The Hour of Our Nation's Agony offers a revealing look into the life of a Confederate soldier as he is transformed by the war. Through these literate, perceptive, and illuminating letters, readers can trace Lt. William Cowper Nelson's evolution from an idealistic young soldier to a battle-hardened veteran. Nelson joined the army at the age of nineteen, leaving behind a close-knit family in Holly Springs, Mississippi. He served for much of the war in the Third Corps of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. By the end of the conflict, Nelson had survived many major battles, including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, as well as the long siege of Petersburg. In his correspondence, Nelson discusses in detail the soldier's life, religion in the ranks, his love for and heartbreak at being separated from his family, and Southern identity. Readers will find his reflections on slavery, religion, and the Confederacy particularly revealing. Seeing and participating in the slaughter of other human beings overpowered Nelson's romantic idealism. He had long imagined war as a noble struggle of valor, selflessness, and glory. But the sight of wounded men with "blood streaming from their wounds," dying slow, lonely deaths showed Nelson the true nature of war. Nelson's letters reveal the conflicting emotions that haunted many soldiers. Despite his bitter hatred of the "ruthless invaders of our beloved South," the sight of wounded Union prisoners moved him to compassion. Nelson's ability to write about irreconcilable moments when he felt both kindness and cruelty toward the enemy with introspection, candor, and sensitivity makes The Hour of Our Nation's Agony more than just a collection of missives. Jennifer Ford places Nelson squarely in the middle of the historiographic debate over the degree of disillusionment felt by Civil War soldiers, arguing that Nelson-like many soldiers-was a complex individual who does not fit neatly into one interpretation. Jennifer W. Ford is head of special collections and associate professor at the J. D. Williams Library at the University of Mississippi, where the where the collection containing Lt. Nelson's letters and other family documents is held.

As if recovering from a raucous dream of the 1960s, Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek arrived on 1970s American radio with a sound that echoed disenchanted hearts of young people everywhere. The three American boys had named their band after a country they’d watched and dreamt of from their London childhood Air Force base homes. What was this country? This new band? Classic and timeless, America embodied the dreams of a nation desperate to emerge from the desert and finally give their horse a name. Celebrating the band’s fiftieth anniversary, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share stories of growing up, growing together, and growing older. Journalist Jude Warne weaves original interviews with Beckley, Bunnell, and many others into a dynamic cultural history of America, the band, and America, the nation. Reliving hits like “Ventura Highway,” “Tin Man,” and of course, “A Horse with No Name” from their 19 studio albums and incomparable live recordings, this book offers readers a new appreciation of what makes some music unforgettable and timeless. As America’s music stays in rhythm with the heartbeats of its millions of fans, new fans feel the draw of a familiar emotion. They’ve felt it before in their hearts and thanks to America, they can now hear it, share it, and sing along.

The story of one of the state's formative institutions

This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement is a paradigm-shifting publication that presents the Civil Rights Movement through the work of nine photographers who participated in the movement as activists with SNCC, SCLC, and CORE. Unlike images produced by photojournalists, who covered breaking news events, these photographers lived within the movement—primarily within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) framework—and documented its activities by focusing on the student activists and local people who together made it happen. The core of the book is a selection of 150 black-and-white photographs, representing the work of photographers Bob Adelman, George Ballis, Bob Fitch, Bob Fletcher, Matt Herron, David Prince, Herbert Randall, Maria Varela, and Tamio Wakayama. Images are grouped around four movement themes and convey SNCC's organizing strategies, resolve in the face of violence, impact on local and national politics, and influence on the nation's consciousness. The photographs and texts of This Light of Ours remind us that the movement was a battleground, that the battle was successfully fought by thousands of “ordinary” Americans among whom were the nation's courageous youth, and that the movement's moral vision and impact continue to shape our lives.

Recipient of the 2018 Special Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and Recipient of a 2018 Heritage Award for Education from the Mississippi Heritage Trust The perfect book for every Mississippian who cares about the state, this is a mammoth collaboration in which thirty subject editors suggested topics, over seven hundred scholars wrote entries, and countless individuals made suggestions. The volume will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about Mississippi and the people who call it home. The book will be especially helpful to students, teachers, and scholars researching, writing about, or otherwise discovering the state, past and present. The volume contains entries on every county, every governor, and numerous musicians, writers, artists, and activists. Each entry provides an authoritative but accessible introduction to the topic discussed. The Mississippi Encyclopedia also features long essays on agriculture, archaeology, the civil rights movement, the Civil War, drama, education, the environment, ethnicity, fiction, folklife, foodways, geography, industry and industrial workers, law, medicine, music, myths and representations, Native Americans, nonfiction, poetry, politics and government, the press, religion, social and economic history, sports, and visual art. It includes solid, clear information in a single volume, offering with clarity and scholarship a breadth of topics unavailable anywhere else. This book also includes many surprises readers can only find by browsing.