Leading journalists between the coasts offer perspectives on immigration, drug addiction, climate change, and more that you won’t find in national mainstream media. After the 2016 presidential election, the national media fretted over what they could have missed in the middle of the country, launching a thousand think pieces about so-called “Trump Country.” Yet in 2020, the polling was way off—again. Journalists between the coasts could only shake their heads at the persistence of the false narratives around the communities where they lived and worked. Contributor Ted Genoways foresaw how close the election in 2016 would be and, in its aftermath, put out a public call on Facebook, calling on writers from those midland states to help answer the national media’s puzzlement. Representing a true cross-section of America, both geographically and ethnically, these writers highlight the diversity of the American experience in essays and articles that tell the hidden local truths behind the national headlines. For instance: -Esther Honig describes the effects of the immigration crackdown in Colorado -C.J. Janovy writes about the challenges of being an LGBTQ+ activist in Kansas -Karen Coates and Valeria Fernández show us the children harvesting our food -And Sydney Boles chronicles a miner’s protest in Kentucky. For readers willing to look at the American experience that the pundits don’t know about or cover, Midland is an invaluable peek into the hearts and minds of largely unheard Americans.
In the spring of 1999, in the beautiful hills of the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, a young white farmer was shot dead on the dirt road running from his father's farmhouse to his irrigation fields. The murder was the work of assassins rather than robbers; a single shot behind the ear, nothing but his gun stolen, no forensic evidence like cartridges or fingerprints left at the scene. Journalist Jonny Steinberg travelled to the midlands to investigate. Local black workers said the young white man had it coming. The dead man's father said the machinery of a political conspiracy had been set into motion, that he and his neighbours were being pushed off their land. Initially thinking that he was to write about an event in the recent past, Steinberg found that much of the story lay in the future. He had stumbled upon a festering frontier battle, the combatants groping hungrily for the whispers and lies that drift in from the other side. Right from the beginning, it was clear that the young white man would not be the only one to die on that frontier. Sifting though the betrayals and the poisoned memories of a century-long relationship between black and white, Steinberg takes us to a part of post-apartheid South Africa we fear to contemplate.
The multicultural Midlands is a unique, interdisciplinary study of the literature, music and food that shape the region’s irrepressible, though often overlooked, cultural identity. It is the first of its kind to give serious critical attention to a part of the world which is frequently ignored by readers, critics and the culture industries. This book makes a claim for the importance of the Midlands and evidences this with nuanced close reading of a multitude of diverse texts spanning so-called ‘high’ to ‘low’ culture; from the Black Country’s ‘Desi Pubs’, to Leicester’s ‘McIndians’ Peri Peri (‘you’ve tried the cowboys, now try the Indians!’); Handsworth’s reggae roots to Adrian Mole’s diaries.
The full story of the infamous double murder featured on Discovery’s FBI Files—includes photos. In this book, former South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) forensic photographer Lt. Rita Y. Shuler recounts twenty-eight days of terror and shocking developments in one of the most notorious double murders and manhunts in South Carolina history. Shuler shares her own personal interactions with some of the key players in this famous manhunt and investigation. Also included are Bell’s chilling calls from area phone booths to the Smith family, along with his disconcerting interviews and bizarre actions in the courtroom, which show the dark, evil, and criminal mind of this horrific killer. This is a comprehensive account of the case that has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s FBI Files, in the CBS movie Nightmare in Columbia County, and on Court TV’s Forensic Files.
This volume will provide a comprehensive yet accessible description of East Midlands English, an area of neglect in linguistic research. Existing publications, which aggregate the findings of earlier surveys and more recent localised studies presenting an overview of regional speech in the UK, are either lacking up-to-date research data from the East Midlands or simply ignore the region. A coordinated survey of dialects of the East Midlands was part of the Survey of English Dialects (SED) in the 1950s. This data is now over sixty years old and focuses almost exclusively on broad rural dialect speakers. This book will fill the knowledge and literature gaps by comparing vernacular speech in different urban and rural locations in the East Midlands, and examining whether the East Midlands is a 'transition zone' between the North and South. Recordings held by the British Library will be used, and will be supplemented with recordings made with local speakers. Language in the East Midlands is distinctive and there is considerable regional variety, for instance, between speech in the major urban centres of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. Bringing out this regional variation will also improve our wider understanding of language variation in English. The concept of the East Midlands in itself is not a clear one, and this volume aims to address such issues and to examine what makes the East Midlands an area of itself and what this area includes.
The photographs in this volume of Steam in the East Midlands and Lincolnshire cover an area beginning at Derby Headquarters of the Midland following the Midland line to Nottingham and its environs, pausing at locations en-route.Trent, in the southeast corner of Derbyshire, was a station without a town, its position and importance as an interchange junction for five main railway routes, through the plethora of junctions, served London, Birmingham, Derby, Chesterfield and Nottingham. Remarkably enough, trains could depart from opposite platforms, in opposite directions but to the same destination. There was also the constant procession of coal trains off the Erewash Valley line from the nearby Toton marashaling yard.Also featured is the Derby Friargate to Nottingham Victoria, the Great Northern Railway line, and the former Great Central route, along with scenes at Saxby where the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, mainly single track line diverged, running via Bourne to East Coast resorts. Finally, there are scenes at Grantham, where changing engines in 1954 was the order of the day. Locomotives are photographed at work, at rest and awaiting a call for scrap.
Association Football did not magically begin with the formation of the Football Association in 1863: for centuries before, leather and rag balls had been kicked about, often as a smoke-screen for a jolly good brawl amongst the ruffians of the town or village! In medieval times, the common people from all over the Midlands would chase after a stuffed leather football, sometimes from dawn till dusk, from one end of town to the other. Football, in all its various forms, was the game of the people. Centuries later, in Englands universities and public schools, the game was brought under a unified set of rules by middle and upper-class young men who formed exclusive football clubs for their fellows and tried to keep the Association game between themselves. Back in the Midlands, however, pioneering men started football teams for the working-class society, and within a decade, there were hundreds of such teams from Worcester to Sheffield. Football had been given back to the common man. This book gives an insight into over sixty small clubs who were the mainstay of organised football across the Midlands from the embryonic 1860s to beyond professionalism in the 1890s. Many new details and photographs are being published for the first time, as the author travels all over the eight counties of the Midlands to find the lost grounds and the Lost Teams of the Midlands. In This Book, Author Mike Bradbury Brings together a history and description of over sixty of the most prominent lost Midlands football clubs from the Victorian era, many defunct even before 1900 Discovers the location of the lost Trapezium Ground in Wednesbury Discovers the location of the Shrubbery Ground where Tipton FC played in the 1870s Establishes four of the grounds used by Derby Junction and other Derby teams Establishes the site of Derby Midland FCs lost ground near the railway station Discovers the true origins of Walsall Town Football Club Unearths previously unpublished pictures of Wellington St. Georges and their Shropshire ground Discovers the previously unknown team colours for over twenty teams featured in this book, including Notts Olympic, Bham Excelsior, Calthorpe, Derby Junction, Staveley Unravels the mystery of the two St. Georges football teams in the Birmingham area Finds out what became of Walsalls oldest team, Rushall Rovers Publishes unseen photographs of Birminghams oldest team, Saltley College, and their ground within the college Discovers the first two grounds of the early Bloxwich FC (Strollers) Presents maps showing the lost locations of the grounds of Rushall Rovers, Smethwick Carriage Works, Lozells FC, Wednesbury Strollers, Crosswells FC, and others Unearths the 1873 advert where players are asked to form the Walsall Football Club Discovers the lost football ground at Aston Cross, used by Aston Shakespeare and Aston Victoria Finds and gets access to the lost ground of the Willenhall Pickwicks, seven-times Staffordshire Junior Cup finalists Photographs all three grounds of pioneering Birmingham club, Calthorpe FC, and unearths their colours and their link to Aston Villa Discovers the lost Vulcan ground used by early Derby teams in the city centre Has created a web site featuring over 100 photographs and maps of teams, players, and grounds, details of which are given inside the book
