Timeless photos offer a rare portrait of the jubilant, vibrant, vital, nearly hidden, and now all-but-vanished world of small-town Black rodeos.

Long before Americans began to officially commemorate Juneteenth, in the heat of East Texas, saddles were being cinched, buckles shined, and lassoes adjusted for a day on the Black rodeo circuit in honor of the holiday. In the late 1970s, as they had been doing for generations, Black communities across the region held local rodeos for the talented cowboys and cowgirls who were segregated from the mainstream circuit. It was to these vibrant community events that bestselling Texas writer Sarah Bird, then a young photojournalist, found herself drawn.

In Juneteenth Rodeo, Bird’s lens celebrates a world that was undervalued at the time, capturing everything, from the moment the pit master fired up his smoker, through the death-defying rides, to the last celebratory dance at a nearby honky-tonk. Essays by Bird and sports historian Demetrius Pearson reclaim the crucial role of Black Americans in the Western US and show modern rodeo riders—who still compete on today’s circuit—as “descendants” in a more than two-hundred-year lineage of Black cowboys. A gorgeous tribute to the ropers and riders—legends like Willie Thomas, Myrtis Dightman, Rufus Green, Bailey’s Prairie Kid, Archie Wycoff, and Calvin Greeley—as well as the secretaries, judges, and pick-up men and even the audience members who were as much family as fans, Juneteenth Rodeo ultimately seeks to put Black cowboys and cowgirls where they have always belonged: in the center of the frame.

Classic criticism.

This volume brings together the three most influential ancient Greek treatises on literature.

Aristotle’s Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, nature, and conventions, with details on poetic diction. Stephen Halliwell makes this seminal work newly accessible with a reliable text and a translation that is both accurate and readable. His authoritative introduction traces the work’s debt to earlier theorists (especially Plato), its distinctive argument, and the reasons behind its enduring relevance.

The essay On the Sublime, usually attributed to “Longinus” (identity uncertain), was probably composed in the first century AD; its subject is the appreciation of greatness (“the sublime”) in writing, with analysis of illustrative passages ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato and Genesis. In this edition, Donald A. Russell has judiciously revised and newly annotated the text and translation by W. Hamilton Fyfe and provides a new introduction.

The treatise On Style, ascribed to an (again unidentifiable) Demetrius, was perhaps composed during the secod century BC. It is notable particularly for its theory and analysis of four distinct styles (grand, elegant, plain, and forceful). Doreen Innes’ fresh rendering of the work is based on the earlier Loeb translation by W. Rhys Roberts. Her new introduction and notes represent the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.