Western Americana - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Zane Grey

Fri, 21 Oct 2005

Zane Grey (2005)
Romancing the West

By Stephen J. May

One of the century’s most enduring American writers, Zane Grey left a legacy to our national consciousness that far outstrips the literary contribution of his often predictable plots and recurring themes. How did Grey capture the attention of millions of readers and promote the Western fantasy that continues to occupy many of the world’s leisure hours? This study assesses the Zane Grey phenomenon by examining Grey’s romantic novels in the context of his life and era.

Grey, whose roots were in Zanesville, Ohio, was the son of a dentist and practiced dentistry himself in his early adulthood. He threw over that life for one of adventure, traveling throughout the world in search of excitement, a course that ultimately led him to become one of America's most popular authors. But he also was dogged by depression and inertia that affected his ability and will to work.

In Zane Grey: Romancing the West, author Stephen J. May traces the career of Grey by analyzing the development of his novels and popularity and the degree to which that shaped his world.

The book also investigates Grey’s personal life—from his fling with Hollywood to his passion for deep-sea fishing—illuminating the literature that shaped America's vision of itself through one of its most enduring and cherished myths.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Zane+Grey.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

DeVoto’s West

Sat, 01 Jan 2005

DeVoto’s West (2005)
History, Conservation, and the Public Good
Edited by Edward A. Mueller
Social commentator and preeminent western historian Bernard DeVoto vigorously defended public lands in the West against commercial interests. By the time of his death in 1955, DeVoto had published criticism, history, and fiction. He had won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. But his most passionate writing—at once incisive and eloquent—advocated conservation of America’s prairies, rangeland, forests, mountains, canyons, and deserts.

DeVoto’s West: History, Conservation, and the Public Good showcases the complexity, depth, and breadth of DeVoto’s thinking. Edward K. Muller introduces these essays (many of which originally appeared in the renowned Harper’s column The Easy Chair) that persuasively advocate stewardship of public land. DeVoto addressed the plundering of resources by absentee eastern corporations, westerners’ conflicted relationship with the forces of exploitation, and the degradation of the national parks.

DeVoto’s West collects for the first time the best of DeVoto’s conservation pieces. It will introduce to a new generation prose that has retained its relevance and remains a remarkably current and timely argument for protecting public lands.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/DeVoto%E2%80%99s+West.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer

Wed, 31 Dec 2003

In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer (2003)
Cultural Narrative and Redemption on the American Frontiers, 1830-1930
By Joel Daehnke
Westward expansion on the North American continent by European settlers generated a flurry of writings on the frontier experience over the course of a hundred years. Asserting that the dominant ideology of America's Manifest Destiny embodied a tense, often contradictory union of Christian and secular republican views of social progress, In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer investigates the ambivalence of the frontier as it was inscribed with redemptive, historical significance by a host of frontier writers.

Enlisting canonical and noncanonical sources, Joel Daehnke examines the manner in which the imagery of the human figure at work and play in the frontier landscape participated in the nationalist, "civilizing" project of westward expansion. While he acknowledges the growing secularization of American life, Professor Daehnke surveys the continuing claims of the Christian redemptive scheme as a powerful symbolic domain for these writers' meditations on social progress and the potential for human perfectibility in the landscapes of the West.

Whether discussing the Edenic imagery of women's gardens, the advocacy of an ethics of land use, or the affairs of fortune in the mining districts of Nevada, In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer presents an enlightening reexamination of an American ideology of progress and its enduring fascination with mission, Manifest Destiny, and the ends of history.

In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer is a welcome addition to the extended library of critical attention to the ideology, history, and literary traditions of the American frontier.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/In+the+Work+of+Their+Hands+Is+Their+Prayer.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

One-Smoke Stories

Fri, 31 Oct 2003

One-Smoke Stories (2003)
Edited by Noreen Groover Lape
One-Smoke Stories is a collection of folk tales from Native American, Spanish Colonial, mestizo, and European American peoples of the Southwest retold in the enthralling words of one of the bestselling writers of her day, Mary Austin. One-Smoke Stories introduces us to a multicultural treasury of character types: lovers, hunters, bandits, shepherds, miners, ranchers, homesteaders, missionaries, government offcials, and supernatural beings.

Through folk tales, animal tales, and other genres of popular lore, Mary Austin acquaints readers with the spirituality, humor, and intercultural conficts of the Southwest. Some stories are overtly political, critiquing the homesteader's conquest of nature, the assimilation policies of Christian missionaries, and the abuses of colonial government. Others use marriage, friendship, community, or religion to illustrate the values and traditions of people in the mainstream and at the margins of American culture.

Originally published in 1934, One-Smoke Stories is one of several early-twentieth-century works that bridged the oral and literary realms by intertwining folklore and fiction. Introduced by Noreen Groover Lape, this new edition of One-Smoke Stories, like Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman, Zitkala-Sa's Old Indian Legends, and Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, stands as an important work in the multicultural canon.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/One-Smoke+Stories.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies

Sun, 03 Aug 2003

Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies (2003)
Women, Sexuality, and Religion in the Victorian Market
By Mary Wilson Carpenter
Of the many literary phenomena that sprang up in eighteenth-century England and later became a staple of Victorian culture, one that has received little attention until now is the "Family Bible with Notes." Published in serial parts to make it affordable, the Family Bible was designed to enhance the family's status and sense of national and imperial identity.

Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies reveals in its study of the production and consumption of British commercial Family Bibles startling changes in "family values." Advertised in the eighteenth century as providing the family with access to "universal knowledge," these Bibles suddenly shifted in the early nineteenth century to Bibles with bracketed sections marked "to be omitted from family reading" and reserved for reading "in the closet" by the "Master of the family." These disciplinary Bibles were paralleled by Family Bibles designed to appeal to the newly important female consumer. Illustrations featured saintly women and charming children, and "family registers" with vignettes of family life emphasized the prominent role of the "angel in the house."

As Mary Wilson Carpenter documents in Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies, the elaborate notes and "elegant engravings" in these Bibles bring to light a wealth of detail about the English commonsense view of such taboo subjects as same-sex relations, masturbation, menstruation, and circumcision. Her reading of literary texts by Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the context of these commercial representations of the "Authorized Version" or King James translation of the Bible indicates that when the Victorians spoke about religion, they were also frequently speaking about sex.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Imperial+Bibles%2C+Domestic+Bodies.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree

Sun, 01 Dec 2002

The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree (2002)
Stories
By Helen Papanikolas
The title of Helen Papanikolas’ second collection of short stories, The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree, is taken from an old Greek proverb and speaks of the new generation’s struggle with the vestiges of Greek customs. Gone are the raw, overt emotions of the pioneers, their bold prejudices, and, especially, the haunting black fatalism of funerals. Yet their children retain much of their parents’ culture. Although they live far from the old Greek towns, we see their rivalries, envy of the successful, and hubris as they respond to their experiences of intermarriage, old age, and loss. The exoticism and color of immigrant life wanes as each generation that follows those first patriarchs and matriarchs becomes “more like the Americans.” These are stories of the long passage of immigration—from accommodation, to the straddling of two cultures, and ending with assimilation. They are stories of a particular people, but they could be about any people.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Apple+Falls+from+the+Apple+Tree.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

The Wild Earth’s Nobility

Thu, 25 Jul 2002

The Wild Earth’s Nobility (2002)
A Novel
By Frank Waters
The Wild Earth's Nobility is the first of Frank Waters's semiautobiographical novels in the Pikes Peak saga. Here, in a frontier town in the shadow of the commanding mountain, the Rogier family settles near an age-old route of migrating Native Americans. In an era of prospecting, silver strikes, and frenzied mining, Joseph Rogier becomes a successful building contractor, rears a large family, and is gradually overwhelmed by the power of the great peak.

In Waters's visionary prose, the story becomes a mythic journey to reconcile instinct and reason, consciousness and intuition, and the powerful emotions of a family struggling with its own dreams and human limitations.

Frank Waters (1902-1995), one of the finest chroniclers of the American Southwest, wrote twenty-eight works of fiction and nonfiction. Of Pike's Peak (1971), the Chicago Daily News wrote, "It is a product of maturity, written with a sustained strength and beauty of style rarely found in fiction today."

Pike's Peak is composed of three condensed novels: The Wild Earth's Nobility, Below Grass Roots, and The Dust within the Rock.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Wild+Earth%E2%80%99s+Nobility.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Below Grass Roots

Thu, 25 Jul 2002

Below Grass Roots (2002)
A Novel
By Frank Waters
In Below Grass Roots, the second book in Frank Waters's Pikes Peak saga, turn-of-the-century Colorado Springs is prospering with the mining boom and a growing tourist industry. Patriarch Joseph Rogier becomes ever more obsessed with the treasures of the towering mountain and tries to enlist his son-in-law Jonathan Cable in his mining schemes. Cable instead leaves for Navajo country with his young son. Rogier, convinced that new wealth lies deep within the mountain, below grass roots, sinks his mines and what remains of his fortune ever deeper into the mountain's granite.

As in the other two novels in this semiautobiographical saga, Waters's masterful narrative draws on his own keen perception of the human condition to bring us this compelling tale of struggle and hope in the American West.

Pike's Peak is composed of three condensed novels: The Wild Earth's Nobility, Below Grass Roots, and The Dust within the Rock.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Below+Grass+Roots.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Pure Waters

Thu, 25 Jul 2002

Pure Waters (2002)
Frank Waters and the Quest for the Cosmic
Edited by Barbara Waters
The novels and nonfiction work of writer Frank Waters stand as a monument to his genius and to his lifetime quest to plumb the spiritual depths that he found for himself in the landscape and people of his beloved Southwest. In a career spanning more than half a century, he shared, through his many books, his insights and discoveries with countless readers across the globe.

Now, drawn from rare editorials, speeches, and essays that Frank Waters authored over the years as a reflection and a formation of his life-long themes, Pure Waters provides a treasure trove of exciting new material from this giant of the American Southwest.

In celebration of the centenary of his birth, Swallow Press is pleased to offer this new collection by one of its bestselling and most inspiring authors.
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Pure+Waters.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

The Dust Within the Rock

Fri, 05 Jul 2002

The Dust Within the Rock (2002)
A Novel
By Frank Waters
Based on one of the most significant periods in Frank Waters's own life, Pike's Peak is perhaps the most complete expression of all the archetypal themes he explored in both fiction and nonfiction.

In The Dust within the Rock, the third book in the Pikes Peak saga, an aging Joseph Rogier clings to his vision of finding gold in the great mountain and his grandson Marsh comes of age in the Rogier household. It is the early part of the twentieth century, in Colorado Springs, and the schoolhouse, the newsstand, the railroad, the mines—all become part of the younger man's emergence into adulthood and self-discovery.

Waters's powerful and intuitive style transforms the tale into a mythic journey, a search for meaning played out in the drama of everyday living on the vast American frontier.

Pike's Peak (1971) is composed of three condensed novels: The Wild Earth's Nobility, Below Grass Roots, and The Dust within the Rock. Some years after its publication, an interviewer asked Frank Waters whether it was autobiographical. “Yes,” he replied, “and no.”
For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Dust+Within+the+Rock.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.