audiobook The Tao of Maggie: The Sound of One Hound Barking by Bill Stanton in Arts-Photography

Description

Joanna Brooksrsquo;s ancestors were among the earliest waves of emigrants to leave England for North America. They lived hardscrabble lives for generations; eking out subsistence in one place after another as they moved forever westward in search of a new life. Why; Brooks wondered; did her people and countless other poor English subjects abandon their homeland to settle for such unremitting hardship? The question leads her on a journey into a largely obscured dimension of American history. With her familyrsquo;s background as a point of departure; Brooks brings to light the harsh realities behind seventeenth- and eighteenth-century working-class English emigrationmdash;and dismantles the long-cherished idea that these immigrants were drawn to America as a land of opportunity. American folk ballads provide a wealth of clues to the catastrophic contexts that propelled early English emigration to the Americas. Brooks follows these songs back across the Atlantic to find histories of economic displacement; environmental destruction; and social betrayal at the heart of the early Anglo-American migrant experience. The folk ballad ldquo;Edward;rdquo; for instance; reveals the role of deforestation in the dislocation and emigration of early Anglo-American peasant immigrants. ldquo;Two Sistersrdquo; discloses the profound social destabilization unleashed by the advent of luxury goods in England. ldquo;The Golden Vanityrdquo; shows how common men and women viewed their own disposable position in Englandrsquo;s imperial project. And ldquo;The House Carpenterrsquo;s Wiferdquo; offers insights into the impact of economic instability and the colonial enterprise on women. From these ballads; tragic and heartrending; Brooks uncovers an archaeology of the worldviews of Americarsquo;s earliest immigrants; presenting a new and haunting historical perspective on the ancestors we thought we knew.