Best of
Americana

2006

The Winter of Frankie Machine


Don Winslow - 2006
    and The Power of the Dog now gives us a fierce and funny new novel—and a blistering new take on the Mafia story.Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex–surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront when he’s not juggling any of his other three part-time jobs or trying to get a quick set in on his longboard. He’s a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter, and a beloved fixture in the community.Frank’s also a hit man. Specifically: a retired hit man. Back in the day, when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine. Years ago Frank consigned his Mob ties to the past, which is where he wants them to stay. But a favor being called in now by the local boss is one Frank can’t refuse, and soon he’s sucked back into the treacherous currents of his former life. Someone from the past wants him dead. He has to figure out who, and why, and he has to do it fast.The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of his local phone book and Frank’s rapidly running out of time.And then things go really bad.

The Complete Peanuts, 1959-1962


Charles M. Schulz - 2006
    Shipping shrinkwrapped, with Volumes 1959-1960 and 1961-1962 packed in a sturdy custom box designed especially for this set, it's the perfect gift book item of the season.This set collects almost 1500 daily and Sunday comic strips, the vast majority of which are not currently available in any in-print Peanuts collection, and many of which have never been reprinted since heir initial appearance in papers over 50 years ago. Using archival-quality syndicate proofs for virtually every strip in its history, the series boasts the best-looking, crispest reproduction for a classic comic strip ever achieved.Peanuts is the most successful comic strip in the history of the medium. A United Media poll in 2002 found Peanuts to be the second most recognizable cartoon property in the world, known by 94 percent of the total U.S. consumer market and a close second only to Mickey Mouse (96 percent).

Andy Catlett: Early Travels


Wendell Berry - 2006
    Nine years old, Andy embarks on the trip by bus, alone for the first time. He decides it will be a rite of passage and his first step into manhood. Sometimes a handful at home, Andy was a good boy when visiting his Grandparents' houses, and he looked forward to the little spoiling certain to come his way. Set during the Christmas of 1943, young Andy's experiences on this solitary voyage become pivot points of the entire epic of Port William. The old ways are in retreat, modern life is crowding everything in its path, and as Andy looks back many years later, he hears the stories again of his neighbors and friends. A beautiful short novel, this book is a perfect introduction into the whole world of Port William and will be a new chapter for those already familiar with this rich unfolding story.

High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006


Joyce Carol Oates - 2006
    All demonstrate what the Chicago Tribune has praised: "the fierce originality of Oates's voice and vision, but also how she has imbued the American short story with an edgy vitality and raw social surfaces."

Collected Plays 1944-1961


Arthur Miller - 2006
    Among the plays included are All My Sons, the story of an industrialist confronted with his moral lapses during World War II; Death of a Salesman, the wrenching tragedy of Willy Loman's demise; The Crucible, at once a riveting reconstruction of the Salem witch trials and a parable of McCarthyism; and A View from the Bridge, Miller's tale of betrayal among Italian immigrants in Brooklyn, presented here in both the original one-act and revised two-act versions. This volume also contains the intriguing early drama The Man Who Had All the Luck, the first of Miller's plays to be produced on Broadway, along with his adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, the autobiographical one-act A Memory of Two Mondays, and Miller's novella The Misfits, based on the screenplay he wrote for Marilyn Monroe.

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia


Michael Gray - 2006
    It's the culmination of over thirty years of dedicated research and scholarship by Michael Gray.Inside these pages, you'll find a world of ideas, facts, and opinions. It's a world in which Baudelaire flows on from the Basement Tapes and A.S. Byatt looks out at the Byrds; in which Far from the Madding Crowd follows Ezekiel and Bob Geldof introduces Jean Genet; and in which Hank and William Carlos Williams stand side by side while J.R.R. Tolkien trails the Titanic. Most of all, of course, it's a world in which everyone and everything interconnects, in endlessly fascinating ways, with one of our greatest living artists: Bob Dylan."Michael Gray... probably Dylan's single most assiduous critic." -New York Review of Books"Fans of Bob Dylan have a multitude of choices when it comes to biographies and retrospectives, but author Michael Gray outdistances them all with this voluminous collection of all things Dylan. ... Insightful and entertaining, Gray's tome will broaden appreciation of the artist, his influences and his legacy." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)"...has all you need to know, and more" -Richard Corliss, Time"This is no mere catalog of facts, but a work of oceanic immersion. It has wit, opinion, style, and asks to be read, not just consulted." -Village Voice"Deeply impressive...destined to be the most important Dylan book, bar none."-Gerry Smith, The Dylan Daily"Utterly idiosyncratic." -Janet Maslin, New York Times"Amazingly well-researched and surprisingly readable work." -Library Journal (starred review)"Door-stopping detail." -Toronto Star"Magnificent...won't just astonish readers with its detail about Dylan's work...contains so many insights and refutes so many myths about the rock 'n' roll era in general that it's invaluable as both a reference guide and a personality study." -Nashville City Paper"Comprehensive and up-to-date." -Slate

Novels, 1926-1929


William Faulkner - 2006
    This is Faulkner as he was meant to be read.In these four novels we can track Faulkner's extraordinary evolution as, over the course of a few years, he discovers and masters the mode and matter of his greatest works. Soldiers' Pay (1926) expresses the disillusionment provoked by World War I through its account of the postwar experiences of homecoming soldiers, including a severely wounded R.A.F. pilot, in a style of restless experimentation. In Mosquitoes (1927), a raucous satire of artistic poseurs, many of them modeled after acquaintances of Faulkner in New Orleans, he continues to try out a range of stylistic approaches as he chronicles an ill-fated cruise on Lake Pontchartrain.With the sprawling Flags in the Dust (published in truncated form in 1929 as Sartoris), Faulkner began his exploration of the mythical region of Mississippi that was to provide the setting for most of his subsequent fiction. Drawing on family history from the Civil War and after, and establishing many characters who recur in his later books, Flags in the Dust marks the crucial turning point in Faulkner's evolution as a novelist.The volume concludes with Faulkner's masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury (1929). This multilayered telling of the decline of the Compson clan over three generations, with its complex mix of narrative voices and its poignant sense of isolation and suffering within a family, is one of the most stunningly original American novels.

Violet Comes to Stay


Melanie Cecka - 2006
    Jan Karon’s legions of fans will love this timeless story about the endearing white kitten named Violet, charmingly written by Melanie Cecka and beautifully illustrated by Caldecott Medal-winning artist Emily Arnold McCully. Karon searched for three years to find a storytelling voice and art style authentic to Cynthia Coppersmith. She was personally involved in every step of the creation of this book. In Violet Comes to Stay, Violet’s search for the perfect home leads her to a plant nursery, a bakery, and finally a bookstore—the one place where the gentle cat isn’t expected to be a mouse hunter.

Legacy of Honor: The Values and Influence of America's Eagle Scouts


Alvin Townley - 2006
    But few people realize the full extent to which Eagle Scouts have made a mark on American history. They have served as astronauts, soldiers, politicians, and businessmen, but they have also been the fathers, brothers, Scoutmasters, coaches, and other role models who have played an integral part in American life. Alvin Townley set out across the country to hear the stories of these Eagle Scouts. He spoke with individuals from every region, of every age and every background, some of whom have risen to fame as public figures while others have left a lasting impact outside of the spotlight. The Eagle Scouts who share their experiences include Bill Gates, Sr., Bill Bradley, J. W. Marriott, Jr., Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Lugar, Michael Dukakis, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, coach Chan Gailey, and Capt. Jim Lovell of Apollo 13. The book also explores the virtues of a Tuskegee Airman, a Vietnam War POW, a September 11 NYPD hero, a crew of Hurricane Katrina relief workers, and a host of others from every walk of life. During his journey, Alvin discovered stories of character, courage, and inspiration that belong not only to Eagle Scouts but to all Americans. These stories form the heart of Legacy of Honor and offer us a chance to appreciate the profound impact that Eagle Scouts have had on American history and the lasting role they will play in our country's future.

Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917


Michael Punke - 2006
    Sparked more than two thousand feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a battle to survive. Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead.Fire and Brimstone recounts the remarkable stories of both the men below ground and their families above, focusing on two groups of miners who made the incredible decision to entomb themselves to escape the gas. While the disaster is compelling in its own right, Fire and Brimstone also tells a far broader story striking in its contemporary relevance. Butte, Montana, on the eve of the North Butte disaster, was a volatile jumble of antiwar protest, an abusive corporate master, seething labor unrest, divisive ethnic tension, and radicalism both left and right. It was a powder keg lacking only a spark, and the mine fire would ignite strikes, murder, ethnic and political witch hunts, occupation by federal troops, and ultimately a battle over presidential power.

Hapax


A.E. Stallings - 2006
    Danks AwardHapax is ancient Greek for "once, once only, once and for all," and "onceness" pervades this second book of poems by American expatriate poet A. E. Stallings. Opening with the jolt of "Aftershocks," this book explores what does and does not survive its "gone moment"-childhood ("The Dollhouse"), ancient artifacts ("Implements from the Grave of the Poet"), a marriage's lost moments of happiness ("Lovejoy Street"). The poems also often compare the ancient world with the modern Greece where Stallings has lived for several years. Her musical lyrics cover a range of subjects from love and family to characters and themes derived from classical Greek sources ("Actaeon" and "Sisyphus"). Employing sonnets, couplets, blank verse, haiku, Sapphics, even a sequence of limericks, Stallings displays a seemingly effortless mastery of form. She makes these diverse forms seem new and relevant as modes for expressing intelligent thought as well as charged emotions and a sense of humor. The unique sensibility and linguistic freshness of her work has already marked her as an important, young poet coming into her own.

Twilight


William Gay - 2006
    Suspecting that something is amiss with their father’s burial, teenager Kenneth Tyler and his sister Corrie venture to his gravesite and make a horrific discovery: their father, a whiskey bootlegger, was not actually buried in the casket they bought for him. Worse, they learn that the undertaker, Fenton Breece, has been grotesquely manipulating the dead.Armed with incriminating photographs, Tyler becomes obsessed with bringing the perverse undertaker to justice. But first, he must outrun Granville Sutter, a local strongman and convicted murderer hired by Fenton to destroy the evidence. What follows is an adventure through the Harrikin, an eerie backwoods filled with tangled roads, rusted machinery, and eccentric squatters–old men, witches, and families among them–who both shield and imperil Tyler as he runs for safety. With his poetic, haunting prose, William Gay rewrites the rules of the gothic fairy tale while exploring the classic Southern themes of good and evil.

The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed to Save an Ailing Industry


Rush Loving, Jr. - 2006
    Here are the chieftains who have run the railroads, including those who set about grabbing power and big salaries for themselves, and others who truly loved the industry.As a journalist and associate editor of Fortune magazine who covered the demise of Penn Central and the creation of Conrail, Rush Loving often had a front row seat to the foibles and follies of this group of men. He uncovers intrigue, greed, lust for power, boardroom battles, and takeover wars and turns them into a page-turning story for readers.Included is the story of how the chairman of CSX Corporation, who later became George W. Bush's Treasury secretary, was inept as a manager but managed to make millions for himself while his company drifted in chaos. Men such as he were shy of scruples, yet there were also those who loved trains and railroading, and who played key roles in reshaping transportation in the northeastern United States. This book will delight not only the rail fan, but anyone interested in American business and history.

The Dead Fish Museum


Charles D'Ambrosio - 2006
    The best bones weren’t on trails—deer and moose don’t die conveniently—and soon I was wandering so far into the woods that I needed a map and compass to find my way home. When winter came and snow blew into the mountains, burying the bones, I continued to spend my days and often my nights in the woods. I vaguely understood that I was doing this because I could no longer think; I found relief in walking up hills. When the night temperatures dropped below zero, I felt visited by necessity, a baseline purpose, and I walked for miles, my only objective to remain upright, keep moving, preserve warmth. When I was lost, I told myself stories . . .”So Charles D’Ambrosio recounted his life in Philipsburg, Montana, the genesis of the brilliant stories collected here, six of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. Each of these eight burnished, terrifying, masterfully crafted stories is set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike in the Pacific Northwest. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in the bleak corridors of a Manhattan psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A Thanksgiving hunting trip in Northern Michigan becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily beneath a surface of sexual tension toward a racial violence they will never fully comprehend. Taking place in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations, the backloads of Iowa and the streets of Seattle, this collection of stories, as muscular and challenging as the best novels, is about people who have been orphaned, who have lost connection, and who have exhausted the ability to generate meaning in their lives. Yet in the midst of lacerating difficulty, the sensibility at work in these fictions boldly insists on the enduring power of love. D’Ambrosio conjures a world that is fearfully inhospitable, darkly humorous, and touched by glory; here are characters, tested by every kind of failure, who struggle to remain human, whose lives have been sharpened rather than numbed by adversity, whose apprehension of truth and beauty has been deepened rather than defeated by their troubles. Many writers speak of the abyss. Charles D’Ambrosio writes as if he is inside of it, gazing upward, and the gaze itself is redemptive, a great yearning ache, poignant and wondrous, equal parts grit and grace.The high divide --Drummond & son --Screenwriter --Up north --The scheme of things --The dead fish museum --Blessing --The bone game

National Geographic Concise History of the World: An Illustrated Time Line


Neil Kagan - 2006
    Few references are as invaluable, all-inclusive, and satisfying to browse. For readers of all ages, world history is easily accessible, depicted as never before—so that events occurring simultaneously around the world can be viewed at-a-glance together. For example, Texas Instruments launched the pocket calculator the same year the Soviet Union launched the first manned space station, in 1971. Columbus sailed from Spain the year Martin Behaim constructed a terrestrial globe in Nuremberg. The California Gold Rush followed the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s, and the Greek dictatorship of Papadopoulos is overthrown the same year Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is deposed and U.S. president Nixon resigns, in 1974. The book's innovative time line truly sets it apart, allowing readers to scan across a spread and explore a single area or compare contemporary societies across the globe. This remarkable resource also contains dozens of maps; scores of sidebars; hundreds of illustrations; and thousands of events, milestones, personalities, ideas, and inventions. Throughout, vivid illustrations depict artworks, artifacts, portraits and dramatic scenes, while sidebar topics range from local customs and lifestyles to the effect of climate change on human migration. Drawing on National Geographic's vast resources, this concise yet comprehensive, one-of-a-kind work is as rewarding as it is compulsively readable.

The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War


Howard Bahr - 2006
    Now, one afternoon in 1885, he is presented with a chance to literally retrace his steps from the past and face the truth behind the events that led to the loss of so many friends and comrades. The opportunity arrives in the form of Cass's childhood friend Alison, a dying woman who urges Cass to accompany her on a trip to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her father and brother. As they make their way north over the battlefields, they are joined by two of Cass's former brothers-in-arms, and his memories reemerge with overwhelming vividness. Before long the group has assembled on the haunted ground of Franklin, where past and present--the legacy of the war and the narrow hope of redemption--will draw each of them toward a painful confrontation. Moving between harrowing scenes of battle and the novel's present-day quest, Howard Bahr re-creates this era with devastating authority, proving himself once again to be the preeminent contemporary novelist of the Civil War.

Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture


Maria Elena Buszek - 2006
    As shocking as contemporary feminist pin-ups are intended to be, perhaps more surprising is that the pin-up has been appropriated by women for their own empowerment since its inception more than a century ago. Pin-Up Grrrls tells the history of the pin-up from its birth, revealing how its development is intimately connected to the history of feminism. Maria Elena Buszek documents the genre’s 150-year history with more than 100 illustrations, many never before published.Beginning with the pin-up’s origins in mid-nineteenth-century carte-de-visite photographs of burlesque performers, Buszek explores how female sex symbols, including Adah Isaacs Menken and Lydia Thompson, fought to exert control over their own images. Buszek analyzes the evolution of the pin-up through the advent of the New Woman, the suffrage movement, fanzine photographs of early film stars, the Varga Girl illustrations that appeared in Esquire during World War II, the early years of Playboy magazine, and the recent revival of the genre in appropriations by third-wave feminist artists. A fascinating combination of art history and cultural history, Pin-Up Grrrls is the story of how women have publicly defined and represented their sexuality since the 1860s.

Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830


Clare A. Lyons - 2006
    Lyons uncovers a world where runaway wives challenged their husbands' patriarchal rights and where serial and casual sexual relationships were commonplace. By reading popular representations of sex against actual behavior, Lyons reveals the clash of meanings given to sex and illuminates struggles to recast sexuality in order to eliminate its subversive potential. Sexuality became the vehicle for exploring currents of liberty, freedom, and individualism in the politics of everyday life among groups of early Americans typically excluded from formal systems of governance--women, African Americans, and poor classes of whites. Lyons shows that men and women created a vibrant urban pleasure culture, including the eroticization of print culture, as eighteenth-century readers became fascinated with stories of bastardy, prostitution, seduction, and adultery. In the post-Revolutionary reaction, white middle-class men asserted their authority, Lyons argues, by creating a gender system that simultaneously allowed them the liberty of their passions, constrained middle-class women with virtue, and projected licentiousness onto lower-class whites and African Americans.Lyons's analysis shows how class and racial divisions fostered new constructions of sexuality that served as a foundation for gender. This gendering of sexuality in the new nation was integral to reconstituting social hierarchies and subordinating women and African Americans in the wake of the Revolution.

The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History


Jennifer Armstrong - 2006
    Some are tales of triumph—the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the Wright brothers taking to the air, Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. Some are tales of tragedy—the fate of the Donner Party, the great fire in Chicago, the eruption of Mount Saint Helens.   There are stories of inventors and athletes and abolitionists and artists. Stories about struggling for freedom—again and again, in so many ways.   With full-color illustrations on nearly every page and short, exciting stories, this book is perfect for browsing by the entire family. Notes at the end of each story direct readers to related stories. And a guide to thematic story arcs offers readers (and teachers) an easy way to follow their particular interests throughout the book. A treasure trove of a book that belongs in every home!   “This lively and engaging collection of stories recounting American history is a wonderful gift not only to the children of this country but also their parents. I can’t wait to share it with my grandchildren.” —Tom Brokaw

The Quotable Jefferson


Thomas Jefferson - 2006
    John Adams chose the 33-year-old Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence largely because of his masterly Pen. The genius of the Declaration and Jefferson's later writings amply confirmed Adams's judgment. Few writers have said so much on so many subjects--and said it so well--as Jefferson. The Quotable Jefferson--the most comprehensive and authoritative book of Jefferson quotations ever published--demonstrates that as does no other book.Drawing primarily on The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, published by Princeton University Press, John Kaminski has carefully collected and cleverly arranged Jefferson's pronouncements on almost 500 subjects, ranging from the profound and public--the Constitution--to the personal and peculiar--cold water bathing. The Quotable Jefferson is the first book to put Jefferson's words in context with a substantial introduction, a chronology of Jefferson's life, the source of each quotation, an appendix identifying Jefferson's correspondents, and a comprehensive index. The main section of Jefferson quotations, which are arranged alphabetically by topic, is followed by three other fascinating sections of quotations: Jefferson on his contemporaries, his contemporaries on him, and Jefferson on himself.This book will delight the casual reader and browser, but it is also a serious and carefully edited reference work. Whatever the subject, if Jefferson said something memorable about it, you are likely to find it here.

With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830


LeRoy Ashby - 2006
    Personalities such as Elvis Presley, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan are more recognizable to many people than are most elected officials. With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, dance, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, technology, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms American culture, revealing that the world of entertainment constantly evolves as it tries to meet the demands of a diverse audience. Trends in popular entertainment often reveal the tensions between competing ideologies, appetites, and values in American society. For example, in the late nineteenth century, Americans embraced "self-made men" such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie: the celebrities of the day were circus tycoons P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey, Wild West star "Buffalo Bill" Cody, professional baseball organizer Albert Spalding, and prizefighter John L. Sullivan. At the same time, however, several female performers challenged traditional notions of weak, frail Victorian women. Adah Isaacs Menken astonished crowds by wearing tights that made her appear nude while performing dangerous stunts on horseback, and the shows of the voluptuous burlesque group British Blondes often centered on provocative images of female sexual power and dominance. Ashby describes how history and politics frequently influence mainstream entertainment. When Native Americans, blacks, and other non-whites appeared in the nineteenth-century circuses and Wild West shows, it was often to perpetuate demeaning racial stereotypes -- crowds jeered Sitting Bull at Cody's shows. By the early twentieth century, however, black minstrel acts reveled in racial tensions, reinforcing stereotypes while at the same time satirizing them and mocking racist attitudes before a predominantly white audience. Decades later, Red Foxx and Richard Pryor's profane comedy routines changed American entertainment. The raw ethnic material of Pryor's short-lived television show led to a series of African-American sitcoms in the 1980s that presented common American experiences -- from family life to college life -- with black casts. Mainstream entertainment has often co-opted and sanitized fringe amusements in an ongoing process of redefining the cultural center and its boundaries. Social control and respectability vied with the bold, erotic, sensational, and surprising, as entrepreneurs sought to manipulate the vagaries of the market, control shifting public appetites, and capitalize on campaigns to protect public morals. Rock 'n Roll was one such fringe culture; in the 1950s, Elvis blurred gender norms with his androgynous style and challenged conventions of public decency with his sexually-charged performances. By the end of the 1960s, Bob Dylan introduced the social consciousness of folk music into the rock scene, and The Beatles embraced hippie counter-culture. Don McLean's 1971 anthem "American Pie" served as an epitaph for rock's political core, which had been replaced by the spectacle of hard rock acts such as Kiss and Alice Cooper. While Rock 'n Roll did not lose its ability to shock, in less than three decades it became part of the established order that it had originally sought to challenge. With Amusement for All provides the context to what Americans have done for fun since 1830, showing the reciprocal nature of the relationships between social, political, economic, and cultural forces and the way in which the entertainment world has reflected, refracted, or reinforced the values those forces represent in America.

Altman on Altman


Robert Altman - 2006
    Cited as an influence by such envelope-pushing directors as Spike Jonze and P. T. Anderson, Altman has created a genre all his own, notable for its improvised, overlapping dialogue and creative cinematography. One of the key moviemakers of the 1970s--commonly considered the heyday of American film--Altman's irrepressible combination of unorthodox vision and style is most clearly evidenced in the fourteen movies he released across that decade. By fine-tuning his talent in a diverse array of genres, including westerns, thrillers, and loopy, absurdist comedies--all subtly altered to fit his signature métier--he cemented his place as one of our most esteemed directors.In these conversations with David Thompson, Altman reflects on his start in industrial filmmaking, as well as his tenure in television directing Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Bonanza, and his big break in feature films as the director of the enormously popular M*A*S*H, a project for which he was the last possible resort behind fourteen other directors. The resulting portrait reveals a quixotic man whose films continue to delight and challenge audiences, both in the United States and beyond.

Yankee Doodle Alphabet


Wendell Minor - 2006
    For each letter of the alphabet, Minor assigns a key element of young America, and with accompanying text, introduces the reader to this rich history.

The Motel Life


Willy Vlautin - 2006
    With "echoes of Of Mice and Men" (The Bookseller, UK), The Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two Nevada brothers — on the run after a hit-and-run accident — who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope, desperately cling to the edge of modern life.

Grateful Dead Gear: The Band's Instruments, Sound Systems and Recording Sessions From 1965 to 1995


Blair Jackson - 2006
    From the "Acid Tests" of the mid-'60s to the famous "Wall of Sound" PA setup in the '70s and on to their exceptional later touring systems, the Grateful Dead were always on the cutting edge of technological innovation and experimentation. This exhaustive study includes clear and concise explanations of the band's equipment technology, instrument design, and studio recording techniques, plus a history of the group. Features: more than 100 photos and diagrams, many never before seen; new interviews with band members and tech personnel; suggested listening for every era of the group's history; and more!

Rape and Sexual Power in Early America


Sharon Block - 2006
    Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. Highlighting the gap between reports of coerced sex and incidents that were publicly classified as rape, Block demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. She challenges conventional narratives that claim sexual relations between white women and black men became racially charged only in the late nineteenth century. Her analysis extends racial ties to rape back into the colonial period and beyond the boundaries of the southern slave-labor system. Early Americans' treatment of rape, Block argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation.

Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life


Kingsley M. Bray - 2006
    His war record was unmatched by any of his peers, and his rout of Custer at the Little Bighorn reverberates through history. Yet so much about him is unknown or steeped in legend.Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life corrects older, idealized accounts—and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies—to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety. Kingsley M. Bray has plumbed interviews of Crazy Horse’s contemporaries and consulted modern Lakotas to fill in vital details of Crazy Horse’s inner and public life.Bray places Crazy Horse within the rich context of the nineteenth-century Lakota world. He reassesses the war chief’s achievements in numerous battles and retraces the tragic sequence of misunderstandings, betrayals, and misjudgments that led to his death. Bray also explores the private tragedies that marred Crazy Horse’s childhood and the network of relationships that shaped his adult life.To this day, Crazy Horse remains a compelling symbol of resistance for modern Lakotas. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life is a singular achievement, scholarly and authoritative, offering a complete portrait of the man and a fuller understanding of his place in American Indian and United States history.

Americana the Beautiful: Mid-Century Culture in Kodachrome


Charles Phoenix - 2006
    This witty, wacky and wondrous collection of found vintage family and travel Kodachrome slides celebrates the cultural extravaganza that is America's golden era, the space age. After SOUTHERN CALIFORNIALAND hit the Los Angeles Times bestseller list, Phoenix has set his sights on the national lists. Readers experience both kitschy and classic places where often only a picture can tell the whole story. With his laugh-out-loud-funny text and colorful images Phoenix proves that Americana can definitely by coffee-table worthy.

Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution


Joseph T. Glatthaar - 2006
    With new detail and historical sweep, Joseph T. Glatthaar and James Kirby Martin offer a vivid account of the Revolution's forgotten heroes, the allies who risked their land, their culture, and their lives to join in a war that gave birth to a new nation at the expense of their own. Not only capturing for the first time the full sacrifice of the Oneida in securing American independence, "Forgotten Allies "also provides details and insights into Oneida culture and how it was shaped, changed, and molded throughout many years of contact with the American colonists. Above all else, it depicts the valor and determination of an Indian nation that fought with all the resolve of the rebels only to be erased from America's collective memory. A long-overdue corrective, "Forgotten Allies "makes certain that the Oneidas' story is finally told.

Hunting the American Werewolf: Beast Men in Wisconsin and Beyond


Linda S. Godfrey - 2006
    Godfrey. He's out there ... a malevolent beast with the head of a wolf--walking upright like a man! Don't believe it? How do you explain dozens of verified sightings throughout Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and nationwide?

David Wojnarowicz: A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side


Giancarlo Ambrosino - 2006
    Wojnarowicz was then at the peak of his notoriety as the fiercest antagonist of morals crusader Senator Jesse Helms--a notoriety that Wojnarowicz alternately embraced and rejected. Already suffering the last stages of AIDS, David saw his dialogue with Lotringer as a chance to set the record straight on his aspirations, his personal history, and his political views. The two arranged to have this three-hour dialogue video-recorded by a mutual friend, the artist Marion Scemama. Lotringer held on to the tape for a long time. After Wojnarowicz's death the following year, he found the transcript enormously moving, yet somehow incomplete. David was trying, often with heartbreaking eloquence, to define not just his career but its position in time. The subject was huge, and transcended the actual dialogue. Lotringer then spent the next several years gathering additional commentary on Wojnarowicz's life and work from those who knew him best--the friends with whom he collaborated. Lotringer solicited personal testimony from Wojnarowicz's friends and other artists, including Mike Bildo, Steve Brown, Julia Scher, Richard Kern, Carlo McCormick, Ben Neill, Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, Marguerite van Cook, and others. What emerges from these masterfully-conducted interviews is a surprising insight into something art history knows, but systematically hides: the collaborative nature of the work of any "great artist." All these respondents had, at one time, made performances, movies, sculptures, photographs, and other collaborative works with Wojnarowicz. In this sense, Wojnarowicz appears not only as a great originator, but as a great synthesizer.

Handbook of Intelligence Studies


Loch K. Johnson - 2006
    Leading experts in the field approach the three major missions of intelligence: collection-and-analysis; covert action; and counterintelligence. Within each of these missions, the dynamically written essays dissect the so-called intelligence cycle to reveal the challenges of gathering and assessing information from around the world. Covert action, the most controversial intelligence activity, is explored, with special attention on the issue of military organizations moving into what was once primarily a civilian responsibility. The authors furthermore examine the problems that are associated with counterintelligence, protecting secrets from foreign spies and terrorist organizations, as well as the question of intelligence accountability, and how a nation can protect its citizens against the possible abuse of power by its own secret agencies.The Handbook of Intelligence Studies is a benchmark publication with major importance both for current research and for the future of the field. It is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and scholars of intelligence studies, international security, strategic studies and political science in general.

The Great Lakes Water Wars


Peter Annin - 2006
    How that water is used by, or diverted from, those people is the story of The Great Lakes Water Wars. These wars are coming. A controversial compact to manage the waters of the Great Lakes through this century will be considered by eight state legislatures and Congress in the years ahead. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume since 1960? Or will we come to see that unregulated water withdrawals are ultimately catastrophic? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind these upcoming battles.

From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice


Thomas F. Jackson - 2006
    Yet King's nonviolent opposition to racism, militarism, and economic injustice had deeper roots and more radical implications than is commonly appreciated, Thomas F. Jackson argues in this searching reinterpretation of King's public ministry. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, King was influenced by and in turn reshaped the political cultures of the black freedom movement and democratic left. His vision of unfettered human rights drew on the diverse tenets of the African American social gospel, socialism, left-New Deal liberalism, Gandhian philosophy, and Popular Front internationalism.King's early leadership reached beyond southern desegregation and voting rights. As the freedom movement of the 1950s and early 1960s confronted poverty and economic reprisals, King championed trade union rights, equal job opportunities, metropolitan integration, and full employment. When the civil rights and antipoverty policies of the Johnson administration failed to deliver on the movement's goals of economic freedom for all, King demanded that the federal government guarantee jobs, income, and local power for poor people. When the Vietnam war stalled domestic liberalism, King called on the nation to abandon imperialism and become a global force for multiracial democracy and economic justice.Drawing widely on published and unpublished archival sources, Jackson explains the contexts and meanings of King's increasingly open call for "a radical redistribution of political and economic power" in American cities, the nation, and the world. The mid-1960s ghetto uprisings were in fact revolts against unemployment, powerlessness, police violence, and institutionalized racism, King argued. His final dream, a Poor People's March on Washington, aimed to mobilize Americans across racial and class lines to reverse a national cycle of urban conflict, political backlash, and policy retrenchment. King's vision of economic democracy and international human rights remains a powerful inspiration for those committed to ending racism and poverty in our time.

Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights


John E. Finn - 2006
    And when we were taught history and learned about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, we were always made aware of that uniqueness, of the extraordinary experiment that gave every citizen of this new nation a gift possessed by no others. But what, exactly, was that gift?What liberties and rights did the Founders intend us to have? How do we get from what Professor John Finn calls the Constitution's "wonderfully elastic and vague" language to the finely tuned specifics of the Supreme Court's decisions about speech, or abortion, or religion?And what is religion? In forbidding Congress to make any law "respecting an establishment" of religion, or "prohibiting the free exercise" of it, the Founders neglected to define it. The answer is more complicated than it seems.In fact, as Professor Finn shows in Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights, almost everything about the Constitution, no matter how unwavering its words might appear, is more complicated than it seems at first reading, leaving a legacy of questions that multiplies with each passing decade.Why have generations of jurists and legal scholars—not to mention legislators, presidents, and citizens—argued so long and hard about the meaning of what often appears to be unambiguous phrasing? How is it that several differing Supreme Court opinions—even those on diametrically opposed sides of a sharply disputed case—can so often all seem plausible? And how has so remarkably sparse a document as the Constitution nevertheless proven to be so complex a vision of what an ideal polity should be?Professor Finn notes, "There is usually more than one way to understand a constitutional provision, usually more than one way to decide a case," with "few, if any, uncontested principles or issues or questions in the American constitutional order."Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights explores the tensions that make up that order—tensions, say, between our commitment to self-governance, expressed through majority rule and the other democratic principles, and our simultaneous commitment to constitutionalism and the Bill of Rights, expressed by the need to keep the majority from acting in ways that trample on liberty.As you might expect from such difficult issues, this is a course filled with nuance—each side of so many constitutional issues can be presented plausibly. Though none of us will agree with every decision of the Court or the constitutional interpretations on which they are constructed, it is extraordinary to experience, so directly, from throughout our history, in the carefully constructed language of the nation's leading judges, the deliberate flexibility and ambiguity that so often make even opposing opinions defensible. Indeed, this is among our Constitution's very greatest strengths.

Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream


Edward Humes - 2006
    government feared the flood of returning World War II soldiers as much as it looked forward to peace. To avoid economic catastrophe, FDR, the American Legion, William Randolph Hearst, and others began crafting the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. It would be the single most transformative bill of the twentieth century. Spun as the G.I. Bill of Rights, this program for vets included home loans, health care, educational funds, and career counseling. The effects were immediate and enduring--the suburbs, the middle class, America's ever-increasing number of college graduates, the lunar landing--all are tied to the G.I. Bill. The Greatest Generation would not exist without it: Norman Mailer, Bob Dole, John F. Kennedy, Paul Newman, Jimmy Carter, Clint Eastwood, and many others benefited from its provisions. Here are the stories of some of these men and women, how their lives changed because of the bill and how this country changed because of them.

A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion


Catherine L. Albanese - 2006
    Catherine L. Albanese follows metaphysical traditions from Renaissance Europe to England and then America, where they have flourished from colonial days to the twenty-first century, blending often with African, Native American, and other cultural elements.The book follows evolving versions of metaphysical religion, including Freemasonry, early Mormonism, Universalism, and Transcendentalism—and such further incarnations as Spiritualism, Theosophy, New Thought, Christian Science, and reinvented versions of Asian ideas and practices. Continuing into the twentieth century and after, the book shows  how the metaphysical mix has broadened to encompass UFO activity, channeling, and chakras in the  New Age movement—and a much broader new spirituality in the present. In its own way, Albanese argues, American metaphysical religion has been as vigorous, persuasive, and influential as the evangelical tradition that is more often the focus of religious scholars’ attention. She makes the case that because of its combinative nature—its ability to incorporate differing beliefs and practices—metaphysical religion offers key insights into the history of all American religions.

Daughters of Mother Earth: The Wisdom of Native American Women


Barbara Alice Mann - 2006
    It holds that for too long, elements unnatural to Native American ways of knowing have been imposed on the study of Native America. Euro-American discourse styles, emphasizing elite male privilege and conceptual linearity, have drowned out the democratic and woman-centered Native approaches. Even when the damage of western linearity is understood to occur, analysis of Native American history, society, and culture has still been relentlessly placed in male custody, following the western assumption that Euro-American men speak ably for all. This book seeks to redress that balance, allowing, as editor Barbara Alice Mann writes, the Daughters of Mother Earth to reclaim their ancient responsibility to speak in council, to tell the truth, to guide the rising generations through spirit-spoken wisdom.The recovery of women's traditions is an important theme in this collection of essays that helps reframe Native issues as properly gendered. Thus, Paula Gunn Allen looks at Indian lifeways through the many stitches of Indian clothes and the many steps of their powwow fancy-dances. Lee Maracle calls for reconstitution of traditional social structures, based on Native American ways of knowing. Kay McGowan identifies the exact sites where woman-power was weakened historically through the heavy impositions of European culture, the better to repair them. Finally, Barbara Mann examines how communication between Natives east and west of the Mississippi came to be so deranged as to be dysfunctional, and outlines how to reestablish good east-west relations for the benefit of all.

Eight Ways to Run the Country: A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right


Brian Patrick Mitchell - 2006
    But the reality is that Americans are deeply divided in more ways than one, and the savvy voter, no less than the savvy politician, must make more sense of things. Eight Ways to Run the Country explains what conventional political theory cannot, offering a profoundly illuminating look at our political past and our present differences.Eight Ways doesn't do away with Left and Right, but it defines them in better terms and adds a whole new dimension to explain what Left and Right can't. It correctly pegs the ideological poles and thus brings easy-to-understand order to the dizzying diversity of political perspectives. It places neoconservatives into historical context, illuminating both what they share with other conservatives and how their differences have wrought a change in the character of the Right. It explains the recurring attempts to define an independent, non-ideological center. It provides the best definition of populism to be found. Finally, it relates the political heritage of the American Founders to the politics of today.

Big Alaska: Journey Across America's Most Amazing State


Debbie S. Miller - 2006
    Alaska is our biggest state, but it is also one of the least populated, making it an enormous span of natural wonders and astonishing wilderness. This unique place is home to the tallest mountain, the most active volcanoes, and the largest land mammals in North America. See hundred-pound salmon, two-ton walruses, and thundering herds of caribou. Take wing through mountains covered with glaciers, fly under the cover of lush rain forests, and circle over barren Arctic tundras.

Dream Chasers of the West: A Homestead Family of Glacier National Park


B.L. Wettstein - 2006
    In 1913, unmarried and alone at the age of thirty, Clara left Minnesota and headed to Montana to file a homestead on free land. Impervious to the dangers that awaited her, Clara thought she could find happiness with a piece of land and a Jersey cow, but life wasn't that simple. Clara settled on the remote southern border of Glacier National Park. It was a time when neighbors helped each other to survive, and when men were tough, but the women were tougher. In many ways, Clara's story is the story of countless settlers who were destined to leave their impact on the West, people who experienced despair and anguish, and whose graves lie largely unmarked and unvisited. B.L. Wettstein spent three years researching Clara's life and legacy, including oral interviews with people who knew Clara. Much of this fast paced book is based on Clara's remarkable letters to friends and family. It includes a collection of historic photos of Clara, her family, and the places she lived and worked.

Shirley Temple: A Pictorial History of the World's Greatest Child Star


Rita Dubas - 2006
    Shirley Temple was a phenomenon, a child star whose talent and personality earned her a permanent place in Hollywood history. The extraordinary six-year-old entertainer struck a chord with audiences all over the globe. Her career sparked a marketing sensation, spurring the production of anything and everything bearing her image-from dolls to tin whistles-in all corners of the globe, both authorized and unauthorized. Despite the decades-long interest in everything Temple, never before has there been a lavishly illustrated art book examining the phenomenon that was Shirley Temple as a child star in the 1930s. Many of the rare and unusual Shirley Temple collectibles have never been featured in print. Along with an informal, concise history of the childhood career of Ms. Temple (featuring film stills, many never-before-seen photographs, and personal snapshots of Shirley as well as several taken by her), this book is a visual treat befitting the magic of the most famous child star of all time, as well as the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The Unauthorized Dan Brown Companion


John Helfers - 2006
    With The Unauthorized Dan Brown Companion, readers will at last have all the information needed to distinguish for themselves between the inventions of a master storyteller and the historical revelations of a first-rate investigator.

Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate


Alicia C. Shepard - 2006
    Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became household names throughout the world after they helped topple Nixon and left an indelible high water mark that confronts every future American journalist.

Liberty Blue Dinnerware


Debbie Coe - 2006
    Here the Old North Church, Minutemen, West Point, Independence Hall, Mount Vernon, and many more historic sites are shown. The Liberty Blue promotion coincided with America's Bicentennial celebrations, causing more people to become interested in owning a set for themselves. Color photographs beautifully illustrate all the pieces in a complete set, and interesting facts are given about each historic scene. Updated prices are included in the captions and the associated glassware and ceramic pieces are carefully described. Original advertisements and brochures are included to provide extensive accurate information. This is the first book about Liberty Blue dinnerware and is sure to become a valuable reference guide for collectors trying to build a complete set.

A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America


Saul T. Cornell - 2006
    Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern collective right view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern individual right view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the collective rights theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century. A Well-Regulated Militia not only restores the lost meaning of the original Second Amendment, but it provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns. For anyone interested in understanding the great American gun debate, this is a must read.Winner of the Langum Prize in American Legal History/Legal Biography

Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia


Rachel Bronson - 2006
    Then came the 9/11 attacks, which sorely tested that relationship. In Thicker than Oil, Rachel Bronson reveals why the partnership became so intimate and how the countries' shared interests sowed the seeds of today's most pressing problem--Islamic radicalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, declassified documents, and interviews with leading Saudi and American officials, Bronson chronicles a history of close, and always controversial, contacts. She argues that contrary to popular belief the relationship was never simply about oil for security. Saudi Arabia's geographic location and religiously motivated foreign policy figured prominently in American efforts to defeat godless communism. From Africa to Afghanistan, Egypt to Nicaragua, the two worked to beat back Soviet expansion. But decisions made for hardheaded Cold War purposes left behind a legacy that today enflames the Middle East. In this landmark work, Bronson exposes the political calculations that drove this secretive relationship. Her lively narrative is interwoven with colorful stories of diplomatic adventures and misadventures--including details of high-level backchannel conversations, awkward cross-cultural encounters, and a bizarre American request for the Saudi government to subsidize Polish pork exports, a demand the U.S. Ambassador refused to deliver. Looking forward, she outlines the challenges confronting the relationship. The Saudi government faces a zealous internal opposition bent on America's and Saudi Arabia's destruction. Yet from the perspective of both countries, the status quo is clearly unsustainable. This book shows how this crucial relationship evolved, and suggests ways to chart its future course.

Vanishing Seattle


Clark Humphrey - 2006
    Generations of Seattleites have fond memories of restaurants, local television shows, stores, and other landmarks that evoke a less sophisticated, more informal city. This new book explores Seattle at a time when timber and fish were more lucrative than airplanes and computers, when the city was a place of kitschy architecture and homespun humor and was full of boundless hope for a brighter future. These rare and vintage images hearken back to the marvels of the 1962 World's Fair, shopping trips to Frederick & Nelson and I. Magnin, dinners at Rosellini's, dancing at the Trianon Ballroom, traveling on the ferry Kalakala, rooting for baseball's Rainiers, and local personalities including Stan Boreson, J. P. Patches, and Wunda Wunda.

Gold Train Tramp/Red Rock Redhead


Dirk Fletcher - 2006
    His assignment—head off the thieves and protect $200,000 in gold en route from the East to a bank in Sacramento. But with the lovely Helena at his side playing detective (as well as some other more exciting games), he'd have a hard time keeping his mind on his mission.RED ROCK REDHEAD: When Spur rode into Arizona Territory, bosomy beauty Bonnie Smith's passionate greeting almost made him forget the mission that had brought him there in the first place. He'd been sent to the town of Hanging Rocks to find the Navajos responsible for a recent massacre of two ranch families. But after Spur began his investigation, he discovered that the Navajo weren't the only killers...

American Genius: Nineteenth Century Bank Locks and Time Locks


John Erroll - 2006
    Many of the hand-crafted masterpieces are decorated with beautiful engraving and casting, despite the fact that their mechanical interiors would rarely be seen. They reflect the great pride in creative workmanship and the mechanical genius that characterized America at the time. Here for the first time is a comprehensive compendium of these marvels of complexity and their the fascinating history. Stunning photographs by Anne Day and learned text by the authors illuminates a remarkable but little-known chapter in American technological achievement. Over 400 color photographs.

Valley of the Skookum: Four Years of Encounters with Bigfoot


Sali Sheppard-Wolford - 2006
    It blew fresh off the glaciers of Mt. Rainier, freezing everything in its path to a still-frame of winter glory. Northwest natives knew the secret of the wind: With it came the low, mournful cries of Skookum, the great man-beast of the mountain. Generations of fathers and sons passed on the knowledge of the elusive tribe of giants. Skookums? grotesque likenesses graced Totem poles in each village and peopled campfire tales. Skookum was part of the Indian world. Each year, at the first sign of autumn, Skookum would retire to the caves on the Great Mountain. They would stay there until the scent of the thaw reached their nostrils from the valley below. Finally, winter began to lose its hold on the land and mournful cries could be heard on the wind?

Dayton (Postcard History Series)


Curt Dalton - 2006
    The postcards showcase some of the city's unique commercial buildings, hotels, churches, and residences, many now long gone due to urban renewal and highway construction in the 1960s and 1970s. Landmarks featured include the National Soldiers' Home, built for veterans of the Civil War in 1868, and there is an entire chapter dedicated to the events of the 1913 flood that forever changed the face of the city. Over 200 postcard images were selected from the Dayton Metro Library and a number of privately held collections.

Archaeology of Tomorrow


Travis Price - 2006
    The Archaeology of Tomorrow offers an innovative perspective on the enduring nature of design and architecture, identifying the principles of the "mythic modern" and employing the "three lenses of architecture"; to define the nature of design through the influence and inspiration of architect Frank Gehry, sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, and mythologist Joseph Campbell. Travis Price is a multiple award-winning architect and innovator in environmentally sound architecture. A former consultant for the Carter administration on alternative energy policy, he is credited with coining the term "passive solar". Price designed the world's largest solar office building - TVA's one million square foot complex, planned new urbanist town developments from Virginia to Uganda, designed an array of stunning individual residences, commercial properties and institutional monuments, and created a line of furniture. He has received numerous AIA design awards, been featured in several films and television programs, and is widely published in journals and books internationally.TravisPriceArchitects.com

Great and Minor Moments in Oregon History: An Illustrated Anthology of Illuminating Glimpses into Oregon's Past — From Prehistory to the Present


Dick Pintarich - 2006
    While not a comprehensive history, it covers the long span from the prehistoric to the present with in-depth, thought provoking and often humorous glimpses of the personalities and peculiarities that inhabit Oregon's past. Its offbeat, ecclectic approach will inform and entertain you. Learn what forces of nature combined to create Oregon over geologic eons. See how the land's natural gifts inspired the mythic world of its original natives. What was it like for Lewis and Clark to spend an Oregon winter on the north coast — without the modern tourist conveniences? Follow the Barlow Road, the most perilous part of the journey facing pioneers at the end of the Oregon Trail. Witness Portland's booming optimism at the start of the 20th century, staging the west coast's first worlds fair and building a world-class rail transit system. See revealed — as never before — the seemy vice underworld of Portland's 1950s rackets mobs. Recall Oregon's illustrious sports heritage and re-live the careers of her superstars — not just in sports, but in politics too. All this and much, much more — from the sublime to the ridiculous, the momentous to the minute — awaits within these pages.

Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography


David S. Brown - 2006
    The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism’s most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation’s most important and prolific public intellectuals. In this masterful biography, David Brown explores Hofstadter’s life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America’s hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy. By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter’s critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied. As this fascinating biography ultimately shows, Hofstadter’s observations on the struggle between conservative and liberal America are relevant to our own times, and his legacy challenges us to this day.

The Great American Road Trip (Book Brick)


Eric Peterson - 2006
    The book features dozens of interesting and unusual sights, from giant sculptures to one-of-a-kind architecture. Here are a few of the American treasures that are featured in the book:The imposing Cabazon Dinosaurs (featured in the movie Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) along California s I-10.Alaska s breathtaking Denali National Park, where you can climb (or admire) America's tallest peak, Mt. McKinley.The O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, site of one of the most famous gunfights in history.The world s biggest cowboy, Big Tex, who presides over the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.Ohio s Cedar Point, one of the oldest, biggest, and most popular amusement parks in the United States.The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and the Junk Statue of Liberty in McRae, Georgia.The Great American Road Trip features colorful photos of each attraction plus interesting facts and helpful travel planning tips. A convenient index in the back is organized by U.S. state.