Category Archives: Books

Calico Joe by John Grisham (2012. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-53607-3) Today’s statistics: Laman’s River  by Mark Munger ranks 1,648,432nd  on Amazon.com. Calico Joe by John Grisham ranks 1,198th. There’s little reason for a modest (in terms of sales, not ego) regional … Continue reading →

                    A Part of the Main by Edward “Ted” M. Holmes (1976. University of Maine Press. ISBN 0-89101-031-9) Ted Holmes is a writer of his place. His prose is so bound … Continue reading →

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1952. Bantam. ISBN 978-0-440-33007-3) The term “angry black man” has a pejorative tone to it these days. There is, in a certain segment of our American population, a brooding fear of … Continue reading →

                              A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher (1989. Mariner Books. ISBN 978-0-618-24010-4) As I said before when reviewing Where the Rivers Flow North, … Continue reading →

                    Where the Rivers Flow North by Howard Frank Mosher (2004. University of Vermont Press. ISBN 1-58465-363-9) Thank you, Lord. After reading Shelter Half (see review elsewhere on this blog) and … Continue reading →

                    shelter half by Carol Bly (2008. Holy Cow Press. ISBN 978-0977945-86-3) Obtuse adj. 1. not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect…dull 2. not sharp, acute, or pointed Diffuse … Continue reading →

Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper, Jr. (2009. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26541-8) His name was Thomas Woodrow Wilson and his earliest friends and his relatives called him “Tommy”. That’s something I learned early on in this mammoth (702pp) work by John … Continue reading →

                    Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862 Edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R. Woolworth (1988. Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 0-87351-216-2) I picked … Continue reading →

                    Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (2011. Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-9307-0) “You’ve got to be kidding me.” That was my line … Continue reading →

                              Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-7075-5) Monumental. Poetic. Well-seasoned. These descriptions apply both to the subject matter of … Continue reading →