"If You Love That Lady Don't Marry Her" is a fascinating collection of almost five hundred letters between John Miller (1819-1895) and Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821-1895). Their correspondence began in early August 1854 and continued until their marriage in November 1856. The oldest daughter of the late Governor James McDowell of Virginia, Sally McDowell owned and managed Colalto, the family plantation. She was considered part of the South's social and political elite. John Miller, a widower with two young children, was a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia. Son of Samuel Miller, a founder of Princeton Theological Seminary, he was one of the North's most prominent clergymen.

McDowell and Miller literally fell in love by mail, but one major obstacle blocked their marriage: Sally McDowell was a divorced woman. She had been wed to Governor Francis Thomas of Maryland, but his jealousy and cruelty soon drove her from Annapolis. Although an 1846 legislative divorce freed her to remarry legally, it was not socially acceptable to do so, especially not to "a man of the cloth." So when Miller and McDowell announced their plan to marry, social pressure cost him his pulpit and made her the object of extreme criticism from family members and friends. Although Miller was initially determined to wed despite any opposition, he eventually settled for a long-term engagement to preserve McDowell's social position.

Apart from a few brief visits, Miller and McDowell's relationship depended entirely upon letters. Begun in carefully guarded terms, these letters soon evolved into intimate explorations of their deepening love, their respective gender roles, the problems created by divorce, and religious and familial obligations. McDowell provides the unusual feminist perspective of a divorced woman in mid-nineteenth-century America. As she probes her own inner world, her correspondence with Miller becomes a healing experience through which she gradually surmounts the limitations she experiences as a woman, her depression and the fears resulting from her first marriage, and the stigma of divorce. Ultimately her self- revelations lead to their marriage in November 1856, which lasted until their deaths a week apart almost forty years later.

Because of their unique situation, Miller and McDowell committed to paper the private thoughts and feelings that most couples would have expressed in person. Although their personal relationship forms the principal subject of these letters, the couple also discussed such issues as the growing sectional tensions, national and state politics and politicians, literary figures, church meetings and personages, slave management and behavior, and family and community values and attitudes. Eloquently written, these letters offer a unique window on American society on the eve of the Civil War. They also reveal important information about gender roles and relationship in nineteenth-century America. Because no other book like this exists in print, readers everywhere will welcome "If You Love That Lady Don't Marry Her."

Pynchon’s California is the first book to examine Thomas Pynchon’s use of California as a setting in his novels. Throughout his 50-year career, Pynchon has regularly returned to the Golden State in his fiction. With the publication in 2009 of his third novel set there, the significance of California in Pynchon’s evolving fictional project becomes increasingly worthy of study. Scott McClintock and John Miller have gathered essays from leading and up-and-coming Pynchon scholars who explore this topic from a variety of critical perspectives, reflecting the diversity and eclecticism of Pynchon’s fiction and of the state that has served as his recurring muse from The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) through Inherent Vice (2009).

Contributors explore such topics as the relationship of the “California novels” to Pynchon’s more historical and encyclopedic works; the significance of California's beaches, deserts, forests, freeways, and  “hieroglyphic” suburban sprawl; the California-inspired noir tradition; and the surprising connections to be uncovered between drug use and realism, melodrama and real estate, private detection and the sacred. The authors bring insights to bear from an array of critical, social, and historical discourses, offering new ways of looking not only at Pynchon’s California novels, but at his entire oeuvre. They explore both how the history, geography, and culture of California have informed Pynchon’s work and how Pynchon’s ever-skeptical critical eye has been turned on the state that has been, in many ways, the flagship for postmodern American culture.
 
CONTRIBUTORS: Hanjo Berressem, Christopher Coffman, Stephen Hock, Margaret Lynd, Scott MacLeod, Scott McClintock, Bill Millard, John Miller, Henry Veggian 

From Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” to the Beatles’s “I am the Walrus,” walruses have played an enigmatic role in popular culture. With their prominent tusks and distinctive whiskers, these odd-looking but charismatic animals have long held a crucial place in the lives and folklore of Arctic indigenous cultures, both as a vital food source and as a part of traditional oral literature. However, commercial trade of walrus products has caused the creatures to be hunted to the brink of extinction, with disastrous effects on human populations in the Arctic.
 
Combining natural, cultural, and environmental history, Walrus explores the intriguing story of an animal that today is on the front lines of conservation debates. John Miller and Louise Miller describe the problems facing walruses even after the twentieth-century bans on nonindigenous walrus hunting—shrinking pack-ice caused by global warming and the exploitation of Arctic oil and gas resources are destroying the animal’s habitat. Wonderfully illustrated with images of walruses in the wild and from art and popular culture, Walrus offers a refreshing account of these large-flippered mammals while also illustrating the ethical dilemmas they embody, from the intensifying conflict between the developed world and indigenous interests to the impact of global warming on arctic animals.