18284 books match the query 'United States' and 3764 start with t

cover of The Week the World Heard Gallaudet

The Week the World Heard Gallaudet

Jack R. Gannon

Gallaudet University Press, 2009

In 200 full-color and black-and-white photographs, The Week the World Heard Gallaudet depicts, day by day, the Deaf President Now! Revolution at Gallaudet University as it unfolded March 6 - 13, 1988. Author Jack Gannon interviewed such main characters as Greg Hlibok, president of the student government, and Elizabeth Zinser, the University’s president for two days. I. King Jordan, Gallaudet’s first deaf president, contributed the epilogue.
[more]
cover of The Weekly War: How the Saturday Evening Post Reported World War I

The Weekly War

How the Saturday Evening Post Reported World War I

Chris Dubbs

University of North Texas Press, 2023

[more]
cover of The Weekly War: Newsmagazines and Vietnam

The Weekly War

Newsmagazines and Vietnam

James Landers

University of Missouri Press, 2004

In The Weekly War, James Landers provides the first in-depth investigation of how the three major newsmagazines—Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report—covered the Vietnam War and the impact their coverage had on the American public, presidents, and policymakers. From March 1965 through January 1973 these magazines reached nearly one-third of adult Americans—second only to news programs on network television. Despite the popular impression that this was primarily a “television war,” the newsmagazines played a prominent role in informing the public about warfare and war policy.
While television reporting provided a here-and-now version of events, these magazines published articles that combined on-the-scene coverage with analysis and commentary. Because these publications worked on a more leisurely weekly deadline as opposed to the daily deadlines of television or newspapers, they were able to provide distinct perspectives on the week’s events, along with factual material. The writing was typically more vivid and detailed than that of newspapers, and the occasional use of color photographs contributed to the impact of the stories.
Each magazine had its own niche and distinct editorial style: Newsweek provided a mainstream liberal perspective, while Time took a more conservative viewpoint and U.S. News & World Report had an ultraconservative outlook. The editors of each magazine aimed to reach like-minded readers, knowing full well that a reader who disliked one magazine could simply switch to another. Landers demonstrates how public-opinion shifts during the war forced the newsmagazines, especially Time, to change too.
This book reflects a thorough examination of roughly nine hundred articles on the Vietnam War published by the three major newsmagazines. Landers also gathered documents from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Richard M. Nixon Presidential Materials Project to reveal the attention paid to the newsmagazines by presidents and policymakers and their attempts to influence or manipulate coverage.
In addition to making a major contribution to the history of print journalism, The Weekly War complements scholarship on television news coverage of the Vietnam War. This volume will appeal to students and teachers of history and journalism, as well as the general reader interested in a unique view of the Vietnam War.
[more]
cover of The West Side Carbondale, Pennsylvania Mine Fire

The West Side Carbondale, Pennsylvania Mine Fire

Kathleen Purcell Munley

University of Scranton Press, 2010

In early 1947 residents of the west side of Carbondale, Pennsylvania began noticing a peculiar steam escaping from the ground. An investigation into this phenomenon revealed that Carbondale was slowly but steadily being destroyed by a burning inferno deep below its surface—a fire raging through the deserted anthracite coal mine shafts that twisted and turned beneath that part of the city. After several years of attempting to contain the fire by flushing, municipal leaders decided that the only sure way of eliminating the threat to the community was by digging it out. To eradicate the burning menace, hundreds of homes and buildings were purchased and destroyed, and what was once a vibrant neighborhood became an abandoned wasteland.

            
Historian Kathleen Purcell Munley narrates here the story of this great fire, identifying its source, tracing its history, and, through personal interviews with former Carbondale residents, reveals its physical and psychological toll. The mine fire destroyed the West Side as it was, but this volume will keep its memory alive and preserve an important chapter in the history of Carbondale and Pennsylvania.

[more]
cover of The West Virginia Pepperoni Roll

The West Virginia Pepperoni Roll

Candace Nelson

West Virginia University Press, 2017

The pepperoni roll, a soft bread roll with pepperoni baked in the middle, originated in the coal mining areas of north central West Virginia when Italian immigrants invented a food that could be eaten easily underground.
This spicy snack soon found its way out of the mines and into bakeries, bread companies, restaurants, and event venues around the state, often with additional ingredients like cheese, red sauce, or peppers.

As the pepperoni roll’s reputation moves beyond the borders of West Virginia, this food continues to embody the culinary culture of its home state. It is now found at the center of bake-offs, eating contests, festivals, as a gourmet item on local menus, and even on a bill in the state’s legislature.

The West Virginia Pepperoni Roll is a comprehensive history of the unofficial state food of West Virginia. With over 100 photographs and countless recipes and recollections, it tells the story of the immigrants, business owners, laborers, and citizens who have developed and devoured this simple yet practical food since its invention.
 
[more]
cover of The West and Central Florida Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore

The West and Central Florida Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore

Clarence Bloomfield Moore, edited and with an introduction by Jeffrey M. Mitchem

University of Alabama Press, 1999

This compilation of Moore's publications on western and central Florida provides all of his archaeological data on the region's mounds and prehistoric canals in a single volume.

The name Clarence B. Moore is familiar to every archaeologist interested in the southeastern United States. This amateur archaeologist's
numerous scientific expeditions to the region resulted in dozens of well-illustrated publications, the value of which increases daily as many of the sites he investigated continue to be destroyed by modern development.

Moore invested considerable time and effort exploring Florida's archaeological sites, devoting more pages of published reports and articles to Florida than to any other state. Because of the wealth of material on Florida, Moore's Florida expedition publications have been
collected in three separate volumes, all published within the Classics in Southeastern Archaeology series. The thirteen papers reproduced in this
volume present the results of Moore's research in West and Central Florida.

Moore's first and last expeditions were to Florida and spanned almost fifty years of archaeological investigations. Following the eastern river drainages to central and western Florida, in 1900 Moore concentrated his efforts along the Florida Gulf Coast, spurred by the exciting
discoveries of Frank Hamilton Cushing at Key Marco in 1896. Although this region is rich in mound sites, many sites located by Moore in the early
years of this century had already been destroyed by construction and lime processing. In addition to mound groupings—some containing masses of skeletal remains—Moore found a number of sites connected by a network of prehistoric canals. Several of the sites located by Moore contained European trade goods and have been used to trace the early wanderings of the conquistadores in the New World.

Moore's early work on the Florida Gulf Coast succeeded in preserving much of the archaeological record in this area. He is to be credited with remarkable insights concerning mound and earthwork construction, artifact trade networks, and chronology development.


[more]
cover of The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839–1846

The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839–1846

Kenneth E. Lewis

Michigan State University Press, 2019

The late antebellum period saw the dramatic growth of the United States as Euro-American settlement began to move into new territories west of the Mississippi River. The journals and letters of businessmen Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, written between 1839 and 1846, provide a unique perspective into a time of dramatic expansion in the Great Lakes and beyond. These accounts describe the daily experiences of Nehemiah and his wife Nancy Shelton Sanford as they traveled west from their Connecticut home to examine lands for speculation in regions undergoing colonization, as well as the experiences of their son Henry who later came out to the family’s western property. Beyond an interest in business, the Sanfords’ journals provide a detailed picture of the people they encountered and the settlements and country through which they passed and include descriptions of events, activities, methods of travel and travel accommodations, as well as mining in the upper Mississippi Valley and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a buffalo hunt on the Great Plains. Through their travels the Sanfords give us an intimate glimpse of the immigrants, settlers, Native Americans, missionaries, traders, mariners, and soldiers they encountered, and their accounts illuminate the lives and activities of the newcomers and native people who inhabited this fascinating region during a time of dramatic transition.
[more]
cover of The Western San Juan Mountains: Their Geology, Ecology, and Human History

The Western San Juan Mountains

Their Geology, Ecology, and Human History

Rob Blair

University Press of Colorado, 1996

The San Juan Skyway winds its way up, over, and through canyons, mesas, plateaus, mountains, plains, and valleys. The sheer variety of landforms makes the Skyway a veritable classroom for the amateur naturalist and historian.

The most complete work published on the natural history of southwest Colorado's majestic mountain system, The Western San Juan Mountains: Their Geology, Ecology, and Human History is designed to be used while exploring the scenic 235-mile paved San Juan Skyway, which passes through Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, Dolores, and Cortez.

The Western San Juan Mountains covers the physical environment, the biological communities, the human history, and points of interest represented on milepost signs along the highway. Some of the many topics covered include: how the San Juan Mountains were formed; why the landscape is so rugged and picturesque; why the vegetation changes from the lowlands to the alpine heights; energy and mineral resources of the area; why these mountains intrigued early explorers; factors that influence the unpredictable weather; and the first-known inhabitants.

The contributions to this guide include Fort Lewis College geologists, biologists, archaeologists, historians, and other specialists. Together they have amassed more than one hundred years of study based not only on previous work but on their own research.

This generously illustrated guidebook is aimed at all those who wish to understand this intricate mountain system in much greater detail than provided by most picture books.

[more]
cover of The Westside Slugger: Joe Neal's Lifelong Fight for Social Justice

The Westside Slugger

Joe Neal's Lifelong Fight for Social Justice

John L. Smith

University of Nevada Press, 2019

The Westside Slugger is the powerful story of civil rights in Las Vegas and Nevada through the eyes and experience of Joe Neal, a history-making state lawmaker in Nevada. Neal rose from humble beginnings in Mound, Louisiana, during the Great Depression to become the first African American to serve in the Nevada State Senate.

Filled with an intense desire for education, he joined the United States Air Force and later graduated from Southern University—studying political science and the law at a time of great upheaval in the racial status quo. As part of a group of courageous men, Neal joined a Department of Justice effort to register the first black voters in Madison Parish.

When Neal moved to southern Nevada in 1963 he found the Silver State to be every bit as discriminatory as his former Louisiana home. As Neal climbed through the political ranks, he used his position in the state senate to speak on behalf of the powerless for more than thirty years. He took on an array of powerful opponents ranging from the Clark County sheriff to the governor of the state, as well as Nevada’s political kingmakers and casino titans. He didn’t always succeed—he lost two runs for governor—but he never stopped fighting. His successes included improved rights for convicted felons and greater services for public education, mental health, and the state’s libraries. He also played an integral role in improving hotel fire safety in the wake of the deadly MGM Grand fire and preserving the pristine waters of Lake Tahoe, which brought him national attention.

Neal lived a life that personified what is right, just, and fair. Pushing through racial and civil rights hurdles and becoming a lifelong advocate for social justice, his dedication and determination are powerful reminders to always fight the good fight and never stop swinging.
 
[more]
cover of The Westside Slugger: Joe Neal's Lifelong Fight for Social Justice

The Westside Slugger

Joe Neal's Lifelong Fight for Social Justice

John L. Smith

University of Nevada Press, 2019

The Westside Slugger is the powerful story of civil rights in Las Vegas and Nevada through the eyes and experience of Joe Neal, a history-making state lawmaker in Nevada. Neal rose from humble beginnings in Mound, Louisiana, during the Great Depression to become the first African American to serve in the Nevada State Senate.

Filled with an intense desire for education, he joined the United States Air Force and later graduated from Southern University—studying political science and the law at a time of great upheaval in the racial status quo. As part of a group of courageous men, Neal joined a Department of Justice effort to register the first black voters in Madison Parish.

When Neal moved to southern Nevada in 1963 he found the Silver State to be every bit as discriminatory as his former Louisiana home. As Neal climbed through the political ranks, he used his position in the state senate to speak on behalf of the powerless for more than thirty years. He took on an array of powerful opponents ranging from the Clark County sheriff to the governor of the state, as well as Nevada’s political kingmakers and casino titans. He didn’t always succeed—he lost two runs for governor—but he never stopped fighting. His successes included improved rights for convicted felons and greater services for public education, mental health, and the state’s libraries. He also played an integral role in improving hotel fire safety in the wake of the deadly MGM Grand fire and preserving the pristine waters of Lake Tahoe, which brought him national attention.

Neal lived a life that personified what is right, just, and fair. Pushing through racial and civil rights hurdles and becoming a lifelong advocate for social justice, his dedication and determination are powerful reminders to always fight the good fight and never stop swinging.
 
[more]
cover of The Whips: Building Party Coalitions in Congress

The Whips

Building Party Coalitions in Congress

C. Lawrence Evans

University of Michigan Press, 2018

The party whips are essential components of the U.S. legislative system, responsible for marshalling party votes and keeping House and Senate party members in line. In The Whips, C. Lawrence Evans offers a comprehensive exploration of coalition building and legislative strategy in the U.S. House and Senate, ranging from the relatively bipartisan, committee-dominated chambers of the 1950s to the highly polarized congresses of the 2000s. In addition to roll call votes and personal interviews with lawmakers and staff, Evans examines the personal papers of dozens of former leaders of the House and Senate, especially former whips. These records allowed Evans to create a database of nearly 1,500 internal leadership polls on hundreds of significant bills across five decades of recent congressional history.

The result is a rich and sweeping understanding of congressional party leaders at work. Since the whips provide valuable political intelligence, they are essential to understanding how coalitions are forged and deals are made on Capitol Hill.

[more]
cover of The Whiskey Merchant’s Diary: An Urban Life in the Emerging Midwest

The Whiskey Merchant’s Diary

An Urban Life in the Emerging Midwest

Joseph J. Mersman

Ohio University Press, 2007

Joseph J. Mersman was a liquor merchant, a German American immigrant who aspired—successfully—to become a self-made man. Hundreds of the residents of Mersman’s hometown in Germany immigrated to Cincinnati in the 1830s, joining many thousands of other German immigrants. In 1847, at the age of twenty-three, Mersman began recording his activities in a bound volume, small enough to fit into his coat pocket. His diary, filled with work and play, eating and drinking, flirting and dancing, provides a unique picture of everyday life, first in Cincinnati and then in St. Louis, the new urban centers of the emerging Midwest.

Outside of Gold Rush diaries and emigration journals, few narrative records of the antebellum period have been published. Illustrated with photographs, maps, and period advertisements, the diary reveals how a young man worked to establish himself during an era that was rich in opportunity.

As a whiskey rectifier, Mersman bought distilled spirits, redistilled or reprocessed them to remove contaminants or increase the alcohol content, and added various flavorings before selling his product to liquor retailers. In his diary, he describes scrambling for capital, marketing his wares, and arranging transportation by steamboat, omnibus, and train. Although the business that he sought to master was eliminated by the passage of the Pure Food Law of 1906, Mersman, like most rectifiers, was a reputable wholesaler. Merchants like him played an important role in distributing liquor in nineteenth-century America.

Mersman confronted serious disease, both as a sufferer from syphilis and as a witness to two devastating cholera epidemics. Unlike other residents of St. Louis, who fled the relative safety of the countryside, he remained in the city and saw the impact of the epidemics on the community.

Linda A. Fisher’s extensive, insightful, and highly readable annotations add a wealth of background information to Mersman’s story. Her professional training and career as a physician give her a particularly valuable perspective on the public health aspects of Mersman’s life and times.

[more]
cover of The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis

The Whiskey Rebellion

A Distilled History of an American Crisis

Brady J. Crytzer

Westholme Publishing, 2024

In March 1791 Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton shocked the western frontier when he proposed a domestic excise tax on whiskey to balance America’s national debt. The law, known colloquially as the “Whiskey Act,” disproportionately penalized farmers in the backcountry, while offering favorable tax incentives designed to protect larger distillers. Although Hamilton viewed the law as a means of both collecting revenue andforcefully imposing federal authority over the notoriously defiant frontier, settlers in Western Pennsylvania bristled at its passage. They demanded that the law be revoked or rewritten to correct its perceived the injustices, and begged their representatives to lobby Congress on their behalf. 
   As the months passed however the people of Western Pennsylvania grew restless with the inadequacy of the government’s response and they soon turned to more violent means of political expression. Treasury officers across the west were targeted for their involvement in the tax collection, and they were brutally attacked by armed bands of disgruntled locals. They were tarred and feathered, burned with hot irons, and whipped; their homes were ransacked and burned. Extralegal courts were established in a direct challenge to federal authority, and the frontier slowly drifted toward a state of rebellion.
   In response President George Washington raised an army of 13,000 men, one of the largest forces he ever commanded, to suppress the rebellion. No major battle ever occurred, but weeks of arrests, illegal detentions, and civil rights violations rocked the west. The event polarized the nation, and highlighted the dramatic differences between Washington’s Federalist perspective and Jefferson’s emerging Democratic-Republican Party. Two centuries later the Whiskey Rebellion stands as the second largest domestic rebellion in American History, only outdone by the Confederate States of America in 1861.
   In The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis, historian Brady J. Crytzer takes the reader on a journey through Western Pennsylvania following the routes of both the rebels and the United States Army to place this important event into context for the reader. Complete with images and maps, the author illuminates what visitors can still see from the period while providing a cogent and engrossing account of this crisis unfolded and how it was resolved. 
[more]
cover of The White African American Body

The White African American Body

Martin, Charles D.

Rutgers University Press, 2002

Blacks with white skin. Since colonial times, showmen have exhibited the bodies of African Americans with white or gradually whitening skin in taverns, dime museums, and circus sideshows. The term "white Negro" has served to describe an individual born with albinism as well as those who have vitiligo, a disorder that robs the skin of its pigment in ever-growing patches. In The White African American Body, Charles D. Martin examines the proliferation of the image of the white Negro in American popular culture, from the late eighteenth century to the present day.

This enigmatic figure highlights the folly of the belief in immutable racial differences. If skin is a race marker, what does it mean for blacks literally to be white? What does this say not only about blacks but also about whites? Scientists have probed this mystery, philosophers have pondered its meaning, and artists have profited from the sale of images of these puzzling figures.

Lavishly illustratedwith many rarely seen photographsThe White African American Body shows how the white Negro occupied, and still occupies, the precarious position between white and black, and how this figure remains resilient in American culture.

[more]
cover of The White Indian Boy: and its sequel The Return of the White Indian Boy

The White Indian Boy

and its sequel The Return of the White Indian Boy

Elijah Nicholas Wilson and Charles A. Wilson

University of Utah Press, 1985

First published in 1910, The White Indian Boy quickly became a western classic. Readers fascinated by real-life 'cowboys and Indians' thrilled to Nick Wilson’s frontier exploits, as he recounted running away to live with the Shoshone in his early teens, riding for the Pony Express, and helping settle Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The volume was so popular that Wilson’s son Charles was compelled to write a second book, The Return of the White Indian, which picks up in 1895 where the first memoir ends, telling the adventures of Nick Wilson’s later life.
These books, published here as a single volume, are testaments to a unique time and place in American history. Because he had a heart for adventure and unusual proficiency with Native American languages, Wilson’s life became an historical canvas on which was painted both the exploration and the closing of a frontier, as he went from childhood among the Shoshone to work as an interpreter for the U.S. government on Indian reservations in Wyoming and Idaho in his later years. This volume includes new introductory material, a family tree, and a background of Indian-white relations in Jackson Hole. Packed with amazing details about life in the Old West, Wilson’s colorful escapades are once again available to a new generation of readers.
[more]
cover of The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the  Black-Jewish Imaginary

The White Negress

Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black-Jewish Imaginary

Harrison-Kahan, Lori

Rutgers University Press, 2010

During the first half of the twentieth century, American Jews demonstrated a commitment to racial justice as well as an attraction to African American culture. Until now, the debate about whether such black-Jewish encounters thwarted or enabled Jews’ claims to white privilege has focused on men and representations of masculinity while ignoring questions of women and femininity. The White Negress investigates literary and cultural texts by Jewish and African American women, opening new avenues of inquiry that yield more complex stories about Jewishness, African American identity, and the meanings of whiteness.

Lori Harrison-Kahan examines writings by Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as the blackface performances of vaudevillian Sophie Tucker and controversies over the musical and film adaptations of Show Boat and Imitation of Life. Moving between literature and popular culture, she illuminates how the dynamics of interethnic exchange have at once produced and undermined the binary of black and white.
[more]
cover of The White Pine Industry in Minnesota: A History

The White Pine Industry in Minnesota

A History

Agnes M. Larson

University of Minnesota Press, 2007

“From the first logging operation to the closing of the last mill this book is so thorough, so comprehensive, so well organized, and so useful that it must take its place with the outstanding monographs of economic and western history.” —Journal of Economic History

The old-growth forests of Minnesota, at one time covering 70 percent of the state, played a major role in the development of the Upper Mississippi Valley. Telling the complete history of the white pine industry, Agnes Larson brings us back to a time when Minnesota’s lumber business was thriving. Larson recounts the development of the region with a wealth of information, including the building of the railroads and bustling mill towns; the daily lives of lumberjacks, loggers, river-drivers, and jam-breakers; and the final devastation of the forests.

“An excellent contribution to the regional history and historical geography of the Upper Great Lakes area and the upper Mississippi Valley.” —Geographical Review

Agnes M. Larson (1892–1967) was professor of history at St. Olaf College.

Bradley J. Gills is adjunct professor of history at Grand Valley State University.

[more]
cover of The White River Chronicles of S. C. Turnbo: Man and Wildlife on the Ozarks Frontier

The White River Chronicles of S. C. Turnbo

Man and Wildlife on the Ozarks Frontier

James Keefe

University of Arkansas Press, 1999

This highly readable folklore collection highlights the most representative and evocative tales in the twenty-five hundred pages of backwoods stories collected by Silas Tunbo toward the end of the last century. Turnbo and his informants, antebellum Ozarks natives, believed that the legends of the hunt were, as William Faulkner would write, “the best of all breathing and forever the best of all listening.”

With no apology, the first settlers on the southern frontiers became predators in their own environment. They embraced blood sport and sought its rewards at every turn. The chase promised them a sureness of profit more predictable than land speculation, timbering, or commercial agriculture.

These early opportunists believed that the greatest natural resource along the lush White River drainages in Missouri and Arkansas was large game. Although surrounded by  living waters, climax forests, and luxuriant grasses, the tellers of Turnbo’s stories only incidentally made mention of flora. Silas Turnbo and his  informants were fascinated by animals and the settlers’ ongoing relationship with them—a relationship often defined by contents for supremacy.

Significantly, Tunbo’s education included only a few years in subscription schools of the 1850s. His writing is direct and in the idiom of hte Ozarks, including spellings that are occasionally whimsical, perfectly befitting these “fireside stories” of the great outdoor drama of the southern frontiers.

[more]
cover of The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption

The White Savior Film

Content, Critics, and Consumption

Matthew Hughey

Temple University Press, 2014

The cinematic trope of the white savior film-think of Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, or Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai--features messianic characters in unfamiliar or hostile settings discovering something about themselves and their culture in the process of saving members of other races from terrible fates.

 

In The White Savior Film, Matthew Hughey provides a cogent, multipronged analysis of this subgenre of films to investigate the underpinnings of the Hollywood-constructed images of idealized (and often idealistic) white Americans.

 

Hughey considers the production, distribution, and consumption of white savior films to show how the dominant messages of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption are perceived by both critics and audiences. Examining the content of fifty films, nearly 3,000 reviews, and interviews with viewer focus groups, he accounts for the popularity of this subgenre and its portrayal of "racial progress."

 

The White Savior Film shows how we as a society create and understand these films and how they reflect the political and cultural contexts of their time. 

[more]
cover of The White Welfare State: The Racialization of U.S. Welfare Policy

The White Welfare State

The Racialization of U.S. Welfare Policy

Deborah E. Ward

University of Michigan Press, 2005

The White Welfare State challenges common misconceptions of the development of U.S. welfare policy. Arguing that race has always been central to welfare policy-making in the United States, Deborah Ward breaks new ground by showing that the Mothers' Pensions--the Progressive-Era precursors to modern welfare programs--were premised on a policy of racial discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Ward's rigorous and thoroughly documented analysis demonstrates that the creation and implementation of the mothers' pensions program was driven by debates about who "deserved" social welfare and not who needed it the most.

"In The White Welfare State, Deborah Ward assembles a powerful array of documentary and statistical evidence to reveal the mechanisms, centrality, and deep historical continuity of racial exclusion in modern 'welfare' provision in the United States. Bringing unparalleled scrutiny to the provisions and implementation of state-level mothers' pensions, she argues persuasively that racialized patterns of welfare administration were firmly entrenched in this Progressive Era legislation, only to be adopted and reinforced in the New Deal welfare state. With rigorous and clear-eyed analysis, she pushes us to confront the singular role of race in welfare's development, from its early 20th-century origins to its official demise at century's end."
--Alice O'Connor, University of California at Santa Barbara

"This is a richly informative and arresting work. The White Welfare State will force a reevaluation of the role racism has played as a fundamental feature in even the most progressive features of the American welfare state. Written elegantly, this book will provoke a wide-ranging discussion among social scientists, historians, and students of public policy."
--Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University

"This book offers an original and absorbing account of early policies that shaped the course of the American welfare state. It extends yet challenges extant interpretations and expands our understanding of the interconnections of race and class issues in the U.S., and American political development more broadly."
--Rodney Hero, University of Notre Dame



[more]
cover of The Whole Library Handbook 5: Current Data, Professional Advice, and Curiosa

The Whole Library Handbook 5

Current Data, Professional Advice, and Curiosa

George M. Eberhart

American Library Association, 2013

[more]
cover of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services

The Whole Library Handbook

Teen Services

Heather Booth

American Library Association, 2014

[more]
cover of The Whole School Library Handbook 2

The Whole School Library Handbook 2

Blanche Woolls

American Library Association, 2013

[more]
cover of The Wilderness Within: American Women Writers and Spiritual Quest

The Wilderness Within

American Women Writers and Spiritual Quest

Kristina K. Groover

University of Arkansas Press, 1999

America’s literature is notably marked by a preoccupation with the spiritual quest. Questing heroes from Huck Finn to Nick Adams have undertaken solitary journeys that pull them away from family and society and into a transformative wilderness that brings them to a new understanding of the spiritual world. Women, however, have not often been portrayed as questing heroes. Bound to home and community, they have been more frequently cast as representatives of that stifling world from which the hero is compelled to flee. Are women in American literary texts thus excluded from spiritual experience?
 
Kristina K. Groover, in examining this question, finds that books by American women writers offer alternative patterns for seeking revelation—patterns which emphasize not solitary journeys, but the sacredness of everyday life. Drawing on the work of feminist theorists and theologians, including Carol Gilligan, Naomi Goldenberg, and Rosemary Ruether, Groover explores the spiritual nature and force of domesticity, community, storytelling, and the garden in the works of such writers as Toni Morrison, Katherine Anne Porter, Kaye Gibbons, and Alice Walker. Ordinary, personal experience in these works becomes a source for spiritual revelation. Wisdom is gained, lessons are learned, and lives are healed not in spite of home and communal ties, but because of them.
 
Thus, American women writers, Groover argues, make alternative literary and spiritual paradigms possible. Similarly, Kristina K. Groover, in this lucid and groundbreaking work, opens up new fields of exploration for any reader interested in women’s spirituality or in the rich, diverse field of American literature.
[more]
cover of The Wildlife of New England: A Viewer's Guide

The Wildlife of New England

A Viewer's Guide

John S. Burk

University of New Hampshire Press, 2011

With practical guidance, helpful tips, and informative overviews of each location, The Wildlife of New England invites you to discover more than 80 wildlife-viewing areas around New England.

• Where are you most likely to spot a moose, black bear, or otter in the wild? 
• On what hilltop can you see thousands of migrating hawks in a single day? 
• Where might you see a basking shark, seal, or sea star?

Experienced nature writer and photographer John S. Burk answers these questions and more in this unique guidebook. Organized by state, each viewing location is discussed in detail, including its natural habitats and their unique features, characteristic species to watch for and when to see them, and recommended trails, auto roads, and driving directions. The Wildlife of New England also offers informative introductions to 60 of the region's iconic animals organized by their natural habitats and shown in stunning photographs, many in color.

[more]
cover of The Will to Win: American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953

The Will to Win

American Military Advisors in Korea, 1946–1953

Bryan R. Gibby

University of Alabama Press, 2012

One of America’s early attempts at nation building - US military advisors' shaping of the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) from 1946 until 1953.

Gibby describes ROKA’s structure, mission, challenges, and successes, thereby linking the South Korean army and their US advisors to the traditional narrative of this “forgotten war.” The work also demonstrates the difficulties inherent in national reconstruction, focusing on barriers in culture and society, and the effects of rapid decolonization combined with intense nationalism and the appeal of communism to East Asia following the destruction of the Japanese empire. Key conclusions include the importance of individual advisors, the significance of the prewar advisory effort, and the depth of the impact these men had on individual Korean units and in a few cases on the entire South Korean army. 

The success or failure of South Korean government in the decade following the end of World War II hinged on the loyalty, strength, and fighting capability of its army, which in turn relied on its American advisors. Gibby argues that without a proficient ROKA, the 1953 armistice, still in effect today, would not have been possible. He reexamines the Korean conflict from its beginning in 1945—particularly Korean politics, military operations, and armed forces—and demonstrates the crucial role the American military advisory program and personnel played to develop a more competent and reliable Korean army.

[more]
cover of The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront

The Williamsburg Avant-Garde

Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront

Cisco Bradley

Duke University Press, 2023

In The Williamsburg Avant-Garde Cisco Bradley chronicles the rise and fall of the underground music and art scene in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn between the late 1980s and the early 2010s. Drawing on interviews, archival collections, musical recordings, videos, photos, and other ephemera, Bradley explores the scene’s social, cultural, and economic dynamics. Building on the neighborhood’s punk DIY approach and aesthetic, Williamsburg's free jazz, postpunk, and noise musicians and groups---from Mary Halvorson, Zs, and Nate Wooley to Matana Roberts, Peter Evans, and Darius Jones---produced shows in a variety of unlicensed venues as well as in clubs and cafes. At the same time, pirate radio station free103point9 and music festivals made Williamsburg an epicenter of New York’s experimental culture. In 2005, New York’s rezoning act devastated the community as gentrification displaced its participants farther afield in Brooklyn and in Queens. With this portrait of Williamsburg, Bradley not only documents some of the most vital music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; he helps readers better understand the formation, vibrancy, and life span of experimental music and art scenes everywhere.
[more]
cover of The Williwaw War: The Arkansas National Guard in the Aleutians in World War II

The Williwaw War

The Arkansas National Guard in the Aleutians in World War II

Donald Goldstein

University of Arkansas Press, 1992

When the 206th Coast Artillery Regiment of the Arkansas National Guard was called into federal service in January of 1941, few of the soldiers saw this action as anything more than a temporary detour in their lives. The war, after all, was in Europe and Asia and did not seem to involve them; many of the men thought they would serve their one-year enlistment and go home. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that.

The Williwaw War highlights the event sthat shaped the service of Arkansas’s 206th in the Aleutian Islands, including the Japanese strikes on Dutch Harbor on the third and fourth of June 1942, as well as the naval battle of the Komandorski Islands and the recapture of Attu and Kiska.

Written by the noted co-authors of the best-welling books on World War II, The Williwaw War chronicles the efforts of the men of the 206th as they battled terrible weather, overwhelming boredome and deprivation, and the Japanese, who were succesfully attempting to distract the Americans from the main Japanese assault on Midway Island.

[more]
cover of The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900

The Wilsonian Century

U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900

Frank Ninkovich

University of Chicago Press, 1999

For most of this century, American foreign policy was guided by a set of assumptions that were formulated during World War I by President Woodrow Wilson. In this incisive reexamination, Frank Ninkovich argues that the Wilsonian outlook, far from being a crusading, idealistic doctrine, was reactive, practical, and grounded in fear. Wilson and his successors believed it absolutely essential to guard against world war or global domination, with the underlying aim of safeguarding and nurturing political harmony and commercial cooperation among the great powers. As the world entered a period of unprecedented turbulence, Wilsonianism became a "crisis internationalism" dedicated to preserving the benign vision of "normal internationalism" with which the United States entered the twentieth century.

In the process of describing Wilson's legacy, Ninkovich reinterprets most of the twentieth century's main foreign policy developments. He views the 1920s, for example, not as an isolationist period but as a reversion to Taft's Dollar Diplomacy. The Cold War, with its faraway military interventions, illustrates Wilsonian America's preoccupation with achieving a cohesive world opinion and its abandonment of traditional, regional conceptions of national interest.

The Wilsonian Century offers a striking alternative to traditional interest-based interpretations of U.S. foreign policy. In revising the usual view of Wilson's contribution, Ninkovich shows the extraordinary degree to which Wilsonian ideas guided American policy through a century of conflict and tension.
[more]
cover of The Wind

The Wind

By Dorothy Scarborough

University of Texas Press, 1979

The Wind stirred up a fury among Texas readers when it was first published in 1925.

This is the story of Letty, a delicate girl who is forced to move from lush Virginia to desolate West Texas. The numbing blizzards, the howling sand storms, and the loneliness of the prairie all combine to undo her nerves. But it is the wind itself, a demon personified, that eventually drives her over the brink of madness.

While the West Texas Chamber of Commerce rose up in anger over this slander of their state, Dorothy Scarborough's depiction of the cattle country around Sweetwater during the drought of the late 1880s is essentially accurate. Her blend of realistic description, authentic folklore, and a tragic heroine, bound together by a supernatural theme, is unique in Southwestern literature. As a story by and about a woman, The Wind is a rarity in the early chronicles of the cattle industry. It is also one of the first novels to deal realistically with the more negative aspects of the West.

Sylvia Ann Grider's foreword reports on the life and work of Dorothy Scarborough, a native Texan and a well-respected scholar.

[more]
cover of The Winter Sailor: Francis R. Stebbins on Florida's Indian River, 1878-1888

The Winter Sailor

Francis R. Stebbins on Florida's Indian River, 1878-1888

Edited by Carolyn Frances Baker Lewis

University of Alabama Press, 2004

A unique guide to Florida's frontier history along Indian River.

The Winter Sailor is a historical adventure that details the yearly winter travels of Francis R. Stebbins to Florida's Indian River. Stebbins, a writer from Michigan, visited Florida in March of 1878 and became entranced by its pristine beauty. Subsequently, Stebbins and his traveling companions made annual visits to Indian River—until 1888 when tragedy struck and ended Stebbins' yearly journeys.

Being an observant traveler, Stebbins began a series of descriptive articles for his hometown newspaper that chronicled his journeys to the Indian River area. Stebbins's articles tell of his own personal experiences during his leisurely visits, which included such activities as hunting and fishing, studying the natural surroundings, and excavating Indian mounds. What Stebbins enjoyed most was sailing down the river interviewing townspeople and examining local attractions as he went. His articles also detail the lifestyle of the region, food, fashion, industry, history, environment, and changes that occurred over time. Stebbins's articles not only entertained and informed but also became a travelogue for his readers. He inspired northern travelers to go south and visit Florida, which contributed to the beginnings of large-scale tourism in the region. 

The Winter Sailor combines Stebbins's 49 articles along with three by his companions, to provide an enjoyable, historical guide. Unique among 19th-century travelogues, this fascinating look into Florida's past documents a decade of change to the Indian River wilderness and becomes Stebbins's gift to the present. 
 

[more]
cover of The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age

The Wired City

Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age

Dan Kennedy

University of Massachusetts Press, 2013

In The Wired City, Dan Kennedy tells the story of the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit community website in Connecticut that is at the leading edge of reinventing local journalism. Through close attention to city government, schools, and neighborhoods, and through an ongoing conversation with its readers, the Independent's small staff of journalists has created a promising model of how to provide members of the public with the information they need in a self-governing society.

Although the Independent is the principal subject of The Wired City, Kennedy examines a number of other online news projects as well, including nonprofit organizations such as Voiceof San Diego and the Connecticut Mirror and for-profit ventures such as the Batavian, Baristanet, and CT News Junkie. Where legacy media such as major city newspapers are cutting back on coverage, entrepreneurs are now moving in to fill at least some of the vacuum.

The Wired City includes the perspectives of journalists, activists, and civic leaders who are actively re-envisioning how journalism can be meaningful in a hyperconnected age of abundant news sources. Kennedy provides deeper context by analyzing the decline of the newspaper industry in recent years and, in the case of those sites choosing such a path, the uneasy relationship between nonprofit status and the First Amendment.

At a time of pessimism over the future of journalism, The Wired City offers hope. What Kennedy documents is not the death of journalism but rather the uncertain and sometimes painful early stages of rebirth.
[more]
cover of The Wisconsin Capitol: Stories of a Monument and Its People

The Wisconsin Capitol

Stories of a Monument and Its People

Michael Edmonds

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017

On the occasion of the Capitol’s centennial in 2017, this book tells the remarkable story of the building—in all its incarnations—and the people who made history beneath its dome. The book covers the creation of the territorial capitol in 1837, the construction of the second capitol in the 1860s (and the fire that almost completely destroyed it in 1904), the eleven-year construction project that completed the third capitol in 1917, and the extensive conservation project of the 1990s that restored the building to its grandeur. Supporting the framework of this architectural history are colorful stories about the people who shaped Wisconsin from within the Capitol—attorneys, senators, and governors (from Henry Dodge to Scott Walker), as well as protesters, reformers, secretaries, tour guides, custodians, and even Old Abe, the Capitol’s resident eagle. Combining historical photographs with modern, full-color architectural photos, The Wisconsin Capitol provides fascinating details about the building, while also emphasizing the importance of the Capitol in Wisconsin’s storied history.

[more]
cover of The Wisconsin Historical Society: Collecting, Preserving, and Sharing Stories Since 1846

The Wisconsin Historical Society

Collecting, Preserving, and Sharing Stories Since 1846

John Zimm

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014

Explore the storied history of this grand Wisconsin treasure – the Wisconsin Historical Society, older than the state itself. From the Society’s earliest days as pioneers worked to record history even as it was happening, to its struggles to weather the Great Depression, and its landmark efforts to record the most important social and political movements of our times. From its very start, the Society has worked to “treasure up” the stories of people from every walk of life, in every corner of the state. The story behind the Wisconsin Historical Society is a uniquely Wisconsin story – one that belongs to all who call Wisconsin home.
[more]
cover of The Wisconsin Story: 150 People, Places, and Turning Points that Shaped the Badger State

The Wisconsin Story

150 People, Places, and Turning Points that Shaped the Badger State

Dennis McCann

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2019

The Wisconsin Story: 150 People, Places, and Turning Points that Shaped the Badger State offers readers engaging vignettes about everything Wisconsin. From portraits of significant figures like Robert and Belle La Follette, Golda Meir, and Edna Ferber, to stories of important events like the Black Hawk War, 1960s campus protests, and oleo smuggling, The Wisconsin Story takes readers on a fun and informative ride all across the Badger State. Where was Calvin Coolidge’s summer White House? What was the “anti-corset resolution?” And why was a cow named Ollie milked on an airplane? Award-winning newspaper columnist Dennis McCann’s talent for distilling complex subjects into brief stories that pack a punch makes this collection the perfect answer to the question “what makes Wisconsin, Wisconsin?”
[more]
cover of The Wisconsin: River of a Thousand Isles

The Wisconsin

River of a Thousand Isles

August Derleth

University of Wisconsin Press, 1985

A classic account of the Wisconsin River's early exploration by French traders and Jesuit priests through the 1940s. Mixing folklore and legend, Derleth tells of the Winnebago, Sauk, and Fox peoples; of lumberjacks, farmers, miners, and preachers; of ordinary folks and famous figures such as the Ringling Brothers, Chief Blackhawk, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Zona Gale.
[more]
cover of The Woman I Am: Southern Baptist Women's Writings, 1906–2006

The Woman I Am

Southern Baptist Women's Writings, 1906–2006

Melody Maxwell

University of Alabama Press, 2014

Melody Maxwell’s The Woman I Am analyzes the traditional, progressive, and potential roles female Southern Baptist writers and editors portrayed for Southern Baptist women from 1906 to 2006, particularly in the area of missions.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) represents the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, yet Southern Baptist women’s voices have been underreported in studies of American religion and culture. In The Woman I Am, Melody Maxwell explores how female Southern Baptist writers and editors in the twentieth century depicted changing roles for women and responded to the tensions that arose as Southern Baptist women assumed leadership positions, especially in the areas of missions and denominational support.

Given access to a century of primary sources and archival documents, Maxwell writes, as did many of her subjects, in a style that deftly combines the dispassionate eye of an observer with the multidimensional grasp of a participant. She examines magazines published by Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), an auxiliary to the SBC: Our Mission Fields (1906–1914), Royal Service (1914–1995), Contempo (1970–1995), and Missions Mosaic (1995–2006). In them, she traces how WMU writers and editors perceived, constructed, and expanded the lives of southern women.

Showing ingenuity and resiliency, these writers and editors continually, though not always consciously, reshaped their ideal of Christian womanhood to better fit the new paths open to women in American culture and Southern Baptist life. Maxwell’s work demonstrates that Southern Baptists have transformed their views on biblically sanctioned roles for women over a relatively short historical period.

How Southern Baptist women perceive women’s roles in their churches, homes, and the wider world is of central importance to readers interested in religion, society, and gender in the United States. The Woman I Am is a tour de force that makes a lasting contribution to the world’s understanding of Southern Baptists and to their understanding of themselves.
[more]
cover of The Woman I Was Not Born To Be: A Transsexual Journey

The Woman I Was Not Born To Be

A Transsexual Journey

Aleshia Brevard

Temple University Press, 2001

Told with humor and flair, this is the autobiography of one transsexual's wild ride from boyhood as Alfred Brevard ("Buddy") Crenshaw in rural Tennessee to voluptuous female entertainer in Hollywood. Aleshia Brevard, as she is now known, underwent transitional surgery in Los Angeles in 1962, one of the first such operations in the United States. (The famous sexual surgery pioneer Harry Benjamin himself broke the news to Brevard's parents.)

Under the stage name Lee Shaw, Brevard worked as a drag queen at Finocchio's, a San Francisco club, doing Marilyn Monroe impersonations. (Like Marilyn, she sought romance all the time and had a string of entanglements with men.) Later, she worked as a stripper in Reno and as a Playboy Bunny at the Sunset Strip hutch.

After playing opposite Don Knotts in the movie The Love God, Brevard appeared in other films and broke into TV as a regular on the Red Skelton Show. She created the role of Tex on the daytime soap opera One Life To Live. As a woman, Brevard returned to teach theater at East Tennessee State, the same university she had attended as a boy.

This memoir is a rare pre-Women's Movement account of coming to terms with gender identity. Brevard writes frankly about the degree to which she organized her life around pleasing men, and how absurd it all seems to her now.
[more]
cover of The Woman in Battle: The Civil War Narrative of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Cuban Woman and Confederate Soldier

The Woman in Battle

The Civil War Narrative of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Cuban Woman and Confederate Soldier

Loreta Janeta Velazquez

University of Wisconsin Press, 2003

A Cuban woman who moved to New Orleans in the 1850s and eloped with her American lover, Loreta Janeta Velazquez fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy as the cross-dressing Harry T. Buford. As Buford, she single-handedly organized an Arkansas regiment; participated in the historic battles of Bull Run, Balls Bluff, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh; romanced men and women; and eventually decided that spying as a woman better suited her Confederate cause than fighting as a man. In the North, she posed as a double agent and worked to traffic information, drugs, and counterfeit bills to support the Confederate cause. She was even hired by the Yankee secret service to find "the woman . . . traveling and figuring as a Confederate agent"—Velazquez herself.

Originally published in 1876 as The Woman in Battle, this Civil War narrative offers Velazquez’s seemingly impossible autobiographical account, as well as a new critical introduction and glossary by Jesse Alemán. Scholars are divided between those who read the book as a generally honest autobiography and those who read it as mostly fiction. According to Alemán’s critical introduction, the book also reads as pulp fiction, spy memoir, seduction narrative, travel literature, and historical account, while it mirrors the literary conventions of other first-person female accounts of cross-dressing published in the United States during wartime, dating back to the Revolutionary War. Whatever the facts are, this is an authentic Civil War narrative, Alemán concludes, that recounts how war disrupts normal gender roles, redefines national borders, and challenges the definition of identity.
[more]
cover of The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory

The Woman in the Zoot Suit

Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory

Catherine S. Ramírez

Duke University Press, 2009

The Mexican American woman zoot suiter, or pachuca, often wore a V-neck sweater or a long, broad-shouldered coat, a knee-length pleated skirt, fishnet stockings or bobby socks, platform heels or saddle shoes, dark lipstick, and a bouffant. Or she donned the same style of zoot suit that her male counterparts wore. With their striking attire, pachucos and pachucas represented a new generation of Mexican American youth, which arrived on the public scene in the 1940s. Yet while pachucos have often been the subject of literature, visual art, and scholarship, The Woman in the Zoot Suit is the first book focused on pachucas.

Two events in wartime Los Angeles thrust young Mexican American zoot suiters into the media spotlight. In the Sleepy Lagoon incident, a man was murdered during a mass brawl in August 1942. Twenty-two young men, all but one of Mexican descent, were tried and convicted of the crime. In the Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943, white servicemen attacked young zoot suiters, particularly Mexican Americans, throughout Los Angeles. The Chicano movement of the 1960s–1980s cast these events as key moments in the political awakening of Mexican Americans and pachucos as exemplars of Chicano identity, resistance, and style. While pachucas and other Mexican American women figured in the two incidents, they were barely acknowledged in later Chicano movement narratives. Catherine S. Ramírez draws on interviews she conducted with Mexican American women who came of age in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as she recovers the neglected stories of pachucas. Investigating their relative absence in scholarly and artistic works, she argues that both wartime U.S. culture and the Chicano movement rejected pachucas because they threatened traditional gender roles. Ramírez reveals how pachucas challenged dominant notions of Mexican American and Chicano identity, how feminists have reinterpreted la pachuca, and how attention to an overlooked figure can disclose much about history making, nationalism, and resistant identities.

[more]
cover of The Woman's Club of Evanston: A History

The Woman's Club of Evanston

A History

Erin Hvizdak with an epilogue by Kathy Rocklin

Northwestern University Press, 2019

The Woman’s Club of Evanston: A History documents a unique institution. Founded in 1889 by Elizabeth Harbert, the Woman’s Club of Evanston set out to address community needs, in particular those of the most vulnerable, supporting organizations that deal with housing, education, and health issues of women and children. Today its clubhouse, built in 1913 to provide a center for the Club’s activities, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
 
An exemplar of the women’s club movement, over the course of its long history the Woman’s Club has redirected its efforts in service and philanthropy and adjusted its organization in response to the changing needs of its community. The Charitable Foundation of the Woman’s Club of Evanston was established to support programs that provide a continuity of care and education and address gaps in funding for families in need. In 2010, the Harbert Society was created to recognize individuals who support the Woman’s Club of Evanston and to encourage and document planned gifts.
[more]
cover of The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965

The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965

Edited by Carol K. Ingall

Brandeis University Press, 2010

The conventional history of Jewish education in the United States focuses on the contributions of Samson Benderly and his male disciples. This volume tells a different story—the story of the women who either influenced or were influenced by Benderly or his closest friend, Mordecai Kaplan. Through ten portraits, the contributors illuminate the impact of these unheralded women who introduced American Jews to Hebraism and Zionism and laid the foundation for contemporary Jewish experiential education. Taken together, these ten portraits illuminate the important and hitherto unexamined contribution of women to the development of American Jewish education.
[more]
cover of The Women of CourtWatch: Reforming a Corrupt Family Court System

The Women of CourtWatch

Reforming a Corrupt Family Court System

By Carole Bell Ford

University of Texas Press, 2005

Houston was a terrible place to divorce or seek child custody in the 1980s and early 1990s. Family court judges routinely rendered verdicts that damaged the interests of women and children. In some especially shocking cases, they even granted custody to fathers who had been accused of molesting their own children. Yet despite persistent allegations of cronyism, incompetence, sexism, racism, bribery, and fraud, the judges wielded such political power and influence that removing them seemed all but impossible. The family court system was clearly broken, but there appeared to be no way to fix it.

This book recounts the inspiring and courageous story of women activists who came together to oppose Houston's family court judges and whose political action committee, CourtWatch, played a crucial role in defeating five of the judges in the 1994 judicial election. Carole Bell Ford draws on extensive interviews with Florence Kusnetz, the attorney who led the reform effort, and other CourtWatch veterans, as well as news accounts, to provide a full history of the formation, struggles, and successes of a women's grassroots organization that overcame powerful political interests to improve Houston's family courts. More than just a local story, however, this history of CourtWatch provides a model that can be used by activists in other communities in which legal and social institutions have gone astray. It also honors the heroism of Florence Kusnetz, whose commitment to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam ("repairing and improving the world") brought her out of a comfortable retirement to fight for justice for women and children.

[more]
cover of The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster

The Women of Katrina

How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster

Emmanuel David

Vanderbilt University Press, 2012

The transformative event known as "Katrina" exposed long-standing social inequalities. While debates rage about race and class relations in New Orleans and the Katrina diaspora, gender remains curiously absent from public discourse and scholarly analysis. This volume draws on original research and firsthand narratives from women in diverse economic, political, ethnic, and geographic contexts to portray pre-Katrina vulnerabilities, gender concerns in post-disaster housing and assistance, and women's collective struggles to recover from this catastrophe.
[more]
cover of The Women's Joint Congressional Committee and the Politics of Maternalism, 1920-30

The Women's Joint Congressional Committee and the Politics of Maternalism, 1920-30

Jan Doolittle Wilson

University of Illinois Press, 2006

The rise and fall of a feminist reform powerhouse

Jan Doolittle Wilson offers the first comprehensive history of the umbrella organization founded by former suffrage leaders in order to coordinate activities around women's reform. Encompassing nearly every major national women's organization of its time, the Women's Joint Congressional Committee (WJCC) evolved into a powerful lobbying force for the legislative agendas of more than twelve million women. Critics and supporters alike came to recognize it as "the most powerful lobby in Washington." 

Examining the WJCC's most consequential and contentious campaigns, Wilson traces how the group's strategies, rhetoric, and success generated congressional and grassroots support for their far-reaching, progressive reforms. But the committee's early achievements sparked a reaction by big business that challenged and ultimately limited the programs these women envisioned. Using the WJCC as a lens, Wilson analyzes women's political culture during the 1920s. She also sheds new light on the initially successful ways women lobbied for social legislation, the limitations of that process for pursuing class-based reforms, and the enormous difficulties the women soon faced in trying to expand public responsibility for social welfare.

A volume in the series Women in American History, edited by Anne Firor Scott, Susan Armitage, Susan K. Cahn, and Deborah Gray White

[more]
cover of The Wongs of Beloit, Wisconsin

The Wongs of Beloit, Wisconsin

Beatrice McKenzie

University of Wisconsin Press, 2022

Through family interviews, original photographs, and national records, Beatrice Loftus McKenzie traces the many lives of a resilient multigenerational family whose experiences parallel the complicated relationship between America and China in the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, Charles Wong moved from Guangdong Province to the United States and opened the Nan King Lo Restaurant in Beloit, Wisconsin. Soon after, his wife Yee Shee joined him to build the "Chop House" into a local institution and start a family. When the Great Depression hit, the Wongs shared what they had with their neighbors. In 1938, Charles's tragic murder left Yee Shee to raise their seven children—ages one through fourteen—on her own. Rather than return to family property in Hong Kong, she and her children stayed in Beloit, buoyed by the friendships they had forged during the worst parts of the 1930s. 

The Wongs thrived in Beloit despite facing racism and classism, embracing wartime opportunities, education, love, and careers within the U. S. McKenzie's collaboration with descendent Mary Wong Palmer reveals a poignant story of Chinese immigrant life in the Upper Midwest that adds a much-needed Wisconsin perspective to existing literature by and about Asian Americans. 
[more]
cover of The Woodland Southeast

The Woodland Southeast

Edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort

University of Alabama Press, 2002

This collection presents, for the first time, a much-needed synthesis of the major research themes and findings that characterize the Woodland Period in the southeastern United States.

The Woodland Period (ca. 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1000) has been the subject of a great deal of archaeological research over the past 25 years. Researchers have learned that in this approximately 2000-year era the peoples of the Southeast experienced increasing sedentism, population growth, and organizational complexity. At the beginning of the period, people are assumed to have been living in small groups, loosely bound by collective burial rituals. But by the first millennium A.D., some parts of the region had densely packed civic ceremonial centers ruled by hereditary elites. Maize was now the primary food crop. Perhaps most importantly, the ancient animal-focused and hunting-based religion and cosmology were being replaced by solar and warfare iconography, consistent with societies dependent on agriculture, and whose elites were increasingly in competition with one another. This volume synthesizes the research on what happened during this era and how these changes came about while analyzing the period's archaeological record.

In gathering the latest research available on the Woodland Period, the editors have included contributions from the full range of specialists working in the field, highlighted major themes, and directed readers to the proper primary sources. Of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, both professional and amateur, this will be a valuable reference work essential to understanding the Woodland Period in the Southeast.
 

[more]
cover of The Word On The Street: Homeless Men In Las Vegas

The Word On The Street

Homeless Men In Las Vegas

Kurt Borchard

University of Nevada Press, 2007

Just beyond Las Vegas’s neon and fantasy live thousands of homeless people, most of them men. To the millions of visitors who come to Las Vegas each year to enjoy its gambling and entertainment, the city’s homeless people are largely invisible, segregated from tourist areas because it’s “good business.” Now, through candid discussions with homeless men, analysis of news reports, and years of fieldwork, Kurt Borchard reveals the lives and desperation of men without shelter in Las Vegas.

Borchard’s account offers a graphic, disturbing, and profoundly moving picture of life on Las Vegas’s streets, depicting the strategies that homeless men employ in order to survive, from the search for a safe place to sleep at night to the challenges of finding food, maintaining personal hygiene, and finding an acceptable place to rest during a long day on the street.

That such misery and desperation exist in the midst of Las Vegas’s hedonistic tourist economy and booming urban development is a cruel irony, according to the author, and it threatens the city’s future as a prime tourist destination. The book will be of interest to social workers, sociologists, anthropologists, politicians, and all those concerned about changing the misery on the street.

[more]
cover of The Word and Its Witness: The Spiritualization of American Realism

The Word and Its Witness

The Spiritualization of American Realism

Gregory S. Jackson

University of Chicago Press, 2009

“What would Jesus do?” is now a rhetorical fixture, but the phrase was first popularized in the nineteenth century’s best-selling novel In His Steps. Charles Sheldon’s book is part of the vast, but mostly overlooked, history of evangelical culture that began during the Great Awakening. In this groundbreaking study, Gregory S. Jackson reveals the full impact of this tradition by exploring the development of religious media in America.

Jackson shows how the homiletic tradition in Protestant sermons provided a foundation for the development of visual and literary realism. Evangelical preachers and writers used vivid language grounded in everyday life to translate abstract concepts like hell into concrete reality—a key influence on realist authors that brought about the more secular forms of the movement we know today. This emphasis on the sensuous also paved the way for Protestantism’s embrace of new media, evident in the photographs of Jacob Riis as well as the video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

With its remarkable scope and timely insights into the interplay between religion, secularism, and politics, The Word and Its Witness will transform the way we understand American realism and American religion.
[more]
cover of The Word on the Street: Linking the Academy and the Common Reader

The Word on the Street

Linking the Academy and the Common Reader

Harvey Michael Teres

University of Michigan Press, 2010

"The Word On the Street invites humanities scholars to move beyond the classroom and the monograph to share the pleasures of art in ways that engage the intelligence of the common reader, cultivating the critical imagination so vital to American cultural democracy.  Lively and thought-provoking, Teres lays out contemporary debates and wades into them with gusto."
---Nancy Cantor, Syracuse University

"At a moment when questions about the literary, 'bookishness,' and the future of print are being urgently raised, with incessant national attention to the perceived crises of literacy and reading, Teres' thoughtful, broadly democratic, but also tough-minded examination of both 'common readers' and academic readers makes a real contribution to the debate."
---Julie Ellison, University of Michigan

Despite significant changes since the mid-twentieth century in American critical culture---the culture emanating from the serious review of books, ideas, and the arts---it attracts only a small and declining minority of Americans. However productive this culture has been, American society has not approached the realization of Emerson's or Dewey's vision of a highly participatory American cultural democracy. Such a culture requires critics who are read by the average citizen, but the migration of critics and intellectuals from the public to the academy has resulted in fewer efforts to engage with ordinary citizens. The Word on the Street investigates this disjunction between the study of literature in the academy and the interests of the common reader and society at large, arguing the vital importance of publicly engaged scholarship in the humanities. Teres chronicles how the once central function of the humanities professorate---to teach students to appreciate and be inspired by literature---has increasingly been lost to literary and cultural studies in the last thirty years.

The Word on the Street argues for a return to an earlier model of the public intellectual and a literary and cultural criticism that is accessible to ordinary citizens. Along the way, Teres offers an illuminating account of the current problem and potential solutions, with the goal of prompting a future vision of publicly engaged scholarship that resonates with the common reader and promotes an informed citizenry.

Harvey Teres is Associate Professor of English at Syracuse University.

Cover image: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times/Redux

The New Public Scholarship

[more]