No comments about William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist.

No comments about George Stoneman: A Biography of the Union General.

2 comments about General and Madam de Lafayette: Partners in Liberty's Cause in the American and French Revolutions.

1. After reading both Unger and Kramer on the astounding life of General Lafayette, I was very curious about his wife. This book of letters and history concerning her life of privilege and partnership is a complement to what most people know about her famous husband. Both the American and French Revolutions were pivotal in their life together of sharing their wealth to the very end. Adrienne generously gave the peasants working her land the best circumstances of the day, while Lafayette at age 18 bought and outfitted a ship to help the colonies win freedom. Three daughters and a son were born while the General was going back and forth across the Atlantic to muster more help from the French for the new nation. Their only son was named George Washington Lafayette and he escaped being imprisoned due to his mother's clever arrangement. Before she joined her husband in prison voluntarily, she snuck her son out of France to be raised for several years by Martha and George Washington. Lafayette's two daughters also joined their father in prison. When Lafayette was not allowed to enter France, his wife pursued their family interests in war torn Paris and environs. She regained La Grange for Lafayette's retirement. He survived Adrienne by almost 30 years at this lovely chateaux and never remarried. She died at 50 due to her illness contracted at the prison where she decided to join her beloved husband. Many relatives were guillotined, so Adrienne arranged their burial site at Picpus Cemetery to be close to the thousands dumped in a mass grave. An American flag flys over their grave for they were both truely "Partners in Liberty's Cause." Lafayette took a triumphal tour of all the United States and returned to France with American soil to spread over their graves. Both equal partners and generous souls.



2. After all that's been written about Lafayette, this book was a complete surprise. It added much to read of his wife's devotion and abilities and their lifelong relationship. It also places them in history, and by reading their letters, you are introduced to them directly. This book is not only entertaining but scholarly. Should be in every college library.

5 comments about The Earp Brothers of Tombstone: The Story of Mrs. Virgil Earp.

1. The author must have had a no-so-hidden agenda to debunk the man and the myth of Wyatt Earp. I have read a number of books on the Earp brothers, especially the Tombstone days. I have also read the transcript or at least what is reported to be the transcript of Judge Spicer's ruling on the murder charges brought against the Earps as a result of THE gunfight. The author in my opinion has badly and intentionally distorted the facts. I threw away my copy of this book.



2. 
   "Aunt Allie" was a dead-honest original, and didn't deserve to have Frank Waters misuse the authority of her name to unload on an unsuspecting public this duplicitous melange of lies about her life, especially that part lived with the Earps.
   
   Allie denounced this book in her own inimitable profane manner. In my possession are the letters of Hildreth Halliwell, Aunt Allie's grand niece, saying only that Allie threatened to "sue" Waters. (She actually threatened to kill him.) As Hildreth went on to say, "I get so mad every time I think of what Frank Waters wrote after spending hours with Aunt Allie I go berserk . . . he published a lot of lies . . . "
   
   I make that clear in my Epilogue to I MARRIED WYATT EARP and did on two other occasions while Waters was still alive, thus giving him an opportunity to sue me for libel if he chose. Naturally he didn't.
   
   Before Frank realized what I knew for sure, I visited him when he was writer-in-residence at Colorado State U. at Ft. Collins, in 1966, ten years before my I MARRIED WYATT EARP was published. I asked him what Aunt Allie had said about his book. He said, "She said it was the truth." I still have extensive notes from that meeting." He naturally said that, but it wasn't true, of course.
   
   This book certainly is a "travesty" as Bruce Trinque comments in an adjoining review, and it is far worse than that. Of course Bruce is referring to Frank Waters' initial title, TOMBSTONE TRAVESTY. Travesty is mild, however, this book is an outrage. It is my opinion that principle requires that it no longer be published.
   
   In sum, Waters' book is garbage, although many passages are pure gold. The book's value is as a source for the more knowledgeable to attempt to separate the gold from the garbage. It certainly is a curiosity. But it isn't a dependable memoir.



3. I find Fred Waters to be like so many other writers who try to make a name for themselves (as well as a buck) by taking cheap shots at and writing tawdry yellow sheet propaganda about an American icons.
   
   These hacks take the easy but foul route when writing so called histories of the famous. It's easy to slander an icon (especially a dead one) by taking an opposite slant on the person's accepted character. (Accepted by those who knew him personally, that is). In this way you not only get attention to yourself (some people are like vultures and want to hear dirt), and it diminishes someone whose height and fame you will never achieve. All the while making a living off the fame of the person you are destroying. Dead icons cannot defend themselves, so it is also an act of cowardice. These people are literary leeches of the worst kind.
   
   Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp has been a life long study of mine (60 years now). I have read just about every book, article and slanderous rag that has his name in it. I find most to be trash, worthy of nothing more than tossing into the garbage heap. Most are not worth the time or effort to read. Fred Waters book is such a book. Fiction is fiction. If a library decides to stock this book they should put it in the fiction section.
   
   Wyatt Earp was a man, a real man, a man's man. He was neither saint nor demon. He was a man of his times when real men were men and they did things they had to do. Things that few men today would have neither the stomach nor the nerve to do. They sometimes made friends along the way and they sometimes made enemies along the way. It is to be expected that the friends would aggrandize Wyatt while his enemies would play him down. However few of them then or now would have had the guts to face him down.
   
   Any student of Wyatt Earp should stick to writers who tell the story as it was told by people who knew the man. One such writer is Glenn G. Boyer. While I have never met this man face to face, his works have been the most trustworthy and envied of all the works about Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp. Mr. Boyer tells the good when Wyatt done good and he tells the bad when Wyatt done bad. One thing for certain Fred Waters would not have had the nerve to let Wyatt read the first draft of his book had Wyatt been alive at the time he wrote it.



4. Reading this tripe, you can see why Virgil Earp's widow, Allie, threatened to shoot Frank Waters on sight. For the enlightenment of the three people who don't know the story, Waters paid court to Allie Earp, pumping her for information. Allie had a bone to pick with Wyatt Earp and Waters ran with it. This collection of distortion and outright lies is the result. Waters no doubt gleaned the balance of his (mis)information from the Tombstone Nugget's pages or, most likely out of his own prejudices. Do bear in mind that the book was written during the height of the revisionist movement in the history of the "old west", and hatchet jobs on the notables of the time were common. The Earps were certainly not a bunch of altar boys, but they were definitely not the murdering pimps Waters makes them out to be. Maybe he was hired by the descendants of the McLowreys, some of whom still hold a grudge.
   This book would make good fire starter.
   
   Dennis Hanisch



5. I liked the fact of the amount of history in the book. The way the writer describes some of the scenery, it feels like you are there. Allie did not like Wyatt....she was a little snip. I would have like to have known what happened to Morg's wife and some of the others. And somethings she would not tell..... Overall I found it very interesting.

2 comments about The Heavens Are Weeping: The Diaries of George Richard Browder, 1852-1886.

1. This book is a miracle. No doubt about it. For years and years the diaries of Rev. George R. Browder lay tucked away passed down and read by the family.
   
   One day, in 1974, the manuscripts were introduced by my wife's best friend (a Browder Family descendant) to Dr. Richard L. Troutman, a professor at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. He fell in love with the remarkably rich and compelling writing style detailing not only major events (the Civil War, etc.), but ordinary every day events like working in tobacco, visiting the sick, and my favorite, the descriptions of Christmas Day.
   
   I love this book and highly recommend it to any student of the history of middle 1800's life on south-central Kentucky.



2. WOW! This is an incredible book. Anyone would enjoy this book. It will appeal to anyone interested in a daily chronicle of life in the mid 19th century, the struggles, the hardships, the joys and the wonder.
   
   George Browder, an elder of the local church, responsible for a six county area in middle/western Kentucky registers a daily diary of his life from approx. 1840-1880.
   
   George was a neighbor of my ancestors, Nelson Hadley Waters. I couldn't have possibly gained so much insight as to life in Kentucky at that time. What an incredible insight!
   
   George also chronicles tidbits about life from the early 1800's in Kentucky when he talks about his father coming over from VA and MD.
   
   I especially enjoyed the insights into the terrible civil war. Kentucky was torn between North and South. Neighbors livestock stolen, houses burned, neighbors going into hiding. Even after the war neighbors were not safe. It was incredible to read about how quickly news traveled during the civil war, primarily due to the telegraph. Once was installed at Volney, which gave this small community access to daily events of the war and George provides many details of daily updates in his diary.
   
   I also enjoyed reading about George taking his family to the World's Fair and their trip to Niagra Falls, etc. This is quite the fete on a paron's salary!
   
   I also learned more about the importance of the railroads in the last half of the 1800's and how it changed their lives in gaining more mobility and access to distant places they otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to reach in such short time.
   
   This is great reading for genealogists, history buffs and general public interested in life through the 19th century.

2 comments about John Ross, Cherokee Chief (Brown Thrasher Books).

1. Throughout times of turmoil for his people, Chief John Ross made the best of many a bad situation. From the removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma to the fracturing of the nation during the Civil War, Ross struggled against internal and external enemies to carve out a bright future for the Cherokee people. Moulton has done a fantastic job with this biography, weaving together a compelling tale of this often misunderstood leader who faced repeated insults from political leaders in Washington and opportunistic members of his own tribe.



2. John Ross is one of the most revered Cherokee chiefs... it is impossible to understand the Cherokee Nation and its people without the study of Ross. Author Gary Moulton gives splendid insight into the life and times of one of the most complex and often misunderstood American Indians--Cherokee Chief John Ross. Ross, a 1/8th Cherokee and 7/8th Scotsman, and framer of the Cherokee Tribal government, was well-known for his harsh protest of the controversial 1835 Treaty of New Echota. Moulton does justice by presenting the Ross position and the outcome that spawned a bloody-factional Cherokee feud--which continued into the American Civil War. Moulton's insight also includes recollections and the death of Ross in 1866.
   
   Matthew D. Parker

1 comments about The Hammonds of Redcliffe.

1. The true history of a Southern slaveholding family, scions of the famous "Cotton is King" Senator James Henry Hammond, told through their own letters and the excellent interpretations of Carol Bleser, pre- and post-Civil War. Just plain fascinating reading.
   
   The word, "slaveholding" may give you a shudder, but this family had its share of troubles and sorrows. On a different scale than their slaves, of course, but troubles nonetheless. And then there are happy occasions - births, marriages...it's life, good and bad, through one of the most tumultuous times in American history. My only quibble is that I want to know even more, in depth, about all of these people - the letters & Ms. Bleser's essays were a great start, now I want even more! Highly recommended.

No comments about The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton.

5 comments about Bernstein: A Biography.

1. The USA Today endorsement of this book neatly summarizes its raison d'etre: 'A spicy Bernstein bio.' If you are seeking all of the outrageous anecdotes, all of the juicy nitty gritty, all of the 'naughty bits' that make up the Bernstein story, then look no further: this book supplies these in abundance.

   If, however, you desire any kind of intelligent or intriguing assesment of Bernstien's musical legacy, any discussion whatsoever of Bernstein's music itself, or even any thoughtful, balanced, or interesting discussion of why Bernstein was the person that he was, then you will be sorely disappointed. This is truly a biography in the National Enquirer style.

   True, Leonard Bernstein was a self-serving, outrageously flambouyant personality. But so was Mozart, and, while interesting, I certainly want much more from a Mozart biography than explications of his obscene letters.

   On example: Chapter 34 ends in 1982, when Bernstein was at work on his last opera, 'A Quiet Place', as composer in residence at Indiana University. Ms. Peyser ends the entire chapter by fully quoting a bawdy limerick that Bernstein apparently sang to the Dean of the School of Music at a party. The limerick, dealing with the size of genitalia, ends:

   But you're a goy, And boy oh boy! I'll just betcha it's built for two!

   End of chapter. No comment from Peyser. Apparently, the wisdom that she wants to impart to the ages regarding Leonard Bernstein in 1982 was that, at a certain party, he sang a song about the Dean's ying-yang.

   This is about as significant (and interesting) as ending a chapter in a Mozart biography by quoting a letter in which Mozart jokes about defecation.

   Bernstein and penies. Mozart and ca-ca.

   Musicians writing about music?




2. This book is one big gossip column about Bernstein 1) being bi-sexual or 2) Bernsteins apparent motivation to constantly undermind other people and turn the focus of anything to himself. Bernstein certianly had an ego, but this book is simply not accurate. In the introduction the author says, "The crevices of character have to e explored as fully as the peaks of achievements to understand...." She certianly explored the "crevices." Instead of spending $18 on this go buy the National Enquirer.



3. While this much maligned biography may indeed dwell a little too much on Bernstein's personal life (how many times do we really need to be told he was gay? this gets tiresome after awhile...) Peyser does include a wealth of competently researched background on the life of this most American of musicians. If you aren't offended by the cheap and trashy (but rarely explicit) parts, it's worth a read. Keep your nose in joint and take this biography for what it is and you'll probably learn a few things!



4. [...]At its release, the NY Times accused Ms. Peyser of inaugurating a new genre: biography as pornography. She misses no opportunity to characterize LB's homosexuality as a sordid, dishonest, manipulative affair. Of compassion she hasn't a drop. But Peyser is equally maliciious about admirable episodes like LB's glorious tenure at the NY Philharmonic or his famous Harvard lectures on music in 1971--nothing escape's her bilious outlook.
   
   You would never know from this book that Bernstein was a beloved figure, or why. Peyser doesn't discuss Bernstein's music-making in any detail. She cannot even grant him his stature as a condcutor, and her overall lack of sympathy has given birth to pure character assassination. This is one of the few books, on music or any other subject, that made me want to take the author to court. The sad thing is that Peyser advanced her career substantially by "bringing down Leonard Bernstein." In a better world she would be deeply ashamed.



5. I'm taking a middle of the road stand on Joan Peyser's BERNSTEIN: a BIOGRAPHY. Some Bernstein fans hate this book, as they feel it villified Lenny, talking too much about his alleged homosexual feelings over the years. But there are many references to Bernstein concerts and recordings which are fascinating, discussion of his wife, Felicia Montealegre (who died in 1976), his 3 children; and Peyser's writing style kept my interest and attention to the point where I'd read several chapters at a time, and found it enjoyable.
   
   I hero worshipped Lenny in the early 1970s (I was a teenager then)when first becoming acquainted with Classical music. I enjoyed many of his LPs, which belonged to our local library: Mendelssohn Symphony 5 + Schubert 5 (New York Philharmonic, Columbia); Berlioz Overtures (Columbia); Handel's MESSIAH (excerpts, Columbia); "The joy of Music", a collection of Rossini, Falla, Bernstein, Mendelssohn, Offenbach movements and overtures (Columbia) and checked them out again and again. I used to think Bernstein was the coolest, most classy musician anyone could imagine, and still do in a way. I was heartbroken on the news of Bernstein's death (October 14, 1990 - I was nearly 32 at that time) although I had read reports that he had been very sick about 2 years before his death.
   
   So, is Joan Peyser's book a good book or a poor one? That's for you to decide. I found alot to enjoy in it, but thought she could have lightened up a bit on Lenny: her reports of his personal life made him sound worse than he was. I like to think of Bernstein's warm, humane qualities, and his artistic contributions over all else:Bernstein had great intelligence and a depth of feeling which made him special, plus the tremendous energy and talent to have so many recordings made over his 45 year career.
   
   So, this is worth a read, but I wouldn't take everything in this book about Bernstein's personal life as Gospel.

No comments about The Soldier's Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War.