The Improbable Life of the Arkansas Democrat

The Improbable Life of the Arkansas Democrat
Author: Jerry McConnell
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2016-01-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1610755731
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The Improbable Life of the Arkansas Democrat is based on more than one hundred interviews with employees of the Democrat, including editors, reporters, feature writers, cartoonists, circulation managers, business managers, salespeople, typesetters and others, from the 1930s through the early 1990s, when the Democrat took over the more prominent Arkansas Gazette after an aggressive newspaper war. This new addition to Arkansas journalism history provides vivid details about what it was like to work at the Democrat. August Engel, who led the paper with focused devotion for forty-two years, was famous for his thrift, creating austere conditions that included no air conditioning in the newsroom and sub-par wages. In spite of these drawbacks, the paper was still home to many dedicated journalism professionals endeavoring to do good work. Readers who remember the ultimate acrimony between the two papers may be surprised to learn that for many years the Democrat and the Gazette owners operated under a tacit agreement of civility. The papers didn’t raid each other’s staff, for example, and when a fire broke out in the Gazette pressroom, Democrat management offered to loan the use of its press. Staffers recall that when the Gazette struggled with an advertising boycott and reduced circulation during the Little Rock Central High crisis because of its perceived progressive editorial stance, which infuriated many Arkansans, the Democrat did less than it might have to capitalize. The eventual newspaper war that combined the two rivals saw the end of any semblance of civility when the Democrat hired an aggressive and infamous managing editor named John Robert Starr. Through these firsthand stories of those who lived it, The Improbable Life of the Arkansas Democrat tells the story of how the second-place paper overtook the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi, forever changing not only Arkansas journalism but also Arkansas history.

Arkansas in Modern America since 1930

Arkansas in Modern America since 1930
Author: Ben F. Johnson III
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2019-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 161075672X
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This second edition of Arkansas in Modern America since 1930 represents a significant rewriting of and elaboration on the first edition, published in 2000. Historian Ben F. Johnson fills in gaps, reconsiders his original conclusions, and reflects on new developments in historical scholarship, extending the book’s analysis of the political, economic, social, and cultural positions into 2018. Particularly impressive for the breadth of its scope, Arkansas in Modern America since 1930 offers an overview of the factors that moved Arkansas from a primarily rural society to one more in step with the modern economy and perspectives of the nation as a whole. The narrative covers the roles of Daisy Bates, Sam Walton, Don Tyson, Bill Clinton, and other influential figures in the state’s history to reveal a state shaped by global as much as by local forces. The second edition of this important book will continue to set the standard for analysis and interpretation of Arkansas’s place in the contemporary world.

A Reason to Believe

A Reason to Believe
Author: Governor Deval Patrick
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2011-04-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0767931122
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Deval Patrick, “an inspirational figure guided by optimism and hope who presaged the rise of President Obama” (The Boston Globe), recounts his extraordinary journey from the South Side of Chicago to the governorship of Massachusetts. “I’ve simply seen too much goodness in this country—and have come so far in my own journey—not to believe in those ideals, and my faith in the future is sometimes restored under the darkest clouds.”—Governor Deval Patrick In January 2007, Deval Patrick became the first black governor of the state of Massachusetts, one of only two black governors elected in American history. But that was just one triumphant step in an improbable life that began in a poor tenement on the South Side of Chicago, taking Patrick from a chaotic childhood to an elite boarding school in New England, from a sojourn doing relief work in Africa to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, and then to a career in politics. In this heartfelt and inspiring memoir, he pays tribute to the family, friends, and strangers who, through words and deeds, have instilled in him transcendent lessons of faith, perseverance, and friendship. In doing so, he reminds us of the power of community and the imperative of idealism. With humility, humor, and grace, he offers a road map for attaining happiness, empowerment, and success while also making an appeal for readers to cultivate those achievements in others, to feel a greater stake in this world, and to shape a life worth living. Warm, nostalgic, and inspirational, A Reason to Believe is destined to become a timeless tribute to a uniquely American odyssey and a testament to what is possible in our lives and our communities if we are hopeful, generous, and resilient. Governor Deval Patrick is donating a portion of the proceeds from A Reason to Believe to A Better Chance, a national organization dedicated to opening the doors to greater educational opportunities for young people of color.

Front Page

Front Page
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2000
Genre: History, Modern
ISBN:
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If It Ain't Broke, Break It

If It Ain't Broke, Break It
Author: Donna Lampkin Stephens
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2015-07-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1610755618
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The Arkansas Gazette, under the independent local ownership of the Heiskell/Patterson family, was one of the most honored newspapers of twentieth-century American journalism, winning two Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the Little Rock Central Crisis. But wounds from a fierce newspaper war against another local owner—Walter Hussman and his Arkansas Democrat—combined with changing economic realities, led to the family’s decision to sell to the Gannett Corporation in 1986. Whereas the Heiskell/Patterson family had been committed to quality journalism, Gannett was focused on the bottom line. The corporation shifted the Gazette’s editorial focus from giving readers what they needed to be engaged citizens to informing them about what they should do in their leisure time. While in many ways the chain trivialized the Gazette’s mission, the paper managed to retain its superior quality. But financial concerns made the difference in Arkansas’s ongoing newspaper war. As the head of a privately held company, Hussman had only himself to answer to, and he never flinched while spending $42 million in his battle with the Pattersons and millions more against Gannett. Gannett ultimately lost $108 million during its five years in Little Rock; Hussman said his losses were far less but still in the tens of millions. Gannett had to answer to nervous stockholders, most of whom had no tie to, or knowledge of, Arkansas or the Gazette. For Hussman, the Arkansan, the battle had been personal since at least 1978. It is no surprise that the corporation blinked first, and the Arkansas Gazette died on October 18, 1991, the victim of corporate journalism.

The Boy from Altheimer

The Boy from Altheimer
Author: William H. Bowen
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2006-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1557288186
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Bill Bowen’s memoir deals with many of the most important events and years in Arkansas history in the twentieth century. Bowen was born and raised in Altheimer, in the Arkansas Delta, a section of the country that was among the most impoverished in the nation during the Depression. His adolescence was shaped by the Depression, and as a young adult he enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve until 1963. After the war, Bowen became a tax attorney. He used his unique skills to refine the legal aspects of investment banking in Arkansas and became so proficient at it that he moved into the banking field to serve first as president then board chairman of one of Arkansas’s largest banks. Legal and banking experience led naturally to politics, and he became chief of staff for Gov. Bill Clinton. After Clinton announced his candidacy for president, it became Bowen’s task to protect the interests and programs of Governor Clinton in the face of intense pressure from then Lt. Gov. Jim Guy Tucker to become de facto governor. Even in retirement he continued to lead an energetic, productive life as he prepared himself for yet another career, this one in education, serving two years as dean of the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Law School, which now bears his name.

Topless Cellist

Topless Cellist
Author: Joan Rothfuss
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2014-09-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 026202750X
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The first book to explore the extraordinary career of musician and performance artist Charlotte Moorman, whose work combined classical rigor, avant-garde experiment, and madcap daring. The Juilliard-trained cellist Charlotte Moorman sat nude behind a cello of carved ice, performed while dangling from helium-filled balloons, and deployed an array of instruments on The Mike Douglas Show that included her cello, a whistle, a cap gun, a gong, and a belch. She did a striptease while playing Bach in Nam June Paik's Sonata for Adults Only. In the 1960s, Moorman (1933–1991) became famous for her madcap (and often unclothed) performance antics; less famous but more significant is Moorman's transformative influence on contemporary performance practice—and her dedication to the idea that avant-garde art should reach the widest possible audience. In Topless Cellist, the first book to explore Moorman's life and work, Joan Rothfuss rediscovers, and recovers, the legacy of an extraordinary American artist. Moorman's arrest in 1967 for performing topless made her a water-cooler conversation-starter, but before her tabloid fame she was a star of the avant-garde performance circuit, with a repertoire of pieces by, among others, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Paik, her main artistic partner. Moorman invented a new mode of performance that combined classical rigor, jazz improvisation, and avant-garde experiment—informed by intuition, daring, and love of spectacle. Moorman's annual festival of the avant-garde offered the public a lively sampler of contemporary art in performance, music, dance, poetry, film, and other media. Rothfuss chronicles Moorman's life from her youth in Little Rock, Arkansas (where she was “Miss City Beautiful” of 1952) through her career in New York's avant-garde to her death from breast cancer in 1991. (Typically, she approached her treatment as if it were a performance.) Deeply researched and profusely illustrated, Topless Cellist offers a fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious story of an artist whose importance was more than the sum of her performances.