Synopses & Reviews
Told more as stories than history lessons, the biographies in
American National Biography Supplement I recount the tales of all the different people who shaped America--leaders, composers, entertainers, entrepreneurs, writers, scientists, and outlaws. Each one written by an expert in the field and masterfully woven together to present the most accurate and up-to-date information, the entries bring forth a powerful narrative of America's past and some of the most important figures that went into its formation.
As the first in a series, ANB Supplement I extends the coverage from the original ANB to include notables who died prior to the end of 1999. This adds another four years of captivating history to the original 24-volume print edition's cutoff date of 1995.
Among the biographies in the Supplement are articles first published in the ANB Online. The result is hour after absorbing hour spent exploring the dance of Gene Kelly and the music of Ella Fitzgerald along with the lives of Revolutionary War General Peter Gansevoort and literary scholar Fredson Bowers, among many, many others.
With over 400 new listings, bibliographies after each entry, and a cumulative revised index of occupations and realms of renown, the Supplement continues the ANB tradition of bringing the people who have meant so much to this country to the forefront.
Review
"Picking up where the American National Biography left off...Supplement I maintains the ANB's format and quality throughout....Every library holding ANB will want Supplement I; those lacking the original set should reconsider."--Choice "The first Supplement adds 400 biographies."--Booklist "Politicians, entertainers, writers, scientists and outlaws who have helped shape our nation are depicted in this excellent massive work. Highly Recommended."--History Media Review
Synopsis
In this innovative study of the South Carolina Low Country, author Stephanie McCurry explores the place of the yeomanry in plantation society--the complex web of domestic and public relations within which they were enmeshed, and the contradictory politics of slave society by which that class
of small farmers extracted the privileges of masterhood from the region's powerful planters. Insisting on the centrality of women as historical actors and gender as a category of analysis, this work shows how the fateful political choices made by the low-country yeomanry were rooted in the politics
of the household, particularly in the customary relations of power male heads of independent households assumed over their dependents, whether slaves or free women and children. Such masterly prerogatives, practiced in the domestic sphere and redeemed in the public, explain the yeomanry's deep
commitment to slavery and, ultimately, their ardent embrace of secession.
By placing the yeomanry in the center of the drama, McCurry offers a significant reinterpretation of this volatile society on the road to Civil War. Through careful and creative use of a wide variety of archival sources, she brings vividly to life the small worlds of yeoman households, and the
larger world of the South Carolina Low Country, the plantation South, and nineteenth-century America.