Rural Roots

Wayne Erbsen's newest book takes a deep look at bluegrass music to uncover its true roots: ballads of early pioneers, Scots-Irish fiddle tunes, black spirituals, plantations melodies, blues, murder ballads, sentimental parlor songs from Tin Pan Alley, North Carolina banjo styles and gospel songs. the book is richly illustrated with over 100 vintage photos and includes lyrics, musical notation, chords, history and playing tips to 94 songs. There are also nearly 80 pages of history and profiles portraying important musicians including the Monroe Brothers, Carter Family, Bradley Kincaid, Riley Puckett, Charlie Poole, Wade & J.E. Mainer, Vernon Dalhart, Carolina Tar Heels, G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, Ernest V. Stoneman, Blue Sky Boys, Fiddlin' John Carson, Coon Creek Girls, Earl Scruggs, Eck Robertson, Callahan Brothers, Samantha Bumgarner, Bill Monroe Zeke & Wiley Morris, Jimmie Rodgers and Stringbean. Optional CD by Wayne Erbsen and Laura Boosinger is available containing fourteen songs from the book.

China’s economic and military rise dominates discussions of the world’s most populous country. Resilient authoritarian government is credited with great successes, but this book expands the discourse to include governance by village heads - who often ignored central politicians. Chinese reforms for prosperity started circa 1970 under rural and suburban leaders. They could act autonomously then because of unexpected political and technological opportunities. Their localization of power eroded socialist controls. Since 1990, central leaders have tried to reverse reforms made by resilient local bosses. New findings, especially from the Yangzi delta around Shanghai, challenge the top-down approach to thinking about governance. As Deng Xiaoping admitted, the nation’s spurt of prosperity began in local communities rather than Beijing. Reforms for triple-cropping and rural industrialization started long before Mao’s death (not in 1978, the date most writers cite). Country factories competed with state industries for materials and markets. Shortages by the 1980s led to inflation, government deficits, unofficial credit, unenforceable planning, illegal migrations, then international exports - and severe political tensions. After 1990, Party leaders sought policies to build a Leninist regime that is mostly post-socialist. These reactionary changes have lasted into the era of Xi Jinping. China’s reforms and subsequent changes can be understood as results of unintended situations not just ideas, and local not just central politics. This book will interest students and scholars of Chinese, as well as any readers who wonder about comparative development.

Between the late colonial period and the Civil War, the countryside of the American northeast was largely transformed. Rural New England changed from a society of independent farmers relatively isolated from international markets into a capitalist economy closely linked to the national market, an economy in which much farming and manufacturing output was produced by wage labor. Using the Connecticut Valley as an example, The Roots of Rural Capitalism demonstrates how this important change came about. Christopher Clark joins the active debate on the "transition to capitalism" with a fresh interpretation that integrates the insights of previous studies with the results of his detailed research. Largely rejecting the assumption of recent scholars that economic change can be explained principally in terms of markets, he constructs a broader social history of the rural economy and traces the complex interactions of social structure, household strategies, gender relations, and cultural values that propelled the countryside from one economic system to another. Above all, he shows that people of rural Massachusetts were not passive victims of changes forced upon them, but actively created a new economic world as they tried to secure their livelihoods under changing demographic and economic circumstances. The emergence of rural capitalism, Clark maintains, was not the result of a single "transition"; rather, it was an accretion of new institutions and practices that occurred over two generations, and in two broad chronological phases. It is his singular contribution to demonstrate the coexistence of a family-based household economy (persisting well into the nineteenth century) and the market-oriented system of production and exchange that is generally held to have emerged full-blown by the eighteenth century. He is adept at describing the clash of values sustaining both economies, and the ways in which the rural household-based economy, through a process he calls "involution," ultimately gave way to a new order. His analysis of the distinctive role of rural women in this transition constitutes a strong new element in the study of gender as a factor in the economic, social, and cultural shifts of the period. Sophisticated in argument and engaging in presentation, this book will be recognized as a major contribution to the history of capitalism and society in nineteenth-century America.

Your address was "rural route" if you lived on a winding country road. As the term disappeared, so did the way of life it represented. This book will strike a responsive chord in the heart of those who warm at the thought of the "country".

This is a collection of stories about growing up in rural Kipling, Northern Ontario, Canada in the 50s and 60s. Some of them are true, some have a hint of truth, and some are products of the author's vivid imagination...

A prizewinning political scientist traces the origins of urban-rural political conflict and shows how geography shapes elections in America and beyond Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography. In the late nineteenth century, support for the left began to cluster in cities among the industrial working class. Today, left-wing parties have become coalitions of diverse urban interest groups, from racial minorities to the creative class. These parties win big in urban districts but struggle to capture the suburban and rural seats necessary for legislative majorities. A bold new interpretation of today's urban-rural political conflict, Why Cities Lose also points to electoral reforms that could address the left's under-representation while reducing urban-rural polarization.

A collection of short stories about life in rural Kipling, Ontario, Canada, a small Scandinavian farming village.

DIVHumans have used the goat as a symbol for thousands of years and have given it a place in myth and legend; in recent times, images of goats are found everywhere from beer labels to heavy metal art. At the same time, the goat also remains a simple farm animal. From ancient myths to pop culture to profiles of domestic breeds, Extraordinary Goats explores the many facets of the goat./divDIV /divDIVGoats are useful for their milk, their fur, and their meat, and they don�t need a lot of acreage to be happy„in fact, they�re known as the poor man�s cow. But that�s not why they�re fascinating. Goats have personality. They can be friendly, angry, pensive, cranky, or curious; they can be your best friend or a thorn in your side. They can drive you crazy and make you laugh„or cry./divDIV /divDIVJoin longtime goat lover, farmer, author, teacher, and cheesemaker Janet Hurst on a light-hearted journey through the goat world, as she introduces the reader to these remarkable animals. Extraordinary Goats is chock full of historical illustrations and modern photos of goats doing what goats do„riding motorcycles, climbing trees, chewing, singing, and being adorably irascible. If you own a goat, or long to, you�ll want Extraordinary Goats on your shelf./div