Although we rely on physicians, calling on them at birth and death and every medical event in between, rarely do we consider the personal challenges faced by doctors-to-be. In White Coats, Marino and Harrison bring readers into the classrooms, anatomy labs, and hospitals where the students take their first pulses, dissect their first cadavers, and deliver their first babies.
“Kat Snider Blackbird gives us all these in her intense and passionate poems. She is a woman—and Woman—in love, in lust, and deeply in life. In her work, women will see themselves on all levels of being and men will at last be allowed to penetrate the mysteries of the women they love.”—Grace Butcher
Using a variety of methodologies and approaches—postcolonial theory, cultural studies, linguistics, performance theory—“Whole Oceans Away” offers a valuable body of criticism for students of nineteenth-century American literature and history, cultural studies, and Pacific Rim studies.
In Why Cows Learn Dutch and Other Secrets of the Amish Farm, Randy James offers an engaging view of Amish farm life, society, and values. An agricultural extension agent for twenty years, James works closely with the Amish farmers of Geauga County, Ohio, the fourth largest Amish settlement in the world, and his narrative provides new, accurate information on the Amish and their farming practices.
Why Cows Need Names follows one young Amish family as they dream about and then struggle to establish a profitable and quintessentially American small farm. The story starts with Eli Gingerich’s first timid phone call to author Randy James, the county agricultural agent in Ohio’s Geauga Amish Settlement—the fourth-largest Amish settlement in the world—and traces the family’s progress over the next five years. Through gentle dialogue and true stories, James captures the challenges of creating a simple business plan that will lead to the family’s radiant success or dismal failure. As the narrative unfolds, readers get a rare glimpse into what it’s like to work in the fields with draft horses; in the barn with cows, calves, children, and Chip the family dog; or to sit at the table talking with family and friends over a noontime meal. A picture emerges of how quietly living a shared goal and “doing without” during hard times can strengthen families and provide an appreciation for what is truly important in life.
In addition to the business aspects and day-to-day farm activities, James interweaves commentary on our complex relationships with animals. The stark differences in the way animals are treated and valued in agribusinesses versus on small family farms is a recurring theme, as is debunking the myth that bigger is always better in American agriculture.
The essays featured in Wider than the Sky range from fresh scholarly analyses to highly personal essays and meditations, each offering thoughts on the emotional, spiritual, and physical healing power gained from reading Dickinson. MacKenzie and Dana invite readers to reflect on how we respond to poems, how they enter into the core of our consciousness, and how we draw strength from what Dickinson called “the Art of Peace.” Wider than the Sky, a resource for Dickinson fans as well as anyone coping with pain, is an important addition to the Literature and Medicine Series.
This first volume in Kent State University’s Bicentennial Edition of the Novels and Related Works of Charles Brockden Brown presents critical texts of Brown’s first published novel, Wieland, and of the fragment, “Carwin,” which he began in 1798 as a companion-piece to his novel. The texts are based on the first printings: the book edition of Wieland printed by T. and J. Swords in New York and published there by Hocquet Caritat in 1798, and the installments of “Carwin” that appeared in the Literary Magazine in Philadelphia in 1803, 1804, and 1805.
While Ohio has lost much of its presettlement landscape, many nearly pristine habitats remain. These relics are populated by a fascinating array of flora and fauna. Wild Ohio singles out the best of Ohio’s natural lands and documents their importance in words and photographs. Because the state has lost over 90 percent of its wetlands and over 99 percent of its original prairie, Wild Ohio focuses especially on rare and declining animals and plants with the intention of inspiring a love of nature and an interest in conservation.
In many ways, Woodrow Wilson and the era of World War I cast a deeper shadow over contemporary foreign policy debates than more recent events, such as the Cold War. More so than after World War II, Wilson and his contemporaries engaged in a wide-ranging debate about the fundamental character of American national security in the modern world. The Will to Believe is the first book that examines that debate in full, offering a detailed analysis of how U.S. political leaders and opinion makers conceptualized and pursued national security from 1914 to 1920.
McKinley was a popular president. Pushed reluctantly into the Spanish-American War, McKinley was instrumental in starting America on the path to becoming a global power. He was reelected by a landslide in 1901, after delivering a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he was assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, McKinley’s vice president, Theodore Roosevelt became the nation’s 26th president. H. Wayne Morgan’s extensively revised and expanded edition of McKinley and His America will prove to be a welcome resource to historians and scholars.
