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The award-winning author of The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion traces the cultural upheavals of mid-century America through the life of Billy Lee Brammer, author of the classic political novel The Gay Place.
Early in the twentieth century, the political humorist Will Rogers was arguably the most famous cowboy in America. And though most in his vast audience didn't know it, he was also the most famous Indian of his time. Those who know of Rogers's Cherokee heritage and upbringing tend to minimize its importance, or to imagine that Rogers himself did so—notwithstanding his avowal in interviews: "I'm a Cherokee and they're the finest Indians in the World." The truth is, throughout his adult life and his work the Oklahoma cowboy made much of his American Indian background. And in doing so, as Amy Ware suggests in this book, he made Cherokee artistry a fundamental part of American popular culture. ...
During the spring semester of 1975, Wayne Woodward, a popular young English teacher at La Plata Junior High School in Hereford, Texas, was unceremoniously fired. His offense? Founding a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Believing he had been unjustly targeted, Woodward sued the school district. You Will Never Be One of Us chronicles the circumstances surrounding Woodward’s dismissal and the ensuing legal battle. Revealing a uniquely regional aspect of the cultural upheaval of the 1970s, the case offers rare insight into the beginnings of the rural-urban, local-national divide that continues to roil American politics. By 1975 Hereford, a quiet farming town in the T...
After death, Townes Van Zandt found the success that he sabotaged during life. Diagnosed as bipolar, an alcoholic, and perennially unreliable, Van Zandt died of heart failure at the age of 52 on New Year’s Day 1997. He released sixteen albums during life, and since his death numerous albums both by and in honor of him have been released and many critical articles published, in addition to several books (including Robert Hardy’s A Deeper Blue by UNT Press). Van Zandt, once an underappreciated and self-destructive wandering troubadour, is now a critics’ and fan-favorite. His best-known songs are “Pancho and Lefty,” covered by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, and “If I Needed You....
"This interdisciplinary work is driven by the question, 'What can imaginings of the South reveal about the recent American past?' In it, Zachary J. Lechner bridges the fields of southern studies, southern history, and post-World War II American cultural and popular culture history in an effort to discern how conceptions of a tradition-bound, 'timeless' South shaped Americans' views of themselves and their society and served as a fantasied refuge from the era's political and cultural fragmentations, namely, the perceived problems associated with urbanization and 'rootlessness.' The book demonstrates that we cannot hope to understand recent U.S. history without exploring how people have conceived the South"--
A collection of letters from a cross-section of Japanese citizens to a leading Japanese newspaper, relating their experiences and thoughts of the Pacific War.
Country music boasts a long tradition of rich, contradictory gender dynamics, creating a world where Kitty Wells could play the demure housewife and the honky-tonk angel simultaneously, Dolly Parton could move from traditionalist "girl singer" to outspoken trans rights advocate, and current radio playlists can alternate between the reckless masculinity of bro-country and the adolescent girlishness of Taylor Swift. In this follow-up volume to A Boy Named Sue, some of the leading authors in the field of country music studies reexamine the place of gender in country music, considering the ways country artists and listeners have negotiated gender and sexuality through their music and how gender ...
Weaving Indian and Euro-American histories together in this groundbreaking book, Sami Lakomäki places the Shawnee people, and Native peoples in general, firmly at the center of American history. The book covers nearly three centuries, from the years leading up to the Shawnees’ first European contacts to the post–Civil War era, and demonstrates vividly how the interactions between Natives and newcomers transformed the political realities and ideas of both groups. Examining Shawnee society and politics in new depth, and introducing not only charismatic warriors like Blue Jacket and Tecumseh but also other leaders and thinkers, Lakomäki explores the Shawnee people’s debates and strategies for coping with colonial invasion. The author refutes the deep-seated notion that only European colonists created new nations in America, showing that the Shawnees, too, were engaged in nation building. With a sharpened focus on the creativity and power of Native political thought, Lakomäki provides an array of insights into Indian as well as American history.
One of early-twentieth-century America’s most fertile grounds for political radicalism, the Pacific Northwest produced some of the most dedicated and successful socialists the country has ever seen. As a radicalized labor force emerged in mining, logging, and other extractive industries, socialists employed intensive organizational and logistical skills to become an almost permanent third party that won elections and shook the confidence of establishment rivals. At the height of Socialist Party influence just before World War I, a Montana member declared, “They are all red out here.” In this first book to fully examine the development of the American Socialist Party in the Northwest, J...
In sunbaked Terlingua, Texas (pop., a few hundred), residents joke that there is a musician under every rock. Located ten miles from Mexico in one of the remotest corners of the United States, the town had a recording studio before it had a school, a well-stocked grocery store, or even a water utility. Open jam sessions are a daily ritual, and some songwriters make a living from their craft despite being thousands of miles from New York or Nashville. Why does such a tiny and isolated place ring with singing and guitars? Based on more than two years of on-the-ground research, On the Porch tells the story of this small but remarkable community. Chase Peeler invites us into the music, introduci...