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Expeditionary Forces in the First World War
By Emre Sencer, Alan Beyerchen. 2019
When war engulfed Europe in 1914, the conflict quickly took on global dimensions. Although fighting erupted in Africa and Asia,…
the Great War primarily pulled troops from around the world into Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Amid the fighting were large numbers of expeditionary forces—and yet they have remained largely unstudied as a collective phenomenon, along with the term “expeditionary force” itself. This collection examines the expeditionary experience through a wide range of case studies. They cover major themes such as the recruitment, transport, and supply of far-flung troops; the cultural and linguistic dissonance, as well as gender relations, navigated by soldiers in foreign lands; the political challenge of providing a rationale to justify their dislocation and sacrifice; and the role of memory and memorialization. Together, these essays open up new avenues for understanding the experiences of soldiers who fought the First World War far from home.Life Sketches
By John Hersey. 1989
This collection—harvest of a lifetime of brilliant reportage and reflection—brings together the most memorable biographical pieces John Hersey has written…
over the past fifty years. His subjects range from Sinclair Lewis, for whom the twenty-three-year-old Hersey was secretary, and the young John F. Kennedy as he related to Hersey the dramatic story of PT 109, to Private John Daniel Ramey and his efforts to overcome illiteracy with the help of the U.S. Army, and Jessica Kelley, an elderly widow trapped in a buckling tenement as the 1955 Connecticut floods raged outside. Whether describing a brisk morning stroll with President Truman or hours spent fishing for blues with Lillian Hellman, recounting Benjamin Weintraub’s harrowing escape from a Nazi death camp or Varsell Pleas’s dangerous struggle for voting rights in the Mississippi of 1964, Hersey brings us face to face with some of the extraordinary events and people of the past half century. And it is with his profoundly curious and sympathetic mind and unsurpassed journalistic eloquence that he brings each startlingly to life. “The skill that won Hersey a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 is more than evident… an important collection of lives and their lessons.” –The New York Times Book Review “Any reader not already a fan of Hersey’s will be swayed by the richness of this collection. Hersey’s legion of admirers will merely be gratified and moved again and again…The cumulative force of these essays is amazing.” –Kirkus ReviewsThe President: A Minute-by-minute Account of a Week in the Life of Gerald Ford
By John Hersey. 1975
The President has given me permission to take a kind of voyage with him—to watch him closely through a working…
week….I will be with him, most of the time, hour in and hour out…. At 8:33 on a rainy Monday in March, 1975, John Hersey sits down on a straight cane-backed chair in the Oval Office to begin soaking up impressions of what happens—in post-Watergate Washington—at the center of American power. Through five and a half days, he will stay close to the President, observing him as he consults with his own staff, with members of Congress, with his Cabinet, with Rockefeller; watching him on the exercise bike, at the barber’s, greeting Miss America: absorbing his confidences as he talks after dinner, in the private quarters of the White House, about his childhood and about his college years when it was difficult to make ends meet. Following the President, Hersey observes in detail all the important moments—as well as the incidental ones—that show what Gerald Ford is like on the job. In this extraordinary book he builds a brilliant and revealing portrait, letting the reader see Ford’s strengths and limitations. And so perceptively does Hersey draw significance from his observations that the insights seem to explode like time bombs. I have seen all week that it is not easy for Gerald Ford…to make what he refers to, in the language of umpires, as “a tough call.” Yet once he has made such a decision, he does not agonize…he becomes convinced of its rightness and is stubborn in its defense…. In reading The President, each of us emerges knowing more than ever before, not only about this imperturbable “iron” man, the first President we did not elect, but also about how the Presidency really operates. In John Hersey’s report we come to understand—the man, and the things that persuade him. And we come to sense…how good it would be if in some way he could speak—good listener that he is—one-to-one with ordinary men and women, his constituents, from whom he has somehow drifted so far away.A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father
By David Maraniss. 2019
In a riveting book with powerful resonance today, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss captures the pervasive fear and paranoia that…
gripped America during the Red Scare of the 1950s through the chilling yet affirming story of his family’s ordeal, from blacklisting to vindication.Elliott Maraniss, David’s father, a WWII veteran who had commanded an all-black company in the Pacific, was spied on by the FBI, named as a communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and blacklisted for five years. Yet he never lost faith in America and emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact. In a sweeping drama that moves from the Depression and Spanish Civil War to the HUAC hearings and end of the McCarthy era, Maraniss weaves his father’s story through the lives of his inquisitors and defenders as they struggle with the vital twentieth-century issues of race, fascism, communism, and first amendment freedoms. A Good American Family powerfully evokes the political dysfunctions of the 1950s while underscoring what it really means to be an American. It is an unsparing yet moving tribute from a brilliant writer to his father and the family he protected in dangerous times.The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America
By Shawn Rochester. 2017
In his new book The Black Tax: The Cost of being Black in America, Shawn Rochester shows how The Black…
Tax (which is the financial cost of conscious and unconscious anti-black discrimination), creates a massive financial burden on Black American households that dramatically reduces their ability to leave a substantial legacy for future generations. Mr. Rochester lays out an extraordinarily compelling case which documents the enormous financial cost of current and past anti-black discrimination on African American households. The Black Tax, provides the fact pattern, data and evidence to substantiate what African Americans have long experienced and tried to convey to an unbelieving American public. Backed by an exceptional amount of research, Mr. Rochester not only highlights the extraordinary cost of the discrimination that African Americans currently face, but also explores the massive cost of past discrimination to explain why after 400 years Black Americans own only about 2% of American wealth. He then establishes a framework that Black Americans and other concerned parties can use to eliminate this tax and help create the 6 million jobs and 1.4 million businesses that are missing from the Black community. The Black Tax takes the reader through a complete paradigm shift that causes the reader to evaluate all forms of spending and investment in terms of the number of jobs created or businesses developed within the Black community. The Black Tax is immensely informative, thoroughly engaging and makes one of the most compelling and effective cases to commercialize Black businesses since the founding of the Negro Business League in 1910.This book examines the nearly 400-year tradition of Quaker engagements with mystical ideas and sources. It provides a fresh assessment…
of the way tradition and social context can shape a religious community while interplaying with historical and theological antecedents within the tradition. Quaker concepts such as “Meeting,” the “Light,” and embodied spirituality, have led Friends to develop an interior spirituality that intersects with extra-Quaker sources, such as those found in Jakob Boehme, Abū Bakr ibn Tufayl, the Continental Quietists, Kabbalah, Buddhist thought, and Luyia indigenous religion. Through time and across cultures, these and other conversations have shaped Quaker self-understanding and, so, expanded previous models of how religious ideas take root within a tradition. The thinkers engaged in this globally-focused, interdisciplinary volume include George Fox, James Nayler, Robert Barclay, Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, Hannah Whitall Smith, Rufus Jones, Inazo Nitobe, Howard Thurman, and Gideon W. H. Mweresa, among others.Who Was Harriet Tubman? (Who Was?)
By Yona Zeldis McDonough, Who Hq. 2002
Born a slave in Maryland, Harriet Tubman knew first-hand what it meant to be someone's property; she was whipped by…
owners and almost killed by an overseer. It was from other field hands that she first heard about the Underground Railroad which she travelled by herself north to Philadelphia. Throughout her long life (she died at the age of ninety-two) and long after the Civil War brought an end to slavery, this amazing woman was proof of what just one person can do.Driving straight to the heart of the most contentious issue in American history, Sean Wilentz argues controversially that, far from…
concealing a crime against humanity, the U.S. Constitution limited slavery’s legitimacy—a limitation which in time inspired the antislavery politics that led to Southern secession, the Civil War, and Emancipation.Great Lakes Sea Lamprey: The 70 Year War on a Biological Invader
By Cory Brant. 2019
The stuff of nightmares in both their looks and the wounds inflicted on their victims, sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) are…
perhaps the deadliest invasive species to ever enter the Great Lakes. At the invasion’s apex in the mid-20th century, harvests of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), the lampreys’ preferred host fish in the Great Lakes, plummeted from peak annual catches of 15 million pounds to just a few hundred thousand pounds per year—a drop of 98% in only a few decades. Threatening the complete collapse of the fishery, the sea lamprey invasion triggered an environmental awakening in the region and prompted an international treaty that secured unprecedented cooperation across political boundaries to protect the Great Lakes. Fueled by a pioneering scientific spirit, the war on Great Lakes sea lampreys led to discoveries that are the backbone of the program that eventually brought the creature under control and still protects the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world to this day. Great Lakes Sea Lamprey draws on extensive interviews with individuals who experienced the invasion firsthand as well as a trove of unexplored archival materials to tell the incredible story of sea lamprey in the Great Lakes—what started the invasion, how it was halted, and what this history can teach us about the response to biological invaders in the present and future. Richly illustrated with color and black & white photographs, the book will interest readers concerned with the health of the Great Lakes, the history of the conservation movement, and the ongoing threat of invasive species.Unlock new records in your family history research by understanding the historic events of your ancestors' eras. This quick and…
convenient guide outlines the major political, military and social events in the United States from the colonial era through 1940. It also includes immigration trends and census dates to help you narrow your research focus and find genealogy records faster. Use The Genealogist's U.S. History Pocket Reference to find: Timelines, charts, quick lists and maps of major events. Popular foods, songs and books of each era. Timelines of wars and other military events. Dates for federal, state and special censuses. Immigration data including major ports and countries of origin. ...and so much more! Stash this indispensable book in your computer case, tote bag or, yes, your pocket, and take it with you wherever you research.The Peace Corps in South America: Volunteers and the Global War on Poverty in the 1960s
By Fernando Purcell. 2019
In the 1960s, twenty-thousand young Americans landed in South America to serve as Peace Corps volunteers. The program was hailed…
by President John F. Kennedy and by volunteers themselves as an exceptional initiative to end global poverty. In practice, it was another front for fighting the Cold War and promoting American interests in the Global South. This book examines how this ideological project played out on the ground as volunteers encountered a range of local actors and agencies engaged in anti-poverty efforts of their own. As they negotiated the complexities of community intervention, these volunteers faced conflicts and frustrations, struggled to adapt, and gradually transformed the Peace Corps of the 1960s into a truly global, decentralized institution. Drawing on letters, diaries, reports, and newsletters created by volunteers themselves, Fernando Purcell shows how their experiences offer an invaluable perspective on local manifestations of the global Cold War.What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism
By Dan Rather, Elliot Kirschner. 2017
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “I find myself thinking deeply about what it means to love America, as I…
surely do.” —Dan Rather At a moment of crisis over our national identity, venerated journalist Dan Rather has emerged as a voice of reason and integrity, reflecting on—and writing passionately about—what it means to be an American. Now, with this collection of original essays, he reminds us of the principles upon which the United States was founded. Looking at the freedoms that define us, from the vote to the press; the values that have transformed us, from empathy to inclusion to service; the institutions that sustain us, such as public education; and the traits that helped form our young country, such as the audacity to take on daunting challenges in science and medicine, Rather brings to bear his decades of experience on the frontlines of the world’s biggest stories. As a living witness to historical change, he offers up an intimate view of history, tracing where we have been in order to help us chart a way forward and heal our bitter divisions. With a fundamental sense of hope, What Unites Us is the book to inspire conversation and listening, and to remind us all how we are, finally, one.Life In Civil War America: A Guide To Everyday Life During The War Between The States
By Michael J. Varhola. 1999
Author and historian Michael J. Varhola takes you back in time to the Civil War, illuminating both the sweeping changes…
and cultural norms that shaped the everyday lives of soldiers and civilians during the war that divided the nation.City of Debtors: A Century Of Fringe Finance
By Anne Fleming. 2018
Since the 1890s, people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in the U.S. have paid the highest price…
for credit. Anne Fleming tells how each generation has tackled the problem of fringe finance and its regulation. Her detailed work contributes to the broader, ongoing debate about the meaning of justice within capitalistic societies.The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence
By S. Max Edelson. 2017
In 1763 British America stretched from Hudson Bay to the Keys, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Using maps that…
Britain created to control its new lands, Max Edelson pictures the contested geography of the British Atlantic world and offers new explanations of the causes and consequences of Britain’s imperial ambitions before the Revolution.Students of the Dream: Resegregation In A Southern City
By Ruth Carbonette Yow. 2017
Marietta High, once a flagship public school northwest of Atlanta, has become a symbol of the resegregation that is sweeping…
across the American South. Ruth Carbonette Yow argues for a revitalized commitment to integration, but one that challenges many orthodoxies of the civil rights struggle, including colorblindness.The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America
By Michael Rossi. 2019
The Republic of Color delves deep into the history of color science in the United States to unearth its origins…
and examine the scope of its influence on the industrial transformation of turn-of-the-century America. For a nation in the grip of profound economic, cultural, and demographic crises, the standardization of color became a means of social reform—a way of sculpting the American population into one more amenable to the needs of the emerging industrial order. Delineating color was also a way to characterize the vagaries of human nature, and to create ideal structures through which those humans would act in a newly modern American republic. Michael Rossi’s compelling history goes far beyond the culture of the visual to show readers how the control and regulation of color shaped the social contours of modern America—and redefined the way we see the world.This book argues that early American history is best understood as the story of a settler-colonial supplanting society—a society intent…
on a vast land grab of American Indian space and driven by a logic of elimination and a genocidal imperative to rid the new white settler living space of its existing Indigenous inhabitants. Challenging the still strongly held notion of American history as somehow exceptional or unique, it locates the history of the United States and its colonial antecedents as a central part of—rather than an exception to—the emerging global histories of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide. It also explores early American history in an imperial, transnational, and global frame, showing how the precedent of the North American West and its colonial trope of Indian wars were used by like-minded American and European expansionists to inspire and legitimate other imperial-colonial adventures from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries.THE HORRIFYING TRUE STORY OF A GOVERNMENT-AUTHORIZED CAMPAIGN OF DISINFORMATION THAT DEFINED AN ERA OF ALIEN PARANOIA AND DESTROYED ONE…
MAN'S LIFE. In 1978, Paul Bennewitz, an electrical physicist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, engaged in some aggressive radio monitoring of the nearby Sandia Labs, then managed by the Department of Defense. When he became convinced that the strange lights hovering over the labs and Kirtland Air Force Base signaled the vanguard of an extraterrestrial alien invasion, he began writing TV stations, newspapers, senators -- and even President Reagan -- to alert them. For the most part Bennewitz received form-letter replies, but Air Force investigators paid him a visit, as did Bill Moore, author of the first book on the Roswell incident. Before long Moore -- then a new force in civilian UFO research -- was tapped by a group of intelligence agents and a deal was struck: Moore was to keep tabs on Bennewitz while the Air Force ran a psychological profile and disinformation campaign on the unsuspecting physicist. In return, Air Force Intelligence would let Moore in on classified UFO material. This is Bennewitz's harrowing tale, told by fringe-culture historian Greg Bishop. It is the troubling account of the custom-made hall of smoke and mirrors that eventually drove Bennewitz to a mental institution, as well as the story of the explosive propagation of disinformation that began in 1979 and reverberates through the UFO community and pop culture to this day.The "Silent Majority" Speech treats Richard Nixon’s address of November 3, 1969, as a lens through which to examine the…
latter years of the Vietnam War and their significance to U.S. global power and American domestic life. The book uses Nixon’s speech – which introduced the policy of "Vietnamization" and cited the so-called bloodbath theory as a justification for continued U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia – as a fascinating moment around which to build an analysis of the last years of the war. For Nixon’s strategy to be successful, he requested the support of what he called the "great silent majority," a term that continues to resonate in American political culture. Scott Laderman moves beyond the war’s final years to address the administration’s hypocritical exploitation of moral rhetoric and its stoking of social divisiveness to achieve policy aims. Laderman explores the antiwar and pro-war movements, the shattering of the liberal consensus, and the stirrings of the right-wing resurgence that would come to define American politics. Supplemental primary sources make this book an ideal tool for introducing students to historical research. The "Silent Majority" Speech is critical reading for those studying American political history and U.S.–Asian/Southeast Asian relations.