{"product_id":"writing-with-fire-barbara-young-welke-9780226850887","title":"Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and the Course of a Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA cultural and legal history intertwined with a deeply emotional meditation on the course of life, memory, and the documents that define us.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring the 1940s and 1950s, an untold number of American children suffered devastating injuries when the fur-like fabric on the chaps of their Gene Autry-branded cowboy playsuits exploded into flame. Barbara Young Welke was researching this history when her teenage daughter unexpectedly died.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe shock of Welke's loss transformed her understanding of the children and their families. Her experience also led her to question the norms of scholarship and of writing. Historians are trained to separate the personal from the intellectual, to be suspicious of emotion. These and other norms are embedded in and reinforced by the calling card of academics, the curriculum vitae. Welke wondered how that cold document--with its literal meaning, \"the course of life\"--had become a form that excludes so much of what gives life meaning. What impact did that have on what we know, how we know it, and how we understand ourselves? Similarly, Welke wondered, what might we see if we looked at the history of the cowboy suit tragedy as more than a matter of lawsuits brought by grieving families? Here, Welke traces the making, marketing, and selling of the cowboy suits; the lengths the defendants went to avoid and limit liability; and the meaning of the injuries, deaths, and legal settlements in the course of these children's and families' lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWriting with Fire\u003c\/i\u003e interweaves the histories of the cowboy suit tragedy and the curriculum vitae. Grounded in archival and legal research, oral histories, and letters Welke wrote her daughter following her death, Welke offers an inimitable examination of trauma, law, autobiography, and identity. The result is revelatory and unforgettable: a provocative historical reflection on life and death, depression and war, markets and families, law, power, and precarity in modern America.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Barbara Young Welke\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0226850889\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226850887\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/09\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 672\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs","brand":"Barbara Young Welke","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48874589356287,"sku":"9780226850887","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/writing-with-fire-barbara-young-welke-9780226850887","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}