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In the early years of this century, Burnside, Kentucky, was a bustling community perched on and above the floodplain formed by the Cumberland River and the South Fork. It was a center for shipping by rail and steamboat packet, and its lumber mills sent their products all over the world. The lower part of the townonce the heart of its economic beingnow lies beneath the waters of Lake Cumberland, and the remaining streets above no longer resound with the clatter and roar of older and busier times. Harriet Simpson Arnow moved to Burnside with her parents and sisters in 1913, a few months before her fifth birthday. She recreates for us the sights and sounds of the town as she sets her childhood memories against the history of the region from the days of early settlers until Wolfe Creek Dam was built, creating the hundred-mile-long Lake Cumberland. Arnow charms the reader with her account of what it was like to be child in such a place and time, describing the fascination of the general stores of the town, the grand sight of the Seven Gables Hotel, the excitement of school, and the ever-interesting river and railroad traffic, all of which lent diversion to a life that sometimes seemed overburdened with household chores and errand running. Though much of old Burnside has disappeared, the way of life Arnow describes is an important part of the fabric of the history of Kentucky and the nation. Evoking vivid scenes of river and railroad, lumber mill and country store, Arnow recreates for us with great artistry a long-vanished place and time.

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The Immigrant Experience and Contemporary American Fiction

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New Strangers in Paradise offers the first in-depth account of the ways in which contemporary American fiction has been shaped by the successive generations of immigrants to reach U.S. shores. Gilbert Muller reveals how the intersections of peoples, regions, and competing cultural histories have remade the American cultural landscape in the aftermath of World War II.Muller focuses on the literature of Holocaust survivors, Chicanos, Latinos, African Caribbeans, and Asian Americans. In the quest for a new identity, each of these groups seeks the American dream and rewrites the story of what it means to be an American. New Strangers in Paradise explores the psychology of uprooted peoples and the relations of culture and power, addressing issues of race and ethnicity, multiculturalism and pluralism, and national and international conflicts.Examining the groups of immigrants in the cultural and historical context both of America and of the lands from which they originated, Muller argues that this "fourth wave" of immigration has led to a creative flowering in modern fiction. The book offers a fresh perspective on the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, Sual Bellow, William Styron, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Oscar Hijuelos, Jamaica Kincaid, Bharati Mukherjee, Rudolfo Anaya, and many others.

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Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl

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A telling memoir by an exciting new voice, Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl explores journalist Kitty Oliver's coming of age as she makes the crossing from an all-black to a predominantly white world.Born and raised in an all-black area of Jacksonville, Florida, Oliver was one of the first African American freshmen to enter the University of Florida. Though she chronicles the strains of her transition from Jim Crow to desegregation, this book is much more than a memoir of the turbulent sixties. It is an upbeat journal of self-discovery in the aftermath of that decade, a look at one woman's coming to terms with living an integrated life in America. With humor, poignancy, and lyrical language (reminiscent at times of another Florida writer, Zora Neale Hurston), Oliver shares her passage from the "old world" to the newan immigrant's journey indicative of the American experience.Blending past and present, she searches for roots from the Gullah or "Geechee" culture of South Carolina to the urban streets of northern Florida to the multicultural mix of South Florida's diverse ethnic cultures, serving up family stories with large helpings of southern "folktalk," food, and music along the way.

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Hundreds of Hollywood-on-Hollywood movies can be found throughout the history of American cinema, from the days of silents to the present. They include films from genres as far ranging as musical, film noir, melodrama, comedy, and action-adventure. Such movies seduce us with the promise of revealing the reality behind the camera. But, as part of the very industry they supposedly critique, they cannot take us behind the scenes in any true sense. Through close analysis of fifteen critically acclaimed films, Christopher Ames reveals how the idea of Hollywood is constructed and constructs itself. Films discussed: What Price Hollywood? (1952), A Star Is Born (1937), Stand-In (1937), Boy Meets Girl (1938), Sullivan's Travels (1941), In a Lonely Place (1950), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Star (1950), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Pennies from Heaven (1981), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), The Player (1992), Last Action Hero (1993).

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Jamboree! To many country music fans the word conjures up memories of Saturday nights around the family radio listening to live broadcasts from that haven of hillbilly music, West Virginia. From 1926 through the 1950s, as Ivan Tribe shows in his lively history, country music radio programming made the Mountain State a mecca for country singers and instrumentalists from all over America.Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Little Jimmy Dickens, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Red Sovine, Blaine Smith, Curly Ray Cline, Grandpa Jones, Cowboy Loye, Rex and Eleanor Parker, Lee Moore, Buddy Starcher, Doc and Chickie Williams, and Molly O'Day were among the many who came to prominence via West Virginia radio.Wheeling's "WWVA jamboree," first broadcast in 1933, attracted a wide audience, especially after 1942, when the station increased its power. The show's success spawned numerous competitors, as new stations all over West Virginia followed WWVA's lead in headlining country music. The state also played an important role in the early recording industry. The Tweedy Brothers, Frank Hutchison, Roy Harvey, Blind Alfred Reed, Frank Welling and John McGhee, Cap and Andy, and the Kessinger Brothers were among West Virginians whose waxings contributed to the state's reputation for fine native musicianship. So too did those who sought out and recorded the Mountaineer folksong heritage.As Nashville's dominance has grown since the 1960s, West Virginia's leadership in country music has lessened. Young performers must now seek fame outside their native state. But, as Ivan Tribe demonstrates, the state's numerous outdoor festivals continue to keep alive the heritage of country music's "mountain mama."

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Monica Appleby and Helen Lewis reveal the largely untold story of women who stood up to the Church and joined Appalachians in their struggle for social justice. Their poignant story of how faith, compassion, and persistence overcame obstacles to progress in Appalachia is a fascinating example of how a collaborative and creative learning community fosters strong voices. Mountain Sisters is a prophetic first-person account of the history of American Catholicism, the war on poverty, and the influence of the turbulent 1960s on the cultural and religious communities of Appalachia.Founded in 1941, The Glenmary Sisters embraced a calling to serve rural Appalachian communities where few Catholics resided. The sisters, many of them seeking alternatives to the choices available to most women during this time, zealously pursued their duties but soon became frustrated with the rules and restrictions of the Church. Outmoded doctrineeven styles of dressmade it difficult for them to interact with the very people they hoped to help. In 1967, after many unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Church to ease its requirements, some seventy Sisters left the security of convent life. Over forty of these women formed a secular service group, FOCIS (Federation of Communities in Service). Mountain Sisters is their story.

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The Cardinal Virtues, Military Ethics, and American Society

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James Toner argues that the cardinal virtues are and must be the core values of the military. By embracing these values, the profession of arms serves as a moral compass in an increasingly confusing age. Building upon a bold introduction, which includes what many will regard as a surprising view of military ethics, Toner examines the four cardinal virtueswisdom, courage, temperance, and justiceand places each in the context of a compelling case study from recent U.S. military history. He discusses the Flinn Case, the Lavelle Affair, a B-52 crash in Washington State, and the courageous actions of Hugh Thompson after My Lai. Morals Under the Gun connects ethics and moral theology with the armed services, demonstrating that the task of preserving virtue, both personal and professional, is a noble, if imperfectible, task.

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Metallurgy in Precontact Eastern North America

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Miskwabik, Metal of Ritual examines the thousands of beautiful and intricate ritual works of artfrom ceremonial weaponry to delicate copper pendants and ear ornamentscreated in eastern North America before the arrival of Europeans. The first comprehensive examination of this 3,000-year-old metallurgical tradition, the book provides unique insight into the motivation of the artisans and the significance of these objects, and highlights the brilliance and sophistication of the early civilizations of the Americas.Comparing the ritual architecture and metallurgy of the original Americans with the ethnological record, Amelia M. Trevelyan begins to unravel the mystery of the significance of the objects as well as their special functions within the societies that created them. The book includes dozens of striking color and black and white photographs.

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It is said that Bascom Lamar Lunsford would "cross hell on a rotten rail to get a folk song"his Southern highlands folk-song compilations now constitute one of the largest collections of its kind in the Library of Congressbut he did much more than acquire songs. He preserved and promoted the Appalachian mountain tradition for generations of people, founding in 1928 the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, an annual event that has shaped America's festival movement. Loyal Jones pens a lively biography of a man considered to be Appalachian music royalty. He also includes a "Lunsford Sampler" of ballads, songs, hymns, tales, and anecdotes, plus a discography of his recordings.

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During the turbulent 1960s, civil rights leader Whitney M. Young Jr. devised a new and effective strategy to achieve equality for African Americans. Young blended interracial mediation with direct protest, demonstrating that these methods pursued together were the best tactics for achieving social, economic, and political change. Militant Mediator is a powerful reassessment of this key and controversial figure in the civil rights movement. It is the first biography to explore in depth the influence Young's father, a civil rights leader in Kentucky, had on his son. Dickerson traces Young's swift rise to national prominence as a leader who could bridge the concerns of deprived blacks and powerful whites and mobilize the resources of the white America to battle the poverty and discrimination at the core of racial inequality. Alone among his civil rights colleaguesMartin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, John Lewis, and James FormanYoung built support from black and white constituencies. As a National Urban League official in the Midwest and as a dean of the School of Social Work at Atlanta University during the 1940s and 1950s, Young developed a strategy of mediation and put it to work on a national level upon becoming the executive director of the League in 1961. Though he worked with powerful whites, Young also drew support from middle-and working-class blacks from religious, fraternal, civil rights, and educational organizations. As he navigated this middle ground, though, Young came under fire from both black nationalists and white conservatives.

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Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord

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Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870

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Much that is commonly accepted about slavery and religion in the Old South is challenged in this significant book. The eight essays included here show that throughout the antebellum period, southern whites and blacks worshipped together, heard the same sermons, took communion and were baptized together, were subject to the same church discipline, and were buried in the same cemeteries. What was the black perception of white-controlled religious ceremonies? How did whites reconcile their faith with their racism? Why did freedmen, as soon as possible after the Civil War, withdraw from the biracial churches and establish black denominations? This book is essential reading for historians of religion, the South, and the Afro-American experience.

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In this informed and entertaining essay, John H. Ellis describes the efforts of physicians and laymen to keep illness at bay during Kentucky's first 200 years. Medicine in Kentucky is part of the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf, "a celebration of two centuries of the history and culture of The Commonwealth." John H. Ellis outlines the practice and development of medicine in Kentucky from the state of medical practices during the colonial era and the paucity of trained practitioners, to the frontier doctors of the early days of Westward expansion, to the founding of the first medical school chartered in the West, Transylvania University.Ellis also details some of the commonly encountered diseases, the various types of practitioners (allopaths, herb doctors, Thomsonians, and homeopaths), and the various, generally short-lived publications and medical societies of nineteenth century Kentucky. He highlights two native Kentuckians, Joseph Nathaniel McCormack, principal architect of the current structure of the AMA, and Abraham Flexner, whose "Medical Education in the United States and Canada" is one of the great landmarks in the field, whether one feels that he laid the foundation for modern scientific medical education or merely set in concrete nineteenth century scientism as the basis for medical education. Although dealing principally with Kentucky medicine, it reflects also on the happenings in medicine across the country.

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The South was many things to Mark Twain: boyhood home, testing ground for manhood, and the principal source of creative inspiration. Although he left the South while a young man, seldom to return, it remained for him always a haunting presence, alternately loved and loathed. To follow his changing attitudes toward the South and its people is to observe the evolving opinions of many Americans during the era that bears the abusive name he gave itthe Gilded Age. This is the first book on a major yet largely ignored aspect of the private life of Samuel Clemens and one of the major themes in Mark Twain's writing from 1863 until his death. Mr. Pettit clearly demonstrates that Mark Twain's feelings on race and region moved in an intelligible direction. The son of a poor but proud slave-holding family in the border South, Samuel Clemens was a product of his time and place. His "retreat" in 1861 to the Nevada territory, a stronghold of Northern sentiment, resulted in a hasty shift to anti-Southern views, born more of social pressures than of a genuine change of heart. This shift became stronger after his move to New York in 1866. Yet the South continued to pull him emotionally, becoming in his tangled imagination both the mythical Eden of Tom Sawyer and the symbol of white racial guilt ultimately expressed in the paradoxical figure of Roxana in Pudd'nhead Wilson. At the same time, Mark Twain the humorist and jester to his age was slow to discard the racist jokes that were commonplace in his day. After his marriage into Eastern money and respectability, however, he gradually imposed a form of self-censorship that reflected his growing recognition of the horrors of white treatment of blacks. Mark Twain's return to the South in 1882 proved a deep disillusionment and a turning point in his thought and writings. The South was no longer Eden but Wasteland. The immediate results were Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn, both with strongly anti-Southern undercurrents. Ultimately he moved into a deeply pessimistic and sardonic vein in which the dream of racial brotherhood was forever dead and the black man was seen as leading the way toward a cosmic snuffing out of the human race. Mr. Pettit approaches his subject as a historian with a deep appreciation for literature. He bases his study on a wide variety of Mark Twain's published and unpublished works, including his notebooks, scrapbooks, and letters. An interesting feature is an examination of Clemens's relations with the only two black men he knew well in his adult years.

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Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind

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Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), led a dramatic life that brought her into contact with kings, queens, and the leading thinkers of her day. The English civil wars forced her into exile, accompanying Queen Henrietta Maria and her court to Paris. From this vantage point, she began writing voluminously, responding to the events and major intellectual movements of the mid-seventeenth century.Cavendish published twenty-three volumes in her lifetime, including plays, romances, poetry, letters, biography, and natural philosophy. In them she explored the political, scientific, and philosophical ideas of her day. While previous biographers of Cavendish have focused almost exclusively on her eccentric public behavior, Anna Battigelli is the first to explore in depth her intellectual life. She dismisses the myth of Cavendish as an isolated and lonely thinker, arguing that the role of exile was a rhetorical stance, one that allowed Cavendish to address and even criticize her world. She, like others writing during the period after the English civil wars, focused squarely on the problem of finding the proper relationship between mind and world. This volume presents Cavendish's writing self, the self she treasured above all others.

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Deadly epidemics of yellow fever and Asiatic cholera plagued the South throughout the nineteenth century, yet doctors had few effective weapons against the diseases. Luke Pryor Blackburn, a Kentucky-born physician, worked with more success than most to save the lives of those who were stricken and to prevent the spread of infection. He aided towns throughout Kentucky and the Deep South where resident doctors had fled or had fallen ill themselves.Blackburn's reputation as a humanitarian soared following his aid to Western Kentucky during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. A year later he was easily elected governor of Kentucky in spite of his political inexperience and the revelation that he had practiced germ warfare during the Civil War. While in office, he sought prison reform and the relief of the unbelievable overcrowding at the state penitentiary, pardoning hundreds of inmates and drawing bitter criticism from across the Commonwealth. Yet his continued efforts to improve prison conditions set Kentucky on the slow road to penal reform.His contemporaries labeled Blackburn a philanthropist, a mass-murderer, a good Samaritan, and an "old loon." Nancy Disher Baird portrays him as a man who stood by his convictions, whether they required strict enforcement of innovative public health measures or unpopular expenditures on behalf of convicts.

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Howard Phillips Lovecraft (18901937) has been described variously as the successor to Edgar Allan Poe, a master of the Gothic horror tale, and one of the father of modern supernatural fantasy fiction. Published originally in pulp magazines, his works have grown in popularity since his death, so that more than thirty editions are currently in print.Yet only recently has Lovecraft received serious attention from literary critics. And until now no one has examined his work from a post-structuralist perspective. Donald Burleson fills that void, for the first time in an extended study bringing the resources of deconstruction to bear on the works of this modern gothicist.In an introductory overview, Burleson gives an unusually readable account of deconstruction theory and terminology, a field all too often discussed in densely opaque fashion. He goes on to deconstruct thirteen Lovecraft stories, delving into their fascinating etymological mazes, abundant ambiguities, and shifting levels of meanings. His lively and remarkably jargon-free readings explore Lovecraft's rich figurality to unprecedented depths. At the same time Burleson develops the view that in practicing self-subversion and structural displacement, literary texts perpetuate themselves. His final chapter explores the broad themes running though Lovecraft's fiction, arguing that these themes in themselves prefigure the deconstructive gesture. This insightful and provocative volume will go a long way toward displacing the label of popular writer and establishing Lovecraft as an important figure in American literature.

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James B. Finleycircuit rider, missionary, prison reformer, church officialtransformed the Ohio River Valley in the nineteenth century. As a boy he witnessed frontier raids, and as a youth he was known as the "New Market Devil" In adulthood, he traveled the Ohio forests, converting thousands through his thunderous preaching-and he was not abovebringing hecklers under control with his fists.Finley criticized the federal government's Indian policy and his racist contemporaries, contributed to the temperance and prison reform movements, and played a key role in the 1844 division of the Methodist Episcopal Church over the slavery issue.Making extensive use of letters, diaries, and church and public documents, Charles C. Cole, Jr. details Finley's influence on the moral and religious development of the Ohio River area.Cole evaluates Finley's writings and focuses on his ideas. He traces the important changes in Finley's attitudes toward slavery and abolition and provides new insights into his views on politics, economics and religion. For anyone with an interest in early life and religion in the Ohio River Valley, Lion of the Forest supplies a critical but sympathetic portrait of a complex, colorful and controversial figure.

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The Bluegrass region of Kentucky was the only part of the slaveholding South Abraham Lincoln knew intimately. How the cultural environment of Lexington, the home of Lincoln's wife, with its pleasure-loving aristocracy, its distinguished political leaders, and its slave auctions shaped his opinions on slavery and secession is traced in these pages.In this city, early known as the "Athens of the West," Lincoln's alliance with the Todd family widened his circle of acquaintances to include such diverse personalities as the fiery Cassius M. Clay, who urged immediate emancipation; Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, courageous Presbyterian minister, and the doctor's nephew, John C. Breckinridge, who took up arms against Lincoln after his election to the presidency.

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When young James Coomer was offered a job as deckhand on the tugboat Pat Murphy at a dollar an hour, he took his first smell of diesel fuel and knew he was hooked. Life on the Ohio puts the reader in the pilot's seat as Coomer wrestles with runaway barges, navigates through ice and fog, pacifies angry crew members, and contends with the loneliness of working a thirty-day stretch. A modern counterpart to Twain's account of life as a steamboat pilot, Life on the Ohio depicts the working river as it is today with its immense towboats, gigantic locks and dams, and millions of tons of cargo. Coomer captures the movement of the boats and the colorful language of river people. Coomer admits that he stuck at his job not for money but for love of the river and his work. "Over the years I had experiences I wouldn't trade for a barge full of gold," he says, "and that's what this book is all about."

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In the early nineteenth century, a young man belonging to the prominent Byrd family of Virginia, the grandson of William Byrd III, took up residence in the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Over the next two years, 18261828, he wrote a series of letters to his father, a federal judge in Ohio, describing his experiences and his impressions of the United Society of Believers, as the Shakers were formally called. Eventually, William S. Byrd became a convert to the society and an advocate of its beliefs and practices. His letterscut short by his father's deathoffer today's reader an intimate view of communal life among the Shakers at a time of considerable turmoil in their village.In the correspondence of William S. Byrd, the Shaker experience is expressed in human terms and becomes a living faith. The letters also record the trials associated with conversion to a religion that was socially unacceptable to many Americans of the time. Some of their more poignant passages describe young Byrd's attempt to reconcile the tensions created by his membership in two familiesthe one of blood and the one of faith.Letters from a Young Shaker provides an unusually instructive commentary on life in a Shaker community, on the questions agitating the community, and on the appeal of Shakerism to Americans in the early nineteenth century. In addition to the letters, the book contains other documents bearing on William Byrd's relationship with the settlement at Pleasant Hill and an introduction placing him in the social and religious context of the period. This book will appeal to historian of American society and to anyone interested in the Shaker way of life.