America may be forgiven for not knowing that Benjamin Albert Botkin (1901–1975) was its folklorist, since Botkin’s greatest popular impact occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, arguably peaking in 1944 with the publication of his... Read More

“Ripped from the headlines,” this book connects current and recent events as seemingly disparate as the murderous conflicts between narco-traffikers on the streets of Juarez, Mexico, and Israel’s 2006 defeat in Lebanon by the... Read More

Like the “Okies” immortalized in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, the impoverished Oklahoma farmers in William Cunningham’s 1935 novel understand that unchecked capitalism leaves the rich as bloated as the flies feasting on the... Read More

Communes have long been a feature of American life. For centuries, religious, cultural, and political groups have attempted to create their own societies to provide respite from the imperfections of the wider world. In the 1960s,... Read More

On March 16, 1968, the soldiers of the First Platoon, Charlie Company, led by Lieutenant William Calley, slaughtered more than 500 children, women, and old men of My Lai village. One year later the author, then a nineteen-year-old second... Read More

The first of a proposed series of mysteries, this novel introduces protagonist Bill Mallory, a drifter who privately sees himself through the lens of his Choctaw name, Hom-Astubby. Although he has a law degree, Mallory works as a... Read More

For all twenty writers in this new collection of essays, fire is, inevitably, a metaphor. The metaphors change, however, depending on the writers’ experiences; while some experiences are similar, especially the ones that involve... Read More

By now many of us have learned the wisdom of reducing, reusing, and recycling. Few people, however, understand the beauty and usefulness of a true life of gleaning and sorting through the refuse left behind by others to find food, art,... Read More