Mississippi Solo


Book Description

INTRODUCED BY ADAM WEYMOUTH, award-winning author of The Kings of Yukon 'A wonderful book -- and a highly original contribution to the literature of travel' PAUL THEROUX 'The Mississippi. Mighty, muddy, dangerous, rebellious and yet a strong, fathering kind of river. The river captured my imagination when I was young and has never let go.' Mississippi Solo tells the story of one man's voyage by canoe down the Mississippi River from its source in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico - a longtime dream, and a journey of over 2,000 miles through the heart of America. Paddling into the Southern states - going from 'where there ain't no black folks to where they still don't like us much' - Eddy is confronted by the legacy of slavery and modern racism, including an incident with a pair of shotgun-toting bigots. There are also the dangers of passing barges, wild dogs roaming the wooded shore, and navigating a waterway that grows vaster, and more hazardous, every day. But Eddy also encounters immense human kindness, friendship and hospitality, as well as coming to know the majestic power - and the awesome dangers - of the river itself. Mississippi Solo is an unforgettable American adventure.




Lansing to LeClaire Travel Guide


Book Description




Back to Mississippi


Book Description

Mary Winstead grew up in Minneapolis, captivated by her fathers tales of his boyhood in rural Mississippi. As a child, she visited her relatives down South, and her nostalgia for that world and its people would compel her to collect her fathers stories for her own children. But Winsteads research into her family history led her to a series of horrifying revelations: about her relatives ingrained racism, their involvement with the Klan, and their connection to the infamous 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney.Writing with dignity, humility, and a profound sense of time and place, Winstead chronicles her awakening to painful truths about people she loved and thought she knew. She profiles her father, a man of remarkable charm and secretiveness. She traces her familys roots through post-Civil War poverty, Southern pride, and Jim Crow laws, exploring racism on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Most movingly, she details her own inner war, a battle between her love for her family and their untenable beliefs and practices.




Mississippi Solo


Book Description

The true story of a young black man's quest: to canoe the length of the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans.




Dark Journey


Book Description

"Remarkable for its relentless truth-telling, and the depth and thoroughness of its investigation, for the freshness of its sources, and for the shock power of its findings. Even a reader who is not unfamiliar with the sources and literature of the subject can be jolted by its impact."--C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books "Dark Journey is a superb piece of scholarship, a book that all students of southern and African-American history will find valuable and informative."--David J. Garrow, Georgia Historical Quarterly




Mississippi to Africa


Book Description

Mississippi to Africa captures Collier's fourteen-year journey in unearthing the buried history of his maternal grandmother's family - a journey that took him back seven generations, from northern Mississippi to the Piedmont hills of South Carolina, and even back to a specific people and region in West Africa where his ancestry undoubtedly began. Trekking the paths of his ancestors and their displaced relatives before Emancipation (1863), this emotion-filled journey traversed down an intricate paper trail of federal, state, and local records, other public records, and oral histories, presented in a narrative style to inspire, entice, and propel readers into the fascinating world of genealogy and historical discoveries. Collier also uncovered the ways in which his ancestors ingeniously retained aspects of their African heritage. DNA technology confirmed his research findings and verified ancestral ties. The reader will gain many research tips and techniques along the journey.




A Sportsman's Journey


Book Description

A Sportsman's Journey lyrically and spiritually connects readers with the natural world. Donald C. Jackson explores the rhythms and ways of hunting and fishing, particularly in America’s Deep South, and in so doing helps readers understand and find meaning in why hunters and anglers venture far afield. Journeying alongside the author, readers will savor the magic of sunrises and the mystery of twilight. Hearts will quicken as deer drift from shadows and ducks circle a woodland pond. The ocean will challenge them as they fight large fish from the deck of a wave-tossed boat far out at sea. Restless winds will whisper messages during a spring squirrel hunt on a Mississippi farm. Bird dogs, old guns, old friends, and times shared with loved ones will remind anglers and hunters of those special, shared memories. Ancient forests and powerful rivers remind us of our fragile, ephemeral state. Quail hunts strengthen cherished relationships with companions. Encounters with a mountain man will take us into a world thought to have vanished generations ago. A gathering of anglers on a Gulf Coast fishing pier at night reminds us of those hidden communities that exist around us, and are often unrecognized or perhaps even unknown. Jackson reveals how all of us depend on the natural world and share very personal interactions with it and with each other. This book reminds us that rediscovering, resurrecting, and celebrating these primal linkages are the real reasons we explore the world.




Roadtrip With a Raindrop


Book Description

A raindrop that falls into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota will reach the Gulf of Mexico 90 days later. When I learned that, my world was sent spinning in a new direction. I knew in that instant that I would make a 90-day road trip, following the entire course of the Mississippi River, while keeping pace with an imaginary raindrop that I would call ""Serendipity."" From that moment on, this adventure has created itself in ways that often seem magical. People offered lodging in places that let me slide body and soul into the local culture. There was a fisherman's cabin, a trendy downtown loft, a tugboat converted to a B&B, a plantation mansion, a sharecropper's cabin - and once, an entire 30-room manor! The Mississippi is one of America's greatest treasures. It is embedded in our history, our present and our identity as a nation. Along its roughly 2,400 mile journey, it is transformed from a tiny creek into an immense force of nature. It passes through dramatic changes in geography, climate, culture, lifestyles and accents. "




River of Song


Book Description

Explores American music




Old Glory


Book Description

'Jonathan Raban is one of the world's greatest living travel writers.' William Dalrymple 'The best book of travel ever written by an Englishman about the United States' Jan Morris, Independent Navigating the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, Raban opens himself to experience the river in all her turbulent and unpredictable old glory. Going wherever the current takes him, he joins a coon-hunt in Savana, falls for a girl in St Louis, worships with black Baptists in Memphis, hangs out with the housewives of Pemiscot and the hog-king of Dubuque. Through tears of laughter, we are led into the heartland of America - with its hunger and hospitality, its inventive energy and its charming lethargy - and come to know something of its soul. The journey is as much the story of Raban as it is of the Mississippi. Navigating the dangerous, ever-changing waters in an unsuitably fragile aluminium skiff, he immerses himself with an irresistible emotional intensity as he tries to give shape to the river and the story - finding himself by turns vulnerable, curious, angry and, like all of us, sometimes foolishly in love.