front cover of Hard Road to Freedom
Hard Road to Freedom
The Story of African America, The Civil War to the Millennium
Horton, Lois E
Rutgers University Press, 2002
Hard Road to Freedom tells the story of African America from its African roots to the political and social upheavals at the end of the twentieth century. It interweaves the experiences of individual black Americans with an analysis of the nation's pursuit of its fundamental principles, of freedom, and civil rights. The book begins with African cultures and the African people who withstood the horrors of the slave trade and slavery to help shape a new multiracial society in North America. The American Revolution brought freedom to some, but most remained in the grip of slavery. African Americans and their allies continually raised the cry for freedom, building determined black communities and dedicated antislavery organizations that contributed to the abolition of slavery. The precarious freedom after the Civil War brought new opportunities, but also new dangers and the limitations of Jim Crow. The wars and the depression in the early twentieth century found black Americans forging new alliances, creating a cultural renaissance, and fighting for democracy and freedom abroad. At home, they struggled against the denials of freedom and citizenship that still barred their full participation and that tarnished America's standing in the eyes of the international community. Throughout the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s and the political and cultural backlash that followed, African Americans continued to raise their voices in often eloquent and always insistent appeals that the nation live up to the promise of its principles. This book tells of America's unsteady advance along the road to freedom, the triumphs and hope, as well as the failures and despair, from the vantage point of the African Americans who resolutely played a critical role in that story.
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The Hayloft Gang
The Story of the National Barn Dance
Edited by Chad Berry
University of Illinois Press, 2007
The National Barn Dance was the nation's most popular country music radio show during the 1930s and 1940s. The pioneering radio program defined country and western entertainment until the Grand Ole Opry and rock 'n' roll supplanted it in the 1950s. Broadcast for more than three decades from Chicago on WLS's powerful 50,000-watt signal, the show reached listeners throughout the Midwest, the East Coast, and South, delivering popular entertainment to both rural and urban areas while celebrating the fading folk traditions of an increasingly urbanized America.

The Hayloft Gang draws on the colorful commentary of performers and former listeners to analyze the National Barn Dance, its audience, and its impact. Contributors trace the history of barn dance radio, explore the paradox of a foundational country music program broadcast from a major city, investigate notions of authenticity in the presentation of country music and entertainment, and delve into provocative issues raised by the barn dance phenomenon.

Contributors: Chad Berry, Michael T. Bertrand, Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Don Cusic, Wayne W. Daniel, Loyal Jones, Kristine M. McCusker, Stephen Parry, Susan Smulyan, Paul L. Tyler, and Michael Ann Williams.

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He Rode with Butch and Sundance
The Story of Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan
Mark T. Smokov
University of North Texas Press, 2012

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Healing Connection
Story Of Physicians Search For Link Between Faith & Hea
Harold Koenig
Templeton Press, 2004

"It is inspiring to see a physician who is unafraid to stand up for his religious beliefs and who understands how those beliefs can resonate with good science." —Larry Dossey, MD, author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words

The name Harold G. Koenig is well known in the fast-growing field of spirituality and health. Founder and director of the widely respected Duke University Center for Theology, Spirituality, and Health, Dr. Koenig is recognized worldwide for his groundbreaking work in medical science and religious faith. In this book—now available in paperback—he shares his remarkable personal story and shows how personal trials became the catalyst for his pioneering research.

In part one, he describes his turbulent youth: growing up on a California vineyard, college days of experimentation during the 1970s, adventures as a student researcher in Africa with Jane Goodall, an emotional breakdown, expulsion from medical school for disruptive behavior, battling mental illness as a street person in San Francisco. He refers to his ongoing battle with a chronic and debilitating physical disease in terms of the insights it gives him for his work, and he recounts the striking realization of God's call, the people and events that helped him refine a vision into a mission, and the subsequent professional opposition that resided alongside his success.

Part two draws on the real-life examples of former patients and summarizes Koenig's most important findings concerning the impact of Christian faith on mental and physical health, encapsulated by the statement: religious faith and practice are connected to mental and physical health.

In part three he challenges individuals and the American church to consider the implications of the research and to develop constructive ways of implementing the healing connection that can be found in faith.

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Hearing Beethoven
A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery
Robin Wallace
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Wallace demystifies the narratives of Beethoven’s approach to his hearing loss and instead explores how Beethoven did not "conquer" his deafness; he adapted to life with it.

We’re all familiar with the image of a fierce and scowling Beethoven, struggling doggedly to overcome his rapidly progressing deafness. That Beethoven continued to play and compose for more than a decade after he lost his hearing is often seen as an act of superhuman heroism. But the truth is that Beethoven’s response to his deafness was entirely human. And by demystifying what he did, we can learn a great deal about Beethoven’s music. Perhaps no one is better positioned to help us do so than Robin Wallace, who not only has dedicated his life to the music of Beethoven but also has close personal experience with deafness. One day, Wallace’s late wife, Barbara, found she couldn’t hear out of her right ear—the result of radiation administered to treat a brain tumor early in life. Three years later, she lost hearing in her left ear as well. Over the eight and a half years that remained of her life, despite receiving a cochlear implant, Barbara didn’t overcome her deafness or ever function again like a hearing person.

Wallace shows here that Beethoven didn’t do those things, either. Rather than heroically overcoming his deafness, Beethoven accomplished something even more challenging: he adapted to his hearing loss and changed the way he interacted with music, revealing important aspects of its very nature in the process. Wallace tells the story of Beethoven’s creative life, interweaving it with his and Barbara’s experience to reveal aspects that only living with deafness could open up. The resulting insights make Beethoven and his music more accessible and help us see how a disability can enhance human wholeness and flourishing.
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Heavenly Supper
The Story of Maria Janis
Fulvio Tomizza
University of Chicago Press, 1991
It is a winter morning in Venice, in 1622. Muted voices drift through a thin wall next door. Her curiosity aroused, a young woman peers through a crack in the door, only to witness a strange and disturbing sight: a woman and a priest secretly celebrating communion. Troubled by what she sees, she reports the incident at confession. Her revelation leads to the arrest, jailing, and arraignment of the two for heresy before the Venetian Holy Office of the Inquisition.

So begins Fulvio Tomizza's absorbing account of the true story of Maria Janis, a devout peasant woman from the mountains north of Bergamo. Too poor to enter a convent, Maria had set out to serve God by relinquishing the little she had, through renunciation of all food but the bread and wine of communion. Encouraged by the restless village priest Pietro Morali, Maria claimed to have existed in this sanctified state for five years. During this time, she, Morali, and the weaver Pietro Palazzi travel from a little village in the Alps to Rome and then to Venice, where their alleged sacrilege is discovered and they are brought to trial. Both revered as a saint and reviled as a fraud, Maria with her "privilege" inspires and threatens believers within the Church. Combining the historian's precision with the novelist's imagination, Tomizza painstakingly reconstructs her story, crafting a fascinating portrait of sublimated love, ambition, and jealousy.

Heavenly Supper alternates a chronological account of the trial with analyses of each protagonist's life history. Along the way, Tomizza gives voice to the minds and hearts of his characters, allowing them to speak for themselves in their own words. The world he recreates resonates with the fervor of the Counter Reformation when faith and its consequences were rigidly controlled by the Church. As suspenseful as a detective novel, Tomizza's story goes beyond the trial to evoke a panoramic view of seventeenth-century Italian culture.
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Home before Morning
The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam
Lynda Van Devanter
University of Massachusetts Press, 2001
Lynda Van Devanter was the girl next door, the cheerleader who went to Catholic schools, enjoyed sports, and got along well with her four sisters and parents. After high school she attended nursing school and then did something that would shatter her secure world for the rest of her life: in 1969, she joined the army and was shipped to Vietnam. When she arrived in Vietnam her idealistic view of the war vanished quickly. She worked long and arduous hours in cramped, ill-equipped, understaffed operating rooms. She saw friends die. Witnessing a war close-up, operating on soldiers and civilians whose injuries were catastrophic, she found the very foundations of her thinking changing daily.

After one traumatic year, she came home, a Vietnam veteran. Coming home was nearly as devastating as the time she spent in Asia. Nothing was the same -- including Lynda herself. Viewed by many as a murderer instead of a healer, she felt isolated and angry. The anger turned to depression; like many other Vietnam veterans she suffered from delayed stress syndrome. Working in hospitals brought back chilling scenes of hopelessly wounded soldiers. A marriage ended in divorce. The war that was fought physically halfway around the world had become a personal, internal battle.

Home before Morning is the story of a woman whose courage, stamina, and personal history make this a compelling autobiography. It is also the saga of others who went to war to aid the wounded and came back wounded -- physically and emotionally -- themselves. And, it is the true story of one person's triumphs: her understanding of, and coming to terms with, her destiny.
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Houston Blue
The Story of the Houston Police Department
Mitchel P. Roth
University of North Texas Press, 2012

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How Science Takes Stock
The Story of Meta-Analysis
Morton Hunt
Russell Sage Foundation, 1997
Policymakers, medical practitioners, and the public alike face an increasingly bewildering flood of new and often contradictory scientific studies on almost every topic. Whether the issue is the the best treatment for breast cancer, the need for prenatal food programs to improve the health of poor infants and mothers, or the ability of women to succeed in scientific professions, the healthy growth of modern science has at times done more to stir up controversy than to establish reliable knowledge. But now scientists in several fields have developed a sophisticated new methodology called meta-analysis to address this problem. By numerically combining diverse research findings on a single question, meta-analysis can be used to identify their central tendency and reach conclusions far more reliable than those of any single investigation. How Science Takes Stock vividly tells the story of meta-analysis through the eyes of its architects and champions, and chronicles its history, techniques, achievements, and controversies. Noted science author Morton Hunt visits key practitioners and recounts their use of meta-analysis to resolve important scientific puzzles and longstanding debates. Does psychotherapy work, and if so what form works best? Does spending federal money on education really improve student performance? Can a single enzyme significantly decrease the risk of heart attack? Do boot camps reduce juvenile delinquency? With each account, Hunt illustrates the major components of the meta-analytic method, reveals strategies for resolving practical and theoretical problems, and discusses the impact of meta-analysis on the science and policy communities. In many cases, he demonstrates how meta-analysts have gone a step further to determine the causes of earlier discrepancies. In this way they not only identify successful approaches to the question at hand, but also clarify the conditions under which they will work best. Hunt also portrays the important but frequently controversial business of doing meta-analysis for legislators and government agencies, particularly in sensitive areas of social policy. How Science Takes Stock demonstrates how the statistical techniques of meta-analysis produce more accurate data than the standard literature review or the old-fashioned process of tallying up the results of each scientific study as if they were votes in an election to decide the truth. Hunt also addresses issues of quality control in each phase of the meta-analytic process, and answers skeptics who claim that the dissimilarities between studies are often too significant for meta-analysis to be any more than an apples and oranges approach. This volume conveys the power of meta-analysis to help social policymakers and health professionals resolve their most pressing problems. How Science Takes Stock concludes with a discussion of the future of meta-analysis that examines its potential for further refinements, its growth in the scientific literature, and exciting new possibilities for its future use. An appendix by meta-analysis expert Harris Cooper offers some finer points on the mechanics of conducting a meta-analytic investigation.
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Hunterdon Medical Center
The Story of One Approach to Rural Medical Care
Ray Elbert Trussell
Harvard University Press


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