: Haul the Water, Haul the Wood could be compared to Little House on the Prairie format. Grounded in historical fact, Haul the Water, Haul the Wood is about immigrants from Norway who settle in Dakota Territory. The title of the book is taken from a Norwegian folk song, " A kjore vatten, aa kjore ve" that almost every older Norwegian can sing. This book would be of those interested in historical novels or pioneer life in the late 1800s and turn of the century.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson is the political biography of our time. No president—no era of American politics—has been so intensively and sharply examined at a time when so many prime witnesses to hitherto untold or misinterpreted facets of a life, a career, and a period of history could still be persuaded to speak. The Path to Power, Book One, reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and urge to power that set LBJ apart. Chronicling the startling early emergence of Johnson’s political genius, it follows him from his Texas boyhood through the years of the Depression in the Texas hill Country to the triumph of his congressional debut in New Deal Washington, to his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, of the national power for which he hungered. We see in him, from earliest childhood, a fierce, unquenchable necessity to be first, to win, to dominate—coupled with a limitless capacity for hard, unceasing labor in the service of his own ambition. Caro shows us the big, gangling, awkward young Lyndon—raised in one of the country’s most desperately poor and isolated areas, his education mediocre at best, his pride stung by his father’s slide into failure and financial ruin—lunging for success, moving inexorably toward that ultimate “impossible” goal that he sets for himself years before any friend or enemy suspects what it may be. We watch him, while still at college, instinctively (and ruthlessly) creating the beginnings of the political machine that was to serve him for three decades. We see him employing his extraordinary ability to mesmerize and manipulate powerful older men, to mesmerize (and sometimes almost enslave) useful subordinates. We see him carrying out, before his thirtieth year, his first great political inspiration: tapping-and becoming the political conduit for-the money and influence of the new oil men and contractors who were to grow with him to immense power. We follow, close up, the radical fluctuations of his relationships with the formidable “Mr. Sam” Raybum (who loved him like a son and whom he betrayed) and with FDR himself. And we follow the dramas of his emotional life-the intensities and complications of his relationships with his family, his contemporaries, his girls; his wooing and winning of the shy Lady Bird; his secret love affair, over many years, with the mistress of one of his most ardent and generous supporters . . . Johnson driving his people to the point of exhausted tears, equally merciless with himself . . . Johnson bullying, cajoling, lying, yet inspiring an amazing loyalty . . . Johnson maneuvering to dethrone the unassailable old Jack Garner (then Vice President of the United States) as the New Deal’s “connection” in Texas, and seize the power himself . . . Johnson raging . . . Johnson hugging . . . Johnson bringing light and, indeed, life to the worn Hill Country farmers and their old-at-thirty wives via the district’s first electric lines. We see him at once unscrupulous, admirable, treacherous, devoted. And we see the country that bred him: the harshness and “nauseating loneliness” of the rural life; the tragic panorama of the Depression; the sudden glow of hope at the dawn of the Age of Roosevelt. And always, in the foreground, on the move, LBJ. Here is Lyndon Johnson—his Texas, his Washington, his America—in a book that brings us as close as we have ever been to a true perception of political genius and the American political process.
Rose Hilory is thrilled when she receives a promotion at the Data Computer Company. Finally, her hard work has paid off, and she moves to Blue Ridge, Alberta. In addition to an increase in pay and responsibility, the company has provided a house to live in rent-free. This is not an ordinary house. With its computerized components, Rose finds surprises in every corner, and some of them are disconcerting. Also troublesome are her mysterious boss and an employee who is determined to see Rose fail. Even though shes glad for the move, Roses memory remains vivid, and she yearns for the love she lost more than ten years ago. She can still envision the growling of the cougar when it attacked her horse, Queenie, as she spent the evening with her boyfriend, Donavin. Even more devastating was the reaction of Donavins parents; they disapproved of their son riding with a simple country girl. His family had packed up without even a goodbye. She never saw him again. Determined, Rose tries to move her life forward, but strange events intervene. Her life, her job, and her welfare could be at stake if her enemies get their way in A Canadian Rose.
