The citizens of the small town of Blakesburg see the aurora borealis and decide Judgment Day has come in this 1946 best-seller.

One of the first great reference tools on the Commonwealth, this WPA Guide is an important, vital part of our heritage. While it includes brief essays describing Kentucky's history, folklore, education, industry, geology, ethnic mix and other topics, the most remarkable feature is the driving tours that are as accurate today as they were more than half a century ago. Careful annotations give directions, point out historical and tourist sites, describe the country side, and even provide mileage for the drives.

History has not been kind to Hannah More. This once lionized writer and activist -- the most influential female philanthropist of her day -- is now considered by many to be the embodiment of pious morality and reactionary anti-feminism. Largely because of her belief in separate spheres for men and women, More has been vilified by modern-day feminists. The first biography to examine the complete range of her life and work, The World of Hannah More depicts the author as a forceful voice in her own day and one who, from the point of view of plain justice, today deserves a more nuanced treatment. Without denying the problems More presents for modern readers, Patricia Demers has produced a balanced revisionist study of a woman enormously influential in late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century England. By examining the career of this cultural warrior, situating her major texts in relation to contemporaries, and addressing her published writing, philanthropic activities, and voluminous correspondence, Demers anchors The World of Hannah More in the work itself -- an appropriate and just response to a woman who took pride in living to some purpose. Trying to deal justly with More and her female moral imperialism requires admitting both the expansiveness and the limitations of her charity, methodology and vision. Without venerating or trivializing, Demers pursues the doubleness and contradictions of More's largely neglected or superficially mined works, from the determined experiments of the earliest plays to the poignantly revealing essays on practical piety, Christian morals, and Saint Paul.

The core dilemma in environmental advocacy may be illustrated by the question, "When we communicate about the world, should we stress what we know or what we feel?" The contributors to The Symbolic Earth argue that it is more important to decide how we should talk about what we know and feel. In their view, the environment is larely a product of how we talk about the world. Because the environment is a social construction, the only hope we have of preserving it is to understand and alter the fundamental ways we discuss it. This collection first examines the ways in which discourse creates environment perceptions. Subjects discussed range from the description of natural scenery to the advocacy of political interest groups, from the everyday interactions of citizens facing environmental crises to the greenwashing of corporate imagemakers, and from the psychology of the mass public to the social constructions of the mass media. The authors include nationally known scholars of environmental history, rhetorical theory, ethnography, communication and journalism studies, public policy, and media criticism.

In the heart of the Bluegrass, basketball is king of collegiate athletics. But it wasn't always so. Before Big Blue chronicles the early history of organized sports at the University of Kentucky, from the tenuous beginnings under student leadership, through the early scandals, financial instability, and clashes with administration, to the Purge of 1938 that paved the way for basketball's ascendancy. Once upon a time in Lexington, football ruled the athletic department. In the 1890s and 1900s the most intense competition was with crosstown rival Transylvania University. The annual Thanksgiving Day game was the biggest event of the season, and its gate receipts essentially funded the entire department. Among other highlights, Gregory Kent Stanley reveals the story behind the Wildcats' nickname, reports on the "greased pants game" against Mississippi State in 1914, and divulges the origins of the post-victory nightshirt parades through downtown.When basketball finally arrived on campus, it was the women's team that was organized first. Its transfer out of the women's physical education department in 1903 led to a twenty-year turf war that was one of the period's most intense. Whether played by men or by women, however, basketball during the early years of the century was of minor consequence. The men's team played in a gym without facilities for spectators, most players were from the football team, and all the early coaches -- including Adolph Rupp -- assisted with the football program. Nevertheless, the early years showed signs of the success to come: the 9-0 team of 1912, which never trailed an opponent; the 1921 squad, losers of only one game and winners of the school's first tournament; and Rupp's winning percentage of.820 during the 1930s that saved his job during President McVey's massive reorganization of the athletic department.Before Big Blue tells a story both unique and universal. As the first comprehensive history of the rise of intercollegiate athletics at UK, it makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature of sports history.

" Award-winning journalist Patsy Sims journeyed through the back roads of the South, along the sawdust trail, to take part in the lives of seven American revivalists, their families, crew members, and followers. She attended services conducted by Pentecostal evangelists, with audiences ranging from almost fifty to five thousand. Before, after, and in between she conducted hundred of interviews. What she discovered is a fascinating world dominated by colorful, compelling, unorthodox men who sprang out of a tradition that dates back almost two hundred years. With descriptive, evocative prose, Sims allows readers to vicariously experience old-time religion: a revivalist attempting to raise his son from the dead, a week with an east Tennessee congregation of snakehandlers, the opening-night jitters of a beginning evangelist, and the loneliness of the road for the veterans. Sims's rendering of what goes on in the tents and tabernacles of America allows the people and events to speak for themselves.

In 1805, at the height of the period of early religious excitement in Kentucky, three members of the Shaker community in New Lebanon, New York, came to the Commonwealth of Kentucky to recruit converts. Soon there were little communities of Believers at Pleasant Hill in Mercer County and at South Union in Logan County. These settlements survived into the twentieth century as centers of worship and communal life; the buildings the Shakers erected here and many of their tools and artifacts remain to delight the eye today. But it is the life of the Shakers as well as the monuments they left that Julia Neal explores. Using the detailed journals and other records kept at both communities, she recounts the early struggles against poverty and persecution, the high hopes of the 1850s when the Shaker idea of communal life seemed to have borne fruit at last, and the hardship and violence of Civil War and Reconstruction days, from which the Kentucky Shakers were never to recover. This absorbing account of the Shakers at Pleasant Hill and South Union is, like so much else associated with the Shakers, simple, functional, and beautiful.

Victorian fiction has been read and analyzed from a wide range of perspectives in the past century. But how did the novelists themselves read and respond to each other's creations when they first appeared? Jerome Meckier answers that intriguing question in this ground-breaking study of what he terms the Victorian realism wars. Meckier argues that nineteenth-century British fiction should be seen as a network of intersecting reactions and counteractions in which the novelists rethought and rewrote each other's novels as a way of enhancing their own credibility. In an increasingly relative world, thanks to the triumph of a scientific secularity, the goal of the novelist was to establish his or her own credentials as a realist, hence a reliable social critic, by undercutting someone else's -- usually Charles Dickens's.Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, and especially George Eliot attempted to make room for themselves in the 1850s and 1860s by pushing Dickens aside. Wilkie Collins tried a different form of parodic revaluation: he strove to outdo Dickens at the kind of novel Dickens thought he did best, the kind his other rivals tried to cancel, tone down, or repair, ostensibly for being too melodramatic but actually for expressing too negative a world view.For his part, Dickens -- determined to remain inimitable -- replied to all of his rivals by redoing them as spiritedly as they had reused his characters and situations to make their own statements and to discredit his.Thus Meckier redefines Victorian realism as the bravura assertion by a major novelist (or one soon to be) that he or she was a better realist than Dickens. By suggesting the ways Victorian novelist read and rewrote each other's work, this innovative study alters present day perceptions of such double-purpose novels as Felix Holt, Bleak House, Middlemarch, North and South, Hard Times, The Woman in White, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Marine Corps Fighter Squadron 214 was hastily organized in the field during World War II to meet the urgent need for another combat squadron in the South Pacific. The squadron, self-named the "Black Sheep," went on under the leadership of the swashbuckling "Pappy" Boyington to become the most famous in Marine Corps history. Now comes the true story of the Black Sheep Squadron and the men who wrote its record in the Pacific skies. Once They Were Eagles tells how and why the squadron was formed, provides brief sketches of every member, and creates a vivid picture of the exciting but deadly aerial sorties over the South Pacific. Frank E. Walton located the thirty-four survivors of the fifty-one original Black Sheep. In a unique series of interviews, former "Eagles" share their recollections of those days of high adventure and their experiences in the years to follow.

In this study of Kentucky pioneer life, Charles R. Staples creates a colorful record of Lexington's first twenty-seven years. He writes of the establishment of an urban center in the midst of the frontier expansion, and in the process documents Lexington's vanishing history. Staples begins with the settlement of the town, describing its early struggles and movement toward becoming the "capitol" of Fayette County. He also presents interesting pictures of the early pioneers and their livelihood: food, dress, houses, cooking utensils, "house raisings," religious meetings, horse races, and other types of entertainment.First published in 1939, this reprint provides those interested in the early history of Kentucky with a comprehensive look at Lexington's pioneer period. Staples recreates a time when downtown's busiest streets were still wilderness and a land rich with agricultural potential was developing commercial elements. Because he wrote during a period when much of pioneer Lexington remained, he provides a wealth of primary information that could not be assembled again.

Ten years in the making, The Kentucky Breeding Bird Atlas presents the results of a seven-year survey of all birds that nest in the Bluegrass State, providing photographs of each species. This work summarizes the distribution and abundance of these bird species, and describes such recent phenomena as the invasions of the Blue Grosbeak and House Finch and the notable decline of other familiar species.Introductory material outlines the methodology used to complete the survey and summarizes its results. Of particular interest, this work helps to document the effect human alteration of the landscape has had on our bird populations. Some of the most common and widespread species in Kentucky today, for example, may have been among the most rare only two hundred years ago.Information for each species includes its current and historical status in the state, habitat preferences, specific details of the construction and placement of nests, and other pertinent aspects of nesting biology. Results of the survey are organized by physiographic region and degree of forestation. For rare or locally distributed species, more specific details concerning individual breeding records are given. Accompanying maps plot each species' distribution and abundance within the state. An additional section briefly summarizes the former status of twelve extinct or extirpated species.The Kentucky Breeding Bird Atlas is sponsored by the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission and the Nongame Wildlife Program of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources in cooperation with the Kentucky Ornithological Society.

Chains carved from a single block of wood, cages whittled with wooden balls rattling inside -- all "made with just a pocketknife" -- are among our most enduring folk designs. Who makes them and why? what is their history? what do they mean for their makers, for their viewers, for our society? Simon J. Bronner portrays four wood carvers in southern Indiana, men who had been transplanted from the rural landscapes of their youth to industrial towns. After retiring, they took up a skill they remembered from childhood. Bronner discusses how creativity helped these men adjust to change and how viewers' responses to carving reflect their own backgrounds. By recording the narratives of these men's lives, the stories and anecdotes that laced their conversation, Bronner finds new insight into the functions and symbolism of traditional craft. Including anew illustrated afterword in which the author discusses recent developments in the carver's art, this new edition will appeal to carvers, scholars, and anyone interested in traditional woodworking.

This volume is the first comprehensive and in-depth history of Kentucky during the first half of the 20th century. State Historian James C. Klotter examines in depth not only the people and their lives but also the state's economy, educational system, cultural activities, politics, and folkways. He demonstrates how, enduring images and stereotypes developed that have shaped the state's progress throughout the century. In his view, the first half of the century were years of unrealized promises and failed dreams. Yet amid poverty there was plenty; along with educational weaknesses were cultural strengths; beside partisanship there was leadership."This is an account of what happened in Kentucky and to Kentucky," Klotter writes. "It focuses on the process and the possibility of change, and how the people sought to adjust and to balance the positives of their past with the promises of their future. To know better what happened between 1900 and 1950 requires a study of not only the formal actions taken, but also the irony of actions, the presence of paradoxes, and the quieter things that shaped the state's character, its essence, its heart and its soul."A landmark in historical writing about the state, Kentucky: Portrait in Paradox is complemented by more than one hundred photographs and illustrations.Published by the Kentucky Historical Society and distributed by the University Press of Kentucky.

Kentucky's rich archaeological heritage spans thousands of years, and the Commonwealth remains fertile ground for study of the people who inhabited the midcontinent before, during, and after European settlement. This long-awaited volume brings together the most recent research on Kentucky's prehistory and early history, presenting both an accurate descriptive and an authoritative interpretation of Kentucky's past.The book is arranged chronologically -- from the Ice Age to modern times, when issues of preservation and conservation have overtaken questions of identification and classification. For each time slice of Kentucky's past, the contributors describe typical communities and settlement patterns, major changes from previous cultural periods, the nature of the economy and subsistence, artifacts, the general health and characteristics of the people, and regional cultural differences.Sites discussed include the Green River shell mounds, the Central Kentucky Adena mounds and enclosures, Eastern Kentucky rockshelters, the important Wickliffe site at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Fort Ancient culture villages, and the fortified towns of the Mississippian period in Western Kentucky.The authors draw from a wealth of unpublished material and offer the detailed insights and perspectives of specialists who have focused much of their professional careers on the scientific investigation of Kentucky's prehistory. The book's many graphic elements -- maps, artifact drawings, photographs, and village plans -- combined with a straightforward and readable text, provide a format that will appeal to the general reader as well as to students and specialists in other fields who wish to learn more about Kentucky's archaeology.

Because they're small, they're easy to overlook. Because their voices don't carry far, it's hard to hear them. We'd rather not look too closely or listen too carefully. And if we don't see them, maybe they'll just go away.But the invisible homeless cannot simply fly away to never-never land, or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or make a wish upon a star. These homeless people are children, and they are not always in the inner cities, as Yvonne Vissing shows in this poignant study of families, housing, and poverty. As many as a third of our nation's homeless are found in rural and small-town America. They are all too commonly out of sight-and out of mind.Homelessness in small towns and rural areas is on the rise. Drawing on interviews with and case studies of three hundred children and their families, with supporting statistics from federal, state, and private agencies, Vissing illustrates the impact this social problem has upon education, health, and the economy. Families vividly describe the ways they have fallen through cracks in the social structure, from home ownership into homelessness. Looking toward the future, Vissing asks if homeless children are destined to become dysfunctional adults and provides a sixteen-year-old girl's moving testimony of the vagabond life her homeless family led.While the economy and the very nature of the family have changed over past decades, housing, education, and human service industries have failed to adapt. Vissing provides a planning model for improving support networks within communities and challenges Americans with a fundamental philosophical question: Do homeless children merit fullscale social intervention? Ultimately, Out of Sight, Out of Mind compels us not merely to voice concerns for family and community values, but also to assert this commitment consciously through improved essential services.

The most colorful member of Kentucky's most illustrious family, Cassius Marcellus Clay is a legendary figure in the Bluegrass. This lively biography records both the traditions surrounding Clay and the historical facts of his life, which are themselves the stuff of legend. Although Clay was a dedicated emancipationist, his real interest lay in broad issues of human freedom. The story of Clay's True American, his service in the Mexican War, his accomplishments as Lincoln's minister to Russia, and his active post-Civil War political life are all told against the background of the climactic events of a lifetime that spanned almost a century of American history.