• Rated 0 stars

“I just posted this on Johnson's new book, Tree of Smoke, and am pasting it here because of the cross-reference:

I'm just finishing this, and have read all of Johnson's earlier works. It bogs in a few places but he quickly picks the reins back up and runs. Through happenstance of timing this is the third long novel I've read in the past couple of weeks -- David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk and Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs were the other two. I picked up all three with a high sense of expectation based on reviews and friends' assessments. But this is by far the best of the lot. And if you haven't read Jesus' Son, Johnson's short story collection, you should. In some ways it is the polar opposite of this book, but at the same time they complement each other remarkably well. ”

smartelle wrote this review Tuesday, November 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 0 stars

“I'm just finishing this, and have read all of Johnson's earlier works. It bogs in a few places but he quickly picks the reins back up and runs. Through happenstance of timing this is the third long novel I've read in the past couple of weeks -- David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk and Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs were the other two. I picked up all three with a high sense of expectation based on reviews and friends' assessments. But this is by far the best of the lot. And if you haven't read Jesus' Son, Johnson's short story collection, you should. In some ways it is the polar opposite of this book, but at the same time they complement each other remarkably well. ”

smartelle wrote this review Tuesday, November 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“One of my all-time favorites, too. It's been years since I've read it, and while I generally don't re-read books I've been thinking about diving back into this one. It was the first Stegner I read, and it was so good it sent me looking for others. None, though, rose to the caliber of this one. ”

smartelle wrote this review Wednesday, October 31 2007. ( reply | permalink )

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“This is a remarkable book, if for no other reason than it forces readers to question perceptions of history. Often what we think we know turns out to be only a thin slice of the truth. Zinn did an enviable job here showing that history is a narrative, and that there are alternative narratives to just about any history. Perspective is key, and by viewing past events through a single perspective we limit our understanding of what really happened. (Full disclosure: I don't know Zinn, but he blurbed my book, "Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.")”

smartelle wrote this review Sunday, October 28 2007. ( reply | permalink )

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“A remarkable reimagining of the Ludlow Massacre, one of the central events of the 1913-14 Colorado coal field war (a subject I explore in my narrative history, "Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class war in the American West"). If you like this evocatively drawn verse novel, check out Eleanor Swanson's "Trembling in the Bones," too, a collection of poems on the same subject. ”

smartelle wrote this review Sunday, October 28 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“In some ways my recent book about the Ludlow Massacre -- Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West -- began with Dos Passos' trilogy. I read this years ago and it infatuated me with that era in American history, with its broad sweep of turmoil yet an engaged sense of hope. ”

smartelle wrote this review Thursday, October 25 2007. ( reply | permalink )