Gray rock fences built of ancient limestone are hallmarks of Kentucky's Bluegrass landscape. Why did Kentucky farmers turn to rock as fence-building material when most had earlier used hardwood rails? Who were the masons responsible for Kentucky's lovely rock fences and what are the different rock forms used in this region? In this generously illustrated book, Carolyn Murray-Wooley and Karl Raitz address those questions and explore the background of Kentucky's rock fences, the talent and skill of the fence masons, and the Irish and Scottish models they followed in their work. They also correct inaccurate popular perceptions about the fences and use census data and archival documents to identify the fence masons and where they worked. As the book reveals, the earliest settlers in Kentucky built dry-laid fences around eighteenth-century farmsteads, cemeteries, and mills. Fence building increased dramatically during the nineteenth century so that by the 1880s rock fences lined most roads, bounded pastures and farmyards throughout the Bluegrass. Farmers also built or commissioned rock fences in New England, the Nashville Basin, and the Texas hill country, but the Bluegrass may have had the most extensive collection of quarried rock fences in North America. This is the first book-length study on any American fence type. Filled with detailed fence descriptions, an extensive list of masons' names, drawings, photographs, and a helpful glossary, it will appeal to folklorists, historians, geographers, architects, landscape architects, and masons, as well as general readers intrigued by Kentucky's rock fences.

Kentucky Bluegrass Country by R. Gerald Alvey Horse breeding, the cultures of tobacco and bourbon, the forms of architecture, the codes of the hunt, the traditions of gambling and dueling, convivial celebrations, regional foodways-all of these are ingredients in the folklife of the Inner Bluegrass Region that is the focus of this fascinating book. R. Gerald Alvey (retired) was a professor of folklore and English at the University of Kentucky.

Within these pages are vintage postcards, created between 1900 and 1950, that depict an area known across the country as Kentucky's Bluegrass. From its horse farms to its military forts and river commerce, this seventeen county region exemplifies the spirit and pride of Kentucky, and the images preserved on these postcards bring the history of this unique area to life.

It is likely that most fans of bluegrass music would concede that no state should be more associated with bluegrass music than Kentuckyand rightly so. Bluegrass music draws its name from the band that Kentuckian Bill Monroe formed during the late 1930s and 1940s. Bill named his band Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys to honor his home state. Eventually, the music these bands and others like them were playing came to be known as bluegrass music. Later, another Kentuckian, Ebo Walker, while playing with the Bowling Green-based bluegrass band, New Grass Revival, coined the phrase newgrass to describe the bands progressive style of music. Other Kentuckians such as Bobby and Sonny Osborne, J. D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs, and Dale Ann Bradley have become bluegrass stars. Some of the musicians from Kentucky covered in this book are quite famoussome are not. Famous or not, all of them have a deep-rooted passion for the music they play.

A shocking investigation into a true crime that tore a town apart—the violent murder of a young coed in Kentucky, the innocent boy who was jailed for the crime, and a small Southern community filled with haunting, unforgettable characters. Katie Autry was a foster child from a tiny village in Kentucky; a little awkward, but always with the biggest smile on her high school cheerleading squad. In September 2002, she matriculated as a freshman at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, majoring in the dental program. She worked days at the smoothie shop, nights at the local strip club, and fell in love with a football player who wouldn’t date her. On the morning of May 4, 2003, Katie Autry was raped, stabbed, sprayed with hairspray, and set on fire in her own dormitory room. In telling the true story of this shocking crime, William Van Meter describes the devastation of not one but three families. Two young men are jailed for the crime: DNA evidence places Stephen Soules, an unemployed, mixed-race high school dropout, at the scene; and Lucas Goodrum, a twenty-one-year-old pot dealer with an ex-wife, a girlfriend still in high school, and a history of domestic abuse, is held by an ever-changing confession. The friends of the suspects and the foster and birth families of the victim form complex and warring social nets that are cast across town. And a small southern community, populated by eccentrics of every socioeconomic class, from dirt-poor to millionaire, responds to the horror. With the keen eye of a talented young journalist returning to his southern roots, Van Meter paints a vivid portrait of the town, the characters who fill it, and the simmering class conflicts that made an injustice like this not only possible, but inevitable. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Bluegrass is redolent with atmosphere, dark tension, and lush landscapes.

Originally established in 1775 the town of Lexington, Kentucky grew quickly into a national cultural center amongst the rolling green hills of the Bluegrass Region. Nicknamed the "Athens of the West," Lexington and the surrounding area became a leader in higher education, visual arts, architecture, and music, and the center of the horse breeding and racing industries. The national impact of the Bluegrass was further confirmed by prominent Kentucky figures such as Henry Clay and John C. Breckinridge. Bluegrass Renaissance: The History and Culture of Central Kentucky, 1792-1852, chronicles Lexington's development as one of the most important educational and cultural centers in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. Editors Daniel Rowland and James C. Klotter gather leading scholars to examine the successes and failures of Central Kentuckians from statehood to the death of Henry Clay, in an investigation of the area's cultural and economic development and national influence. Bluegrass Renaissance is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of Lexington's status as antebellum Kentucky's cultural metropolis.

Signature Edition, slip cased, leather bound 250 limited edition.Into the Bluegrass - Art and Artistry of Kentucky's Historic Icons displays author Dr. Mel Hankla's gifts as a teacher of history and skilled storyteller. Dr. Hankla shares his deep knowledge of frontier Kentucky and his great reverence for her early peoples, offering his readers the best possible outcome: interesting stories told by someone who loves his subject. From Kentucky's earliest frontier weapons to the artistry found in 19th-century furniture, silver, textiles, pottery, and pictorial art, the objects are iconic and the story is Kentucky's own.

Milton's poems invariably depict the decisive instant in a story, a moment of crisis that takes place just before the action undergoes a dramatic change of course. Such instants look backward to a past that is about to be superseded or repudiated and forward, at the same time, to a future that will immediately begin to unfold. Martin Evans identifies this moment of transition as "the Miltonic Moment." This provocative new study focuses primarily on three of Milton's best known early poems: "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus)," and "Lycidas." These texts share a distinctive perceptual and cognitive structure, which Evans defines as characteristically Miltonic, embracing a single moment that is both ending and beginning. The poems communicate a profound sense of intermediacy because they seem to take place between the boundaries that separate events. The works illuniated here, which also include Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, are all about transition from one form to another: from paganism to Christianity, from youthful inexperience to moral maturity, and from pastoral retirement to heroic engagement. This transformation is often ideological as well as historical or biographical. Evans shows that the moment of transition is characteristic of all Milton's poetry, and he proposes a new way of reading one of the seminal writers of the seventeenth century. Evans concludes that the narrative reversals in Milton's poetry suggest his constant attempts to bring about an intellectual revolution that, at a time of religious and political change in England, would transform an age.

Saving Kentucky is about preserving not only land and historic property, but also a way of life. It tells the stories of an eclectic group of Kentuckians, both in their own words and through the extraordinary photographs of Thomas Hart Shelby. From tenant farmers to urban revivalists, they have one thing in common: a deep connection to their heritage and a fierce determination to preserve it for future generations.

On any given day, more than forty thousand horses roam the fields of the Bluegrass, and there are more than five hundred horse farms in the region known for its rich soil and rolling hills. Kentucky Horse Country: Images of the Bluegrass is renowned photographer James Archambeault's pictorial portrait of the natural beauty of Kentucky's Bluegrass region and the thriving thoroughbred industry for which it is famous. The book contains more than 150 full-color images ranging from tender scenes of mares and foals grazing, to the excitement of race day at Keeneland, to gorgeous landscapes of pristine white fences enclosing lush pastures. The region has long been associated with the best achievements of the equine world. In 1871, a horse named Lexington was foaled in Scott County, and many famous thoroughbreds can trace their lineage back to this great sire. Having photographed the bluegrass for decades, Archambeault is intimately familiar with the backstretch and the barns, the fields and the foals, that are known around the world. In the course of his career, he has been able to see many of the legendary horses that have made horse racing so exciting and popular: Affirmed, Alydar, Spectacular Bid, Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Cigar. Rare photographs of these and other racing royalty are included in the book. The handsome barns and well-tended pastures found throughout central Kentucky have been the home to international racing champions, and now individuals from all over the world, including England, Ireland, Japan, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, have a stake in the region's flourishing horse industry. As preeminent racing historian Edward L. Bowen notes in his introduction, "It is a special place where the ruler of Dubai and a stable groom have something in common; the queen of England can admire a leathery old jockey; a philanthropist and a veterinary professor have the same goals; and a $2 bettor celebrates at the same moment that a corporate CEO grits his teeth in disappointment." The vibrant photographs in Kentucky Horse Country are accompanied by Archambeault's captions and narrative descriptions, as well by a lively introduction to the history of thoroughbreds in the Bluegrass by Bowen. The book also includes a foreword by Kentucky native Steve Cauthen, the youngest jockey to win the Triple Crown, who once again calls the Bluegrass his home. James Archambeault's latest work is a Kentucky triple crown for those who love horses and horse racing, for those who revel in the magical beauty of the Bluegrass, and for those who are looking for a grand introduction to what makes this region so unique.