This book offers a comprehensive analysis of Defoe's oeuvre from the perspective of the historian. Clark presents Defoe by recovering the theological basis of his intellectual commitments, establishing him as a crucial figure in the evolution of theories about war and property, conquest and commerce, religious toleration and civil society.

"Motherwit" and "common sense" were the watchwords of Onnie Lee Logan's career as a lay midwife in Mobile County, Alabama. Although she received little formal education, endured the Depression and faced a racist society, Onnie Lee Logan experienced her life as the triumphant fulfillment of a dream to be one of those who could bring babies into the world, as her mother and grandmother had done before her. Her story, told in the soft, now vanishing dialect of the Deep South, is powerful and fascinating oral history. Motherwit follows her life through her work as a servant for a wealthy Mobile...

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITIC CIRCLE AWARD This sumptuous oral biography of Eugene Walter, the best-known man you've never heard of, is an eyewitness history of the heart of the last century-enlivened with personal glimpses of luminaries from William Faulkner and Martha Graham to Judy Garland and Leontyne Price-and a pitch-perfect addition to the Southern literary tradition that has critics cheering. In his 76 years, Eugene Walter ate of "the ripened heart of life," to quote a letter from Isak Dinesen, one of his many illustrious friends. Walter savored the porch life of his native...