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8 books match the query 'Grit'

cover of Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour

Fashioning America

Grit to Glamour

Michelle Tolini Finamore

University of Arkansas Press, 2022

The companion volume to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s first fashion exhibition, Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour celebrates the history of American attire, from the cowboy boot to the zoot suit. From dresses worn by First Ladies to art-inspired garments to iconic moments in fashion that defined a generation, Fashioning America showcases uniquely American expressions of innovation, spotlighting stories of designers and wearers that center on opportunity and self-invention, and amplifying the voices of those who are often left out of dominant fashion narratives.

With nearly one hundred illustrations of garments and accessories that span two centuries of design, Fashioning America celebrates the achievements of a wide array of makers—especially immigrants, Native Americans, and Black Americans. Incorporating essays by fashion historians, curators, and journalists, this volume takes a fresh look at the country’s fashion history while exploring its close relationship with Hollywood and media in general, illuminating the role that American designers have played in shaping global visual culture and demonstrating why American fashion has long resonated around the world.
 
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cover of Grit and Gold: The Death Valley Jayhawkers of 1849

Grit and Gold

The Death Valley Jayhawkers of 1849

Jean Johnson

University of Nevada Press, 2018

No other Western settlement story is more famous than the Donner Party’s ill-fated journey through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But a few years later and several hundred miles south, another group faced a similar situation just as perilous. Scrupulously researched and documented, Grit and Gold tells the story of the Death Valley Jayhawkers of 1849 and the young men who traveled by wagon and foot from Iowa to the California gold rush.  The Jayhawkers’ journey took them through the then uncharted and unnamed hottest, driest, lowest spot in the continent—now aptly known as Death Valley.

After leaving Salt Lake City to break a road south to the Pacific Coast that would eliminate crossing the snowy Sierra Nevada, the party veered off the Old Spanish Trail in southern Utah to follow a mountaineer’s map portraying a bogus trail that claimed to cut months and hundreds of miles off their route to the gold country. With winter coming, however, they found themselves hopelessly lost in the mountains and dry valleys of southern Nevada and California.  Abandoning everything but the shirts on their backs and the few oxen that became their pitiful meals, they turned their dreams of gold to hopes of survival.

Utilizing William Lorton’s 1849 diary of the trek from Illinois to southern Utah, the reminiscences of the Jayhawkers themselves, the keen memory of famed pioneer William Lewis Manly, and the almost daily diary of Sheldon Young, Johnson paints a lively but accurate portrait of guts, grit, and determination.
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cover of Grit and Ink: An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908–2018

Grit and Ink

An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908–2018

William F. Willingham

Oregon State University Press, 2018

Beneath the 24/7 national news cycle and argument over “fake news,” there is a layer of journalism that communities absolutely depend upon. Grit and Ink offers a rare look inside the financial struggles and family dynamic that has kept a Pacific Northwest publishing group alive for more than a century. The newspapers of the Aldrich-Forrester-Bedford-Brown family depict the histories of towns like Pendleton, Astoria, John Day, Enterprise, and Long Beach, Washington. Written by noted historian William Willingham, Grit and Ink describes threats presented by the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Astoria Fire of 1923, the Great Depression, the Aryan Nation, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, the Digital Revolution, and more.
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cover of Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll

Grit, Noise, and Revolution

The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll

David A. Carson

University of Michigan Press, 2011

". . . a great blow-by-blow account of an exciting and still-legendary scene."
---Marshall Crenshaw

From the early days of John Lee Hooker to the heyday of Motown and beyond, Detroit has enjoyed a long reputation as one of the crucibles of American pop music. In Grit, Noise, and Revolution, David Carson turns the spotlight on those hard-rocking, long-haired musicians-influenced by Detroit's R&B heritage-who ultimately helped change the face of rock 'n' roll.

Carson tells the story of some of the great garage-inspired, blue-collar Motor City rock 'n' roll bands that exemplified the Detroit rock sound: The MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, SRC, the Bob Seger System, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, and Grand Funk Railroad.

An indispensable guide for rock aficionados, Grit, Noise, and Revolution features stories of these groundbreaking groups and is the first book to survey Detroit music of the 1960s and 70s-a pivotal era in rock music history.
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cover of New York Sports: Glamour and Grit in the Empire City

New York Sports

Glamour and Grit in the Empire City

Stephen Norwood

University of Arkansas Press, 2018

New York has long been both America’s leading cultural center and its sports capital, with far more championship teams, intracity World Series, and major prizefights than any other city. Pro football’s “Greatest Game Ever Played” took place in New York, along with what was arguably history’s most significant boxing match, the 1938 title bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. As the nation’s most crowded city, basketball proved to be an ideal sport, and for many years it was the site of the country’s most prestigious college basketball tournament. New York boasts storied stadiums, arenas, and gymnasiums and is the home of one of the world’s two leading marathons as well as the Belmont Stakes, the third event in horse racing’s Triple Crown.

New York sportswriters also wield national influence and have done much to connect sports to larger social and cultural issues, and the vitality and distinctiveness of New York’s street games, its ethnic institutions, and its sports-centered restaurants and drinking establishments all contribute to the city’s uniqueness.

New York Sports collects the work of fourteen leading sport historians, providing new insight into the social and cultural history of America’s major metropolis and of the United States. These writers address the topics of changing conceptions of manhood and violence, leisure and social class, urban night life and entertainment, women and athletics, ethnicity and assimilation, and more.
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cover of The Grit and the Grind: Building High-Performing Education Systems in an Era of Polarization

The Grit and the Grind

Building High-Performing Education Systems in an Era of Polarization

Joshua L. Glazer, Cori Egan, William R. Berry, and Amar Fattal

University of Chicago Press, 2026

Offers a much-needed perspective on the connections between community, policymaking, and the improvement of underperforming schools. 

School reform remains a fraught issue in the United States as educators, policymakers, and communities strive to improve outcomes for all students. In The Grit and the Grind, Joshua L. Glazer, Cori Egan, William R. Berry, and Amar Fattal examine two ambitious efforts to improve the lowest-performing schools in Memphis, Tennessee. The book offers a rare inside look at the political, organizational, and educational challenges of improving schools at scale.

The two initiatives, the Achievement School District (ASD) and the Shelby County Innovation Zone (iZone), shared a common goal but pursued it through fundamentally different approaches. The ASD was a state-run turnaround district that removed schools from local control and placed them under the management of charter organizations. By contrast, the iZone operated through existing district institutions, relying on local educators and leaders to drive improvement. Despite common goals and substantial resources, the reforms developed in strikingly different ways. Drawing on years of research in Memphis, the authors move beyond familiar debates about charter schools and district reform to explore a deeper question: What does it take to improve schools in complex, pluralistic, and contested democratic societies? Their analysis reveals that educational improvement is simultaneously professional, organizational, and political. Efforts to enhance educational opportunities depend not only on curriculum, leadership, and expertise, but also on the legitimacy, trust, and community support that allow educational systems to learn from experience and sustain improvement.

At once a study of reform, organizations, and politics, The Grit and the Grind challenges simple explanations of success and failure, showing that meaningful improvement is forged through the slow, uncertain work of building systems capable of earning community trust while continuously strengthening teaching and learning.

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cover of The Grit of the Real: Toward a Semiotics Against Geontopower

The Grit of the Real

Toward a Semiotics Against Geontopower

Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Duke University Press, 2027

In The Grit of the Real, Elizabeth A. Povinelli searches for a semiotics that would undermine “geontopower,” the colonial and capitalist division of Life and Nonlife that governs human and more-than-human worlds. Povinelli presses into the public and scholarly intuition that mind, language, and meaning must be liberated from western humanist frameworks if we are to build a sustainable relationship between human and more-than-human worlds. Povinelli asks what the difference is between a semiotics after geontopower and a semiotics against geontopower, between building yet another universal semiotic machine and building a semiotic disruption machine; and she considers how semiotics itself must be disrupted given its historical entwinement in geontological justifications for colonial and capitalist wars, racial social structures, settler governance, and land and resource appropriation. The Grit of The Real engages colonial and Indigenous theory, critical race theory, semiotics and linguistics, philosophy, the history of ideas, and anthropology to examine the basis of our ongoing political ecological disaster and propose a path forward.
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cover of With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology

With Grit and Determination

A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology

Edited by Suzanne Eskenazi and Nicole M. Herzog

University of Utah Press, 2020

Spanning more than one hundred years of women’s careers and lives, this collection illuminates what it was and is to be a female archaeologist. These personal accounts of researchers, ethnographers, and field archaeologists in the private, public, and academic sectors highlight the unique role women have played in the development of American and Great Basin archaeology. Written by women trained or working in the Great Basin, these accounts reflect  the broader landscape of American archaeology, offering a glimpse into a larger narrative about making one’s way in a historically male field. By sharing their stories, the authors highlight the positive aspects of the field, recognize the challenges that still exist, and encourage conversations about inclusion, diversity, and the future of archaeology in the Great Basin and beyond. Their authentic and intimate narratives inspire us to look at challenges not as roadblocks, but as opportunities for lifelong growth and success.
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