A classic in contemporary Oklahoma literature, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Red Dirt unearths the joys and ordeals of growing up poor during the 1940s and 1950s. In this exquisite rendering of her childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era, the author bears witness to a family and community that still cling to the dream of America as a republic of landowners.

Anthology of the poetry of poetrySPARK, a part of the SPARKcon creative festival in Raleigh, NC, held in September 2009. Illustrated and designed by the superb young artist/graphic designer, Katie Nordt, and edited by Cal Nordt, this attractive volume is an expression of the strong growth of poetry in The Triangle area of NC, a state with perhaps the strongest living history of both avant garde and traditional literature in the US. The 2009 poetrySPARK Anthology includes the best poems of 26 poets who read at the event, which was the largest Raleigh poetry event in memory, with over 60 poets reading in two days. Included are some of the top poets in NC and some with excellent national reputations in almost all genres and forms of poetry. It is diverse, meaningful, and a very good read for both the well-versed and newcomers to this literary art.

Finalist for the Lincoln Prize! Traditional histories of the Civil War describe the conflict as a war between North and South. Kenneth W. Noe suggests it should instead be understood as a war between the North, the South, and the weather. In The Howling Storm, Noe retells the history of the conflagration with a focus on the ways in which weather and climate shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns. He further contends that events such as floods and droughts affecting the Confederate home front constricted soldiers’ food supply, lowered morale, and undercut the government’s efforts to boost nationalist sentiment. By contrast, the superior equipment and open supply lines enjoyed by Union soldiers enabled them to cope successfully with the South’s extreme conditions and, ultimately, secure victory in 1865. Climate conditions during the war proved unusual, as irregular phenomena such as El Niño, La Niña, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean disrupted weather patterns across southern states. Taking into account these meteorological events, Noe rethinks conventional explanations of battlefield victories and losses, compelling historians to reconsider long-held conclusions about the war. Unlike past studies that fault inflation, taxation, and logistical problems for the Confederate defeat, his work considers how soldiers and civilians dealt with floods and droughts that beset areas of the South in 1862, 1863, and 1864. In doing so, he addresses the foundational causes that forced Richmond to make difficult and sometimes disastrous decisions when prioritizing the feeding of the home front or the front lines. The Howling Storm stands as the first comprehensive examination of weather and climate during the Civil War. Its approach, coverage, and conclusions are certain to reshape the field of Civil War studies.

Levi, the son of a sharecropper in rural South Georgia and raised in the 1920s and 1930s, was accustomed to having very little. Now, he found himself facing a situation he could never have imagined. A trip across the country with one of his sisters and her husband sounded thrilling. He had never been out of Georgia when, suddenly, he found himself stranded in a small Texas town with nothing but the clothes on his back. He didn't know which was more devastating: his lost and penniless situation or being abandoned by someone he loved and who, he thought, loved him. At sixteen, alone in a strange new world, he faces one unthinkable situation after another. But he was going home to Alma by whatever means necessary and plant his feet so deeply in that red Georgia clay that he would never move again!

Hunter Nichols, a successful narcotics investigator for the Pittsburgh police department, is critically injured during a drug bust. While recovering, his life is again threatened by the father of the man he killed during the bust, a Colombian drug lord bent on savage revenge. With the help of friends, family and a feisty Native American woman, Hunter discovers the true meaning of healing.

Think of a time when the sun never set on the British Empire. For the British it was once a land of Hope and Glory, but over the eighty years of my biography the grandeur fizzled out and sadly the country ended up as a land of hope for glory.

In 1975 Kenneth Lincoln went on the road with his small daughter and four students, traveling from Los Angeles through Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, searching for the essence of the Indian experience in modern America. His gritty but poetic account of this trip explores the challenges facing native peoples. The Good Red Road captures the tension between Indians and whites, reveals the continuing importance of religion among the Lakotas, and depicts the differences among Indians. Finally, the book is a journey of self-discovery by Lincoln and his students, one of them coauthor Al Logan Slagle, a Cherokee Indian and later an advocate for Indian rights.