What do Scott Joplin, John Grisham, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Maya Angelou, Brooks Robinson, Helen Gurley Brown, Johnny Cash, Alan Ladd, and Sonny Boy Williamson have in common? They’re all Arkansans. What do hillbillies, rednecks, slow trains, bare feet, moonshine, and double-wides have in common? For many in America these represent Arkansas more than any Arkansas success stories do. In 1931 H. L. Mencken described AR (not AK, folks) as the “apex of moronia.” While, in 1942 a Time magazine article said Arkansas had “developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.” Arkansas/Arkansaw is the first book to explain how Arkansas’s image began and how the popular culture stereotypes have been perpetuated and altered through succeeding generations. Brooks Blevins argues that the image has not always been a bad one. He discusses travel accounts, literature, radio programs, movies, and television shows that give a very positive image of the Natural State. From territorial accounts of the Creole inhabitants of the Mississippi River Valley to national derision of the state’s triple-wide governor’s mansion to Li’l Abner, the Beverly Hillbillies, and Slingblade, Blevins leads readers on an entertaining and insightful tour through more than two centuries of the idea of Arkansas. One discovers along the way how one state becomes simultaneously a punch line and a source of admiration for progressives and social critics alike. Winner, 2011 Ragsdale Award

During the 1880s a massive scientific effort was launched by the Smithsonian Institution to discover who had built the prehistoric burial mounds found throughout the United States. Arkansaw Mounds tells the story of this exploration and of Edward Palmer, one of the nineteenth century’s greatest natural historians and archaeologists, who was recruited to lead the research project. Arkansas was unusually rich in prehistoric remains, especially mounds, and became a major focus of the study. Palmer and his team of researchers discovered that the mounds had been built by the ancestors of the historic North American Indians, shattering the then-popular theory that a lost non-Indian race had built them.

Intro -- Contents -- Editors Introduction -- Preface to the 1851 Edition -- Chapter I.A Lumping Business -- Chapter II. Starting Off Of the Right Foot -- Chapter III. Spontaneous Ebullition in a Drunkard -- Chapter IV. The Resurrection, or How To Take Up a Negro -- Chapter V. Busting a Dog and Carving a Turkey -- Chapter VI. The Way To Keep Folks From Marrying -- Chapter VII. A Death-Bed Scene -- Chapter VIII. A New Plan for Catching a Rogue -- Chapter IX. Bloodshed and Hysterics -- Chapter X. Aqua Fortis and Croton Oil, or Taking the Wrong Medicine -- Chapter XI. Three Scrapes In One Night -- Chapter XII. A Thunder Storm, and a Night in the Woods -- Chapter XIII. Making a Hole in the Wrong Place -- Chapter XIV. A Fishing Party, A Ghost, and Suicide -- Chapter XV. Taken Captive By Indians -- Chapter XVI. The Man With a Snake Disease -- Chapter XVII. Cutting Up a Negro Alive -- Chapter XVIII. A Fight With Wolves -- Chapter XIX. How To Cure Deafness In Three Hours -- Chapter XX. Rattlehead's Farewell Address -- Notes

Albert Bigelow Paine (1861-1937) was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. He was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Committee and wrote in several genres, including fiction, humour, and verse. Paine was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and moved to Bentonsport, Iowa at the age of 1. He later moved to St. Louis, where he trained as a photographer, and became a dealer in photographic supplies in Fort Scott, Kansas. He wrote several children's books, the first of which was published in 1898. He went on to write about his travelling adventures, including The Tent Dwellers, written about a trout fishing trip to Nova Scotia. Other works by him: The Boy's Life of Mark Twain (1916), Mark Twain: A Biography, 3 volumes (1917), Mark Twain's Letters, 2 volumes (1917), A Short Life of Mark Twain (1920), Mark Twain's Speeches (1923) and Life and Lillian Gish (1932).

The Arkansaw Bear

Published just days before America’s entry into World War II, Ozark Country is Otto Ernest Rayburn’s love letter to his adopted region. One of several chronicles of the Ozarks that garnered national attention during the Depression and war years, when many Americans craved stories about people and places seemingly untouched by the difficulties of the times, Rayburn’s colorful tour takes readers from the fictional village of Woodville into the backcountry of a region teeming with storytellers, ballad singers, superstitions, and home remedies. Rayburn’s tales—fantastical, fun, and unapologetically romantic—portray a world that had already nearly disappeared by the time they were written. Yet Rayburn’s depiction of the Ozarks resonates with notions of the region that have persisted in the American consciousness ever since.