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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 Schwartz 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 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 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 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. [Click here] for the Amazon book review. 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.
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
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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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