Arkansas's Old State House, arguably the most famous building in the state, was conceived during the territorial period and has served through statehood. A History of Arkansas's Old State House traces the history of the architecture and purposes of the remarkable building. The history begins with Gov. John Pope's ideas for a symbolic state house for Arkansas and continues through the construction years and an expansion in 1885. After years of deterioration, the building was abandoned by the state government, and the Old State House then became a medical school and office building. Kwas traces the subsequent fight for the building's preservation on to its use today as a popular museum of Arkansas history and culture. Brief biographies of secretaries of state, preservationists, caretakers, and others are included, and the book is generously illustrated with early and seldom-seen photographs, drawings, and memorabilia.

Obscured in history by her internationally renowned son, Sen. J. William Fulbright, Roberta Waugh Fulbright was, nonetheless, an extraordinary person deserving of tribute. Here, finally and fittingly, is her biography-a sensitive portrait of a complex woman who was one Arkansas’s dominant figures. Traditional mother of six children, gardener, thinker, and provocative conversationalist, Roberta Fulbright became a sudden widow at age forty-nine. She eventually took charge of the inherited, fragmented, business holdings, originally assembled by her husband, Jay, and molded them into a multi-enterprise family firm. As such, she emerged as an influential newspaper publisher and columnist, bank president, savvy business owner, and conscientious civic crusader. Through her own self-confidence and canny business sense, she became a formidable competitor in Fayetteville’s male-dominated business establishment. Her resolve was reflected in her signature column in the Northwest Arkansas Times, “As I See It”: So long as a woman does poorly and the lords of creation can say, “Oh, it’s nothing but a fool woman,” they are fairly content, for they must, every mother’s son of them, have a woman to do much of the work. But let a woman do WELL and she is all but burned at the stake. I will say for the benefit of those who may be interested, I did not choose business as a career, it was thrust upon me. I did choose it in preference to going broke or dissipating my heritage and that of my children. Intensely interested in politics, Fulbright challenged a corrupt local political machine and, later took on governor, producing a chain of events leading to he4r son’s election to Congress. In her column, she extolled the virtues of women’s talents, and she campaigned for an equal right for women in public life. In doing so, she was a moving force for acknowledgement of women in nontraditional roles, long before feminism became a movement. Stuck and Snow have produced a brisk, lively story, drawing from a genealogical records, numerous interviews of family members, business associates, and friends, and the almost two million words written by Fulbright in her column. Renowned southern historian Willard B. Gatewood Jr. has said of this work: “I really appreciate [the authors’] treatment of [Roberta] as a person— inquisitive, assertive, benevolent, etc. They have captured superbly the family matriarch, incessant thinker and talker, the indulgent grandmother, and gifted gardener. This is truly a good ‘read’ and represents a highly significant achievement.”

" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.

Winner, 2017 Ragsdale Award A timely study that puts current issues—religious intolerance, immigration, the separation of church and state, race relations, and politics—in historical context. The masthead of the Liberator, an anti-Catholic newspaper published in Magnolia, Arkansas, displayed from 1912 to 1915 an image of the Whore of Babylon. She was an immoral woman sitting on a seven-headed beast, holding a golden cup “full of her abominations,” and intended to represent the Catholic Church. Propaganda of this type was common during a nationwide surge in antipathy to Catholicism in the early twentieth century. This hostility was especially intense in largely Protestant Arkansas, where for example a 1915 law required the inspection of convents to ensure that priests could not keep nuns as sexual slaves. Later in the decade, anti-Catholic prejudice attached itself to the campaign against liquor, and when the United States went to war in 1917, suspicion arose against German speakers—most of whom, in Arkansas, were Roman Catholics. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan portrayed Catholics as “inauthentic” Americans and claimed that the Roman church was trying to take over the country’s public schools, institutions, and the government itself. In 1928 a Methodist senator from Arkansas, Joe T. Robinson, was chosen as the running mate to balance the ticket in the presidential campaign of Al Smith, a Catholic, which brought further attention. Although public expressions of anti-Catholicism eventually lessened, prejudice was once again visible with the 1960 presidential campaign, won by John F. Kennedy. Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas illustrates how the dominant Protestant majority portrayed Catholics as a feared or despised “other,” a phenomenon that was particularly strong in Arkansas.