Ghost Traps is a collection of twelve stories about characters who are on the edge and under duress, individuals backed against a wall as they try to free themselves from their own limitations, habits, and destructive desires. In the title story, Harper learns to fish from a man whose son is “catching hell” in the Korean War. When the son returns, he begins stealing lobsters from Harper’s traps, and Harper, out of a sense of obligation and guilt, teaches him to fish, vainly hoping it will help the man put together the pieces of a life that war shattered. In “The Connoisseur,” a wealthy collector on an archeological dig in the Himalayan foothills realizes he “knows how to stay out of jail, charge rent, build hotels, and pass Go,” but has not spiritual life. Unlike his guide, a Sherpa, who could remain content with nothing but the Himalayas, the collector finds himself wanting in all but material success. Whether they win or lose, Robert Abel’s characters make the best of circumstance with creativity, wit, passion, and endurance. In “Lawless in New York,” Professor Alice Reinquist, the sole woman in her university’s delegation to an academic conference, maintains her sense of humor by thinking of Wonder Woman’s Gold Lasso, which makes “even the most cunning of evildoers unable to prevaricate.” Tracey Wynn, a woman who considers herself on loan to her aloof boyfriend, keeps her options open by always leaving a portion of her neck exposed because she “cannot stand being closed in by anything and because she knows it invites at least a fantasy kiss.” In “Appetizer,” a man fishing in Alaska resourcefully asks two hungry grizzly bears, “How much love can $600 worth of salmon buy?” Although many of these characters inhabit a world in which the bottom is about to fall out, they invariably find good reason—and courage—to take the next treacherous step. From the salty waters of Cape Cod Canal to the mountains of Tibet; from a Puerto Rican pub to an elegant New York bar where “Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer had no doubt insulted each other,” Ghost Traps is filled with people hustling for survival and fighting for identity in a world reluctant to give anyone an even break.
First published in 1961, Early Midwestern Travel Narratives records and describes first-person records of journeys in the frontier and early settlement periods which survive in both manuscript and print. Geographically, it deals with the states once part of the Old Northwest Territory-Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota-and with Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Robert Hubach arranged the narratives in chronological order and makes the distinction among diaries (private records, with contemporaneously dated entries), journals (non-private records with contemporaneously dated entries), and "accounts," which are of more literary, descriptive nature. Early Midwestern Travel Narratives remains to this day a unique comprehensive work that fills a long existing need for a bibliography, summary, and interpretation of these early Midwestern travel narratives.
Columbus called them "Indians" because his geography was faulty. But that name and, more importantly, the images it has come to suggest have endured for five centuries, not only obscuring the true identity of the original Americans but serving as an idealogical weapon in their subjugation. Now, in this brilliant and deeply disturbing reinterpretation of the American past, Robert Berkhofer has written an impressively documented account of the self-serving stereotypes Europeans and white Americans have concocted about the "Indian": Noble Savage or bloodthirsty redskin, he was deemed inferior in the light of western, Christian civilization and manipulated to its benefit. A thought-provoking and revelatory study of the absolute, seemingly ineradicable pervasiveness of white racism, The White Man's Indian is a truly important book which penetrates to the very heart of our understanding of ourselves. "A splendid inquiry into, and analysis of, the process whereby white adventurers and the white middle class fabricated the Indian to their own advantage. It deserves a wide and thoughtful readership." —Chronicle of Higher Education "A compelling and definitive history...of racist preconceptions in white behavior toward native Americans." —Leo Marx, The New York Times Book Review
Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders--Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jedediah Smith--opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. They opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845-1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands, the Pacific Ocean becoming our western boundary.
Bradley County consists of rolling hills in two valleys at the base of the Smoky Mountains. In 1711, the Yuchi Indians and their land fell to the Cherokee Indians, who inhabited the area until their land was ceded to the county in the Treaty of Echota in 1836. The county was named for Col. Edward Bradley, a friend of Andrew Jackson and veteran of the War of 1812. While agriculture dominated the local economy well into the 19th century, a diverse industrial base grew to employ thousands and bring prosperity to the county. Religion has also been important to Bradley County, as it is home to seven denominations' international headquarters. Images explore the county seat of Cleveland as well as Charleston, Tasso, McDonald, Georgetown, Flint Springs, and other communities.
The expulsion of Native Americans from the east is one of the most notorious events in U.S. history. Preeminent Jacksonian scholar Remini now provides a thoughtful analysis of the story of Jackson's wars against the Indians. This is at once an exuberant work of American history and a sobering reminder of the violence and darkness at the heart of our nation's past. of illustrations.
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