Public education plays a crucial role in crafting a nation's future. In the United States, education reform policy, particularly the reliance on large-scale, standardized testing, is a growing topic of national conversation and concern. An Illusion of Equity: The Legacy of Eugenics in Today's Education demonstrates how centuries of propaganda have led us to accept the idea that test scores indicate something so valuable about human beings that they should be used to organize society. Drawing on decades of experience as an educator, author Wendy Zagray Warren unpacks the origins of this practice, inviting us to probe the ideologies underlying testing procedures and score interpretation and to evaluate the rationale for using test scores as the sole markers for academic achievement. From the beginning, large-scale tests have produced scores divided by race and class. Initially, these results aligned with the eugenic ideology of its creators. Warren shows that while the rhetoric used to justify test-based policy has changed, the model used to produce test scores remains much the same. Therefore, so do the outcomes of test-based policies, which continue to reproduce and reinforce the existing social hierarchy of the United States. The hope of equity lies in educators charting new paths and scholars around the world who are dreaming new educational paradigms into being. Ultimately, Warren invites policymakers, educators, and parents to explore the richness of possibility when education is designed around the belief that every child is worthy of the opportunity to thrive.

Harry Dean Stanton (1926-2017) got his start in Hollywood in TV productions such as Zane Grey Theater and Gunsmoke. After a series of minor parts in forgettable westerns, he gradually began to get film roles that showcased his laid-back acting style, appearing in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Alien (1979). He became a headliner in the eighties - starring in Wim Wenders's moving Paris, Texas (1984) and Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984) - but it was his extraordinary skill as a character actor that established him as a revered cult figure and kept him in demand throughout his career. Joseph B. Atkins unwinds Stanton's enigmatic persona in the first biography of the man Vanity Fair memorialized as "the philosopher poet of character acting." He sheds light on Stanton's early life in West Irvine, Kentucky, exploring his difficult relationship with his Baptist parents, his service in the Navy, and the events that inspired him to drop out of college and pursue acting. Atkins also chronicles Stanton's early years in California, describing how he honed his craft at the renowned Pasadena Playhouse before breaking into television and movies.In addition to examining the actor's acclaimed body of work, Atkins also explores Harry Dean Stanton as a Hollywood legend, following his years rooming with Jack Nicholson, partying with David Crosby and Mama Cass, jogging with Bob Dylan, and playing poker with John Huston. "HD Stanton" was scratched onto the wall of a jail cell in Easy Rider (1969) and painted on an exterior concrete wall in Drive, He Said (1971). Critic Roger Ebert so admired the actor that he suggested the "Stanton-Walsh Rule," which states that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad."Harry Dean Stanton is often remembered for his crowd-pleasing roles in movies like Pretty in Pink (1986) or Escape from New York (1981), but this impassioned biography illuminates the entirety of his incredible sixty-year career. Drawing on interviews with the actor's friends, family, and colleagues, this much-needed book offers an unprecedented look at a beloved figure.

Between 1945 and 1965, more than fifty nations declared their independence from colonial rule. At the height of the Cold War, the global process of decolonization complicated US-Soviet relations, while Soviet and American interventionism transformed the decolonizing process. Remaking the World examines the connections between the Cold War and decolonization, which helped define the post-World War II global order. Drawing on new scholarship, this comprehensive study provides a chronological overview from World War I to the Soviet collapse and highlights key developments in the international system as decolonization unfolded in tandem with the Cold War. Through six carefully selected case studies - India, Egypt, the Congo, Vietnam, Angola, and Iran - historian Jessica M. Chapman addresses the shifting of Soviet, American, Chinese, and Cuban policies, the centrality of modernization, the role of the United Nations, the often-outsized influence of regional actors like Israel and South Africa, and seminal post-Vietnam War shifts in the international system. Each of the case studies analyzes at least one geopolitical turning point, demonstrating that the Cold War and decolonization were mutually constitutive processes in which local, national, and regional developments altered the superpower competition. Chapman presents a picture of the complexities of international relations and the ways in which local communist and democratic movements differed from their Soviet and American ties, as did their visions for independence and success.

In 1948 the United Nations launched the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization following the conflict that erupted between Israel and its Arab neighbors, who profoundly opposed the creation of a Jewish state. UNTSO quickly found itself overseeing the ceasefire lines between combatant parties. In the ensuing decades, as countries along the eastern Mediterranean engaged in a series of escalating military conflicts, UNTSO was continually challenged in its peacekeeping mission, often having to alter its configuration. Matters came to a head in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon for a second time, calling into question the efficacy of UN peacekeeping operations and US support for them. In Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East, retired US Army colonel and former UN military observer L. Scott Lingamfelter chronicles the role of the US military in UN Middle East peacekeeping operations. Framed by his personal experiences, the book examines the difficulties faced by UN forces wedged between warring sides with limited trust in their authority as well as the challenging dichotomy of a soldier trained for combat yet immersed in unarmed peacekeeping. Yanks in Blue Berets is a "boots on the ground" perspective of the building Arab-Israeli tensions and geopolitics preceding the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

As a Unionist but also proslavery state during the American Civil War, Kentucky occupied a contentious space both politically and geographically. In many ways, its pragmatic attitude toward compromise left it in a cultural no-man's-land. The constant negotiation between the state's nationalistic and Southern identities left many Kentuckians alienated and conflicted. Lincoln referred to Kentucky as the crown jewel of the Union slave states due to its sizable population, agricultural resources, and geographic position, and these advantages, coupled with the state's difficult relationship to both the Union and slavery, ultimately impacted the outcome of the war. Despite Kentucky's central role, relatively little has been written about the aftermath of the Civil War in the state and how the conflict shaped the commonwealth we know today. New Perspectives on Civil War–Era Kentucky offers readers ten essays that paint a rich and complex image of Kentucky during the Civil War. First appearing in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, these essays cover topics ranging from women in wartime to Black legislators in the postwar period. From diverse perspectives, both inside and outside the state, the contributors shine a light on the complicated identities of Kentucky and its citizens in a defining moment of American history.

"I've lived a completely ordinary life, so much that I don't know how to write a transgender or queer or Appalachian story, because I don't feel like I've lived one..

No one will protect you. Months after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. announced his decision to leave the public school system. His career as a high school English teacher had spanned more than a decade but ended abruptly - another casualty of the cruel and dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that is creeping back into the halls of government and the homes of Americans. At the beginning of Carver's career, an administrator warned him about discussing his otherwise openly gay identity at work: "No one will protect you, including me." A new administration allowed for more freedom, but the initial warning eventually rang true. School officials failed repeatedly to address harassment of students and of Carver himself, until he could no longer endure such a purposeful deterioration of human rights. While Carver's testimony before the House of Representatives brought much-needed attention to the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people in schools, the damage was done. In Gay Poems for Red States, Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone. More than a collection of poetry, Carver's earnest and heartfelt verses are for those wishing to discover and understand the vastness of Appalachia, and for the LGBTQ+ Appalachians who long for a future - for a home - in an often unwelcoming place.

In the century after Emancipation, the long shadow of slavery left African Americans well short of the freedom promised to them. Sharecropping and debt peonage entrapped Black people in the South, and across the world, European colonialism had bred a new slavery that menaced the liberty of even more Africans. A core group of Black freedom movement leaders, including Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois, followed their nineteenth century predecessors in insisting that the continuation of racial slavery anywhere put Black freedom on the line everywhere. They even predicted the consequences that ignited the recent nationwide Black Lives Matter movement - the rise of a prison industrial complex and the consequent erosion of African Americans' faith in the criminal justice system.The Freedom Movement's Lost Legacy is the first historical account of the Black freedom movement's response to modern slavery in the 20th century. Keith P. Griffler details how the mainstream antislavery movement became complicit in the enslavement of Black and brown people across the world through its sponsorship of racist international antislavery law that gave the "new slavery" explicit legal sanction. Black freedom movement activists, thinkers, and organizers did more than call out this breathtaking betrayal of abolitionist principles: they dedicated themselves to the eradication of slavery on whatever forms it assumed on the global stage and developed an expansive vision of human freedom. This timely and important work reminds us that the resurgence of today's Black freedom movements is a manifestation and continuation of the tradition and efforts of these early Black leaders and abolitionists - an important chapter in the history of antislavery and the ongoing Black freedom struggle.

Calumet, Claiborne, King Ranch - these iconic names are among the owners and breeders revered by Thoroughbred industry professionals and racing fans around the world. As campaigners of many of the 20th century's top racehorses, their prestige has been confirmed by decades of competition in the Triple Crown, the most esteemed series in American Thoroughbred racing. Even with these substantial legacies, their success is measured against the benchmark set by one of racing's earliest dynasties, the historic Belair Stud. The story of this legendary operation began with William Woodward's childhood memories of grand days at the racetrack, inspiring dreams of breeding a champion or two of his own. During a year working for the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Woodward frequented English racetracks, rekindling that childhood dream of breeding and owning champion Thoroughbreds. Woodward turned those dreams into reality, building Belair Stud on his family's Maryland estate, launching what would become the preeminent Thoroughbred breeding and racing empire in America and chasing racing's biggest prizes in both the United States and England.The defining moment for Belair came when Woodward bred the imported stallion Sir Gallahad III to his mare Marguerite. Their colt, Gallant Fox, became only the second horse in history to win the Preakness Stakes, the Kentucky Derby, and the Belmont Stakes in the same year. In 1935, the farm cemented the Triple Crown as the gold standard for three-year-olds when Gallant Fox's son, Omaha, duplicated his sire's trio of victories, a sweep that sealed the farm's legacy and carved its name in the annals of racing history. In The Foxes of Belair: Gallant Fox, Omaha, and the Quest for the Triple Crown, Jennifer Kelly examines the racing legacies of Gallant Fox and Omaha and how William Woodward's service to racing during the 20th century forever changed the landscape of the American Thoroughbred industry.

George Orson Welles (1915-1985) is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. At just twenty-five years old, he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in his Academy-Award-winning debut film Citizen Kane (1941). His innovative and distinctive directorial style - nonlinear narratives, unusual camera angles, deep focus shots, and long takes - continues to be emulated by directors and cinematographers to this day. The brilliant yet provocative Welles won multiple Grammys, a Golden Globe, and the greatest honor the Directors Guild of America bestows: the D.W. Griffith Award. His final film, The Other Side of the Wind, was released in 2018, 33 years after his death. In Citizen Welles, author Frank Brady presents a comprehensive and complete picture of the artist and auteur. Painstakingly researched, Brady delves into Welles's creative achievements, from his critically acclaimed film Citizen Kane and his controversial radio broadcast The War of the Worlds (1938) to his pioneering stage productions of the classics of Shakespeare, Shaw, and Ionesco; and Welles' starring turn on Broadway in Shaw's Heartbreak House (for which he made the cover of Time). Brady also explores other notable films, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), and Chimes at Midnight (1965). This all-encompassing work also details the personal side of Welles's life, including his romances with Rita Hayworth and Dolores Del Rio and the confounding tragedy of his final years. Presented is a captivating and compelling encapsulation of the revered and respected artist.

"What did happen here there have been so many tales and outright lies told. It has been hard to see through the smoke to see the truth. Now memory, memory is like a loaded pistol it can turn again who's a-holdin' it. " - J. Sidna Allen in Thunder in the Hills by Frank Levering On March 14, 1912, Hillsville, Virginia, native Floyd Allen (1856–1913) was convicted of three criminal charges: assault, maiming, and the rescue of prisoners in custody. What had begun as a scuffle between Allen's nephews over a young woman ended with him being charged as the guilty party after he allegedly hit a deputy in the head with a pistol. When the jury returned with the verdict, Allen stood up and announced, "Gentleman, I ain't a-goin." A gunfight ensued in the crowded courtroom which claimed the lives of the judge, prosecuting attorney, sheriff, a juror, and a witness, and wounded seven other people. The men of the Allen family fled the scene, but detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency apprehended the men two months later. The state of Virginia put Floyd and Claude Allen to death by electrocution the following spring. Within days of the shootout, local and national media sensationalized the event, maligning the Allen men as rough, uncouth residents of impoverished Appalachia. More than a century later, the "Hillsville Massacre" - as it was dubbed - continues to impact the citizens and communities of the area as local newspapers recirculate the sordid story and give credence to annual public reenactments that continue to negatively impact the national perception of the region. Hillsville Remembered: Public Memory, Historical Silence, and Appalachia's Most Notorious Shootout is the first book-length scholarly review of the Hillsville Massacre. This comprehensive study examines a variety of sources written about and inspired by the event and casts light on how the incident helped reinforce the nation's conception of the region through depictions of this sensational moment in history. Author Travis A. Rountree uses rhetorical analyses to trace and reflect on the texts and contexts surrounding the events that have been reported, preserved, interpreted, and reinterpreted with different voices in various formats. In all, this book provides an extensive analysis of the Hillsville Massacre and reveals new understandings of the production of memories and stories that evolved from the event.

In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmarked on regional maps, Oak Ridge attracted more than seventy thousand people eager for high-paying wartime jobs. Among them were author Emily Strasser's grandfather George, a chemist. All employees - from scientists to secretaries, from military personnel to construction workers - were restricted by the tightest security. They were provided only the minimum information necessary to perform their jobs. It wasn't until three years later that the citizens of Oak Ridge, and the rest of the world, learned the true purpose of the local industry. Oak Ridge was one of three secret cities constructed by the Manhattan Project for the express purpose of developing the first atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History, Emily Strasser exposes the toxic legacy - political, environmental, and personal—that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world. Sifting through archives and family memories, and traveling to the deserts of Nevada and the living rooms of Hiroshima, she grapples with the far-reaching ramifications of her grandfather's work. She learns that during the three decades he spent building nuclear weapons, George suffered from increasingly debilitating mental illness. Returning to Oak Ridge, Strasser confronts the widespread contamination resulting from nuclear weapons production and the government's disregard for its impact on the environment and public health. With brilliant insight, she reveals the intersections between the culture of secrecy in her family and the institutionalized secrecy within the nuclear industry, which persists, with grave consequences, to this day.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted." - Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 The Appalachian region is deeply rooted in customs that have been handed down for generations. "Planting by the signs," a practice predicated on the belief that moon phases and astrological signs exert a powerful influence on the growth and well-being of crops, is considered superstitious by some but has been essential to gardeners and farmers for centuries and is still in use today. Sown in the Stars brings together the collective knowledge of farmers in central and eastern Kentucky about the custom of planting by the signs. Sarah Hall interviews nearly two dozen contemporary Kentuckians who still follow the signs of the moon and stars to guide planting, harvesting, canning and food preservation, butchering, and general farm work. Hall explores the roots of this system in both astrology and astronomy and the profound connections felt to the stars, moon, planets, and the earth. Revealed in the personal narratives are the diverse interpretations of the practice. Some farmers and gardeners believe that the moon's impact on crop behavior is purely scientific, while others favor a much wider interpretation of the signs and their impact on our lives. Featuring photographs by Meg Wilson, this timely book bridges the past, present, and future by broadening our understanding of this practice and revealing its potential to increase the resiliency of our current agricultural food systems.

In the earliest days of the United States as settlers made their way west and into what would eventually become Kentucky, they were faced with many challenges in the task of surveying and claiming new and unknown land. Among the highest priorities for new residents was to determine if their chosen homestead could provide the fertile soil and fresh water they needed to sustain life and service their agricultural needs. Kentucky, with its underlying base of predominantly limestone rock - perfectly suited to the natural formation of caves, sinking streams, and springs of cool water - proved the ideal location on which to build their new lives. In Bluegrass Paradise: Royal Spring and the Birth of Georgetown, Kentucky, author Gary A. O'Dell tells the story of the Royal Spring, the largest spring in central Kentucky. Practical and essential to the creation of a successful settlement, the spring and its location became the primary reason pioneers would eventually congregate here and found the city of Georgetown as one of the earliest Kentucky communities. In the ensuing 250 years, the Royal Spring has faithfully served the water needs of the community and the locale remains a cherished cultural and historical asset that provides greenspace within a rapidly growing city.

In 1811, architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe spurred American builders into action when he called for them to reject "the corrupt Age of Dioclesian, or the still more absurd and debased taste of Louis the XIV," and to emulate instead the ancient temples of Greece. In response, people in the antebellum trans-Appalachian region embraced the clean lines, intricate details, and stately symmetry of the Grecian style. On newly built public buildings, private homes, and religious structures, references to classical Greek architecture became the preferred ornamentation. Several antebellum cities and towns adopted the moniker of "Athens," styling themselves as centers of culture, education, and sophistication. As the trend grew, American citizens understood the name as a link between the Grecian style and the founding principles of democracy—signaling a change of taste in service to the larger American cultural ideal. In Athens on the Frontier, Patrick Lee Lucas examines the material culture of Grecian-style buildings in antebellum America to help recover nineteenth-century regional identities. As communities worked to define their built landscape and develop a shared Western identity, Lucas's study invites readers to question many of the assumptions Americans have made about divisions and cultural formation in antebellum society.

"Even in death, who has ownership over Black women's bodies? Questions like this lurk between the lines of these stunning stories engaging with the nuance of African women’s histories."Questions like this sit between the lines of this stunning collection of stories that engage the nuance of African women's histories. Their history is not just one thing, there is heartbreak and pain, and joy, and flying and magic, so much magic. An avenging spirit takes on the patriarchy from beyond the grave.An immigrant woman undergoes a naturalization ceremony in an imagined American state that demands that immigrants pay a toll of the thing they love the most to be allowed to stay. A first-generation Zimbabwean-American woman haunted by generational trauma is willing to pay the ultimate price to take her pain away - giving up her memories. A neighborhood gossip wakes up to find that houses are mysteriously vanishing in the night. A shapeshifting freedom fighter leaves a legacy of resistance to her granddaughter.In Drinking from Graveyard Wells, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu assembles a collection of poignantly reflective stories that ventilate the voices of African women charting a Black history across oceans between southern Africa and America. Ndlovu's stories play with genres ranging from softly surreal to deeply fantastical. Each narrative is wrapped in the literary eloquence and tradition of southern African mythology, in a way that transports readers into the lives of African women who have fought across time and space to be seen.Drawing on her own experiences as a Zimbabwean whose early life was spent under the Mugabe dictatorship, Ndlovu's stories are grounded in truth and empathy. Ndlovu boldly offers up alternative interpretations of a past and a present that speculates into the everyday lives of a people disregarded. Her words explore the erasure of African women - while highlighting their beauty potential and limitless possibility. Immersed in worlds both fantastical and familiar, readers find themselves walking alongside these women, grieving their pain, and celebrating their joy, all against the textured backdrop of African histories, languages, and cultures.