American Catholics: An Encyclopedic History: Beginning with North America’s contact with three imperialist powers (Spain, France, and England), this narrative account tells the story of how Catholicism became and continues to be part of the basic religious and cultural fiber of North America. The book follows a narrative chronological and thematic format, focusing on people, events, practices, social and cultural phenomena, and institutions. People discussed include the well-known, such as Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, and the not-so-well-known, such as Juniper Berthiaume and Jean Louis Berlandier.
With 33 chapter divided into 7 parts and all drawing on primary sources, this book engages with topics such as the overwhelming violence against Indigenous people and the religion’s role in wars, politics, and modern-day culture.
The Lawsons of the American Southern Hill Country: The Lawson family in America were often common people who made their way south and west in colonial America, many of whom in time dwelt in mountainous areas, such as the Appalachians and foothills as well as the small mountain chains of Arkansas, Missouri, and eastern Oklahoma that make up the Ozarks and Ouachitas. Before the twentieth century, they tended to be farmers, generally sufficiently poor not to own slaves in the South, hence relying on the common work of large families and strong kinship networks. Lawsons often lived by each other and often moved to new places, such as in Arkansas, together. They tended to be evangelical Protestants and believers in hard work and traditional family and community values. A history of some of the Lawsons over the past several centuries exemplifies what many American families experienced in the transitional period in American history from the eighteenth-century colonial period to the new nation of the nineteenth century and the onset of modernization from the mid-nineteenth century to today
Van Sorrels: The Woodcutting Musician: This is the story of a woodcutter who lived in Northwest Arkansas. Van Sorrels was a simple man. He could read and write but he had no formal schooling. Yet he was a thinker. He was a big man, stout, strong, blue-eyed, a firm gazer, an honest looker, a man whom others trusted, who kept his word, who believed firmly that the Lord watched him always, and knowing this, Van wished his actions to be pleasing to God. Van was a musician who made his own stringed instruments and taught his family how to play, forming a family orchestra. The time described in this book is the late 1800s, early 1900s. Van Sorrels, son of Deal and Sarah Sorrels, was married to Martha Tully, daughter of Wesley and Jerusha Tully. This man Van of Norman and English extraction with reddish-brown hair and hard muscles worked from dawn to dusk, most days, cutting trees in the forest, cutting off the limbs, dragging the large trunks to his workshop, hewing the wood into various shapes, squares and rectangles that could be used for fencing, barn and cabin framing, railroad ties, and such. During winter he spent much of his time cutting firewood for customers. Sometimes his work was more intricate: preparing wood for the delicate task of fashioning a stringed instrument. Some of this work took thought, some of it did not; he supplemented the routine actions with traditional songs and hymns, many of which he had memorized, others he had composed based off of the original, which he said or hummed, thinking that later in the day, after dusk, he would sit next to the fireplace strumming his guitar, or making the mandolin sing. And his wife and children would join in, their voices merging together, the mandolin, guitar, and fiddle combining together in joyous tunes of praise to the Lord, the land, and the past.
The book is as well a genealogical study of Van’s forebears and his descendants, focusing especially on his grandparents, his granduncles and grandaunts, his parents, and aunts and uncles, his cousins and second cousins, and his children, their spouses, and their children.
The Memories of Lida Newcomb: Lida Newcomb’s life was never easy. Before her third birthday, her father died, and Lida watched her grieving mother sink into depression. The family soon traveled from California to Maine, where Lida spent her formative years. Through the struggles of life in turn of the 20th century New England, Lida found joy in the little things: family, children, and the beauty of Country Pond, her most beloved place in all the world. Though she passed away in 1941, her memories live on.
The Memories of Katie Perkins: The Story of the Perkins and Related Families of New England
This story of Katie Perkins and her family and friends is centered around hundreds of photographs portraying Victorian and Edwardian life in New England as well as hundreds of postcards with messages about family and friends covering the period from 1902 to 1922. Katie kept these photo albums and postcards, and they were passed down to the present by means of her brother Will Perkins and niece Florence Beatrice Brown Phillips. Along with the photos and postcards are diaries, letters, family documents, news clippings, and other such primary source documents from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These documents inform us of a variety of local and family affairs relating to the Perkins and related families: the Reynolds, Phillips, Brown, Cash, Follett, Tyler, Wilcox, Church, Tourgee, and Prosser families of New England and the Crawford and Lennox families of Scotland.
The Christmas Miracle: This novella is a fictional account of one person’s search for God, for love, as he arrives at the final moment of his life.Calvin is a middle aged husband and father dying of cancer. He is spending his last days in a hospice. The book examines his last day of life, Christmas Eve into Christmas Day. Amid the pain and suffering, Calvin experiences a recurring dream in which he is searching for truth, attempting to fill in a scroll with words of truth. In an imaginary dream town, he tries various means to uncover the truth, without success. Finally, in the late afternoon of Christmas Eve, he finds himself standing in line in an alley of the town. He converses with several people–a smoker, a knitter, a professor, and a little bald man. As they wait for the end of the line, they try to figure out what the line is for. Their conversation takes a religious turn, and the professor tries to convince everyone that Christianity is nonsense. He is skeptical and secular. The little bald man tries to counter the professor’s arguments, generally without success. As the line proceeds outside of town into a hilly environment, and as darkness falls and fog envelops them, they cease their conversations. Calvin is alone with his thoughts. He is not sure why he is in the line, where it is taking him. Eventually, at dawn, he comes to a hill on which is a ladder. Unsure why, for what purpose, he scales it anyway, and arrives at a long wooden horizontal post with a hammer and nails. There are notes hammered to the wood. Calvin reads them. They are confessions of error, pain, suffering, and sin–to whom is unclear. Meanwhile Calvin, in the hospice, goes in and out of sleep. He is experiencing horrible pain, and knows he is close to death. The dream intrigues him. As he grows closer and closer to the end, the dream reaches a culmination as well.
Apostle of the East: The Life and Journey of Daniel Little, 2018:
https://wipfandstock.com/9781532694745/apostle-of-the-east/
The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England (University Press of New England, 2015): https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Mark-Captain-Smiths-England/dp/1611685168
Frontier Naturalist: Jean Louis Berlandier and the Exploration of Northern Mexico and Texas (University of New Mexico Press, 2012): http://unmpress.com/books.php?ID=11799318707532&Page=book
Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap, and the American Revolution (Pickering and Chatto/Routledge, 2011): https://www.routledge.com/Ebenezer-Hazard-Jeremy-Belknap-and-the-American-Revolution/Lawson/p/book/9781138661318
The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819 (University of Michigan Press, 2004): https://www.press.umich.edu/17511/land_between_the_rivers
Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington (University Press of New England, 2002): http://www.upne.com/1584651679.html
Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2004): http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOGreenwood/product.aspx?pc=A1435C
Research and Discovery: Landmarks and Pioneers in American Science, 3 vols. (M. E. Sharpe, 2008): http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=197+4294922413+4294910534&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=272718226123804221413433887151865648170&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial
The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past (Praeger, 1998): http://www.abc-clio.com/Praeger/product.aspx?pc=C1978C
Encyclopedia of American Poverty (with Benjamin Lawson as co-author, Greenwood Publishing, 2008): http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=B5701C
Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years (Indian University Press, 2015): https://www.amazon.com/Marking-Jesus-Road-College-Through-ebook/dp/B074427VY3/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=marking+the+jesus+road+bacone+college&qid=1639319188&s=books&sr=1-1
Portsmouth: An Old Town by the Sea (Arcadia Publishing, 2003): http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9780738524276/Portsmouth-An-Old-Town-by-the-Sea
On the Road Histories: New Hampshire (Interlink Publishing, 2005):http://www.interlinkbooks.com/product_info.php?cPath=4_36&products_id=847&osCsid=adf4711ed08e32aff5190eaf3fa79d2b
The Isles of Shoals in the Age of Sail: A Brief History (History Press, 2007): http://www.amazon.com/Isles-Shoals-Age-Sail-The/dp/1596292032
The Piscataqua Valley in the Age of Sail: A Brief History (History Press, 2007): http://www.amazon.com/Piscataqua-Valley-Age-Sail-History/dp/1596292199/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436808815&sr=1-1&keywords=piscataqua+valley+in+age+of+sail
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Indian Issues Today (ABC Clio, 2013):
http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A2581
Servants and Servitude in Colonial America. Praeger, 2018: https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4953C
Other Links:
See my blog post on “The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England,” at the University Press of New England blog: http://upne.blogspot.com/2015/04/how-narrative-history-rescues-past.html
For an interview about my book on Jean Louis Berlandier, go to Studio Tulsa, 89.5 FM, University of Tulsa NPR affiliate, at this link: http://kwgs.org/post/jean-louis-berlandier-and-exploration-northern-mexico-and-texas
For my linkedin site, go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-lawson-67762923/
For my Goodreads site: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/171816.Russell_M_Lawson
For my amazon author site: amazon.com/author/russellmlawson
The American Plutarch 