Mule Trader

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My Remembers Review

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(More customer reviews)Mr. Stimpson's book is a wonderful and entertaing account of his life in a black sharecropper family in what has now become one of the most high tech areas in the United States. You will not be able to put the book down. Ted Peters, Executive Director, Heritage Farmstead Museum, Plano, Texas.

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Pioneer Children On The Journey West Review

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(More customer reviews)Many of us with family histories in the west have visited Sutter's Fort or visited the Donner Historic Monument and read about Patty Reed's doll. But this book, with its first-person accounts of the journey west from the children's perspective, is altogether a different story. The incredible resiliency of the children who made the trip still haunts me. The children had no choice but to make the journey; their parents had a dream and the children had to follow. One entry tells the story of two young brothers who are left in the mountains, with a rifle, to fend for themselves for several weeks while their father takes the rest of the family down to Lassen Ranch and safety. The boys had to hunt for food, worry about Grizzly bears and wonder how long it would be before their father returned. It presents such a stark contrast to today's children who need videos to survive a trip to the grocery store in the family SUV that it's almost a social commentary without actually being one.
Each story is unique and poignant and Werner does a fine job of linking the stories by adding historic contexts and narratives.
An awesome amount of research must have gone into finding long faded documents and scraps of writings that became the heart of this book. This book helps "round out" the exciting history of the west and will remain a permanent resident on my bookshelf along with other notable "western" books like, Up and Down California in 1860-1864: The Journal of William H. Brewer, Fourth Edition, with Maps and McPhee's Assembling California.

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Between 1841 and 1865, some forty thousand children participated in the great overland journeys from the banks of the Missouri River to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. In this engaging book, Emmy Werner gives 120 of these young emigrants, ranging from ages four to seventeen, a chance to tell the stories of their journeys west.Incorporating primary materials in the form of diaries, letters, journals, and reminiscences that are by turns humorous and heartrending, the author tells a timeless tale of human resilience. For six months or more, the young travelers traversed two thousand miles of uncharted prairies, deserts, and mountain ranges. Some became part of makeshift families; others adopted the task of keeping younger siblings alive. They encountered strangers who risked their own lives for youngsters and guides whose erroneous advice led to detours and desolation. The children endured excessive heat and cold and often suffered from cholera, dysentery, fever, and scurvy. They also faced thirst and starvation, cannibalism among famished members of their own parties, kidnappings, and the deaths of family members and friends. From the teenaged Nancy Kelsey, who carried her infant daughter across the Sierra Nevada, to the survivors of the ill-fated Donner party in 1846–1847, Gold Rush orphans of 1849, and the youngsters who crossed Death Valley and the southwestern deserts in the 1850s, the eyewitness accounts of these pioneer children speak of fortitude, faith, and invincibility in the face of great odds.

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Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm surprised to see very few reviews posted here for this excellent award-winning work of historical fiction for middle readers. This Scott O'Dell Award winner about African-American life in the South is in the same tradition as the renowned "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" books by Mildred Taylor.
Here we get on an emotional roller-coaster ride as we follow the lives of three young ex-slaves during the early days of Reconstruction in 1865. Gideon returns from following General Sherman to his former plantation to retrieve his younger crippled brother, Pascal, and his orphaned friend Nelly. In their quest to find the "forty acres and maybe a mule" in Georgia, that had been promised by General Sherman, they befriend a grandfatherly carpenter, and his long-lost granddaughter, to create a new family.
The harsh realities of unjust treatment by white nightriders, who are trying to force emancipated slaves to return to their plantations, are tempered by various friendly white people who help them find their forty acres, open a school for the children, register them to vote, who become neighbors, etc.
This is a story of determination, hard work, rebuilding lives and families, of hope, peace, and love, in the face of discrimination and cruelty.
A seldom recognized historical fact is woven into this well-researched tale: the party of Lincoln, the Republican Party, was the original party of Civil Rights. The impact of the death of Lincoln on these emancipated slaves that were given land is dramatically portrayed here. And the quick backpedaling of his successor, Andrew Johnson, becomes a painful reality for nearly 39,000 black landowners just months after he takes office.
This book deserves a wider reading by upper elementary through middle school students and their teachers, especially when discussing the facts surrounding the impact of the Civil War and early Reconstruction efforts in the South.

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Slavery: A World History Review

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(More customer reviews)A great book, scholarly but easy to read. Originally published in two volumes, the first half deals with slavery from ancient times to the Renaissance, the second half concentrates on the African slave trade, and also covers some of the modern uses of forced labor, gulags and other types of near-slavery. I particularly appreciated reading about slavery in earliest history, a topic that is rarely covered. The comprehensive nature of this book keeps slavery in perspective, but doesn't shy away from the worst abuses when people are classed as property.

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Slavery is not and has never been a "peculiar institution," but one that is deeply rooted in the history and economy of most countries. Although it has flourished in some periods and declined in others, human bondage for profit has never been eradicated completely.In Slavery: A World History renowned author Milton Meltzer traces slavery from its origins in prehistoric hunting societies; through the boom in slave trading that reached its peak in the United States with a pre-Civil War slave population of 4,000,000; through the forced labor under the Nazi regime and in the Soviet gulags; and finally to its widespread practice in many countries today, such as the debt bondage that miners endure in Brazil or the prostitution into which women are sold in Thailand. In this detailed, compassionate account, readers will learn how slavery arose, what forms it takes, what roles slaves have performed in their societies, what everyday existence is like for those enchained, and what can be done to end the degrading practice of slavery.

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American Games : Comprehensive Collector's Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)A super 352 page softbound volume with more than 400 large, full color, sharp photos and over 500 black and white pix. The comprehensive work lists and values 9,000 + games. The back of the book has over 100 pages of color shots of the games. Dates range from 1744 to the present! Major topics range from Games Thru The Ages, to Golden Age, Silver Age, Modern Age, Simulation Games, Role Playing Games, Card Collecting Games and much more. There is a most comprehensive listing of games by category, making it easy to locate items. Prices are year 2000. An outstanding work. Add it to your collectibles library. Toy and game, or Americana enthusiasts will refer to it often.

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Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 Review

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(More customer reviews)Among teachers and students of world history, this book is already considered a classic. It is not so much a book about people, places, and events, as it is a book about processes and networks in a non-Eurocentric 13th century Old World.
Welcome to a world whose hub is India. To the east Southeast Asian gold and spices and Chinese silks and porcelain. From the west come carpets, dye, incense, gold, silver, and slaves from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea - gold, ivory, and slaves from East Africa. To the north, the Mongols control Central Asia and the Silk Road that Marco Polo takes to China. However, much like "westernization" is sometimes used as a concept in modern history, this was a time of "southernization" in an Asia-centered world connected by monsoon winds. Way out on the periphery of an overlapping Mediterranean network lie Genoa and Venice. Indeed, if Europe were mentioned at this time, most literate people would think of Constantinople - not medieval Western Europe, but the postclassical Byzantine Empire.
*Before European Hegemony* is obviously a `not for everyone' history book. Nevertheless, the reason that I gave it 5 stars is because I consider it the most accessible `world systems' history - and also because of the maps of overlapping trading networks which are probably known even better than the book. I can recommend the book to teachers (and students) of AP and college-survey world history courses without hesitation, or any reader whose tastes run to historical scholarship.

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In this important study, Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution, arguing that the modern world economy had its roots not in the sixteenth century, as is widely supposed, but in the thirteenth century economy--a system far different from the European world system which emerged from it. Using the city as the working unit of analysis, Before European Hegemony provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the 14th century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony.

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Mule Trader: Ray Lum's Tales of Horses, Mules, and Men (Banner Book Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Ray Lum's tells a pretty good set of stories in this book. The books format was concise and easy to follow and Lum's stories relate well with the comings and goings of the horse and mule market of the 30's, 40's and 50's. This is a very entertaining read, especially for those Ben Green fans who need some more material. The only drawback comes when Lum starts skipping around in his stories and gets the reader a little lost. But, he is always able to bring the reader back and finish the original story.

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Story after wonderful story, tall tale after tall tale. Ray Lum tells a southern writer where he came from, and where he ought to go. -Shelby Foote Bill Ferris makes me wish I'd known Ray Lum. -Larry Brown Indeed, the mule trader has undoubtedly helped to form our great oral tradition in the South . Ray Lum [was] a man born and bred to the practice of the country monologue. -Eudora Welty
Readers captivated by this book will be happy that Bill Ferris found Ray Lum and that he thought to turn on a tape recorder. Lum (1891--1977) was a mule skinner, a livestock trader, an auctioneer, and an American original. This delightful book, first published in 1992 as You Live and Learn. Then You Die and Forget It All, preserves Lum's colorful folk dialect and captures the essence of this one-of-a-kind figure who seems to have stepped full-blooded from the pages of Mark Twain. This riveting talespinner was tall, heavy-set, and full of body rhythm as he talked. In his special world he was famous for trading, for tale-telling, and for common-sense lessons that had made him a savvy bargainer and a shrewd businessman. His home and his auction barn were in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where mules were his main interest, but in trading he fanned out over twenty states and even into Mexico. A west Texas newspaper reported his fame this way: He is known all over cow country for his honest fair dealing and gentlemanly attitude..... A letter addressed to him anywhere in Texas probably would be delivered. Over several years Ferris recorded Lum's many long conversations that detail livestock auctioneering, cheery memories of rustic Deep South culture, and a philosophy of life that is grounded in good horse sense. Even among the most spellbinding talkers Lum is a standout both for what he has to say and for the way he says it. Ferris's lucky, protracted encounters with him turn out to be the best of good fortune for everybody. William R. Ferris is the former director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Among his many awards are the NEH's Charles Frankel Prize and in 1991 Rolling Stone's citation of him as one of the top ten teachers in the United States.

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Where the Wild Animals Is Plentiful: Diary of an Alabama Fur Trader's Daughter, 1912-1914 Review

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(More customer reviews)Where the Wild Animals is Plentiful is worth a look if only because it offers a (sometimes frustratingly incomplete) window on the life of a young woman in rural Alabama some 90 years back. The diary contains some tantalizing hints at a life lived in frequent solitude and understood through a powerful but circumscribed sense of place and community. Unfortunately, it also seems to reflect well the monotony and repetitiousness of life in rural Alabama at that time. The occasional points of interest come packed between pages of very detailed accounts of May Jordan's fur-buying trips with her father, including frequent comments on soil quality, lists of furs they bought and descriptions of the routes they traveled. Which isn't to say that this sort of material doesn't have some value in understanding a life like May Jordan's, but it does keep the book from being a real page turner. Elisa Moore Baldwin has done a fine job editing the diary insofar as she has left the text alone except where the reader might have had problems with comprehension (most spelling and punctuation irregularities are preserved) and used the introduction to give a more than competent sense of May Jordan's particular historical context.

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