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A 1960s American folk music legend weaves stories of a girlhood on “the singing streets” of Ireland, marriage in Scotland, and arrival in America

W. Raymond Wood played a leading role in the early days of Great Plains archaeology. In A White-Bearded Plainsman, he tells how his own career emerged, as the discipline of Plains archaeology developed during the post-World War II era. Readers will learn of the childhood influences that lead Wood to pursue the path of archaeologist, and of the events and people that shaped his professional life. In addition to telling Wood’s personal story, the book provides an intellectual history of the discipline of mid-continental archaeology over the last half century. It will thus be valuable to students and scholars in the field, as it describes how the paradigms in Plains and midwestern prehistory have changed over time. To understand the discipline, one must understand the cultural and intellectual underpinnings that shaped it. Wood’s book helps map for a new generation of archaeologists from whence they’ve come, and his role in the developments along the way.

John le Carré is viewed by many critics as one of the best spy and espionage novel writers. His most famous works are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and The Little Drummer Girl.
    Peter Wolfe has produced an informative study of le Carré’s works, showing how le Carré’s five years in the Service (British Intelligence) helped him become a keen observer, social historian, and expert in bureaucratic politics. He has supplanted the technological flair marking much of today's spy fiction with moral complexity and psychological depth. He shows us what spies are like, how they feel about spying, and how spying affects their minds and hearts.

"I am Felipe Garcia Villamil" begins Drumming for the Gods, the life history of the Afro-Cuban artist whose music has survived both political and personal upheaval. "Balogun for thirty years. Oluana, of Matanzas, Cuba, for about forty years. Omoana for almost forty-five years. OluIyesa [he knows the secrets of the Iyesa drums]." A practitioner of sacred drumming for almost his entire life, Felipe practiced his trade in Cuba both before and after the Revolution and brought it with him to New York, where he continues to play for the gods.

This book focuses on three periods of Felipe's life, each marked by changes in his personal life and by important historical events. The first period covers his formative years during which he received his initial training. Through Felipe's story, we explore the legacy of slavery in Cuba, the nature of Afro-Cuban religions and their musical traditions, and the history of bata drums. The second period covers the critical years of the Cuban Revolution. Here we see the effect of social turmoil both n music and religious practice (santero, palero, and abakua). The third period covers Felipe's life in New York as a refugee/immigrant, and the role of music in rebuilding his identity. Felipe's story illuminates his cultural practices and beliefs as well as the ways in which an individual musician selects and  modifies the elements of his cultural heritage to create a voice that is personal and unique. Felipe not only lives through history but also makes history, shaping an identity that cannot be described as "Cuban immigrant," "Afro-Cuban," "religious drummer," or "santeria initiate," but is composed of all of them.

Through Felipe's experiences, Maria Teresa Velez reveals the interaction between social, political, economic, and cultural forces and an individual's own actions. The professionalization of musicians in Cuba following the Revolution and the plight of Afro-Cuban immigrants in New York are seen as large historical and social problems to which Felipe must personally respond. A noted ethnomusicologist, Velez provides the most insightful and comprehensive English-language study of an individual Cuban religious drummer available.

Drumming for the Gods is a must-read for those interested in ethnomusicology, Caribbean studies, and Afro-Cuban religions and culture.

Robert Morris, a leading figure in postwar American art, is best known as a pioneer of minimalist sculpture, process art, and earthworks. Yet Morris has resisted affiliation with any one movement or style. An extraordinarily versatile artist, he has produced dances, performance pieces, prints, paintings, drawings, and installations, working with materials including plywood, felt, dirt, aluminum, steel mesh, fiberglass, and encaustic. Throughout his career, Morris has written influential critical essays, commenting on his own work as well as that of other artists, and exploring through text many of the theoretical concerns addressed in his artwork—about perception, materiality, space, and the process of artmaking. Have I Reasons presents seventeen of Morris’s essays, six of which have never been published before. Written over the past fifteen years, the essays, along with the volume’s many illustrations, provide an invaluable record of the recent thought of a major American artist.

The writings are arranged chronologically, beginning with “Indiana Street,” a vivid autobiographical account of the artist’s early years in Kansas City, Missouri. Have I Reasons includes reflections on Morris’s own site-specific installations; transcripts of seminars he conducted in conjunction with exhibitions; and the textual element of The Birthday Boy, the two-screen video-and-sound piece he installed at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo’s David. Essays range from original interpretations of Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings and Jasper Johns’ early work to engagements with one of Morris’s most significant interlocutors, the philosopher Donald Davidson. Have I Reasons conveys not only Morris’s enduring deep interest in philosophy and issues of resemblance and representation but also his more recent turn toward directly addressing contemporary social and political issues such as corporate excess and preemptive belligerence.

Jim Bunning began as a $150-a-month rookie in Richmond, Indiana, spent seven years in the minor leagues, and still made it to the Hall of Fame. He pitched a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park, even though the first-base coach was relaying his catcher's signs to the batters, retiring Ted Williams for the final out. Bunning also pitched an historic perfect game against the New York Mets and  performed spectacularly in a succession of All-Star Game appearances.

He was the second pitcher in major league history to win 100 games in each league. The first was CY Young. He was the second pitcher to strike out 1000 in each league; again, only Cy Young beat hims to it. When Bunning retired at the end of the  1971 season, only one man -- Walter Johnson -- had more career strikeouts.

A proud, intensely competitive man, Bunning relished his duels with Ted Williams, Micky Mantle, and other slugging superstars of the day. What he didn't  relish was dealing with sportswriter who didn't do their homework and with baseball leaders whose mismanagement, Bunning felt, jeopardized the game's place in the nation's heart. He waged battles with the likes of former commissioner Peter Ueberroth and club-owner-turned-interim-commissioner Bud Selig.

But Bunning did more than play baseball. He was a driving force in the early years of the Players Association, one of the men responsible for choosing Marvin Miller as head of  the union. Bunning also was a manager in the minor leagues and in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and was even a player's agent for a time. His baseball career behind him, he began a second career in politics. With a huge assist from his wife, Mary, the mother of their nine children, he waged an unsuccessful gubernational campaign in Kentucky and then became a six-term congressman. Bunning is currently running for the U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky.

This is an analysis of the first 10 post—Cold War  novels of one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction.

This book challenges distinctions between “popular” and “serious” literature by recognizing le Carré as one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction, contributing to an overdue reassessment of his literary stature. Le Carré’s ten post–Cold War novels constitute a distinctive subset of his espionage fiction in their response to the momentous changes in geopolitics that began in the 1990s. Through a close reading of these novels, Snyder traces how—amid the “War on Terror” and transnationalism—le Carré weighs what is at stake in this conflict of deeply invested ideologies.

Summer 1948. In the scenic, remote river town of Oregon, Illinois, a young couple visiting the local lovers’ lane is murdered. The shocking crime garners headlines from Portland, Maine, to Long Beach, California. But after a sweeping manhunt, no one is arrested and the violent deaths of Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla fade into time’s indifference.

Fast forward fifty years. Eccentric entrepreneur Michael Arians moves to Oregon, opens a roadhouse, gets elected mayor, and becomes obsessed with the crime. He comes up with a scandalous conspiracy theory and starts to believe that Mary Jane’s ghost is haunting his establishment. He also reaches out to the Chicago Tribune for help.

Arians’s letter falls on the desk of general assignment reporter Ted Gregory. For the next thirteen years, while he ricochets from story to story and his newspaper is deconstructed around him, Gregory remains beguiled by the case of the teenaged telephone operator Mary Jane and twenty-eight-year-old Navy vet Stanley—and equally fascinated by Arians’s seemingly hopeless pursuit of whoever murdered them. Mary Jane’s Ghost is the story of these two odysseys. 

Unique in ethnography, Nurturing Doubt documents the transforming effects of field experiences on a young Mennonite who went to Argentina to work with the Toba, first as a missionary and later as an anthropologist. Elmer Miller insightfully probes the documents--diaries, field journals, and letters--of both his lives, revealing as he does the ways in which his perceptions of the Toba--and theirs of him--changed when his role changed. Deeply affected by an upbringing in which he had been taught that doubting was "sinful," Miller gradually found that he doubted not only the validity of the missionary mandate but also his ethnographic mandate and the whole practice of anthropology. His exploration of how his doubt was transformed from a negative activity into a positive philosophical attitude underscores the richness of his relationships with the Toba. In depicting the move from theological to anthropological discourse, Miller contributes to current debates over the form and purpose of ethnographic investigation and reporting.
 
 

In detailing the relationship of three women filmmakers’ lives and films to the changing institutions of the post-World War II era, Lauren Rabinovitz has created the first feminist social history of the North American avant-garde cinema.
 
At a time when there were few women directors in commercial films, the postwar avant-garde movement offered an opportunity. Rabinovitz argues that avant-garde cinema, open to women because of its marginal status in the art world, included women as filmmakers, organizers, and critics.
 
Focusing on Maya Deren, Shirley Clarke, and Joyce Wieland, Rabinovitz illustrates how women used bold physical images to enhance their work and how each provided entrée to her subversive art while remaining culturally acceptable. She combines archival materials with her own interviews to show how the women’s labor and films, even their identities as women filmmakers, were produced, disseminated, and understood. With a new preface and an updated bibliography, Points of Resistance simultaneously demonstrates the avant-garde’s importance as an organizational network for women filmmakers and the processes by which women remained marginal figures within that network.
 

When Jo Jeffers was a young girl suffering from asthma, she promised herself, "When I grow up, if I ever do, I shall go to Arizona and be a cowboy." She did both, and Ranch Wife tells the story of her life as wife and partner of a rancher in the high country of northeastern Arizona. Here she describes the routines of ranch life and vividly recalls the dust storms, plagues, and other hazards that challenged the young city-bred woman. It offers readers not only an insider's view of a working ranch but also an appreciation of how ranchers' wives help sustain such a rugged enterprise.

In Strong Advocate, Thomas Strong, one of the most successful trial lawyers in Missouri’s history, chronicles his adventures as a contemporary personal injury attorney. Though the profession is held in low esteem by the general public, Strong entered the field with the right motives: to help victims who have been injured by defective products or the negligence of others.

In recent decades, much of the most vital literature written in English has come from the former colonies of Great Britain. But while postcolonial novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, and V. S. Naipaul have been widely celebrated, the achievements of postcolonial poets have been strangely neglected.

In The Hybrid Muse, Jahan Ramazani argues that postcolonial poets have also dramatically expanded the atlas of literature in English, infusing modern and contemporary poetry with indigenous metaphors and creoles. A rich and vibrant poetry, he contends, has issued from the hybridization of the English muse with the long resident muses of Africa, India, and the Caribbean. Starting with the complex case of Ireland, Ramazani closely analyzes the work of leading postcolonial poets and explores key questions about the relationship between poetry and postcolonialism. As inheritors of both imperial and native cultures, poets such as W. B. Yeats, Derek Walcott, Louise Bennett, A. K. Ramanujan, and Okot p'Bitek invent compelling new forms to articulate the tensions and ambiguities of their cultural in-betweeness. They forge hybrid figures, vocabularies, and genres that embody the postcolonial condition.

Engaging an array of critical topics, from the aesthetics of irony and metaphor to the politics of nationalism and anthropology, Ramazani reconceptualizes issues central to our understanding of both postcolonial literatures and twentieth-century poetry. The first book of its kind, The Hybrid Muse will help internationalize the study of poetry, and in turn, strengthen the place of poetry in postcolonial studies.

Lively and unusual art inspired by baseball’s best all-around player.

As much as any other sports figure, Willie Mays embodies the changes that racial integration brought to America’s game fields and its larger culture in the mid-20th century. Playing baseball with grace, skill, flair, and obvious delight, Willie Mays broke color barriers for more than just himself. He combined the ability to stroke majestic home runs while with an equal ability to outrun and catch what would have been home runs for opponents most famously when he turned Vic Wertz’s titantic blast into a long out in the 1954 World Series. As is often said of great players but never more true than in his case, Willie Mays could do it all.

Assembled in this work are 40 representations of how contemporary artists respond to and portray the skill, fame, and sheer love of the game that make Mays so remarkable and memorable. The art includes a broad range of styles and media from impressionistic graphite pencil drawings on paper through realistic Kodachrome photographic prints to expressionistic colored acrylics on canvas or glass. Mike Shannon offers a perceptive introductory essay on Mays’s long career and places the art in the context of his times. First curated as a traveling exhibit to honor Willie Mays’s 75th birthday, the exhibit opened at the Louisville Slugger Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and is currently on tour.