Herrin, Illinois, has seen many dramatic events unfold in the nearly two hundred years since it was a bell-shaped prairie on the frontier. Now, Herrin native John Griswold, a writer and teacher at the University of Illinois, provides the first comprehensive history of this most American city, a place that in its time became not just a melting pot, but a cauldron. Discover why the coal was so good in the �Quality Circle� and what happened to the boom that followed its discovery. Explore the...

While the president is the commander in chief, the US Congress plays a critical and underappreciated role in civil-military relations—the relationship between the armed forces and the civilian leadership that commands it. This unique book edited by Colton C. Campbell and David P. Auerswald will help readers better understand the role of Congress in military affairs and national and international security policy. Contributors include the most experienced scholars in the field as well as pra...

"In this beautiful book about striving and surviving, every essay displays a well-stocked brain grappling with life's thorny problems."—Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of NormalFor nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate, many under the pen name Oronte Churm. Churm's topics have ranged ...

At age fifty, when many hope to slow down, and what’s left, as the poet Kobayashi Issa once wrote, is “clear profit,” John Griswold was starting over—-again—-in a position he had worked decades to achieve. His family moved down the Mississippi Valley, expecting to create a good life with new friends.What they found instead was a society “organized tightly by race, church attendance, and family name,” which in its corruption, laissez-faire corporatism, gun love, and environmental de...

Managing a national response to transnational, boundary-crashing events requires leaders to link the strategic tools of defense, diplomacy, and development.Written under the direction of West Point social sciences faculty for its Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA), Thinking beyond Boundaries introduces undergraduates to aspects of transnational conflict that extend beyond traditional political and intellectual boundaries, providing context to a var...

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins' legendary memoir—wild tales of his life and times, both at home and around the globe.Tom Robbins' warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels—including Still Life with Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates—provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent...

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more.Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970...

Arthur Black’s best lines are like a shot of whisky-sharp, invigorating and with a good kick. Following the success of his many previous titles, the multiple-award-winning humorist once again delivers black-to-black” laughs with his latest collection, Paint the Town Black.With his usual off-kilter perspective, Black tackles many of the pressing topics of the day, including some positive PR for the swastika, the sometimes fatal effects of poor penmanship and the burning qu...

When it comes to our prosperity, our freedom tradition, and our constitutional government, President Barack Obama has been the great destroyer—knocking down the free-market economy and principles of limited government that have made America the envy of the world. As New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh documents in chilling detail in his new book, The Great Destroyer, the Obama administration has waged a relentless, nearly four-year-long war to transform our nation int...

Winner of the Man Booker PrizeWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in FictionNamed one of the best books of by The New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street JournalA biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the...

John Perkins' controversial and bestselling exposé, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, revealed for the first time the secret world of economic hit men (EHMs). But Perkins' Confessions contained only a small piece of this sinister puzzle. The full story is far bigger, deeper, and darker than Perkins' personal account revealed. Here other EHMs, journalists, and investigators join Perkins to tell their own stories, providing the first probing and expansive look into this pervasive web of sy...

This collection gathers the best travel essays from The New Yorker, Harpers, GQ and more—featuring Paul Theroux, Alice Gregory, Dave Eggers and others.Why do I travel? Why does anyone of us travel? Bill Bryson poses these questions in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2016, and though he admits, "I wasn't at all sure I knew the answer," these questions start us on the path of some fascinating exploratio...