“A richly reported, wonderfully written paean to a great American institution.”
—Geneva Overholser
Former editor of the Des Moines Register
Columnist at the New York Times & Washington Post
Former director of USC Annenberg School of Journalism
COMING OCTOBER 2024
FROM UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY
LESSONS FROM THE FOOTHILLS: BEREA COLLEGE AND ITS UNIQUE ROLE IN AMERICA
In 1859, a mob of sixty-five prominent armed men rode into Berea, Kentucky, and forced the closure of its integrated one-room schoolhouse.
Founded by Kentucky-born abolitionist John Gregg Fee, the school was open to anyone, regardless of their race or gender—a notion that horrified white supremacists. The mob evicted thirty-six community members, including Fee’s family, but Fee and the others returned to Berea in 1864 and reestablished the institution, still committed to educating Appalachia’s most vulnerable populations.
ALL BOOKS
Echoes from Wuhan
The Past as Prologue
Echoes from Wuhan tells the dramatic, fast-paced story of a naïve and adventuresome young American woman and how she navigated—well and not so well--the complexities of cross- cultural confusions and clashes in China long ago.
Civic Pioneers
Local Stories from a Changing America, 1895-1915
Today as activists around America reclaim the common good, Gretchen Dykstra uncovers dramatic stories of creative public servants who shaped much of life as we know it now. Some are remembered, most have been forgotten.
Pinery Boys
Songs and songcatching in the lumberjack era
From 1919-1922, Franz Rickaby, a young English professor at the University of North Dakota, wandered the Upper Midwest, collecting the songs of the lumber jacks, river drivers and sawmill hands.