Andy Gibb was one of the biggest pop stars of the disco era. His first three singles - I Just Want To Be Your Everything, (Love Is) Thicker Than Water, and Shadow Dancing - reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1977-78, and he became a fixture on television specials, appearing alongside legends such as Bob Hope, George Burns, and Dean Martin. In 1981 he became the co-host of the iconic Solid Gold television series, and a year later he starred in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway. But despite his enormous success, he battled with insecurity, depression, and substance abuse, causing his career to flounder and leaving him bankrupt by 1987. By then, he seemed ready to start anew and launch a comeback, but he died suddenly in 1988, five days after his thirtieth birthday.
Despite the tragic brevity of his career and life, Andy Gibb still has a strong fan base around the world, but his story has never been told - until now. Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb draws upon extensive research, rare archival interviews with Andy Gibb and members of his family, and interviews conducted by the author with nearly fifty of Andy's friends and associates to examine the life and career of this beloved pop idol.
Georgia Tech has become one of the nation's top-10-ranked public universities and boasts a former U.S. president, TV personality and Hall-of-Fame athletes among its prominent alumni.
From humble beginnings as a small technological institute that opened in 1888, Georgia Tech is now renowned throughout the world for its excellence in technological education and research. A top-10-ranked public university, according to U.S. News & World Report rankings, famous Georgia Institute of Technology alumni include Jimmy Carter, G. Wayne Clough, Jeff Foxworthy, Sam Nunn, Randolph Scott, and Leonard Wood, along with many famous athletes. Georgia Tech has won four national college football championships, the first in 1917 under the legendary coach John Heisman. Today, Georgia Tech has a student body of more than 29,000 at the undergraduate and graduate levels and more than 155,000 living alumni. The institute has an annual economic impact of about $3 billion upon Georgia's economy. Authors and Tech alumni Matthew Hild and David L. Morton take you inside the journey of how this institute got to where it is today.
Andy Gibb was one of the biggest pop stars of the disco era. His first three singles - I Just Want To Be Your Everything, (Love Is) Thicker Than Water, and Shadow Dancing - reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1977-78, and he became a fixture on television specials, appearing alongside legends such as Bob Hope, George Burns, and Dean Martin. In 1981 he became the co-host of the iconic Solid Gold television series, and a year later he starred in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway. But despite his enormous success, he battled with insecurity, depression, and substance abuse, causing his career to flounder and leaving him bankrupt by 1987. By then, he seemed ready to start anew and launch a comeback, but he died suddenly in 1988, five days after his thirtieth birthday.
Despite the tragic brevity of his career and life, Andy Gibb still has a strong fan base around the world, but his story has never been told - until now. Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb draws upon extensive research, rare archival interviews with Andy Gibb and members of his family, and interviews conducted by the author with nearly fifty of Andy's friends and associates to examine the life and career of this beloved pop idol.
Historians have widely studied the late-nineteenth-century southern agrarian revolts led by such groups as the Farmers' Alliance and the People's (or Populist) Party. Much work has also been done on southern labor insurgencies of the same period, as kindled by the Knights of Labor and others. However, says Matthew Hild, historians have given only minimal consideration to the convergence of these movements.
Hild shows that the Populist (or People's) Party, the most important third party of the 1890s, established itself most solidly in Texas, Alabama, and, under the guise of the earlier Union Labor Party, Arkansas, where farmer-labor political coalitions from the 1870s to mid-1880s had laid the groundwork for populism's expansion. Third-party movements fared progressively worse in Georgia and North Carolina, where little such coalition building had occurred, and in places like Tennessee and South Carolina, where almost no history of farmer-labor solidarity existed. Hild warns against drawing any direct correlations between a strong Populist presence in a given place and a background of farmer-laborer insurgency. Yet such a background could only help Populists and was a necessary precondition for the initially farmer-oriented Populist Party to attract significant labor support. Other studies have found a lack of labor support to be a major reason for the failure of Populism, but Hild demonstrates that the Populists failed despite significant labor support in many parts of the South. Even strong farmer-labor coalitions could not carry the Populists to power in a region in which racism and violent and fraudulent elections were, tragically, central features of politics.Historians have widely studied the late-nineteenth-century southern agrarian revolts led by such groups as the Farmers' Alliance and the People's (or Populist) Party. Much work has also been done on southern labor insurgencies of the same period, as kindled by the Knights of Labor and others. However, says Matthew Hild, historians have given only minimal consideration to the convergence of these movements.
Hild shows that the Populist (or People's) Party, the most important third party of the 1890s, established itself most solidly in Texas, Alabama, and, under the guise of the earlier Union Labor Party, Arkansas, where farmer-labor political coalitions from the 1870s to mid-1880s had laid the groundwork for populism's expansion. Third-party movements fared progressively worse in Georgia and North Carolina, where little such coalition building had occurred, and in places like Tennessee and South Carolina, where almost no history of farmer-labor solidarity existed. Hild warns against drawing any direct correlations between a strong Populist presence in a given place and a background of farmer-laborer insurgency. Yet such a background could only help Populists and was a necessary precondition for the initially farmer-oriented Populist Party to attract significant labor support. Other studies have found a lack of labor support to be a major reason for the failure of Populism, but Hild demonstrates that the Populists failed despite significant labor support in many parts of the South. Even strong farmer-labor coalitions could not carry the Populists to power in a region in which racism and violent and fraudulent elections were, tragically, central features of politics.The American Dream of reaching success through sheer sweat and determination rings false for countless members of today's working class. This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing modern laborers have deep roots in the history of worker exploitation in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the United States.
Spanning nearly all of U.S. history, from the eighteenth century to the present, the essays in this collection range from West Virginia to Florida to Texas. They examine such topics as vagrancy laws in the Early Republic, inmate labor at state penitentiaries, mine workers and union membership, pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labor activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers.
The broad chronological sweep and comprehensive nature of Reconsidering Southern Labor History set this volume apart from any other collection on the topic in the past forty years. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today.