The Winter 2015-16 issue of Ploughshares. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Two out of each year's three issues are guest-edited by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles, with the Winter issue staff-edited.The stories, poems, and essays that comprise this staff-edited issue of Ploughshares are diverse and timely. Visit a South African laundromat in Laurie Baker’s short story, Here I Am, Laughing with Boers;...

World War I's defining weapon for many, Germany's MG 08 machine gun won a formidable reputation on battlefields from Tannenberg to the Somme.Although it was a lethally effective weapon when used from static positions, the MG 08 was far too heavy to perform a mobile role on the battlefield. As the British and French began to deploy lighter machine guns alongside their heavier weapons, the Germans fielded the Danish Madsen and British Lewis as stopgaps, but chose to ...

Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born black nationalist and originator of the "Back to Africa" movement during the 1900s, was a passionate and formidable orator and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey went on to become an inspiration for many future civil rights activists.Marcus Garvey: A Biography by Stephen Johnson provides an in-depth look into the incredible life of this truly remarkable man, his vision for pan-Africanism, and his unrelentin...

This book is a graphic introduction to how chemistry developed, from ancient times to now. Led by cartoon host, Ben Zene — with occasional interjections by eccentric Greek philosopher Democritus — readers learn about ancient Greek and Chinese elements, alchemists, and the development of chemistry as we know it today, from Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier, from Elizabeth Fulhame and John Dalton, to Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Friedrich Wöhler, to Rosalind Franklin, Linus Pauling, and Mario M...

It was a seemingly pleasant evening on October 1, 2017, and more than 20,000 people gathered at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Everyone was in high spirits and the concert began to a thrilling fanfare. Unbeknownst to everyone, sounds began to erupt which were thought to be fireworks … until people started falling as dead bodies. The Las Vegas shooting was the deadliest attack in modern American history that claimed 58 lives and injured over 850. This is the story of the assailant S...