In Pearls, Peaches, and Peddlers: Short Essays on Arkansas’s Amazing History, Tom Dillard offers a lively portrait of Arkansas that reveals how the state was shaped by ordinary people, unexpected industries, and moments of upheaval both grand and small. The seventy-four essays collected here draw upon Dillard’s career as a historian, archivist, educator, and preservationist to challenge familiar myths, reveal overlooked stories, and demonstrate how the history of one state can illuminate the larger American experience.
