Two generations ago, most essayists were men, but in recent decades, women writers have claimed the personal essay, using its freedom to explore contemporary life in all its diversity. Wendy Martin has gathered a wide range of writing, from classics by Maya Angelou and Joan Didion to new voices of younger writers, many appearing here for the first time in book form.

Documents the key feminists who ignited the second wave women's movement. This work tells the stories of more than two thousand individual women and a few notable men who together reignited the women's movement and made permanent changes to entrenched customs and laws.

Welcome to a work of history unlike any other. Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? What is the history of maternity—the history of pregnancy, birth, the encounter with an infant? Can one capture the historical trail of mothers? How? In Mother Is a Verb, the historian Sarah Knott creates a genre all her own in order to craft a new kind of historical interpretation. Blending memoir and history and building from anecdote, her book brings the past and the present viscerally alive. It is at once intimate and expansive, lyrical and precise. As a history, Mother Is a Verb draws on the terrain of Britain and North America from the seventeenth century to the close of the twentieth. Knott searches among a range of past societies, from those of Cree and Ojibwe women to tenant farmers in Appalachia; from enslaved people on South Carolina rice plantations to tenement dwellers in New York City and London’s East End. She pores over diaries, letters, court records, medical manuals, items of clothing. And she explores and documents her own experiences. As a memoir, Mother Is a Verb becomes a method of asking new questions and probing lost pasts in order to historicize the smallest, even the most mundane of human experiences. Is there a history to interruption, to the sound of an infant’s cry, to sleeplessness? Knott finds answers not through the telling of grand narratives, but through the painstaking accumulation of a trellis of anecdotes. And all the while, we can feel the child on her hip.

Contemporary discussions on nonfiction are often riddled with questions about the boundaries between truth and memory, honesty and artifice, facts and lies. Just how much truth is in nonfiction? How much is a lie? Blurring the Boundaries sets out to answer such questions while simultaneously exploring the limits of the form. This collection features twenty genre-bending essays from today's most renowned teachers and writers--including original work from Michael Martone, Marcia Aldrich, Dinty W. Moore, Lia Purpura, and Robin Hemley, among others. These essays experiment with structure, style, and subject matter, and each is accompanied by the writer's personal reflection on the work itself, illuminating his or her struggles along the way. As these innovative writers stretch the limits of genre, they take us with them, offering readers a front-row seat to an ever-evolving form. Readers also receive a practical approach to craft thanks to the unique writing exercises provided by the writers themselves. Part groundbreaking nonfiction collection, part writing reference, Blurring the Boundaries serves as the ideal book for literary lovers and practitioners of the craft.

Featuring 37 essays by distinguished literary scholars, A Companion to the American Novel provides a comprehensive single-volume treatment of the development of the novel in the United States from the late 18th century to the present day. Represents the most comprehensive single-volume introduction to this popular literary form currently available Features 37 contributions from a wide range of distinguished literary scholars Includes essays on topics and genres, historical overviews, and key individual works, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Beloved, and many more.

An exciting new reference work that illuminates the beliefs, customs, events, material culture, and institutions that made up Emily Dickinson's world, giving users a glance at both Dickinson's life and times and the social history of America in the 19th century. While Emily Dickinson is one of the most widely studied American poets, some dimensions of her life and work are largely under-appreciated. This book provides the wider context necessary for a more complete understanding of Dickinson, presenting Dickinson's life and times as well as discussion of her poetry and letters. Prolific author and Dickinson expert Wendy Martin and 59 contributors address the relationship between Emily Dickinson's life and work and the larger world in which she lived. Examination of topics such as the history of Amherst, MA, and the Dickinson family's place in it; and the cultural, financial, political, legal, and religious practices of the day illuminate important dimensions of Dickinson's experiences and world for students, scholars, and general readers of this iconic poet's work.

Drawing on papers, letters, journals, and extensive interviews with Walker, her family, friends, and colleagues, and with leading American cultural figures including Gloria Steinem, Quincy Jones, and Oprah Winfrey, White assesses one of the most influential writers of modern time.

Cultural history and themendment : New York Times v. Sullivan and its times / Kermit L. Hall -- New directions in American constitutional history -- Words as hard as cannon-balls : women's rights agitation -- And liberty of speech in nineteenth-century America / Sandra F. VanBurkleo -- Race, state, market, and civil society in constitutional history / Mark Tushnet -- Constitutional history and the "cultural turn" : cross -- Examining the legal-reelist narratives of Henry Fonda / Norman L. Rosenberg -- Contributors

The accompanying CD provides excerpts from the interviews with the authors.

A collection of short stories depicting and analyzing key issues in America's "New Gilded Age", a phrase that embodies the glitz and glamour of one of the wealthiest countries in the world but also suggests the greed, corruption, and inequalities teeming just below the surface.