Search results for ""University Press of Kentucky""

From the foreword:"In Perfect Black, Crystal Wilkinson walks us back down the road she first walked as a girl, wanders us through the trees that lined the road where she grew up, where her sensibilities as a woman and a writer were first laid bare. In one of the first poems that opens the collection she is a woman looking back on her life, on the soil and mountains that first stamped the particular sound of her voice and she is deeply inquisitive about how it all fell into place: "The map of me can't be all hills& mountains even though I've been country all my life. The twang in my voice has moved downhill to the flat land a time or two."Perfect Black is a book of poems and legends about ancestry, culture, and the terrain of a Black girl becoming. It is a narrow and spacious terrain that enters the bloodstream of this black writing girl's body early. It is a country that she never truly exits even though different zip codes continue to fly through her wild, wondrous, winding life. We read and we hold on too.

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In the summer of 1960, director C. Douglas Ramey took his Carriage House Players theater company down the street from their Old Louisville venue to Central Park, where the actors performed scenes from the Shakespeare classic Much Ado about Nothing. Buoyed by the enthusiastic audience response, Ramey's company returned to the park the next year for the first full season of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. More than sixty years later, Kentucky Shakespeare is now the oldest free, non-ticketed Shakespeare in the Park festival in the country. To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the festival, in spring 2020 Kentucky Shakespeare cooperated with students in the University of Louisville's Department of History to record twenty entertaining and enlightening oral interviews with longtime members of the company.In Under the Greenwood Tree, author Tracy K'Meyer captures the history of Kentucky Shakespeare in a series of carefully selected and edited transcripts of these interviews. In these pages, past and present cast and crew share their memories of the company's history, performances in the park, and the positive impact of its many outreach programs, from its inception in the 1960s, to its slump in the early 2000s, and on to its recent renaissance. An illuminating record of the collaborative artistry that brings Shakespeare's works to life, Under the Greenwood Tree offers readers a peek behind the curtain at the group's steadfast stewardship of the most important literature in the English language.

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General of the Armies John J. Pershing (1860-1948) had a long and decorated military career but is most famous for leading the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. He published a memoir, My Experiences in the World War, and has been the subject of numerous biographies, but the literature regarding this towering figure and his enormous role in the First World War deserves to be expanded to include a collection of his wartime correspondence. Carefully edited by John T. Greenwood, volume 3 of John J. Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, 1917-1919 covers the period of January 1 through March 20, 1918, as General Pershing encounters logistical and organizational challenges that originated in the last months of 1917. With the collapse of the Eastern Front and Allied defeats in Italy, British and French commanders were preparing for a renewed German offensive and proposed that American troops be put under their control for training and frontline combat in order to replenish losses. Pershing's diary entries indicate that he rejected these proposals and yet offered four segregated African American regiments to be placed under French control. The conclusion of the AEF autonomy debate allowed Pershing to focus on reorganizing the General Headquarters of the AEF, establishing effective communication lines, and contracting Allied European governments to produce armaments for the AEF with American raw materials. In March 1918, Maj. Gen. Peyton C. March replaced Gen. Tasker H. Bliss as chief of staff. The sources included in this edition show the origin of Pershing and March's personal feud, which persisted well after the war. Pershing's letters during this time period convey a long and arduous struggle to build an American army at the front. Together, these volumes of wartime correspondence provide new insight into the work of a legendary soldier and the historic events in which he participated.

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In the early days of motion pictures - before superstars, before studio conglomerates, before even the advent of sound - there was a woman named Pearl White (1889-1938). A quintessential beauty of the time, with her perfectly tousled bob and come-hither stare, White's rise to stardom was swift; her assumption of the title of queen of American motion picture serials equally deserved.Born the youngest of five children in a small, rural Missouri farm town, White left high school at only 15, taking on jobs to help keep her family financially afloat, work that included small parts in plays for a local stock company. At 18 she began a three-year stage career with the Trousdale Stock Company, touring on the road and sinking her teeth into leading roles in productions such as Jane Eyre. As she continued to build her professional repertoire, White joined the Powers Film Company in New York and made her film debut in 1910. Her reputation for fearless performances and her penchant for doing her own stunt work soon set her apart from her female colleagues.It was that same daring attitude that would put her on the map internationally as an actress. From flying airplanes to swimming across rapid rivers, to racing cars in serials like The Perils of Pauline (1914), White was undaunted by the demands of her onscreen career. She would go on to star in popular serial classics such as The Exploits of Elaine (1915), Pearl of the Army (1916), The House of Hate (1918), and The Lightning Raider (1919). As active socially as she was professionally, White would also translate her audacious spirit outside of her career by playing a part in the early feminist movement. Her projection of a positive image of bravery on screen served as a model for suffragettes battling for women's rights in the US.William M. Drew's The Woman Who Dared: The Life and Times of Pearl White, Queen of the Serials, is the first full-length biography of this pioneering star. A study in film and female agency, Drew delves into the cultural impact of Pearl White's work and how it evolved along a concurrent trajectory with the social upheavals of the Progressive Era.

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Had Elizabeth 'Bess' Clements Abell (1933-2020) been a boy, she would likely have become a politician like her father, Earle Clements. Effectively barred from that career because of her gender, she forged her own path by helping family friends Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. As President Johnson's Social Secretary, Abell earned the nickname 'Iron Butterfly' for her graceful but firm leadership of social life in the White House. Afterward, she maintained her importance in Washington D.C., serving as chief of staff to Joan Mondale and co-founding a public relations company.Donald A. Ritchie and Terry L. Birdwhistell draw on Abell's own words and those of others close to her to tell her remarkable story. Focusing on her years working for the Johnson campaign and her time in the White House, this engaging oral history provides a window into Abell's life as well as an insider's view of social life in the nation's capital during the tumultuous 1960s.

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Once described by the New York Times as the quintessential French Romantic, half adventurer, half-intellectual, actor, singer, and political activist Yves Montand won the hearts of audiences around the world with a charisma and talent that transcended physical and linguistic borders. Born in Italy as Ivo Livi, Montand achieved international recognition for his singing and performances in films such as Salaire de la Peur (1952) and Let's Make Love (1960) with Marilyn Monroe, with whom he had a passionate but short-lived affair. An Oscar and BAFTA Award winner who was also twice nominated for a Cesar Award for best actor, Montand's success was not limited to his work in film. Discovered and mentored by Edith Piaf, his interpretations of French songs were intense and intoxicating. His mellow baritone voice led to Broadway stardom and sent him on tour, making him one of the best-known entertainers of his day. Yves Montand: The Passionate Voice profiles Montand's complex, dynamic, and e

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James Still (1906-2001) remains one of the most beloved and important writers in Appalachian literature. Best known for his acclaimed novel River of Earth (1940), the Alabama native and adopted Kentuckian left an enduring legacy of novels, stories, and poems during his nearly 70-year career. The Hills Remember: The Complete Short Stories of James Still honors the late writer by collecting all of Still's short stories, including those from On Troublesome Creek (1941), Pattern of a Man and Other Stories (1976), and The Run for the Elbertas (1980), as well as twelve prose pieces originally published as short stories and later incorporated into River of Earth. Also included are several lesser-known stories and ten that were previously unpublished. Recognized as a significant writer of short fiction in his day - many such pieces initially appeared in The Atlantic and The Saturday Evening Post and were included in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories and The Best American Short Stories collections - Still's short stories, while often overshadowed in recent years by his novels and poetry, are among his most enduring literary works. Editor Ted Olson in his introductory essay offers a reassessment of Still's short fiction within the contexts of the author's body of work and within Appalachian and American literature. Compiling all of James Still's compelling and varied short stories into one volume, The Hills Remember is a testament to a master writer.

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On the morning of May 18, 1924, households across America opened their newspapers to the headline: "Derby Winner Property of Indian Woman." The woman in question was Rosa Magnet Hoots, a member of the Oklahoma Osage Nation. The horse, draped in the iconic red roses signifying his victory in the fiftieth running of the Kentucky Derby, was Black Gold. In a sport defined by its exclusivity, the pair's unlikely appearance in the winner's circle set off a firestorm of speculation that would uncover an origin story stranger than fiction. Named for the oil that had been discovered in large quantities in Oklahoma at the time of his birth, Black Gold was born in 1921 to a mare named Useeit. At the start of her hard-knocking racing career, Useeit had been purchased by Al Hoots, for whom she won thirty-two of a staggering 122 races. What the mare lacked in regality, she made up for in gumption, a trait Hoots believed could propel her progeny to the hallowed ground of Churchill Downs.Hoots himself would never see Black Gold, dying unexpectedly in 1917. But the legend that came to define the horse would begin with him. Languishing in his deathbed, Hoots claimed to have a prophetic dream that a colt born to Useeit would win the Kentucky Derby. He extracted a promise from his wife, Rosa, to breed the mare to the stallion Black Toney. The decision, which came to fruition three years after Hoots's death, would set in motion a story that would forever change Thoroughbred racing.In Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold, author Avalyn Hunter explores the personalities and histories that surrounded Black Gold. Told against the backdrop of a make-or-break moment for American horse racing and politics at large and framed by the racial violence that rocked Tulsa in the 1920s, Black Gold's victory at the Golden Jubilee stands at the intersection of sport and history. Hunter's work looks behind every stall and tack room door and celebrates the hard work that goes into a great horse and its rivals.

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A miscreant, misanthrope, and misfit, two-nosed Luther Jukes lands in jail for murdering a man who insulted his froglike facial features. As Luther schemes in his cell, "hoosegow scullery maid" Juanita Sparks frets over an unwanted pregnancy. But there may be a bit of magic that can sort out this mess.In the style of underground comix, Ed McClanahan and J. T. Dockery present Juanita and the Frog Prince, an outrageous tale adapted from McClanahan's novella of the same name, originally published in A Congress of Wonders. Set in 1940s Kentucky, Juanita features a cast of characters trying to get ahead at all costs, including the Right Reverend Philander Cosmo Rexroat, redheaded rich boy Warren Harding Skidmore, and "Bad-Cess" Sallie Jukes, the town apothecary rumored to have "access to sinister forces." Rendered in bold strokes of ink that swirl from panel to panel, Luther's and Juanita's stories become further entangled until, in desperation, they attempt to harness the power of a lucky toadstone to create their own fairytale ending -- or do they?Juanita and the Frog Prince is a southern Gothic psychedelic trip of a comic that will enrapture readers until the stroke of midnight -- and the final KLANG of the clocktower bell.

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This coloring book is like no other on the market. It's a celebration of chromatic homes, the alluring and ornate structures that grace our most charming and beautiful cities, such as Louisville, Cincinnati, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Miami, and have been around for centuries in far-flung places such as Havana, Venice, Amsterdam, Brazil, and Moscow. This captivating collection also teaches and explores the art and science of the use of color in historic preservation, architecture, neighborhood design, and planning.As this book illustrates, color is a powerful tool - it enlightens, entertains, and transforms - and when color graces chromatic homes, it can enhance, revive, and regenerate a community. This vibrant, engaging, and inviting book provides an escape to a world of inspiration, artistic fulfillment, and appreciation for these homes. Containing fifty-seven pages of illustrations, this edition is an effective and fun-filled way to enjoy and appreciate the homes' beauty, while also encouraging imagination and the creation of a unique work of art.

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