New Arrivals: E 1 - E 9999
Showing 301 - 325 of 489 new items.
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© 2013,Here, from James Tobin, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography, is the story of the greatest comeback in American political history, a saga long buried in half-truth, distortion, and myth-Franklin Roosevelt's ten-year climb from paralysis to the White House. In 1921, at the age of thirty-nine, Roosevelt was the brightest young star in the Democratic Party. One day he was racing his children around their summer home. Two days later he could not stand up. Hopes of a quick recovery faded fast. "He's through," said allies and enemies alike. Even his family and close friends misjudged their man, as they and the nation would learn in time. With a painstaking reexamination of original documents, James Tobin uncovers the twisted chain of accidents that left FDR paralyzed; he reveals how polio recast Roosevelt's fateful partnership with his wife, Eleanor; and he shows that FDR's true victory was not over paralysis but over the ancient stigma attached to the disabled. Tobin also explodes the conventional wisdom of recent years-that FDR deceived the public about his condition. In fact, Roosevelt and his chief aide, Louis Howe, understood that only by displaying himself as a man who had come back from a knockout punch could FDR erase the perception that had followed him from childhood-that he was a pampered, too smooth pretty boy without the strength to lead the nation. As Tobin persuasively argues, FDR became president less in spite of polio than because of polio. The Man He Became affirms that true character emerges only in crisis and that in the shaping of this great American leader character was all. -
© 2013,The final years of Theodore Roosevelt's life have long been considered a dark, aberrant period in which a once-great statesman descended into contrarianism and ill health as his legacy was eclipsed by world events. This stirring narrative decisively puts the lie to such depictions of Roosevelt's twilight years, showing the characteristic dignity, intellectual brilliance, and youthful vigor with which he confronted both private hardships and the onset of the First World War. It was a historical moment eerily reminiscent of our own: violence in the failed state of Mexico bleeding across the border, an insurgency brewing within the Republican party, and an eloquent and charismatic Democratic president facing a global conflict while bedeviled by constant and vitriolic partisan attacks. That president was Woodrow Wilson, and his committed adversary was Theodore Roosevelt, who would wage a personal and political battle against the administration until the day he died. This duel of American titans lies at the center of J. Lee Thompson's history, which is the first modern account of Roosevelt exclusively during the war years. This is a tale of politics and global conflict, but also a private story of true love and familial devotion: the love of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt and the deep bonds of affection they held for all their children--particularly sons Ted, Kermit, Archie, and Quentin, who all served bravely on the front. From public triumphs to personal tragedies, Thompson gives us a long-overdue look at the later life of one of American history's most indelible figures, as well as the inexorable process by which the US was drawn into the greatest war the world had yet seen. -
© 2014,Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award The astonishing story of a unique missionary project--and the America it embodied--from award-winning historian John Demos. Near the start of the nineteenth century, as the newly established United States looked outward toward the wider world, a group of eminent Protestant ministers formed a grand scheme for gathering the rest of mankind into the redemptive fold of Christianity and "civilization." Its core element was a special school for "heathen youth" drawn from all parts of the earth, including the Pacific Islands, China, India, and, increasingly, the native nations of North America. If all went well, graduates would return to join similar projects in their respective homelands. For some years, the school prospered, indeed became quite famous. However, when two Cherokee students courted and married local women, public resolve--and fundamental ideals--were put to a severe test. The Heathen School follows the progress, and the demise, of this first true melting pot through the lives of individual students: among them, Henry Obookiah, a young Hawaiian who ran away from home and worked as a seaman in the China Trade before ending up in New England; John Ridge, son of a powerful Cherokee chief and subsequently a leader in the process of Indian "removal"; and Elias Boudinot, editor of the first newspaper published by and for Native Americans. From its birth as a beacon of hope for universal "salvation," the heathen school descends into bitter controversy, as American racial attitudes harden and intensify. Instead of encouraging reconciliation, the school exposes the limits of tolerance and sets off a chain of events that will culminate tragically in the Trail of Tears. In The Heathen School , John Demos marshals his deep empathy and feel for the textures of history to tell a moving story of families and communities--and to probe the very roots of American identity. -
© 2013,First popularized during the 1950s, the concept of "brainwashing" is often viewed as an example of Cold War paranoia, an amusing relic of a bygone era. Yet as Matthew W. Dunne shows in this study, over time brainwashing came to connote much more than a sinister form of Communist mind control, taking on broader cultural and political meanings. Moving beyond well-known debates over Korean War POWs and iconic cultural texts like The Manchurian Candidate, Dunne explores the impact of the idea of brainwashing on popular concerns about freedom, individualism, loyalty, and trust in authority. By the late 1950s the concept had been appropriated into critiques of various aspects of American life such as an insistence on conformity, the alleged "softening" of American men, and rampant consumerism fueled by corporate advertising that used "hidden" or "subliminal" forms of persuasion. Because of these associations and growing anxieties about the potential misuse of psychology, concerns about brainwashing contributed to a new emphasis on individuality and skepticism toward authority in the 1960s. The notion even played an unusual role in the 1968 presidential race, when Republican frontrunner George Romney's claim that he had been "brainwashed" about the Vietnam War by the Johnson administration effectively destroyed his campaign. In addition to analyzing the evolving meaning of brainwashing over an extended period of time, A Cold War State of Mind explores the class and gender implications of the idea, such as the assumption that working-class POWs were more susceptible to mind control and that women were more easily taken in by the manipulations of advertisers. -
© 2014,How should America wield its enormous power beyond its borders? Should it adhere to grand principles or act on narrow self-interest? Should it partner with other nations or avoid entangling alliances? Americans have been grappling with questions like these throughout the nation's history, and especially since the emergence of the United States as a major world power in the late nineteenth century. America in the World illuminates this history by capturing the diverse voices and viewpoints of some of the most colorful and eloquent people who participated in these momentous debates. Spanning the era from the Gilded Age to the Obama years, this unique reader collects more than two hundred documents--everything from presidential addresses and diplomatic cables to political cartoons and song lyrics. It encompasses various phases of American diplomatic history that are typically treated separately, such as the First World War, the Cold War, and 9/11. The book presents the perspectives of elite policymakers--presidents, secretaries of state, generals, and diplomats--alongside those of other kinds of Americans, such as newspaper columnists, clergymen, songwriters, poets, and novelists. It also features numerous documents from other countries, illustrating how foreigners viewed America's role in the world. Ideal for classroom use, America in the World sheds light on the complex interplay of political, economic, ideological, and cultural factors underlying the exercise of American power on the global stage. Includes more than two hundred documents from the late nineteenth century to today Looks at everything from presidential addresses to political cartoons and song lyrics Presents diverse perspectives, from elite policymakers to clergymen and novelists Features documents from outside the United States, illustrating how people in other countries viewed America's role in the world -
© 2014,Over the course of more than six decades as an author, journalist, and professor, Max Lerner studied and assessed many presidents, yet Thomas Jefferson received his most sustained attention. To Lerner, Jefferson came closest in the American context to Plato's "philosopher-king," the ideal thinker and leader. Because of his keen sense of Jefferson's virtues and his unique place in United States history, Lerner began work on a book about Jefferson in 1957, rewriting it several times throughout his life, always with the intention of introducing general readers to "a thinker and public figure of enduring pertinence." In this volume, Lerner uses the facts of Jefferson's life and work as the springboard to insightful analysis and informed assessment. In considering Jefferson, Lerner combines biographical information, historical background, and analytical commentary. The result is a biographical-interpretive volume, a primer about Jefferson that not only describes his accomplishments, but discusses his problems and failures. As political figures have declined in esteem in recent decades, the media has probed deeper into previously private lives. Historians, biographers, and others have revealed personal details about deceased prominent figures. Two centuries after he helped create America, Jefferson remains a figure of enduring fascination within academic circles and beyond. Max Lerner helps explain and clarify not only this unending fascination, but the timeless relevance of the nation's devoutly democratic yet singularly authentic "philosopher-king." -
© 2014,The United States has never had an officially established national church. Since the time of the first British colonists, it has instead developed a strong civil religion that melds God and nation. In a deft exploration of American civil religious symbols-from the Liberty Bell to the Vietnam Memorial, from Mount Rushmore to Disney World-Peter Gardella explains how the places, objects, and words that Americans hold sacred came into being and how Americans' feelings about them have changed over time. In addition to examining revered historical sites and structures, he analyzes such sacred texts as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Kennedy Inaugural, and the speeches of Martin Luther King, and shows how five patriotic songs-"The Star-Spangled Banner," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "America the Beautiful," "God Bless America," and "This Land Is Your Land"-have been elevated into hymns. Arguing that certain values-personal freedom, political democracy, world peace, and cultural tolerance-have held American civil religion together, Gardella chronicles the numerous forms those values have taken, from Jamestown and Plymouth to the September 11, 2001 Memorial in New York. -
© 2014,For readers of the historical works of Robert K. Massie, David McCulough, and Alison Weir comes the first biography on the life of Abigail Adams and her sisters. nbsp; "Never sisters loved each other better than we."--Abigail Adams in a letter to her sister Mary, June 1776 nbsp; Much has been written about the enduring marriage of President John Adams and his wife, Abigail. But few know of the equally strong bond Abigail shared with her sisters, Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, accomplished women in their own right. Now acclaimed biographer Diane Jacobs reveals their moving story, which unfolds against the stunning backdrop of America in its transformative colonial years. nbsp; Abigail, Mary, and Elizabeth Smith grew up in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the close-knit daughters of a minister and his wife. When the sisters moved away from one another, they relied on near-constant letters--from what John Adams called their "elegant pen"--to buoy them through pregnancies, illnesses, grief, political upheaval, and, for Abigail, life in the White House. Infusing her writing with rich historical perspective and detail, Jacobs offers fascinating insight into these progressive women's lives: oldest sister Mary, who became de facto mayor of her small village; youngest sister Betsy, an aspiring writer who, along with her husband, founded the second coeducational school in the United States; and middle child Abigail, who years before becoming First Lady ran the family farm while her husband served in the Continental Congress, first in Philadelphia, and was then sent tonbsp;France and England, where she joined him at last. nbsp; This engaging narrative traces the sisters' lives from their childhood sibling rivalries to their eyewitness roles during the American Revolution and their adulthood as outspoken wives and mothers. They were women ahead of their time who believed in intellectual and educational equality between the sexes. Drawing from newly discovered correspondence, never-before-published diaries, and archival research, Dear Abigail is a fascinating front-row seat to history--and to the lives of three exceptional women who were influential during a time when our nation's democracy was just taking hold. Advance praise for Dear Abigail nbsp; "In a beautifully wrought narrative, Diane Jacobs has brought the high-spirited, hyperarticulate Smith sisters, and the early years of the American republic, to rich, luminous life. . . . A stunning, sensitive work of history." --Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra nbsp; "Jacobs is a superb storyteller. In this sweeping narrative about family and friendship during the American Revolution, Abigail Adams emerges as one of the great political heroines of the eighteenth century. I fell in love with her all over again." --Amanda Foreman, New York Times bestselling author of A World on Fire nbsp; "Beauty, brains, and breeding--Elizabeth, Abigail, and Mary had them all. This absorbing history shows how these close-knit and well-educated daughters of colonial America become women of influence in the newly begotten United States. Jacobs's feel for the period is confident; so is her appreciation of the nuances of character." --Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage -
© 2014,Many Americans, argues Michael C. C. Adams, tend to think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. Millions of tourists flock to battlefields each year as vacation destinations, their perceptions of the war often shaped by reenactors who work hard for verisimilitude but who cannot ultimately simulate mutilation, madness, chronic disease, advanced physical decay. In Living Hell , Adams tries a different tack, clustering the voices of myriad actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment. Perhaps because the United States has not seen conventional war on its own soil since 1865, the collective memory of its horror has faded, so that we have sanitized and romanticized even the experience of the Civil War. Neither film nor reenactment can fully capture the hard truth of the four-year conflict. Living Hell presents a stark portrait of the human costs of the Civil War and gives readers a more accurate appreciation of its profound and lasting consequences. Adams examines the sharp contrast between the expectations of recruits versus the realities of communal living, the enormous problems of dirt and exposure, poor diet, malnutrition, and disease. He describes the slaughter produced by close-order combat, the difficulties of cleaning up the battlefields-where tens of thousands of dead and wounded often lay in an area of only a few square miles-and the resulting psychological damage survivors experienced. Drawing extensively on letters and memoirs of individual soldiers, Adams assembles vivid accounts of the distress Confederate and Union soldiers faced daily: sickness, exhaustion, hunger, devastating injuries, and makeshift hospitals where saws were often the medical instrument of choice. Inverting Robert E. Lee's famous line about war, Adams suggests that too many Americans become fond of war out of ignorance of its terrors. Providing a powerful counterpoint to Civil War glorification, Living Hell echoes William Tecumseh Sherman's comment that war is cruelty and cannot be refined. Praise for Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure in the East, 1861-1865 "This excellent and provocative work concludes with a chapter suggesting how the image of Southern military superiority endured in spite of defeat."- Civil War History "Adams's imaginative connections between culture and combat provide a forceful reminder that Civil War military history belongs not in an encapsulated realm, with its own categories and arcane language, but at the center of the study of the intellectual, social, and psychological currents that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century."- Journal of American History Praise for The Best War Ever: America and World War II "Adams has a real gift for efficiently explaining complex historical problems."- Reviews in American History "Not only is this mythologizing bad history, says Adams, it is dangerous as well. Surrounding the war with an aura of nostalgia both fosters the delusion that war can cure our social ills and makes us strong again, and weakens confidence in our ability to act effectively in our own time."- Journal of Military History -
© 2014,This book examines the political economy of the master-slave relationship viewed through the lens of consumption and market exchange. What did it mean when human chattel bought commodities, 'stole' property, or gave and received gifts? Forgotten exchanges, this study argues, measured the deepest questions of worth and value, shaping an enduring struggle for power between slaves and masters. The slaves' internal economy focused intense paternalist negotiation on a ground where categories of exchange - provision, gift, contraband, and commodity - were in constant flux. At once binding and alienating, these ties endured constant moral stresses and material manipulation by masters and slaves alike, galvanizing conflict and engendering complex new social relations on and off the plantation. -
© 2014,Native peoples played major roles in the War of 1812 as allies of both the United States and Great Britain, but few wrote about their conflict experiences. Two famously wrote down their stories: Black Hawk, the British-allied chief of the still-independent Sauks from the upper Mississippi, and American soldier William Apess, a Christian convert from the Pequots who lived on a reservation in Connecticut. Carl Benn explores the wartime passages of their autobiographies, in which they detail their decisions to take up arms, their experiences in the fighting, their broader lives within the context of native-newcomer relations, and their views on such critical issues as aboriginal independence. Scholars, students, and general readers interested in indigenous and military history in the early American republic will appreciate these important memoirs, along with Benn's helpful introductions and annotations. -
© 2013,How conflicting memories of the nation's origins shaped the political culture of the early American republic -
© 2013,Examines the impact of the 1976 bicentennial on the way Americans celebrate the nation's past -
© 2013,Today well over two hundred museums focusing on African American history and culture can be found throughout the United States and Canada. Many of these institutions trace their roots to the 1960s and 1970s, when the struggle for racial equality inspired a movement within the black community to make the history and culture of African America more "public." This book tells the story of four of these groundbreaking museums: the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago (founded in 1961); the International Afro-American Museum in Detroit (1965); the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in Washington, D.C. (1967); and the African American Museum of Philadelphia (1976). Andrea A. Burns shows how the founders of these institutions, many of whom had ties to the Black Power movement, sought to provide African Americans with a meaningful alternative to the misrepresentation or utter neglect of black history found in standard textbooks and most public history sites. Through the recovery and interpretation of artifacts, documents, and stories drawn from African American experience, they encouraged the embrace of a distinctly black identity and promoted new methods of interaction between the museum and the local community. Over time, the black museum movement induced mainstream institutions to integrate African American history and culture into their own exhibits and educational programs. This often controversial process has culminated in the creation of a National Museum of African American History and Culture, now scheduled to open in the nation's capital in 2015.
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© 2013,Robert M. La Follette (1855-1925), the Republican senator from Wisconsin, is best known as a key architect of American Progressivism and as a fiery advocate for liberal politics in the domestic sphere. But "Fighting Bob" did not immediately come to a progressive stance on foreign affairs. In "The Education of an Anti-Imperialist," Richard Drake follows La Follette's growth as a critic of America's wars and the policies that led to them. He began his political career with conventional Republican views of the era on foreign policy, avidly supporting the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. La Follette's critique of empire emerged in 1910, during the first year of the Mexican Revolution, as he began to perceive a Washington-Wall Street alliance in the United States' dealings with Mexico. La Follette subsequently became Congress's foremost critic of Woodrow Wilson, fiercely opposing United States involvement in World War I. Denounced in the American press as the most dangerous man in the country, he became hated and vilified by many but beloved and admired by others. La Follette believed that financial imperialism and its necessary instrument, militarism, caused modern wars. He contended they were twin evils that would have ruinous consequences for the United States and its citizens in the twentieth century and beyond. -
© 2013,Covering an eventful period in Herbert Hoover's career--and, more specifically, his life as a political pugilist from 1933 to 1955--this previously unknown memoir was composed and revised by the 31st president during the 1940s and 1950s--and then, surprisingly, set aside. This work recounts Hoover's family life after March 4, 1933, his myriad philanthropic interests, and, most of all, his unrelenting "crusade against collectivism" in American life. Aside from its often feisty account of Hoover's political activities during the Roosevelt and Truman eras, and its window on Hoover's private life and campaigns for good causes, The Crusade Years invites readers to reflect on the factors that made his extraordinarily fruitful postpresidential years possible. The pages of this memoir recount the story of Hoover's later life, his abiding political philosophy, and his vision of the nation that gave him the opportunity for service. This is, in short, a remarkable saga told in the former president's own words and in his own way that will appeal as much to professional historians and political scientists as it will lay readers interested in history. -
© 2014,It could be said that Leon Panetta has had two of the most consequential careers of any American public servant in the past fifty years. His first career, beginning as an army intelligence officer and including a distinguished run as one of Congress's most powerful and respected members, lasted thirty-five years and culminated in his transformational role as Clinton's budget czar and White House chief of staff. He then 'retired' to establish the Panetta Institute with his wife of fifty years, Sylvia; to serve on the Iraq Study Group; and to protect his beloved California coastline. But in 2009, he accepted what many said was a thankless task: returning to public office as the director of the CIA, taking it from a state of turmoil after the Bush-era torture debates and moving it back to the vital center of America's war against Al Qaeda, including the campaign that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. And then, in the wake of bin Laden's death, Panetta became the U.S. secretary of defense, inheriting two troubled wars in a time of austerity and painful choices. Like his career, Worthy Fights is a reflection of Panetta's values. It is imbued with the frank, grounded, and often quite funny spirit of a man who never lost touch with where he came from: his family's walnut farm in beautiful Carmel Valley, California. It is also a testament to a lost kind of political leadership, which favors progress and duty to country over partisanship. Panetta is a Democrat who pushed for balanced budgets while also expanding care for the elderly and sick; a devout Catholic who opposes the death penalty but had to weigh every drone strike from 2009 through 2011. Throughout his career, Panetta's polestar has been his belief that a public servant's real choice is between leadership or crisis. Troubles always come about through no fault of one's own, but most can be prevented with courage and foresight. As always, Panetta calls them as he sees them in Worthy Fights . Suffused with its author's decency and stubborn common sense, the book is an epic American success story, a great political memoir, and a revelatory view onto many of the great figures and events of our time. ' Worthy Fights is Panetta's addition to the Cabinet bookshelf, and it's very readable, with the frank descriptions of personalities and events that distinguish this genre at its best.' The Washington Post -
© 2014,Beginning with the economic, political, and social forces behind the conflict, continuing to the first shots fired at Fort Sumter, the military strategies, battles, and people, and following Lee's surrender at Appomattox to the reconstruction and modern aftermath, The Handy Civil War Answer Book is a captivating, concise, and convenient history of American's defining conflict. From the biggest events and battles to the lesser known warriors and women, The Handy Civil War Answer Book presents the war, its participants, and historical significance in an accessible, enjoyable, question-and-answer format. The strategies of Lee, Sherman, and Grant; the key battles, including Gettysburg, Chattanooga, and Chancellorsville; the weapons, the prices of everything from a bale of cotton to a box of ashes; and the fascinating stories of the women, children, and soldiers affected by the carnage are explained and explored. Photos, battlefield maps, and a chronology of major events contribute to the understanding of the War between the States. The Handy Civil War Answer Book answers over 900 questions, from the mostly widely asked to the more obscure, such as: How did the Mexican War influence Americans of the 1850s? How many people had their minds changed by Uncle Tom's Cabin? Did Jefferson Davis really mean it--was he sincere--when he used words like "liberty" and "freedom"? What did people mean when they said Lincoln had the style of a buffoon and the #147;brain of a giant"? What was Robert E. Lee's connection to George Washington? How does Lincoln's 1860 election stack up when compared to other major election races? What is nullification? What is secession? How closely are they linked? Was there any technical or technological area in which the South held an advantage? How could General Ambrose Burnside have made such a calamitous error at the Battle of Fredericksburg? Who were the first black soldiers in the Civil War? What was so important about the Homestead Act? Was there any precedent for the Siege of Vicksburg? Who was Junius Brutus Booth? Would North and South have been reconciled if Lincoln were not assassinated? What was, or is, the Solid South? What happened to the centennial celebrations of the Civil War? -
© 2014,William Y. Adams grew up in an Indian Service family in an Indian Service town in the 1930s. Window Rock, Arizona was the newly founded administrative capital for the vast Navajo reservation, and all 298 of its residents were Indian Bureau employees or their families. With the exception of a few low-level service personnel, none were Navajo, nor did they have any detailed familiarity with the world of hogans and corrals. They were technocrats, skilled in agriculture, range management, forestry, mining, education, public health, and law enforcement, among other things. Despite their varied backgrounds and skills, however, they shared a common determination to do right by the Indians after decades of government neglect and mismanagement. That concept, however, originated not in Window Rock but in Washington, the administrative headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the years following World War II, Adams lived and worked among Navajos and Hopis in a number of different capacities.As an archaeological explorer, an ethnologist, an interviewer for the Arizona Bureau of Ethnic Research, a livestock drive foreman, and - perhaps most importantly - a trader, he became aware of the myth of the Indian: a belief in the Indian as a kind of unitary, symbolic figure, who stood as the surrogate for hundreds of tribes, cultures, and languages spread across the American continent. In Indian Policies in the Americas, Adams addresses the idea that the Indian, as conceived by colonial powers and later by different postcolonial interest groups, was as much ideology as empirical reality. Adams surveys the policies of the various colonial and postcolonial powers, then reflects upon the great ideological, moral, and intellectual issues that underlay those policies. -
© 2013,A concise, engaging, and provocative history of African Americans since World War II, Peace Be Still is also nothing less than an alternate history of the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Organizing this history around culture, politics, and resistance, Matthew C. Whitaker takes us from World War II as a galvanizing force for African American activism and the modern civil rights movement to the culmination of generations of struggle in the election of Barack Obama. From the promise of the post-World War II era to the black power movement of the 1960s, the economic and political struggles of the 1970s, and the major ideological realignment of political culture during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, this book chronicles a people fighting oppression while fashioning a dynamic culture of artistic and religious expression along with a program of educational and professional advancement. A resurgence of rigid conservative right-wing policies, the politics of poverty, racial profiling, and police brutality are ongoing counterpoints to African Americans rising to political prominence and securing positions once denied them. A history of African Americans for a new generation, Peace Be Still demonstrates how dramatically African American history illuminates the promise, conflicts, contradictions, hopes, and victories that all Americans share. -
© 2014,"In this ambitious project, historian Katrina Thompson examines the conceptualization and staging of race through the performance, sometimes coerced, of black dance from the slave ship to the minstrel stage. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, Thompson explicates how black musical performance was used by white Europeans and Americans to justify enslavement, perpetuate the existing racial hierarchy, and mask the brutality of the domestic slave trade. Whether on slave ships, at the auction block, or on plantations, whites often used coerced performances to oppress and demean the enslaved. As Thompson shows, however, blacks' "backstage" use of musical performance often served quite a different purpose. Through creolization and other means, enslaved people preserved some native musical and dance traditions and invented or adopted new traditions that built community and even aided rebellion. Thompson shows how these traditions evolved into nineteenth-century minstrelsy and, ultimately, raises the question of whether today's mass media performances and depictions of African Americans are so very far removed from their troublesome roots"-- -
© 2014,From the revered historian, the long-awaited conclusion of the magisterial history of slavery and emancipation in Western culture that has been nearly fifty years in the making. David Brion Davis is one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and nearly every award given by the historical profession. Now, with The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, Davis brings his staggeringly ambitious, prizewinning trilogy on slavery in Western culture to a close. Once again, Davis offers original and penetrating insights into what slavery and emancipation meant to Americans. He explores how the Haitian Revolution respectively terrified and inspired white and black Americans, hovering over the antislavery debates like a bloodstained ghost, and he offers a surprising analysis of the complex and misunderstood significance of colonization--the project to move freed slaves back to Africa--to members of both races and all political persuasions. He vividly portrays the dehumanizing impact of slavery, as well as the generally unrecognized importance of freed slaves to abolition. Most of all, Davis presents the age of emancipation as a model for reform and as probably the greatest landmark of willed moral progress in human history. This is a monumental and harrowing undertaking following the century of struggle, rebellion, and warfare that led to the eradication of slavery in the new world. An in-depth investigation, a rigorous colloquy of ideas, ranging from Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama, from British industrial "wage slavery" to the Chicago World's Fair, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation is a brilliant conclusion to one of the great works of American history. Above all, Davis captures how America wrestled with demons of its own making, and moved forward. From the Hardcover edition. -
© 2014,While Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first hundred days may be the most celebrated period of his presidency, the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor proved the most critical. Beginning as early as 1939 when Germany first attacked Poland, Roosevelt skillfully navigated a host of challenges#151;a reluctant population, an unprepared military, and disagreements within his cabinet#151;to prepare the country for its inevitable confrontation with the Axis. In No End Save Victory , esteemed historian David Kaiser draws on extensive archival research to reveal the careful preparations that enabled the United States to win World War II. Alarmed by Germany and Japan's aggressive militarism, Roosevelt understood that the United States would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict raging in Europe and Asia. However, the American populace, still traumatized by memories of the First World War, was reluctant to intervene in European and Asian affairs. Even more serious was the deplorable state of the American military. In September of 1940, Roosevelt's military advisors told him that the US would not have the arms, ammunition, or men necessary to undertake any major military operation overseas#151;let alone win such a fight#151;until April of 1942. Aided by his closest military and civilian collaborators, Roosevelt pushed a series of military expansions through Congress that nearly doubled the size of the US Navy and Army, and increased production of the arms, tanks, bombers, and warships that would allow America to prevail in the coming fight. Highlighting Roosevelt's deft management of the strong personalities within his cabinet and his able navigation of the shifting tides of war, No End Save Victory is the definitive account of America's preparations for and entry into World War II. As Kaiser shows, it was Roosevelt's masterful leadership and prescience that prepared the reluctant nation to fight#151;and gave it the tools to win. -
© 2013,The defeat of George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn was big news in 1876. Newspaper coverage of the battle initiated hot debates about whether the U.S. government should change its policy toward American Indians and who was to blame for the army's loss--the latter, an argument that ignites passion to this day. In Shooting Arrows and Slinging Mud, James E. Mueller draws on exhaustive research of period newspapers to explore press coverage of the famous battle. As he analyzes a wide range of accounts--some grim, some circumspect, some even laced with humor--Mueller offers a unique take on the dramatic events that so shook the American public. Among the many myths surrounding the Little Bighorn is that journalists of that time were incompetent hacks who, in response to the stunning news of Custer's defeat, called for bloodthirsty revenge against the Indians and portrayed the "boy general" as a glamorous hero who had suffered a martyr's death. Mueller argues otherwise, explaining that the journalists of 1876 were not uniformly biased against the Indians, and they did a credible job of describing the battle. They reported facts as they knew them, wrote thoughtful editorials, and asked important questions. Although not without their biases, journalists reporting on the Battle of the Little Bighorn cannot be credited--or faulted--for creating the legend of Custer's Last Stand. Indeed, as Mueller reveals, after the initial burst of attention, these journalists quickly moved on to other stories of their day. It would be art and popular culture--biographies, paintings, Wild West shows, novels, and movies--that would forever embed the Last Stand in the American psyche. -
© 2013,In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom--a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur'an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country. Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson's political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders' ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done. As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg's revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country's creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.