Footnote #4
A Literary Journal of History
48 Pieces by 33 Authors
PAPERBACK $14.99
EBOOK $7.99
PDF (PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN)
Foot•note (fŏŏt’nōt’) n. 1. A note placed at the bottom of a page of a book or manuscript that comments on or cites a reference for a designated part of the text. 2. Something related to but of lesser importance than a larger work or occurrence. 3. A kickass literary journal of history-themed pieces that will make you rethink how you view history.
The fourth issue of our annual literary publication contains 48 works of poetry, fiction, essays, articles, and nonfiction by 33 authors about various historical topics, paired with dozens of photographs. Within these pages, you will find contemporary outlooks on history right alongside little-known public domain works that feel as fresh and as vibrant (and as scary) as if they were written today. Here, the old meets the new, and you’ll discover fascinating history from a personal, accessible, nonscholarly literary approach.
As we go through an age of accountability and social justice as a society, the writing we’re seeing becomes more aware, more prominent in its voicing of history’s ill treatment of certain subsets of people and ideas. We start right out with the gut punch of American slavery, hearing the voices of then and now, through Rev. Richard Allen, slavemasters, runaways, and Frederick Douglass, and leading up to Juneteenth, when enslaved workers in Texas finally learned that they’d already been free for two years. We’ll meet Civil War zombies and cattle-hunting soldiers, and we’ll go in search of the lost hoof of a famous fire horse. We’ll explore the missionary failures of David Livingstone and Eleazar Wheelock and travel the seafaring journeys and shipwrecks of robber Joaquín Murrieta, arctic explorers, British lightermen, and one unfortunate girl in a rum keg. Women like Conchita Cintrón will have their firsts (and be arrested, naturally), and we’ll unravel the dark mind of Virginia Woolf. We’ll learn about the Brothertown Indians, the ill beginnings of Dartmouth College, and the massacres and stereotypes that Native Americans endured in the mid-to-late 1800s. We’ll travel to England with Samson Occom, Dominic Fanning, Oliver Cromwell, nuclear bombs, and the erosion of the East Yorkshire coastline through the years. Art is explored through the eyes of Leda with her swan, Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, the photography of the Great Depression, and Victorian photographs with dead people.
Featured Writer Kindra McDonald will take us through the Dismal Swamp and into the suicidal minds of Robert Frost and Meriwether Lewis, then through a history of salt, foot binding, and lost languages. Featured Writer Benjamin Goluboff examines the work and art curation of John Quinn and Walker Evans, the former responsible for the 1913 Armory Show that was the first exhibit of modern art, and the latter a renowned photographer of life in the 1930s. Their work is showcased next to the winners and finalists for the 2018 Charter Oak Award for Best Historical.
Content Warning: slavery, racism, gun violence, animal amputation, death in childbirth, bullfighting, suicide, Native American massacres and betrayal by white people, climate trauma, light sexual content of transgender transitioning, light nudity in 16th-c. paintings, animal cruelty, child death (mild horror)
2018 Charter Oak Award Winners for Best Historical
2018 Charter Oak Award Winners
1st Place: “After I Get Top Surgery, J. Robert Oppenheimer Watches Me Make Out with My Partner” by Linnet Ezra
2nd Place: “Yara ni ‘Ua” by Rebecca Pelky
3rd Place: “The Nurseryman” by Arthur Allen
Authors
• Arthur Allen
• Rev. Richard Allen
• Lois Baer Barr
• L. Shapley Bassen
• DeMisty D. Bellinger
• Bill Berlino
• J. Bowers
• Robert Busby
• Celia Daniels
• Frederick Douglass
• Colin Patrick Ennen
• Walker Evans
• Linnet Ezra
• Mike Fox
• Benjamin Goluboff
• Ken Gosse
• Vernita Hall
• Lenore Hart
• Marion Lake
• David Livingstone
• Kindra McDonald
• Charissa Menefee
• Samson Occom
• Rebecca Pelky
• George Perreault
• Winston Plowes
• David S. Pointer
• Angela Raper
• William Shakespeare
• Roger Sippl
• Robert Walton
• David Whorley
• Virginia Woolf
Other Footnote Issues
Also by David S. Pointer
Also by L. Shapley Bassen & David S. Pointer
Also by Kindra McDonald & Roger Sippl
Also by DeMisty D. Bellinger
You Might Also Like:
Footnote is our annual literary publication dedicated to historical and contemporary views on history. It contains poetry, images, fiction, and nonfiction by various authors, both contemporary and historical, about any topic of history. We are excited by pieces that give an author’s intimate or emotional take on historical places, people, events, or ideas.
• Historical: Poems | Fiction | Nonfiction
• 48 Pieces by 33 Authors
• 5½” x 8½” Perfectbound Trade Paperback
• Cream Paper, 140 Pages
• Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-946580-19-1
• Paperback ISBN-10: 1946580198
• Ebook ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• LCCN: Not Registered
• First Edition: October 23, 2018
• Short URL: acpbook.link/footnote4
• Permalink
• Read Excerpt Sample
• Download Press Release
• Book Club Reading & Discussion Guide
• Request Review Copy
• Get DRC on Edelweiss+
Cover design by Leah Angstman using images from the 1889 issue of the annual French magazine Figaro Illustré.
About the Editor
LEAH ANGSTMAN is the founder and executive editor of Alternating Current Press since 1993. She has also been an editor/fact-checker for Pacific Standard, Underscore News, Mother Jones, Departures, and Smithsonian, and she is the author of Out Front the Following Sea, Shoot the Horses First, and Falcon in the Dive.
Media & Images
Distribution & Sales
Booksellers can order this book through their Ingram ordering catalogs for 50% discount with free returns or through Asterism Books for 50% discount with no returns (we will accept free returns of Asterism purchases back to us directly; please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com if you need this return service option).
Booksellers ordering direct from us can get a 50% discount, no shipping costs, free returns accepted. Enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced or need to use a purchase order number, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
Booksellers who’d like shelf talkers, point-of-sale signage, bookmarks, or author signing/reading posters, you can download the book’s sales kit here.
Contributing authors ordering direct from us can enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
For reviewers, promotional outlets, or desk copies, please request a copy. Booksellers and book industry professionals can read or download a DRC at Edelweiss+.