Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United and other high-profile cases have sparked passionate disagreement about the proper role of corporations in American democracy. Partisans on both sides have made bold claims, often with little basis in historical facts. Bringing together leading scholars of history, law, and political science, Corporations and American Democracy provides the historical and intellectual grounding necessary to put today’s corporate policy debates in proper context.
From the nation’s founding to the present, Americans have regarded corporations with ambivalence—embracing their potential to revolutionize economic life and yet remaining wary of their capacity to undermine democratic institutions. Although corporations were originally created to give businesses and other associations special legal rights and privileges, historically they were denied many of the constitutional protections afforded flesh-and-blood citizens.
This comprehensive volume covers a range of topics, including the origins of corporations in English and American law, the historical shift from special charters to general incorporation, the increased variety of corporations that this shift made possible, and the roots of modern corporate regulation in the Progressive Era and New Deal. It also covers the evolution of judicial views of corporate rights, particularly since corporations have become the form of choice for an increasing variety of nonbusiness organizations, including political advocacy groups. Ironically, in today’s global economy the decline of large, vertically integrated corporations—the type of corporation that past reform movements fought so hard to regulate—poses some of the newest challenges to effective government oversight of the economy.
A picturesque island strategically located at the entrance of Manila Bay, Corregidor has had military significance since the days of the Spanish galleon trade. Although its dramatic role in the defense of the Philippines during World War II is well documented, relatively little is known about its history apart from military involvement. This richly illustrated book tells the story of the island and sheds new light on the geopolitical forces that shaped its destiny.
Corregidor in Peace and War is a biography of a mysterious island known simply as “the Rock.” It traces the buildup of armaments and fortifications on the island after the American occupation of the Philippines in 1898, then chronicles clandestine military preparations for an expected war with Imperial Japan. It vividly documents aspects of island life before World War II—including the enviable lifestyle of the American officer corps stationed there, the development of the island’s rail system using imported American streetcars, and the creation of the Philippine Scouts coastal artillery units—and then records its loss and recapture during the struggle with Japan. The final chapter reviews the island’s history since the war.
More than 150 illustrations include maps and photos from both the Spanish and American periods up to the present day—some photographs published more than a century ago and impeccably restored, many never before seen in print. Interweaving new and old photos with informative text, Charles Hubbard and Collis Davis, Jr., provide a guided tour that captures the natural beauty of an island once enjoyed by early residents but subsequently decimated by cannon fire and aerial bombardment. Brilliant color images evoke a place where flora and wildlife coexist alongside abandoned fortifications, documenting stark reminders from times of war. Other photographs show the majestic “suicide cliffs” where Japanese soldiers are said to have jumped to their deaths rather than become prisoners.
Now a tourist destination and historic monument, Corregidor remains a formidable island worthy of its nickname. Corregidor in Peace and War uncovers its many unknown facets and singularly reflects the experiences of both a place and a people that deserve a prominent place in history.
Kristine Stiles selected, edited, annotated, and wrote the introduction to the letters, assembling them so that readers can follow the development of Schneemann’s art, thought, and private and public relationships. The correspondence chronicles a history of energy and invention, joy and sorrow, and charged personal and artistic struggles. It sheds light on the internecine aesthetic politics and mundane activities that constitute the exasperating vicissitudes of making art, building an artistic reputation, and negotiating an industry as unpredictable and demanding as the art world in the mid- to late twentieth century.
Emory Upton (1839–1881) was thrust into the Civil War immediately upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in May of 1861. He was wounded three times during the war. He participated in nearly every major battle in the Eastern Theater including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania, where he led a prominent attack on entrenched Confederate positions—a signal of Upton’s brilliance as an officer and of his military creativity that foreshadowed his later work in revising the Army’s tactics. Upton was mustered out of service in 1866 and later named commandant of cadets at West Point, a position that carved a path for Upton to focus more on Army tactics and reforms.
Until now, the only lenses through which scholars could study Upton were two biographies published nearly a century apart but practically identical in scope and treatment. The two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton follows Upton through his enrollment at West Point to his extensive Army activities following the Civil War and contains the bulk of his wartime correspondence. Volume one, with Upton’s Civil War correspondence encompasses both larger battle details and day-to-day activities in the life of a soldier. His letters reveal a mercurial individual: a humorous person used to suffering and rejoicing, who could be flawed and brilliant, vain and humble.
These selected letters and reports, expertly annotated and gathered from repositories across the country, present a more complex, human Emory Upton. He is both the “clean, pure, and spotless” individual of biographies and the ambitious, yet flawed Army officer obsessed with his career. These volumes explore his trials and frustrations as well as his triumphs.
Salvatore G. Cilella Jr., now retired, was president of the Atlanta Historical Society. He is the author of Upton’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the American Civil War and Fund Raising for Small Museums in Good Times and Bad.
Emory Upton (1839–1881) was thrust into the Civil War immediately upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in May of 1861. He was wounded three times during the war. He participated in nearly ever major battle in the Eastern Theater including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania, where he led a prominent attack on entrenched Confederate positions—a signal of Upton’s brilliance as an officer and of his military creativity that foreshadowed his later work in revising the Army’s tactics. Upton was mustered out of service in 1866 and later named commandant of cadets at West Point, a position that carved a path for Upton to focus more on Army tactics and reforms.
Until now, the only lenses through which scholars could study Upton were two biographies published nearly a century apart but practically identical in scope and treatment of Upton. The two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton follows Upton through his enrollment at West Point to his extensive Army activities following the Civil War and contains the bulk of Emory Upton’s wartime correspondence. Volume two collects Upton’s foreign correspondence and observations on military tactics and Army reform. At the behest of U.S. Army Commanding General William T. Sherman, Upton was sent on a tour to study the armies of Asia and Europe, and more specifically the German army after conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. This tour resulted in the publication of his monumental The Armies of Europe and Asia, which warned that the U.S. Army was woefully below the standards of European nations, and between Upton’s death in 1881 and the turn of the twentieth century, military policy was fiercely debated in both the military and popular press. Upton’s ideas on reform were often central to the arguments, and his letters and writings provoked a wide range of discussion over military and, inevitably, civilian issues.
These selected letters and reports, expertly annotated and gathered from repositories across the country, present a more complex, human Emory Upton. He is both the “clean, pure, and spotless” individual of Michie’s biographies and the ambitious, yet flawed Army officer obsessed with his career. These volumes explore his trials and frustrations as well as his triumphs.
Salvatore G. Cilella, now retired, was president of the Atlanta Historical Society. He is the author of Upton’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the American Civil War and Fund Raising for Small Museums in Good Times and Bad.
Almost since its creation, recurring problems with corruption bedeviled the Teamsters Union. David Witwer provides the first in-depth historical study of the forces that contributed to the Teamsters' troubled past and the mechanisms the union employed--from top-down directives to grassroots measures--to combat corruption.
Witwer draws on the perspectives of rank-and-file members, union leaders, and the criminal element to explain the processes that allowed organized crime to seize power inside the union. His account includes the infamous links between the Mafia and union head Jimmy Hoffa, but he also tells the little-known story of the McClellan Committee investigation that first brought those links to light. Witwer also examines how anti-labor forces used the Teamsters' unsavory reputation to influence popular and legislative opinion in a broad attack on workers' rights.
When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to “corrupt” Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruption—rooted in ideals of civic virtue—was a driving force at the Constitutional Convention.
For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.
In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.
"Christian Moraru is an especially dynamic and brilliant scholar who works at a high level of critical and theoretical sophistication. I've never seen anything quite so exhaustive, so magisterial. Readers of Cosmodernism will think of the Keats line about an astronomer's exhilaration when a new planet swims into his ken."
---David Cowart, University of South Carolina
"Cosmodernism has the potential to become foundational for the study of a whole period. Christian Moraru undertakes here to establish a new basis for thinking about the era of cultural history in which we have found ourselves, in the United States but also around the world, since the end of the Cold War. The strength of Moraru's work lies in its intellectual ambition and scope; its polymathic range and breadth of learning; its confident mastery of a variety of disciplinary discourses; its fresh and thoughtful selection of texts for discussion; the sharpness and insight of its textual analyses; and, animating everything, its fervent commitment to a new and better way of understanding our relationship to others and the world at large."
---Brian McHale, The Ohio State University
A sweeping inquiry into post–Cold War American literature and theory, Cosmodernism argues, cautiously but persuasively, for the rise of a new cultural paradigm against the backdrop of accelerating globalization. Moraru calls this paradigm "cosmodern." He uses the term to account for what seems to be gradually challenging the postmodern over the last twenty-odd years. Not so much a well-structured movement yet, cosmodernism is chiefly a critical construct enabling Moraru to articulate representative literary-theoretical interventions of the past two decades into a reasonably coherent model. The coherence inheres, he shows, in a certain "relational" imaginary, which the critic canvasses by placing a wide range of authors and works in, across, and against the material-conceptual networks of globalization, cosmopolitanism, modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and other areas of contemporary U.S. intellectual history.
Christian Moraru is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His latest books include Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning (2001), Memorious Discourse: Reprise and Representation in Postmodernism (2005), and the edited collection Postcommunism, Postmodernism, and the Global Imagination (2009).
Cover art: Earth, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48" × 36", 2008. Painting courtesy of Rebecca Darlington.
In a volume that represents the culmination of his life’s work in considering the relationship between culture and landscape, eminent scholar Yi-Fu Tuan argues that “cosmos” and “hearth” are two scales that anchor what it means to be fully and happily human. Illustrating this contention with examples from both his native China and his home of the past forty years, the United States, Tuan proposes a revised conception of culture, one thoroughly grounded in one’s own society but also embracing curiosity about the world. Optimistic and deeply human, this important volume lays out a path to being “at home in the cosmos.”
Hardcover:In this moving meditation on the difficult choices facing humanity in the next millennium, celebrated scholar Yi-Fu Tuan reaffirms his faith in the value of a cosmopolitan worldview. In a volume that represents the culmination of his life's work in considering the relationship between culture and landscape, Tuan argues that “cosmos” and “hearth” are two scales that anchor what it means to be fully and happily human. Hearth is our house and neighborhood, family and kinfolk, habit and custom. Cosmos, by contrast, is the larger reality-world, civilization, and humankind. Tuan addresses the extraordinary revival of interest in the hearth in recent decades, examining both the positive and negative effects of this renewed concern. Among the beneficent outcomes has been a revival of ethnic culture and sense of place. Negative repercussions abound, however, manifested as an upsurge in superstition, excessive pride in ancestry and custom, and a constricted worldview that when taken together can inflame local passions, leading at times to violent conflict-from riots in American cities to wars in the Balkans. In Cosmos and Hearth, Tuan takes the position that we need to embrace both the sublime and the humble, drawing what is valuable from each. Illustrating the importance of both cosmos and hearth with examples from his country of birth, China, and from his home of the past forty years, the United States, Tuan proposes a revised conception of culture, the “cosmopolitan hearth,” that has the coziness but not the narrowness and bigotry of the traditional hearth. Tuan encourages not only being thoroughly grounded in one’s own culture but also the embracing of curiosity about the world. Optimistic and deeply human, Cosmos and Hearth lays out a path to being “at home in the cosmos.” Born in China and educated in Australia, the Philippines, England, and the United States, Yi-Fu Tuan is professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minnesota, 1977), Landscapes of Fear (Minnesota, 1982), The Good Life (1986), and Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture (1993). Excerpt: “Thinking yields a twofold gain: although it isolates us from our immediate group it can link us both seriously and playfully to the cosmos-to strangers in other places and times; and it enables us to accept a human condition that we have always been tempted by fear and anxiety to deny, namely, the impermanence of our state wherever we are, our ultimate homelessness. A cosmopolite is one who considers the gain greater than the loss. Having seen something of the splendid spaces, he or she will not want to return, permanently, to the ambiguous safeness of the hearth.”The gender wage gap is one of the most persistent problems of labor markets and women’s lives.
Most approaches to explaining the gap focus on adult employment despite the fact that many Americans begin working well before their education is completed. In her critical and compelling new book, The Cost of Being a Girl, Yasemin Besen-Cassino examines the origins of the gender wage gap by looking at the teenage labor force, where comparisons between boys and girls ought to show no difference, but do.
Besen-Cassino’s findings are disturbing. Because of discrimination in the market, most teenage girls who start part-time work as babysitters and in other freelance jobs fail to make the same wages as teenage boys who move into employee-type jobs. The “cost” of being a girl is also psychological; when teenage girls work retail jobs in the apparel industry, they have lower wages and body image issues in the long run.
Through in-depth interviews and surveys with workers and employees, The Cost of Being a Girl puts this alarming social problem—which extends to race and class inequality—in to bold relief. Besen-Cassino emphasizes that early inequalities in the workplace ultimately translate into greater inequalities in the overall labor force.
This deeply moving story chronicles the tenacity and vision that carried Carl Elliott from the hills of northwest Alabama to eight distinguished terms in the United States House of Representatives.
Born in a log cabin on a tenant farm in 1913, Carl Elliott worked his way through The University of Alabama during the Great Depression and was elected to Congress in 1948. With a no-nonsense philosophy of fairness and equal opportunity, he established himself as one of the most effective members of the House of Representatives during the 1950s. He was a progressive Democrat and he fought hard for the dirt farmers and coal miners he grew up with and who sent him to Congress.
In an era when racial segregationists dominated southern politics, Elliott worked with many of the important political leaders of the 20th century, including Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy and powerful House Speaker Sam Rayburn. He was instrumental in passing the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which continues to provide college loans to more than 20 million Americans. But his brave stand against racism and George Wallace in the 1966 Alabama gubernatorial race ruined him professionally (he never returned to elected office) and financially (he cashed in his congressional pension to help fund the campaign). Even as a destitute invalid in his old age, however, Elliott kept his dignity and integrity intact.
The life story of Carl Elliott is full of humor and wry wisdom and explains how he made his way across a stage as big as America, influencing its politics and future, and then emerged, belatedly, as an unsung hero of the fight for civil rights and equality.
Winner of the United Association for Labor Education Book Award 2021, this is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand the role of Amazon in our economy and society. With Amazon, supply-chain, and unionization in the news, it is both timely and incredibly informative.
Amazon is the most powerful corporation on the planet and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, has become one of the richest individuals in history, and one of the few people to profit from a global pandemic. Its dominance has reshaped the global economy itself: we live in the age of “Amazon Capitalism.”
“One-click” instant consumerism and its immense variety of products has made Amazon a worldwide household name, with over 60% of US households subscribing to Amazon Prime. In turn, these subscribers are surveilled by the corporation. Amazon is also one of the world's largest logistics companies, resulting in weakened unions and lowered labor standards.
The company has also become the largest provider of cloud-computing services and home surveillance systems, not to mention the ubiquitous Alexa.
With cutting-edge analyses, this book looks at the many dark facets of the corporation, including automation, surveillance, tech work, workers' struggles, algorithmic challenges, the disruption of local democracy and much more. The Cost of Free Shipping shows how Amazon represents a fundamental shift in global capitalism that we should name, interrogate, and be primed to resist.
Antebellum Mobile was a cotton port city, and economic dependence upon the North created by the cotton trade controlled the city’s development. Mobile’s export trade placed the city third after New York and New Orleans in total value of exports for the nation by 1860. Because the exports consisted almost entirely of cotton headed for Northern and foreign textile mills, Mobile depended on Northern businessmen for marketing services. Nearly all the city’s imports were from New York: Mobile had the worst export-import imbalance of all antebellum ports.
Told from the viewpoint of the Indians, this account of Indian-white relations during the second half of the eighteenth century is an exciting addition to the historical literature of Pennsylvania.
From the beginning, when the white traders followed the first Shawnee hunters into Pennsylvania, until the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the region’s history was the history of the relationship between the Indians and the whites. For nearly half a century the Indian maintained a precarious hold upon Western Pennsylvania by playing one white faction off against the anther, first the French against the British, then the British against the Americans.
When you look at a bird, do you see feathers and a beak? Or do you see circles and triangles? Artist Charley Harper spent his life reducing subjects to their simplest forms, their basic lines and shapes. This resulted in what he called minimal realism and the style that would become easily recognized as Charley Harper’s. Art fans and nature lovers around the world fell in love with Harper’s paintings, which often featured bright colors and intriguing nature subjects.
Harper’s love of painting and drawing led him from the hills of West Virginia to the bombed-out villages of Europe, to the streets of New York City, and to the halls of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. How did the farm boy who didn’t know a single artist become one of America’s most recognized midcentury modern painters? The answer is simple. He did it by counting the wings.
Count the Wings is the first book for middle-grade readers about Harper’s life and work. Author Michelle Houts worked closely with the Harper estate to include full-color illustrations, plentiful supplemental materials, and discussion questions that will intrigue and engage young readers. Count the Wings is part of our acclaimed Biographies for Young Readers series, which brings smart, expertly researched books about often overlooked but exceptional individuals to school-age readers.
In the mid-twentieth century, far more evangelicals supported such “liberal” causes as peace, social justice, and environmental protection. Only gradually did the conservative evangelical faction win dominance, allying with the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and, eventually, George W. Bush.
In Countercultural Conservatives Axel Schäfer traces the evolution of a diffuse and pluralistic movement into the political force of the New Christian Right. In forging its complex theological and political identity, evangelicalism did not simply reject the ideas of 1960s counterculture, Schäfer argues. For all their strict Biblicism and uncompromising morality, evangelicals absorbed and extended key aspects of the countercultural worldview.
Carefully examining evangelicalism’s internal dynamics, fissures, and coalitions, this book offers an intriguing reinterpretation of the most important development in American religion and politics since World War II.
In a bold reconsideration of the late sixties San Francisco counterculture movement, Counterculture Kaleidoscope takes a close look at the cultural and musical practices of that era. Addressing the conventional wisdom that the movement was grounded in rebellion and opposition, the book exposes two myths: first, that the counterculture was an organized social and political movement of progressives with a shared agenda who opposed the mainstream (dubbed "hippies"); and second, that the counterculture was an innocent entity hijacked by commercialism and transformed over time into a vehicle of so-called "hip consumerism."
Seeking an alternative to the now common narrative, Nadya Zimmerman examines primary source material including music, artwork, popular literature, personal narratives, and firsthand historical accounts. She reveals that the San Francisco counterculture wasn't interested in commitments to causes and made no association with divisive issues---that it embraced everything in general and nothing in particular.
"Astute and accessible, Counterculture Kaleidoscope provides thought-provoking insights into the historical, cultural and social context of the San Francisco counter-culture and its music scene, including discussions of Vietnam and student protest, the Haight-Ashbury Diggers, the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Altamont, and Charlie Manson. A must for students and scholars of socio-musical activity and for all of us to whom music matters."
---Sheila Whiteley, author of The Space Between the Notes: Rock and the Counter-Culture and Too Much Too Young: Popular Music, Age and Gender
"The hippie counterculture has never garnered the scholarly attention accorded the new left and the black freedom struggle. Overviews of the period ritualistically mention it as part and parcel of that apparently incandescent era---the Sixties---but rarely capture its distinctiveness. Counterculture Kaleidoscope is a timely and provocative intervention in Sixties scholarship that significantly deepens our understanding of this important but understudied phenomenon."
—Alice Echols, Associate Professor, University of Southern California, and author of Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin
This book focuses on the return of the diasporic Greek second generation to Greece, primarily in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and their evolving, often ambivalent, senses of belonging and conceptualizations of “home.” Drawing from a large-scale research project employing a multi-sited and multi-method comparative approach, Counter-Diaspora is a narrative ethnographic account of the lives and identities of second-generation Greek-Americans and Greek-Germans. Through an interdisciplinary gender and generational lens, the study examines lived migration experiences at three diasporic moments: growing up within the Greek diasporic setting in the United States and Germany; motivations for the counter-diasporic return; and experiences in the “homeland” of Greece. Research documents and analyzes a range of feelings and experiences associated with this “counter-diasporic” return to the ancestral homeland.
Images and imaginations of the “homeland” are discussed and deconstructed, along with notions of “Greekness” mediated through diasporic encounters. Using extensive extracts from interviews, the authors explore the roles of, among other things, family solidarity, kinship, food, language, and religion, as well as the impact of “home-coming” visits on the decision to return to the ancestral “homeland.” The book also contributes to a reconceptualization of diaspora and a problematization of the notion of “second generation.”
Rebelling against bourgeois vacuity and taking their countercultural critique on the road, the Beat writers and artists have long symbolized a spirit of freedom and radical democracy. Manuel Martinez offers an eye-opening challenge to this characterization of the Beats, juxtaposing them against Chicano nationalists like Raul Salinas, Jose Montoya, Luis Valdez, and Oscar Acosta and Mexican migrant writers in the United States, like Tomas Rivera and Ernesto Galarza.
In an innovative rereading of American radical politics and culture of the 1950s and 1960s, Martinez uncovers reactionary, neoromantic, and sometimes racist strains in the Beats’ vision of freedom, and he brings to the fore the complex stances of Latinos on participant democracy and progressive culture. He analyzes the ways that Beats, Chicanos, and migrant writers conceived of and articulated social and political perspectives. He contends that both the Beats’ extreme individualism and the Chicano nationalists’ narrow vision of citizenship are betrayals of the democratic ideal, but that the migrant writers presented a distinctly radical and inclusive vision of democracy that was truly countercultural.
Andrew Mumford challenges the notion of a “special relationship” between the United States and United Kingdom in diplomatic and military affairs, the most vaunted and, he says, exaggerated of associations in the post-1945 era. Though they are allies to be sure, national self-interest and domestic politics have often undercut their relationship.
This is the first book to combine a history of US-UK interaction during major counterinsurgency campaigns since 1945, from Palestine to Iraq and Afghanistan, with a critical examination of the so called special relationship that has been tested during these difficult, protracted, and costly conflicts. Mumford’s assessment of each nation’s internal political discussions and diplomatic exchanges reveals that in actuality there is only a thin layer of specialness at work in the wars that shaped the postcolonial balance of power, the fight against Communism in the Cold War, and the twenty-first-century “war on terror.” This book is especially timely given that the US-UK relationship is once again under scrutiny because of the Trump administration’s “America First” rhetoric and Britain's changing international relations as a result of Brexit. Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo-American Alliance will interest scholars and students of history, international relations, and security studies as well as policy practitioners in the field.
An essential look at how and why backlash movements are inherent to US policymaking.
The most successful policies not only solve problems. They also build supportive coalitions. Yet, sometimes, policies trigger backlash and mobilize opposition. Although backlash is not a new phenomenon, today’s political landscape is distinguished by the frequency and pervasiveness of backlash in nearly every area of US policymaking, from abortion rights to the Affordable Care Act.
Eric M. Patashnik develops a policy-centered theory of backlash that illuminates how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. Drawing on case studies of issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control, Countermobilization shows that backlash politics is fueled by polarization, cultural shifts, and negative feedback from the activist government itself. It also offers crucial insights to help identify and navigate backlash risks.
The public library is in the perfect position as a community resource to help bridge the gap between preschool and kindergarten; however, starting from scratch can feel daunting. In this guide, Baker combines her background in early childhood education with her experience as a youth services programming specialist to present a school readiness program that can be tailored for any public library. Based on the successful framework of her tried and tested original program, this book offers everything that a public library needs in order to get started, including
Baker's guide will help public libraries ensure that young children are ready for school from day one.
Winner, 2023 J. G. Ragsdale Book Award from the Arkansas Historical Association
Because Johnny Cash cut his classic singles at Sun Records in Memphis and reigned for years as country royalty from his Nashville-area mansion, people tend to associate the Man in Black with Tennessee. But some of Cash’s best songs—including classics like “Pickin’ Time,” “Big River,” and “Five Feet High and Rising”—sprang from his youth in the sweltering cotton fields of northeastern Arkansas.
In Country Boy, Colin Woodward combines biography, history, and music criticism to illustrate how Cash’s experiences in Arkansas shaped his life and work. The grip of the Great Depression on Arkansas’s small farmers, the comforts and tragedies of family, and a bedrock of faith all lent his music the power and authenticity that so appealed to millions. Though Cash left Arkansas as an eighteen-year-old, he often returned to his home state, where he played some of his most memorable and personal concerts. Drawing upon the country legend’s songs and writings, as well as the accounts of family, fellow musicians, and chroniclers, Woodward reveals how the profound sincerity and empathy so central to Cash’s music depended on his maintaining a deep connection to his native Arkansas—a place that never left his soul.
Q: Is he afraid of work?
A: No, he can lie down beside it and go to sleep.
This volume is an encyclopedia of the many country music performers who made comedy a central part of their careers. Loyal Jones offers an informative biographical sketch of each performer and many entries include a sample of the artist's humor, a recording history, and amusing anecdotal tidbits. Starting with vaudeville and radio barn dance figures like the Skillet Lickers and the Weaver Brothers and Elviry, Jones moves on to the regulars on Hee Haw and the Grand Old Opry and present-day comedians from the Austin Lounge Lizards to Jeff Foxworthy.
Jones's introductory essay discusses such topics as stock comic figures, venues for comedic performance, and benchmark performers. Throughout the volume, he places each performer squarely in the context of the country music community, its performing traditions, and each artist's place in the larger cultural milieu.
The county courthouse has long held a central place on the Texas landscape—literally, as the center of the town in which it is located, and figuratively, as the symbol of governmental authority. As a county’s most important public building, the courthouse makes an architectural statement about a community’s prosperity and aspirations—or the lack of them. Thus, a study of county courthouses tells a compelling story about how society’s relationships with public buildings and government have radically changed over the course of time, as well as how architectural tastes have evolved through the decades.
A first of its kind, The Courthouses of Central Texas offers an in-depth, comparative architectural survey of fifty county courthouses, which serve as a representative sample of larger trends at play throughout the rest of the state. Each courthouse is represented by a description, with information about date(s) of construction and architects, along with a historical photograph, a site plan of its orientation and courthouse square, and two- and sometimes three-dimensional drawings of its facade with modifications over time. Side-by-side drawings and plans also facilitate comparisons between courthouses. These consistently scaled and formatted architectural drawings, which Brantley Hightower spent years creating, allow for direct comparisons in ways never before possible. He also explains the courthouses’ formal development by placing them in their historical and social context, which illuminates the power and importance of these structures in the history of Texas, as well as their enduring relevance today.
Unique among Western democracies in refusing to eradicate the death penalty, the United States has attempted instead to reform and rationalize state death penalty practices through federal constitutional law. Courting Death traces the unusual and distinctive history of top-down judicial regulation of capital punishment under the Constitution and its unanticipated consequences for our time.
In the 1960s and 1970s, in the face of widespread abolition of the death penalty around the world, provisions for capital punishment that had long fallen under the purview of the states were challenged in federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court intervened in two landmark decisions, first by constitutionally invalidating the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972) on the grounds that it was capricious and discriminatory, followed four years later by restoring it in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). Since then, by neither retaining capital punishment in unfettered form nor abolishing it outright, the Supreme Court has created a complex regulatory apparatus that has brought executions in many states to a halt, while also failing to address the problems that led the Court to intervene in the first place.
While execution chambers remain active in several states, constitutional regulation has contributed to the death penalty’s new fragility. In the next decade or two, Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker argue, the fate of the American death penalty is likely to be sealed by this failed judicial experiment. Courting Death illuminates both the promise and pitfalls of constitutional regulation of contentious social issues.
Community Courts are designed to handle a city’s low-level offenses and quality-of-life crimes, such as littering, loitering, or public drunkenness. Court advocates maintain that these largely victimless crimes jeopardize the well-being of residents, businesses, and visitors. Whereas traditional courts might dismiss such cases or administer a small fine, community courts aim to meaningfully punish offenders to avoid disorder escalating to apocalyptic decline.
Courting the Community is a fascinating ethnography that goes behind the scenes to explore how quality-of-life discourses are translated into court practices that marry therapeutic and rehabilitative ideas. Christine Zozula shows how residents and businesses participate in meting out justice—such as through community service, treatment, or other sanctions—making it more emotional, less detached, and more legitimate in the eyes of stakeholders. She also examines both “impact panels,” in which offenders, residents, and business owners meet to discuss how quality-of-life crimes negatively impact the neighborhood, as well as strategic neighborhood outreach efforts to update residents on cases and gauge their concerns.
Zozula’s nuanced investigation of community courts can lead us to a deeper understanding of punishment and rehabilitation and, by extension, the current state of the American court system.
Over the past thirty-five years, federal courts have dramatically retreated from actively promoting school desegregation. In the meantime, state courts have taken up the mantle of promoting the vision of educational equity originally articulated in Brown v. Board of Education. Courts and Kids is the first detailed analysis of why the state courts have taken on this active role and how successful their efforts have been.
Since 1973, litigants have challenged the constitutionality of education finance systems in forty-five states on the grounds that they deprive many poor and minority students of adequate access to a sound education. While the plaintiffs have won in the majority of these cases, the decisions are often branded “judicial activism”—a stigma that has reduced their impact. To counter the charge, Michael A. Rebell persuasively defends the courts’ authority and responsibility to pursue the goal of educational equity. He envisions their ideal role as supervisory, and in Courts and Kids he offers innovative recommendations on how the courts can collaborate with the executive and legislative branches to create a truly democratic educational system.
Everyone got married in the 1950s, then moved to the suburbs to have the children of the soon-to-be-famous baby boom. For Americans who had survived the Great Depression and World War II, prosperous married life was a triumph. The unwed were objects of pity, scorn, even suspicion. And so in the 1950s, Eva Eldridge, no longer so young and marginally employed, was the perfect target for handsome Vick, who promised everything: storybook romance, marital respectability, and the lively social life she loved. When he disappeared not long after their honeymoon, she was devastated.
Eva hadn’t always been so vulnerable. Growing up pretty and popular in rural Oregon, she expected to marry young and live a life much like that of her parents, farming and rearing children. But then the United States threw its weight into World War II and as men headed to battle, the government started recruiting women to work in their places. Eva, like many other young women, found that life in the city with plenty of money, personal freedom, and lots of soldiers and sailors eager to pay court was more exhilarating than life down on the farm. After the war, she was ambivalent about getting married and settling down—at least until Vick arrived.
Refusing to believe her brand-new husband had abandoned her, Eva set about tracking down a man who, she now believed, was more damaged by wartime trauma than she had known. But instead of a wounded hero, she found a long string of women much like herself—hard-working, intelligent women who had loved and married Vick and now had no idea where—or even who—he was.
Drawing on a trove of some eight hundred letters and papers, Diane Simmons tells the story of Eva’s poignant struggle to get her dream husband back, as well as the stories of the women who had stood at the altar with Vick before and after her. Eva’s remarkable life illuminates women’s struggle for happiness at a time when marriage—and the perfect husband—meant everything.
Over the past century, tort law and insurance have developed deeply intertwined legal and economic roots. Insurance usually determines whether tort cases are brought to trial, whom plaintiffs sue, how much they claim, who provides the defense, how the case gets litigated, the dynamics of the settlement, and how much plaintiffs ultimately recover. But to what extent should liability rules be influenced by insurance? In this study, Mark Rahdert identifies the leading arguments both in favor of and against what he terms the "insurance rationale"—the idea that tort law should be structured to facilitate victim access to assured compensation.
The insurance rationale has been a leading force in the development of product liability law and, as a component of accident compensation, has significantly influenced pro-plaintiff advances in principal areas of tort law. However, the insurance rationale is also the source of great controversy. Critics charge that liability rules deliberately set to maximize plaintiffs' access to insurance funds have corrupted the system, causing insurance costs to spiral upward uncontrollably. Considering the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of the current debate, Rahdert develops a modified version of the insurance rationale that can become a tool for evaluating future tort reform proposals.
The European Enlightenment in the latter half of the eighteenth century heralded a grave conflict between theological and scientific modes of thought, starkly revealing the ancient tensions between spiritual knowledge and rationalism. Yet there was another, lesser-known movement during this time---a "covert" Enlightenment---that sought to bring fresh perspectives on the soul, and by extension, on the human mind and on consciousness. This work examines the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg and Anton Mesmer on the budding movement toward psychology in the late-eighteenth century and also spiritualism and millennialism in the nineteenth century.
An in-depth analysis of why COVID-19 warnings failed and how to avert the next disaster
Epidemiologists and national security agencies warned for years about the potential for a deadly pandemic, but in the end global surveillance and warning systems were not enough to avert the COVID-19 disaster. In The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure, Erik J. Dahl demonstrates that understanding how intelligence warnings work—and how they fail—shows why the years of predictions were not enough.
In the first in-depth analysis of the topic, Dahl examines the roles that both traditional intelligence services and medical intelligence and surveillance systems play in providing advance warning against public health threats—and how these systems must be improved for the future. For intelligence to effectively mitigate threats, specific, tactical-level warnings must be collected and shared in real time with receptive decision makers who will take appropriate action. Dahl shows how a combination of late and insufficient warnings about COVID-19, the Trump administration’s political aversion to scientific advice, and decentralized public health systems all exacerbated the pandemic in the United States. Dahl’s analysis draws parallels to other warning failures that preceded major catastrophes from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, placing current events in context.
The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure is a wake-up call for the United States and the international community to improve their national security, medical, and public health intelligence systems and capabilities.
Cow People records the fading memories of a bygone Texas, the reminiscences of the cow people themselves. These are the Texans of the don't-fence-me-in era, their faces pinched by years of squinting into the desert glare, tanned by the sun and coarsened by the dust of the Chisholm Trail. Their stories are often raucous but just as often quiet as hot plains under a pale Texan sky.
A native Texan, J. Frank Dobie had an inborn knowledge of the men and customs of the trail camps. Cattlemen were as various as the country was big. Ab Blocker was a tall, quiet man who belonged totally to the cattle and the silent plains. But big men often had big lungs. "Shanghai Pierce was the loudest man in the country. He would sit at one end of a day coach and in normal voice hold conversation with some man at the other end of the coach, who of course had to yell, while the train was clanking along. He knew everybody, yelled at everybody he saw."
Texas bred tall men and taller stories. There was Findlay Simpson, who played havoc with fact but whiled away the drivers' long, lonely evenings with his tales. Old Findlay told of a country so wet that it bogged down the shadow of a buzzard, and of cattle that went into hibernation during rugged winters; he once spun yarns for three days straight, outlasting his listeners in a marathon of endurance.
All real cow people—from the cattle drivers to the cattle owners—lived by a simple code based on the individual's integrity. Bothering anyone else's poke or business uninvited was strictly forbidden, and enforcement of this unwritten law was as easy as pulling a trigger. Honesty was taken for granted, and a cowman's name on a check made it negotiable currency.
Yet Texas had its "bad guys"—the crooks, the thieves, even the tightwads. "A world big enough to hold a rattlesnake and a purty woman is big enough for all kinds of people," wrote Dobie. This is the world whose vast and various population the reader will find in Cow People.
Anthony W. Ivins (1852-1934) migrated to St. George, Utah, at age nine where he later became an influential civic and ecclesiastical leader. He married Elizabeth A. Snow, daughter of apostle Erastus F. Snow. Ivins was a first cousin of Heber J. Grant, and served as his counselor while Grant was LDS president. Ivins filled several Mormon missions to Mexico and presided as the Juarez, Mexico stake president where he performed post-manifesto marriages. He was appointed by the U.S. government as an Indian agent, and was warmly acquainted with Porfirio Diaz, president of Mexico. Involved in politics in St. George, Ivins held aspirations of running as a Democrat for governor of Utah. In 1907, he was ordained an apostle and later advanced to the First Presidency. Tone, as he called himself, was an accomplished horseman who worked with, and invested in, livestock. He was a game-hunting cowboy who became a statesman for both his country and his expanding religious community.
Though in his correspondence Ivins expressed paramount concern for members of his family, he rarely mentions them in his journals. Rather, his diaries chronicle his business and religious observations including meetings with the Quorum of the Twelve and others. He records meetings of the apostles where decisions were made to remove Church leaders from office who had entered into polygamy after 1904, and details the Church’s dealings with the Mexican government to safeguard the Mormon colonists. There are also discussions where doctrinal principles were clarified. For example, in 1912, Ivins reported that President Joseph F. Smith addressed Brigham Young’s Adam God teachings and affirmed that it was “not a doctrine of the Church.” Ivins clearly loved the ruggedness of outdoor life, as evidenced in his passion for hunting, but was also intrigued with the curiosities at the Utah State Fair, the entertaining showmanship of Buffalo Bill, and the refinement of the theater. Tragedy became commonplace as he recorded vigilante-like justice against Indians and Mexicans who were killed for stealing food, and witnessing the execution of John D. Lee, a once favored son of Mormonism. Appendices of Cowboy Apostle include Ivins Record Book of Marriage and an essay by Ivins son, H. Grant Ivins titled “Polygamy in Mexico as Practiced by the Mormon Church, 1895-1905.”
No president today is more controversial than Venezuela's Hugo Chávez Frías. Elected in a landslide in 1998, he promised a peaceful revolution. That peaceful dream became a nightmare when Chávez was overthrown in a coup d'état in 2002. Surprisingly, he was brought back to power by his supporters, mostly barrio dwellers, within forty-eight hours. Although Chávez continues to be dogged by controversy, he stays in power because of these supporters who see themselves as active participants in a democratic revolution.
As a former Catholic priest who has lived in Venezuela for the past twenty years and spent eight of those years in a cardboard-and-tin shack in one of Caracas' barrios, Charles Hardy is in a unique position to explain what is taking place. Cowboy in Caracas: A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution gives the reader insight into the Venezuelan reality, using an anecdotal presentation drawn from the writer's personal experiences.
The central figure in American mythology, the cowboy can be seen everywhere: in films, novels, advertisements, TV, sports, and music. Though his image holds little resemblance to the historical cowboy, it is important because it represents many qualities with which Americans identify, including bravery, honor, chivalry, and individualism.
Accounts by Joseph G. McCoy, Richard Irving Dodge, Charles A. Siringo, and many others detail the daily trials and tribulations of cowboy life on the southern Great Plains-particularly Texas, Indian Territory, and Kansas-from the 1860s to around 1900. And in a new Afterword, editor William W. Savage, Jr. discusses the directions the cowboy myth has taken in the past two decades, as well as the impact the "new Western history" and films such as Lonesome Dove have had on popular culture.
This edition contains a new preface and afterword by the author.
What can we learn from a high-country valley tucked into an isolated corner of Rocky Mountain National Park? In this pathbreaking book, Thomas Andrews offers a meditation on the environmental and historical pressures that have shaped and reshaped one small stretch of North America, from the last ice age to the advent of the Anthropocene and the latest controversies over climate change.
Large-scale historical approaches continue to make monumental contributions to our understanding of the past, Andrews writes. But they are incapable of revealing everything we need to know about the interconnected workings of nature and human history. Alongside native peoples, miners, homesteaders, tourists, and conservationists, Andrews considers elk, willows, gold, mountain pine beetles, and the Colorado River as vital historical subjects. Integrating evidence from several historical fields with insights from ecology, archaeology, geology, and wildlife biology, this work simultaneously invites scientists to take history seriously and prevails upon historians to give other ways of knowing the past the attention they deserve.
From the emergence and dispossession of the Nuche—“the People”—who for centuries adapted to a stubborn environment, to settlers intent on exploiting the land, to forest-destroying insect invasions and a warming climate that is pushing entire ecosystems to the brink of extinction, Coyote Valley underscores the value of deep drilling into local history for core relationships—to the land, climate, and other species—that complement broader truths. This book brings to the surface the critical lessons that only small and seemingly unimportant places on Earth can teach.
Al McGuire was the Mark Twain of college basketball. Never was there a figure in the game so quoted and so quotable, on sports and on the human condition. This book collects more than a hundred of McGuire’s most colorful quotations, plus photographs from his life and career, in a tribute that is funny, poignant, and brimming with his streetwise sagacity.
McGuire, a brash and fiery New Yorker who grew up working in his parents’ saloon, played a rough and tumble game of basketball at St. John’s University and briefly in the NBA before entering the coaching ranks. He reached the pinnacle of his profession and gained national fame at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where in thirteen seasons he compiled a 295-80 record, appeared in nine NCAA tournaments, and won eighty-one home games in a row. He was a fine coach who cared deeply about his players and was beloved by his teams and fans alike, but his flamboyance and his mouth sometimes got him into trouble. The end of his coaching career captivated the nation: McGuire wept on the bench as his Marquette Warriors won the national title.
McGuire then began a ground-breaking career in network broadcasting, adding a zest and unconventionality that the college game had never seen. His sometimes bizarre and always entertaining commentary kept viewers tuned in even after the outcome of a lopsided game was a foregone conclusion. When Al McGuire died of leukemia in 2001, the sports world lost a true original.
Cracker Culture is a provocative study of social life in the Old South that probes the origin of cultural differences between the South and the North throughout American history. Among Scotch-Irish settlers the term “Cracker” initially designated a person who boasted, but in American usage the word has come to designate poor whites. McWhiney uses the term to define culture rather than to signify an economic condition. Although all poor whites were Crackers, not all Crackers were poor whites; both, however, were Southerners.
What do Jon Stewart, Freddy Krueger, Patch Adams, and George W. Bush have in common? As Paul Lewis shows in Cracking Up, they are all among the ranks of joke tellers who aim to do much more than simply amuse. Exploring topics that range from the sadistic mockery of Abu Ghraib prison guards to New Age platitudes about the healing power of laughter, from jokes used to ridicule the possibility of global climate change to the heartwarming performances of hospital clowns, Lewis demonstrates that over the past thirty years American humor has become increasingly purposeful and embattled.
Navigating this contentious world of controversial, manipulative, and disturbing laughter, Cracking Up argues that the good news about American humor in our time—that it is delightful, relaxing, and distracting—is also the bad news. In a culture that both enjoys and quarrels about jokes, humor expresses our most nurturing and hurtful impulses, informs and misinforms us, and exposes as well as covers up the shortcomings of our leaders. Wondering what’s so funny about a culture determined to laugh at problems it prefers not to face, Lewis reveals connections between such seemingly unrelated jokers as Norman Cousins, Hannibal Lecter, Rush Limbaugh, Garry Trudeau, Jay Leno, Ronald Reagan, Beavis and Butt-Head, and Bill Clinton. The result is a surprising, alarming, and at times hilarious argument that will appeal to anyone interested in the ways humor is changing our cultural and political landscapes.
The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed to Be forms an extended consideration not only of Harryette Mullen’s own work, methods, and interests as a poet, but also of issues of central importance to African American poetry and language, women’s voices, and the future of poetry.
Together, these essays and interviews highlight the impulses and influences that drive Mullen’s work as a poet and thinker, and suggest unique possibilities for the future of poetic language and its role as an instrument of identity and power.
Cradle of Freedom puts a human face on the story of the black American struggle for equality in Alabama during the 1960s. While exceptional leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, and others rose up from the ranks and carved their places in history, the burden of the movement was not carried by them alone. It was fueled by the commitment and hard work of thousands of everyday people who decided that the time had come to take a stand.
Cradle of Freedom is tied to the chronology of pivotal events occurring in Alabama the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, Bloody Sunday, and the Black Power movement in the Black Belt. Gaillard artfully interweaves fresh stories of ordinary people with the familiar ones of the civil rights icons. We learn about the ministers and lawyers, both black and white, who aided the movement in distinct ways at key points. We meet Vernon Johns, King's predecessor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, who first suggested boycotting the buses and who wrote later, "It is a heart strangely un-Christian that cannot thrill with joy when the least of men begin to pull in the direction of the stars." We hear from John Hulett who tells how terror of lynching forced him down into ditches whenever headlights appeared on a night road. We see the Edmund Pettus Bridge beatings from the perspective of marcher JoAnne Bland, who was only a child at the time. We learn of E. D. Nixon, a Pullman porter who helped organize the bus boycott and who later choked with emotion when, for the first time in his life, a white man extended his hand in greeting to him on a public street.
How these ordinary people rose to the challenges of an unfair system with a will and determination that changed their times forever is a fascinating and extraordinary story that Gaillard tells with his hallmark talent. Cradle of Freedom unfolds with the dramatic flow of a novel, yet it is based on meticulous research. With authority and grace, Gaillard explains how the southern state deemed the Cradle of the Confederacy became with great struggle, some loss, and much hope the Cradle of Freedom.
Reading texts by John Adams, Thomas Paine, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Augusta J. Evans, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, William James, José Martí, W. E. B. Du Bois, and others, Levander traces the child as it figures in writing about several defining events for the United States. Among these are the Revolutionary War, the U.S.-Mexican War, the Civil War, and the U.S. expulsion of Spain from the Caribbean and Cuba. She charts how the child crystallized the concept of self—a self who could affiliate with the nation—in the early national period, and then follows the child through the rise of a school of American psychology and the period of imperialism. Demonstrating that textual representations of the child have been a potent force in shaping public opinion about race, slavery, exceptionalism, and imperialism, Cradle of Liberty shows how a powerful racial logic pervades structures of liberal democracy in the United States.
Ever since Dolly, the Scottish lamb, tottered on wobbly legs into our consciousness-followed swiftly by other animals: first, mice; then pigs that may provide human transplants, and even an ordinary house cat-thoughts have flown to the cloning of human beings. Legislators rushed to propose a ban on a technique that remains highly hypothetical, although some independent researchers have announced their determination to pursue the possibilities. Political scientist and well-known expert on reproductive issues, Andrea L. Bonnicksen examines the political reaction to this new-born science and the efforts to construct cloning policy. She also looks at issues that relate to stem cell research, its even newer sibling, and poses a key question:
How does the response to Dolly guide us as we manage innovative reproductive technologies in the future?
Various legislative endeavors and the efforts by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee cloning, as well as policy models related to federal funding, individual state laws, and programs abroad, inform Bonnicksen's identification of four types of cloning policy. She analyzes in depth the roles of diverse interest groups as each struggle to become the dominant voice in the decision-making process. With skill and insight, she clears the mists from a complicated topic, and addresses the legal, political, and ethical arguments that are not likely to disappear from the national conversation or debates any time soon.
Craft is a diverse, democratic art form practiced by Americans of every gender, age, ethnicity, and class. Crafting America traces this expansive range of skilled making in a variety of forms, from ceramics and wood to performance costume and community-based practice. In exploring the intertwining of craft and American experience, this volume reveals how artists leverage their craft to realize the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Accompanying an exhibition of the same title organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Crafting America features contributions from scholars that illuminate craft’s relationship to ritual and memory, personal independence, abstraction, and Native American histories. The richly illustrated catalog section—with more than a hundred color images accompanied by lively commentary—presents a vivid picture of American craft over the past eight decades, offering fresh insights on the relationships between objects.
Building upon recent advances in craft scholarship and encouraging more inclusive narratives, Crafting America presents a bold statement on the vital role of craft within the broader context of American art and identity.
Winner of the 2013 Award of Merit by the American Association for State and Local History Leadership in History awards committee
Winner of the 2013 New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, Author Awards, Non-fiction Popular Category
One of the oldest towns in New Jersey, Cranbury has a long and noteworthy history that is in part distinctive and in part broadly representative of larger themes in the development of the state and the nation. In this beautifully illustrated book sponsored by Cranbury Landmarks, Inc., historian John Whiteclay Chambers II links the narrative of this remarkable place to contemporary debates about suburbanization and land-use planning.
Founded in 1697 and soon featuring an inn, a gristmill, and a church, the village prospered due to its strategic location on important transportation routes between New York and Philadelphia and its fertile, productive farmland. David Brainerd, a famous and controversial young missionary, came there to preach to the Lenape Indians. In 1778, George Washington and his army stayed there on their way to the Battle of Monmouth. In the nineteenth century, roadways, railroads, and turnpikes spurred the town’s commerce and agriculture. Yet unlike many old agricultural centers transformed by suburbanization in the twentieth century, Cranbury has retained its picturesque, small-town image and much of its charm.
Cranbury has the feel of a well-preserved nineteenth-century village, remarkable for its intact and cohesive domestic and commercial architecture—a status recognized when it was placed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. In the last several decades, an active citizenry has innovatively linked the historic preservation of the town center with the maintenance of adjoining farmland, stream corridors, and wildlife habitats. How Cranbury preserved much of its character while accommodating economic growth provides a central theme in this book. Preserving the best of the past while astutely meeting the challenges of the present, Cranbury’s history offers an inspiration for active civic participation, a model for enlightened development, and an engaging American story.
A project of Cranbury Landmarks, Inc.
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