Caroline Miller

n Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs, Arellano closely examines such narratives as well as the work of western historian and archivist Hubert Howe Bancroft, who was sympathetic to them and that of Ida B. Wells, who wrote in fierce opposition to lynching. Tracing the creation, maintenance, and circulation of dominant, alternative, and oppositional vigilante stories from the 19th century frontier through the Jim Crow South, she casts new light on the role of narrative in creating a knowable past.

Just when her life felt right: new career, new home, new grandchildren, Janet Givens left it all behind and followed her new husband into the Peace Corps. Assigned to Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country finding its own way after generations under Soviet rule, Givens must also find a way to be in a world different from what she knew. And what she expected. Will it be worth it?