A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY87 start with W start with W
An engaging collection of essays focusing on American veterans.
War and American Life is a book of essays and reflections by celebrated historian and former marine James Wright, who has been active as an advocate, teacher, and scholar. Featuring both previously published pieces and new essays, the book considers veterans in America and the ways in which our society needs better to understand who they are and what they have done on the nation’s behalf—and the responsibilities that follow this recognition.
He witnessed the gradual transformation of the civil rights movement from a mild campaign for 'British Democracy' to an all-out military assault on the British state. This new edition updates the last edition (1980) with an additional introduction covering the last thirteen years.
War and an Irish Town is a trenchant, powerful narrative which reaches an unequivocal conclusion: 'There can be no internal solution to the Northern Ireland problem. The existence of the northern state is the problem'.
Combining different disciplinary perspectives, War and Diplomacy argues that the key events that portended the beginning of the end of the multiethnic Ottoman Empire were the The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin. The essays in this volume analyze how the war and the treaty permanently transformed the political landscape both in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. The treaty marked the end of Ottoman hegemony in the Balkans by formally recognizing the independence or de facto sovereignty of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, and the autonomy of Bulgaria.
By introducing the unitary nation-state as the new organizing concept, the treaty planted the seeds of future conflict, from the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and the First World War to the recent civil wars and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia. The magnitude of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Russia—and eventually by the other great powers—and the human, material, and territorial losses that followed proved fatal to the project of Muslim liberal reform and modernization that the Ottoman state had launched in the middle of the 19th century.
War and Diplomacy offers the first comparative examination of the treaty and its socio-political implications for the Balkans and the Caucasus by utilizing the theoretical tools and approaches of political science, sociology, history, and international relations. Representing the latest scholarship in the field of study, this volume documents the proceedings of a conference on the Treaty of Berlin that was held at the University of Utah in 2010. It provides an important contribution to understanding the historical background of these events.
War and Diplomacy documents the proceedings of the first of three conferences:
1878 Treaty of Berlin (in 2010)
Balkan Wars (in 2011)
World War I (in 2012)
Proceedings of the final two conferences will also be published by the University of Utah Press.
A massive undertaking, the antimalarial program was to biomedical research what the Manhattan Project was to the physical sciences.
A volume in the Critical Issues in Health and Medicine series, edited by Rima D. Apple and Janet Golden.
In this provocative study, Paul Atwood attempts to show Americans that their history is one of constant wars of aggression and imperial expansion.
In his long teaching career, Atwood has found that most students know virtually nothing about America's involvement in the wars of the 20th century, let alone those prior to World War I. War and Empire aims to correct this, clearly and persuasively explaining US actions in every major war since the declaration of independence. The book shows that, far from being dragged reluctantly into foreign entanglements, America's leaders have always picked its battles in order to increase their influence and power, with little regard for the American soldiers and 'enemy' civilians killed or made to suffer in the process.
This book is an eye-opening introduction to the American way of life for undergraduate students of American history, politics and international relations.
This volume examines the limits Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have set for the use of coercive violence. It probes the agreements and disagreements of these major religious traditions on pacifism (the abjurance of all force) and quietism (the avoidance of force unless certain stringent conditions are met).
The distinguished contributors examine the foundations for nonviolence in each religion, criticize the positions each religion has taken, address the inherent challenges nonviolence poses, and evaluate the difficulty of practicing nonviolence in a secular society. The concluding essay defines the common ground, isolates the points of conflict, and suggests avenues of further inquiry.
The most important contribution this volume makes is to demonstrate that no Western religious tradition provides a basis for the glorification of violence. Rather, each accepts warfare as a regretted necessity and sets strict limits on the use of force.
This work offers new insights for those interested in the ethics of warfare, peace studies, religious traditions, and international affairs.
This interdisciplinary volume stands as a critique of the standard discourse regarding the Balkan Wars and effectively questions many of the assumptions of prevailing modern nation-state histories, which have long privileged the ethno-religious dimensions present in the Balkans. The authors go to great lengths in demonstrating the fluidity of social, geographical, and cultural boundaries before 1912 and call into question the “nationalist watershed” notion that was artificially imposed by manipulative historiography and political machinations following the end of fighting in 1913.
War and Nationalism will be of interest to scholars looking to enrich their own understanding of an overshadowed historical event and will serve as a valuable contribution to courses on Ottoman and European history.
How do Asian states navigate the complex terrain between international legal obligations and strategic national interests in matters of war and peace? What justifications are invoked to wage war, and what are the legal frameworks used to restore peace? Do bilateral settlements comply with and support the development of international law, or do they undermine it? This comprehensive study examines conflict and peace-building across Asia since 1945, providing a distinctly Asian perspective on international law and relations.
War and Peace in Asia considers how Asian history, including the region's experience of colonialism, shapes ideas of international order. Kriangsak Kittichaisaree considers rules against the threat or use of force; management of sovereignty disputes over borders and territories; insurgencies or conflicts arising from groups seeking self-determination; annexations of one State’s territory by another State; conflicts under the guise of “humanitarian intervention” and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine; self-defense against terrorists and non-state actors who are driven by ideology; and armed intervention by invitation. The book offers scholars, policymakers, and practitioners crucial insights into conflict dynamics in this geopolitically volatile region.
In order to understand the history of twentieth-century Europe, we must first appreciate and accept how different societies and cultures remember their national conflicts. We must also be aware of the ways that those memories evolve over time. In War and Public Memory: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Europe, Messenger outlines the relevant history of war and its impact on different European nations and assesses how and where the memory of these conflicts emerges in political and public discourse and in the public sphere and public spaces of Europe.
The case studies presented emphasize the major wars fought on European soil as well as the violence perpetrated against civilian populations. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of the conflict and then proceeds with a study of how memory of that struggle has entered into public consciousness in different national societies. The focus throughout is on collective social, cultural, and public memory, and in particular how memory has emerged in public spaces throughout Europe, such as parks, museums, and memorial sites.
Messenger discusses memories of the First World War for both the victors and the vanquished as well as their successor states. Other events discussed include the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent conflicts in the former Soviet Union, the Armenian genocide, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the legacy of the civil war in Spain, Germanys reckoning with its Nazi past, and the memory of occupation and the Holocaust in France and Poland.
Warfare in Europe contributed to the development of the modern state. In response to external conflict, state leaders raised armies and defended borders. The centralization of power, the development of bureaucracies, and the integration of economies all maximized revenue to support war. But how does a persistent external threat affect the development of a strong state? The “Garrison State” hypothesis argues that states that face a severe security threat will become autocracies. Conversely, the “Extraction School,” argues that warfare indirectly promotes the development of democratic institutions.
Execution of large-scale war requires the mobilization of resource and usually reluctant populations. In most cases, leaders must extend economic or political rights in exchange for resolving the crisis. Large-scale warfare thus expands political participation in the long run. The authors use empirical statistical modeling to show that war decreases rights in the short term, but the longer and bigger a war gets, the rights of the citizenry expand with the conflict. The authors test this argument through historical case studies—Imperial Russia, Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, African Americans in World War I and II, and the Tirailleurs Senegalese in World War I—through the use of large-N statistical studies—Europe 1900–50 and Global 1893–2011—and survey data. The results identify when, where, and how war can lead to the expansion of political rights.
Written from a Zambian perspective, this leading study shows how the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) organized and deployed human, military, and natural resources during and after the Second World War.
The Second World War brought unprecedented pressures to bear on Britain’s empire, which then included colonial Northern Rhodesia. Through new archival materials and oral histories, War and Society in Colonial Zambia tells—from an African perspective—the story of how the colony organized its human and natural resources on behalf of the imperial government.
Alfred Tembo first examines government propaganda and recruitment of personnel for the Northern Rhodesia Regiment, which served in East Africa, Palestine, Ceylon, Burma, and India. Later, Zambia’s economic contribution to the Allied war effort would foreground the central importance of the colony’s mining industry as well as its role as supplier of rubber and beeswax following the fall of the Southeast Asian colonies to the Japanese in early 1942. Finally, Tembo presents archival and oral evidence about life on the home front, including the social impact of wartime commodity shortages, difficulties posed by incoming Polish refugees, and the more interventionist forms of colonial governance that these circumstances engendered.
Success in war ultimately depends on the consolidation of political order. Nadia Schadlow argues that the steps needed to consolidate a new political order are not separate from war. They are instead an essential component of war and victory.
The challenge of governance operations did not start with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Army’s involvement in the political and economic reconstruction of states has been central to all its armed conflicts from large-scale conventional wars to so-called irregular or counterinsurgency wars. Yet, US policymakers and military leaders have failed to institutionalize lessons on how to consolidate combat gains into desired political outcomes. War and the Art of Governance examines fifteen historical cases of US Army military interventions, from the Mexican War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Improving future outcomes will require US policymakers and military leaders to accept that plans, timelines, and resources must be shaped to reflect this reality before they intervene in a conflict, not after things go wrong.
Schadlow provides clear lessons for students and scholars of security studies and military history, as well as for policymakers and the military personnel who will be involved in the next foreign intervention.
For centuries liberal minded men have been horrified by the pain and waste of war. From Erasmus, who saw war above all as a product of stupidity, to the Marxists who see it as a matter of class conflict, they have produced social theories to account for its occurrence and have tried to devise means to end it.
Their prescriptions have been various. The central view of the Enlightenment was that wars would end when the ambitions of princes could be curbed by the sanity of ordinary men. At first the commercial classes seemed to be the new force that would produce this happy state, but by the end of the nineteenth century they themselves (the ‘capitalists’) were being stigmatized as the instigators of war.
Similarly, the nineteenth-century liberals at first believed that the rise of the new independent nation-states of Europe would lead to a permanent peace as the wishes of the masses (naturally peace-loving) were able to express themselves. Again, the supposed agents of peace were soon seen as a prime cause of wars.
Despite these contradictions there have been certain continuing themes in the search for a means to end wars, and one of the most enlightening things in this book is they way in which it is possible to see how these themes recur in subtly different forms in different periods of history. Professor Howard traces them from the renaissance to our own time, through the social, political and intellectual groups that gave birth to them.
Throughout the whole story runs the continuing contrast between those who hoped to find a single cause for the disease, leading to a lasting cure, and those who understood that, in Professor Howard’s words, ‘this was a task which needs to be tackled afresh every day of our lives’...
War and the State exposes the invalid arguments employed in the unproductive debate about Realism among international relations scholars, as well as the common fallacy of sharply distinguishing between conflict among states and conflict within them. As R. Harrison Wagner demonstrates, any understanding of international politics must be part of a more general study of the relationship between political order and organized violence everywhere--as it was in the intellectual tradition from which modern-day Realism was derived. War and the State draws on the insights from Wagner's distinguished career to create an elegantly crafted essay accessible to both students and scholars.
"Possibly the most important book on international relations theory since Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics."
---James Fearon, Stanford University
"This is one of the best books on international relations theory I have read in a very long time. It is required reading for any student of modern IR theory. Once again, Wagner has shown himself to be one of the clearest thinkers in the field today."
---Robert Powell, Robson Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
"Painting on a vast canvas, and tackling and integrating topics such as state formation, domestic politics, and international conflict, R. Harrison Wagner's War and the State offers many brilliant insights into the nature of international relations and international conflict. War and the State compellingly highlights the importance of constructing rigorous and valid theorizing and sets a high standard for all students of international relations. The field has much to gain if scholars follow the trail blazed by Wagner in this book."
---Hein Goemans, University of Rochester
R. Harrison Wagner is Professor of Government at the University of Texas.
This is a lively history of specific social, political, ad economic changes that all-out war brought to the home front in mid-America. Drawing from letters to the editor in local and state papers, from editorials, from personal interviews, and from the manuscript collections left by state political leaders, Calvin Smith brings into focus the impact of wartime not only upon agricultural and business economics but also upon particular social groups and the lives of individuals.
The war generated the beginnings of a rights revolution in black communities throughout the nation. The author takes a careful look at the resulting strain on relations between the state’s black and white citizens. No less important is the consideration of Japanese Americans from the West Coast who were relocated to camps in Arkansas, and of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who would not take part in the war effort either on the battlefield or at home.
War and Wartime Changes illuminates a fascinating and sometimes embarrassing segment of history which until now has not been presented in a single, cohesive work. The author details the unique experiences Arkansas had at this time as well as the patriotism its citizens felt for their country.
Here is the story for the historian, for every student of society and its ways, and for anyone who wants to understand or remember the patriotic fervor of Americans during World War II. Calvin Smith has created, with persistent and imaginative research, a rare admixture of nostalgia and solid scholarship.
In the three years, eight months, and twenty days of the Khmer Rouge’s deadly reign over Cambodia, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished as a result of forced labor, execution, starvation, and disease. Despite the passage of more than thirty years, two regime shifts, and a contested U.N. intervention, only one former Khmer Rouge official has been successfully tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity in an international court of law to date. It is against this background of war, genocide, and denied justice that Cathy J. Schlund-Vials explores the work of 1.5-generation Cambodian American artists and writers.
Drawing on what James Young labels “memory work”—the collected articulation of large-scale human loss—War, Genocide, and Justice investigates the remembrance work of Cambodian American cultural producers through film, memoir, and music. Schlund-Vials includes interviews with artists such as Anida Yoeu Ali, praCh Ly, Sambath Hy, and Socheata Poeuv. Alongside the enduring legacy of the Killing Fields and post-9/11 deportations of Cambodian American youth, artists potently reimagine alternative sites for memorialization, reclamation, and justice. Traversing borders, these artists generate forms of genocidal remembrance that combat amnesic politics and revise citizenship practices in the United States and Cambodia.
Engaged in politicized acts of resistance, individually produced and communally consumed, Cambodian American memory work represents a significant and previously unexamined site of Asian American critique.
"This account will be welcome to a large circle of readers. . . . The arduous nature of these campaigns deserves to be far more widely known, and this is just the book for the purpose--short, clear, and easy to read."--Journal of the African Society
The largest battles of World War I were fought in Europe, and it is there where most critical studies focus. The fate of the far-flung colonies of Germany, however, are what gave the war its global scope, with campaigns reaching from China to New Guinea and East to West Africa. While there are detailed accounts of most of these campaigns, The War in Africa and the Far East, 1914-17 is unique in providing a concise history of the entire series of military events in Africa and Asia, giving the reader a better idea of the relationship and chronology of these wide-ranging events. While Germany was stripped of all its overseas colonies, the change in power had unintended consequences, most importantly the rise of Japan in the Pacific, where former German colonies now stood at the territorial boundary between Japan and the United States.
Waged by Allied troops from Britain, Kenya, Zambia, Portugal, Japan, India, Netherlands, and other countries and led by such personalities as General Jan Christian Smuts, the theater of operations crossed modern-day Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, New Guinea, Qingdau, the Bismarck Archipelago, and other Pacific Island chains. Originally published in 1918 using official dispatches and other sources, and presented here for the first time in paperback, completely retypeset and with the original maps and additional photographs, The War in Africa and the Far East is a compact overview of an important aspect of the First World War.
World War II posed a crisis for American culture: to defeat the enemy, Americans had to unite across the class, racial and ethnic boundaries that had long divided them. Exploring government censorship of war photography, the revision of immigration laws, Hollywood moviemaking, swing music, and popular magazines, these essays reveal the creation of a new national identity that was pluralistic, but also controlled and sanitized. Concentrating on the home front and the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Americans, the contributors give us a rich portrayal of family life, sexuality, cultural images, and working-class life in addition to detailed consideration of African Americans, Latinos, and women who lived through the unsettling and rapidly altered circumstances of wartime America.
War in Pieces considers media representations of the first phase of the “War on Terror,” set between 2001 and 2013. The book argues that the central figures around which narratives of the conflicts cohered—the war journalist, the active-duty service member, the veteran, and the military family—served to mask the loss of the myth of a unified American national identity and embodied the negotiation of cultural anxieties. Offering a theory of narrative figuration that draws into conversation repetitions and differences across media forms (fiction and nonfiction films, television shows, and online videos), this book breaks down how these figures contributed to a continued sense of unified national identity even as different audiences came away with divergent understandings. This book frames these questions in terms of how US media packaged the “War on Terror” for future cultural memory even as the conflicts continued.
A wide-ranging examination of the causes of war in Syria and the Middle East.
In War in Syria and the Middle East, Federico Manfredi Firmian uses historical, political, and economic lenses to examine how Syria’s civil war is part of a broad pattern of social breakdown increasingly prevalent across the Arab and Islamic worlds. This expansive book argues that many conflicts across the Middle East today are rooted in fundamental ideological divides that originated with European imperialism. In Syria, the iniquities of French rule gave way to the radicalism of the Arab Socialist Baʿth Party, which promised to dismantle imperial legacies and capitalist logics through nationalizations, land redistribution, and central planning.
Baʿthist Syria, however, ultimately failed to provide a viable alternative to capitalism. In fact, its failures, and the failures of other revolutionary regimes of socialist inspiration, provided an opening for armed Islamist movements to challenge both secular authoritarian rule and US foreign policies—ultimately leading to civil war. Combining a multidisciplinary approach with fieldwork, War in Syria and the Middle East argues for a global perspective on a pressing, ongoing conflict.
On the morning of September 8, 1756, a band of about three hundred volunteers of a newly created Pennsylvania militia led by Lt. Col. John Armstrong crept slowly through the western Pennsylvania brush. The night before they had reviewed a plan to quietly surround and attack the Lenape, or Delaware, Indian village of Kittanning. The Pennsylvanians had learned that several prominent Delaware who had led recent attacks on frontier settlements as well as a number of white prisoners were at the village. Seeking reprisal, Armstrong’s force successfully assaulted Kittanning, killing one of the Delaware they sought, but causing most to flee—along with their prisoners. Armstrong then ordered the village burned. The raid did not achieve all of its goals, but it did lead to the Indians relocating their villages further away from the frontier settlements. However, it was a major victory for those Pennsylvanians—including some Quaker legislators—who believed the colony must be able to defend itself from outside attack, whether from the French, Indians, or another colony.
In War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756, historian Brady J. Crytzer follows the two major threads that intertwined at Kittanning: the French and Indian War that began in the Pennsylvania frontier, and the bitter struggle between pacifist Quakers and those Quakers and others—most notably, Benjamin Franklin—who supported the need to take up arms. It was a transformational moment for the American colonies. Rather than having a large, pacifist Pennsylvania in the heart of British North America, the colony now joined the others in training soldiers for defense. Ironically, it would be Pennsylvania soldiers who, in the early days of the American Revolution, would be crucial to the survival of George Washington’s army.
The Last Major Combat for American Troops in Germany During the Final Days of World War II
By April 1945, the last German counteroffensive in the west had been defeated, the vaunted Siegfried Line was no more, the Rhine River had been crossed, and major German cities were being bombed relentlessly. The war in Europe appeared to be in its final stages. As American and British armies overran central Germany, the Russians were smashing their way from the east toward Berlin. Optimism reigned up and down the Allied lines. But as the American Army’s 100th Infantry Division pushed along the west bank of the Neckar River across from bomb-shattered Heilbronn, resistance unexpectedly stiffened. In that 700-year-old city, a major industrial and communications center still operating for the benefit of the Nazi war machine, Hitler’s subordinates had battened down for a last-ditch stand. For sheer ferocity, it would exceed anything the now-battle-hardened Americans had experienced. Here, American troops faced a grueling campaign of house-to-house fighting, with Hitler Youth, Volkssturm militia, and an SS division attempting to stop the American advance at this critical sector of the European theater. Having been repeatedly targeted by Alllied aircraft, the city resembled a vast, Hellish ruin, and as American soldiers inched their way forward, they encountered booby traps, withering sniper fire, deadly Panzerfaust rounds, and a fanatical enemy. The nine-day battle for Heilbronn would be the last major combat for American troops in Europe. Within three weeks of their securing the city, Hitler would be dead and Germany defeated.
In War in the Ruins: The American Army’s Final Battle Against Nazi Germany, Edward G. Longacre recounts this neglected but essential chapter in the history of World War II, describing the 100th Division’s swift but grueling advance through the Vosges Mountains, their Rhine River crossing, the assault on the historic Maginot Line, and the ominous approach to Heilbronn. The author then describes the entire bitter battle and its aftermath, using private letters, journals, German and American action reports, and other primary source material, to establish War in the Ruins as an essential volume in the history of World War II in Europe.
Originally published in German as Die Gesellschaft der Uberlebenden, The War in Their Minds examines hitherto unused source material—psychiatric medical files of soldiers—to make clear how difficult it was for the soldiers and their families to readjust to normal, everyday life. Goltermann allows these testimonies of violence, guilt, justification, and helplessness speak for themselves and sensitively explores how the pension claims of returning soldiers were to compete with the claims of the Holocaust victims to compensation.
This collective work analyzes the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, providing a coherent picture of Ukraine and Eastern Europe in the period 2013–2020. Giving voice to different social groups, scholarly communities and agencies relevant to Ukraine’s recent history, The War in Ukraine's Donbas goes beyond simplistic media interpretations that limit the analysis to Vladimir Putin and Russian aims to annex Ukraine. Instead, the authors identify the deeper roots linked to the autonomy and history of Donbas as a region. The contributions explore local society and traditions and the alienation from Ukraine caused by the events of Euromaidan, which saw the removal of the Donetsk-based president Viktor Yanukovych. Other chapters address the refugee crisis, the Minsk Accords in 2014 and the impact of the new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his efforts to bring the war to an end by negotiations among Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany.
The book concludes with four proposals for a durable peace in Donbas: territorial power-sharing; the conversion of rebels into legitimate political parties; amnesty for all participants of the armed conflict; and a transitional period of several years until political institutions are fully re-established.
The authors find such well-known theories as the balance of power and collective security systems inadequate to explain how conflict erupts in the international system. Their rigorous empirical analysis proves that the power-transition theory, hinging on economic, social, and political growth, is more accurate; it is the differential rate of growth of the two most powerful nations in the system—the dominant nation and the challenger—that destabilizes all members and precipitates world wars.
Predictions of who will win or lose a war, the authors find, depend not only on the power potential of a nation but on the capability of its political systems to mobilize its resources—the "political capacity indicator." After examining the aftermath of major conflicts, the authors identify national growth as the determining factor in a nation's recovery. With victory, national capabilities may increase or decrease; with defeat, losses can be enormous. Unexpectedly, however, in less than two decades, losers make up for their losses and all combatants find themselves where they would have been had no war occurred.
Finally, the authors address the question of nuclear arsenals. They find that these arsenals do not make the difference that is usually assumed. Nuclear weapons have not changed the structure of power on which international politics rests. Nor does the behavior of participants in nuclear confrontation meet the expectations set out in deterrence theory.
Written by Nobel Peace prize winner and former nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat, who was involved in the creation of the first atom bomb, and biologist/ psychologist Robert Hinde, War No More provides expert insight into the nature of modern warfare - including weapons of mass destruction. Examining the key factors that contribute to conflict, the authors explain how best to approach a peaceful future.
If war is ever to be eliminated, we must address key issues such as the gap between rich and poor; have fully effective arms controls, and above all we must have better education. The authors emphasise the United Nations - as well as NGOs, religious groups, and grassroots movements - also have important parts to play.
"A balanced analysis of tactics and strategy, this book also summarizes succinctly and clearly recent scholarship on causes and describes briefly the war's military, economic, and political consequences. Coles has surveyed thoroughly the existing literature but arrives at a number of independent judgments. It is the best single-volume account of the war in all its aspects. In recounting sea battles, Coles puts aside the patriotic blinders that have for so long prevented a sensible understanding of American capabilities and strategic necessities; thus American naval victories are put in a proper perspective. And in dealing with land engagements, he has shunned the mocking and amused attitude which has so often passed for historical judgment. Undergraduates will be stimulated by the hints of modern parallels and will find useful the excellent annotated bibliography and simple maps."—Choice
"A balanced analysis of tactics and strategy, this book also summarizes succinctly and clearly recent scholarship on causes and describes briefly the war's military, economic, and political consequences. Coles has surveyed thoroughly the existing literature but arrives at a number of independent judgments. It is the best single-volume account of the war in all its aspects. In recounting sea battles, Coles puts aside the patriotic blinders that have for so long prevented a sensible understanding of American capabilities and strategic necessities; thus American naval victories are put in a proper perspective. And in dealing with land engagements, he has shunned the mocking and amused attitude which has so often passed for historical judgment. Undergraduates will be stimulated by the hints of modern parallels and will find useful the excellent annotated bibliography and simple maps."—Choice
Book-of-the-Month Club and History Book Club selections and received one of the two 1990 "Best Book Awards" from the American Military Institute.
This abridged edition of Donald R. Hickey's comprehensive and authoritative The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict has been thoroughly revised for the 200th anniversary of the historic conflict. A myth-shattering study that will inform and entertain students and general readers alike, The War of 1812: A Short History explores the military, diplomatic, and domestic history of our second war with Great Britain, bringing the study up to date with recent scholarship on all aspects of the war, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
This engaging narrative history deftly illustrates the War of 1812 as it played out in the Old Northwest — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and bordering parts of Canada. From the stirrings of conflict in the area beginning as early as the 1760s, through the Battle of Tippecanoe, and to Michigan Territory’s role as a focal point in prewar preparation, the book examines the lead-up to the war before delving into key battles in the region. In this accessible text, Gilpin explores key figures, dates, and wartime developments, shedding considerable light on the strategic and logistical issues raised by the region’s unique geography, culture, economy, and political temperament. Battles covered include the Surrender of Detroit, the Siege of Fort Meigs, and the battles of River Raisin, Lake Erie, the Thames, and Mackinac Island.
The spring of 1812 found the young American republic on edge. The British Navy was impressing American seamen with impunity at an alarming rate while vicious attacks on frontier settlements by American Indians armed with British weapons had left a trail of fear and outrage. As calls for a military response increased, Kentucky, the first state west of the Appalachians, urged that only by defeating the British could the nation achieve security. The very thought conjured up embellished memories of the American Revolution, and once war was declared, many soldiers believed that the “Spirit of 76” would lead them to victory. But the conflict quickly transformed from a patriotic parade to a desperate attempt to survive against a major military power. While the War of 1812 is known mostly for later events, including the burning of Washington and the siege of Fort McHenry, much of the first two years of the war was fought in the west, with the British Army and their Indian allies nearly overrunning the Old Northwest and threatening the borders of the original colonies.
In The War of 1812 in the West: From Fort Detroit to New Orleans, David Kirkpatrick chronicles the near catastrophic loss of the Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois Territories, the bitter fight against both Tecumseh’s Confederation and the Creek Nation, and the slow recovery and ultimate victory of American forces—a large portion of which was supplied by Kentucky—from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Battles such as River Raisin, Thames River, Fort Meigs, and New Orleans are placed in context to show how they secured America’s frontier and opened territory to the west to new settlement following the war.
In The War of 1812 in Wisconsin, author Mary Elise Antoine brings a little-known corner of Wisconsin’s history to life. Prairie du Chien, located just above mouth of the Wisconsin River, was the key to trade on the upper Mississippi. Whoever controlled the prairie commanded the immense territory inhabited by thousands of American Indians—and the fur they traded. When war broke out between the United States and Great Britain in 1812, British and Americans fought to maintain the ever-shifting alliance of the tribes.
This is the story of the battle for the control of Prairie du Chien and the western country, which began many years before the three-day siege in July of 1814 for which the Battle of Prairie du Chien is named. It is also the tale of the people, Euro-American and Native, who lived in pre-territorial Wisconsin and how the contest for control of the region affected their lives and livelihoods. The outcome of the War of 1812 would determine what "manifest destiny" would mean to all who called these lands home.
Demonstrates the role of Beirut’s postwar graffiti and street art in transforming the cityscape and animating resistance.
Over the last two decades in Beirut, graffiti makers have engaged in a fierce “war of colors,” seeking to disrupt and transform the city’s physical and social spaces. In A War of Colors, Nadine Sinno examines how graffiti and street art have been used in postwar Beirut to comment on the rapidly changing social dynamics of the country and region. Analyzing how graffiti makers can reclaim and transform cityscapes that were damaged or monopolized by militias during the war, Sinno explores graffiti’s other roles, including forging civic engagement, commemorating cultural icons, protesting political corruption and environmental violence, and animating resistance. In addition, she argues that graffiti making can offer voices to those who are often marginalized, especially women and LGBTQ people. Copiously illustrated with images of graffiti and street art, A War of Colors is a visually captivating and thought-provoking journey through Beirut, where local and global discourses intersect on both scarred and polished walls in the city.
The War of My Generation is the first essay collection to focus specifically on how the terrorist attacks and their aftermath have shaped these new generations of Americans. Drawing from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and literary studies, the essays cover a wide range of topics, from graphic war images in the classroom to computer games designed to promote military recruitment to emails from parents in the combat zone. The collection considers what cultural factors and products have shaped young people's experience of the 9/11 attacks, the wars that have followed, and their experiences as emerging citizen-subjects in that moment. Revealing how young people understand the War on Terror—and how adults understand the way young people think—The War of My Generation offers groundbreaking research on catastrophic events still fresh in our minds.
This study by Phillip Eubanks challenges traditional accounts of metaphor and significantly expands theories of "conceptual" metaphor by examining Trade Is War metaphor as it occurs in concrete discourse.
Although scholarly interest in metaphor as an aesthetic, linguistic, and cognitive phenomenon has long endured, Eubanks is among the first to consider metaphor in its sociohistorical role. Questioning major accounts of metaphor from Aristotle to the present, Eubanks argues that metaphor is not just influenced by but actually is constituted by its concrete operation.
Far-reaching in its implications for our understanding of metaphor, Eubanks’s premise enables us to see metaphor as a sweeping rhetorical entity even as it accounts for the more localized operations of metaphor of interest to linguists, philosophers of language, and cognitive scientists. Providing a new model of metaphoric functioning, Eubanks reconsiders the most promising account of metaphor to date, the notion of "conceptual metaphor.”
Eubanks focuses on the conceptual metaphor Trade Is War—a metaphor found wherever people discuss business and commerce—to develop his rhetorical model of metaphor. He analyzes Trade Is War as it occurs in the print news media, on television discussion shows, in academic works, in popular nonfiction and novels, in historic economic commentary, and in focus group talk. While these examples do reveal a rich variety in the make-up of Trade Is War, much more than mere variety is at stake.
Trade Is War is implicated in an extended and rhetorically complex conversation with other metaphors and literal concepts: trade is peace, Trade Is a Game, Trade Is Friendship, Trade is a Journey, and Markets Are Containers. The recognition and analysis of this constituting conversation furthers a reevaluation theory. What also emerges, however, is a valuable portrait of the discourse of trade itself, a discourse that depends importantly upon a responsive interchange of metaphors.
Numerous biographies of Jefferson Davis have been penned; however, until now, there had been no substantive analysis of his public discourse as president of the Confederacy. R. Jarrod Atchison’s A War of Words uses concepts from rhetorical theory and public address to help answer a question that has intrigued scholars from a variety of disciplines since the collapse of the Confederacy: what role, if any, did Davis play in the collapse of Confederate nationalism?
Most discussions of Davis and nationalism focus on the military outcomes of his controversial wartime decisions. A War of Words focuses less on military outcomes and argues instead that, in the context of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis’s rhetorical leadership should have been responsible for articulating a vision for the nation—including the core tenets of its identity, the values the nation should hold dear, the principles it should never compromise, and the goals it should set for its future. Undoubtedly, Davis possessed the skills necessary to make a persuasive public argument. It is precisely because Davis’s oratory skills were so powerful that there is room to judge how he used them. In short, being a great orator is not synonymous with successful rhetorical leadership.
Atchison posits that Davis’s initial successes constrained his rhetorical options later in the war. A War of Words concludes that, in the end, Davis’s rhetorical leadership was a failure because he was unable to articulate a coherent Confederate identity in light of the sacrifices endured by the populace in order to sustain the war effort.
Anxieties about crime today have become a familiar route for the creation of new government agencies and the extension of state authority. It is important to remember the original "war on crime" in the 1930s-and the opportunities it afforded to New Dealers and established bureaucrats like J. Edgar Hoover-as scholars grapple with the ways states assert influence over populations, local authority, and party politics while they pursue goals such as reducing popular violence and protecting private property.
While laws prohibiting the production, sale and use of particular drugs are presented as politically neutral and objective, this collection reveals the racist impact of the War on Drugs across multiple continents and in numerous situations. From racialised drugs policing at festivals in the UK to the necropolitical wars in Juarez, Mexico and from the exchange of drug policing programs between the United States and Israel to the management of black bodies in Brazil, this collection proves that the regulation of drugs and race is an international, and intentional, disaster.
Pushing forward the debate and activism led by groups such as Black Lives Matter and calling for radical changes in drug policy legislation and prison reform, both nationally and internationally, this collection cuts deep and rings true for all people fighting racism today.
The public's understanding of human trafficking is comprised of terrible stories like these, which the media covers in dramatic, but usually short-lived bursts. The more complicated, long-term story of how policy on trafficking has evolved has been largely ignored. In The War on Human Trafficking, Anthony M. DeStefano covers a decade of reporting on the policy battles that have surrounded efforts to abolish such practices, helping readers to understand the forced labor of immigrants as a major global human rights story.
DeStefano details the events leading up to the creation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the federal law that first addressed the phenomenon of trafficking in persons. He assesses the effectiveness of the 2000 law and its progeny, showing the difficulties encountered by federal prosecutors in building criminal cases against traffickers. The book also describes the tensions created as the Bush Administration tried to use the trafficking laws to attack prostitution and shows how the American response to these criminal activities was impacted by the events of September 11th and the War in Iraq.
Parsing politics from practice, this important book gets beyond sensational stories of sexual servitude to show that human trafficking has a much broader scope and is inextricable from the powerful economic conditions that impel immigrants to put themselves at risk.
In The War on Slums in the Southwest, Robert Fairbanks provides compelling and probing case studies of economic problems and public housing plights in Albuquerque, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and San Antonio. He provides brief histories of each city--all of which expanded dynamically between 1935 and 1965--and how they responded to slums under the Housing Acts of 1937, 1949, and 1954.
Despite being a region where conservative politics has ruled, these Southwestern cities often handled population growth, urban planning, and economic development in ways that closely followed the national account of efforts to eliminate slums and provide public housing for the needy. The War on Slums in the Southwest therefore corrects some misconceptions about the role of slum clearance and public housing in this region as Fairbanks integrates urban policy into the larger understanding of federal and state-based housing policies.
Paul Rogers is one of the world's leading security experts. Since the 11 September attacks, he has been a regular guest on TV news channels throughout America and Britain, where he has offered expert advice on the real implications of 9/11 and Bush's 'war on terror'. His articles in newspapers around the world, and in the web journal Open Democracy, have become essential reading for many thousands of people, including government officials, senior military, heads of UN agencies, opinion formers, journalists and peace activists.
A War on Terror is Paul Roger's radical assessment of Bush's new policy, the way it has affected world security and the grave implications that it holds for future peace, not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. Moving from the war in Afghanistan and its aftermath to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the continuing development of al-Qaida and its associates through to the war on Iraq, Rogers presents a uniquely cogent analysis of these rapid and traumatic events.
In a world in which the US and other states of the Atlantic community are increasingly speaking a different language to that of the majority of the world, Paul Rogers offers a vital critical assessment of the language of dominance and control as 'the New American Century' unfolds.
For the US, in particular, the post-9/11 world is one in which it is essential to maintain firm control of international security, extending to pre-emptive military action. In this book, Rogers demonstrates how futile, mistaken and deeply counter-productive that belief is, and points the way to more effective routes to a more just and secure world.
A collective ethnography of grassroots mobilizations for community safety across the Silicon Valley
This is a narrative of struggle and solidarity and a collective toolkit for grassroots opposition to militarization, policing, and ongoing conditions of war in the current conjuncture of racial patriarchal capitalism. Grassroots researcher Annie Paradise presents here a collective ethnography of the mothers and community matriarchs whose children have been murdered by police across the San Francisco Bay Area as they develop and practice autonomous, creative forms of resistance.
The War on the Social Factory: The Struggle for Community Safety in the Silicon Valley maps local families’ struggles to reclaim their households and their communities—to create a social infrastructure of care, justice, and safety outside state- and market-determined modes of “security.” Practices such as sustained vigil, testimony, and the production and circulation of insurgent knowledges are shown here to be part of interconnected justice efforts to demilitarize and decarcerate communities in the face of the multiple forms of violence enacted under late racial patriarchal capitalism. Paradise examines the expanding carceral processes of enclosure, criminalization, dispossession, expropriation, and disposability that mark the neoliberal "security” regime across the Silicon Valley and offers counter-counterinsurgent strategies and practices of co-generative, dynamic resistance.
The development of an American wine ethos.
The history of wine is a tale of capitalist production and consumer experience, and early Americans embraced the idea of having their own wine culture. But many began to believe that excessive alcohol consumption had become a moral, ethical, economic, political, social, and health conundrum. The result was a national on-again, off-again relationship with the concept of an American wine culture.
Citizens struggled to build a wine culture patterned after their diasporic European custom of wine as a moderating beverage that was part of a healthy diet. Yet, as America grew, untold attempts to create a wine culture failed due to climate, pests, diseases, wars, and depressions, resulting in some people considering the nation an alcoholic republic. Thus began an anti-alcohol culture war aimed at restricting or prohibiting alcoholic beverages.
With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), a culture war started between wet and dry proponents. After the repeal of Prohibition, the decimated wine industry responded by forming the Wine Institute to rebrand wine’s role in American society, after which neoprohibitionists attempted to restrict alcohol availability and consumption. To confront these aggressive actions, the Wine Institute hired politically trained John A. De Luca to navigate the new attacks and pushed for rebranding wine as a cultural spirit with health benefits.
How did slavery and race impact American literature in the nineteenth century? In this ambitious book, Michael T. Gilmore argues that they were the carriers of linguistic restriction, and writers from Frederick Douglass to Stephen Crane wrestled with the demands for silence and circumspection that accompanied the antebellum fear of disunion and the postwar reconciliation between the North and South.
Proposing a radical new interpretation of nineteenth-century American literature, The War on Words examines struggles over permissible and impermissible utterance in works ranging from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” to Henry James’s The Bostonians. Combining historical knowledge with groundbreaking readings of some of the classic texts of the American past, The War on Words places Lincoln’s Cooper Union address in the same constellation as Margaret Fuller’s feminism and Thomas Dixon’s defense of lynching. Arguing that slavery and race exerted coercive pressure on freedom of expression, Gilmore offers here a transformative study that alters our understanding of nineteenth-century literary culture and its fraught engagement with the right to speak.
War, Peace, and Prosperity in the Name of God turns the focus on the “big three monotheisms”—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—to consider these questions. Chronicling the relatively rapid spread of the Abrahamic religions among the Old World, Murat Iyigun shows that societies that adhered to a monotheistic belief in that era lasted longer, suggesting that monotheism brought some sociopolitical advantages. While the inherent belief in one true god meant that these religious communities had sooner or later to contend with one another, Iyigun shows that differences among them were typically strong enough to trump disagreements within. The book concludes by documenting the long-term repercussions of these dynamics for the organization of societies and their politics in Europe and the Middle East.
This book is the first to analyze the institutions, successes, and failures of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the pro-Soviet regime that sought to dominate the country during the years of the Soviet military presence. Antonio Giustozzi explores the military, political, and social strategies of the predominantly urban and Marxist regime as it struggled—and ultimately failed—to win the support of a largely rural and Islamic population.
Drawing on many Soviet materials not previously used by Western writers, including unpublished Red Army documents and interviews with participants, Giustozzi provides valuable new insights into the cold war and the rise of Islamic revolt.
Analyzing poetry, photographs, video and video games the book illustrates the ways in which war was framed in these different historical contexts. It examines the cultural assumptions that influenced the reception of images of war and discusses how death and damage to bodies was made acceptable to the public. War Without Bodies aims to heighten awareness of how acceptance of war is coded into texts and how active resistance to such hidden messages can help prevent future unnecessary wars.
"The ancient Celts capture the modern imagination as do few other people of classical times. Naked barbarians charging the Roman legions, Druids performing sacrifices of unspeakable horror, women fighting beside their men and even leading armies—these, along with stunning works of art, are the images most of us call to mind when we think of the Celts," observes Philip Freeman. "And for the most part, these images are firmly based in the descriptions handed down to us by the Greek and Roman writers."
This book draws on the firsthand observations and early accounts of classical writers to piece together a detailed portrait of the ancient Celtic peoples of Europe and the British Isles. Philip Freeman groups the selections (ranging from short statements to longer treatises) by themes—war, feasting, poetry, religion, women, and the Western Isles. He also presents inscriptions written by the ancient Celts themselves. This wealth of material, introduced and translated by Freeman to be especially accessible to students and general readers, makes this book essential reading for everyone fascinated by the ancient Celts.
New perspectives on Israelite warfare for biblical studies, military studies, and social theory
Contributors investigate what constituted a symbol in war, what rituals were performed and their purpose, how symbols and rituals functioned in and between wars and battles, what effects symbols and rituals had on insiders and outsiders, what ways symbols and rituals functioned as instruments of war, and what roles rituals and symbols played in the production and use of texts.
Features:
- Thirteen essays examine war in textual, historical, and social contexts
- Texts from the Hebrew Bible are read in light of ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeology
- Interdisciplinary studies make use of contemporary ritual and social theory
Kelly addresses fundamental questions concerning the trinity of interrelationship between human nature, war, and the constitution of society: Is war a primordial and pervasive feature of human existence or a set of practices that arose at a certain time in our recent prehistoric past? Are there peaceful societies in which war is absent and, if so, what are they like and how do they differ from warlike societies? Do the critical differentiating features pertain to child-rearing practices, to modes of conflict resolution, to social and economic inequality, to resource competition, or to the constitution of social groups?
As the conclusions of such an inquiry are central to our conceptions of human nature, the book will interest a wide range of readers, from those curious about the origins of collective violence to those studying the roles social institutions play in society.
Raymond C. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Reports of sexual violence in armed conflict frequently appear in political discussions and news media, presenting a stark contrast to a long history of silence and nonrecognition. Conflict-related sexual violence has transitioned rapidly from a neglected human rights issue to an unambiguous security concern on the agendas of powerful states and the United Nations Security Council. Through interviews and primary-source evidence, Kerry F. Crawford investigates the reasons for this dramatic change and the implications of the securitization of sexual violence.
Views about wartime sexual violence began changing in the 1990s as a result of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and then accelerated in the 2000s. Three case studies—the United States' response to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1820 in 2008, and the development of the United Kingdom’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative—illustrate that use of the weapon of war frame does not represent pure co-optation by the security sector. Rather, well-placed advocates have used this frame to advance the antisexual violence agenda while simultaneously working to move beyond the frame’s constraints. This book is a groundbreaking account of the transformation of international efforts to end wartime sexual violence.
John Cross’s WHAT BLEAK ANGELS CARRIED YOUR BED opens in exile and st(r)ays there. The character Mathias, a trickster who opens this collection, wakes with a primal utterance and startled vision born of commotion. Bewildered by the noise of our culture, he finds brief glimpses of meaning in fleeting, slippery moments. Mathias navigates life in exile, exploring the depths of his situation through the beat of his song and stutter, which manifests in a deranging of language and finds a foothold in cosmic disorder. A “scavenger for armor” in a world of loss and wreckage, he feels the terror of existence while holding onto the promise of a “breath still audible at near dark.”
The second half of the book opens in the harsh light of a sun that “pushes down on our feet” and implores that we witness our world. In this brightness, Cross conjures shadows from his own memory and confronts a world where a president throws “his people to the wolves.” These poems move through the world in wonder, offering an elegiac hushed prayer to all that we are losing in a changing environment, to “the oriole ascending / the palo verde of bee vibration . . . & Mitchell’s satyr butterfly.”
WHAT BLEAK ANGELS CARRIED YOUR BED is the winner of the 2023 Omnidawn Poetry Open Contest, selected by Maw Shein Win.
What Nostalgia Was unearths that history. Thomas Dodman begins his story in Basel, where a nineteen-year-old medical student invented the new diagnosis, modeled on prevailing notions of melancholy. From there, Dodman traces its spread through the European republic of letters and into Napoleon's armies, as French soldiers far from home were diagnosed and treated for the disease. Nostalgia then gradually transformed from a medical term to a more expansive cultural concept, one that encompassed Romantic notions of the aesthetic pleasure of suffering. But the decisive shift toward its contemporary meaning occurred in the colonies, where Frenchmen worried about racial and cultural mixing came to view moderate homesickness as salutary. An afterword reflects on how the history of nostalgia can help us understand the transformations of the modern world, rounding out a surprising, fascinating tour through the history of a durable idea.
Adamczyk was a young Polish boy when he was deported with his mother and siblings from their comfortable home in Luck to Soviet Siberia in May of 1940. His father, a Polish Army officer, was taken prisoner by the Red Army and eventually became one of the victims of the Katyn massacre, in which tens of thousands of Polish officers were slain at the hands of the Soviet secret police. The family's separation and deportation in 1940 marked the beginning of a ten-year odyssey in which the family endured fierce living conditions, meager food rations, chronic displacement, and rampant disease, first in the Soviet Union and then in Iran, where Adamczyk's mother succumbed to exhaustion after mounting a harrowing escape from the Soviets. Wandering from country to country and living in refugee camps and the homes of strangers, Adamczyk struggled to survive and maintain his dignity amid the horrors of war.
When God Looked the Other Way is a memoir of a boyhood lived in unspeakable circumstances, a book that not only illuminates one of the darkest periods of European history but also traces the loss of innocence and the fight against despair that took root in one young boy. It is also a book that offers a stark picture of the unforgiving nature of Communism and its champions. Unflinching and poignant, When God Looked the Other Way will stand as a testament to the trials of a family during wartime and an intimate chronicle of episodes yet to receive their historical due.
“A finely wrought memoir of loss and survival.”—Publishers Weekly
“Adamczyk’s unpretentious prose is well-suited to capture that truly awful reality.” —Andrew Wachtel, Chicago Tribune Books
“Mr. Adamczyk writes heartfelt, straightforward prose. . . . This book sheds light on more than one forgotten episode of history.”—Gordon Haber, New York Sun
“One of the most remarkable World War II sagas I have ever read. It is history with a human face.”—Andrew Beichman, Washington Times
Both survivors of the Holocaust and those who were not there agree that it is impossible to tell what happened as the Nazi Final Solution was put into effect. No writing can adequately imagine the concentration camps, ghettos, and death camps. And that is precisely why writers must tell-and retell-what happened there.
In When Night Fell: An Anthology of Holocaust Short Stories, Linda Schermer Raphael and Marc Lee Raphael have collected twenty-six short stories that tell of the human toll of the Holocaust on those who survived its horrors, as well as later generations touched by its memory. The stories are framed by discussion of the current debate about who owns the Holocaust and who is entitled to speak about it.
Some of the stories included here are by internationally acclaimed authors. Others may be new to many readers. When Night Fell is a fitting memorial to this genocidal horror, putting eloquent voice to human endurance that is-almost-beyond words.
Already that same summer Melville had written Redburn, and he regarded the books as "two jobs, which I have done for money--being forced to it, as other men are to sawing wood." The reviewers were not as hard on White-Jacket as Melville himself was. The English liked its praise of British seamen. The Americans were more interested in Melville's attack on naval abuses, particularly flogging, and his advocacy of humanitarian causes. Soon Melville was acclaimed the best sea writer of the day.
Part autobiography, part epic fiction, White-Jacket remains a brilliantly imaginative social novel by one of the great writers of the sea. This text of the novel is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
Already that same summer Melville had written Redburn, and he regarded the books as "two jobs, which I have done for money--being forced to it, as other men are to sawing wood." The reviewers were not as hard on White-Jacket as Melville himself was. The English liked its praise of British seamen. The Americans were more interested in Melville's attack on naval abuses, particularly flogging, and his advocacy of humanitarian causes. Soon Melville was acclaimed the best sea writer of the day.
Part autobiography, part epic fiction, White-Jacket remains a brilliantly imaginative social novel by one of the great writers of the sea. This text of the novel is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
— from the Judge’s Citation by Kimiko Hahn
Why Misread a Cloud takes its name from clouds of ash and smoke in wartime which appear to the author as a “storm, blown over the sea.” Both an exploration of the mind’s ability to turn what is into something else, in order to survive, and the mind’s ability to resist the effects of psychosocial warfare—imposed by the military and the police. “Who wants you to be afraid” the poet’s friend asks as he “added sugar to his tea.” The realization this question brings enables the poet to explore forces that separate us from one another and ways we rise up within ourselves to move through fear toward love.
Our drug prohibition policy is hopeless, just as Prohibition, our alcohol prohibition policy, was before it. Today there are more drugs in our communities and at lower prices and higher strengths than ever before.
We have built large numbers of prisons, but they are overflowing with non-violent drug offenders. The huge profits made from drug sales are corrupting people and institutions here and abroad. And far from being protected by our drug prohibition policy, our children are being recruited by it to a lifestyle of drug use and drug selling.
Judge Gray’s book drives a stake through the heart of the War on Drugs. After documenting the wide-ranging harms caused by this failed policy, Judge Gray also gives us hope. We have viable options. The author evaluates these options, ranging from education and drug treatment to different strategies for taking the profit out of drug-dealing.
Many officials will not say publicly what they acknowledge privately about the failure of the War on Drugs. Politicians especially are afraid of not appearing "tough on drugs." But Judge Gray’s conclusions as a veteran trial judge and former federal prosecutor are reinforced by the testimonies of more than forty other judges nationwide.
Why does peace fail? More precisely, why do some countries that show every sign of having successfully emerged from civil war fall once again into armed conflict? What explains why peace "sticks" after some wars but not others?
In this illuminating study, Charles T. Call examines the factors behind fifteen cases of civil war recurrence in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Latin America. He argues that widely touted explanations of civil war—such as poverty, conflict over natural resources, and weak states—are far less important than political exclusion. Call’s study shows that inclusion of former opponents in postwar governance plays a decisive role in sustained peace.
Why Peace Fails ultimately suggests that the international community should resist the temptation to prematurely withdraw resources and peacekeepers after a transition from war. Instead, international actors must remain fully engaged with postwar elected governments, ensuring that they make room for former enemies.
Waller's explorations of role behavior, especially in his writings on marriage and education, shocked academia and are still provocative today. In his direct, perceptive, often cynical style, he penetrated the facades of the most respected social institutions. He made use of the case study method; many of Waller's case studies were lifted directly from his own experiences, particularly from the agonies of his own divorce and from the disappointments of his initial teaching experience. He also drew fresh insights from the personal experiences of his colleagues and students, hardly a traditional procedure.
This volume is the first unified presentation of Waller's writings, covering in depth his work on family, education, and war. It also includes his shorter, but equally vivid, discussions on social problems such as crime and on the conflict between insight and scientific method.
Since Waller's private life was so intimately bound to his public work, an understanding of his personal history reveals much about the development and dilemma of sociologists in the United States. In their Introduction editors Goode, Mitchell, and Furstenberg reconstruct the life of this complex American thinker.
William Washington began the war as a captain of Virginia Militia, was commissioned a junior officer in the Continental Infantry, and slowly rose to field command in the Continental Light Dragoons where he built one of the hardest hitting cavalry regiments to serve in the war. His chief adversary Lord Cornwallis commented, “There could be no more formidable antagonist in a charge, at the head of his cavalry, than Colonel William Washington.” Despite his connection to the commander-in-chief, he suffered his fair share of setbacks, and his relationships varied with not only his legendary cousin George, but many well-known figures of the Revolution including, Henry Lee, Casimir Pulaski, Nathanael Greene, and Daniel Morgan. Relying largely on firsthand accounts and period letters, in William Washington: American Light Dragoon: A Continental Cavalry Leader in the War of Independence, author and avid equestrian Daniel Murphy blends these primary sources with his own working knowledge of period drill, tactics, and terrain to deliver a more complete view of William Washington’s actions throughout the conflict. This perspective traces the often overlooked role of cavalry in the American Revolution and sheds new light on many pivotal battles in of the war, including Trenton, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Hobkirk’s Hill, and William Washington’s final action at Eutaw Springs.
Challenging the assumptions of many realist and neorealist thinkers on war and interstate conflict, Stam shows how domestic political factors affect the outcome of war. Using a rational choice analysis, Stam looks at the factors that affect the decisionmakers' preferences for different outcomes of military conflict, as well as how the payoffs of those outcomes are affected by both domestic and structural factors. Structural factors, such as the state's population, define a state's power relative to that of other states and will affect the probability of a policy succeeding. Domestic factors, such as the positions taken by domestic political groups, will affect the preferences of the leaders for particular outcomes and their willingness to bear the costs associated with the payoffs and probabilities of the various outcomes.
This book will be of interest to political scientists studying war and conflict in the international system as well as to historians and military strategists interested in understanding the factors that predict the outcome of war.
Allan Stam is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University.
The first book ever to focus on Laird’s legacy, this authorized biography reveals his central and often unrecognized role in managing the crisis of national identity sparked by the Vietnam War—and the challenges, ethical and political, that confronted him along the way. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Laird, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, and numerous others, author Dale Van Atta offers a sympathetic portrait of a man striving for open government in an atmosphere fraught with secrecy. Van Atta illuminates the inner workings of high politics: Laird’s behind-the-scenes sparring with Kissinger over policy, his decisions to ignore Nixon’s wilder directives, his formative impact on arms control and health care, his key role in the selection of Ford for vice president, his frustration with the country’s abandonment of Vietnamization, and, in later years, his unheeded warning to Donald Rumsfeld that “it’s a helluva lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one.”
Women Remember the War, 1941-1945 offers a brief introduction to the experiences of Wisconsin women in World War II through selections from oral history interviews in which women addressed issues concerning their wartime lives.
In this volume, more than 30 women describe how they balanced their more traditional roles in the home with new demands placed on them by the biggest global conflict in history. This book provides a rich mix of insights, incorporating the perspectives of workers in factories, in offices, and on farms as well as those of wives and mothers who found their work in the home. In addition, the volume contains accounts by women who served overseas in the military and the Red Cross. These accounts provide readers with a vivid picture of how women coped with the stresses created by their daily lives and by the additional burden of worrying about loved ones fighting overseas.
Based on interviews with seventy women refugees, Women, Violence and War is a book about war as it is seen, lived and interpreted by women who were citizens of the former Yugoslavia.
Many of the accounts portray the horrific experiences the victims had to face and the book addresses issues of sexual, physical and psychological violence, as well as problems of confinement, upheaval and family separation. In a completely new insight the book dispels the myth that many of the women were peasants, and shows that in fact they were educated, middle-class women with independent careers. The study also depicts how some of the victims attempt to come to terms with the aftermath of wartime abuse.
This probing, accurate and unique investigation of victimization is an unparalleled volume that presents a completely new perspective maintaining that violence against women in war is not independent of peace-time victimization and the imbalance of power between sexes.
“Words for the Hour” presents a readable and illuminating account of the Civil War, told through the words of poets North and South. From bathos to profound philosophical meditation and sorrow, the range of these poems illuminates the complexity of their era while also revealing the continuing power of this turning point in American history to speak to readers in the present day.
The volume is divided into three parts, each offering a different perspective on the poetry generated by the war. Part I samples the extraordinary range of poems written immediately preceding and during the war and published in popular periodicals, providing a kind of poetic newspaper account as one might have read it then—from the early days of optimistically heralded victory on both sides, through the mounting casualties and brutal deaths of the long middle years, to the war's conclusion and President Lincoln's assassination. Viewing the struggle from many different vantage points gives the reader access to the ways that people from various backgrounds experienced the trajectory of the war. Civilians and soldiers, free blacks and proponents of slavery, women and men from Massachusetts and Virginia and from recently admitted states and barely developed territories, writers with their eyes on the national political stage and those focused on personal domestic issues: these are the multiple voices of America responding to the war.
Part II includes substantial selections of poems by writers who published extensively in response to the conflict, providing more complex and comprehensive perceptions of the war. These poets include not just well-known figures such as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and John Greenleaf Whittier, but also African American poets George Moses Horton and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Southern poets Henry Timrod and Sarah Piatt.
Part III offers poems by two poets who did not publish during their lifetimes, but had strong imaginative responses to the conflict, thus giving a sense of the long reach of the war as a defining national experience. One of these two poets (Emily Dickinson) is now renowned while the other (Obadiah Ethelbert Baker) is first published in this volume.
“Words for the Hour” is indeed “new” among anthologies of Civil War poetry not only in its wide range of poems by popular, anonymous, and now canonical poets but also in its informational apparatus. A historical timeline listing major battles and events of the war begins the volume, and historical photographs or lithographs introduce each section of poems. The book also includes a substantial introduction, a glossary of important names and terminology relevant to understanding the poems, and biographical sketches for all the poets whose work is included.
Celebrate the career of an inspirational scholar and teacher concerned with revealing voices from the margins
This volume of essays honors Susan Niditch, author of War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (1993), “My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man”: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel (2008), and most recently, The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (forthcoming), among other influential publications. Essays touch on topics such as folklore, mythology, and oral history, Israelite religion, ancient Judaism, warfare, violence, and gender.
Features:
- Essays from nineteen scholars, all experts in their fields
- Exploration of texts from Mesopotamia, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament
- Bibliography of Niditch's scholarly contributions
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