Rating: 
Summary: I tried, I tried, but I finally had to give up
Review:
From a historical perspective, this is a great book. it is obvious that Mr. Carter has researched the subject. The book is full of interesting insights about how life must have been in the 1770s. But, this is not a history text book, or a non-fiction account. This is a novel, and the creative part of it is what has disappointed me to the point that I won't make it past page 173. The characters are very one-dimensional. Ethan, the main character, is so stiff to the point of being terribly unlikeable. Elijah Clarke is an overgrown bully. The plot moves slowly and without any spice. The action is so painfully slow! The funny part is that much to the chagrin of Mr. Carter, the book was reduced in length by his editors.
I have read historical fiction before, and at times it has had a thriller aspect to it that made me look forward to the next chance to read. All that was absent here. I am sure that if the author had been someone other than a past president, this novel would have never seen the light.
Rating:
Summary: The worst book/historical fiction ever written
Review: Was I ever primed for this one. As a living historian who portrays the Southern campaign I could not wait for the book to arrive. It was obvious from Carter's Larry King interview he had read the right books, had a firm grasp on the salient issues and understood the long-overlooked importance of the Southern front. What he could not do was tell a story, write a passable piece of dialogue or engage his reader at all. It was in short a book as disasterous as his presidency. In fact, I am convinced were he not a former president, short of self-publishing, this could never have been printed. 134 used copies from as low as $4.59 right here on Amazon says it all.
Rating: 
Summary: A War Within A War.
Review: After eight previous published books written by our former U.S. president (one co-authored with Rosalynn) he has been a busy man writing an over-long novel purportedly about the South's particiapation in the Revolutionary War. He wrote journals, poems, meditations, a primer on aging, memoirs, and some inspirational pieces. This, however, is totally fiction (more than 900 pages in the LP version). He uses letter to the militia to keep up morale from the Governor's agent. He involves the Creeks and Cherokees in this eight year war (1775-1783) taken place in Georgia of all places.He and Rosalynn build houses for the poor working class, and I wonder when he has time to write. This can't compare with CITY OF DREAMS, which was based on many years of research. He mentions the brutality of this war. There is great brutality in any war, even when the American Indians are not the enemy. His ending, "For the next half century, legal and military battles would be fought over the conflicting claims for land, and the ravages of slavery and its aftermath would affect the nation for another 150 years." His next novel, no doubt, will be about the underground railroad in which the Southern blacks were secretly moved to the North, the atrocities of the Civil War and its aftermath in the South, or maybe he will do a bit of research and write about THE TRAIL OF TEARS in which our beloved Cherokees were forced to relocate to Oklahoma. The Creeks, I think, stayed in Florida. Maybe his home state of Georgia.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Historical Perspective
Review: As a genealogist with ancestors who were in Georgia and the Carolinas before and during the Revolutionary War, I was interested to see what perspective Jimmy Carter would bring to the topic. I found this to be an excellent historical perspective that personalized the events of the day and made me understand why people, whether settlers, Indians, or slaves, made the choices they did. While I have read some "history" books and articles, they tend to be more abstract. This book gave me understanding of the people and their motivations in relation to the war and the times. If I had wanted to read a love story, I would not have chosen a book by Jimmy Carter. (Perhaps Nora Ephron or even Nora Roberts!) However, this book gave a thorough accounting of the political events, the battles, and the kinds of people involved at each stage. Some incidents, like that of the slave Quash Dolly, were individual stories that stood alone--except that it showed why some--and perhaps many slaves--chose to support the British rather than the American revolutionaries. The treatment of the Indians, and the lengthy development of the personality and activities of the British Indian agent and spy, Thomas Brown, showed why the Indians threw their lot in with the British. Personalities of many of the Georgia and Carolina revolutionary leaders were drawn out effectively (example, Elijah Clarke) as well as many other wartime leaders. Hornet's Nest is a great read if you are interested in history of the beginning of this country from a perspective that is different from that of the usual "founding fathers" approach. It also portends many of the problems that we faced years later with the political issues leading to and following the Civil War and later settlements farther west. I have already started going to other reference books and pure "histories" to find out more about some of the people and the events described in this book. That kind of inspiration signals a good book to me.
Rating:
Summary: Calls attention to the most neglected part of our history
Review: As a living historian who educates both children and adults on this time period I could only say "Its about time!" when I heard this was published. Yankee historians have virtually airbrushed the American South out of this conflict and New England still carries on if they won it single-handedly. Compare 12 battles fought in Mass to the 85 fought in SC and the disparity is immediately apparent. The effort is overdue. The events that led to and culminated in the American victory occurred in the South. It is the most captivating, untold and compelling story in our history until the 1860's. Carter's research is quite good. His interviews demonstrate a firm historical grasp. Unfortunately the majority of the criticisms are valid. Characters are flat. There seems to be no plot. The story is poorly told. While I respect Carter as a person but have never cared for his politics I read this(every single page) with an open mind. It fails on almost every level. This is an excellent story just begging for a better story-teller.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Man, A Thorough Historian, a Mediocre Novelist
Review: I actually enjoyed Jimmy Carter's "Hornet's Nest" thoroughly, but that may be because I am a historian and it is much more fun to read good history in a novel than in a scholarly work. If Jimmy Carter's novel reaches John and Jane Doe, then it will have served its purpose. As a novel, though, it leaves much to be desired. We really learn very little about his fictional characters, and for the man who "lusted in his heart" he seems squeamish writing about the subject. But I did learn a lot of good history about the Revolutionary War in the South and am glad I read it.
Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary War in the South
Review: I agree that the title of my review isn't real exciting, but President Carter's book isn't either, frankly. The research that went into it is extensive, and so is the historical detail throughout the book. If you're looking for a well researched book about a subject that gets very little ink, i.e, the American Revolutionary war in the southern states and rural life at that time, I think you'll find this to be an excellent tome. I learned a lot about the southern colonies in the 1760's - 1780's. If you're looking for a novel that will hold your interest and get you excited, then I'm afraid this isn't it. It reads like a technical, engineer's history report, which, is what Mr. Carter was before he entered politics.
Rating:
Summary: A somewhat biased account...
Review: I also wanted very much to enjoy this book as I have always been an avid student of the history and demographics of the South of that era with several of my ancestral family lines being participants in the events depicted. Frankly, there is not enough general knowledge of the important role the South played in the winning of our indipendence, and I applaud Mr. Carter's attempt to rectify that.
Aside from that, however, I was generally disappointed with the work. I'm sure the author believed himself to be more than fair to both sides. Yet, I could not help but notice a inherent bias in the work that I had to work to understand. It occured to me that the loyalists received altogether more sympathetic treatement than did most of the patriots.
At Carter's hand, the loyalists, as personified by Thomas Brown, are generally refined, introspective individuals, driven to their violence by circumstances. Patriots, such as Elijah Clarke, appear to have simply been born violent, uncouth and predudice. The message appears to be that the rugged individualism that marked the infancy of our culture can only be trusted to the occassional special indiviual such as Ethan Pratt, or Jimmy Carter. The rest of us need guidance, we need government. And perhaps it is not an altogether good thing that we lost so early the guiding hand of the British government. Maybe if the regulator movement would have succeeded the Revolution would have not been necessary, and we could have had a few more generations of guidance under the crown of England to become more comforatble with dependency upon government and less dependent upon ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: I was excited to read this....
Review: I believe that Jimmy Carter is a fine man with a good heart and an admirable mind. "Sources of Strength" was an inspiring book to me. So I waited in line for 3 hours to have Mr. Carter sign my copy of "The Hornet's Nest." But that's where my story takes a turn for the worse. Because then I read the book. And it's not great. The ratio of telling to showing is really bad, the dialogue is stilted, etc... I finished it as a matter of principle. But I would not recommend it to a friend looking for a good read. I've given it 2 stars simply because the research that went into the book was obviously so extensive. And I learned some interesting things. But now I know why no other former presidents have written fiction. It's harder than it looks! (And I'm not a writer.)
Rating:
Summary: Carter's first novel shares a finely developed view of war
Review: I found Carter's The Hornet's Nest wonderful in its narrative, predictably stilted in its dialogue, but profoundly revealing of a great man's conclusions about war: the impact that war as an option to resolve conflict has on individual humanity. With Carter's astonishing honesty, he is able to objectively portray good will on the part of the Americans, the British and the native Americans that degenerates -- on all sides -- into oppression, cruelty, and finally the destruction of The story plays out in settling disagreementcoercive force of the fabric of humanity. I wondered if he is telling the tale in order to take the reader to this truth or if it is just the result of his looking at history through his finely honed world view, but in any case, it's a rare chance to share a one man's conclusions from a life lived large. Incidentially, I also recommend a book I found in the Bahamas just as I was finishing this one, which coincidentially picks up where Carter leaves off, with a Tory family resettling in the Bahamas: Wind from the Carolinas, by Robert Wilder.
|
