The Kentucky Irish American began life in 1898 as one of many ethnic newspapers in America, but by its final years it attracted an avid national audience of many ethnicities. From 1925, the KIA was owned and edited by the Barry family of Louisville: by John J. Barry to 1950, and by his son Michael to its demise in 1968. This anthology focuses on the Mike Barry years -- a time of Cold War and Vietnam, of Kennedy, Nixon, McCarthy, Goldwater, and Happy Chandler. Under Mike's brilliant editorship, the KIA offered its readers a richly textured, pungent voice that combined humor with a constant push for social improvement in Kentucky and in the nation.Always the KIA was strong in its support of all things Irish, Catholic, and American. It was also an acerbic commentator on the absurdities of Kentucky politics. But the KIA was notable -- and noticed -- for its strong positions on national and international issues.Red Smith once described the KIA as "all the excuse any man needs for learning to read." Today's readers can now discover the pleasures of a livelier era in journalism.

Twentieth-century Spanish poetry has received comparatively little attention from critics writing in English. Andrew Debicki now presents the first English-language history published in the United States to examine the sweep of modern Spanish verse. More important, he is the first to situate Spanish poetry in the context of European modernity, to trace its trajectory from the symbolists to the postmodernists. Avoiding the rigid generational schemes and catalogs of names found in traditional Hispanic literary histories, Debicki offers detailed discussions of salient books and texts to construct an original and compelling view of his subject. He demonstrates that contemporary Spanish verse is rooted in the modem tradition and poetics that see the text as a unique embodiment of complex experiences. He then traces the evolution of that tradition in the early decades of the century and its gradual disintegration from the 1950s to the present as Spanish poetry came to reflect features of the postmodern, especially the poetics of text as process rather than as product.By centering his study on major periods and examining within each the work of poets of different ages, Debicki develops novel perspectives. The late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, were not merely the setting for a new aestheticist generation but an era of exceptional creativity in which both established and new writers engendered a profound, intertextual, and often self-referential lyricism. This book will be essential reading for specialists in modern Spanish letters, for advanced students, and for readers inter-ested in comparative literature.

In July 1992 Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) angrily suggested during floor debate..

A warm and humorous account of the trials of creating a place to call home. To longtime Giles fans and new readers alike, these reminiscences of family, friends, a river, and a roof offer a charming visit to rural Kentucky in the late 1950s.

A fascinating guide which tells you what you need to know to bring more bluebirds into your life In this detailed how-to book, bluebird expert Wayne H. Davis tells how to attract and care for this beautiful and gentle bird and offers solutions to the most common bluebird problems. Since bluebirds are almost entirely dependent on people for providing nesting sites, the book contains plans for erecting a structure that will attract bluebirds to a safe habitat. Instructions for building and maintaining a "bluebirds trail," complete with drawings of various bluebirds houses and guards against predators, are also included. Davis shares his plans for his specially designed Kentucky Bluebird Box -- a unique bird house attractive to the Eastern Bluebird but unsuitable for the bluebird's rivals -- as well an a variety of other plans for using materials as inexpensive as milk cartons and scavenged pipes. A chapter by professional photographer Philippe Roca offers tips on photographing bluebirds. Lavishly illustrated and written in an accessible style, this book will aid in the conservation of tone of America's most beloved birds. Whether you are a beginning birder or an expert, Davis will help ensure your success in attracting and raising bluebirds.

"You see, some folks has albums to put folks' pictures in to remember them by, and some folks has a book and lorites down the things that happen every day so they won't forget them; but, honey, these quilts is my albums and my diaries."Aunt Jane is a fictional character well known for her gentle folk wisdom and her vivid descriptions of a picturesque and almost vanished way of life in the rural South of the last century. Her words recall lavish Sunday dinners, courtships, quilting bees, church meetings, and county fair competitions. Yet Aunt Jane of Kentucky is more than a collection of reminiscences about the region of Western Kentucky where Eliza Caroline Obenchain (who published under the name Eliza Calvert Hall) was born and raised. She writes about strong women and the ways in which they make their voices heard. Obenchain was a dedicated suffragist who worked to win rights for women in the areas of property ownership and divorce, and her interest in the social condition of women is evident throughout her fictional work. In one of the most popular stories in the collection, "Sally Ann's Experience," Sally Ann refuses to agree that women should be silent in church; she tells her male audience, "Now it's my time to talk and yours to listen."Aunt Jane of Kentucky, first published in 1907, is a delightful example of regional fiction that will also serve as a valuable document for those interested in the history of women's issues.

Few people in America today live with the dangers and deprivations that Appalachian coal mining families experience. But to the eighteen West Virginia women Carol Giesen interviewed for this book, hard times are just everyday life.These coal miners' wives, ranging in age from late teens to eighty-five, tell of a way of life dominated by coal mining -- and shadowed by a constant fear of death or injury to a loved one. From birth to old age, they experience the social and economic pressures of the coal mining industry. Few families in these communities earn their living in any job outside a coal mine, and most young men and women find no advantage in completing their education.Women whose stresses and strengths have seldom been disclosed reveal here their personal stories, their understanding of the dangers of coal mining, their domestic concerns, the place of friends and faith in their lives, and their expectations of the future.What emerges is a deeply moving story of determination in the face of adversity. Over and over, these women deal with the frustrations caused by strikes, layoffs, and mine closings, often taking any jobs they can find while their husbands are out of work. Endlessly; their home concerns revolve around protecting their husbands from additional work or worry. Always there is fear for their husbands' lives and the pervasive anger they feel toward the mining companies. For some, there is also the pain of losing a loved one to the mines. Behind these women's acceptance of their circumstances lies a pragmatic understanding of the politics of mining and of the communities in which they live.Giesen's insights into the experiences of miners' wives contribute much to our understanding of the impact of industry, economics, and politics on women's lives.

From Gone with the Wind to Designing Women, images of southern females that emerge from fiction and film tend to obscure the diversity of American women from below the Mason-Dixon line. In a work that deftly lays bare a myriad of myths and stereotypes while presenting true stories of ambition, grit, and endurance, Margaret Ripley Wolfe offers the first professional historical synthesis of southern women's experiences across the centuries.In telling their story, she considers many ordinary lives -- those of Native-American, African-American, and white women from the Tidewater region and Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the Gulf Coastal Plain, women whose varied economic and social circumstances resist simple explanations. Wolfe examines critical eras, outstanding personalities and groups -- wives, mothers, pioneers, soldiers, suffragists, politicians, and civil rights activists -- and the impact of the passage of time and the pressure of historical forces on the region's females.The historical southern woman, argues Wolfe, has operated under a number of handicaps, bearing the full weight of southern history, mythology, and legend. Added to these have been the limitations of being female in a patriarchal society and the constraining images of the "southern belle" and her mentor, the "southern lady." In addition, the specter of race has haunted all southern women. Gender is a common denominator, but according to Wolfe, it does not transcend race, class, point of view, or a host of other factors.Intrigued by the imagery as well as the irony of biblical stories and southern history, Wolfe titles her work Daughters of Canaan. Canaan symbolizes promise, and for activist women in particular the South has been about promise as much as fulfillment. General readers and students of southern and women's history will be drawn to Wolfe's engrossing chronicle.

Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd was a New England woman with a mission in life. In 1916 she settled on Caney Creek in Eastern Kentucky, determined to bring higher education to this remote corner of Appalachia. The school she founded, now Alice Lloyd College, continues to serve the area and its people and to stand as a tribute to Lloyd's remarkable energy, determination, and vision. Lloyd's program combined a rigorous academic curriculum with an intense effort to instill a sense of service in the school's graduates. This education was provided free and required only that the students abide by Lloyd's strict rules of conduct and pledge to remain in the mountains after graduating.In the first full-scale study of Lloyd's life and work and the institution she founded, David Searles shows how this courageous and complex woman struggled throughout her long life against seemingly insurmountable odds to create an institution dedicated to improving life in Appalachia. But, as he acknowledges, Lloyd's fundraising activities relied on harmful stereotypes that caused resentment among her mountain neighbors, and she often angered others working in the mountains.Despite the negative aspects of Lloyd's activities, Searles casts serious doubt on the now fashionable conclusion that the women who came to the mountains to do good created more problems than they solved. Lloyd's story, he argues, demonstrates that much good was indeed accomplished and that the people of the mountains recognized and appreciated her achievement.

As television screens across America showed Chinese students blocking government tanks in Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and missiles searching their targets in Baghdad, the connection between media and revolution seemed more significant than ever. In this book, thirteen prominent scholars examine the role of the communication media in revolutionary crises -- from the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s to the upheaval in the former Czechoslovakia.Their central question: Do the media in fact have a real influence on the unfolding of revolutionary crises? On this question, the contributors diverge, some arguing that the press does not bring about revolution but is part of the revolutionary process, others downplaying the role of the media.Essays focus on areas as diverse as pamphlet literature, newspapers, political cartoons, and the modern electronic media. The authors' wide-ranging views form a balanced and perceptive examination of the impact of the media on the making of history.

The story of Free Frank is not only a testament to human courage and resourcefulness but affords new insight into the American frontier. Born a slave in the South Carolina piedmont in 1777, Frank died a free man in 1854 in a town he had founded in western Illinois. His accomplishments, creditable for any frontiersman, were for a black man extraordinary. We first learn details of Frank's life when in 1795 his owner moved to Pulaski County, Kentucky. We know that he married Lucy, a slave on a neighboring farm, in 1799. Later he was allowed to hire out his time, and when his owner moved to Tennessee, Frank was left in charge of the Kentucky farm. During the War of 1812, he set up his own saltpeter works, an enterprise he maintained until he left Kentucky. In 1817 he purchased his wife's freedom for $800; two years later he bought his own liberty for the same price. Now free, he expanded his activities, purchasing land and dealing in livestock.With his wife and four of his children, Free Frank left Kentucky in 1830 to settle on a new frontier. In Pike County, Illinois, he purchased a farm and later, in 1836, platted and successfully promoted the town of New Philadelphia. The desire for freedom was an obvious spur to his commercial efforts. Through his lifetime of work he purchased the liberty of sixteen members of his family at a cost of nearly $14,000.Goods and services commanded a premium in the life of the frontier. Free Frank's career shows what an exceptional man, through working against great odds, could accomplish through industry, acumen, and aggressiveness. His story suggests a great deal about business activity and legal practices, as well as racial conditions, on the frontier.Juliet Walker has performed a task of historical detection in recreating the life of Free Frank from family traditions, limited personal papers, public documents, and secondary sources. In doing so, she has added a significant chapter to the history of African Americans.

"The first full biography of the famous Confederate cavalry leader from Kentucky. It provides fresh, unpublished information on all aspects of Morgan's life and furnishes a new perspective on the Civil War. In a highly original interpretation, Ramage portrays Morgan as a revolutionary guerrilla chief. Using the tactics of guerrilla war and making his own rules, Morgan terrorized federal provost marshals in an independent campaign to protect Confederate sympathizers in Kentucky. He killed pickets and used the enemy uniform as a disguise, frequently masquerading as a Union officer. Employing civilians in the fighting, he set off a cycle of escalating violence which culminated in an unauthorized policy of retaliation by his command on the property of Union civilians. To many southerners, Morgan became the prime model of a popular movement for guerrilla warfare that led to the Partisan Ranger Act. For Confederates he was the ideal romantic cavalier, the "Francis Marion of the War," and they make him a folk hero who was especially adored by women. Discerning fact from folklore, Ramage describes Morgan's strengths and weaknesses and suggests that excessive dependence on his war bride contributed to his declining success. The author throws new light on the Indiana-Ohio Raid and the suspenseful escape from the Ohio Penitentiary and unravels the mysteries around Morgan's death in Greeneville, Tennessee. Rebel Raider also shows how in the popular mind John Hunt Morgan was deified as a symbol of the Lost Cause.

James H. Toner is professor of international relations and military ethics at the U.S. Air War College and author of Morals Under the Gun.

In this collection of informative essays, Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye bring together work by such notable scholars as Ellen Carol DuBois, Alice Kessler-Harris, Barbara Sicherman, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn to illuminate the lives and labor of American women from the late nineteenth century to the early 1920s. Revealing the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class, the authors explore women's accomplishments in changing welfare and labor legislation; early twentieth century feminism and women's suffrage; women in industry and the work force; the relationship between family and community in early twentieth-century America; and the ways in which African American, immigrant, and working-class women contributed to progressive reform. This challenging collection not only displays the dramatic transformations women of all classes experienced, but also helps construct a new scaffolding for progressivism in general.

Arms control remains a major international issue as the twentieth century closes, but it is hardly a new concern. The effort to limit military power has enjoyed recurring support since shortly after World War I, when the United States, Britain, and Japan sought naval arms control as a means to insure stability in the Far East, contain naval expenditure, and prevent another world cataclysm.Richard Fanning examines the efforts of American, British, and Japanese leaders -- political, military, and social -- to reach agreement on naval limitation between 1922 and the mid-1930s, with focus on the years 1927-30, when political leaders, statesmen, naval officers, and various civilian pressure groups were especially active in considering naval limits. The civilian and even some military actors believed the Great War had been an aberration and that international stability would reign in the near future. But the coming of the Great Depression brought a dramatic drop in concern for disarmament.This study, based on a wide variety of unpublished sources, compares the cultural underpinnings of the disarmament movement in the three countries, especially the effects of public opinion, through examination of the many peace groups that played an important role in the disarmament process. The decision to strive for arms control, he finds, usually resulted from peace group pressure and political expediency.For anyone interested in naval history, this book illuminates the beginnings of the arms limitation effort and the growth of the peace movement.

The life of a human community rests on common experience. Yet in modem life there is an experience common to all that threatens the very basis of community -- the experience of exile. No one in the modem world has been spared the encounter with homelessness. Refugees and fugitives, the disillusioned and disenfranchised grow in number every day. Why does it happen? What does it mean? And how are we implicated?David Patterson responds to these and related questions by examining exile, a primary motif in Russian thought over the last century and a half. By "exile" he means not only a form of punishment but an existential condition.Drawing on texts by such familiar figures as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, and Brodsky, as well as less thoroughly examined figures, including Florensky, Shestov, Tertz, and Gendelev, Patterson moves beyond the political and geographical fact of exile to explore its spiritual, metaphysical, and linguistic aspects. Thus he pursues the connections between exile and identity, identity and meaning, meaning and language.Patterson shows that the problem of meaning in human life is a problem of homelessness, that the effort to return from exile is an effort to return meaning to the word, and that the exile of the word is an exile of the human being. By making heard voices from the Russian wilderness, Patterson makes visible the wilderness of the world.