Mississippi Blue


Book Description

Sixty of the 169 cyanotypes from the MacKenzie Album, showing views, boats, dams, and bridges on the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Louis from 1883-1891.







Mississippi John Hurt


Book Description

Winner, Best History, 2012 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research When Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) was "rediscovered" by blues revivalists in 1963, his musicianship and recordings transformed popular notions of prewar country blues. At seventy-one he moved to Washington, D.C., from Avalon, Mississippi, and became a live-wire connection to a powerful, authentic past. His intricate and lively style made him the most sought after musician among the many talents the revival brought to light. Mississippi John Hurt provides this legendary creator's life story for the first time. Biographer Philip Ratcliffe traces Hurt's roots to the moment his mother Mary Jane McCain and his father Isom Hurt were freed from slavery. Anecdotes from Hurt's childhood and teenage years include the destiny-making moment when his mother purchased his first guitar for $1.50 when he was only nine years old. Stories from his neighbors and friends, from both of his wives, and from his extended family round out the community picture of Avalon. US census records, Hurt's first marriage record in 1916, images of his first autographed LP record, and excerpts from personal letters written in his own hand provide treasures for fans. Ratcliffe details Hurt's musical influences and the origins of his style and repertoire. The author also relates numerous stories from the time of his success, drawing on published sources and many hours of interviews with people who knew Hurt well, including the late Jerry Ricks, Pat Sky, Stefan Grossman and Max Ochs, Dick Spottswood, and the late Mike Stewart. In addition, some of the last photographs taken of the legendary musician are featured for the first time in Mississippi John Hurt.




1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi


Book Description

Presents a children's counting picture book in poetry and prose based upon the history, heritage, and industry of Mississippi.




One Mississippi


Book Description

You need only one best friend, Daniel Musgrove figures, to make it through high school alive. After his family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, Daniel finds fellow outsider Tim Cousins. The two become inseparable, sharing a fascination with ridicule, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. But soon things go terribly wrong. The friends commit a small crime that grows larger and larger, and threatens to engulf the whole town. Arnita, the first black prom queen in the history of the school, is injured and wakes up a different person. And Daniel, Tim, and their families are swept up in a shocking chain of events. "There is nothing small about Childress's fine novel. It's big in all the ways that matter -- big in daring, big in insight, and big-hearted. Really, really big-hearted." -New Orleans Times-Picayune




Airships


Book Description

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award, Airships is a “strong, original, tragic and funny” story collection of “the creative Southern tradition” (Alfred Kazin). One of the most revered short story collections of the past fifty years, Airships remains a vital text in the history of the American short story. The award-winning contemporary classic features twenty wildly original, exuberant, often hilarious stories that celebrate the universal peculiarities of the new American South—a land of high school band contests where good old boys from Vicksburg are reunited in Vietnam, and petty nostalgia and the incessant pain of disappointed love prevail in spite of our worst efforts. Hailed by none other than Larry McMurtry as “the best young writer to appear in the South since Flannery O’Connor,” Barry Hannah’s immense storytelling gifts are on striking display in this essential work. “Hannah takes fiction by surprise—scenes, shocks, sounds and amazements: an explosive but meticulous originality.” —Cynthia Ozick




Hidden History of Mississippi Blues


Book Description

Although many bluesmen began leaving the Magnolia State in the early twentieth century to pursue fortune and fame up north, many others stayed home. These musicians remained rooted to the traditions of their land, which came to define a distinctive playing style unique to Mississippi. They didn't simply play the blues, they lived it. Travel through the hallowed juke joints and cotton fields with author Roger Stolle as he recounts the history of Mississippi blues and the musicians who have kept it alive. Some of these bluesmen remain to carry on this proud legacy, while others have passed on, but Hidden History of Mississippi Blues ensures none will be forgotten.







Views on the Mississippi


Book Description

"Henry Peter Bosse (1844-1903) is now recognized as the leading photographer of the Mississippi River during the late nineteenth century: he extensively photographed the Upper Mississippi from 1883 to 1893, a time of unprecedented environmental and social change. His work was practically unknown until five separate volumes of his photographs were discovered within the past decade. Since then, his photographs have been exhibited at the Smithsonian and other national museums and purchased by private art collectors around the world." "Views on the Mississippi brings together for the first time almost one hundred of Bosse's most stunning images. These photographs, tracing the river from Minneapolis to St. Louis, capture the Mississippi as it was being transformed from an untamed natural wonder to a modern commercial highway. Presenting wagon and railroad bridges, towns and villages along the banks, and the steamboats that served them, Bosse's photography depicts the river at the fulcrum between the nostalgic, romantic era recorded by Mark Twain and the coming century of industrial development and environmental alterations (the navigation projects of the Army Corps are among the changes documented by Bosse). Also included is a detailed reproduction of Bosse's rare landmark map of the river, first published in 1887-88."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Sons of Mississippi


Book Description

They stand as unselfconscious as if the photograph were being taken at a church picnic and not during one of the pitched battles of the civil rights struggle. None of them knows that the image will appear in Life magazine or that it will become an icon of its era. The year is 1962, and these seven white Mississippi lawmen have gathered to stop James Meredith from integrating the University of Mississippi. One of them is swinging a billy club. More than thirty years later, award-winning journalist and author Paul Hendrickson sets out to discover who these men were, what happened to them after the photograph was taken, and how racist attitudes shaped the way they lived their lives. But his ultimate focus is on their children and grandchildren, and how the prejudice bequeathed by the fathers was transformed, or remained untouched, in the sons. Sons of Mississippi is a scalding yet redemptive work of social history, a book of eloquence and subtlely that tracks the movement of racism across three generations and bears witness to its ravages among both black and white Americans.