The Kentuckians of Janice Holt Giles's title were that hardy band of angels who straggled through Cumberland Gap in the 1770s and carved their farms from the wilderness of Virginia's westernmost country. In her historical novel, first published in 1953, Giles invited the reader to experience the danger and beauty of life on the American frontier.Many of the frontiersmen were hunters in search of escape from an ever-advancing civilization, seeking freedom and space. Such a man was David Cooper, who had hunted the Kentucky wilderness with Daniel Boone before the first settlers crossed the Appalachians. No love of land or home or woman had been strong enough to hold David -- until he met Bethia. It was for her that he cleared his patch of forest, planted crops, and built a cabin. Too late, he learned that the girl he had dreamed of marrying was the wife of his enemy.David and Bethia belonged to a generation that never knew or expected security, and the background of their story is one of turmoil: Outnumbered and ill-equipped, early settlers were hard put to defend their forts; and, although united in war against the British and their Indian allies, they were often at odds among themselves. Many, including Boone, held land grants from Judge Henderson's Transylvania Company. Others, like David, based their claims on the authority of Virginia. Few today realize how close the British came to winning out.In her research, Giles studied the journals of the early Kentuckians and has retold their story in their own easy-flowing, cadenced prose. Only the three central characters are fictional. All subsidiary characters and historical events are authentic, set against the background of a country the author knows and loves.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.

"God knew that it would take brave and sturdy people to survive in these beautiful but rugged hills. So He sent us His very strongest men and women." So begins the heartwarming story of Verna Mae and her father, Isom B. ""Kitteneye"" Slone, an extradordinay personal family history set in the hills around Caney Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.

"Brief narratives," or medieval precursors to the modern short story, are compositions couched in the form of a tale of reasonable short length. They began with writings in Latin and, eventually, made their way into the vernacular languages of Europe. They include the fable, the apologue, the exemplum, the saint's life, the miracle, the biography, the adventure tale, the romance, the jest, and the anecdote, among others. In Spain, the oldest extant brief narratives in written form are in verse and date from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The earliest examples include La vida de Santa Maria Egipciaca and El libre dels tres reys d'Orient. Both are concise enough to be read in one sitting and were probably read before or after meals as entertainment.In Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian and Galician Verse, John E. Keller studies the structure of the pious brief narrative, including such works at the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X and Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora, among others. He examines which narrative techniques were employed by their authors, including versification, music, and the pictorial arts as aids to narration. Using nine basic elements -- plot, setting, conflict, characterization, theme, style, effect, point of view, and mood or tone -- Keller shows how writers in medieval Spain employed more sophisticated uses of these techniques than has previously been recognized.

Biography was Samuel Johnson's favorite among literary genres, and his Lives of the Poets is often regarded as the capstone of his career. The central place of biography in his oeuvre is explored in this collection of nine original essays by leading Johnson scholars. Varied in their focus and approach, the essays range from a philosophical overview of Johnson's notion of the relation between life and art, to a detailed reading of the Life of Milton, to a speculation on the value of the Lives in the classroom. Emerging clearly in the essays are the dual concerns -- artistic and intellectual -- that can be pursued in Johnson's biographical writings. On the one hand, they are complex creative works that reward literary analysis, traditional and modern. On the other, with their wide range, they offer a special insight into Johnson's eighteenth-century world -- the state of biography at the time, the tradition of English poetry, literary criticism and its philosophical values, and, of course, Johnson himself with his powers and failings.Domestick Privacies thus offers important new perspectives not only to professed Johnsonians but to all who study biography, criticism, and the eighteenth century.

Most Hilltoppers believe that Western Kentucky University is unique. They take pride in its lovely campus, its friendly spirit, the loyalty of its alumni, and its academic and athletic achievements. But Western's development also illustrates a major trend in American higher education during the past century. Scores of other institutions have followed the Western pattern, growing from private normal school to state normal school, to teachers college, to general college, finally emerging as an important state university.Historian Lowell Harrison traces the Western story from the school's origin in 1875 to the January 1986 election of its seventh president. For much of its history, Western has been led by paternalistic presidents whose major battles have been with other state schools and parsimonious legislatures. In recent years the presidents have been challenged by students and faculty who have demanded more active roles in university governance, and by a Board of Regents and the Council on Higher Education, which have raised challenging new issues.Harrison's account of the institution's development is laced with anecdotes and vignettes of some of the school's interesting personalities: President Henry Hardin Cherry, whose chapel talks convinced countless students that "the Spirit Makes the Master"; "Uncle Ed" Diddle, whose flying towel and winning teams earned national basketball fame; "Daddy" Bur-ton who could catch flies while lecturing; Miss Gabie Robertson, who held students into the next class period; the lone Japanese student who was on campus during World War II.Harrison also recalls steamboat excursions, the Great Depression and the Second World War, the astounding boom in enrollment and buildings in the 1960s, the period of student unrest, and the numerous fiscal crises that have beset the school.This is the story of an institution proud of its past and seeking to chart its course into the twenty-first century.

Coal, the nation's most abundant fossil fuel and the only one that is exported, represents one of our most valuable natural resources. This study undertakes a thorough review of the economics of the Appalachian coal industry. It establishes, first of all, the international framework within which the American and the Appalachian coal industry function. It next examines the underlying principles that govern the production of and the demand for coal. This demand is influenced not only by price but also by world politics, the economic well-being of dozens of countries, government regulation, and the availability of fuel substitutes. Included are a comprehensive treatment of the regulation of the industry, the effects of coal utilization on air quality, land reclamation, safety, transport, and legislation pertaining to port use.In conclusion, Harvey looks at the prospects for Appalachian coal, considering the impact of technologies such as fluidized bed combustion and coal-water slurry and the issue of energy policy and fuel alternatives. The picture that emerges is not unexpected -- an industry whose recovery and enduring health depend on resurgence of world and domestic economic activity, social and political stability, and government regulation.

Sulky races at the Mercer County Fair, church suppers, sorghum making, shooting marbles in the school yard, housing tobacco, loafing at the courthouse -- here are 129 beautifully reproduced images of who we were as Kentuckians not so long ago -- during the Depression and the early years of World War II.This collection is part of the remarkable series of photos shot for the Farm Security Administration -- more than 125,000 photographs taken over a period of nine years by some of the best American photographers of the time, including Ben Shahn, Marion Post Wolcott, Russell Lee, John Vachon, and Arthur Rothstein.To reintroduce us to that important slice of our history, Beverly Brannan and David Horvath have selected a rich sampling from among several thousand photos taken in Kentucky for the FSA. They have added an extra dimension to the images by including in their commentary excerpts from the photographers' own correspondence and field notes.Along with a lively introduction by the well-known Kentucky poet Jim Wayne Miller, the text of A Kentucky Album helps us see these photographs as art, as social history, and as an unforgettable composite of the amazing diversity of culture, history, and environment that have made Kentucky unique.

A glut of oil, dropping prices, the threat of insolvency, a divided membership -- these developments in the early weeks of 1985 underline the cogency of Mohammed Ahrari's historical study of the OPEC oil cartel and his argument that economic forces, not politics, determine OPEC's action in the world arena.The impetus for the formation of OPEC in 1960 was the desire of the oil-producing states for greater income from their most valuable resource. The international oil corporations had secured lucrative concessions early in this century, and in the 1960s they still dictated both the terms of production and the prices paid the oil states. In the buyers' market of the 1960s, the organization found itself with little economic clout. But in the early 1970s, OPEC members succeeded not only in manipulating the price of crude oil but in reducing the status of the oil corporations to that of mere managers of upstream operations. In addition, they accumulated enormous numbers of petrodollars by exploiting increasingly tight markets in the aftermath of the oil embargo of 1973 and the Iranian revolution in 1979.The effects of OPEC policies on the consuming countries have been skyrocketing inflation and sustained recession, with profound political repercussions. But the OPEC members have found their apparent power an uncertain blessing, as Mr. Ahrari demonstrates. Their failure to develop pricing formulas sensitive to fluctuations in the international oil market have made them highly vulnerable. In addition, the political tensions emanating from the Iran-Iraq war and from the specter of repetition of Iranian-style revolution elsewhere in the Persian Gulf have made OPEC's continued viability highly uncertain.

Commentators, especially since the Democratic party reforms following 1968, have expressed serious concerns about the role of party activists in the American political system. Have they become so concerned with ideological purity that they are unable to nominate strong candidates? Are activists loyal only to particular interest groups, with little concern for the parties as institutions? Are the reformed nominating procedures open to takeover by new activists, who exit the party immediately after the presidential nominations fight? With such an unrepresentative set of activists, can parties adjust to changing environments?Based on a survey of more than 17,000 delegates to state presidential nominating conventions in eleven states in 1980, this pathbreaking book addresses these questions in a comprehensive way for the first time. Heretofore most of the generalizations about party activists in the presidential nomination process have been based on studies of national convention delegates, in particular those attending the 1972 conventions. But those delegates were atypical activists, as this book shows. The state of the activist stratum of the parties differs from what many of the critics have suggested.

Colley Cibber changed the course of the English-speaking theater. One of the most complete theater men in the history of the stage, he fostered the change from drama as the handmaiden of literature to theater as an independent and lively art. In the process, Cibber became one of London's brightest stars, one of its most popular playwrights and, for thirty years, manager of the most important theater in England, Drury Lane. Yet above all, Cibber was an actor, and this fact governed his life and career. In his plays, he demonstrated a remarkable awareness of the audience in the playhouse, while the character of a fool, which he created for the stage, gradually became the mask he wore in private life. The man himself achieved fame and wealth and gained powerful friends who gave him the post of Poet Laureate. But the mask and his success brought equally powerful enemies who made him the target of their ridicule and succeeded in destroying his reputation.Since then the distorted image created by Pope and Fielding has amused generations of readers, but it does not explain how such a supposed fool remained a favorite with the public throughout his career, had more plays in the repertory than any other contemporary author, successfully managed a major theatrical company, or wrote the best theatrical history of his age. This biography looks at the man behind that distorting mask, his position in his own time, and his contribution to the theater.

Shakespeare was clearly fascinated by the relationship between fathers and daughters, for this primal bond of domination and defiance structures twenty-one of his comedies, tragedies, and romances. In a conflict that is at once social and interpersonal, Shakespeare's fathers demand hierarchical obedience while their daughters affirm the new, more personal values upheld by Renaissance humanists and Puritans.In her penetrating analysis of this compelling relationship, Diane Dreher examines the underlying psychological tensions as well as the changing concepts of marriage and the family during Shakespeare's time. She points to the pain and conflict caused by sex role polarization. Shakespeare's possessive fathers tyrannize over their daughters, unwilling to relinquish their "masculine" power and control and leaving these young women with only two alternatives: paternal domination or defiance and loss of love. The logic of Shakespeare's plays repudiates traditional stereotypes, showing how women like Ophelia and Desdemona are destroyed by conforming to the passive Renaissance ideal.The book concludes with a consideration of Shakespeare's androgynous characters -- dynamic women in doublet and hose, and fathers who become sensitive, caring, and empathetic. Shakespeare's balanced characters thus reconcile the polarities within themselves and bring greater harmony to their world.Domination and Defiance is the first book on this most provocative relationship in Shakespeare. Shedding new light on the complex father-daughter bond, character, and motivation, it makes a major contribution to literary studies.

Ann Beattie, Annie Dillard, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, Anne Redmon, Anne Tyler, and Alice Walker all seem to be especially concerned with narrative management. The ten essays in this book raise new and intriguing questions about the ways these leading women writers appropriate and transform generic norms and ultimately revise literary tradition to make it more inclusive of female experience, vision, and expression.The contributors to this volume discover diverse narrative strategies. Beattie, Dillard, Paley, and Redmon in divergent ways rely heavily upon narrative gaps, surfaces, and silences, often suggesting depths which are lamentably absent from modern experience or which mysteriously elude language. For Kingston and Walker, verbal assertiveness is the focus of narratives depicting the gradual empowerment of female protagonists who learn to speak themselves into existence.Ozick and Tyler disrupt conventional reader expectations of the "anti-novel" and the "family novel," respectively. Finally, Morrison's and Piercy's works reveal how traditional narrative forms such as the Bildungsroman and the "soap opera" are adaptable to feminist purposes.In examining the writings of these ten important women authors, this book illuminates a significant moment in literary history when women's voices are profoundly reshaping American literary tradition.

Whether one things of him as dashing cavalier or shameless horse thief, it is impossible not to regard John Hunt Morgan as a fascinating figure of the Civil War. He collected his Raiders at first from the prominent families of Kentucky, though later the exploits of the group were to attract a less elite class of recruits. Morgan was able to lead these men into the most dangerous adventures by convincing them that the honor of the South was at stake; yet he did not always succeed in appealing to that sense of honor when temptations of easy theft drew the Raiders from military objectives to wanton pillage. In John Hunt Morgan and his Raiders, Edison H. Thomas gives us a balanced view of these controversial men and their raids. In a fast-paced narrative he follows the cavalry unit for the evening the first group set out from Lexington to join the Confederate forces until the morning of Morgan's death in Greeneville, Tennessee. Basil Duke, St. Leger Grenfell, Lightning Ellsworth, and the beautiful Martha Ready all receive their due, and the truly remarkable story of the Raiders' newspaper is told.A special contribution is the insight this account offers into the disruption of rail communications carried out with such enthusiasm by Morgan and his men. Thomas' study of the railroad records of the period has enabled him to present this part of the Raiders' story with rare detail and understanding.

Deconstruction -- a mode of close reading associated with the contemporary philosopher Jacques Derrida and other members of the "Yale School" -- is the current critical rage, and is likely to remain so for some time. Reading Deconstruction / Deconstructive Reading offers a unique, informed, and badly needed introduction to this important movement, written by one of its most sensitive and lucid practitioners. More than an introduction, this book makes a significant addition to the current debate in critical theory. G. Douglas Atkins first analyzes and explains deconstruction theory and practice. Focusing on such major critics and theorists as Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, and Geoffrey Hartman, he brings to the fore issues previously scanted in accounts of deconstruction, especially its religious implications. Then, through close readings of such texts as Religio Laici, A Tale of a Tub, and An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, he proceeds to demonstrate and exemplify a mode of deconstruction indebted to both Derrida and Paul de Man. This skillfully organized book, designed to reflect the "both/ and" nature of deconstruction, thus makes its own contribution to deconstructive practice. The important readings provided of Dryden, Swift, and Pope are among the first to treat major Augustan texts from a deconstructive point of view and make the book a valuable addition to the study of that period.Well versed in deconstruction, the variety of texts he treats, and major issues of current concern in literary study, Atkins offers in this book a balanced and judicious defense of deconstruction that avoids being polemical, dogmatic, or narrowly ideological. Whereas much previous work on and in deconstruction has been notable for its thick prose, jargon, and general obfuscation, this book will be appreciated for its clarity and grace, as well as for its command of an impressively wide range of texts and issues. Without taming it as an instrument of analysis and potential change, Atkins makes deconstruction comprehensible to the general reader. His efforts will interest all those concerned with literary theory and criticism, Augustan literature, and the relation of literature and religion.

Throughout the coal industry's two-hundred-year history, labor issues have dominated its economics and politics. Curtis Seltzer has written a comprehensive historical- analysis of labor relations in the American coal industry-the first since the 1930s.Market forces have victimized coal suppliers and their workers for most of this century as demand shifted to other fuels. Coal producers responded to poor sales and excess production capacity with policies that led to strikes, inefficiency, and turmoil. Since its founding in 1890, the United Mine Workers of America has represented most coal miners, and management has traditionally taken one of two positions toward the UMWA: break it or use it. From 1950 to 1972, the major coal operators and the union formed an industrial partnership whose purpose was to survive a protracted slump in demand by controlling labor costs, increasing productivity, and limiting competition. This partnership eventually led to a rebellion within the UMWA that demanded democratic reform, better contracts, and improved health and safety in the workplace. For the last decade, the UMWA has been reworking its relationship with management, a process marked by conflict and stress.n the years ahead, substantial environmental problems associated with coal combustion may drastically limit coal's growth. New mining technologies may cut labor requirements to the bone. As the shift to renewable energy occurs, coal may experience a transitional period of expansion followed by a rapid decline. These trends will have enormoussocial and economic consequences.Fire in the Hole is a story that captures the people of coal as well as the broad clash of social forces.

Returning to Kentucky in the spring of 1829 after four years as secretary of state in the administration of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay quickly regained the political dominance at home that would carry him to the U.S. Senate in 1831. Assuming leadership of the anti-Jackson forces, Senator Clay in 1832 mounted a spirited campaign for the presidency, advocating recharter of the national bank, high protective tariffs, and internal improvements, and alleging the administrative incompetence of Jackson and his cronies. Clay's defeat by the popular military hero was probably foreordained, but he emerged with sufficient national prestige to play the leading role in mediation of the nullification crisis of December 1832-March 1833. The battle over the constitutionality of the protective tariff, during which the words secession, invasion, and civil war were freely used, pitted Jackson and the power of the federal government against the states' rights politicians of South Carolina. Clay's masterful legislative compromise of 1833 defused a tense situation and brought him national applause as savior of the Union.Continuing his efforts to form a political coalition strong enough to defeat the Jacksonians, Clay was successful in a Senate resolution to censure the president for unconstitutional exercise of power in removing government deposits from the Bank of the United States. But as the election of 1836 drew near it became evident that the emerging coalition could not defeat Democrat Martin Van Buren, Jackson's hand- picked candidate; as the Reign of Jackson drew to a close, Clay could only view the national scene with dismay.Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.