Summary

From Ann Margret to Bob Dylan and George Jones to Simon & Garfunkel, Nashville harmonica virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy has contributed to some of the most successful recordings of country, pop, and rock music of the last six decades. As the leader of the Hee Haw “Million-Dollar Band,” McCoy spent more than two decades appearing on the television screens of country music fans around the United States. And, as a solo artist, he has entertained audiences across North America, Europe, and Japan and has earned numerous honors as a result.

Fifty Cents and a Box Top: The Creative Life of Nashville Session Musician Charlie McCoy offers rare firsthand insights into life in the recording studio, on the road, and on the small screen as Nashville became a leading center of popular music production in the 1960s and as a young McCoy, a West Virginia native, established himself as one of the most sought-after session musicians in the country. 

Over the course of his nearly six-decade career as a session musician, harmonica virtuoso, and multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy has appeared on thousands of country, pop, and rock recordings. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Musicians Hall of Fame, and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, McCoy also led the famous “Million-Dollar Band” on the syndicated country music program Hee Haw for more than two decades.

Contents

Foreword: Travis D. Stimeling

Acknowledgements

1. West Virginia Days

2. Rock and Roll Charlie

3. The Road to Nashville

4. College and the Return to Nashville

5. Music City Opportunities

6. Life in the Studio

7. The Artists

8. The Recording Artist

9. Hee Haw

10. An Artist Overseas

11. The Harmonica and Me

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Nashville Number System

Appendix B: Artist Discography

Notes

Index

Photographs

Author

Over the course of his nearly six-decade career as a session musician, harmonica virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist Charlie McCoy has appeared on thousands of country, pop, and rock recordings. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Musicians Hall of Fame, and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, McCoy also led the famous “Million-Dollar Band” on the syndicated country music program Hee Haw for more than two decades.

Travis D. Stimeling is associate professor of musicology at West Virginia University, where he also directs the WVU Bluegrass and Old-Time Bands. His previous books include Cosmic Cowboys, New Hicks: The Countercultural Sounds of Austin’s Progressive Country Music Scene, The Country Music Reader, and Songwriting in Contemporary West Virginia: Profiles and Reflections, published by WVU Press.

Reviews

"We've been waiting for McCoy to tell us his story and can be grateful that he has now done so in such compelling and entertaining fashion."
No Depression

“One of the first serious, substantive books by a major participant in the Nashville recording scene. McCoy’s recollections and insights offer a new and fascinating perspective on the development and expansion of the country music industry.”
Rich Kienzle, author of The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones

"Fifty Cents and a Box Top–what a great title–is well worth your time."
Joe Specht, Librarian Emeritus, McMurry University and co-editor of The Roots of Texas Music

Summary

The sixty-three fiction writers and poets within this anthology delve deep into the many senses of place that modern West Virginia, the core of Appalachia, inspires.

Throughout this collection, we see profound wonder, questioning, and conflicts involving family, sexual identity, class, discrimination, environmental beauty and peril, and all the sorts of rebellion, error, contemplation, and contentment that an intrepid soul can devise. These stories and poems, all published within the last fifteen years, are grounded in what it means to live in and identify with a complex place.

With a mix of established writers like Jayne Anne Phillips, Norman Jordan, Ann Pancake, Maggie Anderson, and Denise Giardina and fresh voices like Matthew Neill Null, Ida Stewart, Rajia Hassib, and Scott McClanahan, this collection breaks open new visions of all-American landscapes of the heart. By turns rowdy and contemplative, hilarious and bleak, and lyrical and gritty, it is a collage of extraordinary literary visions.

Contents

Gail Galloway Adams
Maggie Anderson
Pinckney Benedict
Laura Treacy Bentley
Michael Blumenthal
Ace Boggess
Mark Brazaitis
Joy Castro
Jonathan Corcoran
Ed Davis
Mark DeFoe
Cheryl Denise
Andrea Fekete
Denise Giardina
Maggie Glover
Crystal Good
James Harms
Marc Harshman
Rajia Hassib
John Hoppenthaler
Ron Houchin
Norman Jordan
Laura Long
Marie Manilla
Jeff Mann
Mesha Maren
Lee Maynard
Scott McClanahan
John McKernan
Llewellyn McKernan
Irene McKinney
Devon McNamara
Kelly McQuain
Rahul Mehta
Sheryl Monks
Mary B. Moore
Renée K. Nicholson
Val Nieman
Matthew Neill Null
Ann Pancake
Jayne Anne Phillips
Sara Pritchard
Mary Ann Samyn
Elizabeth Savage
Steve Scafidi
Angela Shaw
Kent Shaw
Anita Skeen
Aaron Smith
Ida Stewart
Kevin Stewart
A. E. Stringer
Natalie Sypolt
Glenn Taylor
Vince Trimboli
Jessie van Eerden
Doug Van Gundy
John Van Kirk
Erin Veith
Ryan Walsh
Randi Ward
Meredith Sue Willis
William Woolfitt

Editors

Laura Long is the author of the novel Out of Peel Tree and two poetry collections. She teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia.

Doug Van Gundy’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Oxford American, Ecotone, Appalachian Heritage, Poetry Salzburg Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the poetry collection A Life Above Water, and he teaches writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Reviews

"Editors Long and Van Gundy bring together fiction and poetry to show a region as diverse as the people who make it up. . . .A collage of a region that is greater than the sum of its parts."
Kirkus Reviews

"Beautiful and important."
Silas House, author of Clay’s Quilt, The Coal Tattoo, and Eli the Good

“This book is a literary treasure for West Virginia and the rest of the Appalachian region. Interwoven with prose and poetry, it is a rumination on what it means to be of a mountain place in this day and time. In vivid, fresh language West Virginians explore place, identity, family, and so much more. A rich and important addition to mountain letters, I think this book will be regarded for a long time.”
Crystal Wilkinson, author of The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries

“Never sentimental or clichéd, this essential collection captures the complexity and richness of West Virginia today. Revealing a deep, sometimes uneasy connection to home, these stories and poems carry us into the coalfields and hollers, cities, and small towns across West Virginia, and take surprising turns along the way to illuminate its beauty, darkness, violence, and grace.”
Carter Sickels, author of The Evening Hour

"Representing the rich diversity of West Virginians, these writers offer historical, contemporary, and timeless reflections of life and death in the great mountain state through poignant, at times haunting, poetry and prose."
Theresa L. Burriss, Radford University 

Summary

Ecologists, like other scientists, have for decades debated their role in society. While some have argued that ecologists should participate in environmental politics, others have focused their attention strictly on scientific issues. In Ecologists and Environmental Politics, now updated with a new preface by the author, Stephen Bocking explores this debate by recounting the history of ecology in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada since the 1940s.

Bocking tells this history through four case studies: the origins and early research of the Nature Conservancy in Great Britain; the development of ecology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee; the work of the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study in New Hampshire; and research in fisheries ecology at the University of Toronto. By comparing these case studies, Bocking demonstrates how the places of contemporary science—laboratories, landscapes, and funding agencies—and science’s purposes, as expressed through the political roles of expertise and specific managerial and regulatory responsibilities, have shaped contemporary ecology and its application to pressing environmental problems.

Contents

Coming Soon.

Author

Stephen Bocking is a professor of environmental history and policy in the Trent School of the Environment at Trent University. His other books include Biodiversity in Canada: Ecology, Ideas, and Action, Nature's Experts: Science, Politics, and the Environment, and Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History.

Reviews

“An important study of the period when ecology was being called upon to solve problems of environmental deterioration, and of the institutional context of scientific research in general.”
Environmental History

Summary

Untapped collects twelve previously unpublished essays that analyze the rise of craft beer from social and cultural perspectives.

In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe there has been exponential growth in the number of small independent breweries over the past thirty years – a reversal of the corporate consolidation and narrowing of consumer choice that characterized much of the twentieth century. While there are legal and policy components involved in this shift, the contributors to Untapped ask broader questions. How does the growth of craft beer connect to trends like the farm-to-table movement, gentrification, the rise of the “creative class,” and changing attitudes toward both cities and farms? How do craft beers conjure history, place, and authenticity? At perhaps the most fundamental level, how does the rise of craft beer call into being new communities that may challenge or reinscribe hierarchies based on gender, class, and race?

Contents

Foreword 
Ian Malcolm Taplin

Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of the Craft Beer Revolution: Introduction and Overview
Nathaniel G. Chapman, J. Slade Lellock, and Cameron D. Lippard

Part I: Global Political Economy

1. Storytelling and Market Formation: An Exploration of Craft Brewers in the UK
Jennifer Smith Maguire, Jessica Bain, Andrea Davies, and Maria Touri

2. A Pint of Success: How Beer Is Revitalizing Cities and Local Economies in the United Kingdom
Ignazio Cabras

3. The Rationalization of Craft Beer from Medieval Monks to Modern Microbrewers: A Weberian Analysis
Michael A. Elliott

4. Entrepreneurial Leisure and the Microbrew Revolution: The Neoliberal Origins of the Craft Beer Movement
J. Nikol Beckham

Part II: Space and Place

5. Crafting Place: Craft Beer and Authenticity in Jacksonville, Florida
Krista E. Paulsen and Hayley E. Tuller

6. Ethical Brews: New England, Networked Ecologies, and a New Craft Beer Movement
Ellis Jones and Daina Cheyenne Harvey

7. Atmosphere and Activism at the Great British Beer Festival
Thomas Thurnell-Read

8. Neighborhood Change, One Pint at a Time: The Impact of Local Characteristics on Craft Breweries
Jesus Barajas, Geoff Boeing, and Julie Wartell

9. The Spatial Dynamics of Organizational Identity among Craft Brewers
Tünde Cserpes and Paul-Brian McInerney

Part III: Intersecting Identities

10. The Cultural Tensions Between Taste Refinement and Middle-Class Masculinity
Andre F. Maciel

11. You Are What You Drink: Gender Stereotypes and Craft Beer Preferences within the Craft Beer Scene of New York City
Helana Darwin

12. Brewing Boundaries of White/Middle-Class/Maleness: Reflections from Within the Craft Beer Industry
Erik T. Withers

Glossary
List of Contributors
Index

Author

Nathaniel G. Chapman is an assistant professor of sociology in the department of behavioral sciences at Arkansas Tech University. His research focuses on craft beer and the production of culture in the United States. He has also researched racial dynamics at Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festivals, and EDM more broadly. Currently, he is conducting research on gender and consumption in the craft beer industry, and the construction of authenticity in craft brewing.

J. Slade Lellock is a PhD student in the department of sociology at Virginia Tech. His research interests include culture, digital sociology, consumption, taste, and qualitative methodologies. His work generally focuses on the symbolic and expressive realms of culture such as music, art, film, and dress as well as social and symbolic boundaries. Given his interest in the cultural dimensions of digital social life, he has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in multiple online communities.

Cameron D. Lippard is an associate professor of sociology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. His teaching and research interests are in social inequality, focusing on the social problems and racialization Latino immigrants face while living in the American South. Recent publications include two books: Building Inequality: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in the Atlanta Construction Industry and Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South. He also has researched the connections between immigrant labor and growing industries in the American South including the construction, meatpacking, and Christmas tree industries.

Reviews

"Untapped speaks to important aspects of beer and food culture. It is well researched and documented and adds to our understanding of a largely understudied field."
Carolyn Keller, Keene State College

"A valuable and teachable book that will appeal to anyone interested in social science perspectives on craft brewing."
Andrew Shears, Mansfield University

Summary

Shortly after his mother dies of breast cancer when he is ten years old, Michael Blumenthal discovers that she was not his biological mother, and that his aunt and uncle, immigrant chicken farmers living in Vineland, New Jersey, are really his parents.

As fate would have it, his adoptive father, a German-Jewish refugee raised by a loveless and embittered stepmother after his own mother died in childbirth, has inflicted on his stepson a fate uncannily—and terrifyingly—similar to his own: Having first adopted Michael, in part, to help his dying wife, he then imposes on him the same sort of penurious and loveless stepmother whom he himself had had to survive. With these revelations, the "mysteries" that seem to have permeated Michael's childhood are laid bare, triggering a quest for belonging that will infiltrate the author's entire adult life.

Contents

Coming Soon 

Author

Michael Blumenthal is a visiting professor of law and codirector of the Immigration Clinic at West Virginia University College of Law. A former director of creative writing at Harvard University, he is the author of eight books of poetry, as well as The Greatest Jewish-American Lover in Hungarian History, Because They Needed Me: The Incredible Life of Rita Miljo and Her Struggle to Save the Baboons of South Africa, Weinstock Among The Dying, and When History Enters the House.

Reviews

"Michael Blumenthal's astonishing book has a Dickensian power quite unlike anything we're used to in modern American memoir. . . . Here is a book that turns the familiar immigrant story on its ear, and makes of that American tale a profound meditation on family and history."
Patricia Hampl, author of A Romantic Education and The Florist’s Daughter

"The touching story of [Blumenthal's] search for his true identity."
Library Journal

Summary

In the early nineteenth century, a ten-mile stretch along the Kanawha River in western Virginia became the largest salt-producing area in the antebellum United States. Production of this basic commodity stimulated settlement, the livestock industry, and the rise of agricultural processing, especially pork packing, in the American West. Salt extraction was then and is now a fundamental industry.

In his illuminating study, now available with a new preface by the author, John Stealey examines the legal basis of this industry, its labor practices, and its marketing and distribution patterns. Through technological innovation, salt producers harnessed coal and steam as well as men and animals, constructed a novel evaporative system, and invented drilling tools later employed in oil and natural gas exploration. Thus in many ways the salt industry was the precursor of the American extractive and chemical industries. Stealey's informative study is an important contribution to American economic, business, labor, and legal history.

Contents

Coming Soon 

Author

John Stealey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, Shepherd University and the author of Kanawhan Prelude to Nineteenth-Century United States Monopoly: The Virginia Combinations, Porte Crayon’s Mexico: David Hunter Strother’s Diaries in the Early Porfirian Era, 1879-1885, and West Virginia’s Civil War-Era Constitution: Loyal Revolution, Confederate Counter-Revolution, and the Convention of 1872.

Reviews

"A piece of meticulous scholarship and an outstanding reconstruction, mostly from primary sources, of one of the first major manufacturing industries to develop in what is now southern West Virginia. . . .This is a well-told story of entrepreneurship, revealing how innovators in a frontier industry both anticipated and adapted to change by introducing new technologies and forms of business organization."
West Virginia History

Summary

In 1898, when war with Spain seemed inevitable, Andrew Summers Rowan, an American army lieutenant from West Virginia, was sent on a secret mission to Cuba. He was to meet with General Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban rebels, in order to gather information for a U.S. invasion. Months later, after the war was fought and won, a flamboyant entrepreneur named Elbert Hubbard wrote an account of Rowan’s mission titled “A Message to Garcia.” It sold millions of copies, and Rowan became the equivalent of a modern-day rock star. His fame resulted in hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, radio shows, and two movies. Even today he is held up as an exemplar of bravery and loyalty. The problem is that nothing Hubbard wrote about Rowan was true.

Donald Tunnicliff Rice reveals the facts behind the story of “A Message to Garcia” while using Rowan’s biography as a window into the history of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, and the Moro Rebellion. The result is a compellingly written narrative containing many details never before published in any form, and also an accessible perspective on American diplomatic and military history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Contents

Preface                                    

Introduction                

1. “It is meritorious to be a boy at West Point”                    

2. Becoming an Intelligence Officer                

3. “A Most Perilous Undertaking”                 

4. America Takes a Step towards Empire                  

5. The Creation of an American Myth                       

6. Exactly Where Are the Philippines?                       

7. A Glorious Undertaking                 

8. Captain Rowan in Command                     

9. An Idyllic Spot to Spend the War              

10. Major Rowan in Love and War              

11. The Complexities of Retirement   

12. The Myth Lives On        

Epilogue                      

Endnotes                     

Selected Bibliography 

Index                           

Author

Donald Tunnicliff Rice is the author of The Agitator and How to Publish Your Own Magazine, and the winner of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Achievement Award. He has been employed as a history textbook writer, technical editor, and advertising copywriter. His writings have appeared in periodicals ranging from the New York Times to the Journal of Caribbean Literature.

Reviews

“Rice interweaves personal and national history to outline major shifts in expansionist activity under McKinley and Roosevelt. . . . Readers who thrill to the particulars of life in military camps will find much to enjoy here.”
Publishers Weekly

"Both authoritative and entertaining."
Caribbean Studies

“The story of Andrew Summers Rowan is very much worth telling, and it's difficult to imagine it being told better than in this book.”
Peter Hulme, author of Cuba’s Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente

“What makes this book so fascinating is the way in which the author weaves Andrew Rowan’s personal story into the greater history of American imperial expansion under McKinley and Roosevelt. Both general readers and scholars interested in West Virginia history and, especially, in the complex history of the U.S.’s war against Spain and subsequent ascension over the Philippines will find a great deal to admire.”
Brady Harrison, author of Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature

“Cast in Deathless Bronze is well worth reading. Rowan's story not only intersects with West Virginia history, but it reconstructs early military efforts at intelligence-gathering, reveals the many aspects—the tedious and lonely, the fulfilling and frustrating—of military life on the late nineteenth-century western frontier and in Cuba and the Philippines, and illustrates effectively the way history is often twisted into a myth that overwhelms both the actions of its original participants and truth itself.”
West Virginia History