[Fasder]

Saw this on another forum but made me think about books concerning Arkansas or Arkansans

What are your favorites? Anyone else have recomendations?

A few recommendations:

Classic's

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

Interesting Reads like

• The Pelican Brief by John Grisham and related line

• Johnny Cash: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash

Or Politics like

• My Life by Bill Clinton

• The Arrogance of Power by J. William Fulbright

Something that fascinates me concerns area's of the state that were influenced or reflect past history. One of these is a series of books on Albert Pike. In my home town of Hot Springs, there is a major road named after him, but it is a very interesting read to find background information about the person that recieved the honor.

• A Life of Albert Pike by Walter Lee Brown

[GetmeoutofAR]

Civil War in the Ozarks. Tim Ernst' books

[vrussell]

Add Charles Portis writings to the list. :-) He is said to be one of the finest of Arkansas fiction writers.
·Norwood (novel) (1966)
·True Grit (1968)
·The Dog of the South (1979)
·Masters of Atlantis (1985)
·Gringos (1991)

[luvarkansas]

Oh yeah, Tim Ernst's books....the best for getting a true sense of the Arkansas wilderness!

He has a journal on his website that we check every day around here. I think a link wouldn't be allowed, but all anyone would have to do is Google his name. He calls his home (and his website! heehee) Cloudland. He lives close to Ponca and the Boxley Valley, 'way out in the middle of nowhere.

[Stormcrow73]

Funny this should come up today as I came across some titles I read when I was younger just yesterday! They aren't exactly fine literature but they are great examples of life in the Ozarks in a bygone era. They are the "Way Back in the Hills" series written by James C. Hefley and his brother(?) Howard. You can get some of them from Amazon.com or better yet, order them from the Newton County Historical Society for a few bucks cheaper! Books about Newton County

[rackensack]

There's no better book for understanding Arkansas and Arkansawyers than Donald Harington's Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns -- an indescribable book of mostly non-fiction that's social, political, architectural, and cultural history all rolled into one, with some mystery and great love story rolled into it as well. And Harington's novel The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks is right up there with it, second to it only because it doesn't have the geographic scope of LUBUC (it's set mostly in Newton County, in the semi-fictional community of Stay More, which is also the setting of several other novels by Harington -- LUBUC deals with lost towns from all parts of the state).

John Gould Fletcher's history of the state, Arkansas, is also essential reading, though of course as history it's quite out of date. The things that make Arkansas Arkansas, and Arkansawyers Arkansawyers, however, haven't changed much in the sixty years or so since Fletcher wrote it.

Donald "Skip" Hays' The Dixie Association is a wonderful comic baseball novel set in Little Rock that gets a whole lot of things right about Arkansas, baseball, and life in general. (As a side note, Hays used to be proprietor of Fayetteville's excellent and now departed Hays and Sanders Book Store, near the square, where one of the employees was Kim Harington, Donald Harington's wife, who is the heroine -- or at least one of them -- of Let Us Build Us a City)

Jack Butler's Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock is another wonderful novel (with the Holy Spirit as its narrator), and if you were around LR or central Arkansas in the 1980s you'll immediately recognize the inspiration for many of the key characters. And Butler's Jack's Skillet: Plain Talk and Some Recipes from a Guy in the Kitchen is part social history and part cookbook -- and a wonderful read even if you never turn on your stove.

Fasder: Pike's a fascinating character -- a life full of twists and turns and adventures and experiences you couldn't make up if you tried, and that was only ever possible for a brief time -- in 19th century America.

[Sam I Am]

Not necessarily about the whole of Arkansas, but onOne autobiography I really enjoyed was The Bookmaker's Daughter by Shirley Abbott, set in Hot Springs.

There was another one set in Little Rock and I can't think of the name - If These Walls Could Talk? Something like that - can't remember the author, either - he did a historical research project on the house he lived in, which was up on the north side of Markham just east of Pine and Cedar, I think maybe on Crystal Ct. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Now I'll go nuts until I remember it. It's not a book about all of Arkansas but it had some neat info in it.

[RTTNFAM]

The Old Man's Letters by Michael Reisig is a hilarious book of letters from the Ouachita area.