Background
McKay Jenkins was born on February 1, 1963, in Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. He is a son of Donald Chase Jenkins, an investment adviser, and Carla D. Jenkins, a television producer.
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States
In 1985 McKay Jenkins received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College.
Columbia University, New York, New York, United States
In 1987 McKay Jenkins obtained a Master of Science degree from Columbia University.
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
In 1996 Jenkins gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University.
(If the nation as a whole during the 1940s was halfway bet...)
If the nation as a whole during the 1940s was halfway between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the postwar prosperity of the 1950s, the South found itself struggling through an additional transition, one bound up in an often violent reworking of its own sense of history and regional identity. Examining the changing nature of racial politics in the 1940s, McKay Jenkins measures its impact on white Southern literature, history, and culture. Jenkins focuses on four white Southern writers - W. J. Cash, William Alexander Percy, Lillian Smith, and Carson McCullers - to show how they constructed images of race and race relations within works that professed to have little, if anything, to do with race. Sexual isolation further complicated these authors' struggles with issues of identity and repression, he argues, allowing them to occupy a space between the privilege of whiteness and the alienation of blackness. Although their views on race varied tremendously, these Southern writers' uneasy relationship with their own dominant racial group belies the idea that "whiteness" was an unchallenged, monolithic racial identity in the region.
https://www.amazon.com/South-Black-White-Literature-1940s-ebook/dp/B00AG5IIIA/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(In 1969, five young men from Montana set out to accomplis...)
In 1969, five young men from Montana set out to accomplish what no one had before: to scale the sheer north face of Mt. Cleveland, Glacier National Park's tallest mountain, in winter. Two days later tragedy struck: they were buried in an avalanche so deep that their bodies would not be discovered until the following June. The White Death is the riveting account of that fated climb and of the breathtakingly heroic rescue attempt that ensued. In the spirit of Peter Matthiessen and John McPhee, McKay Jenkins interweaves a harrowing narrative with an astonishing expanse of relevant knowledge ranging from the history of mountain climbing to the science of snow. Evocative and moving, this fascinating book is a humbling account of man at his most intrepid and nature at its most indomitable.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Death-Tragedy-Heroism-Avalanche-ebook/dp/B000QCSAS6/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins pre...)
In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins presents a single-volume collection of this distinguished author's nonfiction. Here are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen's vision. Matthiessen chronicles his 250-mile trek across the Himalaya to the Tibetan Plateau in a selection from the National Book Award winner The Snow Leopard. Wild peoples, wilderness, and wildlife--common themes throughout Matthiessen's oeuvre--are examined with grace and power in The Tree Where Man Was Born. Here too are excerpts from Indian Country and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen's stunning exposé of the Leonard Peltier case and the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the American Indian Movement. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature's noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world - as well as ourselves - truthfully and clearly.
https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Matthiessen-Reader/dp/0375702725/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army ...)
When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army had no specialized division of mountain soldiers. But in the winter of 1939–1940, after a tiny band of Finnish mountain troops brought the invading Soviet army to its knees, an amateur skier named Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole convinced the United States Army to let him recruit an extraordinary assortment of European expatriates, wealthy ski bums, mountaineers, and thrill-seekers and form them into a unique band of Alpine soldiers. These men endured nearly three years of grueling training in the Colorado Rockies and in the process set new standards for both soldiering and mountaineering. The newly forged 10th Mountain Division finally faced combat in the winter of 1945, in Italy’s Apennine Mountains, against the seemingly unbreakable German fortifications north of the Gothic Line. There, they planned and executed what is still regarded as the most daring series of nighttime mountain attacks in U.S. military history, taking Mount Belvedere and the sheer, treacherous face of Riva Ridge to smash the linchpin of the German army’s lines.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Ridge-Americas-Mountain-Soldiers-ebook/dp/B000XUBCGI/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, two C...)
In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, two Catholic priests set out on a dangerous mission to do what no white men had ever attempted: reach a group of utterly isolated Eskimos and convert them. Farther and farther north the priests trudged, through a frigid and bleak country known as the Barren Lands, until they reached the place where the Coppermine River dumps into the Arctic Ocean.
https://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Falls-Coppermine-Madness-Murder-ebook/dp/B000XU4U1M/?tag=2022091-20
2005
(Do you know what chemicals are in your shampoo? How about...)
Do you know what chemicals are in your shampoo? How about your cosmetics? Do you know what’s in the plastic water bottles you drink from, or the weed killer in your garage, or your children’s pajamas? If you’re like most of us, the answer is probably no. But you also probably figured that most of these products were safe, and that someone - the manufacturers, the government - was looking out for you. The truth might surprise you.
https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Gotten-into-Us-Staying/dp/1400068037/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(When you order a meal in a restaurant, you won't find mal...)
When you order a meal in a restaurant, you won't find malathion, kelthane or arsenic listed on the menu as an ingredient of your entrée, but these and scores of other pesticides and dangerous chemicals are in the food we eat. They are dumped into the environment where they seep into our water supply and float in the air we breathe. The use of these poisons is approved-or in some cases, simply ignored--by the Environmental Protection Agency. Poison Spring documents, in devastating detail, the EPA's corruption and misuse of science and public trust. In its half-century of existence, the agency has repeatedly reinforced the chemical-industrial complex by endorsing deadly chemicals, botching field investigations, turning a blind eye to toxic disasters, and swallowing the self-serving claims of industry. E. G. Vallianatos, who saw the EPA from the inside for more than two decades with rising dismay, reveals in Poison Spring how the agency has allowed our lands and waters to be poisoned with more toxic chemicals than ever. No one who cares for the natural world, or for the health of future generations, can ignore this powerful exposé.
https://www.amazon.com/Poison-Spring-Secret-History-Pollution/dp/1608199266/?tag=2022091-20
2014
(In the past two decades, GMOs have come to dominate the A...)
In the past two decades, GMOs have come to dominate the American diet. Advocates hail them as the future of food, an enhanced method of crop breeding that can help feed an ever-increasing global population and adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Critics, meanwhile, call for their banishment, insisting GMOs were designed by overeager scientists and greedy corporations to bolster an industrial food system that forces us to rely on cheap, unhealthy, processed food so they can turn an easy profit. In response, health-conscious brands such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have started boasting that they are "GMO-free," and companies like Monsanto have become villains in the eyes of average consumers.
https://www.amazon.com/Food-Fight-GMOs-Future-American/dp/1101982209/?tag=2022091-20
2017
educator journalist author scholars
McKay Jenkins was born on February 1, 1963, in Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. He is a son of Donald Chase Jenkins, an investment adviser, and Carla D. Jenkins, a television producer.
In 1985 McKay Jenkins received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College. In 1987 he obtained a Master of Science degree from Columbia University. In 1996 Jenkins gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University.
From 1987 to 1988 McKay Jenkins was a staff writer at The Capital, Annapolis. In 1988 he served as a staff writer at Seattle Times. From 1988 to 1992 Jenkins was a staff writer at Atlanta Constitution (now The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). From 1996 to 2000 McKay served as an assistant professor and member of Program in Journalism at the University of Delaware and was appointed an associate professor of English in 2000. Currently, he is the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English, Journalism, and Environmental Humanities there.
(If the nation as a whole during the 1940s was halfway bet...)
1999(Do you know what chemicals are in your shampoo? How about...)
2011(When you order a meal in a restaurant, you won't find mal...)
2014(In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, two C...)
2005(In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins pre...)
2000(In 1969, five young men from Montana set out to accomplis...)
2000(When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army ...)
2003(In the past two decades, GMOs have come to dominate the A...)
2017On June 13, 1998, McKay Jenkins married Katherine Hinckley. They have two children.