Product Description: The Trans-Cedar lynching is an infamous tale buried deep in the subconscious of rural Texas history—although it made front-page headlines in the Dallas Morning News and even in national newspapers from May through November of 1899...read more

Product Description: Renowned for Goodbye to a River, his now-classic meditation on the natural and human history of Texas, as well as for his masterful ability as a prose stylist, John Graves has become the dean of Texas letters for a legion of admiring readers and fellow writers...read more

Provides alphabetically arranged entries on the architecture, art, ecology, folklore, food, religion, and recreation of each major United States region.

(view table of contents)

Product Description: If you've never even been to Southeast Asia, can you be a Vietnam veteran? In a novel that captures the life and times of a generation, Mark Busby takes us on a journey through an era of hippies, the shootings at Kent State University, integration, and Woodstock...read more

Product Description: This is the first major single-authored book in almost twenty years to examine the life and work of Texas' foremost novelist and to develop coherent patterns of theme, structure, symbol, imagery, and influence in Larry McMurtry's work...read more

The frontier has evoked a set of images, attitudes, and assumptions that have shaped a peculiarly American literary heritage. This volume reconsiders the whole of American literary tradition by focusing on the imaginative impact of the frontier mythology. Exploring the aesthetic implications of frontier experience, these essays also illustrate the vigorous debate among scholars regarding canon formation. Long dominated by the works of white males from the northeastern region of the country, the American literary canon continues to expand to include works by minorities, women, and authors from various parts of the nation. The eighteen scholars represented here focus on the importance of frontier mythology to many American writers, both traditional and new, thus providing meaningful context for further altering the American canon to include their works.The authors emphasize frontier mythology's central role in the literary dialogue as they discuss such topics as contemporary fiction, regional literature, nature writing, drama, film, and science fiction and focus on writers ranging from Mary Rowlandson and Emily Dickinson to N. Scott Momaday and Rolando Hinojosa. Taken as a whole, this collection asserts that frontier experience has historically created a symbolic vocabulary that is intrinsically dialectical, having elicited ironic responses from the different perspectives of women and minority writers, for example. Scholars and students of American literature will also see from these essays that frontier mythology in American literary tradition shows remarkable continuity, and that an understanding of the dialectical and dialogic nature of this inherited literary tradition will expand the canon and enrich the interpretations of the American dream.