Arkansas County Moonshine Wars

Larry Jack arrives home from the Korean War with a divorce and no prospects for a future he now assumes will be lonely. As luck would have it, however, with his discharge paper still in hand, Larry Jack is offered the job of a lifetime as a revenuer in his homeland of Arkansas County, Arkansas. He is placed in charge of investigating bootleggers and possible drug dealers in the region—and even though he’s a native, he does not receive the warmest of welcomes. Larry Jack’s Arkansas is a bit wild; there are vicious feuds, rough-and-tumble fighting in the honky-tonks, and shootouts on the town square. Despite their personal differences, though, the people of the bayou have one thing in common: distaste for authority figures, which makes his job difficult. His life gets even more interesting when he encounters an old flame by the name of Mary Ann. Meanwhile, it soon becomes apparent in his investigation that Larry Jack isn’t just dealing with local crooks. A crime syndicate is behind the drug-dealing, and in order to convict Larry Jack will have to risk his own life against not only guns but also water moccasins, alligators, and bears. With Mary Ann at his side, he might be able to navigate the bayou, but how will he bring these criminals to justice without ending up with a bullet in the back?

In 1837 Representative Joseph J. Anthony stabs the speaker of the house to death during a debate about wolf pelts. In 1899 Hot Springs police shoot it out with the county sheriffs over control of illegal gambling. In 1974 President Richard Nixon resigns in part due to the outspokenness of Pine Bluff native Martha Mitchell. In this special print project of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, legendary cartoonist Ron Wolfe brings these and many other stories to life. Accompanied by selected entries from the encyclopedia, Wolfe’s cartoons highlight the oddities and absurdities of our state’s history. Seriously, you couldn’t make up this stuff.

This study examines the phenomenon of peasant resistance in westernMaharashtra with special reference to the years 1875-1947. It investigates thetranformation of agrarian society in this region through a sociological analysisof specific cases of peasant resistance.

Most Americans think of the Civil War as a series of dramatic clashes between massive armies led by romantic-seeming leaders. But in the Appalachian communities of North Georgia, things were very different. Focusing on Fannin and Lumpkin counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains along Georgia’s northern border, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South argues for a more localized, idiosyncratic understanding of this momentous period in our nation’s history. The book reveals that, for many participants, this war was fought less for abstract ideological causes than for reasons tied to home, family, friends, and community. Making use of a large trove of letters, diaries, interviews, government documents, and sociological data, Jonathan Dean Sarris brings to life a previously obscured version of our nation’s most divisive and destructive war. From the outset, the prospect of secession and war divided Georgia’s mountain communities along the lines of race and religion, and war itself only heightened these tensions. As the Confederate government began to draft men into the army and seize supplies from farmers, many mountaineers became more disaffected still. They banded together in armed squads, fighting off Confederate soldiers, state militia, and their own pro-Confederate neighbors. A local civil war ensued, with each side seeing the other as a threat to law, order, and community itself. In this very personal conflict, both factions came to dehumanize their enemies and use methods that shocked even seasoned soldiers with their savagery. But when the war was over in 1865, each faction sought to sanitize the past and integrate its stories into the national myths later popularized about the Civil War. By arguing that the reason for choosing sides had more to do with local concerns than with competing ideologies or social or political visions, Sarris adds a much-needed complication to the question of why men fought in the Civil War.

This work is an accurate, wide-ranging, and entertaining account of the illegal liquor traffic during the Prohibition Era (1920 to 1933). Based on FBI files, legal documents, old newspapers and other sources, it offers a coast-to-coast survey of Volstead crime--outrageous stories of America's most notorious liquor lords, including Al Capone and Dutch Schultz. Readers will find the lesser known Volstead outlaws to be as fascinating as their more famous counterparts. The riveting tales of Max Hassel, Waxy Gordon, Roy Olmstead, the Purple Gang, the Havre Bunch, and the Capitol Hill Bootlegger will be new to most readers. Likewise, the exploits of women bootleggers and flying bootleggers are unknown to most Americans. Books about Prohibition usually note that Canadian liquor exporters abetted the U.S. bootleggers, but they fail to go into detail. Bootleggers and Beer Barons examines the major cross-border routes for smuggling liquor from Canada into the U.S.: Quebec to Vermont and New York, Ontario to Michigan, Saskatchewan to Montana, and British Columbia to Washington.

A history of the community and people of Lawrence County, Arkansas.