Illuminating the central struggle in The Lord of the Rings to deepen understanding of the whole of Tolkien's legendarium In this remarkable work of close reading and analysis, Thomas P. Hillman gets to the heart of the tension between pity and the desire for power in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. As the book traces the entangled story ......
"Few novelists captured the contradictions of his country so simply or so honestly in the metaphor of the pure, fatalistic, and merciless community of bruising."-from the Foreword
When The Bruiser was first published in 1936, almost every reviewer praised Jim ......
Learning from one Rust Belt city's postindustrial transition While Pittsburgh is sometimes held up as a successful example of urban reinvention in the era after heavy industry (think "eds and meds"), its transition away from steel has in fact been uneven and contested. Christopher P. Briem grew up in the city's Bloomfield and South Side ......
American Fashion Through Elizabeth and William Phelps
One couple's bold vision for American fashion Long before the fashion industry formally addressed questions of sustainability and advocated for "slow fashion," William and Elizabeth Phelps, a husband-and-wife design duo, were already working to create hand-crafted leathergoods and functional women's sportswear that could be worn for decades. ......
A study of Grant's and Lee's battles in the weeks before the 1864 election In the fall of 1864, the Civil War's outcome rested largely on Abraham Lincoln's success in the upcoming presidential election. As the contest approached, cautious optimism buoyed the President's supporters in the wake of Union victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah ......
Winner of the 2024 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize The Deep Blue of Neptune is a striking, meditative collection of poems by Terry Belew, which reminds readers of the necessity of empathy in the midst of uncertain and unsettling times. Set against a rural backdrop, Belew's poems reside in the everyday--driving on gravel backroads, roaming the ......
The unlikely story of one of baseball's greatest comeback seasons The Boston Braves (the present-day Atlanta Braves) were a bunch of losers and alcohol-soaked whiskey swiggers, buried in last place as late as mid-July of 1914. This rough gang was led by their bullying, superstitious manager George Stallings and assisted by Johnny Evers, a nasty, ......
The thrilling, true story of a prolific criminal's many identities and exploits On the morning of July 3, 1915, John Pierpont Morgan Jr., one of the most famous names in finance, was entertaining guests at his sprawling Long Island estate when the doorbell unexpectedly rang. An armed man forced his way inside. At the same time, authorities in ......
