The ignorance of the Lester family evokes humor., 09 Aug 1999
The plight of the Lester family is depressing, but humorous. Their stupidity made me laugh, especially the scenes involving the destruction of the brand new automobile. They practically destroy the car, and they do not seem to care. Additionally, it is amazing how people can lack consideration for other individuals. Specifically, the scene where Bessie and Dude run over the grandmother, and the family shows no concern. When they eventually take her to be buried, I wasn't truly convinced that she was dead. All in all I felt the book was quite entertaining.

Natural Selection at Work!, 03 Aug 1999
I was alternately repulsed by the author's apparent hatred of poor people and horrified to admit that I believe people like this exist. Is it worse to coldly allow such people to starve and abuse each other, or help them persevere and reproduce? A question for the ages - and for Republicans and Democrats to duke out... It would have been noble for Jeeter to keep his feet on the land if only he hadn't been too lazy and ignorant to do anything useful there. Do we need to build more poor houses for people too helpless to look after themselves? Or would / does this just help them perpetuate their gene pool? This question is certainly as valid now as it ever was.

Southerners., 19 Mar 1999
A touching, moving drama about the perseverance of the human spirit and the brotherhood of man. Not!

Are Southerners fated to be so self destructive? Read "The Jungle" instead - there's something more sypathetic about people who actually try, but fail than about people who fail because they don't even try.

An American Classic, 09 Mar 1999
Your literary education isn't complete until you've read Caldwell. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre should be required reading in every high school -- or college, at least -- in America.

If you love Hemingway, Bukowski, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullars, Barry Hannah, Larry Brown or any writing that cuts right to the bone and then keeps on cutting, read Erskine Caldwell right now. His work is very, very good.

ignorance, selfishness, and hunger, 16 Oct 1998
This is a book that oscillates from very comic to deeply tragic. While reading it, I at times began to feel very frustrated and saddened by the Lesters' plight, but in the next instant something so outrageous or unbelievable happened that it jolted me from contemplating this book as reality and made it more into something of a farce. It is amazing the way this book can convey both tragedy and comedy in that way. The Lesters are exploited by the society that they live in, but at the same time they are equally ruined by their own complete lack of intelligence. It is hard to imagine more ignorant and selfish people...do such people really exist? This book is a very entertaining, disturbing, and thought-provoking work.

The ignorance of the Lester family evokes humor., 09 Aug 1999
The plight of the Lester family is depressing, but humorous. Their stupidity made me laugh, especially the scenes involving the destruction of the brand new automobile. They practically destroy the car, and they do not seem to care. Additionally, it is amazing how people can lack consideration for other individuals. Specifically, the scene where Bessie and Dude run over the grandmother, and the family shows no concern. When they eventually take her to be buried, I wasn't truly convinced that she was dead. All in all I felt the book was quite entertaining.

Natural Selection at Work!, 03 Aug 1999
I was alternately repulsed by the author's apparent hatred of poor people and horrified to admit that I believe people like this exist. Is it worse to coldly allow such people to starve and abuse each other, or help them persevere and reproduce? A question for the ages - and for Republicans and Democrats to duke out... It would have been noble for Jeeter to keep his feet on the land if only he hadn't been too lazy and ignorant to do anything useful there. Do we need to build more poor houses for people too helpless to look after themselves? Or would / does this just help them perpetuate their gene pool? This question is certainly as valid now as it ever was.

Southerners., 19 Mar 1999
A touching, moving drama about the perseverance of the human spirit and the brotherhood of man. Not!

Are Southerners fated to be so self destructive? Read "The Jungle" instead - there's something more sypathetic about people who actually try, but fail than about people who fail because they don't even try.

An American Classic, 09 Mar 1999
Your literary education isn't complete until you've read Caldwell. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre should be required reading in every high school -- or college, at least -- in America.

If you love Hemingway, Bukowski, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullars, Barry Hannah, Larry Brown or any writing that cuts right to the bone and then keeps on cutting, read Erskine Caldwell right now. His work is very, very good.

ignorance, selfishness, and hunger, 16 Oct 1998
This is a book that oscillates from very comic to deeply tragic. While reading it, I at times began to feel very frustrated and saddened by the Lesters' plight, but in the next instant something so outrageous or unbelievable happened that it jolted me from contemplating this book as reality and made it more into something of a farce. It is amazing the way this book can convey both tragedy and comedy in that way. The Lesters are exploited by the society that they live in, but at the same time they are equally ruined by their own complete lack of intelligence. It is hard to imagine more ignorant and selfish people...do such people really exist? This book is a very entertaining, disturbing, and thought-provoking work.

Offensive, upsetting and ultimately pointless., 10 Oct 2003
I hated this book. I acquired it since it appeared on a list of "Classic American Fiction". Unfortunately the list was anonymously composed, so I can't complain to the author, nor sue them for the hour of my life I wasted with this book. Written in the 1930's, it's a tale of poor white people in the South of the USA. They have slaves, and refer to them in the most racist, patronising way one can imagine. The (anti)heroes feel free to have sex with each others' wives and other women who stray into the tale, often consenting but sometimes not. I read a few chapters somewhat incredulously, waiting for the modern viewpoint or explanation - but it never came. Flicking forward to the end, I can't say the plot isn't anything to get excited about either.

For Culture Studies / Literature students who want to dissect the racist / sexist thinking, it might be a good choice. For people wanting to be entertained and not disgusted ... don't waste your time and money, try elsewhere. Classic - not in this Universe!

Idiotic Soft-Porn, 21 Jul 1999
Caldwell's most acclaimed work, this novel is idiotic soft-porn. The plot and events portrayed are absurd. Caldwell's novels sold so well in the 30s due to the book-buying public's preconceived notions and prejudices regarding Southern social life. America's intellectual elite bought Caldwell's lies for a while but he fortunately faded from view after World War Two, reduced to writing even worse soft-porn.

Mr. Caldwell painted pictures with words..., 08 Jun 1999
Mr. Caldwell used words like an artist uses brushes. His use of humor, earthy characters, and raw descriptions titillated all five senses. I read this book for the first time when I was a 12 year old girl. It was my first glimpse of adult life and its struggles. As I look back, I can only think of one author similar to him...Ernest Hemmingway.

It's a crime that this book isn't taught in Lit courses!, 11 Mar 1999
This is a great book -- better, even, than Tobacco Road.

Caldwell is like Hemingway and Faulkner got together and had a baby, fed it lots of bad liquor, kicked it around and finally taught it to love this sorry, sordid world.

It's a damned shame people don't read him much anymore.

FAST TIMES IN THE DEPRESSION ERA SOUTH, 29 Dec 1997
If Andy Griffith and Hugh Heffner were to co-author a Shakespearian tragedy it would be a lot like "God's Little Acre." When there ain't no money in planting cotton and the mill's shut up there ain't but one thing for men and women to do to keep their minds off of their troubles: SEX!

TyTy Walden is as obsessed with finding gold on his land as Captain Ahab was about finding the great white whale. Greselda Walden has to be one of the most desired and fought over women in all of American literature. And what red blooded American male would not have wanted a date with Darling Jill. This book alternates from being light-hearted and silly to being very serious and profound. There is great pathos in the description of the desperation of Will Thompson and the other starving mill workers to re-open the mill and go back to work. The death of Will Thompson is a great reminder of the struggle of working people to be treated fairly in this country. This book accurately recounts the hopes and fears of the thousands of working class people who were forced to live in "company towns" and who "owed their soul to the company store."

Although I found some of the more explicit sexual content of this novel to be silly and somewhat overdone (I don't think that most people in rural Georgia in the 1930's were this open about their sexualty!), this is a great American novel and Erskine Caldwell should be remembered as one of the great American writers of this century.

The ignorance of the Lester family evokes humor., 09 Aug 1999
The plight of the Lester family is depressing, but humorous. Their stupidity made me laugh, especially the scenes involving the destruction of the brand new automobile. They practically destroy the car, and they do not seem to care. Additionally, it is amazing how people can lack consideration for other individuals. Specifically, the scene where Bessie and Dude run over the grandmother, and the family shows no concern. When they eventually take her to be buried, I wasn't truly convinced that she was dead. All in all I felt the book was quite entertaining.

Natural Selection at Work!, 03 Aug 1999
I was alternately repulsed by the author's apparent hatred of poor people and horrified to admit that I believe people like this exist. Is it worse to coldly allow such people to starve and abuse each other, or help them persevere and reproduce? A question for the ages - and for Republicans and Democrats to duke out... It would have been noble for Jeeter to keep his feet on the land if only he hadn't been too lazy and ignorant to do anything useful there. Do we need to build more poor houses for people too helpless to look after themselves? Or would / does this just help them perpetuate their gene pool? This question is certainly as valid now as it ever was.

Southerners., 19 Mar 1999
A touching, moving drama about the perseverance of the human spirit and the brotherhood of man. Not!

Are Southerners fated to be so self destructive? Read "The Jungle" instead - there's something more sypathetic about people who actually try, but fail than about people who fail because they don't even try.

An American Classic, 09 Mar 1999
Your literary education isn't complete until you've read Caldwell. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre should be required reading in every high school -- or college, at least -- in America.

If you love Hemingway, Bukowski, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullars, Barry Hannah, Larry Brown or any writing that cuts right to the bone and then keeps on cutting, read Erskine Caldwell right now. His work is very, very good.

ignorance, selfishness, and hunger, 16 Oct 1998
This is a book that oscillates from very comic to deeply tragic. While reading it, I at times began to feel very frustrated and saddened by the Lesters' plight, but in the next instant something so outrageous or unbelievable happened that it jolted me from contemplating this book as reality and made it more into something of a farce. It is amazing the way this book can convey both tragedy and comedy in that way. The Lesters are exploited by the society that they live in, but at the same time they are equally ruined by their own complete lack of intelligence. It is hard to imagine more ignorant and selfish people...do such people really exist? This book is a very entertaining, disturbing, and thought-provoking work.

Offensive, upsetting and ultimately pointless., 10 Oct 2003
I hated this book. I acquired it since it appeared on a list of "Classic American Fiction". Unfortunately the list was anonymously composed, so I can't complain to the author, nor sue them for the hour of my life I wasted with this book. Written in the 1930's, it's a tale of poor white people in the South of the USA. They have slaves, and refer to them in the most racist, patronising way one can imagine. The (anti)heroes feel free to have sex with each others' wives and other women who stray into the tale, often consenting but sometimes not. I read a few chapters somewhat incredulously, waiting for the modern viewpoint or explanation - but it never came. Flicking forward to the end, I can't say the plot isn't anything to get excited about either.

For Culture Studies / Literature students who want to dissect the racist / sexist thinking, it might be a good choice. For people wanting to be entertained and not disgusted ... don't waste your time and money, try elsewhere. Classic - not in this Universe!

Idiotic Soft-Porn, 21 Jul 1999
Caldwell's most acclaimed work, this novel is idiotic soft-porn. The plot and events portrayed are absurd. Caldwell's novels sold so well in the 30s due to the book-buying public's preconceived notions and prejudices regarding Southern social life. America's intellectual elite bought Caldwell's lies for a while but he fortunately faded from view after World War Two, reduced to writing even worse soft-porn.

Mr. Caldwell painted pictures with words..., 08 Jun 1999
Mr. Caldwell used words like an artist uses brushes. His use of humor, earthy characters, and raw descriptions titillated all five senses. I read this book for the first time when I was a 12 year old girl. It was my first glimpse of adult life and its struggles. As I look back, I can only think of one author similar to him...Ernest Hemmingway.

It's a crime that this book isn't taught in Lit courses!, 11 Mar 1999
This is a great book -- better, even, than Tobacco Road.

Caldwell is like Hemingway and Faulkner got together and had a baby, fed it lots of bad liquor, kicked it around and finally taught it to love this sorry, sordid world.

It's a damned shame people don't read him much anymore.

FAST TIMES IN THE DEPRESSION ERA SOUTH, 29 Dec 1997
If Andy Griffith and Hugh Heffner were to co-author a Shakespearian tragedy it would be a lot like "God's Little Acre." When there ain't no money in planting cotton and the mill's shut up there ain't but one thing for men and women to do to keep their minds off of their troubles: SEX!

TyTy Walden is as obsessed with finding gold on his land as Captain Ahab was about finding the great white whale. Greselda Walden has to be one of the most desired and fought over women in all of American literature. And what red blooded American male would not have wanted a date with Darling Jill. This book alternates from being light-hearted and silly to being very serious and profound. There is great pathos in the description of the desperation of Will Thompson and the other starving mill workers to re-open the mill and go back to work. The death of Will Thompson is a great reminder of the struggle of working people to be treated fairly in this country. This book accurately recounts the hopes and fears of the thousands of working class people who were forced to live in "company towns" and who "owed their soul to the company store."

Although I found some of the more explicit sexual content of this novel to be silly and somewhat overdone (I don't think that most people in rural Georgia in the 1930's were this open about their sexualty!), this is a great American novel and Erskine Caldwell should be remembered as one of the great American writers of this century.

Prophetic and accurate analyses, 06 Nov 2005
In these essays from the 1960s and early 1970s, Ayn Rand identifies the underlying nihilism of the Left and the student movement of the time. Already back then, she warned of the toxic influence of the left and pointed out that the intellectual battle does not consist of opposing, denouncing or evading, but of exposing and disproving evil ideas and proclaiming a consistent alternative to the left’s bankrupt philosophy.

In the essay Apollo and Dionysus, she compares the 1 million people that converged on Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969 to witness the launch of Apollo 11 with the 300 000 that gathered at Woodstock on August 15 that year. Rand explores these events in the light of Nietzsche’s metaphysical principles of reason and emotion as observed in Greek theatre.

Whilst denying that reason and emotion are irreconcilable antagonists, she shows how the media virtually ignored the one event while blowing the significance of the other out of all proportion. On the one hand, decent people were sharing an event of great achievement and on the other, self-indulgent hedonists behaving like pigs. As she explains so eloquently, it is irrational emotions that drag people down into the mud, and it is reason that lifts us up to the stars.

In the essay The Left: Old And New, Rand predicted that the issue of the environment would be the next big crusade of the Leftists, after Vietnam. In this, as on so many other issues, she was correct and we still have the EnviroNuts with us and they are shriller than ever before with their self-serving tooth fairy tales of global warming.

The short essay “Political Crimes” looks at the dangerous notion that there could be a distinction between political and non-political criminals. Crime is a violation of the rights of others by force of fraud, thus there is no such thing as a political crime. The essay The Chicken’s Homecoming discusses the results of promulgating doctrines like Pragmatism, Logical Positivism and Linguistic Analysis, and how these doctrines disarmed the best and unleashed the nihilists. In this regard, see The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier.

The Age Of Envy is one of the very best in this collection. In it, Rand claims that the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment had been followed by ours, the Age of Envy. She takes envy to mean: The hatred of the good for being the good. Here too, she nails down the left, old and new, with keen insight and prescience. She demonstrates how the appeasement of evil has been an undertow of mankind’s cultural stream down the ages.

The Comprachicos is the disturbing essay that concludes the collection. It warns against the hijacking of the minds of children and students by the leftist, collectivist educational establishment. This even more true now than it was then: the modern seats of leftism are the universities and the Old Media which Rand exposes throughout the book.

To show how right Ayn Rand has been, I highly recommend the following books: The New Thought Police and The Death Of Right And Wrong by Tammy Bruce, Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz, treason by Ann Coulter and Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild by Michelle Malkin.

Caldwell at his best. I couldn't put the book down., 05 Mar 1999
Hatred, bigotry, lust, lynchings and mayhem all take place in the ole south. After reading trouble in July I ran out and bought "A PLACE CALLED ESTHERVILLE", here again Caldwell displays just how good his writing & story telling skills are. I read "TROUBLE IN JULY ABOUT 13 YRS. AGO. The book was lent to a friend and never returned. I was delighted when I saw that the book had been reprinted, I plan on purchasing another copy. This book has stayed on my mind for years. I wish Caldwell was still alive so he could write more of these novels with stories from the land of dixie. Trouble in july will move you and bring you close to tears, trust me and keep a hankie close at hand.

The ignorance of the Lester family evokes humor., 09 Aug 1999
The plight of the Lester family is depressing, but humorous. Their stupidity made me laugh, especially the scenes involving the destruction of the brand new automobile. They practically destroy the car, and they do not seem to care. Additionally, it is amazing how people can lack consideration for other individuals. Specifically, the scene where Bessie and Dude run over the grandmother, and the family shows no concern. When they eventually take her to be buried, I wasn't truly convinced that she was dead. All in all I felt the book was quite entertaining.

Natural Selection at Work!, 03 Aug 1999
I was alternately repulsed by the author's apparent hatred of poor people and horrified to admit that I believe people like this exist. Is it worse to coldly allow such people to starve and abuse each other, or help them persevere and reproduce? A question for the ages - and for Republicans and Democrats to duke out... It would have been noble for Jeeter to keep his feet on the land if only he hadn't been too lazy and ignorant to do anything useful there. Do we need to build more poor houses for people too helpless to look after themselves? Or would / does this just help them perpetuate their gene pool? This question is certainly as valid now as it ever was.

Southerners., 19 Mar 1999
A touching, moving drama about the perseverance of the human spirit and the brotherhood of man. Not!

Are Southerners fated to be so self destructive? Read "The Jungle" instead - there's something more sypathetic about people who actually try, but fail than about people who fail because they don't even try.

An American Classic, 09 Mar 1999
Your literary education isn't complete until you've read Caldwell. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre should be required reading in every high school -- or college, at least -- in America.

If you love Hemingway, Bukowski, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullars, Barry Hannah, Larry Brown or any writing that cuts right to the bone and then keeps on cutting, read Erskine Caldwell right now. His work is very, very good.

ignorance, selfishness, and hunger, 16 Oct 1998
This is a book that oscillates from very comic to deeply tragic. While reading it, I at times began to feel very frustrated and saddened by the Lesters' plight, but in the next instant something so outrageous or unbelievable happened that it jolted me from contemplating this book as reality and made it more into something of a farce. It is amazing the way this book can convey both tragedy and comedy in that way. The Lesters are exploited by the society that they live in, but at the same time they are equally ruined by their own complete lack of intelligence. It is hard to imagine more ignorant and selfish people...do such people really exist? This book is a very entertaining, disturbing, and thought-provoking work.

Offensive, upsetting and ultimately pointless., 10 Oct 2003
I hated this book. I acquired it since it appeared on a list of "Classic American Fiction". Unfortunately the list was anonymously composed, so I can't complain to the author, nor sue them for the hour of my life I wasted with this book. Written in the 1930's, it's a tale of poor white people in the South of the USA. They have slaves, and refer to them in the most racist, patronising way one can imagine. The (anti)heroes feel free to have sex with each others' wives and other women who stray into the tale, often consenting but sometimes not. I read a few chapters somewhat incredulously, waiting for the modern viewpoint or explanation - but it never came. Flicking forward to the end, I can't say the plot isn't anything to get excited about either.

For Culture Studies / Literature students who want to dissect the racist / sexist thinking, it might be a good choice. For people wanting to be entertained and not disgusted ... don't waste your time and money, try elsewhere. Classic - not in this Universe!

Idiotic Soft-Porn, 21 Jul 1999
Caldwell's most acclaimed work, this novel is idiotic soft-porn. The plot and events portrayed are absurd. Caldwell's novels sold so well in the 30s due to the book-buying public's preconceived notions and prejudices regarding Southern social life. America's intellectual elite bought Caldwell's lies for a while but he fortunately faded from view after World War Two, reduced to writing even worse soft-porn.

Mr. Caldwell painted pictures with words..., 08 Jun 1999
Mr. Caldwell used words like an artist uses brushes. His use of humor, earthy characters, and raw descriptions titillated all five senses. I read this book for the first time when I was a 12 year old girl. It was my first glimpse of adult life and its struggles. As I look back, I can only think of one author similar to him...Ernest Hemmingway.

It's a crime that this book isn't taught in Lit courses!, 11 Mar 1999
This is a great book -- better, even, than Tobacco Road.

Caldwell is like Hemingway and Faulkner got together and had a baby, fed it lots of bad liquor, kicked it around and finally taught it to love this sorry, sordid world.

It's a damned shame people don't read him much anymore.

FAST TIMES IN THE DEPRESSION ERA SOUTH, 29 Dec 1997
If Andy Griffith and Hugh Heffner were to co-author a Shakespearian tragedy it would be a lot like "God's Little Acre." When there ain't no money in planting cotton and the mill's shut up there ain't but one thing for men and women to do to keep their minds off of their troubles: SEX!

TyTy Walden is as obsessed with finding gold on his land as Captain Ahab was about finding the great white whale. Greselda Walden has to be one of the most desired and fought over women in all of American literature. And what red blooded American male would not have wanted a date with Darling Jill. This book alternates from being light-hearted and silly to being very serious and profound. There is great pathos in the description of the desperation of Will Thompson and the other starving mill workers to re-open the mill and go back to work. The death of Will Thompson is a great reminder of the struggle of working people to be treated fairly in this country. This book accurately recounts the hopes and fears of the thousands of working class people who were forced to live in "company towns" and who "owed their soul to the company store."

Although I found some of the more explicit sexual content of this novel to be silly and somewhat overdone (I don't think that most people in rural Georgia in the 1930's were this open about their sexualty!), this is a great American novel and Erskine Caldwell should be remembered as one of the great American writers of this century.

Prophetic and accurate analyses, 06 Nov 2005
In these essays from the 1960s and early 1970s, Ayn Rand identifies the underlying nihilism of the Left and the student movement of the time. Already back then, she warned of the toxic influence of the left and pointed out that the intellectual battle does not consist of opposing, denouncing or evading, but of exposing and disproving evil ideas and proclaiming a consistent alternative to the left’s bankrupt philosophy.

In the essay Apollo and Dionysus, she compares the 1 million people that converged on Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969 to witness the launch of Apollo 11 with the 300 000 that gathered at Woodstock on August 15 that year. Rand explores these events in the light of Nietzsche’s metaphysical principles of reason and emotion as observed in Greek theatre.

Whilst denying that reason and emotion are irreconcilable antagonists, she shows how the media virtually ignored the one event while blowing the significance of the other out of all proportion. On the one hand, decent people were sharing an event of great achievement and on the other, self-indulgent hedonists behaving like pigs. As she explains so eloquently, it is irrational emotions that drag people down into the mud, and it is reason that lifts us up to the stars.

In the essay The Left: Old And New, Rand predicted that the issue of the environment would be the next big crusade of the Leftists, after Vietnam. In this, as on so many other issues, she was correct and we still have the EnviroNuts with us and they are shriller than ever before with their self-serving tooth fairy tales of global warming.

The short essay “Political Crimes” looks at the dangerous notion that there could be a distinction between political and non-political criminals. Crime is a violation of the rights of others by force of fraud, thus there is no such thing as a political crime. The essay The Chicken’s Homecoming discusses the results of promulgating doctrines like Pragmatism, Logical Positivism and Linguistic Analysis, and how these doctrines disarmed the best and unleashed the nihilists. In this regard, see The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier.

The Age Of Envy is one of the very best in this collection. In it, Rand claims that the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment had been followed by ours, the Age of Envy. She takes envy to mean: The hatred of the good for being the good. Here too, she nails down the left, old and new, with keen insight and prescience. She demonstrates how the appeasement of evil has been an undertow of mankind’s cultural stream down the ages.

The Comprachicos is the disturbing essay that concludes the collection. It warns against the hijacking of the minds of children and students by the leftist, collectivist educational establishment. This even more true now than it was then: the modern seats of leftism are the universities and the Old Media which Rand exposes throughout the book.

To show how right Ayn Rand has been, I highly recommend the following books: The New Thought Police and The Death Of Right And Wrong by Tammy Bruce, Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz, treason by Ann Coulter and Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild by Michelle Malkin.

Caldwell at his best. I couldn't put the book down., 05 Mar 1999
Hatred, bigotry, lust, lynchings and mayhem all take place in the ole south. After reading trouble in July I ran out and bought "A PLACE CALLED ESTHERVILLE", here again Caldwell displays just how good his writing & story telling skills are. I read "TROUBLE IN JULY ABOUT 13 YRS. AGO. The book was lent to a friend and never returned. I was delighted when I saw that the book had been reprinted, I plan on purchasing another copy. This book has stayed on my mind for years. I wish Caldwell was still alive so he could write more of these novels with stories from the land of dixie. Trouble in july will move you and bring you close to tears, trust me and keep a hankie close at hand.

Strange, strange dark and good, 08 Jan 1999
While this is probably not the best Caldwell book to read if you've never read Caldwell, it is gripping in a lurid, over the top, stink of death and madness kind of way. I loved it.