Beyond “El Paso”: a story song survey
Story songs had won love from an admiring public since the days when drunken Vikings flung wandering skalds into a nearby volcano. When the wireless came along, story songs filled […]
Author: rkcunningham
Posts by rkcunningham
For the love of wicked Feleena
There is a possibly apocryphal story about Loretta Lynn’s classic “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Supposedly, Lynn’s original version of the song included ten (or eight or twelve) verses. Hearing it, her […]
Battle of the Sexes
Bobby Riggs had risen to the top of men’s tennis in the 1940s. A longtime promoter of the game with the soul of a pool hall hustler, Riggs used his […]
The Barb sinks a carrier
Seventy years ago today, the American submarine USS Barb torpedoed the Japanese carrier Unyo in the South China Sea, one of the legendary feats of the famed sub and its skipper, […]
Pigskin Primer, 2014
The casual viewer might not ponder a university press and the manly art of football at the same time. Assuming a scholarly publisher covered sports at all, wouldn’t it devote its energy […]
The meaning of Diana
Sunday, August 31 marks the seventeenth anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. The event became one of those “I remember just where I was when I heard” moments. The car crash […]
Happy Women’s Equality Day
Today, the enlightened everywhere celebrate Women’s Equality Day, commemorating not only the Nineteenth Amendment giving half of American humanity the right to vote outside of Wyoming, but recognizing all of […]
Ray Bradbury and the Twilight Zone
Ray Bradbury had made his name fusing science fiction with an abiding concern for humanity. What he had done in print, Rod Serling brought to early television. The anthology series The […]
“James Brown is a freedom I created for humanity”
The release of the film Get On Up in early August rekindled interest in the life and music of James Brown. One of the most staggeringly influential entertainers in American […]
Woodstock flashback: don’t mess with Joe
Hippydom’s high holy day, August 15, marks the anniversary of those three days of peace, love, and mud known as Woodstock. Those who care about the iconic rock festival know […]
$2.99 eBook sale on select titles
For the month of August we have lowered the e-book list price of three major titles in the University of Illinois Press catalog to $2.99. Equal Time: Television and the Civil […]
The Other Hawthorne’s Weird Tales
Julian Hawthorne hustled. An independent contractor par excellence, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne reported on foreign wars and domestic politics, published novels, penned short stories, dreamt up theosophist blarney, raked […]