I wrote a trilogy about the German settlements on the Texas frontier; so of course, I had to deal with the historical realities of Comanche raids - and the absolutely stomach-churning accounts of what happened to those (both from other Indian tribes, as well as whites and Hispanics) who were taken captive. The Comanches lived by making war, by plunder and slave-trading. There's no earthly way to paint them as peaceable innocents, unjustly set upon.
One of my research books was by Gregory and Susan Michno, a collection of captivity accounts. I could hardly stand to read more than a couple of chapters at a time, as almost every one of them began with survivors seeing friends and family being slaughtered all around them.

Be my guest, Craig - I'd kinda like to get the t-word as unusable in polite company as the n-word is!

All righty then - use of the offensive epithet "teabagger" is noted. (Does no one try to explain to these people that using it in a discussion of the current political scene is like starting off a discussion of civil rights by using the epithet "ni**er?) Also noted is Mr. Tolkin's epic condescension and contempt towards conservatives, strict constitutionalists, and those who take science seriously. I might have been a little tempted to go out and see "Nine" but after reading this barrage ... I will have something better to do.

I haven't seen it, but the funniest comment I've heard so far is that it should have been called "Dances with Smurfs."

My daughter was assigned that book, in her college freshman history class, and didn't get much more than the first chapter before noticing ... well, that it had a definite bias. She herself wasn't all that interested in history, but a lot of my own intense interest, and the fact that I dragged her around to a lot of historical sites in Europe and in the American West probably rubbed off on her. (Also that I actually write very carefully researched historical novels set on the American frontier, she probably can't help knowing quite a lot, inadvertently.) When she mentioned this to her history prof on the first or second day of class, he said, essentially "Oh, don't bother with reading it." He taught the course with his own lecture material, and assigned a lot of original documents and readings, as well as an original history research project. Zinn's textbook was ignored. Apparently, it was "the assigned textbook" for Freshman History, but in practice it was ignored.
Hope there are a lot more history profs like that out there.

Epic levels of lame, a blogger ridiculing an indy-writer ... with luck it will really boost sales. Hey, can I get SadlyNo to go after my books? I'm an indy writer too, and my latest is about German settlers in frontier Texas. Please? It's called The Adelsverein Trilogy, and I'd love to have a boost in sales, especially over the holidays.

It sure as heck is - and some are fantastically good reads - and published by writers who just got very tired of the same old submission-go-round at major publishers and agencies and went "indy". Why not publish yourself, and let readers decide that they wanted to read it! Revolutionary, eh? (Heck, I've done my own four novels as an indy-writer.)

Yay, Tea Parties - the new Resistance! How does it feel to be a dangerous, edgy radical!

I tell them that using it in a conversation about the Tea Party is like starting a discussion about civil rights by using the word "n***er".

Gosh, MA - noting ever dies on the internet! Heck, you should remember the most interesting stories then!