Book Reviews

Title: The Devil’s Own Day
Author: John D. Beatty
Reviewed by Jack Manick

ISBN (for Amazon store): 160910661X

The Devil's Own Day is a story of three armies-two Union and one Confederate-that fought for two days near an obscure flatboat landing in southeastern Tennessee that lay just two miles from a Methodist meeting house called Shiloh. The battle would determine the course of the Civil War in the Mississippi Valley, the fate of two generals, Ulysses S. Grant and Albert S. Johnston, and the course of American history.

Title: Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show Vol.I 1914-1920
Author: Phillip W. Stewart
Reviewed by: Dave Brown

ISBN (for Amazon store): 0981744478

This is the first volume of the HENRY FORD'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW: An Investigator's Guide to the Films Produced by the Ford Motor Company series. It focuses on the initial six years (1914-1920) of the Ford Motor Company motion picture collection that is held in the U.S. National Archives and identifies 935 films. To assist in your investigation of this historically significant film collection, two indexes are also provided--an alphabetical title index and a comprehensive subject index.

The Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show is a multi-book series of guides written to facilitate the public and professional use of the film footage in the Ford Motor Company Collection and to describe its contents in a way that has been, until now, unavailable. The volumes ultimately published under this title, catalog the surviving films produced or acquired by the Ford Motor Company between 1914 and 1954. When the U.S. National Archives accepted these historically significant films in 1963, it provided an all inclusive formal title of: Films Relating to the Ford Motor Company, the Henry Ford Family, Noted Personalities, Industry, and Numerous Americana and Other Subjects...and this pretty well sums up the visual content of the collection.

Altogether, the collection holds approximately 1.8 million feet of silent, black and white, 35-millimeter celluloid film. The main goal of Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show is to provide a useful and practical resource to the moving images of the world during the first half of the 20th Century, as seen through the camera lens of the Ford Motion Picture Department and its successor, the Ford Photographic Department. These films have superb historical value that stems from their very broad subject-matter coverage. Overall, the moving images contained in these films are truly Americana in motion.

Title: Barksdale Chronicles in America, Vol I
Author: Robert A. Groves
By Lee Boyland

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1452059969

Barksdale Chronicles in America, Volume I is the first published book by Maj Robert A. Groves. His research into his maternal ancestors began at the millennium due, in large part, to the colorful family stories he recalled his mother and her siblings sharing during his childhood. Family chronicles define and preserve the contributions of ancestors to their families and communities. Through a study of our roots, we gain an appreciation of what helped shape us as individuals and citizens. This edition captures but a small part of the Barksdale family as it starts out in the New World. As followed through the lineage of John Hickerson Barksdale, early ancestors began forging a life for themselves in Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas. They courageously served their country in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. Some dipped their toes into the political waters of our country and served their communities, states and nation as elected officials. Using their creativeness, they turned resources available to them into entrepreneurial opportunities in agriculture, merchandising, and manufacturing. Some heard a higher calling and faced the moral issues of the time from rural pulpits. Indeed, the early Barksdale ancestors played a vital role in shaping the communities where they settled and the environment into which following generations were born

Title: SAT & BAF! Memories of a Tower Rat
Author: Doug DePew
By Lee Boyland

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1432771329

The year is 1986. The Soviet Union is five years from collapsing, and the arms race has ramped up to unbelievable proportions. It appears nothing can end this standoff except nuclear annihilation or capitulation by one of the antagonists. One company of infantry stands between the entire Soviet arsenal and live Pershing II nuclear missiles which are the threat used by President Ronald Reagan as he orders Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall".

In this brutally honest and irreverently funny account, one of the men who stood the perimeter describes what it was like. You will be taken to the field, inside the towers, and out on the town. You will be carried through the two year tour of one very young Infantryman as he arrives in Germany straight out of Infantry School and gradually navigates his way through the mind numbingly tedious and insanely active life of a tower rat. For possibly the first time, a person who was actually there relates the amazing bond forged in the towers of Waldheide Nuclear Weapons Storage Area. You will see it through his eyes. You will live it.

Title: WRAITH
Author: James R. Hannibal
Reviewed By: E. Franklin Evans

ISBN (for Amazon store): 1590957237

Bestselling thriller writer Clive Cussler has enthusiastically endorsed WRAITH, a new techno-thriller and first novel by former Stealth Bomber pilot James R. Hannibal:

"Hannibal brings together a terrific mix of real air technology with intrigue and nonstop action. A true suspenseful story that will keep you turning the pages until the exciting finale; it really is a great tale."