Results by title

For pious converts to Christianity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New England, all reality was shaped by religious devotion and biblical text. It is therefore not surprising that earnest believers who found themselves marginalized by their race or sex relied on their faith to reconcile the tension between the spiritual experience of rebirth and the social ordeal of exclusion and injustice.

In Piety and Dissent, Eileen Razzari Elrod examines the religious autobiographies of six early Americans who represented various sorts of marginality: John Marrant, Olaudah Equiano, and Jarena Lee, all of African or African American heritage; Samson Occom (Mohegan) and William Apess (Pequot); and Abigail Abbott Bailey, a white woman who was subjected to extreme domestic violence. Through close readings of these personal narratives, Elrod uncovers the complex rhetorical strategies employed by pious outsiders to challenge the particular kinds of oppression each experienced. She identifies recurrent ideals and images drawn from Scripture and Protestant tradition—parables of liberation, rage, justice, and opposition to authority—that allowed them to see resistance as a religious act and, more than that, imbued them with a sense of agency. 

What the life stories of these six individuals reveal, according to Elrod, is that conventional Christianity in early America was not the hegemonic force that church leaders at the time imagined, and that many people since have believed it to be. Nor was there a clear distinction between personal piety and religious, social, and political resistance. To understand fully the role of religion in the early period of American letters, we must rethink some of our most fundamental assumptions about the function of Christian faith in the context of individual lives.

The long awaited new edition of a classic offers memories, myths, and meanings of the largest contiguous piece of wild land in Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

This updated edition explores more deeply why and how the outdoors moves and compels us. It’s a book about mice who sing, elk who wear collars, deer who kiss, and birds who could dictate their compositions to Mozart. It's about the human species interacting in generous and sometimes misguided ways with the rest of life. It's about men trying to ripen pinecones into pineapples and women taking better aim with a revolver than expected. It's about poetry—from Mary Oliver, Lao Tzu, and Theodore Roethke—and seeing hawks dive in a night sky or feeling oil geologists shake the earth below. It's about finding fish dead in the river by the thousands and crouching behind a stump to watch beaver build a dwelling. While this book considers life beyond the boundaries of Pigeon River Country, it is steeped in the specifics of a place that lives mostly on its own, instead of human, terms.

The Pigeon River Country is a remote northern forest, ecologically distinct from most of the United States. Laced with waterways, it has a storied past. Dale Clarke Franz has collected personal accounts from various people intrigued with the Pigeon River Country—including loggers, conservationists, mill workers, campers, even the young Ernest Hemingway, who said he loved the forest "better than anything in the world." There are comprehensive discussions of the area's flora and fauna, guides to trails and camping sites, and photos showcasing the changing face of this hidden national treasure.

Written with exquisite sensitivity and wit, this memoir by one of Mexico’s foremost men of letters describes coming of age during the violence of the Mexican Revolution and “living dangerously” as an openly homosexual man in a brutally machista society.

Salvador Novo (1904–1974) was a provocative and prolific cultural presence in Mexico City through much of the twentieth century. With his friend and fellow poet Xavier Villaurrutia, he cofounded Ulises and Contemporáneos, landmark avant-garde journals of the late 1920s and 1930s. At once “outsider” and “insider,” Novo held high posts at the Ministries of Culture and Public Education and wrote volumes about Mexican history, politics, literature, and culture. The author of numerous collections of poems, including XX poemas, Nuevo amor, Espejo, Dueño mío, and Poesía 1915–1955, Novo is also considered one of the finest, most original prose stylists of his generation.

Pillar of Salt is Novo’s incomparable memoir of growing up during and after the Mexican Revolution; shuttling north to escape the Zapatistas, only to see his uncle murdered at home by the troops of Pancho Villa; and his initiations into literature and love with colorful, poignant, complicated men of usually mutually exclusive social classes. Pillar of Salt portrays the codes, intrigues, and dynamics of what, decades later, would be called “a gay ghetto.” But in Novo’s Mexico City, there was no name for this parallel universe, as full of fear as it was canny and vibrant. Novo’s memoir plumbs the intricate subtleties of this world with startling frankness, sensitivity, and potential for hilarity. Also included in this volume are nineteen erotic sonnets, one of which was long thought to have been lost.

Tracing the roots of resilience on the American frontier.

Pioneer Family is based on the recollections of Hugie and Oleta Oesterreicher, who lived in rural northeast Florida in the early decades of the twentieth century. Northeast Florida was still frontier country then, and Hugie and Oleta were pioneers. Although the time and setting of their story are particular, the theme of survival during hard times is universal. Born in a cypress cabin on the edge of the great Durbin Swamp located midway between St. Augustine and Jacksonville, Hugie knew every alligator hole, every bog, every creek; he could dry venison so it lasted without refrigeration for months, could build a potato bank that kept potatoes warm all winter, and put down a well without machinery. He knew how to cope with rattlesnakes and moccasins. Early one morning in 1925, Hugie fell in love with a tall, brown-eyed girl as he passed her place on a cattle drive. He courted this girl, Oleta Brown, with no success at first, but finally they were married in 1927.

Their daughter retells their story from vivid accounts they gave of their childhood, courtship, early years of marriage, and struggles during the Great Depression. In an age bereft of heroes, the story of their courage, their faith, and their commitment provides a fascinating empathy with a time that has passed; a place that has disappeared.

Samuel Bangs, the first printer in the territory that is now Texas, once owed his life to his printing press. One of the few survivors of the Mina Expedition to Mexico in 1817, Bangs wrote to Servando de Mier, “I had the good fortune, through the will of God, to have my life saved, as I was a printer.”

Bangs was not always so fortunate. Losses and disappointments plagued him throughout his career, and he spent many miserable months in Mexican jails. But his ingenuity in the face of adversity, his courage and charm, stamped him not only as a storybook hero but as a man whose virtues were large enough to be their own reward.

Lota Spell’s fine biography of Samuel Bangs is at the same time a fascinating history of northern Mexico (including Texas) in the first half of the nineteenth century. Through the successes and failures of an individual it presents the facts about the operation of a business during a time of important political and economic change.

Even more important is its contribution to our knowledge of printing and of the contemporary periodical press. Although first of all a printer, Samuel Bangs was also involved in the production of newspapers, making this book a detailed history of journalism in the Mexico and Texas of his day. His printing office also functioned as a typographer’s school, through which he instituted the apprentice system in the Southwest; and as a result of his interest in presses as a commodity of trade, the first business for merchandising and servicing printing presses in the area was developed.

This narrative, combining the story of a man’s life, the history of his times, and the development of his profession, fills a gap in our knowledge of Mexico and Texas, and does it with perception and charm.

The profiles are edited transcripts of interviews videotaped between 1996 and 2004. They tell of the development of new techniques such as the "blue baby operation," the first heart-lung machine, the first artificial heart valve, and the first coronary bypass operation. They also tell the unusual life stories of the surgeons and allude to professional and institutional rivalries. A particularly valuable part of the book is the author's brief history of cardiac surgery, designed to orient the reader for reading the profiles that follow.

Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, claimed that in 2005 the film industry lost $2.3 billion in revenue to piracy online. But here Adrian Johns shows that piracy has a much longer and more vital history than we have realized—one that has been largely forgotten and is little understood.

Piracy explores the intellectual property wars from the advent of print culture in the fifteenth century to the reign of the Internet in the twenty-first. Brimming with broader implications for today’s debates over open access, fair use, free culture, and the like, Johns’s book ultimately argues that piracy has always stood at the center of our attempts to reconcile creativity and commerce—and that piracy has been an engine of social, technological, and intellectual innovations as often as it has been their adversary. From Cervantes to Sonny Bono, from Maria Callas to Microsoft, from Grub Street to Google, no chapter in the story of piracy evades Johns’s graceful analysis in what will be the definitive history of the subject for years to come.

How Dominicans contribute to Major League Baseball and what they receive in return.

From Juan Marichal and Pedro Martínez to Albert Pujols and Juan Soto, Dominicans have long been among Major League Baseball’s best. How did this small Caribbean nation become a hothouse of baseball talent? To many fans, the answer is both obvious and disconcerting: pro teams use their riches to develop talent abroad, creating opportunities for superhuman athletes and corrupt officials, while the rest of the population sees little benefit.

Yet this interpretation of history is incomplete. April Yoder traces how baseball has empowered Dominicans in their struggles for democracy and social justice. While the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo saw the sport as a means of cementing its power at home and abroad, the Dominican people fashioned an emancipated civic sphere by seeing their potential for democratic success in their compatriots’ baseball success. Later, Dominicans articulated demands for democracy, economic opportunity, and civil rights through successful calls for public support of amateur and professional baseball. Today, Dominicans continue to demand that incentives for the baseball industry foster human as well as economic development. A revelatory and innovative history, Pitching Democracy restores agency to the Dominican people and honors their true love of the game.

Discover the stories, people, and histories behind the names on Alabama's map.

Place Names in Alabama is the first comprehensive and systematic study of the names that define Alabama's geographic landscape. In this indispensable reference work, Virginia O. Foscue examines more than 2,600 place names drawn from across the state, including counties, cities, towns, rivers, lakes, streams, mountains, and other significant geographic features. Each entry provides detailed information on location, historical development, etymology, naming history, and documented sources, creating a rich portrait of the people, cultures, and events that have shaped Alabama over time.

Drawing upon archival records, historical documents, maps, and interviews with local informants, Foscue uncovers the stories behind the names that appear on Alabama's maps. The volume reveals the influence of Native American languages, European settlement, transportation networks, natural features, political leaders, local families, and regional traditions on the state's evolving identity. By tracing how communities and landmarks acquired their names, the book illuminates broader patterns of migration, settlement, economic development, and cultural exchange throughout Alabama's history.

More than a dictionary of place names, this work offers a unique window into Alabama's social and cultural heritage. Readers discover not only the origins of familiar names but also the histories of the individuals and communities that helped build the state. Whether used as a scholarly resource, a genealogical tool, or a source of fascinating historical insights, Place Names in Alabama remains an essential guide to understanding the connections between geography, language, and history in the American South.

Valuable for historians, genealogists, geographers, librarians, educators, students, journalists, and local history enthusiasts, this landmark volume continues to serve as the definitive reference on Alabama's geographic names and the stories they preserve.