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For much of his career, Johnny Cash opened his shows with the tagline, “Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.” This introduction seemed unnecessary, since everyone in the audience knew who he was—the famous musical artist whose career spanned almost five decades, whose troubled life on and off the stage received wide publicity, and whose cragged face seemed to express a depth and intensity not found in any other artist, living or dead.

For Cash, as for many celebrities, renown was the product of both hard work and luck. Often a visionary and always a tireless performer, he was subject to a whirlwind of social, economic, and cultural countercurrents. Nine Choices explores the tension between Cash's desire for mainstream success, his personal struggles with alcohol and drugs, and an ever-changing cultural landscape that often circumscribed his options.

Drawing on interviews, archival research, and textual analysis, Jonathan Silverman focuses on Cash's personal and artistic choices as a way of understanding his life, his impact on American culture, and the ways in which that culture in turn shaped him. Cash made decisions about where he would live, what he would play, who would produce his albums, whether he would support the Vietnam War, and even if he would flip his famous “bird”—the iconic image of Cash giving the finger which is now plastered on posters and T-shirts everywhere—in the context of cultural forces both visible and opaque. He made other decisions in consultation with a variety of people, many of whom were chiefly concerned with the reaction of his audiences. 

Less a conventional biography than a study of the making of an identity, Nine Choices explores how Johnny Cash sought to define who he was, how he was perceived, and what he signified through a series of self-conscious actions. The result, Silverman shows, was a life that was often tumultuous but never uninteresting.

On July 22, 2011, a white supremacist killed eight people at Oslo’s Government Center in Norway and then terrorized the idyllic island of Utøya, where he executed sixty-nine more people, mostly teenagers. The country had never suffered such a massacre, and in the aftermath, the entire population was reeling.

Utøya, the Norwegian Labor Party’s summer camp for youth, a beloved place where many Norwegians learned about democratic values and processes, made lifelong friendships, and developed a vision for a just society, became mired in grief and discord. When Jørgen Watne Frydnes took on the daunting task of rebuilding the island and charting its future, he had to figure out a compassionate and just way forward. He made a radical decision: he set out to talk with each family of a murdered person, seeking to understand their needs and their hopes so that the future of the island could include their wishes and concerns. This emotionally grueling work, which was never considered in the scholarly literature on commemoration, led to a true renewal of Utøya, resulting in a meaningful memorial to those who were lost as well as beautiful surroundings for campers who come there to study democracy and peace.

Frydnes’s narrative, originally published in Norwegian, is structured around the seasons of the year and the landscape of the island, and tracks one person’s account of learning how to remember, commemorate, and honor the dead, and acknowledge a mass tragedy, and yet also create a nurturing, aspirational space for hope.

WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH AGEE PRIZE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

A groundbreaking appreciation of Dylan as a literary practitioner.

The literary establishment tends to regard Bob Dylan as an intriguing, if baffling, outsider. That changed overnight when Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, challenging us to think of him as an integral part of our national and international literary heritage. No One to Meet: Imitation and Originality in the Songs of Bob Dylan places Dylan the artist within a long tradition of literary production and offers an innovative way to understand his unique and often controversial methods of composition.

Dylan expert Raphael Falco traces the similarities between the way Dylan borrows, digests, and transforms traditional songs and what Renaissance writers called imitatio. Although Dylan’s lyrical postures may suggest an avant-garde consciousness, No One to Meet shows that Dylan’s creative process creatively expands methods used by classical and Renaissance authors.

Drawing on numerous examples, including Dylan’s previously unseen manuscript excerpts and archival materials, Raphael Falco illuminates how the ancient process of poetic imitation, handed down from Greco-Roman antiquity, allows us to make sense of Dylan’s musical and lyrical technique. By placing Dylan firmly in the context of an age-old poetic practice, No One to Meet deepens our appreciation of Dylan’s songs and allows us to celebrate him as what he truly is: a great writer.
 

This story, set in the Piney Woods country of East Texas, spans most of a century, from shortly after the close of the Civil War to the 1960's. It is the story of Charley White, who was born in the middle of those woods—in a decaying windowless log cabin a few years after his mother and father were freed from slavery. His childhood, lived in almost unbelievable poverty, was followed by financial stability achieved in middle age through years of struggle. And then, in order to obey God's will, he abandoned this secure life, and for forty years he waged a one-man war on poverty and intolerance.

Winner of the Carr P. Collins Award (best nonfiction book) of the Texas Institute of Letters, No Quittin' Sense presents the story of Rev. C. C. "Charley" White, whose life has inspired thousands of readers since the book was first published in 1969.

A Chicagoan’s coming-of-age memoir finds courage in the face of immense loss

In her early twenties, Maggie Andersen was a founding ensemble member of Chicago’s storied Gift Theatre with her then-boyfriend, Michael Patrick Thornton. But after a series of spinal strokes left Thornton paralyzed, Andersen made the heart-wrenching decision to leave him, along with their growing company and, later, her beloved city. No Stars in Jefferson Park alternates between two narratives: the energy and excitement of making art in Chicago’s thriving storefront theater scene and the devastating day-to-day realities of rehabilitation and rebuilding—and somewhere in the middle finding the courage to choose yourself.

Over the past twenty-plus years, the Gift—now performing in the working-class neighborhood of Portage Park—has become one of the most vital storefront theaters in Chicago, with Thornton’s career taking him to Hollywood and Broadway. But Andersen’s story has brought her back home. No Stars in Jefferson Park is a testament to lifelong friendship, a love letter to Chicago, and a profound coming-of-age story about the pain and necessity of putting yourself first.

Olympic gold medalist. Two-time world heavyweight champion. Hall of Famer. Infomercial and reality TV star. George Foreman’s fighting ability is matched only by his acumen for selling. Yet the complete story of Foreman’s rise from urban poverty to global celebrity has never been told until now.

Raised in Houston’s “Bloody Fifth” Ward, battling against scarcity in housing and food, young Foreman fought sometimes for survival and other times just for fun. But when a government program rescued him from poverty and introduced him to the sport of boxing, his life changed forever.

In No Way but to Fight, Andrew R. M. Smith traces Foreman’s life and career from the Great Migration to the Great Society, through the Cold War and culture wars, out of urban Houston and onto the world stage where he discovered that fame brought new challenges. Drawing on new interviews with George Foreman and declassified government documents, as well as more than fifty domestic and international newspapers and magazines, Smith brings to life the exhilarating story of a true American icon. No Way but to Fight is an epic worthy of a champion.

Finalist, 2016 Society for Midland Authors Award for Biography & Memoir

During his lifetime, William Gaddis (1922–1998) evaded biographical questions, never read from his work publicly, and didn’t allow his photograph to appear on his books. Before his novel J R (1975) won Gaddis the National Book Award and some measure of renown, he had given up the bohemian world of 1950s Greenwich Village for a series of corporate jobs that both paid the bills and provided an inside view of the encroachment of market values into every corner of American culture.

By illustrating the interconnectedness of Gaddis’s life and work, Tabbi, among his foremost interpreters, demystifies the “difficult author” and shows a writer who was as attuned as any to the way Americans talk, and who sensitively chronicled the gradual commodification of artistic endeavor. Illuminating, heartbreaking, and masterful, Tabbi’s book gives us the most subtly drawn portrait to date of one of the twentieth century’s seminal novelists.

John H. Reagan was one of the most important figures in Texas history; this was the first biography of him to be published. Reagan, who was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, in 1818, came to Texas twenty-one years later—while Texas was still a republic—and stayed to play many major roles in its later economic and political development.

In this excellent biography, Ben H. Procter not only re-creates for us the character of the man, with his forthright integrity and his boundless desire for knowledge, but also places him against the background of the time in which he lived. In vivid language Procter portrays the violence and vigor of pioneer life, the excitement of frontier politics, the dedication, devotion, enthusiasm, and—ultimately—despair of the Civil War, and the bitterness of the struggle with the railroad tycoons and their gargantuan monopolies. Spanning as it does the Republic of Texas, early statehood, the Confederacy, Reconstruction, and the era of the "robber barons," the story of John H. Reagan encompasses a panoramic sweep of mid- to late-nineteenth-century United States history.

Throughout his long life, respect came to Reagan almost as a matter of course. The forceful strength of his personality made an impression few people could ignore. From the day when Colonel Durst hired the young Reagan as a tutor for his children, exclaiming, "This man is a scholar," until the day some fifty years later when Governor Hogg persuaded him to leave the U.S. Senate to become chairman of the new Railroad Commission because the Commission "must be above reproach," his extraordinary character and ability were recognized. In fact, the perceptive intelligence that made him examine all aspects of a situation, and the sturdy integrity and courage that made it impossible for him to abandon a position he believed to be right simply because it was for the moment unpopular, frequently gave him the appearance of a prophet. Although this "prophetic gift" occasionally led to interludes of public disfavor, Reagan was accorded honor, even in his own land—and in later years veneration—that any prophet might envy.

The mystery of how an ordinary Minnesota girl came to be, briefly, one of the most wanted domestic terrorists in the United States

Behind every act of domestic terrorism there is someone’s child, an average American whose life took a radical turn for reasons that often remain mysterious. Camilla Hall is a case in point: a pastor’s daughter from small-town Minnesota who eventually joined the ranks of radicals like Sara Jane Olson (aka Kathleen Soliah) in the notorious Symbionese Liberation Army before dying in a shootout with Los Angeles Police in May 1974. How could a “good girl” like Camilla become one of the most wanted domestic terrorists in the United States? Rachael Hanel tells her story here, revealing both the deep humanity and the extraordinary circumstances of Camilla Hall’s life.

Camilla’s childhood in a tight-knit religious family was marred by loss and grief as, one after another, her three siblings died. Her path from her Minnesota home to her final, radical SLA family featured years as an artist and activist—in welfare offices, political campaigns, union organizing, culminating in a love affair that would be her introduction to the SLA. Through in-depth research and extensive interviews, Hanel pieces together Camilla’s bewildering transformation from a “gentle, zaftig, arty, otherworldy” young woman (as one observer remarked), working for social change within the system, into a gun-wielding criminal involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

During this time of mounting unrest and violence, Camilla Hall’s story is of urgent interest for what it reveals about the forces of radicalization. But as Hanel ventures ever further into Camilla’s past, searching out the critical points where character and cause might intersect, her book becomes an intriguing, disturbing, and ultimately deeply moving journey into the dark side of America’s promise.

Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas, 2000
Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association Book Award, the Texas Old Missions and Fort Restoration Association and the Texas Catholic Historical Society, 2001

The Spanish colonial era in Texas (1528-1821) continues to emerge from the shadowy past with every new archaeological and historical discovery. In this book, years of archival sleuthing by Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph now reveal the real human beings behind the legendary figures who discovered, explored, and settled Spanish Texas.

By combining dramatic, real-life incidents, biographical sketches, and historical background, the authors bring to life these famous (and sometimes infamous) men of Spanish Texas:

• Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
• Alonso de León
• Francisco Hidalgo
• Louis Juchereau de St. Denis
• Antonio Margil
• The Marqués de Aguayo
• Pedro de Rivera
• Felipe de Rábago
• José de Escandón
• Athanase de Mézières
• The Marqués de Rubí
• Antonio Gil Ibarvo
• Domingo Cabello
• José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara
• Joaquín de Arredondo

The authors also devote a chapter to the women of Spanish Texas, drawing on scarce historical clues to tell the stories of both well-known and previously unknown Tejana, Indian, and African women.