University of Arkansas Press

“Historian Kimberly Harper, a noted voice on Southern violence and post-Reconstruction issues, brings (back) to life one of the greatest confidence men you’ve never heard of: Robert Boatright. As the head of the Midwest’s Buckfoot Gang, Boatright was every bit as dangerous and influential as Western conmen like Soapy Smith and Big Ed Burns. Through Harper’s meticulous research, Boatright’s story is again brought to national attention and exposes the seedy underbelly of Boatright’s criminal influence on the otherwise idyllic Midwest at the dawn of the 20th century. Men of No Reputation is an insightful book about menacing criminals and offers a spotlight into the world of men whose lives led them into the shadows as well as those who sought to catch them.”
—Erik Wright, Tombstone Epitaph, June 2024

https://www.uapress.com/tombstone-epitaph-reviews-men-of-no-reputation/

Catch Robert Cochran interviewed by Daniel Moran about his new book HAUNTED MAN'S REPORT: Reading Charles Portis

https://newbooksnetwork.com/haunted-mans-report

"Twenty Acres is a wonderful, rewarding family memoir that will resonate both for elder veterans of the sixties and seventies 'back to the land' counter culture but most especially for their now adult children, of which author Neidhardt is one."

Listen to Sarah Neidhardt talk about her book TWENTY ACRES on the WritersCast Podcast with David Wilk:

https://www.writerscast.com/sarah-neidhardt-twenty-acres-a-seventies-childhood-in-the-woods/

The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to offer its Arkansas history award winning titles at 40% off for summer 2024. New books and timeless classics—winners of the Ragsdale Award, Graves Award, Booker Worthen Prize, and others—are on sale to give readers a chance to brush up on the history of the natural state.

https://www.uapress.com/summer-sale-arkansas-history-award-winners/

The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Chefs, Restaurants, and Culinary Sustainability, edited by Carole Counihan and Susanne Højlund, to be published in the Fall of 2024, as part the University of Arkansas Press’s Food and Foodways Series.

Announcing the Forthcoming Publication of Chefs, Restaurants, and Culinary Sustainability How chefs in diverse culinary contexts tackle the increasingly urgent societal and environmental need for a more secure food future.

"The law catches up with most of the Boatright Gang in the end, and Harper does an admirable job following the thread of each core member’s biography while also proving these were not suave, honorable thieves as portrayed in films like Ocean’s Eleven but rather hardened criminals capable of murder or worse. Men of No Reputation takes a magnifying glass to a little-understood underworld in a region that is too often ignored. It seems aimed to please both the amateur history buff as well as the academic, and one could easily see it becoming a Martin Scorsese film in the not-too-distant future.”
—Evan Alan Wood, Missouri Life, July 2024

https://www.uapress.com/product/men-of-no-reputation/

LitHub: "Holding Up Mirrors to the Self: 7 New Poetry Collections to Read This June"

https://lithub.com/holding-up-mirrors-to-the-self-7-new-poetry-collections-to-read-this-june/

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Haunted Man's Report featured in the New York Review of Books!

Portisheads, order here: https://www.uapress.com/product/haunted-mans-report/

“It’s hard to describe the many strengths of this collection, which read like a poet at the top of his game instead of a debut collection. The poems have been stripped of excess, and Clark’s use of form to convey meaning is masterful. For example, the ‘Unauthorized Autobiography’ is a cento poem, composed of lines from other artists, patching together a broken speaker and erasing the speaker completely beneath the words of others. These poems are filled with music and poignant line breaks, and they read like a coming of age story for a Black American speaker who has overcome demons and found a new way of being in the world. The Trouble with Light is haunting and devastating, but it progresses through the stages of transformation one would expect from a hero, and through hard work and hope it ends with the triumphant embrace of the speaker’s own human limits.”
—Sara Lynn Eastler, Southern Review of Books, June 2024

https://www.uapress.com/product/the-trouble-with-light/

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“Cochran’s volume gathers a great deal of scrupulous research, and even some portion of psycho-biographical speculation, into a persuasive close reading of five novels, plus journalism, a short story, and Portis’s single stage play. Cochran brings to light both the sidelong historical ruminations and the sorrowful depths of feeling that admirers have always sensed moving beneath the picaresque plots and the insouciant breezes of Portis’s prose.”
—Jonathan Lethem, The New York Review of Books, June 2024

Grand Poobah of the Antigrandiose | Jonathan Lethem In his five very different novels Charles Portis’s signature was deflation, his attention always fixed on how the world declines to make sense.

Kitty Ledbetter, author of Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads, will give a book talk at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 8, at the Fayetteville Public Library. The event is part of the library's U of A Press Author Spotlight Series.

See you there!

Ledbetter to Discuss 'Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads' Kitty Ledbetter, author of Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads, will give a book talk at 2 p.m. June 8 at the Fayetteville Public Library as part of the U of A Press Author Spotlight Series.

Mark your calendars! Kitty Ledbetter will will discuss her latest book, Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads at the Fayetteville Public Library Saturday, June 8 at 2pm!

See you there!

Hitmakers from the Ozarks – Si Siman & Wayne Carson Author Kitty Ledbetter will discuss her latest book, "Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads."

Iranian Diaspora Spotlight: A Conversation with Poets Armen Davoudian and Saba Keramati on “Two-Sidedness” and the Power of Language to Name

Iranian Diaspora Spotlight: A Conversation with Poets Armen Davoudian and Saba Keramati on “Two-Sidedness” and the Power of Language to Name By Persis Karim, Center Director  During an online conversation with poets Armen Davoudian and Saba Keramati for National Poetry Month, Davoudian answers a question about belonging and un-belo…

"Whimsical and incisive in equal measure, Blevins blends the storytelling gifts of the folklorist with the keen lens of social science analysis. He purports not to caricature the people of his homeland but instead to complicate them through historical, sociological, economic, and anthropological scrutiny. The text is fairly haunted with the author’s memories and profound love for the places and people that define both his upbringing and his professional life and is all the richer and more engaging for it.” —Kevin C. Motl, Journal of Southern History, May 2024

https://www.uapress.com/product/up-south-in-the-ozarks/

University of Arkansas English professor Robert Cochran talks with Ozarks at Large about his new book "Haunted Man's Report,"which traces the themes, style and literary influence of Arkansas novelist Charles Portis. Cochran looks at the novels, short fiction, essays and early journalism of Portis to reveal a compelling, funny and singular writer.

Exploring the work of Charles Portis in 'Haunted Man's Report' University of Arkansas English professor Robert Cochran's latest book looks at the collected work of Arkansas author Charles Portis.

Now Available! PEDALING RESISTANCE: Sympathy, Subversion, and Vegan Cycling, edited by Carol J. Adams and Michael D. Wise.

“Over many years, I have realized that the relationship between veganism and cycling has deep roots. This collection of essays will go a long way toward showing that being vegan is 100 percent compatible with being a strong cyclist.”
—Marc Bekoff

https://www.uapress.com/product/pedaling-resistance/

Off to print! The Last Thirty Seconds: A Brief History of the Evolution of Hit-to-Kill Technology by David K. Stumpf

“David Stumpf exhibits the highest level of diligent research. He shares a fascinating tale of an amazing achievement and the persistence needed to translate an idea into a reality.”
—Rick Sturdevant, command historian, STARCOM, United States Space Force

Pre-order: https://www.uapress.com/product/last-thirty-seconds/

John C. Davis, the author of From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas, will give a book talk at the Fayetteville Public Library at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 15. The event is part of the library's U of A Press Author Spotlight Series.

John C. Davis to Discuss His New Book, 'From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas' Davis will give a book talk about From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas at 6 p.m. May 15 at the Fayetteville Public Library as part of its U of A Press Author Spotlight Series.

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta: Essays to Mark the Centennial of the Elaine Massacre has won the 2024 John William Graves Book Award from the Arkansas Historical Association.

Edited by Michael Pierce and Calvin White, Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta examines the history of labor relations and racial conflict in the Mississippi Valley from the Civil War into the late twentieth century. This essay collection grew out of a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of one of the nation’s deadliest labor conflicts—the 1919 Elaine Massacre, during which white mobs ruthlessly slaughtered over two hundred African Americans across Phillips County, Arkansas, in response to a meeting of unionized Black sharecroppers. The essays here demonstrate that the brutality that unfolded in Phillips County was characteristic of the culture of race- and labor-based violence that prevailed in the century after the Civil War. They detail how Delta landowners began seeking cheap labor as soon as the slave system ended—securing a workforce by inflicting racial terror, eroding the Reconstruction Amendments in the courts, and obstructing federal financial-relief efforts. The result was a system of peonage that continued to exploit Blacks and poor whites for their labor, sometimes fatally. In response, laborers devised their own methods for sustaining themselves and their communities: forming unions, calling strikes, relocating, and occasionally operating outside the law. By shedding light on the broader context of the Elaine Massacre, Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta reveals that the fight against white supremacy in the Delta was necessarily a fight for better working conditions, fair labor practices, and economic justice.

Reviewing the book in the Journal of Southern History, Evan Howard Ashford wrote “Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta contributes to the fields of United States history, southern history, African American history, and Arkansas history by adding a much-needed intersectional analysis of the power struggle between Black and white in areas like gender, economics, and politics. The volume also connects Arkansas’s role in the Black freedom struggle to a larger narrative that expands the many ways to study African Americans’ quest for freedom and equality.”

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta Wins the John William Graves Book Award Given by the Arkansas Historical Association to the best book on the history of race relations in Arkansas.

Now Available!

HAUNTED MAN'S REPORT: Reading Charles Portis by Robert Cochran.

“What are we Portis fans to do, after re-reading the Little Rock laureate’s five novels to pieces? Cochran’s smart, engaging critical biography makes a terrific companion volume to Escape Velocity. Even grizzled Portisheads will find fresh glimmers of insight.”
—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams

https://www.uapress.com/product/haunted-mans-report/

Check out the latest Awards and Reviews from the University of Arkansas Press:

https://conta.cc/4b1hBjw

This episode of the SHSMO podcast features a conversation with Kimberly Harper about her new book, "Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America."

https://shsmo.org/our-missouri/season-6/episode-97

“Lucile Morris Upton was an amazing woman who redefined herself time and again—teacher, journalist, and public official—at a time when many women were not part of the public sphere. This book is her story, and it is told well. It reflects the community she knew and thus explains the culture of the Ozarks.”
—Kimberly Voss, Missouri Historical Review, April 2024

https://www.uapress.com/product/newspaperwoman-of-the-ozarks/

Been waiting on this like it’s Christmas.
Couldn’t be more in awe of our friend Jeremy Micheal Clark and couldn’t be more excited to dig into this. If you missed his spot last night, you can catch him at Foxing on May 7th along with a gathering of other poets and writers.

Did you know that Jasper County was once home to one of the most successful criminal organizations in America? Led by Robert Boatright, a colorful confederacy of con men known as the Buckfoot Gang swindled dozens of victims out of millions of dollars from the gang's headquarters in Webb City, Missouri. The gang swindled a future governor of Kansas, attorneys, businessmen, merchants, farmers and lawmen from across the US on fixed athletic contests. Just how did they do it? Kimberly Harper tells their story in Men of No Reputation: Robert Boatright, the Buckfoot Gang, and the Fleecing of Middle America. If you enjoy reading about Jasper County's history, you may want to ask for the book at the Joplin Public Library

https://news.uark.edu/articles/70259/new-book-explores-early-20th-century-country-music-in-springfield-missouri

New Book Explores Early 20th Century Country Music in Springfield, Missouri Broadcasting the Ozarks explores the vibrant country music scene that emerged in Springfield in the 1930s and thrived for half a century.

New Poetry Titles (4/23/24) Check out new poetry books for the week of 4/23 from Bottlecap Press, Biblioasis, Copper Canyon Press, Red Hen Press, Milkweed Editions, University of Arkansas Press, Seren, Carcanet Press Ltd., Talonbooks, Unbound Edition Press and BOA Editions Ltd.