Best of
Americana

1997

Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England


Tom Wessels - 1997
    What exactly is the meaning of all those stone walls in the middle of the forest? Why do beech and birch trees have smooth bark when the bark of all other northern species is rough? How do you tell the age of a beaver pond and determine if beavers still live there? Why are pine trees dominant in one patch of forest and maples in another? What happened to the American chestnut? Turn to this book for the answers, and no walk in the woods will ever be the same.

Barney's Version


Mordecai Richler - 1997
    Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a 'wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer'. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off 3 wives - the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs Panofsky; and finally Miriam who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris and London, his outrageous expolits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback - the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end.

The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967


Hunter S. Thompson - 1997
    Thompson. In letters to a Who's Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez—not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors—Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective. Passionate in their admiration, merciless in their scorn, and never anything less than fascinating, the dispatches of The Proud Highway offer an unprecedented and penetrating gaze into the evolution of the most outrageous raconteur/provocateur ever to assault a typewriter.

Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth / My First Summer in the Sierra / The Mountains of California / Stickeen / Essays


John Muir - 1997
    A crucial figure in the creation of our national parks system and a far-seeing prophet of environmental awareness who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, he was also a master of natural description who evoked with unique power and intimacy the untrammeled landscapes of the American West. The Library of America’s Nature Writings collects his most significant and best-loved works in a single volume.The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913) is Muir’s memoir of growing up by the sea in Scotland, of coming to America with his family at age eleven, and of his early fascination with the natural world. My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) is his famous account of the spiritual awakening he experienced when, in 1869, he first encountered the mountains and valleys of central California, of which he wrote: “Bathed in such beauty, watching the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and winds and birds, would be endless pleasure…. No other place has ever so overwhelmingly attracted me as this hospitable, Godful wilderness.”The natural history classic The Mountains of California (1894) draws on half a lifetime of exploration of the High Sierra country to celebrate and evoke the region’s lakes, forests, flowers, and animals, its glaciers, storms, floods, and geological formations, in a masterpiece of observation and poetic description: “After ten years spent in the heart of it … it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.”Stickeen (1909), Muir’s most popular book, is the affectionate story of his adventure with a dog in Alaska. Rounding out the volume is a rich selection of essays—including “Yosemite Glaciers,” “God’s First Temples,” “Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta,” “The American Forests,” and the late appeal “Save the Redwoods”—highlighting various aspects of his career: his exploration of the Grand Canyon and of what became Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, his successful crusades to preserve the wilderness, his early walking tour to Florida, and the Alaska journey of 1879.

Mason & Dixon


Thomas Pynchon - 1997
    Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatch'd pair—one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic—from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

Daughters of the Dust


Julie Dash - 1997
    Native New Yorker Amelia Peazant returns to her mother's home to trace her family's history. From her multigenerational clan she gathers colorful stories, learning about "the first man and woman," the slaves who walked across the water back home to Africa, the ways men and women need each other, and the intermingling of African and Native American cultures.Through her experiences, Amelia comes to treasure her family traditions and her relationship with her fiercely independent cousin Elizabeth. Daughters of the Dust is ultimately a story of homecoming and the reclaiming of family and cultural heritage.

Letting Loose the Hounds: Stories


Brady Udall - 1997
    . . a fierce new voice of the American West.”—OutsideExploding with an unsettling exuberance, Brady Udall’s stories traverse a geography of lost love, fragmented lives, and satisfying revenge. From the night a six-foot-three Apache Indian holding a goat steps into a moonlit Arizona backyard in "Midnight Raid" to the pivotal moment when a man, delirious from a dental extraction, gets rescued by a stranger in the title story, Udall injects his stories and characters with equal parts darkness and humor. These are sad and sweet stories, moving from the familiar to surprising destinations. But even when disaster looms, Udall's fine comic sense sustains his men and women in their sometimes extravagant efforts to connect and cope. Plunged in the moment, these stories have velocity; they spray gravel as they take off.

The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century


Studs Terkel - 1997
    A personal selection of the best interviews from eight classic books by America's much-loved pre-eminent oral historian, Studs Terkel.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies


Martin Scorsese - 1997
    Hundreds of film stills, many in color, plus dialogue, quotations, and other sources add to and illustrate each chapter's overriding theme.

Jackie Brown


Quentin Tarantino - 1997
    From Quentin Tarantino, the creator of Pulp Fiction, comes Jackie Brown, a crime caper based about an attractive stewardess who supplements her income by smuggling cash into the country for an illegal arms dealer-until the day federal agents bust her.

Underworld


Don DeLillo - 1997
    Written in what DeLillo calls "super-omniscience" the sentences sweep from young Cotter Martin as he jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, runs out to the diamond, slides in on a fast ball, pops into the stands where J. Edgar Hoover is sitting with a drunken Jackie Gleason and a splenetic Frank Sinatra, and learns of the Soviet Union's second detonation of a nuclear bomb. It's an absolutely thrilling literary moment. When Bobby Thomson hits Branca's pitch into the outstretched hand of Cotter—the "shot heard around the world"—and Jackie Gleason pukes on Sinatra's shoes, the events of the next few decades are set in motion, all threaded together by the baseball as it passes from hand to hand."It's all falling indelibly into the past," writes DeLillo, a past that he carefully recalls and reconstructs with acute grace. Jump from Giants Stadium to the Nevada desert in 1992, where Nick Shay, who now owns the baseball, reunites with the artist Kara Sax. They had been brief and unlikely lovers 40 years before, and it is largely through the events, spinoffs, and coincidental encounters of their pasts that DeLillo filters the Cold War experience. He believes that "global events may alter how we live in the smallest ways," and as the book steps back in time to 1951, over the following 800-odd pages, we see just how those events alter lives. This reverse narrative allows the author to strip away the detritus of history and pop culture until we get to the story's pure elements: the bomb, the baseball, and the Bronx. In an epilogue as breathless and stunning as the prologue, DeLillo fast-forwards to a near future in which ruthless capitalism, the Internet, and a new, hushed faith have replaced the Cold War's blend of dread and euphoria.Through fragments and interlaced stories—including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others—DeLillo creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life, wonderfully distilled.

Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time


Robert V. Remini - 1997
    In this new biography, Webster is seen as a major player in American politics in the era between the War of 1812 and the beginning of the Civil War, involved with every significant issue confronting the new nation. Webster had no equal as an orator, then or since. Whether in the Senate, before the Supreme Court, or on the political stump, he was a golden-tongued spellbinder, often holding audiences in thrall for hours. In his lifelong defense of the Constitution, and as a constant upholder of the Union, Webster won love and respect. He was often referred to as "the Godlike Daniel". But he was also referred to as "Black Dan" because of his questionable dealings with men of wealth and power, his political conniving, his habitual nonpayment of debts, and perhaps even his somewhat roving eye.

The Road Back to Paris (Modern Library)


A.J. Liebling - 1997
    J. Liebling filed with The New Yorker during the Second World War. The magazine sent Liebling to Paris in 1939, hoping that he could replicate in wartime France his brilliant reporting of New York life. Liebling succeeded triumphantly, concentrating on writing the individual soldier's story to illuminate the larger picture of the European theater of the war and the fight for what Liebling felt was the first priority of business: the liberation of his beloved France. The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.For a complete list of titles, see the inside of the jacket. Despite his ill health and bad eyesight, Liebling went on patrol, interviewed soldiers, fled Paris and returned after D-Day, was shot at in North Africa and bombed in the blitz in London. Into thischaos, as his biographer Raymond Sokolov comments, "he brought himself, a fiercely committed Francophile with a novelist's skill for crystallizing his day-to-day experiences into a profound chronicle of a 'world knocked down.' "

A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America


David K. Shipler - 1997
    To tell the story in human rather than abstract terms, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David K. Shipler bypasses both extremists and celebrities and takes us among ordinary Americans as they encounter one another across racial lines.We learn how blacks and whites see each other, how they interpret each other's behavior, and how certain damaging images and assumptions seep into the actions of even the most unbiased. We penetrate into dimensions of stereotyping and discrimination that are usually invisible, and discover the unseen prejudices and privileges of white Americans, and what black Americans make of them.We explore the competing impulses of integration and separation: the reference points by which the races navigate as they venture out and then withdraw; the biculturalism that many blacks perfect as they move back and forth between the white and black worlds, and the homesickness some blacks feel for the comfort of all-black separateness. There are portrayals of interracial families and their multiracial children--expert guides through the clashes created by racial blending in America. We see how whites and blacks each carry the burden of our history.Black-white stereotypes are dissected: the physical bodies that we see, the mental qualities we imagine, the moral character we attribute to others and to ourselves, the violence we fear, the power we seek or are loath to relinquish.The book makes clear that we have the ability to shape our racial landscape--to reconstruct, even if not perfectly, the texture of our relationships. There is an assessment of the complexity confronting blacks and whites alike as they struggle to recognize and define the racial motivations that may or may not be present in a thought, a word, a deed. The book does not prescribe, but it documents the silences that prevail, the listening that doesn't happen, the conversations that don't take place. It looks at relations between minorities, including blacks and Jews, and blacks and Koreans. It explores the human dimensions of affirmative action, the intricate contacts and misunderstandings across racial lines among coworkers and neighbors. It is unstinting in its criticism of our society's failure to come to grips with bigotry; but it is also, happily, crowded with black people and white people who struggle in their daily lives to do just that.A remarkable book that will stimulate each of us to reexamine and better understand our own deepest attitudes in regard to race in America.

The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories


John V. Denson - 1997
    In the war-torn twentieth century, we rarely hear that one of the main costs of armed conflict is long-term loss of liberty to winners and losers alike. Beyond the obvious and direct costs of dead and wounded soldiers, there is the lifetime struggle of veterans to live with their nightmares and their injuries; the hidden economic costs of inflation, debts, and taxes; and more generally the damages caused to our culture, our morality, and to civilization at large. The new edition is now available in paperback, with a number of new essays. It represents a large-scale collective effort to pierce the veils of myth and propaganda to reveal the true costs of war, above all, the cost to liberty.Central to this volume are the views of Ludwig von Mises on war and foreign policy. Mises argued that war, along with colonialism and imperialism, is the greatest enemy of freedom and prosperity, and that peace throughout the world cannot be achieved until the central governments of the major nations become limited in scope and power. In the spirit of these theorems by Mises, the contributors to this volume consider the costs of war generally and assess specific corrosive effects of major American wars since the Revolution. The first section includes chapters on the theoretical and institutional dimensions of the relationship between war and society, including conscription, infringements on freedom, the military as an engine of social change, war and literature, and the right of citizens to bear arms. The second group includes reconsiderations of Lincoln and Churchill, an analysis of the anti-interventionist idea in American politics, a discussion of the meaning of the -just war, - an assessment of how World War I changed the course of Western civilization, and finally two eyewitness accounts of the true horrors of actual combat by veterans of World War II. The Costs of War is unique in its combination of historical scope and timeliness for current debates about foreign policy and military intervention. It will be of interest to historians, political scientists, economists, and sociologists.

The Death and Life of Bobby Z


Don Winslow - 1997
    When Tim Kearney, a small-time criminal, slits the throat of a Hell's Angel and draws a life sentence in a prison full of gang members, he knows he’s pretty much a dead man. That’s until the DEA makes Kearney an offer: impersonate the late, legendary dope smuggler Bobby Z so that the agency can trade him for one of their own, who was captured by a Mexican drug kingpin. Knowing his chances of survival are a little better than in prison, Kearney accepts, and he winds up in the middle of a desert at the notorious drug lord’s lavish compound. To his surprise he meets Bobby Z's old flame, Elizabeth, and her son. At first, it’s a short vacation by the pool, but when things turn bloody, the three of them begin the most desperate flight of their lives, with drug lords, bikers, Indians, and cops furiously chasing after them. Whether he pulls it off, whether he can keep the kid and the girl and his life, makes this compelling novel a hilarious, fast-paced thriller about a con caught in a devil’s bargain.

Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley


Robert P. Sharp - 1997
    Illustrated with photographs, maps, and diagrams, "Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley" provides an on-the-ground look at the processes sculpting the terrain in this land of extremes for everyone interested in how the earth works.

Out of My Mind: An Autobiography


Kristin Nelson Tinker - 1997
    Throughout her life she has recorded personal events and experiences on canvas. This book is her story, in words and pictures.

Little Miss Strange


Joanna Rose - 1997
    -- Floyd Skloot, Portland Oregonian"Sarajean's account of her life and experiences are bound to embed themselves thoroughly in a reader's memory.' -- Candace Horgan, The Denver Post"Little Miss Strange is a novel boldly reminding us that peace, love, and happiness weren't the only things to come out of the sixties and seventies...a gloriously descriptive novel, packed with colorful details reminiscent of the dream, the era of free-love left behind". -- Molly MacDermot, Redbook"The ending alone may be as perfect as any novel written this year. Four stars". -- Barbara Holliday, Detroit News/Free Press

Elysium--A Gathering of Souls: New Orleans Cemeteries


Sandra Russell Clark - 1997
    Sandra Russell Clark's photographs, however, offer a perspective unavailable to the naked eye: her luminous black-and-white duotones register atmosphere and time, as well as the solid substances of chiseled stone, sculpted marble, and wrought iron. Andrei Codrescu offers his poet's view of cemeteries generally and of his adopted hometown's in particular, confiding that he has used places of eternal rest as his private coffeehouses since he was a teen. Historian Patricia Brady follows with a fascinating discussion of New Orleans' distinctive burial practices and places over the past two hundred years. Evocative passages from writers including William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams enhance the progression of photographs. A listing of, and a map locating, the twenty cemeteries represented in the collection complete the volume.

Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law


Daniel A. Farber - 1997
    These scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivityare merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than a socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authorscritically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the verygoals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes.If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much validity as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferencesfor legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitfuldiscussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government controlof hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time.

A Heart For The Taking


Shirlee Busbee - 1997
    So when Jonathan returns from England with the widowed Lady Fancy Merrivale, Chance decides to strike back at his cousin by wooing the beautiful Lady. But revenge is bittersweet for Chance as he and Fancy find themselves hopelessly in love--and in desperate danger.

The Nearby Faraway A Personal Journey Through The Heart Of The West


David Petersen - 1997
    A rich and moving collection from one of the west's most down-to-earth writers.

Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History


Rogers M. Smith - 1997
    citizenship the product of multiple traditions—not only liberalism and republicanism but also white supremacy, Anglo-Saxon supremacy, Protestant supremacy, and male supremacy? In this powerful and disturbing book, Rogers Smith traces political struggles over U.S. citizenship laws from the colonial period through the Progressive era and shows that throughout this time, most adults were legally denied access to full citizenship, including political rights, solely because of their race, ethnicity, or gender. Basic conflicts over these denials have driven political development and civic membership in the U.S., Smith argues. These conflicts are what truly define U.S. civic identity up to this day.Others have claimed that nativist, racist, and sexist traditions have been marginal or that they are purely products of capitalist institutions. In contrast, Smith’s pathbreaking account explains why these traditions have been central to American political and economic life. He shows that in the politics of nation building, principles of democracy and liberty have often failed to foster a sense of shared "peoplehood" and have instead led many Americans to claim that they are a "chosen people," a "master race" or superior culture, with distinctive gender roles. Smith concludes that today the United States is in a period of reaction against the egalitarian civic reforms of the last generation, with nativist, racist, and sexist beliefs regaining influence. He suggests ways that proponents of liberal democracy should alter their view of U.S. citizenship in order to combat these developments more effectively.

The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness


Paul Schneider - 1997
    And even now, Schneider shows that Americans' relationship with the glorious mountains and rivers of the Adirondacks continues to change. As in every good romance, nothing is as simple as it appears.

Seasons of the Heart


Charles Wysocki - 1997
    In a time of utmost sophisication, Chuck beckons back to a world of homest birtues and charming coutnry landscapes. He revives pleasant thoughts of a bygone era when order, neatness and serenity ruled, when people were not afraid to show thier sentimental affection for home and family, God and country. Chick does not just paint beautiful piectures, he touches our hear each and every time by expressing our nostalgic yearnings for a world of remembered joys. The universal appeal of his work has led to many prestigious awards, the reproduction of his art on many successful products and most importantly, to a large and loyal following. As a result, he is one of America's most beloved anda respected artists.

Naked Lens: Beat Cinema


Jack Sargeant - 1997
    Films by, featuring or inspired by: William S Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Brion Gysin, Anthony Balch, Ron Rice, John Cassavetes, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Klaus Maeck, Gus van Sant, and many others. Including interviews with writers such as Allen Ginsberg, directors such as Robert Frank and actors such as Taylor Mead. Plus detailed examination of key Beat texts and cult classics such as Pull My Daisy, Chappaqua, Towers Open Fire and The Flower Thief; verit

Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present


Jerry Z. Muller - 1997
    No comparable collection that I know of is as broad and unparochial as this one.” — Thomas Pangle, University of TorontoAt a time when the label “conservative” is indiscriminately applied to fundamentalists, populists, libertarians, fascists, and the advocates of one or another orthodoxy, this volume offers a nuanced and historically informed presentation of what is distinctive about conservative social and political thought. It is an anthology with an argument, locating the origins of modern conservatism within the Enlightenment and distinguishing between conservatism and orthodoxy.Bringing together important specimens of European and American conservative social and political analysis from the mid-eighteenth century through our own day, Conservatism demonstrates that while the particular institutions that conservatives have sought to conserve have varied, there are characteristic features of conservative argument that recur over time and across national borders.

Selling 'em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food


David Gerard Hogan - 1997
    Yet by 1930 Americans in every corner of the country accepted the hamburger as a mainstream meal and eventually made it a staple of their diet. The quintessential American food, hamburgers have by now spread to almost every country and culture in the world. But how did this fast food icon come to occupy so quickly such a singular role in American mass culture?In Selling 'em By the Sack, David Gerard Hogan traces the history of the hamburger's rise as a distinctive American culinary and ethnic symbol through the prism of one of its earliest promoters. The first to market both the hamburger and the to go carry-out style to American consumers, White Castle quickly established itself as a cornerstone of the fast food industry. Its founder, Billy Ingram, shrewdly marketed his hamburgers in large quantities at five cents a piece, telling his customers to Buy'em by the Sack.The years following World War II saw the rise of great franchised chains such as McDonald's, which challenged and ultimately overshadowed the company that Billy Ingram founded. Yet White Castle stands as a charismatic pioneer in one of America's most formidable industries, a company that drastically changed American eating patterns, and hence, American life. It could be argued that what Henry Ford did for the car and transportation, Billy Ingram did for the hamburger and eating.

Star Medicine: Native American Path to Emotional Healing


Wolf Moondance - 1997
    Seven ceremonies help you find inner strength and peace. To prepare you for your inner journey, complete and detailed instructions are provided for creating a sacred space where you are encircled by a wheel made of cornmeal and cleansed by the softly rising smoke of smoldering herbs. There you bring your spirit journal and other sacred tools, all clearly explained, and venture into vision with lessons from the entities of the spirit world. Each chapter features a shamanic story, a ceremony, and a vision to help you become more deeply in touch with the "dance of life." 192 pages, 23 b/w illus., 6 x 9.

What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters


Michael X. Delli Carpini - 1997
    Drawing on extensive survey data, including much that is original, two experts in public opinion and political behavior find that many citizens are remarkably informed about the details of politics, while equally large numbers are nearly ignorant of political facts. And despite dramatic changes in American society and politics, citizens appear no more or less informed today than half a century ago. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter demonstrate that informed persons are more likely to participate, better able to discern their own interests, and more likely to advocate those interests through political actions. Who, then, is politically informed? The authors provide compelling evidence that whites, men, and older, financially secure citizens have substantially more knowledge about national politics than do blacks, women, young adults, and financially less- well-off citizens. Thus citizens who are most disadvantaged socially and economically are least able to redress their grievances politically. Yet the authors believe that a broader and more equitably informed populace is possible. The challenge to America, they conclude, lies in providing an environment in which the benefits of being informed are clearer, the tools for gaining information more accessible, and the opportunities to learn about politics more frequent, timely, and equitable.

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello: An Intimate Portrait


Robert Lautman - 1997
    Jefferson died in 1826, the year photography was invented. In the spirit of this early era, award-winning photographer Robert Lautman has captured the house artistically using a unique mid-nineteenth-century method of creating photographs. After shooting the spaces with a large-format camera, and using only natural light -- photographing the east side in the morning and the west side in the afternoon, utilizing shutters and doors for lighting control -- he printed the images with a platinum-palladium process on hand-coated paper. The resulting photographs display a never-before-seen radiant atmosphere of this enchanting place, masterfully reproduced in this charming gift volume. Begun in 1768 when Jefferson was only twenty-five years old, Monticello continued to be altered with changes and additions until his death. It remains the single home in America on the World Heritage List of international treasures. Jefferson, the only architect ever to serve as president, believed this house was his individual exploration and expression of classical architecture. Seen here are the harmonious proportions of the building, warm interiors, extensive grounds, romantic gardens, and elegant furnishings, along with some of Jefferson's prized personal belongings.

Perfect Vehicle


Melissa Holbrook Pierson - 1997
    She sifts through myth and hyperbole: misrepresentations about danger, about the type of people who ride and why they do so. The Perfect Vehicle is not a mere recitation of facts, nor is it a polemic or apologia. Its vivid historical accounts-the beginnings of the machine, the often hidden tradition of women who ride, the tale of the defiant ones who taunt death on the racetrack-are intertwined with Pierson's own story, which, in itself, shows that although you may think you know what kind of person rides a motorcycle, you probably don't.

Manhattan in Maps: 1527-1995


Paul E. Cohen - 1997
    These rare and mostly never-before-published maps span four centuries. 64 color illustrations. Size D. 176 pp.

The First Five Books of Poems (Poetry Pleiade)


Louise Glück - 1997
    This collection shows the poet in this evolution. It includes: Firstborn (1968); The House on Marshland (1975); Descending Figure (1980); The Triumph of Achilles (1985); and Ararat (1990).

Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream


Nabeel Abraham - 1997
    In this volume, Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock bring together the work of twenty-five contributors to create a richly detailed portrait of Arab Detroit. The book goes behind the bulletproof glass in Iraqi Chaldean liquor stores. It explores the role of women in a Sunni mosque and the place of nationalist politics in a Coptic church. It follows the careers of wedding singers, Arabic calligraphers, restaurant owners, and pastry chefs. It examines the agendas of Shia Muslim activists and Washington-based lobbyists and looks at the intimate politics of marriage, family honor, and adolescent rebellion. Memoirs and poems by Lebanese, Chaldean, Yemeni, and Palestinian writers anchor the book in personal experience, while over fifty photographs provide a backdrop of vivid, often unexpected, images. In their efforts to represent an ethnic/immigrant community that is flourishing on the margins of pluralist discourse, the contributors to this book break new ground in the study of identity politics, transnationalism, and diaspora cultures.

The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History


Walter F. LaFeber - 1997
    Photos.

Wisdom of the Plain Folk: Songs and Prayers from the Amish and Mennonites


Robert Leahy - 1997
    Robert Leahy's striking color photographs capture the grace of a people who cherish simplicity as a means to a higher spiritual end.

Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South


Mark M. Smith - 1997
    Challenging traditional assumptions about the plantation economy's reliance on a premodern, nature-based conception of time, Mark M. Smith shows how and why southerners--particularly masters and their slaves--came to view the clock as a legitimate arbiter of time. Drawing on an extraordinary range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archival sources, Smith demonstrates that white southern slaveholders began to incorporate this new sense of time in the 1830s. Influenced by colonial merchants' fascination with time thrift, by a long-held familiarity with urban, public time, by the transport and market revolution in the South, and by their own qualified embrace of modernity, slaveowners began to purchase timepieces in growing numbers, adopting a clock-based conception of time and attempting in turn to instill a similar consciousness in their slaves. But, forbidden to own watches themselves, slaves did not internalize this idea to the same degree as their masters, and slaveholders found themselves dependent as much on the whip as on the clock when enforcing slaves' obedience to time. Ironically, Smith shows, freedom largely consolidated the dependence of masters as well as freedpeople on the clock.

The Revolution Wasn't Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict


Lynn Spigel - 1997
    Opposed to these conceptions, The Revolution Wasn't Televised explores the ways in which prime-time television was centrally involved in the social conflicts of the 1960s. It was then that television became a ubiquitous element in American homes. The contributors in this volume argue that due to TV's constant presence in everyday life, it became the object of intense debates over childraising, education, racism, gender, technology, politics, violence, and Vietnam. These essays explore the minutia of TV in relation to the macro-structure of sixties politics and society, attempting to understand the struggles that took place over representation the nation's most popular communications media during the 1960s.

James Taylor's Shocked & Amazed: On & Off the Midway (Volume 4)


James Taylor - 1997
    

Mormon Sisters: Women In Early Utah


Claudia Bushman - 1997
    The book that led the way for these varied studies came to be when a group of Boston-area women, connected with the periodical Exponent II (named in honour of its nineteenth century predecessor, The Woman's Exponent), got together to publish a collection of topical essays on Utah women's history titled Mormon Sisters. The book became a minor classic in Mormon women's studies and inspired several imitators. Mormon Sisters has been out of print for a number of years. Now back in print, this new edition adds new illustrations, an updated reading list, information on the subsequent careers of the contributors, and an introduction by prominent historian Anne Firor Scott, author of numerous books, including Southern Lady.

Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government


Philip Pettit - 1997
    The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens withan examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty.The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many attractions, and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would require with regard tosubstantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of state-societal relationsfounded upon civility and trust.Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology.

Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes


Stanley I. Kutler - 1997
    What in the name of God are we doing on this one? What are we doing about the financial contributors? Now, those lists there, are we looking over McGovern's financial contributors? Are we looking over the financial contributors to the Democratic National Committee? Are we running their income tax returns? Is the Justice Department checking to see whether or not there is any antitrust suits? Do we have anything going on any of these things? HALDEMAN: Not as far as I know. PRESIDENT NIXON: We better forget the Goddamn campaign right this minute, not tomorrow, no. That's what concerns me. We have all this power and we aren't using it.