Chris Abernathy

A rousing, poignant look at the cultural history of rock & roll during the early 1960s. In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called "the American Century." Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For "one brief, shining moment" in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon...

A long-treasured but forgotten classic of folk healing, with an introduction and commentary by the author of Backwoods Witchcraft and Doctoring the Devil. Ossman & Steel's Guide to Health or Household Instructor (its original 1894 title) is a collection of spells, remedies, and charms. The books draws from the old Pennsylvania Dutch and German powwow healing practices that in turn helped shape Appalachian folk healing, conjure, rootwork, and many...

The rural roads that led to our planet-changing global economy ran through the American South. That region's impact on the interconnected histories of business and ecological change is narrated here by acclaimed scholar Bart Elmore, who uses the histories of five southern firms-Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, and Bank of America-to investigate the environmental impact of our have-it-now, fly-by-night, buy-on-credit economy. Drawing on exclusive...

#1 New York Times bestselling author Arthur Hailey unveils the inner workings of a grand hotel and brings to life the nonstop human drama that rages behind the scenes  During five sultry days, the lives of the guests, the management, and the workers at New Orleans' largest and most luxurious hotel converge in an explosive human drama of round-the-clock excitement. The owner has four days to raise the money to save his financially ailing property....

When a Detroit doctor's secret life gets out of hand, killers come for him In the exclusive suburb of Grosse Pointe, Alan Canty was a respected psychologist, with clients drawn from wealthy families across Detroit. But at night, he ventured into the city's seedy south side, where, under the name Dr. Al Miller, he met with prostitutes. One girl in particular caught Dr. Al's eye: a skinny teenage drug addict named Dawn, an ex-honor student who had fallen...

Frye Gaillard has given us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller's eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times - civil rights, black power, women's liberation, the War in Vietnam, and the protests against it. But he also examines the cultural manifestations of change - music, literature, art, religion, and science - and...

Available for the first time as a traditional paperback, this revised and updated edition contains new and archival interviews with those closest to Chris Bell and the Big Star circle: their friends, family, former bandmates-even fans, exes, classmates, and coworkers. The varied cast of voices comprises all the members of Big Star, including Chris Bell, the iconic Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel, and Jody Stephens. In the following decades after its 1975...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Pincus exposes the darkest secret in American nuclear history-sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands that decimated a people and their land. The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands-an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for over sixty US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the...

Long before the United States had presidents from the world of movies and reality TV, we had scores of politicians with connections to country music. In I'd Fight the World, Peter La Chapelle traces the deep bonds between country music and politics, from the nineteenth-century rise of fiddler-politicians to more recent figures like Pappy O'Daniel, Roy Acuff, and Rob Quist. These performers and politicians both rode and resisted cultural waves: some...

How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life-a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the American South in national and global contexts, celebrated historian Charles Reagan Wilson assesses how diverse communities of southerners have sought to define the region's identity. Surveying three centuries of southern regional consciousness across many genres, disciplines, and cultural strains, Wilson...