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Robert Rebein argues that much literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s represents a triumphant, if tortured, return to questions about place and the individual that inspired the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, and other giants of American literature. Concentrating on the realist bent and regional orientation in contemporary fiction, he discusses in detail the various names by which this fiction has been described, including literary postmodernism, minimalism, Hick Chic, Dirty Realism, ecofeminism, and more. Rebein's clearly written, nuanced interpretations of works by Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Allison, Barbara Kingsolver, E. Annie Proulx, Chris Offut, and others, will appeal to a wide range of readers.

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War hero. Lawyer. U.S. Senate candidate. Horse lover. Farm boy. Fundraiser. To this impressive list add one more role ably filled by Philip Ardery: master storyteller.Heroes and Horses presents a series of delightful vignettes evoking a way of life almost beyond recall. Bourbon County, the touchstone for Ardery's life, is the center that holds together the tales in the collection. Stories about Ardery's family home, "Rocclicgan," boyhood activities on the farm, and the servants' kitchen gossip paint vivid portraits of a lost time in Kentucky's history.Though the Ardery family and most of their neighbors were not horse people, all ages were united in their devotion to the sport of racing, with excitement reaching a crescendo each spring at Derby time. At the 1930 Derby, in which Bourbon County favorite Tannery finished eighth, losses from wagering on the horse hit the county harder than the stock market crash of the previous year. Ardery regales us with memories of hitchhiking to Louisville in 1933, sneaking into the Downs, and witnessing one of the most famous stretch runs of all time. He also tells about Claiborne Farms and its 1984 Derby and Belmont winner, Swalea story that takes us from the heights of euphoria to the depths of despair.Despite Ardery's spring trips to Louisville, home base for this collection remains pastoral Bourbon County, northeast of Lexington, the very heart of the Bluegrass. Ardery gives us a personal account of the rise and fall of Edward F. Prichard Jr., whose life "seems something of a Greek tragedy." We hear the story of Reuben Hutchcraft, the county's greatest hero of World War I. We learn the history of Barton Stone and the Cane Ridge Meeting House, where the Disciples of Christ denomination was born before the Civil War. And in one of the most moving stories in the book, Ardery tells of his respect and admiration for the wisdom of Cap'n, a former slave who worked on the family's farm during Ardery's boyhood.Written by one of Kentucky's favorite sons, Heroes and Horses will delight anyone with even a passing interest in the Bluegrass State or who enjoys a good story well told.

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"I was born at the tail end of a unique and delightful era and raised on one of the last showboats to struggle for survival against the devastating crunch of progress.... Our showboat's express purpose was carrying entertainment to hundreds of thousands of river-bottom farmers along our water-bordered frontier." from the bookBetty Bryant was a river rat. The Floating Theater was her home, and the river was her back yard. While other children were learning to walk, she was learning to swim. She knew how to set a trotline, gig a frog, catch a crawdad, and strip the mud vein out of a carp by the time she was four. In this colorful memoir, Betty shares her own piece of Americana, the small, family-owned showboat of the early twentieth century. Billy Bryant's Showboat plied the inland waterways of the Ohio River watershed from before the First World War until 1942, bringing a blend of melodrama and vaudeville, laughter and therapeutic tears, into the lives of isolated people in rural communities along the way. Betty made her first professional appearance at the age of six weeks when she played a baby in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." In her twenty years of touring, she acted, danced, and grew up in the tradition of "family entertainment, by families, for families." Here Comes the Showboat! is told with the ageless wonder of a child who loved the showboat and the eager audiences its uniquely American entertainment touched. It is a treasure trove of humorous anecdotes, touching remembrances, and delightful photographs of Betty, the three generations who ran the family showboat, miners, musselers, shantyboaters, farmers, merchants, and actors whose lives intersected along the Ohio River.

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This detailed study of Henry Clay and the American Systema program of vigorous economic nationalism dependent on active government and constitutional aspects of what was perhaps Clay's greatest contribution to national policy, a contribution that has received surprisingly little study until now.During the first half of the nineteenth century the new United States experienced rapid material growth, transforming a largely agrarian, pre-modern economy into a diversified, industrializing one. As Speaker of the House in the years following the War of 1812, and later as founder of the Whig party, Clay argued strongly for the development of a home market for domestic goods so that Americans would not be dependent on foreign imports. This "American System" was originally little more than a protective tariff on foreign goods, but it soon came to encompass a collection of policies that included a national banking system and distribution of federal funds to improve transportation. Baxter reveals the inner workings of Clay's program and offers the first careful analysis of its successes and failures.This lively and incisive account will appeal to anyone interested in American history and the processes that shaped modern America

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The novels of Janice Holt Giles grew in part from her marriage to Kentuckian Henry Giles. That union and the couple's settling near Henry's boyhood home in Kentucky provided the source and inspiration for Janice's earliest books and influenced much of her later writing. Hello, Janice tells the story of how their marriage came about.

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Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the major American poets of this century and the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1950). Yet far less critical attention has focused on her work than on that of her peers.In this comprehensive biocritical study, Melhemherself a poet and critictraces the development of Brooks's poetry over four decades, from such early works as A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, and The Bean Eaters, to the more recent In the Mecca, Riot, and To Disembark.In addition to analyzing the poetic devices used, Melhem examines the biographical, historical, and literary contexts of Brooks's poetry: her upbringing and education, her political involvement in the struggle for civil rights, her efforts on behalf of young black poets, her role as a teacher, and her influence on black letters. Among the many sources examined are such revealing documents as Brooks's correspondence with her editor of twenty years and with other writers and critics.From Melhem's illuminating study emerges a picture of the poet as prophet. Brooks's work, she shows, is consciously charged with the quest for emancipation and leadership, for black unity and pride. At the same time, Brooks is seen as one of the preeminent American poets of this century, influencing both African American letters and American literature generally. This important book is an indispensable guide to the work of a consummate poet.

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This collection of fourteen essays by American and English scholarsmany of them hitherto unpublished and all of them selected with a view to avoiding the duplication of essays already familiar and availableoffers new testimony of the range and accomplishments of Graham Greene's talent. The essays vary from considerations of general topics to critical analyses of single novels, from a discussion of Greene as a writer of Christian tragedy to a witty, irreverent assessment of The Power and the Glory. The authors here are chiefly concerned with the novels, though frequent allusions reveal something of the nature and importance of the "entertainments" and the travel books.A number of the essayists focus upon Greene's commitment to the Roman Catholic faith and the definition it has given to his work. As a writer he is shown to be preoccupied with a duel vision of human frailty and of God's saving grace, a vision found by some to assert sin to the point of virtual heresy, though it never loses sight of that mercy which may catch up a soul "between the stirrup and the ground." As one essay points out, traces of this vision are to be found in Greene's earlier works as well as in his entertainments. Greene's own particular bent as a Catholic writer is brought out by a comparison with Fracois Maruiac; another essay is concerned with the tension that exists between the life of art and the life of sanctity.Round out this presentation of Greene's accomplishments are discussions of his work in the dram, the short story, and as a motion picture critic. Finally, this collection is notable for its inclusion of the most comprehensive bibliography of Greene's work and the criticism of them yet published.Graham Greene emerges from this composite judgment as a writer of consummate artistry who sees behind the facade the emptiness of a secular world.

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Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America

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America stocks its shelves with mass-produced goods but fills its imagination with handmade folk objects. In Pennsylvania, the "back to the city" housing movement causes a conflict of cultures. In Indiana, an old tradition of butchering turtles for church picnics evokes both pride and loathing among residents. In New York, folk-art exhibits raise choruses of adoration and protest. These are a few of the examples Simon Bronner uses to illustrate the ways Americans physically and mentally grasp things. Bronner moves beyond the usual discussions of form and variety in America's folk material culture to explain historical influences on, and the social consequences of, channeling folk culture into a mass society.

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English novelist, short-story writer, playwright and journalist, Graham Greene was one of the most widely read novelist of the 20th-century, a superb storyteller. Adventure and suspense are constant elements in his novels and many of his books have been made into successful films. Although Greene was nominated several times as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he never received the award. Graham Greene is a descriptive catalog of first editions of works by Greene, which are currently held in the collection of the University of Louisville. Arranged chronologically by title, Robert H. Miller, also includes letters, radio scripts, pamphlets, and subsequent editions of importance and scarcity.

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The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism

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An intricate network of contacts developed among women in Europe and North America over the course of the nineteenth century. These women created virtual communities through communication, support, and a shared ideology. Forged across boundaries of nationality, language, ethnic origin, and even class, these connections laid the foundation for the 1888 International Council of Women and formed the beginnings of an international women's movement. This matrix extended throughout England and the Continent and included Scandinavia and Finland. In a remarkable display of investigative research, Margaret McFadden describes the burgeoning avenues of communication in the nineteenth century that led to an explosion in the number of international contacts among women. This network blossomed because of increased travel opportunities; advances in women's literacy and education; increased activity in the temperance, abolitionist, and peace reform movements; and the emergence of female evangelicals, political revolutionaries, and expatriates. Particular attention is paid to five women whose decades of work helped give birth to the women's movement by century's end. These ""mothers of the matrix"" include Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the United States, Anna Doyle Wheeler of Ireland, Fredrika Bremer of Sweden, and Frances Power Cobbe of England. Despite their philosophic differences, these leaders recognized the value of friendship and advocacy among women and shared an affinity for bringing together people from different cultural settings.McFadden demonstrates without question that the traditions of transatlantic female communication are far older than most historians realize and that the women's movement was inherently international. No other scholar has painted so complete a picture of the golden cables that linked the women who saw the Atlantic and the borders within Europe as bridges rather than barriers to improving their status.

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Frank Mathias was a teenager in a small town when the draft swept him into the army and then halfway around the world to the jungles of the South Pacific. He served in the huge invasion force in the Battle of Manila, the deadliest single battle of the Pacific War. As an army musician attached to the 37th Infantry Division, Mathias saw the war from the bottom of the heap, where young privates lived and died. In his best selling book The GI Generation, Mathias tells of growing up in small-town America between the wars. In GI Jive he recalls the gritty experience of combat as well as the music and the homefront pleasures the GIs fought to preserve.

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The Berlin newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack), founded by Joseph Goebbels in 1927, was a significant instrument for arousing support for Nazi ideas. Berlin was the center of the political life of the Weimar Republic, and Goebbels became an actor upon this frenetic stage in 1926, becoming Gauleiter of Berlin's Nazis. Focusing on the period from 1927 to 1933, a time the Nazis later called "the blood years," Russel Lemmons examines how Der Angriff was used to promote support for Nazism. Some of the most important propaganda motifs of the Third Reich first appeared in the pages of Der Angriff. Horst Wessel, murdered by the German Communist Party in 1930, became the archetypal Nazi hero; much of his legend began on the pages of Der Angriff. Other Nazi propaganda themesthe "Unknown SA man" and the "myth of resurrection and return"made their first appearances in this newspaper. How could the Germans, seemingly among the most cultured people in Europe, hand over their fate to the Nazis? As this book demonstrates, Der Angriff had much to do with the rise of National Socialism in Berlin and the cataclysmic results.

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"Holy Rollers"with this epithet most people dismiss members of the Pentecostal sect as wild religious fanatics. In this new study, folklorist Elaine Lawless draws on fieldwork among Pentecostal congregations in the limestone region of southern Indiana to offer a sympathetic view of the Pentecostals as a special group distinguished by their own folk traditions and religious expression.From her findings she describes the members' codes of dress and behavior, their attitudes toward themselves and others, their special use of words, and their distinctive religious practices. Focusing on the activity of a particular church, she then analyzes the structure of the service and shows how its elementssinging, praying, testifying, preaching, and speaking in tonguesexhibit, not a formless display of fervor, but rather an ordered and traditional sequence that creates a unique religious expression.Important to the study is the attention given the role of women. Although the Pentecostal interpretation of Biblical teachings accords men dominance, women occasionally preach in the church and during the testifying part of the service they are often able to exercise control and religious authority. Many of the women have relatives in the dangerous work of the limestone quarries, and for these women the personal experience and close relationship fostered by the Pentecostal church, Lawless finds, offers welcome emotional support.This readable study affords a new understanding of one Pentecostal sect and an appreciation of the role of women in fundamentalist religious practices.

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With a foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy RichardsGirls Rock! explores the many ways women have defined themselves as rock musicians in an industry once dominated and controlled by men. Integrating history, feminist analysis, and developmental theory, the authors describe how and why women have become rock musicianswhat inspires them to play and perform, how they write, what their music means to them, and what they hope their music means to listeners. As these musicians tell their stories, topics emerge that illuminate broader trends in rock's history. From Wanda Jackson's revolutionary act of picking up a guitar to the current success of independent artists such as Ani DiFranco, Girls Rock! examines the shared threads of these performers' lives and the evolution of women's roles in rock music since its beginnings in the 1950s. This provocative investigation of women in rock is based on numerous interviews with a broad spectrum of women performersthose who have achieved fame and those just starting bands, those playing at local coffeehouses and those selling out huge arenas. Girls Rock! celebrates what female musicians have to teach about their experiences as women, artists, and rock musicians.

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Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era

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In this collection of informative essays, Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye bring together work by such notable scholars as Ellen Carol DuBois, Alice Kessler-Harris, Barbara Sicherman, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn to illuminate the lives and labor of American women from the late nineteenth century to the early 1920s. Revealing the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class, the authors explore women's accomplishments in changing welfare and labor legislation; early twentieth century feminism and women's suffrage; women in industry and the work force; the relationship between family and community in early twentieth-century America; and the ways in which African American, immigrant, and working-class women contributed to progressive reform. This challenging collection not only displays the dramatic transformations women of all classes experienced, but also helps construct a new scaffolding for progressivism in general.

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When Evelyn Waugh wrote The Loved One (1948) as a satire of the elaborate preparations and memorialization of the dead taking place in his time, he had no way of knowing how technical and extraordinarily creative human funerary practices would become in the ensuing decades. In Funeral Festivals in America, author Jacqueline S. Thursby explores how modern American funerals and their accompanying rituals have evolved into affairs that help the living with the healing process. Thursby suggests that there is irony in the festivities surrounding death. The typical American response to death often develops into a celebration that reestablishes links or strengthens ties between family members and friends. The increasingly important funerary banquet, for example, honors an often well-lived life in order to help survivors accept the change that death brings and to provide healing fellowship. At such celebrations and other forms of the traditional wake, participants often use humor to add another dimension to expressing both the personality of the deceased and their ties to a particular ethnic heritage. In her research and interviews, Thursby discovered the paramount importance of food as part of the funeral ritual. During times of loss, individuals want to be consoled, and this is often accomplished through the preparation and consumption of nourishing, comforting foods. In the Intermountain West, Funeral Potatoes, a potato-cheese casserole, has become an expectation at funeral meals; Muslim families often bring honey flavored fruits and vegetables to the funeral table for their consoling familiarity; and many Mexican Americans continue the tradition of tamale making as a way to bring people together to talk, to share memories, and to simply enjoy being together. Funeral Festivals in America examines rituals for loved ones separated by death, frivolities surrounding death, funeral foods and feasts, post-funeral rites, and personalized memorials and grave markers. Thursby concludes that though Americans come from many different cultural traditions, they deal with death in a largely similar approach. They emphasize unity and embrace rites that soothe the distress of death as a way to heal and move forward.

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African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley

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The Underground Railroad, an often misunderstood antebellum institution, has been viewed as a simple combination of mainly white "conductors" and black "passengers." Keith P. Griffler takes a new, battlefield-level view of the war against American slavery as he reevaluates one of its front lines: the Ohio River, the longest commercial dividing line between slavery and freedom. In shifting the focus from the much discussed white-led "stations" to the primarily black-led frontline struggle along the Ohio, Griffler reveals for the first time the crucial importance of the freedom movement in the river's port cities and towns. Front Line of Freedom fully examines America's first successful interracial freedom movement, which proved to be as much a struggle to transform the states north of the Ohio as those to its south. In a climate of racial proscription, mob violence, and white hostility, the efforts of Ohio Valley African Americans to establish and maintain communities became inextricably linked to the steady stream of fugitives crossing the region. As Griffler traces the efforts of African Americans to free themselves, Griffler provides a window into the process by which this clandestine network took shape and grew into a powerful force in antebellum America.

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From My Old Kentucky Home to the White House

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The Political Journey of Catherine Conner

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This lively memoir recounts the story of a determined woman who led a remarkable life in the highest circles of power in both state and national politics. Catherine Conner spent her formative years on a farm named "Solitude," located outside of Bardstown. Her father, who taught her early to ride and swim, told the young woman, "I can't teach you how to be a lady, but I can teach you how to behave like a gentleman." She was weaned on a secret "early breakfast" of bourbon and milk toddies that her father brought to her every morning. Though she enjoyed privilege, Conner also witnessed the harsher sides of rural life. Those experiences markedly shaped the personality of a woman who would become the youngest National Democratic Committeewoman and would subsequently serve in FDR's inner circle. Conner began her political career in Kentucky under the tutelage of J. Dan Talbott of Bardstown, heading the successful effort to have Federal Hill, better known as "My Old Kentucky Home," preserved as a state park, which has now become one of the most popular in Kentucky. When local leaders proved only mildly supportive of the project, Conner devised a campaign in 1921 that raised $45,000 by having schoolchildren all over the state drop their pennies into a cardboard replica of the famous home. She acted as a special assistant to Harry Hopkins for five years, helping set up departments to carry out New Deal programs and lobbying. She befriended many of the shapers of the 20th Century, including Senator Sam Rayburn, A.B. "Happy" Chandler, and Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia. Throughout her life, Conner witnessed remarkable events. She saw the Hindenburg crash, met Amelia Earhart, and had Cary Grant show her how to gut a Thanksgiving turkey.

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Women Entertainers in Twentieth-Century America

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Entertainers were the first group of successful women to capture the public eye, taking to the stage in vaudeville and film and redefining their place in society. June Sochen introduces the white, African American, and Latina women who danced on Broadway, fell on bananas in silent films, and wisecracked in smoky clubs, as well as the modern icons of today's movies and popular music. Sochen considers such women as Mae West, Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, Lucille Ball, and Mary Tyler Moore to discover what show business did for them and what they did for the world of entertainment. She uses the life of 30s and 40s Latina star Lupe Velez as a case study of the roles available to Latinas in popular culture. She then contrasts her story with that of the African American action star Pam Grier to demonstrate the old and new ways minority women are portrayed in popular culture. From Mae to Madonna places each woman within the context of her time and talks about her relationship with dominant female stereotypes. Sochen discusses women's roles as Mary, Eve, and Lilith and asks thought-provoking questions. Why did the Depression give women movie stars so many important roles while the so-called feminist 1970s did not? Why has television been a congenial venue for women comics while film has not? In examining how entertainers worked within or transformed particular genres and how their personal and public lives affected their careers, From Mae to Madonna casts the spotlight on a series of remarkable women and their dramatic effect on America's popular culture.

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The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780-1865

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Kidnapping was perhaps the greatest fear of free blacks in pre-Civil War America. Though they may have descended from generations of free-born people or worked to purchase their freedom, free blacks were not able to enjoy the privileges and opportunities of white Americans. They lived with the constant threat of kidnapping and enslavement, against which they had little recourse.Most kidnapped free blacks were forcibly abducted, but other methods, such as luring victims with job offers or falsely claiming free people as fugitive slaves, were used as well. Kidnapping of blacks was actually facilitated by numerous state laws, as well as the federal fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850. Greed motivated kidnappers, who were assured high profits on the sale of their victims. As the internal slave trade increased in the early nineteenth century, so did kidnapping.If greed provided the motivation for the crime, racism helped it to continue unabated. Victims usually found it extremely difficult to regain their freedom through a legal system that reflected society's racist views, perpetuated a racial double standard, and considered all blacks slaves until proven otherwise. Fortunate was the victim who received assistance, sometimes from government officials, most often from abolitionists. Frequently, however, the black community was forced to protect its own and organized to do so, sometimes by working within the law, sometimes by meeting violence with violence.Mining newspaper accounts, memoirs, slave narratives, court records, letters, abolitionist society minutes, and government documents, Carol Wilson has provided a needed addition to our picture of free black life in the United States.