Book Description
The Hatfield-McCoy feud, the entertaining subject of comic strips, popular songs, movies, and television, has long been a part of American folklore and legend. Ironically, the extraordinary endurance of the myth that has grown up around the Hatfields and McCoys has obscured the consideration of the feud as a serious historical event. In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization.
Waller argues that the legendary feud was not an outgrowth of an inherently violent mountain culture but rather one manifestation of a contest for social and economic control between local people and outside industrial capitalists—the Hatfields were defending community autonomy while the McCoys were allied with the forces of industrial capitalism. Profiling the colorful feudists "Devil Anse" Hatfield, "Old Ranel" McCoy, "Bad" Frank Phillips, and the ill-fated lovers Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield, Waller illustrates how Appalachians both shaped and responded to the new economic and social order.
Customer Reviews:
Great Research of the FEUD.......2004-09-07
This book happens to be one of the only studies that Dr. Coleman Hatfield recommended at one of the talks I attended. Dr. Hatfield is the great-grandson of Devil Anse and is quite a history scholar in his own right -- and the author of "THE TALE OF THE DEVIL" the first and only biography of Devil Anse Hatfield.
Waller has meticulously studied the subject matter, and it's worth reading. And American tragedy.
Useful, but flawed in several important aspects . . ........2002-09-21
Dr. Waller attempts to get past the "traditional accounts", usually assembled from the newspaper and popular accounts of the time, but falls into one error which confounds the rest of her presentation: she found a great deal of information for the Hatfield family and for the West Virginia side of the river, but not as much for the Kentucky side and she generalized about the second using what she learned from the first. While the book was exceptionally well-researched, some information was overlooked or missed. Professor Waller unfortunately accepts the claim that the Tug Valley was a Confederate stronghold. However, only the West Virginia side of the river was strongly Confederate in its sympathies. The Kentucky side of the river contained a large number of Union veterans (possibly as many as a hundred or more men from this area joined the Federal army), and, in fact, in Pike County the area bordering the river was the most loyal in the entire county (post-war voting records reveal the largest percentages of Republican voters in the two precincts which were part of the Tug Valley). Waller's initial conclusions lead her to dismiss the Civil War connections of the feud. She was apparently unaware of the high degree of Unionism in the region and how it may have contributed to what could have been a continuation of the 1861-1865 warfare on the border, despite the alleged thirteen- and five-year respites. While it is well-known that Hatfield and his kin were Confederate veterans (though there is a justifiable dispute as to whether Devil Anse was actually a member of the Logan Wildcats), and it is also known that many of the McCoys had served in gray with the Hatfields, in the later phases of the feud (aptly identified by Dr. Waller) the participation of several former Union veterans or their sons in the fighting against the Hatfields indicates a significant Civil War connection. The evidence that the feuding was a carryover from the war is substantial and cannot be dismissed.
Hatfields and McCoys.......2002-07-21
It has long been assumed that the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys in the 1880's was a family affair between two clans of primitive hillbillies. In Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900, Altina Waller argues that this view is nothing less than folklore, and the historical reality of the feud has been all but lost. Her work successfully explodes the myths that have surrounded the feuding Hatfields and McCoys.
In her introduction, Professor Waller discusses the previous interpretations of the feud. The first states that, "the feud and the culture from which it emerged were anachronisms in modern society" and "they represented a primitive way of life which had somehow been preserved in much the same way that prehistoric fossils are preserved." The second school of thought suggests that the feud was a result of the transformation that was occurring in the region due to the "onslaught of industrialization." Waller rejects both of these interpretations because of three aspects of the feud that she has identified as violence, family, and timing. Waller has concluded after much research that "in the 1870s and 1880s, the Tug Valley may have been boisterous and rowdy, but it was far from dangerous" and that "something unusual was happening eithin this particular community which drove a few individuals and families to resort to extreme measures." And Waller discounts the family explanation because " supportersof the Hatfields and of the Mccoys consisted of numerous individuals unrelated to those families; in fact, more than half of each group were unrelated to the feud leaders. More puzzling, there were McCoys on the Hatfield side and Hatfields on the McCoy side." Waller rejects also that the feud was caused by the Civil War. She dates the feud from 1878-1900, and identifies two phases with a five year interim. Waller offers that the feud must be examined internally and also in the light of regional and national trends.
The Tug Valley in the years following the Civil War underwent profound changes. Due to rapid growth in population and the finite agricultural resources available in the Valley, a sort of greedy desperation began to emerge in the character of some inhabitants of the Tug Valley. Also at this time outside interest in the vast resources of the Appalachias was taking the form of big money men and local agents purchasing huge tracts of land in order to exploit the mountains for their coal and timber. Gradually the mountaineer was transformed from an inependent farmer to an impoverished wage laborer. attempting to buck this trend is none other than Devil Anse Hatfield. Through hard work and some crafty legal maneuvers, Anse becomes proprieter of a sizable timber busines. And in the process incurs the wrath of Old Ranel McCoy and Perry Cline. Old Ranel through his own foolishness has not prospered, and Anse has bested Cline in a court action and removed him from his lands, which are then awarded to Anse. This is what Professor Waller has discovered to be the crux of the feud--economic power and control and its resultant societal implications. Anse has climbed the ladder while others have watched, and they are jealous.
These truths were initially lost because of the sensational handling of the feud by the newspapers of the day. Altina Waller has been successful in separating the myths from the reality. She states in conclusion that, "the feudists were struggling with the same historical forces of transformation that had been changing Americal since before the American Revolution." This is the larger picture.
Well-researched and written account of the famous feud along.......1998-05-28
Waller has a done a spectacular job of recreating this now infamous event, seperating fact from myth and rebutting many of the stereotypes that were perpetrated about the feud by the Northern press that glamorized it. As a native of Pike County, Kentucky and a distant relative of many involved in this feud, I found the text most informative. It is also accesible to anyone who is not from Appalachia or who is not versed in its history.
Amazon.com
William Clarke Quantrill was quite possibly the most dangerous man to fight in the Civil War. The leader of an almost psychopathic band of guerrilla warriors, Quantrill participated as a Confederate in a deadly border war between Southern sympathizers in Missouri and the Unionist Jayhawks of Kansas. He was largely responsible for the 1863 massacre of nearly 200 unresisting men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas, as well as dozens of other brutal acts that today would be called terrorism. Among the notorious men who rode with him were Frank and Jesse James, whose postwar crime careers are briefly reviewed. Edward E. Leslie provides an objective treatment of his controversial subject, and readers will appreciate his ability to tell a good story--including the one about why Quantrill's bones currently rest in three different states and why a forensically correct wax reconstruction of his head can be found in the refrigerator of an Ohio historical society. --John J. Miller
Book Description
This is the first modern biography of the most famous--and infamous--soldier, rogue, raider, and terrorist to emerge from the Civil War. The Devil Knows How to Ride is based on memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspapers--all of which the author has skillfully converted in a biography that is almost sure to provoke controversy among Civil War historians and buffs alike. of photos.
Customer Reviews:
Charley Hart was mistreated in Lawrence...............2007-09-09
....and Colonel William Clarke Quantrill called in the debt. He sure as hell did. Hart was an assumed name that Quantrill used as a young man when he went west from Ohio seeking fame and fortune, or at least a living. Problem was, he landed right in the middle of the "Bleeding Kansas" mess that was especially hot along the Missouri-Kansas border. Quantrill worked as a teacher, and is said to have been a good one, but trouble was brewing...Charles Jennison and his Jayhawkers, John Brown and his murders of innocent whites....more than enough motivation for a young man to follow the South when war came.
Missouri was even more deeply divided than the rest of the country; it really was brother against brother. The Confederate commander in Missouri was Major General Sterling Price, a fine and decent man, but not our best General. Initially, Quantrill served in the regular Confederate Army, but gradually broke away, with a band of followers, to form The Missouri Partisan Rangers, forerunner of the modern Special Forces, complete with proper Confederate commissions. At first, they played by regular rules...taking prisoners, giving paroles, etc. But when Jim Lane wantonly burned Osceola, and murdered civilians, the black flag came out...
Quantrill's followers are the stuff of Legend...Captain Bloody Bill Anderson...Captain George Todd, who eventually supplanted Quantrill [I am married to a direct descendent of Captain Todd; our son will gladly tell you about it]...Archie Clement...Bill Gregg...Cole Younger...Frank James...Jesse James. Some died in the cause; others went on to fame after the war.
Quantrill's Raiders lived off the countryside, and made things hot for the Yankees wherever they went. They even fought, and won, regular battles, like Baxter Springs. Finally, the Yankees imprisoned female relatives of the Raiders in a structurally unsafe jail in Kansas City...when it collapsed, five innocent girls, including Bill Anderson's sister and Cole Younger's cousin died...enough was enough, the bill was due, and Lawrence paid. When Ewing issued his infamous Order #11, clearing northwest Missouri of Southern civilians, resolve hardened.
Eventually, Todd and Anderson were killed, and the war ended. Quantrill was mortally wounded in Kentucky in 1865. Or was he? He was seen alive as late as 1915...the ultimate legendary status...seen alive after death, joining such company as Jesse James [seen as late as 1951], Houdini, Elvis, and JFK. His skull was used as a prop in a college fraternity initiation for years; he finally received a military funeral, and Christian burial, in 1992. Surviving Raiders held reunions from 1898 till 1929; interestingly, there were two black Raiders at the reunions, though no one knows much about them.
This is a well researched account of a little known aspect of our Civil War. "Quantrill's War" by Duane Schultz is more academic, but this is more readable...both get five stars.
The Civil War wasn't just in the East.......2005-04-04
I went to KU in Lawrence so I was well aware of Quantrill's raid but that was about all that I was aware of. (Pioneer Cemetery with headstone inscriptions bearing witness to that raid is just across I70 from KU on Mount Oread.) When studying the American Civil War in school one learns about Gettysburg, Antietam, Petersburg and the fighting in the Shenandoah of Virginia. Some passing mention might be made of the war in the west, usually a reference to Grant and Vicksburg. There is hardly if ever any mention of the 'border war' in eastern Kansas and western Missouri. The border war is still alive in that part of the nation; the massacre at Baxter Springs and General Order Number 11 that emptied a number of counties of citizens in western Missouri to combat bands of guerillas is still in the memory of many. Not all of the fighting was in the east and Edward Leslie does a fine job of bringing to life a bit of the war in the west. It was as nasty if not nastier than anything in the east.
The Bloody Conflict in Kansas-Missouri.......2004-11-06
With nealy 620,000 combat deaths, the American Civil War has proven the single bloodiest conflict ever engaged in by U.S. forces. Names like Antietam, Gettysburg, and Appomattox still make many Americans cringe with thoughts of bullets, sabres, and grape shot tearing through ranks of steadily marching countrymen.
However, there was another smaller, beastly war occuring along the contested boarder region between Missouri and Kansas. Rarely was there a conflict between the massive armies of the C.S.A. and U.S.A. Rather it was a war of attrition waged by roving bands of maruaders who were less interested in ideology and more concerned with loot and plunder. Indeed, along the border raged a savage guerrilla war.
With the State of Kansas predomintly in support of the Federal Union, and the Missourians leaning towards Jeff Davis' Confederate States, the border was a tinderbox, and sparks were everywhere. Incidents of violence were common, and reprisal raids were bloody.
Leslie provides an excellent and informative book regarding not only the Missouri-Kansas border war, but one of the principal guerrila chieftains, William Clarke Quantrill. Q's band of raiders, which included such infamous names as Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger, and the notorious "Bloody" Bill Anderson waged a war with few if any rules. Prisoners were executed with out remorse, cities and towns were burned to the ground, and civilians attempting the least resistance were gunned down, usually with one pistol ball to the head. Rather than being a rarity, Q's band was one of many roaming the countyside. The Unionists also maintained their guerrila fighters under the name of Jayhawkers who were equally ruthless as Quantrill; the difference being they were partial to the execution of Southern sympathizers.
Leslie follows the story of Q and the Kansas-Missouri war from its inception to its conclusion. He keeps his observations objective and provides a clear picture of both the C.S.A. and the U.S.A. His work is well researched and readable, and certainly leads readers to discover more about this unique, although bloody Americans.
Classic Study on Guerrilla War In the US.......2004-10-27
This is a classic study in depth study into the mind of the 19th century guerrilla in the War Between the States. To understand counterinsugency of today or to understand the reasons insurgents fight, you must delve into their world.
Great Insight on why Kansas and Missouri were enemies.......2003-03-25
Great Book
This is an excellently researched book about the pre-Civil War era along the Missouri and Kansas border and why their conflicts escalated into a all out war between them during the Civil War.
This book is well balanced and not a bunch of hyped up exaggerated stories about a notorious outlaw. Excellent read for any student or history buff desiring to better understand the turmoil and terror the local communities and people endured and suffered on both sides of the civil war.
Book Description
This sweeping history explores the growing Latino presence in the United States over the past two hundred years. It also debunks common myths about Silicon Valley, one of the world's most influential but least-understood places. Far more than any label of the moment, the devil of racism has long been Silicon Valley's defining force, and Stephen Pitti argues that ethnic Mexicans--rather than computer programmers--should take center stage in any contemporary discussion of the "new West."
Pitti weaves together the experiences of disparate residents--early Spanish-Mexican settlers, Gold Rush miners, farmworkers transplanted from Texas, Chicano movement activists, and late-twentieth-century musicians--to offer a broad reevaluation of the American West. Based on dozens of oral histories as well as unprecedented archival research, The Devil in Silicon Valley shows how San José, Santa Clara, and other northern California locales played a critical role in the ongoing development of Latino politics.
This is a transnational history. In addition to considering the past efforts of immigrant and U.S.-born miners, fruit cannery workers, and janitors at high-tech firms--many of whom retained strong ties to Mexico--Pitti describes the work of such well-known Valley residents as César Chavez. He also chronicles the violent opposition ethnic Mexicans have faced in Santa Clara Valley. In the process, he reinterprets not only California history but the Latino political tradition and the story of American labor.
This book follows California race relations from the Franciscan missions to the Gold Rush, from the New Almaden mine standoff to the Apple janitorial strike. As the first sustained account of Northern California's Mexican American history, it challenges conventional thinking and tells a fascinating story. Bringing the past to bear on the present, The Devil in Silicon Valley is counter-history at its best.
Customer Reviews:
By the sweat of their brow, the wealth of CA was built..........2003-02-10
This book is an incredible contribution to understanding California and the West. The author has a good eye for detail, and he tells a vivid story. Most important, he offers incisive analysis of race, labor and community in the Silicon Valley. The book is also enjoyable to read because the author has a very nice writing style, and he knows how to use his subjects' own insights to prove his arguments convincingly. This book should give activists, public officials, and residents a lot to grapple with. Highest possible recommendation!
thoroughly researched and readable.......2003-01-25
As part of my doctoral research into the history of California, I've read several books on the history of Santa Clara County. Most emphasize the "pioneer" (read: white colonization) days, and the rest the technical magnificence of the Valley of Silicon Delight.
This new important work delineates the history of ethnic Mexicans in the county, particularly its East Side. From the poisonous mines of Almaden to the poisonous laboratories of the West Side, it has been ethnically based labor for low pay that has allowed the county to develop in all its prolific economic richness. The author's book provides an overview of these dynamics through research, figures, facts, and eyewitness accounts.
The "devil" mentioned in the title has to do with racism, and the book goes beyond the usual sociological and psychological explanations of racism to emphasize its classist underpinnings in a supposedly classless society. Also emphasized are the creative responses in opposition to it as ethnic Mexicans have made their voices heard and refused to be subjugated without meaningful forms of culturally enhancing assertiveness. Highly recommended.
Best Book on the History of Latinos.......2003-01-02
This is quite a book: a smart, easy to read, and important study of Latinos in California from the early 19th century to the present. Specialists and non-specialists alike will find here an engaging narrative guided by impressive (even stunning) historical research. Pitti provides the first accurate and sensitive portrait of the San Jose area's development, and he does so while showing how Northern California developed in relation to Mexico and to the wider history of "race" in the United States. Moreover, THE DEVIL IN SILICON VALLEY explains the many ways in which Mexicans and Mexican Americans responded to discriminatory treatment over time. The portrait of Latinos and their politics given here will be critical reading for anyone who seeks to understand Mexican Americans, the politics of immigration, and many other aspects of the multicultural United States in the years to come. Not to be missed!
About time.......2002-12-18
Every Mexican American, Mexican immigrant, and Latino should read this book. Pitti lifts the lid on the Silicon Valley myth and shows that underneath is just old-time exploitation and injustice, and it's been going on for over a century. And thankfully, Pitti's a scholar who isn't afraid to call for action. My only complaint: too hard to read because the type was so small.
Average customer rating:
- Very Worthwhile Reading
- History with a perceptive twist
- Wyoming History
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Devil's Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Story
Tom Rea
Manufacturer: University of Oklahoma Press
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Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life (Civilization of the American Indian Series)
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Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West
ASIN: 0806137924 |
Book Description
Devil's Gate--the very name conjures difficult passage and portends a doubtful outcome. In this eloquent and captivating narrative, Tom Rea traces the history of the Sweetwater River valley in central Wyoming--a remote place that includes Devil's Gate, Independence Rock, and other sites along a storied stretch of the Oregon Trail--to show how legal ownership of a place can translate into owning its story.
Customer Reviews:
Very Worthwhile Reading.......2007-05-12
This well written book provides historical depth on the Oregon Trail as well as interesting reading that gets an important message across about historical truth. Highly recommend it.
History with a perceptive twist.......2007-03-22
At times history can be a Gatling gun of fact and speculation and cause the reader to separate truth from fiction. The underlying theme of Tom Rea's fine work is that given a certain geographical area (in this case Devil's Gate along Wyoming's Sweetwater River), it is the land itself that owns the true stories of space and time. People simply tell them, sometimes to fit their own needs.
Recruiting and interweaving stories from days gone by of this region, whether it be John Fremont mapping the territory, experiences of Oregon Trail emigrants, the Mormon handcarters, mid-nineteenth century Indian wars, Billy Owen's surveying or Hiram Chittenden's engineering for dam sites, to feuds with neighboring ranchers ("Cattle Kate" lynching), water rites, grazing laws, up to the present-day, this is a gifted undertaking of connecting historical meaning.
Enjoyed the stories. Benefited from the insightful viewpoint as well.
Wyoming History.......2007-03-16
This books does a good job of summerizing many historic events in Wyoming's past to a very unique and sometimes forgotten place. It was interesting to read accounts of some of these historic events and some not so historic and obscure events and how this country tied into them. It was an enjoyable read of history but also posed an underlying troubling trend today. It is a very interesting "history" book in that aspect.
Average customer rating:
- Is This a Good Book?
- A novel book
- An enticing South African Mythology
- Weird!
- "Devil's Valley" a look into the stranger side of life.
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Devil's Valley
Andre Brink
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
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Binding: Paperback
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Imaginings of Sand
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The Other Side of Silence
ASIN: 0156012081 |
Amazon.com
Flip Lochner--embittered boozer, self-described loser, burnt-out crime reporter, would-be historian, failed husband and father--finds himself on the farthest edge of civilization one day, descending on foot into a region that lies so deep within the walls of wild mountains it is all but impossible to reach. The Devil's Valley has been home for 160 years to a breakaway sect of inbred Boers shut off from the rest of the world, and Lochner has come to dig into their stories, to establish their history, to know their truth.
With Devil's Valley, South African writer André Brink, author of A Dry White Season, takes the reader on a wild ride into all the dark places of human nature that people most like to avoid. He makes a landscape and social history of these dark places as he brings his protagonist face to face with an agrarian community sternly committed to keeping outsiders out and inner secrets in. It's a place where dream worlds, death worlds, and this world blur and blend, where God and the Devil daily wrestle for the souls of the inhabitants, where simple human dignity is all but out of reach. What is history in such a place? What is truth? "The problem is that I have no bloody way of making sure what I have to show for my efforts," Lochner muses on his experience. "Statements, testimonies, accounts, or just a damn handful of ravings?"
Devil's Valley asks the reader to wonder about his or her own history, especially those parts we all like to leave out yet mutter silently to ourselves, the parts that skitter through our own moonlit night lives accompanied by owls and baboons. --Schuyler Ingle
Book Description
When Flip Lochner, a seedy, tired journalist fleeing a failed marriage, sees a beautiful woman with four breasts in Devil's Valley, he thinks it's a mirage. But then a man called Lukas Death stands before him. So begins Lochner's search for "the truth" first hinted at by a young student in Cape Town who was mysteriously killed. Lochner meets Lukas Death's clan, where righteousness prevails by day and depravity by night, where punishment for misdemeanors is summary, yet brutal murderers walk unscathed. Nothing in Devil's Valley is as it seems: the supernatural is an ingredient of every day, the living and the dead are never quite separate, the grotesque coexists with the banal.
Vibrant and darkly humorous, Devil's Valley is splendid entertainment from a master storyteller.
Customer Reviews:
Is This a Good Book?.......2003-08-06
I kept asking myself for the first hundred pages, "is this a good book?" It is, but I needed to explain it to myself. The novel is set in a South African equivalent of, say, a renegade Mormon enclave in some lost canyon of remotest Utah (I apologize for the imperfect comparison). What sets the story in motion is pure detective story boilerplate: a young man who has fled the community for a life on the outside dies under mysterious circumstances after blabbing to a stranger about it ? who also happens to be crime reporter ("is this a good book?"). The reporter (predictably washed up and foul-mouthed) treks into the valley to get the scoop and finds a holler teaming with gothic characters, falling in love with one of the youngest and most beautiful of them ("is this a good book?"). Even the ending concludes on a predictable note of Judgment. And yet, I found this skeleton able to support a very rich and dialogical fabric of storytelling that drew me on and on. In particular, the predictable genre aspects of this structure allow Brink's moments of magical realism (there are many) to really take flight. Clearly the novel also functions as a parable about Afrikaners' collective soul-searching (or lack thereof) in the wake of "Truth and Reconciliation." But to this Southern American reader, this novel put me in mind of progressive, if not exactly liberal writers like Robert Penn Warren and Walker Percy: novelists who were also torn between celebrating and mourning the difficult passage of their people from feudal social relations to modernity. Anyway, when a novel starts engaging my own experience in this way, for my money, it is a good one.
A novel book.......2003-03-11
I very much enjoyed Brink's novel "Devils Valley." A strange story that keeps you on the edge, wondering what is going to happen next. Magic, ghosts (looking and acting much like real people), and a gritty realistic texture to the location and people are combined with significant social insights and total unpredictability to make Devils Valley as _novel_ a book as any I've read. Brink's examination of local history and journalistic writing also delves into some interesting domains: for example, where and how much is it proper to delve into people's personal affairs.
I'm a bit surprised that other readers didn't look at this book as more of an attempt by the author to describe a place that is more literally an aspect of the title itself.
SPOILERS: Brink does not answer the question of whether we are reading about one person's hell (or purgatory) or not, but there is much in the book that hints that the main character, Flip Lochner, is in his own personal hell. We are told very little about Flip's previous life, as one example, other than that his wife kicked him out of the house, and that he has a grown son and daughter that no longer have much to do with him. Is Flip meeting other people that are involved in independent familial beatings and rapes, or are these people simply projections of his own past? There is much in Devils Valley that is hard to read, but it is done in a smart, engaging, questioning way. A great book, with much to think and ponder on.
An enticing South African Mythology.......2003-02-01
I wasn't even sure at what parts I was supposed to supend my disbelief. Brink weaves a South African Boer mythology that makes the Greek version seem mundane. Like all mythologies, it explained a culture. His story of a village of secluded and inbred hyper-calvinist helped me to understand the Boer. And I don't mean that in a bad way. They were obviously a rugged God-fearing jihad going people, tougher than nails, living shrapnel. He brings you into their world view through the stories they use to explain it. This book is mighty.
Weird!.......1999-05-27
This is a very strange book. The narrator is a true anti-hero, a loser who seems determined for some reason to visit a lost and utterly remote enclave of inbred people. He does make it and right away sees a vision of a beautiful woman whom he later learns is Emma. Most of the book relates the interviews he has with all the strange characters tho why they would all tell him all their intimate secrets when they fear and distrust strangers is hard to accept. Another strong annoyance with me at least is the constant use of expletives in totally gratuitous ways. In quoting a conversation, OK, but not so unnecessarily in the narrative. I will say that the climax was well done and kept me turning the final pages but it was only stubbornness on my part that kept me going that far. Maybe only the people in South Africa would appreciate this one.
"Devil's Valley" a look into the stranger side of life........1999-04-18
This book captures the essence of being South African in a brutally funny way. Being a white, Afrikaans-speaking woman, I could identify in an almost frightening manner with the fallen hero of the book, Flip Lochner. 'Devil's Valley', with it's wonderfully twisted plot and surreal characters, took me on a shocking, surprising journey into a part of my heritage.
It is a pity that this fabulous book will be less accessible to non-South Africans. It is such an intensely personal portrait of everything South African that the details are less likely to make sense to someone who has not grown up on that sunny southern tip of the dark continent.
No doubt so much of the Afrikaans language (not to mention the extremely effective swear words!) were lost in the translation. I can liken it to good poetry; truely stirring in its original language, but less spell-binding when translated. I encourage people of all nationalities to give this book a try. If it's not your cup of tea, rest assured that a clan of white Africans will treasure it as a wonderful part of their culture.
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Devil-brother,
Walter Baron
Manufacturer: Minton, Balch & Company
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B00085P9ZI |
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DEVILS VALLEY
Andre Brink
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJBLXC |
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Devils, Ghosts and Witches: Occult Folklore of the Upper Ohio Valley
George Swetnam
Manufacturer: MacDonald Sward Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Ghosts
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ASIN: 094543703X |
Customer Reviews:
Very nice book.......2005-06-04
This is a very well put together book. People into Ghost stories will enjoy it. It was only printed for a limited time and is hard to find.
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee Bar
- My Name Is America: journal Of Rufus Rowe, Witness To The Battle Of Fredricksburg
- Globalization and Its Enemies
- History: Fiction or Science
- Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power And Purpose
- Return To Me
- Managing Scientists: Leadership Strategies in Research and Development
- The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation
- India and the IT Revolution: Networks of Global Culture
- Working for the Devil
Hatfields and the McCoys
The Tale of the Devil: The Biography of Devil Anse Hatfield
History's Mysteries: Family Feud: The Hatfields And McCoys
The Coffin Quilt: The Feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys
West Virginia: A History
