This dual biography focuses on the lives of two very different men who fought for and settled the American West and whose vision secured the old Northwest Territory for the new nation. The two represented contrasting American experiences: famed military leader George Rogers Clark was from the Virginia planter class. William Croghan was an Irish immigrant with tight family ties to the British in America. Yet their lives would intersect in ways that would make independence and western settlement possible.The war experiences of Clark and Croghan epitomize the American course of the Revolution. Croghan fought in the Revolutionary War at Trenton and spent the winter of 1777--1778 at Valley Forge with George Washington and LaFayette before being taken prisoner at Charleston. Clark, known as the "Hannibal of the West," was famous for his victorious Illinois campaign against the British and as an Indian fighter. Following the war, Croghan became Clark's deputy surveyor of military lands for the Virginia State Line, enabling him to acquire some 54,000 acres on the edge of the American frontier. Croghan's marriage to Lucy Clark, George Rogers Clark's sister, solidified his position in society. Clark, however, was regularly called by Virginia and the federal government to secure peace in the Ohio River Valley, leading to his financial ruin and emotional decline. Croghan remained at Clark's side throughout it all, even as he prospered in the new world they had fought to create, while Clark languished. These men nevertheless worked and eventually lived together, bound by the familial connections they shared and a political ideology honed by the Revolution.

Following historical and theoretical overview of African immigration, the heart of this book is based on oral history interviews with forty-seven of the more than twenty-two thousand Africa-born immigrants in Kentucky. From a former ambassador from Gambia, a pharmacist from South Africa, a restaurant owner from Guinea, to a certified nursing assistant from the Democratic Republic of Congo -- every immigrant has a unique and complex story of their life experiences and the decisions that led them to emigrate to the United States. The compelling narratives reveal why and how the immigrants came to the Bluegrass state -- whether it was coming voluntarily as a student or forced because of war -- and how they connect with and contribute to their home countries as well as to the US. The immigrants describe their challenges -- language, loneliness, cultural differences, credentials for employment, ignorance towards Africa, and racism -- and positive experiences such as education, job opportunities, and helpful people. One chapter focuses on family -- including interviews with the second generations -- and how the immigrants identify themselves.

This comprehensive biography is the first to present Lewis Milestone's remarkable life -- a classic rags-to-riches American narrative -- in full and explores his many acclaimed films from the silent to the sound era. Creator of All Quiet on the Western Front, Of Mice and Men, the original Ocean's Eleven and Mutiny on the Bounty, Lewis Milestone (1895-1980) was one of the most significant, prolific, and influential directors of our time. A serious artist who believed in film's power not only to entertain, but also to convey messages of social importance, Milestone was known as a man of principle in an industry not always known for an abundance of virtue. Born in Ukraine, Milestone came to America as a tough, resourceful Russian-speaking teenager and learned about film by editing footage from the front as a member of the Signal Corps of the US Army during World War I. During the course of his film career, which spanned more than 40 years, Milestone developed intense personal and professional relationships with such major Hollywood figures as Howard Hughes, Kirk Douglas, Marlene Dietrich, and Marlon Brando. Addressed are Milestone's successes -- he garnered 28 Academy Award nominations -- as well as his challenges. Using newly available archival material, this work also examines Milestone's experience during the Hollywood Blacklist period, when he was one of the first prominent Hollywood figures to fall under suspicion for his alleged Communist sympathies.

One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film -- violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise -- are just as relevant today as when the film first opened.To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action.

John Hervey Wheeler (1908--1978) was one of the civil rights movement's most influential leaders. In articulating a bold vision of regional prosperity grounded in full citizenship and economic power for African Americans, this banker, lawyer, and visionary would play a key role in the fight for racial and economic equality throughout North Carolina.Utilizing previously unexamined sources from the John Hervey Wheeler Collection at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library, this biography explores the black freedom struggle through the life of North Carolina's most influential black power broker. After graduating from Morehouse College, Wheeler returned to Durham and began a decades-long career at Mechanics and Farmers (M&F) Bank. He started as a teller and rose to become bank president in 1952. In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Wheeler to the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, a position in which he championed equal rights for African Americans and worked with Vice President Johnson to draft civil rights legislation. One of the first blacks to attain a high position in the state's Democratic Party, Wheeler became the state party's treasurer in 1968, and then its financial director.Wheeler urged North Carolina's white financial advisors to steer the region toward the end of Jim Crow segregation for economic reasons. Straddling the line between confrontation and negotiation, Wheeler pushed for increased economic opportunity for African Americans while reminding the white South that its future was linked to the plight of black southerners.

Did President Reagan's hawkish policies destroy the Soviet Union and enable the United States to win the Cold War? Many Americans believe this to be the case. In this view -- known as "triumphalism" -- Reagan's denunciations of the "evil empire" and his military buildup compelled Moscow to admit defeat. The president's triumph demonstrates that America's leaders should stand strong and threaten adversaries into submission.Drawing on both US and Soviet sources, this study demonstrates that triumphalism is a series of falsehoods about President Reagan's intentions, his policies, and the impact his administration had on the Soviet Union. In reality, the president's initially hardline posture undermined US interests and brought the superpowers to the brink of war. This work exposes Reagan's dedication to diplomacy and his unorthodox views about global security, which frequently brought him into conflict with his own advisers and allies. The president did not seek to destroy the USSR; rather, he sought to eliminate nuclear weapons.This volume also explains why Moscow chose to abandon the arms race, adopt democratic reforms, and withdraw from its ill-fated war in Afghanistan. These initiatives were part of a reform movement that had been growing in the USSR for decades before Reagan entered office. The Kremlin did not acquiesce to American pressure; rather, Soviet reformers believed the arms race had been futile and sought to move beyond the Cold War. In fact, President Reagan's initially aggressive policies had made it more difficult for Moscow to pursue these revolutionary reforms. Ultimately President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev together were able to accomplish what no one at the time thought possible -- the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. The president's opposition to nuclear weapons, his determined leadership, and his dedication to diplomacy are his most enduring legacies.

Until I was nine or ten, everyone called me Joe or Joe Hall. Then one day, my grandmother, for reasons known only to her, pulled me aside, telling me my name was "too short and too plain." She said, "Let's add your middle initial to make it more interesting. From now on, you say your name is Joe B., not just Joe. It's Joe B. Hall."Joe B. Hall is one of only three men to both play on an NCAA championship team (1949, Kentucky) and coach an NCAA championship team (1978, Kentucky), and the only one to do so for the same school. In this riveting memoir, Hall presents intimate details about his remarkable life on and off the court. He reveals never-before-heard stories about memorable players, coaches, and friends and expresses the joys and fulfillments of his rewarding life and career. During his thirteen years as head coach at the University of Kentucky, from 1972 to 1985, Joe B. Hall led the team to 297 victories. The most memorable of these is the 1978 NCAA Men's Division Basketball Championship. This legendary coach followed in the colossal footsteps of Adolph Rupp to chart his own path to success and become one of college basketball's all-time greats and winningest coaches.

Scandal, adultery, secret marriages, celebrity, divorce, custody battles, suicide attempts, and alcoholism -- the trials and tribulations of the Costellos were as riveting as any Hollywood feature film. Written with unprecedented access to the family's personal documents and artifacts -- and interviews with several family members, including Dolores Barrymore Bedell (the daughter of John Barrymore and Dolores Costello) and Helene's daughter Deirdre -- this riveting study explores the dramatic history of the Costellos and their extraordinary significance to the stage and screen.This eccentric, tragic, yet talented clan was one of the twentieth century's most accomplished families of actors -- second only to the Barrymores, with whom they intermarried and begat a film dynasty riddled with jealousy, resentment, and heartbreak. Inevitably, the Costellos' brilliant achievements would be eclipsed by their own immutable penchant for self-destruction. Patriarch Maurice "Dimples" Costello (1877--1950) was considered the first screen idol and the first great movie star until his screen career, marked by accusations of spousal abuse, drunkenness, and physical assault, abruptly ended. His daughter Dolores married John Barrymore, arguably the most famous man in Hollywood during the late 1920s and early '30s, and their son would carry on the Barrymore name to successive generations of famous actors. Costello's other daughter, Helene, was the first actress to star in an all-talking picture, The Lights of New York (1928). However, her career was wracked by scandal in 1932 during her very public divorce from actor-director Lowell Sherman, who testified that his wife was a drunk and an avid reader of pornography.The original members of this pioneering family may be gone, but the name and legacy of the Costellos will live on through their accomplishments, films, and descendants -- most notably, actress Drew Barrymore.

"The traditional neighborly work of killing a hog and preparing it as food for humans is either a fine art or a shameful mess. It requires knowledge, experience, skill, good sense, and sympathy," writes Wendell Berry in the essay portion of this book. In November 1979 as in years before, neighborly families gathered to do one of the ceremonious jobs of farm life: hog killing. Tanya Berry had been given a camera by New Farm magazine to photograph Kentucky farmers at work, and for two days at the farm of Owen and Loyce Flood in Henry County, she captured this culmination of a year's labor raising livestock. Here, in the resulting photographs, published for the first time, the American agrarian tradition is shown at its most harmonious, with strong men and women toiling with shared purpose towards a common wealth.Tanya Berry reveals intimate, expressive moments: the teams of young men hoisting animals by physical strength onto a gambrel and wagon for butchering, women grinding meat and mixing sausage and readying hams for preservation, and the solidarity of human beings coming together in reverence for the food they would eat, the lives and bodies which would be taken, and those which would be strengthened.

With more than fifty distilleries in the state, bourbon is as synonymous with Kentucky as horses and basketball. As one of the commonwealth's signature industries, bourbon distilling has influenced the landscape and heritage of the region for more than two centuries. Blending several topics -- tax revenue, railroads, the mechanics of brewing, geography, landscapes, and architecture -- this primer and geographical guide presents a detailed history of the development of Kentucky's distilling industry. Nineteenth-century distilling changed from an artisanal craft practiced by farmers and millers to a large-scale mechanized industry that practiced increasingly refined production techniques. Distillers often operated at comparatively remote sites -- the "backroads" -- to take advantage of water sources or transport access. Some distillers adopted mechanization and the steam engine, forgoing water power -- a change that permitted geographical relocation of distilleries away from traditional sites along creeks or at large springs to urban or rural rail-side sites.Based on extensive archival research that includes private paper collections, newspapers, and period documents, this work places the distilling process in its environmental, geographical, and historical context. Bourbon's Backroads reveals the places where bourbon's heritage was made -- from old and new distilleries, storage warehouses, railroad yards, and factories where copper fermenting vessels are made -- and why the industry continues to thrive.

Horse racing was so popular and influential between 1930 and 1960 that nearly 150 racing themed films were released, including A Day at the Races, Thoroughbreds Don't Cry, and National Velvet. This fast-paced, gossipy history explores the relationship between the Hollywood film industry, the horse racing industry, and the extraordinary participation of producers, directors, and actors in the Sport of Kings. Alan Shuback details how all three of Southern California's major racetracks were founded by Hollywood luminaries: Hal Roach was cofounder of Santa Anita Park, Bing Crosby founded Del Mar with help from Pat O'Brien, and Jack and Harry Warner founded Hollywood Park with help from dozens of people in the film community. The races also provided a social and sporting outlet for the film community -- studios encouraged film stars to spend a day at the races, especially when a new film was being released. The stars' presence at the track generated a bevy of attention from eager photographers and movie columnists, as well as free publicity for their new films. Moreover, Louis B. Mayer, Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Betty Grable, and Don Ameche were all major Thoroughbred owners, while Mickey Rooney, Chico Marx, and John Huston were notorious for their unsuccessful forays to the betting windows.

When Katherine Pettit and May Stone arrived in the rural Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky to engage in social settlement work in the late 1800s, they were unmarried outsiders, living in pitched tents on the side of a hill, and perceived as odd, peculiar -- and "quare" (the local pronunciation of "queer"). Yet these strong, capable educators wanted to "learn all we can and teach all we can," and in doing so would persevere to establish the Hindman Settlement School in 1902. When Lucy Furman arrived at the school five years later, she was already an accomplished writer, but used her two decades of living and working at the school as fruitful and prolific inspiration for her beloved novels. Printed for the first time since 1941, this lightly fictionalized account of Pettit's and Stone's entrances into the Hindman community offers the contemporary reader a unique look at this country's early rural/urban divide. From the time of its first publication in The Atlantic to the last edition of the bound book, The Quare Women was a big success. Readers loved the book's dramatic adventure and romance, as well as the real-life research that Furman used to create the story.To this day, the Hindman Settlement School believes in "honoring the past, improving the present, and planning for the bright and colorful future of Central Appalachia." This book endures as a lasting testament to the spirit and legacy of these trailblazing women.

Every individual is entitled to quality health care, but medical professionals are not always equipped with the training and knowledge to provide the necessary care to patients -- especially when it comes to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities and individuals with differences of sex development (DSD). For this reason, the University of Louisville School of Medicine established eQuality (www.louisville. edu/medicine/equality/), an inclusive LGBTQ/DSD-affected health training program that was integrated across the medical student curriculum.After the launch of this program, the university realized that its students needed more clinical skills training to translate classroom learning into patient care. The eQuality Toolkit addresses those gaps by training medical students to care for LGBTQ/DSD-affected communities. These patients experience repeated instances of stigma and discrimination related to their identities, with consequent health and healthcare disparities that knowledgeable healthcare providers can help to address.The manual presents a practical and fundamental approach to LGBTQ/DSD health and clinical care, and it addresses several categories, including gender-affirming care, inclusive communication skills, and consideration for youth and family planning. The book, which has been used to train medical students in an educational setting, also functions independently as a clinical skills supplement for practicing providers. Most importantly, this resource emphasizes that providers who have open and thoughtful conversations with all patients will help ensure that quality and effective health care is provided.

His life and career were the embodiment of the American dream. Born in Poland, John Shalikashvili (1936--2011) descended from aristocratic European families that served with distinction in both battle and government for centuries. After barely surviving the Warsaw Uprising, he and his family fled to Germany during World War II to escape advancing Soviet troops and emigrated to the United States in 1952. Shalikashvili was drafted into the army as a private in 1958 and rose steadily through the ranks, serving in every level of unit command from platoon to division. In 1993 Shalikashvili was tapped by President Bill Clinton to replace General Colin Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, becoming the first immigrant, first draftee, and first Officer Candidate School graduate to hold the position.This first-ever biography of Shalikashvili's riches-to-rags-and-back-to-riches story reveals how his distinctive background helped him become one of the United States's greatest military leaders. He exhibited a unique and unconventional leadership style -- employing expertise, humility, straightforwardness, and empathy -- that he adroitly used to resolve or prevent destructive conflict. His distinctive leadership style greatly benefited the United States, Europe, and beyond: as when he led the rescue of 500,000 Kurdish refugees in the first Gulf War's aftermath; when he represented Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell in helping secure loose nukes in the former Soviet republics; as he joined forces with fellow immigrant Madeleine Albright on the Partnership for Peace initiative and NATO enlargement program in the 1990s; and in retirement, when he helped end the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, thereby finally allowing gay servicemembers to serve openly without fear of dishonorable discharge.

This study presents a comprehensive look at a complex man who exhibited an unfaltering commitment to the military and to his soldiers but whose career was marked by controversy. As a senior Army officer in World Wars I and II, Lt. Gen. Edward M. Almond lived by the adage that "units don't fail, leaders do." He was chosen to command the 92nd Infantry Division -- one of only two African American divisions to see combat during WWII -- but when the infantry performed poorly in Italy in 1944--1945, he asserted that it was due to their inferiority as a race and not their maltreatment by a separate but unequal society. He would later command the X Corps during the Inchon invasion that changed the course of the Korean War, but his accomplishments would be overshadowed by his abrasive personality and tactical mistakes.This book addresses how Almond's early education at the Virginia Military Institute, with its strong Confederate and military influences, shaped his military prowess. Presented is a thorough assessment of Almond's military record; how he garnered respect for his aggressiveness, courage in combat, strong dedication, and leadership; and how he was affected by the loss of his son and son-in-law in combat during WWII. Following the war, Almond would return to the US to assume command of the US Army War College, but would find himself unprepared for a changing world. This volume asserts that since his death, his bigoted views have come to dominate his place in history and undermine his military achievements.

Louisville-born and nationally renowned sculptor Enid Yandell (1869--1934) was ahead of her time. She began her career when sculpture was considered too physical, too messy, and too masculine for women. Yandell challenged the gender norms of early-twentieth-century artistic practice and became an award-winning sculptor, independent artist, and activist for women's suffrage. This study examines Yandell's life and work: how she grew from a young, Southern dilettante -- the daughter of a Confederate medical officer -- into a mature, gifted artist who ran in circles with more established male artists in New York and Paris, such as Frederick MacMonnies and Auguste Rodin. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, she was one of a select group of women sculptors, known as the White Rabbits, who sculpted the statues and architectural embellishments of the fair. As a result of her success in Chicago, Yandell was commissioned to create a twenty-five foot figure of Pallas Athena for Nashville's Centennial Exposition in 1897. Newspapers hailed it as the largest statue ever created by a woman. Yandell's command of classical subject matter was matched by her abilities with large-scale, figurative works such as the Daniel Boone statue in Cherokee Park, Louisville. In 1898 Yandell was among the first women to be selected for membership in the National Sculpture Society, the first organization of professional sculptors formed in the United States.Presented to coincide with the 150th anniversary of her birth, this study demonstrates the ways in which Yandell was a pioneer and draws attention to her legacy.