The Mississippi Encyclopedia


Book Description

Recipient of the 2018 Special Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and Recipient of a 2018 Heritage Award for Education from the Mississippi Heritage Trust The perfect book for every Mississippian who cares about the state, this is a mammoth collaboration in which thirty subject editors suggested topics, over seven hundred scholars wrote entries, and countless individuals made suggestions. The volume will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about Mississippi and the people who call it home. The book will be especially helpful to students, teachers, and scholars researching, writing about, or otherwise discovering the state, past and present. The volume contains entries on every county, every governor, and numerous musicians, writers, artists, and activists. Each entry provides an authoritative but accessible introduction to the topic discussed. The Mississippi Encyclopedia also features long essays on agriculture, archaeology, the civil rights movement, the Civil War, drama, education, the environment, ethnicity, fiction, folklife, foodways, geography, industry and industrial workers, law, medicine, music, myths and representations, Native Americans, nonfiction, poetry, politics and government, the press, religion, social and economic history, sports, and visual art. It includes solid, clear information in a single volume, offering with clarity and scholarship a breadth of topics unavailable anywhere else. This book also includes many surprises readers can only find by browsing.




Mississippi Memories: Nights Under a Tin Roof and Life After Mississippi


Book Description

Mississippi Memories is a collection of 77 poems from Nights Under A Tin Roof and Life After Mississippi. The author, a former U.S. Air Force pilot, newspaper reporter, national magazine editor and Fortune 500 executive, returns to his Mississippi roots to examine the forces which shaped him. Autry's narrative verse focuses on the rhythms of rural southern life, an odyssey of country funerals, weddings, church revivals, family reunions, and courtships drawn from a unique American heritage. "The landscape of Autry's memories is familiar to anyone who has heard the voice of the whippoorwill or the baying of hounds in the night or who has savored the smell of fresh-turned earth." (The Atlanta Journal) "Autry writes of farm life, of revival meetings and teenage romance, of weddings and reunions and funerals, in vivid, sensuous detail. His sure hand moves with gentleness through his material." (The Richmond News Leader)




Nights Under a Tin Roof


Book Description

A collection of poems and photographs through which the author recalls his youth in the American South during the 1940s and 50s.




Forthcoming Books


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Words on Cassette


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Rivers


Book Description

For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, “a wonderfully cinematic story” (The Washington Post) set in the post-Katrina South after violent storms have decimated the region. It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land. The Gulf Coast has been brought to its knees. Years of catastrophic hurricanes have so punished and depleted the region that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules—including Cohen, whose wife and unborn child were killed during an evacuation attempt. He buried them on family land and never left. But after he is ambushed and his home is ransacked, Cohen is forced to flee. On the road north, he is captured by Aggie, a fanatical, snake-handling preacher who has a colony of captives and dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region. Now Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s prisoners across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that poses the greatest threat of all. Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a Southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.“This is the kind of book that lifts you up with its mesmerizing language then pulls you under like a riptide” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).




The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation


Book Description

An exploration of the Mississippi River, tracing its length from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, and discussing its important role in the history of the United States. Includes photographs, period illustrations, artwork, documents, and maps.




The Complete Travel Books, Anecdotes & Memoirs of Mark Twain (Illustrated)


Book Description

This unique collection of "The Complete Travel Books, Anecdotes & Memoirs of Mark Twain (Illustrated)" has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards. "The Innocents Abroad" humorously chronicles Twain's "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land in 1867. "Roughing It" follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the Wild West during the years 1861–1867. The book illustrates many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to Salt Lake City, gold and silver prospecting, real-estate speculation and a journey to the Kingdom of Hawaii. "Old Times on the Mississippi" is a short account of Twain's experiences as a cub pilot, learning the Mississippi river. "A Tramp Abroad" details Twain's journey through central and southern Europe with his friend. As the two men make their way through Germany, the Alps, and Italy, they encounter situations made all the more humorous by their reactions to them. "Life on the Mississippi" is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, recounting his trip along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans after the War. "Following the Equator" – In an attempt to extricate himself from debt, Twain undertook a tour of the British Empire in 1895, a route chosen to provide numerous opportunities for lectures in English. The book is a social commentary, critical of racism towards Blacks, Asians, and Indigenous groups. "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" presents a series of stories about a trip that Twain and some friends took to Bermuda from New York City. "Chapters from my Autobiography" comprises a rambling collection of anecdotes and ruminations of Mark Twain, assembled during his life. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.




Responsible Adults


Book Description

"In Responsible Adults, a mother uses her reluctant adolescent daughter as a model for her art photography. "Your mother loves you best when you are ugly," the girl comes to believe. A stepfather attacks a neighbor boy for exposing a shameful secret to his stepdaughter. A pregnant and undocumented young woman brings new life to a failing church and its dwindling congregation. Farms fail, families break apart, work is hard to come by, and the characters in these fictional Midwestern towns are fueled by grief and hope, loss and desire. What happens when responsible adults are anything but responsible people? When they are at best, irresponsible, and at worst, dangerous?" -- from backcover.