Insurgent Mexico. Review

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(More customer reviews)This book has been notorious since its publication in 1914. The author was a vagabond leftist reporter for the American radical press, and did not go to Mexico City riding in relative comfort on the press train accompanying the Division del Norte of General Francisco "Pancho" Villa during his successful Constitutionalist southward campaign against the Federalista forces of the usurper General Victoriano Huerta; he who had murdered president Madero and his vice president, and seized power in Mexico City in conjunction the forces of Zapata.
Instead, Reed, in accord with his common man leanings, while on campaign, lived among the "grunts", Mexican campesinos who made up the bulk of Villa's forces.
There are incisive pen portraits of the Constitutionalist leaders, descriptions of the wretched living conditions of the people, observations on the siege of Torréon, N.L.. and nearby Gomez Palacio, neighboring key strategic cities on the railroad south from Juarez to Mexico City.
This is not history or reporting but a collection of impressionistic and justifiably biased essays. Still very valuable for the feel of the times and has been translated into many languages. The author later went to Russia and wrote "Ten Days That Shook the World." (c.f.) about the October Revolution.

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Hard Tack and Coffee Review

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(More customer reviews)Josh Billings served with the 10th Mass Battery of Light Artillery during the Civil War. After having written the Official "History of the 10th Mass Battery" he responded to numerous requests to write a book about daily life in the Union Army. "Hardtack and Coffee" is an unpretentious, humorous look at life in the Union Army, Particularly the Light Artillery During the Civil War. Mr. Billings paints a vivid picture of living life under canvas, in the field. He addresses such topics as Army food, The day by Bugle calls, Beats (people who "avoided work"), punishments and more. This book is not a comedy, but is written with a light and readable style that makes it interesting to the average reader, as well as to those interested in the Civil War. this book is a must read for all readers of Civil War literature.

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Originally published in 1888, this first-person account of everyday life for the foot soldier during the Civil War became an immediate bestseller. 8 cassettes.--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement Review

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(More customer reviews)Civil Rights History From the Ground Up provides a compelling survey of civil rights struggles that began in the South and spread across the nation, offering college-level readers a collection of scholarly debates and examples discussing the central issues of the movement. Teachers and advanced students of civil rights receive a fine movement history that clarifies the extent of debates surrounding the issues.


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After decades of scholarship on the civil rights movement at the local level, the insights of bottom-up movement history remain essentially invisible in the accepted narrative of the movement and peripheral to debates on how to research, document, and teach about the movement. This collection of original works refocuses attention on this bottom-up history and compels a rethinking of what and who we think is central to the movement.

The essays examine such locales as Sunflower County, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Wilson, North Carolina; and engage such issues as nonviolence and self-defense, the implications of focusing on women in the movement, and struggles for freedom beyond voting rights and school desegregation. Events and incidents discussed range from the movement's heyday to the present and include the Poor People's Campaign mule train to Washington, D.C., the popular response to the deaths of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King, and political cartoons addressing Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

The kinds of scholarship represented here—which draw on oral history and activist insights (along with traditional sources) and which bring the specificity of time and place into dialogue with broad themes and a national context—are crucial as we continue to foster scholarly debates, evaluate newer conceptual frameworks, and replace the superficial narrative that persists in the popular imagination.

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Children of Strangers Review

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(More customer reviews)I think it is stupid to rate this book based on some misconceptions of how Mr Saxon viewed blacks or rural people. Saxon was regarded by anyone who knew him as very progressive in this regard if not a bit too paternalistic. One of the obituaries written of him at his passing referred to him as "friend toward black people".
The cane river plantation was Lyle Saxon's home away from home when he wasn't in his beloved New Orleans. Saxon had a great nostalgia for his days as a youth in a plantation just south of Baton rouge. He loved to relax there and did his most productive writing there. As an educated and cultured man living most of the time in New Orleans and hanging around people like Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner he probably would think of rural farm people as uncultured or less educated. I don't have a problem with that.
Saxon here provides an insightful story of plantation life from the inside looking out. He delves into the attitudes of Creoles and race and how they perceived the world. He was fully aware that while plantation life was a getaway and relaxation to him it was hard work for those who relied on it to live.
This is a well crafted piece thaqt is tight and well detailed and it should be it took him years write. Lyle Saxon is best known for his love of New Orleans especially his beloved view carrie and he was instrumental in popularizing it as a place for writers and artists. While Saxon lived most of his adult life in New Orleans most of his writings are about plantation life a subject very near and dear to him. Children of strangers is a seminal book of it's kind!
Other Saxon books about plantation life in Louisiana-Friends of joe Gilmour-Father Mississippi-Old Louisiana.
No writer loved Louisiana more or wrote about it better.

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The moving story of love in a Cane River community bound by race and class. Famie is a mulatto girl whose ancestors-free blacks-rivaled the white planters in wealth and culture. But on a Louisiana plantation in the 1920s, she is an outcast. An illicit love affair with a white landowner leaves her with a son. She dreams her son will be accepted into white society, but in her struggle to transcend race and class Famie must sacrifice the last links to her past.

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Head of Research: My Ten-Year Roller Coaster Ride on Wall Street Review

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(More customer reviews)I was very disappointed with this book if you can call it a book. It is more like an essay that can be read in one hour. This book is very abrupt difficult to follow due to the lack of details. When I read a book I want to learn something from it but with this work I came away empty handed. We all know that Darwin's survival of the fittest theory personifies wall street to the tee. Yes, it is brutal unfair but so is the nature of this beast.

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BRIGHT LIGHTSAND SHATTERED DREAMS Yi Chen looked up at the bright lights and corner offices of Wall Street and wanted it all. And he nearly had it. After emigrating from China and earning his PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, Yi landed at Goldman Sachs, a quantitative analyst on the rise. After leaving Goldman to seek his fortune as a trader, the roller-coaster ride began and Yi's life became a nightmare of lighting-fast promotions and blowups, fueled by office politics.While working for one investment bank, Yi found himself in line for a million-dollar paycheck and a bulletproof, executive position. However, jealous traders and managers soon undermined his position and had him ousted. His was forced to start his career climb all over again. A story of perseverance, loss and redemption, Head of Research is a lesson in career ambition and personal fortitude. With the odds stacked against him, Yi Chen never gave up chasing his dream. He still hasn't.

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The Empress Sword Review

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(More customer reviews)Synopsis:
"A brave prince, a ferocious dragon, and a magic sword are all familiar elements of the classic adventure story. But for thirteen-year-old Prince Aster of Caledon, the quest for the Empress Sword-the only magic strong enough to defeat the dragon menacing his kingdom-is just the beginning.
Aster has always been told that wielding great magic requires a sacrifice, but what the Empress Sword demands from him is the last thing he ever expected to lose: his own identity as crown prince and the king's only son." - GoodReads.com
Author:
Paulette Jaxton is a personal friend that comes from a heavy computer programming background. She counts NASA as one of her earliest job sources and has taken that forward thinking view into her writing. Currently, The Empress Sword [TES] is her only published novel. However, she is working on the second book in the series.
She also is working on podcasting the novel.
Review:
TES is one of the shorter Young Adult novels that I've read, however it packs a lot of twists and turns into that short span. Many of the characters in a YA tend to be abbreviated, shadows of what they could be. Jaxton manages to make the protagonist, Prince Aster, seem more rounded through all the trials and tribulations he must survive. Though, I suppose the term `protagonist' may be slightly out of place as the book opens up with the awakening of the terrible Dragon.
Mandrake, the reptile in question, is the herald for the return of his winged people who have slept for the past hundreds of years. Unfortunately for Caledon, Mandrake can't get past the notion that the mountain blocking his way to where his people sleep is the kingdom's fault. He decides it is his duty to burn the vermin from his homeland in preparation for the return of the Dragonkin.
And the only one standing in his way? Prince Aster and his search for the legendary Empress Sword, said once to hold all dragons in its sway.
This fantasy novel is a quick read at only 300 pages, but manages to keep even an adult reader's attention. There is no swearing, and the blood letting that occurs is extremely minimal.
There are quite a few smaller characters that make the subplots a fun read, and the world building is very thorough for a YA novel.
Summary:
The Empress Sword is a fine debut novel for Paulette Jaxton's series, and I look forward to what the next installment has to offer. While it is not as polished a piece as you might get from a more experienced fiction author, the book has a good plot, wit, and charming characters that will keep the reader looking for more.
Cost and Purchase:
At $19.99 (Marked down to $14.96 by Amazon) for the paperback, it seems a bit costly. If this were the hard-cover cost, I would think it a fair price. However, the electronic version of the novel is easily worth the $2.99 on Kindle.


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Jaxton leads you easily into a story of magic, growing up and consequences. The Empress Sword takes the well-known young prince slays dragon story and tips it upside down and inside out in the most delightful ways.~Philippa Ballantine, author of Geist and SpectyrThe Empress Sword is a wonderfully vivid tale with a most intriguing twist. Just the right mix of light humor and quirky characters that kept the pages turning and left me wanting more... What a delightful tale!~Chris A. Jackson, author of Scimitar Moon, a ForeWordMagazine Book of the Year Gold Medal WinnerThe Empress Sword carries the reader on an unexpected journey full of excitement, mystery, and new perspectives. ~Christiana Ellis, award-winning writer and podcasterA brave prince, a ferocious dragon, and a magic sword are all familiar elements of the classic adventure story. But for thirteen-year-old Prince Aster of Caledon, the quest for the Empress Sword--the only magic strong enough to defeat the dragon menacing his kingdom--is just the beginning.Aster has always been told that wielding great magic requires a sacrifice, but what the Empress Sword demands from him is the last thing he ever expected to lose: his own identity as crown prince and the king's only son.

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Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World Review

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(More customer reviews)I appreciated the subject matter more than the book itself.
Endless books are available on the East India Company and the resulting Raj with its economic, political and military impact on Britain starting in the eighteenth century. It is much harder to find comparable studies of the Levant Company and its influence on Britain of the seventeenth century. I was thus very excited to discover this book.
The title is somewhat misleading. This is not a study of "traders and travelers in the Islamic world" as the subtitle explains. It is a study of British citizens in the Ottoman Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And it is really a history of the Levant Company, a rough equivalent of the East India Company, established as a monopoly trade company between England and the Ottoman Empire.
The strength of the book is the extensive use of quotes from primary sources, often letters and dispatches from Levant Company officials and British diplomats.
My main criticism is that the book attempts too much for its short length (240 pages plus notes, bibliography & index). The author also presents us with two young men in the seventeenth century apprenticed to the Levant Company. But after providing back stories and several pages on the first journey to Turkey by one of them ,the author loses interest in the two, and we rarely hear from them again. Puzzling.
There is an extensive bibliography for those wishing to further investigate this fascinating subject. Two arguments raised by the author but not sufficiently discussed to sate my curiosity were: 1) the Levant Company was never interested in militarily conquering Turkey or other parts of the Ottoman Empire, unlike the East India Company in India; and 2) while many books touch on the impact of trade from India in the eighteenth century in developing Britain's consumer and fashion society, the author makes an intriguing argument that trade with the Ottoman Empire had a similar, though less far reaching, impact during the seventeenth century.
The book ends with an unfortunate epilogue of scenes from Raj-era India and a summary of Britain's increasingly narrow and bigoted view of Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since these are at best a tangent to the book's themes, it was a puzzling way to end the book.


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Long before they came as occupiers, the British were drawn to the Middle East by the fabled riches of its trade and the enlightened tolerance of its people. The Pashas, merchants and travelers from Europe, discovered an Islamic world that was alluring, dynamic, and diverse. Ranging across two and a half centuries and through the great cities of Istanbul, Aleppo, and Alexandria, James Mather tells the forgotten story of the men of the Levant Company who sought their fortunes in the Ottoman Empire. Their trade brought to the region not only merchants but also ambassadors and envoys, pilgrims and chaplains, families and servants, aristocratic tourists and roving antiquarians. Unlike the nabobs who gathered their fortunes in Bengal, they both respected and learned from the culture they encountered, and their lives provide a fascinating insight into the meeting of East and West before the age of European imperialism.Intriguing, intimate, and original, Pashas brings to life an extraordinary tale of faraway visitors beguiled by a mysterious world of Islam.

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