With the goal of sketching “at least some of the bright lights and dark shadows of the war;” William Baxter authored his regional classic, Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, in 1864, before the actual end of the Civil War.

Primarily focusing on the civilians of the region, Baxter vividly describes their precarious and vulnerable positions during the advances and retreats of armies as Confederate and Federal forces marched across their homeland. In his account, Baxter describes skirmishes and cavalry charges outside his front door, the “firing” of his town’s buildings during a Confederate retreat, clashes between secessionist and Unionist neighbors, the feeding of hungry soldiers and the forceful appropriation of his remaining food supply, and the sickening sight of the wounded emerging from the Prairie Grove battlefield.

Since its original printing, this firsthand account has only been reprinted once, in 1957, and both editions are considered collectors’ items today. Of interest to Civil War scholars and general readers alike, Baxter’s compelling social history is rendered even more comprehensive by William Shea’s introduction. Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove is a valuable personal account of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi West which enables us to better comprehend the conflict as a whole and its devastating effect on the general populace of the war-torn portions of the country.

Clay County, Arkansas, was a flatland with little improvements at the outset of the twentieth century. Into this primitive society came a St. Louis entrepreneur with a liking for agriculture. Paul Pfeiffer bought large tracts of land, set up tenant farmers, and reigned for nearly fifty years as a beneficent landlord. Laymon records the gratitude of many a family who remember with appreciation loans made to acquire equipment. When farming was interrupted by the coming of the railroad, both Pfeiffer and his tenants adapted to a lumbering economy—so long as the hardwood forest lasted. Interestingly, Laymon’s account includes the fate of tenants following the break-up of “Pfeiffer Country.”

In a selection of more than one hundred black and white images taken over a period of sixty years, this book bears witness to the life of a remarkable photographer and to small-town African American life in the middle of the twentieth century. Geleve Grice was born and raised near Pine Bluff, and he has documented the ordinary life of his community: parades, graduations, weddings, club events, and whatever else brought people together. In the process he has created a remarkable historical portrait of an African American community. Through his lens we glimpse the daily patterns of segregated Pine Bluff, and we also participate in the excitement of greeting extraordinary visitors. Martin Luther King Jr., Mary McLeod Bethune, Harry S. Truman, and others all came through town.

Folklorist Robert Cochran worked with Grice to select these photographs from the thousands he has taken across a lifetime. They organized the work chronologically, reflecting Grice’s early years in small-town Arkansas, his travel as a serviceman in World War II, and his long career in Pine Bluff. Cochran’s accompanying chapters link Grice to the great tradition of American community photographers. He also shows how work for pay-at the Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College in Pine Bluff; at the Arkansas State Press daily newspaper; through his own studio-shaped Grice’s work. Cochran shows that Grice not only made his living taking photographs for jobs, but that he also made his own life by making photographs for himself-and now for history.

Arkansas is well known for its rich tradition of upland folk arts. Little, however, has been reported from the lowland areas, particulary on African American contributions to the state's cultural heritage. A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans seeks to rectify that oversight by drawing attention to the extensive, important collection of African American quilts in the Old State House Museum in Little Rock. Over seventy-five individual pieces of patchwork art are presented in this publication in full-color plates, each with a commentary by the exhibit's guest curator, Cuesta Benberry. The book details the importance of quilting to black Arkansans; the quilts' uses, materials and construction; and what each piece says about the artist and her beliefs. We are granted a glimpse into the living conditions and cultural mores of the quilters' lives. Regionalisms, such as the unusual custom of renaming traditional quilt patterns for things seen in the farmyard, such as Rooster Tail or Chicken Feet, and of piecing patchwork funerary cloths to decorate coffins are discussed. This impressive collection of cultural artifacts is placed in the larger context of the African American experience through an introduction by noted scholar Raymond Dobard (art history, Howard University), co-author, with Jacqueline Tobin, of the highly acclaimed book, Hidden in Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad (1999, Doubleday). All those interested in American folk art, the quilting craft, and black history will find this beautiful book fascinating and rewarding.

Hot Springs National Park was recognized nationally in 2010 when the U.S. Mint unveiled the design of the first quarter of 56 in a series called the America the Beautiful Quarters Program. In 1903 a Chicago magazine, The 400, told its upscale readers about Hot Springs, Arkansas. The article's author wrote, "I also perceive a Chicago-Hot Springs air line of macadamized highway, lined with meteoric automobiles ribboning off the 750 miles between the cities in a thousand or less minutes. The perspective is almost delirious." Such exuberant words are testimony to what Hot Springs, "a place apart," has been to the nation since the early European explorers found vapors rising from the thermal springs-47 of them from which a million gallons of 143-degree water flow each day. A Place Apart offers readers a balanced history in words and historic photographs of a unique locale in the state of Arkansas. The hot springs of what the Native Americans called Washita were on the national map of Pres. Thomas Jefferson when the United States acquired what would become Arkansas in the Louisiana Purchase of 1804. Congress created the Hot Springs Reservation in 1832-the first land that the federal government set aside for preservation-granting federal protection of the thermal waters, and renamed it Hot Springs National Park in 1921. This book provides a fascinating visual history of pioneers, wealthy barons, scoundrels, gamblers (including such frequent visitors as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano), colorful politicians, and the hundreds of thousands of people who came to the spa city in hopes of regaining their fleeting health. Also covered are such famous attractions as Oaklawn Park, a thoroughbred horse-racing track, and Bathhouse Row, with its eight turn-of-the-century historic buildings.

In the fall of 1861, fifty-one-year-old Rev. Francis Springer enlisted in the Union army. The following spring, Springer, a friend and one-time neighbor to Abraham Lincoln, rode away with the 10th Illinois Cavalry. A witness to the Battle of Prairie Grove (December 1862), Springer was later named post chaplain at Fort Smith, where, in additon to preaching and ministering to the troops, he was placed in charge of refugees—widows, orphans, and contrabands—the displaced victims of virulent guerrilla warfare in Northwest Arkansas. Springer also wrote articles and columns in the Fort Smith New Era under the pseudonym, “Thrifton.” Springer’s honest appraisals of life in the Army of the Frontier make for fascinating reading, and his unique perspective as moralist, educator, and journalist provide new insight into the Civil War and how it was fought in the West. The book includes several never-before published photographs and appendixes which feature accounts of six military executions that Springer participated in as a Union Army chaplain, the hitherto unpublished last letters home of two rebel soldiers condemned and executed at Fort Smith, as well as a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln.

The Preacher’s Tale includes several never before published photographs, and appendixes that contain accounts of six military executions that Springer participated in as a Union Army chaplain, the last letters home of two rebel soldiers condemned and executed at Fort Smith, as well as a eulogy written for Abraham Lincoln.

Bill Clinton has long been touted as a master of public speaking form and political discourse. Taken from his speeches as a twenty-seven-year-old candidate for Congress though his 1992 victory speech, Preface to the Presidency reveals the power and range of his contribution to our nation's political dialogue.

Winner of the 2006 Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the 2004 Ragsdale Award.

Sidney Sanders McMath was a pivotal figure not only in Arkansas history but in the history of the Democratic Party and of American law. Still vibrant and engaged in his nineties, he sets out his story in full for the first time: how he rose and fell in public office, and rose again as a lawyer seeking justice for ordinary people.

McMath divides his story into four parts. In the first, he describes how his early life in rural Arkansas sparked his commitment to people. The second section describes his service to democracy in the military, including his commission in the U.S. Marines, a battlefield promotion in the Pacific and other honors, and his subsequent advancement to the rank of major general.

The revealing third section details McMath’s extraordinary life in politics, starting with his explosive debut in 1945, when he and other recent veterans dethroned one of Arkansas’s most powerful and corrupt political machines. Later, as a two-term governor, he fulfilled this promise of reform and modernization: he brought the first roads and electricity to rural areas, fought the poll tax, and built the state’s first medical center. He also helped change the party’s rules so that black citizens could vote in primaries. McMath describes how he worked with President Truman to keep the segregationist Dixiecrats from taking over the Democratic Party—and the presidency.

But here his story takes a dramatic turn: political opponents alleged bribery in his highway program, and although no indictments were handed down, McMath’s political career ended. Arguing his case for the first time in fifty years, he sets the facts straight.

McMath turned to the practice of law to fight for the people he had represented as governor. In the concluding section of the book he describes some of his most important cases, examples of how he put his life’s experience, knowledge, and integrity in the service of those who had few resources. These stories show exactly why he has been honored with membership in such exclusive groups as the Inner Circle of Advocates as well as the presidency of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.

Promises Kept shows us the excitement and the hard choices of real democracy, offering compelling human stories, new information on past conflicts, and the crucial perspective of a man at the center of history.

David Pryor’s career of public service is unparalleled in Arkansas history: he has been elected state representative, congressman, governor, and, alongside Dale Bumpers, U.S. senator (1979–1997). Through it all, Pryor’s curiosity, compassion, and concern for ordinary Americans draw the reader from one colorful vignette to another.

August 1st, 1878 The preceding winter had been mild, the spring and summer was hot and rainy; there were mosquitoes everywhere. "Yellow Jack" had been reported in New Orleans. William Warren, a steamboat crewman at Presidents Island just south of Memphis, left his ship and entered the city. One day later he was admitted to the City Hospital and two days hence he was dead of yellow fever. When word got out of a yellow fever death in the city the citizens began to flee. Schools and churches closed their doors. Passenger boat services from New Orleans were forced to disembark their passengers on the Arkansas side. In the end 5,100 people died in the city of Memphis. The hardest-hit towns in Arkansas were Helena, Hopefield (West Memphis) and Augusta on the White River. Trains and boats entering the state of Arkansas were quarantined. Many little towns across the Delta established "shotgun" quarantines: if you weren’t recognized by the men manning the barrier, you were asked to leave through the sights of a gun. Smallpox,malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, yellow fever were ever present dangers in nineteenth and early twentieth century Arkansas. This story is a narrative history of the health and disease of the people of Arkansas, what they faced and how they dealt with it.