19th century

"Sitting in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is a rough cotton bag, called 'Ashley's Sack,' embroidered with just a handful of words that evoke a . . . family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. In 1850s South Carolina, just before nine-year-old Ashley was sold, her mother, Rose, gave her a sack filled with just a few things as a token of her love. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter, Ruth, embroidered this history on the bag--including Rose's message that 'It be filled with my Love always.' Historian Tiya Miles carefully follows faint archival traces back to Charleston to find Rose in the kitchen where she may have packed the sack for Ashley. From Rose's last resourceful gift to her daughter, Miles then follows the paths their lives and the lives of so many like them took to write a . . . history of the lived experience of slavery in the United States. The contents of the sack--a tattered dress, handfuls of pecans, a braid of hair, 'my Love always'--speak volumes and open up a window on Rose and Ashley's world. As she follows Ashley's journey, Miles metaphorically 'unpacks' the sack, deepening its emotional resonance and revealing the meanings and significance of everything it contained. These include the story of enslaved labor's role in the cotton trade and apparel crafts and the rougher cotton 'negro cloth' that was left for enslaved people to wear; the role of the pecan in nutrition, survival, and southern culture; the significance of hair to Black women and of locks of hair in the nineteenth century; and an exploration of Black mothers' love and the place of emotion in history"--Provided by publisher.

"Follows the story of [the] author's . . . maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boardinghouses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive generations of African-American women, Elster intertwines the fictionalized adaptations of the defining periods and challenges--race relations, miscegenation, sexual assault, and class divisions--in her family's history"--.

A dramatic account of the ill-fated 19th-century naval expedition to the North Pole cites the contributions of German cartographer August Peterman, New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett and famed naval officer George Washington De Long in the team's efforts to survive brutal environmental conditions.

Discusses the life and writing career of eighteenth and nineteenth century author, Hannah More.

Presents nineteenth-century American writer and social activist Henry David Thoreau's reflections upon living alone among nature for two years on Massachusetts' Walden Pond.

"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times"--Provided by publisher.

Discusses the falling-out between women's and African-American suffrage advocates during the Reconstruction era, examining the political culture in the United States during the nineteenth century, and describing how local Republicans sought to defeat both causes by setting the groups against each other.