Lamar Underwood

Do you like outdoor books, cliffhangers, and a longer read? If you do you would like the book “The Greatest Hunting Stories Ever Told” By Lamar Underwood. The book is about 30 unforgettable hunts these different people went to and either got an animal or didn't get an animal.
The theme of the book is patience because you can't always shoot an animal when you go hunting because sometimes you see the animal is too far or sees you or many other things that happen. The setting of the book is out in the woods or out in the march duck or goose hunting or on the river moose hunting or in tall grass pheasant hunting. The 30 stories are good and some are bad with missing the animal or spooking the animal or getting the animal and being happy It is irony because in one chapter of the book, Tom Mcintyre was the hunter and it was his last day he saw one moose on the first day and he wanted to shoot a moose but it was the last day and they saw one but it was too far then it got in to brush so then he didn’t get any animal and it was the last day.
I recommend this novel because there is hunting and a lot of action, but there are a lot of chapters, so I recommend it to a person who likes to read or do outdoor stuff.… (more)

Editor Lamar Underwood has collected some of the finest writings, both fact and realistic fiction, that best captures man's fascination with flight, meticulously culled from the various magazines, books, plays, and films. Stories portraying humankind's attraction to flying, from the first flights of the Wright brothers, to stories of war and plane crashes.
A diverse, inspiring and exciting collection on the thrills of taking flight.At 10:35 in the morning of Thursday, December 17, 1903, man got his wings. On the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright flew the motorized aircraft he and his brother Wilbur had constructed to a distance less than the length of the wingspan of today's 747 jet. They made three other flights the same day, the final lasting 59 seconds for a distance over the ground of 852 feet. The world would never be the same after that day. Mankind was finally off the ground in powered flight. Not a balloon . . . not in a glider . . . but in an airplane with wings and a motor. And man's experiences in the air would forevermore join the literature of human endeavors, to be shared by kindred spirits as well as the curious sorts who have wanted to know, "What was it like up there?"In The Greatest Flying Stories Ever Told, editor Lamar Underwood has collected some of the finest writings, both fact and realistic fiction, that best captures man's fascination with flight, meticulously culled from the various magazines, books, plays, and films that serve to lay bare the drama of human beings coping with the skills needed to direct their machines through the vastness of the skies. With contributions from: Charles Lindbergh, Ernest K. Gann, General Chuck Yeager & Leo Janos, Tom Wolfe, Mary Lovell, Richard Bach, Rinker Buck, Diane Ackerman, Derek Robinson, and more...(6 x 9 1/4, 352 pages)Lamar Underwood is a former editor-in-chief of Sports Afield and Outdoor Life, and the author of the novel On Dangerous Ground. He is also the editor of the Greatest War Stories Ever Told, The Greatest Survival Stories Ever Told and several other books. Presently, he serves as the Editorial Director of the Outdoor Magazine Group of Harris Publications in New York.… (more)

This is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, including excerpts from such classics as Les Miserables and The Killer Angels. The names of the authors included in this collection of short stories, and many excerpts from memoirs and novels caught my eye, esp when I saw names like Hemingway, William Faulkner and Bert Stiles. It made this look like a good read from the local library. I wasn't disappointed. There are some great stories in here, including what may be my favorite, the tale of Sgt. Alvin York which many people know from the old Gary Cooper film. A few of the pieces I didn't really care for and several suffered by being excerpts - we are dropped into the story without background knowledge of the characters and as a result some of the immediacy gets dulled. I think this collection will be enjoyed by casual readers of military history like myself. Underwood, as editor, provides an introduction to each piece, although a few were a little odd (fanboyish) and/or offputting - the reverse of the intended effect I am sure. I staggered the reading of these stories over a period of time, and I'll confess that my eyes glazed over a time or two in the reading of some of these. So do I think these are the greatest war stories ever told? No, but some are and most are pretty good.

I'm often not crazy about stories that just depict the thick of battle, and the experience of military combat, such as Bruce Catton's excellent accounting of the cornfield at Antietim, a place I have visited and been humbled by. Otherwise I might rate this collection a little higher. I was more taken with things such as the excerpt from Hemingway's "For Whom the Bells Toll", and W. C. Heinz's "The Morning They Shot the Spies", which reflect the "humanity" of people in war, good and bad, and the simple unfairness of it all. Sometimes the humanity and battle do get together in a piece, however, such as the one on the Chosin Few, "Frozen Chosin" by Martin Russ and the Alvin York piece.

The excerpt from "All Quiet on the Western Front" is excellent and clearly shows why it may be the most powerful anti-war war story ever written. So too with the brief but brilliant excerpt from Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels" which is in my reading the best novel on war ever written.

On a side note, there are some unacceptable levels of typographical errors in here, esp with The Stephen Ambrose piece. It is truly ridiculous. It would be impossible to believe that piece was proofread at all. I got so annoyed that I pulled out my own copy of Ambrose's "D-Day" to compare the excerpt to the original and clearly the multiple errors everywhere, such as repeatedly spelling 'toward' as 'twoard' are not in the original work. Someone got extremely sloppy here. I've always thought Stephen Ambrose can be a clunky writer (great historian but his storytelling is very disjointed) but the screwups here are not his fault.

What I get out of stories like these, more than anything, is the never ending insanity of war through the ages.

The stories and excerpts are:

(1) The Cornfield by Bruce Catton, (2) The Morning They Shot the Spies by W.C. Heinz, (3) The Fight at the Bridge by Ernest Hemingway, (4) Frozen Chosin by Martin Russ, (5) Two Soldiers by William Faulkner, (6) The Leipzig Mission by Bert Stiles, (7) Breathing In by Michael Herr, (8) The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon by Col. Theodore Roosevelt, (9) Waterloo by Victor Hugo, (10) Landing Zone X-Ray by Robert Mason, (11) Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell, (12) Omaha Beach by Stephen E. Ambrose, (13) The Drums of the Fore and Aft by Rudyard Kipling, (14) Sink the Bismarck! by C.S. Forester, (15) The Battle at Borodino by Leo Tolstoy, (16) Les Graves Gens (The Brave Men) by William Manchester, (17) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, (18) Pickett's Charge by Michael Shaara, (19) Faith at Sea by Irwin Shaw, (20) Mountain Fighting by Ernie Pyle, (21) The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, (22) The Perfect Deadfall by S.L.A. Marshall, (23) Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (24) and Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson.… (more)