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This book is a rather personal history of an academic publishing house I chose to call 'Three Acorns Press' in the narrative. I did this to protect nearly 500 authors and the publishing house itself. Not that what I had to say was scandalous or problematic, but rather I wanted to keep personalities out of this story. It is not an autobiographical study of the author, per se, and it is hopefully not the end of the publishing house which has over one hundred and twenty-five titles in print. My personal history is somewhat more complicated and the story of this publishing house has not yet ended. The following is, however, my own recollections of how I began this publishing house and how and why it has grown to be a house of reputation - the winner of the American Library Association Academic Book of the Year award and cited three times by the Ford Foundation and the National Research Council as a leader in the field. I did not set out from school to be a publisher. Though I have always been a lover of books, I never dreamed of actually publishing them. But, a publisher is what I am and this is my story of how it all came about.
The song "John Henry," perhaps America's greatest folk ballad, is about an African-American steel driver who raced and beat a steam drill, dying "with his hammer in his hand" from the effort. Most singers and historians believe John Henry was a real person, not a fictitious one, and that his story took place in West Virginia--though other places have been proposed. John Garst argues convincingly that it took place near Dunnavant, Alabama, in 1887. The author's reconstruction, based on contemporaneous evidence and subsequent research, uncovers a fascinating story that supports the Dunnavant location and provides new insights. Beyond John Henry, readers will discover the lives and work of his people: Black and white singers; his "captain," contractor Frederick Dabney; C. C. Spencer, the most credible eyewitness; John Henry's wife; the blind singer W. T. Blankenship, who printed the first broadside of the ballad; and later scholars who studied John Henry. The book includes analyses of the song's numerous iterations, several previously unpublished illustrations and a foreword by folklorist Art Rosenbaum.
Since the appearance in 1950 of Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky's radical theories of planetary physics have been the center of controversy. This book presents an analysis of the Velikovsky affair, resolves the misunderstandings and arguments between opposing camps, and leads us to an understanding of the scientific process itself.
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