Leading journalists between the coasts offer perspectives on immigration, drug addiction, climate change, and more that you won’t find in national mainstream media. After the 2016 presidential election, the national media fretted over what they could have missed in the middle of the country, launching a thousand think pieces about so-called “Trump Country.” Yet in 2020, the polling was way off—again. Journalists between the coasts could only shake their heads at the persistence of the false narratives around the communities where they lived and worked. Contributor Ted Genoways foresaw how close the election in 2016 would be and, in its aftermath, put out a public call on Facebook, calling on writers from those midland states to help answer the national media’s puzzlement. Representing a true cross-section of America, both geographically and ethnically, these writers highlight the diversity of the American experience in essays and articles that tell the hidden local truths behind the national headlines. For instance: -Esther Honig describes the effects of the immigration crackdown in Colorado -C.J. Janovy writes about the challenges of being an LGBTQ+ activist in Kansas -Karen Coates and Valeria Fernández show us the children harvesting our food -And Sydney Boles chronicles a miner’s protest in Kentucky. For readers willing to look at the American experience that the pundits don’t know about or cover, Midland is an invaluable peek into the hearts and minds of largely unheard Americans.

A history of Midland, Texas

In an introduction written for this edition, Alexander Saxton reveals that he does not regret having been a Communist, even though his political convictions cost him job opportunities.

Archetypal patterns endure because they give expression to perennial dilemmas submerged in the collective unconscious. Having examined more than 300 novels by both major and minor women writers over three centuries, Annis Pratt perceives in women's fiction distinctive elements of plot, characterization, image, and tone. She argues that women's fiction should be read as a mutually illuminative or interrelated field of texts reflecting feminine archetypes that are signals of a repressed tradition in conflict with patriarchal culture. Pratt suggests that the archetypal patterns in women's fiction provide a ritual expression containing the potential for the reader's personal transformation and that women's novels constitute literary variations on preliterary folk practices that are available in the realm of imagination even when they have long been absent from day-to-day life.

“Christopher Sykes has written the authoritative work on the Palestine Mandate... His account is almost unbearably fair to all concerned, even to Britain... a very excellent book. Mr. Sykes steers his way through the reigns of successive High Commissioners and through the maze of White Papers and Royal Commissions with amazing virtuosity. We see the whole picture of the Mandate in a way which was impossible to those at the time.” — International Affairs “Mr. Sykes (son of Mark Sykes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot Agreement) has written an illuminating, highly-informed and balanced study of the development of the Zionist movement into the State of Israel. By virtue of his acquaintance with many of the leading persons involved, Mr. Sykes has had access to a considerable amount of unpublished material upon which he has drawn heavily to clarify much that was previously obscure about events in the unhappy Holy Land. He also writes with an easy, lucid style so that apart from the book’s intrinsic merit it is immensely readable.” — International Journal “One of the many merits of Mr Sykes’s wholly meritorious book is that he is not anchored in time or prejudice.” — Middle Eastern Studies

The book investigates the vast number of locomotives that came to the London Midland Region in 1948 at Nationalisation. This is a class by class survey with over 200 illustrations, covering all the top link and freight classes, also looking at the smaller types of locomotive, operating on branch lines and doing more humble tasks. The author explores what happened to them and also looks at those that eventually made their way into preservation.

The renowned HO scale Allegheny Midland layout is analyzed in detail in this fascinating book by Tony Koester. Built by Tony, over the course of 25 years, the legendary layout has provided many lessons about what worked and what didn't work. You'll be sure to enjoy Tony's unique insight and perspective.