A confederate soldier, pioneer merchant, rancher, newspaper publisher, and town builder, George Washington Grayson also served for six decades as a leader of the Creek Nation. His life paralleled the most tumultuous events in Creek Indian and Oklahoma history, from the aftermath of the Trail of Tears through World War I.

As a diplomat representing the Creek people, Grayson worked to shape Indian policy. As a cultural broker, he explained its ramifications to his people. A self-described progressive who advocated English education, constitutional government, and economic development, Grayson also was an Indian nationalist who appreciated traditional values. When the Creeks faced allotment and loss of sovereignty, Grayson sought ways to accommodate change without sacrificing Indian identity.

Mary Jane Warde bases her portrait of Grayson on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, including the extensive writings of Grayson himself.

Winner, 2021 PROSE Award in the Cultural Anthropology & Sociology Category Finalist, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies A troubling account of heterosexual desire in the era of #MeToo Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every day on relationship coaches, seduction boot camps, and couple’s therapy in a search for happiness. In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the twenty-first century, and what straight people can do to fix it for good. She shows how straight women, and to a lesser extent straight men, have tried to mend a fraught patriarchal system in which intimacy, sexual fulfillment, and mutual respect are expected to coexist alongside enduring forms of inequality, alienation, and violence in straight relationships. Ward also takes an intriguing look at the multi-billion-dollar self-help industry, which markets goods and services to help heterosexual couples without addressing the root of their problems. Ultimately, she encourages straight men and women to take a page out of queer culture, reminding them “about the human capacity to desire, fuck, and show respect at the same time.”

Ward's book focuses on the work of the Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller; prominent member of the Budapest School, a group of students who studied under the Marxist social theorist Gyoergy Lukacs. For both Marx and Heller (albeit in different ways) dissatisfaction emerges as the inevitable result of the expansion of need(s) within modernity and as a catalyst for the development of anthropological wealth (what Marx refers to as the 'human being rich in need'). Ward argues that dissatisfaction and the corresponding category of human wealth-as both motif and method-is central to grasping Heller's seemingly disparate writings. While Marx postulates a radical overcoming of dissatisfaction, Heller argues dissatisfaction is integral not only to the on-going survival of modernity but also to the dynamics of both freedom and individual life. In this way Heller's work remains committed to a position that both continually returns and departs, is both with and against, the philosophy of Marx. This book will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, social theory, critical theory, and sociology.

A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight-her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other's penises and stick fingers up their fellow members' anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can-and do-have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward's analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality-not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

Winner, 2021 PROSE Award in the Cultural Anthropology & Sociology Category Finalist, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies A troubling account of heterosexual desire in the era of #MeToo Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every day on relationship coaches, seduction boot camps, and couple's therapy in a search for happiness. In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the twenty-first century, and what straight people can do to fix it for good. She shows how straight women, and to a lesser extent straight men, have tried to mend a fraught patriarchal system in which intimacy, sexual fulfillment, and mutual respect are expected to coexist alongside enduring forms of inequality, alienation, and violence in straight relationships. Ward also takes an intriguing look at the multi-billion-dollar self-help industry, which markets goods and services to help heterosexual couples without addressing the root of their problems. Ultimately, she encourages straight men and women to take a page out of queer culture, reminding them "about the human capacity to desire, fuck, and show respect at the same time."

When David Herron-overwhelmed and despairing, his family's business and finances in ruin due to the bursting lending bubble of 2008-takes his own life one chilly spring morning, he has no idea the ripple effect his decision will set into motion. Two years later, his widow, Jules, is now an employee of the bakery she and David used to own-and still full of bitterness over David's lies, perceived cowardice, and ultimate abandonment of her and their now-teenage daughter, Rennie. Rennie, meanwhile, struggles socially at school, resents her work-obsessed mother, and is convinced she's to blame for her father's death. When Denise, the former police detective who worked (and, due to her own personal struggles at the time, mishandled) David's case, catches sight of Rennie at her sons' school, she's struck by the girl's halo of sadness-and becomes obsessed with attempting to right the wrongs she believes she perpetrated two years ago. And as all this unfolds in Boston, Daniel, the guilt-ridden young man who, in his old life as a banker, helped create the circumstances that led to David's suicide, continues to punish himself for his sins by living half a life, working odd jobs and bouncing from one US city to another, never staying long enough to make friends or build something lasting. Ultimately, each of these very different people-all of them tied together by one tragic event-must learn in their own way how to say good-bye to the past and move into a brighter future.

Winner of the 2014 Oklahoma Book Award for nonfiction Winner of the 2014 Pate Award from the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table. When the peoples of the Indian Territory found themselves in the midst of the American Civil War, squeezed between Union Kansas and Confederate Texas and Arkansas, they had no way to escape a conflict not of their choosing--and no alternative but to suffer its consequences. When the Wolf Came explores how the war in the Indian Territory involved almost every resident, killed many civilians as well as soldiers, left the country stripped and devastated, and cost Indian nations millions of acres of land. Using a solid foundation of both published and unpublished sources, including the records of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations, Mary Jane Warde details how the coming of the war set off a wave of migration into neighboring Kansas, the Red River Valley, and Texas. She describes how Indian Territory troops in Unionist regiments or as Confederate allies battled enemies--some from their own nations--in the territory and in neighboring Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. And she shows how post-war land cessions forced by the federal government on Indian nations formerly allied with the Confederacy allowed the removal of still more tribes to the Indian Territory, leaving millions of acres open for homesteads, railroads, and development in at least ten states. Enhanced by maps and photographs from the Oklahoma Historical Society's photographic archives, When the Wolf Came will be welcomed by both general readers and scholars interested in the signal public events that marked that tumultuous era and the consequences for the territory's tens of thousands of native peoples.

A confederate soldier, pioneer merchant, rancher, newspaper publisher, and town builder, George Washington Grayson also served for six decades as a leader of the Creek Nation. His life paralleled the most tumultuous events in Creek Indian and Oklahoma history, from the aftermath of the Trail of Tears through World War I. As a diplomat representing the Creek people, Grayson worked to shape Indian policy. As a cultural broker, he explained its ramifications to his people. A self-described progressive who advocated English education, constitutional government, and economic development, Grayson also was an Indian nationalist who appreciated traditional values. When the Creeks faced allotment and loss of sovereignty, Grayson sought ways to accommodate change without sacrificing Indian identity. Mary Jane Warde bases her portrait of Grayson on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, including the extensive writings of Grayson himself.

THE MOSAIC ARTIST tells the story of the break up of a family and the unorthodox ways in which two siblings hold themselves and others together in order to live their lives in the aftermath of messy divorce. Lives that had been torn apart and carefully reconstructed in the past are on the verge of shattering again, but Jack's decision to leave his children the house just might help them all remake their lives one more time.

For three years the author did participant-observation at three nationally prominent queer organizations in Los Angeles-Christopher Street West, which produces L.A.'s queer pride festival; the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a 37-year-old multi-site organization; and Bienestar, an HIV services organization for gay Latinos. Ward documents the evolution of these organizations, including class and race conflicts within them, but she especially focuses on the misuses of diversity culture.

"Respectably Queer" reveals how neoliberal ideas about difference are becoming embedded in the daily life of a progressive movement and producing frequent conflicts over the meaning of "diversity." The author shows how queer activists are learning from the corporate model to leverage their differences to compete with other non-profit groups, enhance their public reputation or moral standing, and establish their diversity-related expertise. Ward argues that this instrumentalization of diversity has increased the demand for predictable and easily measurable forms of difference, a trend at odds with queer resistance.

Ward traces the standoff between the respectable world of "diversity awareness" and the often vulgar, sexualized, and historically unprofessional world of queer pride festivals. She spotlights dissenting voices in a queer organization where diversity has become synonymous with tedious and superficial workplace training. And she shows how activists fight back when prevailing diversity discourses-the ones that "diverse" people are compelled to use in order to receive funding-simply don't fit.

For three years the author did participant-observation at three nationally prominent queer organizations in Los Angeles-Christopher Street West, which produces L.A.'s queer pride festival; the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a 37-year-old multi-site organization; and Bienestar, an HIV services organization for gay Latinos. Ward documents the evolution of these organizations, including class and race conflicts within them, but she especially focuses on the misuses of diversity culture.

"Respectably Queer" reveals how neoliberal ideas about difference are becoming embedded in the daily life of a progressive movement and producing frequent conflicts over the meaning of "diversity." The author shows how queer activists are learning from the corporate model to leverage their differences to compete with other non-profit groups, enhance their public reputation or moral standing, and establish their diversity-related expertise. Ward argues that this instrumentalization of diversity has increased the demand for predictable and easily measurable forms of difference, a trend at odds with queer resistance.

Ward traces the standoff between the respectable world of "diversity awareness" and the often vulgar, sexualized, and historically unprofessional world of queer pride festivals. She spotlights dissenting voices in a queer organization where diversity has become synonymous with tedious and superficial workplace training. And she shows how activists fight back when prevailing diversity discourses-the ones that "diverse" people are compelled to use in order to receive funding-simply don't fit.

A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight-her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other's penises and stick fingers up their fellow members' anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can-and do-have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward's analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality-not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.