“goldstein, Margaret J. You Are Now on Indian Land: The American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island, California, 1969.” .

In 1916, Lucy Thompson, an indigenous woman from Northwestern California, published To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman. The first book to be published by a member of the California Yurok tribe, it offers an autobiographical view of the intricacies of life in the tribe at the dawn of the twentieth century, as well as a powerful critique of the colonial agenda. Elizabeth Schleber Lowry presents a rhetorical analysis of this iconic text, investigating how Thompson aimed to appeal to diverse audiences and constructed arguments that still resonate today.

A debut on CD for the American Decca legacy of Ruth Slenczynska, a prodigious Romantic-age keyboard lioness. The biography for her Wigmore Hall recital in March 1957 claimed that the 32-year-old Ruth Slenczynska had given 1600 concerts. Scarcely believably, perhaps, but no less so than other elements of her extraordinary life story - making her public debut at the age of four, under the instruction of a tyrannical and abusive father, playing a Mozart concerto at the Salle Pleyel in Paris just three years later, attracting the admiration and tutelage of Cortot and Rachmaninov, apparently burnt out before adulthood.

For many the entry of Jackie Robinson into Major League Baseball in 1947 marked the beginning of integration in professional baseball, but the entry of American Indians into the game during the previous half-century and the persistent racism directed toward them is not as well known. From the time that Louis Sockalexis stepped onto a Major League Baseball field in 1897, American Indians have had a presence in professional baseball. Unfortunately, it has not always been welcomed or respected, and Native athletes have faced racist stereotypes, foul epithets, and abuse from fans and players throughout their careers. The American Indian Integration of Baseball describes the experiences and contributions of American Indians as they courageously tried to make their place in America’s national game during the first half of the twentieth century.

Jeffrey Powers-Beck provides biographical profiles of forgotten Native players such as Elijah Pinnance, George Johnson, Louis Leroy, and Moses Yellow Horse, along with profiles of better-known athletes such as Jim Thorpe, Charles Albert Bender, and John Tortes Meyers. Combining analysis of popular-press accounts with records from boarding schools for Native youth, where baseball was used as a tool of assimilation, Powers-Beck shows how American Indians battled discrimination and racism to integrate American baseball.