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Analyzes Mississippian daily life at Cahokia’s environs during wartime

In Life in a Mississippian Warscape: Common Field, Cahokia, and the Effects of Warfare Meghan E. Buchanan posits that to understand the big histories of warfare, political fragmentation, and resilience in the past archaeologists must also analyze and interpret the microscale actions of the past. These are the daily activities of people before, during, and after historical events. Within warscapes, battles take place in peoples’ front yards, family members die, and the impacts of violence in near and distant places are experienced on a daily basis. This book explores the microscale of daily lives of people living at Common Field, a large, palisaded mound center, during the period of Cahokia’s abandonment and the spread of violence and warfare throughout the Southeast.

Linking together ethnographic, historic, and archaeological sources, Buchanan discusses the evidence that the people of Common Field engaged in novel and hybrid practices in these dangerous times. At the microscale, they adopted new ceramic tempering techniques, produced large numbers of serving vessels decorated with warfare-related imagery, adapted their food practices, and erected a substantial palisade with specially prepared deposits. The overall picture that emerges at Common Field is of a people who engaged in risk-averse practices that minimized their exposure to outside of the palisade and attempted to seek intercession from otherworldly realms through public ceremonies involving warfare-related iconography.
 

Born in 1767 at Saukenuk on the Rock River in western Illinois, Black Hawk of the Sauk and Fox Nation rose from young warrior to fierce defender of his people as the United States pushed relentlessly westward. His autobiography, originally dictated in 1833, is one of the earliest Native American life narratives recorded: a warrior’s unfiltered account of betrayal, resistance, and the patriotic fight to protect his homeland. In 1832, Black Hawk led his people to reclaim Saukenuk. Settlers had destroyed their homes and crops and illegally occupied their land that had been recognized as Sauk and Fox by treaty. After winning the first two battles against the U.S. military and volunteer militia in Wisconsin, Black Hawk’s band lost the final one at Bad Axe. Black Hawk’s people were forced to accept permanent removal to the west, and he became a prisoner of war at the Fort Jefferson barracks near St. Louis. It was there that he dictated his autobiography to an interpreter.

Introduced and edited by historian Donald L. Fixico, this new edition of Life of Black Hawk brings fresh context and cultural depth to Black Hawk’s words, illuminating the Sauk and Fox worldview, the sacred traditions of the Thunder Clan, and the spiritual life that shaped this remarkable leader. Black Hawk's account conveys what it was like to be a Sauk warrior in the early 1800s. He explains the Medicine Way of his people and how the traditional worldview of Black Hawk was quickly changing from a harmonious relationship with nature to unavoidable frontier hostilities with an expanding United States. You feel the frustrating dilemma of Black Hawk, who knows that defending his people and fighting to save his homeland is morally right. Timely, intimate, and essential, this volume is both a vivid window into the Indigenous experience on the frontier and a testament to a man who stands alongside the great Native patriots. For readers of Native American history, military history, and American biography, this is an extraordinary story that has never been more important to hear. 

While working on his first book, Bob Korkuc became intimately familiar with the 381st Bombardment Group of the Mighty Eighth Air Force and met the group’s chaplain, James Good Brown. Brown kept a diary during his time with the bomb group (1943 to 1945) in which he chronicled the daily experiences of the men. 

Years after the war, Brown self-published his diary, which today is hard to find. Through his friendship with Brown, Korkuc gained access to and chose to edit the original docu - ment so that more readers might appreciate this insightful wartime eyewitness account. 

Serving in his early forties alongside men twenty years his junior—whom he called the “Mighty Men of the 381st”—Brown took part in morning briefings, shared meals with crews, and anxiously awaited their return from dangerous daylight bombing missions. Flying as a noncombatant, an unnecessary eleventh crewmember, Brown describes his own observations of a Flying Fortress combat mission over Germany. Writing with extraordinary candor, Brown documents the inner workings of a bomb group that flew 297 combat missions over Europe, providing vivid character assessments of his fellow airmen and capturing both their victories and devastating losses. 

In addition to judiciously editing Brown’s original diary for readability, Korkuc created a unique appendix, which reveals the fate of every airman who served with Brown. The immediacy of Brown’s narration combined with Korkuc’s meticulous editing make this a promising new resource for scholars and general readers alike.
 
 

First published in 1953, this photographic record of the real life and work of cowboys remains a perennial favorite. Erwin E. Smith was the outstanding cowboy photographer of the West, and these eighty photographs were among those he chose for an exhibit of his best work at the 1936 Texas Centennial. The text by J. Evetts Haley, a noted historian of the range, skillfully complements Smith's visual record of a vanishing way of life.

This book of thirteen conversations introduces us to the life of an exceptional person—theatre critic, Germanist, and long-time chair of the Open Lithuania Fund board—Irena Veisaitė. The dialogue between Lithuanian historian Aurimas Švedas and a woman who reflects deeply on her experiences reveals both one individual’s historically dramatic life and the fate of Europe and Lithuania in the twentieth century.

Through the complementary lenses of history and memory, we confront with Veisaitė the horrific events of the Holocaust, which brought about the end of the Lithuanian Jewish world. We also meet an array of world-class cultural figures, see fragments of legendary theatre performances, and hear meaningful words that were spoken or heard decades ago.

This book’s interlocutors do not so much seek to answer the question “What was it like?” but instead repeatedly ask each other: “What, how, and why do we remember? What is the meaning of our experiences? How can history help us to live in the present and create the future? How do we learn to understand and forgive?”

A series of Veisaitė’s texts, statements, and letters, presented at the end of the book suggest further ways of answering these questions.

"[T]his handsomely-produced volume performs admirably as a series of introductions to sources, approaches, and the state of scholarship on major topics in Roman social history . . . Collections of essays come and go, but this one will stay in wide use. Each essay can stand alone but, tied together by the theme of dominance, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
---Donald Kyle, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"This collection of essays is intended to serve as a coursebook for introductory lecture series on Roman civilization; the essays are concentrated on fundamental aspects of Roman society, and no prior knowledge of antiquity on the reader's part is assumed. . . . The book as a whole is entirely successful in its projected aim: an immense range of detailed information about antiquity is presented in readable and largely sophisticated discussion. . . . Increasingly we need to be able to suggest to our students reading that is introductory but also in-depth and challenging, and this book is one possible reading that we can offer."
---Ellen O'Gorman, Classical Review

Life, Death, and Entertainment gives those with a general interest in Roman antiquity a starting point, informed by the latest developments in scholarship, for understanding the extraordinary range of Roman society. Family structure, slavery, gender identity, food supply, religion, and entertainment---all crucial parts of the Roman world---are discussed here, in a single volume that offers an approachable guide for readers of all backgrounds. The collection unites a series of general introductions on each of these topics, bringing readers in touch with a broad range of evidence, as well as with a wide variety of approaches to basic questions about the Roman world.

The newly expanded edition includes historian Keith Hopkins' pathbreaking article on Roman slaves. Volume editor David Potter has contributed two new translations of documents from emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian's letters document a reorganization of the festival cycle in the Empire and reassert the importance of the Olympic Games; the letter to Marcus provides the most important surviving evidence for how gladiatorial games were actually organized. 

Contributors to the volume include Greg S. Aldrete, Hazel Dodge, Bruce W. Frier, Maud W. Gleason, Ann E. Hanson, Keith Hopkins, David J. Mattingly, and David S. Potter.

D.S. Potter is Professor of Classics and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan.

D.J. Mattingly is Professor of Roman Archaeology, University of Leicester, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Cover illustrations: top left, Karanis Excavation, courtesy Kelsey Museum; bottom right, Monte Testacchio, courtesy David J. Mattingly; center, Pollice Verso by Jean-Léon Gérôme, courtesy Phoenix Art Museum, Museum Purchase.

A poignant exploration of post–World War II life, blending fictional and non-fictional stories that challenge traditions and reflect on the enduring impact of historical disruptions. 

Lifespan Narratives has to do with stories, fictitious and not, which present a sad chronicle and question tradition from several different perspectives. Originally comprising Alexander Kluge’s first book, these stories were written between the years 1958 and 1962, in which he emphasizes the importance of continuously questioning our past. He underscores the necessity of recounting lifespan narratives even from today’s viewpoint, proposing that “life in a time of disruption” should be viewed as a constant experiential substance, transcending any single era.  

In Lifespan Narratives, readers are invited to explore the enduring impact of historical disruptions through Kluge’s masterful storytelling, which remains as relevant today as it was in the years following the Second World War. For this edition, the English translation of a selection of stories by Leila Vennewitz has been expanded by Alexander Booth in conjunction with the author. 

The essential collection of African American voices that shaped the struggle for freedom, equality, and citizenship.

Lift Every Voice is a completely revised, updated, and expanded version of Philip Foner's 1972 classic Voice of Black America, which Library Journal hailed as "indispensable.""This well-edited and
richly inclusive work," wrote Benjamin Quarles, "unveils the full sweep of Black expression as found in platform addresses" by "men and women who join eloquence with reason in articulating their
grievances and their aspirations and in arousing their listeners with their ringing and prophetic challenges." This new collection includes over 60 additional texts and revised and expanded introductory essays that provide historical, biographical, and critical information for each speech.

For Americans of the 19th century, as W. E. B. Du Bois observed, eloquent speeches were 'the shining lights of civilization' that both expressed and sought to improve the lives and communities from which they sprang. Through political speeches, sermons, lectures, oral testimonies, and ceremonial addresses, African Americans offered diverse responses to the issues and events of their times, including not only slavery and racial equality but also women's rights, education, religion, immigration, socialism, war, Indian policy, and labor organization, among others. The speeches in this
collection are among the most powerful expressions of African American opinions on these issues and were delivered on occasions and before audiences where the speakers believed their words might be transformative.

Containing more than 150 speeches, this anthology represents the most extensive and diverse collection of African American oratory of the 18th and 19th centuries ever published. Lift Every Voice makes readily accessible not only the classic orations of such well-known figures as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington but also dozens of lesser-known but important speeches deserving greater recognition and study. Many of these speeches are previously unpublished, uncollected, or long out of print.

"Lifting the Fog of Peace is a captivating study of an agile and adaptive military evolving through the chaos of the post-9/11 world. In what is certain to be regarded as the definitive analysis of the reshaping of American combat power in the face of a complex and uncertain future, Dr. Janine Davidson firmly establishes herself as a rising intellectual star in government and politics. A thoroughly captivating study of organizational learning and adaptation—a 'must read' for leaders in every field."
---LTG William B. Caldwell, IV, Commanding General, NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan

"In Lifting the Fog of Peace, Dr. Janine Davidson explains how the American military has adapted itself to succeed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are the most likely future face of combat. The book is informed by her experience of these wars in the Department of Defense, where she now plays a critical role in continuing the process of learning that has so visibly marked the military's performance in today's wars. Highly recommended."
---John A. Nagl, President, Center for a New American Security

"Janine Davidson’s Lifting the Fog of Peace is a superb, concise, and well-written book that makes important contributions in three areas. It advances our knowledge of organizational learning in the Armed Forces. It also accurately captures the rich post-Vietnam operational and doctrinal history of the Army and the Marine Corps. The simplistic cartoon of dim-witted generals fixated on the Fulda Gap is replaced here by a more accurate version, where engaged senior officers studied the security environment, absorbed important lessons, and began to improve the learning capacity of the military services. Finally, Lifting the Fog of Peace assesses the state of contemporary stability operations and what must be done to further prepare our Armed Forces for modern war on the low end of the spectrum of conflict. It will be a 'must read' on the E-Ring of the Pentagon and in security studies programs across the nation."
---Joseph J. Collins, Professor, National War College, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations

Counterinsurgency and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are only the most recent examples of the U.S. Armed Forces fighting insurgents, building infrastructure, enforcing laws, and governing cities. For more than two centuries, these assignments have been a regular part of the military's tasks; yet until recently the lessons learned from the experiences have seldom been formally incorporated into doctrine and training. As a result, each generation of soldiers has had to learn on the job.

Janine Davidson traces the history of the U.S. military's involvement in these complex and frustrating missions. By comparing the historical record to the current era, Davidson assesses the relative influence of organizational culture and processes, institutional structures, military leadership, and political factors on the U.S. military's capacity to learn and to adapt. Pointing to the case of Iraq, she shows that commanders serving today have benefited at the tactical level from institutional changes following the Vietnam War and from the lessons of the 1990s. Davidson concludes by addressing the question of whether or not such military learning, in the absence of enhanced capabilities and capacity in other U.S. government agencies, will be sufficient to meet the complex challenges of the 21st century.

Janine Davidson, a former Air Force pilot, is a professor of national security at George Mason University, currently serving in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Plans.

The views presented in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or its Components.

From disability metaphors to narratives structured around bodies presented as aberrant, early medieval English thoughtworlds conveyed the promise of resurrection and the hope of salvation through crip and disabled bodies. Light of the Everlasting Life argues that early medieval Christian eschatology, as manifested in Old English literary texts, was a crip eschatology: a theology of the afterlife that relied upon disabled bodies and concepts related to disability in order to convey promises of resurrection and salvation. In addition to demonstrating how literature manifested theological approaches to the afterlife, Leah Pope Parker articulates the ways of thinking about bodies and disability that were available to ordinary early medieval people, many of whom experienced their bodies in ways that resonate with what we call disability today, but who rarely appear in the historical record.

By analyzing Old English texts, including Alfredian translations, Ælfric’s saints’ lives, and poetry from the Exeter and Vercelli Books, Parker introduces novel ways of characterizing disability’s effects in literature. “Spiritual prosthesis” reveals rhetorical, narrative, and theological reliance upon disability to convey the promise of a Christian afterlife. “Systems of aberrance” emerge as a result, in which bodies marked as deviant—including disabled, monstrous, heroic, saintly, and dead bodies—form a network of embodiments that reinforce the narratives they inhabit and that of Christian salvation history. Locating crip eschatology in early medieval literature, Light of the Everlasting Life rewrites standard histories of disability, of the body, and of medieval Christian eschatology.

When Louise Wagenknecht’s family arrived in the remote logging town of Happy Camp in 1962, a boundless optimism reigned. Whites and Indians worked together in the woods and the lumber mills of northern California’s Klamath country. Logging and lumber mills, it seemed, would hold communities together forever.

But that booming prosperity would come to an end. Looking back on her teenage years spent along the Klamath River, Louise Wagenknecht recounts a vanishing way of life. She explores the dynamics of family relationships and the contradictions of being female in a western logging town in the 1960s. And she paints an evocative portrait of the landscape and her relationship with it.

Light on the Devils is a captivating memoir of place. It will appeal to general readers interested in the rural West, personal memoir, history, and natural history.

El Tajín, an ancient Mesoamerican capital in Veracruz, Mexico, has long been admired for its stunning pyramids and ballcourts decorated with extensive sculptural programs. Yet the city's singularity as the only center in the region with such a wealth of sculpture and fine architecture has hindered attempts to place it more firmly in the context of Mesoamerican history. In Lightning Gods and Feathered Serpents, Rex Koontz undertakes the first extensive treatment of El Tajín's iconography in over thirty years, allowing us to view its imagery in the broader Mesoamerican context of rising capitals and new elites during a period of fundamental historical transformations.

Koontz focuses on three major architectural features—the Pyramid of the Niches/Central Plaza ensemble, the South Ballcourt, and the Mound of the Building Columns complex—and investigates the meanings of their sculpture and how these meanings would have been experienced by specific audiences. Koontz finds that the iconography of El Tajín reveals much about how motifs and elite rites growing out of the Classic period were transmitted to later Mesoamerican peoples as the cultures centered on Teotihuacan and the Maya became the myriad city-states of the Early Postclassic period.

By reexamining the iconography of sculptures long in the record, as well as introducing important new monuments and contexts, Lightning Gods and Feathered Serpents clearly demonstrates El Tajín's numerous iconographic connections with other areas of Mesoamerica, while also exploring its roots in an indigenous Gulf lowlands culture whose outlines are only now emerging. At the same time, it begins to uncover a largely ignored regional artistic culture of which Tajín is the crowning achievement.

Lightning through the Clouds is the first English-language life-and-times biography of ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a preeminent figure who helped to reshape the political and religious landscape of the region. A Syrian-born, Egyptian-educated cleric, he went from the battlefields of World War I to join the anticolonialist fight against the French in Syria. Sentenced to be executed by the French military, he managed to escape to Palestine, where he became an increasingly popular presence, moved by the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Outraged by British rule and the encroachment of Zionism, he formed a secret society to resist the colonization of Palestine first by the British and then by Jewish immigrants from Europe, once again taking up arms and advocating for a moral, political, and military jihad as the only solution. His death at the hands of Palestine Police in 1935 drew thousands to his funeral and sparked the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt.

His influence continues to be felt in the region; for example, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas organization is named the ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Al-Qassam is either revered or reviled, depending on the observers’ perspective, but he is without doubt a fascinating and historically significant individual whose influence on the past, and our present, makes this examination of his life both important and timely.

Like Friends, Like Foes offers a comprehensive analysis of how Nevada residents responded and reacted to the “Japanese Question” during World War II. Both before and during the war, the experience of Japanese American residents of Nevada varied widely. Once the war started, Japanese immigrants experienced an unusual case of mass internment from the mining towns of Ruth and McGill, Nevada, while Japanese American railroad workers and their families, scattered across the state, faced sudden layoffs and evictions. At the same time, most of the Japanese Americans living in Nevada fared much better than their counterparts who resided in the surrounding states.

Andrew Russell’s study examines how variations in local history and local circumstances generated starkly different perspectives and responses to the supposed “Japanese problems” confronting Nevada’s small communities, the state, and the larger region. While Russell’s interpretive history spotlights some highly unusual developments, it nevertheless offers fresh evidence of how individuals or small groups can play significant roles in combating the abuse of civil rights during times of fear and uncertainty.

Joseph F. Smith was born in 1838 to Hyrum Smith and Mary Fielding Smith. Six years later both his father and his uncle, Joseph Smith Jr., the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were murdered in Carthage, Illinois. The trauma of that event remained with Joseph F. for the rest of his life, affecting his personal behavior and public tenure in the highest tiers of the LDS Church, including the post of president from 1901 until his death in 1918. Joseph F. Smith laid the theological groundwork for modern Mormonism, especially the emphasis on temple work. This contribution was capped off by his “revelation on the redemption of the dead,” a prophetic glimpse into the afterlife. Taysom’s book traces the roots of this vision, which reach far more deeply into Joseph F. Smith’s life than other scholars have previously identified.
 
In this first cradle-to-grave biography of Joseph F. Smith, Stephen C. Taysom uses previously unavailable primary source materials to craft a deeply detailed, insightful story of a prominent member of a governing and influential Mormon family. Importantly, Taysom situates Smith within the historical currents of American westward expansion, rapid industrialization, settler colonialism, regional and national politics, changing ideas about family and masculinity, and more. Though some writers tend to view the LDS Church and its leaders through a lens of political and religious separatism, Taysom does the opposite, pushing Joseph F. Smith and the LDS Church closer to the centers of power in Washington, DC, and elsewhere.