Download or read book Struggle for the Heartland written by Stephen D. Engle and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Struggle for the Heartland tells the story surrounding the military campaign that began in early 1862 with the advance to Fort Henry and culminated in late May with the capture of Corinth, Mississippi. The first significant Northern penetration into the Confederate west, this campaign saw the military coming-of-age of Ulysses S. Grant and offered a hint as to where the Federals might win the war. For the South, it dashed any hopes of avoiding a protracted conflict. Stephen D. Engle colors in the details that bring great clarity and new life to the scene of these battles as well as to the social and political context in which they occurred.

Download or read book Heartland TV written by Victoria E. Johnson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2009 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award The Midwest of popular imagination is a "Heartland" characterized by traditional cultural values and mass market dispositions. Whether cast positively —; as authentic, pastoral, populist, hardworking, and all-American—or negatively—as backward, narrow–minded, unsophisticated, conservative, and out-of-touch—the myth of the Heartland endures. Heartland TV examines the centrality of this myth to television's promotion and development, programming and marketing appeals, and public debates over the medium's and its audience's cultural worth. Victoria E. Johnson investigates how the "square" image of the heartland has been ritually recuperated on prime time television, from The Lawrence Welk Show in the 1950s, to documentary specials in the 1960s, to The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s, to Ellen in the 1990s. She also examines news specials on the Oklahoma City bombing to reveal how that city has been inscribed as the epitome of a timeless, pastoral heartland, and concludes with an analysis of network branding practices and appeals to an imagined "red state" audience. Johnson argues that non-white, queer, and urban culture is consistently erased from depictions of the Midwest in order to reinforce its "reassuring" image as white and straight. Through analyses of policy, industry discourse, and case studies of specific shows, Heartland TV exposes the cultural function of the Midwest as a site of national transference and disavowal with regard to race, sexuality, and citizenship ideals.

Download or read book Heartland written by Sarah Smarsh and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist for the National Book Award* *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly* An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.* Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. Beautifully written, in a distinctive voice, Heartland combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, challenging the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. “Heartland is one of a growing number of important works—including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville—that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra” *(The New York Times Book Review).

Download or read book Decision in the Heartland written by Steven E. Woodworth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-01-30 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The verdict is in: the Civil War was won in the West—that is, in the nation's heartland, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Yet, a person who follows the literature on the war might still think that it was the conflict in Virginia that ultimately decided the outcome. Each year sees the appearance of new books aimed at the popular market that simply assume that it was in the East, often at Gettysburg, that the decisive clashes of the war took place. For decades, serious historians of the Civil War have completed one careful study after another, nearly all tending to indicate the pivotal importance of what people during the war referred to as the West. In this fast paced overview, Woodworth presents his case for the decisiveness of the theater. Overwhelming evidence now indicates that it was battles like Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Atlanta that sealed the fate of the Confederacy-not the nearly legendary clashes at Bull Run or Chancellorsville or the mythical high-water mark at Gettysburg. The western campaigns cost the Confederacy vast territories, the manufacturing center of Nashville, the financial center of New Orleans, communications hubs such as Corinth, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, along with the agricultural produce of the breadbasket of the Confederacy. They sapped the morale of Confederates and buoyed the spirits of Unionists, ultimately sealing the northern electorate's decision to return Lincoln to the presidency for a second term and thus to see the war through to final victory. Detailing the Western clashes that proved so significant, Woodworth contends that it was there alone that the Civil War could be—and was—decided.

Download or read book Heartland Tobacco War written by Michael S. Givel and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heartland Tobacco War chronicles the political and public relations battles between health advocates and forces supported by the tobacco industry in Oklahoma from the 1980s to the present. Michael S. Givel and Andrew L. Spivak draw on previously-suppressed tobacco insider documents and first-hand interviews with key players in the conflict. This story of pro- and anti-tobacco lobbying and legislation in the nation’s heartland especially highlights the unique role of Oklahoma’s “renegade” Department of Health Commissioner, Dr. Leslie Bietsch. After decades of political dominance by the tobacco industry, this single maverick bureaucrat in the early 2000s bypassed the usual insider politics of the legislature and employed aggressive public campaign strategies to bring about sweeping legal victories for clean indoor air and tobacco taxes in a very conservative state. The authors examine the Commissioner’s aggressive advocacy in the context of insider and outsider policy advocacy, public administration ethics, the politics of bureaucratic activism and administrative lawmaking, and direct democracy. Heartland Tobacco War tells a story that will be of great relevance to public health practitioners, historians, health activists, health policy scholars, sociologists, public administration scholars, social movement and public interest group scholars, political scientists, public policy scholars, and anyone else interested in the politics of the tobacco industry.

Download or read book Hard pressed in the Heartland written by Peter J. Rachleff and published by South End Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hard-Pressed in the Heartland tells the heartbreaking but empowering story of a spirited local union trying to resist management's drive for concessions--while fending off a conservative national union leadership unwilling to support its own members. Going beyond academic history, it offers useful perspectives for rebuilding a democratic, militant, community-based unionism that can succeed where today's bureaucratic unionism cannot.

Download or read book The Dust Of Empire written by Karl E. Meyer and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Charles de Gaulle learned that France's former colonies in Africa had chosen independence, the great general shrugged dismissively, "They are the dust of empire." But as Americans have learned, particles of dust from remote and seemingly medieval countries can, at great human and material cost, jam the gears of a superpower. In The Dust of Empire, Karl E. Meyer examines the present and past of the Asian heartland in a book that blends scholarship with reportage, providing fascinating detail about regions and peoples now of urgent concern to America: the five Central Asian republics, the Caspian and the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and long-dominant Russia. He provides the context for America's war on terrorism, for Washington's search for friends and allies in an Islamic world rife with extremism, and for the new politics of pipelines and human rights in an area richer in the former than the latter. He offers a rich and complicated tapestry of a region where empires have so often come to grief—a cautionary tale.

Download or read book Tecumseh and the Prophet written by Peter Cozzens and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An insightful, unflinching portrayal of the remarkable siblings who came closer to altering the course of American history than any other Indian leaders."⁠ —H.W. Brands, author of The Zealot and the Emancipator The first biography of the great Shawnee leader to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States. Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. Detailed research of Native American society and customs provides a window into a world often erased from history books and reveals how both men came to power in different but no less important ways. Cozzens brings us to the forefront of the chaos and violence that characterized the young American Republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, disregarding their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.

Download or read book Hero of the Heartland written by Robert F. Martin and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-17 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Robert F. Martin demonstrates nicely that, beneath all of Billy Sunday's flamboyance, the orphan-turned-baseball player-turned-evangelist embodied the tensions of his age. Martin's prodigious research has yielded a wealth of anecdotal material that adds flavor and spice to his keen analysis." -- Randall Balmer, author of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America William Ashley "Billy" Sunday was the most popular and influential evangelist of his time. Between 1896 and 1935, the colorful Iowa-born evangelist toured first his native Midwest and then the nation, preaching in tent and tabernacle, espousing a simplistic but, for many, deeply satisfying interpretation of Christianity. Embodying the traditional values and attitudes of the heartland and at home in an increasingly diverse, urban, industrial America, Sunday won the hearts -- and the pocketbooks -- of millions of Americans. Hero of the Heartland is an interpretive biography that focuses on the ways in which the man and his career resonated with the hopes and fears of his contemporaries as they coped with the economic, social, and cultural changes around the start of the 20th century. Robert F. Martin shows how Sunday and his revivalism helped his followers bridge the gap between the traditional past and the progressive future, and made more comfortable the transition from the old order to the new.

Download or read book Hard Living in America s Heartland written by Paula vW. Dáil and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite living hard, endlessly challenging lives, the rural poor remain tirelessly optimistic, believing things will get better next year. As one struggling farmer explained, "Sometimes I feel like a jackass in a hailstorm--I just have to stand here and take it...but what the hell--it'll stop hailing sooner or later." The struggle to survive on the richest farmland in America has produced some of the nation's poorest people. However, rural poverty is not the same as urban poverty: the usual definitions and criteria do not always apply, the known predictors do not necessarily hold up, and again and again the rural poor save themselves because they know no one else will. This book refutes the common image of the poor as lazy slackers averse to work. In reality, fiercely independent, politically astute, hard-working men and women who possess a wide array of useful skills populate the rural heartland--and they struggle to stay afloat in small-town economies that rise and fall on the whims of remote farm policy decisions, a volatile world marketplace and Mother Nature, who is a fickle, wildly unpredictable business partner.

Download or read book The Shiloh Campaign written by Steven E. Woodworth and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some 100,000 soldiers fought in the April 1862 battle of Shiloh, and nearly 20,000 men were killed or wounded; more Americans died on that Tennessee battlefield than had died in all the nation’s previous wars combined. In the first book in his new series, Steven E. Woodworth has brought together a group of superb historians to reassess this significant battleandprovide in-depth analyses of key aspects of the campaign and its aftermath. The eight talented contributors dissect the campaign’s fundamental events, many of which have not received adequate attention before now. John R. Lundberg examines the role of Albert Sidney Johnston, the prized Confederate commander who recovered impressively after a less-than-stellar performance at forts Henry and Donelson only to die at Shiloh; Alexander Mendoza analyzes the crucial, and perhaps decisive, struggle to defend the Union’s left; Timothy B. Smith investigates the persistent legend that the Hornet’s Nest was the spot of the hottest fighting at Shiloh; Steven E. Woodworth follows Lew Wallace’s controversial march to the battlefield and shows why Ulysses S. Grant never forgave him; Gary D. Joiner provides the deepest analysis available of action by the Union gunboats; Grady McWhineydescribes P. G. T. Beauregard’s decision to stop the first day’s attack and takes issue with his claim of victory; and Charles D. Grear shows the battle’s impact on Confederate soldiers, many of whom did not consider the battle a defeat for their side. In the final chapter, Brooks D. Simpson analyzes how command relationships—specifically the interactions among Grant, Henry Halleck, William T. Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln—affected the campaign and debunks commonly held beliefs about Grant’s reactions to Shiloh’s aftermath. The Shiloh Campaign will enhance readers’ understanding of a pivotal battle that helped unlock the western theater to Union conquest. It is sure to inspire further study of and debate about one of the American Civil War’s momentous campaigns.

Download or read book Union Heartland written by Ginette Aley and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-28 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War has historically been viewed somewhat simplistically as a battle between the North and the South. Southern historians have broadened this viewpoint by revealing the “many Souths” that made up the Confederacy, but the “North” has remained largely undifferentiated as a geopolitical term. In this welcome collection, seven Civil War scholars offer a unique regional perspective on the Civil War by examining how a specific group of Northerners—Midwesterners, known as Westerners and Middle Westerners during the 1860s—experienced the war on the home front. Much of the intensifying political and ideological turmoil of the 1850s played out in the Midwest and instilled in its people a powerful sense of connection to this important drama. The 1850 federal Fugitive Slave Law and highly visible efforts to recapture former bondsmen and women who had escaped; underground railroad “stations” and supporters throughout the region; publication of Ohioan Harriet Beecher Stowe’s widely-influential and best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854; the murderous abolitionist John Brown, who gained notoriety and hero status attacking proslavery advocates in Kansas; the emergence of the Republican Party and Illinoisan Abraham Lincoln—all placed the Midwest at the center of the rising sectional tensions. From the exploitation of Confederate prisoners in Ohio to wartime college enrollment in Michigan, these essays reveal how Midwestern men, women, families, and communities became engaged in myriad war-related activities and support. Agriculture figures prominently in the collection, with several scholars examining the agricultural power of the region and the impact of the war on farming, farm families, and farm women. Contributors also consider student debates and reactions to questions of patriotism, the effect of the war on military families’ relationships, issues of women’s loyalty and deference to male authority, as well as the treatment of political dissent and dissenters. Bringing together an assortment of home front topics from a variety of fresh perspectives, this collection offers a view of the Civil War that is unabashedly Midwestern.

Download or read book Revolt from the Heartland written by Joseph A. Scotchie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dominant forces of American conservatism remain wedded, at all costs, to the Republican Party, but another movement, one with its roots in the pre-World War II era, has stepped forth to fill an intellectual vacuum on the right. This Old Right first rose in opposition to the New Deal, fighting both statism at home and the emergence of an American empire abroad. More recently this movement, sometimes called paleoconservatism, has provided the ideological backbone of modern populism and the opposition to globalization, with decisive effects on presidential politics. In Revolt from the Heartland, Joseph Scotchie provides an intellectual history of the Old Right, treating its main figures and defining its conflict with the traditional left-right political mainstream. As Scotchie's account makes clear, the Old Right and its descendents have articulated an arresting and powerful worldview. They include an array of learned and provocative writers, including M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Murray Rothbard, and more recently, Clyde Wilson, Thomas Fleming, Samuel Francis, and Chilton Williamson, Jr. Beginning with the movement's anti-Federalist forerunners, Scotchie traces its developments over two centuries of American history. In the realm of politics and economics, he examines the anti-imperialist stance against the Spanish-American War and the League of Nations, the split among conservatives on Cold War foreign policy, and the hostility to the socialist orientation of the New Deal. Identifying a number of social and cultural attitudes that define the Old Right, Scotchie finds the most important to be the importance of the classics, a recognition of regional cultures, the primacy of family over state, the moral case against immigration. In general, too, a Tenth Amendment approach to such recurring issues as education, abortion, and school prayer characterizes the group. As Scotchie makes clear, the Old Right and its grass-roots supporters have, and continue to be, a powerful force in modern American politics in spite of a lack of institutional support and media recognition. Revolt from the Heartland is an important study of a persisting current in American political life.

Download or read book Daughter of the Heartland written by Joni Ernst and published by Threshold Editions. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining the by-the-bootstraps work ethic of Nikki Haley’s Can’t Is Not an Option with the military pluck of MJ Heger’s Shoot Like a Girl, Joni Ernst’s candid memoir details the rise of one of the most inspiring and authentic women in the United States Senate. The daughter of hardworking farmers in the heartland, Joni Ernst has never been afraid to roll up her sleeves and get the job done. Raised in rural Iowa, Joni grew up cleaning stalls, hauling grain, and castrating hogs. Farm life forged her work ethic. She developed grit and tenacity, attributes that would later be put to the test when she faced abuse, sexism, and harassment. First, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and later as an underdog candidate in the US Senate, Joni has proven to be a natural leader who proudly serves her fellow Americans. She had to learn to believe when others didn’t, to raise her own voice for those who couldn’t, and to silence the naysayers (even herself) to become a bold leader and a fierce advocate. In her inspiring memoir, Joni shares her struggles and the invaluable lessons she learned through hardship—on the farm, in the home, and at work. As a woman fighting for position in the boys’ clubs of the military and politics, she found strength in courage and vulnerability, becoming a role model for women everywhere. As a US Senator, Joni is well-known and respected for her fight to hold Washington accountable and her demand for bipartisanship in a time of fierce tribalism. Daughter of the Heartland tells Joni’s incredible story in four parts, defined by the values she’s learned along the way—leadership, service, courage, and gratitude. Written in an honest and compelling voice, Daughter of the Heartland is Joni’s inspirational story of finding her place as a champion for Iowa, a defender of our armed forces, and a voice for women.

Download or read book Lessons from the Heartland written by Barbara J. Miner and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Miner’s story of Milwaukee is filled with memorable characters . . . explores with consummate skill the dynamics of race, politics, and schools in our time.” —Mike Rose, author of The Mind at Work Weaving together the racially fraught history of public education in Milwaukee and the broader story of hypersegregation in the rust belt, Lessons from the Heartland tells of a city’s fall from grace—and its chance for redemption in the twenty-first century. A symbol of middle American working-class values, Wisconsin—and in particular urban Milwaukee—has been at the forefront of a half century of public education experiments, from desegregation and “school choice” to vouchers and charter schools. This book offers a sweeping narrative portrait of an all-American city at the epicenter of public education reform, and an exploration of larger issues of race and class in our democracy. The author, a former Milwaukee Journal reporter whose daughters went through the public school system, explores the intricate ways that jobs, housing, and schools intersect, underscoring the intrinsic link between the future of public schools and the dreams and hopes of democracy in a multicultural society. “A social history with the pulse and pace of a carefully crafted novel and a Dickensian cast of unforgettable characters. With the eye of an ethnographer, the instincts of a beat reporter, and the heart of a devoted mother and citizen activist, Miner has created a compelling portrait of a city, a time, and a people on the edge. This is essential reading.” —Bill Ayers, author of Teaching Toward Freedom “Eloquently captures the narratives of schoolchildren, parents, and teachers.” —Library Journal

Download or read book The Long Deep Grudge written by Toni Gilpin and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The definitive history of an important but largely forgotten labor organization and its heroic struggles with an icon of industrial capitalism.” —Ahmed A. White, author of The Last Great Strike This rich history details the bitter, deep-rooted conflict between industrial behemoth International Harvester and the uniquely radical Farm Equipment Workers union. The Long Deep Grudge makes clear that class warfare has been, and remains, integral to the American experience, providing up-close-and-personal and long-view perspectives from both sides of the battle lines. International Harvester—and the McCormick family that largely controlled it—garnered a reputation for bare-knuckled union-busting in the 1880s, but in the twentieth century also pioneered sophisticated union-avoidance techniques that have since become standard corporate practice. On the other side the militant Farm Equipment Workers union, connected to the Communist Party, mounted a vociferous challenge to the cooperative ethos that came to define the American labor movement after World War II. This evocative account, stretching back to the nineteenth century and carried through to the present, reads like a novel. Biographical sketches of McCormick family members, union officials and rank-and-file workers are woven into the narrative, along with anarchists, jazz musicians, Wall Street financiers, civil rights crusaders, and mob lawyers. It touches on pivotal moments and movements as wide-ranging as the Haymarket “riot,” the Flint sit-down strikes, the Memorial Day Massacre, the McCarthy-era anti-communist purges, and America’s late twentieth-century industrial decline. “A capitalist family dynasty, a radical union, and a revolution in how and where work gets done—Toni Gilpin’s The Long Deep Grudge is a detailed chronicle of one of the most active battlefronts in our ever-evolving class war.” —John Sayles

Download or read book Abandoned in the Heartland written by Jennifer Hamer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban poverty, along with all of its poignant manifestations, is moving from city centers to working-class and industrial suburbs in contemporary America. Nowhere is this more evident than in East St. Louis, Illinois. Once a thriving manufacturing and transportation center, East St. Louis is now known for its unemployment, crime, and collapsing infrastructure. Abandoned in the Heartland takes us into the lives of East St. Louis’s predominantly African American residents to find out what has happened since industry abandoned the city, and jobs, quality schools, and city services disappeared, leaving people isolated and imperiled. Jennifer Hamer introduces men who search for meaning and opportunity in dead-end jobs, women who often take on caretaking responsibilities until well into old age, and parents who have the impossible task of protecting their children in this dangerous, and literally toxic, environment. Illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs showing how the city has changed over time, this book, full of stories of courage and fortitude, offers a powerful vision of the transformed circumstances of life in one American suburb.