Kirjahaku

James Vincent Conran (1899-1970) was the most significant political organizer in the history of rural America. Serving as a rural Missouri prosecutor for 32 years, Conran was the much sought political friend of statewide and national candidates, such as President Harry S. Truman, U.S. Senator Thomas F. Eagleton, and Governor Warren Hearnes. His singular political influence was inextricably linked to the unique demographics of his home region, the Missouri “Bootheel,” which was a part southern, part mid-western, and part frontier community where African Americans enjoyed unusual political power. Though contemporary media depictions portrayed Conran as a traditional, corrupt political boss—like his notorious contemporaries, Tom Pendergast of Kansas City or Ed Crump of Memphis—this view is flawed. In J.V. Conran and Rural Political Power, Will Sarvis aims to paint a more accurate picture of Conran by revealing the true extent and limitations of his power and influence.

This book addresses urban ecology, green technology, problems with climate change prediction, groundwater contamination, invasive species and many other topics, and offers a guardedly optimistic interpretation of humanity's place in nature and our unique caretaker role. Drawing upon scholarly and media sources, the author presents a common-sense analysis of environmental science, debunking eco-apocalyptic thinking along the way. Compromised science masquerading as authoritative is revealed as a fundraising and policy-influencing crusade by the environmental elite, overshadowing unambiguous problems like environmental racism.

Lao drives an old school bus from the eastern seaboard toward the west, vowing to pick up every hitchhiker he sees. Various travelers join him throughout the mid-continent as they make their wending way. This becomes an adventure from old lives lived in old places, merging into the mystical Basin and Range landscape. People and love are found and lost through brooding philosophical journeys of wonder, doubt, and hope that teeters between abandonment and affirmation . . . as they all move toward some ultimate fulfillment of mythological destiny.This is Will Sarvis's fourth novel. Other works include Amy's Bull Company, Another Dimension of Loneliness, Waiti, and Beaten Boy.

The highland forests of southwestern Virginia were a sacred land to Native Americans and one they relied upon for sustenance. After European contact, this beautiful country drew successive waves of settlers and visitors, and for a brief yet intense period, industrialists rapaciously exploited its timber resources, particularly in the higher elevations where the woodlands had survived the nearby valleys' generations of agricultural use. This is the story of how various peoples have regarded this land over the centuries and how, starting in the early twentieth century, the federal government acquired 700,000 acres of it to create what is now the Jefferson National Forest (JNF). Will Sarvis's in-depth history explores the area's significance to such native tribes as the Cherokee and Shawnee, for whom it functioned as a buffer zone in late prehistory, and its attraction for nineteenth-century romantics who, arriving in stagecoaches, became the area's first tourists. Aggressive commercial logging gave way to the arrival of the U.S. Forest Service, which patched the JNF together through successive purchases of privately owned land and instituted a more regulated harvesting of various timber resources. Public support for Forest Service policy during the Depression and World War II was followed by controversies, including the use of eminent domain. In presenting this history, Sarvis probes the many complexities of land stewardship and, in analysis that is sure to spark debate, discusses how and why the JNF could abandon clear-cutting and return to traditional selective tree management. An ongoing experiment in democratic land use, the JNF contains many lessons about our relationship with the natural environment. This book delineates those lessons in a clear and compelling narrative that will be of great interest to policy makers, activists, and indeed anyone drawn to American environmental history and Appalachian studies.

122 page booklet; 12 illustrations; index.

More short stories from the author of How Fast the Quiet Comes and other books.

Bess is killing people and disposing of their bodies; detective Diana only knows she has multiple missing person reports. Diana begins to link these missing persons to road rage incidents and other displays of rude public behavior. Meanwhile, the fiercely independent attorney Vivian is showing signs of middle-aged stress after years of high accomplishment. Following a courtroom outburst, a judge orders her to anger counseling, which is immediately complicated by a counselor who desires Vivian. Vivian begins to retreat to the Oregon Coast, where she gains an appreciation of a mysterious spiritual presence that seems to foretell something about her future. Something is linking her to the detective, the serial killer, and a destiny as ominous as the ocean.