Author: Brooks Blevins Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252052994 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 469
Book Description
Between the world wars, America embraced an image of the Ozarks as a remote land of hills and hollers. The popular imagination stereotyped Ozarkers as ridge runners, hillbillies, and pioneers—a cast of colorful throwbacks hostile to change. But the real Ozarks reflected a more complex reality. Brooks Blevins tells the cultural history of the Ozarks as a regional variation of an American story. As he shows, the experiences of the Ozarkers have not diverged from the currents of mainstream life as sharply or consistently as the mythmakers would have it. If much of the region seemed to trail behind by a generation, the time lag was rooted more in poverty and geographic barriers than a conscious rejection of the modern world and its progressive spirit. In fact, the minority who clung to the old days seemed exotic largely because their anachronistic ways clashed against the backdrop of the evolving region around them. Blevins explores how these people’s disproportionate influence affected the creation of the idea of the Ozarks, and reveals the truer idea that exists at the intersection of myth and reality. The conclusion to the acclaimed trilogy, The History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers offers an authoritative appraisal of the modern Ozarks and its people.
Author: Brooks Blevins Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252050606 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 475
Book Description
Winner of the Missouri History Book Award, from the State Historical Society of Missouri Winner of the Arkansiana Award, from the Arkansas Library Association Geologic forces raised the Ozarks. Myth enshrouds these hills. Human beings shaped them and were shaped by them. The Ozarks reflect the epic tableau of the American people—the native Osage and would-be colonial conquerors, the determined settlers and on-the-make speculators, the endless labors of hardscrabble farmers and capitalism of visionary entrepreneurs. The Old Ozarks is the first volume of a monumental three-part history of the region and its inhabitants. Brooks Blevins begins in deep prehistory, charting how these highlands of granite, dolomite, and limestone came to exist. From there he turns to the political and economic motivations behind the eagerness of many peoples to possess the Ozarks. Blevins places these early proto-Ozarkers within the context of larger American history and the economic, social, and political forces that drove it forward. But he also tells the varied and colorful human stories that fill the region's storied past—and contribute to the powerful myths and misunderstandings that even today distort our views of the Ozarks' places and people. A sweeping history in the grand tradition, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1: The Old Ozarks is essential reading for anyone who cares about the highland heart of America.
Author: Brooks Blevins Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252044052 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
Between the world wars, America embraced an image of the Ozarks as a remote land of hills and hollers. The popular imagination stereotyped Ozarkers as ridge runners, hillbillies, and pioneers—a cast of colorful throwbacks hostile to change. But the real Ozarks reflected a more complex reality. Brooks Blevins tells the cultural history of the Ozarks as a regional variation of an American story. As he shows, the experiences of the Ozarkers have not diverged from the currents of mainstream life as sharply or consistently as the mythmakers would have it. If much of the region seemed to trail behind by a generation, the time lag was rooted more in poverty and geographic barriers than a conscious rejection of the modern world and its progressive spirit. In fact, the minority who clung to the old days seemed exotic largely because their anachronistic ways clashed against the backdrop of the evolving region around them. Blevins explores how these people’s disproportionate influence affected the creation of the idea of the Ozarks, and reveals the truer idea that exists at the intersection of myth and reality. The conclusion to the acclaimed trilogy, The History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers offers an authoritative appraisal of the modern Ozarks and its people.
Author: Brooks Blevins Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 9780807853429 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
In the first comprehensive social history of the Arkansas Ozarks from the early 19th century through the end of the 20th century, Blevins examines settlement patterns, farming, economics, class, and tourism. He also explores the development of conflicting images of the Ozarks as a timeless arcadia peopled by quaint, homespun characters or a backward region filled with hillbillies.
Author: Brooks Blevins Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252094115 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.
Author: Vance Randolph Publisher: ISBN: 9780806115351 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Down in the Holler, first published in 1953, is a classic study of Ozark folklore. The University of Oklahoma Press is especially pleased to introduce such an invaluable and delightfully written book to a new generation of researchers and Americans entranced by the Ozarks and the folkways of the past. Until World War II the backwoodsmen living in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma were the most deliberately "unprogressive" people in the United States. The descendants of pioneers from the southern Appalachians, they changed their way of life very little during the whole span of the nineteenth century and were able to preserve their customs and traditions in an age of industrialism. When the many attractions of the Ozarks were discovered by "outlanders," the tourists--and television--reached the hinterlands, and the old patterns of speech and life began to fade. In this perceptive book, Vance Randolph, who first visited the Ozarks country in 1899, and his collaborator, George P. Wilson, recapture the speech of the people who lived "down in the holler." Randolph, closely identified with the region for many years, hunted possums with its people and shared their table at the House of Lords (a "kind of tavern" in Joplin). Through the years his hobby became a profession, and he spent years recording the various aspects of Ozark folk speech.
Author: Phyllis Rossiter Publisher: Pelican Publishing ISBN: 9780882898018 Category : Travel Languages : en Pages : 487
Book Description
Describes the Ozark Mountains region in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, discusses the history and culture of the region, and identifies points of interest in each area
Author: Vance Randolph Publisher: University of Arkansas Press ISBN: 1682260267 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
"Vance Randolph was perfectly constituted for his role as the chronicler of Ozark folkways. As a self-described "hack writer," who first visited the region as a child with his middle-class parents, he was as much a figure of the margins as his chosen subjects. And his essentially romantic identification with the Ozarks--encouraged by the editors of the era--was always tempered by his scientific training and his contrarian nature. In The Ozarks, originally published in 1931, we have Randolph's first book-length portrait of the people he would spend the next half-century studying. The full range of Randolph's interests--in language, in hunting and fishing, in folksongs and play parties, in moonshining--is on view in this book that made his name; forever after he was "Mr. Ozark," the region's preeminent expert who would, in collection after collection, enlarge and deepen his debut effort. With a new introduction by Robert Cochran, The Ozarks , an image shaper in its day, a cultural artifact for decades to come, this wonderful book is as entertaining as ever." --Back cover.
Author: Dan William Peek Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1625858116 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
For tourists, the beautiful Lake of the Ozarks must seem in complete harmony with the natural order of its surroundings. Even lifelong natives can struggle to imagine a time when the reservoir created by the Bagnell Dam didn't exist. But beneath the placid waters of the lake that draws bustling visitors to its shores lies the drama of a remote Ozark community suddenly thrust into an urban world. True locals Dan William Peek and Kent Van Landuyt piece together the fascinating story of how that community adapted to the lake that redefined their home.
Author: Elmo Ingenthron Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company ISBN: 1455600547 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
In the 1880s, the Ozark hills around Taney County, Missouri, echoed with the sound of Winchester rifles. Men were lynched from tree limbs by masked night riders. Bundles of switches were tossed on the porches of "loose" men and women as a grim warning to reform or leave the area. In this action-filled saga of the notorious eight-year career of the vigilantes, journalist Mary Hartman and historian Elmo Ingenthron have produced the most comprehensive account of the Bald Knobber era. They trace the roots of the group in the region's border struggles during the Civil War, and examine the organization of anti-Bald Knobbers which sprang up to oppose them. Giant Nat Kinney founded the Bald Knobbers, and led them in their violent campaign for law and order. Andrew Coggburn wrote satirical songs to infuriate Kinney and the other vigilantes. Seventeen-year-old Billy Walker murdered an innocent family and was hanged by the beleaguered authorities. Five opponents of the Bald Knobbers vowed to kill Nat Kinney, and played cards to decide who would do the deed. Elmo Ingenthron was an Ozarks historian, and collected Bald Knobbers lore for more than thirty-five years. Mary Hartman is a veteran journalist and freelance writer.
Author: Brooks Blevins
Author: Brooks Blevins
Author: Brooks Blevins
Author: Brooks Blevins
Author: Brooks Blevins
Author: Vance Randolph
Author: Phyllis Rossiter
Author: Vance Randolph
Author: Dan William Peek
Author: Elmo Ingenthron