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How to Live a Happy Life    Follow Your Dreams   Turn Ideas Into Reality

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Imagine how your life would change if you learned an easier way how to create the life you desire. A motivating and inspiring path to living a happier life, following your dreams, and turning your ideas into reality, Create Your Culture is a mindset of actionable intelligence backed by real-world examples and collective wisdom.

This guidebook containing the Create Your Culture philosophy teaches step-by step:

 How to define your own version of success and become happier in the process
 The 8 dimensions of wellness: a holistic approach to living a healthier, happier lifestyle
 How to know yourself, let your heart guide you, and create vision from within
 How to expand your mind in three different ways and become a better learner
 How to turn ideas into reality in six different ways, including the power of a magic board

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A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution

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How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas Victory

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Millions of words have been written about the Cuban Revolution, which, to both its supporters and detractors, is almost universally understood as being won by a small band of guerillas. In this unique and stimulating book, Stephen Cushion turns the conventional wisdom on its head, and argues that the Cuban working class played a much more decisive role in the Revolutions outcome than previously understood. Although the working class was well-organized in the 1950s, it is believed to have been too influenced by corrupt trade union leaders, the Partido Socialist Popular, and a tradition of making primarily economic demands to have offered much support to the guerillas. Cushion contends that the opposite is true, and that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerillas operating in the mountains.
Developed during five research trips to Cuba under the auspices of the Institute of Cuban History in Havana, this book analyzes a wealth of leaflets, pamphlets, clandestine newspapers, and other agitational material from the 1950s that has never before been systematically examined, along with many interviews with participants themselves. Cushion uncovers widespread militant activity, from illegal strikes to sabotage to armed conflict with the state, all of which culminated in two revolutionary workers congresses and the largest general strike in Cuban history. He argues that these efforts helped clinch the victory of the revolution, and thus presents a fresh and provocative take on the place of the working class in Cuban history.

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Why a More Equal World Is Better for Us All

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Inequality is the defining issue of our time. But it is not just a problem for the rich world. It is the global 1% that now owns fully half the worlds wealththe true measure of our age of inequality. In this historical tour de force, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the usual story of globalization and development as a story of the management of inequality. Reaching back to the eighteenth century and around the globe, The Political Origins of Inequality foregrounds the political turning points and decisions behind the making of todays uneven societies. As it weaves together insights from the Victorian city to the Cold War, from US economic policy to Europes present migration crisis, a true picture emerges of the structure of inequality itself.     The problem of inequality, Reid-Henry argues, is a problem that manifests between places as well as over time. This is one reason why it cannot be resolved by the usual arguments of left versus right, bound as they are to the national scale alone. Most of all, however, it is why the level of inequality that confronts us today is indicative of a more general crisis in political thought. Modern political discourse has no place for public reason or the common good. Equality is yesterdays dream. Yet the fact that we now accept such a worlda world that values security over freedom, special treatment over universal opportunity, and efficiency over fairnessis ultimately because we have stopped even trying in recent decades to build the political architecture the world actually requires.  Our politics has fallen out of step with the world, then, and at the every moment it is needed more than ever. Yet it is within our power to address this. Doing so involves identifying and then meeting our political responsibilities to others, not just offering them the selective charity of the rich. It means looking beyond issues of economics and outside our national borders. But above all it demands of us that we reinvent the language of equality for a modern, global world: and then institute this. The world is not falling apart. Different worlds, we all can see, are colliding together. It is our capacity to act in concert that is falling apart. It is this that needs restoring most of all.

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Relationship as the Heart of Ethical Discourse

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Rethinking governance through the lens of human connection. Whenever Two or More Are Gathered focuses on the critical role of ethics and moral responsibility in the field of public administration. Michael M. Harmon and O. C. McSwite posit that administrative ethics, as presently conceived and practiced, is largely a failure, incapable of delivering on its original promise of effectively regulating official conduct in order to promote the public interest. They argue that administrative ethics is compromised at its very foundations by two core assumptions: that human beings act rationally and that language is capable of conveying clear, stable, and unambiguous principles of ethical conduct. The result is the illusion that values, principles, and rules of ethical conduct can be specified in workably clear ways, in particular, through their formalization in official codes of ethics; that people are capable of comprehending and responding to them as they are intended; and that the rewards and punishments attached to them will be effective in structuring daily behavior. In a series of essays that draw on both fiction and film, as well as the disciplines of pragmatism, organizational theory, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, and economics, Harmon and McSwite make their case for human relationship as the proper foundation of administrative ethics. Exercising responsible ethical practice requires attaining a special kind of relationship with other people. Relationship is how the pure freedom that resides in the human psychefor ethical choice, creativity, or original action of any typecan be brought into the structured world of human social relations without damaging or destroying it. Furthermore, they make the case for dropping the term ethics in favor of the term responsibility, as responsibility accentuates the social [relational] nature of moral action.

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The Story of Singing in American College Life

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When Colleges Sang is an illustrated history of the rich culture of college singing from the earliest days of the American republic to the present.   Before fraternity songs, alma maters, and the rahs of college fight songs became commonplace, students sang. Students in the earliest American colleges created their own literary melodies that they shared with their classmates. As J. Lloyd Winstead documents in When Colleges Sang, college singing expanded in conjunction with the growth of the nation and the American higher education system.   While it was often simply an entertaining pastime, singing had other subtle and not-so-subtle effects. Singing indoctrinated students into the life of formal and informal student organizations as well as encouraged them to conform to college rituals and celebrations. University faculty used songs to reinforce the religious practices and ceremonial observances that their universities supported. Students used singing for more social purposes: students sang to praise their peers achievements (and underachievements), mock the faculty, and provide humor. In extreme circumstances, they sang to intimidate classmates and faculty, and to defy college authorities. Singing was, and is, an intrinsic part of campus culture.   When Colleges Sang explores the dynamics that inspired collegiate singing and the development of singing traditions from the earliest days of the American college. Winstead explores this traditions tenuous beginnings in the Puritan era and follows its progress into the present. Using historical documents provided by various universities, When Colleges Sang follows the unique applications and influences of song that persisted in various forms. This original and significant contribution to the literature of higher education sheds light on how college singing traditions have evolved through the generations and have continued to remain culturally relevant even today.

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The Case for the Critical Study of Religion

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In 2002, the University of Alabama's Department of Religious Studies established the annual Aronov Lecture Series to showcase the works of nationally recognized scholars of religion capable of reflecting on issues of wide relevance to scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. Writing Religion: The Case for the Critical Study of Religion is an edited collection of essays that highlights critical contributions from the first ten Aronov lecturers.   Section one of the volume, Writing Discourses, features essays by Jonathan Z. Smith, Bruce Lincoln, and Ann Pellegrini that illustrate how critical study enables the analysis of discourses in society and history. Section two, Riting Social Formations, includes pieces by Arjun Appadurai, Judith Plaskow, and Nathan Katz that reference both the power of rites to construct society and the act of riting as a form of disciplining that both prescribes and proscribes. The writings of Tomoko Masuzawa, Amy-Jill Levine, Aaron W. Hughes, and Martin S. Jaffee appear in section three, Righting the Discipline. They emphasize the correction of movements within the academic study of religion.   Steven W. Ramey frames the collection with a thoughtful introduction that explores the genesis, development, and diversity of critical analysis in the study of religion. An afterword by Russell McCutcheon reflects on the critical study of religion at the University of Alabama and rounds out this superb collection.   The mission of the Department of Religious Studies is to avoid every tendency toward confusing the study of religion with the practice of religion. Instruction aboutrather than inreligion is foundational to the departments larger goal of producing knowledge of the world and its many practices and systems of beliefs. Infused with this spirit, these fascinating essays, which read like good conversations with learned friends, offer significant examples of each scholars work. Writing Religion will be of value to graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and scholars interested in the study of religion from a critical perspective.

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Russell T. McCutcheon, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Theodore Louis Trost, Steven W. Ramey, Martin S. Jaffee, Nathan Katz, Amy-Jill Levine, Bruce Lincoln, Tomoko Masuzawa, Russell T. McCutcheon, Ann Pellegrini, Judith Plaskow, Jonathan Z. Smith, Steven W. Ramey, Theodore Louis Trost, Arjun Appadurai, Aaron W. Hughes, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Steven W. Ramey

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A Cultural Survey of the Heart of Alabama

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Capturing the soul of the Souths Black Belt. In Visions of the Black Belt, Robin McDonald and Valerie Pope Burnes offer a richly illustrated tour of the Black Belt, the fertile arc that represents the cultural efflorescence of Alabamas heartland. Like knowledgeable friends, McDonald and Burnes guide readers through the Black Belts towns and architecture and introduce the regions great panoply of citizens, farmers, craftspeople, cooks, writers, and musicians.   A constellation of Black Belt towns arose during Alabamas territorial decades, communities like Selma, Camden, Eutaw, Tuskegee, Greenville, and many more. Visions of the Black Belt recounts their stories and others, such as Demopoliss founding by exiles from Napoleons France. As an escarpment of clouds scuds across an indigo sky, the ruins of Alabamas lost capital of Cahaba reveal the secrets of its lost squares. Also on this picturesque tour are the Black Belts homes, from artless cabins wreathed in fern to ozymandian manses wrapped by stately columns, such as Kirkwood and Reverie.   Among the emblematic houses of worship lovingly photographed in Visions of the Black Belt is Prairievilles St. Andrews Episcopal Church, noted for its carpenter gothic style. Also reflecting the regions history of faith are poignant graveyards such as Greenvilles Pioneer Cemetery with its homespun memorials of seashell-and-concrete and the elegant marbles clad in ebon lichen of Selma's Live Oak Cemetery.   In photos and text, McDonald and Burnes bring to life the layers of history that shaped the Black Belts tastes, sounds, and colors. Their gastronomic discoveries include the picant crawfish of the Faunsdale Bar & Grill and GainesRidge Dining Clubs famed Black Bottom pie. They bring the sounds of the Black Belt to life by presenting a wide range of musicians and musical events, from bona fide blues and soul masters to Eutaws Black Belt Roots Festival.   Including two maps and more than 370 full-color photographs, Visions of the Black Belt offers a timeless message of faith, determination, and the rich simplicity of living in harmony with the rhythms of the land and nature.  Published in Cooperation with the Black Belt Treasures Cultural Arts Center, Camden, Alabama.

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Robin McDonald, Valerie Pope Burnes, Robin McDonald

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Definitions at the Intersection of Science and Politics

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Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USX-NONEX-NONEMicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In recent years political, religious, and scientific communities have engaged in an ethical debate regarding the development of and research on embryonic stem cells. Does the manipulation of embryonic stem cells destroy human life? Or do limitations imposed on stem cell research harm patients who might otherwise benefit?   John Lynchs What Are Stem Cells? identifies the moral stalemate between the rights of the embryo and the rights of the patient and uses it as the framework for a larger discussion about the role of definitions as a key rhetorical strategy in the debate. In the case of stem cells, the controversy arises from the manner in which stem cells are defined--in particular, whether they are defined with an appeal to their original source or to their future application. Definitions such as these, Lynch argues, are far more than convenient expository references; they determine the realities of any given social discourse.   Lynch addresses definitions conceptually--their stability in the face of continual technological innovation, their versatility at the crossroads of scientific and public forums, and their translations and retranslations through politics. Most importantly, his work recognizes definitions as central to issues, not only within the topic of stem cell research, but also in all argumentation.

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Seminole Leadership in the Late Twentieth Century

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Warriors Without War takes readers beneath the placid waters of the Seminoles public image and into the fascinating depths of Seminole society and politics.   For the entire last quarter of the twentieth century, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, a federally recognized American Indian Tribe, struggled as it transitioned from a tiny group of warriors into one of the best-known tribes on the worlds economic stage through their gaming enterprises.    Caught between a desperate desire for continued cultural survival and the mounting pressures of the non-Indian worldespecially, the increasing requirements of the United States government the Seminoles took a warriorlike approach to financial risk management.  Their leader was the sometimes charming, sometimes crass and explosive, always warriorlike James Billie, who twice led the tribe in fights with the State of Florida that led all the way to the US Supreme Court.   Patricia Riles Wickman, who lived and worked for fifteen years with the Seminole people, chronicles the near-meteoric rise of the tribe and its leader to the pinnacle of international fame, and Billies ultimate fall after twenty-four years in power.  Based partly on her own personal experiences working with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Wickman has produced an in-depth study of the rise of one of the largest Indian gaming operations in the United States that reads almost like a Capote nonfiction novel.

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A First-Hand Account of the Historic Under-Ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish (SSN-651)

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A first-person view of submarine under-ice operations that appears in very few other works.  Gary E. Weir, author of Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Russian Submarines that Fought the Cold War  Unknown Waters tells the story of the brave officers and men of the nuclear attack submarine USS Queenfish (SSN-651), who made the first survey of an extremely important and remote region of the Arctic Ocean. The unpredictability of deep-draft sea ice, shallow water, and possible Soviet discovery, all played a dramatic part in this engrossing 1970 voyage. Covering 3,100 miles over a period of some 20 days at a laborious average speed of 6.5 knots or less, the attack submarine carefully threaded its way through innumerable underwater canyons of ice and over irregular seafloors, at one point becoming entrapped in an ice garage. Only cool thinking and skillful maneuvering of the nearly 5,000-ton vessel enabled a successful exit.

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Alfred Scott McLaren, William R. Anderson

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McClellan, Sumner, and the Second Army Corps in the Antietam Campaign

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Unfurl Those Colors! provides an operational study of the Army of the Potomac during the pivotal Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, illuminating in details that will fascinate scholars and armchair generals alike US army commander George B. McClellans command decisions and how those decisions were carried out in the middle and lower ranks of the Second Army Corps.   Armstrong offers the most comprehensive account yet of the Second Army Corpss fight at Antietam, including Sedgwicks division in the West Woods and Frenchs and Richardsons divisions at Bloody Land. He offers a fresh reappraisal of the leadership of Bostonian Edwin V. Bull Head Sumner as the only federal corps commander who doggedly and accurately carried out McClellans battle plan and effectively directed the battle on the Federal right.   Many esteemed Civil War historians consider Antietam a watershed moment in the Civil War, a crucial success after which Abraham Lincoln was emboldened to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfurl Those Colors! offers a vital examination of the operational fabric of the Army of the Potomacs leadership and command in one of the most important days in American history.

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Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama

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Uplifting the People is a history of the Alabama Missionary Baptist State Conventionits origins, churches, associations, conventions, and leaders. Fallin demonstrates that a distinctive Afro-Baptist faith emerged as slaves in Alabama combined the African religious emphasis on spirit possession, soul-travel, and rebirth with the evangelical faith of Baptists. The denomination emphasizes a conversion experience that brings salvation, spiritual freedom, love, joy, and patience, and also stresses liberation from slavery and oppression and highlights the exodus experience. In examining the social and theological development of the Afro-Baptist faith over the course of three centuries, Uplifting the People demonstrates how black Baptists in Alabama used faith to cope with hostility and repression.   Fallin reveals that black Baptist churches were far more than places of worship. They functioned as self-help institutions within black communities and served as gathering places for social clubs, benevolent organizations, and political meetings. Church leaders did more than conduct services; they protested segregation and disfranchisement, founded and operated schools, and provided community leaders for the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century.   Through black churches, members built banking systems, insurance companies, and welfare structures. Since the gains of the civil rights era, black Baptists have worked to maintain the accomplishments of that struggle, church leaders continue to speak for social justice and the rights of the poor, and churches now house day care and Head Start programs. Uplifting the People also explores the role of women, the relations between black and white Baptists, and class formation within the black church.

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Truman Capote and the Legacy of "In Cold Blood"

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Ralph F. Voss was a high school junior in Plainville, Kansas in mid-November of 1959 when four members of the Herbert Clutter family were murdered in Holcomb, Kansas, by four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives, an unimaginable horror in a quiet farm community during the Eisenhower years. No one in Kansas or elsewhere could then have foreseen the emergence of Capotes bookwhich has never gone out of print, has twice been made into a major motion picture, remains required reading in criminology, American Studies, sociology, and English classes, and has been the source of two recent biographical films.  Voss examines Capote and In Cold Blood from many perspectives, not only as the crowning achievement of Capotes career, but also as a story in itself, focusing on Capotes artfully composed text, his extravagant claims for it as reportage, and its larger status in American popular culture.  Voss argues that Capotes publication of In Cold Blood in 1966 forever transcended his reputation as a first-rate stylist but second-rate writer of  Southern gothic fiction; that In Cold Blood actually is a gothic novel, a sophisticated culmination of Capotes artistic development and interest in lurid regionalism, but one that nonetheless eclipsed him both personally and artistically. He also explores Capotes famous claim that he created a genre called the non-fiction novel, and its status as a foundational work of true crime writing as practiced by authors ranging from Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer to James Ellroy, Joe McGinniss, and John Berendt.  Voss also examines Capotes artful manipulation of the storys facts and circumstances: his masking of crucial homoerotic elements to enhance its marketability; his need for the killers to remain alive long enough to get the story, and then his need for them to die so that he could complete it; and Capotes style, his shaping of the narrative, and his selection of detailswhy it served him to include this and not that, and the effects of such choicesall despite confident declarations that every word is true.  Though its been nearly 50 years since the Clutter murders and far more gruesome crimes have been documented, In Cold Blood continues to resonate deeply in popular culture. Beyond questions of artistic selection and claims of truth, beyond questions about capital punishment and Capotes own post-publication dissolution, In Cold Bloods ongoing relevance stems, argues Voss, from its unmatched role as a touchstone for enduring issues of truth, exploitation, victimization, and the power of narrative.      

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An American Paratrooper and the 1972 Battle for An Loc

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True Faith and Allegiance: An American Paratrooper and the 1972 Battle for An Loc is an intimate and compelling account of the most brutal infantry warfare and is also a critique of the mishandling of Americas departure from Indochina. An unintended consequence of Washingtons stampede to get out of Indochina was an upsurge in combat on a scale not seen before in Vietnam, peaking with the Easter Offensive of 1972.  The battle for An Loc, a key component in the North Vietnamese attempt to overwhelm the South, swept Mike McDermott, then the senior advisor to an elite South Vietnamese paratrooper battalion, into some of the most horrific close-quarters fighting of the war. His in-the-trenches account is augmented by detailed descriptions of a users perspective on the parachute resupply, tactical airpower, and B-52 strikes that allowed the An Loc garrison to survive.  True Faith and Allegiance is a riveting recounting of the prism through which a Vietnam veteran views the war as he continues to live with the aftereffects of life-altering experiences in the service of his country.

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Culturally Modified Bone in the Prehistoric Midwest

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Transforming the Dead is a collection of essays that examines culturally modified human bones and their roles as cultural and ritual objects among prehistoric Eastern Woodland cultures. Previous scholarship has explored the role of human body parts in Native American cultures as trophies of war and revered ancestors. This collection discusses new evidence that human elements were also important components of daily and ritual activities across the Eastern Woodlands. The contributors to this volume discuss each case study within the unique regional and temporal contexts of the material, rather than seeking universal answers to how these objects were used.   Most research addressing modified human bone has focused on cut marks and trauma associated with warfare, trophy taking, and burial practices. The editors and contributors of Transforming the Dead document the varied and often overlooked ways that human bone was intentionally modified through drilling, incising, cutting, and polishing for utilitarian, ornamental, spiritual, or ritual use. Examples include bracelets and gorgets to be worn, as well as musical rasps, pipe stems, masks, and protective talismans. The form and function of these objects are not unusual; their construction from the remains of another sets them apart.   Through a flexible but systematic analysis of the archaeological record, the contributors bring into focus how the careful selection, modification, and retention of particular bones or body parts of an individual after death offer insights into concepts of personhood, the body, life, and death among the prehistoric Native Americans in the Midwest.  

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Katie J. Zejdlik, Mary Lucas Powell, Shirley J. Schermer, Maria Ostendorf Smith, Linea Sundstrom, Kathleen T Blue, Christopher Carr, Dawn E Cobb, Della Collins Cook, Paul D Emanovsky, Eve A. Hargrave, Kristin M. Hedman, Cheryl A Johnston, Anne B. Lee, Robin M. Lillie, Cheryl Ann Munson, Stephen P Nawrocki, Anna Novotny, Shirley J. Schermer, Kristin M. Hedman, Robin M. Lillie, Eve A. Hargrave

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Zachary Taylor's Mexican War Campaign and His Emerging Civil War Leaders

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This work is a narrative of Zachary Taylors Mexican War campaign, from the formation of his army in 1844 to his last battle at Buena Vista in 1847, with emphasis on the 163 men in his Army of Occupation who became Confederate or Union generals in the Civil War. It clarifies what being a Mexican War veteran meant in their cases, how they interacted with one another, how they performed their various duties, and how they reacted under fire. Referring to developments in Washington, D.C., and other theaters of the war, this book provides a comprehensive picture of the early years of the conflict based on army records and the letters and diaries of the participants. Trailing Clouds of Glory is the first examination of the roles played in the Mexican War by the large number of men who served with Taylor and who would be prominent in the next war, both as volunteer and regular army officers, and it provides fresh information, even on such subjects as Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Particularly interesting for the student of the Civil War are largely unknown aspects of the Mexican War service of Daniel Harvey Hill, Braxton Bragg, and Thomas W. Sherman.

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Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White

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Explores how both black and white southern writers such as Joel Chandler Harris, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Ellen Douglas, and Ernest Gaines have employed oral storytelling in literature  Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White is a study of the historical use of oral storytelling by southern writers in written works. In each chapter, Sarah Gilbreath Ford pairs a white and an African American writer to highlight points of confluence in black and white southern oral traditions. She argues that the connections between white and African American southern writers run deeper than critics have yet explored, and she uses textual comparisons to examine the racial mixing of oral culture.  On porches, in kitchens, and on the pages of their work, black and white southerners exchanged not just stories but strategies for telling stories. As a boy, Joel Chandler Harris listened to the stories of African American slaves, and he devised a framework to turn the oral stories into written ones. Harriss use of the frame structure influenced how Charles Chesnutt recorded oral stories, but it led Alice Walker to complain that her heritage had been stolen. Mark Twain listened to African American storytellers as a child. His use of oral dialects then impacts how Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner employ oral storytelling and how Toni Morrison later writes in response to Faulkner. The interactions are not linear, not a chain of influence, but a network of interactions, borrowings, and revisions.  Fords pairings lead to new readings that reveal how the writers employ similar strategies in their narratives, due in part to shared historical context. While Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner, for example, use oral storytelling in the 1930s to examine the fear of racial mixing, Ellen Douglas and Ernest Gaines use it in the 1970s to build bridges between the races. Exploring the cultural crossing that occurs in the use of oral storytelling, Ford offers a different view of this common strategy in southern narrative and a new perspective on how culture is shared.

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Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie

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A gripping firsthand account of loyalty, resistance, and survival in Confederate Tennessee, this memoir reveals the untold story of Unionist courage behind enemy lines. Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie is the memoir of a Union supporter in south-central Tennessee. In it, he chronicles in vivid and emotional detail the local tensions between Unionists and Confederates during the Civil War South and offers a rare first-person account of the guerrilla war that devastated Western Tennessee. Thomas Jefferson Cypert (1827-1918) was a staunch Union man of Wayne County, Tennessee. In 1863, he helped organize the Second Tennessee Mounted Infantry, a regiment of loyalist Southerners enlisted to combat Confederate cavalry in West Tennessee and Northern Alabama. Tried Men and True is Cyperts memoir of his time as Captain of Company A, including his capture by Confederate cavalry and subsequent daring escape, in which he was aided by local Union sympathizers and slaves. After the Civil War, Cypert served two terms in the Tennessee State Senate, one of them during the heated first years of Reconstruction, when Tennessee disenfranchised former rebels and attempted to establish Unionist Republican rule in the state. Cypert clearly wrote his memoir to defend Unionism, condemn secession and rebellion, and support loyalists claims for post-war power through an account of their wartime sacrifices. Never before published, the manuscript has been preserved in nearly perfect condition by Cyperts descendants over the generations. This book is a remarkable and engagingly written account of resistance to the Confederacy by a group of southwestern Tennessee loyalists.

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Thomas Jefferson Cypert, Margaret M. Storey, Margaret M. Storey

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Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America

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Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America recounts the story of three innocent victims, all of whom suffered violent deaths through no fault of their own: Vaudine Maddox in 1933 in Tuscaloosa, Sergeant Gene Ballard in 1979 in Birmingham, and Michael Donald in 1981 in Mobile.  The death of Vaudine Maddoxand the lynchings that followedserves as a cautionary tale about the violence that occurred in the same region nearly fifty-years later, highlighting the cowardice, ignorance, and happenstance that sustained a culture of racial intolerance far into the future.Nearly half a century later, after a black bank robber was acquitted for the murder of police Sergeant Gene Ballard, two Klansmen took it upon themselves to exact revenge on an innocent victim--nineteen-year-old African American Michael Donald.  Donald's murder--deemed the last lynching in America--reignited the race debate in America and culminated in a courtroom drama in which the United Klans of America were at long last put on trial.   While tracing the relationships among these murders, B. J. Hollars's research led him deep into the heart of Alabamas racial, political, and legal landscapes.  A work of literary journalism, Thirteen Loops  draws upon rarely examined primary sources, court documents, newspaper reports, and first-hand accounts in an effort to unravel the twisted tale of a pair of interconnected murders that forever altered United States' race relations.

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This Bright Light of Ours offers a tightly focused insiders view of the community-based activism that was the heart of the civil rights movement. A celebration of grassroots heroes, this book details through first-person accounts the contributions of ordinary people who formed  the nonviolent army that won the fight for voting rights.  Combining memoir and oral history, Maria Gitin fills a vital gap in civil rights history by focusing on the neglected Freedom Summer of 1965 when hundreds of college students joined forces with local black leaders to register thousands of new black voters in the rural South. Gitin was an idealistic nineteen-year-old college freshman from a small farming community north of San Francisco who felt called to action when she saw televised images of brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators during Bloody Sunday, in Selma, Alabama.  Atypical among white civil rights volunteers, Gitin came from a rural low-income family. She raised funds to attend an intensive orientation in Atlanta featuring now-legendary civil rights leaders. Her detailed letters include the first narrative account of this orientation and the only in-depth field report from a teenage Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) project participant.  Gitin details the dangerous life of civil rights activists in Wilcox County, Alabama, where she was assigned. She tells of threats and arrests, but also of forming deep friendships and of falling in love. More than four decades later, Gitin returned to Wilcox County to revisit the people and places that she could never forget and to discover their views of the outside agitators who had come to their community. Through conversational interviews with more than fifty Wilcox County residents and former civil rights workers, she has created a channel for the voices of these unheralded heroes who formed the backbone of the civil rights movement.