Winner, 1999 Missouri Conference on History Book Award
This fascinating biography of a marriage in the Gilded Age closely examines the dynamic flow of power, control, and love between Washington blue blood Violet Blair and New Orleans attorney Albert Janin. Based on their voluminous correspondence as well as Violet’s extensive diaries, it offers a thoroughly intimate portrait of a fifty-four-year union which, in many ways, conformed to societal strictures, yet always created its own definition of itself in order to fit the flux of needs of both husband and wife.
Central to their story is Violet’s fierce determination to maintain her autonomy within the patriarchic institution of marriage. An enduring belle who thought, talked, and acted with the assurance and self-confidence of one whose wishes demanded obedience, she rejected the Victorian ideal of women as silent, submissive consorts. Yet her feminism was a private one, not played out on a public stage but kept to the confines of her own daily life and marriage.
With abundant documentary evidence to draw upon, Laas ties this compelling story to broader themes of courtiship behavior, domesticity, gender roles, extended family bonds, elitism, and societal stereotyping. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century has the dual virtue of making an important historical contribution while also appealing to a broad popular audience.
Winner of the eighth annual Arkansas Poetry Award, Martin Lammon writes poems that deal fearlessly and directly with their subjects. Tenderness, complexity, compassion, reverence, and condemnation are all within his range.
Writing of love, he can speak broadly and universally of the heart, yet in the same poem, he can intricately describe a woman’s hand, a fire on a beach, or the hollows around a lover’s eye. Even when he works in the voice of a suicide, his precision can be devastating, as in these lines: “When you lie beside me under stars, each needlepoint / of light pricks my bare arms.”
With equal ease, Lammon travels across miles, cultures, and time, writing of kilns and potters in Japan, long-dead Eskimos in Alaska, or Blue Hole Cave in Pennsylvania.
Full of grace and candor, these poems pursue the stories that shimmer behind the day’s headlines, seeking the spirit at stake in the “lives beside [our] own whose secrets are worth loving.”
Lynching is often viewed as a narrow form of violence: either the spontaneous act of an angry mob against accused individuals, or a demonstration of white supremacy against an entire population considered subhuman. However, in this new treatise, historian Guy Lancaster exposes the multiple forms of violence hidden beneath the singular label of lynching.
Lancaster, who has written extensively on racial violence, details several lynchings of Blacks by white posses in post-Reconstruction Arkansas. Drawing from the fields of history, philosophy, cognitive science, sociology, and literary theory, and quoting chilling contemporary accounts, he argues that the act of lynching encompasses five distinct but overlapping types of violence. This new framework reveals lynching to be even more of an atrocity than previously understood: that mobs did not disregard the humanity of their victims but rather reveled in it; that they were not simply enacting personal vengeance but manifesting an elite project of subjugation. Lancaster thus clarifies and connects the motives and goals of seemingly isolated lynch mobs, embedding the practice in the ongoing enforcement of white supremacy. By interrogating the substance of lynching, American Atrocity shines new light on both past anti-Black violence and the historical underpinnings of our present moment.
“It’s good to see Si Siman and the Ozark Jubilee get their due in Broadcasting the Ozarks.”
—Willie Nelson
Broadcasting the Ozarks explores the vibrant country music scene that emerged in Springfield, Missouri, in the 1930s and thrived for half a century. Central to this history is the Ozark Jubilee (1955–60), the first regularly broadcast live country music show on network television. Dubbed the “king of the televised barn dances,” the show introduced the Ozarks to viewers across America and put Springfield in the running with Nashville for dominance of the country music industry—with the Jubilee’s producer, Si Siman, at the helm.
Siman’s life story is almost as remarkable as the show he produced. He was booking Tommy Dorsey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Glenn Miller during the mid-1930s while still a high school student and produced nationally syndicated country music radio shows in the decades that followed. Siman was a promotional genius with an ear for talent, a persuasive gift for gab, and the energy and persistence to make things happen for many future Country Music Hall of Famers, including Chet Atkins, Porter Wagoner, the Browns, and Brenda Lee. Following the Jubilee’s five-year run, Siman had a hand in some of the greatest hits of the twentieth century as a music publisher, collaborating with such songwriters as rockabilly legend and fellow Springfieldian Ronnie Self, who wrote Brenda Lee’s signature hit, “I’m Sorry,” and Wayne Carson, who wrote Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind.” Although Siman had numerous opportunities to find success in bigger cities, he chose to do it all from his hometown in the Ozarks.
Finalist, Miller Williams Poetry Prize
“The past is a flame you must learn to hold / your hand above,” Eric Leigh writes in this stunning first volume of poems, a poignant meditation on the harm that we can and cannot keep from those we love, and the harm that cannot be kept from us. Taking place in both the rural and the urban, in fields and on sidewalks, in gay bars and in laboratories, with topics as diverse and powerful as a father’s suicide, a mother’s resilience, coming out, lost love, and the continuing plight of HIV, Leigh’s poems locate the heartbreaking music in these struggles. At the center of this profound book about loss—of family, of love, of immunity—lies the spirit’s ability to persevere. “My worst fear has come true, / and I am still here walking,” Leigh writes. Indeed, these poems are as assured and brave as those steps toward an unknown future. At turns beautiful, disturbing, mournful, and redemptive, Harm’s Way is an accomplished debut.
Harm’s Way is part of the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer.
San Francisco Bay Area Sports brings together fifteen essays covering the issues, controversies, and personalities that have emerged as northern Californians recreated and competed over the last 150 years. The area’s diversity, anti-establishment leanings, and unique and beautiful natural surroundings are explored in the context of a dynamic sporting past that includes events broadcast to millions or activities engaged in by just a few.
Professional and college events are covered along with lesser-known entities such as Oakland’s public parks, tennis player and Bay Area native Rosie Casals, environmentalism and hiking in Marin County, and the origins of the Gay Games. Taken as a whole, this book clarifies how sport is connected to identities based on sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity. Just as crucial, the stories here illuminate how sport and recreation can potentially create transgressive spaces, particularity in a place known for its nonconformity.
When Laurence Lieberman writes of Guyana or islands in the Dutch West Indies, he excavates, explores, even exhumes the essence of the place. In the flora and fauna, in the rural cafes and ruins of churches and crypts, in the taste of iguana soup and the look of light through stained glass, Lieberman unfolds an exquisite atlas of the senses.
The awe of encounter, the raw impact, beauty, and sometimes the brutality of both the surroundings and the people fuel this poetry. Whether he meets an iguana hunter, a bricklayer, a witness to the United States–led Grenada invasion, or a classical composer, Lieberman gives the reader a vivid combination of his own wit and surprising observations mingled with the speech of each character.
Folk tales, legends, and island myths play a great role in his newest work. In the eddies of a river in Guyana, Lieberman dares river demons. On the island of Aruba, he hears the chants and work songs of long-dead miners in an abandoned gold mine. He briefly loses himself when he stares into the mirror of a well once frequented by slaves on Bonaire.
Coupled with natural forces—floods, volcanic eruptions, constant rains—these folk tales and the stories of the islanders’ lives create a “wedding of sun and rain,” and a map to the troves of the Caribbean hidden beneath a rich and often violent history.
Laurence Lieberman writes poems that successfully utilize techniques from every possible form of literature—including histories, travelogues, short stories, and epics. All the while, his lines maintain a deft balance of lyrical intensity, clear, methodical description, and the pure dialect of the characters living his poetry.
In Dark Songs: Slave House and Synagogue, Lieberman creates a narrative mosaic of the eastern Caribbean islands, ranging from St. Eustatius in the eighteenth century to the island of Grenada after the United States–led invasion in 1983. When he writes of African slaves, British governors, Dutch Jews, island guerillas, fallen Swiss nobility, and piratelike charter captains, the wealth of his details, the force, and often the truth behind his stories allow us to witness the whole human saga of the Caribbean.
With humor, absolute candor, and relentless observation, Lieberman has, as reviewer Samuel Maio says, “given is a new form of fiction in his poetry. He has created a singular art.”
In his newest collection of poetry, Laurence Leiberman widens the scope of his previous Caribbean collections by drawing attention to the small enchanting islands of the Grenadines, a chain running between Grenada and St. Vincent. These outposts, often frequented by sailors, are mainly off the beaten tourist tracks. Lieberman’s poems bring to life all the overlooked people, hidden places, and indigenous but rarely seen animals which can be found on these islands.
These poems are as powerful as voodoo, full of energetic narratives in which Lieberman acts as observer while his characters—native “Caribs” and friends—guide us through the mystifying world of Guyana and the Caribbean: the planting of tree farms, local myths and religious sects, the daily crises of manual laborers working in the gold and diamond mines, and encounters with watras and harpy eagles.
Lieberman’s lines are rhythmic and strong; voices swirl in and out of his stanzas. From Lieberman’s own precise observations to his inclusion of Caribbean dialects, the language created here is deeply textured and unique. The majority of these poems are narratives, stories about a culture that is extremely attuned to the richness of its past. They remind their readers that no matter how diverse a society becomes, it remains irrevocably connected to the land it was born of and the plants and animals that struggle to survive in its midst.
During the period from 1836 to 1874, the legal system in the new state of Arkansas developed amid huge social change. While the legislature could, and did, determine what issues were considered of importance to the populace, the Arkansas Supreme Court determined the efficacy of legislation in cases involving land titles, banks, transportation, slavery, family law, property, debt, contract, criminal law, and procedure.
Distinguishing the Righteous from the Roguish examines the court’s decisions in this era and shows how Arkansas, as a rural slave-holding state, did not follow the transformational patterns typical of some other states during the nineteenth century. Rather than using the law to promote broad economic growth and encourage social change, the Arkansas court attempted to accommodate the interests of the elite class by preserving the institution of slavery. The ideology of paternalism is reflected in the decisions of the court, and Looney shows how social and political stability—an emphasis on preserving the status quo of the so-called “righteous”—came at the expense of broader economic development.Since its founding, Nashville has been a center of black urban culture in the Upper South. Blacks—slave and free—made up 20 percent of Fort Nashborough’s settlers in 1779. From these early years through the Civil War, a growing black community in Nashville, led by a small group of black elites, quietly built the foundations of a future society, developing schools, churches, and businesses. The Civil War brought new freedoms and challenges as the black population of Nashville increased and as black elites found themselves able—even obliged—to act more openly. To establish a more stable and prosperous African-American community, the elites found that they had to work within a system bound to the interests of whites. But the aims of this elite did not always coincide with those of the black community at large. By 1930, younger blacks, in particular, were moving towards protest and confrontation. As democratization and higher education spread, the lines distinguishing Nashville’s black elite became blurred.
Bobby L. Lovett presents a complex analysis of black experience in Nashville during the years between 1780 and 1930, exploring the impact of civil rights, education, politics, religion, business, and neighborhood development on a particular African-American community. This study of black Nashville examines lives lived within a web of shifting alliances and interests—the choices made, the difficulties overcome.
Fifteen years in the making, illustrated with maps and photographs, this work is the first detailed study of any of Tennessee’s major urban black communities. Lovett here collects, organizes, and interprets a large, rich body of data, making this material newly accessible to all interested in the black urban experience.
The Crown Games were the apex of competition in ancient Greece. Along with prestigious athletic contests in honor of Zeus at Olympia, they comprised the Pythian Games for Apollo at Delphi, the Isthmian Games for Poseidon, and the Nemean Games, sacred to Zeus. For over nine hundred years, the Greeks celebrated these athletic and religious festivals, a rare point of cultural unity amid the fierce regional independence of the numerous Greek city-states and kingdoms.
The Crown Games of Ancient Greece examines these festivals in the context of the ancient Greek world, a vast and sprawling cultural region that stretched from modern Spain to the Black Sea and North Africa. Illuminating the unique history and features of the celebrations, David Lunt delves into the development of the contest sites as sanctuaries and the Panhellenic competitions that gave them their distinctive character. While literary sources have long been the mainstay for understanding the evolution of the Crown Games and ancient Greek athletics, archaeological excavations have significantly augmented contemporary understandings of the events. Drawing on this research, Lunt brings deeper context to these gatherings, which were not only athletics competitions but also occasions for musical contests, dramatic performances, religious ceremonies, and diplomatic summits—as well as raucous partying. Taken as a circuit, the Crown Games offer a more nuanced view of ancient Greek culture than do the well-known Olympian Games on their own. With this comprehensive examination of the Crown Games, Lunt provides a new perspective on how the ancient Greeks competed and collaborated both as individuals and as city-states.
In order to bring sociology to the recognition of a social world of contingencies and of an obdurate but protean reality that changes shapes as humans define it, Stanford Lyman re-introduces the concept of “civilization,” employing it as both an intellectual resource and a proper topic for sociological investigations.
The fifteen essays in this collection by one of America’s premier sociologists reflect Lyman’s concern with all that is meant by the term civilization. Primarily inspired by his attempts to synthesize the ideas of Erving Goffman, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Herbert Blumer, and other social thinkers, the essays reflect the author’s abiding interest in the structures and the processes attending race relations, minority communities, and the constitution of the social self.
1991 Mid-South Sociological Association Book Award1993 Mid-South Sociological Association Book Award
Robert E. Park has long been recognized as one of the most influential thinkers in early American sociology, yet virtually all of his works appearing before 1913 were published in popular magazines and were dismissed as nonsociological muckraking. In Militarism, Imperialism, and Racial Accommodation: An Analysis and Interpretation of the Early Writings of Robert E. Park, Stanford M. Lyman examines and reprints many of these little-known works, including Park’s essays on German military organization, his exposés of the atrocities committed by Belgium’s Leopold II in the Congo State, his studies of the black community in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and of Booker T. Washington’s agricultural education program at Tuskegee, Alabama.
Lyman shows clearly that Park’s essays, written outside the academy, formulated a far more complex perspective on modern modes of evil than any proposed by his contemporaries, thereby influencing sociological debates for decades to come. By writing his essays on topical subjects and by publishing them for a public audience, Park dramatized his profound belief that the struggle to achieve racial accommodation and to establish a true and lasting democracy is a concern for all.
Focusing on the Cold War years, thismonograph examines the processes, problems, and policies through which the Federal Republic of Germany was formed and admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The author compares the situation of Weimar Germany during its short-lived postwar decade with that of the Federal Republic by applying geopolitical concepts and theory, illustrating Germany’s territorial uniqueness and how that special aspect of its place on the European continent in?uenced the nation’s diplomacy in both eras.
During the late 1940s and the 1950s, the problem presented by Germany to the other NATO allies was how to secure and maintain the Federal Republic’s allegiance to the anticommunist alliance without eliminating the country’s desire to be reunited with its Soviet-dominated eastern section. How both NATO and Germany managed to maintain themselves in a state of dynamic equilibrium throughout the era of the Cold War illustrates the concept of international organization called “cooptation,” which Lyman helped to de?ne and expand.
The epilogue explores the larger issues that the case study illuminates: global space, national territorialization, collective identity, and ethnocentrism. Considering the current con?ict in the Balkans as it relates to the new Germany and the role of NATO, this far-reaching book is especially relevant with its suggestions for a basic supranational sociology.
In the fifth volume in the Studies in American Sociology Series, Stanford M. Lyman offers commentaries on and critiques of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction, posing questions concerning theoretical and epistemological problems arising from what appears to be a “nouvelle vague.”
Postmodernism, poststructuralism, and deconstructionism are interrelated aspects of the newest theoretical development in sociology and the social sciences. This new wave of thought challenges virtually all paradigms currently in use. In this, his fifth volume in the Studies in American Sociology Series, Stanford M. Lyman offers commentaries on and critiques of this new perspective, posing questions concerning theoretical and epistemological problems arising from what appears to be a nouvelle vague.
Among the basic themes and issues explored are the allegation that modernity has defaulted on the promise of the Enlightenment; the question of whether the rational basis for knowledge and action is still valid; the controversy over the place of metanarratives and macrosociological outlooks; and newer concerns over race, gender, sexual preferences, the self, and the “Other.”
Professor Lyman provides empirically based and historically specific analyses of the relation of the race question to the problem of otherness and to the legal construction of racial identity in American court proceedings. Focusing on the issues of citizenship affecting European, Middle Eastern, and Asian immigrants; African Americans; and the special cases of the Chinese and Native Americans, he relates major public problems to the modern as well as the postmodern perspectives on justice. The debate over assimilation and multiculturalism, the dynamics of gender-specific emotions as expressed in six decades of Hollywood films, and the postmodern approach to deviance are each examined. He also offers proposals for a social science attuned to, but critical of, postmodernism and poststructuralism. Such a sociology might offer a perspective that treats the drama of social relations in the routine as well as the remarkable aspects of everyday life. Professor Lyman provides not only a new understanding of postmodernism but also a program of how to proceed with respect to its challenges.
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