Kentucky Books

Weird Kentucky: Your Travel Guide to Kentucky's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Weird)

Jeffrey Scott Holland

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sterling Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $12.33

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Kentucky
Subjects -> Reference -> Fun Facts -> Curiosities & Wonders
Subjects -> Travel -> United States -> Regions -> South -> East South Central

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Best Travel Series of the Year 2006!"—Booklist

What’s weird around here?

That’s a question Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman have enjoyed asking for years—and their offbeat sense of curiosity led them to create the bestselling phenomenon, Weird N.J. Now the weirdness has spread throughout key locales in the U.S. Each fun and intriguing volume offers more than 250 illustrated pages of places where tourists usually don’t venture—it’s chock-full of oddball curiosities, ghostly places, local legends, crazy characters, cursed roads, and peculiar roadside attractions. What’s NOT shockingly odd here: that every previously published Weird book has become a bestseller in its region.

Kentucky: Memorable Stories of Wildcat Basketball (Game of My Life)

Ryan Clark

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sports Publishing LLC Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $13.79

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Kentucky
Subjects -> Sports -> Basketball -> College & University
Subjects -> Sports -> Basketball -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Fantastic for Big Blue Fans 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Outstanding compilation of historical Kentucky players/legends sharing their thoughts regarding their most memorable game as a Wildcat. Their stories take on a fervor as they are being relayed to the reader through the hand of the gifted author, who is a true Big Blue fan. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in Kentucky basketball or just a fan of the college game.

A must-own for any UK fan 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The players' stories are interesting and spread out over the history of UK ball. Ralph Beard, Sam Bowie and Rajon Rondo are all here. Todd Svoboda even chips in.

Given as a gift and LOVED by receipient 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Although this book was purchased as a Christmas gift for someone, I was advised that it is a GREAT book and would really be enjoyed by any Kentucky fan. Highly recommend.

Editorial Review:

Several former Wildcat basketball players share their memories of the game that is the most defining of his Kentucky career. Stars like Jamal Mashburn, Dan Issel, Kenny Walker, Richie Farmer, and Travis Ford are among the former players profiled in this book that takes readers down memory lane.

American Still Life: The Jim Beam Story and the Making of the World's #1 Bourbon

F. Paul Pacult

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 63 new & used starting at $2.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Biography & History -> Company Profiles
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The untold story of the world's premier bourbon and the family that made it #1

American Still Life tells the intertwined true stories of America's favorite whiskey and the family dynasty that produces it to this very day. Jim Beam is the world's top-selling bourbon whiskey, with sales of over five million cases per year. Not a day has passed in the 207 years of Jim Beam's existence when a Beam family member has not been master distiller. Dedicated to quality, and dedicated to the family legacy, the Beams have shepherded their particularly American spirit to the top of their industry. And they've done it in an industry beset by challenges, from government regulation and prohibition, to changing consumer tastes, to fierce new global competition. By creating a brand of unparalleled quality and consistency, and by tying the success of their product with the good name of the family, the Beams have established a lasting legacy as perhaps one of the greatest family business dynasties in American history. Not just a simple history of "America's native spirit" (so named by an act of Congress in 1964) or a simple family history, American Still Life is a story of business success based on quality and attention to detail, constant innovation, revolutionary branding and advertising, and adaptation to the business environment.

F. Paul Pacult (Walkill, NY) is recognized the world over as his generation's most accomplished and respected authority on beverage alcohol. He has written for many magazines, including Playboy, Wine and Spirits, Connoisseur, Whisky, Drink, Men's Journal, Cheers, Country Inns, Travel and Leisure, Bon Appetit, Decanter, and Food and Wine. Among his many accomplishments, he has hosted and coproduced two syndicated talk-radio programs and served as the primary expert on whiskey, beer, and wine for the History Channel documentary America Drinks: History in a Glass.

Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (An Owl Book)

John Mack Faragher

Amazon Price: $12.92 List Price: $19.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Holt Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 71 new & used starting at $2.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Well Detailed Book on the Great Backwoodsman 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Well written and detailed book on America's back woodsman who seemed a precursor to the Mountain Man. Hailing from Pennsylvania, the author tracks Boone's introduction and love of hunting from his early years through his family's move to North carolina to Kentucky finishing his mature years in Missouri due to his constant thirst for better hunting and less people. Fascinating account of Boone's unique relationship with the Indians and cool head. His ability to sustain himself like a native and stay in the wilds alone or with small bands. The author not only does well detailing how Boone led parties into Kentucky and creating settlements but also verifies several exploits such as his saving the lives of his daughter and her friend who were kidnapped by Indians by using his knowledge of the geography of the land and the trails that the Indians used.

The author also details well Boone's controversial surrendering of his men to the Indians in exchange for sparing families at Boonesboro that is still somewhat puzzling as many thought him a traitor. Also a bit of a paradox is Boone's love of the hunt, staying away from home sometimes for a year or more while fathering 8 to 10 kids with Rebecca. Also interesting is his relationship with Rebecca who endured his long hunts and disappearances and may have had a child not Boone's that he accepted as the the consequences of his absence. Well worth reading, even covers Boone's warts particularly as a land surveyor, that obviously was not his skill. And unlike Fess Parker and the legend, he never wore a cookskin cap. But the author makes the facts as fascinating as the legend as Boone was in fact a fearless and independent man of the wilderness.

Editorial Review:

The legend of the American frontier is largely the legend of a single individual, Daniel Boone, who looms over our folklore like a giant. Boone figures in other traditions as well: Goethe held him up as the model of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "natural man," and Lord Byron devoted several stanzas of his epic poem Don Juan to the frontiersman, calling Boone "happiest of mortals any where." But folklore is not history, and we are fortunate to have a reliable and factual life of Boone through the considerable efforts of John Mack Faragher. The contradictory admirer of Indians who participated in their destruction, the slaveholder who cherished liberty, the devoted family man who prized solitude and would disappear into the woods for years at a time--the real Boone is far more interesting than the mythical image, and in this book we finally catch sight of him.

Rare Wildflowers of Kentucky

Thomas G. Barnes, Deborah White, Marc Evans

Amazon Price: $29.16 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University Press of Kentucky Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $20.60

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Kentucky
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Conservation -> Endangered Species
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Conservation -> General

Editorial Review:

Kentucky’s rich soil and wonderfully diverse landscapes have for centuries made the state a welcoming habitat for a dazzling variety of wildflowers. From the delicate Kentucky glade cress to the fiery royal catchfly, flowers, grasses, and sedges nestle on rocky hillsides, bask in open woodlands and prairies, and even manage to thrive in busy rights of way and roadsides.

As demand for natural resources and land for development and housing in the Commonwealth grows, land use and habitats are quickly changing. Unfortunately, this translates into disappearing or degraded habitats for a host of remarkable wildflowers. Currently 255 plant species in Kentucky are considered endangered or threatened, and there are more than 50 potential additions to the list.

Rare Wildflowers of Kentucky provides an introduction to Kentucky’s signature rare plants with 220 gorgeous full-color photographs by Thomas G. Barnes, a naturalist and award-winning photographer. These rare wildflowers and their descriptions are organized by habitat, and the book draws attention to the enduring beauty of Kentucky’s old-growth forests, prairies, wetlands, and other habitats.

In addition to serving as a stunning photographic record of Kentucky’s rare plants, the book examines ecological communities and the ways in which they are threatened. The authors also explain how various plants have become endangered over the decades and suggest concrete steps for conservation and preservation at both the government and private level. The book also includes references, a list of scientific and common species names, and a list of each plant’s endangered status that is especially useful to gardeners, botanists, and horticultural professionals.

Rare Wildflowers of Kentucky is both a celebration and a call to action to save the plants that are a vital part of Kentucky’s natural heritage.

Entertaining with Bluegrass Winners Cookbook: New Recipes and Menus from Kentucky's Legendary Horse Farms

Edward L Bowen

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Garden Club of Lexington Amazon Marketplace: 24 new & used starting at $19.45

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Small Business & Entrepreneurship -> Entrepreneurship
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Regional & International -> U.S. Regional -> South
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Special Occasions -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A unique and prized addition to any personal and community library cookbook collection. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

"Entertaining With Bluegrass Winners" is a compendium of recipes contributed by bluegrass hostesses who share their favorite dishes along with their family traditions for every season of the year and every special occasion from a formal winter dinner to a Derby-day brunch. Featuring new recipes and menus from Kentucky's legendary horse farms. "Entertaining With Bluegrass Winners" offers thoroughly 'kitchen cook friendly' dishes that range from Fried Green Tomatoes; Cheese Wafers with Pecans; Marinated Cucumber Sandwiches; and Artichoke Soup; to Fireside Venison Chili; Goat Cheese Salad with Pancetta, Dried Cherry, and Port Dressing; Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts; and Banana Cake with Caramel Icing. Organized by Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, each recipe is part of a menu from a distinguished horse farm. Very nicely illustrated throughout with more than one hundred color photographs, "Entertaining With Bluegrass Winners" is a unique and prized addition to any personal and community library cookbook collection.

Editorial Review:

The all new Entertaining with Bluegrass Winners cookbook has updated menus and recipes that reflect the changing seasons at Central Kentucky's horse farms. In this book, racing historian Edward L. Bowen provides details of the 40 thoroughbred farms that are featured.

The Life of Daniel Boone

Lyman Copeland Draper

Amazon Price: $26.37 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Stackpole Books Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $14.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Draper MS best source of Boone's Life 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Lyman Draper wrote the single best account of the life of Daniel Boone. This source, while not well known, has been mined by virtually every biographer of Boone since 1850. This book and the biography of John Bakeless are the best two volumes ever to appear about the life of Daniel Boone. Also the Memoirs of Nathan Boone and his wife are of extreme value. These books provide the basis for the study of early Kentucky history.

From Smoke & Fire News: A Unique Volume on Daniel Boone 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Occasionally a book that has been available for a while deserves another look just because of its intrinsic value. In 1998 a book was published that combined the names of two legendary individuals who will be associated forever with the history of the American backwoods-Daniel Boone, the famous adventurer, and Lyman C. Draper, the renowned nineteenth-century interviewer and collector. It was only through the painstaking efforts of editor Ted Franklin Belue that Draper's highly significant tome on Boone finally came into being a century and a half after it was started. Before the ink was dry on the printed page, this book had become a backcountry classic. It instantly went to the front rank of Boone biographies. For the previous hundred years few but the serious historian had been drawing from Draper's handwritten manuscript on Boone; now even the casual reader would have the material readily available in print. Despite the fact that Draper never finished writing the biography and didn't take Boone's exploits beyond 1778, The Life of Daniel Boone (596 pages hardcover, $39.95, Stackpole Books) has proven to be well worth the long wait.
The book is a treasure trove of information about Boone, including such highlights as: his early years in Pennsylvania and North Carolina; activities during the French and Indian War; hunting in the Appalachian region; long hunting in Kentucky; adventures in Dunmore's War; the establishment of Boonesborough; and the first half of the Revolutionary War in Kentucky. While perusing these pages, the reader will be reminded constantly of Draper's monumental research that involved extensive travel to obtain interviews with people who had known Boone personally or with relatives and friends of such individuals. He also endeavored to collect important documents before they disappeared. His efforts were literally a race against time. Belue sets a standard for excellence with his very interesting preface as well as his editor's note (following the preface) that explains how the book finally came into being. The outstanding notes at the end of each chapter by both Draper and Belue are a further wealth of information. Draper's 44-page appendix provides a Boone genealogy and biographical sketches of many other frontier figures.
From Smoke & Fire News, November 2004, by Bob Holden

Editorial Review:

Draper, the first secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, collected more than 500 volumes of material on the famed frontiersman Daniel Boone. His biography of Boone remained unfinished for 100 years until Ted Franklin Belue, a widely read scholar of early Americana, added his authoritative editing. This long-awaited work is filled with little-known information on Boone and his family, long hunters, the Shawnee, the fur trade, and frontier life in general.

Trapped!: The Story of Floyd Collins

Robert K. Murray, Roger W. Brucker

Amazon Price: $17.95 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University Press of Kentucky Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $3.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Kentucky
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> South

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Trapped: The Story of Floyd Collins 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

When asked about his earliest childhood memory, my late father would tell of his dad carrying him to his uncle's house to listen to radio news reports of the attempted rescue of Floyd Collins from a cave in nearby Kentucky. This book brings to life those events that captured the nation's attention in Jan.-Feb. 1925. Trapped is a well-written, well-documented account of the tragedy that occured in the central Kentucky hills and before watchful eyes of the nation. Its a gripping account that manages to capture the facts of the event, including great details of America's first modern media circus, while still attending to the many colorful characters who played a role in Collin's life, the rescue attempt, and the aftermath.

Editorial Review:

This text is an historical recreation of an event in the past that became the first true media spectacle in America. The book charts the story of Floyd Collins' entrapment in a Kentucky cave in 1925, and the subsequent rescue attempt that caused sensationalism and hysteria.

Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking

Henry G. Crowgey

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University Press of Kentucky Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $9.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic History
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent Book on Early Distillers 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

In tracing the history of distilling in Kentucky up to the eve of the Civil War, Crowgey dispels many of the myths and "pleasant legends" that have grown up around this native spirit.

There is, of course, much here for those interested in Kentucky history and the history of distilling. However, through his study of early bourbon making, Crowgey also tells us a great deal about early American agricultural history and the settlement and development of the frontier. Originally published in 1971, this is a wonderful little book that deserved to be reprinted.

Editorial Review:

Bourbon whiskey is perhaps Kentucky’s most distinctive product. Despite bourbon’s prominence in the social and economic life of the Bluegrass state, many myths and legends surround its origins. In Kentucky Bourbon, Henry C. Crowgey claims that distilled spirits and pioneer settlement went hand in hand; Isaac Shelby, the state’s first governor, was among Kentucky’s pioneer distillers. Crowgey traces the drink’s history from its beginnings as a cottage industry to steam-based commercial operations in the period just before the Civil War. From “spirited” camp meetings, to bourbon’s use as a medium of exchange for goods and services, to the industry’s coming of age in the mid-nineteenth century, the story of Kentucky bourbon is a fascinating chapter in the state’s early history.

The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal

Gerald Stern

Amazon Price: $13.60 List Price: $20.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Amazon Marketplace: 70 new & used starting at $2.15

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Kentucky
Subjects -> Law -> Administrative Law -> General
Subjects -> Law -> Administrative Law -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On March 9, 1976, a violent explosion, fueled by high concentrations of methane gas and coal dust, ripped through the Scotia mine in the heart of Eastern Kentucky coal country. The blast killed fifteen miners who were working nearly three and a half miles underground; two days later, a second explosion took the lives of eleven rescue workers. For the miners’ surviving family members, the loss of their husbands, fathers, and sons was only the beginning of their nightmare.

In The Scotia Widows, Gerald M. Stern, the groundbreaking litigator and acclaimed author of The Buffalo Creek Disaster, recounts the epic four-year legal struggle waged by the widows in the aftermath of the disaster. Stern shares a story of loss, scandal, and perseverance–and the plaintiffs’ fight for justice against the titanic forces of “Big Daddy Coal.”

Confronted at nearly every turn by a hostile judge and the scorched-earth defense of the Scotia mine’s owners, family members also withstood the opprobrium of some of their neighbors, most of whom relied on coal mining for their livelihoods. Meanwhile, Stern, representing the widows of the disaster on contingency, amassed huge bills and encountered a litany of formidable obstacles. The Eastern Kentucky trial judge withheld disclosure of his own personal financial interest in coal mining, and a popular pro-coal former Kentucky governor served as the lead defense counsel. The judge also suppressed as evidence the federal mine study that pointed to numerous safety violations at the Scotia mine: In a rush to produce more coal, necessary ventilation had been short-circuited, miners had not been trained in the use of self-rescue equipment, and ventilation inspections had not been made. Moreover, Scotia did not even have a trained rescue team. Ultimately, the Scotia widows’ ordeal helped to inspire the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, which changed safety regulations for coal mines throughout the country.

The Scotia Widows portrays in gripping detail young women deciding to pursue a landmark legal campaign against powerful corporate interests and the judge who protected them. It is a critically important and timeless story of ordinary people who took a stand and refused to give up hope for justice.

Praise for The Scotia Widows:

“This is a very scary story, a guided tour of the grinding cogs and spinning wheels inside the machinery of justice. Gerald Stern’s compassionate account of the ordeal of the Scotia widows shows you how horribly out of kilter it can all get when greed and self-interest are at the controls. Only with luck and the expertise of Stern does justice emerge in the end, a bit tarnished but still intact.”
–Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action