In the early twentieth century, two wealthy white sisters, cousins to a North Carolina governor, wrote identical wills that left their substantial homeplace to a black man and his daughter. Maggie Ross, whose sister Sallie died in 1909, was the richest woman in Union County, North Carolina. Upon Maggie's death in 1920, her will bequeathed her estate to Bob Ross—who had grown up in the sisters' household—and his daughter Mittie Bell Houston. Mittie had also grown up with the well-to-do women, who had shown their affection for her by building a house for her and her husband. This house, along with eight hundred acres, hundreds of dollars in cash, and two of the white family's three gold watches went to Bob Ross and Houston. As soon as the contents of the will became known, more than one hundred of Maggie Ross's scandalized cousins sued to break the will, claiming that its bequest to black people proved that Maggie Ross was mentally incompetent. Revealing the details of this case and of the lives of the people involved in it, Gene Stowe presents a story that sheds light on and complicates our understanding of the Jim Crow South. Stowe's account of this famous court battle shows how specific individuals, both white and black, labored against the status quo of white superiority and ultimately won. An evocative portrait of an entire generation's sins, Inherit the Land: Jim Crow Meets Miss Maggie's Will hints at the possibility for color-blind justice in small-town North Carolina.
The political value of African American literature has long been a topic of great debate among American writers, both black and white, from Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama. In his compelling new book, Representing the Race, Gene Andrew Jarrett traces the genealogy of this topic in order to develop an innovative political history of African American literature. Jarrett examines texts of every sort—pamphlets, autobiographies, cultural criticism, poems, short stories, and novels—to parse the myths of authenticity, popular culture, nationalism, and militancy that have come to define African American political activism in recent decades. He argues that unless we show the diverse and complex ways that African American literature has transformed society, political myths will continue to limit our understanding of this intellectual tradition. Cultural forums ranging from the printing press, schools, and conventions, to parlors, railroad cars, and courtrooms provide the backdrop to this African American literary history, while the foreground is replete with compelling stories, from the debate over racial genius in early American history and the intellectual culture of racial politics after slavery, to the tension between copyright law and free speech in contemporary African American culture, to the political audacity of Barack Obama’s creative writing. Erudite yet accessible, Representing the Race is a bold explanation of what’s at stake in continuing to politicize African American literature in the new millennium.
Since the earliest days of colonial America, the relationship between cotton and the African-American experience has been central to the history of the republic. America's most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown. Both before and after the Civil War, blacks were assigned to the cotton fields while a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South. Gene Dattel's pioneering study explores the historical roots of these most central social issues. In telling detail Mr. Dattel shows why the vastly underappreciated story of cotton is a key to understanding America's rise to economic power. When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite, it became the first truly complex global business and thereby a major driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial "sea legs" in the world economy. Without slave-produced cotton, the South could never have initiated the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict at home. Mr. Dattel's skillful historical analysis identifies the commercial forces that cotton unleashed and the pervasive nature of racial antipathy it produced. This is a story that has never been told in quite the same way before, related here with the authority of a historian with a profound knowledge of the history of international finance. With 23 black-and-white illustrations.
The acclaimed author of García Márquez delivers “a compulsively readable account of the life and works of our greatest . . . writer of fantasy” (New York Daily News). Since its first publication in 1981, Borges and His Fiction has introduced the life and works of this Argentinian master-writer to an entire generation of students, high school and college teachers, and general readers. Responding to a steady demand for an updated edition, Gene H. Bell-Villada has significantly revised and expanded the book to incorporate new information that has become available since Borges’ death in 1986. In particular, he offers a more complete look at Borges and Peronism and Borges’ personal experiences of love and mysticism, as well as revised interpretations of some of Borges’ stories. As before, the book is divided into three sections that examine Borges’ life, his stories in Ficciones and El Aleph, and his place in world literature. “Of the scores of Borges studies by now published in English, Bell-Villada’s excellent book stands out as one of the freshest and most generally helpful . . . Lay readers and specialists alike will find his book a valuable and highly readable companion to Ficciones and El Aleph.” —Choice
Through their scientific research and clinical practice, husband and wife team Gene D. Cohen and Wendy L. Miller uncovered new clues about how the aging mind can build resilience and continue growth, even during times of grave illness, thus setting aside the traditional paradigm of aging as a time of decline. Sky Above Clouds tells the inside story of how attitude, community, creativity, and love shape a life, with or without health, even to our dying. Cohen and Miller draw deeply on their own lessons learned as they struggle through aging, illness, and loss within their own family and eventually Cohen's own untimely death.
For a work to be considered African American literature, does it need to focus on black characters or political themes? Must it represent these within a specific stylistic range? Or is it enough for the author to be identified as African American? In Deans and Truants, Gene Andrew Jarrett traces the shifting definitions of African American literature and the authors who wrote beyond those boundaries at the cost of critical dismissal and, at times, obscurity. From the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, de facto deans—critics and authors as different as William Howells, Alain Locke, Richard Wright, and Amiri Baraka—prescribed the shifting parameters of realism and racial subject matter appropriate to authentic African American literature, while truant authors such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, George S. Schuyler, Frank Yerby, and Toni Morrison—perhaps the most celebrated African American author of the twentieth century—wrote literature anomalous to those standards. Jarrett explores the issues at stake when Howells, the "Dean of American Letters," argues in 1896 that only Dunbar's "entirely black verse," written in dialect, "would succeed." Three decades later, Locke, the cultural arbiter of the Harlem Renaissance, stands in contrast to Schuyler, a journalist and novelist who questions the existence of a peculiarly black or "New Negro" art. Next, Wright's 1937 blueprint for African American writing sets the terms of the Chicago Renaissance, but Yerby's version of historical romance approaches race and realism in alternative literary ways. Finally, Deans and Truants measures the gravitational pull of the late 1960s Black Aesthetic in Baraka's editorial silence on Toni Morrison's first and only short story, "Recitatif." Drawing from a wealth of biographical, historical, and literary sources, Deans and Truants describes the changing notions of race, politics, and gender that framed and were framed by the authors and critics of African American culture for more than a century.
Gene Lees is regarded by many as the best jazz essayist in America. The book that consolidated his reputation was "Singers and the Song", which appeared in 1987. Here, this classic work is released in an expanded edition with new essays.
Who knew school could be such a barrel of fun? The classroom becomes a laugh-room with these wacky jokes, riotous riddles, and loony excuses. From silly students and zany profs to quizzes, homework, and that mysterious cafeteria food--every joke will keep you laughing from the time the school bell rings in the morning till you're home free!
The truth behind a Civil War controversy.“Anyone with an interest in the 1862 Maryland Campaign will find it a fascinating and illuminating read.” —D. Scott Hartwig, author of To Antietam Creek The discovery of Robert E. Lee’s Special Orders no. 191 outside of Frederick, Maryland on September 13, 1862 is one of the most important and hotly disputed events of the American Civil War. For more than 150 years historians have debated if George McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, dawdled upon receiving a copy of the orders before warily advancing to challenge Lee’s forces at the Battle of South Mountain. In this new digital essay, the first in the Spotlight Series to be published by Savas Beatie, authors Gene Thorp and Alexander Rossino document exhaustively how “Little Mac” moved with uncharacteristic energy to counter the Confederate threat and take advantage of Lee’s divided forces, striking a blow in the process that wrecked Lee’s plans and sent his army reeling back toward Virginia. The essay is a beautifully woven tour de force of primary research that proposes to put a final word on the debate over the fate and impact of the Lost Orders on the history of the 1862 Maryland Campaign. “Thorp and Rossino make a very persuasive case for McClellan having received the Lost Orders in mid-afternoon and sending his dispatch to Lincoln at midnight on September 13th, 1862. If I were writing my Antietam book today, I would follow their account.” —James M. McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom
On this wintry December night in 1893, Millie had lots of time to think. His wife, Mina, was with child; and tonight looked like the baby would arrive. His first child was a girl named Blanche, who was four years old. He was truly hoping for a boy, even knowing that Mina and Blanche both wanted a girl. Millie had thought back to the time when he and his family came to Michigan from Canada in the late 1870s. He reminisced about events and adventures this move had brought. He loved life on the farm. To him it was a very rewarding life. He hoped to be able to pass this passion he had for farming on to a son. He had dreamed of being married and having children. He remembered how his pa and ma favored his sister over him and his brother. He never wanted to do that to his children when he had them. He thought how nice it would be to have a son to carry on the family name. A son to help on the farm and eventually inherit it. A son would just make him feel complete as a man. Then came the words. "It's a boy!" Millie heaved a heavy sigh. A son! He couldn't wait to see him. He would call him Rate to honor his dad. Now he could look forward to this new chapter in his life. Only time would tell how this chapter would unfold.
A readable guide to the art of looking at art. There’s an art to viewing art. A sizable portion of the population regards art with varying degrees of reverence, bewilderment, suspicion, contempt, and intimidation. Most people aren’t sure what to do when standing before a work of art, besides gaze at it for what they hope is an acceptable amount of time, and even those who visit galleries and museums regularly aren’t always as well versed as they wish they could be. This book will help remedy that situation and answer many of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to the matter of art in general: When was the first art made? Who decides which art is “for the ages”? What is art’s purpose? How do paintings get to be worth tens of millions of dollars? Where do artists get their ideas? And perhaps the most pressing question of all, have human cadavers ever been used as art materials? (Yup.) The Art of Looking at Art addresses these and countless more of the issues surrounding this frequently misunderstood microcosm, in a highly informative, yet conversational tone. History, fascinating and altogether human backstories, and information pertaining to every conceivable aspect of visual art are interwoven in twelve concise chapters, providing all the information the average person needs to comfortably approach, analyze, and appreciate art. Readers with a background in art will learn a few new things as well. This beautiful full-color book includes 45 full-page reproductions.
The book deals with five European film directors who were forced to remain in exile in the wake of the rise of Hitler and who subsequently enriched the American motion picture industry with a reservoir of new talent that had been nurtured in Europe. The directors treated are Fritz Lang, William Wyler, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Billy Wilder.
The definitive biography of a pivotal figure in American literary history A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the “poet laureate of his race” hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a “caged bird” that sings. Jarrett tells the fascinating story of how Dunbar, born during Reconstruction to formerly enslaved parents, excelled against all odds to become an accomplished and versatile artist. A prolific and successful poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and Broadway librettist, he was also a friend of such luminaries as Frederick Douglass and Orville and Wilbur Wright. But while audiences across the United States and Europe flocked to enjoy his literary readings, Dunbar privately bemoaned shouldering the burden of race and catering to minstrel stereotypes to earn fame and money. Inspired by his parents’ survival of slavery, but also agitated by a turbulent public marriage, beholden to influential benefactors, and helpless against his widely reported bouts of tuberculosis and alcoholism, he came to regard his racial notoriety as a curse as well as a blessing before dying at the age of only thirty-three. Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and generously illustrated, this biography presents the richest, most detailed, and most nuanced portrait yet of Dunbar and his work, transforming how we understand the astonishing life and times of a central figure in American literary history.
Virtually every month for fourteen years, Gene Burnett wrote a history piece under the title "Florida's Past" for Florida Trend, Florida's respected magazine of business and finance. The first volume of collected essays from that series proved so popular among book readers that two more volumes have been published. Pineapple Press is now proud to make them available in paperback. Burnett's easygoing style and his sometimes surprising choice of topics make history good reading. Each volume divides Florida's people and events into Achievers and Pioneers, Villains and Characters, Heroes and Heroines, War and Peace, and Calamities and Social Turbulence. Read a chapter and you'll find you've gone on to read more. Read this volume and you'll find yourself looking for the next two. Next in series > > See all of the books in this series
The Guide to AIDS is succinct review of HIV/AIDS from a human-interest perspective. Chapters focus on some of the common patterns and prevention of HIV transmission and debunks misconceptions about HIV and AIDS. Brief descriptions the human immune system and epidemiology of HIV are included. The cultural component of disease, treatment and living with AIDS is central to much of this guide intended to synthesize, explain and de-mystify HIV and AIDS.
This book is about an ordinary man who lived in extraordinary times during the period of slavery in southern history. Abraham was born into an institution which viewed him as three-fifths of a white person by the United States Constitution. He was sold into the slave state of Georgia from South Carolina in 1856, one year before the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857. This decision proclaimed in March of 1857 declared that African Americans were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in federal courts. A United States citizen had a constitutional right to take his slave property into any state or territory based on the property clause of the Fifth Amendment. This book is not about the life of an invisible historical figure in a remote period of time in Southern and United Sates history. Its about a real person and his family who survived the brutality and savagery of slavery. This book is about a people who experienced disenfranchisement, the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, the loss of property through trickery, and deceit. Its about a man who left his wife and four small children to join the union army. He wanted to be free. He arrived in Savannah on a cold rainy wind- swept day; dressed in raggedy clothes with worn out shoes with holes in each one. His body exposed to the near freezing cold and rainy weather of February 1865. On March 7, 1865 he enlisted in the union army with Company C, Thirty-Third Regiment United States Colored Troops. Abraham knew that his fate and the destiny of thousands of other slaves and free African Americans rested upon the outcome of union victory.
AIDS ignores political boundaries, crosses porous borders of poor human choice, pays no customs duties, travels with neither passport nor visa, drives the worlds highways, sails the planets seas, flies through earths airspace, breaks hearts, breaks down immunity, covers truth, spreads myths, promotes ignorance, wrecks homes, grieves children, fathers orphans, leaves widows, chops trees for coffins, exploits poor choices, gnaws away at health, robs the rich, impoverishes the poor, destroys CD4+ counts, baffles scientists, challenges budgets, reduces profits, encourages absenteeism, promotes burials, worships immorality, upholds double standards, exploits women, exploits men, exploits children, flourishes in an apathetic NIMBY (not in my backyard) environment, avoids unified NIOBY (not in our backyard) efforts, evades classical immunity, avoids slumber, takes no vacations, torments the adults in Cape Town and Mumbai, confuses the children in orphanages and on streets, dries no tears, sheds no tears, distributes no handkerchiefs, makes no mortgage payments, slays mortgage payers, robs down payments, kills down payers, evicts tenants, plays Trojan horse, shares freely, terminates employment, drives up insurance rates, drives down population growth, loves drug users, mixes well with alcohol, encourages fear, squelches hope, creates morbid personal histories, changes the history of nations, tortures the present, and ambushes the future.
Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 is a classic work on a little-studied subject in American music history: the contribution of African-American songwriters to the world of popular song. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "thoroughly researched and entertainingly written," this work documents the careers of songwriters like James A. Bland ("Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny"), Bert Williams ("Nobody"), W. C. Handy ("St. Louis Blues"), Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake ("I'm Just Wild About Harry"), and many more. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from sheet music, newspapers, and other unique sources, the book documents an entire era of performance when black singers, dancers, and actors were active on the New York stage. In sheer depth of research, new information, and full coverage, Spreadin' Rhythm Around offers a comprehensive picture of the contributions of black musicians to American popular song. For anyone interested in the history of jazz, pop song, or Broadway, this book will be a revelation.
In the early twentieth century, two wealthy white sisters, cousins to a North Carolina governor, wrote identical wills that left their substantial homeplace to a black man and his daughter. Maggie Ross, whose sister Sallie died in 1909, was the richest woman in Union County, North Carolina. Upon Maggie's death in 1920, her will bequeathed her estate to Bob Ross--who had grown up in the sisters' household--and his daughter Mittie Bell Houston. Mittie had also grown up with the well-to-do women, who had shown their affection for her by building a house for her and her husband. This house, along with eight hundred acres, hundreds of dollars in cash, and two of the white family's three gold watches went to Bob Ross and Houston. As soon as the contents of the will became known, more than one hundred of Maggie Ross's scandalized cousins sued to break the will, claiming that its bequest to black people proved that Maggie Ross was mentally incompetent. Revealing the details of this case and of the lives of the people involved in it, Gene Stowe presents a story that sheds light on and complicates our understanding of the Jim Crow South. Stowe's account of this famous court battle shows how specific individuals, both white and black, labored against the status quo of white superiority and ultimately won. An evocative portrait of an entire generation's sins, Inherit the Land: Jim Crow Meets Miss Maggie's Will hints at the possibility for color-blind justice in small-town North Carolina.
You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling in the City of Light—Paris. With the self-guided tours in this book, you'll explore the grand Champs-Elysées, the eye-popping Eiffel Tower, and the radiant cathedral of Notre-Dame. Learn how to save money and avoid the lines at the Louvre and Orsay Museums. Enjoy the ambience of Parisian neighborhoods, and take a day trip to the glittering palace of Versailles, or to the Champagne-soaked city of Reims. Then grab a café crème at a sidewalk café and listen to the hum of the city. You'll see why Paris remains at the heart of global culture. Rick's candid, humorous advice will guide you to good-value hotels and restaurants in delightful neighborhoods. You'll learn how to navigate the Paris Métro, and which sights are worth your time and money. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves guidebook is a tour guide in your pocket.
You wanted the truth, you got the truth—the hottest book in the world! Fueled by an explosive mix of makeup, costumes, and attitude, KISS burst onto the music scene thirty years ago and has become a rock institution. The band has sold more than eighty million records, has broken every concert attendance record set by Elvis Presley and the Beatles, stands behind the Beatles alone in number of gold records from any group in history, and has spawned more than 2,500 licenses. There would have been no KISS without Gene Simmons, the outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon. KISS and Make-Up is the wild, shocking, unbelievable story, from the man himself, about how an immigrant boy from Israel studied to be a rabbi, was saved by rock and roll, and became one of the most notorious rock stars the world has ever seen. Before Gene Simmons there was Chaim Witz, a boy from Haifa, Israel, who had no inkling of the life that lay ahead of him. In vivid detail Gene recounts his childhood growing up in Haifa under the watchful eye of his beloved, strong-willed mother, a concentration camp survivor; his adolescent years attending a Jewish theological center for rabbinical studies in Brooklyn; his love of all things American, including comic books, superheroes, and cowboys; and his early fascination with girls and sex, which prompted him to start a rock band in school after he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. KISS and Make-Up is not just the classic story of achieving the American dream through the eyes of an immigrant boy making good, but a juicy, rollicking rock and roll read that takes you along for the ride of your life with KISS, from the 1970s, when they were the biggest band in the world, through the ’80s, when they took off their world-famous war paint, and into the ’90s, when they came back bigger and badder than ever to become the number one touring band in the world. In his own irreverent, unapologetic voice, Gene talks about the girls (4,600 of them and counting); his tight bond with KISS cofounder Paul Stanley; the struggles he and Paul had with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss and their departures from the group; the new band members and Eric Carr’s untimely death; the enormous love and affection he has for the people who put him there in the first place—the KISS Army and the ever-loyal KISS fans around the world; his love life, including stories about his relationships with Cher and Diana Ross and with Shannon Tweed, Playmate of the Year, mother of his son and daughter, and his companion of eighteen years; and much more. Full of dozens of photographs, many never-before-seen pictures from Gene’s private collection, KISS and Make-Up is a surprising, intimate look at the man behind the mask. For the first time Gene reveals all the facets of his complex personality—son, rock star, actor, record producer, businessman, ladies’ man, devoted father, and now author.
God as Author takes a thoughtful literary approach to understanding the Gospel. Gene Fant writes in the preface: “Most of us have heard that Christ is ‘the Author and Finisher of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2), so it makes sense that the Gospel would be God’s story. As many a church message board has noted so succinctly, ‘History is His Story.’ In our easy discussions of special revelation, I cannot help but wonder if we have missed something awe-inspiring that may be revealed by a reversal of the lens that we turn toward narrative. Perhaps the Gospel is not just like a story; perhaps story, narrative in general, is like the Gospel. My clear conviction is that something stands behind the power of narrative. In fact, I believe that Someone stands behind it. There is an Author whose skill and grace imbues the broad range of the stories that we tell. There is a Father who gave us a story to help us understand our place in this world, a story that points back to Him. His story is, in many ways, the only story that we know. When we use that realization as a foundation for interpreting and generating narrative, it changes everything, including ourselves.”
Professor Landrum begins with biographical overviews of a dozen of the most interesting and powerful entrepreneurs of recent vintage. He identifies their unique eccentricities and then shows the personality traits that they all have in common. These are the attributes that constitute the genius of the great entrepreneur. To enable you to compare your personality attributes with those of the great entrepreneurs who have achieved billionaire status, Professor Landrum has included in this book a self-assessment exercise. Book jacket.
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