|9780822947875|Violence, White Manhood, and Authority in the Early Western Backcountry| For western colonists in the early American backcountry, disputes often ended in bloodshed and death. Making the Frontier Man examines early life and the origins of lawless behavior in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio from 1750 to 1815. It provides a key to understanding why the trans-Appalachian West was prone to violent struggles, especially between white men. Traumatic experiences of the Revolution and the Forty Years War legitimized killing as a means of self-defense—of property, reputation, and rights—transferring power from the county courts to the ordinary citizen. Backcountry men waged…

|9780822957409|Centuries Of Change| Human settlement of the Lower Mississippi River Valley—especially in New Orleans, the region’s largest metropolis—has produced profound and dramatic environmental change. From prehistoric midden building to late-twentieth century industrial pollution, Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs traces through history the impact of human activity upon the environment of this fascinating and unpredictable region. In eleven essays, scholars across disciplines––including anthropology, architecture, history, natural history, and geography––chronicle how societies have worked to transform untamed wetlands and volatile floodplains into a present-day sprawling urban center and industrial complex, and how they have responded to the environmental changes brought about…

|9780822945642|Electric Energy and the Modern South| Regenerating Dixie is the first book that traces the electrification of the US South from the 1880s to the 1970s. It emphasizes that electricity was not solely the result of technological innovation or federal intervention. Instead, it was a multifaceted process that influenced, and was influenced by, environmental alterations, political machinations, business practices, and social matters. Although it generally hewed to national and global patterns, southern electrification charted a distinctive and instructive path and, despite orthodoxies to the contrary, stood at the cutting edge of electrification from the late 1800s onward. Its story speaks…