Religious liberalism in America has often been equated with an ecumenical Protestant establishment. By contrast, American Religious Liberalism draws... attention to the broad diversity of liberal cultures that shapes America's religious movements. The essays gathered here push beyond familiar tropes and boundaries to interrogate religious liberalism's dense cultural leanings by looking at spirituality in the arts, the politics and piety of religious cosmopolitanism, and the interaction between liberal religion and liberal secularism. Readers will find a kaleidoscopic view of many of the progressive strands of America's religious past and present in this richly provocative volume.

American Rendering showcases twenty-four new poems as well as a generous selection from Andrew Hudgins’s six previous volumes, spanning a... distinguished career of more than twenty-five years. Hudgins, who was born in Texas and spent most of his childhood in the South, is a lively and prolific poet who draws on his vivid Southern and,more specifically, Southern Baptist, childhood. Influenced by writers such as John Crowe Ransom,William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and James Dickey, Hudgins has developed a distinctively descriptive form of the Southern Gothic imagination. His poems are rich with religious allusions, irreverent humor, and at times are inflected with a dark and violent eroticism.Of Hudgins’s most recent collection, Ecstatic in the Poison, Mark Strand wrote: “[It] is full of intelligence, vitality, and grace. And there is a beautiful oddness about it.Dark moments seem charged with an eerie luminosity and the most humdrum events assume a startling lyric intensity. A deep resonant humor is everywhere, and everywhere amazing.”

Written when political and military history dominated the discipline, J. Franklin Jameson's The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement was... a pioneering work. Based on a series of four lectures he gave at Princeton University in 1925, the short book argued that the most salient feature of the American Revolution had not been the war for independence from Great Britain; it was, rather, the struggle between aristocratic values and those of the common people who tended toward a leveling democracy. American revolutionaries sought to change their government, not their society, but in destroying monarchy and establishing republics, they in fact changed their society profoundly. Jameson wrote, "The stream of revolution, once started, could not be con.ned within narrow banks, but spread abroad upon the land." Jameson's book was among the first to bring social analysis to the fore of American history. Examining the effects the American Revolution had on business, intellectual and religious life, slavery, land ownership, and interactions between members of different social classes, Jameson showed the extent of the social reforms won at home during the war. By looking beyond the political and probing the social aspects of this seminal event, Jameson forced a reexamination of revolution as a social phenomenon and, as one reviewer put it, injected a "liberal spirit" into the study of American history. Still in print after nearly eighty years, the book is a classic of American historiography.

The study of personal relationships has proliferated as an interdisciplinary social science field. In this volume, leading authority Steve Duck brings... the reader up to date on basic concepts and research findings on all aspects of personal relationships. The book discusses how children learn key relationship skills and how adult relationships start, develop, and are sustained, including friendship, romance, and heterosexual and same-sex partnerships. Coverage of clinical and social policy implications of the research gives the book a practical edge. This accessible, engaging book contains much of value for students of relationships, communication studies, and psychology.

The most comprehensive anthology of its kind! The Third Edition of American Rhetorical Discourse continues to build on the success of previous editions.... This expanded collection reflects the diversity, significance, and method of speakers throughout American history by illuminating the evolution and accomplishment of rhetorical practice in American society. Rhetorical discourse engages the concerns that define public life, revealing a record of responses to the American experience that enrich the possibilities for future rhetoric. The variety of speakers in this volume emulates a spectrum of achievement and influence throughout American discourse. Each of the discourses presented in this distinguished collection is preceded by an informative and provocative commentary. These commentaries provide biographical information on the speaker, locate the speech in its historical time, and sketch the rhetorical situation to set the speech into its historical context. By highlighting the content of individual discourses, each commentary creates a solid basis for students to enlarge their understanding of history, broaden their perspective on the importance of the rhetorical moment, and improve their own rhetorical skills. The combination of commentary and speech provides an opportunity to explore a more sensitive analysis of a discourse, engaging and connecting the reader to the power and momentum of rhetoric.

"Everything and nothing is sacred in Rebecca Brown's essays. Tongue, word, thought, and intellect all conspire in a free language love of living... history, divination, sex, solitude and amusement. She is America's only real rock n' roll schoolteacher. Lessons layered with profundity and protracted parallels. Where old world religion, Gertrude Stein and Oreo cookies co-exist in an actual and mystic world of wonder." --Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth"If Rebecca Brown's talent for prose were any tighter, it would be a lyric -- to a pop standard. An homage -- a menage -- to America, exposing what's laid bare in a comic tragic redux. I laughed till it hurt." --Van Dyke Parks, Composer/Arranger"Anyone who can get from the Eucharist, to a Necco Wafer, to the goo beween the Oreo wafers, to the Inquisition, to the goo between the legs of excited young women is a distant sibling of mine. She can dash and she can drift and she is not much interested in the really bad parts that might qualify as confession. She likes the float of quotidian living and I like to read the words upon which she floats." -- Dave Hickey, author of Air GuitarThe impulse to tell our worst to a bunch of strangers has been fueling American self-hood for 300 years: there's a direct line from the Puritan confession narrative to today's lurid, inescapable exhibitionism. But whose stories are we telling?This collection of mordant, poignant, and playful essays shows Rebecca Brown at the height of her imaginative and intuitive powers. A wry, incisive social and literary critique is couched in a gonzo mix of pop culture, autobiography, fiction, literary history, misremembered movie plots, and fantasy that plays with the notion of what it is to be “American.” Fantastical connections and unlikely meetings span the course of America’s cultural history in a manic remix, featuring appearances by Brian Wilson, Gertrude Stein, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Invisible Man, the Abligensian Crusade, John Wayne, Felix Mendelssohn, JFK, Shane, and God.Rebecca Brown’s books include: The Gifts of the Body, The Last Time I Saw You, The Haunted House, Terrible Girls, and The End of Youth.

Written for intermediate-level students, American Roots includes articles written in a variety of styles. These readings describe major events,... people, and trends within nine broad historical periods, and are designed to increase reading confidence while building knowledge of U.S. history and culture.

NATIONAL BESTSELLERAmerica was flying high in the Roaring Twenties. Then, almost overnight, the Great Depression brought it crashing down. When the dust... settled, people were primed for a star who could distract them from reality. Enter Gypsy Rose Lee, a strutting, bawdy, erudite stripper who possessed a gift for delivering exactly what America needed. With her superb narrative skills and eye for detail, Karen Abbott brings to life an era of ambition, glamour, struggle, and survival. Using exclusive interviews and never-before-published material, she vividly delves into Gypsy’s world, including her intense triangle relationship with her sister, actress June Havoc, and their formidable mother, Rose, a petite but ferocious woman who literally killed to get her daughters on the stage. Weaving in the compelling saga of the Minskys—four scrappy brothers from New York City who would pave the way for Gypsy Rose Lee’s brand of burlesque and transform the entertainment landscape—Karen Abbott creates a rich account of a legend whose sensational tale of tragedy and triumph embodies the American Dream.

Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation—as... well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love—that arise from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.Newsweek's list of "Best. Books. Ever"Amazon Top 100 book of 2009A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009A New York Times Notable Book of 2009An Economist Best Book of 2009A Kansas City Star Top 100 book of 2009Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Best Books of 2009Idaho Statesman's Best Books of 2009

"I found this book to be refreshing in its candor, brilliant in its creativity, and exciting in its ability to provide fresh insights into what appear... to be timeless questions for Americans. I like the authors' approach, which blends history, structure, and theory. I would characterize it as scholarly, challenging, critical, and highly readable." --Rodney Coates, Miami University The Second Edition of Peter Kivisto's and new coauthor Wendy Ng's AMERICANS ALL introduces foundational ideas and concepts about race and ethnic groups and applies them to issues and events relevant to today's college student population. The text combines both empirical and theoretical material and is designed to help students better understand our highly diverse society. It illustrates the importance of using sociology to identify and assess both the dynamics of ethnic conflicts and the forces that might serve to create a more harmonious society. This text differs from other race and ethnic group texts in three significant ways: * First, it is more historically grounded, making use of the scholarship of social historians in an interdisciplinary way. * Second, it offers a genuinely comparative perspective. The authors highlight similarities and differences between and among groups--as well as distinctions in time, place, and circumstance--that account for contemporary differences in the social locations and well-being of the nation's major ethnic groups. Likewise, cross-national comparisons make sense of how the United States relates to other major liberal democracies in the world. * Third, the book examines the inner workings of racial and ethnic communities, including discussions of group cultures, institutions, resources, and internal divisions. New features of this completely updated and streamlined edition include: * A new chapter on multiculturalism that provides insightful comparisons between the United States and Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Great Britain. * "Voices"--boxed inserts in each chapter--that provide first-person accounts of the impact of ethnic identity on everyday lived experience. * In-depth discussions of theoretical developments in the field, particularly focusing on current discussions of multiculturalism and transnationalism. * Greater attention to the interplay between ethnicity, class, and gender. * Extensive use of the most cutting-edge research on new immigrants in the United States. * An Instructor's Manual/Testing Program and online Interactive Student Study Guide are available.

The second edition of Peter Kivisto and Wendy Ng's Americans All introduces foundational ideas and concepts about race and ethnic groups and applies... them to issues and events relevant to today's college student population. The text combines both empirical and theoretical material and is designed to help students better understand our highly diverse society. It illustrates the importance of using sociology to identify and assess both the dynamics of ethnic conflicts and the forces that might serve to create a more harmonious society.This text differs from other race and ethnic group texts in three significant ways:* First, it is more historically grounded, making use of the scholarship of social historians in an interdisciplinary way.* Second, it offers a genuinely comparative perspective. The authors highlight similarities and differences between and among groups--as well as distinctions in time, place, and circumstance--that account for contemporary differences in the social locations and well-being of the nation's major ethnic groups. Likewise, cross-national comparisons make sense of how the United States relates to other major liberal democracies in the world.* Third, the book examines the inner workings of racial and ethnic communities, including discussions of group cultures, institutions, resources, and internal divisions.New features of this completely updated and streamlined edition include:* A new chapter on multiculturalism that provides insightful comparisons between the United States and Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Great Britain.* "Voices"--boxed inserts in each chapter--that provide first-person accounts of the impact of ethnic identity on everyday lived experience.* In-depth discussions of theoretical developments in the field, particularly focusing on current discussions of multiculturalism and transnationalism.* Greater attention to the interplay between ethnicity, class, and gender.* Extensive use of the most cutting-edge research on new immigrants in the United States.* An Instructor's Manual/Testing Program and online Interactive Student Study Guide are available.

Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Fiction; finalist for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. “These short stories... approach their subjects from an array of perspectives, but what they share is freshness, surprise, and a compulsion to plumb some absolute extremes of American existence.”—National Book Award citationAmerican Salvage is rich with local color and peopled with rural characters who love and hate extravagantly. They know how to fix cars and washing machines, how to shoot and clean game, and how to cook up methamphetamine, but they have not figured out how to prosper in the twenty-first century. Through the complex inner lives of working-class characters, Bonnie Jo Campbell illustrates the desperation of post-industrial America, where wildlife, jobs, and whole ways of life go extinct and the people have no choice but to live off what is left behind.