Best Regional American Literature Criticism

In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Duncan claims that each person owns scores of river teeth and that they have the potential to guide, wound, and withstand time's erasure.

His beliefs and scientific understanding of the river would be challenged again when he was hired in 1859 as a technical consultant for the River Meadow Association, in America’s first statewide case for dam removal―a veritable class-action suit of more than five hundred petitioners that pitted local farmers against industrialists. Increasingly, he sought out for solace and pleasure those river sites most dramatically altered by human invention and intervention―for better and worse. If Thorson had just done this, the book would have been valuable enough, but his story of Thoreau’s self-education in hydrology, of his turning himself into a scientific expert on the local rivers and in rivers in general, and of his involvement in a class-action suit to tear down the Billerica dam, make this an important book. A scrupulous account of the environment Thoreau loved most and, important for our day, the ways in which he expressed this passion in the face of ecological degradation…Thorson argues convincingly―sometimes beautifully―that Thoreau’s thinking and writing were integrally connected to paddling and sailing…With the meticulous care of a modern geologist, he excavates Thoreau’s journals, notebooks and correspondence, concentrating on the last years of the naturalist’s life and exposing the way he became what today we would call a fluvial geomorphologist, an environmental scientist devoted to understanding the form and function of rivers. Thorson argues that Thoreau ‘properly interpreted most of the key ideas of fluvial geomorphology a half century before the subject was invented.’ He was, in Thorson’s words, ‘a lone genius’ whose contributions to science we’ve too long ignored…Part of what makes Thorson’s work on Thoreau so unusual is that he hardly bothers with literary, political, or intellectual approaches to his subject at all―he’s after data, and when he finds it, he checks it, weighing it against today’s best practices. He comes away from his historical data-crunching deeply impressed with Thoreau’s skill… The Boatman is an impressive feat of empirical research, and Thorson’s conclusions are an important contribution to the scholarship on Thoreau as natural scientist.

“A tall but telescopic-sight-true tale of Hunter Thompson, Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, and a large cavorting cast running around with sand in their shoes at ‘ground zero for lust and greed and most of the other deadly sins’: Key West.”— Tom Wolfe “An engrossing tell-all in which Key West’s most notable residents struggle to find sanity, sobriety and a place to call home.”— Kirkus Reviews “A necessary read for fans of Florida fiction or any of the figures included here, as well as for those traveling to Key West.”— Library Journal “McKeen’s portrait of Key West as a onetime bohemian utopia and hotspot is atmospheric, and . a tale of the island’s famous personalities that flows as easily as an ocean breeze.” —Orlando Sentinel “Make McKeen’s tale your next trip to the island.”— South Florida Sun-Sentinel “A wonderful zinger of a book. Never before have the literary traditions of the Conch Republic been mined for such gold nugget anecdotes.”— Douglas Brinkley Mile Marker Zero tells the story of how a league of great American writers and artists found their identities in Key West and maintained their friendships over the decades, despite oceans of booze and boatloads of pot, through serial marriages and sexual escapades, in that dangerous paradise. “A tall but telescopic-sight-true tale of Hunter Thompson, Jimmy Buffet, Tom McGuane, and a large cavorting cast running around with sand in their shoes at ‘ground zero for lust and greed and most of the other deadly sins:’ Key West.”—Tom Wolfe. "Not just another paean to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, William McKeen's gritty, no-holds-barred oeuvre, Mile Marker Zero , carefully and thoroughly establishes the groundwork for understanding and appreciating the achievement of literary mavericks and artists of Key West in the Seventies. This treatment of the personal lives and works of Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, Russell Chatham, Jimmy Buffet, Hunter S. Thompson…offers an arresting and instructive rendering of this colorful cadre of characters, in the shadow of Key West's most famous resident, Ernest Hemingway, drawn together in this tropical Greenwich Village to establish a new enclave on the fringe." “Make McKeen's tale your next trip to the island.” —Sun Sentinel "You may not believe that these writers were able to take their eyes off the famous Key West sunset to focus on their work, but every feast needs a backdrop." There is a saying that if you remember the sixties, then you weren’t there; in the same vein, this book should be read by not only anyone with even a passing interest in this fascinating period of literary creativity, but also by anyone who actually was in Key West during the seventies—they could probably use a few reminders of just what was buzzing on the island at the time anyway."

In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Duncan claims that each person owns scores of river teeth and that they have the potential to guide, wound, and withstand time's erasure.

His brilliant and provocative essays made him the literary voice of the Civil Rights Era, and they continue to speak with powerful urgency to us today, whether in the swirling debate over the Black Lives Matter movement or in the words of Raoul Peck's documentary "I Am Not Your Negro." Here are the complete texts of his early landmark collections, Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961), which established him as an essential intellectual voice of his time, fusing in unique fashion the personal, the literary, and the political. Novelist Morrison's editing of this omnibus, which includes a chronology and notes, should help rekindle interest in Baldwin, whose recurrent themes?the African American search for identity, the hypocrisy of white America, the urgent necessity for love?make his work timely and challenging.

In this provocative and original exploration of racial subjugation during slavery and its aftermath, Saidiya Hartman illumines the forms of terror and resistance that shaped black identity. Saidiya Hartman is Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Berkeley.

Meet Special Agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock in these exciting novels of intrigue and suspense—and watch the sparks fly as their relationship heats up amid cases that could destroy everything they hold dear... Praise for Catherine Coulter’s FBI Thrillers “Fast-paced.”— People “This terrific thriller will drag you into its chilling web of terror and not let go until the last paragraph…A ripping good read.”— The San Francisco Examiner “A good storyteller...Coulter always keeps the pace brisk.”— Fort Worth Star-Telegram “With possible blackmail, intra-judiciary rivalries and personal peccadilloes, there’s more than enough intrigue—and suspects—for full court standing in this snappy page-turner…A zesty read.”— Book Page “Twisted villains...intriguing escapism...The latest in the series featuring likable married FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich.”— Lansing (MI) State Journal “Coulter takes readers on a chilling and suspenseful ride...taut, fast-paced, hard to put down.”— Cedar Rapids Gazette “The perfect suspense thriller, loaded with plenty of action.”—The Best Reviews. “The newest installment in Coulter’s FBI series delivers...a fast-moving investigation, a mind-bending mystery.”— Publishers Weekly “Fast-paced, romantic...Coulter gets better and more cinematic with each of her suspenseful FBI adventures.”— Booklist Catherine Coulter is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the FBI Thrillers featuring husband and wife team Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock.