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Weaving eyewitness history through US history, Forming the Public reveals what understanding the journalism landscape can teach us about the nature of journalism’s own interests in race, gender, and class while tracing the factors that shaped the contours of dominant American culture.

During the War for Independence, Fort Ticonderoga’s guns, sited critically between Lakes Champlain and George, dominated north-south communications in upstate New York that were vital to both the British and American war efforts. In the public mind Ticonderoga was the “American Gibraltar” or the “Key to the Continent,” and patriots considered holding the fort essential to the success of the Revolutionary cause. Ticonderoga was a primary target in British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s 1777 campaign to crush American resistance in the north and end the rebellion in a decisive stroke. American efforts to defend the fort in June against overwhelming odds entailed political and military intrigue, bungling, heroism, and ultimately a narrow escape for the Continental and provincial forces under Major General Arthur St. Clair. The loss of Ticonderoga stunned patriot morale and ignited one of the greatest political firestorms of the war. But the fortunes of war turned. Two months later, the rebels mounted a sensational—if little known—counter-attack on Ticonderoga that had major implications for Burgoyne’s eventual defeat at Saratoga in October. Yet Saratoga brought no peace, and Ticonderoga would be central to additional military and political maneuverings—many of them known only to specialist historians—that would keep the region on edge until the end of the war in 1783. 

From the home front to the front lines—Alabama’s pivotal role in shaping victory in World War II.

Alabama and its people played a conspicuous role in World War II. Not only were thousands of servicemen trained at military facilities in the state—at Fort McClellan, Camp Rucker, Camp Sibert, Maxwell Air Field, and Tuskegee Army Air Field—but Axis prisoners of war were interned in camps on Alabama soil. The state of Alabama held a significant number of these prisoners, over seventeen thousand in four camps across the state: Camp Aliceville, Camp Opelika, Fort McClellan, and Fort Rucker. This study focuses on Camp Aliceville and Camp Opelika which provide a sample that frames and highlights the national prisoner of war program. Through this example, one can see the lasting legacy of the prisoner of war program and its role in transforming the United States and forever changing the lives of thousands of prisoners, guards, and local citizens. An analysis of the Alabama camps also reveals how memory is constructed and how one narrative can ultimately emerge as the dominant story. In addition, a survey of the landscape reveals the importance of place and its role in the process of remembering and forgetting.
 

When Fred Risser retired from the Wisconsin Senate in 2021, his sixty-four years in state government made him the longest serving legislator in US history. Now, in this candid and illuminating autobiography, Risser shares his singular perspective on events that transformed the state and the nation over the course of his remarkable career. From his role in the “Joe Must Go” drive to recall US Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s to his position as the senior senator among the “Fab Fourteen” Wisconsin Democrats who opposed Governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation against collective bargaining in 2011, Risser was a leader in state politics for decades, always maintaining an unwavering belief that political action can change people’s lives for the better. 

Forward for the People provides a unique peek behind the political curtain from the viewpoint of someone who saw it all. Risser worked with thirteen governors and authored more than 240 bills that became law, championing public health and safety, environmental protection, women’s and reproductive rights, organized labor, civil rights, and social justice, among many other causes. Risser also recounts interactions with prominent national politicians, including Robert La Follette Jr., Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. More than forty photographs from Risser’s personal collection and the Wisconsin Senate paint a vivid picture of his six-decade journey through Wisconsin politics. 

Forward for the People details Risser’s experiences out of state, from a stint in the Panama Canal Zone as a navy hospital corpsman to his undergraduate debate-team days at Minnesota’s Carleton College to his years studying law at the University of Oregon and his travels to all seven continents. The book also depicts the quirky habits that made Risser a memorable and beloved politician: biking his age in miles every birthday and never taking the elevator in his sixty-four years at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Enhanced with details sourced from correspondence, personal notes, newspaper accounts, and recollections from friends and former colleagues, Risser and coauthor Doug Moe have crafted an engaging account of an extraordinary life in public service.

When Fred Risser retired from the Wisconsin Senate in 2021, his sixty-four years in state government made him the longest serving legislator in US history. Now, in this candid and illuminating autobiography, Risser shares his singular perspective on events that transformed the state and the nation over the course of his remarkable career. From his role in the “Joe Must Go” drive to recall US Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s to his position as the senior senator among the “Fab Fourteen” Wisconsin Democrats who opposed Governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation against collective bargaining in 2011, Risser was a leader in state politics for decades, always maintaining an unwavering belief that political action can change people’s lives for the better. 

Forward for the People provides a unique peek behind the political curtain from the viewpoint of someone who saw it all. Risser worked with thirteen governors and authored more than 240 bills that became law, championing public health and safety, environmental protection, women’s and reproductive rights, organized labor, civil rights, and social justice, among many other causes. Risser also recounts interactions with prominent national politicians, including Robert La Follette Jr., Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.

Forward for the People details Risser’s experiences out of state, from a stint in the Panama Canal Zone as a navy hospital corpsman to his undergraduate debate-team days at Minnesota’s Carleton College to his years studying law at the University of Oregon and his travels to all seven continents. The book also depicts the quirky habits that made Risser a memorable and beloved politician: biking his age in miles every birthday and never taking the elevator in his sixty-four years at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Enhanced with details sourced from correspondence, personal notes, newspaper accounts, and recollections from friends and former colleagues, Risser and coauthor Doug Moe have crafted an engaging account of an extraordinary life in public service.

• the historical and legal roots of intellectual freedom, with an in-depth examination of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” and Article 19 of the U.N Declaration of Human Rights, and its central concepts and principles;  
• the intersection of intellectual freedom, freedom of expression, and social justice;
• professional values, codes of ethics, ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, and Freedom to Read/View Statements;
• pro- and anti- censorship arguments and their use in impeding and facilitating access to information;
• book banning and internet filtering;
• privacy and its relationship to information services;
• U.S. case law and precedents;
• the basics of U.S. copyright law, including fair use, and how it differs from international copyright law; and
• emerging global issues and their impact on future intellectual freedom.

Richard E. Rubin’s book has served as the authoritative introductory text for generations of library and information science practitioners, with each new edition taking in its stride the myriad societal, technological, political, and economic changes affecting our users and institutions and transforming our discipline. Rubin teams up with his daughter, Rachel G. Rubin, a rising star in the library field in her own right, for the fifth edition. Spanning all types of libraries, from public to academic, school, and special, it illuminates the major facets of LIS for students as well as current professionals. Continuing its tradition of excellence, this text addresses

• the history and mission of libraries from past to present, including the history of service to African Americans;
• critical contemporary social issues such as services to marginalized communities, tribal libraries, and immigrants;  
• the rise of e-government and the crucial role of political advocacy;  
• digital devices, social networking, digital publishing, e-books, virtual reality, and other technology;
• forces shaping the future of libraries, including Future Ready libraries, and sustainability as a core value of librarianship;
• the values and ethics of the profession, with new coverage of civic engagement, combatting fake news, the importance of social justice, and the role of critical librarianship;
• knowledge infrastructure and organization, including Resource Description and Access (RDA), linked data, and the Library Research Model;
• the significance of the digital divide and policy issues related to broadband access and net neutrality;
• intellectual freedom, legal issues, and copyright-related topics;
• contemporary issues in LIS education such as the ongoing tensions between information science and library science; and
• the changing character of collections and services including the role of digital libraries, preservation, and the digital humanities.

In its newest edition, Foundations of Library and Information Science remains the field’s essential resource.

The political decisions made by the founding fathers were crucial to the success of the early republic. But the economic decisions they made were just as pivotal, ensuring the general welfare and common defense of the United States for decades to come. Founding Choices explores these economic choices and their profound influence on American life, westward expansion, and influence abroad. Among the topics covered are finance, trade, and monetary and banking policy, with a focus on the factors guiding those policies and their end result. 

This book redresses the relative neglect of the economic achievements of the founders. It will be essential reading for historians and economists alike.

With each passing year, the number of family farms in the United States diminishes. Fewer people have the persistence and ingenuity to wrest a livelihood from the land in an era of corporate ownership and mass production. Yet some family farms survive. 

Through words and photographs, this book documents the long lives of five of the oldest farms in Massachusetts. Each has remained in the same family for more than two, sometimes three, centuries and each has a distinctive history. The devotion to the land and family heritage is palpable in the stories these five families tell. 

Stan Sherer’s remarkable photographs depict the activities of the family members as they go about their daily labors, planting crops, feeding animals, applying new technologies to ancient tasks, and coping with the vagaries of weather and state regulations. Michael E. C. Gery’s narrative traces how the farms began, what has sustained them through the generations, and how the families who run them today feel about their past, present, and future. These stories are told largely through the words of the people themselves. 

The result is a complex portrait that moves beyond traditional stereotypes to reveal the realities of family farm life in an increasingly urbanized society. 

Recent movements such as the Tea Party and anti-tax “constitutional conservatism” lay claim to the finance and taxation ideas of America’s founders, but how much do we really know about the dramatic clashes over finance and economics that marked the founding of America? Dissenting from both right-wing claims and certain liberal preconceptions, Founding Finance brings to life the violent conflicts over economics, class, and finance that played directly, and in many ways ironically, into the hardball politics of forming the nation and ratifying the Constitution—conflicts that still continue to affect our politics, legislation, and debate today.

Mixing lively narrative with fresh views of America’s founders, William Hogeland offers a new perspective on America’s economic infancy: foreclosure crises that make our current one look mild; investment bubbles in land and securities that drove rich men to high-risk borrowing and mad displays of ostentation before dropping them into debtors’ prisons; depressions longer and deeper than the great one of the twentieth century; crony mercantilism, war profiteering, and government corruption that undermine any nostalgia for a virtuous early republic; and predatory lending of scarce cash at exorbitant, unregulated rates, which forced people into bankruptcy, landlessness, and working in the factories and on the commercial farms of their creditors. This story exposes and corrects a perpetual historical denial—by movements across the political spectrum—of America’s all-important founding economic clashes, a denial that weakens and cheapens public discourse on American finance just when we need it most.

An updated paperback version of the book heralded as “a new benchmark in Marx scholarship” by the Los Angeles Times

Before film made them international comedy legends, the Marx Brothers developed their comic skills on stage for twenty-five years. In Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage, Robert S. Bader offers the first comprehensive history of the foursome’s hardscrabble early years honing their act in front of live audiences.

From Groucho’s debut in 1905 to their final live performances of scenes from A Night in Casablanca in 1945, the brothers’ stage career shows how their characters and routines evolved before their arrival in Hollywood. Four of the Three Musketeers draws on an unmatched array of sources, many not referenced elsewhere. Bader’s detailed portrait of the struggling young actors both brings to vivid life a typical night on the road for the Marx Brothers and illuminates the inner workings of the vaudeville business, especially during its peak in the 1920s.

As Bader traces the origins of the characters that would later come to be beloved by filmgoers, he also skillfully scrapes away the accretion of rumors and mythology perpetuated not only by fans and writers but by the Marx Brothers themselves. Revealing, vital, and entertaining, Four of the Three Musketeers has taken its place as an essential reference for this legendary American act. Now, the updated edition adds newly discovered performances—some submitted by readers—and additional information provided by descendants of long-departed vaudevillians mentioned in the book.

A trenchant examination of the political dynamics of autobiography in education.

How do historically marginalized groups expose the partiality and presumptions of educational institutions through autobiographical acts? How are the stories we tell used to justify resistance to change or institutional complacency? These are the questions Wendy S. Hesford asks as she considers the uses of autobiography in educational settings. This book demonstrates how autobiographical acts-oral, written, performative, and visual-play out in vexed and contradictory ways and how in the academy they can become sites of cultural struggle over multicultural education, sexual harassment, institutional racism, hate speech, student activism, and commemorative practices.

Over the past quarter century, American liberals and conservatives alike have invoked memories of the 1960s to define their respective ideological positions and to influence voters. Liberals recall the positive associations of what might be called the “good Sixties”—the “Camelot” years of JFK, the early civil rights movement, and the dreams of the Great Society—while conservatives conjure images of the “bad Sixties”—a time of urban riots, antiwar protests, and countercultural revolt. 

In Framing the Sixties, Bernard von Bothmer examines this battle over the collective memory of the decade primarily through the lens of presidential politics. He shows how four presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush—each sought to advance his political agenda by consciously shaping public understanding of the meaning of “the Sixties.” He compares not only the way that each depicted the decade as a whole, but also their commentary on a set of specific topics: the presidency of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson's “Great Society” initiatives, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. 

In addition to analyzing the pronouncements of the presidents themselves, von Bothmer draws on interviews he conducted with more than one hundred and twenty cabinet members, speechwriters, advisers, strategists, historians, journalists, and activists from across the political spectrum—from Julian Bond, Daniel Ellsberg, Todd Gitlin, and Arthur Schlesinger to James Baker, Robert Bork, Phyllis Schlafly, and Paul Weyrich. 

It is no secret that the upheavals of the 1960s opened fissures within American society that have continued to affect the nation's politics and to intensify its so-called culture wars. What this book documents is the extent to which political leaders, left and right, consciously exploited those divisions by “framing” the memory of that turbulent decade to serve their own partisan interests.

A historian who lived the kind of history he wrote, Francis Parkman is a major—and controversial—figure in American historiography. His narrative style, while popular with readers wanting a "good story," has raised many questions with professional historians. Was Parkman writing history or historical fiction? Did he color historical figures with his own heroic self-image? Was his objectivity compromised by his "unbending, conservative, Brahmin" values? These are some of the many issues that Wilbur Jacobs treats in this thought-provoking study.

Jacobs carefully considers the "apprenticeship" of Francis Parkman, first spent in facing the rigors of the Oregon Trail and later in struggling to write his histories despite a mysterious, frequently incapacitating illness. He shows how these events allowed Parkman to create a heroic self-image, which impelled his desire for fame as a historian and influenced his treatment of both the "noble" and the "savage" characters of his histories.

In addition to assessing the influence of Parkman's development and personality on his histories, Jacobs comments on Parkman's relationship to basic social and cultural issues of the nineteenth century. These include the slavery question, Native American issues, expansion of the suffrage to new groups, including women, and anti-Catholicism.

A revealing biography of a powerful Southern editor at the center of South Carolina’s post‑Reconstruction political transformation.

In the decades following the Civil War, South Carolina—like much of the South—struggled to redefine its political identity amid the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of conservative “Redeemer” governments. In Francis Warrington Dawson and the Politics of Restoration, historian E. Culpepper Clark offers a deeply researched and incisive study of this transformation through the life and work of Francis Warrington Dawson, one of the state’s most influential newspaper editors.

Dawson was far more than a chronicler of events. As a powerful voice in South Carolina’s political press, he helped shape public opinion, broker alliances among conservative factions, and articulate the ideological foundations of post‑Reconstruction governance. Clark situates Dawson at the center of the struggles among Redeemers, Straight‑Out Democrats, agrarian reformers, and emerging political leaders such as Ben Tillman, revealing a political landscape marked by rivalry, class conflict, and competing visions of the New South.

Drawing on extensive manuscript collections, newspapers, and political correspondence, Clark explores the close relationship between journalism and power in the late nineteenth century and demonstrates how newspapers functioned as active political actors rather than neutral observers. The result is both a compelling political biography and a broader analysis of how restoration politics operated at the state level.

Francis Warrington Dawson and the Politics of Restoration is an essential work for readers interested in Southern history, Reconstruction and its aftermath, the history of American journalism, and the forces that shaped the political culture of the modern South.