Reexamining the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Making of the American South.Tohopeka contains a variety of perspectives and uses a wide array of evidence and approaches, from scrutiny of cultural and religious practices to literary and linguistic analysis, to illuminate this troubled period. Almost two hundred years ago, the territory that would become Alabama was both ancient homeland and new frontier where a complex network of allegiances a...

Nineteen acclaimed writers reflect on the Alabama landscapes, memories, and experiences that shaped their voices.In The Remembered Gate, nationally prominent fiction writers, essayists, and poets recall how their formative years in Alabama shaped them as people and as writers. The essays range in tone from the pained and sorrowful to the wistful and playful, in class from the privileged to the poverty-stricken, in geography from the rural to the u...

Reimagining America Through the Blues, Jazz, and the Cultural Vision of Albert Murray.This collection consists of essays written by prominent African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray scholars, reminiscences from Murray protégés and associates, and interviews with Murray himself. It illustrates Murray’s place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer.Born in Nokomis, Alabama, and raised ...

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the British Empire is engaged in a titanic war with Napoleonic France for global supremacy. The American Republic is quickly expanding its territory along the western frontier, while native peoples struggle to protect their lands from the relentless wave of new settlers.Bestselling author and scholar James Laxer offers a fresh and compelling view of this decisive war, by bringing to life two major contests: the native peoples' Endless War to e...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Maya Angelou shares her path to living well and with meaning in this absorbing book of personal essays.Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lesso...

A landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” (The Atlantic) and “raw and gorgeous” (LA Times), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead.Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, S...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life.The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the ide...

From celebrated art historian, curator, and teacher Sarah Lewis, a fascinating examination of how our most iconic creative endeavors—from innovation to the arts—are not achievements but conversions, corrections after failed attempts.The gift of failure is a riddle: it will always be both the void and the start of infinite possibility. The Rise—part investigation into a psychological mystery, part an argument about creativity and art, and part a soulful cel...

"William C. Davis's Three Roads to the Alamo is far and away the best account of the Alamo I have ever read. The portraits of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis are brilliantly sketched in a fast-moving story that keeps the reader riveted to the very last word." — Stephen B. OatesThree Roads to the Alamois the definitive book about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis—the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their des...

Often hailed as the godfather of today’s elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on “impossible” missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers’ legend. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Rogers learned to survive in New England’s dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. John F. Ross not only re-creates ...

“Warm, witty, imaginative. . . . This is a rich and winning book.”—The New YorkerFrom Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most important African American writers of the twentieth century, comes her riveting autobiography—now available in a limited Olive Edition.First published in 1942 at the height of her popularity, Dust Tracks on a Road is Zora Neale Hurston’s candid, funny, bold, and poignant autobiography—an imaginative and exuberant accoun...

"Vivid, Comprehensible . . . cuts through decades of mythmaking." —Texas MonthlyPopular culture transformed his memory into “Davy Crockett,” and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. In this surprising New York Times bestseller, historian Michael Wallis has cast a fresh look at the flesh-and-blood man behind one of the most celebrated figures in American history. More than a riveting story, Wallis’s David Crockett is a rev...