Books published by Louisiana State University Press

A collection of poems celebrating several generations of a Southern Black family which includes such members as Great-Uncle Rufus who was born a blave, Aunt Geneva who loved a white man, and the author's father who was an Air Force navigator and part of the famed Tuskagee Airmen.

The unfinished novel from which this collection of sketches, stories and novellas takes its title is credited as Wolfe's final effort. It tells the story of the Joyner family and conveys Wolfe's fine sense of family traits, rooted in a traceable past.

Presents the first biography of John Kennedy Toole, drawing on scores of interviews with contemporaries of the writer and acquaintances of his influencing mother, Thelma, as well as unpublished letters, documents, and photographs. Frank yet sympathetic, Ignatius Rising deftly describes a life that is dark, tragic, bizarre, and amazing.

In one of his most important books, the renowned historian Eugene D. Genovese examines slave revolts in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil, placing them in the context of modern world history.

A gifted poet as well as a renowned cardiologist and medical professor, John Stone eloquently bridges science and the arts. In this wonderful collection of true stories, Stone fluently translates the language of cardiology into one we can all understand as he examines the relationship between the physical heart and the metaphorical heart.

Amantha Starr, born and raised by a doting father on a Kentucky plantation in the years before the Civil War, is the heroine of this powerfully dramatic novel. Band of Angels displays Robert Penn Warren's prodigious gifts. First published in 1955, it is one of the most searing and vivid fictional accounts of the Civil War era ever written.

Offers the first systematic history and definition of the short-story cycle as exemplified in contemporary American fiction, bringing attention to the format's wide appeal among various ethnic groups. James Nagel examines in detail eight recent manifestations of the genre, all praised by critics while uniformly misidentified as novels.

Offers an insightful historical analysis of the miscegenation of American whites and blacks from colonial times to the present, of the "new people" produced by these interracial relationships, and of the myriad ways in which miscegenation has affected American culture.

Explores the passionate political strife that raged in Britain as a result of the American Civil War. R.J.M. Blackett opens the subject to a wider transatlantic context of influence and undertakes a deftly researched sociological, intellectual, and political examination of who in Britain supported the Union, who the Confederacy, and why.

John Burt's Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren is more broadly representative of Warren's poetry than any previous selected gathering. More than two hundred poems from every phase grace the volume, a vehicle ideal for sampling- or soaking in- the finest of Warren's rich output.

This study depicts a range of transformations in southeastern Indian cultures as a result of contact, and often conflict, with Europeans in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The author argues that the colonial Southeast cannot be understood without paying attentions to its native inhabitants.

An investigation of the earliest political sex scandal in American history. During Andrew Jackson's first term in office, Margaret Eaton, the Secretary of State's wife, was branded a "loose woman". The book relates how this social controversy could so strongly influence the politics of the age.

Examines nearly five hundred shipboard rebellions that occurred over the course of the entire slave trade, directly challenging the prevailing thesis that such resistance was infrequent or insignificant. As Eric Robert Taylor shows, though most revolts were crushed quickly, others raged on for hours, days, or weeks.

Through silence and song, death and rebirth, a sense of wonder pervades every minute of our lives. In The Man Who Saws Us in Half, Ron Houchin explores this idea from the first curiosities of childhood to the gradual skepticism that comes with age and the weight of practical concerns.

In this illuminating study, Gelien Matthews demonstrates how slave rebellions in the British West Indies influenced the tactics of abolitionists in England and how the rhetoric and actions of the abolitionists emboldened slaves.

Few Americans who have served their country, however, have met with as little recognition as George Mason of Gunston Hall. In this concise, cogently written biography, a distinguished historian restores the "reluctant statesman" to his proper place in the pantheon of America's greatest citizens.

Elegiac and fierce, solemn and celebratory, the poems in Chanda Feldman's Approaching the Fields consider family and history. Love and violence echo through the collection, and Feldman's beautifully crafted poems, often formal in style, answer them sometimes with an embrace and sometimes with a turning away.

More than 140 years after Judah Benjamin first appeared on the Confederate scene, historians still debate his place in the history of the Lost Cause. Robert Douthat Meade's absorbing account of the life of this enigmatic Civil War figure, who built a second brilliant career in England after the war, remains the definitive study of Benjamin.

Provides a detailed study of the rhythms of highland Berber life, from the daily routines of making a living in such a demanding environment to the relationships between individuals, the community, and the national economy.

In this study, the author aims to provide a critical account of early Acadian culture in Louisiana and the reasons for its survival. He rejects accepted notions about the routes Acadians travelled from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, and the patterns of their subsequent migrations within the state.

In this book, William C. Davis narrates one of the most memorable and crucial of the engagements fought for control of the strategically vital Shenandoah Valley - a battle that centred on the farming community of New Market.

Led by a coalition of blacks and whites with funding from congressional radicals, the Union League was a secret society who aimed to bring freedmen into the political arena after the Civil War. This work explores the influence of the League in Alabama and Mississippi.

Ed Falco considers love and the loss of love, what we have today and what we remember of yesterday, the promise of youth and the disappointments and pleasures of aging. By turns whimsical, meditative, and poignant, these poems examine the joys and sorrows of living.

In the summer of 1866, racial tensions ran high in Louisiana as a constitutional convention considered disenfranchising former Confederates and enfranchising blacks. In An Absolute Massacre, James Hollandsworth, Jr offers a compelling look at the racial tinderbox that was the post-Civil War South.

Civil War scholars and enthusiasts will welcome Secessionists and Other Scoundrels as an exciting and entertaining opportunity to be reintroduced to one of the era's most colourful and controversial characters.

A native of Warren County, Iowa, Cyrus F. Boyd served a year and a half as an orderly sergeant with the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry before becoming first lieutenant in Company B of the Thirty-Fourth Iowa Infantry. His diary offers a full account of soldiering in the Union Army.