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Juárez was Warner Brothers' cinematic attempt to answer the major international question of the 1930s: would democracy or dictatorship prevail? Eager to further the foreign policy objectives of its friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt and equally willing to add to its prestigious and profitable biography series, the stuido set a record high budget and assembled special film stock, extensive scholarly research, a loose time schedule, a renowned director, and a stellar cast that included Paul Muni, Brian Aherne, and Bette Davis. The film was meant to be an ideologically clear-cut statement against fascism. The ways in which this artistic propaganda backfired make Juárez a significant historical document for students of film, Latin American history, and U.S. foreign relations.

The raid that exposed the Union capital’s greatest danger.

The definitive description of the last Confederate invasion of the Union in 1864. The Civil War was in its fourth year, and the Union’s victory was not at all certain. The Lincoln administration seemed weak as the autumn election approached. Lee’s army remained strong in Virginia while Johnston’s forces feinted and dodged in north Georgia to shield Atlanta. The Union army and navy grew in strength, but Confederate forces continued to fight tenaciously.

Amid an air of stalemate, the Confederates planned a bold move to strike at Washington, DC and capture or scatter Lincoln and his cabinet. In command of the operation was the colorful and unpredictable Jubal “Old Jube” Anderson Early, brought in to replace the fallen Stonewall Jackson. Less well known than the bloodier Antietam and Gettysburg, Early's campaign, Cooling argues, had greater significance.

In addition to the persnickety bachelor Anderson, this account introduces many colorful participants, including railroad president John W. Garrett, the politically influential Blair family, and Elizabeth “Aunt Betty” Thomas, a free Black woman, who was said to have saved Lincoln’s life by shouting at him: “Get down, you fool!” when he came under fire at Fort Stevens. Exciting and comprehensive, Civil War scholars and readers will delight in this masterful account.
 

A history of the jubilus—the complex vocal run on the last syllable of the Alleluia chant in medieval Christian liturgy.

In liturgical Christian worship, the Alleluia chant during the Mass involves extensive melismas—vocal embellishments on a single syllable sung over a complex melodic line. The melisma on the final “a” of the word “alleluia” is known as the jubilus—a climactic, musical eruption of joy. In Jubilation of the Heart, Kris J. Trujillo shows how the performance of this single syllable grew in significance during the European Middle Ages until it became a core element in Christian mystical traditions and beyond.

In various incarnations of the jubilus—from spontaneous sounds of joy to recitations of the Psalms, from meditations on the name of Jesus to glossolalia—Trujillo discovers a range of affective, embodied, and erotic modes of medieval Christian devotion with lasting influence on modern ideas about discourse, the subject, and ecstasy. Trujillo illuminates the raptures of joy expressed by theologians including Augustine, John Cassian, and Bernard of Clairvaux; thirteenth-century holy women like Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Christina the Astonishing; psychoanalytic thinkers Michel de Certeau and Jacques Lacan; popular vocalists Edith Piaf, Linda Ronstadt, and Whitney Houston; and even a diverse set of queer theorists. The result is an enchanting and wide-ranging history of premodern joy and its contemporary afterlives.

Investigate a relatively neglected but momentous period in Judean history

Nadav Sharon closely examines a critical period in Judean history, which saw the end of the Hasmonean dynasty and the beginning of Roman domination of Judea leading up to the kingship of Herod (67-37 BCE). In this period renowned Roman figures such as Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Gaius Cassius (a conspirator against Caesar), and Mark Anthony, led the Roman Republic on the eve of its transformation into an Empire, each having his own dealings with—and holding sway over—Judea at different times. This volume explores the impact of the Roman conquest on the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, enhances the understanding of later Judean-Roman relations and the roots of the Great Revolt, and examines how this early period of Roman domination had on impact on later developments in Judean society and religion.

Features:

• Part one dedicating to reconstructing Judean history from the death of Alexander to the reign of King Herod
• Part two examining the effects of Roman domination on Judean society
• Maps, illustrations, and appendices

In nineteenth-century Brazil the power of the courts rivaled that of the central government, bringing to it during its first half century of independence a stability unique in Latin America. Thomas Flory analyzes the Brazilian lower-court system, where the private interests of society and the public interests of the state intersected.

Justices of the peace—lay judges elected at the parish level—played a special role in the early years of independence, for the post represented the triumph of Brazilian liberalism’s commitment to localism and decentralization. However, as Flory shows by tracing the social history and performance of parish judges, the institution actually intensified conflict within parishes to the point of destabilizing the local regime and proved to be so independent of national interests that it all but destroyed the state.

By the 1840s the powers of the office were passed to state appointees, particularly the district judges. Flory recognizes these professional magistrates as a new elite who served as brokers between the state and the poorly articulated landowner elite, and his account of their rise reveals the mechanisms of state integration.

In focusing on the judiciary, Flory has isolated a crucial aspect of Brazil’s early history, one with broad implications for the study of nineteenth-century Latin America as a whole. He combines social, intellectual, and political perspectives—as well as national-level discussion with scrutiny of parish-level implementation—and so makes sense of a complicated, little-studied period. The study clearly shows the progression of Brazilian social thought from a serene liberal faith in the people as a nation to an abiding, very modern distrust of that nation as a threat to the state.

This volume presents the first broadly inclusive collection, with accessible text and English translation, of documents related to judicial decisions in the ancient Near East, the oldest setting for such writing in the world. The texts in this volume belong to various genres, especially legal records and letters, and span almost two thousand years. With such varied material, the work depends on the expertise of specialists in each setting, from the Sumerian of early Ur to the late Akkadian of Babylonia under the Persians. The collection brings together not only 183 transliterated texts and new translations but also introductions and commentary that place these legal documents in their historical and social contexts. A glossary of legal terms, a concordance of texts included, and an index of legal terms makes this an invaluable tool for students and scholars across disciplines. The contributors are Dominique Charpin, Sophie Démare-Lafont, Daniel E. Fleming, Francis Joannès, Bertrand Lafont, Brigitte Lion, Ignacio Márquez Rowe, Cécile Michel, and Pierre Villard.

Judith Resnik didn’t grow up dreaming of space, but when NASA opened its doors to women astronauts in the late 1970s, she stepped forward—and soared. One of the first six women ever accepted into NASA’s space shuttle astronaut-training program, Resnik brought her sharp mind, determination, and creativity to a field that had long been closed to women. Although she wasn’t the first American woman in space, she became one of the most accomplished astronauts of her time.

Resnik’s journey wasn’t easy. She faced challenges at home and in school, but she never let obstacles stop her. A gifted student, she excelled in math, science, and music—she even considered becoming a concert pianist before choosing a career in engineering. Her hard work paid off: She earned multiple degrees and helped design improvements for the space shuttle itself. She proved that astronauts aren’t just pilots—they’re problem solvers, inventors, and explorers.

In 1984, Resnik launched into space for the first time aboard the shuttle Discovery. Two years later, she joined the crew of Challenger. Tragically, that mission ended in disaster, cutting her life short. While the world focused on the loss of teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was a passenger on that flight, Resnik’s story was often overlooked. Yet her contributions to science and space exploration live on through programs, schools, and scholarships that bear her name.

This inspiring biography brings Resnik’s remarkable life to light. Readers will discover how a girl from Ohio became a trailblazer in space and how her courage and brilliance continue to inspire new generations. Her story reminds us that even if you’re not first, you can still make history—and that reaching for the stars starts with believing in yourself.

If the 1930s was the Swing Era, then the years from 1937 on might well be called the Jump Era. That summer Count Basie recorded “Jumping at the Woodside,” and suddenly jump tunes seemed to be everywhere. Along with the bouncy beat came a new dance step—the high-flying aerials of the jitterbuggers—and the basketball games that took place in the dance halls of African America became faster, higher, and flashier. Duke Ellington and a cast of hundreds put the buoyant spirit of the era on stage with their 1941 musical revue, Jump for Joy, a title that captured the momentum and direction of the new culture of exuberance. 

Several high-profile public victories accompanied this increasing optimism: the spectacular successes of African American athletes at the 1936 Olympics, the 1937 union victory of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Joe Louis's 1937 and 1938 heavyweight championship fights. For the first time in history, Black Americans emerged as cultural heroes and ambassadors, and many felt a new pride in citizenship. 

In this book, Gena Caponi-Tabery chronicles these triumphs and shows how they shaped American music, sports, and dance of the 1930s and beyond. But she also shows how they emboldened ordinary African Americans to push for greater recognition and civil liberties—how cultural change preceded and catalyzed political action. 

Tracing the path of one symbolic gesture—the jump—across cultural and disciplinary boundaries, Caponi-Tabery provides a unique political, intellectual, and artistic analysis of the years immediately preceding World War II.

Award of Excellence — Communication Arts 
Honorable Mention — The International Photography Awards 2024 Book Category
Jury Top 5 Selection — The International Photography Awards 2024 Book Category
Silver Winner in Zines And Photo Book/Culture— 2024 International Film Photography Award, Analog Sparks

Timeless photos offer a rare portrait of the jubilant, vibrant, vital, nearly hidden, and now all-but-vanished world of small-town Black rodeos.

Long before Americans began to officially commemorate Juneteenth, in the heat of East Texas, saddles were being cinched, buckles shined, and lassoes adjusted for a day on the Black rodeo circuit in honor of the holiday. In the late 1970s, as they had been doing for generations, Black communities across the region held local rodeos for the talented cowboys and cowgirls who were segregated from the mainstream circuit. It was to these vibrant community events that bestselling Texas writer Sarah Bird, then a young photojournalist, found herself drawn.

In Juneteenth Rodeo, Bird’s lens celebrates a world that was undervalued at the time, capturing everything, from the moment the pit master fired up his smoker, through the death-defying rides, to the last celebratory dance at a nearby honky-tonk. Essays by Bird and sports historian Demetrius Pearson reclaim the crucial role of Black Americans in the Western US and show modern rodeo riders—who still compete on today’s circuit—as “descendants” in a more than two-hundred-year lineage of Black cowboys. A gorgeous tribute to the ropers and riders—legends like Willie Thomas, Myrtis Dightman, Rufus Green, Bailey’s Prairie Kid, Archie Wycoff, and Calvin Greeley—as well as the secretaries, judges, and pick-up men and even the audience members who were as much family as fans, Juneteenth Rodeo ultimately seeks to put Black cowboys and cowgirls where they have always belonged: in the center of the frame.

Kristine McCusker charts the dramatic transformation that took place when southerners in particular and Americans in general changed their thinking about when one should die, how that death could occur, and what decent burial really means. As she shows, death care evolved from being a community act to a commercial one where purchasing a purple coffin and hearse ride to the cemetery became a political statement and the norm. That evolution also required interactions between perfect strangers, especially during the world wars as families searched for their missing soldiers. In either case, being put away decent, as southerners called burial, came to mean something fundamentally different in 1955 than it had just fifty years earlier.

Just Language revisits the Weimar period and its representation in the postwar years to explore narratives of linguistic resistance in the works of Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan. How did this generation of exile writers grapple with their experiences of oppression and persecution? How did they create a language of resistance during the decades that prepared the Third Reich and the Shoah?

Facing the devastations of World War I, the book explores how Walter Benjamin analyzed language’s ability to radically break the cyclical violence of war and examines his opposition to expansionism and imperialism in Weimar education and culture. Based on Benjamin’s analysis, Johannßen traces the postwar responses of Hannah Arendt and Paul Celan. While Arendt proposed strategies of metaphorical thinking to counteract the formation of totalitarianism, Celan mobilized silence as a poetic counterforce against oppression and erasure. Just Language argues that every linguistic act and practice, no matter how small or marginalized, entails the ethical task of opposing the normalization and institutionalization of political violence. By tracing how Benjamin and his interlocutors struggled against German fascism, Johannßen presents a memory-based critique of linguistic violence, opening a dialogue between German-Jewish writers and today’s debates on nondiscrimination, propaganda, and social justice.

Gillian M. Rodger uses the development of male impersonation from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century to illuminate the history of the variety show. Exploding notions of high- and lowbrow entertainment, Rodger looks at how both performers and forms consistently expanded upward toward respectable—and richer—audiences. At the same time, she illuminates a lost theatrical world where women made fun of middle-class restrictions even as they bumped up against rules imposed in part by audiences. Onstage, the actresses' changing performance styles reflected gender construction in the working class and shifts in class affiliation by parts of the audiences. Rodger observes how restrictive standards of femininity increasingly bound male impersonators as new gender constructions allowed women greater access to public space while tolerating less independent behavior from them.

Don Zminda’s account looks at these interconnected events alongside the little-known chronicle of Chicago’s slow track to integrating major league baseball. By the early 1950s, the Cubs and White Sox organizations had become rich in Black and Afro-Latino stars and talented prospects. Unlike Miñoso and Banks, however, most of these minor leaguers never advanced to the majors or, if they did, it was for little more than a cup of coffee. Zminda also profiles these players, from Charles Pope, the Cubs’ first Black signee, to larger-than-life fireballer Blood Burns.

Essential and dramatic, Justice Batted Last uses the lives and careers of two Chicago legends to tell a story of integration on and off the diamond.