Best of
United-States

1992

Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook


Peter Blood - 1992
    Folk revival favorites; Broadway show tunes; Beatles' songs; hymns, spirituals, and gospel standards; songs about peace, freedom, labor, and the environment are among the types of songs included. This revised and retypeset large-print version of the enormously popular songbook makes this essential resource easy to read and useful in leading large and small groups.

Memories That Smell Like Gasoline


David Wojnarowicz - 1992
    This volume collects four tales--"Into the Drift and Sway," "Doing Time in a Disposable Body," "Spiral" and the title story--interspersed with ink drawings by the artist. "Sometimes it gets dark in here behind these eyes I feel like the physical equivalent of a scream. The highway at night in the headlights of this speeding car speeding is the only motion that lets the heart unravel and in the wind of the road the two story framed houses appear one after the other like some cinematic stage set..." From these opening sentences of the book (in "Into the Drift and Sawy"), Wojnarowicz lets loose a salvo of explicit gay sexual reverie harshly lit by the New York cityscape: escapades in movie theaters and bus terminals, amid the ascent of AIDS and Wojnarowicz's own consciousness of the virus in himself and at large in the gay community.

On the Edge of Nowhere


James Huntington - 1992
    Thus, Jimmy Huntington learns early how to survive on the land. Huntington is only seven when his mother dies, and he must care for his younger siblings. A courageous and inspiring man, Huntington hunts wolves, fights bears, survives close calls too numerous to mention, and becomes a championship sled-dog racer.

Year 501: The Conquest Continues


Noam Chomsky - 1992
    With chapters on Haiti, Latin America, the new global economic order, the Third World at home, and much more, this is a powerful treatise on the not-so-new New World Order.

The Trail to Peach Meadow Canyon [L'Amour's Original Text]


Louis L'Amour - 1992
    Mike Bastian was the son of an outlaw and one of the fastest guns alive – but would he use It to break the law or uphold it! Outlaw Ben Curry had adopted Mike Bastian when he was orphaned as a child Curry had raised Mike as his own son, teaching him everything the boy would need to know to follow the owlhoot trail in his footsteps. Mike had grown up to be the fastest draw, the most skilled tracker, and the quickest thinker in the territory. Not once had he ever questioned the path the man he loved as his father had set out for him. But when Mike met Drusilla, the spirited young woman had stolen his heart. Now with a bloody train robbery and a murderous raid on an unsuspecting ranch planned, Mike found himself wondering where his true loyalty lay. Was it to the man who had raised him? Or to the dream of a home and family which so many other Westerners shared? Either way he would have to be prepared to go it alone against the flinty-hearted guns of the law or the guns of the deadliest outlaw band the West had ever known.

Collected Stories


Saul Bellow - 1992
    While he has garnered acclaim as a novelist, Bellow's shorter works prove equally strong. Primarily set in a sepia-toned Chicago, characters (mostly men) deal with family issues, desires, memories, and failings--often arriving at humorous if not comic situations. In the process, these quirky and wholly real characters examine human nature. The narrative is straightforward, with deftly handled shifts in time, and the prose is concise, sometimes pithy, with equal parts humor and grace. In "Looking for Mr. Green," Bellow describes a relief worker sized up by tenants: "They must have realized that he was not a college boy employed afternoons by a bill collector, trying foxily to pass for a relief clerk, recognized that he was an older man who knew himself what need was, who had more than an average seasoning in hardship. It was evident enough if you looked at the marks under his eyes and at the sides of his mouth." This collection should appeal both to those familiar with Bellow's work and to those seeking an introduction. --Michael Ferch

Fire on the Prairie: Chicago's Harold Washington and the Politics of Race


Gary Rivlin - 1992
    In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., set the nation's sights on the city when he said, If we crack Chicago, then we crack the world. Black empowerment would take off like a prairie fire across the land. Here is the story of Harold Washington's election in 1983 as the city's first black mayor. Photographs.

Home Fires


Donald R. Katz - 1992
    Spanning nearly five decades, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, their story has the scope, depth, wealth of incident, and emotional intensity of a great novel, and an abundance of humor, scandal, warmth, and trauma. A masterful chronicle of the turbulent postwar era, illuminating the interplay between private life and profound cultural changes.Donald Katz begins his account in 1945, when Sam Gordon comes home from the war to his young wife, and two-year-old daughter, eager to move his family into the growing middle class. After a few years in the Bronx, Sam and Eve move to a new Long Island subdivision and have two more children. As the '50s yield to the '60s, the younger Gordons fly out into the culture like shrapnel from an artillery shell, each tracing a unique trajectory.Katz tells the Gordons' story-the unraveling of Sam's and Eve's American dream, to the slow, hopeful reknitting of the family-marshaling a vivid cast of supporting characters. Deftly juxtaposing day-to-day family life with landmark public events, Katz creates a rich and revealing portrait of the second half of 20th century America.

Ancestry's Red Book: American State, County and Town Sources


Alice Eichholz - 1992
    In it, you will find both general and specific information essential to researchers of American records. This revised 3rd edition provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization. Whether you are looking for your ancestors in the northeastern states, the South, the West, or somewhere in the middle, "Ancestry's Red Book has information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide. In short, the "Red Book is simply the book that no genealogist can afford not to have. The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail. Unlike the federal census, state and territorial census were taken at different times and different questions were asked. Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"

The Portable Abraham Lincoln


Abraham Lincoln - 1992
    Features the "House Divided" speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and 75 other selections.

Niagara: A History of the Falls


Pierre Berton - 1992
    Few natural wonders have inspired the passions and the imaginations of so many as Niagara Falls, whose sublime beauty and awesome power have made it a magnet for statesmen and stuntmen, poets and poseurs, ordinary sightseers and exceptional visionaries. Popular historian Pierre Berton traces the history and allure of one of America's great natural phenomena. As Thurston Clarke noted in his front page "New York Times Book Review," Berton "makes a serious and convincing case for Niagara's pivotal role in North American history.... His Niagara is a lodestar for North American culture and invention: site of the first railway suspension bridge, inspiration for Nikola Tesla's discovery of the principle of alternating current, and the subject of Frederic Church's most celebrated landscape; a natural wonder that has bewitched generations of scientists, authors, and utopians, and stimulated innovations and social movements still casting long shadows."

Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study


Paula S. Rothenberg - 1992
    Rothenberg offers students 126 readings, each providing different perspectives and examining the ways in which race, gender, class, and sexuality are socially constructed. Rothenberg deftly and consistently helps students analyze each phenomena, as well as the relationships among them, thereby deepening their understanding of each issue surrounding race and ethnicity.

Outside Stories


Eliot Weinberger - 1992
    The fifteen pieces collected here range from the history of the Salman Rushdie affair to the dream of Atlantis, from the turf wars among ethnographic filmmakers to the unlikely romance between poetry and espionage, from the pilgrims in Plymouth to the students in Tiananmen Square. Above all, Weinberger's concern is poetry––whether written in medieval Baghdad or by Mexicans in Japan––and the perennially underground yet global network through which it travels. With his modernist sensibility and internationalist perspective, Weinberger's inventive prose transports old myths and texts to the strange realities of contemporary life.

Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass


Gary Paulsen - 1992
    Paulsen's prose is realistic and down-to-earth....Ruth Wright Paulsen's paintings are an invitation to pause and imagine...a delight (Christian Science Monitor). Illustrations by Ruth Wright Paulsen."

Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade


Rickie Solinger - 1992
    Such initiatives encouraged white women to relinquish their babies, spawning a flourishing adoption market, while they subjected black women to social welfare policies which assumed they would keep their babies and aimed to prevent them from having more.

Bat in My Pocket: A Memorable Friendshop


Amanda Lollar - 1992
    This book also demonstrates that bats are one of the farmers' best friends. Any creature that will eat 3,000 to 7,000 insects per night, including mosquitos, is a good neighbor.

After the War


Richard Marius - 1992
    Gradually, he is drawn into the life of the town and, as a long-enduring conflict precipitates new and accelerating violence, is woven so tightly into the town's fabric that he will never leave.

The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60


John D. Unruh - 1992
    Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, the Ray A. Billington Book Award of the Organization of American Historians, and the National Historical Society Book Prize.

Divine Days


Leon Forrest - 1992
    This huge oratorio of a novel unfolds over seven days in the life of Joubert Jones, an aspiring playwright making ends meet tending bar at his Aunt Eloise's Night Lounge. A Rabelaisian cast of characters and a Shakespearean range of voices crowd the pages of this book, an infinitely rich and suggestive tapestry of Black-American life and identity.

Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian


Noam Chomsky - 1992
    Chomsky feels the abuses, cruelty and hypocrisies of power more intensely than anyone I know. It's a state of continual alertness. Often, after I've glanced at a story in the paper and skipped rapidly over the familiar rubble of falsification, a week or two later will drop into my mailbox a photocopy of that same story marked up by Chomsky, with sentences underlined and a phrase or two in the margin etched deep into the paper by an angry pen. What Chomsky offers is a coherent "big picture," buttressed by the data of a thousand smaller pictures and discrete theaters of conflict, struggle and oppression.... For hundreds of thousands of people--over the years, he must have spoken to more American students than any person alive--Chomsky has offered the assurance, the intellectual and moral authority, that there is another way of looking at things. In this vital function he stands in the same relationship to his audience as did a philosopher he admires greatly, Bertrand Russell. -Alexander Cockburn, from his introduction "Excavating the Truth"

Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook's Lowbrow Northwest


Stewart Hall Holbrook - 1992
    This anthology collects two dozen of his best pieces about his adopted home, the Pacific Northwest.Holbrook believed in "lowbrow or non-stuffed shirt history." Holbrook's lowbrow Northwest ranges from British Columbia logging camps to Oregon ranches, and is peopled with fascinating characters like Liverpool Liz of the old Portland waterfront, the over-sexed prophet Joshua II of the Church of the Brides of Christ in Corvallis, and Arthur Boose, the last Wobbly paper boy. Here are stories of forgotten scandals and crimes, forest fires, floods, and other catastrophes, stories of workers, underdogs, scoundrels, dreamers, and fanatics, stories that bring the past to life.

Sherman: A Soldier's Passion For Order


John F. Marszalek - 1992
    As well as Sherman's role in the Civil War, the book covers other aspects of his life - West Point, the Gold Rush, the construction of the transcontinental railway and more.

Classics of Children's Literature


John W. Griffith - 1992
    Presents some of the masterpieces of children's literature, including Mother Goose verses, fairy tales, works by London, Ruskin, Carroll, Twain, Stevenson, Baum, Grahame, Montgomery, Dickens, and more.

Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution


Oren Lyons - 1992
    European philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Jean Jacques Rousseau had begun pressing for democratic reforms in Europe on the basis of glowing reports by early settlers about the New World and its native inhabitants. The founding fathers of the United States, in turn, were inspired to fight for independence and to create the great American documents of freedom through contact with Native American statesmen and exposure to American Indian societies based on individual freedom, representative government and the democratic union of tribes.Yet American Indians have never been acknowledged for their many contributions to the founding of the United States of America, and they have never been permitted to fully share the benefits of the freedoms they helped establish. Exiled in the Land of the Free is a dramatic recounting of early American history and an eloquent call for reform that will not be ignored.Written by eight prominent Native American leaders and scholars, each a specialist in his area of expertise, Exiled in the Land of the Free is a landmark volume, sure to be read by generations to come. An aspect of American history that has been ignored and denied for centuries is the extent to which we are indebted to Native Americans for the principles and practices on which our democratic institutions are based. This is the first work to recognize that legacy and trace our model of participatory democracy to its Native American roots.This book, which was written into the Congressional Record, has major implications for future relations between Indian tribes and the governments of the United States and other nations. It presents the strongest case ever made for Native American sovereignty. American history has finally been written--not from the European point of view--but from an Indian perspective.

A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm


Stanley Crawford - 1992
    From his New Mexico mountain home, award-winning author Stanley Crawford writes about growing garlic and selling it."To dream a garden and then to plant it is an act of independence and even defiance to the greater world."--Stan Crawford

Legends from Camp


Lawson Fusao Inada - 1992
    Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry finalist. "Recommended for classroom and library use, this book will add a fresh dimension to a growing body of literature that remembers, humanizes, and shares the Japanese-American internment experience for new generations."--Choice

American Gothic: The Story of America's Legendary Theatrical Family--Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth


Gene Smith - 1992
    Smith's chronicle of the Booth family draws readers into the glittering world of the theater and into a family beset by insanity and fateful dreams of glory. 16 pages of photos.

Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader


Alexander Berkman - 1992
    Like the abolitionist John Brown before him, Berkman was hugely idealistic, ready to go to the furthest extreme of self-sacrifice and violence on behalf of justice and civil rights. He decided to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after reading in the newspaper that Pinkertons hired by Frick had opened fire on the Homestead strikers, killing men, women, and children. Berkman’s bungled attempt cost him fifteen years in a federal penitentiary. Upon his release, he became an effective agitator against conscription and was again imprisoned and eventually deported to Russia, where he saw at first hand the early days of Bolshevism.Berkman’s writings remain a lasting and impassioned record of intense political transformation.Featuring a new introduction by Howard Zinn, Life of an Anarchist contains Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Berkman’s account of his years in prison; The Bolshevik Myth, his eyewitness account of the early days of the Russian Revolution; and The ABC of Anarchism, the classic text on the nature of anarchism in the twentieth century. Also included are a selection of letters between Berkman and his lifelong companion Emma Goldman, and a generous sampling from Berkman’s other publications.

The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities


Richard L. Bushman - 1992
    Spanning the material world from mansions and silverware to etiquette books, city planning, and sentimental novels, Richard L. Bushman shows how a set of values originating in aristocratic court culture gradually permeated almost every stratum of American society and served to prevent the hardening of class consciousness. A work of immense and richly nuanced learning, The Refinement of America newly illuminates every facet of both our artifacts and our values.

MIA, or Mythmaking in America


Howard Bruce Franklin - 1992
    or Mythmaking in America adds major new material about Ross Perot's role, the 1991-1992 Senate investigation, and illegal operations authorized by Ronald Reagan. “An important and compelling book. . . . Franklin raises and answers all of the hardest questions about an enduring piece of political mythology.”--The Philadelphia Inquirer“A calm and thoughtful book on a firestorm of a subject. . . . Intelligent, provocative, and courageous.”--Kirkus Reviews

Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery


John Michael Vlach - 1992
    John Michael Vlach explores the structures and spaces that formed the slaves' environment. Through photographs and the words of former slaves, he portrays the plantation landscape from the slaves' own point of view.The plantation landscape was chiefly the creation of slaveholders, but Vlach argues convincingly that slaves imbued this landscape with their own meanings. Their subtle acts of appropriation constituted one of the more effective strategies of slave resistance and one that provided a locus for the formation of a distinctive African American culture in the South.Vlach has chosen more than 200 photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey--an archive that has been mined many times for its images of the planters' residences but rarely for those of slave dwellings. In a dramatic photographic tour, Vlach leads readers through kitchens, smokehouses, dairies, barns and stables, and overseers' houses, finally reaching the slave quarters. To evoke a firsthand sense of what it was like to live and work in these spaces, he includes excerpts from the moving testimonies of former slaves drawn from the Federal Writers' Project collections.

America's Dream Team: The Quest for Olympic Gold


Chuck Daly - 1992
    Then came the Olympics of 1972 and defeat by the Russians in the last heartbreaking and highly disputed seconds. Boycotts and another defeat in 1988 followed. Now, with the historic decision to allow our greatest NBA stars to compete for the first time, the Dream Team is set to go for the gold in Barcelona. 275 full-color photos and illustrations.

A History of the Jews in America


Howard M. Sachar - 1992
    Sachar tells the stories of Spanish marranos and Russian refugees, of aristocrats and threadbare social revolutionaries, of philanthropists and Hollywood moguls. At the same time, he elucidates the grand themes of the Jewish encounter with America, from the bigotry of a Christian majority to the tensions among Jews of different origins and beliefs, and from the struggle for acceptance to the ambivalence of assimilation.

Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism 1940-1990


Michael McClintock - 1992
    

Cross to Bear: America's Most Dangerous Politics


John Maginnis - 1992
    David Duke vs. Buddy Roemer. For Louisiana voters, it was like watching a train wreck, except they were along for the ride.Cross to Bear is the inside account of the Louisiana's governor's race that had the whole world watching, and that in many ways foretold events in America's bizarre presidential race of 1992. The reader gets a back-seat view of this fascinating, often funny, sometimes frightening ride through the wild terrain of Louisiana politics. The current national political phenomena of racial alienation, voter rage, sex-life inspections and third-party challenges exploded first in Louisiana before rocking the American scene. This true story reads like a fast-moving novel in developing the characters of David Duke, struggling to shake his racist, anti-Semitic past as he incites the voter anger and raises millions; ambitious and aloof Buddy Roemer, battling his political demons while struggling through his mid-life crisis; and of the scandal-plagued Edwin Edwards, notorious gambler and womanizer, politicking for redemption in one last, improbable comeback bid. Along the way the reader meets the henchmen, bagmen, yes-men, Klansmen and girlfriends who keep politics interesting and dangerous in America's last banana republic.John Maginnis, a Louisiana native, is the author of the 1984 book on Louisiana politics, The Last Hayride. The syndicated political columnist is the editor and publisher of Louisiana Political Review and a frequent commentator in the national media.

Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900


Karin Calvert - 1992
    She argues that parents have consistently tried to mold their offspring into the prevailing notion of childhood, and identifies three distinct eras in American parenting, in which children have been seen in turn as "inchoate adults", "natural creatures", and "innocent nestlings."