Böcker utgivna av Mercer University Press

Jimmy Morrow, a pastor and serpent handler for over a quarter of a century explores the history of serpent handling from a variety of sources, including his extensive familiarity with families whose roots are deep in Appalachia. As a native Appalachian Jimmy has access to histories unavailable to outsiders. While not formally trained as a historian, Jimmy's own narrative of the Jesus Name tradition is a unique contribution to not only Appalachian studies, but to the history of what many have prematurely thought to be a tradition whose obituary is soon to be written. Jimmy's astounding photographs and his keen insight to the power of this tradition that he proudly upholds suggests that while unlikely ever to be a dominant form of religious expression, it will continue as perhaps Americas most unique form of religion that persists in Appalachia despite laws against the practice of handling serpents. This is an extraordinary personal account of a unique form of religious devotion and dedication. It will be of interest to anyone interested in Appalachian culture or religion in the South.

In his powerful debut collection Twelfth Year and Other Stories, Randy Hendricks paints each of his characters with a few meticulous strokes. Characters in search of identity, in search of the right path, in search of answers, drive each story and the questions each poses. In "The Stove, " Joby Johnson must contend with the weight of his own pride and the questions it raises about who he is and who he wants to be. Sitting in a hospital waiting room, Caleb Vance must confront his own regrets as he looks back on his wife and their life together in the story "D & C." The narrator of "Ruins" moves us through his search for the real man behind his grandfather and the real man behind himself, seeking in his memories what he could not find in the actual experiences themselves. Randy Hendricks's economical storytelling gives each work an inevitable sense, as if the stories had always existed, each line of dialogue following the one before so naturally that one could not imagine the stories being any other way. Step by step then, each story in this collection constructs a journey of the most internal and fundamental kind, journeys that we all must make toward who we are.

An examination of an entrepreneur who saw his personal wealth as a divine trust.

Encouraged by the Bible, Puritans banished a variety of radicals from the Puritan colonies including Baptists. Among those banished was Roger Williams, the advocate of religious liberty who established the first Baptist church in America. Williams posed a serious challenge to a colonial society in which the Bible was the paramount guide in every aspect of life, both public and private.

After considerable scouring of musty and dusty files in courtroom storage cellars, the research project in Springfield, Illinois discovered more than 70,000 documents directly linked to Abraham Lincoln's twenty-four years as a practicing lawyer. Having access to that wealth of information, A. Lincoln Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated Litigator presents unique insight into Lincoln's legal career in a distinctive book that presents detailed stories about Lincoln's cases using actual trial document, uses Lincoln's cases to examine the social and political climate of the time, shows how relationships between Lincoln and his clients changed over time, and is the first book to use the newly discovered Lincoln Legal Papers primary source data.In contrast to the mythical image of Lincoln as a country lawyer, he was actually among the top leaders of the Illinois bar. This book details more than fifty of Lincoln's legal cases and activities such as assault and battery, bestiality, a wrongful dismissal, medical malpractice uncollected debts, the insanity plea in a murder case, divorce, the selection of expert witnesses, patent infringement, sexual slander, personal damages, corporate clients, and the first use of the temporary insanity plea in a US courtroom, and set the precedent for using expert witnesses. Lincoln even defended an Illinois Supreme Court justice against an impeachment charge.

William Rhadamanthus Montgomery (1839-1906) was present at some of the most memorable battles of the Civil War. Among them were Chickahominy, Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredricksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Wounded seven or eight times, Montgomery remained in service throughout the entire war. After the war, he returned to Marietta where he lived out the rest of his days. The diary and the letters contained herein is a testament to his time as a soldier during the Civil War. But as the diary and letters indicate, the war was not the end all of his life. His loyalty for the South was surpassed only by his loyalty for and to his family.

In examining the course of the debate between the philosophies of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft in the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, several important conclusions have been reached. First, a much more diverse spectrum of women's exercise existed in the antebellum era than is currently described in modern historical texts. Second, several exercise systems had significant links to an ideal of womanhood - called in this text Majestic Womanhood - which directly competed with the prevailing construct of the ideology of True Womanhood articulated by historian Barbara Welter. Third, purposive training mattered in the lives of American women influencing them physically, intellectually, and emotionally. In many instances this training empowered women to step beyond the confines of their separate sphere of domestic duty and involve themselves in the world outside their homes.