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| 0060518499
| 9780060518493
| 0060518499
| 4.16
| 32,248
| Feb 06, 2006
| Feb 07, 2006
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it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 24, 2024
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Apr 03, 2024
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Mar 24, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 3.87
| 255
| 1961
| 1961
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it was amazing
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Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 18, 2024
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Mar 19, 2024
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Mar 18, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0802161693
| 9780802161703
| B0BNS4KQYB
| 3.99
| 4,563
| Jul 11, 2023
| Jul 11, 2023
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it was amazing
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Notes are private!
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Dec 14, 2023
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Dec 15, 2023
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Dec 14, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0553393960
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| 4.46
| 7,713
| Oct 18, 2022
| Oct 18, 2022
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it was amazing
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Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 09, 2022
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Jan 10, 2023
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Nov 09, 2022
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Hardcover
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| B09TQ47Y3R
| 4.72
| 240
| Mar 02, 2022
| Feb 28, 2022
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it was amazing
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”I was startled awake several mornings later by what I first mistook as thunder. I jumped up, jerking my head around blindly in the purple glow of the
”I was startled awake several mornings later by what I first mistook as thunder. I jumped up, jerking my head around blindly in the purple glow of the pre-dawn. The ground shook under my feet and the roar of the thunder continued to grow louder until it was near deafening. It occurred to me then what it was.… Buffalo. I tied up my bedroll and packed up the nervous mare as quickly as I could. As I removed her tether from the rock I’d tied it to, the sound hit it’s crescendo and began slowly receding into the west. I mounted the mare and rode in the direction of the sound, pushing the old girl harder than I should have. I came up over a rise, and then another, and there before me was the most exciting sight of my life; the entire prairie below, as far as I could see from east to west and north, was a cloud of rolling dust and the shifting mass of thousands of stampeding buffalo. I sat atop the mare and watched the herd pass as the sun rose over the eastern horizon. When they were finally gone, the silence left behind was stark and somehow lonely. The animals’ backtrail of obliterated prairie marched off into the distance almost due east. I followed it for a time, fascinated by the contrast between the undisturbed grass and the buffalos’ path of destruction.” A few years ago I read a book by a guy named John Williams titled Butcher's Crossing. Williams is a great man of letters who is unknown to most of the reading public, but I was happy to see that the Library of America has recently collected his three brilliant novels together for posterity. Collected Novels: Butcher’s Crossing / Stoner / Augustus There were several points while reading this novel where I thought about Butcher’s Crossing, and the moment quoted above is one of them. No small comparison. Take heed my friends. This novel is told from the perspective of a memoir, and frankly, if McLellan had told me he found its yellowing pages in a steamer trunk in the spiderwebbed, dusty attic of an abandoned Victorian home in California…I’d have believed him. When Michael asked me to sum up my thoughts about the novel, this is what I wrote to him: This impeccably researched western casts a long shadow over the mythology of the West. The settling of the West was a collision of ideology bound by greed, treachery, and death. McLellan blends real and imaginary characters into a testimonial of what really happened as the West was "won" by some and lost by most. Spanning decades, we see a boy become a man as he tries to understand what is worth fighting for, what is worth dying for, and who is worth trusting. Straddling two cultures, at home in neither, it becomes impossible for him to find peace amongst the turmoil of a nation consumed with Manifest Destiny. As I was reading the novel, there were several points where I forgot I was reading a novel and really believed I was reading the memoir of some old coot who had managed to survive the “taming” of the West. I used the term impeccably researched, and that's because McLellan not only gets the major historical events right, but he also gets the everyday things like food, clothing, and gear correct. As you worm your way into this novel, you will eventually reach this point where you are…there. It will rub off on you. You will go to bed, and you will smell like horse sweat, woodsmoke, and chicory coffee. This is one of those cases where fiction is more authentic than “real” history. We’ve seen American history in recent years being pushed and shoved back and forth between cancel culture and those who wish to whitewash events. In the process, we just keep making what we teach our children less and less interesting (those who care can sense the bullshite). Whites are tired of being blamed for the sins of their ancestors. People of color are tired of being pawns in the political wars of white elitists. We keep kicking the can down the road for our misdeeds, and what would have been easier to make right in the past has now become a stain that has sunk bone deep. By just getting history right, McLellan is unwillingly making a political statement. The truth will set you free? More like the truth will set your house/teepee/cabin on fire. Everett Ward survives four years of one of the bloodiest wars ever fought in history. He started work on a Texas cattle ranch and fell in love with a pretty kitchen maid called Rebecca, but her real name was Wačhiwi. Where Everett was color blind, the people who owned Rebecca were not. His attempt to be honorable was seen as foolhardy and naïve. This sets off a decade-long battle between Everett and deep-seated racism, not just with a cattle rancher in Texas, but with the generally accepted views of most white westerners. As he navigates his way through the Indian Wars, the buffalo slaughter, and the ruthlessness of those in power, he meets people like Custer, Wyatt Earp, Pawnee Killer, and Sitting Bull. He inadvertently becomes a small player in the biggest moments of the final days of the settling of the West. He witnesses the numerous moments of treachery in the guise of peace that destroyed the last chances for Native Americans to live with some semblance of honor. Everett gives us the truth of what really happened. Through all of this, Everett is just trying to get back to Wačhiwi. The world might be on fire, but through the smoke it is love that he is looking for. I want to thank Michael McLellan for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 25, 2022
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Feb 28, 2022
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Feb 25, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 0684189577
| 9780684189574
| 0684189577
| 4.13
| 54,738
| 1874
| Nov 30, 1988
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it was amazing
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Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 20, 2021
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May 06, 2021
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Apr 20, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 4.38
| 331
| Apr 26, 2017
| Apr 26, 2017
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it was amazing
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”The white man only knows desire, Notaxemahasooma. He knows nothing of contentment. His heart is dry and withered, and he seeks to revive it with that
”The white man only knows desire, Notaxemahasooma. He knows nothing of contentment. His heart is dry and withered, and he seeks to revive it with that of which has no medicine. He is careless and wasteful, and places himself above and apart from all other things. The white soldiers murder without regard, but themselves are spiritless and go screaming into their own deaths as they were born into life. The white father would take all of our hunting grounds and leave our children with stomachs full of air and hearts full of hate. There can be no peace with such men. We will kill this murderer of The People, but it will not stop the whites. There will be more. Many more.” [image] The settling of the West involved a lot of unsettling first. American Indians were in the way of westward expansion. The buffalo were in the way of rangeland fencing. The West still needed to be conquered and exploited. Capitalism was just a more acceptable term for greed. There was simply no time to waste on upholding any sense of morality or being bothered by such words as honor or virtuousness. There was money to be made, and whatever was in the way just simple had to be ground down into powder. Lieutenant John Elliot has just been booted out of West Point. The powerful father of Clara Hanfield, his love interest, has been the instrument of his destruction. A court-martial is preferable, but a firing squad is what her father really wants for John. Instead, he is assigned to a clandestine unit in South Dakota where he joins Colonel Frank Picton. John is temporarily asked to resign his commission because this isn’t an officially sanctioned operation. The powers-that-be want to be able to disavow anything they might do, while at the same time encouraging them to wreck as much havoc as possible. If this were Vietnam, we’d call this Black Ops, but since it is in the mid-1860s, we just call it Manifest Destiny. Their task is to give the American Indians what they call a nudge. If they wipe out a few villages, the warriors will have to go on the warpath. If these “rampaging” Indians kill a few whites, then the government will be able to sanction their extermination. Destroying the buffalo also takes away a primary food source for the American Indians. Starve them or kill them, either way they won’t be a problem for much longer. Henry is an emancipated slave who is trying to find his place in the world. His anger over what has been done to him and those he loves simmers under a steady flame. Ghosts haunt him. His most trusted friend, Standing Elk, is a Cheyenne warrior who often understands Henry better than Henry understands himself. ”For Henry, the hatred which had slowly been fading over the last four years tried to return. He suddenly wished that he was a warrior like the name Notaxemahtasooma implied. He didn’t fully understand the word; it meant Shadow Warrior or possibly Spirit Warrior. He guessed the former as shadow could refer to his skin color. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t a warrior. He wasn’t anyone. He was a man without a place, without a nation.” John, Clara, Standing Elk, and Henry soon find themselves standing on the wrong side of history, which frequently happens to be on the right side of morality. I grew up reading a lot of Westerns by Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Max Brand, Nelson Nye, Elmore Leonard (Yes, before he became the guru of the hardboiled thriller, he was a Western writer), Ernest Haycox, Elmer Kelton, and later Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry. I wasn’t surprised to learn that McLellan read a lot of the same. Even though I don’t read many westerns anymore, I do sometimes get a hankering to return to my reading roots. I will google lists of the best westerns and frequently find a hidden gem on those lists that may be trapped by a genre, but really should just be seen as fine literature. In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree, to my mind, is historical fiction and, if seen that way, would open up a much larger reading audience for the book. McLellan has a compelling plot that shines a light on an insidious series of events in our history. He has characters that are made of flesh and bone, and when things don’t go well for them, I, as the reader, have that sinking in my belly that can only come from making a real connection with the characters. His villains are treacherous racists, blinded by greed and an unquenching desire to remake the world in their own deceitful images. His heroes are reluctant heroes, who would much rather lead a peaceful life, but find themselves in conflict with the jackboots of history. The 1860s were a turbulent time with the East still recovering from the devastation of the Civil War, and then there was the systematic plan to wipe out the American Indians out West. It was an opportunistic time to do some household cleaning out West, with those who might care the most still nursing the mental and physical wounds from the bloodiest conflict in American history. This is a story full of grit and greatness, and treachery and duplicity. Saddle up and head West, my friends, and experience the real, unvarnished West. I intimated to Michael A. McLellan that I might reveal aspects of his dark and disturbing past, which was enough leverage to get him to answer a few questions for me. Now that he has answered the questions I can say that I was completely bluffing. Whatever is dark and disturbing in his past has remained beyond my grasp...for now. Jeffrey D. Keeten: John William's book Butcher's Crossing focuses on the destruction of the buffalo herds as a concerted effort to eliminate the primary food source of the remaining plains Indians. You touch on this, but the storyline of your novel has a more insidious plot, with the government using some rogue "soldiers" to intentionally stir up trouble with the Indians. If you look back at the history of the United States, we have fought many wars over manufactured pretenses because we had other objectives in mind. In your research, did you find situations where the government was actually employing methods to manipulate an Indian uprising? [image] Michael A. McLellan Michael A. McLellan: It was certainly in the interest of the wealthy and powerful to eliminate Native Americans to help facilitate a smoother and safer westward expansion for whites. Of course, any evidence pointing to the U.S. government deliberately inciting an uprising would be completely circumstantial. Having said that, there is plenty of hard evidence that they (Native Americans) were repeatedly pushed toward that end, whether it was plotted or not. "Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." This quote is attributed to a U.S. army colonel by the name of John Chivington. Chivington is responsible for ordering and participating in an unprovoked attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho camp at Big Sandy Creek in November of 1864. Somewhere between 40 and 110 (some claim the number is much higher) Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children were killed in the attack. Earlier that same year Chivington, partnered with then Colorado Territory governor John Evans, ordered punitive attacks on several Cheyenne camps for alleged crimes, such as stealing cattle. No investigations, no trials. JDK: I recently read a biography of William T. Sherman, whom I've always considered to be one of my favorite heroes of the Civil War, but like with many heroes from history, my impression of him was forever tainted when I discovered that he was instructed to get rid of the "Indian problem" out west, and he employed some pretty insidious methods to accomplish that task. The Robber Barons back East were impatient to exploit the West. Your character John Usher portrays that type of greed. Did the American public have any kind of idea of what was really happening out West? Would they have cared? MAM: Funny, John Usher was the Secretary of the Interior under President Lincoln during the war. At that time, the Department of the Interior handled Indian Affairs. Later he was general solicitor for the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division. Whether he was an honest man or not is not for me to say, but here is a man with huge government influence who after his resignation in 1865 had a genuine financial stake in the westward expansion. As far as the public, some word got back east, a lot by disillusioned soldiers, and there was some limited advocacy. Not enough to make any real difference though. Native Americans were feared and hated for the most part. JDK: The West was a dangerous place, and lots of people met untimely ends. Many of your characters meet their maker in a variety of different ways. I was starting to think I was reading the George R. R. Martin of the American Western. We romanticize and have so much nostalgia for the West, but really it was a brutal environment, especially during the years that your story covers. When I traveled in Italy a few years ago, people were so excited that I was from Dodge City. They had grown up watching Gunsmoke and were so enthralled with the Old West. I thought your portrayal of the violence of the times was based more on fact than fiction. As you were spinning this story, did you have moments where you caught up with yourself and went...Crap did I really just kill off ______? MAM: I did have some moments like that. I don't want to do spoilers here, but there was a secondary character I was rather fond of who gets killed near the end of the story. I never planned it though. I don't even do outlines. The story just unfolded how it unfolded, and almost any story told in that time period should have more death in it than we're accustomed to. It's the way it was. Disease, violence. I think the average life expectancy in the midwest in 1870 was somewhere around 42. JDK: Was the insidious Colonel Frank Picton based on a real person? How about Henry, who was such a tragic figure? "Henry wasn't a soldier, nor a wily tactician. He wasn't anything. He was, he thought, as he surveyed the scrubby prairie, a man without a place, a purpose, or a people." Henry was such a peaceful man, but violence kept insisting on finding him. MAM: Picton encompassed my vision of men like Chivington, Sheridan, Custer and, as you mentioned, General Sherman. Men of war who, for the most part, probably believed in what they were doing. Things are seldom black and white. As for right or wrong, all we can do is look closely (and honestly) at history and make our own assessments. Henry was a way to tell a different sort of tale from a different sort of protagonist's perspective. Imagining what it would be like to be someone like him was sobering. An ex-slave making his way in a world he had no part in shaping. JDK: So where did the idea to write this novel come from? Did you read something? Did you visit somewhere? Did you take peyote? What was that lightning rod moment when you knew you had a story that you had to tell? MAM: I grew up on Louis L'Amour, Elmore Leonard, and Larry McMurtry. Not to mention John Wayne. I've always been fascinated with this period, and I feel there is room for new stories from new voices to be told within it. Stories that might balance the reality of the time and the romanticism we humans love so much a little better than we managed in the past. JDK: What are you working on now, and when can we expect another novel from you? MAM: I'm currently working on three novels. One is a contemporary piece about a fourteen-year-old boy who's put into the foster care system after his parents both die tragically. Another is a near-future story about an aging man seeking redemption in a dying world. The third is another historical fiction novel related to In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree. I was hoping to have one out this fall, but life got in the way. At some point here, I will put two of them on the shelf for awhile and concentrate on the one I feel most into at the moment. Realistically, I guess I won't have a release until mid-year 2020. Thanks for having me, Jeffrey. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 24, 2019
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Jul 19, 2019
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Jun 24, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0307409600
| 9780307409607
| 0307409600
| 4.22
| 3,231
| Oct 09, 2018
| Oct 09, 2018
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it was amazing
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”At about 4:30 on Friday morning, April 12, 1861, a single mortar shell tore a thin streak through the blue-black sky over Charleston Harbor, then dro
”At about 4:30 on Friday morning, April 12, 1861, a single mortar shell tore a thin streak through the blue-black sky over Charleston Harbor, then dropped onto Fort Sumter, exploding into a burst of red and orange.” [image] With that one mortar shell, South Carolina touched off a conflict that would claim the lives of approximately 618,222 soldiers. The greatest toll of lives, by far, of any war fought by America. There were two very different perspectives of the prospect of this war. The South was excited and hell bent on licking those yellow bellied Yankees. The North was still in denial that they were even in a war. They were mystified as to why their Southern cousins were so intent on trying to kill them. A combination of brainwashing, poor education, and a clinging to a way of life that was unsustainable insured that thousands of people were about to die for reasons that, frankly, defied logic and, for most of the participants, was a constant source of confusion. Why are we dying? President Abraham Lincoln, clothed in immense power (I love that scene from the Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln), changed the scope of the executive branch of government and greatly extended the powers of that branch that would have far reaching influences on American politics. The theme of Michael Beschloss’s book is an exploration of the sometimes hidden reasons behind the wars that have been started by American presidents (although in the case of Lincoln, just getting elected president was the spark that led to war) and the actions and reactions of those presidents that led America into its many conflicts. He starts with the forgotten conflict, the War of 1812. Few remember that The Star Spangled Banner was written at the bombing of Fort McHenry during this war. President James Madison was completely unprepared to fight this conflict. The US had no ships, no standing army to speak of, and no funds with which to take on the greatest army and navy in the world. The quarrel began over the British impressment of sailors off US ships. There are a few bright spots in this conflict: Dolley Madison saving the portrait of George Washington from a burning White House, the failure of the US to invade and conquer Canada (good for you, Canada), a few sea battles that the US, bafflingly, managed to win, and of course, Andrew Jackson’s dramatic victory at New Orleans. Interestingly enough, the greatest military victory by Old Hickory came after the war had officially been concluded. Needless to say, communication was a slower process than the instantaneous communications available today. [image] Dolley Madison One of the more humorous moments in the book was when the British soldiers were looting the White House and were playing dress up with the Madison’s abandoned wardrobe. They made ”ribald jokes about Dolley’s voluptuous derriere and breasts.” This caught me completely unawares, and I laughed because I had never really thought about Dolley’s physical conformity. Many years later, she was described at public events as a striking and handsome woman. She was a brilliant marketer of her husband’s legacy, so astute about so many things, and obviously curvaceous, as well. [image] James K. Polk was hell bent for war. President James K. Polk used a pretense of invasion by Mexico to start the Mexican-American War. The intent was to establish the boundary of Texas on the Rio Grande, not the Nueces River, and in the process also acquire what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado and Wyoming, but most importantly, obtain the jewel of the West...California. This was a huge extension of the power of the Presidency. He couldn’t outright say I want this land from Mexico. Polk had to fabricate an injustice to bolster support for this endeavor. I may not agree with the way this section of North America became part of the United States, but I am very fond of those states and certainly appreciate their inclusion in the union. I can rail against Polk for overreaching his presidential powers to add territory, but at the same time I admit I’m glad he did. [image] The Spanish-American War was one of those situations that America found itself in frequently, where we are supporting the rebels against a foreign power, in this case Cuban rebels against Spain. When the USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor, President William McKinley had his pretense to declare war openly on Spain. The official reasons for the war were one thing, but the hidden agenda, or the mission creep as it was referred to, was to add several islands, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, Hawaii, and even Cuba, as territorial gains. President Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the idea that he would keep America out of the war in Europe. That was a big, fat, juicy lie, but he did, in my opinion and in the more astute opinions of revered historians, prove to be a good wartime president. Poor Theodore Roosevelt was green with envy that Wilson had such a dust up happen while president. He frequently called Wilson “yellow” because he was dragging his feet about entering the war. Frankly, I think if Wilson had been a more vigorous man, he should have busted TR in the snout. The sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman Telegram are frequently used as pretenses for America entering the war, but really, the truth of the matter is we wanted and needed to get in that war. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, there was the theme of sinking ships and America’s entry into war, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was handed exactly what he needed to go to the aid of Europe against the German Aggression of WW2. Again, isolationism proved to be impossible. The world by this time had continued to shrink, and the moats surrounding the United States were not wide or deep enough to keep the war in Europe and Asia from reaching her shores. [image] The frying pan that President Truman, the State Department, and the Pentagon found themselves in after firing General MacArthur. The Korean War became a wintery bog for President Harry Truman. Another time when a President expanded his authority to be able to fight a war not officially sanctioned by congress. His epic battles with General Douglas MacArthur are actually fascinating and a case study for why we have civilian control of the military. I actually respect several of the accomplishments of MacArthur, particularly his governing of Japan after the war, so I’m always a bit wistful about the way his career ended. A similar scene was later played out between President Barack Obama and General Stanley McChrystal. The Korean War was a preview of a much more destructive and long lasting conflict in Vietnam. There was so much desperation of purpose surrounding this conflict. President Lyndon Johnson, beset by doubts, crippled by fear if he does something and equally apprehensive if he does not, was a president, not the first, fighting a war for the wrong reasons. The conflict was designated a policing action, which gave Johnson and later Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon power to wage a major war through the executive branch of government. Vietnam is a quagmire for any review or discussion so I will not venture in, but I will say Beschloss did a great job putting the reader in the mind of LBJ. [image] Lyndon Johnson’s appendix scar becomes Vietnam Beschloss covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq briefly in the epilogue. The subject he took on is a broad subject. I’m sure he had to leave a lot of great observations on the cutting room floor to even keep the book to 586 pages. It does make me wonder if he intends to write about Afghanistan and Iraq in a future book. The pretenses for fighting those wars were not only disturbing, but built on a cascade of the worst lies ever sold to the American public. This book is a terrific overview for amateur historians who may have little knowledge of the various conflicts. The book also provides a potential opportunity for a cohesion of thought for the more astute historian about the real reasons behind these conflicts and how they were presented to the American public. I found my knowledge of American wars to be deepened and also my awareness of the way we continue to be manipulated by politicians into conflicts that would be best resolved in ways other than through the blood of our children and the treasure of our future clarified. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visithttp://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 16, 2018
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Nov 10, 2018
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Oct 16, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1400069726
| 9781400069729
| 1400069726
| 4.03
| 1,924
| May 06, 2014
| Jul 01, 2014
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really liked it
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”He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk; now, sir, we stand by each other always.” ---William Tecumseh Sherman on his rel ”He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk; now, sir, we stand by each other always.” ---William Tecumseh Sherman on his relationship with Ulysses S. Grant [image] William Tecumseh Sherman The importance of second-in-commands became very apparent to me while reading this book. If you think back to Alexander the Great and the close relationship he had with his friend/confidant/lover Hephaestion, he was never the same after Hephaestion’s death. Robert E. Lee struggled after the death of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson was a facilitator who didn’t question Lee, but merely did his best to give him what he wanted. At Gettysburg, Lee missed Jackson, but actually, James Longstreet, one of my favorite brooding generals of the Confederacy, gave Lee valuable advice, but it wasn’t what Lee wanted from him. He wanted him to be more like Jackson. The relationship between Longstreet and Lee could never be the same as the blind loyalty inspired by the Lee and Jackson’s friendship. If Grant had not had Sherman, the war could have gone on for considerably longer. I could make the case that, if Sherman had been incapacitated, maybe a Philip Sheridan could have stepped up and made that famous March to the Sea, but would the same trust have existed? Would Sheridan have been able to burn Atlanta or make the decision to destroy as much of South Carolina as he could lay a torch to? Sherman and Grant were both flawed human beings, and each recognized those flaws in the other. This shared weakness formed a bond of trust which allowed Grant to feel comfortable letting Sherman have lots of loose rope to play with. Interestingly enough, when Sherman was given his own command with absolute power in the West, he was nearly incapacitated by crushing self doubts and depression. He discovered that he worked best as a general with enough power to realize his strategies, but with the strain buffered by someone above him with ultimate control and responsibility. [image] The Peacemakers (1868) by George P. A. Healy with Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. Notice who is talking. Sherman was known for being a motor mouth. Grant and Sherman were both fortunate that Abraham Lincoln, a man well documented for suffering from melancholy verging on madness, was the man making the decisions about who was in command. Lincoln trusted their flawed natures more than probably any other president would have had the foresight to do so. It is almost impossible to talk about Grant without talking about Sherman or talking about Sherman without talking about Grant. Their ascensions were woven together like braided rope. [image] Ulysses S. Grant The duo made mistakes when they were fighting out West, but they learned from them. When Lincoln lost patience with his generals in the East, it only made sense that he would go out West and bring those generals who were having success to the main event in the East. It took a special man to put thousands of men through a meat grinder, and Grant turned out to be the right man for the job. As Sherman made his March to the Sea, he avoided large skirmishes and became more concerned about his “boys” living to see their families again. He was a fiery man who may have been hated when he first took command, but it didn’t take long for his soldiers to learn to love him. Sherman had this amazing gift for remembering vast stretches of terrain that was made possible by his photographic memory. ”Sherman was a prodigy of geography. During the Civil War, no matter how befuddled the swamp or forest or mountain range, if Sherman had been there, he remembered it exactly. And since he had seen so much of the South, he became a kind of human geolocation system. It was an awesome military talent, but at the time he was developing it, it was nearly invisible to those around him. It may not have even struck Sherman as that unusual; it was simply something he did and assumed others shared.” Could another general have been as effective making his way through the Southern terrain as Sherman? He made sure that foragers or bummers, as they liked to call themselves, understood that they weren’t there to line up the population and shoot them or conduct mass rapes. He stressed to his men that these were Americans. Burn their houses, take their food, but do not kill them unless you have to. Part of how he insured that the men followed his instructions was to make sure there were plenty of officers overseeing the pillaging. This was commendable. The South still sees his March as one of the most vilifying moments of the war, which is perfectly understandable, but another general might have let his soldiers loose, and the destruction might have been far more insidious in nature. After the war, Sherman was tasked with extending the railway lines West. Railway lines bisecting the United States from the East Coast to the West Coast would be the final nail in the coffin of the American Indian. Sherman was instrumental in the destruction of the buffalo herds as a means to take away the indigenous population’s ability to feed themselves. It was most effective. ”He shattered the South, bulldozed the Indians, and reduced the buffalo to scrap.” When I put all of these factors together, it is hard to think of a man who had a bigger impact on the 19th century in America or to consider anyone who was more directly responsible for so much destruction. I had no idea. Robert L. O’Connell does a wonderful job, not only bringing Sherman to life for me, but also revealing his tempestuous relationship with his wife Ellen. He had grown up with her in the Thomas Ewing household, so he literarily knew her for his entire life. She was a stringent Catholic, and he was ambivalent, at best, about religion. This caused much stress in their relationship as she wanted her children raised and taught in the best Catholic schools, and he wanted them to have a more secular upbringing. He lost those battles, as he did most of his disagreements with Ellen. The shadow of her powerful father, a man who served in more than one cabinet position for the federal government, had a hugely adverse impact on their relationship. Her allegiance was always to her father first and her husband second until Sherman rose to prominence after the war and became a more revered person in America than her father. It was an interesting backstory to see how their, at times, tormenting relationship impacted Sherman in various ways as he tried to make his way through war and life. Despite all that, he loved her, and certainly they had an amorous relationship whenever they were in close enough proximity to one another, corroborated by the arrival of eight children. [image] Vinnie Ream, the talented woman with the tresses and distresses. Later in his life, there was a woman by the name of Vinnie Ream, a talented sculptor, who Sherman talked of ”Toying with your long tresses, and comforting your imaginary distresses.” I won’t say more about that. You will have to read the book to find out the salacious details. Certainly, he was a flawed man and a ruthless man, willing to do what it takes to end the Civil War or end the war with the American Indians. Where you live probably determines a lot of how you feel about Sherman. I will say O’Connell revealed a man to me that was much different than the man I thought I knew. As politics splits this country down the middle, with the South becoming redder and New England becoming bluer, I can’t help but have the feeling that we’ve seen this all before. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 07, 2018
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Oct 16, 2018
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Oct 07, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0316206164
| 9780316206167
| 0316206164
| 4.18
| 1,807
| 1987
| Jun 19, 2012
|
it was amazing
|
”’Good’ doesn’t mean anything like what it used to mean. No, sir we are not good men. But we are men. They’ll have to whip us. We won’t do it for them
”’Good’ doesn’t mean anything like what it used to mean. No, sir we are not good men. But we are men. They’ll have to whip us. We won’t do it for them by quitting.” [image] They call themselves the First Kansas Irregulars, which is an apt designation given the fact that they are a bunch of feral young men turned loose on the countryside in search of mayhem more than fighting for a cause. They are men from Kansas and Missouri who choose not to head South to join the Confederacy but to stay close to home to bring the fight to the Yankee soldiers and civilians. This is a time in the territories when long standing feuds can be ended by accusing your enemies of being Seceshs (secessionists) if you are talking to Union troops or calling them Yankee sympathizers if you are talking to the Bushwhackers who are loosely tied to the Confederate cause. No one can remain neutral. The Jayhawkers, based out of Lawrence, Kansas, are the most hated of the Union supporters. ”Jayhawkers said they raided to free slaves, but mostly they freed horseflesh from riders, furniture from houses, cattle from pastures, precious jewelry from family troves and wives from husbands. Sometimes they had so much plunder n***ers were needed to haul it, so they took a few along. This, they said, made them abolitionists.” As I am reading this book, I can’t help but be reminded of the political discourse happening today. With families being split along political lines instead of blood lines. Facebook unfriending has provided a new battlefront to show our disapproval of one another. Like the Bushwhackers and the Jayhawkers, we want to believe the very worst about each other so that we can be more firmly entrenched in our beliefs and feel safer among our own perceived kind. I’ve seen some ugly things said on social media that go well beyond the issue at hand that must stem from a core belief in the basic inhumanity of those who oppose them. ”Is it possible for a man to retain his humanity in an inhuman time, and if not, at least to regain that humanity after a war ends?” The Civil War was a scary time, and it feels like we live in another political age that may pit brother against brother. Let us hope that rhetoric will be the extent of it, but as we all know, despite the adage “that words will never hurt us,” we are very aware that they do. Words are powerful and sometimes, when struck with enough force, become unforgettable. We need a uniter in this age of the divider. Our protagonist is Jake “Dutchy” Roedel. As you might guess from his nickname, he is of Dutch heritage. He is as committed to the cause as his American born neighbor and best friend, Jack Bull Chiles. Unfortunately, the rest of the Irregulars, because the Dutch mostly support the Union, have a difficult time accepting him as one of them. It probably doesn’t help that he is better education than the rest of them with a fine hand for writing and the ability to read, as well as being a school teacher. When they capture a sack full of Union letters, he becomes the center of huddled masses of men as they ask him to read those letters to them. It is somewhat confusing for them to find out that people up North have the same concerns and fears as those in the South. They are merely human beings like they are, trying to make their way the best way they know how through difficult times. It is a poignant moment in the book, and in the film as well, to see the yearning for civilisation in the faces of all those young men who are really just feral boys with a need to return to the responsibilities of hearth, family, and home. ”I could well believe that the Cause had been set loose in the lust for loot.” When you read this book, you will get to know Coleman Younger, Pitt Mackeson, Black Jake Ambrose, Turner Rawls, Cave Wyatt, George Clyde, and his black friend Daniel Holt. You will even get to meet the infamous William Quantrill, who will lead these men in a famous and deadly raid against Lawrence, Kansas, inspiring the epitaph Bleeding Kansas as a reference to this point in history. The writing is lyrical and real. I feel like I am squatting down around a campfire with these men, listening to their grunts, farts, and their jaws working on a cud of tobacco. The movie based on this book is called Riding With the Devil and is directed by Ang Lee. The gun battle scenes are chaotic and so real I can feel my heart rate start to speed up. It is easy to see how someone might end up shooting their best friend or even brother by mistake. Woodrell helped with the film script, and much of his dialogue from the book is lifted word for word to the silver screen. The cast is full of names you will recognize, such as Tobey Maquire, Jim Caviezel, Jewel, Skeet Ulrich, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jeffrey Wright, Simon Baker, and Mark Ruffalo. [image] One of my favorite classes when I was at university was one on film and literature where we were assigned a book and then watched the film that was based on the book. The discussions inspired were some of the best that I experienced the whole time I was at the University of Arizona. What did we like about the book better than the film? What did we like about the film better than the book? Did we agree with the casting? Was that who you saw playing that role? What was missing from the film that you felt should have been included? I always felt like I had a deeper understanding of the work after experiencing the writing and the celluloid interpretations. I have a lot of fond memories of that class, so whenever I can, I stick to that format by reading the book and watching the film soon after. I have films DVRed from years ago waiting for the opportunity to eventually be paired with the book that inspired them. One of my favorite nothing scenes from the movie is when the Bushwhackers are all on horseback outside of Lawrence, and there is a gunshot, and all the horses shy at the same time. It is like watching a ripple of wind move through a field of ripe wheat. It is beautiful. A second and a half of film and I will never forget it. If the book or the movie fall short of being masterpieces, the two of them together will get them there. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 29, 2018
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Sep 30, 2018
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Sep 29, 2018
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0030600413
| 9780030600418
| 0030600413
| 4.18
| 109
| 1982
| 1982
|
it was amazing
|
”Weapons came up along the fence now, and in the fusillade that followed, they saw for the first time the disastrous effect of fire enfilading a line
”Weapons came up along the fence now, and in the fusillade that followed, they saw for the first time the disastrous effect of fire enfilading a line of standing troops. They butchered the right flank of the advancing Union divisions with volley fire, and as that fell back in bloody confusion, their bullets found targets farther along the blue formation, collapsing it from end to end like flame eating along the length of a fuse.” [image] Noah Fawley stole a pig at the wrong, damn time. The powderkeg has just been lit that has set in motion the war between the states. The Southern cause needed every available warm body. The judge, instead of sending him to jail or fining him for the replacement value of the hog in question, told him...son, you are in the army now. Pa Fawley didn’t want to send off his youngest son by himself, so he sent along Zack, the steady hand in the family, who has always found ways to calm down the hot headed tantrums that Noah tended to throw. They joined an Arkansas unit and were promptly marched off to Virginia to fight the Army of the Potomac. A military unit is sort of like being trapped on an elevator with a bunch of random people. People are frankly fascinating and varied in their outlooks on life. Take for example Martin Hasford, whom the other soldiers called Parson because he read his Bible every night. After each conflict, he would have to pray for forgiveness for all the expletives that passed his lips in the heat of the battle. Sometimes the heat was more literal than figurative. ”Deeper into the trees then---pressing, charging, the smoke from burning timber stinging his eyes. The roar of Napoleon guns sounded nearby. Canister and grape and rifle bullets sheared off the limbs of trees and the brush, carpeting the woodland floor with a bramble of instant abatis, almost as impregnable as those their own engineers sometimes constructed of sharpened stakes to create barriers to an advancing line. All of it catching fire. Already there was the stink of burning flesh, like bacon dropped in hot embers, and the screams of fallen men caught by the flames and trampled by the rush of others.” Can you imagine the sheer terror? The booms, the crashes, the screams, and then that cloud sweeps over you like a wet blanket, reeking of that distinctive upchuck inducing stink of burning bodies. Not to mention the glittering bayonets of the advancing blue clad army that you are supposed to repel. Douglas C. Jones paints a distinct picture of the horrors of war. His superb deft sketches of the men who faced these barbaric conditions is one of the many reasons why I rated this book five stars. The character of Liverpool Morgan might have raised the rating on this book a full star all by himself. He is a big, black Welshman, who could sing like an angel and ring skulls like Thor’s hammer. I kept thinking of him as a wharf rat. A man who could find what his unit needed when they needed it most. He would swim the river and trade tobacco to the Yankees for much needed food. He would scavenge. He would hunt for wildlife so the stew pot had some much needed calories. He was invaluable. Making friends with a guy like this might be the difference between dying and living. Jones also addressed the other looming issues surrounding the actual fighting. The fact that, when Robert E. Lee crossed into Maryland, pieces of his army melted away. They’d fight to keep Yankees out of the South, but they had no desire to invade the North. Also, men who owned twenty or more slaves were exempt from service, similar to the same exemption the North gave men of means to either pay a fine so their sons didn’t go or found a man to go in his place. These men who were exempt were the men who had the most to gain or lose by the outcome of the war. Jones touched on the unmitigated anger, a searing heat of raw emotion, that Confederate soldiers felt when they were about to face former slaves on the battlefield. One of my favorites was when Noah Fawley read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and became so unsettled that he thought to himself, ”Well, if books is like that, the best thang is to jus’ stay clear of ‘em.” It is always scary when you discover that something you have always believed is based on a whole wiggling sack of lies. When the boys reached Richmond, they were issued Confederate script and allowed a short furlough into town. They visited one of the local establishments. The name made me laugh out loud: ”Miz Rozella’s Afternoon Tea Sippin’ Society and Billiard Hall” I bet you can guess the boys weren’t interested in “Sippin’ Tea.” By the end of the book, I felt like I’d been on campaign with these guys. I knew their strengths and weaknesses. I can see how men in combat grow to love each other like brothers. There are poignant moments of unexpected humor and fistfights over nothing. The anxieties of war and deprivations affect each of them differently. By the conclusion, I was gritting my teeth, fully immersed in the action, worried about who would survive and who would be missing from the campfire that night. If you want an idea of what the war was really like, this book will have your tongue tasting like gunpowder, your ears ringing with cannon fire, and your stomach growling from hunger. Your toes will tingle for a good pair of boots. Your head will feel vulnerable and exposed without a good slouch hat. You’ll pine the most for a letter from home, just something to remind you of what you are fighting to get back to. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 17, 2017
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Jul 29, 2017
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Jul 17, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0874068134
| 9780874068139
| 0874068134
| 4.02
| 25,172
| 1890
| 1996
|
it was amazing
|
”Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In th
”Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.” Due to unspecified reasons, Peyton Fahrquhar has never joined the glorious fight for the Confederacy, but he is a firm secessionist and is ardently devoted to the cause. He is a wealthy Alabama planter with a pretty wife and a passel load of children. When he discovers that the bridge at Owl Creek has been rebuilt by the invading army of the Union, he decides this is his chance to do something for the Southern cause. His eyes are bespeckled by the splendorous beacon of glory. In other words, he is blinded by his vision of his own future achievement. Many times there is a razor thin line between success and failure. We are not privy to how close to being successful our gentleman of mayhem was to destroying the bridge, but we do know that his illusion of glory has ended in an inglorious, frankly embarrassing, reality. He is about to be hung. At moments like this something happens to our senses. I remember when I had my Jeep accident. I was flipping over and over. Sounds were amplified. The crunch of steel was like a Wagner crescendo. The sound of breaking glass was like shrieking sirens. Everything slowed down to where I could watch individual pieces of glass moving so slowly that I could have caught them with a pair of chopsticks. I was NEO. For Fahrquhar, it is his watch, ticking so loud that to his ears it sounds like iron being molded by a hammer on an anvil. Everything seems brighter and more significant. He is standing on the bridge he had meant to destroy. His life is literally hanging in the balance, about to be dispatched by this inanimate object’s ability to suspend his weight long enough for his life to be taken from him. ”As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness -- of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum.” Any time the word pendulum is used in a story I can’t help but think of Poe. ”I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air.” Edgar Allan Poe The Pit and the Pendulum There are some very clever twists, and the author, Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce, leaves you a few breadcrumbs along the way. He was known for his sardonic view of human nature. Whenever I read a Bierce story, which it has been way too long since I’ve read the last one, I come away feeling that he is speaking from personal experience. The hanging scene in this story, you would swear the man has been dangling from a rope at some point in time in his history. His stories are dark and feel so real that I have to slap myself across the face periodically to make sure I don’t find myself trapped in a world of Bierce’s making. Bierce, in typical Bierce fashion, heads down to Mexico and is never heard of again. He is gone like smoke caught in a Western wind. I would recommend reading this story without commentary and then reading it a second time with analysis because Bierce has layered in some symbolism into the story. He then camouflaged these metaphors with leaves and broken branches. If you move your head too fast your eyes will just skim right over the top of them. You can see ‘em, but you have to be looking right at ‘em. Highly Recommended! If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 17, 2017
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Mar 17, 2017
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Mar 17, 2017
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ebook
| ||||||||||||||
| 1400069025
| 9781400069026
| 1400069025
| 4.21
| 5,652
| Oct 04, 2016
| Oct 04, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
”Grant ‘moves with his shoulders thrown a little forward of the perpendicular, his left hand in the pocket of his pantaloons, an unlighted cigar in hi
”Grant ‘moves with his shoulders thrown a little forward of the perpendicular, his left hand in the pocket of his pantaloons, an unlighted cigar in his mouth, his eyes thrown straight forward, which from the haze of abstraction that veils them, and a countenance drawn into furrows of thought, would seem to indicate that he is intensely preoccupied.’ ‘The soldiers observe him coming, and rising to their feet, gather on each side of the way to see him pass--they do not salute him, they only watch him… with a certain sort of familiar reverence.’” [image] Often on the battlefield, Grant was indistinguishable from a private by the state of his clothing. I still have that flutter of excitement whenever I go to my bookshelves to pick out a new book. Sometimes I know when I finish a book which one I will read next, but sometimes to add a bit more thrill to the process, I change my mind at the last minute. When I decide to read a biography like this one, I know that a couple of things will happen. One, if the writing is good, I will be completely transported to a different time and place. Second, I know I will have a revised opinion of the person I’m reading about by the time I finish the book. I’ve always had a good impression of Grant, despite knowing about his alleged shortcomings: a failure before the war, a drunkard, a butcher on the battlefield, and later the President of a corrupt government. Ronald C. White is the first biographer who has had access to all 33 volumes of the collected papers of Ulysses S. Grant, so this is the most up-to-date, most informed biography ever written about Grant. White convinces me that those inadequacies, although based in some truth, are largely untrue. He was not a great success between the time he left the military and the time he joined back up for the national crisis, but nor was he a failure. He did drink, but rarely to excess. There were stories about his wife Julia having to visit him to straighten out his drinking problem; in reality, she was there to assuage his loneliness for her. There were many letters from him imploring her to write him more or to come see him. She suffered from strabismus, crossed eyes, which may have contributed to her reluctance to write. [image] Julia Dent Grant, please write Ulysses a letter!! Or maybe she just wasn’t much of writer. As it turns out, her husband was an exceptional writer. His Memoirs, written while he was dying, are considered masterpieces. This gift for words surprised everyone, including his most fervent admirer Mark Twain. Even Gore Vidal, who is extremely difficult to impress, had high praise for the President’s writing. ”It is simply not possible to read Grant’s Memoirs without realizing that the author is a man of first-rate intelligence.” The Federal troops took more casualties in almost every battle they fought in the Civil War, regardless of who was their commanding officer. The side that has to be offensive instead of defensive generally takes more casualties, and as Grant pushed the Confederates southward, he usually found his enemy entrenched. When Grant was given the command of the Army of the Potomac, he was the last in a long list of commanders who were fired for either bad results or a lack of results. One thing Abraham Lincoln knew was that he needed Grant, despite the thicket of criticisms that came fast and furious against him from those with thwarted ambition or green with jealousy. ”I need the man. He fights.” Later, when Grant was President, his administration was rocked with scandal. Questions were even asked about HIS own honesty. The problem stemmed from the fact that Grant packed his appointments with close friends, people he trusted who also were far from the best qualified people for the job. Bribery, graft, and corruption charges at times made it difficult for him to administer his duties. He was a loyal person, constantly disappointed with the way the power of Washington tainted good men. [image] General, later President, Zachary Taylor. President Polk was uneasy about how popular Taylor was becoming with the American people due to his victories in Mexico. Grant fought in two wars. The first one was the Mexican-American War. He served under the future President Zachary Taylor. He was assigned the job of Quartermaster, which had him wondering to himself what he had done wrong to be so punished. As it turns out, he was pretty damn good at the job. He arranged how the army would travel in Mexico. He found supplies when supply lines became stretched too thin. Next to the commander in charge, there is probably not a more important person in any army. His time as quartermaster served him well in the Civil War when he found himself in the role of commander. He not only designed the battles to be fought, but was able to make sure his men would be well fed and supplied in the process. A full belly should always be part of the tactics of any commander in any war. As the war progressed, the Confederates were fighting on empty bellies more than they were with a full ones, which not only weakened their fighting ability, but also affected their morale. The other interesting thing about the Mexican-American War was the who’s who of Civil War generals who fought in that conflict as subordinate officers. Besides Grant, there was Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, George McClellan, James Longstreet, George Meade, Ambrose Burnside, William T. Sherman, and P.G.T. Beauregard, just to name a few. Now if we flash forward to the Civil War, these same men found themselves fighting against each other. In the 1860s, people identified more closely with their home state than they did with their country; most of the men went the way their state decided to go. James Longstreet was a groomsman at Ulysses S. Grant’s wedding. After Stonewall Jackson was killed, Longstreet became the number one man for Robert E. Lee on the Confederate side. This wasn’t an unusual story as too many families and friends found themselves split by their divided loyalties. The officers on both sides all knew each other well. They went to West Point together. They fought together in Mexico. When an officer was killed, both sides mourned his passing. There are a lot of things I like about Grant. One is his complete devotion to his wife, the respect he always showed her and also the respect he showed the wives, daughters, and mothers caught in the middle of war. I liked that he pursued the enemy relentlessly when others would have stopped to contemplate, hang up their garlands, or lick their wounds. He turned South when other Union generals, who had preceded him, had turned back North. The men from out West, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, proved to be the fighters for which Lincoln was looking. Grant was loyal to those men. He looked upon Sherman as a brother and Sheridan as a son. When he finished his two terms in the White House, he took Julia on a two and half year trip around the world. He read voraciously the whole time, with favorites being his friend Mark Twain, his old favorite from West Point Walter Scott, and of course the Odyssey featuring his namesake. As they travelled, he and Julia often read out loud to one another. More relationships would benefit from sharing reading experiences together. [image] Grant reading just three days before he died. Last but not least, when he discovered he was dying from throat cancer (he loved smoking cigars which certainly contributed to his demise), he decided that he needed to write his Memoirs to make sure that Julia and the kids had enough money. He’d lost a fortune over the years, trusting the wrong people. It was the Gilded Age and too many men found themselves broke from investing in blue sky with the hope of making a fortune. It sort of reminds me of the Tech Bubble when so many people felt stupid watching other people get filthy rich. Unfortunately just like in the Gilded Age many of the companies that looked like good investments in the 1990s were built on thin air and promises. Grant did not want to leave his family destitute. He wrote like a fiend every day, regardless of how well he felt. There were some who speculated that writing his Memoirs was the only thing keeping him alive. His battle tactics which he fortunately wrote about extensively (White supplies a flurry of great maps showing his key battles.) are still being studied for their ”speed, flexibility, surprise, concentration, and most importantly their audacity.” Grant is to say the least an unusual man. Ronald C. White has done a wonderful job writing an engaging biography that brought Grant out from beneath the shadows of his slouch hat so we can see his twinkling blue eyes, shake his hand, and say, thank you, sir, for preserving our Union. I just launched my debut video book review and I talk about this book American Ulysses Video Review If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
|
Dec 05, 2016
not set
|
Jan 29, 2017
not set
|
Dec 05, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0807854670
| 9780807854679
| 0807854670
| 3.54
| 549
| Sep 10, 2001
| Feb 24, 2003
|
really liked it
|
”It was easy to see why the legend had endured. Its characters were larger than life: men bound to one another by kinship, economic status, and member
”It was easy to see why the legend had endured. Its characters were larger than life: men bound to one another by kinship, economic status, and membership in a paramilitary band armed against the Confederacy; women equally bound by kinship and unfettered by the chains of ladylike behavior; and even some slaves, although Piney Woods, Mississippi was not a major slaveholding region. Towering above all other characters in popular memory were ‘Captain’ Newt Knight, the grandson of a slaveholder, and Rachel Knight, the slave of Newt’s grandfather. Their relationship added the specter of interracial intimacy to the story.” [image] Newton Knight There is a misconception regarding the County of Jones in Mississippi. Some think this county seceded from the Confederacy, but the real truth is they never left the Union. They remained loyal to their federal government, and some men even left to join the Union army, but a group of men, some deserters from the Confederate Army and some slaves, banded together to form a resistance to what they considered to be an invading force. Rachel was a slave, a pretty woman with light skin. Her descendents tried to convince people that she was of Spanish heritage as a way to excuse her dark eyes, dark hair, and tinted complexion. It is all rubbish, of course, just people putting their racism on display when what they should be is feeling proud that, despite her circumstances, she became a woman to be reckoned with. Ethel Knight wrote a damning biography of Newt but maybe unintentionally revealed the more interesting part of the story. ”Ethel not only restored Rachel’s historical role, but she also unveiled a powerful, larger-than-life woman who had endured slavery, sexual exploitation, the Civil War Reconstruction, and Mississippi’s mounting campaign for white supremacy and racial segregation. Most strikingly, Rachel seemed to have had as much impact on the world around her as it had on her.” [image] Rachel Knight Rachel had three children before the Civil War; all the children were obviously from white fathers. As a slave, she didn’t have much choice who bent her over a table and flung her skirt up. The raping of female slaves was an epidemic in the South. ”Between 1890-1920 white Southern literature---especially newspapers---commonly portrayed interracial sexual relations as the product of sex-crazed black ‘fiends’ ravishing innocent, virginal blondes, rather than as the product of white men raping black women or of blacks and whites participating in consensual sexual relations.” The interesting thing is, when these wealthy planters impregnated their slaves, they were condemning their own offspring to slavery. In their minds, they were helping to create more workers for their plantations. There is a disconnect in this reasoning that has me thinking that sex with their slaves, basically having a harem at their disposal, was more important to them than any thoughts of their own blood being condemned to a life in chains. [image] I’m sure Hollywood, in the new movie starring Matthew Mcconaughey, will make it a love story between Newt and Rachel. The author Victoria E. Bynum doesn’t necessary disabuse that notion, but I couldn’t help thinking, was this love or was Rachel just being practical? White men found her attractive. Maybe she was with the alpha dog to keep from having to fend off the attentions of the other men. She had children with Newt, but what makes me feel a bit unsettled about buying the love story is that he also rumored to have had children with her daughter. What the heck was going on out there in the deep Mississippi woods? To further complicate the picture, he remained married to his wife Serena for the rest of his life. Men joined Newt out of fear for their lives. They didn’t want to die on a battlefield, fighting Yankees for rich planters. It wasn’t exactly safe being with Newt’s band; many were caught and hung or shot. They were also suffering economic hardship from being away from their homes to go to war. When the Confederacy passed the Twenty Negro Law which allowed any Southerner with twenty or more slaves to leave the war to go home to help with harvest, it became clear to many men that the Confederate Government was only worried about the very richest of the rich. Does the man with twenty slaves really need to go home? It seems to me that this small demographic had plenty of help to bring in the harvest. It was the man with no slaves, with a wife and a passel load of children, who needed to go home to help. Of course, the bulk of the soldiers were poor men with either a small acreage or were sharecroppers without land. If you let those guys go home, there would be no army. I know many thought they were going to war to defend their “raights,” but in reality they were fighting to defend a system in which they had no skin in the game. [image] 12.2% of the population of Jones County were slaves. This was the lowest percentage of any county in Mississippi. These were not men who aspired to be slave owners. Bynum traces back the history of these men as their ancestors came from Georgia and South Carolina to Mississippi to live simple lives and avoid the corruption of ”over civilisation.” There was always something a little different about Jones County. Victoria E. Bynum is descended from one of the men who joined Newt Knight in his armed resistance to the Confederacy. I’ve done some research on my own family, and one of the things that happens is that as you collect the data and begin to put together a picture of who your ancestors are, you start to change how you think about yourself. Discovering your roots is important, but there is always the risk that you will discover that you are descended from scalawags or unscrupulous men or a murderer. To me that just adds spice to the stew that is a family tree. Bynum confessed that, once she finished this book, she was going to miss living every day with these people who were so unique, so brave, and who resisted when many more should have. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Jun 28, 2016
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Hardcover
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| 0307592642
| 9780307592644
| 0307592642
| 4.16
| 1,800
| Oct 06, 2015
| Oct 27, 2015
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it was amazing
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”Gen. Custer is of medium stature, with body slightly inclined forward in walking, face spare, nose rather large and pointed, and hair hanging in slig
”Gen. Custer is of medium stature, with body slightly inclined forward in walking, face spare, nose rather large and pointed, and hair hanging in slight curls to the shoulders. In talking he is intensely earnest and lively, and during (an) interview he sat leaning forward with his arms crossed and resting on his knees, which were also crossed--not a very soldierly attitude, to be sure. His manner is quick and nervous and somewhat eccentric. They all found him fascinating.” Professor William Phelps [image] There is no doubt that George Armstrong Custer is a fascinating man. For those that met him and for those who have researched him, he remains an impossible figure to continue to be impartial about. As the facts are sifted and the scales are balanced, people can choose to admire him or despise him. Cases could be easily made to laud him or condemn him. It is an understatement to say he is a complicated man. T.J. Stiles, a historian I find to be meticulous in his research, has attempted with this book to set aside the mounds of outrageous speculations and outright lies that have been written about Custer in the hopes of presenting the man properly attired in all of his tarnished, but still gleaming glitter. He was in trouble...frequently. In fact, the Civil War saved his military career. For the first time, but not the last time, he was facing a dishonorable discharge, this time at the very moment that his career was supposed to start. It wasn’t that he was an exemplary student for whom the board was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Custer amassed demerits that kept him on the verge of expulsion all three years he attended West Point. Most of these demerits were earned playing pranks on other cadets. Someone might have seen this as an opportunity to get rid of a bad apple, but the board must have seen more merit in him than was readily apparent from his conduct. Well... and there was a war on, and they needed every available officer they could find. Patton, Nelson, and Napoleon are all men who loved war, but they’d be riding in the sidecar with Custer in the driver’s seat because there is no doubt that no one in history has ever had more zeal for battle than George Armstrong Custer. If war were a bagel, he’d be the cream cheese. He became a boy general at the age of twenty-three. It wasn’t because he knew someone or because he had a knack for buttering the biscuits of his commanding officers. In fact, he was more likely to be walking a tightrope just North of insubordination. He was promoted for his displays of courage, but more importantly for his ”gift for combat leadership”. ”He combined keen observation with an intuitive grasp of the meaning of what he saw. A cloud of dust behind a hill might indicate an enemy outflanking maneuver or a retreat; a flicker of gray-clad men in a tree line might be a mere picket or massed column preparing to charge. He sometimes guessed wrong, but more often he judged right--far more than most. He had a talent for choosing the correct course amid chaos.” He led from the front, no more spectacularly than when he took on J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry at Gettysburg. For once the Confederates, who had boasted for the extent of the war of their superior horsemanship, found themselves stopped by a band of Federal horsemen from Michigan, led in a charge by one batshit crazy boy general. His courage in combat was incontestable. His detractors, possibly adversely affected by the bravado that surrounded Custer like a cloak of invincibility, couldn’t accept the genuineness of his courage. The fact of the matter is that out of all the myths that grew about Custer after his death the one that rings true is that he was not a fake, not a charlatan, when it came to charging in the face of certain death. His mad dashes were calculated, not without risk, but were certainly not just a man relying on luck to carry him through. [image] Libbie Custer One thing I really like about Custer is his relationship with Elizabeth Clift Bacon. Out of all the girls who were vying for his attention or were pining for him by hearth sites all across the nation, I don’t think he could have found a woman better suited to himself. They had a lustful marriage. Their letters are full of erotic allusions and true affection for one another. He faced yet another court martial because he abandoned his command without leave to travel hundreds of miles to see her. ”Libbie was at home in Fort Riley when she heard ‘the clank of a sabre on our gallery, and with the quick, springing steps of feet, “ and Armstrong burst in.” He had to see her. They became a power couple. When Libbie lived in Washington and he was away, she used her charm to continue to advance his career. She had to become very deft at keeping her slender waist from falling into the hands of lecherous, sometimes drunk, politicians who thought her kind solicitations might also include a quickie on the desk or an immodest bend over a handy settee. She is pretty in her photographs, but she must have had a charm that went well beyond what the cameras could capture. The Battle of the Little Bighorn or, as some call it, Custer’s Last Stand is fascinating for many reasons, mainly because we are left with so many unanswered questions. (The horse Comanche isn’t talking. I’ve met him...well...what is left of him. He resides at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum.) The men that could have told the tale were killed. It is easy to blame hubris, especially with Custer’s reputation for daring and recklessness. Historians have poured over the facts and assembled a murky, but still incomplete, picture of events. Stiles does a good job of sticking to the facts and not venturing into speculation. Custer split his command, which turned out to be a fatal decision. The intent was to not allow the Indians to slip away. Custer was putting out a net of soldiers to make sure they could trap them into a fight. He was missing some facts. The number of warriors were much higher than he could have known. The number of Indians involved is unknown, but speculation ranges anywhere from 900 to 5000. I tend to think that there were probably a couple of thousand., a much larger force than what Custer and his twelve companies (647) could handle. Custer kept five companies, assigned three companies to Major Marcus Reno, and three to Captain Frederick Benteen. Reno was supposed to capture the Indian village, which would draw the warriors back to protect the village. He didn’t make it. He came under heavy fire and retreated to high ground and dug in. He was most assuredly drunk. Benteen was sent a message to join up with Custer which he ignored. As he said later at the inquiry, “he felt Custer was capable of taking care of himself.” He ended up joining up with Reno’s men who were glad to see him. Despite his sneering insubordination regarding Custer, he was a capable and cool headed commander. [image] Custer’s Last Stand by Edgar Samuel Paxson We all know what happened to Custer. I’m not sure that anything could have changed that event. If Benteen had chosen to join Custer, he might have perished with him or maybe the additional force would have been enough to extract the remaining survivors. If Reno had taken the village, maybe he would have drawn the warriors back from Custer, but then his force would have surely been wiped out. The force of Indians was simply too large for such a small command to handle. Even if all twelve companies had been assembled, they would have lost the battle; maybe they could have escaped a devastating massacre. Reno received a lot of blame despite being cleared by a court of inquiry. I can be irritated that he was a drunk and a man accused of trying to rape another officer’s wife, but I have to admit that his strategic retreat was the right decision. I find it hard not to loath Benteen mainly because I think his dislike for Custer may have been the reason that he so cavalierly dismissed Custer’s message to join him. I may not like Benteen as a person, but I still am not convinced that if he had joined Custer that it would have changed the outcome. Custer’s tactics came under the most incriminations after everyone quit looking around for a person to blame. I can see what he was trying to do. He was more afraid of the warriors escaping a fight than he was afraid of being overwhelmed. It would have never crossed Custer’s mind that he was going to lose. I’ve read several books on Custer which have given me many varying perspectives on his life, his triumphs, his disasters, but Stiles still managed to put more flesh on his bones. I feel like I may have the most precise idea of who he really was from this book out of all the books I’ve read. He was at times a racist, especially during reconstruction when he was palling around with all the ex-Confederates in Texas. He stole a famous racehorse during the Civil War as contraband, not exactly a shining example of honor. He referred to widows as the ”left over remains of another man,” which irritated Libbie and me as well. I’m sick of the veneration of the virgin that is still so prevalent today. (I see it as just another way to oppress women.) Custer hero worshiped George B. McClellan, who I actually see as a traitor for his untimely political aspirations. Despite knowing all this, I can’t help, but like the guy. ”Custer imagined a self and sought to make others believe it. What has confused observers is the fact that his ability was real, his courage genuine.” I guess I admire what was best in him and allow him the latitude to be human with all the burrs and stickers that were prevalent in the men of his era. My review of The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 31, 2015
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Jan 10, 2016
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Dec 31, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 1439121168
| 9781439121160
| 1439121168
| 4.10
| 1,103
| Sep 11, 2012
| Sep 18, 2012
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really liked it
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”We must be content to lead when we can, and to follow when we cannot lead; and if we cannot at any time do for our country all the good that we would
”We must be content to lead when we can, and to follow when we cannot lead; and if we cannot at any time do for our country all the good that we would wish, we must be satisfied with doing for her all the good that we can.” William Henry Seward [image] The famous profile of William H. Seward with the macaw nose on prominent display. William Seward was a man certainly qualified to be president. When the first ballots came in during the Republican primary in 1860, he was well in the lead with 172 votes to Abraham Lincoln’s 102. He was 70 votes shy of winning the nomination. He felt reasonably assured he was going to be the Republican nominee. There were plenty of votes still out there loosely attached to candidates (favored sons of certain states) who were incapable of winning the nomination. Deals were to be made, and those votes would eventually swing to either Seward or Lincoln. Seward discovered only after it was too late that he had been outflanked. The convention was being held in Chicago, which of course was in Lincoln’s home state. When the final balloting was tallied, Lincoln men had filled the hall, and the Seward contingency found themselves outside unable to lend their voices in support of their candidate. Lincoln won the nomination. Politics is a fickle child, spawned of ambition, greed, and backroom deals. Seward was an old hand at politics and was a lightening rod for opposition from the very beginning of his political career in New York. He was an opinionated speaker and writer. People didn’t have to speculate about what he believed. The press knew he was always good for a quote, and he obliged them sometimes to his detriment. He was fervently against expansion of slavery in the territories as they were added as states. He was not as fervently supportive of the dissolution of slavery, but his wife Francis was a firm believer that the country could never be sanctioned by a higher power unless those in chains were fully liberated. Seward had experienced the political tide going his way when he was elected governor and U.S. Senator, but he’d also lost elections due to the manipulations of his enemies who had chafed under the scorn of his oratory and writing ability. People were incapable of neutrality in regards to William Henry Seward. They either loved him or despised him. [image] There is speculation that Seward might have lost the election in 1860 if he had been nominated. Lincoln was a relatively unknown, inexperienced candidate that in some cases might have hurt his chances, but the log cabin, rail splitter campaign resonated with people. As you can see from the map, the electoral vote was split between four candidates which certainly increased Lincoln’s chances, but even if all those Lincoln opposing states were united under one candidate, they would still fall short of winning the presidency. Seward may have lost states that Lincoln won which might have thrown the election to the House of Representatives to decide. A Democratic challenger would probably have been selected as a conciliatory notion to the South. It is hard to even speculate about where we would be as a nation today if Lincoln had not become president in 1860. As much as I adore Seward, he may have compromised where Lincoln held firm, and one Civil War might have just been a prelude to another. 81.2% of the population turned out to vote, which shows how important Americans felt that election would be. It was the largest voter turnout in American history to that point, only eclipsed by the contentious 1876 election sixteen years later. Considering what happened as a result of Lincoln being elected, it was good that the 1860 election was determined by a majority of the population. With an attempt at conciliation to all factions, Lincoln assembled his famous team of rivals (not to be confused with The Avengers) with the hope that the Southern states would be somewhat mollified. They were not. I’ve spent some time muttering and irritated over the irrational, impulsive behavior of South Carolina. Rebellion against any change seems to be in their blood. They drafted resolutions to secede once again in 2012 over a disagreement with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. I will never forget the famous moment during President Obama’s state of the union speech when Joe Wilson, House member from South Carolina, shouted ”you lie”. He is a hero in South Carolina and has been comfortably re-elected ever since. It’s the only time I remember seeing Obama look like he wanted to throw down with someone. I’ve come to believe that South Carolina is the Judas Iscariot of this story. As the Bible tale goes, Judas has to betray Jesus for the son of God to die for all of our sins. Without the betrayal of Jesus there is no martyr (not to mention the cleansing of sin), and probably Christianity would never have been one of the dominant religions it is today. Only Mary Magdalene might be more maligned in history than Judas. So if I believe that about Judas, I have to believe that about South Carolina. South Carolina had to betray the Union so that the United States could continue to exist as one nation. By attacking Fort Sumter, they forced the hands of the other Southern states. The South was not interested in any of the proposals to settle the slavery issue. In other words, war was the only solution. It is hard to swallow because one would like to find that pivotal moment when war could have been avoided, but if the war didn’t happen in 1861, then it would have happened later in our history with potentially even more devastating results. The South was sure they could beat the North in a war and split the United States asunder. As long as they believed this, war was inevitable. Seward joined the cabinet as Secretary of State. He was once described by a member of the opposing party as looking ”dirty, rusty, vulgar, and low” and used words like “hell and damn”. His cuffs were often noticed to be unraveling. His face frequently unshaved, and his tongue untamed. Lincoln was not a paragon of fashion either, so Seward’s appearance as well as his counsel may have been why the once rivals bonded so closely so quickly. It was an endless source of irritation to the other cabinet members that Lincoln sought Seward’s opinions on so many matters. Mary Todd was not of the same opinion regarding Seward as her husband. She voiced her thoughts most vehemently when she discovered her husband intended to include him in the cabinet. ”Never” She insisted that “if all things should go right--the credit would go to Seward--if they go wrong--the blame would fall upon my husband. Seward in the cabinet--NEVER!” Lincoln would not have been Lincoln without Seward. There were many grumblings among friends and foes alike that Seward was the true power behind the throne. This reminds me of the same kind of grumblings regarding President George W. Bush and his Vice-President Dick “Dark Lord” Cheney. There are many moments where Seward offered Lincoln brilliant counsel. There are many bills and proclamations that have Seward’s deft skill with words etched into their framework. I will only talk about one particular event where Seward altered the course of history. Even thinking about what it would have meant for the country sends a shiver down my spine if Lincoln’s initial intentions had become the final decision. In 1861 the Union learned that representatives of the recently, hastily formed, Confederate government were on their way to England to ask for their nation to be formally recognized. Lincoln wanted them intercepted. They were found off the coast of Cuba on a British ship called the RMS Trent by the USS San Jacinto. Confederate representatives James Mason and John Slidell and their aids were detained and arrested. This became known as The Trent Affair. Britain, understandably, went ballistic and started adding troops in Canada. The Confederate government was thrilled. This was a golden opportunity for an implosion that would lead to severed relations between the Union and Britain. In the process, it would strengthen relations between the South and Britain, after all the European cousins were missing their Southern grown cotton. Lincoln was willing to go to war with England. Think about the implications of that. He was determined to keep those rebel diplomats locked up. Seward convinced Lincoln otherwise. It was not as simple as convincing the President. He also needed to convince the constituency. He drafted some articles with the intent of changing the mind of the public. These were successful, and instead of looking soft the administration ended up looking magnanimus. Potential boos became applause. Here is a handkerchief for your sweaty brow, Mr. Seward. Cuba is one of the many strange parallels between the Lincoln and Kennedy administrations. In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis happened almost exactly a hundred years after the Trent Affair. Since the Bay of Pigs disaster of 1961 was the direct cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis, one could say these potentially catastrophic events happened exactly a hundred years apart. Seward proved to be loyal. He was one of the few cabinet members who did not conspire against Lincoln. In fact, Seward staunchly defended him at every turn and admired him immensely. When Seward was laid up from a carriage accident, Lincoln came to visit. He took off his hat and stretched out his long frame on the bed next to Seward and caught his Secretary of State up on all he’d missed since being laid up. That scene to me validates the closeness of these two men more than anything else I’ve ever heard. This was the same bed that Seward was dozing in when Lewis Powell tried to kill him on April 14th, 1865. ”Seward later recalled that the blade was cold, and then there was what seemed like a rainfall--a rainfall of his own blood.” They didn’t tell Seward right away that Lincoln was dead, fearing that the shock would hinder his recovery, but Seward knew. As he said to an attendant, “If he had been alive he would have been the first to call on me; but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am.” 1865 was a bad year for many people in the United States, but certainly Seward qualifies for being one of those most affected. ”Seward was tested in 1865 as few men are ever tested: by the carriage accident, by the attack of the assassin, by the near death of his son Frederick, by the death of his good friend and leader Lincoln, and the death of his wife Frances.” [image] The Scars of the Powell attack are evident in the changed geography of his Seward’s face. I don’t know exactly why Seward, once healthy enough to leave his bed, returned to work and even stayed to help President Andrew Johnson, except that he still felt the need to serve his country. He was instrumental in buying Alaska from, our good allies at the time, the Russians. He was ridiculed by opponents and friends for buying “worthless land.” He had even more ambitions to extend the borders of the United States, and in one such attempt almost swung a deal to bring British Columbia into the United States. After he retired from public office, he travelled extensively in the United States and around the world despite having health issues, including moments of paralysis of his hands that stemmed from the attack in 1865. ”In sum, although Seward was far from perfect, his talents and accomplishments more than entitle him to be called a statesman. Indeed, other than presidents, Seward was the foremost American statesman of the nineteenth century.” American Heritage considers him one of the ten best Secretaries of States to ever serve our government. Click to see the ten best Secretaries of State He is second only to John Quincy Adams. Walter Stahr has written a compelling biography about one of those oh so important men who stand in the shadows of other men, and yet, whose presence changed history. At times I felt like I was in Lincoln’s cabinet, sitting behind Seward, looking over his shoulder as he proofed legislation that would forever alter the destiny of the United States. See more of my writing on my blog. http://www.jeffreykeeten.com. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 14, 2015
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May 2015
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Apr 14, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 0609602357
| 9780609602355
| 0609602357
| 3.48
| 541
| 1999
| Apr 20, 1999
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really liked it
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”It was the War. The interests of money and the will of our Commander decreed it. Battle for the rights of the industrialists, battle for the rights o
”It was the War. The interests of money and the will of our Commander decreed it. Battle for the rights of the industrialists, battle for the rights of the agriculturists, battle on behalf of bullyrag Abe, who saw himself, I insist, as the issue: my will, my national entity, my idea of indivisibility. Crush the farmboys and the desperate Negroes into one another with a thunderclap. And see to it--be sure!--one William Bartholomew receives the national hoofprint in his head. I’m a coin imprinted with Abe’s earnestness.” [image] The Sharpshooter by Winslow Homer on display at the Portland Museum of Art. Billy implies that he was the model for this painting. I would say that William Bartholomew had just cause in being bitter, but when we weigh the cosmic scales of justice there is generally always a few ingots of information that we may not choose to put on the scale for fear that it will determine a different outcome contrary to our feelings. It is rare that a finger is not on the scale even by those that are duly elected to judge the rest of us. For those of us not wearing robes we may allow emotion to override the details, but then who among us has the right to judge Billy Bartholomew. He was sanctioned in what he did. He was a killer for Abe. ”The colonel was a girlish-looking young man in a creased but clean-looking uniform, and he had long, fine fingers with which he tapped on the air, as if working out the proper phrase, or, for all I knew, the rhyme scheme of a poem. I put a bullet into the side of his head, which appeared to disintegrate as he went over, hands and elbows loose in the air, a cloud of sprayed blood remaining behind an instant where he had been. The ink spilled, and the pen hung in the air although the writer was gone while the shot still echoed.” Billy was a sharpshooter. A man lauded and reviled in the same breath. Every man in that war had the opportunity to become a killer. Some fired their weapons high on purpose. Some thought God was guiding their bullets. Some believed it was just a damn dirty job that had to be done. Some didn’t know they liked killing until the war introduced them to the Devil. Some killed themselves rather than jeopardize their souls in taking the life of another. Some men reveled in finally being able to embrace their baser natures. Billy was a killer long before he joined the Union army. His Uncle took it upon himself to see to his brother’s family after Billy’s Dad died. He was reasonably wealthy so the family was not a burden to him. He was a businessman and didn’t see the sense in giving money without something in return. He was very clear in his demands. It was either his brother’s wife or his brother’s son, it didn’t matter which, but one of them was going to have to service his carnal appetite. It wasn’t so much that Billy killed him, but how he killed him. Which brings us back to his decision to be a sharpshooter. There is a darkness in him. He wasn’t up in those trees shooting men for Abe. He was up in those trees shooting men because he was good at it. He liked it. Sure, he had doubts. He wasn’t a total psychopath, but maybe it had more to do with the fact that he could hear the hoof beats of retribution. Abe wasn’t going to be there when that horseman arrived. Billy was going to have to face it on his own. [image] Abe carried the burden of what he asked you to do Billy. His face shows the blemishes of war. ”My head burned from within, like one of the ruined manorial houses, all roasted black shell and sullen embers, which I had seen before the hunters took me down.” It was an unlucky shot. It was a bullet from a mirror, his counterpart on the other side. It was a bullet meant to kill him, but it exploded the magazine of his rifle, sending shrapnel and liquid fire into his face. He begged them to kill him, but a debt is a debt and Billy hadn’t paid all of his yet. He wears a mask. His face is a horror show too damaged to repair. He moves to New York, the city of commerce. He starts making money. He places investments for himself and others. He meets Jessie a prostitute who lifts his mask and kisses the rigid scars of his battlefield face. ”I wondered who had passed down eyes of such coloration if her mother was African or Polynesian, and her father a slave. There was a white man in the woodpile, I thought. I thought, too, of the loveliness of her face, the strength of her long throat, the savagery in her tattoos. She was a letter I had read with my fingers, like a man long blind who at last has a message he was years before intended to receive.” Jessie has plans for Billy. Everyone craves affection. A monster needs it more than most. The tattered remnants of his soul are hers for the taking. [image] Herman Melville Bartholomew meets the writer of The Whale. A man ignored by readers. A man now besot with drink. A man who instead of devoting his time to scribbling is working for the government as a Custom Inspector on the docks of New York. Frederick Busch does an excellent job bringing Melville to life. For those that are big fans of Melville this will be the next best thing to meeting him. You may not greet him at his best, but you will certainly be left with a view of him that rings true. To help Jessie Billy Bartholomew knows he needs Melville. He takes him on a tour of the seamier side of town. A look through a peephole in a bordello lends weight to Billy’s request of Melville. It also leaves everyone in the party feeling dirty. ”I showed you a look at bad behavior and sorrow. Like it was minstrels kicking and strumming just for you.” They paid to look through the peephole to give them distance from these disgusting liberties being taken, but by being an observer without action they became part of the problem. [image] There is ugliness in this novel beyond the disfigured grotesqueness of Billy’s shattered face. With poverty rampant in 1867 and so many more widowed women and orphaned children from the war vulnerable to the desires and profits of the strong, it wasn’t only the South suffering through darkest days. Busch doesn’t shy away from the grit, the stench, and the ruthlessness of this time period. In fact, he pushes the reader up to the peephole and whispers in your ear…”what are you going to do about it?” ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 27, 2015
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Feb 28, 2015
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Feb 27, 2015
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1451673280
| 9781451673289
| 1451673280
| 4.26
| 7,839
| May 20, 2014
| Sep 30, 2014
|
it was amazing
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”He wore a tattered, faded, and mud-flecked uniform whose shoulders had been bleached yellow by the sun, large artillery boots, and a soiled cap pulle
”He wore a tattered, faded, and mud-flecked uniform whose shoulders had been bleached yellow by the sun, large artillery boots, and a soiled cap pulled down across the bridge of his nose so that much of his face was obscured. His hair was long and his beard unkempt. He was what most of the thousands of people who saw him and later recorded their observations might have called nondescript.” [image] Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was one of those men that blossomed because of war. Jackson had always been a strange bird. A man difficult to hold a conversation with. A man so rigid in self-discipline that he proved at times impossible to like. He was orphaned early in life and book learning was never easy for him. This self imposed discipline was without a doubt one of the reasons he was able to overcome his disadvantages and survive a strict course of study at West Point. He graduated in the class of 1846 which just happened to be the same class as the celebrated Union general George B. McClellan. ”a class that eventually produced more generals----twenty-two, twelve Union and ten Confederate, including two lieutenant generals and fourteen major generals---than any West Point class in history.” It reminds me of a show I watched on the great Robber Barons of American history. They were all born within a few years of each other, basically, they were born at the right time to take advantage of a huge opportunity in advancing technology. The same could be said for the West Point class of 1846. They were born at the right time to be at the proper point in their careers to take the best advantage of the fast promotions available during war time. [image] George B. McClellan, please do not scuff his boot or tarnish a button on his splendid jacket. McClellan always dressed like an exquisitely designed toy soldier, too polished to be a man at war. Jackson dressed more like a man down on his luck than a celebrated Confederate General. McClellan drilled his soldiers to perfection and spent more time preparing for war than actually fighting the war. Jackson on the other hand with his ragged army, many without shoes, didn’t spend much time on drilling, but was always spoiling for the next fight. McClellan was looking to the future with a Presidential run as his ultimate prize. He thought he could be the one to reunite the Union and didn’t want to bloody his hands more than necessary in suppressing the very people he felt would support him over that “ape” (the term of “endearment” that McClellan used when discussing the President) Abraham Lincoln. Jackson never gave politics much of a thought. He was intent on winning the war with bullets and blood not through speeches or negotiations. [image] Lincoln trying to entice McClellan into battle. There is certainly a difference in the mentality of the North and the South regarding the war. Jackson had a controversial view of the war. ”He proceeded to lay out for the amazed Smith a full-blown plan to lay waste to the North, its armies, its industries, and its cities that would see Philadelphia in flames and Confederate armies camped on the shores of the Great Lakes.” He believed in total war. The North at the beginning of the war had no such thoughts. They really just wanted to win enough battles to force the South to the negotiation table. It was easy to see the way the Union Generals made decisions and even the way the troops responded to the conflict that the North didn’t really want to fight. The Confederacy felt different about the war from the very beginning. ”The people of the Confederacy had fully expected a splendid victory. They had been quite certain that a Southern boy could whip several times his weight in cowardly Yankees, and they had been proven right. They had believed that, faced with Confederate resolve and Confederate gumption, the Federals would turn and run like scalded dogs, and the Northern boys had given them the truly immense satisfaction of doing precisely that.” When you read the rhetoric coming out of the South, they were looking forward to killing Yankees. They had resentments against the North that the North didn’t reciprocate. The typical Yankee soldier didn’t hate the Rebels, but the typical Confederate soldier felt a lot of animosity towards the North. The Confederate soldiers as a group were a lot more motivated and thus more supportive of the war than the Union soldiers. As the war progressed and people in the North were being personally affected by the war this changed the perceptions towards the war and towards the South. President Abraham Lincoln also found a General in Grant who was willing to embrace the Jackson concept of total war. Where the typical Union soldier saw the war as a necessary evil, the typical Southern soldier saw it more as a glorious quest. ”What the Confederacy had desperately needed, in a war it was obviously losing, was a myth of invincibility, proof of their notions of the glorious, godly, embattled, chivalric Southern character were not just romantic dreams. Proof that with inferior resources it could still win the war. Jackson, in his brilliant, underdog valley campaign, had finally given it to them.” Jackson was a truly a gifted tactician. He moved whole armies as if they were ghost soldiers. They disappeared into the mist and reappeared where they couldn’t possibly be. He possessed, like his commanding officer Robert E. Lee, the ability to assess his opponents strengths and weakness well beyond just the man power and artillery available, but also down to the decisions their opponent was most likely to make during battle. They could be bold while the Union General on the other side typically...hesitates. A Union General just knowing that Thomas Jackson commanded the Confederate troops in front of him would automatically be more likely to think defensively than offensively. Jackson with his stream of victories was as famous and as lauded in the North as he was in the South. Yankee prisoners would cheer him when he passed by. The Richmond Whig summed up how important Jackson was proving to be to the Southern cause. ”The central figure of the war is, beyond question, that of Robert E. Lee. His the calm, broad military intellect that reduced the chaos after Donelson to form and order. But Jackson is the motive power that executes, with the rapidity of lightning, all that Lee can plan. Lee is the exponent of Southern power of command; Jackson, the expression of its faith in God and in itself, its terrible energy, its enthusiasm and daring, its unconquerable will, its contempt of danger and fatigue.” Jackson typically put himself in the thick of things. Something that his troops loved, but his general staff hated. He was reckless with his life believing that God would spare him or take him whether he was in the middle of a beehive of bullets or safely observing from a far hill. What made him so valuable to Lee was that he understood his orders well beyond what was discussed with Lee. He could anticipate changes in strategy the exact same way that Lee would. A subordinate like this is not only unusual, but invaluable. Lee and Jackson were very different men in upbringing and in their ability to communicate, but when it came to looking at a battlefield they were peering at it, seemingly, with the same eyes. [image] Jackson rarely got enough sleep which sometimes slowed his thinking processes. When this happened his staff who were used to lightning fast, well thought out decisions, were sometimes compromised because Jackson rarely shared his battle plans. Jackson was vindictive and rigid when it comes to enforcing military policy. Over the span of his career, even well before the Civil War, he brought many officers up on charges, some not provable. He even accused a commanding officer of immoral conduct. During the war that harshness was still part of his personality. He wanted to shoot all deserters, but resisted only because he knew the public sentiment would not stand for it. What was irritating to me was at times he disciplined fellow officers or removed them from command for breaking rules that he himself had broken. He obviously saw himself above the law, but felt that everyone else must comply or face harsh consequences. Jackson was willing to sacrifice his men, sometimes ruthlessly. The more impossible the requests he made of his men, the more they loved him. The Northern Generals never had the luxury of such devoted soldiers that were willing to follow their commanders to the gates of hell. Some of that was a lack of dynamic, forceful leadership that was so prevalent among the Confederate armies, but some of it was also a reluctance to destroy people who they still considered to be fellow Americans. Lee certainly missed Jackson at Gettysburg. If Jackson had been there maybe that battle would have turned out differently and the tide of the war would not have changed so dramatically at that specific moment in time. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war, but he certainly might have helped to prolong it. [image] Stone Mountain Memorial to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Jackson. Like a hero of mythology Jackson does not have to taste defeat. He is shot by his own men near the end of the Battle of Chancellorsville when he and his staff were mistaken for Union cavalry. His arm is amputated and there is hope that he will recover, but he succumbs to pneumonia a little over a week after he is wounded. S. C. Gwynne brings Jackson out of the mists of history and presents what made him such an effective leader. He reveals the thorns of his personality along with the brilliance of his tactical mind. Jackson saw the future of how to win the war long before either side was willing to admit the amount of butchery and the destruction of assets that would be required to finally reunite the country and end the war. How fascinating (and bloody) would it have been to have had two like minded warriors such as Grant and Jackson to meet in battle? I also recently read and reviewed the new book by Michael Korda on Robert E. Lee. Clouds of Glory If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 18, 2014
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Nov 13, 2014
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Sep 12, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 1565125215
| 9781565125216
| 1565125215
| 3.82
| 1,931
| Jan 01, 2007
| Apr 10, 2007
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it was amazing
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”He let float in the dark air his free hand and then raised it up and reached to the sky where his fingers enfolded a flickering red star. The star wa
”He let float in the dark air his free hand and then raised it up and reached to the sky where his fingers enfolded a flickering red star. The star was warm in his hand and beat with the pulse of a frog or a songbird held in your palm. He caressed the star and let it ride in his palm and then he carried the star to his mouth where it tasted liked sugar before he swallowed it.” Robey Childs’s mother had a dream that Stonewall Jackson had died. In her mind, if Jackson was dead, then the war was over. It was time for her husband to come home. She decides that the only course of action is for her fourteen year old son to go find his father and bring him back to the farm. It is a herculean task for a grown man, but for a fourteen year old boy it has the makings of a suicide mission. Like Joseph, she makes him a coat of many colors...well...two colors. One side is butternut gray and the other is Union blue. Her intentions were the best and there is a natural logic that she has made her son safer with the ability to blend with one side or the other. Or they could think he was a spy. Old Man Morphew runs the local mercantile establishment and when Robey wandered into town barely beginning his quest and already exhausted and hungry he offers him food, advice, a pair of pistols, and most importantly the use of...the Coal Black Horse. It is the type of horse, standing 16 hands, with a fire in his eye and quivering raw energy that makes a man out of a mouse...if he can stay on him. A horse like that might increase a boy’s chances from none to slim. Robey has to learn fast and lessons are handed out with hard falls and pride knuckling helplessness. He meets a man dressed as a woman, a preacher with the devil riding both his shoulders, and two scavengers that snip dead soldiers fingers for their rings and pry gold teeth from their mouths. He experiences the kindness of a pregnant woman burying soldiers as best she can, a Union Major who has the wherewithal to understand he isn’t a spy, and most importantly he meets a waif of a girl named Rachel. Every time he has something go wrong he has just enough go right to keep himself afloat. He has more than a passing acquaintance with hunger. ”When the coffee was boiled he poured half a cup into the drippings and could not wait, but was so hungry he burned his fingers and mouth. He slid the cake off the hoe into the gravy and ate the slurry with his fingers. He scraped the sides and the rapidly cooling bottom of the pan with the backs of his fingers and licked them clean and wiped at his mouth and then licked the back of his hand and then it was over. He knew enough to know he’d eaten like a ravenous dog and how disapproving his mother would be if she had witnessed such and how nice it would be to someday again not eat like that.” The war finds him and etches scenes into the fabric of his memories that will scar and harden a young boy into an old man. ”War had even been made upon the cemetery and in places the ground looked as if plowed. The tombstones were broken into fragments and graves had been turned up by plunging shells. The monuments had been toppled to provide cover for a time and so they were pocked and scarred by the scrape of bullets. The bodies slumped behind the stones had absorbed the bullets made of pure, hollow, soft lead, arriving to kill at a thousand yards, fracturing and shattering bones, blasting tissue, and causing large gaping wounds that draped like cut mouths in the sun.” Violence is a live thing like a virus that infects all who come near it. It leaves maggots in the hearts of the pure, crushes the weak, and makes the strong feeble. ”How to explain the way violence needs violence? Is that the explanation itself? Violence demands violence. This was not the pagan retribution: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This was the law before there was law. This was vengeance and a rebellion to law. How to explain the failure to understand this and the failure to not understand there are things that cannot be understood?” He does find his father. ”Their lives were in balance and asking and considering this question they were stepping back from fear and hopelessness and emerging into prospect. They were a teaching father and a learning son, timeless in their existence, the father born into the son as is the grandfather and the father before him and all the way back to the first. The father’s life is foreclosed and the son’s life is continuing and as always, only the unknown privileging one state of being over the other.” I read somewhere a long time ago that there are theories that all the experiences of all our ancestors are coded into our DNA. We carry not only their genes, but their lives in our bodies. When we reproduce we are not only preserving our own existence, but the existence of all our ancestors going back to the very beginning. I believe this to be true. This is a story of courage, of a boy who goes on a quest not because he wants to or that he expects to find glory or fame, but because his mamma asks him to. When we weigh and measure Robey, stacking up his assets and his deficits, he comes up short of even that $4.50 that supposedly the elements of the human bodies are worth. His character, though, is worth a million dollars and change. I’d ride the river with him whenever he needed me. Highly Recommended!! If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 19, 2014
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Jul 19, 2014
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Jul 19, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0345348109
| 9780345348104
| 0345348109
| 4.33
| 87,022
| 1974
| Aug 12, 1987
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it was amazing
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”This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or
”This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. I don’t … this hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. We’re an army going out to set other men free.” Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain [image] The position of all the troops on July 3rd, 1863. The last day of battle. You can see the famous fishhook deployment of the Union troops in blue. I hadn’t really thought about how unusual it is in the history of the world for men to be fighting for the freedom of others. It was one of many times while reading this book that Michael Shaara crystallized some thoughts for me. I love those moments when I read something, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that another tumbler has clicked into place. With every click I have come one step closer to understanding everything. ( a mad thought that doesn’t last long) So the North was preserving the Union and freeing the slaves, but what exactly where the boys in butternut fighting for. ”They kept on insistin’ they wasn’t fightin’ for no slaves, they were fightin’ for their ‘rats.’ It finally dawned on me that what the feller meant was their ‘rights,’ only, the way they talk, it came out ‘rats.’... Then after that I asked this fella what rights he had that we were offendin’, and he said, well, he didn’t know, but he must have some rights he didn’t know nothin’ about. Now, aint that something?” 33% of Southerners owned slaves. Mississippi and South Carolina had much higher percentages at 49% and 46%. So why did all those Southern boys rich and poor fight for the ‘rats to keep slaves? Most Southern Americans, as do most Americans today, had an expectation that they would be rich someday, the eternal optimists. Those poor white sharecropper farmers aspired to be slave owners. It is the same reason why I hear people who live below the poverty line saying they didn’t believe it was ‘rat that the government was taxing the one percenters more than the rest of us. It doesn’t make sense, but then they...might...just win the lottery...someday. [image] General Robert E. Lee on Traveller. Lee said, “Well, we have left nothing undone. It is all in the hands of God.” Longstreet thought : it isn’t God that is sending those men up that hill. But he said nothing. Lee rode away. This book is centered around the three days of the battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Robert E. Lee, overall commander of the Confederate army and GOD to many, is trying to make a final thrust North to force the Union to seek terms. His men loved him unconditionally. ”The secret of General Lee is that men love him and follow him with faith in him. That’s one secret. The next secret is that General Lee makes a decision and he moves, with guts, and he’s been up against a lot of sickly generals who don’t know how to make decisions, although some of them have guts but whose men don’t love them.” He is a different man than he was at the start of the war. Some would say he is a brilliant tactician, but if you walk the grounds of the battle of Gettysburg which I have not had that opportunity physically, you will discover that Lee gave his generals an impossible task. The battle smells of desperation. Shaara makes the case that Lee was already suffering from the heart condition that would eventually kill him. ”But it was not the pain that troubled him; it was a sick gray emptiness he knew too well, that sense of a hole clear through him like the blasted vacancy in the air behind a shell burst, an enormous emptiness.” [image] General James Longstreet loyal despite his fervent disagreements with Lee on tactics. Lee was feeling weak and mortal at Gettysburg. He wanted the war ended now. It certainly clouded his judgement. He was a man of faith and honor. In Pennsylvania he put too much faith in God finding his cause righteous and he depending too heavily on the honor of his troops to make it to that grove of trees at the top of the hill. He had a brilliant commander in Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Longstreet argued to slide around the enemy and to fight another day. If truth be known he disagreed with this whole thrusting North business. He wanted to build trenches and fight a defensive war. You don’t win glorious honorable battles fighting a defensive war and Lee was addicted to winning battles. There is a whiff of Shakespearean tragedy around Longstreet. ”It was Longstreet’s curse to see the thing clearly. He was a brilliant man who was slow in speech and slow to move and silent-faced as stone. He had not the power to convince.” He was a strong, commanding figure until he got around Lee. ”Longstreet felt an extraordinary confusion. He had a moment without confidence, windblown and blasted, vacant as an exploded shell. There was a grandness in Lee that shadowed him, silenced him.” He was an eccentric as well. He was living more in his mind than in his body. ”Longstreet touched his cap, came heavily down from the horse. He was taller than Lee, head like a boulder, full-bearded, long-haired, always a bit sloppy, gloomy, shocked his staff by going into battle once wearing carpet slippers.” Lee counted on him, but unfortunately he would have traded Longstreet for Stonewall Jackson every day of the week and twice on Sunday. [image] General John Buford died a few months after Gettysburg from Typhoid Fever. He was a huge loss to the Union side. Shaara also takes us into the minds of Union men like General John Buford who arrived at Gettysburg and realized the importance of deploying troops on the high ground against a superior Confederate force. He knew he had to hold out until reinforcements arrived. He’d done this before. ”He had thrown away the book of cavalry doctrine and they loved him for it. At Thoroughfare Gap he had held against Longstreet, 3,000 men against 25,000, for six hours, sending off appeal after appeal for help which never came.” What impressed me about Buford was his ability to think out of the box and adapt to any situation. Unfortunately for the Union he didn’t have long to live or his name may have been further immortalized in Civil War history books. [image] General John Bell Hood There was also Colonel Joshua Chamberlain who commanded the 20th Maine. He was a school teacher by trade, a professor at Bowdoin before the war broke out. He and the Maine troops were positioned at the far left of the Federal line. He was on Little Round Top facing the seasoned veteran General John B. Hood. Hood was a Longstreet man and firmly believed in the concept of a defensive war. Despite their objections to Lee’s tactics Hood and Longstreet did everything they could to obtain the objectives. [image] The 20th Maine’s bayonet charge. Chamberlain’s men fired until they ran out of bullets and then Chamberlain in an act of desperation yelled: ”Let’s fix bayonets.” Chamberlain and his remaining men charged down the hill in the face of enemy fire and because of the ferocity of their attack Hood’s men turned and retreated. There are descriptions of battles so elegantly told that the horror is somewhat mitigated by the eloquence of Shaara’s writing. Bravery is not just for Custeresque men like General Winfield Scott Hancock who inspired such loyalty from his acquaintances, even those dressed in gray, such as his best friend General Lewis Armistead. Shaara describes the true crisis of consciousness these officers were facing. Most of them had fought together in the Mexican-American war, went to West Point together, drank together, and had been united as one before this war where politics forced them to choose sides against the friends they had once fought with. ”They’re never quite the enemy, those boys in blue.” “I know,” Lee said. “I used to command those boys,” Longstreet said. “Difficult thing to fight men you used to command.” Lee said nothing.” By the end of this book I felt I knew all these men as intimately as I know friends I’ve known for decades. It is as if Shaara raised them from the dead, one by one. They are talking skeletons with nothing but truth rattling through their teeth. Their souls are showing through their pale gray ribcages enscrolled with their most intimate thoughts. They hid nothing from Shaara not their fears or their desires. The war has never been more real to me. Highly recommended! If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visithttp://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 16, 2014
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May 18, 2014
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May 18, 2014
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Mass Market Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 4.16
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it was amazing
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Apr 03, 2024
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Mar 24, 2024
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| 3.87
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it was amazing
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Mar 19, 2024
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Mar 18, 2024
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| 3.99
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it was amazing
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Dec 15, 2023
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Dec 14, 2023
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| 4.46
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it was amazing
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Jan 10, 2023
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Nov 09, 2022
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| 4.72
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it was amazing
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Feb 28, 2022
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Feb 25, 2022
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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May 06, 2021
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Apr 20, 2021
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| 4.38
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it was amazing
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Jul 19, 2019
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Jun 24, 2019
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| 4.22
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it was amazing
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Nov 10, 2018
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Oct 16, 2018
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| 4.03
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really liked it
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Oct 16, 2018
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Oct 07, 2018
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Sep 30, 2018
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Sep 29, 2018
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Jul 29, 2017
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Jul 17, 2017
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| 4.02
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it was amazing
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Mar 17, 2017
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Mar 17, 2017
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| 4.21
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it was amazing
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Jan 29, 2017
not set
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Dec 05, 2016
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| 3.54
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really liked it
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not set
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Jun 28, 2016
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| 4.16
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it was amazing
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Jan 10, 2016
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Dec 31, 2015
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| 4.10
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really liked it
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May 2015
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Apr 14, 2015
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| 3.48
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really liked it
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Feb 28, 2015
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Feb 27, 2015
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| 4.26
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it was amazing
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Nov 13, 2014
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Sep 12, 2014
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| 3.82
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it was amazing
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Jul 19, 2014
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Jul 19, 2014
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| 4.33
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it was amazing
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May 18, 2014
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May 18, 2014
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