Summary

Petroforms contributes a much-needed theory of form and genre to the cutting-edge field of petrocriticism, itself an offshoot of developments in postcolonial ecocriticism. Studies of resource fiction and inquiries in the energy humanities have recently taken their rightful place as necessary reflections on the role of the literary imagination in intervening in the Anthropocene as we find ourselves precariously placed in the face of a fossil fuel crisis, climate change, and mass extinctions.

With Petroforms, Helen Kapstein undertakes close readings of a range of Nigerian aesthetic forms: short stories, romance novels, documentary film, the “Nollywood” film industry, fine art sculpture, and poetry. She uses these forms to argue that the demands of paying attention to petroleum extraction, production, consumption, and distribution in the creation of resource fictions must necessarily alter and affect conventional forms and structures. What results is a new set of genre-bending forms, like documentary film that we can read as horror, in response to the forceful and fluid demands of the petroleum industry and its master narrative.

Nigeria is one of the world’s largest oil-producing nations, in which that production is concentrated in the Niger Delta, resulting in a local environment that has been steadily degraded by oil spills, flares, pollution, and contamination, and a local culture shaped by false scarcity in a space of abundance, murderous politics, and escalating violence. At the same time as the Niger Delta grounds Kapstein’s argument in its own political realities and cultural responses, Nigeria’s participation in a global economy of petrodependency allows her theory of petroforms to be extended and applied more generally.

What Peter Hitchcock calls “oil’s generative law” is that it is “everywhere and obvious, it must be opaque or otherwise fantastic.” He means the coexistence of oil’s taken-for-granted qualities is something constitutive of every level of everyday life and its spectacular displays—gushers, spills, explosions. Oil’s nature, the fact that it is everywhere, unctuously oozing into every corner of everyday life, means that it constantly spills over out of our existing forms, genres, and systems, demanding accommodation. To try to contain it, we create new forms. Thus, a petroform is simultaneously reactionary (a necessary response to oil’s pressures, a by-product of the commodity itself) and resistant (an attempt at containment, at generating a retort to the very thing that shapes it). Each form figures oil and then configures and reconfigures itself in reaction to it.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Crude Fictions
2. Petrofeminism
3. Petroart
4. Petrohorror
5. Petrocinema
6. Petrodrama
Conclusion
Works Cited

Author

Helen Kapstein is professor of English at John Jay College, The City University of New York. She is the author of Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism: Reading Real and Imagined Spaces (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Her work has appeared in Postcolonial Text, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. She holds a PhD in English and comparative literature from Columbia University.

Reviews

 

“Petroforms is a remarkable study of the manifold genres produced not merely by what we in the energy humanities term petromodernity; it attends to those ‘crude’ genres that arise organically from the extraction, refinement and distribution of petroleum within global markets. The central argument—that oil engenders its own forms, because it exceeds the ontological containers available through conventional literary-critical protocols—is one that has often been made in the context of reader reception but not necessarily in terms of artistic production.” 
—Stacey Balkan, associate professor of Environmental Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, is the author of Rogues in the Postcolony: Narrating Extraction and Itinerancy in India and coauthor of Oil Fictions: World Literature and Our Contemporary Petrosphere

“Responding to the sense that oil encounters are difficult to capture in literature, Petroforms demonstrates how literary, filmic, sculptural, and pop-cultural forms from Nigeria stretch and change to represent oil. Helen Kapstein locates this formal stretching not only in documentaries and short stories that portray devastation in the Niger Delta but also in the other face of Nigerian oil: the romance––even the eroticism––of petromodernity for more privileged subjects in Lagos and beyond. Recognizing that petromodernity is classed and regionalized but also gendered, Kapstein foregrounds the ambivalent participation of Nigerian women as both protestors of oil extractivism and beneficiaries of petromodernity. Taking readers from short story to romance novel, sculpture, drama, and even sitcom, Petroforms illustrates the wide-ranging formal innovation prompted by Nigeria’s ongoing enmeshment with oil.”
—B. Jamieson Stanley, associate professor of English at the University of Delaware and author of Precarious Eating: Narrating Environmental Harm in the Global South

“[A]n urgent intervention into the cultural politics of energy, showing how Nigerian artists make visible and reckon with the costs, consequences, and contradictionsof life in oil zones.”
—Imre Szeman, coeditor of Power Shift: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy

Summary

When a mid-life couple finds an old farm that promises refuge from hectic lives and encroaching illness, their world opens up to unexpected adventures: breeding heritage goats, hogs, and cattle; managing a half-dozen large guardian dogs; dealing with barn fires, rapacious logging, and the death of treasured animals. The farm and the surrounding forest also lead to surprising moments of beauty—from sublime sunsets and powerful connections with animals to an outpouring of help from neighbors.

Written separately by wife and husband with distinctly separate voices, the book’s essays illustrate different perspectives of life on a farm dedicated to the compassionate treatment of livestock and a deep appreciation of nature’s complexities. Priscilla embraces the intensity of loving animals; Henry explores the mysteries of living in a beautiful place. And, in telling their tales, the authors provide a glimpse into their own marriage—as complicated, improbable, and enduring as life itself. The Keep—the term for “the strongest or central tower of a castle, acting as a final refuge”—is a love letter to an unexpected place and adopted lifestyle.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

 

A Place to Love

Letter to Mom

Mud Between My Toes

 

Decisions

Tiny Tim

All that the Land Contains

Sid’s Twins

Mindful Meddling

The Dilemma of Loving Hogs

 

Surprises

Of These Mountains

Early Years

Hercules

Morels on the Mountain

Arnost and the Eagle

 

“Say What? No Way!”

Hog Gossip

The Duckness

Sex in the Pasture

Hat of Shame

From Power Take Off to Artificial Intelligence

 

Hard Times

Pedro

Death on the Farm

January 11, The Fire

January 12, The Fire

The Forgiving Land

The Old Oak

 

Gifts

Winter’s Wood

Unexpected Outcomes

Lucy

Izzy’s Bridge

Home Before Breakfast

 

Quiet Times

The Pond

On a Summer Breeze

A Fisher’s Solitude

Lovely October

Epilogues

The Near Final

Letter for Alice

 

Acknowledgements

Author

Henry T. Ireys has a forty-year career as a health policy researcher working for Vanderbilt University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He later became a senior researcher for Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, DC. He published numerous papers in health policy journals and, since his retirement, has been writing for The Hampshire Review about farming and the natural world. He holds a PhD from Case Western Reserve University. Priscilla M. Ireys attended the Pittsburg Institute of Art and FIT in New York. She designed and made stage clothes for country music stars such as Loretta Lynn. Under her own label, she sold expensive handmade scarves to Norstrom’s, Henri Bendel, and many high-end boutiques. She left the fashion industry after thirty years to focus on farming and the conservation of heritage breeds. She has written numerous stories for Small Farmer’s Journal. Together, Henry and Priscilla have lived on a farm in Hampshire County since 2001, tending a core herd of fifty Spanish and Savanna goats. The Keep is their first book together.

Reviews

“The Keep is honest and compelling storytelling told through the contrasting and complementarity of Priscilla’s and Henry’s individual voices. Priscilla has an intimate view of animal husbandry, while Henry is more prone to philosophizing; yet both are deeply engaged with the land, and both are thoughtful and lively storytellers. Neither shies away from complexities and challenges. In her accounts of raising goats and hogs, Priscilla captures both the necessary brutality and profound tenderness required for successful animal husbandry.” 
—Arwen Donahue is the author of the graphic memoir Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year (Hub City, 2022) and the oral history collection This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak (University Press of Kentucky, 2022). She lives on a farm in Kentucky.

“A delightful chronicle of a moment in time on a parcel in Appalachia. I enjoyed reading about this couple, their purchase of this land, the way they cared for it, raised a family on it, the hard work of raising goats, other interactions with the natural world and with their neighbors.” 
—Gretchen Legler is the author of Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life (Trinity University Press, 2022); On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (Milkweed Editions, 2005); and All the Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman’s Notebook (Milkweed Editions, 1995). She is professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington. Legler holds a PhD in English and feminist studies and a master’s of divinity from Harvard Divinity School.

Summary

Artifact is about the stories we tell ourselves after mass shootings. Each college campus shooting leaves a record: archival collections, monuments to the dead, government-led inquiries, internal university investigations, and lawsuits. Artifact: Encounters with the Campus Shooting Archives seeks to understand university and college campus shootings that involve students and faculty of those institutions. The book examines the aftermaths of such attacks by moving between university archives, memorials to victims, conversations with survivors, and beyond.

Julija Šukys examines a series of five North American university and college campus shootings between 1989 and 2015: the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Concordia University in Montreal, Virginia Tech, University of Alabama–Huntsville, and Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. These attacks involved students and faculty as both victims and perpetrators—that is, all the shooters were either faculty members or (in one case, would-be) students of the institution where the killings took place.

Šukys arrives at each site long after the killings have taken place: by now, the teddy bears, flowers, and crosses have been cleared away. Prying journalists are long gone. She sorts through myriad objects left at makeshift memorial sites. She talks for hours with a professor who survived an attack only because her colleague’s gun jammed as it was pointed at her head. She wanders and documents the reconfigured buildings made unrecognizable after the horrors that occurred within them. She reads tedious court transcripts, officious government-commissioned reports, and a troubling memoir written by a shooter’s mother and sifts through the mathematics papers that one campus shooter publishes from his prison cell.

Artifact weighs what it means to live in a place where students and their teachers are gunned down on a seemingly regular basis. It asks how we can continue to learn, teach, and live when nothing changes in response to these deaths. It attempts to speak into silence, to look at the pain of those who have come through trauma, and to meet their gazes without platitudes or triumphalism. The result is a searching book about care, memory, forgiveness, and survival.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Scope and Contents

Box I: A Record of Violence

 

SERIES 1

Box II: 1989, L’École Polytechnique de Montréal (Montreal, QC)

Folder 1. Winter Storm

Folder 2. Monuments

Box III: 1992, Concordia University (Montreal, QC)

Folder 3. Trapped

Folder 4. Truthtellers

 

SERIES 2

Box IV: 2007, Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA)

Folder 5. Insiders/Outsiders

Folder 6. Root

Box V: 2010, University of Alabama (Huntsville, AL)

Folder 7. Vengeance Weapon

Folder 8. Forgiveness

 

SERIES 3

Box VI: 2015, Umpqua Community College (Roseburg, OR)

Folder 9. Timber Country

Folder 10. Bloom

Box VII: A Different Testimony

 

Notes

Works Cited

Index

 

Author

Julija Šukys is associate professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin, where she teaches the writing of memoirs, autobiographical writing, essays, and archival research methods. She is the author of Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), and Silence Is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). Šukys holds a PhD in English from the University of Toronto.

Reviews

“But while despairing for change marks the concern for Artifact, despair is not the point. Šukys works through campus shootings to uncover the details of what happened, how it happened, even probing why it happened. Šukys digs into the archives of the event to find research, but also to secure the main motif of the book: If there is any hope that these shootings will stop, we can’t turn away from the situation. We need to dig deep into both the event and into the culture that allowed it to happen. The archives become a metaphor for how we might acknowledge, see, even experience in our own bodies, the causes and effects of these mass killings.” 
—Nicole Walker, author of Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster (Torrey House, 2021); Sustainability: A Love Story (Mad Creek Books, 2018); Egg (Object Lessons Series, Bloomsbury, 2017); and Micrograms (New Michigan Press, 2016). She is professor of English and MFA program director at Northern Arizona University.

“An elegant mixture of the personal and the historical. Šukys’s engaging journey invites the reader to feel the pull of the archive, and the many twists and turns of the search.”
—Philip Nel is author of How to Draw the World: Harold and the Purple Crayon and the Making of a Children’s Classic and is University Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University

Sukys

 

Summary

You may have heard it at a football game, in an advertisement, or on the radio on a road trip far from home. You may have sung along on a rooftop in Thailand, at Oktoberfest in Belgium, or with a Japanese cover band. It may have moved you to dance at a wedding or cry at a funeral. Regardless of where it plays, the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is ubiquitous, unmistakable, universal. Written and recorded by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver in 1971, the song continues to resonate across cultures and audiences, carrying meaning beyond naming and inviting transformation for a range of rhetorical purposes in nearly 300 recorded English versions and in more than 20 languages. 

This book examines “Country Roads” as it illuminates a universal sense of belonging to place even as it obscures the literality of the place it names. In examining “Country Roads” as anthem, text, artifact, and rhetoric, this work untangles ideas related to place, belonging, identity, and pedagogy. Sarah L. Morris uses the Welsh term hiraeth, which is an existential longing for an idealized, sometimes imaginary home, as a governing framework for this work. She explores the song in various contexts, such as how it pertains to West Virginia geography and heritage and the diversity of these beliefs, external perceptions of the state, concepts of home and belonging, and the song as a phenomenon across different media platforms. “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” while being about West Virginia, has registered as a global phenomenon.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

The Song Is a Memory (an Introduction)

Chapter 2

Hiraeth, Home, and West Virginian Rhetorics of Identity

Chapter 3

Placing “Country Roads” in Context

Chapter 4

A West Virginia State of Mind

Chapter 5

Evoking (and Marketing) Belonging and Home

Chapter 6

The Window, the Mirror, and the Lens: Pedagogical Implications

References

Index

 

Author

Sarah L. Morris is assistant professor in the department of English and coordinator of undergraduate writing at West Virginia University. She is also co-director of WVU’s National Writing Project. Morris holds an MA in English / Language Arts Teacher Education from WVU and a PhD in English from the University of Maryland. This is her first book.

Reviews

“This brilliant, heartfelt work belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in regional West Virginia and Appalachian studies. Morris’s thoughtful exploration of the ways we are shaped by music and public rhetoric has relevance for people in all places and all walks of life. I never knew how much ‘Country Roads’ could teach me about identity in all its complexities until I read this book.”
—Amanda E. Hayes, author of The Politics of Appalachian Rhetoric (WVU Press, 2018) and The Madison Women: Gender, Higher Education, and Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Appalachia (WVU Press, 2024)

"This book offers a compelling exploration of 'Country Roads' as a song of global resonance—tracing how a distinctly American ballad came to embody a universal sense of belonging and longing for home."
—Debra Lattanzi Shutika, author of Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexicoand associate professor of folklore at George Mason University

Summary

 

“How would our lives change,” wondered entrepreneur Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard in 1987, “if everyday people had a stable, high-speed data connection to the Internet?” While he wasn’t the first to imagine a world of digital connectivity, Yassini-Fard was in the vanguard by creating the cable modem, which transformed residential Internet access from its slow, frustrating dial-up origins to a fast, always-on, and extraordinary connectivity tool by harnessing the existing infrastructure of the residential cable network.

The Accidental Network tells the untold story of the invention of the cable modem by the small, struggling tech company LANcity in the early 1990s, illustrating how Yassini-Fard overcame a cascade of technical challenges, investment community naysayers, and unnerving business obstacles to create the cable modem technology that has changed the way billions of individuals across the globe now manage their daily lives and commerce. The cable modem delivered broadband, with speeds ranging from 10 megabits per second (Mbps) to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps)—a big leap from the dial-up speeds of 56 kilobits per second (Kbps). This platform, along with the adoption of the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard, engendered the modern revolution in broadband internet access. Shunned by venture capitalists and surviving on a shoestring budget, Yassini-Fard and his colleagues were willing to bet it all (including the deed for Yassini-Fard’s home) on the creation of the cable modem and the pursuit of global adoption.

The Accidental Network is both a valuable history of technology innovation and an engrossing account of business conducted at high speed. The book details Yassini-Fard’s journey from electrical engineer to entrepreneur in the race to secure technology partners, create a wholly new marketplace, and convince cable industry executives that a bold business awaited in transmitting data to households at a time when skepticism about the reach of personal computing was the norm.

Written from the lens of a devoted idealist and WVU alum known as “the father of the cable modem,” this book reveals how a perfect storm of forces—the rise of cable television, the onset of the personal computing era, a growing awareness of the Internet for information and commerce, and the development of the cable modem—converged to usher in the age of broadband access.

Contents

Foreword by John Chambers

Prologue

 

1 American Dream

2 Wired Nation

3 Vision Quest 

4 It’s a Deal

5 The Missing Link

6 When Doves Fly

7 Death Star

8 Puppy Love

9 Screen Wars

10 Rose Gardening

11 Wicked Fast

12 Father Figure

 

Epilogue: A New Alphabet

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Authors

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard is a technology entrepreneur and philanthropist whose Massachusetts-based organization, YAS Foundation, supports innovation and creativity, addressing medical technology, telecommunications advocacy, educational scholarship, and cultural collaboration. His is widely known as the "father of the cable modem," tracing back to the breakthrough achievements around high-speed data technology pioneered by LANcity, a company Yassini-Fard founded in 1988.

 

Stewart Schley is a journalist who writes about the business of media and telecommunications. He is the founding editor of Cable World magazine.

John Chambers is founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures and former executive chairman and CEO of Cisco.

Reviews

“The cable modem did more than speed up the Internet—it accelerated the future. This book tells how it all began.”
—Mark Robichaux, author of Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business

“Broadband is the most beloved technology in the world. The invention of the cable modem opened the door to always-on, fast Internet access that put to rest the crude experience of dial-up. In doing so it unleashed a torrent of innovation and gave rise to the Information Age. Yassini-Fard, famed inventor of the cable modem, expertly tells one of the great American success stories.”
—Michael K. Powell, president and CEO, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association [2011 - 2025], chairman, United States Federal Communications Commission [2001 - 2005]

“Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard led the vision for the cable industry that the cable plant could provide Internet to your home. The pioneering work that Rouzbeh and his team did at LANcity was the embodiment of that vision and ultimately led to the creation of DOCSIS. We, the DOCSIS generation, stand on the shoulders of giants, and Rouzbeh and his team were those giants. This book is a fascinating read of life in a startup and compares to great books like The Soul of a New Machine. Rouzbeh’s book shows what you can do with a vision even when all the odds seem against you.”
—John Chapman, former Broadband CTO and Fellow, Cisco

"A fascinating story of the vision and innovation that transformed a network for distributing analog video into a modern broadband access network that now touches almost every aspect of our lives."
—Dr. Surinder Kumar, founder and chairman, Vecima Networks

“From a venture investor's perspective, broadband did much more than increase internet speeds—it created the essential foundation for streaming services and social media platforms to exist. Rouzbeh Yassini’s visionary insight in creating the first residential cable modem helped investors see for themselves that broadband enabled entirely new business models and consumer behaviors, ultimately unlocking trillions in market value from companies that simply couldn't have existed before.”
—David Aronoff, chairman and managing partner, MCJ

“A good telling of the story of the invention of the cable modem.” 
—Peter Jones is distinguished engineer at Cisco and an active  member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

"In this compelling first-hand account of the development and commercialization of the cable modem, Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard shares personal stories as well as deep technical and industry insights. While the Internet's history has been told before in the context of the traditional telecommunication industry, The Accidental Network offers a fresh perspective through the lens of television networks and cable operators. This book is a valuable addition for netowrk technologists-many of whom are unfamiliar with cable television- as well as the technically interested reader who is intrigued by how our digital infrastructure became as pervasive as it is."
—Alex Bochannek, curator, Computer History Museum

“The rise of home-based broadband was a transformative moment in personal communication, creativity, knowledge creation and human relations. At the center of that story is Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard: energetic immigrant, hustling entrepreneur, and inventor of the cable modem. His success was hardly foreordained. His narrative is full of grit, drama, and big personalities. This engrossing book brings to life a prototypical American tale that shows how an inspired, smart citizen can help change the world.”
—Lee Rainie, Director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center, Elon University and former director of The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

 

Summary

Epic and Lovely is the swan song of Nina Simone Blaine, the daughter of a long-dead 1950s Vegas crooner and a Texas beauty queen forty years his junior. In the wake of her unexpected divorce, Nina returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to spend her final days with The Friends of the Good Thumb, a support group for patients with A12 Fibrillin Deficiency Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects children of much-older fathers, causes several physical deformities, and results in death around the age of forty.

Written as a deathbed letter to the UCLA physician who has tracked Nina and the other Good Thumbs throughout their lives, Nina recounts her final days with the group and with Cole, the charismatic, sadistic fellow A12er with whom she has fallen madly in love, who charms and harms her in equal measures. An unlikely alliance with a tech billionaire, the return of her estranged mother, and the birth of the baby she never thought she’d have force Nina to reckon with the triumphs and mistakes of her life and to fight to leave her child in good hands.

 

Author

Mo Daviau is the author of the novel Every Anxious Wave, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. A graduate of Smith College and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Daviau lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a bookseller.

Reviews

"This book is a love bomb, a love bloom, a love letter from a soul on the edge of death who talks back, cracks wise, and throws down wisdom. Daviau reminds us that death always kisses birth, living always births dying, crying keeps us whole, and laughter is good medicine. I swooned."
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Reading the Waves: A Memoir and The Chronology of Water

"Mo Daviau's Epic and Lovely is a novel that manages the startling feat of being at once deeply intimate and thrillingly grand. Taking on motherhood, mortality, disability, and seemingly everything else under the California sun—tech billionaires and Vegas lounge singers, age gaps and abusers—Daviau's heartbreaking novel fully earns its title's fitting descriptors. Epic and Lovely is wonderful from end to end."
—Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood and Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California

"Full of tenderness, dark humor, and aching vulnerability, Mo Daviau has written a stunning novel that asks how we choose to be remembered when our stories reach their inevitable conclusion. Illuminating the complicated intersection of bodily autonomy and parental love,Epic and Lovelyis a meditation on inheritance—both genetic and emotional—that deftly explores what it means to leave behind a legacy when time is running out."
—Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe

“Daviau is such a talented prose writer. Uproariously funny, singeing, authoritative. This is a skillful, sophisticated author writing with a scalpel on every line, willing to go to wild places. Somehow we’re in the territory of farce, of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, and of Eyes Wide Shut, all at the same time.”
—Courtney Sender, author of In Other Lifetimes All I’ve Lost Comes Back to Me: Stories

“In Epic and Lovely, Mo Daviau pushes against our expectations of the chronically ill. It’s a fully rendered look at chronic illness and difficult choices. Darkly funny and driven by the voice of Nina, whose voice is in turns sardonic, quirky, smart, and vulnerable, Epic and Lovely challenges our ideas about what it means to be sick in the modern world.”
—Renée K. Nicholson, coeditor of Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine

 

Summary

Bobby Bowden is considered one of the greatest football coaches in NCAA history with 377 wins, the second among Division I coaches. In his 44 seasons as a head coach, Bowden engineered 40 winning seasons, with an astonishing 33 consecutive winning seasons as head coach of the Florida State Seminoles (1976–2009). However, before his time in Tallahassee, Bowden served as head coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers for six seasons (preceded by four years as offensive coordinator). Although he logged five winning seasons in Morgantown and had an overall record of 42–26, Bowden’s tenure was still controversial, and he was subject to very hostile treatment from some sports fans that was prompted by embarrassing losses to archrivals like Pitt. Bowden’s time coaching the Mountaineers was one of growth and development for him rather than the unchallenged dominance he would go on to display with Florida State.

Sports journalist John Antonik covers Bowden’s entire WVU tenure from 1966–75 and the circumstances, issues, difficulties, and obstacles that he had to overcome that were unique to this period in Mountaineer sports history. Additionally, Almost Heaven examines what transpired on WVU’s campus and in its athletic programs as well as nationally during the Vietnam War, campus protests, desegregation, and the complexities of the shifting NCAA landscape. Antonik paints a vivid picture of how Bowden’s time at WVU enriched him personally and professionally while putting athletics on a path toward the much greater successes that it enjoyed in the 1980s when Don Nehlen arrived. By the time he left Morgantown in the winter of 1976, following the Mountaineers’ 13–10 Peach Bowl victory over North Carolina State, which culminated in an outstanding 9–3 season, he was a far wiser and much better-prepared football coach. Those difficult lessons that Bowden learned at West Virginia led him down a path to greatness at Florida State.

Almost Heaven draws from an impressive array of primary sources, including newspaper articles; football team rosters; internal documents on recruiting; and interviews with former players, assistants, staffers, sports reporters, Bowden’s sons Tommy and Terry, and Bowden himself, prior to his passing in 2021. The year 2025 represents the 50th anniversary of his final season coaching the Mountaineers, and many of his players are now entering their golden years, making this the optimal time to tell this story.

Contents

Introduction

Prologue

 

1 Changing Times

2 Bowden Takes Over

3 The Riverboat Gambler

4 A Day of Infamy

5 Tragedy in Huntington

6 Kidnapping Prospects

7 Dangerous Dan

8 A Scorching in Atlanta

9 Breaking Barriers

10 ’74 Outlook Bright

11 Close Defeats

12 Hanging in Effigy

13 The Bombers

14 Back in the National Rankings

15 McKenzie’s Kick Is Good!

16 Bobby versus Lou, Part III

17 Tallahassee Bound

 

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1 West Virginia Staff 1970–75

Appendix 2 West Virginia Varsity Players 1966–75

Appendix 3 West Virginia Games 1970–75

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

 

Author

John Antonik is senior director of athletics content at West Virginia University. He is a past member of College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), the West Virginia Sports Writers, and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers associations. Antonik received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from WVU in 1990 and a master’s degree in sport management from WVU in 1992; in 2010, he was the recipient of the Paul B. “Buck” Martin Award, presented by the WVU Alumni Association to an individual who has helped to preserve and maintain West Virginia University’s traditions.

Antonik has authored four books on Mountaineer athletics: Saturday Snapshots: West Virginia University Football (WVU Press, 2015); The Backyard Brawl: Stories from One of the Weirdest, Wildest, Longest Running, and Most Intense Rivalries in College Football History (WVU Press, 2012), which was a 2012 Foreword Book of the Year finalist in the category of sports; Roll Out the Carpet: 101 Seasons of West Virginia University Basketball (WVU Press, 2010); and West Virginia University Football Vault: The History of the Mountaineers (Whitman Publishing, 2009).

Reviews

"In Almost Heaven, John Antonik masterfully documents the integral role West Virginia University played in Bobby Bowden’s journey to becoming one of the most revered and successful coaches in college football history. Bowden never shied away from a challenge—whether it was facing a gauntlet of top-ranked teams on the road or rebuilding woebegone programs into national contenders. The foundation for his fearless approach was laid in Morgantown, West Virginia."
—Mark Schlabach, ESPN reporter and collaborator of Bobby Bowden's memoir, Called to Coach: Reflections on Life, Faith, and Football

“Before he became one of just four active coaches in history to be inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame, Bobby Bowden cultivated his Division I career in Morgantown, WV. John Antonik’s Almost Heaven offers a candid look at the pivotal challenges of a young coach who ultimately became one of the game’s greatest legends. In today’s college football landscape, the story of Bowden’s WVU journey is a consequential reminder that success doesn’t always come easy and a Hall of Fame career is built through trial and error.”
—Hillary Jeffries, Director of Special Projects, National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame, Inc.

“John Antonik’s fifth book on West Virginia University sports might just be his finest yet. As a native West Virginian, he brings a deep and invaluable understanding of WVU’s rich athletic history. Readers are given a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and triumphs that shaped Bowden’s legendary career. A must-read for any true Mountaineer fan.”
—Tony Caridi, sportscaster for West Virginia University’s Mountaineer Sports Network and West Virginia Radio Corporation’s MetroNews Radio Network

“Whether you lived through it or have heard the stories of Bobby Bowden’s time at West Virginia, this is a must-read for Mountaineer and college football fans alike. It’s a masterfully woven account of the time Bowden spent in Morgantown stuffed full of details, captivating insight and anecdotes from the key voices of the period. John Antonik effectively captures how both the triumphs and challenges of Bowden’s tenure helped to shape his future coaching success all while transporting readers to a bygone era of college athletics.”
—Keenan Cummings, Managing Editor, WVSports.com

“Authenticity is the hallmark of John Antonik’s masterfully crafted Almost Heaven. Antonik presents Coach Bowden in his own voice, enhanced by quotes from hundreds of others who contributed to his WVU story. Antonik also conveys an institutional narrative, revealing how decisions made during the 1966-75 era positioned the Mountaineers in the upper echelon of major college football. This is a fantastic read, authored by the premier interpreter of WVU sports history.”
—Frank Fear, author, Band of Brothers, Then and Now: The Inspiring Story of the 1966-1970 WVU Football Mountaineers, and co-host, Mountaineer Locker Room podcast

"John Antonik is considered the historian for the West Virginia University athletic department. He also might be an artist who paints a picture with words in Almost Heaven. With first-hand interviews and stories about the Bobby Bowden years at WVU, John pays attention to details making you feel you were also on the football field sidelines. A first-class effort."
—Doug Huff, West Virginia Sports Writers Association and retired sports editor, The Intelligencer

“Most books about Bobby Bowden focus on the Florida State days, but Antonik tackles the question of how it all began. He comprehensively addresses the point that were it not for Coach Bowden’s days at WVU, his experiences, and what he learned in Morgantown, he would not have been as successful at Florida State. Antonik explains how he had successes but also notable failures at WVU that shaped his coaching career. You cannot fully understand Coach Bowden by just focusing on Florida State; his coaching story really begins at WVU. Almost Heaven is a ‘must read’ for long-time WVU sports fans.”
—Hoppy Kercheval, the radio “dean” of West Virginia broadcasters and a founding father of MetroNews

“Bobby Bowden spent a decade as a coach for the West Virginia University Mountaineers. During these formative years, he faced many challenges: poor facilities, geographic isolation in recruiting, dreaded one-year contracts, biting fan criticism, and a ramped-up strength of schedule. Almost Heaven details these difficulties and shares the lessons Coach Bowden learned while in charge of the WVU football program. It offers insight into one man’s arduous path to becoming one of history’s greatest and winningest college football coaches.”
—Dr. H. Wayne Lambert, professor and vice chair of anatomy in the department of pathology, anatomy, and laboratory medicine at West Virginia University School of Medicine; chair of the West Virginia State Anatomical Board; and avid WVU sports fan

 

Summary

Weaving a Fabric of Unity shares the story of the pioneering enterprise that came to be identified as FUNDAEC (the Foundation for the Application and Teaching of Science), highlighting five decades of stories, learning, and insight from key individuals central to shaping its evolution. The book outlines FUNDAEC’s unique conceptual and methodological approach, which is focused on the releasing of human potentialities and the integration of theory and practice, bringing the reader on the journey of how the organization created one of Latin America’s most innovative curriculum in rural development. It shares how FUNDAEC’s focus on raising up individuals and communities dedicated to the promotion of community well-being supported its efforts to organically scale over the last few decades, reaching hundreds of thousands of students across Colombia and being adopted in over a dozen countries to support diverse populations working towards the collective realization of a dignified future.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Weaving Our Stories Together

Textiles of Trust

Interwoven Commitments

A Living Tapestry

Releasing Human Potentialities

Picking Up the Threads

Postscript

Bibliography

Authors

Haleh Arbab was with FUNDAEC for over twenty years, including ten years as director of its Centro Universitario de Bienstar Rural (The University Center for Rural Wellbeing). She was director of the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity (ISGP). Arbab is currently the founding director of the Center for Research in Education for Development (CRED), where her work focuses on fostering community-based approaches to research and education internationally. She holds a doctor of education from the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts.

Gustavo Correa was one of the founders of FUNDAEC in 1974 and served as its director from 1988 to 2005. In addition to being an advisor to FUNDAEC, he is currently working with Project Hope, a network of 1,500 people he mobilized across 800 initiatives to quickly respond to the food insecurity problems triggered by COVID-19 in Colombia. He holds a master’s in public administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Bradley Wilson is associate professor of geography and executive director of the West Virginia University Center for Resilient Communities. With his students, he has established a robust action research program focused on cooperative economics, food justice, food system development, community health, and environmental justice in West Virginia and Appalachia. For the past five years, Wilson has collaborated with FUNDAEC on projects focused on its educational programs and building the capacity of its research teams working on food sovereignty in Norte del Cauca. He has a PhD in geography from Rutgers University.

Reviews

“The story of FUNDAEC in Colombia is one of the most inspiring educational processes of the 20th century and is vitally important today. Every student of development economics should read this book.”

—Nava Ashraf, Professor of Economics, London School of Economics

 

“Weaving a Fabric of Unity is a timely and brilliant gift to those of us concerned with education and social transformation. With rising recognition that decades of educational programs and initiatives aimed at fostering global prosperity and change have fallen short of realizing their initial aspirations, many in the field of education are searching for viable and impactful alternatives. The story of FUNDAEC is an urgent call to reframe the purpose of education itself.”

—Shabnam Koirala-Azad, Dean of Education, University of San Francisco

 

Summary

Power Shift traces recent social and cultural shifts in how we understand and imagine energy, the environment, and the challenges of global warming. Across the globe, the need to transition to renewables has become the guiding reality of our energy present and future, despite continuing resistance to change. But what does this moment of energy transition look like for those struggling to make it happen in a way that benefits every individual and all communities? 

Featuring brief essays on 101 key terms by scholars, artists, and activists from around the world and across disciplines, Power Shift offers an expansive, kaleidoscopic guide to the history of petromodernity, recent technological and social developments, and pathways to new energy futures. The book offers new insights into the emergent politics of energy, contrasting today’s environmental and climate movements with the geopolitical contests of the Cold War era. It explores the still unfolding story of energy transition by focusing on the ongoing struggles of communities and individuals against decisions made by corporations, governments, and international organizations.

Contents

Foreword
David E. Nye

How to Use This Book

Introduction
Imre Szeman and Jennifer Wenzel

2040
What genre will the future be?
Philomena Polefrone

Abandoned
Who is tending to the present?
Liz Harmer

Action
What becomes possible when climate action fails?
Stephen Collis

Africa
Energy for whom and at what cost?
Erin Dean and Kristin D. Phillips

Air Conditioning
Has air conditioning become a technology of citizenship?
Anushree Gupta and Aalok Khandekar

Airplane
Why might we still need to fly?
Parke Wilde

Alberta
How many nuclear bombs does it take to develop an oil field?
Jeremy J. Schmidt

Animals
How do animals organize?
Jaimey Hamilton Faris

Art
How are art and energy related?
Carolyn Fornoff

Autonomy
Why do we want energy autonomy?
Darin Barney

Bankrupt
Is bankruptcy the crisis we need?
Caleb Wellum

Battery
Can batteries foster a radically just energy transition?
Isaac Thornley

Behavior
Why do appeals to values usually fail to change behavior?
Stéphane La Branche

Black
What are the Black politics of energy?
Walter Gordon

Blockade
Why are blockades an essential form of climate action?
Joshua Clover, Deedee Chao, and Emily Rich

Carbon Management
Is carbon management a moral imperative or a moral hazard?
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

Civil Disobedience
What rules must be broken to build a better world?
Alicia Massie

Class
Why is climate change a class issue?
Valerie Uher

Clean
What does clean energy really mean?
Gökçe Günel

Commons
What forms of governance could solve the tragedy of the commons?
Alfonso Giuliani

Communication
What are effective strategies for climate communication?
Andrew Revkin

Community
Is it still possible to trust other people?
Darren Fleet

Coronavirus
What does the coronavirus reveal about the politics of climate crisis?
Helen Petrovsky

Corporation
Will an energy transition help fossil fuel companies?
Cameron Hu

Cuba
What can Cuba teach us about climate action? 
Andrew Pendakis

Cycling
Is cycling a solution?
Stacey Balkan

Decolonization 
What can OPEC teach us about the link between energy and decolonization?
Sanaz Sohrabi

Degrowth
Is degrowth inevitable?
Dominic Boyer

Democracy
To save the planet, do we need more democracy, or less? 
Robert Danisch

Design
What does design make possible?
Keller Easterling

Development
Can development be green?
Siddharth Sareen

Digital
How does the digital reshape the material realm?
Shane Denson

Documentary
Why is uncertainty useful?
Thomas Pringle

Economy
Is economic expertise important?
Kylie Benton-Connell

Education
How should energy educators respond to youth climate activism?
Carrie Karsgaard

Electricity
How does electricity organize society?
Daniela Russ

Evidence
How is climate evidence used?
James Wilt

Expert
What counts as effective climate expertise?
Shane Gunster

Extinction
Is there a relation between energy and extinction?
Ashley Dawson

Family
What is the environmental future of the family?
Eva-Lynn Jagoe

Farm
Whose muscles power our food system?
Emily Pawley

Finance
Can we create an economy based on care?
Max Haiven

Fire/Bushfire
What can we learn from fire?
Meg Samuelson

Gaslighting
How has gaslighting circumscribed our environmental imagination?
Grace Franklin

Gender
Why is gender important to energy transition?
Petra Tschakert

Geoengineering
Is geoengineering inevitable?
Drew Pendergrass

Globalization
How does energy matter to globalization?
Tanner Mirrlees

Green New Deal
Will the Green New Deal save us from extinction?
Todd Dufresne

Greta
Why is intersectional agility Greta Thunberg’s rhetorical superpower?
Sheena Wilson

Habit
What kinds of friction can disrupt the status quo?
Rhys Williams

India
Can there be a just transition in India?
Swaralipi Nandi

Indigenous
How are Indigenous and extraction related?
Deena Rymhs

Indigenous Activism
What is the power of radical care?
Amber Hickey

Industrial Revolution
What does a focus on jobs mean for energy transition?
Cara Daggett

IPCC
What can the IPCC tell us about the relationship between knowledge and action?
Marcela da Silveira Feital and Jessica O’Reilly

Japan
Why do fears of energy scarcity obstruct energy transition?
Hiroki Shin

Justice
What kind of justice is energy justice? 
Pauline Destrée and Sarah O’Brien 

Keep It in the Ground
How can we build momentum to keep fossil fuels in the ground?
Angela Carter

Law
How can we change the law to prevent the climate crisis?
Michael B. Gerrard

Lifestyle
Are lifestyle changes a waste of time?
Mark Simpson

Local
How do local climate politics work best?
Brian Cozen and Danielle Endres

Mining
Why are the ways that we imagine mining important?
Gianfranco Selgas

Music
How are listening and energy related?
Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum

Nationalism
What is the impact of transition on nationalism?
Zeynep Oguz

Natural Gas
Can natural gas be made visible, or viable?
John Szabo

Neoextractivism
What comes after neoextractivism? 
Donald V. Kingsbury

Net Zero
Do we really want to live in a net-zero world?
Mijin Cha

Nonlinear
Can nonlinear imaginative practices help us survive nonlinear catastrophes?
Katy Didden

Normal
What will be normal after fossil fuels?
Stephanie LeMenager

North Dakota
How does oil extraction reshape space and time?
Kyle Conway

Online
When we are online, what lines are we on?
Anne Pasek

Organize 
Can the master’s tools dismantle the master’s house?
Zainab Ashraf, Rachel Krueger, Guy Brodsky, Lesley Johnston, and Joy Hutchinson 

Paris Agreement
Does the Paris Agreement still matter?
Amy Janzwood

Permafrost
What do you do when the ground starts to melt beneath your feet?
Brigt Dale

Pipeline
Why is opposition to pipelines important?
Kai Bosworth

Planet
What happens to politics on an increasingly unlivable planet?
Leah Aronowsky

Populism
What can energy politics learn from populism?
Rodrigo Nunes

Protest
Why is protection more important than protest in Indigenous struggles? 
Kimberly Skye Richards

Renewable
What do renewables renew?
Marianna Dudley

Resource
Can waste serve as a resource for energy transition?
Kesha Fevrier and Anna Zalik

Retrofit
What does it mean to breathe life into buildings?
Fallon Samuels Aidoo and Daniel A. Barber

Sabotage
Can sabotage ever be more than a romantic gesture?
Ted Hamilton

Scale
What if scale were about equity rather than magnitude?
Cymene Howe

Scales
What can the human voice tell us about the scale of climate change?
Lisa Moore

Scenario Planning
Is the future a waste of time?
Josefin Wangel

Science
Do scientists believe that science matters?
Adam Sobel

Settler Colonialism
How can modern energy systems be indigenized?
S. Awâsis

Shipping
What would actual free shipping look like?
Christiaan De Beukelaer

Solar Farm
Can solar farms foster energy justice, instead of obstructing it?
Dustin Mulvaney

Solidarity
How can solidarity catalyze energy democracy?
Ana Isabel Baptista

Sport
Can sport be untangled from oil?
Graeme Macdonald

Storytelling
What can storytelling really do?
Misty Matthews-Roper

Sustainability
Does sustainability’s popularity indicate the failure of environmentalism?
Stephanie Foote

Trans-
What is trans- about transition?
Emerson Cram

Transitions
If transition is inevitable, will it be just?
Matthew S. Henry

Treaty
How can treaties help states transition away from fossil fuels?
Carlos Larrea, Bhushan Tuladhar, and Mohamed Adow

Vegan
What does transition look like on your plate?
Allisa Ali and Jordan B. Kinder

Waste
What is at stake in using waste for energy?
Aarti Latkar and Aalok Khandekar

Water
How can microbe metabolism foster sustainable infrastructures?
Melody Jue

Wind
What color is the wind?
David McDermott Hughes

Youth
Why is youth culture indispensable to energy transition?
Derek Gladwin

Acknowledgments

Contributors
Alternative Index

Author

Imre Szeman is director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability and professor of human geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He authored books such as On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy and Futures of the Sun. 

Jennifer Wenzel is professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her books include The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature and Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond.

Contributors 

Fallon Samuels Aidoo, Leah Aronowsky, Sākihitowin Awāsis, Stacey Balkan, Ana Isabel Baptista, Daniel A. Barber, Darin Barney, Kylie Benton-Connell, Kai Bosworth, Dominic Boyer, Guy Brodsky, Rebecca Byrnes, Angela Carter, J. Mijin Cha, Deedee Chao, Joshua Clover, Stephen Collis, Kyle Conway, Brian Cozen, E. Cram, Cara New Daggett, Brigt Dale, Robert Danisch, Ashley Dawson, Christiaan De Beukelaer, Erin Dean, Shane Denson, Katy Didden, Marianna Dudley, Todd Duresne, Keller Easterling, Danielle Endres, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Marcela da Silveira Feital, Kesha Fevrier, Darren Fleet, Carolyn Fornoff, Grace Franklin, Michael B. Gerrard, Alfonso Giuliani, Derek Gladwin, Gökçe Günel, Shane GUnster, Anushree Gupta, Max Haiven, Ted Hamilton, Liz Harmer, Matthew S. Henry, Amber Hickey, Cymene Howe, Cameron Hsu, David Hughes, Joy Hutchinson, Eva-Lynn Jagoe, AMy Janzwood, Lesley Johnston, Melody, Carrie Karsgaard, Aalok Khandekar, Jordan B. Kinder, Donald Kingsbury, Rachel Krueger, Stéphane La Branche, Sherry Lee, Stephanie LeMenager, Emily MacCallum, Graeme Macdonald, Alicia Massie, Misty Matthews-Roper, Tanner Mirrlees, Lisa Moore, Dustin Mulvaney, Swaralipi Nandi, Rodrigo Nunes, Sarah O'Brien, Jessica O'Reilly, Zeynep Oguz, Anne Pasek, Emily Pawley, Andrew Pendakis, Helen Petrovsky, Kristin D. Phillips, Philomena Polefrone, Thomas Patrick Pringle, Andrew Revkin, Emily Rich, Meg Samuelson, Kimberly Skye Richards, Daniela Russ, Deena Rymhs, Siddarth Sareen, Jeremy Schmidt, Gianfranco Selgas, Hiroki Shin, Mark Simpson, Adam Sobel, Sanaz, Sohrabi, John Szabo, Isaac Thornley, Petra Tshakert, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Bhushab Tuladhar, Valerie Uher, Josefin Wangel, Caleb Wellum, Parke Wilde, Rhys Williams, Sheena Wilson, James Wilt, Anna Zalik

Reviews

“We urgently need Power Shift if we are to find our way forward toward a decarbonized future.”
—David E. Nye, author of Seven Sublimes and Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies

 

Summary

What makes a sustainable city? When planners and politicians talk about making cities more sustainable, they often describe changes to large urban centers like New York City or Los Angeles. Yet when they suggest solutions for sustainable living, they talk about walkable neighborhoods, traditional architecture, and diverse land uses; they talk about small towns. Planners and developers are now working to introduce a “small-town feel” into our large cities and suburbs in hopes that it will provide a sense of community and reduce the use of automobiles.

So, what of small towns themselves? We don’t talk about these places as much. They are often assumed to be utopias of the past or crumbling ghost towns of the present day rather than places with potential for sustainable living. This book critically examines narratives of American small towns, contrasting them with lived experiences in these places, and considers both the myth and reality in the context of current urban challenges. Interweaving stories from and about U.S. small towns, it offers lessons in sustainable urbanism that can be applied both in the towns themselves and to the larger cities and suburbs where most Americans now live. 

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction: The Myth of the American Small Town
Chapter 1: Defining and Describing Small Towns in the US
Chapter 2: The Small Town in the American Imagination
Chapter 3: New Urbanism and the New Small Town
Chapter 4: Small Towns and the Rise of Donald Trump
Chapter 5: Dreaming Big in Small Towns
Chapter 6: Sustainable Futures for Ordinary Cities
Conclusion: Transforming the American Small Town
Acknowledgments
Notes
References

Author

Jennifer Mapes is assistant professor of geography at Kent State University. A community geographer, she researches with local stakeholders to help build more sustainable, just futures. Jen and her family live, work, and play in downtown Kent, Ohio.

Reviews

"The book offers hope-filled portraits of small towns as livable, sustainable, and diverse places and serves as an important corrective to the media narrative of alienated, left-behind rural voters." 
—Mark Bjelland, author of Good Places for All