On July 8, 1860, fire destroyed the entire business section of Dallas, Texas. At about the same time, two other fires damaged towns near Dallas. Early reports indicated that spontaneous combustion was
“If there was any doubt that Hurricane Katrina was, in reality, a man-made catastrophe in New Orleans, this book dispels it, fact by indisputable fact. . . . This is an important book that exposes the
Traces the life of journalist Edward Price Bell who helped establish the ideal of a professional foreign news service while working at the Chicago Daily News.
Perhaps not southerners in the usual sense, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson each demonstrated a political style and philosophy that helped them influence the South and un
Though deeply entrenched in antebellum life, the artisans who lived and worked in Petersburg, Virginia, in the 1800s -- including carpenters, blacksmiths, coach makers, bakers, and other skilled craft
From antebellum readers avidly consuming stories featuring white southern men as benevolent patriarchs, hell-raising frontiersmen, and callous plantation owners to post--Civil War southern writers see
In William Faulkner, William James, and the American Pragmatic Tradition, David H. Evans pairs the writings of America's most intellectually challenging modern novelist, William Faulkner, and the idea
In the late 1890s a journalist wrote, "Spanish women would rather weep at a husband's or a son's gravesite than blush for lack of patriotic fervor." Yet at a time when women were expected to sacrifice
A pioneering local-color writer about Creole New Orleans and a public advocate for black equality in his native South during and after Reconstruction, George Washington Cable (1844--1925) depicted in
In this comprehensive, groundbreaking study, Tim A. Ryan explores how American novelists since World War I have imagined the institution of slavery and the experience of those involved in it. Complica
Camping is perhaps the quintessential American activity. We camp to escape, to retreat, to "find" ourselves. The camp serves as a home-away-from-home where we might rethink a deliberate life. We also
In Portrait of a Scientific Racist James G. Hollandsworth Jr. reveals how the conjectures of one of the country's most prominent racial theorists, Alfred Holt Stone, helped justify a repressive racia
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson acquired 828,000 square miles of French territory in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase. Although today Louisiana makes up only a small portion of this imm
The Snow’s Music continues award-winning poet Floyd Skloot’s lyrical and narrative explorations of memory, love, loss, and artistic expression. At once musical and precise, formal and fluid, Skloot’s
In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events that began with Governor Earl K. Long's commitment to a mental instituti
In Faulkner's Imperialism, Taylor Hagood explores two staples of Faulkner's world: myth and place. Using an interdisciplinary approach to examine the economic, sociological, and political factors in F
Few historical events lend themselves to such a sharp delineation between right and wrong as does the civil rights struggle. Consequently, many historical accounts of white resistance to civil rights
In It was a terrible cloud at twilight, Alessandra Lynch reflects on personal, social, moral, and historical terror. These ambitious, imagistic poems move through subjects of violence and loss that ar
In the turbulent decades after World War I, both France and Germany sought to return to an idealized, prewar past. Many people believed they could recapture a sense of order and stability by reinstitu
