Have you ever been bullied, molested, or told “You don’t have the sense you were born with,” “You are going out of the world backward,” “You are a knucklehead,” “You are mentally slow,” “You are too small to play a game,” “You are not strong enough,” “You are a quitter,” “You will never fi nish anything,” “People like you should not go to college,” “You are stupid,” “You were meant to be a laborer,” “You are ugly,” or “YOU WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO A HILL OF BEANS?” This autobiography of my life story is for all of the people who have been put-down or discouraged by family, friends, classmates, or society at large. I hope that it will help you to not give up on your hopes and dreams. May it strengthen your faith in God, yourself, and your fellowmen.

Johnstone Country. Come and Get It. Mac is back. Framed for a murder he didn’t commit, Dewey “Mac” Mackenzie is a wanted man on a cattle drive heading west—as a chuckwagon cook. Though he’s never even boiled an egg, Mackenzie has a natural gift for cobbling together good trail drive grub. Now, with two trail drives under his belt, Mackenzie has proven to be more than a good chuckwagon cook. He’s good at serving up justice, too—with a side of hot lead . . . A HILL OF BEANS Mac Mackenzie has enough problems on his plate. He’s got bounty hunters on his tail, no one on his side, and no place to hide. Just when he thinks it can’t get any worse, he hears the rumbling of a cattle stampede—heading straight for his camp. Mac’s got two choices: Get trampled like a weed or saddle up and help get the herd under control. At first, the traildrivers ain’t too pleased to have a stranger help them out. But once they realize Mac’s not a rustler, they ask him to join the team. Mac takes them up on the offer—especially after he meets the cowgirl Colleen—and quickly impresses everyone with his cooking skills. There’s just a few more problems: Mac’s new employers might be the real rustlers. And Mac’s stepped out of the frying pan into the fire . . .

Do we make too much of our day-to-day problems? In the big scheme of things how important can they be? Award-winning storyteller Valerie Schultz answers these questions through deeply touching—and sometimes provocative—personal accounts of family, career, addiction, alienation, romance, aging, and loss. With compassion and honesty Schultz retraces the passages of ordinary life, finding grace and the presence of God in those she loves and those she struggles to love.

"Rare is the poet who can create living breathing images, bringing a place and a people fully to life, as William S. Tribell has magnificently accomplished in A Duke's Mixture and a Hill of Beans. "That Day Over to the Belva Straight Creek Mine" and "The Old Walnut Tree" are two of his many Kentucky gems. But the farseeing rebel poet departs from Kentucky and wanders on to foreign lands. Read William S. Tribell's new masterpiece to find out where he goes. And, believe me, he goes." Ron Whitehead poet writer editor publisher scholar activist

Leslie Epstein's Hill of Beans is the story of how one nation, one industry, and in particular one man responded to the desperate hope of freedom in the Second World War.

American English(es) focuses on the manifold nature of a macro-regional variety of English which is better described in the plural form, thus enhancing the endless contribution of most diverse ethnic groups, such as those kidnapped from Africa to be employed as slaves, survivors of native American tribes systematically exterminated in the past, and, later on, European Jews escaping from pogroms, Europeans and Asians escaping from poverty, and, more recently, Central and South Americans, mostly Spanish speakers, emigrating to the USA in search of supposedly better living conditions. By tackling the notions of “minority”, “variety”, and “dialect”, this book singles out three language-related phenomena which are currently relevant to the academic and cultural debate concerning US society, namely the obsolescent representation of minority vs hegemonic varieties of English, the latest developments of the Spanish vs English controversy, and the increasing exposure of slang in public contexts. The multiple points of view on American Englishes, offered by the essays included in the present volume, draw on diverse and often contrasting approaches, ranging from corpus linguistics to cultural studies, from lexicography/lexicology to discourse analysis.