Considering the course his life took, one might wonder how Zachary Taylor ever came to be elected the twelfth president of the United States. According to K. Jack Bauer, Taylor "was and remains an eni
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title“Who will write about the way my people talk, the way my people sing?” Mary Ellen Doyle gathers and makes audible the voices arising from all of Ernest J. Gaines’s
The extraction of raw turpentine and tar from the southern longleaf pine -- along with the manufacture of derivative products such as spirits of turpentine and rosin -- constitutes what was once the l
Though slavery was widespread and antislavery sentiment rare in Alabama, there emerged a small loyalist population, mostly in the northern counties, that persisted in the face of overwhelming odds aga
The beginnings of jazz and the story of Charles “Buddy” Bolden (1877–1931) are inextricably intertwined. Just after the turn of the century, New Orleanians could often hear Bolden’s powerful horn from
Throughout his career, William Faulkner produced a literary discourse remarkably contiguous with other discourses of American culture, but seldom has his work been explored as a participant in the shi
With a well-earned reputation for tolerance of both prostitution and miscegenation, New Orleans became known as the Great Southern Babylon in antebellum times. Following the Civil War, a profound alte
Though historians have largely overlooked Robert Horton, his public relations campaigns remain fixed in popular memory of the home front during World War II. Utilizing all media including the nascent
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, French cooks began to claim central roles in defining and enforcing taste, as well as educating their diners to changing standards. Tracing the transformati
The world s last authentic overnight wooden steamboat, the Delta Queen cruised America s inland waters from 1927 through 2008, offering passengers breathtaking views, luxury accommodations, rousing en
At the beginning of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and his highest-ranking general, George B. McClellan, agreed that the United States must preserve the Union. Their differing strategies for
Theater of Memory honors the life and work of celebrated poet Mark Perlberg (1929 2008), featuring poems from his four previous books The Burning Field, The Feel of the Sun, The Impossible Toystore, a
In Atomic Testing in Mississippi, David Allen Burke illuminates the nearly forgotten history of America s only nuclear detonations east of the Mississippi River. The atomic tests, conducted in the mid
Conjuring numerous voices and characters across oceans and centuries, Faster Than Light explores widely disparate experiences through the lens of traditional poetic forms. This volume contains a selec
In The Tree of Forgetfulness, writer Pam Durban, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, continues her exploration of southern history and memory. This mesmerizing and disquieting novel recovers the l
In this illuminating study, Gelien Matthews demonstrates how slave rebellions in the British West Indies influenced the tactics of abolitionists in England and how the rhetoric and actions of the abol
The nine self-contained essays in this collection explore Jefferson Davis's participation in and influence on events central to the American Civil War, covering such topics as his role in antebellum p
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jim Crow strengthened rapidly and several southern states adopted new constitutions designed primarily to strip African American men of their right
David Huddle s latest collection, Blacksnake at the Family Reunion, shares intimate and amusing stories as if told by a quirky, usually reticent, great uncle. In Boy Story, a teenage romantic meeting
Varied and accessible, William Wenthe's third collection begins in the domestic realm, then moves outward in subject and place to a bird market in Paris, the Jaffa Gate in Old Jerusalem, the Chain Bri
