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The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster: A Revealing Portrait of the Forgotten Man Behind Swanee River, Beautiful Dreamer, and My Old Kentucky Home

JoAnne O'Connell

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Book

The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster offers an engaging reassessment of the life, politics, and...

The Man with the Branded Hand: The Life of Jonathan Walker, Abolitionist

Alvin F. Oickle

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Book

Sailing around the Florida Keys in 1844, forty-five-year-old Jonathan Walker had a price on his...

Bombing Hitler: The Story of the Man Who Almost Assassinated the Fuhrer

Hellmut G. Haasis and William Odom

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Book

Georg Elser was just a working-class citizen living in Munich, Germany. He was employed as a...

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain and Emory Elliott

6.9 (28 Ratings) Rate It

Book

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer",...

American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment

Gerard N. Magliocca

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John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A...

Awix (3310 KP) rated The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) in Movies

Mar 1, 2019 (Updated Mar 1, 2019)

Whether or not you consider this to be one of the greatest westerns ever made or just an empty, cynical joke is probably a matter of personal taste; coherent arguments can be made both ways. Against the backdrop of the American Civil War, three gunmen search for a coffin full of dollars: Eastwood isn't especially good, but Van Cleef is certainly bad, and as for Wallach... The first of the film's many careful ironies is that there really isn't very much to choose between them in moral terms - those who view the western as a venue for articulating moral principles may not be impressed.

However, maybe they are missing the point, for while this may be a cynical movie, it is by no means wholly amoral, and there is compassion on display as well. What you would have to be utterly contrary to argue against are the brilliant set-pieces orchestrated by Leone, invariably accompanied by Ennio Morricone's stunning score. Eccentric and impressionistic in places, but still an extraordinary piece of cinema what ever you think of its place within the western genre.

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Lindsay (1717 KP) rated A Silken Thread in Books

Jul 1, 2019

A Silken Thread

Kim Vogel Sawyer | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry, History & Politics, Romance

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

I love the fact, that A Silken Thread is mostly a historical fiction book with a little bit of romance. The author does a really good job of telling a story though three main characters. The story is based around the Cotton Exposition of 1895. We learn a bit about what life a bit after the civil war and what life is like for southerners.

Their a story about African American and whites though out the story. Though we have a bit of story with a fourth character as well. Laurel is looking for someone to love her and find maybe find love along the way. She applies to be a weaver in the silk room.

Willie applies to the Cotton Exposition for he want to help pay for his fathers hospital bills and to help him get better. Willie friend Quincy has gotten a job their as well. We also have Langdon. What the author show though out the book is how world is viewed between each character. She does a well job of it.

Kudos

David McK (3425 KP) rated Dances With Wolves (1990) in Movies

Mar 14, 2021

Dances With Wolves (1990)

1990 | Action, Drama, Western

7.9

(14 Ratings)

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John Dunbar ... Dances with Wolves

Kevin Costner's epic Western, in which the man himself stars as Civil War veteran John Dunbar who, after an act of attempted suicide charging the enemy lines on his own, is offered his choice of posting and chooses to go to the American Frontier (before it disappears).

Once he gets there, he is posted to an abandoned fort, with everyone who had knowledge of this posting then (for plot reasons) getting killed off.

Initially left on his own, he soon encounters a nearby tribe of Sioux Indians and, as the film progresses, finds himself drawn more and more to their way of life, eventually earning the name 'Dances with Wolves' before the inevitable happens and the US army starts making their way into Sioux territory.

Unusual (for it's time) in that this film is largely sympathetic to the Native Americans plight, with some stunning cinematography, beautiful music and some stellar acting but, holy moly, boy is this one long film: even the 'standard' version is roughly 3 hours long!