You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Beyond the Mountains explores the ways in which Appalachia often served as a laboratory for the exploration and practice of American conceptions of nature. The region operated alternately as frontier, wilderness, rural hinterland, region of subsistence agriculture, bastion of yeoman farmers, and place to experiment with modernization. In these various takes on the southern mountains, scattered across time and space, both mountain residents and outsiders consistently believed that the region's environment made Appalachia distinctive, for better or worse. With chapters dedicated to microhistories focused on particular commodities, Drew A. Swanson builds upon recent Appalachian studies scholars...
Why do we preserve certain landscapes while developing others without restraint? Drew A. Swanson’s in-depth look at Wormsloe plantation, located on the salt marshes outside of Savannah, Georgia, explores that question while revealing the broad historical forces that have shaped the lowcountry South. Wormsloe is one of the most historic and ecologically significant stretches of the Georgia coast. It has remained in the hands of one family from 1736, when Georgia’s Trustees granted it to Noble Jones, through the 1970s, when much of Wormsloe was ceded to Georgia for the creation of a state historic site. It has served as a guard post against aggression from Spanish Florida; a node in an eme...
Drew A. Swanson has written an “environmental” history about a crop of great historical and economic significance: American tobacco. A preferred agricultural product for much of the South, the tobacco plant would ultimately degrade the land that nurtured it, but as the author provocatively argues, the choice of crop initially made perfect agrarian as well as financial sense for southern planters. Swanson, who brings to his narrative the experience of having grown up on a working Virginia tobacco farm, explores how one attempt at agricultural permanence went seriously awry. He weaves together social, agricultural, and cultural history of the Piedmont region and illustrates how ideas about race and landscape management became entangled under slavery and afterward. Challenging long-held perceptions, this innovative study examines not only the material relationships that connected crop, land, and people but also the justifications that encouraged tobacco farming in the region.
An unusual collection of Civil War essays as seen through the lens of noted environmental scholars, this book's provocative historical commentary explores how nature--disease, climate, flora and fauna, etc.--affected the war and how the war shaped Americans' perceptions, understanding, and use of nature.
A devious tale of psychological suspense so irresistible that it prompts Entertainment Weekly to ask, “Is The Kind Worth Killing the next Gone Girl?” From one of the hottest new thriller writers, Peter Swanson, a name you may not know yet (but soon will), this is his breakout novel in the bestselling tradition of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train—and is soon to be a major movie directed by Agnieszka Holland. In a tantalizing set-up reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train… On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revea...
'He's the real deal...' JOE HILL 'Another read in one sitting from the best-selling Swanson.' METRO 'A brilliantly original premise, delivered with panache.' CLARE MACKINTOSH On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his step-mother Alice, to their house on the Maine coast, following the unexpected death of his father. But who really is Alice, his father's much younger second wife? In a brilliant split narrative, Peter Swanson teases out the stories and damage that lie in her past. And as her story entwines with Harry's in the present, things grow increasingly dark and threatening - will Harry be able to see any of it clearly through his own confused feelings?
In the latest body of work by author and photographer Claiborne Swanson Frank, the artist set out to explore what modern motherhood means in the 21st century. Turning her lens on 70 iconic families of mothers and children from such celebrated names as Delfina Figueras, Carolina Herrera, Lauren Santo Domingo, Anne Vyalitsyna, Aerin Lauder, and Patti Hansen, Swanson Frank’s stunning portraits capture the emotional bonds and beauty that frame the primal relationship of a mother and her child. Complementing her work is a series of questions-and-answers, in which Swanson Frank delicately tasks each mother to look within themselves and express what being a mother truly means to them. Their answers, while exceedingly thoughtful and introspective, are also amusing, fascinating, and moving. Each one of these deeply intimate and stunning portraits will captivate and inspire readers as they embark on this profound journey that reminds us all of the power of motherhood and the great gift of love.
What if racial reconciliation doesn’t look like what you expected? The high-profile killings of young black men and women by white police officers, and the protests and violence that ensued, have convinced many white Christians to reexamine their intuitions when it comes to race and justice. In this provocative book, theologian and blogger Drew G. I. Hart places police brutality, mass incarceration, anti-black stereotypes, poverty, and everyday acts of racism within the larger framework of white supremacy. He argues that white Christians have repeatedly gotten it wrong about race because dominant culture and white privilege have so thoroughly shaped their assumptions. He also challenges bl...
Philip Zumwalt is an accomplished musician, poet, and idealist-a dreamer. Fresh out of college in 1940, he takes a job as a music teacher in a small, rural Illinois town. His plan is to teach for a few years hoping to save enough money to finance his dreams: go to Chicago to become a professional musician and get his pilot's license. These dreams dominate his thoughts until one summer night when he meets Elinor Robinson. Philip and Elinor's forbidden romance-and the specter of war hanging over the country-put Philip's dreams on hold. When he enlists in the Army Air Force, the gifted artist goes on an unpredictable journey of lost innocence. Life and death hang in the balance as he overcomes his fears and spiritual doubts in a desperate effort to survive aerial combat in the maelstrom of the Southwest Pacific Theater. In the end, a single dream remains for Philip: to return home to the woman he loves. Based upon the World War II diaries of the real Philip Zumwalt, this debut novel is a bittersweet tale of the transcendent power of love and reminds us of the immense sacrifices made by the men and women of that era.
Georgia’s Planting Prelate consists of notes on the life of the Reverend Stephen Elliott, a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the mid-1800s and the only presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. These notes are accompanied by the full text of the bishop’s address on horticulture given in 1851 in Macon, which displays his remarkable knowledge of southern agriculture. The Georgia Open History Library has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this collection, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.