Kyle and Swin spend their nights crisscrossing the South with illicit goods, making shifty deals in dingy trailers, and taking vague orders from a boss they've never met. Soon their lazy peace is shattered with a shot: night blends into day filled with dead bodies, crooked superiors, and suspicious associates. It's on-the-job training, with no time for slow learning, bad judgment, or foul luck.
The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstäcker, who would go on to become one of Germany’s most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.
"Meticulously researched, highly readable, profusely illustrated, and broadly focused . . . unquestionably the most significant work ever written about the Arkansas Post." --Carl Brasseaux
What do Scott Joplin, John Grisham, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Maya Angelou, Brooks Robinson, Helen Gurley Brown, Johnny Cash, Alan Ladd, and Sonny Boy Williamson have in common? They’re all Arkansans. What do hillbillies, rednecks, slow trains, bare feet, moonshine, and double-wides have in common? For many in America these represent Arkansas more than any Arkansas success stories do. In 1931 H. L. Mencken described AR (not AK, folks) as the “apex of moronia.” While, in 1942 a Time magazine article said Arkansas had “developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.” Arkansas/Arkansaw is the first book to explain how Arkansas’s image began and how the popular culture stereotypes have been perpetuated and altered through succeeding generations. Brooks Blevins argues that the image has not always been a bad one. He discusses travel accounts, literature, radio programs, movies, and television shows that give a very positive image of the Natural State. From territorial accounts of the Creole inhabitants of the Mississippi River Valley to national derision of the state’s triple-wide governor’s mansion to Li’l Abner, the Beverly Hillbillies, and Slingblade, Blevins leads readers on an entertaining and insightful tour through more than two centuries of the idea of Arkansas. One discovers along the way how one state becomes simultaneously a punch line and a source of admiration for progressives and social critics alike. Winner, 2011 Ragsdale Award
Following in the tradition of the Southern Women series, Arkansas Women highlights prominent Arkansas women, exploring women’s experiences across time and space from the state’s earliest frontier years to the late twentieth century. In doing so, this collection of fifteen biographical essays productively complicates Arkansas history by providing a multidimensional focus on women, with a particular appreciation for how gendered issues influenced the historical moment in which they lived. Diverse in nature, Arkansas Women contains stories about women on the Arkansas frontier, including the narratives of indigenous women and their interactions with European men and of bondwomen of African descent who were forcibly moved to Arkansas from the seaboard South to labor on cotton plantations. There are also essays about twentieth-century women who were agents of change in their communities, such as Hilda Kahlert Cornish and the Arkansas birth control movement, Adolphine Fletcher Terry’s antisegregationist social activism, and Sue Cowan Morris’s Little Rock classroom teachers’ salary equalization suit. Collectively, these inspirational essays work to acknowledge women’s accomplishments and to further discussions about their contributions to Arkansas’s rich cultural heritage. Contributors: Michael Dougan on Mary Sybil Kidd Maynard Lewis Gary T. Edwards on Amanda Trulock Dianna Fraley on Adolphine Fletcher Terry Sarah Wilkerson Freeman on Senator Hattie Caraway Rebecca Howard on Women of the Ozarks in the Civil War Elizabeth Jacoway on Daisy Lee Gatson Bates Kelly Houston Jones on Bondwomen on Arkansas’s Cotton Frontier John Kirk on Sue Cowan Morris Marianne Leung on Hilda Kahlert Cornish Rachel Reynolds Luster on Mary Celestia Parler Loretta N. McGregor on Dr. Mamie Katherine Phipps Clark Michael Pierce on Freda Hogan Debra A. Reid on Mary L. Ray Yulonda Eadie Sano on Edith Mae Irby Jones Sonia Toudji on Women in Early Frontier Arkansas
Like its companion book, this second volume of Arkansas Backstories will amaze even the most serious students of the state with surprising insights. How many people are aware that a world-class yodeler from Zinc ran against John F. Kennedy in 1960 for the top spot on the national Democratic ticket, or that an African-American born in Little Rock campaigned for the Presidency nearly 70 years before Congressman Shirley Chisholm made her historic run? Or that bands of blood-thirsty pirates once lurked in the bayous and backwaters of eastern Arkansas, preying on unsuspecting Mississippi River travelers? Likewise, how many readers will recognize the fact that an English botanist who spent months investigating Arkansas's flora in the early nineteenth century has been described as the worst explorer in history? That Fort Smith hosted the world's first international UFO conference? Or that the Nielsen rating system has a direct connection to the state as does Tony Bennett's signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"? Such tidbits are among the unexpected elements that make the Natural State so tantalizing. Written in an informal, conversational style and nicely illustrated, Arkansas Backstories Volume Two will be a wonderful addition to the libraries of Arkansans, expats, and anyone else interested in one of America's most fascinating states.
This is a study of gay and lesbian life in Arkansas in the twentieth century, a deft weaving together of Arkansas history, dozens of oral histories, and Brock Thompson's own story.
This is a complete, illustrated guide to Arkansas's woody plants and nonwoody vines. The text for each species appears next to its photograph. In all, 325 species are described along with descriptions of sixty-eight plant families and drawings of plant parts. The book also includes a glossary and complete index.
Adopted by the State of Arkansas for 2008 Once again, the State of Arkansas has adopted An Arkansas History for Young People as an official textbook for middle-level and/or junior-high-school Arkansas-history classes. This fourth edition incorporates new research done after extensive consultations with middle-level and junior-high teachers from across the state, curriculum coordinators, literacy coaches, university professors, and students themselves. It includes a multitude of new features and is now full color throughout. This edition has been completely redesigned and now features a modern format and new graphics suitable for many levels of student readers. The completely revised fourth edition includes new unit, chapter, and section divisions as well as five brand-new chapters: an introductory chapter with information on the symbols, flag, and songs of Arkansas; chapter 2, which covers the geography of Arkansas; chapter 3, on state and local government; chapter four, on economics and tourism; and a “modern” chapter on the Arkansas of today and the future, which completes the learning adventure. This edition also has two “special features”: one on the Central High School crisis of 1957 and another on the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. It also has new and interesting features for students like the “Guide to Reading” (at the beginning of each chapter, there is a list of important terms, people, places and events for the student to keep in mind as he or she reads [corresponding to blue vocabulary words in the text, which are define in the margin]), “County Quest,” “I Am an Arkansan,” “Did You Know?” “Only in Arkansas,” “A Day in the Life,” “Chapter Reflection” questions and activities, over forty-five new content maps, and a comprehensive new map atlas.
