In the 1990s, churches across the southeastern United States were targeted and set ablaze. These arsonists predominately targeted African American congregations and captured the attention of the media nationwide. Using oral histories, newspaper accounts, and governmental reports, Christopher Strain gives a chronological account of the series of church fires. Burning Faith considers the various forces at work, including government responses, civil rights groups, religious forces, and media coverage, in providing a thorough, comprehensive analysis of the events and their fallout. Arguing that these church fires symbolize the breakdown of communal bonds in the nation, Strain appeals for the revitalization of united Americans and the return to a sense of community. Combining scholarly sophistication with popular readability, Strain has produced one of the first histories of the last decade and demonstrates that the increasing fragmentation of community in America runs deeper than race relations or prejudice. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2011 When incidents of extreme violence flare in America, all too often they are framed as isolated aberrations. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Christopher Strain argues in his new book, Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life. The unpleasant fact, as he reveals in this highly readable study, is that American violence is inextricably woven into the fabric of our national heritage and experience. In Reload, Strain traces our modern-day conception of violence from the struggle to survive on the American frontier, through evolving gender roles in recent centuries, to the hysteria surrounding video and role-playing games and the more recent disturbing phenomenon of school shootings. Strain shapes nothing less than a profound meditation on American violence and a "primer" on understanding what can often appear to be a profoundly dangerous nation. In addition to serving as a comprehensive overview of the state of violence in America, Reload also suggests ways of combating the trends that lead to tragedy.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2011 When incidents of extreme violence flare in America, all too often they are framed as isolated aberrations. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Christopher Strain argues in his new book, Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life. The unpleasant fact, as he reveals in this highly readable study, is that American violence is inextricably woven into the fabric of our national heritage and experience. In Reload, Strain traces our modern-day conception of violence from the struggle to survive on the American frontier, through evolving gender roles in recent centuries, to the hysteria surrounding video and role-playing games and the more recent disturbing phenomenon of school shootings. Strain shapes nothing less than a profound meditation on American violence and a "primer" on understanding what can often appear to be a profoundly dangerous nation. In addition to serving as a comprehensive overview of the state of violence in America, Reload also suggests ways of combating the trends that lead to tragedy.

Pure Fire is a history of self-defense as it was debated and practiced during the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. Moving beyond the realm of organized protests and demonstrations, Christopher B. Strain reframes self-defense as a daily concern for many African Americans as they faced the continual menace of white aggression. In such circumstances, deciding to defend oneself and one's family was to assert a long-denied right and, consequently, to adopt a liberating new attitude. To grasp the subtleties of this activist approach to self-defense in the struggle for black equality, Strain says we must break down the dichotomies of the movement constructed by journalists, scholars, and even activists: pre-1965 versus post-1965 eras, nonviolence versus violence, integration versus segregation, Martin Luther King Jr. versus Malcolm X. These and other oversimplifications have led to a blurring of distinctions between the violence of racial animosity and the necessary force of self-defense, and to the misinterpretation of nonviolence as passivity. Pure Fire looks anew at familiar figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton, and at such events and issues as gun ownership, the Watts riot of 1965 in Los Angeles, and the rise of the Black Panther Party. It also profiles Robert F. Williams of North Carolina, Charles Sims of the Louisiana-based Deacons for Defense and Justice, and other outspoken black advocates of armed self-defense. This provocative new study reveals how self-defense underpinned notions of personhood, black advancement, citizenship, and "Americanness," holding deep implications for civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights.