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30 books match the query 'Fifty Years'
A Good Long Drive
Fifty Years of Texas Country ReporterBob Phillips
University of Texas Press, 2021
In 2021, Texas Country Reporter celebrates its fiftieth season on the air. Broadcast every week on stations across Texas, it focuses on “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” And at the center of it is Bob Phillips, the show’s creator and host—an erstwhile poor kid from Dallas who ended up with a job that allowed him to rub elbows with sports figures, entertainers, and politicians but who preferred to spend his time on the back roads, listening to less-famous Texans tell their stories.
In this memoir, Phillips tells his own story, from his early days as a reporter and his initial pitch for the show while a student at SMU to his ongoing work at the longest-running independently produced TV show in American television history. As we travel with Phillips on his journey, we meet Willie Nelson and former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry; reflect on memorable, unusual, and challenging show segments; experience the behind-the-scenes drama that goes on in local television; witness the launching of an annual festival; and discover the unbelievable allure of Texas, its culture, and, especially, its people. Spanning generations, A Good Long Drive is proof that life’s journey really is a destination unto itself.
Clear It with Sid!
Sidney R. Yates and Fifty Years of Presidents, Pragmatism, and Public ServiceMichael C. Dorf and George Van Dusen
University of Illinois Press, 2022
Michael C. Dorf and George Van Dusen draw on scores of interviews and unprecedented access to private papers to illuminate the life of an Illinois political icon. Wise, energetic, charismatic, petty, stubborn--Sid Yates presented a complicated character to constituents and colleagues alike. Yet his get-it-done approach to legislation allowed him to bridge partisan divides in the often-polarized House of Representatives. Following Yates from the campaign trail to the negotiating table to the House floor, Dorf and Van Dusen offer a rich portrait of a dealmaker extraordinaire and tireless patriot on a fifty-year journey through postwar American politics.
Cussing Dixie, Loving Dixie
Fifty Years of Commentary by H. Brandt AyersH. Brandt Ayers and Carol Nunnelley
University of Alabama Press, 2015
The decades-long ribbon of prose that spilled from Ayers’s pen captured the epochal milestones of our times, such as the 1965 March on Washington, the civil rights movement, the rise and decay of the New South movement, the South’s transformation from a bulwark of Democratic entropy to a heartland of irascible conservatism, and the election of the republic’s first black president.
Cussing Dixie, Loving Dixie: Fifty Years of Commentary by H. Brandt Ayers includes Ayers’s unforgettable descriptions of the political giants of Alabama’s turbulent twentieth century. Of George Wallace he wrote: “He lost his way in the swamp of racial politics, squandered his great talent for leadership, and, cruelly, has made his most devoted followers bear the consequences.” And Ayers memorably hymned Supreme Court justice Hugo Black as having “made of the Bill of Rights a trumpet which kept calling the nation back to its original purpose.”
Ayers was so known for his passionate crusade for a fair deal for “the plain people of both races” of Alabama that enemies dubbed his family’s newspaper “The Red Star.” A loyal son of Alabama who extolls Southern culture, Ayers unapologetically calls for Alabamians to cast off the moribund ideologies of the past. He jousts against obscurantism itself: “When fear and ignorance snuff out the brains of a man,” he thunders, “he is reduced to the level of a jungle predator—a flexed mass of instincts.”
Writing from a generous heart, Ayers enlivens and enlightens. Eschewing the hifalutin, his artful writing is both accessible to the people and admired by the learned. Far from provincial, his far-ranging eye landed often on global events, and he persuasively frames the state and region as an active front on which key national issues hang.
Ayers ranks among the most prolific and insightful chroniclers of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Alabama. Cussing Dixie, Loving Dixie: Fifty Years of Commentary by H. Brandt Ayers is a monument to his enduring legacy and relevance.
D. H. Lawrence
Fifty Years on FilmLouis K. Greiff
Southern Illinois University Press, 2001
Between 1949 and 1999, the life and works of D. H. Lawrence inspired ten feature films: nine based on works of fiction and one based on biography. In D. H. Lawrence: Fifty Years on Film, Louis K. Greiff examines these films as adaptations, as cultural or historical documents, and as independent works of art.
Significantly, the films were not spread evenly throughout the decades but appeared in three clusters. The first group, or the “black and white,” appeared between 1949 and 1960. With the exception of Marc Allegret’s L’Amant de Lady Chatterley (1955), all celebrate the British common man as a midcentury hero and promote an unmistakable yet never strident postwar ethos that is Marxist in spirit.
The second cluster occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These films show Lawrence’s values as similar to the cultural values of the time—nonconformity, neobohemianism, sexual rebellion, war protest, and the celebration of youth. In his discussion of the third group Greiff explains why, in an un-Lawrentian decade like the 1980s, there was a revival of Lawrence’s works on film.
Greiff also deals with the contributions made by directors Ken Russell and Christopher Miles, both of whom directed Lawrence films of the latter two clusters. He shows how Russell and, to a lesser extent, Miles were responsible for bringing mass audiences in touch with the works of Lawrence.
Greiff’s final and most important goal is to interpret and evaluate the Lawrence films. He looks first at the film as a visual representation of its text, then as an original act of creation and object of art.
Don't Leave Hungry
Fifty Years of Southern Poetry ReviewJames Smith
University of Arkansas Press, 2009
Dutch is Beautiful
Fifty Years of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of MichiganTon Broos, Annemarie Toebosch, and Karla Vandersypen
Michigan Publishing Services, 2019
Dutch is Beautiful tells the story of the fifty years of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. It is an account of the efforts to promote Dutch and Flemish culture and language, as well as a description of how the teaching of Dutch language, literature, history and culture can be a tool to look at a world of diverse identities. It also offers a comprehensive overview of the beginnings of a successful program that included Dutch writers-in-residence, visiting Netherlands professors, cultural and educational events, arts, music, films, conferences and publications. Several alumni of the program look back at their college years with appreciation. Articles and essays on history, Anne Frank, and conversations on colonialism discuss critical and educational views on Dutch and Flemish Studies in past, present and future, when diversity, equity and inclusion are important goals and objectives, and public scholarship and academic activism will be a larger part of the curriculum. This book will inform, entertain, stimulate and impress everyone who is interested in the culture of the Low Countries. The title says it all!
Evoking Newark
Fifty YearsCamilo José Vergara
Rutgers University Press, 2027
Evoking Newark is a systematic photographic documentation of Newark, NJ, from 1977-2024. This project creates a flexible framework for tracing Newark’s evolution. In this ambitious volume, award-winning photographer Camilo José Vergara creates an indelible record of the city, beginning along its most important commercial thoroughfares, such as Broad, Market, Springfield Ave., Clinton Ave., Central Ave., and MLK Jr. Blvd. He also takes a closer look at landmarks as well as more modest buildings whose folksy character caught his eye. As an urban documentary photographer, Vergara frequently returned to re-photograph Newark in order to track changes over time. For almost fifty years, he identified multiple street intersections that were particularly revealing settings for charting developments in the city.
Vergara examines in particular the slow renewal of these main thoroughfares, the demolition of high-rise housing projects, the ruination and clearing of industrial sites, the building of multi-family houses in once-vacant lots, and the construction of skyscrapers and cultural institutions. To complete the project, he added photos of graffiti and murals that comment on local and national events celebrating African American and Hispanic heroes and heroines and memorials remembering the dead. With these efforts at careful documentation, Brick City demonstrates the usefulness of a time-based documentary approach to the study of post-industrial urban areas. The photographs are accompanied by detailed captions about the locations portrayed, and in many cases by Vergara's own observations and transcripts of his interviews with local people as well as overheard conversations. The photos and captions are one way of telling us that “this happened,” and a means of refreshing the memories of viewers who have experienced Newark generations ago--recollections that contribute to their sense of identity.
Fifty Years of "The Battle of Algiers"
Past as PrologueSohail Daulatzai
University of Minnesota Press, 2016
The Battle of Algiers, a 1966 film that poetically captures Algerian resistance to French colonial occupation, is widely considered one of the greatest political films of all time. With an artistic defiance that matched the boldness of the anticolonial struggles of the time, it was embraced across the political spectrum—from leftist groups like the Black Panther Party and the Palestine Liberation Organization to right-wing juntas in the 1970s and later, the Pentagon in 2003. With a philosophical nod to Frantz Fanon, Sohail Daulatzai demonstrates that tracing the film’s afterlife reveals a larger story about how dreams of freedom were shared and crushed in the fifty years since its release. As the War on Terror expands and the “threat” of the Muslim looms, The Battle of Algiers is more than an artifact of the past—it’s a prophetic testament to the present and a cautionary tale of an imperial future, as perpetual war has been declared on permanent unrest.
Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
Fifty Years of Change on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Growth, Development, and Quality of LifeBy Joan B. Anderson and James Gerber
University of Texas Press, 2007
Winner, Book Award, Associaton for Borderland Studies, 2008
The U.S. and Mexican border regions have experienced rapid demographic and economic growth over the last fifty years. In this analysis, Joan Anderson and James Gerber offer a new perspective on the changes and tensions pulling at the border from both sides through a discussion of cross-border economic issues and thorough analytical research that examines not only the dramatic demographic and economic growth of the region, but also shifts in living standards, the changing political climate, and environmental pressures, as well as how these affect the lives of people in the border region.
Creating what they term a Border Human Development Index, the authors rank the quality of life for every U.S. county and Mexican municipio that touches the 2,000-mile border. Using data from six U.S. and Mexican censuses, the book adeptly illustrates disparities in various aspects of economic development between the two countries over the last six decades.
Anderson and Gerber make the material accessible and compelling by drawing an evocative picture of how similar the communities on either side of the border are culturally, yet how divided they are economically. The authors bring a heightened level of insight to border issues not just for academics but also for general readers. The book will be of particular value to individuals interested in how the border between the two countries shapes the debates on quality of life, industrial growth, immigration, cross-border integration, and economic and social development.
Fifty Years of Economic Measurement
The Jubilee of the Conference on Research in Income and WealthEdited series contract is 9894 by Ernst R. Berndt and Jack E. Triplett
University of Chicago Press, 1990
This volume contains papers presented at a conference in May 1988 in Washington, D.C., commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW). The call for papers emphasized assessments of broad topics in economic measurement, both conceptual and pragmatic. The organizers desired (and succeeded in obtaining) a mix of papers that, first, illustrate the range of measurement issues that economics as a science must confront and, second, mark major milestones of CRIW accomplishment. The papers concern prices and output (Griliches, Pieper, Triplett) and also the major productive inputs, capital (Hulten) and labor (Hamermesh). Measures of saving, the source of capital accumulation, are covered in one paper (Boskin); measuring productivity, the source of much of the growth in per capita income, is reviewed in another (Jorgenson). The use of economic data in economic policy analysis and in regulation are illustrated in a review of measures of tax burden (Atrostic and Nunns) and in an analysis of the data needed for environmental regulation (Russell and Smith); the adequacy of data for policy analysis is evaluated in a roundtable discussion (chapter 12) involving four distinguished policy analysts with extensive government experience in Washington and Ottawa.
Fifty Years of Exponent II
Katie Ludlow Rich
Signature Books, 2024
On a sweltering day in June 1974, a group of housewives, graduate students, and young professionals gathered in the Boston suburbs. Their mission: to produce the first issue of Exponent II, a “humble yet sincere” newspaper “poised on the dual platforms of Mormonism and Feminism.” They viewed their work as an act of devotion, not rebellion, and were naïve of the cold reception they would soon receive from LDS Church leaders. Nevertheless, the paper became a national platform connecting Mormon feminists. It provided a vital space for them to question and integrate different aspects of their dual—and sometimes dueling—identities. From the Equal Rights Amendment to queer identity, Exponent II has hosted some of the most urgent conversations of its time while also embracing life’s dailiness.
This comprehensive history and anthology celebrate five decades of Exponent II. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, the authors chronicle the organization’s evolution from a kitchen-table-style newspaper to a quarterly magazine, blog, and annual retreat. Its transformative impact on the lives of its participants stands as a testament to the power of connection, resilience, and community over ideological purity.
Fifty Years of Thomas Mann Studies
A Bibliography of CriticismKlaus Jonas
University of Minnesota Press, 1955
International and Language Education for a Global Future
Fifty Years of U.S. Title VI and Fulbright-Hays ProgramsDavid S. Wiley
Michigan State University Press, 2010
The contributions to this book address the role that the U.S. Department of Education Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs have played in building the largest and highest quality infrastructure in the world for training in languages and other aspects of foreign area knowledge. The volume celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Title VI and associated Fulbright-Hays programs, which have established more than 150 centers of excellence for modern foreign language and area studies and international business education in more than 60 U.S. universities.
The authors review the history of the programs, including their founding and their cumulative impacts on internationalizing the American university at the graduate and undergraduate levels. They review how programs for foreign research, technology for foreign information access, and undergraduate programs have built the foundations of U.S. language-learning materials for use in college courses and government with improved language-learning pedagogies, erected the most distinguished library holdings on foreign countries, supported in-depth research abroad in virtually every nation, and created capacity to teach more than 200 less commonly taught languages.
Is It Still Good to Ya?
Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017Robert Christgau
Duke University Press, 2018
Japan in the World, the World in Japan
Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at MichiganEdited by the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan
University of Michigan Press, 2001
Middletown Families
Fifty Years of Change and ContinuityTheodore Caplow, Bruce A. Chadwick, Howard M. Bahr, Reuben Hill, and Margaret Holmes Williamson
University of Minnesota Press, 1985
Middletown Families was first published in 1985. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Fifty years after publication of Robert and Helen Lloyd's classic studies, Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), the Middletown III Project picked up and continued their exploration of American values and institutions. By duplicating the original studies - in many cases by using the same questions - this team of social scientists attempted to gauge the changes that had taken place in Muncie, Indiana, since the 1920s. In Middletown Families, the first book to emerge from this project, Theodore Caplow and his colleagues reveal that many widely discussed changes in family life, such as the breakdown of traditional male/female roles, increased conflict between parents and children, and disintegration of extended family ties, are more perceived than actual. Their evidence suggests that the Middletown family seems to be stronger and more tolerant, with closer bonds and greater marital satisfaction than fifty years ago. Instead of breaking it apart, the pressures of modern society may have drawn the family closer together.
Middletown families
fifty years of change and continuityTheodore. Caplow
University of Minnesota Press, 1982
National Parks Forever
Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for IndependenceJonathan B. Jarvis and T. Destry Jarvis
University of Chicago Press, 2022
The US National Parks, what environmentalist and historian Wallace Stegner called America’s “best idea,” are under siege. Since 1972, partisan political appointees in the Department of the Interior have offered two conflicting views of the National Park Service (NPS): one vision emphasizes preservation and science-based decision-making, and another prioritizes economic benefits and privatization. These politically driven shifts represent a pernicious, existential threat to the very future of our parks.
For the past fifty years, brothers Jonathan B. and T. Destry Jarvis have worked both within and outside NPS as leaders and advocates. National Parks Forever interweaves their two voices to show how our parks must be protected from those who would open them to economic exploitation, while still allowing generations to explore and learn in them. Their history also details how Congress and administration appointees have used budget and staffing cuts to sabotage NPS’s ability to manage the parks and even threatened their existence. Drawing on their experience, Jarvis and Jarvis make a bold and compelling proposal: that it is time for NPS to be removed from the Department of the Interior and made an independent agency, similar to the Smithsonian Institution, giving NPS leaders the ability to manage park resources and plan our parks’ protection, priorities, and future.
National Parks Forever
Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for IndependenceJonathan B. Jarvis and T. Destry Jarvis
University of Chicago Press, 2022
This is an auto-narrated audiobook edition of this book.
Two leaders of the National Park Service provide a front-row seat to the disastrous impact of partisan politics over the past fifty years—and offer a bold vision for the parks’ future.
The US National Parks, what environmentalist and historian Wallace Stegner called America’s “best idea,” are under siege. Since 1972, partisan political appointees in the Department of the Interior have offered two conflicting views of the National Park Service (NPS): one vision emphasizes preservation and science-based decision-making, and another prioritizes economic benefits and privatization. These politically driven shifts represent a pernicious, existential threat to the very future of our parks.
For the past fifty years, brothers Jonathan B. and T. Destry Jarvis have worked both within and outside NPS as leaders and advocates. National Parks Forever interweaves their two voices to show how our parks must be protected from those who would open them to economic exploitation, while still allowing generations to explore and learn in them. Their history also details how Congress and administration appointees have used budget and staffing cuts to sabotage NPS’s ability to manage the parks and even threatened their existence. Drawing on their experience, Jarvis and Jarvis make a bold and compelling proposal: that it is time for NPS to be removed from the Department of the Interior and made an independent agency, similar to the Smithsonian Institution, giving NPS leaders the ability to manage park resources and plan our parks’ protection, priorities, and future.
Roshara Journal
Chronicling Four Seasons, Fifty Years, and 120 AcresJerry Apps
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2016
A photographic diary of a small Midwestern farm and the family who’ve made it their home
In Roshara Journal, father-and-son team Jerry and Steve Apps share the monthly happenings at their family’s farm in central Wisconsin. Featuring Steve’s stunning photos and fifty years of Jerry’s journal entries, Roshara Journal captures the changes—both from month to month and over the decades—on the landscape and farmstead.
The Apps family has owned Roshara since 1966. There they nurture a prairie restoration and pine plantation, maintain a large garden that feeds three generations, observe wildlife species by the dozens, and support a population of endangered butterflies. In documenting life on this piece of land, Jerry and Steve remind us how, despite the pace and challenges of modern life, the seasons continue to influence our lives in ways large and small. Jerry explains that his journal entries become much more than mere observations: "It seems that when I write about something—a bur oak tree, for example—that old tree becomes a part of me. . . . Writing takes me to a place that goes beyond observation and understanding, a place filled with feeling and meaning."
In the tradition of Bernd Heinrich in Maine, Barry Lopez in the Canadian Arctic, and Aldo Leopold just an hour down the road in Baraboo, Jerry and Steve Apps combine observation, experience, and reflection to tell a profound story about one place in the world.
Speed Trap
eighty robberies and fifty yearsWilliam W. Allen
Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2012
Allen describes the exhilaration of his youthful rule-breaking behavior
as well as the crushing reality that followed.”
– William Stephens, Ph.D.
Split Britches
Fifty Years OnPeggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, Edited by Benjamin Gillespie
University of Michigan Press, 2027
What does it mean to sustain a creative life over fifty years? Split Britches: Fifty Years On offers an intimate look at the enduring collaboration of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, the artists behind the groundbreaking performance troupe Split Britches. The collection highlights Split Britches’ enduring queer and feminist legacies, tracing how their distinctive butch/femme lesbian aesthetic and collaborative performance practice have evolved over five decades and nearly thirty original productions. It foregrounds their shift toward increasingly autobiographical and introspective work, while also situating their later performances within key theatrical, historical, and critical frameworks–paying particular attention to issues of embodiment, aging, the archive, and queer temporality. Bringing together performance scripts, candid interviews, production photos, accessible essays, and video documentation, Split Britches: Fifty Years On demonstrates how Shaw and Weaver pull from the past in order to critique the present. For scholars, artists, and students, the volume's unique combination of primary texts, critical essays, and multimedia resources makes it an essential volume that considers theatre scholarship and practice, queer and feminist discourses, and the evolution of creativity with age and time.
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Fifty Years of the Pseudepigrapha Section at the SBLMatthias Henze
SBL Press, 2019
A history of research that changed scholarly perceptions of early Judaism
This collection of essays by some of the most important scholars in the fields of early Judaism and Christianity celebrates fifty years of the study of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha at the Society of Biblical Literature and the pioneering scholars who introduced the Pseudepigrapha to the Society. Since its early days as a breakfast meeting in 1969, the Pseudepigrapha Section has provided a forum for a rigorous discussion of these understudied texts and their relevance for Judaism and Christianity. Contributors recount the history of the section's beginnings, critically examine the vivid debates that shaped the discipline, and challenge future generations to expand the field in new interdisciplinary directions.
Features:
- Reflections from early members of the Pseudepigrapha Group
- Essays that examine a methodological shift from capturing and preserving traditions to exploring the intellectual and social world of Jewish antiquity
- Evaluations of past interactions with adjacent fields and the larger academic world
The Postcolonial State in Africa
Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010Crawford Young
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012
Young identifies three cycles of hope and disappointment common to many of the African states (including those in North Africa) over the last half-century: initial euphoria at independence in the 1960s followed by disillusionment with a lapse into single-party autocracies and military rule; a period of renewed confidence, radicalization, and ambitious state expansion in the 1970s preceding state crisis and even failure in the disastrous 1980s; and a phase of reborn optimism during the continental wave of democratization beginning around 1990. He explores in depth the many African civil wars—especially those since 1990—and three key tracks of identity: Africanism, territorial nationalism, and ethnicity.
Only more recently, Young argues, have the paths of the fifty-three African states begun to diverge more dramatically, with some leading to liberalization and others to political, social, and economic collapse—outcomes impossible to predict at the outset of independence.
“This book is the best volume to date on the politics of the last 50 years of African independence.”—International Affairs
“The book shares Young’s encyclopedic knowledge of African politics, providing in a single volume a comprehensive rendering of the first 50 years of independence. The book is sprinkled with anecdotes from his vast experience in Africa and that of his many students, and quotations from all of the relevant literature published over the past five decades. Students and scholars of African politics alike will benefit immensely from and enjoy reading The Postcolonial State in Africa.”—Political Science Quarterly
“The study of African politics will continue to be enriched if practitioners pay homage to the erudition and the nobility of spirit that has anchored the engagement of this most esteemed doyen of Africanists with the continent.”—African History Review
“The book’s strongest attribute is the careful way that comparative political theory is woven into historical storytelling throughout the text. . . . Written with great clarity even for all its detail, and its interwoven use of theory makes it a great choice for new students of African studies.”—Australasian Review of African Studies
The Rational Public
Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy PreferencesBenjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro
University of Chicago Press, 1992
The authors unequivocally demonstrate that, notwithstanding fluctuations in the opinions of individuals, collective public opinion is remarkably coherent: it reflects a stable system of values shared by the majority of Americans and it responds sensitively to new events, arguments, and information reported in the mass media. While documenting some alarming case of manipulation, Page and Shapiro solidly establish the soundness and value of collective political opinion. The Rational Public provides a wealth of information about what we as a nation have wanted from government, how we have changed our minds over the years, and why.
For anyone interested in the short- and long-term trends in Americans' policy preferences, or eager to learn what Americans have thought about issues ranging from racial equality to the MX missile, welfare to abortion, this book offers by far the most sophisticated and detailed treatment available.
Through a Green Lens
Fifty Years of Writing for NatureRobert Michael Pyle
Oregon State University Press, 2016
Thus began a life path devoted to natural history, nature conservation, and the language, and how they all meet in the literature of the land. Working in a succession of far-flung jobs in biological conservation, teaching, and field research, Pyle eventually threw in a regular paycheck in favor of a freelance existence devoted to his mutual passions for nature study and writing.
All along, he wrote, and wrote: to date, twenty books and hundreds of essays, stories, papers, and poems. But it is the occasional prose--the deeply personal essays that explored and indulged his immediate fascinations--that make up this selection of never-before-collected testimonies. Beginning with that 1965 cri de coeur written on mountain motel stationery, Through a Green Lens ranges across broad territory of topic, vehicle, geography, populace, and politics, concluding with powerful forewords for two 2015 books, Earth and Eros and Nerves and Numbers. Pyle's half-century long view, acute and uncommonly attuned to the physical world, gives readers a remarkable window on the natural setting of our life and times.
Walter's Perspective
A Memoir of Fifty Years in Chicago TV NewsWalter Jacobson, Foreword by Bill Kurtis
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012
This highly readable book provides a unique glimpse into the rough-and-tumble Chicago news business as seen through the eyes of one of its legendary players. From his first news job working as a legman for Daily News columnist Jack Mabley in the 1950s to his later role as a news anchor and political commentator at CBS-owned WBBM, Walter Jacobson battled along the front lines of an industry undergoing dramatic changes. While it is ultimately Jacobson’s story, a memoir of a long and distinguished (and sometimes highly controversial) career, it is also an insider’s account of the inner workings of Chicago television news, including the ratings games, the process of defining news and choosing stories, the media’s power and its failures, and the meddling by corporate and network executives.
As a reporter, Jacobson was regularly contentious and confrontational. He was fired on a number of occasions and was convicted of libeling tobacco company Brown and Williamson, resulting in a multimillion-dollar federal court judgment against him and CBS. Yet it was this gutsy attitude that put him at the top of the news game. With an engaging writing style, Jacobson recollects his interactions with Chicago mayors Richard J. and Richard M. Daley, Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, and Rahm Emanuel; recounts his coverage of such fascinating news stories as the violent 1968 Democratic National Convention and the execution of convicted mass murderer John Wayne Gacy; and recalls his reporting on and interviews with Louis Farrakhan, governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, and Barack Obama. More than a memoir, Walter’s Perspective is the extraordinary journey of one reporter whose distinctive career followed the changing face of Chicago’s local news.
Welcome to Capitol Hill
Fifty Years of Scandal in Tennessee PoliticsJoel Ebert and Erik Schelzig
Vanderbilt University Press, 2023
Veteran political reporters Joel Ebert and Erik Schelzig draw from interviews, archival documents, and never-before-seen federal investigative files to provide readers with a handy resource about the wrongdoings of our elected officials.
Welcome to Capitol Hill
Fifty Years of Scandal in Tennessee PoliticsJoel Ebert and Erik Schelzig
Vanderbilt University Press, 2024
Veteran political reporters Joel Ebert and Erik Schelzig draw from interviews, archival documents, and never-before-seen federal investigative files to provide readers with a handy resource about the wrongdoings of our elected officials.
Where the Hood At?
Fifty Years of Change in Black NeighborhoodsMichael C. Lens
Russell Sage Foundation, 2024
Hip hop music was born out of Black neighborhoods in the 1970s and has evolved alongside them. In Where the Hood At? Lens uses rap’s growth and influence across the country to frame discussions about the development and conditions of Black neighborhoods. Lens finds that social and economic improvement in Black neighborhoods since the 1970s has been slow. However, how well Black neighborhoods are doing varies substantially by region. Overall, Black neighborhoods in the South are doing well and growing quickly. Washington D.C. and Atlanta, in particular, stand out as centers of Black affluence. Black neighborhoods in the Midwest and the Rust Belt, on the other hand, are particularly disadvantaged. The welfare of Black neighborhoods is related not only to factors within neighborhoods, such as the unemployment rate, but also to characteristics of the larger metropolitan area, such as overall income inequality. Lens finds that while gentrification is increasingly prevalent, it is growing slowly, and is not as pressing an issue as public discourse would make it seem. Instead, concentrated disadvantage is by far the most common and pressing problem in Black neighborhoods.
Lens argues that Black neighborhoods represent urban America’s greatest policy failures, and that recent housing policies have only had mild success. He provides several suggestions for policies with the goal of uplifting Black neighborhoods. One radical proposal is enacting policies and programs, such as tax breaks for entrepreneurs or other small business owners, that would encourage Black Americans to move back to the South. Black Americans migrating South would have a better chance at moving to an advantaged Black neighborhood as improving neighborhood location is higher when moving across regions. It would also help Black Americans expand their political and economic power. He also suggests a regional focus for economic development policies, particularly in the Midwest where Black neighborhoods are struggling the most. One way to boost economic development would be to move federal agencies to the area. He also calls for building more affordable housing in Black suburbs. Black poverty is lower in suburbs than in central cities, so increasing housing in Black suburbs would allow Black households to relocate to more advantaged neighborhoods, which research has shown leads to improved life outcomes.
Where the Hood At? is a remarkable and comprehensive account of Black neighborhoods that helps us to better understand the places and conditions that allow them flourish or impedes their advancement.