The Civil War was the first 'image war', as photographs of the battlefields became the dominant means for capturing an epochal historical moment. At the same time, writers used the Civil War to present both their notions of nation and their ideas about the new intersections between photography and literary form. Through The Negative offers an account of the collisions between print and visual culture in the work of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain and Crane as they responded to and incorporated the work of such photographers as George Barnard, Alexander Gardner and Jacob Riis. Through the Negative examines how key nineteenth-century American writers attempted to combat, understand, and incorporate the advent of photography in their fiction. In so doing, Megan Williams demonstrates how analyzing the impact of photography on the diverse narrative histories of the nineteenth century yields fresh insights about contemporary art and writing, as the photographic image continues to shape national consciousness.

Promising tennis players Chad Warren and Megan Williams met on the court when he was 26 and she was 16. Just a few days later, Chad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the blood. While it would be more than three years and a bone marrow transplant before Chad and Megan finally kissed, it was the beginning of a love story you will never forget - and of a battle they shared and fought together. "Too often, we hear about someone who has cancer, and we hear about their "brave battle." We hear that they've won, or they've (tragically) lost. But unless we've been at their bedside and watched them fight to recover from the horrendous treatments meant to save them, we just never know the human cost. We don't know how the people around them grow in strength and love in order to support them; we don't see the great intentions and human frailty of their caregivers. We don't see their heroism or their exhaustion - or the bottomless well of their love for life. I hope that everyone reads this book. It's a page turner, a sweet romance and a tear jerker, no question. But it also serves a great purpose, bringing us face to face with cancer and, in the process, revealing how incredibly wonderful life is." - Goodreads Reviewer