Search results for ""Louisiana""

As the acclaimed author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) has been publishing stories and novels for more than sixty years. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana have made him one of the most respected and beloved living American writers.Ernest J. Gaines: Conversations brings together the author's own thoughts and words in interviews that range from 1994 to 2017, discussing his life, his work, and his literary legacy. The interviews cover all of Gaines's works, including his two latest books, Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005) and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (2017). The book provides a retrospective of his work from the viewpoint of a senior writer, now eighty-five years old, and gives an important international perspective on Gaines and his work.Among the many things Gaines discusses in his interviews are the recurrent themes in his works: the search for manhood, the importance of personal responsibility and standing with dignity, the problems of fathers and sons, and the challenges of race and racism in America. He examines his fictional world and his strong sense of place, his role as teacher and mentor, the importance of strong women in his life, and the influence of spirituality, religion, and music on his work. He also talks about storytelling, the nature of narrative, writing as a journey, and how he sees himself as a storyteller.

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How did the ideology that inspired the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution translate into foreign policy? John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton each struggled with this question as they encountered foreign powers. The French Revolution, the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, and the illegal seizures of U.S. ships and sailors on the high seas all brought diplomatic challenges. In the process of developing foreign policy, the founding generation refined the meaning of republicanism. In Keeping the Republic, Robert W. Smith identifies three contending brands of republicanism—classical, whig, and yeoman—that shaped the founders' thinking. Jefferson and Madison pursued a yeoman republicanism with its faith in economic sanctions rather than military might as a means of diplomacy. Nations dependent upon American agricultural exports, they thought, would bow to American interests. Both Adams and Hamilton, originally admirers of classical republicanism and its belief in public virtue, came to adopt a whig republicanism that applied the balance-of-power principle, exemplified by the three branches of the federal government, to the international community. In this view, nations should have equal naval power. Ideology had real consequences: Jefferson's insistence on imposing a trade embargo rather than considering alternative solutions resulted in the War of 1812. This process of translating ideology into foreign policy, so ably described in Keeping the Republic, continues to shape American international relations in the twenty-first century.

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In this original and provocative book, Colin Dayan tackles head-on the inexhaustible world, at once tender and fierce, of dogs and humans. We follow the tracks of dogs in the bayous of Louisiana, the streets of Istanbul, and the humane societies of the United States, and in the memories and myths of the humans who love them. Dayan reorients our ethical and political assumptions through a trans-species engagement that risks as much as it promises. She makes a powerful case for questioning what we think of as our deepest-held beliefs and, with dogs in the lead, unsettles the dubious promises of liberal humanism. Moving seamlessly between memoir, case law, and film, Dayan takes politics and animal studies in a new direction-one that gives us glimpses of how we can think beyond ourselves and with other beings. Her unconventional perspective raises hard questions and renews what it means for any animal or human to live in the twenty-first century. Nothing less than a challenge for us to confront violence and suffering even in the privileged precincts of modernity, this searing and lyrical book calls for another way to think the world. Theoretically sophisticated yet aimed at a broad readership, With Dogs at the Edge of Life illuminates how dogs-and their struggles-take us beyond sentimentality and into a form of thought that can make a difference to our lives.

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Known for its soaring towers that mark the skylines of the world's great cities, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects is also a leading designer of performing arts centres, including critically acclaimed venues for opera, dance, plays, and concerts. The firm's award-winning work in this highly demanding field is vast, with examples ranging from one of largest performing arts centres in the United States to intimate theatres on college campuses. Highlighting the firm's technically rigorous and aesthetically inspiring designs, Perform features a selection of concert halls and theatres, and cultural centres, including such prominent and distinctive works as the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami. Designed with renowned acousticians and theatre planners, these performance halls are both architecturally exciting and technically advanced. This book explores the design of beautiful and uplifting spaces that allow the performing arts to shine while adding life to their surroundings. Selected Projects: - Hancher, University of Iowa - The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Theater - Wintrust Arena - Multi-purpose Auditorium, Hong Kong University - Science and Technology - The Theatre School, DePaul University - St. Katherine Drexel Chapel, Xavier University of Louisiana - BOK Center - Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall and Samueli Theater - The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County - Overture Center for the Arts - South Coast Repertory Theater - Schuster Performing Arts Center - Dewan Filharmonik at Petronas Towers - Aronoff Center for the Arts - North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

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From one of rap’s most personal and evocative writers comes a stirring memoir about how Boosie Badazz, one of the industry’s most controversial figures, was able to overcome insurmountable odds to make his music dreams a reality.A Baton Rouge native who began rapping at age fourteen, Boosie Badazz was already a cult hero in Louisiana when, in 2009, he was sentenced to two years in prison. The next year, he was indicted on even more serious charges, eventually landing him on Death Row. Prosecutors played Boosie’s music in the courtroom in an attempt to paint him as a thug with no chance of redemption. However, against overwhelming odds and the backdrop of a social media campaign to #FreeBoosie, he was freed in March of 2014 with a rare second chance to make his music dreams come true. In this evocative and compelling memoir, Boosie explores the relationship between his life on the streets with his ceaseless tear through the rap industry. From near-death experiences to a ruthless bout with kidney cancer to a life-threatening diabetes diagnosis, Boosie has overcome remarkable challenges to make a name for himself as one of rap’s most influential voices. A redemptive story with an urgent voice, Cross the Tracks is the survival tale of a man who wasn’t sure he would live to see another day...but who rose from the ashes to change the rap industry forever.

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Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who stood up, spoke up and rose up against the odds!In this chapter book biography by NAACP Image Award-winning author and Coretta Scott King Honor recipient Kekla Magoon, readers learn about the amazing life of Ruby Bridges--and how she persisted. As a first grader, Ruby Bridges was the first Black student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. This was no easy task, especially for a six-year-old. Ruby's bravery and perseverance inspired children and adults alike to fight for equality and social justice. Perfect for back-to-school reading!Complete with an introduction from Chelsea Clinton, black-and-white illustrations throughout, and a list of ways that readers can follow in Ruby Bridges's footsteps and make a difference! A perfect choice for kids who love learning and teachers who want to bring inspiring women into their curriculum.And don’t miss out on the rest of the books in the She Persisted series, featuring so many more women who persisted, including Oprah Winfrey, Harriet Tubman, Claudette Colvin, Coretta Scott King, and more!Praise for She Persisted: Ruby Bridges:"Bridges’ voice, quoted from various sources, gives readers access to her own perspective. A context-offering complement to Bridges’ own books for children." --Kirkus Reviews"Given the more relatable perspective of starting first grade, this volume makes Bridges’s story poignant for the intended audience." --School Library Journal

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A rare, magnified look at America's best-designed stamps from the mid-20th century! Every picture tells a story—even one on a postage stamp. Presented enormously enlarged, the 128 stamps in this book chronicle a stylish era of design: mid-20th-century America. Spanning the late 1950s to the early 1970s, these mini-masterpieces were created when the US post office started to lavish color on its stamps and to hire the best midcentury talents to design them. Magnifies the stylish beauty of 144 mini-masterpiece postage stamps chronicling a stylish era of design from the late 1950s to the early 1970s The roster includes Japanese American children’s book illustrator Gyo Fujikawa, barrier-busting Black graphic artist Georg Olden, Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer, and sultan of psychedelia Peter Max. Divulges the stories behind 144 tiny pieces of 1960s and 1970s art, including works by pop artist Robert Indiana and Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer A native of the cotton-ginning town of Oak Grove, Louisiana, and a lifelong philatelist, author David Cobb Craig became enchanted with postage when in the 1960s and ’70s he saw pictures of about-to-come-out stamps posted on the bulletin board at his small local post office (71263). Photographed at five, ten, and even fifteen times their actual size, each stamp is presented with a morsel of fun info that will broadly appeal to stamp collectors, history and nostalgia buffs, midcentury design fans, and everyone who likes to geek out on magnified views of teeny images.

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Audacious…Life on the Mississippi sparkles.” —The Wall Street Journal * “A rich mix of history, reporting, and personal introspection.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch * “Both a travelogue and an engaging history lesson about America’s westward expansion.” —The Christian Science Monitor The eagerly awaited return of master American storyteller Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand “flatboat era” of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River, illuminating the forgotten past of America’s first western frontier.Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands, and steep levees. As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era. The role of the flatboat in our country’s evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize. Between 1800 and 1840, millions of farmers, merchants, and teenage adventurers embarked from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia on flatboats headed beyond the Appalachians to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Settler families repurposed the wood from their boats to build their first cabins in the wilderness; cargo boats were broken apart and sold to build the boomtowns along the water route. Joining the river traffic were floating brothels, called “gun boats”; “smithy boats” for blacksmiths; even “whiskey boats” for alcohol. In the present day, America’s inland rivers are a superhighway dominated by leviathan barges—carrying $80 billion of cargo annually—all descended from flatboats like the ramshackle Patience. As a historian, Buck resurrects the era’s adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers’ push for land and wealth. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced more than 125,000 members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and several other tribes to travel the Mississippi on a brutal journey en route to the barrens of Oklahoma. Simultaneously, almost a million enslaved African Americans were carried in flatboats and marched by foot 1,000 miles over the Appalachians to the cotton and cane fields of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, birthing the term “sold down the river.” Buck portrays this watershed era of American expansion as it was really lived. With a rare narrative power that blends stirring adventure with absorbing untold history, Life on the Mississippi is a mus­cular and majestic feat of storytelling from a writer who may be the closest that we have today to Mark Twain.

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Featured on LeVar Burton Reads “Like Oscar Wilde or Ray Bradbury, E. Lily Yu writes the kind of delicious short stories that come with a sting in the tail. Utterly beguiling.” —Kelly Link, bestselling author of Get in Trouble“Each story here is a gem. A trove of fantastical treasures.” —Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW “An astonishing collection of stories…transformative.” —Library Journal STARRED REVIEWThe strange, the sublime, and the monstrous confront one another with astonishing consequences in this collection of twenty-two stories from award-winning writer E. Lily Yu.In the village of Yiwei, a fallen wasp nest unfurls into a beautifully accurate map. In a field in Louisiana, birdwatchers forge an indelible connection over a shared glimpse of a Vermilion Flycatcher, and fall. In Nineveh, a judge who prides himself on impartiality finds himself questioned by a mysterious god. On a nameless shore, a small monster searches for refuge and finds unexpected courage.At turns bittersweet and boundary-breaking, poignant and profound, these twenty-two stories sing, as the oldest fables do, of what it means to be alive in this strange, terrible, beautiful world. For readers who loved the intelligence and compassion in Kim Fu's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century and the dreamlike prose of Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, this collection introduces the short fiction of E. Lily Yu, winner of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer and author of the Washington Book Award–winning novel On Fragile Waves, praised by the New York Times Book Review as "devastating and perfect.""A lovely story." —LeVar Burton, on "The Pilgrim and The Angel" (from Jewel Box: Stories)

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The best professional advice Henry Horenstein ever received was to “shoot what you love.” He’s been doing that for more than four decades, capturing photographs that often richly evoke older cultures and places, especially ones that are disappearing: country musicians in Branson, horse racing at Saratoga Springs, nightlife in Buenos Aires, fais do-dos in Cajun Louisiana, old highways everywhere. Horenstein brings these images together in this rich visual memoir, along with behind-the-scenes stories, insights, and tips and suggestions for being a better photographer. His photographs and engaging, often humorous stories chronicle a career that begins in the 1960s, when photography was a trade and even the greatest photographers were not considered to be artists. He amusingly recounts his early assignments. Using his family and friends as subjects for a book on drug abuse was not too much of a stretch, he says, and while shooting Dolly Parton for what would become the Boston Phoenix, the star told him, “Honey, people don’t come out to see me looking like them.” He engagingly recalls his shoots with stars like the Lennon Sisters and Emmylou Harris, as well as his encounters with Ansel Adams, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Nan Goldin, and many other photo legends. Commanding these pages, though, are the subjects with whom Horenstein has chosen to spend most of his professional career, shooting what he loves. His images of honky-tonk stars, stock car drivers, exotic sea creatures, mixed-race residents of rural Maryland, and Venezuelan baseball players tell what he calls “a good story . . . with humor and a punch line, if possible.”

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* AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ‘A spectacular achievement’ ANTHONY DOERR ‘Extravagantly beautiful’ DAILY MAIL ‘One of the greatest writers of all time’ JACQUELINE WOODSON ‘Extraordinary’ GUARDIAN ‘The best book I’ve read in years’ LOUISE KENNEDY ----------------------- The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand. On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother’s resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother – how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness. When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving landscapes of the American South alone: from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans, and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Searching for relief in memories of her mother, she opens herself to a world beyond her own, teeming with spirits of earth, water, history and myth. A reimagining of American slavery as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching, Let Us Descend offers a magnificent portrait of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to emerge from darkness into light. This is a story of beauty, love, rebirth and reclamation – a masterwork for the ages. Praise for Sing, Unburied, Sing ‘A must’ Margaret Atwood ‘One of the most important writers in America today’ Ann Patchett ‘Ward is a lyrical, visceral storyteller’ Daily Mail ‘A searing, urgent read’ Celeste Ng ‘Plays out like a grand epic … Staggering’ Marlon James

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A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the US, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships - with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son - Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.

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In the 150 years since the birth of the petroleum industry oil has saturated our culture, fueling our cars and wars, our economy and policies. But just as thoroughly, culture saturates oil. So what exactly is “oil culture”? This book pursues an answer through petrocapitalism’s history in literature, film, fine art, wartime propaganda, and museum displays. Investigating cultural discourses that have taken shape around oil, these essays compose the first sustained attempt to understand how petroleum has suffused the Western imagination. The contributors to this volume examine the oil culture nexus, beginning with the whale oil culture it replaced and analyzing literature and films such as Giant, Sundown, Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Via del Petrolio, and Ben Okri’s “What the Tapster Saw”; corporate art, museum installations, and contemporary photography; and in apocalyptic visions of environmental disaster and science fiction. By considering oil as both a natural resource and a trope, the authors show how oil’s dominance is part of culture rather than an economic or physical necessity. Oil Culture sees beyond oil capitalism to alternative modes of energy production and consumption. Contributors: Georgiana Banita, U of Bamberg; Frederick Buell, Queens College; Gerry Canavan, Marquette U; Melanie Doherty, Wesleyan College; Sarah Frohardt-Lane, Ripon College, Matthew T. Huber, Syracuse U; Dolly Jørgensen, Umeå U; Stephanie LeMenager, U of Oregon; Hanna Musiol, Northeastern U; Chad H. Parker, U of Louisiana at Lafayette; Ruth Salvaggio, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Heidi Scott, Florida International U; Imre Szeman, U of Alberta; Michael Watts, U of California, Berkeley; Jennifer Wenzel, Columbia University; Sheena Wilson, U of Alberta; Rochelle Raineri Zuck, U of Minnesota Duluth; Catherine Zuromskis, U of New Mexico.

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Over the past quarter century, dramatic technological advances in the production, manipulation, and dissemination of images have transformed the practices of journalism, entertainment, and advertising as well as the visual environment itself. From digital retouching to wholesale deception, the media world is now beset by an unprecedented range of moral, ethical, legal, and professional challenges. Image Ethics in the Digital Age brings together leading experts in the fields of journalism, media studies, and law to address these challenges and assess their implications for personal and societal values and behavior.Among the issues raised are the threat to journalistic integrity posed by visual editing software; the monopolization of image archives by a handful of corporations and its impact on copyright and fair use laws; the instantaneous electronic distribution of images of dubious provenance around the world; the erosion of privacy and civility under the onslaught of sensationalistic twenty-four-hour television news coverage and entertainment programming; and the increasingly widespread use of surveillance cameras in public spaces. This volume of original essays is vital reading for anyone concerned with the influence of the mass media in the digital age.Contributors: Howard S. Becker; Derek Bousé, Eastern Mediterranean U, Cyprus; Hart Cohen, U of Western Sydney; Jessica M. Fishman; Paul Frosh, Hebrew U of Jerusalem; Faye Ginsburg, New York U; Laura Grindstaff, U of California, Davis; Dianne Hagaman; Sheldon W. Halpern, Ohio State U; Darrell Y. Hamamoto, U of California, Davis; Marguerite Moritz, U of Colorado, Boulder; David D. Perlmutter, Louisiana State U; Dona Schwartz, U of Minnesota; Matthew Soar, Concordia University; Stephen E. Weil, Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Education and Museum Studies.

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This gripping study examines slave resistance and protest in antebellum Florida and its local and national impact from 1821 to 1865. Using a variety of sources such as slaveholders' wills and probate records, ledgers, account books, court records, oral histories, and numerous newspaper accounts, Larry Eugene Rivers discusses the historical significance of Florida as a runaway slave haven dating back to the seventeenth century and explains Florida's unique history of slave resistance and protest. In moving detail, Rivers illustrates what life was like for enslaved blacks whose families were pulled asunder as they relocated from the Upper South to the Lower South to an untamed place such as Florida, and how they fought back any way they could to control small parts of their own lives. Against a smoldering backdrop of violence, this study analyzes the various degrees of slave resistance--from the perspectives of both slave and master--and how they differed in various regions of antebellum Florida. In particular, Rivers demonstrates how the Atlantic world view of some enslaved blacks successfully aided their escape to freedom, a path that did not always lead North but sometimes farther South to the Bahama Islands and Caribbean. Identifying more commonly known slave rebellions such as the Stono, Louisiana, Denmark (Telemaque) Vesey, Gabriel, and the Nat Turner insurrections, Rivers argues persuasively that the size, scope, and intensity of black resistance in the Second Seminole War makes it the largest sustained slave insurrection ever to occur in American history.Meticulously researched, Rebels and Runaways offers a detailed account of resistance, protest, and violence as enslaved blacks fought for freedom.

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“A work of art. In each of the pages, you will feel the flow of a powerful energy which will murmur to each of your cells that it is time to come out of hiding, to open the windows, to breathe freely, to dress colorfully… to fly.”—Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for ChocolateAn illustrated fable for all ages about a Mexican-American girl who transforms into a monarch butterfly and undertakes the great migration to Mexico, Monarca braids together the values of heritage, ecology, and personal transformation.On her thirteenth birthday, Inés receives a mysterious necklace from her abuela in Mexico that turns her into a monarch butterfly—the fulfilment of a prophecy linking Inés’ destiny to her family’s legacy and the butterflies’ survival.The adventure continues as Inés joins the monarchs on their long journey south to the butterfly sanctuary in Mexico—an odyssey that has become increasingly perilous due to human activity. Together, the swarm travels from the northeast to the swamps of Louisiana to the pine-filled mountain tops of the western Sierra Madre, finally alighting at the Sierra Chincua sanctuary. On this wondrous journey in the vein of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Little Prince, Inés discovers the connections between all living beings, and the urgent need to protect the monarchs' migration and habitats. Divided into four chapters to mirror the four stages in a monarch’s life—egg, larva, pupa and butterfly—Monarca blends Mexican folklore, environmentalism, and magical realism in an enchanting novella. Illustrated with stunning full-color drawings by Leopoldo Gout, this book will inspire readers to protect and cherish the sacred natural world around them.

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Find Joy in the Beauty and Wonder of Birds Birding is among the most popular outdoor activities—especially in the South, where hundreds of different bird species can be seen and observed. Now is the perfect time to join the fun and let our feathered friends astonish and inspire you. Award-winning author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer Stan Tekiela has written best-selling bird identification guides for every Southern state. In Stan Tekiela’s Birding for Beginners: South, he provides the information you need to become a skilled birder in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, east Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, east Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. The first section of the book presents “how to” information. Learn the basics of bird feeders. Get to know your birdseed. Create a bird-friendly yard—and even make your own bird food with do-it-yourself recipes. The book’s second section is an identification guide, featuring 54 Southern birds that are most likely to be seen at your backyard feeder or near your home. The species are organized by color, making it simple to identify what you see. If you spot a yellow bird, go to the yellow section to discover what it is. Each bird gets a full-page photograph with notations about key field marks, or identification characteristics. The full-color photos are paired with information ranging from the bird’s nest and eggs to favorite foods, as well as Stan’s fascinating naturalist notes. Give birding a try, and get started with the guidance of an expert. You’ll be amazed by how much joy birds can bring, and you’ll have a lifetime to enjoy them.

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JACK LARK: SOLDIER, LEADER, IMPOSTER.The eighth book in the exhilarating military adventure series for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden and Angus Donald. 'Classic Jack Lark in a classic western... an exceptionally entertaining historical action adventure' Matthew Harffy 'If you are looking for nonstop high-octane adventure with lots of pulsating action, this is for you. Strap on a navy Colt, mount up - and enjoy' Historical Novel Society 'An excellent, gripping, old-fashion Western yarn, with first-class blood-and-guts action sequences - a real white-knuckle page-turner.' Angus DonaldLouisiana, 1863. Jack Lark is on the long and lonely road to nowhere, the battlefield behind him. But soon his soldier skill lands him a job, and a new purpose - defending a valuable wagon train of cotton as it journeys down through Texas to Mexico. Working for another man, let alone the volatile Brannigan, isn't going to be easy. And with the Deep South's most infamous outlaws hot on their trail, Jack knows he is living on borrowed time. As they cross the border, Jack quickly discovers that the usual rules of war don't apply. He will have to fight to survive, and this time the battle might prove one he could lose. THE LOST OUTLAW: JACK LARK BOOK 8 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF JACK LARK: 'A gritty story of murder and betrayal, and eventually revenge' 'Some of the most ruthless characters ever created in historical fiction' 'The action throughout is ferocious, the battles and the gunfights, bloody, vivid and visceral' 'Jack Lark is a hero I'll happily follow' 'Paul Fraser Collard goes from strength to strength'

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Creole Soul: Zydeco Lives is an exquisitely photographed volume of interviews with contemporary zydeco musicians. Featuring the voices of zydeco’s venerable senior generation and its current agents of change, this book celebrates a musical world full of passion, energy, cowboy hats and boots, banging bass, horse trailers, joy, and dazzling dance moves. Author Burt Feintuch captures an important American music in the process of significant—and sometimes controversial—change. Creole Soul draws us into conversations with zydeco musicians from Texas and Louisiana, most of them bandleaders, including Ed Poullard, Lawrence "Black" Ardoin, Step Rideau, Brian Jack, Jerome Batiste, Ruben Moreno, Nathan Williams Jr., Leroy Thomas, Corey Ledet, Sean Ardoin, and Dwayne Dopsie. Some of the interviewees represent the contemporary scene and are among today’s most popular performers along the Creole Corridor. Others are rooted in older French music forms and are especially well qualified to talk about zydeco’s origins. The musicians speak freely, whether discussing the death of a famed musician or describing a memorable performance, such as when Boozoo Chavis played the accordion while dripping blood on stage shortly after a freak barbeque-building accident that sliced off parts of two of his fingers. They address the influence of rap on today’s zydeco music and discuss how to pass music along to a younger generation—and how not to. They weigh the merits of the old-time zydeco clubs versus today’s casinos and African American trailrides, which come complete with horses and the loudest zydeco bands you can imagine. In Creole Soul, zydeco musicians give an unprecedented look into their lives, their music, and their culture.

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In one of America's most notorious prisons, a young man sentenced to life without parole miraculously found faith, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration. In 27 Summers Ronald Olivier shares his dramatic and powerful story and offers proof that God can bring healing and hope to even the darkest circumstances. As a teenager Ronald Olivier ran wild in the streets of New Orleans, selling drugs, stealing cars, and finally killing someone on what was supposed to be the happiest day of the year--Christmas Day. Facing the consequences of his crime, he remembered what his mother once said. "Baby, if you ever have real trouble, the kind that I can't get you out of, you can always call on Jesus." So he did.Ron was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Through the agony of solitary confinement and multiple transfers into increasingly dangerous prison environments, Ron kept seeking God for healing and hope. Finally, after being locked up for twenty-seven summers at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary--known as Angola--Ron was miraculously released. Remarkably, he became the director of chaplains at Mississippi State Penitentiary. Today, Ron loves to combat hopelessness, wherever he finds it, by saying, "Don't tell me what God can't do!”Readers will learn new insights about faith and patience from a man who spent almost three decades in a cruel and violent environment; be encouraged, like Ron, to find grace and forgiveness to overcome the pain of their past; and find hope that God can redeem and restore anyone. Ron's fascinating story brilliantly displays God's power to transform individuals, families, and communities, reminding us that there truly is nothing God can't do.

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This collection of essays, comprised of research first presented at the seventh annual Louisiana Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture, explores one of the most pervasive, vexing, and alluring concepts in the Humanities, that of place. Including essays which encompass a broad range of research fields and methodologies, from Geography to Cybernetics, it presents a cross-section of approaches aimed revealing the complex cultural machinations behind what once may have seemed a static, one-dimensional topic.Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified its own places through its literature. Imagined places such as Faulker’s Yoknapatawpha or Joyce’s Dublin become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors’ homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred; and persisting through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in which they are created and set. With the idea of place foregrounded in so much contemporary discourse, this collection promises to enter into an already lively debate and one which, due to its relevance to where we live and how we make sense of our own “places” within them, does not show any signs of flagging.

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* AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ‘A spectacular achievement’ ANTHONY DOERR ‘Extravagantly beautiful’ DAILY MAIL ‘One of the greatest writers of all time’ JACQUELINE WOODSON ‘Extraordinary’ GUARDIAN ‘The best book I’ve read in years’ LOUISE KENNEDY ----------------------- The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand. On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother’s resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother – how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness. When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving landscapes of the American South alone: from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans, and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Searching for relief in memories of her mother, she opens herself to a world beyond her own, teeming with spirits of earth, water, history and myth. A reimagining of American slavery as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching, Let Us Descend offers a magnificent portrait of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to emerge from darkness into light. This is a story of beauty, love, rebirth and reclamation – a masterwork for the ages. Praise for Sing, Unburied, Sing ‘A must’ Margaret Atwood ‘One of the most important writers in America today’ Ann Patchett ‘Ward is a lyrical, visceral storyteller’ Daily Mail ‘A searing, urgent read’ Celeste Ng ‘Plays out like a grand epic … Staggering’ Marlon James

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Set between January 1862 and January 1863, this second installment in the ambitious Civil War series paints an unforgettable portrait of the year that turned a secessionist rebellion into a war of emancipationIncluding eleven never-before-published pieces, here are more than 140 messages, proclamations, newspaper stories, letters, diary entries, memoir excerpts, and poems by more than eighty participants and observers, among them Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan, Robert E. Lee, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Clara Barton, Harriet Jacobs, and George Templeton Strong, as well as soldiers Charles B. Haydon and Henry Livermore Abbott; diarists Kate Stone and Judith McGuire; and war correspondents George E. Stephens and George Smalley. The selections include vivid and haunting narratives of battles-Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, the gunboat war on the Western rivers, Shiloh, the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Iuka, Corinth, Perryville, Fredericksburg, Stones River-as well as firsthand accounts of life and death in the military hospitals in Richmond and Georgetown; of the impact of war on Massachusetts towns and Louisiana plantations; of the struggles of runaway slaves and the mounting fears of slaveholders; and of the deliberations of the cabinet in Washington, as Lincoln moved toward what he would call "the central act of my administration and the great event of the nineteenth century": the revolutionary proclamation of emancipation.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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Early Art of the Southeastern Indians is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full colour, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centres for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America.Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods—from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600—Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeast—from Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahoma—the pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators’ widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds.The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles consisting of symbolic colours, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centres that were noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales.Power comments on the widening of artists’ subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a piece’s artistic “language” could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody an iconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of these south eastern artists delight the senses and engage the mind while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings.

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Generations of Americans have seen the West as beyond federal control and direction. But the national government's presence in the West dates to before Lewis and Clark, and since 1789 a number of U.S. presidents have had a penetrating and long-lasting impact on the region. In Presidents Who Shaped the American West, noted historians Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain present startling analyses of chief executives and their policies, illuminating the long reach of presidential power. The authors begin each chapter by sketching a particular president's biography and explaining the political context in which he operated while in office. They then consider overarching actions and policies that affected both the nation and the region during the president's administration, such as Thomas Jefferson's augmentation of the West via the Louisiana Purchase, and Andrew Jackson's removal of American Indians from the Southeast to ""Indian Country"" in the West. Abraham Lincoln's promotion of the Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad, and western territories and states free of slavery marked further extensions of presidential power in the region. Theodore Roosevelt's conservation efforts and Jimmy Carter's expansion of earlier policies reflected growing public concern with the West's finite natural resources and fragile natural environment. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Dwight D. Eisenhower's highway program, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society funneled federal funding into the West. In return for this largesse, some argued, the West paid the price of increased federal hegemony, and Ronald Reagan's presidency arguably curbed that power. Riley and Etulain also discuss the most recent presidential terms and the region's growing political power in Congress and the federal bureaucracy. With an accessible approach, Presidents Who Shaped the American West establishes the crucial and formative nature of the relationship between the White House and the West - and will encourage readers to continue examining this relationship.

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“Set in New Orleans, this important and powerful novel follows the Boisdoré family . . . in the months after Katrina. A profound, moving and authentically detailed picture of the storm’s emotional impact on those who lived through it.” —People In this dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, C. Morgan Babst takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina and the life of a great city. As the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora Boisdoré refuses to leave the city. Her parents, Joe Boisdoré, an artist descended from freed slaves who became the city’s preeminent furniture makers, and his white “Uptown” wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, are forced to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic—the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself. This mystery is at the center of Babst’s haunting and profound novel. Cora’s sister, Del, returns to New Orleans from the successful life she built in New York City to find her hometown in ruins and her family deeply alienated from one another. As Del attempts to figure out what happened to her sister, she must also reckon with the racial history of the city and the trauma of a disaster that was not, in fact, some random act of God but an avoidable tragedy visited on New Orleans’s most vulnerable citizens. Separately and together, each member of the Boisdoré clan must find the strength to remake home in a city forever changed.The Floating World is the Katrina story that needed to be told—one with a piercing, unforgettable loveliness and a vivid, intimate understanding of this particular place and its tangled past.

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In The Ledger and the Chain, prize-winning historian Joshua D. Rothman tells the disturbing story of the Franklin and Armfield company and the men who built it into the largest and most powerful slave trading company in the United States. In so doing, he reveals the central importance of the domestic slave trade to the development of American capitalism and the expansion of the American nation.Few slave traders were more successful than Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who ran Franklin and Armfield, and none were more influential. Drawing on source material from more than thirty archives in a dozen states, Rothman follows the three traders through their first meetings, the rise of their firm, and its eventual dissolution. Responsible for selling between 8,000 and 12,000 slaves from the Upper South to Deep South plantations over a period of eight years in the 1830s, they ran an extensive and innovative operation, with offices in New Orleans and Alexandria in Louisiana and Natchez in Mississippi. They advertised widely, borrowed heavily from bankers and other creditors, extended long term credit to their buyers, and had ships built to take slaves from Virginia down to New Orleans. Slavers are often misremembered as pariahs of more cultivated society, but as Rothman argues, the men who perpetrated the slave trade were respected members of prominent social and business communities and understood themselves as patriotic Americans.By tracing the lives and careers of the nation's most notorious slave traders, The Ledger and the Chain shows how their business skills and remorseless violence together made the malevolent entrepreneurialism of the slave trade. And it reveals how this horrific, ubiquitous trade in human beings shaped a growing nation and corrupted it in ways still powerfully felt today.

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Renowned for A Ballad of the West, his epic trilogy about the American West from the era of mountain man Jim Bridger to the closing of the frontier, Bobby Bridger has had a career in show business that spans the rockabilly-to-"Music City, USA" era in Nashville, the cosmic cowboy scene in Austin, the flowering of folk music, and even Broadway theater. His multifaceted talents have found expression in singing, acting, writing, painting, and sculpting. In this engrossing account of the personal and artistic journey that led him to create a new American art form, the epic ballad, Bridger touches on almost every major musical, entertainment, and cultural movement of the second half of the twentieth century, with a cast of characters that reads like a "Who's Who" of American popular culture.Bridger's story begins in a small town in northeast Louisiana, where he first experienced the twin attractions of painting and music. He recounts his early efforts to become a successful Nashville singer-songwriter and his growing awareness that the commercial music business would never support his evolving desire to become a historical balladeer. Bridger recalls how his interest in folk music and folk ballads fired his ambition to tell the story of the American West. He movingly describes how this dream eventually became A Ballad of the West, an epic trilogy about Jim Bridger, the Lakota Sioux, and Buffalo Bill that has taken form in an acclaimed cycle of songs, a one-man show, books, full-cast stage performances, and other media.Included in the book is a DVD that offers songs from A Ballad of the West and a sample from the forthcoming documentary Quest of an Epic Balladeer, based on Bobby Bridger's life and work.

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The multi-author Essays in Later Mediaeval Metaphysics focuses primarily on 13th and 14th century Latin treatments of some of the most important metaphysical issues as conceived by many of the most important thinkers of the day. Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, John Buridan, Dietrich of Freiburg, Robert Holcot, Walter Burley, and the 11th century Islamic philosopher Ibn-Sina (Avicenna) are among the figures examined here. The work begins with standard ontological topics—e.g., the nature of existence, and of metaphysics generally; the status of universals, form, and accidents. Here, a number of questions are considered. What is the proper subject matter of metaphysical speculation? Are essence and existence really distinct in bodies? Furthermore, does the body lose its unifying form at death? Can an accident of a substance exist in separation from that substance? Are universals real, and if so, are they anything more than general concepts? There is also an emphasis on metaphysics broadly conceived. Thus, discussions of theories of mediaeval logic, epistemology, and language are added to provide a fuller account of the range of ideas included in the later mediaeval worldview. Many questions are raised in this context as well. What are the objects of propositional attitudes? How does Aristotelian logic stand up against modern predicate calculus? Are infinite regress arguments defensible in metaphysical contexts? How are the notions of analogy and equivocation related to the concept of being? Contributors include scholars of mediaeval philosophy from across North America: Rega Wood (Indiana), Gyula Klima (Fordham), Brian Francis Conolly (Bard College at Simon’s Rock ), Charles Bolyard (James Madison), Martin Tweedale (emeritus, Alberta), Jack Zupko (Winnipeg), Susan Brower-Toland (St. Louis), Rondo Keele (Louisiana Scholars’ College), Terence Parsons (UC-Irvine), and E. J. Ashworth (emeritus, Waterloo).

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In A Language of Song, Samuel Charters—one of the pioneering collectors of African American music—writes of a trip to West Africa where he found “a gathering of cultures and a continuing history that lay behind the flood of musical expression [he] encountered everywhere . . . from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem.” In this book, Charters takes readers along to those and other places, including Jamaica and the Georgia Sea Islands, as he recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, documenting, recording, and writing about the Africa-influenced music of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean.Each of the book’s fourteen chapters is a vivid rendering of a particular location that Charters visited. While music is always his focus, the book is filled with details about individuals, history, landscape, and culture. In first-person narratives, Charters relates voyages including a trip to the St. Louis home of the legendary ragtime composer Scott Joplin and the journey to West Africa, where he met a man who performed an hours-long song about the Europeans’ first colonial conquests in Gambia. Throughout the book, Charters traces the persistence of African musical culture despite slavery, as well as the influence of slaves’ songs on subsequent musical forms. In evocative prose, he relates a lifetime of travel and research, listening to brass bands in New Orleans; investigating the emergence of reggae, ska, and rock-steady music in Jamaica’s dancehalls; and exploring the history of Afro-Cuban music through the life of the jazz musician Bebo Valdés. A Language of Song is a unique expedition led by one of music’s most observant and well-traveled explorers.

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One of TIME's 100 Must Read Books of 2020 and one of Good Housekeeping's Best Books of the Year“One of the smartest young writers of her generation.”—Book RiotNow in paperback and featuring a new afterword from the author, comes Morgan Jerkins' powerful story of her journey to understand her northern and southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California. Following in their footsteps, Jerkins seeks to understand not only her own past, but the lineage of an entire group of people who have been displaced, disenfranchised, and disrespected throughout our history. Through interviews, photos, and hundreds of pages of transcription, Jerkins braids the loose threads of her family’s oral histories, which she was able to trace back 300 years, with the insights and recollections of black people she met along the way—the tissue of black myths, customs, and blood that connect the bones of American history. Incisive and illuminating, Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and enthralling look at America’s past and present, one family’s legacy, and a young black woman’s life, filtered through her sharp and curious eyes.

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The eighth action-packed Victorian military adventure featuring hero Jack Lark: soldier, leader, imposter. Expect hard fighting, dangerous bandoleros and double-crossing aplenty as Jack arrives in Mexico. A must-read military adventure for fans of Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow. Dusty deserts, showdowns under the blistering sun, bloodthirsty bandoleros, rough whisky and rougher men. Bullets fly, emotions run high and treachery abounds in The Lost Outlaw. This is classic Jack Lark in a classic western...an exceptionally entertaining historical action adventure' In the midst of civil war, America stands divided. Jack Lark has faced both armies first hand, but will no longer fight for a cause that isn't his. 1863, Louisiana. Jack may have left the battlefield behind, but his gun is never far from reach, especially on the long and lonely road to nowhere. Soon, his skill lands him a job, and a new purpose.Navy Colt in hand, Jack embarks on the dangerous task of escorting a valuable wagon train of cotton down through Texas to Mexico. Working for another man, let alone a man like the volatile Brannigan, isn't going to be easy. With the cargo under constant attack, and the Deep South's most infamous outlaws hot on their trail, Jack knows he is living on borrowed time. And, as they cross the border, Jack soon discovers that the usual rules of war don't apply. He will have to fight to survive, and this time the battle might prove one he could lose. Praise for the Jack Lark series:'Brilliant' Bernard Cornwell'Enthralling' The Times 'You feel and experience all the emotions and the blood, sweat and tears that Jack does... I devoured it in one sitting' Parmenion Books

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An emotionally evocative, richly textured history based on autobiographical accounts of those who lived and shaped the struggle. The importance of many of Rogers' subjects and the uniqueness of New Orleans make this must reading for anyone interested in the history of the movement. But those interested in oral history and African-American autobiography will find riches aplenty as well. A welcome addition to a number of literatures --Doug McAdam, author of Freedom Summer Righteous Lives skillfully blends oral history with a perceptive analysis of three generations of civil rights leadership in New Orleans. Rogers has revealed not only what people did, but what they remember, and how their assessments of their activism have changed over time. --Donald A. Ritchie, U.S. Senate Historical Office "Rogers paints a slightly less rosy picture, one in which the Louisiana un-American Activities Committee staged a raid on the offices of the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), and the City Council passed laws prohibiting the right to peaceful assembly, paving the way to jailing protesters." —Gambit Weekly This important study provides fresh insights into the lives of both black and white civil rights leaders, documents the diversity of individuals and motivations, and traces movement history in a major southern city. Well written and well researched, this book is highly recommended for readers at all levels. --Choice Charts the distinctly different experiences and memories of 25 black and white civil rights activists of three 'generations' in New Orleans, opening with a deft sketch of the city's unusual racial background with its black Creole caste. --Publishers Weekly An important study, full of valuable information, profoundly moving testimony, and provocative insights. --The Journal of Southern History A major contribution to our understanding of the civil rights movement. RIGHTEOUS LIVES illustrates the complexity of movements for social change, the long history of seemingly spontaneous conflicts, and the personal consequences of political activism. Rogers reveals how issues of caste and class, of gender and generation divided the black community in New Orleans, while her in-depth interviews and observations bring to the surface previously unexamined contradictions within the white southern experience as well. RIGHTEOUS LIVES also offers perceptive and thought-provoking insights into broader issues of collective and individual memory, life history, and autobiography. It evokes the struggle for African-American self-determination in the Crescent City with clarity and conviction, and it stands as a fitting testimonial to the courageous men and women whose voices provide so much of the book's fascinating narratives and textures. -- George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego When former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke campaigned for governor in late 1991, race relations in Louisiana were thrust dramatically into the national spotlight. New Orleans, the political and economic hub of the state, is in many ways representative of Louisiana's unique racial mix, a fusion of African-American, Caribbean, European, and white Southern cultures. An old, colorful port famous for its French and Spanish heritage, distinctive architecture, and jazz, New Orleans was a peculiarly segregated city in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, despite its complicated racial and ethnic identity and heated desegregation battles, New Orleans, unlike other Southern cities such as Birmingham, did not explode. In this moving work, Kim Rogers tells the stories, in their own words, of the New Orleans' civil rights workers who fought to deter the racial terrorism that scarred much of the South in the 1950s and 1960s. Spanning three generations of activists, RIGHTEOUS LIVES traces the risks, triumphs, and disappointments that characterized the lives of New Orleans activists. Chronicling watershed moments in the movement, Rogers' compelling narrative illustrates how blacks and whites worked together to decompress the tensions that accompanied desegregation in the ethnic mosaic of New Orleans.

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This comprehensive Cajun and Creole cookbook presents over seventy recipes from all the top New Orleans restaurants.From Brennan's and Emeril to Commanders Palace—providing all the heady Cajun and Creole flavors of this fabulous food city in one handy volume. Author John DeMers is one of New Orleans' leading food writers, and he starts by giving you a comprehensive overview of the history and food culture of New Orleans—an insightful and spirited look at everything this city stands for in terms of food, with incredible photographs including some family album shots of local food celebrities. Next is a detailed "how-to" introduction to the local ingredients and cooking techniques. The main body of this Creole and Cajun cookbook presents incredible recipes for all the classic New Orleans dishes served at leading restaurants—from Jambalaya to Creole Gumbo and Beignets. These Creole and Cajun recipes are all written by top local chefs and restaurants like Andrea's, Arnaud's, Bayona, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, Emeril and the Sazerac. Relive the rich flavors of the Big Easy in the comfort of your own kitchen with this book! Authentic Cajun and Creole recipes include: Pain Perdu Oysters Rockefeller Seafood Gumbo Crawfish Etouffee Muffuletta Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce World Food Cookbooks allow people to bring the cuisines of the world into their own homes. These beautiful books offer complete information on ingredients, utensils, and cooking techniques. Each volume presents the best authentic recipes and detailed explorations of the cultural context in which dishes are created.

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Leonidas Polk was a graduate of West Point who resigned his commission to enter the Episcopal priesthood as a young man. At first combining parish ministry with cotton farming in Tennessee, Polk subsequently was elected the first bishop of the Louisiana Diocese, whereupon he bought a sugarcane plantation and worked it with several hundred slaves owned by his wife. Then, in the 1850s he was instrumental in the founding of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. When secession led to war he pulled his diocese out of the national church and with other Southern bishops established what they styled the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. Polk then offered his military services to his friend and former West Point classmate Jefferson Davis and became a major general in the Confederate Army.Polk was one of the more notable, yet controversial, generals of the war. Recognizing his indispensable familiarity with the Mississippi Valley, Confederate president Jefferson Davis commissioned his elevation to a high military position regardless of his lack of prior combat experience. Polk commanded troops in the Battles of Belmont, Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and Meridian as well as several smaller engagements in Georgia leading up to Atlanta. Polk is remembered for his bitter disagreements with his immediate superior, the likewise-controversial General Braxton Bragg of the Army of Tennessee. In 1864, while serving under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston, Polk was killed by Union cannon fire as he observed General Sherman's emplacements on the hills outside Atlanta.

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Hungry for your favorite meal from Chili's, P.F. Chang's, or The Cheesecake Factory? You can satisfy those cravings at home-without the expensive bill after dessert.Bestselling authors Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough are the authorities on getting the most out of your Instant Pot, having sold hundreds of thousands of copies of their Instant Pot Bible cookbooks. Now, they reveal the secrets to bringing all the flavor and excitement from dozens of beloved restaurants into your own Instant Pot-from Applebee's and Buca di Beppo to Olive Garden and Ruby Tuesday.Not only do these 175 original recipes taste like the real thing, they put you in control of the cooking. That means you can avoid processed foods, use the ingredients you prefer, and adjust each dish to meet your dietary needs. Plus, they have all been tested to work with every model of Instant Pot.With Instant Pot Bible: Copycat Recipes, any night can taste like dining out on the weekend, featuring original Instant Pot versions of:- Chipotle's Queso Blanco- Hale and Hearty's Chicken Pot Pie Soup- Red Robin's Creamy Artichoke and Spinach Dip- The Capital Grille's Lobster Mac-and-Cheese- P. F. Chang's Spicy Miso Ramen- Applebee's Three Cheese Chicken Penne- Buca di Beppo's World-Famous Meatballs- Cracker Barrel's Sunday Pot Roast- Café Rio's Sweet Pork Barbacoa Tostadas- Noodles & Company's Pad Thai with Shrimp- Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen's Cajun Rice- Marie Callender's Famous Golden Cornbread- The Cheesecake Factory's Marshmallow S'mores Cheesecake...and other dishes inspired by Buffalo Wild Wings, Rao's, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster, TGI Friday's, and more!

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NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ‘AN INTENSE AND BROODING THRILLER ’ – THE OBSERVER A intensely romantic and atmospheric thriller for young adults, full of twists and turns with a simmering supernatural undercurrent. Perfect for fans of Holly Jackson, Karen McManus and Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing When seventeen-year-old Grey makes her annual visit to La Cachette, Louisiana – the tiny bayou town that proclaims to be the “Psychic Capital of the World” – she knows it will be different from past years: her childhood best friend Elora went missing several months earlier and no one is telling the truth about the night she disappears. Grey can’t believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something—her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave. When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou – a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town’s bloody history – Grey realizes that La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. She doesn’t know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent—and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.

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101st Airborne Division was activated in August 1942 in Louisiana, and its first combat mission was Operation Overlord. On D-Day—June 6, 1944—101st and 82nd Airborne dropped onto the Cotentin peninsula hours before the landings, tasked with capturing bridges and positions, taking out German strongpoints and batteries, and securing the exits from Utah and Omaha Beaches. Things did not initially go smoothly for 101st Airborne, with cloud and antiaircraft fire disrupting the drops resulting in some units landing scattered over a large area outside their designated drop zones and having to waste time assembling—stymied by lost or damaged radio equipment—or trying to achieve their objectives with severely reduced numbers. Casualties were high in some areas due to heavy pre-registered German fire. Nevertheless, the paratroopers fought on and they did manage to secure the crucial beach exits, even if they only achieved a tenuous hold on some other positions. A few days later, 101st Airborne were tasked with attacking the German-held city of Carentan as part of the consolidation of the US beachheads and establishment of a defensive line against the anticipated German counteroffensive. The 101st forced their way into Carentan on 10 and 11 June. The Germans withdrew the following day, and a counteroffensive was put down by elements of the 2nd Armored Division. This fully illustrated book details the planning of the airborne element of D-Day, and the execution of the plans until the troops were withdrawn to prepare for the next big airborne operation, Market Garden.

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In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II, a strong strain of isolationism existed in Congress and across the country. The U.S. Army stood at fewer than 200,000 men—unprepared to defend the country, much less carry the fight to Europe and the Far East. And yet, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the American army led the Allied invasion of North Africa, beginning the campaign that would defeat Germany, and the Navy and Marines were fully engaged with Japan in the Pacific.The story of America’s astounding industrial mobilization during World War II has been told. But what has never been chronicled before Paul Dickson’s The Rise of the G. I. Army, 1940-1941 is the extraordinary transformation of America’s military from a disparate collection of camps with dilapidated equipment into a well-trained and spirited army ten times its prior size in little more than eighteen months. From Franklin Roosevelt’s selection of George C. Marshall to be Army Chief of Staff to the remarkable peace-time draft of 1940 and the massive and unprecedented mock battles in Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Carolinas by which the skill and spirit of the Army were forged and out of which iconic leaders like Eisenhower, Bradley, and Clark emerged; Dickson narrates America’s urgent mobilization against a backdrop of political and cultural isolationist resistance and racial tension at home, and the increasingly perceived threat of attack from both Germany and Japan.An important addition to American history, The Rise of the G. I. Army, 1940-1941 is essential to our understanding of America’s involvement in World War II.

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"I was drawn to Michael Jeffrey Lee's line-up of loners and drifters, imperiled children, and haunted psychos neither because I want to hang out with these bad boys, nor because I plan to cross the street when I see them coming, but because the invitation to inhabit their minds, to see the world through their eyes, and to watch their often unsettling stories play out in space and time enables Lee to do all sorts of extremely interesting things with consciousness and language."—Francine Prose, judge for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction Michael Jeffrey Lee's stories are bizarre and smart and stilted, like dystopic fables told by a redneck Samuel Beckett. Outcasts hunker under bridges, or hole up in bars, waiting for the hurricane to hit. Lee's forests are full of menace too-unseen crowds gather at the tree-line, and bands of petty crooks and marauders bluster their way into suicidal games of one-upmanship. In Something In My Eye, violence and idleness are always in tension, ratcheting up and down with an eerie and effortless force. Diction leaps between registers with the same vertiginous swoops, moving from courtly formality to the funk and texture of a slang that is all the characters' own. It's a masterful performance, and Lee's inventiveness accomplishes that very rare feat-hyper-stylized structure and language that achieve clarity out of turbulence, never allowing technique to obscure what's most important: a direct address that makes visible all those we'd rather not see. Michael Jeffrey Lee lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he earns his living as a typist, waiter, and nightclub singer. A frequent contributor to Conjunctions, he is also an associate fiction editor at the New Orleans Review. He is at work on a novel.

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Tracing the careers of four instrumental players who turned around the Yankees ball club, this book shares behind-the-scenes stories from their early days together in the minors through the 2013 season, and follows them on their majestic ride to the top of the baseball world. At a time when the New York Yankees were in free fall, having failed to win a World Series in 17 years and had not played in one in 14 years—the Bronx Bombers’ longest drought since before the days of Babe Ruth—along came four young players whose powerful impact returned the franchise to its former glory. They were a diverse group from different parts of the globe: Mariano Rivera, a right-handed pitcher from Panama, who was destined to become the all-time record holder in saves and baseball’s greatest closer; Derek Jeter, a shortstop raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who would become the first Yankee to accumulate 3,000 hits; Jorge Posada, an infielder-turned-catcher from Puerto Rico, who would hit more home runs than any Yankees catcher except the legendary Hall of Famer Yogi Berra; and Andy Pettitte, a left-handed pitcher born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who would win more postseason games than any player in baseball history. Together they formed the “Core Four,” and would go on to play as teammates for 13 seasons during which time they would help the Yankees advance to the postseason 12 times, win the American League pennant seven times, and take home five World Series trophies. This book follows these phenoms from the minor leagues to the present, detailing their significant contributions to a winning major league franchise. This 2014 edition updates readers on Jeter’s struggles with injuries and recovery, Rivera’s final season, and Pettitte’s and Jeter’s plans moving forward.

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Longleaf pine forests are an iconic forest of the southeastern United States. Although these forests were often called "pine barrens" by early explorers and colonists, they were far from barren. Frequent and low-intensity surface fires are fueled by the unique plant diversity of the forest itself and serve as the catalyst that perpetuates the ecosystem on which many rare species depend. With this guide, authors John McGuire, Carol Denhof, and Byron Levan reveal the forest’s unique characteristics by shining a light on its inhabitants, the ecological processes that are necessary for their survival, and how we as humans play a role in shaping this ecosystem.Covering a wide range of topics, such as the anatomy of the longleaf tree, its history (and revival), and the surrounding fauna and flora, the authors provide the general reader with a thorough understanding of a forest that used to stretch as far as the eye could see. They claim that although the remnants of this once-great longleaf pine forest exist, they are often just a reminder of its former majesty, only recognizable to the informed observer. The Forest That Fire Made is dedicated to introducing the next generation of outdoor enthusiasts to many of the unique animals and plants that their ancestors would have known. This guide includes three hundred color images of the flora and fauna that make longleaf pine forests their habitat and more than forty detailed drawings that document the most common species of animals, plants, and insects found there. It also describes more than forty longleaf pine forests to visit in nine southern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. In these preserved areas (many of which are publicly accessible), one can still experience the majesty of these once-dominant ecological communities.

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Discipline and the Other Body reveals the intimate relationship between violence and difference underlying modern governmental power and the human rights discourses that critique it. The comparative essays brought together in this collection show how, in using physical violence to discipline and control colonial subjects, governments repeatedly found themselves enmeshed in a fundamental paradox: Colonialism was about the management of difference—the “civilized” ruling the “uncivilized”—but colonial violence seemed to many the antithesis of civility, threatening to undermine the very distinction that validated its use. Violation of the bodies of colonial subjects regularly generated scandals, and eventually led to humanitarian initiatives, ultimately changing conceptions of “the human” and helping to constitute modern forms of human rights discourse. Colonial violence and discipline also played a crucial role in hardening modern categories of difference—race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.The contributors, who include both historians and anthropologists, address instances of colonial violence from the early modern period to the twentieth century and from Asia to Africa to North America. They consider diverse topics, from the interactions of race, law, and violence in colonial Louisiana to British attempts to regulate sex and marriage in the Indian army in the early nineteenth century. They examine the political dilemmas raised by the extensive use of torture in colonial India and the ways that British colonizers flogged Nigerians based on beliefs that different ethnic and religious affiliations corresponded to different degrees of social evolution and levels of susceptibility to physical pain. An essay on how contemporary Sufi healers deploy bodily violence to maintain sexual and religious hierarchies in postcolonial northern Nigeria makes it clear that the state is not the only enforcer of disciplinary regimes based on ideas of difference.Contributors. Laura Bear, Yvette Christiansë, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Dorothy Ko, Isaac Land, Susan O’Brien, Douglas M. Peers, Steven Pierce, Anupama Rao, Kerry Ward

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The perfect guide to the birds of the southeastern United States, from the #1 birding website AllAboutBirds.orgThe All About Birds Regional Field-Guide Series brings birding enthusiasts the best information from the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, AllAboutBirds.org, used by more than 21 million people each year. These definitive books provide the most up-to-date resources and expert coverage on bird species throughout North America.This dynamic guide is the perfect companion for anyone interested in the birds of the southeastern United States. The guide offers fascinating details about the birds around you, useful bird ID tips, and handy bird-watching information. It presents full accounts of the 210 species most commonly seen in the Southeast; beautiful photographs of male, female, and immature birds, as well as morphs, and breeding and nonbreeding plumage (so you can ID birds all year long); current range maps; and so much more. The southeastern USA edition of All About Birds is easy to use and easy to share.This volume features the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, as well as Washington, DC. Descriptions of 210 bird species, including four photos for each bird chosen specifically for better ID and sourced from the Macaulay Library (a collection of bird photos from citizen scientists) Quick and easy index with illustrations on cover flaps, with complete index at the back Information on Cornell Lab citizen-science programs and how to participate Bonus content includes identification best practices and tips on bird photography, birdscaping, food and feeding, and more Free MERLIN Bird ID app (downloaded more than 5 million times) for quick ID in the wild using photos and birdsong

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On the morning of January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold in California. The news spread across the continent, launching hundreds of ships and hitching a thousand prairie schooners filled with adventurers in search of heretofore unimagined wealth. Those who joined the procession - soon called 49ers - included the wealthy and the poor from every state and territory, including slaves brought by their owners. In numbers, they represented the greatest mass migration in the history of the Republic. In this first comprehensive history of the Gold Rush, Malcolm J. Rohrbough demonstrates that in its far-reaching repercussions, it was the most significant event in the first half of the nineteenth century. No other series of events between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War produced such a vast movement of people; called into question basic values of marriage, family, work, wealth, and leisure; led to so many varied consequences; and, left such vivid memories among its participants. Through extensive research in diaries, letters, and other archival sources, Rohrbough uncovers the personal dilemmas and confusion that the Gold Rush brought. His engaging narrative depicts the complexity of human motivation behind the event and reveals the effects of the Gold Rush as it spread outward in ever-widening circles to touch the lives of families and communities everywhere in the United States. For those who joined the 49ers, the decision to go raised questions about marital obligations and family responsibilities. For those men - and women, whose experiences of being left behind have been largely ignored until now - who remained on the farm or in the shop, the absences of tens of thousands of men over a period of years had a profound impact, reshaping a thousand communities across the breadth of the American nation.

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New Orleans in the 1920s and '30s was a deadly place. In 1925, the city's homicide rate was six times that of New York City and twelve times that of Boston, despite having a fraction of the population. Jeffrey S. Adler has explored every homicide officially recorded in New Orleans between 1925 and 1940--over two thousand in all--scouring police and autopsy reports, old interviews, and crumbling newspapers. More than simply quantifying these cases, Adler places them in larger contexts--legal, political, cultural, and demographic--and emerges with a tale of racism, urban violence, and vicious policing that has startling relevance for today. Murder in New Orleans shows how whites were convicted of homicide at far higher rates than blacks leading up the mid-1920s. But by the end of the next decade, this pattern had reversed completely, despite an overall plummet in municipal crime rates. This sharp rise in arrests was compounded by the increasingly harsh treatment of black subjects by New Orleans police, marked by acts of extreme brutality. Adler also explores counter-intuitive trends in violence, particularly how murder soared during the flush times of the Roaring Twenties, how it plummeted during the Great Depression, and how the vicious response to African American crime occurred as such violence plunged in frequency, revealing that the city's cycle of racial policing and punishment was connected less to actual patterns of wrongdoing than to the national enshrinement of Jim Crow. Rather than some hyperviolent outlier, this Louisiana city was a harbinger of the endemic racism at the center of today's criminal justice state. Murder in New Orleans lays bare how decades-old crimes, and the racially motivated cruelty of the official response, once again have baleful resonance in the age of Black Lives Matter.

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In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. But is it a real da Vinci? In a thrilling narrative built on formidable research, Ben Lewis tracks the extraordinary journey of a masterpiece lost and found, lied and fought over across the centuries. In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as saviour of the world is ‘the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived’. Its dazzling price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting. For two centuries art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the first half of the sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings and sheikhs. Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Holland, Moscow and Louisiana; to the galleries, salerooms and restorer’s workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly, emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across five centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, where we’re never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth.

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In a year when the Southern Foodways Alliance asks, “Where is the South?”, the Fall 2023 issue of Gravy examines Southern food inside and outside the region. Readers will follow traditional Southern foods as they transcend the region’s historic geographic borders. Meanwhile, newcomers to the South adapt to regional tastes and introduce new flavors to the canon. Mackenzie Martin tells of culinary entrepreneur Annie Fisher, who built a booming catering business at the turn of the twentieth century with her signature beaten biscuits—all without investors or access to a bank loan, as a Black woman in Jim Crow Missouri. In a story by Mikeie Reiland, two professional soccer players of African Muslim ancestry find a taste of home in Nashville, at iftar, the fast-breaking meal of Ramadan. Chris Jay serves up Shreveport stuffed shrimp, a dish perfected by a network of Black chefs in Shreveport, Louisiana, through five generations of restaurant ownership. Gravy columnist Hanna Raskin tracks Bojangles’ expansion into the Midwest, asking: does a fast food biscuit lose its fluff outside the South? Adrian Miller digs into the menu archives at the Carter Center to find out exactly how “Southern” the First Family ate in the White House. SFA oral historian Sarah Rodriguez shares excerpts from the new oral history project, Tapping into Richmond Beer, which chronicles craft brewing in Richmond, Virginia, through the city’s vibrant and diverse beer scene. Poet Reyes Ramirez explores Latino foodways in Texas in verse from his debut collection El Rey of Gold Teeth, forthcoming from Hub City Press. Erika Council talks biscuits and business in a Q&A about her new book, Still We Rise: A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit with Over 70 Sweet and Savory Recipes.

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