Tips and Fun Stuff Book & Movie Reviews
		Title	Submitter	Type	Length
	(click for info)	A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	428 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Granddaughter Josha read this book as a freshman at MSU and recommended it to grandpa. She was right as it is a most informative read. It presents the story of the non-WASP cultures that came to America, struggled and were absorbed (mostly) into our melting pot...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	A Distant Thunder: Michigan in the Civil War by Richard Bak	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	220 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   No Civil War battles were fought in Michigan but the intense anti-slavery/free labor movement here combined with the great offense taken of the attack on USA soldiers at Ft. Sumner in Charleston S.C. harbor rallied a state ambivalent at best about African-Americans to the stout defense of the Union. This is the story of the about 90,000 union soldiers from Michigan who fought and the 15,000 who died (5000 from battle and the rest from disease) in that conflict...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	A Field Guide to Michigan State History by Jan Leibovitz Alloy	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	252 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Presented in dictionary form A-Z with many pictures, this history offers paragraphs (more or less) about many of the people, places and events involved in Michigan History...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	A Shovel Of Stars: The Making of the American West 1800 to the Present by Ted Morgan	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	508 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The 13 American Colonies became states with the revolution and then Vermont, Tennessee and Kentucky were included in the USA to make 16. This book tells the tale of the other 34 states in their journey to statehood. The (Old) Northwest Territory (north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River) had territorial status under the NW Ordinance of 1787 and had provisions for sections to become territories when having 5,000 voters (white males over 21) and then states when they had 60,000 such voters...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	A Stronger Kinship - One (MI) Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith by Anna-Lisa Cox	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	212 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   “What if” after the Civil War, Americans would have been willing to transcend race and get on with living without racism in its significant business of life? Well, one small town in western Michigan did. In the 1860’s some freed slaves from N. Carolina and an abolitionist lumbering family from Maine settled Covert Township, MI just south of South Haven and 60 mi SW of Grand Rapids...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	A Wilderness So Immense - The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America by Jon Kukla	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	349 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This most readable history tells the background of the French, Spanish and USA governments as they moved to this mammoth real estate transaction. Jefferson had a problem as with the development of the Ohio Valley lands, settlers floated produce down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to market at Spanish owned New Orleans. Inconsistent and occasionally hostile administration by the Spanish made acquisition of a USA market outlet crucial. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War by Tom McNichol	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	186 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Beta or VHS? What gauge railroad tracks? AM or FM? Well the first standards battle was over whether alternating or direct current would be used to power electrical appliances and Edison was out there first with direct current and a huge reputation. But, alternating current was able to be transformed to higher voltages for efficient distant transmission, and the battle was on...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	African-Americans in Michigan by Lewis Walker, Benjamin Wilson and Linwood Cousins	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	47 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This little book is part of the Discovering the Peoples of Michigan series by the MSU Press. The first 2/3rds is historical material with reference starting with the African-Americans owned by wealthy Detroiters in the early days of Michigan Territory...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Amazing Grace (2006) by Eric Metazas Screen Play by Steven Knight	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Biography	111 mins
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   William Wilberforce was born in 1759 and lived till 1833 and this movie is basically a biography of his adult life till 1807. It is not the story of the slave trade or even the abolishment of the slave trade although it underlay the screenplay and was a central part of Wilberforce’s life...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Amazing Grace – William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metazas	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	277 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The companion book (see Amazing Grace - Movie) covers all of Wilberforce’s life and more of the associates in the struggle to end the slave trade...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Ambitious Brew : The Story of American Beer by Maureen Ogle	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	342 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Yes…my homebrewer phase of life has gone the way of too many calories and too few beer drinkers in my social circle. For me, this book fills in the larger story of American beer industry and its pioneers, the industrial giants, the Prohibition era, the 1950’s era of home consumption and TV advertising and finally the home brewers like me and the new craft brewers...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	America Afire - Jefferson , Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800" by Bernard A Weisberger	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	310 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   At a time when the USA is trying to birth democracy in Iraq, it is most interesting to read of the birth process we had in the USA. In 1788 the monumental figure of Geo. Washington provided us a godlike figure to ralley around as the new constitution was put into place, but everything had to be invented, and there was a huge regional split between the NE states and the rest about how and what should be done....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		American Family Paper Dolls – From The Pilgrim Period To The Civil War by Tom Tierney	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Cutout paper dolls in their undergarments are presented for four periods of American history: Pilgrims, Colonial, Federal and Civil War. Then various costumes that can be cut out, are presented that can be used to dress the figures in their costumes for work as well as more formal situations. The purpose is to study dress styles over the different period. An appendix contains the written descriptions of costumes. Yes, in my dotage I play/look at paper dolls. I portray my Irish born gt-gt-gt grandfather Andrew Booth in costume as an 1830’s farmer when giving kids tours at the Michigan Historical Museum, and the history of American costume is of some interest to me.
	(click for info)	An Imperfect God, George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	363 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   George Washington was the "father of the USA", but, also "ran" as many as 300 slaves on his various plantations. Yet, he had the Black poet Phylis Wheatley write and present to him a long and praiseful poem about him which blew his plantation notions of the limits of black intelligence, had black troops in his command and had to recognize their courage and discipline, so he had to confront the realities of skilled African-Americans in a way not many European-Americans did...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars by Robert Remini	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	281 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Jackson, is an authentic American hero but one who seems the carrier of the burden for the exploitive policies that removed the natives peoples from the Eastern USA to lands west of the Mississippi. This partial biography presents Jackson in a much different light than I'd gathered from my US history. Personally scarred by the Indian Wars in his childhood S. Carolina, Jackson believed the Indian tribes would be destroyed by the liquor, diseases, and the laws of the various states and their unfair settler run legal systems of an encroaching white populations. He believe...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Apples by Frank Browning	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	211 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   I love to learn about our basic commodities and “Apples” was written by a Mid-western apple grower (Kentucky) about the history, growing, development and marketing of apple and cider. Having a cellar with cases of home fermented cider testifies to my interest in that aspect of the apple story. The apple apparently originated in NW China or Khuzestan and most probably spread to the Middle East, then Italy and eventually France and England. Possibly, some apple stock were brought to NW Europe by the human migration to there from Central Asia (the DNA of my paternal line indicate that line also traveled that route). Apples were brought to N. America in the 1620’s and the first orchard just outside Boston. Apples and apple cider were the fare of the early settlers and land grants in the NW Territory required a planting of apples. Apples could be stored through the winter and the extra could be juiced for fermenting cider, and both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson put much effort into their sieder orchards. John Chapman or Johnny Appleseed spread apples into the frontier of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois even as he proselytized his Siedenburg religious ideas. Many farmers pressed their extra apples and put a barrel of cider down in their cellar or root cellar to provide a source of beverage from late winter on. The author explores the cider culture of the England and France as well as our colonial times. Prohibition in the USA dealt a death blow to home fermented cider in the USA as the middle class Protestant rural families were the staunchest supporters of Prohibition, but were also the home cider fermantors. So, if you want to know something of the complexities of developing new apple varieties, growing apples or competing in the world market, this is a most informative read. Will the small USA orchard owner survive in the age of industrial food production? Reading this most literate orchard owner makes one surely hope so.
	(click for info)	Arc of Justice : A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle	Shirley Rowland	Book/Novel	432 pgs
		Reviewed By: Shirley Rowland   "If you would like to read more about Ossian Sweet, the doctor who was the grandson of a slave that worked his way up from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood in Detroit, I recommend, "The Arc of Justice", by Kevin Boyle...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Away From Her by Sarahp Polley	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction	110 mins
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Julie Christie has been winning awards for her performance here as Alzheimer’s disease takes over her mind, Her devoted husband struggles with whether to institutionalize her and once that necessary decision is made compliant with the wife’s wishes, he struggles again as she withdraws from him and attaches to another male patient forgetting her spouse, or does she? This is a touching movie with strong acting performances from both Julie Christie and Olympia Dukakis as the wife of the “other man”. For those of you that don’t remember, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner retired from the Supremes to attend her husband coping with Alzheimer’s, who then needed to be institutionalized and promptly attached himself to another female patient. Living with my mother Helen as she coped with Alzheimer’s/dementia in her late nineties, and having watched the changes as the condition progressed, made the movie most credible.
	(click for info)	Becoming Jane by Kevin Hood, Sarah Williams	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Biography	120 mins
		Reviewed By:   Jane Austen is a real heavyweight in English Literature with 6 major novels that are constantly being reworked to provide cinematic fare. This is a biographical film (I don’t vouch for the accuracy as I’m not a Jane Austen scholar) and is beautifully filmed in the Irish and English countryside, plus excellently cast and produced. Actress Anne Hathaway is a stunning beauty which apparently Jane Austen was not…and the entire film is excellent. My wife Kathy was an English Lit major and she loved the film, so see it for its being a period piece, a biography, for the beautifully cinematography, the romance, the popcorn or whatever reason you choose.
	(click for info)	Before The Dawn by Micholas Wade	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	279 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The advent of genetic testing and study of gene mutation and gene mutation rates, have opened new lines of research into evolutionary history. Yeah, it sounds really technical, but the questions being asked are the most basic sorts of “Where did we come from?” and “When did this or that attribute develop?...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Beowulf by Neil Gaiman (screenplay)	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   No, I’d never read the book skipping over English Literature for a high school shop class, and then never in contact with Beowulf in my years of college and Feed Technology studies. So….the chance to invest a couple of hours in neglected culture watching the first story written of English literature and see Angelina Jolie nake...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Billy, Alfred and General Motors by William Pelfrey	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	279 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The early auto industry has Billy Durant’s and Alfred Sloan’s handprints all over its history. Alfred Sloan was a New Jersey engineer that took a struggling bearing supply company that supplied Ransom Olds, then David Buick and Henry Ford with vital bearings parts and made Hyatt Bearing a huge success.. An ambitious Billy Durant in Flint, MI had seen a buggy design he liked, so he arranged to buy the shop and patents and made the Dort-Durant Carriage Company into the leading manufacturer of light buggies...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Black Hawk: The Battle for the Heart of America by Kerry A. Trask	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	308 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   “Blackhawk”……the Chicago hockey team? Well, in 1832, a large group of maybe 2,000 Sauk Indians was led by Sauk sub chief Blackhawk to return from their lands in Iowa Territory to their former home village where the Rock River joins the Mississippi River, or today’s Rock Island, Illinois. Although the main chiefs of the Sauk Nation had signed a treaty giving up the Illinois lands to the USA government...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Blackwater Ben by William Durbin	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	197 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The year is 1898 and Ben, who is bored with school, wants to accompany his father to a Minnesota logging camp for a winter’s work as a “cookie” instead of attending school. Ben gets his wish and this colorful book describes his winter in the deep woods as a “cookie” working with his dad, the camp cook. It introduces the colorful lingo of the logging trade including “swamp water (hot tea)”, loggin berries (stewed prunes); The Push (camp boss); “road monkeys” (builders of logging roads); the Dentist (crosscut saw sharpener) and so forth. The boy”s mother died when he was quite young, and Ben finds in camp someone in addition to his father, that knew his mother. Dad won’t talk of his dead wife, so Ben seeks out this new source to learn of his absent mother. This new source also is most interested in classic literature, and a new outlook on education is provided for Ben.
		Blooding at Great Meadows – Young George Washington and the Battle That Shaped the Man by Alan Axelrod	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	260 pgs
		Reviewed By:   This is a bio of George Washington’s early life and particularly the 1754 campaign where Virginia tried to assert its claim to the Ohio country and sent a 21 year old Col. George Washington to travel to the French presence to declare Virginia’s claim. With their claim haughtily rebuffed by the French, the Gov. of Virginia then returned an army with young Washington as 2nd in command, to dislodge the French...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Bold Women in Michigan History by Virginia Law Burns	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	140 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This book has short biographies of 13 women that have had impact of Michigan starting with: Mde Marie Therese Cadillac who was instrumental founding Detroit; Mde LaFramboise who ran a fur trading post at what became Grand Rapids; Quakers Elizabeth Chandler and Laura Havilland who led Michigan’s anti-slavery movement and aided the Underground Railroad...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Books and islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling through the Land of my Ancestors by Louise Erdrich	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Travelogue	141 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Louise Erdrich is of Chippewa/Ojibwe and German/French ancestry, and a N. Dakota native. She writes novels of the northern plains/Midwest life and is a most popular and honored author. This little book is different than her usual novels as here she explores northern lakes and islands important to her Ojibwe tribe and it was a perfect read for me as we vacationed along a N. Michigan lake this August...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America by Fergus Bordewich	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	409 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Growing up in eastern Kansas 40 miles or so from the border of former slave state Missouri, I was told of the old Palmyra Hotel in the NE corner of Baldwin where an underground room could hide runaway slaves, and the “Signal Oak” north of town overlooking the Kaw River Valley from which a lantern could be seen in Lawrence, KS to advise them of fugitive slaves headed to them and away from bondage in Missouri...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Bourne Ultimatum by Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns, George Nolfi	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction	111 mins
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   If you like the action movie genre, this is pretty well done but a bit jerky to look at and hard to understand the dialogue at times. The CIA has created and utilized Jason Bourne as an assassin but he’s retired and outside the current operations. But, his old love has been assassinated and he wants to know what is going on and why and who killed her. With “The Company’s “ memory erasing techniques, Bourne can’t remember his pre-CIA identity but he knows all the latest codes, security techniques and even ferry schedules to operate across Europe. It’s superman against a corrupt CIA with all their cutting edge technology.
		Brief Encounters With Che Guevara by Ben Fountain	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	228 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   These stories are so carefully crafted and plausible, that I had to keep reminding myself I was reading fiction. All of them (well, except the last) involve stories of persons from the developed world encountering radical elements struggling to deal with third world conditions. The locales range from Asia, Africa to the Caribbean and Latin America, and after reading the book, I’m almost convinced that I’ve been to those locales. This book has the ambiguity of life for the quasi-political story situations rather than the heroics and satisfactions typical of fictional fare.
		Bury The Chains-Prophets and Rebels In the Fight To Free An Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	364 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   On August 1, 1838, just passed midnight in a church burial yard in British Jamaica, the congregation buried a coffin that had the chains and artifacts of slavery as emancipation of enslaved people in the British Empire became effective. It would take 27 more years for the USA, and 50+ for Cuba and Brazil to end their slavery and the battle against racial discrimination and race based poverty still goes on. “Bury The Chains” is the story of how “abolition” or the battle to end the slave trade happened, and then how the struggle for “emancipation” or the end of slavery in the empire continued...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Chippewa's of Lake Superior by Edmund Jefferson Danziger, Jr	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	217 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This 1979 publication fills out an important part of the story of the Native Americans. Most of us know more about the western plains tribes and the Indian Wars there and the story of the Cherokee tribes and others removal to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, but the Chippewa's (Ojibwa) were the first tribe to avoid removal and go to reservations in their historic area....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Copper River by William Kent Kruger	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	309 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Set in a small town just outside Marquette, MI in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, this is a nice tight mystery with interesting personalities, many disparate threads and one that captures nicely a flavor of contemperary Northern Michigan...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Copper, Timber, Iron and Heart: Stories of Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Ben Mukkala	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	261 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is an interesting, easy to read book that gives a good feel for life and industry of Michigan’s UP both historically and tracking the industries to modern times. It’s loaded with details about the UP’s early days progressing to the present day status of the timber, iron, and copper industries...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Cradle to Grave – Life, Work, and Death At The Lake Superior Copper Mines by Larry Larkton	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	267 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author is a professor of history at Michigan Technological College, at one time the Michigan College of Mines right in the center of the Keweenaw Peninsula where the copper mining occurred. This excellent book captures in its title the paternalism that the large mining companies exercised toward its workers. Less one be confused,...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Crow Lake by Mary Lawson	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	291 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The cover has a marsh like lake front which attracted this farmpond/wetlands loving reader, as the post of August books discussed. This story is set on a northern Ontario farm and told over years from the point of view of the 8 yr old daughter. The 4 kids (two sons ages 17 & 16; girls 8 & 3) are orphaned by a car accident at the start of the book. With the oldest son scheduled to enter teacher's college with the family's meager cash, the other 3 are to be farmed out to various relatives. The local school teacher pleads with the family not to forego the 16 yrs old son's chances at college as he is "the brightest mind she has ever taught" so options are sought. The oldest son decides to abandon college, work the farm and keep the 4 kids together. A great grandmother has committed the family ideal to seek as much education as they can get, but it turns out the 8 year old daughter is the only one to go on to college. Drawing on her childhood love of the ponds near her childhood home, the storyteller has become a research microbiologistand feels somewhat distant from her siblings who remained in the isolated farm community, and also distant from both her emotional self and her fiancée. The telling of her emotional struggles with her brilliant older brother (the 16 yr old) who she idolizes and realizes he should have had her academic experiences and success, but instead remained to marry the girl next door and farm. An engaging tale for those of us who have made choices of family, jobs and advanced education, especially if we have memories of farmlife and ponds.
	(click for info)	Crusader Nation-The United States In Peace and the Great War, 1898-1920 by David Traxel	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	359 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Theodore Roosevelt was elected as VP with McKinley in 1900, and then replaced the assassinated McKinley. The Progressive era had started with Civil Service reform, railroad and utility regulation, and trust busting of monopolistic corporations, and would continue with the Federal Reserve banking reforms, Child Labor laws, the progressive income tax, the suffrage movement to give women the vote, tariff reform, Federal regulation over food processing, et...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Daniel Boone - A Biography by Robert Morgan	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Biography	452 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Daniel Boone is one of those almost mythic characters of American history that I knew almost nothing about other than his name. I’ve wanted to visit his homesite just west of St. Louis where he spent his final years, but other priorities always dominated when I was in the area. I’ve lived in Boone, IA, named for his son, spent a week each in Boone, KY and Boone, NC but never absorbed information about the man...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Deep Ancestry – Inside the Genographic Project – The Landmark DNA Project to Decipher Our Distant Past by Spencer Wells	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is the write-up of the National Geographic Society Project with IBM to collect and analyze DNA sample from around the world to study the early migration patterns of humans and study how peoples around the world relate to one another. The book I reviewed last month “Before The Dawn” explored much of the same information but with less technical info about the specific groups and more general information from archeology and anthropology. One DNA data set is from the female side and another for the males...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Definately Maybe by Adam Brooks	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction	112 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a nice romance story showing how complicated modern romance can be. It uses the conceit that a daddy in the throes of a divorce, is pressed by his 3rd grade daughter who has just had a school sex education class, to explain how he met his soon-to-be-ex, her mom and the other romances in his life...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West by Ethan Ranick	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   We’ve all heard of the Donner Party and the starvation and cannibalism to survive. This telling of the events clarified many details of travel along the trails to the west coast. The Donner and Reed families of Springfield, IL arrived at St. Joe, Missouri late spring and were some of the late travelers to head west. They lost a few more days along the trail but the decision to take the proposed Hastings Cutoff from SW Wyoming territory around the south of the Great Salt Lake and across the desert to Nevada was disastrous and deadly. They lost weeks and then an early season massive Sierra Nevada snowstorm sealed off the mountain passes they were almost across. Hunkered down waiting for rescue, 35 of the 81 people died. Bodies were eaten and the only two killed and eaten were the Indian helper guides sent by John Sutter in a rescue attempt (accounts say they were near death). Most of the deaths were men as they were more worn down by the hardships of the trail, and apparently women have more body fat (oops soft curves) to keep them alive. A most readable accounting of the story and it was read on NPR’s Radio Reader.
		Diary of an Early American Boy – Noah Blake 1805 by Eric Sloane	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	108 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author uses some historic but very cursory diary entries to discuss the practical work life of a late teen young man working with his father to build a mill, bridge, forge, and farm in a New England rural community. This was a mostly pre-industrial time and most things were made by...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Dreamgirls by Bill Condon (screenplay)	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction	131 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   A most interesting movie and very well made and acted. It’s a film version of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls” which is a ripoff of the Motown story of Barry Gordy and Motown’s “Supremes” changed just enough to avoid the lawyers. Dreamgirls follows the trend of Broadway musicals (Rent; Tommy) to utilize opera recitative styling for dramatic impact, and this production was far more “operatic” than I expected and which I personally enjoyed. I’m not the greatest fan of modern gospel music sound and that issue is the heart of the Motown story....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Early Farm Life – Early Settler Series by Crabtree Publishing	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	79 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is one of a series of 15 books for young people and is richly provided with early pictures and drawings presenting life of the Northern states settlers in the early 19th century. I dress up as a 19 century farmer and lead school kids and other groups on tours of the Michigan Historical Museum 2-4 days a week so this is excellent background material for my docent experiences. Yet, I’m struck that at my 69 years of age, much of the 1940’s farm work of my youth in Kansas, utilized the vestiges of settler farm work herein described as my dad had left the farm of his boyhood during WWI and only returned to farming in 1947 with his techniques/farming skills of his youth....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Early Schools;Early Travel; Food for the Settler; Early Loggers and the Sawmill; Early Settler Children; Early Farm Life by Crabtree Publication Co	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Part of a 15 publication series on Early Settler Life Kathy and I wandered into the Ft. Wayne Historical Museum bookstore and I found this series (some titles also in MI State Historical Museum gift shop). Each book is 60 or so pages with a mix of old and new photos, etchings and other illustrations and I limited my self to buying the 6 titles above. They are available from Crabtree Publishing at www.crabtree_pub.com in hardback and paperback...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Facing East from Indian Country - A Native History of Early America by Daniel K. Richter	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	253 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This book attempts to present the story as recorded by the various Native American voices over the early years. The tribes greatly welcomed the access to European trade goods and even colonists. Yet, their alternative attempts to 1) ally with France, England or Spain, 2) to play one power against another, 3) to resist intrusion by the colonists, or 4) to adopt farming, Christianity, and an education to be accepted as another settler (as George Washington hoped for); all failed the Native Americans peoples. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Family by Ian Frazier	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	367 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author grew up in Ohio as did many of his fore bearers. So, he writes of his family and uses them as vehicles to tell a story of the settling of Ohio and the history of the NE USA through the insights his family’s stories provide...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	372 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Yes, it’s a kid’s book. My farmer boy youth reaches back through my father’s early 1900’s farm experiences that he replicated on our 1940-50’s farm. Laura Wilder reaches back to the 1860’s and emphasizes the wide variety of experiences and talents of the diversified, mostly self sufficient farm life of that period...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	338 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Well…the stories I was fed as a youth in 1950’s Kansas about Reconstruction were racist myths. This easy reading book by a Bancroft Prize winning author (the top prize given in history) is combined with a pictorial essays at the end of each chapter to tell how the visual images of the era were used to bring out the difficult story of the end of slavery, and the effort to bring ex-slaves into the political arena, something unique among nations emancipating their slaves...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	France, A Love Story – Women Write About the French Experience by Camille Cusumanno	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	272 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   A different type of book is this series of essays about experiences of American women as visitors to France. Most of them were extended visits or living and most of the women had some ability to speak the French language, although many of them cite their struggles to adapt their school girl French to the native ear....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828 by Walter A. McDougall	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	513 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This USA history book takes us up to 1830. It is probably the best USA history book I remember reading and if the author writes another about the 1830 years on, I’ll buy it immediately. The author illuminates all sorts of interesting situations that I’d missed in other learning situations...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	From Midnight To Dawn – The Last Tracks of the Underground Railroad by Jacqueline L. Tobin with Hettie Jones	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	249 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   What happened to the fugitives from slavery when they got to their “Canaan” or West Canada? Well, various refugee communities in Lower Ontario were created and others absorbed the refugees as land was cheap and the rural lives of the many formerly enslaved people gave them the skills and aptitude for lumbering, clearing the land and planting crops, particularly tobacco...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Geography Of Hope:Black Exodus From the South After Reconstruction by Jim Haskins	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	126 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This brief book is written for youth and has lots of interesting historical photos. When Reconstruction ended in 1877 and the White Leagues violently suppressed the political participation of African-American in the South, various efforts were made by ex-slaves to flee the oppression...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Geology of Michigan by John Dorr, Jr and Donald Eschman (U of M geology profs)	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	449 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   It’s almost funny instead of pathetic that I could live in the State of Michigan for 35 years and never make a serious attempt to learn about the geology of the state. Sure, I knew there were glaciers here long ago (12,000+ years) and maybe the western part of the Upper Peninsula was of older rocks (3.5+ billion years) and copper and iron had been mined there, but other than that, there was very little I knew. This book was written in the 1960’s and possibly needs some updating...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Gods In Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson	Jim & Kathy Booth\	Book/Fiction	275 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This novel interested me as the main character leaves her white Alabama family, goes to grad school in Chicago, has a Black lawyer boyfriend and then is forced to return south to visit her Alabama family with boyfriend. She has to confront a chilling issue from her high school years that she has fled as well as her family who doesn't know of the boyfriend. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Good Girl Work by Catherine Gourley	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	93 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Written for a teen age reader, this book graphically describes the factory work by young women, particularly at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Grand Traverse by Michael Beres	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	366 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Futuristic fiction isn’t my genre and I’d have passed on this book except that the Grand Traverse Bay is a major Michigan site. The story line is projected 20 to 40 years in the future and extrapolates our environmental and global warming issues forward. The main characters are two talented young U. of Illinois women students who are impacted by an abandoned chemical dump in suburban Chicago. The story follows their lives and...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Great Lakes Indians – A Pictorial Guide by William Kubiak	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	203 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a really fast read because much of the book is sketches and maps. There are 3 chapters about Great Lakes Indians in general covering the history, languages and dwelling types, and then 25 chapters covering the many tribes with ties to the Great Lakes, divided into the three language groupings of Siouan, Algonquian and Iroquoian...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Huck's Raft - A History of American Childhood by Stephen Mintz	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	282 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   We all know about childhood...after all, if you can read this you've been there, heard about your parents' and probably raised your own set of kids. This history is a good read as it takes you into different cultures as the early Puritans, Quakers, Native Americans, slave African Americans and other families and explores the features of their childrearing. Also it discusses childhood in unusual time...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company - A Novel of Lewis & Clark by Brian Hall	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a great novel. The author takes the considerable information available about the journey and the participants and then uses the different voices of the principals to skillfully tell the/their stories. Charbonneau, Sacagawea Lewis, Clark and finally York all speak through the novelist as the writing style changes dramatically between voices. This can make some hard going understanding Sacagawea unique style of thinking and talking. Start by reading the Author's Notes at the books end. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	I Was A Slave – Book Two: The Lives of Slave Men by Donna Howell	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	64 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is another volume of interviews in the 1930’s of ex-slaves as part of the WPA project...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	I’ve Got a Home In Gloryland by Karolyn Smardz Frost	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	353 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This old spiritual captures the story of Ruthie and Thornton Blackburn who were enslaved in Louisville, Kentucky in 1831. When Ruthie’s master died, she was sold to settle the estate and was thought to be headed to New Orleans where a most attractive enslaved women like her would fetch a high price as a “fancy girl”. Husband Thornton, under different ownership was powerless to protect her or sustain his marriage so with forged freedom papers, they fled across the Ohio River to Indiana and took a steamboat to Cincinnati, and then a coach to Detroit where they lived and worked as free people...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Kaughing Whitefish by Robert Travers (John Volker)	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	312 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Old timers may remember “Anatomy of a Murder” a book /movie by the same author. “Laughing Whitefish” was written in 1965 and is inspired by a important Michigan court case in the 1870’s, The true story is that a Chippewa Chief Margi Gesick in the UP of Michigan was hired to guide a survey party when white settlement was starting in the 1840’s....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations – A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	408 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This probably is a book for economists, and I’m not sure who else. It details in mostly layman language, the history of economic theory regarding economic growth and the role of technology and ideas or knowledge. It was a perfect read for me who devoted much of the 1960’s and early 70’s to studying economic growth and development theory, but then had dropped out of teaching to sell real estate, raise daughters and I hadn’t kept up with the battle of the economic theorists except for occasional sightings in the popular press....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands by Susan Carol McCarthy	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	275 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This story is based on actual happenings in N. Florida in 1951 when the Klu Klux Klan went on a bombing spree against civil rights activists, Catholics and Jewish targets. By targeting the Catholics and Jewish populations, the KKK overreached and in threatening the Florida tourist industry, brought the ire of the mercantile interests and then the FBI into investigating their outrages...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Let Women Vote (Spotlight on American History) by Marlene Targ Brill	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	58 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This book was written for teenagers to communicate something of the struggle women have had from “wife auctions” in England and occasionally the colonies, to modern times. The first women’s rights convention in 1848 petitioned for the right of women to “earn wages, go to college, own property, pursue a career, have equal say about children after divorce, and be heard in court”. A quite controversial addition was finally passed to ask for the right of women to vote...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Life and Food in the Basque Country by Maria Jose Sevilla	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Travelogue	157 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   I know very little about the Basque except they keep terrorizing the Spanish, caught codfish off N. America NE coast before Columbus and their language bears little relationship to any other in the world. Basque single men came to the American west in droves to be lonely sheepherders before returning home with the saved cash to be a village man of consequence, and also the Basque are famous chefs. This book was written in the late 1980’s and captures a rapidly changing world as the old peasant and village life is rapidly being replaced by modern ways. The author documents, celebrates and laments the passing of old ways. The chapters start with one on market day, and then go successively to small farmers, fishermen, old village customs, the cider and wine houses, urban lifestyles, the gastronomic societies, and finally the professional chef. Many of the recipes aren’t likely to be on today’s American fare as ingredients as tripe, lambs feet, pigeon, and goat and the many local varieties of fish and seafood aren’t available locally. Yet, the cooking methods were interesting from grilled sardines along the beach to the many stewed fish dishes. I loved the chapter on the sidrerias (cider houses) and the rapidly dying out customs centered on this ancient part of Basque village life.
		Little Heathens – Hard Times and High spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	290 pgs
		Reviewed By:   This delightful book describes the Midwestern farm life in the 1930’s from a kid’s point of view, and it echoes so much of what I and my cousins experienced in the 1940’s in Kansas. Our 1940’s farm houses always had refrigerators, running water and electricity but these were new and my parents, my Uncle Portie and Aunt Easta’s, my Uncle Tussie and Aunt Mary’s and my grandparents’ farm homes were well oriented to life without central heat, indoor plumbing and the such...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Look at me by	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a great relationship movie with a superb score of classical voice. An immensely self-centered French father who is a quite successful author and publisher with a young trophy wife, has a late teen daughter from a previous marriage living with them. He bites and snarls at everyone family included, and generally ignores his pudgy teenager except to hurt her with verbal jabs...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Lumberjack: Inside an Era in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan by William S. Crowe	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	125 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This newly reissued first person book was written in 1952 by a man who’d lived and worked in the timber industry during the Upper Peninsula of Michigan’s white pine era when the 300 year old 125-175 foot tall white pine were being harvested in the 1890’s...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		March by Geraldine Brooks	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	280 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is the novel written as a complement to the famous "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott using Mr. March, the absent father and his life as a chaplain in the Civil War in "Little Woman" as the subject. Just as Louisa Alcott seemed hard on papa about the voluntary poverty he imposed on the family, and about his extreme empathy for those in pain and all liberal causes (not only a vegetarian, but he wouldn't use milk as it was "stolen from the cow"), Captain March's extreme empath...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	172 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   In my new interest as a volunteer giving tours to 4th grade classes at the Michigan State Historical Museum, the statehood story of MI is tied into the election of Martin Van Buren in 1836. So, the latest of the biography series about USA Presidents seemed worth a quick read, as I knew NOTHING about the man. Turns out he really was the founder of the Democratic party of today. As a Jeffersonian Republican (read Democrat) from small town (Kinderhook NY), his extraordinary skills as a lawyer for poor farmers propelled him to the US Senate from NY. There, he was a perfect complement to the famous A. Jackson...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Mayflower – A Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	358 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   We all are familiar with a Mayflower story and the founding of the Plymouth Colony and the first Thanksgiving. There is much more to the story of the Pilgrims and their establishment of the 2nd English colony on the N. American continent and how the relationship with the natives was conducted...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Measuring America – How the United States Was Shaped By The Greatest Land Sale In History by Andro Linklater	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	263 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   I never understood the barbed wire rolls my dad purchased to build fences on the farm of my childhood were in 80 rod lengths, or why Lansing city lots are often 33’ or 66’ x 99”. Why are road right-of-ways 66” and what the heck is a “rod” anyway? Why are legal descriptions written in so many Ranges east or west and Townships north or south? ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Medical Myths that Can Kill You: And the 10 Truths that Will Save, Extend, and Improve Your Life by Nancy L. Snyderman, M.D.	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	272 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is well worth reading by adults of all ages and it’s an easy breezy read. I’ve changed a number of parts of my lifestyle; please don’t get caught up in the smoke some people blow that medical and health research reports and advices are constantly being revised. Yes, the press gets out in front of the facts and sometimes subsequent research revises the conclusions initially promoted, but, that’s the method of science as studies have to be replicated to become “wisdom”. What are some of the myths and truths in the book that impacted me? Well, the desired frequency of medical exams and suggested tests was important for me. We know women are advised to self examine their breasts for lumps but men are also advised to check their testes for the same and the technique is described. Chocolate doesn’t cause acne and dark chocolate is good for the heart. The 8 glasses of water a day is not a suggested guide. Put the toilet lid down when you flush because the cascade of water propels materials throughout the room; also the heat and moisture of the bathroom is the worst possible place to keep pills. Go for the Omega 3’s but vitamin megadoses are just expensive pee and sometimes dangerous. Yes, quitting smoking, controlling weight and exercising are important and colon cleansing therapy is definitely not recommended. Do stretch your neck muscles by gently rotating your head side to side. The last chapter is on living with mental illness and is an important read whether mental illness is in your family or not. The writer is in charge of medical reporting for NBC news.
		Meet You In Hell - Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick and the Bitter Partnership that Transformed America by Les Standiford	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	310 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Heard of the Homestead strike or of a Carnegie Library or the NYC Frick Museum of Art? Well, here's the story behind the transformation of the American Iron industry by these giants of the 19th century USA industrial scene. How did they amass their fortunes? Why did they have their bitter falling ou...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Michigan - A History of the Wolverine State by Willis Dunbar and Geo. May	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	659 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Whatever you want to know about Michigan history, here it is in a most interesting, readable package. This is the "bible" that I find most useful to check issues in MI history that arise from questions at the State Historical Museum where I volunteer as a docent. Whatever the item on display or issue presented there, its seems to be covered in this text in greater detail. I've already read and re-read parts of it several times as the wealth of detail swamps my limited memory for places, names and dates. As it was revised in 199...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	529 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   “Middlesex” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003 and was most highly recommended by Kathy and a number of friends. As it is set in Detroit, MI, and covers a broad sweep of 20th century Michigan history, I’ve had it on my shelf for several years and have been reading parts of it off and on, as I do most books...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Minnesota’s Geology by Richard W. Ojakangas and Charles L. Matsch	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	243 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Last summer I read “Geology of Michigan” but it had a 1970 date and the then fairly new concept of continental drift barely made the book. This book has a 1982 date and is much updated but its still 25 years old...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Imani Perry	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	263 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Sojourner Truth was born a slave in 1797 and was freed in 1827 when NY ended its slavery. She spent the rest of her life working for progressive causes as: abolition, temperance, ending capital punishment, women’s rights, and resettling freed slaves in the American west, and elaborate women’s fashions. She was sold from her parents as a 10 year old and miscommunications resulted in brutal punished by cruel masters who spoke only English as Sojourner spoke only “low Dutch”. Her own children were sold from her and...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Negro President - Jefferson and the Slave Powers by Gary Wills	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	230 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a great little book that details the 3/5ths rule for counting slaves as population in the USA and the resultant power that this gave the slave states in the period prior to the 1860's. During the period of Confederation (before 1792), the new states contributed to the cost of Federal government on a basis of population. But the Northern States said "ain't fair - you Southerners have all these slaves and you pay nothing" so the South agreed to pay taxes for 3/5 ths of all the slaves in addition to the whites. Each state had one vote. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Night at the Museum by	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction	108 mins
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   We took the 7, 8, 9 and 16 year old grandkids and they really enjoyed this film. A divorced dad’s life isn’t going well and his 10 year old son is being inspired by mom’s new boyfriend, a successful bond trader...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		North Country by	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is based on a true story although I can’t vouch for “based” vs. “what really happened”. It is a powerful film that is painful to view as the story is told. As story telling goes, it has a happy ending which leads the sophisticated reviewers to trash it as movies have happy Hollywood endings whereas us jaded viewers “know” real life is full of bitter endings. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Oak-The Frame of Civilization by William Bryant Logan	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	308 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   There are a number of books like this: "Salt", "Cod", "Cotton", "Corn", "Coal", "Cider" I've read and that I've learned a lot from and thoroughly enjoyed. The oak tree, the author argues, is the fundamental resource of early civilization occurring in a belt around the world where the great civilizations have flourished. Mesopotamia had oak groves that the author believes were the basis for man's giving up the hunting and gathering life to form villages relying on the acorn for a steady supply of food for both man and animals. Later, other crop...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Once Upon a Farm by Bob Artley	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	126 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The retired illustrator has authored a book of his childhood Iowa farm life through the 1920’s & 30’s on the farm settled by his grandparents. Almost every other page is a delightful full page illustration accompanying the narrative detailing of the equipment, housing, farm building, farming techniques and rural community life...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Paul Bunyan – Last of the Frontier Demigods by Daniel Hoffman	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	164 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   As a kid in the 1940’s, it seemed Paul Bunyan was an important part of American folklore, but its been years since I’ve seen any references to Paul or Babe, except for a drive through Bemidji, Minnesota where the Chamber of Commerce has built a large statue and a tourist motel is nearby of that name...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Playing for Pizza by John Grisham	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	272 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Read on NPR’s Radio Reader, this book by the popular fiction writer of legal thrillers, is really a “brother from another planet” experience where an NFL castoff quarterback is picked up to lead the Parma Panthers in the Italian Football (American) League...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Pleasant Valley by Louis Bromfield	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	320 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Cousin Karla recommended this title to me and it took me back to my 1940’s 4-H farm kid youth. The book was written by a Pulitzer Prize (1926) winning author. Bromfield returned during WWII to his family farm community in SE Ohio. Here he turned his intellectual talents to the issues of conservation and restoration of farmlands ravaged by neglect from the hard use of the early1900’s even while hosting movie stars, celebrities and foreign guests to his farm. The book is reall...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Pontiac and the Indian Upraising by Howard Peckham	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	325 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   OK, OK, Pontiac is a city in Michigan that's not doing very well, and a GM Auto Division and who cares about the French and Indian War as its called in USA schools. Well, the Indians then mostly sided with the French and particularly those tribes west of the Appalachia who had traded, slept with and made families with the French traders, against the British and their colonials as Geo. Washington who wanted the land to farm or sell to farmers. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Presidential Courage – Brave Leaders And How They Changed America 1789-1989 by Michael Beschlos	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	273 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Presidential historian Beschols, a familiar figure on PBS’s Jim Leher’s News hour and elsewhere draws from 200 years of American history to cite 9 instances where America’s Presidents undertook controversial actions where they were convinced they were right even if the actions were politically risky and/or severely questioned by their advisors...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Proud to Work: A Pictorial History of Michigan's Civilian Conservation Corps by Annick Hivert Carthew	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	143 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was started in the early 1930’s in New York State and went national with the election of FDR. Until 1942, over 102,000 Michigan youth from 16 – 25 years old were enrolled into 130 Michigan camps where they built and sustained the CCC camps, fought forest fires, and worked on State Conservation projects, mostly of soil conservation, fisheries and forest management as road building, fire fighting and tree planting...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War by Nicholas Leman	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	250 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is one of the toughest books I’ve ever read and the author is a Southerner who is now Dean of Journalism at Columbia U and author of well regarded books. “Redeemers” was the name the Southern Whites gave to those pursuing the violent struggle to take political power away from the Republican Party of the South after the Civil War, so “Redemption” fits as the title for the process...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Returning To Earth by Jim Harrison	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	280 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Harrison’s earlier popular book “True North” concerned the grandson (and gt-grandson) David of a Marquette, MI scion of the lumber and mining fortunes struggling to understand how one could live with the personal legacy of the lumbering and mining wealth inherited from his ancestors’ exploiting of the land and people of Michigan’s upper peninsula. In “Returning To Earth”, the family saga continues with David and his sister Cynthia now in middle age. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Saint Patrick’s Battalion by James Alexander Thom	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	279 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   In 1948, my parents took us to Mexico City and we visited Chapultepec Castle where the Los Ninos Heroes, Mexico’s youthful military cadets had died fighting the US Army. President Polk’s conquering of Mexico in the 1846-48 war made Mexico cede to us the northern 1/3rd of Mexico or what became our southwestern states. On that 1948 trip my dad had taken many 35mm slide pictures and when showing our infamous “Mexican pictures slide show” he included a slide of an elevated passageway with the comment, “I can’t remember why I took that picture” to the sighs and soft groans of the suffering audience...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Settling In Michigan – And Other Pioneer Stories by Lynne Deur	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	80 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Written for early adolescents, this collection of stories mostly from the early 1800’s is of the first settlers in Michigan. The tales of rutted roads and sinking wagons, wrecked stages, splitting rails, clouds of mosquitoes, sharing with the Indians, the strap iron railroad rails, maple sugar gum, and conflicts with wildlife as bears and deer provide look into a quite different life for settlers then we can imagine today. A quick easy read but filled with vivid details most of us don’t have in our story repertoire.
		Shadowbrook - A Novel of Love, War and the Birth of America by Beverly Swerling	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	488 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author wrote "City of Dreams: A Novel of Nieuw Amsterdam & Early Manhattan" which I really enjoyed and passed off to my NYC relatives and I eagerly looked forward to this novel which moved the location up the Hudson River to north of Albany and looked at life on one of the old Dutch Patents or estates during the 7 Yrs War or what we Americans call the French and Indian Wars in the 1750's. The author cleverly used two half brothers, sons the patriarch of the Hale estate who'd made his fortune trading with the Native American and brought to his estate his Potawatomi Indian wife and son to live winters with the whites (the Cmokmanuks) with his Dutch ancestry white wife and their son(s). Summers, the Potawatomi wife too...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Short History of the North American Indians by Frederic Baraga	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	191 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Father Frederic Baraga was a Catholic Priest in Slovenia who came to N. America in 1830 and eventually to Michigan to minister to the Native Americans. He was known as the "Snowshoe Priest" and served in Grand Rapids and then various posts in the Northern part of Michigan. He was active with others to oppose US removal of Native Americans and is responsible for some of the small parcels remaining in tribal ownership that serve today as tribal homes to Native Americans. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Slave Nation - How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	266 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   We grew up with "taxation without representation" and other slogans about why the colonies united in rebellion against English rule, but several things got left out. In 1772 a London judge ruled that "slavery was so odious, that it could not be permitted except by a positive law expressly permitting such", and Parliament had never and would never so rule......consequently British slave owners from then on could never use legal force to keep their slaves from walking away. The authors trace with great detail the impact of this "Sommerset rule" on the thinking of our Southern planters as they united with the Northern colonies in their mutual disputes over revenue and political representation issues to sever the ties with Britain...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Soapy - A biography of G. Mennen Williams by Thomas J. Noer	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	355 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Soapy Williams was a major political force in the 1950’s serving: 6 terms as Michigan’s governor, in Kennedy’s State Department as Head of the African desk, then for LBJ as ambassador to the Philippines and finally elected for two terms on Michigan’s Supreme Court...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Soul Catcher by Michael White	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	418 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Cain, the main character is a veteran of the Mexican War, uses alcohol and laudanum to dull the continuing pain from a war wound to his leg and also to fuel his life. He is a product of antebellum Virginia farm life but was not comfortable with taking over the neighbor’s farm, the neighbor’s daughter, his childhood friend, as his wife, and management of the plantations’ slaves as both families expect, so Cain has left farm life and the managing the plantations slaves to his brothers. To support himself, Cain gambles and when broke, tracks and re-captures runaways to return them to slavery but Cai...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Standing Bear Is a Person: The True Story of a Native American's Quest for Justice by Stephen Dando-Collins	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	235 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a most interesting, must read for anyone having concern in the situations of Native Americans in USA history. Standing Bear was a Ponca Indian in the extreme SE South Dakota/NE Nebraska. He was a farmer as were most of his tribe and the USA callously and illegally removed him and his tribe to Oklahoma Territory. This book reads as a legal thriller explaining how the issues of Native American rights were handled in the US courts of 1870’s...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Storm Over Texas – The Annexation Controversy and the Road to the Civil War by Joel H Silby	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	181 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Why does someone in Michigan care about Annexation of Texas in 1845? Well, in my discussing the causes of our Civil War with 4th grade tours at the MI State Historical Museum, that the western lands obtained in the Mexican War had to be organized as slave or free territories was the issue that...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Super-Crunchers – Why Thinking-By-The-Numbers Is The New Way To Be Smart by Ian Ayres	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	218 pgs
		Reviewed By:   Digital data recording, the Internet and cheap storage of huge files of data in this era makes it possible to assemble and use huge data files to ask and answer all types of questions. An all new era of testing alternatives in medicine, education, welfare policy, marketing and other private and public policy situations has arrived and few of us understand this new data world. Multiple regression analysis was around since the 1840’s but the data and computation capacity in the last 20 years has exploded. Huge data sets can now...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Age Of Homespun – Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth by Laurel Ulrich	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	418 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   My sis gave this to me in 2002 and I’ve plugged away reading it off and on since. The author is a Harvard professor of American History and she takes 11 household items made in the period before 1835 and uses them to articulate the life of women and household industry in the New England states during the pre 1835 period...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The American Home Front: 1941-1942 by Alistair Cooke	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Travelogue	304 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   In 1942, Alistair Cooke was a BBC correspondent assigned in the USA. He made a trip around the USA to report on the impact of WWII on civilian life and his route went west from Washington DC to Kentucky, then SE to Florida and across the south of the USA to LA, then up the west coast to Washington and then east to Montana, south to Denver and east to Kansas City...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	239 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Erdrich is a well known Anishinabe (Obijwe) author of both adult and young people’s books. This book is set in the 1840’s on a Lake Superior island and describes a year in the life of the family from the point of view of the 7 yr old daughter. The chinookomanug (white folks) are presented in the missionary, the missionary school and the trader, and guns, fabrics, steel traps, salt pork, glass beads and cloth now present in the life of the Anishinabe, and talk is rampart of removal to the west by the government. Will the girl Omakayas (Little Frog) at age 7 connect with her mentors of the bear clan in the spirit world? Will she learn to appreciate the annoyances of her two younger brothers? Will she survive the smallpox outbreak that ravishes her family? Will she learn to bead makazins or read the chinookoman tracks taught at the the missionary school? Very easy reading with enough gripping story elements to be more than a convenient cataloguing of the passing of a year. At the end is a glossary of Anishinabe words with pronouncinations that is most helpful….including gaygo (GAY-go) which means stop.
		The Black Donnellys – The Outrageous Tale of Canada’s Deadliest Feud by Nate Hendley	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	125 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   About 140 miles east of Lansing in rural Ontario, a feud developed between a rough family of Irish Catholics and their neighbors through the late 1800’s. This story tells the story of settlement and community life in ethnic rural communities. In the 1840’s, Jim Donnelly, wife, and son William (born with a club foot that was thought by the Irish to be a mark of the devil) immigrated to Ontario and settled in a small Catholic community near London, ON. Jim Donnelly settled on acres that were vacant but with contested land title as was quite common on the...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Childrens Blizzard by Dave Larkin	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	271 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   On Jan 12, 1888 when the northern Great Plains were probably at their peak population, a ferocious blizzard hit the Dakotas mid-day. The Army Signal Corp had the responsibility for being a weather service, but the science was very crude, the staff reading the telegraph wires reporting the crashing barometers didn't really register how severe the storm would be, and without radio or TV, many farm kids had walked to school with light coats as a warm spell had them thinking of anything but blizzard...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Custer Album by George Armstrong Custer, Lawrence A. Frost	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	184 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   George Custer is an Ohio boy who came to Monroe, MI at age 10 to live with a sister, returned to Ohio to help with farm work for two years and then returned to Monroe, MI for better educational opportunities. He was smart, tall, brave, athletic, excellent with horses and popular, and became the youngest Union General in the Civil War...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Fabric of America – How Our Boundaries and Borders Shaped The Country and Forged Our National Identity by Andro Linketer	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	277 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author’s previous book, “Measuring America” was about how America was surveyed and platted out. This book extends that work to detail the hard work of finding the boundaries in our early days. Andrew Ellicott, a young Pennsylvania Quaker was a meticulous mathematician and astronomer and friend of Thomas Jefferson. Endicott was hired to find...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Forests Of Michigan by Donald Dickman and Larry Leefers	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	278 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This large format soft cover book is an excellent source of information about both the history and the current status of Michigan’s forest...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Genuine Article - A Historian Looks at Early American History by Edmond Morgan	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   What do historians talk about among themselves? Well, this historian offers us a chance to listen in these 23 review articles on a variety of subjects that get kicked about among the historians. What was the Salaam witch trials about and 6 others about the NE? Did Southern culture raise its males differentl...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Great Lakes Water Wars by Paul Annin	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	276 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The Great Lakes gathered up waters of the melting glaciers 10-20,000 years ago and now contain 18% of the world’s fresh water, enough to put 9.5 feet deep across the whole of the lower 48 states. The problem is that all that water that now goes out is jealously utilized, so we can use and reuse the water within the Basin, but not export it...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Illustrated Voyageur: Paintings and Companion Stories by Howard Sivertson	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	71 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   I first thought this was a children’s book but it’s written for adults. The 32 full page paintings reproduced are lovely illustrations for the companion essays about aspects of the voyageurs’ lives that were the transportation power on the early Great Lakes, especially in the fur trade era...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Little Ice Age by How Climate Made History 1399 – 1850	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	217 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   In the warm period since the melting of the Laurentian Glacier 12,000 years or so ago in N. America until 1300 CE, human life greatly expanded into new places in the world. Than during the 500+ years of the “Little Ice Age – 1300 to 1850”, human life was very harsh in our northern settlements and crop failures had famine a reality of life for our ancestors...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Living Great Lakes – Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	263 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   I’ve sailed just a bit and am not at all a boat person, so this short book was the perfect way to experience the Great Lakes from the water. The author had volunteered to help crew a 3 mast’ed sailboat from Traverse City MI to Maine via the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal and this adventure provides the...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Long Ships Passing - The Story of the Great Lakes by Walter Havighurst	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	341 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This was written first in 1942 and then up dated in 1975. It is a superb complement to the materials at the State Historical Museum where I docent, as the museum focuses on the State of MI while the book emphasizes the Great Lakes life around the State of MI as well as Ohio, MN, Wisconsin, etc. The writing is excellent going back to the first French explorers, to the latest (1975) bulk cargo ship. Its a mix of personal anecdotes and summary type materials. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	264 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   China is a long way from Michigan but my mother Helen traveled to China in 1980 and came home enthused about Chinese culture. As a young boy we entertained on our farm numerous Chinese foreign students at holidays, so this chance to learn something of the scientific advances made in ancient China was of interest to me. Joseph Needham was an English scholar sent to China in 1943 to aid scientists there as China was Britain’s ally against Japan. The descriptions of Needham’s travels across China in war torn China is fascinating. Needham was a free-thinker leftist who was most interested in the communist revolution in China and was well acquainted with Mao and Chou-en-lei, and as a leftist, became quite controversial post revolution and for a time, persona non gratis to the USA. Needham played a major role in getting the science or the “S” in UNESCO and other post WWII organizations, but collected major documents while in China that became the source of his main life work of documenting for the west, the history of science in China. We know of gunpowder, the compass, but the book’s appendix list’s 300 plus inventions (including the stirrup and breast strap for draft horses) derived in ancient China is astounding. Winchester draws on Needham’s diaries to document his open marriage to another scholar, his relationship with a lifelong mistress who became a close friend with Needham’s wife, and his various other female involvements make for colorful reading of this most unique person. Fluent in a half dozen or so languages including Chinese, his life cuts across all political, sexual and cultural boundaries and he was greatly honored by his university, his country, China, and the world by his death at age 94, He was very much a compatriot of my mother and father’s age born in 1900.
		The March by E. L. Doctorow	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	363 pgs
		Reviewed By:   Doctorow, author of Ragtime, is a masterful writer, and this story set in General Tecumseh Sherman’s historic march from Atlanta to Savanna, then north through S. Carolina and finally to the end of the war in N. Carolina. Rather than attempting to talk of the grand strategy and elite personalities, Doctorow captures the flowing, moving, organic nature of Sherman’s campaign, as his army was cut off from its supply lines and living off the land and moving across the secessionist South...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Mighty Scourge – Perspectives on the Civil War by James McPherson	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	220 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   If you have interest in our Civil War, this is a must read. Written by one of America’s pre-eminent and popular historians of that war, it is a series of essays on various issues that historians have debated since the 1860’s. It reviews the waves of scholarship and how they have varied over years...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Moments Lost - A Midwest Pilgrim’s Progress by Bruce Olds	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   In 1913, a bitter labor strike occurred in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Keewenaw country that shut down many of the copper mines and led to a 6 months+ conflict. “Big Annie” Leibowitz was a miner’s wife who led many of the miner actions. Anne’s marriage didn’t...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Money Men – The 100 Year War Over The American Dollar by H. W. Brands	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   OK…you say only an economist trained guy like myself could get interested in this title. Well, there were many hard decisions to make at the time of the US Constitution, and Alexander Hamilton had President George Washington’s confidence but money man Robert Morris had political clout. Monetary theory was poorly understood then and the speculators (as R. Morris) were busy buying discounted notes issued by the various states and re-purchasing the vouchers for land bonuses issued to Revolutionary War vets; these presented a huge opportunity for the money men at the expense of the populace...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Mysterious Private Thompson - The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier by Laura Leedy Gansler	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	222 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Sarah is a feature in our State of Michigan Historical Museum Civil War gallery. Born in Canada to a family that lacked able bodied sons to provide family farm labor, she worked in the fields as the men folk did, and loved the outdoor life. At 16, daddy was going to marry her off to an older farmer widower who needed a wife for his brood, so she ran away and dressed as a man to work and travel freely. She was a subscription bookseller (door to door) in Michigan when the Civil War broke out so she enlisted wit...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	275 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author has Ojibwa ancestors and writes including both worlds in her novels. This work starts in the voice of a New England 50ish woman who lives with her mother and deals in antiques. When asked to help settle an estate, she finds...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	536 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   What a complex person. Henry Ford was bright, modest, personable and hard working. The author describes him as “intuitive thinker rather than a systematic thinker” with the consequences that when Ford was right he was spectacular, and when he was wrong he was arrogant, narrow-minded and vindictive. He was financially successful and had a great instinct for getting the public’s attention so he had the means to publicize his ideas right or wrong. Henry Ford had the ability to utilize some extremely talented associates, as long as they could work within the peculiarities Ford imposed....(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Purple Gang - Organized Crime in Detroit 1910-1945 by Paul Kaveiff	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	204 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The Purple Gang in Detroit were from Jewish working class families who in the WWI era organized to feed off the bootleggers, rumrunners, blind pig and speakeasy operators of the prohibition era and includes the typical gangster era stories. The most vicious schoolyard punks beat and shot their way to riche...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Queen's Slave Trader - John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and Trafficing in Human Souls by Neil Hazelwood	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	323 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The history of the slave trade and early practices coincided with my general interest in England around Shakesphere's time. In the 1560's, England was at odds with Catholic states as Spain and Portugal so John Hawkyn arranged a syndicate of financers including borrowing ships from the Royal Navy to go to Guinia and force open trade between England, Africa and the America's. He got most of his slaves by capturing Portugese slave ships and stealing their cargos, but attempted to raid villages also...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mosin Hamhid	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	179 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is written by a Pakistani author and is a short quick read. The story line is of a western traveler having dinner with a proud, young Pakistani in Lahore, and this conversation takes place narrated entirely by the young Pakistani’s voice. It presents the familiar story of a bright young foreigner (the Pakistani) coming to the west (Princeton University) to study. He thrives and graduates with...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	272 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Our Civil War was such a traumatic event we still are healing from it 150 years later. Historian Drew Faust, the current president of Harvard University, has written this book to help us understand the impact of the carnage on the people of that time. The chapters include titles as: Dying; Killing; Burial; Realizing; Believing; Numbering, which articulate the thinking at the time of the participants and their family members...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Republican Party by Adam Smith	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	368 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This title has is mostly pictures of political events illustrating the persons and events of political history. The concise text introduces the representative periods of GOP party history as Civil War 1850’s – 1880’s, The Gilded Age 1880’s to WWI, WWI to Korea, Korea to Viet Nam, Viet Nam to Reagan. The text argues that the themes of: 1) individual (as opposed to class) advancement, 2) law and order and 3) patriotism unite the party from Lincoln to Reagan. A companion book “The Democratic Party” exists and it uses many of the same early historical pictures.
		The Runaway Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction	329 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Another in the author’s most readable Elm Creek Quilt series. This mixes modern relationship story content with 1850’s material about the establishment of their Elm Creek 1850’s farm. The first 2/3rds was mostly relationship stuff which was salvaged for me only that my mother’s grandmother’s had life experiences quite similar. My great-grandmother Jutzie grew up in Germany, but had lost an eye as...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Scotch by John Kenneth Galbraith	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	151 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   John Kenneth Galbraith was one of America’s premier economists serving on the Harvard faculty, writing popular and influential books and serving in various governmental positions in the Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In this small paperback, he turns his social science eyes on the small rural Canadian community just north of Lake Erie where he grew up. He was an agricultural economist before...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Scratch of the Pen – 1763 and the Transformation of North America by Colin G. Calloway	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	171 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Remember the French and Indian War as we called it in high school? Well, this author, a most respected professor of history, argues that this was an Indian War against the British and the Settlers as America’s First War of Independence...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Story of Chicago May by Nuala O’Faolin	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Biography	304 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Chicago May was the criminal name of an attractive young Irish woman who took her parents savings without permission and immigrated to Nebraska in the late 1800’s to live with an uncle. She quickly tired of rural life and associated with a dashing young male robbery specialist Dal, who soon was killed. She moved on to Chicago and became a “badger” at the time of the Chicago World Fair, or a woman that picked up men and took them to...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Story of Corn by Betty Fussell	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	333 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Full Title: The Story of Corn –The Myths and History, the Culture and Agriculture, The Art and Science of America’s Quintessential Crop Indian corn or maize developed in S. America and spread slowly through the Americas reaching the Great Lakes Indians by about 1050 AD. With Columbus, Indian Corn planting spread rapidly throughout the world and became the polenta of Europe, a major crop of China and a most important food stock mealie mealie in Africa...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Story of Reo Joe - Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown USA by Lisa Fine	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	175 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Ransom E. Olds started the Oldsmobile auto plant in Detroit and was the first commercial manufacturer of cars in the world and MI. His plant burned and he rebuilt it in Lansing, MI, his home town and where his father and he had been long-term manufacturers of gasoline engines. In fairly short order, differences within the company led to others buying Olds out. Then he started the "REO" company to manufacture autos in Lansin...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Sugar Camp Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverni	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	306 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This the 6th in a series of Elm Creek Quilt mysteries. This one is set in Pennsylvania in the 1850's featuring Dorthea, a 19 yr old daughter of a couple living with an older uncle on an Elm Creek farm. This is the first of the author's work I've read and I'll get more of them. Partly because the historical detail is very interesting, the writing is very good and the story telling is engaging...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Summer He Didn’t Die by Jim Harrison	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The lead novella is set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where the part Indian pulp cutter, fisherman, handy man alter ego of the author is raising two children as their mother is in jail. The high school age boy is quite bright while his younger sister is retarded due to fetal alcohol syndrome and is most gifted with animals. Will she be sent to a State of Michigan boarding facility for seriously birth damaged childre...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	268 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth\   If you care at all about the decade of the 1950’s, you gotta read this book. Bryson is the best selling author of a series of travel books (mostly) and he offers us a breezy travel though his 1950’s boyhood in Des Moines, IA. His father and mother worked for the Des Moines Register and he lived on a long leash in a middle class childhood on Des Moines near west side...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	349 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Ms. Munro is a gifted Canadian writer and she takes her and her family’s story as the substance for this book…but she labels it as a novel as she seamlessly goes beyond biography. The book starts in the 18th Century Scottish highlands where her ancestors eked out a living before immigrating to West Canada or today’s Ontari...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Wars of the Iroquois – A Study in Intertribal Trade Relations by George Hunt	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	161 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   One of the murky areas of my history knowledge is of the early 16th & 17th century American Indian peoples. A little bit about the Jamestown conflicts and Pilgrim experiences and then something of the King Phillips War in the 1670’s and that was it. According to author George Hunt (this is a 1940’s U. of Wisc. Press reissued in 1978), the American Indians were quite anxious to gain goods from industrial Europe as textiles and metal goods, and when the local beaver and other fur bearing animals populations were depleted, the tribes and particularly the Iroquois waged wars on each other to try to become the middlemen of fur trade from the tribes further west than the French, Dutch and English had then penetrated. In the SE of the colonies, the fur trade was with deer hides...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	The Widow`s War: A Novel by Sally Gunning	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	298 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This novel is set in Cape Cod in the 1760’s just as the whaling industry was starting to change from a shore based localized hunting industry. The principal character has just been widowed and her house and household possessions will be distributed according to her husband’s will…and widows/women cannot own property so her house goes to her son-in-law and she becomes subject to his direction...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		The Woodland Indians of the Western Great Lakes by Robert Ritzenthaler and Pat Ritzenthaler	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	139 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This small paperback was published in 1983 by the Milwaukee WI public museum and is part of a series about Native Americans by the publisher, Waveland Press. Many of the examples the book cites involve the Chippewa Tribe although the Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox and Menomini and other tribes are represented. It is generously supplied with photos from earlier in the 20th century and many of the materials are from first person case studies with traditional tribal remnants. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	There Will Be Blood by Upton Sinclair	Jim & Kathy Booth	Movie/Fiction	158 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   “The title may prevent folks that don’t like blood and gore to avoid an excellent movie. There is relatively little of the gushing blood violence that many folks object to in this movie, but just a bit. The “blood” is “blood of the lamb” placed in opposition to “blood” generated by oil greed and competitiveness...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	351 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This work of fiction is inspired by the live of “Francis Pegahmagabow, sniper, scout, and later chief of Wasauksing First Nation (Parry Island). He is one of Canada’s most important heroes. Two Cree cousins join Canada’s forces during “The Great War” and serve in the trenches in Belgium and France...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Thunder Bay by William Krueger	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	280 pgs
		Reviewed By:   Krueger lives in Minnesota and writes mysteries set in the north woods and lakes drawing on the Ojibwe culture for color. Since Kathy and I had just touristed in that neck of the woods, this was a perfect “after dinner” encore. The Cork O’Conner detective series captured the feel of the North country without us having to hike trails, paddle a canoe or swat black flies and mosquitoes. Here, a 90 year old traditional Ojibwe friend of Cork seems...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Thunderstruck by Eric Larson	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	292 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Author Larson writes descriptive books of the historic period combined with a lurid true crime story. This combination worked with his hugely successful “Devil In White City” about the Chicago World’s Fair and a serial killer who as a dentist, preyed on single young women patients. In Thunderstruck, he combines the struggles of Guglielmo Marconi to develop radio in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s with the murder of the wife of a Michigan born doctor who was practicing medicine in London, England...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		True North by Jim Harrison	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Fiction
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   I took this book to the cottage to read of life in Northern Michigan. The novel is the voice of a 4th generation son of a wealthy lumber and mining family in Michigan’s UP. The story is told in the decade of the 60’s as a high school aged boy, in the 1970’s as a young married graduate student at Michigan State U, and as a divorced 40’s man in the 1980’s...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Union 1812 – The Americans That Fought the 2nd War of Independence by A. J. Langyut	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	409 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This is a history book that many people who don’t like to read history, may like…that is if they like biography. It takes the major personalities of the period and tells how they related to the 1812 War, and in doing so, tells the story of the war...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Vaccinated – One Man’s Quest To Defeat The Worlds Deadliest Diseases by Paul Offit, M.D.	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	272 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   We older cousins remember the kid line-ups so the school nurse could give vaccinations for diphtheria, and typhoid fever, but we expected to suffer flu, mumps, chicken pox and measles. In 1944, a Montana farm boy Maurice Hilleman got his Ph’D at U. of Chicago and spent his career at Merck Pharmaceuticals where he played a major role in developing the vaccines for mumps, polio, Rubella, chicken pox, Hepatitis A & B, influenza and others...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Vayages into Michigan's Past by Larry Massie	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	269 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   These stories of Michigan history were first published as columns in Booth Newspapers to celebrate Michigan’s 150th anniversary of Statehood in 1837, but have been revised with additional material deleted due to newspaper column limitations. Breezy but succinct, they cover the major points included in the MI State Historical Museum where Kathy and I docent, and are most helpful in augmenting the discussion of those exhibits...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Voyageurs by Margaret Elphinstone	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	466 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This new historical novel was just a marvelous read for me. It covers a number of historical subjects that are of great personal interest. Set in 1810-13 period, a 24 yr old English Quaker farmer Mark Greenhow, travels to Canada and then Michigan territory to look for his sister who while traveling in Ministry to Friends in Upper Ontario, married a fur trader and then disappeared on ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Warrior Woman - The Exceptional Life Story of Nonhelema, Shawnee Indian Woman Chief by James Alexander Thom and Dark Rain Thom	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Novel	450 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Set in the revolutionary war period, it presents the conflicts to the area west of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania where our great great great grandfather Andrew Booth settled 20 some years later in 1798 on the lands ceded by the natives. Based on the historical person of Nonhelema, a sister of Cornstalk the major Shawnee Chief, the book presents the Shawnee tribe life and times as the settlers poured over the Alleghenies and down the Ohio River to Kentucky. ...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		Wau-Bun - The 'Early Days' in the Northwest by Juliette M. Kinzie	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	390 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   This book was originally published in the 1850's and has been republished in 5 editions with additional footnotes clarifying and correcting material. Juliette Kinzie was the young wife of John Kinzie appointed Indian Agent by Michigan Territorial Governor Lewis Cass to serve from 1830 at Ft. Winnebago (Portage, Wisconsin). This is the story of the author's travel by schooner from Detroit, MI to Mackinac Island an...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	Wedding of the Waters by Peter L. Bernstein	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	381 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   Michigan and the Upper Midwest was pretty much left to the fur trappers until the Erie Canal (pronounced Ca-nawl) opened in 1825. From then on flour, salt, timber, potash, and barrels of fish, pork, and pigeons rapidly replaced furs and whisky as the products imported from the west, and New York City as the ocean terminus for the Erie Canal became the “Big Apple” rapidly outdistancing Boston, Philly, Baltimore, and Charleston...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
	(click for info)	When I was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slace Narrative Collection by Norman R. Yetman	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	157 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   These short books, 24 scheduled of about 60 pages each are the results of interviews conducted throughout the USA by W.P.A. workers in the 1930’s. This book extracts narratives from these interviews about plantation life and reflect a wide variety of experiences. Some got adequate food, clothes and housing while others suffered extreme deprivations. Slave boys and girls were dressed alike in shirt tails with no underwear until age 14 or so when the boys would get trousers in the winter. Some had gardens and cooked in their cabin, and others had a communal mess. Most slaves worked dawn to dark in the fields and then had chores and work assignments after dark. The write-ups are spelled in the dialects and lingo of the time and it is most interesting reading. How fortunate we are to live in the times and places we do.
		When Skins Were Money - A History of the Fur Trade by James A. Hanson	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	191 pgs
		Reviewed By:   The author is the present curator of the Chadron, Nebraska Museum of the Fur Trade, the son of the museum founder and has spent his life studying and presenting the story of the fur trade. This is a most interesting and informative book filled with excellent reproduction...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		When the Mississippi River Ran Backwards - Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquake by Jay Feldman	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	290 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   What a creative book! The author presents the lives of historic people in 1812 as: Tecumseh, the Shawnee war chief trying to rally the various tribes to coordinate a war to drive the whites east of the Appalachian Mountains; David Morgan, the revolutionary war hero who obtained a Spanish Grant to found New Madrid on the west bank of the Mississippi; The ner-do-well Lewis family (nephews of T. Jefferson...(Click Here for a Complete Review)
		White Pine Whispers by Larry B. Massie	Jim & Kathy Booth	Book/Non-Fiction	264 pgs
		Reviewed By: Jim Booth   The author has some 15 books focusing on Michigan history, so I have 13 more to go. This easy to read paperback has 37 tales of Michigan history, from the first Black football player at U. of Michigan to the Massasaugas rattlesnakes infesting Allegan; from the forest fire...(Click Here for a Complete Review)