In his new memoir, My Creative Year in the Army,David Madden tells a story of creativity and conflict.In 1954 during the Korean Civil War, when nineteen-year-old Madden showed up at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he set in motion a series of creative acts and conflicts, sometimes comic.A romantic, an idealist, an agnostic, and a liberal, he had actively attacked racism, censorship, the death penalty, and tyranny.During basic training, he befriended Rooks, a ...

“Abducted by Circumstance is a thrilling crime story, a dark and complex psychological study, a rich contemplation on contemporary life. It is also a masterful moral drama about the centuries-old conflicts that arise from the juxtaposition of the flesh and spirit.” —Allen Wier, author of Tehano“David Madden continues to push the envelope of literary fiction in subtle and profoundly sophisticated ways. Abducted by Circumstance is a quirky, utterly compelli...

When the first edition of David Madden's A Primer of the Novel: For Readers and Writers was published more than twenty-five years ago, there were no other books of its kind available. Since then, many authors and editors have produced works that attempt the same comprehensive coverage of the genre. However, these works tend to be either written solely for writers or solely for readers. More often than not, those written for readers tend to be aimed at advanced students or critics ...

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it?Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housin...

When she is seventeen, Emily Merritt’s beloved father gives her the piano she has always wanted. A few days later, having lost his job, he sells Emily’s piano and moves the family out of its two-story house in Cleveland, Ohio, to his mother’s three-room house in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.The loss of her piano casts a shadow over Emily’s life in Knoxville, a city she could never love. Throughout the rest of her life, Emily longs to return to Cleveland, where she had an id...

This unique collection of writings by the celebrated author David Madden provides a multitude of reflections on the Civil War and Reconstruction, from nonfiction to fiction. Included are Madden’s examination of key works by historians James McPherson and Fletcher Pratt, the story of the effort to simultaneously burn nine bridges by nine unionist guerrilla bands in the most complicated and coordinated guerrilla tactic of the war, and rediscoveries of both classic and contemporary works of C...

James M. Cain was among the prominent member of the "hard-boiled" school of writing that characterized the 1930s and 1940s, one of the masters of the genre that included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His novels became such popular film noir classics as The Postman always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce, and his 1937 novel Serenade boldly portrayed its hero as a bisexual. Cain also taught journalism at various colleges in Maryland, wrote editorials for the New Yor...

“Like Dr. Frankenstein’s invented creature, the larger-than-life, flesh-and-blood characters of London Bridge in Plague and Fireare made from pieces of the dead past that are forged in the consciousness of an historian—himself a creation of history and of David Madden’s literary magic. Struck by the lightning bolt of the co-joined imaginations of Madden and his reader, the fabricated beings rise up and walk on London Bridge, and they have the audacity to speak for themselves in completely ...

James M. Cain wrote some of the grittiest novels in American literature, including such classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. James M. Cain: Hard-Boiled Mythmaker is a critical overview of the author's life, work, and legacy. An updated and expanded edition of two of David Madden's scholarly works on Cain, this new book improves upon the previous works by collecting the most essential writing on Cain by Madden into one volume. In addition to meld...

A gripping and thought-provoking work that is unlike any Civil War novel previously written, Sharpshooter takes us into the mind of one of the war’s veterans as he attempts, years after the conflict, to reconstruct his experiences and to find some measure of meaning in them.A child of the divided East Tennessee mountain region, Willis Carr left home at age thirteen to follow his father and brothers on a bridge-burning mission for the Union cause. Imprisoned at Knoxville, h...

Racism has permeated the workings of the U.S. Constitution since ratification. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, supporters of slavery ensured it was protected by rule of law. The federal government upheld slavery until it was abolished by the Civil War; then supported the South's Jim Crow power structure. From Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Era until today, veneration of the Constitution has not prevented lynching, segregation, voter intimidation or police brutality against ...

What are the consequences of Yugoslavia's existence – and breakup – for the present? This book reflects on this very question, identifying and analysing the political legacies left behind by Yugoslavia through the prism of continuities and ruptures between the past and present of the area.After the collapse of Yugoslavia, it's former states adopted a nation-building process which opted to eradicate the past as such an approach seemed more convenient for the new national projects. T...