"Wishart and the staff of the Center for Great Plains Studies have compiled a wide-ranging (pun intended) encyclopedia of this important region. Their objective was to 'give definition to a region that has traditionally been poorly defined,' and they have

First published in 1949, Frank Lawrence Owsley’s Plain Folk of the Old South refuted the popular myth that the antebellum South contained only three classes—planters, poor whites, and slaves. Owsley draws on a wide range of source materials—firsthand accounts such as diaries and the published observations of travelers and journalists; church records; and county records, including wills, deeds, tax lists, and grand-jury reports—to accurately reconstruct the prewar South’s large and significant “yeoman farmer” middle class. He follows the history of this group, beginning with their migration from the Atlantic states into the frontier South, charts their property holdings and economic standing, and tells of the rich texture of their lives: the singing schools and corn shuckings, their courtship rituals and revival meetings, barn raisings and logrollings, and contests of marksmanship and horsemanship such as “snuffing the candle,” “driving the nail,” and the “gander pull.” A new introduction by John B. Boles explains why this book remains the starting point today for the study of society in the Old South.

One day Roger Welsch ventured to ask his father a delicate personal question: “Why am I an only child?” His father’s answer is one of many examples of the delightful and laughter-inducing ribald tales Welsch has compiled from a lifetime of listening to and sharing the folklore of the Plains. More narrative than simple jokes, and the product of multiple retellings, these coarse tales were even delivered by such prudish sources as Welsch’s stern and fearsome German great-aunts. Speaking of cucumbers and sausages in a toast to a newly married couple, the prim and proper women of Welsch’s memory voice the obscene and unspeakable in stories fit for general company. Why I’m an Only Child and Other Slightly Naughty Plains Folktales is Welsch’s celebration of the gentle and evocative bits of humor reflecting the personality of the people of the Plains.

In this critical introduction to the poetry and fiction of Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965), David Scrase elucidates the literary subtleties of one of the most prominent writers to live and work in the German Democratic Republic. Despite the fact that Bobrowski won such prestigious accolades as the Heinrich Mann Prize and Charles Veillon Prize and held an important position in the literature of postwar Germany, very little English-language scholarship has been published about his work. Scrase fills this gap by exploring the heralded writer's novels, poems, and short stories. Contending that Bobrowski's writing can be understood only by those who appreciate the ethos that pervaded East Prussia during the writer's childhood, Scrase begins by reviewing the region's history and profiling the diverse ethnic and religious communities that Bobrowski encountered there. In looking at a representative sampling of Bobrowski's work, Scrase exposes the writer's attempts to come to terms with Germany's destructive role in eastern Europe. Scrase offers close readings of selected Bobrowski poems, most of which depict the landscape of Sarmatia, its rural traditions, and the daily tasks of its people. He also reviews Bobrowski's two novels, Levin's Mill and Lithuanian Pianos, and explains how to read Bobrowski's short stories.

These "New Westers", Johnson reveals, line-dance and two-step, listen to Garth Brooks and George Strait, drink beer from long-neck bottles, wear clothes ordered from Sheplers, watch rodeo on ESPN, play Wild West arcade games, eat fajitas and tacos in stuccoed Mexican cafes, collect Western art and Native American crafts, and vacation in and move to the West. "New Westers" rewrite the history and biography of the West. They reimagine the West in Cowboy sagas and poetry, Native American novels, Mexican-American drama, nature writing, revisionist films, eclectic visual artwork, and neo-traditional music. They flock to movies like Thelma and Louise, Unforgiven, and Dances with Wolves, watch mini-series like Lonesome Dove, and read bestsellers like The Crossing and All The Pretty Horses. "New Westers" are men and women who may or may not have ever hitched up a horse but who crave connection with the West. At the end of a century of urbanization, technological change, and cultural confusion, they seek a more natural home, a fuller and wider sense of place, and a deeper and more colorful personal identity. They also want to revive the dream of the mythic West - but on different terms. They overrun the Old West and yet strive to preserve it, raising troubling new concerns about the differences between the mythic and the real, between traditional and contemporary cultural influences.