MARVIN SCHWARTZ
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True Stories

Chapters:

1. Grandma Lilly Tells it Like it Is
         In 1910, a woman young, a Polish immigrant, arrives in New York.    
         
Decades later, as the S
chwartz family matriarch, she instills in the
         author a sense of personal strength and  capacity. 

2. Pastures of Plenty
         The story offers a perspective on America from a 1969 cross country
          hitchhiking
summer, including a time in a Haight-Ashbury commune
          and a marijuana arrest in
Nebraska. 
3. The Machete
          A travel memoir set in Guatemala in 1975 offers a reflection on
          youthful passion and risk
 taking in a time and place of political            
          violence.

4. Confessions of  Distance Swimmer
          The story describes the author’s participation in the competitive world
           of adult swimming, 
the psychology of amateur athletes’ compulsion  
           for winning, and the unpredictable
 ways that national champion
           races can be won.

5. Talking Points
           Employment at a local Planned Parenthood clinic culminates in a
           confrontation with an
 arch-conservation local journalist. 
6. The Funeral of Betty Ruth Crawford
           A 2010 funeral at a small Southern Baptist church in a rural  
           Arkansas town is the
 setting for a hilarious, unexpected gravesite
​           event.
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We Wanna Boogie: The Rockabilly Roots of Sonny Burgess and the Pacers 
Butler Books, Central Arkansas Library System, Little Rock, AR, 2014

     Rock and roll pioneer and Newport native Sonny Burgess is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In this book full of personal interviews and remembrances, Burgess and his band tell of their original recordings for Sun Records in the 1950s; their shows with greats such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis; and their success in the contemporary rockabilly revival. This also is the history of a once prominent and spirited Delta community of extensive agricultural wealth. Newport was home to numerous music clubs that hosted national artists as well as illicit backroom gambling. Burgess is a product of this history, and his vivacious music is shaped by his hometown and the dramatic transformation of southern rural life it witnessed.

Awards for We Wanna Boogie
Worthen Prize, Central Arkansas Library System
Arkansiana Award, Arkansas Library Association                 
Arkansas GEM Book                                 
Listed in the Readers’ Map of Arkansas 




Go to: KUAF radio interview on "We Wanna Boogie" Recorded June 2018. Marvin talks about Sonny Burgess and rockabilly history.
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Racing Starts: A History of Competitive Swimming in Central Arkansas
Published by Little Rock Athletic Clubs, Inc., 2011

     The story of competitive swimming from the 1920s through 2010 is presented in a large-format book with numerous color photos, newspaper clippings, and swimming memorabilia. The book presents a chronology of athletes, coaches, and community organizations, from the earliest days of Little Rock Boys Clubs and YMCA swim teams through the creation of modern aquatic facilities and swimming teams dedicated to producing Olympic athletes. 
Available through the Little Rock Racquet Club and Central Arkansas Library System.

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Central in Our Lives: Voices from Little Rock Central High School, 1957-1959
The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System, Little Rock, AR
Co-authored with Ralph Brodie, 2007 
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      This history and analysis of the landmark desegregation crisis features untold stories by Central High School students who supported the entry of blacks into their classrooms. This group of students were among the top academic achievers at the school. Comprising the upper ten percent of the student body, they were Merit Scholars, nationally ranked athletes, and student government leaders. They recognized the noble goals of the blacks students who challenged the racial laws and social norms of the time. But their efforts to befriend the new black students and assist their academic efforts were thwarted, and at times directly prohibited, by school administrators, racial agitators inside the school and in the community, and elected officials.
       Ralph Brodie was the Central High School student body president for the Class of 1957. In the decades that followed the crisis, he collected numerous comments and memories of other top students.These stories reveal their shock, heartbreak, and confusion as their placid world turned into chaos and confrontation.
     For many years, the Central High School 1957 desegregation crisis has been analyzed as a conflict between two primary groups. One group included the courageous black students and a small cadre of adults who supported them. The other group was the mass racist community of Little Rock and the Southern politicians who refused to accept new national civil rights laws. Central In Our Lives offers a new perspective and a more complex social portrait. 
Also available through the National Park Service Central High School Visitor Center. 
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J. B. Hunt: The Long Haul to Success
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR, 1992

      The story of the trucking giant, J.B. Hunt, and its impact on the transportation industry. The book includes a biography of the founding entrepreneur and a marketing study of the business strategies and innovations which made J.B. Hunt the largest trucking firm in the nation.

[
Click here] for Amazon reviews and readers’ comments
[Click here] for Central Arkansas Library System comments
     
              "Schwartz spins an American success story"   Publishers Weekly
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Also available through J.B. Hunt Trucking Corp..
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Tyson: From Farm to Market - The Remarkable Story of Tyson Foods
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR, 1991
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     The story of Tyson Foods and its impact on both the business community and the poultry market in America in an entertaining and enlightening tribute to the Tyson vision and success. The book includes a biography of founding entrepreneur John Tyson and his son Don Tyson.
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[Click here] for the Amazon book review.
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Also available through Tyson Foods.​
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In Service to America: A History of VISTA in Arkansas, 1965-1985
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR, 1988 
​Foreward by President Bill Clinton

       As part of President Johnson's War on Poverty, VISTA volunteers in the 1960s began fanning out across the United States to try to break the cycle of poverty in which many Americans were caught. This work takes a close look at the effect these volunteers had on Arkansas communities and, in turn, the effect the communities had on the volunteers.


An American Library Association Notable Book

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People of the Land: A History of Arkansas Land and Farm Development Corporation

Learning from the Land: How the Youth Enterprise in Agriculture Program is preparing a new generation of rural leaders

Published by Arkansas Land and Farm Development Corporation, 1993 and 1999

     The two publications are histories of ALFDC, a rural Arkansas nonprofit organization, and YEA, the innovative youth development program it created. The books offer insight into the challenges facing small family farmers, especially African American land owners, in eastern Arkansas. Both books include original photographs, maps, timeline illustrations, and interviews with key participants.
  • People of the Land provides an organizational history and a social portrait of key Delta citizens who introduced new community responses to rectify racial injustices, assure success of small family farmers, and preserve community integrity.​
  • Learning from the Land is a study of a youth development program created by ALFDC staff in partnership with the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences and the Pine Woods Country Life School, Jackson, Mississippi. The innovative program provided high school students in three states with a two-year process of academic training, field experience, and career development assistance.​
Copies may be available through Arkansas Land and Farm Development Corporation, Address. 533 Floyd Brown Rd; Brinkley, Arkansas 72021. (870) 734-1140.
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Out of Print
Passages: Poetry Sets
Self published, 2002
Cover art by the author - In The Hand of God, 1968

     Passages is a chapbook structured to reflect the author’s life journey. Poems are grouped into five sets with thematic content.

Click on the poem titles for full text and notes.
1. Origins:     
Three poems on the author’s Jewish heritage, his immigrant grandparents and the  assimilation into American culture of the generations that followed.    
               Testimony

               Visiting My Grandmother in Miami Beach
               My Grandmother’s Sheitle
2. Homeland:
A single, long poem inspired by a 1972 visit to the Ford Motor Company Rouge Plant at  Dearborn, Michigan. 
                  
The History of Gasoline
3. Life Studies:
Three poems that address themes of human physical presence, consciousness of mortality, and artistic expression.

                  Figure Drawing
                  Posing with a Skeleton
                  
Anatomy Lab 
4. Stops Along the Way:
Fourteen poems, each set in a European city visited by the author in 1976. 

                  London
                 Train to Harwich
                 Amsterdam
                 Brugge
                 Paris
                 Strasbourg: Chateau de Portales
                 Leysin
                 Ville Franche sur Mer
                 Nice
                 Madrid
                 Fuengirola
                 Granada
                 Venice
                 Sleeping in Paris  
5. Arrival:
Two love poems addressing spiritual and emotional fulfillment .

                 The Privileged Passengers
                 “when we’are to bodies gone”      
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Poems for a Temporal Body
​The Veiled Horn Press, Little Rock, AR, 1981
The Veiled Horn Press was a small publishing venture, whose work in the 1980-1990s was hand set and printed on a hand-operated press. Veiled Horn Press publications were distributed by August House Publishers. 

     A chapbook containing fifteen poems, some of which were originally published in The History of Gasoline and Other Poems, a thesis completed for the author’s 1974 MFA in Poetry from the University of Arkansas. The book’s title is taken from a line in the final poem Dionysus, Section 2.  -  "the body is temporal, its sorrow is brief."   Poetic voices that influenced on the work include Baudelaire, Neruda, Lorca, and Yeats. 

Click on the poem titles for full text and notes.
                   Epigram:  from Baudelaire’s The Voyage, translated by Marvin Schwartz
                   Contemporary Dialectic
                   Visiting my Grandmother in Miami Beach
                   The Invisible Word
                   At the Moment of Total Eclipse
                   Old women in their hospital beds
                   Ripeness is All
                   Epithalamion
                   Maya
                   The Cat is Sleeping and Dreaming of Birds
                   The Concert
                   The Sand Crab
                   The Hanged Man as Guru
                   Street Poem
                   The Elastic Dream
                    Dionysus 
Only available through the University of Arkansas Mullins Library (Fayetteville) and the Central Arkansas Library System (Little Rock) 
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