From Muscle Shoals to Mobile, Alabamians enjoy fabulous barbecue at home, at club meetings and at countless eateries.In the 1820s, however, a group of reformers wanted to eliminate the southern staple because politicians used it to entice voters. As the state and nation changed through wars and the civil rights movement, so did Alabama barbecue. Alabama restaurants like Big Bob Gibson's, Dreamland and Jim 'n Nick's have earned fans across the country. Mark A. Johns...

In American Bacon, Mark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse? Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, modern fad diets, and the emerging craft bacon industry, Johnson provides a new perspective on some familiar Ame...

In Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877–1932, author Mark A. Johnson examines three notable cases of Black participation in the spectacles of politics: the 1885–1898 local-option prohibition contests of Atlanta and Macon, Georgia; the United Confederate Veterans conflict with the Musicians’ Union prior to the 1903 UCV Reunion in New Orleans; and the 1909 Memphis mayoral election featuring Edward Hull Crump and W. C. Handy. Through these case studies, John...

"A welcome renewal and defense of John Dewey's ethical naturalism, which Johnson claims is the only morality 'fit for actual human beings.'" — Notre Dame Philosophical ReviewsWhat is the difference between right and wrong? This is no easy question to answer, yet we constantly try to make it so, frequently appealing to absolutes, whether drawn from God, universal reason, or societal authority. Combining cognitive science with a pragmatist philosophical frame...

Mark Johnson is one of the great thinkers of our time on how the body shapes the mind. This book brings together a selection of essays from the past two decades that build a powerful argument that any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of mind and thought must ultimately explain how bodily perception and action give rise to cognition, meaning, language, action, and values.A brief account of Johnson's own intellectual journey, through which we track some of the mos...

An exploration of the central role the human imagination plays in all meaning, understanding, and reasoning."There are books . . . which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity." — San Francisco Chronicle...

Concepts in Reproduction integrates the principal mechanisms of reproduction among eukaryotes, with a focus on animals and plants. The text emphasizes processes and approaches that evolved to address specific problems inherent in reproduction using examples from morphology, functional studies, and genetic studies. The many high-quality figures complement the text and provide visual storyboards. Footnotes and boxes are used throughout to provide depth and to enrich understanding. I...

This state-of-the-art golf book provides a focused, step-by-step golf instruction program that will help you understand the golf game and improve your golfing ability.This book contains important instructional elements that help you learn and retain the skills that you need to develop to learn the game of golf. The guide is designed for both beginner golfers and for more experienced golfers. If you want to take your golf skills to a higher level, you will sooner or later h...

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation.

All too often, we think of our minds and bodies separately. The reality couldn't be more different: the fundamental fact about our mind is that it is embodied. We have a deep visceral, emotional, and qualitative relationship to the world—and any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of the mind must take into account the ways that cognition, meaning, language, action, and values are grounded in and shaped by that embodiment.This book gathers the best of philosopher Ma...

"Demonstrates that the aesthetic and emotional aspects of meaning are fundamental . . . and that the arts show meaning-making in its fullest realization." —George Lakoff, author of Moral PoliticsIn The Meaning of the Body, Mark Johnson continues his pioneering work on the exciting connections between cognitive science, language, and meaning first begun in the classic Metaphors We Live By. Johnson uses recent research into infant psychology...

If you want the highest quality knife blade you need to learn how to use a whetstone, the most effective Japanese way of sharpening knives is to maintain their edge crisp and sharp.Whetstone will not only teach you the basics of knife sharpening, but also an essential range of other essential skills. You will learn how to thin old knives to renew them and make them as good as new. You will also learn how to create a knife sharpening plan that will have you sharpening knive...