ISSUE: Summer 1997
Originally published under the title Tocqueville and Beaumont in America by Oxford in 1938, George Wilson Pierson’s story of how two ambitious French aristocrats of 1831 set out in quest of an understanding of how democratic government in America works became a classic. His account was reconstructed from a few published writings of Alexis de Tocqueville and from a mass of letters, diaries, sketches, and other unpublished manuscripts unearthed in this century. This account of the journey through early 19th-century America that resulted in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America has now been republished in a paper edition by Johns Hopkins [$24.95]. Another recent reprint from Johns Hopkins is John R.Thelin’s Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics which chronicles the history of collegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990—from the glory days of Knute Rockne to the modern era huge budgets, tyrannical coaches, and pampered players [$15.95 paper], Yale is offering a paper edition of Patricia Ann Palmieri’s In Adamless Eden, a history of exclusively female Wellesley College, the alma mater of, among others, Hillary Clinton [$40 cloth, $18 paper]. Two other recent Yale reprints are Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton’s The Rosenberg File out in a second edition with a new introduction containing revelations from the National Security Agency and Soviet sources about the central figures in America’s most famous espionage case both executed by the U.S.in June 1953 for conspiring to pass atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union [$18 paper]; the other recent reprint is Timothy B.Spears’ 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture, the first in depth study of the traveling salesman, illuminating his role in American culture from 1830 to 1920 [$40 cloth, $17 paper]. Washington is offering a paper edition of Stephen J.Pyne’s Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire originally published in 1982 [$24.95]. Richard J.Carwardine’s Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America was first published in 1993 with great acclaim and examines the relationship between evangelical Protestant piety and political life in the critical 20 years before the Civil War. A paper edition is available from Tennessee [$25], Jim Cullen’s The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past explores popular interpretations of America’s bloodiest conflict during the 20th century, including treatment of Lincoln by both historian and novelist, movies such as Gone With the Wind and Glory, and battlefield reenactments. A paper edition is now available from the Smithsonian Institution Press [$13.95].
When William Ivy Hair’s The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P.Long was first published in 1991, it received this reaction from the New Orleans Times-Picayune: “The best biography of Long written to date.” The account of Louisiana’s most colorful and controversial politician later won the Jules and Frances Landry Award for that year. Now it is available in a paper edition from Louisiana [$16.95]. Transaction is offering a new edition of Elizabeth Stevenson’s Henry Adams: A Biography with a new introduction by the author [$29.95 paper], Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S, Truman edited by Robert H.Ferrell was first published by Missouri in 1980 and covered the period from his occupancy of the White House in 1945 to shortly before his death in 1972. Missouri recently published a paper edition of Off the Record [$19.95]. Perigee Rooks has a reprint of In Their Own Words: Robber Barons and Radicals: Reconstruction and the Origins of Civil Rights collected and edited by T.J.Stiles with an introduction by Edward Countryman [$16 paper]. In Chesapeake Boyhood: Memoirs of a Farm Boy, internationally renowned sculptor William H.Turner recalls his childhood on Virginia’s Eastern Shore during the years following the Great Depression. This recollection of a vanishing world was recently reissued in a paper edition by Johns Hopkins [$14.95]. As part of its 20th Century Classics series, Penguin Books is offering a new edition of Jorge Semprun’s The Long Voyage, an account of the young Spaniard’s trip in a cattle truck toward Buchenwald in World War II [$11.95], Another recent Penguin reprint is Ursula Duba’s Tales From a Child of the Enemy, a memoir of a young German coming to maturity after World War II and learning about the atrocities her people committed during the Thousand Year Reich [$8.95]. Pantheon has reprinted M.F.K.Fisher’s Last House: Reflections, Dreams, and Observations, 1943—1991[$13 paper]. Garret Keizer’s No Place But Here: A Teacher’s Vocation in a Rural Community, the community being in Vermont, is available in paper from New England [$10.95]. S.S.McClure was one of America’s great muckraking editors when he headed McClure’s Magazine in the early 20th century. He was also the mentor of young Willa Cather and after leaving her , position at McClure’s in 1912, Cather ghosted a grateful portrait of her former boss entitled The Autobiography of S.S.McClure.This account of the crusading editor is again available as a Bison Book from Nebraska [$15 paper]. Other recent Bison Books include David Dixon’s Hero of Beecher Island: The Life and Military Career of George A.Forsyth, a frontier fighter in the years after the Civil War [$14]; James Reston Jr.’s The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti: Collision at Home Plate [$16]; Red Barber and Robert Creamer’s Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat [$14.95]; and Homer Croy’s Jesse James Was My Neighbor [$15].
Three different selections of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry have recently been published in paper editions by three different publishers. The first is the Uncollected Poems, a bilingual edition translated by Edward Snow and published by North Point Press [$13]. The second is Rilke’s Two Stories of Prague translated by Angela Esterhammer and issued by New England [$12.95]. The third volume is Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy and published and released by Riverhead Books [$12], New paper editions from Noonday include John Ashbery’s Can You Hear, Bird: Poems, his 17th collection [$12]; Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems selected and edited by Roger L.Conover
[$13]; Robert Pinsky’s The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966—1996 [$15]; and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney’s The Spirit Level [$11]. Two recent editions to Wesleyan Poetry Classics series are John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, a 35th anniversary edition [$11.95 paper] and An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry, a 25th anniversary edition, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil [$16.95], A finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Donald Justice’s New and Selected Poems was praised by Mark Strand in The New Yorker for enacting “a brilliant accommodation to almost everyone’s expectations of poetry.” Knopf has come out with a paper edition of these poems [$16]. Knopf has also reissued a number of paper reprints by contemporary poets including Brooks Haxton’s The Sun at Night [$14]; Stan Rice’s Fear Itself [$14]; Deborah Digges’ Rough Music [$14]; Lucy Brock-Broido’s The Master Letters [$14]; and The Poems of Peter Davison[$17.50].
First published in 1995, Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation received the Michael Durkan Prize for Irish Literary and Cultural Criticism, awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies and received widespread acclaim from critics including novelist of Ireland Thomas Flanagan who called the work “A remarkable achievement.” Harvard is now offering a paper edition of Inventing Ireland [$18.95]. Pennsylvania has reprinted Laura E.Skandera-Trombley’s Mark Twain in the Company of Women, an explanation of the key role women played in Twain’s life as a writer [$16.50 paper], Pennsylvania is also offering a paper edition of Lennard J.Davis’ Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel showing how English fiction was consolidated out of journalism, history, and literature [$16.50]. Princeton is out with a paper edition of Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner’s Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose[$14.95].
