Herrin, Illinois, has seen many dramatic events unfold in the nearly two hundred years since it was a bell-shaped prairie on the frontier. Now, Herrin native John Griswold, a writer and teacher at the University of Illinois, provides the first comprehensive history of this most American city, a place that in its time became not just a melting pot, but a cauldron. Discover why the coal was so good in the �Quality Circle� and what happened to the boom that followed its discovery. Explore the...

"In this beautiful book about striving and surviving, every essay displays a well-stocked brain grappling with life's thorny problems."—Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of NormalFor nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate, many under the pen name Oronte Churm. Churm's topics have ranged ...

While the president is the commander in chief, the US Congress plays a critical and underappreciated role in civil-military relations—the relationship between the armed forces and the civilian leadership that commands it. This unique book edited by Colton C. Campbell and David P. Auerswald will help readers better understand the role of Congress in military affairs and national and international security policy. Contributors include the most experienced scholars in the field as well as pra...

At age fifty, when many hope to slow down, and what’s left, as the poet Kobayashi Issa once wrote, is “clear profit,” John Griswold was starting over—-again—-in a position he had worked decades to achieve. His family moved down the Mississippi Valley, expecting to create a good life with new friends.What they found instead was a society “organized tightly by race, church attendance, and family name,” which in its corruption, laissez-faire corporatism, gun love, and environmental de...

Managing a national response to transnational, boundary-crashing events requires leaders to link the strategic tools of defense, diplomacy, and development.Written under the direction of West Point social sciences faculty for its Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA), Thinking beyond Boundaries introduces undergraduates to aspects of transnational conflict that extend beyond traditional political and intellectual boundaries, providing context to a var...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An unprecedented examination of how news stories, editorials and photographs in the American press—and the journalists responsible for them—profoundly changed the nation’s thinking about civil rights in the South during the 1950s and ‘60s.Roberts and Klibanoff draw on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen—black and white—revealed to a nation its most ...

When it comes to our prosperity, our freedom tradition, and our constitutional government, President Barack Obama has been the great destroyer—knocking down the free-market economy and principles of limited government that have made America the envy of the world. As New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh documents in chilling detail in his new book, The Great Destroyer, the Obama administration has waged a relentless, nearly four-year-long war to transform our nation int...

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award.An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of almost one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundred...

"The most comprehensive and comprehendible history of the West Virginia Coal War I've ever read." —John Sayles, writer and director of MatewanOn September 1, 1912, the largest, most protracted, and deadliest working-class uprising in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were fifty thousand mine workers, the nation's largest labor uni...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERDiscover 365 reasons to love America as you read the storied history of the United States.The fife and drum of history mark the time of each passing day. And within their cadence, personalities, conflicts, discoveries, ideas, and nations peal and fade. American history is no different. Best-selling author and educator Dr. William J. Bennett is a master of the story that is the United States...

A National Book Award Nominee and a Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.Over the centuries, Florida has been many things: an unconquered realm protected by geography, a wilderness that ruined Spanish conquistadors, “God’s waiting room,” and a place to start over. Depopulated after the extermination of its original native population, today it’s home to nineteen million. The site of vicious racial violence, including massacres, slavery, and the r...

“What sets Ralph Nader apart is that he has moved beyond social criticism to effective political action.”**—**The New York TimesThe column is the most natural literary form for a citizen’s advocate, and Ralph Nader may be its most robust and forceful practitioner. The Big Book of Ralph Nader Columns presents a panoramic portrait of the problems confronting our society and provides examples of the many actions an organized citizenry could an...