Time For A ‘Spring Break’ From Politics

NEW ARKANSAS BOOKS WORTH READING AS LEGISLATURE IN RECESS

Lay aside your fears, the 90th General Assembly, this coming week, will be in a short recess for spring break.

They will return in a couple of days sprinting towards the end of the session.

And that’s just the right time to tout some new Arkansas books that might fill the three- to- four day drought from day-to-day politics in Arkansas.

That is unless Junior U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, decides to pen another poison letter to a Third World junta.

There will be more on Sen. Cotton’s antics in the coming weeks.

Back to books and a respite from politics.

Most of these books can be found in your local independent booksellers, such as Nightbird Books in Fayetteville, or on order from websites at each of the publishing houses mentioned.

From the University of Arkansas Press, local author Margaret Jones Bolsterli of Fayetteville emerges her examination of her family tree with an unexpected turn. “Kaleidoscope: Redrawing an American Family Tree,” a short, but enticing, easy read about families pre- and post-Civil War and how they survived.

Another UA Press Book to quickly read “If It Ain’t Broke, BREAK IT: How Corporate Journalism Killed The Arkansas Gazette,” by Donna Lampkin Stephens, a former Gazette reporter. It is an autopsy of the behindthe-scenes death of the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi.

The Butler Center Books out of Little Rock has some interesting new books out this spring.

First is “Arky: The Saga of the USS Arkansas,” by the brothers duo of Ray and Stephen Hanley. This duo, best known for their collection of old Arkansas postcards, has co-authored quite a hit in writing about this famed battleship. The USS Arkansas, measuring almost the length of two football fields, went to sea in 1911 and sailed the world until 1947, when it served as a target for the atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific.

Another quick and easy read, really set up for learning more about Arkansas history in a short, easy format, is “Arkansas In Ink: Gunslingers, Ghosts and Other Graphic Tales.” This is a collection of one-to-two page stories about Arkansas’ outlaws, ghosts, oddities and absurdities, taken from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, edited by Guy Lancaster and wonderfully illustrated by Ron Wolfe. It is the perfect book for the senior citizen or the younger student at your home. Are you into movies? Want to know more about Arkansans in the movies?

Well there is no source better than a new UA Press Book, “Lights! Camera! Arkansas!” by Robert Cochran and Suzanne McCray. This husband-and-wife team of UA professors has screened close to 200 films in their spirited research any movie buff will absolutely love. This volume traces the roles played by Arkansans in the first century of Hollywood’s film industry, from Hollywood’s first cowboy star, Broncho Billy Anderson, to Mary Steenburgen, Billy Bob Thornton, and many others.

And last, another Butler Center Book on war and history. “To Can The Kaizer: Arkansas and the Great War,” edited by Michael Polston and Guy Lancaster, explains how World War I forged a connection between Arkansas and the rest of the world. More than 70,000 Arkansans served as soldiers during the war. Wartime propaganda led to suspicions directed against Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and African-Americans in Arkansas, but war production proved a boon to the state in the form of greater demand for cotton, minerals, and timber.

As always, there will be an outbreak of political skirmishes down in Little Rock, but we need a much needed break – a spring break.

And such a break is always welcomed.

I’ll be back next week with another political take on local politics.

Until then, read on. And read about Arkansas. MAYLON RICE IS A FORMER JOUNALIST WHO WORKED FOR SEVERAL NORTHWEST ARKANSAS PUBLICATIONS. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.