Entry Category: Nonfiction - Starting with M

Man in Black is the first autobiography by Johnny Cash. The bestselling book includes extensive discussion of Cash’s days in Arkansas and focuses on Cash’s recovery from addiction and his closer embrace of Christianity. Published in 1975, it was one of two autobiographies Cash wrote in his lifetime. By 1975, Johnny Cash was an institution. For twenty years, he had enjoyed immense success as a country star. He had seemingly done it all—made hit records, appeared in movies, and had a nationally televised variety show on ABC. By the mid-1970s, though, Cash’s life and career had settled down, and Cash saw it as time to write his life story. Toward the end of 1967, Cash had begun to sober up, …

Mary Elizabeth Massey was a history professor noted for her early studies of women in the Civil War, years before women’s history courses became common in university history departments. Her books have continued to be important decades after their publication. Mary Elizabeth Massey (she used her full name throughout her life) was born on December 25, 1915, in Morrilton (Conway County) to Mary McClung Massey and Charles Leonidas Massey. After graduation from Morrilton High School, she attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). For multiple years, Massey was president of her sorority (in an era when Hendrix had fraternities and sororities), and she served on the Interfraternity Council, the dormitory council, and the Student Senate, in addition to serving one-year …

Deborah Mathis is an acclaimed journalist and author who has been a reporter and columnist for newspapers and a television reporter and anchor. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2003. Deborah Myers was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on August 24, 1953. Her father, Lloyd H. Myers, was a businessman and Baptist minister, while her mother, Rachel A. Helms Myers, was an educator. She has several brothers and sisters. Myers attended Gibbs Elementary, Rightsell Elementary, and Westside Junior High, graduating from Little Rock Central High in 1971. She got her start in journalism at the Central school newspaper as the first female and first African-American editor. Rather than leave home to go to college, …

Elmer Wayne Mikel was a bootlegger during Prohibition and later became a self-published author who wrote books and essays about his criminal life and his experiences at the notorious Tucker State Prison Farm (now the Tucker Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction) in Jefferson County in the 1930s. Mikel was also a songwriter who wrote about Arkansas subjects, including the deadly Greenwood (Sebastian County) tornado of 1968. Elmer Mikel was born on October 8, 1905, in Jenny Lind (Sebastian County), one of ten children of George Elmer Mikel and Amanda Featherston Mikel. George Mikel, a Missouri native, was active in the United Mine Workers of America and ran as a socialist candidate for governor of Arkansas in 1912. Elmer Mikel attended high school but …

First published in 1871, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry is an abstruse philosophical tract written by Arkansas historical figure Albert Pike. The lengthy text explores the strengths and weaknesses of human character, the morals and meanings behind mythological symbols, major world religions, and ancient mystery teachings. It advocates for self-improvement through study and reflection, and it proclaims upright character to be a necessary support for democracy. Written as a spiritual instruction manual for the Masonic order, Morals and Dogma represents the philosophy of Scottish Rite Freemasonry as understood by Pike, who is known as the leading figure of the American Masonic revival movement of the mid-nineteenth century. Given Pike’s presence in Arkansas in …

My Life is the autobiography of William Jefferson Clinton, a former governor of Arkansas and the forty-second president of the United States, and was written during the three years after he left the office of president in 2001. The 957-page book, published in hardcover in 2004 by Alfred A. Knopf of New York, was the most thorough memoir of a presidency ever published and the most financially successful. Knopf ordered a first printing of one and a half million copies, but two million orders were received before its release; the company ordered a second printing of 1,075,000. On the day of its release, booksellers sold more than 400,000 copies. Clinton had received a ten-million-dollar advance to write the book, which …