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The account of one radically new school year for a Teacher of the Year and for his nonbinary, art-obsessed, brilliant child 

Seven-year-old Ollie was researching local advanced school programs—because every second grader does that, right? Ollie, who used to hate weekends because they meant no school, was crying on the way to school almost every day. Sure, there were the slings and arrows of bullies and bad teachers, but, maybe worse, Ollie, a funny, anxious, smart kid with a thing for choir and an eye for graphic art, was gravely underchallenged and also struggling with identity and how to live totally as themselves. Ollie begged to switch to a new school with “kids like me,” where they wouldn’t feel so alone, or so bored, and so they made the change. 

Raising Ollie is dad Tom Rademacher’s story (really, many stories) of that eventful and sometimes painful school year, parenting Ollie and relearning every day what it means to be a father and teacher. As Ollie—who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, and prefers art to athletics, vegetables to cake, and animals to most humans—flourishes in their new school, Rademacher is making an eye-opening adjustment to a new school of his own, one that’s whiter and more suburban than anywhere he has previously taught, with a history of racial tension that he tries to address and navigate. 

While Ollie is learning to code, 3D model, animate, speak Japanese, and finally feel comfortable at school, Rademacher increasingly sees how his own educational struggles, anxieties, and childhood upbringing are reflected in his teaching, writing, and parenting, as well as in Ollie’s experience. And with this story of one anything-but-academic year of inquiry and wonder, doubt and revelation, he shows us how raising a kid changes everything—and how much raising a kid like Ollie can teach us about who we are and what we’re doing in the world.

A rich history of the development of American minimum wage policy with lessons for today.

Despite broad popular support for robust minimum wage policy, the federal minimum wage is now worth less—in real, inflation-adjusted terms—than at any time since 1949. While some state and local governments have stepped in to fill this void, others have declined to set any minimum wage standard at all. Traversing more than 100 years of history, Raising the Floor examines how interest groups have navigated the highly decentralized American political system to shape the development of federal, state, and local minimum wage laws.

In her analysis, Shanna Rose highlights the importance of American federalism. She argues that because federalism creates multiple arenas for policy change, interest groups have sought out the sites most conducive to their goals, shifting their lobbying efforts as new obstacles and opportunities emerge. Federalism has facilitated minimum wage policymaking by fostering policy experimentation, learning, and diffusion across states and by allowing state and local governments to overcome gridlock and status-quo biases at the national level. Yet, federalism has also been an instrument for containment, enabling those opposed to minimum wage increases to litigate and preempt local-level laws.

With rich historical chapters that illuminate different phases in the development of today’s patchwork of wage standards, Raising the Floor is a deep examination of the past, present, and future of American minimum wage law.

Semifinalist, 22nd Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, 2002
Finalist, Spur Award in western nonfiction biography, Western Writers of America, 2002

Revered by many Texans and other Americans as "the People's Senator," Ralph Webster Yarborough (1903-1996) fought for "the little people" in a political career that places him in the ranks of the most influential leaders in Texas history. The only U. S. Senator representing a former Confederate state to vote for every significant piece of modern civil rights legislation, Yarborough became a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs in the areas of education, environmental preservation, and health care. In doing so, he played a major role in the social and economic modernization of Texas and the American South. He often defied conventional political wisdom with his stands against powerful political interests and with his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. Yet to this day, his admirers speak of Yarborough as an inspiration for public service and a model of political independence and integrity.

This biography offers the first in-depth look at the life and career of Ralph Yarborough. Patrick L. Cox draws on Yarborough's personal and professional papers, as well as on extensive interviews with the Senator and his associates, to follow Yarborough from his formative years in East Texas through his legal and judicial career in the 1930s, decorated military service in World War II, unsuccessful campaigns for Texas governor in the 1950s, distinguished tenure in the United States Senate from 1957 to 1970, and return to legal practice through the 1980s.

Although Yarborough's liberal politics set him at odds with most of the Texas power brokers of his time, including Lyndon Johnson, his accomplishments have become part of the national fabric. Medicare recipients, beneficiaries of the Cold War G. I. Bill, and even beachcombers on Padre Island National Seashore all share in the lasting legacy of Senator Ralph Yarborough.

Rancheros hold a distinct place in the culture and social hierarchy of Mexico, falling between the indigenous (Indian) rural Mexicans and the more educated city-dwelling Mexicans. In addition to making up an estimated twenty percent of the population of Mexico, rancheros may comprise the majority of Mexican immigrants to the United States. Although often mestizo (mixed race), rancheros generally identify as non-indigenous, and many identify primarily with the Spanish side of their heritage. They are active seekers of opportunity, and hence very mobile. Rancheros emphasize progress and a self-assertive individualism that contrasts starkly with the common portrayal of rural Mexicans as communal and publicly deferential to social superiors.

Marcia Farr studied, over the course of fifteen years, a transnational community of Mexican ranchero families living both in Chicago and in their village-of-origin in Michoacán, Mexico. For this ethnolinguistic portrait, she focuses on three culturally salient styles of speaking that characterize rancheros: franqueza (candid, frank speech); respeto (respectful speech); and relajo (humorous, disruptive language that allows artful verbal critique of the social order maintained through respeto). She studies the construction of local identity through a community's daily talk, and provides the first book-length examination of language and identity in transnational Mexicans.

In addition, Farr includes information on the history of rancheros in Mexico, available for the first time in English, as well as an analysis of the racial discourse of rancheros within the context of the history of race and ethnicity in Mexico and the United States. This work provides groundbreaking insight into the lives of rancheros, particularly as seen from their own perspectives.

Randy Travis’s 1986 breakthrough put him at the forefront of Nashville’s new traditionalist sound and, in the words of Garth Brooks, saved country music. The singer’s warm baritone and all-time classic songs like “Forever and Ever, Amen” landed him atop the charts sixteen times. His cross-genre appeal brought a level of multiplatinum success that no country artist before him had ever achieved.

Diane Diekman’s biography follows the life and career of one of country music’s most beloved figures. Steered from a troubled path as a teen, Travis served a long apprenticeship under manager and future wife Lib Hatcher before being rejected by the Nashville music industry as “too country.” The single “On the Other Hand” and his smash debut album did away with the doubters and began a dominant four-year run that stretched into ongoing success as a recording artist, trailblazing live performer, and actor in film and television. Diekman uses dozens of interviews and in-depth research to fill in the details of Travis’s pre-fame life and his enormous impact on country, popular, and gospel music. From there, she pivots to telling the story of the singer’s difficult divorce from Hatcher, subsequent problems with alcohol and run-ins with the law, and the challenges he overcame in the aftermath of a devastating 2013 stroke.

Informed by a wealth of new research and interviews, Randy Travis is the first in-depth biography of the country music legend.

Winner of the 2023 National Communication Association's American Studies Division Outstanding Book Award

News media and popular culture in the United States have produced a conventional narrative of the outcomes of sexual abuse: someone perpetrates sexual violence, goes to trial, and is then punished with prison time. Survivors recede into the background, becoming minor characters in their own stories as intrepid prosecutors, police officers, and investigators gather evidence and build a case.

Leland G. Spencer explains how the stories we tell about sexual assault serve to reinforce rape culture, privileging criminal punishment over social justice and community-based responses to sexual violence. Examining a broad range of popular media, including news coverage of the Brock Turner case, Naomi Iizuka’s popular play Good Kids, the television program Criminal Minds, and the book turned television show 13 Reasons Why, Spencer demonstrates how these representations shore up the carceral state, perpetuate rape myths, blame victims, and excuse those who harm. While increased discussion about sexual violence represents feminist progress, these narratives assume that policing and prosecution are the only means of achieving justice, sidelining other potential avenues for confronting perpetrators and supporting victims.

A definitive biography illuminating the scientific, industrial, and exploratory contributions of America’s pioneering economic geologist.

Raphael Pumpelly: Gentleman Geologist of the Gilded Age provides an excellent opportunity to look at the development of the profession of geology during the years spanned by his career, from 1860 to the early twentieth century. In this period, the practical applications of geology to resource development were of major importance, but geologists were also investigating new subjects, such as petrology, geomorphology, glaciology, and structural geology. These investigations resulted in an explosion of knowledge in these areas and in the growth of subdisciplines. Pumpelly did research in these fields but like others of his generation did not limit himself to any one of them; he remained a generalist in a time of increasing specialization, a transitional figure in a period of rapid change.
 

A sweeping study that reveals how conservation science does more than simply protect by inadvertently making nature valuable in new ways.
 
Climate change and other environmental transformations are causing species to go extinct at accelerating rates. What, then, should a science of saving nature look like? In Rarities, Zoe Nyssa traces how conservation emerged as a distinct scientific endeavor in the United States over the twentieth century and how this history has shaped environmental research practices and policy today. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research with leading conservation labs and programs, Nyssa explores how conservation science appears to generate contradictory, even counterintuitive, results as scientists, policymakers, and the public all take up, respond to, and repurpose scientists’ ideas about rarity, vulnerability, and endangerment. The designation of new nature reserves can lead to increased poaching and habitat destruction. The listing of a species as endangered fuels their black-market consumption as pets, food, or luxury items. Protection of natural resources can push resource extraction into unprotected areas. Other effects are less simple to calculate; persuading the public to care about one species might siphon support for another, and paying for one kind of conservation behavior can discourage other forms of conservation activity.
 
The science of saving nature spans a century of work by ecologists and others to develop a scientific basis for conservation. Yet Nyssa shows how their efforts to understand the natural world in terms of endangerment and extinction unleashed new ways for nonscientists to experience and understand nature as well. The scientific values that emerge, she argues, can transform the complex interconnections between human and nonhuman life. Rarities offers a framework for understanding these surprising socio-ecological dynamics and why they matter, both for contemporary science and for the planet.

Citizens in democracies complain that political parties’ positions on major issues are too ambiguous for them to confidently understand. Why is party position ambiguity so common? Are party positions ambiguous because political parties fail in forming clear policies or because they deliberately blur their positions? Rationality of Irrationality argues that political parties are motivated to strategically blur their position on an issue when they struggle with a certain disadvantage in the issue. Specifically, political parties present an ambiguous position when their own supporters are divided in their stances on the issue. A political party also blurs position stances when voters do not acknowledge that the party has the ability and integrity to solve problems related to the issue. Political parties blur their position in these cases because ambiguous party positions divert voters’ attention from the issue. Voters support a political party whose policy positions on major issues are close to their own stances. However, voters cannot confidently and exactly estimate party positions on an issue when they are only ambiguous.

Here are observations and speculations, legends and yarns, even gossip about the habits and dispositions of these extraordinary creatures—rattlesnakes—their reported size, deadliness, and power to charm their natural enemies. Here are descriptions of actual fights to the death between rattlesnakes and other animals and accounts of the strange experiences human beings have had with them, as well as tips on where to find them and how to act when you see one.

Dobie began systematically collecting lore about the rattlesnake world many years ago, using some of it in such regional publications as Southwest Review and incorporating much of it into essays—with the intention of eventually putting together a book about rattlesnakes. Now, in this collection of twenty-two articles, his wish is posthumously fulfilled.

Only Frank Dobie could tell of this fascinating and frightening creature with such wisdom and humor, thereby tempering "the age-old feud between the snake and man." And the rattlesnake—who once aroused fear among even the boldest men in the Old West—can at last be regarded with tolerance, respect, and even affection.

This biography of the African-American activist and scholar, Rayford W. Logan, draws from his own work, letters, diaries and autobiography to create a portrait of a lesser-known member of the Black scholarly elite in the mid-20th century.

Throughout Jewish history, revolutionary events and subversive ideas have burst forth, repeatedly transforming Jewish experience. Re-forming Judaism seeks to explore these ideas—and the individuals behind them—by delving into historical disruptions that led to lasting change in Jewish thought. A distinguished array of scholars take us on a journey from the disruptive prophets of ancient times, through rational, mystical, and extremist medievalists, to the impact of Haskalah and early Reform thought in modernity. Contemporary innovations such as changes in liturgy and music, feminism, and post-Holocaust theology are included, as are insights into Sephardic and North African experiences. By showing how Judaism forms—then re-forms, and re-forms again—the contributors demonstrate that tensions between continuity and change have always been part of Jewish life, helping us to both understand the past and contemplate the future.

The untold stories of resilience in Hmong American education

Re-membering Culture is a deep exploration of the intricate dynamics of cultural memory and education, centering the experiences of Hmong American students and educators. Arguing that the school, as a product of coloniality, perpetuates the marginalization and erasure of non-Western epistemologies, author Bic Ngo sheds light on the subtle yet impactful process of structured forgetting within the American education system. This politics of forgetting, in turn, contributes to the fragmentation of Hmong cultural heritage, identity, and community.

Based on a high school in an urban center with a considerable Hmong immigrant community, Ngo’s work draws on extensive ethnographic research with Hmong American community leaders, school administrators, parents, teachers, staff, and high school students to understand how they navigate the terrain of Western pedagogy while attempting to retain and preserve Hmong knowledge systems. Exploring a range of school experiences, Ngo traverses students’ challenges in balancing school with family life and the everyday cultural racism encountered in the classroom as well as grassroots efforts to preserve culture, including the establishment of a Hmong Cultural Club.

Highlighting these experiences and voices, Ngo provides a nuanced understanding of the challenges Hmong Americans face within an assimilationist society while contesting the dominant anti-immigrant narratives of refugee suffering and poverty. Through these practices of (re)storytelling, resurgence, and refusal, she underscores the agency of the Hmong American community, illuminating how the critical consciousness fostered by re-membering serves as a powerful tool in confronting white hegemonic ideologies in education.

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During the Cold War, the editor of Time magazine declared, “A good citizen is a good reader.” As postwar euphoria faded, a wide variety of Americans turned to reading to understand their place in the changing world. Yet, what did it mean to be a good reader? And how did reading make you a good citizen?

In Reading America, Kristin L. Matthews puts into conversation a range of political, educational, popular, and touchstone literary texts to demonstrate how Americans from across the political spectrum—including “great works” proponents, New Critics, civil rights leaders, postmodern theorists, neoconservatives, and multiculturalists—celebrated particular texts and advocated particular interpretive methods as they worked to make their vision of "America" a reality. She situates the fiction of J. D. Salinger, Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and Maxine Hong Kingston within these debates, illustrating how Cold War literature was not just an object of but also a vested participant in postwar efforts to define good reading and citizenship.

For too long, the visual culture of the American South has been framed through narrow lenses: elite patronage, regional nostalgia, and selective narratives that privilege whiteness while overlooking the complexity of the region’s artistic production. Reading Southern Art: Essays on the Visual Arts in the United States from the Colonies to Today intervenes decisively in this tradition, illuminating the vast visual and material history of the South through works produced by a variety of artists across the region. 

Edited by Rachel Stephens, this collection examines Southern art from the seventeenth century until today, covering a diverse variety of media, from traditional fine arts to material and visual culture, ephemera, and public monuments. Analyzing an array of works, from portraits to vernacular traditions to contemporary artistic practice, Reading Southern Art considers how histories, visual and otherwise, are constructed and revised and how the art of the American South has shaped, and been shaped by, such contested histories.