Bøger udgivet af University Press of Mississippi

Renowned for his masterful storytelling, Alan J. Pakula (1928-1998) left an indelible mark on cinema history. Alan J. Pakula: Interviews offers a concise yet comprehensive overview of the director's illustrious career, from his early days in Hollywood to his rise as a major filmmaker. From the famous "paranoid trilogy" of Klute, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men to the gripping psychological drama of Sophie's Choice and his often-undervalued later work, Pakula's diverse filmography has captivated audiences and critics alike. The first published collection of interviews with the acclaimed director, this volume presents an illuminating portrait of Pakula as a filmmaker, an artist, and a man of many parts. The eighteen pieces compiled here, including an illuminating introduction and previously unpublished 1983 interview by editor Tom Ryan, provide a broad overview of Pakula's career. In his own words, Pakula recounts his experience as Robert Mulligan's producer, reflects on the bulk of films he made as director, and outlines his approach to the art of filmmaking. Taken as a whole, Alan J. Pakula: Interviews is a treasure trove of cinematic wisdom and a fitting tribute to the legacy of an important American filmmaker.

John Clellon Holmes met Jack Kerouac on a hot New York City weekend in 1948, and until the end of Kerouac's life they were-in Holmes's words-"e;Brother Souls."e; Both were neophyte novelists, hungry for literary fame but just as hungry to find a new way of responding to their experiences in a postwar American society that for them had lost its direction. Late one night as they sat talking, Kerouac spontaneously created the term "e;Beat Generation"e; to describe this new attitude they felt stirring around them. Brother Souls is the remarkable chronicle of this cornerstone friendship and the life of John Clellon Holmes. From 1948 to 1951, when Kerouac's wanderings took him back to New York, he and Holmes met almost daily. Struggling to find a form for the novel he intended to write, Kerouac climbed the stairs to the apartment in midtown Manhattan where Holmes lived with his wife to read the pages of Holmes's manuscript for the novel Go as they left the typewriter. With the pages of Holmes's final chapter still in his mind, he was at last able to crack his own writing dilemma. In a burst of creation in April 1951, he drew all the materials he had been gathering into the scroll manuscript of On the Road. Biographer Ann Charters was close to John Clellon Holmes for more than a decade. At his death in 1988 she was one of a handful of scholars allowed access to the voluminous archive of letters, journals, and manuscripts Holmes had been keeping for twenty-five years. In that mass of material waited an untold story. These two ambitious writers, Holmes and Kerouac, shared days and nights arguing over what writing should be, wandering from one explosive party to the next, and hanging on the new sounds of bebop. Through the pages of Holmes's journals, often written the morning after the events they recount, Charters discovered and mined an unparalleled trove describing the seminal figures of the Beat Generation: Holmes, Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and their friends and lovers.

Contributions by Robert Adams Jr., Shenita Brazelton, Donathan L. Brown, Owen Brown Jr., Michael L. Clemons, Daphne Cooper, LaTasha Chaffin Dehaan, William H. L. Dorsey, Bertis D. English, Precious D. Hall, Beverly Johnson, Natasha Altema McNeely, Maurice Mangum, Amardo Rodriguez, Randall Swain, Edward V. Wallace, Ingrid P. Whitaker, and Mark M. Whitaker Beginning early in his career, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the moral and humanitarian need to pursue social justice and equity for marginalized Americans, those for whom the American dream had proven to be an elusive ideal. In Dream and Legacy, Volume II: Revisiting King in the Post-Civil Rights Era, contributors sift through the historical record, engaging one of America's most consequential, radical historical traditions. Despite robust reform efforts since the 1930s, a wide range of policy-related challenges plague the lives of African Americans, other persons of color, women, and the poor in the twenty-first century. This anthology, like the first from coeditors Michael L. Clemons, Donathan L. Brown, and William H. L. Dorsey, applies the ideology and activism of Dr. King to its analysis of contemporary sociopolitical issues in the United States and abroad. The project begins with a foreword that situates the subsequent essays within the context of contemporary social developments. Grouped into themed sections, the essays cover such topics as voting rights, public protest, police brutality, poverty and wage discrimination, healthcare, and more. The epilogue concludes with a discussion of the timeless impact of Dr. King's philosophy and activism, as well as the implications of his work for the future of domestic and global leadership. Dream and Legacy, Volume II identifies a variety of practical lessons that can help resolve contemporary social problems.

In the 1970s, British filmmaker Ken Russell (1927-2011) quickly gained a reputation as the enfant terrible of British cinema. His work, like the man himself, was regarded as flamboyant, excessive, and unrestrained. Inheriting and yet subverting the venerable mantle of British documentary, Russell did not fit comfortably in the context of a national cinema dominated by sober realism. His distinct style combined realism with fictional devices, often in audacious ways, to create the biographical "docudrama." In Ken Russell: Interviews, the filmmaker discusses his colorful life and career, from his youth fascinated by movies to his early work in television through his feature films and his retreat to home movies. Russell first drew notice in the early 1960s for a series of unorthodox biographical films about artists and composers. In these early television films, Russell was already exhibiting an unconventional approach to biography that combined historical fact, aesthetic interpretation, and outlandish personal vision. After the critical and commercial success of his adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, Russell continued to explore the related themes of art, sexuality, and music in The Music Lovers, The Boy Friend, Mahler, Tommy, and Lisztomania. His career foundered after Valentino, however, and he found it increasingly difficult to get funding. Toward the end of his career, Russell was restricted to making movies with his own equipment, using family and friends as actors, with virtually no budget. Throughout the ups and downs of his career, Russell alternately embraced and resented his characterization as an enfant terrible. While Russell's comments are often meant to provoke and shock, he is articulate when discussing his films, his approach to cinema, music and composers, and, of course, his critics.

Contributions by Sandra Bartlett Atwood, Nathan E. Bender, London Brickley, Eric A. Eliason, Noah D. Eliason, Tim Frandy, Robert Glenn Howard, Jay Mechling, Annamarie O'Brien Morel, Raymond Summerville, Tok Thompson, and Megan L. Zahay Guns are a ubiquitous part of life in the United States. Arguably more pervasive than physical guns is "gunlore," which refers to the many folklore genres related to firearms. Gunlore: Firearms, Folkways, and Communities is the first book to engage with the many narratives, rituals, folk-speech, customs, art, and handicraft encompassed by gunlore. Like most expressive cultures, gunlore emerges from specific communities. Groups with a shared interest around firearms may form for many reasons--self-protection, hunting, crime, work, political or social identity signaling, the desire to creatively modify guns, and even the resolve to oppose gun use and ownership. This collection explores a range of gunlore genres and the "gunfolk" groups that give rise to them. Contributors examine topics that include the fetishization of firearms, "Moms Who Carry," online discussion boards, alternative history cosplay, survivalist communities, gunsmiths and gun craft, and more. Gun owners and gun enthusiasts, in all their varieties, are one of the largest avocational groups in America. The essays in Gunlore seek to expand our understanding of these communities by looking at the various roles firearms play, have played, and can play in our world. Gunlore, for better or worse, is a powerful and pervasive method of self-expression. In examining the folklore around these controversial and politically charged tools, weapons, and symbols, we can begin to understand aspects of American culture that will remain prominent for the foreseeable future.

Between the 1930s and the invention of the internet, American comics reached readers in a few distinct physical forms: the familiar monthly stapled pamphlet, the newspaper comics section, bubblegum wrappers, and bound books. From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics places the history of four representative comics--Watchmen, Uncle Scrooge, Richie Rich, and Fleer Funnies featuring Pud--in the larger contexts of book history, children's culture, and consumerism to understand the roles that comics have played as very specific kinds of books. While comics have received increasing amounts of scholarly attention over the past several decades, their material form is a neglected aspect of how creators, corporations, and readers have constructed meaning inside and around narratives. Neale Barnholden traces the unusual and surprising histories of comics ranging from the most acclaimed works to literal garbage, analyzing how the physical objects containing comics change the meaning of those comics. For example, Carl Barks's Uncle Scrooge comics were gradually salvaged by a fan-driven project, an evolution that is evident when considering their increasingly expensive forms. Similarly, Watchmen has been physically made into the epitome of "prestigious graphic novel" by the DC Comics corporation. On the other hand, Harvey Comics' Richie Rich is typically misunderstood as a result of its own branding, while Fleer Funnies uses its inextricable association with bubblegum to offer unexpectedly sophisticated meanings. Examining the bibliographical histories of each title, Barnholden demonstrates how the materiality of consumer culture suggests meanings to comics texts beyond the narratives.

Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery been fully realized or so blatantly apparent than on the eve of the Second World War. In Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland, scholar Ewa Stańczyk explores how illustrators conceived of Jewish people in satirical drawing and reflected on the burning political questions of the day. Incorporating hundreds of cartoons, satirical texts, and newspaper articles from the 1930s, Stańczyk investigates how a visual culture that was essentially hostile to Jews penetrated deep and wide into Polish print media. In her sensitive analysis of these sources, the first of this kind in English, the author examines how major satirical magazines intervened in the ongoing events and contributed to the racialized political climate of the time. Paying close attention to the antisemitic tropes that were both local and global, Stańczyk reflects on the role of pictorial humor in the transmission of visual antisemitism across historical and geographical borders. As she discusses the communities of artists, publishers, and political commentators who made up the visual culture of the day, Stańczyk tells a captivating story of people who served the antisemitic cause, and those who chose to oppose it.

A devout Catholic, a visionary--and some say prophetic--writer, Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) has gained a growing presence in contemporary popular culture. While O'Connor professed that she did not have an ear for music, allusions to her writing appear in the lyrics and narrative form of some of the most celebrated musicians on the contemporary music scene. Flannery at the Grammys sounds the extensive influence of this southern author on the art and vision of a suite of American and British singer-songwriters and pop groups. Author Irwin H. Streight invites critical awareness of O'Connor's resonance in the products of popular music culture--in folk, blues, rock, gospel, punk, heavy metal, and indie pop songs by some of the most notable figures in the popular music business. Streight examines O'Connor's influence on the art and vision of multiple Grammy Award winners Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, R.E.M., and U2, along with celebrated songwriters Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Sufjan Stevens, Mary Gauthier, Tom Waits, and others. Despite her orthodox religious, and at times controversial, views and limited literary output, O'Connor has left a curiously indelible mark on the careers of the successful musicians discussed in this volume. Still, her acknowledged influence and remarkable presence in contemporary pop and rock songs has not been well noted by pop music critics and/or literary scholars. Many years in the making, Flannery at the Grammys achieves groundbreaking work in cultural studies and combines in-depth literary and pop music scholarship to engage the informed devotee and the casual reader alike.

Legal legend Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer once stated that there were "only two people in the world who really understood the Constitution" and its impact on American lives. One was Hugo Black, deceased Supreme Court justice. The other was William Benson Bryant Sr. (1911-2005), who in the early 1950s became the first Black assistant US attorney to try cases in Washington, DC's federal court, and became that same court's first Black chief judge in 1977. Written by award-winning author Tonya Bolden, this biography presents the story of Bryant's remarkable, pioneering life in the law--one that began in a segregated DC and included many years as an extraordinary criminal defense attorney, most notably as the dogged defender of Andrew Mallory, a young poor Black man sentenced to the electric chair for the 1954 rape of a white woman. Bryant fought for Mallory's life all the way to the US Supreme Court, chiefly on the grounds that Mallory's confession--the most damning evidence against him--was the fruit of an illegal detention. The High Court overturned Mallory's conviction. Mallory v. United States was among the cases that culminated in the landmark 1966 Miranda rule. Appointed to federal judicial service by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, Bryant's forty-year tenure included cases ranging from overturning a corrupted election of the United Mine Workers and unconstitutional conditions at the DC jail. The biography draws upon an array of documents, newspaper articles, interviews with the judge's friends, colleagues, and family members, as well as oral histories, including Judge Bryant's. Bolden beautifully narrates the story of a life of compassion, unparalleled integrity, and unwavering belief in the dignity of every human being.

"Bill Crawford thought his modern-day Republican Party would lift Mississippi off the bottom, a notion born of Gil Carmichael's vision for good government conservatism. A Republican's Lament tells of Crawford's dedicated efforts to implement Carmichael's vision, his keen observations of Mississippi's struggles, and his critical commentaries over the past half century. For more than fifty years, few people have had a better view or a wider variety of roles in the ups and downs of Mississippi and its communities than Crawford. The Canton native has been a daily newspaper reporter, a crusading small-town weekly editor, a Republican Party leader, a reform-minded Republican state representative, an influential Institutions of Higher Learning board trustee, a successful banker, a community college administrator, a state economic development official, a community development leader and nonprofit founder, a mentor of developing community leaders, and a syndicated political columnist. From Gil Carmichael's vision for good government and Haley Barbour's pragmatic conservatism to starve the beast and truth management politics, poverty and the Cycle of Prosperity, Faulkner's curse and other behavioral shadows, the Ayers case, and more, Crawford weaves a unique and eventful story about his home state's enduring dilemmas and a clarion call for its better possibilities"--

Coming soon, the firsthand account of a studio insider's adventures in movie marketing

"In this poignant and introspective dual memoir, Marion Garrard Barnwell embarks on a deeply personal journey. Inspired by the memoir of her maternal grandmother, Mary DuBose Trice Clark, affectionately known as "Ganny," the narratives, though separated by decades, are brought together to offer readers a unique and moving exploration of growing up in Mississippi and the intersections of family, motherhood, and self-discovery. Clark's memoir, penned in 1956, offers readers a glimpse into the past, telling the story of her life in Mississippi with unwavering commitment to "just plain facts." Her narrative traverses the landscapes of Okalona, Nettleton, Verona, and Tupelo, revealing their histories and the vibrant tapestry of her life while artfully sidestepping the complexities of her relationships and emotional vulnerabilities. Reflecting on an era when discussions of emotion and self-awareness were often shrouded in reticence, Clark's story leaves a void in which Barnwell seeks to uncover the unspoken truths that shaped their family dynamics. Written at the age of seventy-seven, the same age as her grandmother when she wrote her memoir, Barnwell's writing emerges as a response to the enigmatic silence within her grandmother's narrative. It paints a vivid and expansive picture of her own life in the Mississippi Delta while also addressing profound themes of alcoholism, racism, shared family history, and the intricate dynamics between generations of women. As Barnwell weaves her own memoir into the fabric of this book, she takes readers on her emotional journey of self-discovery and truth-telling that leads to healing. All the Things We Didn't Say: Two Memoirs is a testament to the power of storytelling and a captivating ode to the enduring human spirit and the timeless pursuit of understanding the intricate threads that connect us across generations"--

In conversations on regional blues, the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Piedmont, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are frequently lauded. But until now, little attention has been paid to the Midwest, despite the presence and popularity of blues in these heartland communities. Wichita Blues: Music in the African American Community seeks to address this gap in music history by exploring the lively Wichita blues tradition. In interviews with nineteen African American Wichita blues performers, author Patrick Joseph O'Connor reveals the evolution of the blues from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond. Utilizing twenty-five years of fieldwork, Wichita Blues details the history of performance and camaraderie among the musicians of this often-neglected regional sound. The personal interviews offer unique insight into topics that shape Wichita's sound, including how migration from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas brought varied artists to the area and the ways musical traditions cross racial divides and generations. The artists articulate the poetics of the blues and the diverse regional influences that can be detected in their music. In exploring the Wichita blues tradition, O'Connor traces African American history in Kansas, ranging from the Exoduster movement in the late nineteenth century and minstrel shows across the state to Black cowboys and growing urban African American communities in Topeka and Wichita. Including a foreword by renowned music scholar David Evans, Wichita Blues allows seasoned blues musicians to tell their own stories and paints a picture of the vibrant Black music scene in the city.

Born and raised on the island of Jamaica, Fern June Khan has valued and embraced Jamaica in each stage of her life. Despite the island's economic and educational challenges during her youth, Khan's childhood was a colorful one, replete with the vibrant culture of the island, endlessly supportive role models, and a complex social tapestry. Her early experiences empowered Khan to develop an unwavering sense of self as she progressed into adulthood and moved to the United States. Through Jamaican Lenses: A Memoir celebrates Khan's joyful upbringing, journey to a new environment, and her many educational and professional accomplishments. Centering on her early life in Jamaica in the 1940s and '50s, this memoir reveals Khan's childhood as one rich with opportunities to observe and experience the complexities of Jamaican life and history. Khan's childhood memories revel in the community's vivid folklore, Jamaica's music and food, popular idioms and sayings, as well as the implications of color and class. Then a British colony, Jamaica still bore the legacies and social impacts of slavery and emancipation. Jamaica was becoming increasingly globalized and along with that transition came a growing interest in cultural exchange. Stories of economic success poured in from relatives and friends who had traveled abroad, whether as seasonal workers or as immigrants. As Khan grew, ambition brought her to the United States as a foreign student. She graduated from New York University with a BSc in sociology and a graduate degree in social work. Following a brief career in social work, Khan next cultivated a forty-four-year career in higher education, using her social work skills to inform her work developing education programs for children, youth, and adults alike in New York City and beyond. Bolstered by her early education in Jamaica, these achievements would not have been possible without the support of her community. Examining not only Jamaica's contribution to the arts, its customs and traditions, and its social and cultural heritage, Through Jamaican Lenses explores honestly the diasporic experience of Caribbean immigration, postcolonialism, collective and individual memory, and transnational identity.

A detailed biography of the esteemed actress, before, during, and after The Avengers

Contributions by Yoshiko Akamatsu, Carol L. Beran, Rita Bode, Lesley D. Clement, Allison McBain Hudson, Kate Lawson, Jessica Wen Hui Lim, Lindsey McMaster, E. Holly Pike, Katharine Slater, Margaret Steffler, and Anastasia Ulanowicz Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was a Canadian author best known for writing the wildly popular Anne of Green Gables. At the time of its publication in 1908, it was an immediate bestseller and launched Montgomery to fame. Less known than the dreamy and accidentally mischievous Anne Shirley is Emily Byrd Starr, the title character in the trilogy that followed much later in Montgomery's professional career, Emily of New Moon. Published in 1923, Emily of New Moon is the first in a series of novels about an orphan girl growing up on Prince Edward Island, a story that mirrors Anne's but intentionally resists many of the defining qualities of Montgomery's most famous creation. Despite being overshadowed by the immense popularity of Anne of Green Gables, the Emily of New Moon trilogy has become a subject of endless fascination to fans and scholars around the world. The trilogy was conceived during an important phase in Montgomery's career during which she turned from Anne and plunged into more intricate aspects of gender, adolescence, nature, and authorship. While the novels have attracted rich critical attention since their publication, book-length studies proved surprisingly scarce. L. M. Montgomery's "Emily of New Moon" A Children's Classic at 100 is the first scholarly volume exclusively dedicated to the trilogy, coalescing different research perspectives. It offers a fresh point of entrance into a well-loved classic at its one-hundredth anniversary.

Contributions by GerShun Avilez, Lola Boorman, Thomas Britt, John Brooks, Phillip James Martinez Cortes, Derek DiMatteo, Tikenya Foster-Singletary, Alexandra Glavanakova, Erica-Brittany Horhn, Matthias Klestil, Abigail Jinju Lee, Derek C. Maus, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Sarah O'Brien, Keyana Parks, and Emily Ruth Rutter The seventeen essays in Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama collectively argue that in the years after the widespread hopefulness surrounding Barack Obama's election as president waned, Black satire began to reveal a profound shift in US culture. Using the four seasons of the FX television show Atlanta (2016-22) as a springboard, the collection examines more than a dozen novels, films, and television shows that together reveal the ways in which Black satire has developed in response to contemporary cultural dynamics. Contributors reveal increased scorn toward self-proclaimed allies in the existential struggle still facing African Americans today. Having started its production within a few weeks of Donald Trump's (in)famous escalator ride in 2015, Atlanta in many ways is the perfect commentary on the absurdities of the contemporary cultural moment. The series exemplifies a significant development in contemporary Black satire, which largely eschews expectations of reform and instead offers an exasperated self-affirmation that echoes the declaration that Black Lives Matter. Given anti-Black racism's lengthy history, overt stimuli for outrage have predictably commanded African American satirists' attention through the years. However, more recent works emphasize the willful ignorance underlying that history. As the volume shows, this has led to the exposure of performative allyship, virtue signaling, slacktivism, and other duplicitous forms of purported support as empty, oblivious gestures that ultimately harm African Americans as grievously as unconcealed bigotry.

Hanna and Barbera: Conversations presents a lively portrait of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the influential producers behind Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, the Smurfs, and hundreds of other cartoon characters who continue to entertain the world today. Encompassing more than fifty years of film and television history, the conversations in this volume include first-person accounts by the namesakes of the Hanna-Barbera studio as well as recollections by artists and executives who worked closely with the pair for decades. It is the first collection of its kind about Hanna and Barbera, likely the most prolific animation producers of the twentieth century, whose studio once outflanked its competitor Walt Disney in output and influence. Bill Hanna fell into animation in 1930 at the Harman-Ising studio in Los Angeles, gaining skills across the phases of production as MGM opened its animation studio. Joe Barbera, a talented and sociable artist, entered the industry around the same time at the wild and woolly Van Beuren studio in Manhattan, learning the ins and outs of animation art before crossing the country to join MGM. In television, Hanna's timing and community-oriented work ethic along with Barbera's knack for sales and creating funny characters enabled Hanna-Barbera to build a roster of beloved cartoon series. A wide range of pieces map Hanna and Barbera's partnership, from their early days in Hollywood in the 1930s to Cartoon Network in the 1990s, when a new generation took the reins of their animation studio. Relatively unknown when they made over one hundred Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons at MGM in the 1940s and 1950s, Hanna and Barbera became household names upon entering the new medium of television in 1957. Discussions here chart their early primetime successes as well as later controversies surrounding violence, overseas production, and the lack of quality in their Saturday morning cartoons. With wit, candor, insight, and bravado, Hanna and Barbera: Conversations reflects on Bill and Joe's breakthroughs and shortcomings, and their studio's innovations and retreads.

Hanna and Barbera: Conversations presents a lively portrait of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the influential producers behind Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, the Smurfs, and hundreds of other cartoon characters who continue to entertain the world today. Encompassing more than fifty years of film and television history, the conversations in this volume include first-person accounts by the namesakes of the Hanna-Barbera studio as well as recollections by artists and executives who worked closely with the pair for decades. It is the first collection of its kind about Hanna and Barbera, likely the most prolific animation producers of the twentieth century, whose studio once outflanked its competitor Walt Disney in output and influence. Bill Hanna fell into animation in 1930 at the Harman-Ising studio in Los Angeles, gaining skills across the phases of production as MGM opened its animation studio. Joe Barbera, a talented and sociable artist, entered the industry around the same time at the wild and woolly Van Beuren studio in Manhattan, learning the ins and outs of animation art before crossing the country to join MGM. In television, Hanna's timing and community-oriented work ethic along with Barbera's knack for sales and creating funny characters enabled Hanna-Barbera to build a roster of beloved cartoon series. A wide range of pieces map Hanna and Barbera's partnership, from their early days in Hollywood in the 1930s to Cartoon Network in the 1990s, when a new generation took the reins of their animation studio. Relatively unknown when they made over one hundred Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons at MGM in the 1940s and 1950s, Hanna and Barbera became household names upon entering the new medium of television in 1957. Discussions here chart their early primetime successes as well as later controversies surrounding violence, overseas production, and the lack of quality in their Saturday morning cartoons. With wit, candor, insight, and bravado, Hanna and Barbera: Conversations reflects on Bill and Joe's breakthroughs and shortcomings, and their studio's innovations and retreads.

Two people, principal and ghostwriter, collaborate on the controversial story of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and his alleged affair with Queen Elizabeth I.

Beyond Control reveals the Mississippi as a waterway of change, unnaturally confined by ever-larger levees and control structures. During the great flood of 1973, the current scoured a hole beneath the main structure near Baton Rouge and enlarged a pre-existing football-field-size crater. That night the Mississippi River nearly changed its course for a shorter and steeper path to the sea. Such a map-changing reconfiguration of the country's largest river would bear national significance as well as disastrous consequences for New Orleans and towns like Morgan City, at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River. Since 1973, the US Army Corps of Engineers Control Complex at Old River has kept the Mississippi from jumping out of its historic channel and plunging through the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond Control traces the history of this phenomenon, beginning with a major channel shift around 3,000 years ago. By the time European colonists began to explore the Lower Mississippi Valley, a unique confluence of waterways had formed where the Red River joined the Mississippi, and the Atchafalaya River flowed out into the Atchafalaya Basin. A series of human alterations to this potentially volatile web of rivers, starting with a bend cutoff in 1831 by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, set the forces in motion for the Mississippi's move into the Atchafalaya Basin. Told against the backdrop of the Lower Mississippi River's impending diversion, the book's chapters chronicle historic floods, rising flood crests, a changing strategy for flood protection, and competing interests in the management of the Old River outlet. Beyond Control is both a history and a close look at an inexorable, living process happening now in the twenty-first century.