (I use an apostrophe to represent 'ayin) means "excepted if," an expression which seems to have gone out of fashion among native speakers of English in the sixteenth century. Since the dictionary does not identify the language of an inscription when it quotes it, beginners may complain that it is often difficult for them to know just what they are looking at. But this is probably a virtue, not a defect: those beginners need to be reminded that they are, after all, using a grown-up's tool.

...this two-volume, 1300-page work is a steal. I have wept at its beauties.

That's exactly what you'll find here -- and in large, heavy doses. This is an extremely well-crafted work -- I would recommend it on that aspect alone -- but don't enter into it looking for an uplifting read. There is indeed angst a-plenty in this story -- the thin volume belies its weight -- and from every side. I just finished reading it today, and I can't recall a character in it that was truly happy in their life. It's a testament to the power of Lyons' talent that I was able to work my way through it.

Most readers might not expect a novel set in the American farmland to be so dark -- isn't this the heart of America? Believe me, there's plenty of darkness there. The story centers around two people -- one of them the narrator, Annie, whom we follow from girlhood into adulthood, through trials and tribulations with her parents, her relatives, and a marriage; the other her cousin, one Henry Starr, whom we see through a series of letters he writes to Annie over a period of several years.

Henry is seen as an outcast by his relatives. He has abandoned his family and home after an emotional trauma -- he has discovered that Florence, the woman married to his father Amos, who has nurtured him through all of his memory, is not his real mother. The breakdown of this wall of secrecy comes in a rush of emotion, and Henry and Florence find themselves thrown together in a way not viewed in a very favorable light by those around them. Rumors fly, secrets are kept and told in quiet whispers, away from young ears. Much is thought but little is spoken.

Annie is mystified by her cousin -- and his reputation, by word and by imagination. She pries what little information she can from her parents and others -- and what she actually gleans offers her very little substance. Most of what she learns of Henry comes from his letters. After his sudden departure, he begins writing to her -- tortuous missives that seem to issue from deep within his torn soul. His mood and psyche -- and, for that matter, those of Annie as well -- are captured in breathtakingly pure, raw fashion by Lyons. Many of his letters contain not so much sentences but short bursts of thought -- and a lot of what seem to be rhetorical questions, but they are questions that are eating Henry alive.

Annie comes to feel closer and closer to Henry over the course of a few years of these one-way communications. He never stays in one place long enough to have a return address -- or, at least, he never offers one, preferring to conduct his quest in isolation. His quest? To find and meet his real mother. It takes him from one end of the country to the other and back again, through a series of misadventures, odd characters (the like of which I haven't seen since ON THE ROAD) and close shaves.

While all of this is going on, Annie, at home, is going through some tough times of her own. Her husband falls ill and dies in her arms -- and Henry's letters, combined with her own pain and thoughts (as well as those around her), cause her to re-evaluate her own philosophy of life and love. After Annie's mother dies, her father takes off to 'find his dreams' in California -- he returns some time later, and the confrontation between father and daughter is strained -- and depicted in such a vivid yet spare prose that I felt like I was in the room with them.

There's a word in Portuguese -- saudade. It's considered to be literally untranslatable into English -- it means, roughly, a sense of longing, one that becomes an ache in the soul. The story told here could, I think, be considered an American saudade -- the pain that these characters experience is that deep.

This novel was definitely NOT the 'feel-good book of the summer' for me -- but I'm pleased to have discovered this author's work. He's a powerful, masterful writer.

Wisconsin History Professor Frederick Jackson Turner came up with the "Frontier Thesis," the idea that it was the frontier that was the most important factor in shaping the American nation. Turner linked American democracy, nationalism, individualism, as well as physical and social mobility to how pioneers faced the frontier as they moved the boundaries of the United States westward. Richard W. Etulain presents four essays responding to Turner's Frontier Thesis and the question "Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional?"

Richard White's essay compares and contrasts how Turner and Buffalo Bill Cody interpreted the closing of the West at the end of the 19th-Century. White sees these narratives as having some elements in common but ultimately offering competing narrative explanations. In her essay Glenda Riley notes that Turner clearly ignored women from his story of the Frontier and outlines what he may have missed as a result. Martin Ridge focuses on the influence of Turner's thesis and characterizes Turner as sort of the high priest of American exceptionalism. Finally, Donald Worster notes that historians have essentially dismissed Turner's theory since the 1950s and considers what appropriate interpretation should be offered. Worster argues that historians should return to the interpretation offered by Walter Prescott Webb, who considered the West as an evolving place separate from what was happening in the big cities on each coast.

I have always considered Turner's "Frontier Thesis" to be the prime example of historiography when it comes to introducing the concept to students. From talking to students it is clear that the Frontier Thesis has not been taught in schools for years, which is a shame because since the thesis so eminently debatable, as this collection of essays proves, it remains the perfect way of making students aware that what we teach as history is a collection of arguments rather than the "true" story of what "really" happened. As such, this volume is a useful source of alternative theories as well as insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Turner's ideas.