James McWilliams was born about 1746 in York County, Pennsylvania. James married Rosanna in South Carolina and their son was named David. James died in Lowndes County, Mississippi after 1837. Andrew M. McWilliams, the brother of James was born around 1750. He married Elizabeth. Their children were John, Jane, Francis, Anne, James, Polly, Watson, Elizabeth and Mary. Andrew died in Jefferson County, Alabama. Another brother to James and Andrew was William who was born around 1756 in North Carolina. He married Sarah or Sally in South Carolina. Their children were Jane, John, Polly, Andrew, William, Cassie, Sarah, Archibald, Elizabeth, Jesse and Ritta. William died in 1843 in Mississippi.

“This excellent and charming story describes a tree that endured numerous hardships to become not only a staple of Southern cuisine but an American treasure.” —Library Journal What would Thanksgiving be without pecan pie? New Orleans without pecan pralines? But as familiar as the pecan is, most people don’t know the fascinating story of how native pecan trees fed Americans for thousands of years until the nut was “improved” a little more than a century ago—and why that rapid domestication actually threatens the pecan’s long-term future. In The Pecan, the acclaimed author of Just Food and A Revolution in Eating explores the history of America’s most important commercial nut. He describes how essential the pecan was for Native Americans—by some calculations, an average pecan harvest had the food value of nearly 150,000 bison. McWilliams explains that, because of its natural edibility, abundance, and ease of harvesting, the pecan was left in its natural state longer than any other commercial fruit or nut crop in America. Yet once the process of “improvement” began, it took less than a century for the pecan to be almost totally domesticated. Today, more than 300 million pounds of pecans are produced every year in the United States—and as much as half of that total might be exported to China, which has fallen in love with America’s native nut. McWilliams also warns that, as ubiquitous as the pecan has become, it is vulnerable to a “perfect storm” of economic threats and ecological disasters that could wipe it out within a generation. This lively history suggests why the pecan deserves to be recognized as a true American heirloom.

Just Food author James McWilliams's exploration of the "compassionate carnivore" movement and the paradox of humanity's relationship with animals. In the last four decades, food reformers have revealed the ecological and ethical problems of eating animals raised in industrial settings, turning what was once the boutique concern of radical eco-freaks into a mainstream movement. Although animal products are often labeled "cage free," "free range," and "humanely raised," can we trust these goods to be safe, sound, or ethical? In The Modern Savage, renowned writer, historian, and animal advocate James McWilliams pushes back against the questionable moral standards of a largely omnivorous world and explores the "alternative to the alternative"-not eating domesticated animals at all. In poignant, powerful, and persuasive prose, McWilliams reveals the scope of the cruelty that takes place even on the smallest and-supposedly-most humane animal farms. In a world increasingly aware of animals' intelligence and the range of their emotions, McWilliams advocates for the only truly moral, sustainable choice-a diet without meat, dairy, or other animal products. The Modern Savage is a riveting expose of an industry that has typically hidden behind a veil of morality, and a compelling account of how to live a more economical, environmental, and ethical life.

It was the decisive battle of World War I. German commander Erich Ludendorff called it "the black day of the German army." Many authors have stated that it was the beginning of the end of the great conflict. And yet, until now, no book has been published on the climactic battle at Amiens. Amiens was one of the first "modern" battles, and certainly the first attempted by the Allies. Employing the troops of five nations (including Canada) and utilizing secrecy, deception, and combined operations, the Allies won the first of a string of victories culminating in the Armistice one hundred days later.Amiens: Dawn of Victory is the first book to study the historic battle in minute detail. Using eyewitness accounts from dozens of survivors, plus many accounts, both published and unpublished, by the participants, the authors take us into the trenches, the tanks, and the cockpits.

"Just Food" does for fresh food what "Fast Food Nation" did for fast food, challenging conventional views, and cutting through layers of myth and misinformation.

A colorful, spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America. Confronted by unfamiliar animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as “fit for swine,” became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine. While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a “culinary declaration of independence,” prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define the cuisine of the United States—a shift that imbued values that continue to shape the nation’s attitudes to this day. “A lively and informative read.” —TheNew Yorker

The world of insects is one we only dimly understand. Yet from using arsenic, cobalt, and quicksilver to kill household infiltrators to employing the sophisticated tools of the Orkin Man, Americans have fought to eradicate the "bugs" they have learned to hate. Inspired by the still-revolutionary theories of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, James E. McWilliams argues for a more harmonious and rational approach to our relationship with insects, one that does not harm our environment and, consequently, ourselves along the way. Beginning with the early techniques of colonial farmers and ending with the modern use of chemical insecticides, McWilliams deftly shows how America's war on insects mirrors its continual struggle with nature, economic development, technology, and federal regulation. He reveals a very American paradox: the men and women who settled and developed this country sought to control the environment and achieve certain economic goals; yet their methods of agricultural expansion undermined their efforts and linked them even closer to the inexorable realities of the insect world. As told from the perspective of the often flamboyant actors in the battle against insects, American Pests is a fascinating investigation into the attitudes, policies, and practices that continue to influence our behavior toward insects. Asking us to question, if not abandon, our reckless (and sometimes futile) attempts at insect control, McWilliams convincingly argues that insects, like people, have an inherent right to exist and that in our attempt to rid ourselves of insects, we compromise the balance of nature.

"The full-throated biography fans have been yearning for." --Kirkus Starred Review, April 2025 When twenty-nine-year-old Frank Stanford put three bullets in his chest on June 3, 1978, he ended a life that had been inextricably linked with poetry since childhood. Deeply influential but largely unknown outside his corner of the poetry world, this prodigy of the American South inspired a cult following that has kept his reputation and work flickering on the periphery of the American literary tradition ever since. The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford offers for the first time a comprehensive study of Stanford's life and work, introducing to a broad readership poetry that remains both captivating to poets and, in its celebration of everyday experience over academic erudition, accessible to those who rarely read poetry. Stanford's poems range from one line to his 15,283-line epic, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. The vital thread running through all of his poetry is an ear for language that vies with Walt Whitman in its expansiveness and generosity. Stanford's omnivorous attraction to vernacular, particularly Black and rural vernacular, centered on an admiration for the marginalized and eccentric. Blending the Southern Gothic of Faulkner and O'Connor with a racially egalitarian vision, his poetry thrives on the stories and traditions of the oppressed and forgotten. The themes that preoccupied Stanford's prolific output--language, sex, death, class, geography, commercialism, surrealism, film, race--also preoccupied the poet in his daily life, which was marked by heavy drinking, philandering, mental instability, emotional abuse, and, through it all, an inveterate desire for beauty. Constantly attentive to this tension, biographer James McWilliams traces the short and painfully complicated life of this hidden talent who left a lifetime's worth of poetry that, through its grounding in the mundane, achieved a vision of the transcendent.

A bold and bracing argument for the complete reimagining of the human diet by the critically acclaimed author of Just Food The human practice of farming food has failed. There are 7,500 known varieties of domesticated apples; we regularly eat about five. Seventy–five percent of the world's food derives from five animals and twelve plants. Factory farmed meat is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions (about 14 percent, larger than transportation) and consumes 75 percent of the water in drought–prone regions such as the West. We are struck in a rut of limited choices, ad the vast majority of what we eat is detrimental to our health and the welfare of the planet. But what if we could eliminate agriculture as we know it? What if we could start over? James McWilliams's search for more expansive palate leads him to those who are actively exploring the fringes of what we can eat, a group of outliers seeking nutrition innovation outside the industrial food system. Here, we meet insect manufacturers, seaweed harvesters, road kill foragers, plant biologists, and oyster farmers who seek to open both our minds and our mouths—and to overturn our most basic assumptions about food, health, and ethics. Eating Promiscously generates hope for a more tasteful future—one in which we eat thousands of foods rather than dozens—with a new philosophy that could save both ourselves and our planet.