"This is the first book since the 1930s to study this important and little-remembered phenomenon of American folk culture. The author interviewed a large number of older Americans, both black and white, who performed play parties as young adults. A songbook of ninety musical examples and lyrics completes the picture of this vanished tradition."--Jacket.

New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper tells a timelessly seductive tale of a romance touched by the paranormal and of a woman who opens a door to the unknown and finds a stranger with an irresistible invitation…. With its antebellum setting and gallant history, Jasmine Hall was more than just a business for Banner Clairmont. The lovingly preserved plantation-era inn had been home to the Clairmont family for generations. But the realities of modern real-estate had made it time to sell even the most priceless treasures. So it was hardly with a great deal of enthusiasm that Banner led real-estate speculator Rory Stewart around the property. How could this stranger—whose southern charm and universal good looks made it impossible to entirely distrust him—have any idea of Jasmine Hall’s true value? Yet what was Banner to make of the fact that Rory had seen the ghosts that never showed themselves to outsiders? Was he destined not only to save the Hall but to live there? Was his fate entangled with hers? Or was she banking too much on an old family legend … and wishful thinking?

To demonstrate the authority of this manual, the publisher claims the author to be American inventor, Elias Howe. Similar to many other dance manuals published throughout the nineteenth century, this book is a publisher's compilation of other sources. The book begins with a description of ballroom etiquette, dress, appropriate music, and rules for prompters. The manual continues with discussion of the era's most popular dances including quadrilles, waltz, polka, schottisch, gorlitza, polka mazurka, country dances, and figures for forty-two "French Fancy Cotillons," (also known as the cotillon or German), a group dance performed as a series of party games, usually to waltz music.

In Appalachian Dance: Creativity and Continuity in Six Communities, Susan Eike Spalding brings to bear twenty-five years' worth of rich interviews with black and white Virginians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians to explore the evolution and social uses of dance in each region. Spalding analyzes how issues as disparate as industrialization around coal, plantation culture, race relations, and the 1970s folk revival influenced freestyle clogging and other dance forms like square dancing in profound ways. She reveals how African Americans and Native Americans, as well as European immigrants drawn to the timber mills and coal fields, brought movement styles that added to local dance vocabularies. Placing each community in its sociopolitical and economic context, Spalding analyzes how the formal and stylistic nuances found in Appalachian dance reflect the beliefs, shared understandings, and experiences of the community at large, paying particular attention to both regional and racial diversity. Written in clear and accessible prose, Appalachian Dance is a lively addition to the literature and a bold contribution to scholarship concerned with the meaning of movement and the ever-changing nature of tradition.