Book Description
The battle of Shiloh, fought in April 1862 in the wilderness of south central Tennessee, marked a savage turning point in the Civil War. In this masterful book, Larry Daniel re-creates the drama and the horror of the battle and discusses in authoritative detail the political and military policies that led to Shiloh, the personalities of those who formulated and executed the battle plans, the fateful misjudgments made on both sides, and the heroism of the small-unit leaders and ordinary soldiers who manned the battlefield.
Customer Reviews:
You might be a redneck if..........2007-09-10
You thought this book was an accurate history of Shiloh.
This history of the Battle of Shiloh ignores the battlefield roles played by Sherman and Grant, and concentrates on the decisions made by the Confederate generals. The title is Shiloh: The Battle That Changed The Civil War... yet the book ignores the ways in which this battle gave rise to the two leaders that eventually won the Civil War!
The result is a bit one-sided, in a strange way. For example, at one point the author mentions a meeting, at 10 AM on Day One, between Sherman and Grant. The topics of discussion are never mentioned. A hundred pages later, we learn that Grant has formed a line of last resistance on his left wing... in between, nothing of his actions. In fact, the book seldom makes mention of any tactical decisions made by Sherman or Grant.
As a result, the author's legitimate criticisms of Grant and Sherman, for their actions taken before the battle, remain unbalanced with any attention to the energy and decisiveness shown by both during the battle. The ability of the Union to hold on Day One, and to take the offensive on Day Two, lack any grounding in an understanding of the actions of these two leaders.
This clear avoidance of any discussion of any action by Grant or Sherman for the entire first day of the battle gives the author license to depict Grant and Sherman as the true causes of the near-disaster, without any redeemable moments, decisions, or qualities. This may be fair, but other historians have also traced the rise of these two men to their energies in overcoming the Confederate advantages and yielding a Union victory. The author leaves the reader without a full understanding of the battle.
The writing is a bit muddled, with place names and the names of combatants mushed around just enough to cause some confusion. The best parts of this book come from the author's research into earlier and later lives of the combatants. The concentration on Confederate actions does yield a stronger sense of their strategies than might be found in some other histories of Shiloh. In the end, however, the author misses what made this battle seminal... among all other results, Shiloh forged in fire the two quite fallible leaders, Grant and Sherman, who went on to win the war.
honest picture of Shiloh.......2007-08-13
The Battle of Shiloh was engaged in by both Union and Confederate amatures. It resulted in maturity for both sides. This is probably the best book on the battle to date. Rev. Daniels not only offers a well researched retelling of the battle and a reasoned evaluation of the strategy leading up to and following the battl, but a review that is amazingly free of hero worship. Some readers will find the book disquiting, some will thank the author for his work, but everyone interested in this battle and the war in general. Thanks to Larry Daniel.
Daniel does a good job examining Shiloh.......2006-11-26
I cannot find the reference in my memory, but I do recall a line in some work on the Civil War in which a veteran soldier says something like "I wasn't so bad scared since Shiloh." Shiloh was the first monster battle of the Civil War. Prior to this contestation, the major battles included First Manassas (or First Bull Run), Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge (or Elkhorn Tavern), and Forts Henry and Donelson. None was anything like Shiloh.
Larry Daniel's book is a detailed and very readable accounting of this battle. Quite useful are the maps included in the book. After the collapse of the Confederate line with Grant's victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, General Albert S. Johnston felt that he had to retreat. With General P. G. T. Beauregard, he contemplated an effort to recover the painful losses from the retreat. And thus, the movement toward Shiloh began.
After the capture of the Confederate forts, Grant moved to Pittsburg Landing, to await the arrival of General Don Carlos Buell's army. Together, they would move out to attack further south. In the meantime, the southern forces began a major effort to strengthen the units under Generals Beauregard and Johnston, including Braxton Bragg's forces. The "southern Napoleon," Beauregard developed an aggressive plan to surprise and attack Grant. Stunningly, Grant made himself an inviting target by not fortifying his position, an idea supported by his increasingly good friend William T. Sherman.
The southern army moved to the attack, with all sorts of mishaps in the process. The fact that the attack was still a surprise is an example of the oblivious northern army not paying attention to facts on the ground. Once the battle began, chaos ensured. The disposition of the Confederate Army was flawed; the Union army lost much ground. Johnston was killed; Beauregard took command of the southern forces. Many future officers of renown, such as Pat Cleburne, got their first major taste of battle and command here.
By the end of the day, the southerners were in reasonably good shape, but they could not drive Grant's force into the Tennessee River. Meanwhile, elements of Buell's Army arrived.
The next day, Grant, imperturbable even though he had almost lost the day, began a counterattack and ultimately drove Beauregard's army from the field. Both Union and Confederate leaders were stunned by the bloodiness and carnage associated with this battle. It was unlike anything that had gone before and foreshadowed the major bloodletting of later battles.
Grant's career was almost undone. However, as Daniel points out (page 311), ". . .Shiloh had been a tremendous strategic victory for the North. . . ." Few recognized that at the time, but it was so. This is a well written, well researched book that remains an outstanding rendering of the first titanic battle of the Civil War.
Confederate perspective: Nothing gained........2006-11-11
This battle of Shiloh, like other battles from the Confederate point of view, was a no gainer that only served to deplete southern manpower that
the south could not replace. This book clearly shows that the Confederacy
certainly had the will to fight in spite of the lack of resourses and was doomed to lose eventually. Clearly, "Shiloh: The battle that changed the
civil war" left no doubt that Confederate leadership failed to follow through with gains accomplished during the first days of battle, as this became a trait that the Confederacy would continue the rest of the war.
It took one hundred pages for the battle of Shiloh to begin, and got somewhat boring before the battle got under way, but made up for it the rest of the way. I found that the book was fairly well researched, and
factual. I used the book during a visit to the battlefield and found it very helpful.
Drawn out and hard to follow.......2006-08-03
This book was very dry and drawn out and I couln't wait to be finished. It was often hard to follow as the author added almost too much detail regarding units and commanders. It was hard to keep track of who was who and often found myself looking back to remember who someone was. Maps often did not correspond with what section it was placed in and were often confusing. Also many editing errors. For example, spelling a name differently at the end of a paragraph than at the beginning. The Book is subtitled "The Battle That Changed the Civil War," but only goes into this in the last two pages! If only Stephen Sears would write a battle history of Shiloh!
Customer Reviews:
Worth to read several times.......2007-01-24
Noth's study is worth to read several times. It has been translated from German and has also been revised by Noth himself. While reading through, you will get to know more about the tools that were available to the early Islamic Historians in their workshop. As a rare endeavour, Noth lays out the the prevalent themes, topoi and schemata frequently used in the early Islamic historical writing.
deciphering early islamic texts.......2004-08-30
This translated and much expand edition of Albrecht Noth's Quellenkritische Studien serves a great how-to book for deciphering the literary themes, forms, topoi and schemata organizing the vast materials the comprise most of the principle sources currently available for the historian of early Islamic history. Noth's work maintains its value because it is able to take one past the basic textual appreciation that the histories of Islam tend to come in the form of khabars consisting of matns and isnaads to get under the hood of how histories and narratives were effectively created in the stylized forms that we now have. None of this is as dull as it may seems insofar as it goes a long way to provide the historian with tools for separating the wheat from the chaff in these ancient narrative. Of course, Noth does not solve all of the problems presented to us by the sources, but he does give us some useful tools that rigorous and much less mystifying that the notorious `sixth-sense' that Islamicists tend to evoke when commenting on the historicity of any series of details on a historical event.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Journal of the American Oriental Society, published by American Oriental Society on January 1, 1998. The length of the article is 3884 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source Critical Study. (book reviews)
Author: Tayeb El-Hibri
Publication:
The Journal of the American Oriental Society (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1998
Publisher: American Oriental Society
Volume: v118
Issue: n1
Page: p114(5)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
California boasts one of the richest assemblages of native plant species in the world, and among the state's most beautiful flowering plants are its monocotyledons--a large and varied group including lilies, irises, grasses, orchids, agaves, and even palms. Wild Lilies, Irises, and Grasses, created under the auspices of the California Native Plant Society, tells how to grow California monocots in the garden. Beautifully illustrated with color photographs and line drawings, the book contains valuable information on exactly which species are best adapted to garden conditions, how to grow them, and where to obtain them from nurseries and mail-order suppliers. Gardeners can be highly successful with many of California's most exquisite native monocots, and propagating these native plants helps ensure their long-term preservation.
Each chapter includes introductory information for gardeners and tips on garden cultivation and propagation, while individual plant descriptions provide greater detail on each species, including its distribution and habitat in the wild, cultural preferences and tolerances in the garden, and features that distinguish the plant from similar species. With its valuable combination of horticultural and botanical information, this book is the perfect introduction to California's monocots. It will inspire gardeners as well as landscape designers, city planners, and others to consider these lovely native species when designing, planting, and approving plans for landscapes in California.
Customer Reviews:
A New Classic For California Native Plant Enthusiasts.......2004-04-28
Over a period of almost 20 years, I've read every new and old book on gardening with California Native Plants. For about the last eight of those years, I've been waiting for someone to come out with a worthwhile new book on the subject. I think my waiting is over.
Gardening With California Monocots is a well-written guide to planting native orchids, irises, grasses and other monocots (plants that germinate with a single seed-leaf). The book explains not only where these plants occur in the wild, but also describes the conditions they require to succeed in your garden. The discussion on garden-worthy bunchgrasses is the most valuable and comprehensive I've ever seen. Even the gurus of california native plant authors, Marjorie Schmidt and Glenn Keator, have never covered the subject so thoroughly.
In addition, Gardening with California Monocots has something which most other books on the subject lack: stunning pen and ink drawings of the plants together with equally-beautiful color plates.
The book has one shortcoming. The authors don't go into enough detail about propogation of each specific plant. I wish the authors had provided specific information for the propogation of each plant discussed - explaining what time of year to gather seeds, take cuttings or make divisions, what medium to use to plant the seeds or cuttings, and how to pretreat the seeds, if necessary. I suspect the authors left this information out purposely to discourage readers from gathering seeds and cuttings from wild, often endangered, populations. Someday I'll find a book which provides all that information. In the meantime, however, Gardening With California Monocots is a must-read for native plant gardeners.
Average customer rating:
- INTRODUCTIONS
- This is the Science Anthology for you
- Of interest to anyone with an enquiring mind.
- A SUPERB GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE.
|
The Faber Book of Science
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
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Binding: Paperback
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Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
ASIN: 0571179010 |
Customer Reviews:
INTRODUCTIONS.......2004-04-30
This book is edited (with introduction) by John Carey, and that ought to trigger a few responses in people who have been around. Professor Carey is an all-purpose media intellectual, much in demand for elevated discussions of more or less anything. He was formerly Professor of English at Oxford, and here he is guiding us around `science'. I recall the answer of John W Campbell Jr when asked what was the place of science fiction in English literature. Campbell responded that science fiction is a genre taking in everything from the primal egg to the heat-death of the universe, so to try to place it within English literature is a bit of an odd question.
Carey clearly views this anthology as `literature' rather than as some kind of reference book. On the one hand he gave thought to the sequencing of the selections, and I may say I read the volume from cover to cover as sequenced. On the other hand one of his main criteria for inclusion is that the pieces that qualify should be well enough written for him to want to read them twice. This is where I start to have problems with his approach. Given the significance of most of the subject-matter, my own reason for wanting to read any given piece twice would be that I had not understood it the first time. I am only too grateful for the quality of readability, but when confronted with relativity or quantum theory or black holes or seismology or nuclear fusion or fractals or genetics I can only find a preoccupation with literary aspects to be the most despicable footling. That said, the literary quality is pretty good, as of course one would expect. This is obviously a book for amateurs not for professionals, and speaking as an amateur I felt helped to retain my fumbling but determined grasp on, say, particle physics as well as getting a genuinely better perception of, say, chaos theory and natural selection. Readers inclined to a religious outlook will probably not find much to bolster it here, and whether that represents some bias on the part of the editor or whether it is simply in the nature of the case I am unable to judge.
It's a clever production by a very clever editor, but I'm still suspicious of him because of his background. I have never really been convinced that reading books in one's own mother tongue amounts to a respectable academic subject. So far as I could tell, the way they got around this perception at Oxford was to make the subject artificially difficult, demanding a ludicrous amount of reading and assessing the products of their grisly ergastulum on their capacity to make clever-clever observations provided these stayed within the party line adopted by a fearsome and condescending thought-police. That anyone who had gone through this particular mill retained any literary sensibility whatsoever seems to me as good an argument for a benevolent deity as I have encountered. Professor Carey is clearly alive to this problem, but after my own struggles with establishing Greek and Latin texts, or with the subtleties of vowel-gradation in the Indo-European languages, I don't like being lumped in with his lot as an `arts' graduate, standing in the same relationship to the larger sciences as they do. There are sciences and sciences. The one I studied was a minor one, the contemplation of the structure of the cosmos is ultimately what it's all about. How good a grasp of it I shall ever get I don't know, but this book has not hindered that purpose for all the `literary' fooling that goes with it.
I see that Professor Carey has written a book called `The Intellectuals and the Masses'. I don't have the courage to read it, but I think I might have been able to invent the title if I had not been told of it. I wish him a long and productive life. It may be that we shall yet see some Faber Book of Introductions, edited (with introduction) by John Carey.
This is the Science Anthology for you.......2003-10-31
If you're interested in Science, but want to study some new topics, meet some new people, reading about their achievements in their own words or of their contemporaries, then this book cannot be surpassed.
Of interest to anyone with an enquiring mind........1997-09-12
I must confess it is over a year since I read this book but it has to be one of the best I've read in several years. Its ability to give an insight or recount an incident helps us look not only at the world in a new light, but also the people who brought about the advances.
The range of history and the range of topics is very wide and it should appeal to anyone with an enquiring mind, whether or not they have a science background. I would strongly recommend it and have already lent my copy to several people
A SUPERB GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE........1996-09-02
"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe," wrote Einstein, "is that it's comprehensible". Comprehensible to scientists, anyway -- most of the rest of us abandoned the scientific method back in high school, along with the periodic table and pickled frogs. Today the general reader needs the mediation of a thoughtful, lucid guide to make sense of it all. Luckily there are plenty of good science writers around , and even some scientists, who have a gift for communicating their stories with childlike wonder intact. These authors can not only make the universe comprehensible to us, but enchanting.
Good scientific prose is more than a minor literary genre; it's genuine magic realism. The Faber Book of Science has a cast of characters no less colourful than those from the pens of the Latin American fantasy-weavers: black holes and battling ants, quarks and quasars, and a man who mistook his wife for a hat.
"Like any anthology," editor and Oxford professor John Carey writes in the introduction, "it is meant to entertaining, intriguing, lendable-to-friends and good-to-read as well..." Readers need not worry about mental meltdowns. Carey spent five years reading "many books and articles, ostensibly for a popular readership, which start out intelligibly and fairly soon hit a quagmire of fuse-blowing technicalities, from which no non-scientist could emerge intact." These, along with the articles he felt he'd never read twice, were "instantly rejected."
The result is a guided tour through the best articles, essays, and memoirs of scientists and science writers, from the Renaissance on. The chapters are brief: Carey is following the toxin principle of anthologies -- a trace amount of a technical topic is a stimulant, anything more is deadly. The book begins with a few pages from Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical notebooks, and then we alight on Galileo's reflections, and just as quickly are into Anton Von Leeuwenhoek descriptions of the tiny "animalcules" discovered by microscope in a drop of water. Carey inserts biographical information and other asides throughout each chapter, breaking up the material and giving continuity to the journey. He's along as a guide, nudging the reader's interest and sharing in the discovery of the unexpected.
Some of the selections seem a little odd (Freud seems out of place here, as does Orville Wright). And why the inert gas of Isaac Asimov, at the expense of better storytellers of science -- Timothy Ferris, Dianne Ackermann, or Heinz Pagels? Still, The Faber Book of Science will have you digging in for weeks for the many little treasures within, particularly the selections from the past quarter-century. In Italo Calvino's The Gecko's Belly, the author constructs a meditation on a tiny creature that slowly moves from literary-scientific inquisitiveness into a Zenlike awe. And in an excerpt from Primo Levi's writings, we follow the progress of a carbon atom:
"It was caught high by the wind, flung down on the earth, lifted ten kilometers high. It was breathed in by a falcon, descending into its precipitous lungs, but did not penetrate it s thick bood and was expelled. It dissolved three times in the water of the sea, once in the waster of a cascading torrent, and again was expelled. It travelled with the wind for eight years: now high, now low, on the sea and among the clouds, over forests, deserts, and limitless expanses of ice; then it stumbled into capture and the organic adventure..."
Magic realism indeed!
John Updike has his famous "Cosmic Gall" here, a poem about subatomic particles called neutrinos. Every second, hundreds of billions of these neutrinos pass through each square inch of our bodies, coming from above during the day and from below at night, when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth.
Neutrinos, they are very small./
They have no charge and have no mass/
And do not interact at all./
The earth is just a silly ball/
To them, through which they simply pass,/
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall/
Or photons through a sheet of glass.... /
"Not many poets have written about atomic particles", Carey approvingly adds.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent new field guide
- Comprehensive & Beautifully Illustrated
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California Desert Flowers: An Introduction to Families, Genera, and Species (Phyllis M. Faber Books)
Sia Morhardt , and
J. Emil Morhardt
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Mojave Desert Wildflowers: A Field Guide to Wildflowers, Trees, and Shrubs of the Mojave Desert, Including the Mojave National Preserve, Death Valley National Park, and Joshua Tree National Park
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Introduction to California Desert Wildflowers (California Natural History Guides)
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The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California
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Sonoran Desert Wildflowers: A Field Guide to the Common Wildflowers of the Sonoran Desert, Including Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Saguaro National Park, Organ Pipe National Monument, Ironwood Forest National Monument, and the Sonoran Portion of Joshua Tree National Park
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Flowers and Shrubs of the Mojave Desert
ASIN: 0520240030 |
Book Description
This easy-to-use guide to the most visible families of California desert flowers includes family and genus keys, color photographs of nearly 300 species, and a wealth of diagrams. Created as a primer on identification to family and genus, California Desert Flowers takes readers to a new level of understanding and appreciation of wildflower relationships and their habitats and adaptations.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent new field guide.......2006-01-27
This field guide contains very useful keys, which is quite rare for a book of this type, with excellent illustrations and Family descriptions.
I own many field guides and botanical manuals and this is one of the best I have seen.
Comprehensive & Beautifully Illustrated.......2004-12-12
Beginner or advanced wildflower botanist, there is something for everyone in this new field guide for California desert wildflowers. Each chapter is introduced with a stunning photo, followed by wildflower species grouped by family, genera, and species, rather than approximate color of the flower. This format enables the user to familiarize themselves with the characteristics and similarities between related species, leading to a better understanding of wildflower diversity and habitat adaptations. The book is illustrated with excellent photos taken almost exclusively by the authors. In addition to close up photos of the flowers, there's often an image showing the entire plant. This is very handy for identification purposes. The text is enriched by tidbits of information regarding usages of the plant, unusual features, etc. For those who wish to own only one field guide about desert wildflowers, this well-researched book should be the one. For those of us with "field-guide-itis," no collection would be complete without this volume on the reference shelf or in a daypack.
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|
Airplane (Great Inventions)
Harold Faber
Manufacturer: Benchmark Books (NY)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0761418768 |
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|
Common Wetland Plants of Coastal California: A Field Guide for the Layman
Phyllis M. Faber
Manufacturer: Pickleweed Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0960789006 |
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Evolution, Time, Production and the Environment
Malte Michael Faber
Manufacturer: Springer
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0387526080 |
Book Description
This book is concerned with long run interactions between the economy and the environment. Evolution which involves the emergence of novelty is distinguished from evolution with no novelty. Three types of time irreversibility are developed to show how time has been treated in the natural sciences and in economics. Concepts of evolution, novelty, time structure and ignorance are synthesized to derive general conclusions for environmental policy. Neo-Austrian capital theory is employed to model economy-environmental interactions. The role and the importance of interdisciplinary work is stressed.
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The Faber Book of Food
Claire Clifton
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
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ASIN: 0571164676 |
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The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950
William Beinart
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0199261512 |
Book Description
This book is an innovative contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighbouring eastern Cape grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the middle of the nineteenth century. The Cape, like Australia, became a major exporter of wool. Vast numbers of sheep flooded its plains and rapidly transformed its fragile natural pastures. Cattle also remained vital for ox-wagon transport and internal markets. Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion, overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife protection as the central preoccupations of South African conservationists. The book traces debates about environmental degradation in successive eras of South African history. It offers a reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states. It expands the understanding of English-speaking South Africans and their role both as farmers and as protagonists of conservationist ideas. The book is also a contribution to the history of science, exploring the way in which new scientific knowledge shaped environmental understanding and formed a significant element in settler intellectual life. It paints an evocative picture of the post-conquest Karoo, analysing the impact of self-consciously progressive farmers and officials in their attempts to secure private property, curtail transhumance and kraaling, control animal diseases, enhance water supplies, eradicate jackals, destroy alien weeds such as the prickly pear, and combat drought. It concludes by analysing conservationist interventions in the African areas, and discussing evidence for a stabilization of environmental conditions over the longer term.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Historian, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 470 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment, 1770-1950.(Book Review)
Author: Louis W. Truschel
Publication:
The Historian (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 67
Issue: 1
Page: 100(1)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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