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Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love
Arguably one of the most important American writers working today, Wendell Berry, is the author of more than fifty books, including novels and collections of poems, short stories, and essays. A prominent spokesman for agrarian values, Berry frequently defends such practices and ideas as sustainable agriculture, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of work, and the interconnectedness of life. This book provides a sweeping engagement with Berry's entire corpus. It introduces the reader to Berry's general philosophy and aesthetic through careful consideration of his essays. It also pays particular attention to Berry as an agrarian, citizen, and patriot, ...Read More
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A Political Companion to Walt Whitman
The works of Walt Whitman have been described as masculine, feminine, postcolonial, homoerotic, urban, organic, unique, and democratic, yet arguments about the extent to which Whitman could or should be considered a political poet have yet to be fully confronted. Some scholars disregard Whitman’s understanding of democracy, insisting on separating his personal works from his political works.
A Political Companion to Walt Whitman is the first full-length exploration of Whitman’s works through the lens of political theory. Editor John E. Seery and a collection of prominent theorists and philosophers uncover the political awareness of Whitman’s poetry and prose, analyzing his ...Read More
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Come and Go, Molly Snow: A Novel
Mary Ann Taylor-Hall’s highly acclaimed first novel, Come and Go, Molly Snow, introduces us to Carrie Marie Mullins, a gifted Kentucky bluegrass fiddler and singer in the Hawktown Road band. After moving to Lexington to develop her talents, Carrie becomes infatuated with the band’s leader, Cap Dunlap. Her romantic distraction prevents Carrie from saving her five-year-old daughter, Molly, when she careens down the driveway and is killed by a truck. Overwhelmed with grief, Carrie breaks down.
Cap finds Carrie in this state of distress and takes her to Ona and Ruth Barkley, two elderly sisters living in an old farmhouse. ...Read More
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A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau
The writings of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) have captivated scholars, activists, and ecologists for more than a century. Less attention has been paid, however, to the author’s political philosophy and its influence on American public life. Although Thoreau’s doctrine of civil disobedience has long since become a touchstone of world history, the greater part of his political legacy has been overlooked. With a resurgence of interest in recent years, A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau is the first volume focused exclusively on Thoreau’s ethical and political thought.
Jack Turner illuminates the unexamined aspects of Thoreau’s political life and writings. ...Read More
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Eliza Calvert Hall: Kentucky Author and Suffragist
In 1907, author, poet, essayist, and folk art historian Eliza Calvert Hall (1856–1935) published Aunt Jane of Kentucky, a collection of stories about rural life infused with the spirit and gentle good humor of its elderly narrator, Aunt Jane. The book and several sequels achieved wide popularity, reaching an estimated one million readers in her lifetime, and placed Hall in the front ranks of “local color” fiction writers of her time.
Eliza Calvert Hall’s life and work unfolded during a time of restlessness and change for American women. Born Eliza “Lida” Calvert in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Hall experienced the upheaval ...Read More
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The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was one of the most important American writers of his generation, and one of the most versatile, producing poetry, fiction, drama, and autobiography. In this innovative study, R. Baxter Miller explores Hughes's life and art to enlarge our appreciation of his contribution to American letters.
Arguing that readers often miss the complexity of Hughes's work because of its seeming accessibility, Miller begins with a discussion of the writer's auto-biography, an important yet hitherto neglected key to his imagination. Moving on to consider the subtle resonances of his life in the varied genres over which his imagination "wandered," Miller ...Read More
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Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man
An important new collection of original essays that examine how Ellison’s landmark novel, Invisible Man (1952), addresses the social, cultural, political, economic, and racial contradictions of America. Commenting on the significance of Mark Twain’s writings, Ralph Ellison wrote that “a novel could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal.” Ellison believed it was the contradiction between America’s “noble ideals and the actualities of our conduct” that inspired the most ...Read More
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Miss America Kissed Caleb: Stories
The mountain is a lonely place. Welcome to Sourwood, a small Kentucky town inhabited by men and women unique and yet eerily familiar. Among its joyful and tragic citizens we meet the crafty, spirited Caleb and his curious younger brother; Pearl, a suspected witch, and her sheltered daughter, Thanie; superstitious Eli; and the doomed orphan Girty. In Sourwood, the mountain is both a keeper of secrets and an imposing, isolating presence, shaping the lives of all who live in its shadow.
Strong in both the voice and sensibilities of Appalachia, the stories in Miss America Kissed Caleb are at turns ...Read More
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Act of Contrition
Act of Contrition focuses on the intimate relationship between Regina, a widow, and Michael, a young doctor whose wife left him for another man. Having found happiness in one another, they desire nothing more than to be together. Yet in the eyes of the Catholic Church, Michael is not free to divorce his wife and marry Regina. In an emotional climax Regina must decide if she loves Michael enough to give him up or if she’ll force him to choose between her and God.
By modern standards, Giles’s love scenes are tasteful, and the general atmosphere of ecumenism within today’s ...Read More
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The Scourges of Heaven: A Novel
A historical novel of prejudice and plague, The Scourges of Heaven sweeps gracefully, joyfully, painfully across centuries and generations. Through Cynthia Anne Ferguson, orphaned aboard a vessel carrying immigrants, hopes, dreams, and cholera from the Old World to the New, David Dick paints a world where the causes of disease are little understood, where faith is not always a comfort, where human questioning often goes unanswered, and where unexpected death is frequently attributed to the wrath of an angry God. Cynthia's story unfolds in the midst of the first of four great cholera epidemics to sweep America in the mid-nineteenth ...Read More
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