William Frederick "Billy" Klair (1875-1937) was the undisputed czar of Lexington, Kentucky, for decades. As political boss in a mid-sized, southern city, he faced problems strikingly similar to those of large cities in the North. As he watched the city grow from a sleepy market town of 16,000 residents to a bustling, active urban center of over 50,000, Klair saw changes that altered not just Lexington but the nation and the world: urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. But Klair did not merely watch these changes; like other political bosses and social reformers, he actively participated in the transformation of his city.As a political boss and a practitioner of what George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall referred to as "honest graft," Klair applied lessons of organization, innovation, manipulation, power, and control from the machine age to bring together diverse groups of Lexingtonians and Kentuckians as supporters of a powerful political machine. James Duane Bolin also examines the underside of the city, once known as the Athens of the West. He balances the postcard view of Bluegrass mansions and horse farms with the city's well-known vice district, housing problems, racial tensions, and corrupt politics. With the reality of life in Lexington as a backdrop, the career of Billy Klair provides as a valuable and engaging case study of the inner workings of a southern political machine.

" Anna Held (1870?-1918), a petite woman with an hourglass figure, was America's most popular musical comedy star during the two decades preceding World War I. In the colorful world of New York theater during La Belle Époque, she epitomized everything that was glamorous, sophisticated, and suggestive about turn-of-the-century Broadway. Overcoming an impoverished life as an orphan to become a music-hall star in Paris, Held rocketed to fame in America. From 1896 to 1910, she starred in hit after hit and quickly replaced Lillian Russell as the darling of the theatrical world. The first wife of legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Held was the brains and inspiration behind his Follies and shared his knack for publicity. Together, they brought the Paris scene to New York, complete with lavish costumes and sets and a chorus of stunningly beautiful women, dubbed ""The Anna Held Girls."" While Held was known for a champagne giggle as well as for her million-dollar bank account, there was a darker side to her life. She concealed her Jewish background and her daughter from a previous marriage. She suffered through her two husbands' gambling problems and Ziegfeld's blatant affairs with showgirls. With the outbreak of fighting in Europe, Held returned to France to support the war effort. She entertained troops and delivered medical supplies, and she was once briefly captured by the German army. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway reveals one of the most remarkable women in the history of theatrical entertainment. With access to previously unseen family records and photographs, Eve Golden has uncovered the details of an extraordinary woman in the vibrant world of 1900s New York.

First published in an era when most novels about young women concentrated on courtship and ended with marriage, The Recess daringly portrays women involved in political intrigues, overseas journeys, and even warfare. The novel is set during the reign of Elizabeth I and features as narrators twin daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots, by a secret marriage. One of the earliest Gothic novels, The Recess pioneered the genre of historical fiction. The novel was also one of the first to describe characters and events from conflicting points of view and was wildly popular in its day.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote poetry, prose, and plays and is considered the greatest of Mexican women writers. She was an intellectual prodigy, reportedly mastering Latin in twenty lessons, and at sixteen she entered a convent so that she might continue her learning. One of the most influential early feminists in the New World, she answered a bishop's criticism in a letter that has become a classic defense of the education of women. She collected a private library of 4,000 volumes, but when she was told that her studies were delaying the progress of her spiritual education, she gave away her books and devoted herself to religious studies.Traditionally, scholars have attributed only one complete play to Sor Juana, but in 1989 Guillermo Schmidhuber discovered a lost play, The Second Celestina, which he proved conclusively to be Sor Juana's earliest comedia, co-authored with Agustin Salazar y Torres. Schmidhuber's critical study is the first dedicated exclusively to the secular plays and the first to confirm Sor Juana's authorship of three dramatic pieces. Combining literary history and criticism, Schmidhuber explores the life and originality of Sor Juana's dramas and helps elucidate her enigmatic genius.Though Sor Juana's work as a poet and intellectual has received increasing attention in the last decade, writing about her has rarely taken into account her role as dramatist. Schmidhuber helps correct this critical imbalance by examining Sor Juana's plays in light of dramatic theory. He finds elements of both mannerist and baroque theater in her work, sometimes both within the same play.

Winner of the 1997 Appalachian Studies Award Appalachian Writers Association 1999 Book of the Year Winner of the Susan Koppleman Award of the Popular Culture Association for Best Edited Collection in Women's Studies Joyce Dyer is director of writing and associate professor of English at Hiram College, Ohio."

Though he was best known as a politician, Henry Clay (1777-1852) maintained an active legal practice for more than fifty years. He was a leading contributor both to the early development of the U.S. legal system and to the interaction between law and politics in pre-Civil War America.During the years of Clay's practice, modern American law was taking shape, building on the English experience but working out the new rules and precedents that a changing and growing society required. Clay specialized in property law, a natural choice at a time of entangled land claims, ill-defined boundaries, and inadequate state and federal procedures. He argued many precedent-setting cases, some of them before the U.

A fascinating personal memoir of underwater combat in World War II, told by a man who played a major role in those dangerous operations. Frank and beautifully written, Submarine Commander's breezy style and irrepressible humor place it in a class by itself. This book will be of lasting value as a submarine history by an expert and as an enduring military and political analysis. In early 1943 the submarine USS Scorpion, with Paul R. Schratz as torpedo officer, slipped into the shallow waters east of Tokyo, laid a minefield, and made successful torpedo attacks on merchant shipping. Schratz participated in many more patrols in heavily mined Japanese waters as executive officer of the Sterlet and the Atule. At war's end he participated in the Japanese surrender, aided the release of American POWs, and had a key role in the disarming of enemy suicide submarines. He then took command of the revolutionary new Japanese submarine I-203 and returned it to Pearl Harbor. But this was far from the end of Schratz's submarine career. In 1949 he commissioned the ultramodern USS Pickerel, the most deadly submarine then afloat, and set a world's record in a 21-day, 5,200-mile submerged passage from Hong Kong to Honolulu. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the Pickerel was immediately sent to Korea to participate in secret intelligence operations only recently declassified and never before revealed in print. Schratz's broad military experience makes this a far from ordinary memoir.

" Constructed in 1923, the American submarine S39 was practically an antique when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. With defective torpedoes, a semi-trained crew, and a primitive ventilation system (hence the nickname), she nevertheless sank two enemy vessels and eluded pursuit to fight again in the Solomons. This is the little-known story of how an unprepared navy fought with what it had until the tide could be turned. Bobette Gugliotta was one of the S-39 wives. With the technical assistance of her husband, Guy, an officer who served on three of the S-class boats during the war, she presents an accurate and absorbing account of submarine operations and warfare. No less valuable is her candid and sympathetic portrayal of the men and women whose lives were caught up in the voyage of the S-39.

Considered her finest work and an American classic, Roberts's novel traces the coming of age of Ellen Chesser, the daughter of a poor itinerant farmer. Against all privations and the forces that would subdue her, Ellen is sustained by a sense of wonder and by an awareness of her own being. Reduced to the bare elements of life, her world becomes a ceremony of daily duties that bind her to the natural world and her family. The Time of Man stands as a beautifully written tribute to the human spirit.

The eighteenth century was a time of significant change in the perception of marriage and family relations, the emphasis of reason over revelation, and the spread of political consciousness. The Unity of the Brethren, known in America as Moravians, experienced the resulting tensions firsthand as they organized their protective religious settlements in Germany. A group of the Brethren who later settled in Salem, North Carolina, experienced the stresses of cultural and generational conflict when its younger members came to think of themselves as Americans. The Moravians who first immigrated to America actively maintained their connections to those who remained in Europe and gave them the authority for deciding religious, social, and governmental issues. But, as the children born in Salem became acclimated to more freedoms, particularly in the wake of the American Revolution, a series of disputes intensified the problems of transatlantic governance. While the group's leadership usually associated Enlightenment principles with rebellion and religious skepticism, the younger Brethren were drawn to its message of individual autonomy and creative expression.Elisabeth Sommer traces the impact of this generational and cultural change among Moravians on both sides of the Atlantic and examines the resulting debate over the definition of freedom and faith.

Behind Japanese Lines has a great deal to say about the relations with the Filipinos and about the problems of dealing with and fighting the Hukbalahaps, the communist guerrillas or, indeed, in opposing the Japanese. This book adds considerable insights into the significance of guerrilla warfare as it relates to modern warfare in general.

Jean Ritchie, the youngest of fourteen children born and raised in Viper, Kentucky, is considered one of the greatest balladeers in this century. Her performances have influenced the resurgence of interest in folk music and given audiences a glimpse into the heart of Appalachia. Jean Ritchie's Swapping Song Book brings together twenty-one songs from the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky. Many are old songs, brought over by settlers from Scotland, Ireland, and England. Child ballads, gospel music, play party tunes, and frolic songs have been handed down by family members, with each generation adding or embellishing verses and melodies. This new edition retains the original text, written by Ritchie, and includes her husband George Pickow's beautiful photographs to help illustrate the stories of such songs as "Jubilee," "The Old Soap Gourd," and "Ground Hog." A new foreword by Charles Wolfe shows how Ritchie's collection of songs is "part of the rich folk poetry" that makes up Appalachian culture.

Between the Civil War and the turn of the last century, Southern Baptists gained prominence in the religious life of the South. As their power increased, they became defenders of the racial, political, social, and economic status quo. By the beginning of this century, however, a feisty tradition of dissent began to appear in Southern Baptist life as criticism of the center increased from both the left and the right. The popular belief in a doctrine of "once saved, always saved" led progressive Baptists to claim that moderates, once saved, did not address the serious social and political problems that faced many in the South. These Baptist dissenters claimed that they could not be "at ease in Zion."Led by the radical Walter Nathan Johnson in the 1920s and 1930s, progressive Baptists produced civil rights advocates, labor organizers, women's rights advocates, and proponents of disarmament and abolition of capital punishment. They challenged some of the most fundamental aspects of southern society and of Baptist ecclesiastical structure and practice. For their efforts and beliefs, many of these men and women suffered as they lost jobs, experienced physical danger and injury, and endured character assassination.In A Genealogy of Dissent, David Stricklin traces the history of these progressive Baptists and their descendants throughout the twentieth century and shows how they created an active culture of protest within a highly traditional society.

Dwayne Cox and William Morison trace the twists and turns of the University of Louisville's two hundred year journey from provincial academy to national powerhouse.From the 1798 charter that established Jefferson Seminary to the 1998 opening of Papa John Stadium, Cox and Morison reveal the unique and fascinating history of the university's evolution. They discuss the early failures to establish a liberal arts college; tell the extraordinary story of the Louisville Municipal College, U of L's separate division for African Americans during the era of segregation; detail the political wrangling and budgetary struggles of the university's move from quasi-private to state-supported institution; and confront head-on the question of the university's founding date. The history of the University of Louisville defies the stereotype of orderly and planned growth. For many years, the university was essentially a consortium of two professional schools -- medicine and law. Not until the first decade of the twentieth century did the liberal arts gain a firm and permanent foothold. Because of its early emphasis on practical, professional education and the virtual autonomy of its separate units for many years, the University of Louisville is unusual in the annals of higher education.

Interpretations of women in the antebellum period have long dwelt upon the notion of public versus private gender spheres. As part of the ongoing reevaluation of the prehistory of the women's movement, Carolyn Lawes challenges this paradigm and the primacy of class motivation. She studies the women of antebellum Worcester, Massachusetts, discovering that whatever their economic background, women there publicly worked to remake and improve their community in their own image. Lawes analyzes the organized social activism of the mostly middle-class, urban, white women of Worcester and finds that they were at the center of community life and leadership. Drawing on rich local history collections, Lawes weaves together information from city and state documents, court cases, medical records, church collections, newspapers, and diaries and letters to create a portrait of a group of women for whom constant personal and social change was the norm. Throughout Women and Reform in a New England Community, conventional women make seemingly unconventional choices. A wealthy Worcester matron helped spark a women-led rebellion against ministerial authority in the town's orthodox Calvinist church. Similarly, a close look at the town's sewing circles reveals that they were vehicles for political exchange as well as social gatherings that included men but intentionally restricted them to a subordinate role. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the women of Worcester had taken up explicitly political and social causes, such as an orphan asylum they founded, funded, and directed. Lawes argues that economic and personal instability rather than a desire for social control motivated women, even relatively privileged ones, into social activism. She concludes that the local activism of the women of Worcester stimulated, and was stimulated by, their interest in the first two national women's rights conventions, held in Worcester in 1850 and 1851. Far from being marginalized from the vital economic, social, and political issues of their day, the women of this antebellum New England community insisted upon being active and ongoing participants in the debates and decisions of their society and nation.

To understand the cultural history of England during the Restoration, one need look no further than the theater, which was attended by the gentry as well as by members of the middle and lower classes. The theater of this period embodied the values, meanings, and power relations of Restoration England. In Heroes and States, Douglas Canfield argues that drama not only represents but actually helps constitute the value and belief systems of an entire culture. Heroes and States completes Canfield's two-volume cultural history of Restoration drama, begun in Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy. In this second volume Canfield shows how Restoration playwrights attempted to rein scribe late-feudal aristocratic ideology after the English Civil War.In the serious drama of the period, conflict is between noble heroes, upon whom states are built, and transgressors of the established order -- tyrants, traitors, usurpers, rapists, and atheists. Canfield considers several sub genres of tragedy. He argues that most of these sub genres reaffirm the older ideology after testing it in the fires of conflict. Tragical satire, on the other hand, the most subversive of these sub genres, exposes the failure of the ruling class to live up to its own codes and, in some cases, the absurdity of the codes themselves.Canfield also finds playwrights struggling with issues of race and colonialism. He uses the work of modern theorists such as Bakhtin, Girard, Kristeva, Derrida, Althusser, Williams, and Eagleton to illuminate aspects of his inquiries. Restoration tragedy stands on the cusp of a cultural transition from a late feudal to an early bourgeois ideology, and the issues and themes addressed in the theater validate the culture and politics of seventeenth-century England.