When St. Louis homemaker Pearl Curran began writing fiction and poetry at a Ouija board in 1913, she attributed the work to the “discarnate entity” Patience Worth, a seventeenth-century Puritan. Though now virtually forgotten, her writing garnered both critical praise and public popularity at the time. The Patience of Pearl uncovers more of Curran’s (and thus Patience Worth’s) biography than has been known before; Daniel B. Shea provides close readings of the Patience-dictated wri...

In the city of Edgehaven, New York lives a man named Lucas Winslow. He’s the night-time security guard at a blood bank. Nothing really exciting happens in his life; he goes to class by day and guards the blood by night. He seems to have a fairly easy job as no one ever steals from a blood bank. At least that was Lucas’ assumption when he took the job. But then, one night, there is a break-in at the blood bank. Lucas investigates and finds himself face to face with the beautiful, ivory skin...

Continuing a three-decade tradition, The State of the Parties 7th edition brings together leading experts to evaluate change and continuity in American electoral politics. Political parties in America have never been more contentious and divided than they are right now. Even splits within the parties themselves have the power to elevate relatively unknown candidates to power and topple established incumbents. With sections devoted to polarization and the electorate, polarization and politi...

Combining primary sources with expert commentary, this timely book probes critical moments in U.S. presidential elections in the last 20th- and early 21st-centuries, empowering readers to better understand and analyze the electoral process.Presidential Campaigns: Documents Decoded illuminates both the high stakes of a presidential campaign and the gaffes, controversies, and excesses that often influence the outcome. With a view to enabling readers to devel...

For nearly 200 years, Americans have pinned the democratic character of their system on elections. In many ways, we have become an election-crazed nation, ever-hoping that the next grand contest or the next great candidate will save the day. But tectonic shifts abound – changes that are distorting the nature of the process. From the rise of fear-centered partisanship, new limits on voter access to the polls, the omnipotence of social media, declining standards of objectivity, Russian inter...

The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside, and the entire governing system is threatened by one-party dominance. After Donald Trump’s surprising victories throughout rural America, pundits and journalists went searching for answers, popping into roadside diners and opining from afar. Rural Americans are supposedly bigots, culturally backw...

The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside, and the entire governing system is threatened by one-party dominance. After Donald Trump's surprising victories throughout rural America, pundits and journalists went searching for answers, popping into roadside diners and opining from afar. Rural Americans are supposedly bigots, culturally backw...

Bicycles have more cultural identities than many realize, functioning not only as literal vehicles in a text but also as “vehicles” for that text’s themes, ideas, and critiques. In the late nineteenth century the bicycle was seen as a way for the wealthy urban elite to reconnect with nature and for women to gain a measure of personal freedom, while during World War II it became a utilitarian tool of the French Resistance and in 1970s China stood for wealth and modernization. Lately it has ...

The pressures of contemporary electioneering force political professionals into 'campaign mode'-a state of mind that merges a visceral drive to win elections with a deep-seated habit of strategic thinking. Wise political professionals know the basic rules of electoral strategy and how to read the political terrain. Campaign Mode examines the strategic histories of five successful congressional candidates-Ohio's Ted Strickland, Georgia's Bob Barr, California's Loretta Sanchez, Tennessee's H...

“Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before.”In 1665, London was struck by the bubonic plague, an epidemic that was the last major instance of the bubonic plague in England. This instance of the plague killed 100,000 people over a year a...

How do we transform American Culture through our religious convictions?Discover here the compelling stories of thirteen pioneers for social justice who engaged in peaceful protest and gave voice to the marginalized, working courageously out of their religious convictions to transform American culture. Their prophetic witness still speaks today.Comprising a variety of voices—Catholic and Protestant, gay and straight, men and women of different racia...

Greek Corporate Governance Legislation, a translation of Greek Law 4706/2020 and relevant acts issued by the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission shortly thereafter, was translated within months of Law 4706/2020 being adopted by the Hellenic Parliament.The purpose of this publication is to clarify the Greek legal system for international investors, entrepreneurs and legal practitioners, providing them with the entire text of the law applicab...