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When Gina Oliva first went to school in 1955, she didn’t know that she was “different.” If the kindergarten teacher played a tune on the piano to signal the next exercise, Oliva didn’t react because she couldn’t hear the music. So began her journey as a “solitary,” her term for being the only deaf child in the entire school. Gina felt alone because she couldn’t communicate easily with her classmates, but also because none of them had a hearing loss like hers. It wasn’t until years later at Gallaudet University that she discovered that she wasn’t alone and that her experience was common among mainstreamed deaf students. Alone in the Mainstream recounts Oliva’s story, as well as those of many other solitaries.

In writing this important book, Oliva combined her personal experiences with responses from the Solitary Mainstream Project, a survey that she conducted of deaf and hard of hearing adults who attended public school. Oliva matched her findings with current research on deaf students in public schools and confirmed that hearing teachers are ill-prepared to teach deaf pupils, they don’t know much about hearing loss, and they frequently underestimate deaf children. The collected memories in Alone in the Mainstream add emotional weight to the conviction that students need to be able to communicate freely, and they also need peers to know they are not alone.

Notable shipwrecks of Lake Michigan throughout a century of enterprise, industry, heroism, and disaster on the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are graveyards of a vast number of shipwrecks (30,000 by some estimates), and Lake Michigan has more than the other four lakes combined. The stories of those wrecks tell the history of that mighty lake in its endless, mercurial challenge to human endeavor.

Surveying the wreckage throughout the decades, from the fiery end of the twin propeller–driven Phoenix in 1847 to the failure of the Anna Minch to outrun the infamous 1940 Armistice Day storm, Michael Schumacher charts the course of shipping disasters great and small on Lake Michigan. He illuminates the details of maritime weather and shipcraft, the lives devoted to and lost on the water, and the mistakes and monumental failures that led to these ships’ watery ends.

Schumacher’s deft storytelling, drawing from deep research and comprehensive knowledge, brings forth the vivid details of the last minutes of these doomed ships, along with the circumstances surrounding their voyages. Here are tragic tales like that of the Eastland, the deadliest shipwreck in Great Lakes history, lost while docked in the Chicago River; the Rouse Simmons, a wooden schooner loaded with Christmas trees; the train ferry Milwaukee and the Wisconsin, a package freighter, gone within one week of each other in October 1929; and the passenger vessel the Lady Elgin, a devastating loss met with incredible heroism.

Liberally illustrated with historical photographs, the stories of these shipwrecks, spanning a full century of commercial traffic on Lake Michigan, document the myriad forms of bravery and misfortune that mark our encounters with the Great Lakes.

In this significant recovery project, Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach investigates the institutions and streetscapes of Black Chicago that fueled an entire literary and artistic movement. She argues that African American authors and artists--such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, painter Archibald Motley, and many others--viewed and presented black reality from a specific geographic vantage point: the view along the streets of Bronzeville. Schlabach explores how the particular rhythms and scenes of daily life in Bronzeville locations, such as the State Street "Stroll" district or the bustling intersection of 47th Street and South Parkway, figured into the creative works and experiences of the artists and writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance. She also covers in detail the South Side Community Art Center and the South Side Writers' Group, two institutions of art and literature that engendered a unique aesthetic consciousness and political ideology for which the Black Chicago Renaissance would garner much fame.

Life in Bronzeville also involved economic hardship and social injustice, themes that resonated throughout the flourishing arts scene. Schlabach explores Bronzeville's harsh living conditions, exemplified in the cramped one-bedroom kitchenette apartments that housed many of the migrants drawn to the city's promises of opportunity and freedom. Many struggled with the precariousness of urban life, and Schlabach shows how the once vibrant neighborhood eventually succumbed to the pressures of segregation and economic disparity. Providing a virtual tour South Side African American urban life at street level, Along the Streets of Bronzeville charts the complex interplay and intersection of race, geography, and cultural criticism during the Black Chicago Renaissance's rise and fall.

Virtually every American alive has at some point consumed at least one, and very likely more, consciousness altering drug. Even those who actively eschew alcohol, tobacco, and coffee cannot easily avoid the full range of psychoactive substances pervading the culture. With many children now taking Ritalin for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, professional athletes relying on androstenidione to bulk up, and the chronically depressed resorting to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac, the early twenty-first century appears no less rife with drugs than previous periods.

Yet, if the use of drugs is a constant in American history, the way they have been perceived has varied extensively. Just as the corrupting cigarettes of the early twentieth century ("coffin nails" to contemporaries) became the glamorous accessory of Hollywood stars and American GIs in the 1940s, only to fall into public disfavor later as an unhealthy and irresponsible habit, the social significance of every drug changes over time. 

The essays in this volume explore these changes, showing how the identity of any psychoactive substance—from alcohol and nicotine to cocaine and heroin—owes as much to its users, their patterns of use, and the cultural context in which the drug is taken, as it owes to the drug's documented physiological effects. Rather than seeing licit drugs and illicit drugs, recreational drugs and medicinal drugs, “hard” drugs and “soft” drugs as mutually exclusive categories, the book challenges readers to consider the ways in which drugs have shifted historically from one category to another. 

In addition to the editors, contributors include Jim Baumohl, Allan M. Brandt, Katherine Chavigny, Timothy Hickman, Peter Mancall, Michelle McClellan, Steven J. Novak, Ron Roizen, Lori Rotskoff, Susan L. Speaker, Nicholas Weiss, and William White.

In 1969, Henry Catto was selling insurance in San Antonio, Texas. Just twenty years later, he presented his credentials as ambassador to the Court of St. James's to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace. In this engaging memoir, he retraces his journey from Texas outsider to Washington insider, providing a fascinating look at the glamour, day-to-day work, and even occasional danger that come with being a high-level representative of the United States government.

Catto's posts brought him into contact with the world's most powerful leaders and left him with a wealth of stories, which he recounts amusingly in these pages. He was the official host for Queen Elizabeth's visit to America during the Bicentennial year—and one of José Napoleon Duarte's protectors after his failed 1972 coup attempt in El Salvador. Catto accompanied Richard Nixon on his historic trip to Russia, sparred with Bill Moyers and the producers of "60 Minutes" as Caspar Weinberger's spokesman at the Pentagon, and hosted George Bush's planning meeting with Margaret Thatcher at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War. In telling these and other stories, he offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into how political power really works in Washington, London, and other world capitals.

In Ambition, Competition, and Electoral Reform, Jamie L. Carson and Jason M. Roberts present an original study of U.S. congressional elections and electoral institutions for 1872-1944 from a contemporary political science perspective. Using data on late nineteenth and early twentieth century congressional elections, the authors test the applicability in a historical context of modern political science theories, assess the effects of institutional reforms, and identify the factors that shape the competitiveness of elections. They present several key findings: the strategic politicians theory is applicable in an era without candidate-centered campaigns; there was an incumbency advantage prior to the full development of candidate-centered campaigns; institutional reforms have had a significant effect on elections; and the degree of electoral competition frequently correlates with elected officials' responsiveness to citizens.

Explores childhood in relation to blackness, transfeminism, queerness, and deportability to interrogate what “the child” makes possible

The concept of childhood contains many contested and ambivalent meanings that have extraordinary implications, particularly for those staking their claim for belonging and justice on the wish for inclusion within it. In Ambivalent Childhoods, Jacob Breslow examines contemporary U.S. social justice movements (including Black Lives Matter, transfeminism, queer youth activism, and antideportation movements) to discover and reveal how childhood operates within and against them.

Ambivalent Childhoods brings together critical race, trans, feminist, queer, critical migration, and psychoanalytic theories to explore the role of childhood in shaping and challenging the disposability of young black life, the steadfastness of the gender binary, the queer life of children’s desires, and the precarious status of migrants. Through an engagement with“the psychic life of the child” that combines theoretical discussions of childhood, blackness, transfeminism, and deportability with critical readings of films, narrative, images, and social justice movements, Breslow demonstrates how childhood requires sustained attention as a complex and ambivalent site for contesting the workings of power, not only for the young. 

Ambivalent Childhoods is a forward-thinking and intersectional analysis of how childhood affects activism, national belonging, and the violence directed against queer, trans, and racialized people. 

The definitive biography Amelia Gayle Gorgas, one of the most influential people in the history of the University of Alabama

Amelia Gayle Gorgas: A Biography is a richly documented and deeply compelling portrait of one of Alabama’s most influential nineteenth‑century women. Drawing on the unparalleled depth of the Gayle‑Gorgas Collection—letters, journals, family papers, and contemporary accounts—this biography argues that Amelia’s life offers enduring insight into the resilience, intellect, and quiet leadership that shaped Southern society before, during, and after the Civil War. 

Far more than the daughter of a governor, wife of Confederate ordnance chief Josiah Gorgas, or mother of famed physician William Crawford Gorgas, Amelia emerges here as a figure of remarkable adaptability and personal strength. The book traces her journey from a lively Greensboro childhood through the upheavals of war‑torn Richmond, the hardships of Reconstruction‑era Alabama, and her transformative service as librarian at The University of Alabama. Its chapters illuminate the themes that define her legacy: intellectual curiosity without formal schooling, deft management of family and community crises, a gift for nurturing students and soldiers alike, and an ability to thrive in environments as varied as Maine, Charleston, Sewanee, and Tuscaloosa. 

Vivid storytelling blends seamlessly with meticulous scholarship, giving readers both an intimate family narrative and a sweeping social history of the nineteenth‑century South. This biography will appeal especially to readers of Southern history, women’s history, university and library heritage, Civil War studies, and anyone drawn to strong, quietly trailblazing figures whose lives illuminate broader cultural change. Amelia’s story endures because it speaks to the universal work of holding families, institutions, and communities together in times of profound upheaval.

In this work, Sean Dettman traces an observable correlation over the course of late summer 1940 between the bombings of London and other UK cities and the changing attitude of the American people towards adopting a moderate pro-aid position, and argues that these processes were aided by pro-aid US journalists who deployed a positive Blitz narrative centered on themes of resilience, courage, and fortitude. This shift in US public opinion allowed the Roosevelt Administration and pro-aid pressure groups to advance conversations in Washington towards aiding Britain, even at the risk of war.

Dettman also argues that this shift in opinion was caused by fear that a Nazi victory would threaten US national security and the American way of life, rather than an interest in expanding pro-democratic structures and institutions in Britain. 

Whereas the vast body of literature examining US public opinion during the ‘Great Debate’ reduces the Blitz narrative to a minor cause, America and the Blitz demonstrates how the Blitz narrative influenced domestic conversations regarding US national security and the American way of life. The author reveals that when the events and themes of the Blitz come into dialogue with conversations about US aid to Britain and national security, the traditional narrative changes.

America and the Blitz offers a new framework for understanding the ‘Great Debate,’ revealing the relationship between US journalists’ Blitz narrative and its effect on US public opinion towards aiding Britain and the ascendancy of American global power.

Between the two world wars, American publishing entered a “golden age” characterized by an explosion of new publishers, authors, audiences, distribution strategies, and marketing techniques. The period was distinguished by a diverse literary culture, ranging from modern cultural rebels to working-class laborers, political radicals, and progressive housewives. In America the Middlebrow, Jaime Harker focuses on one neglected mode of authorship in the interwar period—women's middlebrow authorship and its intersection with progressive politics. 

With the rise of middlebrow institutions and readers came the need for the creation of the new category of authorship. Harker contends that these new writers appropriated and adapted a larger tradition of women's activism and literary activity to their own needs and practices. Like sentimental women writers and readers of the 1850s, these authors saw fiction as a means of reforming and transforming society. Like their Progressive Era forebears, they replaced religious icons with nationalistic images of progress and pragmatic ideology. In the interwar period, this mode of authorship was informed by Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which insisted that art provided vicarious experience that could help create humane, democratic societies.

Drawing on letters from publishers, editors, agents, and authors, America the Middlebrow traces four key moments in this distinctive culture of letters through the careers of Dorothy Canfield, Jessie Fauset, Pearl Buck, and Josephine Herbst. Both an exploration of a virtually invisible culture of letters and a challenge to monolithic paradigms of modernism, the book offers fresh insight into the ongoing tradition of political domestic fiction that flourished between the wars.