18284 books match the query 'United States' and 3764 start with t

cover of The Life and Adventures of an Arkansaw Doctor

The Life and Adventures of an Arkansaw Doctor

David Rattlehead

University of Arkansas Press, 1989

First published in 1851, this is the fictionalized account of Dr. Marcus Byrn's brief practice in eastern Arkansas and the earliest volume solely devoted to Arkansas humor.
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cover of The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth

The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse

Taking Risks in the Service of Truth

Andrew J. Kunka

Rutgers University Press, 2022

Nominated for the 2022 Eisner Award - Best Academic/Scholarly Work

The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse tells the remarkable story of how a self-described “preacher’s kid” from Birmingham, Alabama, became the so-called “Godfather of Gay Comics.” This study showcases a remarkable fifty-year career that included working in the 1970s underground comics scene, becoming founding editor of the groundbreaking anthology series Gay Comix, and publishing the graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, partially based on his own experience of coming of age in the Civil Rights era.  
 
Through his exploration of Cruse’s life and work, Andrew J. Kunka also chronicles the dramatic ways that gay culture changed over the course of Cruse’s lifetime, from Cold War-era homophobia to the gay liberation movement to the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage. Highlighting Cruse’s skills as a trenchant satirist and social commentator, Kunka explores how he cast a queer look at American politics, mainstream comics culture, and the gay community’s own norms. 
 
Lavishly illustrated with a broad selection of comics from Cruse’s career, this study serves as a perfect introduction to this pioneering cartoonist, as well as an insightful read for fans who already love how his work sketched a new vision of gay life.
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cover of The Life and Death of Gus Reed: A Story of Race and Justice in Illinois during the Civil War and Reconstruction

The Life and Death of Gus Reed

A Story of Race and Justice in Illinois during the Civil War and Reconstruction

Thomas Bahde

Ohio University Press, 2014

Gus Reed was a freed slave who traveled north as Sherman’s March was sweeping through Georgia in 1864. His journey ended in Springfield, Illinois, a city undergoing fundamental changes as its white citizens struggled to understand the political, legal, and cultural consequences of emancipation and black citizenship. Reed became known as a petty thief, appearing time and again in the records of the state’s courts and prisons. In late 1877, he burglarized the home of a well-known Springfield attorney—and brother of Abraham Lincoln’s former law partner—a crime for which he was convicted and sentenced to the Illinois State Penitentiary.

Reed died at the penitentiary in 1878, shackled to the door of his cell for days with a gag strapped in his mouth. An investigation established that two guards were responsible for the prisoner’s death, but neither they nor the prison warden suffered any penalty. The guards were dismissed, the investigation was closed, and Reed was forgotten.

Gus Reed’s story connects the political and legal cultures of white supremacy, black migration and black communities, the Midwest’s experience with the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the resurgence of nationwide opposition to African American civil rights in the late nineteenth century. These experiences shaped a nation with deep and unresolved misgivings about race, as well as distinctive and conflicting ideas about justice and how to achieve it.

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cover of The Life and Political Economy of Lauchlin Currie: New Dealer, Presidential Advisor, and Development Economist

The Life and Political Economy of Lauchlin Currie

New Dealer, Presidential Advisor, and Development Economist

Roger J. Sandilands

Duke University Press, 1990

Lauchlin Currie’s contribution to monetary theory and policies during the New Deal and in the postwar period when he became one of the most important economic advisors to several presidents of Colombia is the subject of this biography. Currie was a major economic advisor to president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and as his administrative assistant from 1939 until the president’s death in 1945 helped shape Roosevelt’s thinking on economic issues.
His involvement in U.S. policymaking in China, where he directed Lend-Lease operations from 1941-1943, was one of the factors leading to his confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1949 he directed the first World Bank mission to Colombia.
Roger Sandilands had access to Currie’s own papers and to previously unpublished material. In this biography he provides the reader with a critical evaluation of Currie’s contribution to the literature on the theory and practice of economic development in general, together with an analysis of how his concepts were shaped during the New Deal and in post-World War II Colombia.
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cover of The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey

The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey

Matthew Shindell

University of Chicago Press, 2019

Harold C. Urey (1893–1981), whose discoveries lie at the foundation of modern science, was one of the most famous American scientists of the twentieth century. Born in rural Indiana, his evolution from small-town farm boy to scientific celebrity made him a symbol and spokesman for American scientific authority. Because he rose to fame alongside the prestige of American science, the story of his life reflects broader changes in the social and intellectual landscape of twentieth-century America. In this, the first ever biography of the chemist, Matthew Shindell shines new light on Urey’s struggles and achievements in a thoughtful exploration of the science, politics, and society of the Cold War era.
 
From Urey’s orthodox religious upbringing to his death in 1981, Shindell follows the scientist through nearly a century of American history: his discovery of deuterium and heavy water earned him the Nobel Prize in 1934, his work on the Manhattan Project helped usher in the atomic age, he initiated a generation of American scientists into the world of quantum physics and chemistry, and he took on the origin of the Moon in NASA’s lunar exploration program. Despite his success, however, Urey had difficulty navigating the nuclear age. In later years he lived in the shadow of the bomb he helped create, plagued by the uncertainties unleashed by the rise of American science and unable to reconcile the consequences of scientific progress with the morality of religion.
 
Tracing Urey’s life through two world wars and the Cold War not only conveys the complex historical relationship between science and religion in the twentieth century, but it also illustrates how these complexities spilled over into the early days of space science. More than a life story, this book immerses readers in the trials and triumphs of an extraordinary man and his extraordinary times.
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cover of The Life and Thought of Josiah Royce: Revised and Expanded Edition

The Life and Thought of Josiah Royce

Revised and Expanded Edition

John Clendenning

Vanderbilt University Press, 1999

Infuses the first, highly acclaimed edition with new material that deepens our understanding of this distinguished American philosopher

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cover of The Life and Times of John Steele: Mormon Kingdom Builder

The Life and Times of John Steele

Mormon Kingdom Builder

Kerry William Bate

University of Utah Press, 2025

From radical reformer to Mormon pioneer and mystic

Among the founders of Salt Lake City, Parowan, and Las Vegas, and an explorer of Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon, John Steele's legacy is etched across the American West. The Life and Times of John Steele follows the remarkable journey of this Irish-born convert to Mormonism from his birth into scarcity through his final days in Kanarraville, Utah.

A fervent believer in utopian ideals, Steele sought to build an egalitarian Kingdom of Christ in the last days, becoming a key figure in early Utah history. His multifaceted roles—missionary, city founder, militia major, justice of the peace, and self-taught doctor using folk medicine, charms, and the occult—make his story unique. This meticulously researched biography offers new insights into pivotal events such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the communal economics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, drawing from Steele’s extensive personal diaries and papers to bring his complex, colorful life and times to light.
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cover of The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity

The Life and Times of Louis Lomax

The Art of Deliberate Disunity

Thomas Aiello

Duke University Press, 2021

Syndicated television and radio host. Serial liar. Pioneering journalist. Convicted criminal. Close ally of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Publicity-seeking provocateur. Louis Lomax's life was a study in contradiction. In this biography, Thomas Aiello traces the complicated and fascinating arc of Lomax's life and career, showing how the contradictions, tumult, and inconsistencies that marked his life reflected those of 1960s America. Aiello takes readers from Lomax's childhood in the Deep South to his early confidence schemes to his emergence as one of the loudest and most influential voices of the civil rights movement. Regardless of what political position he happened to take at any given moment, Lomax preached “the art of deliberate disunity,” in which the path to democracy could only be achieved through a diversity of opinions. Engaging and broad in scope, The Life and Times of Louis Lomax is the definitive study of one of the civil rights era's most complicated, important, and overlooked figures.
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cover of The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes: The Politics of Civility

The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes

The Politics of Civility

Wefing, John B

Rutgers University Press, 2009

The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes explores the influential public service of this two-term New Jersey governor. He was the only person in New Jersey history to serve as both governor and chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

This biography illuminates the governor's accomplishments between 1962 and 1970, including the creation of the Hackensack Meadowlands Commission, formation of the county college system, establishment of stringent antipollution laws, design of the public defender system, and the adoption of a New Jersey sales tax, as well as his pivotal role during the Newark riots. As chief justice, Hughes faced difficult issuesùschool funding, low and moderate income housing needs, freedom of speech, and his decision in the rightto-die case involving Karen Ann Quinlan. With a career characterized by liberal activism, Hughes also contributed nationally and internationally, from serving as host of the 1964 Democratic National Convention to monitoring elections in South Vietnam.

John B. Wefing's research includes interviews with prominent politicians and leaders who worked with Hughes at various points in his career. The result is a rich story of a public servant who possessed a true ability to work with members of both political parties and played a significant role in shaping modern New Jersey.

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cover of The Life and Times of T. H. Gallaudet

The Life and Times of T. H. Gallaudet

Edna Edith Sayers

University Press of New England, 2017

Edna Edith Sayers has written the definitive biography of T. H. Gallaudet (1787–1851), celebrated today as the founder of deaf education in America. Sayers traces Gallaudet’s work in the fields of deaf education, free common schools, literacy, teacher education and certification, and children’s books, while also examining his role in reactionary causes intended to uphold a white, Protestant nation thought to have existed in New England’s golden past. Gallaudet’s youthful social and political entanglements included involvement with Connecticut’s conservative, state-established Congregational Church, the Federalist Party, and the Counter-Enlightenment ideals of Yale (where he was a student). He later embraced anti-immigrant, anti-abolition, and anti-Catholic efforts, and supported the expatriation of free African-Americans to settlements on Africa’s west coast. As much a history of the paternalistic, bigoted, and class-conscious roots of a reform movement as a story of one man’s life, this landmark work will surprise and enlighten both the hearing and Deaf worlds.
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cover of The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts

The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey

Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts

John Griffiths Pedley

University of Michigan Press, 2011

President of the Archaeological Institute of America, professor at the University of Michigan from 1889 to 1927, and president of the American Philological Association, Francis Kelsey was crucially involved in the founding or growth of major educational institutions. He came to maturity in a period of great technological change in communications, transportation, and manufacturing. Kelsey took full advantage of such innovations in his ceaseless drive to promote education for all, to further the expansion of knowledge, and to champion the benefits of the study of antiquity.

A vigorous traveler around the United States, Europe, and the Mediterranean, Kelsey strongly believed in the value of personally viewing sites ancient and modern and collecting artifacts that could be used by the new museums and universities that were springing up in the United States. This collecting habit put him in touch with major financiers of the day, including Charles Freer, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, as he sought their help for important projects.

Drawing heavily on Kelsey's daily diaries now held at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, John Griffiths Pedley gives us a biography that records the wide-ranging activities of a gifted and energetic scholar whose achievements mirrored the creative and contributive innovations of his contemporary Americans.

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cover of The Life of Andrew Jackson

The Life of Andrew Jackson

John Reid

University of Alabama Press, 2007

The frontier fighter who rose to the presidency and reshaped a nation.

Original copies of the first, 1817, edition of this work are so rare that even the Library of Congress does not have an undamaged copy. Consequently scholars and students of Jackson have had to rely on later, incomplete or bowdlerized editions. It is therefore all the more valuable to have Owsley’s critical restoration of the original edition, complete with its useful maps.

The work is a straightforward history of Jackson’s military career, begun by John Reid, Jackson’s military aide throughout the War of 1812 and the ensuing Creek War. Reid wrote the first four chapters, and after his death John Eaton completed the work from Reid’s outline, notes, and papers. Owsley, quondam professor of history at Auburn University, has carefully restored the original edition, noted variants between this and successor editions, and included helpful apparatus, including a memoir of John Reid by Helen Reid Roberts, and indexes to the whole.

This is the first paperback edition of this valuable record and includes the original four large-scale foldout maps on an accompanying CD.

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cover of The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself

The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself

Phineas T. BarnumIntroduction by Terence Whalen

University of Illinois Press, 2000

For more than fifty years, Phineas T. Barnum embodied all that was grand and fraudulent in American mass culture. Over the course of a life that spanned the nineteenth century (1810-91), he inflicted himself upon a surprisingly willing public in a variety of guises, from newspaper editor (or libeler) to traveling showman (or charlatan) and distinguished public benefactor (or shameless hypocrite).
 
Barnum deliberately cultivated his ambiguous public image through a lifelong advertising campaign, shrewdly exploiting the cultural and technological capabilities of the new publishing industry. While running his numerous shows and exhibitions, Barnum managed to publish newspaper articles, exposés of fraud (not his own), self-help tracts, and a series of best-selling autobiographies, each promising to give "the true history of my many adventures."
 
Updated editions of The Life of P. T. Barnum appeared regularly, allowing Barnum to keep up with demand and prune the narrative of details that might offend posterity. The present volume is the first modern edition of Barnum's original and outrageous autobiography, published in 1855 and unavailable for more than a century. Brazen, confessional, and immensely entertaining, it immortalizes the showman who hoodwinked customers into paying to hear the reminiscences of a woman presented as George Washington's 161-year-old nurse, the impresario who brought Jenny Lind to America and toured Europe with General Tom Thumb, and the grand entrepreneur of the American Museum of New York. Above all, it ensures that Barnum would be properly remembered . . . exactly as he created himself.
 
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cover of The Life of Selina Campbell: A Fellow Soldier in the Cause of Restoration

The Life of Selina Campbell

A Fellow Soldier in the Cause of Restoration

Loretta M. Long Hunnicutt

University of Alabama Press, 2001

This first biography of Selina Campbell opens a window onto the experience of women in one of the most dynamic religious groups of 19th-century America

Loretta M. Long examines the life and influence of Selina Campbell, one of the most visible women in the 19th-century Disciples of Christ movement. Best known as the wife of Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples, Selina Campbell both shaped and exemplified the role of women in this dynamic religious group (also known as the Stone-Campbell movement). Her story demonstrates the importance of faith in the lives of many women during this era and adds a new dimension to the concept of the “separate spheres” of men and women, which women like Campbell interpreted in the context of their religious beliefs.

A household manager, mother, writer, and friend, Campbell held sway primarily in the domestic sphere, but she was not held captive by it. Her relationship with her husband was founded on a deep sense of partnership conditioned by their strong faith in an all-powerful God. Each of them took on complementary roles according to the perceived natural abilities of their genders: Alexander depended on Selina to manage his property and raise the children while he traveled the country preaching. Campbell outlived her husband by 30 years, and during that time published several newspaper articles and supported new causes, such as women in missions.

In the end, as Long amply demonstrates, Selina Campbell was neither her husband’s shadow nor solely a domestic worker. She was, in her husband’s eyes, a full partner and a “fellow soldier” in the cause of Restoration.
 

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cover of The Life of Stephen F. Austin, Founder of Texas, 1793-1836: A Chapter in the Westward Movement of the Anglo-American People

The Life of Stephen F. Austin, Founder of Texas, 1793-1836

A Chapter in the Westward Movement of the Anglo-American People

By Eugene C. Barker

University of Texas Press, 1969

Almost a hundred years after the death of Stephen F. Austin this first full-length biography was published. And for almost a quarter of a century—dividing his time between editing, teaching, textbook writing, and serving in various academic capacities—Eugene C. Barker pursued the study which resulted in The Life of Stephen F. Austin. His accomplishment has long been regarded as a fine example of biography in Texas literature.

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cover of The Light That Endures: Stories of Courage, Compassion, and Resilience at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

The Light That Endures

Stories of Courage, Compassion, and Resilience at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Todd Weissman

University of Massachusetts Press, 2026

Showing that everyday people offer the deepest, most relatable lessons in grace

Offering an intimate glimpse into the lives of individuals connected to one of the world’s foremost centers for cancer care and research, The Light That Endures reveals how ordinary people at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute demonstrate extraordinary resilience in the face of life’s most challenging moments. Through eight captivating profiles, readers meet a world-renowned pediatric oncologist who rode on horseback at Eisenhower’s inauguration, delivered a secret message in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, and hosted the future King of England; a florist-turned-nurse-turned-teacher whose life changed drastically after a chance encounter on a train; an administrator who has faced adversity his entire life, from a violent father, to confronting his own identity, to being held up at gunpoint; a teenage patient whose battle with cancer was just one of many challenges he has navigated; and a woman who, despite spending her life bringing comfort to others, wonders whether she’s been enough as she reflects after a terminal diagnosis.

These remarkable people, diverse in their backgrounds, share a common bond through cancer and Dana-Farber, that much is obvious. However, it is their quiet acts of grace and service—woven into both their professional paths and personal journeys—that more deeply unite them. Their stories reveal a deeper truth: despite hardship and loss, the arc of life bends toward goodness. Fractured childhoods, family estrangement, mental health strains, winding career paths, and the ever-present shadow of self-doubt are not just obstacles but catalysts. The individuals profiled have found hope and meaning in community and their work, shaping lives of purpose, service, and gratitude. More than a recounting of lives touched by cancer, The Light That Endures is a celebration of the profound impact of compassion and human connection. It captures the essence of Dana-Farber’s ethos, where a shared mission of care fosters an environment of empathy and hope.

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cover of The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America

The Light of the Home

An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America

Harvey Green

University of Arkansas Press, 2003

From the greatest collection of American Victoriana comes a wonderful evocation of the lives of women 100 years ago. Harvey Green culls from letters and diaries, quotes from magazines, and looks at the clothes, samplers, books, appliances, toys, and dolls of the era to provide a rare portrait of daily life in turn-of-the-century America.
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cover of The Limits of Auteurism: Case Studies in the Critically Constructed New Hollywood

The Limits of Auteurism

Case Studies in the Critically Constructed New Hollywood

Godfrey, Nicholas

Rutgers University Press, 2018

The New Hollywood era of the late 1960s and early 1970s has become one of the most romanticized periods in motion picture history, celebrated for its stylistic boldness, thematic complexity, and the unshackling of directorial ambition. The Limits of Auteurism aims to challenge many of these assumptions. Beginning with the commercial success of Easy Rider in 1969, and ending two years later with the critical and commercial failure of that film’s twin progeny, The Last Movie and The Hired Hand, Nicholas Godfrey surveys a key moment that defined the subsequent aesthetic parameters of American commercial art cinema. 

The book explores the role that contemporary critics played in determining how the movies of this period were understood and how, in turn, strategies of distribution influenced critical responses and dictated the conditions of entry into the rapidly codifying New Hollywood canon. Focusing on a small number of industrially significant films, this new history advances our understanding of this important moment of transition from Classical to contemporary modes of production.  
 
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cover of The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions

The Limits of Legitimacy

Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions

Michael A. Zilis

University of Michigan Press, 2015

When the U.S. Supreme Court announces a decision, reporters simplify and dramatize the complex legal issues by highlighting dissenting opinions and thus emphasizing conflict among the justices themselves. This often sensationalistic coverage fosters public controversy over specific rulings despite polls which show that Americans strongly believe in the Court’s legitimacy as an institution. In The Limits of Legitimacy, Michael A. Zilis illuminates this link between case law and public opinion. Drawing on a diverse array of sources and methods, he employs case studies of eminent domain decisions, analysis of media reporting, an experiment to test how volunteers respond to media messages, and finally the natural experiment of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

Zilis finds that the media tends not to quote from majority opinions. However, the greater the division over a particular ruling among the justices themselves, the greater the likelihood that the media will criticize that ruling, characterize it as "activist," and employ inflammatory rhetoric. Hethen demonstrates that the media’s portrayal of a decision, as much as the substance of the decision itself, influences citizens’ reactions to and acceptance of it.

This meticulously constructed study and its persuasively argued conclusion advance the understanding of the media, judicial politics, political institutions, and political behavior.
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cover of The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era

The Limits of Party

Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era

James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee

University of Chicago Press, 2020

To many observers, Congress has become a deeply partisan institution where ideologically-distinct political parties do little more than engage in legislative trench warfare. A zero-sum, winner-take-all approach to congressional politics has replaced the bipartisan comity of past eras. If the parties cannot get everything they want in national policymaking, then they prefer gridlock and stalemate to compromise. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom.

In The Limits of Party, James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee challenge this conventional wisdom. By constructing legislative histories of congressional majority parties’ attempts to enact their policy agendas in every congress since the 1980s and by drawing on interviews with Washington insiders, the authors analyze the successes and failures of congressional parties to enact their legislative agendas.
​
Their conclusions will surprise many congressional observers: Even in our time of intense party polarization, bipartisanship remains the key to legislative success on Capitol Hill. Congressional majority parties today are neither more nor less successful at enacting their partisan agendas. They are not more likely to ram though partisan laws or become mired in stalemate. Rather, the parties continue to build bipartisan coalitions for their legislative priorities and typically compromise on their original visions for legislation in order to achieve legislative success.
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cover of The Limits of Religious Tolerance

The Limits of Religious Tolerance

Alan Jay Levinovitz

Amherst College Press, 2016

Religion’s place in American public life has never been fixed. As new communities have arrived, as old traditions have fractured and reformed, as cultural norms have been shaped by shifting economic structures and the advance of science, and as new faith traditions have expanded the range of religious confessions within America’s religious landscape, the claims posited by religious faiths—and the respect such claims may demand—have been subjects of near-constant change. In The Limits of Religious Tolerance, Alan Jay Levinovitz pushes against the widely held (and often unexamined) notion that unbounded tolerance must and should be accorded to claims forwarded on the basis of religious belief in a society increasingly characterized by religious pluralism. Pressing at the distinction between tolerance and respect, Levinovitz seeks to offer a set of guideposts by which a democratic society could identify and observe a set of limits beyond which religiously grounded claims may legitimately be denied the expectation of unqualified non-interference.
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cover of The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War

The Limits of Sovereignty

Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War

Daniel W. Hamilton

University of Chicago Press, 2006

Americans take for granted that government does not have the right to permanently seize private property without just compensation. Yet for much of American history, such a view constituted the weaker side of an ongoing argument about government sovereignty and individual rights. What brought about this drastic shift in legal and political thought?

Daniel W. Hamilton locates that change in the crucible of the Civil War. In the early days of the war, Congress passed the First and Second Confiscation Acts, authorizing the Union to seize private property in the rebellious states of the Confederacy, and the Confederate Congress responded with the broader Sequestration Act. The competing acts fueled a fierce, sustained debate among legislators and lawyers about the principles underlying alternative ideas of private property and state power, a debate which by 1870 was increasingly dominated by today’s view of more limited government power.

Through its exploration of this little-studied consequence of the debates over confiscation during the Civil War, The Limits of Sovereignty will be essential to an understanding of the place of private property in American law and legal history.

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cover of The Limits of Transnationalism

The Limits of Transnationalism

Nancy L. Green

University of Chicago Press, 2019

Transnationalism means many things to many people, from crossing physical borders to crossing intellectual ones. The Limits of Transnationalism reassesses the overly optimistic narratives often associated with this malleable term, revealing both the metaphorical and very real obstacles for transnational mobility. Nancy L. Green begins her wide-ranging examination with the story of Frank Gueydan, an early twentieth-century American convicted of manufacturing fake wine in France who complained bitterly that he was neither able to get a fair trial there nor to enlist the help of US officials. Gueydan’s predicament opens the door for a series of inquiries into the past twenty-five years of transnational scholarship, raising questions about the weaknesses of global networks and the slippery nature of citizenship ties for those who try to live transnational lives. The Limits of Transnationalism serves as a cogent reminder of this topic’s complexity, calling for greater attention to be paid to the many bumps in the road.
 
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cover of The Limits to Union: Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Civil Rights

The Limits to Union

Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Civil Rights

Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller

University of Michigan Press, 2004

Revised and updated to include the most current information on same-sex marriage, The Limits to Union documents a legal struggle at its moment of greatest historical importance.

"The Limits to Union is a superb book about the complexities of recent political struggles over same-sex marriage. Goldberg-Hiller offers a sophisticated account of egalitarian rights advocacy and the reaction it has generated from established majorities animated by a 'new common sense' of exclusionary sovereign authority. The author's analysis is multidimensional and nuanced, but the core argument is bold, important, and well-supported. I recommend it very highly to everyone interested in understanding the character, possibilities, and constraints of civil rights amid our contemporary culture wars."
-Michael McCann, author of Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization

"In this excellent book, Goldberg-Hiller uses Hawaii's experience to examine the interaction between courts and the political system. . . . Relying on briefs, legislative statements, and interviews with activists from both sides of the question, he views this familiar debate . . . through the unfamiliar prism of gay marriage, which allows him to gauge the viability and the pliability of the American civil rights ideal, and how gay and lesbian issues fit (or don't fit) within that ideal."
-Willian Heinzen, New York Law Journal

"Goldberg-Hiller presents the history of the same-sex marriage question since it first sparked debate in Hawaii. He follows the shifting debate through court cases, state propositions, and state and federal legislatures, considering questions about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and the concept of equal protection under the law for gays and lesbians. This detailed treatment of the legal issues surrounding same-sex marriages is highly recommended."
-R. L. Abbott, University of Evansville


"[A] valuable contribution to the field, situating the gay marriage debate in broader contexts of theory, law and practice. [S]ame-sex marriage is an important issue...that finds itself caught in the friction points of much larger debates over the nature of rights, the limits of sovereignty and the proper role of courts and law in a democratic society. The Limits to Union should therefore be of interest even to those who do not think of themselves as interested in gay and lesbian rights issues."
-Evan Gerstmann, Loyola Marymount University, Law and Politics Book Review
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cover of The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence

The Lincoln Assassination

The Evidence

Edited by William C. Edwards and Edward Steers

University of Illinois Press, 2008

On April 22, 1865, Brevet Colonel H. L. Burnett was assigned to head the investigation into the murder of President Abraham Lincoln and the attempted murder of Secretary of State William H. Seward. Burnett orchestrated the collection of thousands of documents for the Military Commission’s trial of the conspirators. This deep archive of documentary evidence--consisting of letters, depositions, eyewitness accounts, investigative reports, and other documents--provides invaluable insight into the historical, cultural, and judicial context of the investigation. Only a fraction of the information presented in these documents ever made its way into the trial, and most of it has never been readily accessible. By presenting an annotated and indexed transcription of these documents, this volume offers significant new access to information on the events surrounding the assassination and a vast new store of social and political history of the Civil War era.

“With tears in my eyes I think it your duty to hang every rebel caught. I feel as bad as if was my own mother or father & will be one to volunteer to try & shoot every Southern man. May God have mercy on the man’s soul that done such a deed.
With much Respect for our Country,
I remain
Weeping”
--Anonymous letter, New York, April 15, 1865

“I know Booth. He was in the habit of coming to my place to shoot. . . . He shot well, and practiced to shoot with accuracy in every possible position. . . . He was a quick shot; always silent, reticent.”
--Deposition of Benjamin Barker, Pistol Gallery proprietor

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cover of The Lincoln Family Album

The Lincoln Family Album

Mark E. Neely Jr. and Harold Holzer

Southern Illinois University Press, 2006

Chronicling the private lives of the Lincolns through their personal photographic collection

The Lincoln Family Album offers a rare and revealing glimpse into the private life of Abraham Lincoln and the first family. Showcasing original and previously unpublished photographs collected and preserved by Mary Todd Lincoln and four generations of descendants, the volume includes pictures displayed in a family album when the Lincolns lived in the White House. Chronicled are the lives of the Lincolns’ three sons, including the tragic death of Willie in 1862, the rapid change of Tad during the war, and Robert’s marriage, children, and political career. Soldiers and statesmen of the Civil War, period figures such as Tom Thumb and Henry Ward Beecher, and even the family dog also graced the album that became the nucleus of the Lincolns’ personal collection.

This updated edition, which provides both additional pictures and new introductory materials by renowned Lincoln scholars Mark E. Neely Jr. and Harold Holzer, paints a portrait of the Lincolns’ rise to prominence and the exclusion of poorer relations after the family moved to the nation’s capital. With 150 illustrations and detailed captions, this authoritative and enlightening nineteenth-century history also includes capsule biographies of the Lincolns’ friends and relatives.

In such images as the First Lady in mourning or the assassin John Wilkes Booth, the pictures cannot disguise the painful truth about a family that suffered as many tragedies as triumphs. Willie’s death at the age of eleven abruptly ended Mary and Abraham’s personal collecting, but Lincoln descendants continued the tradition. The last pages of The Lincoln Family Album conclude with the death of Robert Lincoln’s last grandchild, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, in 1985, ending the direct line of Abraham and Mary Lincoln.

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cover of The Lincoln Highway: Main Street across America, A Tenth Aniversary Edition

The Lincoln Highway

Main Street across America, A Tenth Aniversary Edition

Drake Hokanson

University of Iowa Press, 1999

Ten years after its original publication, Drake Hokanson's best-selling book continues to inspire readers to leave the interstate for a road less traveled, but one that still fuels the American preoccupation with the open road.

In his new introduction to this tenth anniversary edition, Hokanson revisits the Lincoln Highway and finds it changed—much for the better—since the original publication of this book. Most notably, he calls attention to the reinvigorated Lincoln Highway Association and its efforts to preserve what is left of the old road. Hokanson finds more and more tourists traveling the road—not only Americans but foreigners as well—by car, bus, and motorcycle on journeys not to any particular destination, but simply to see America.

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cover of The Lincoln Image: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE POPULAR PRINT

The Lincoln Image

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE POPULAR PRINT

Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, and Mark E . Neely Jr.

University of Illinois Press, 1984

[more]
cover of The Lincoln Mailbag: America Writes to the President, 1861-1865

The Lincoln Mailbag

America Writes to the President, 1861-1865

Edited by Harold Holzer

Southern Illinois University Press, 2006

As president, Abraham Lincoln received between two hundred and five hundred letters a day—correspondence from public officials, political allies, and military leaders, as well as letters from ordinary Americans of all races who wanted to share their views with him. Here, and in his critically acclaimed volume Dear Mr. Lincoln, editor Harold Holzer has rescued these voices—sometimes eloquent, occasionally angry, at times poetic—from the obscurity of the archives of the Civil War. The Lincoln Mailbag includes letters written by African Americans, which Lincoln never saw, revealing to readers a more accurate representation of the nation’s mood than even the president knew. This first paperback edition of The Lincoln Mailbag includes a new index and fourteen illustrations, and Holzer’s introduction and annotations provide historical context for the events described and the people who wrote so passionately to their president in Lincoln's America.

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cover of The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies

The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies

William Hanchett

University of Illinois Press, 1983

[more]
cover of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The Lincoln Studies Center Edition

Edited by Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson

University of Illinois Press, 2014

While the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas are undoubtedly the most celebrated in American history, they may also be the most consequential as well. For the issues so fiercely debated in 1858 were about various interrelated aspects of one momentous, nation-threatening issue: slavery. The contest between Lincoln and Douglas became a testing ground for the viability of conflicting ideals in a nation deeply divided. One of the most colorful and engaging episodes in American history, this series of debates is of enduring interest as an illuminating instance of the ever-recurring dilemma of self-government: what happens when the guiding principle of democracy, "popular sovereignty," confronts a principled stand against a "moral, social, and political evil"? The tragic answer in this case came three years later: civil war.

Important as they are, the Lincoln-Douglas debates have long since ceased to be self-explanatory. This edition is the first to provide a text founded on all known records, rather than following one or another of the partisan and sometimes widely-varying newspaper accounts. Meticulously edited and annotated, it provides numerous aids to help the modern reader understand the debates, including extensive introductory material, commentary, and a glossary. The fullest and most dependable edition of the Lincoln-Douglas debates ever prepared, this edition brings readers as close as possible to the original words of these two remarkable men.

[more]
cover of The Lithic Industries of the Illinois Valley in the Early and Middle Woodland Period

The Lithic Industries of the Illinois Valley in the Early and Middle Woodland Period

Anta Montet-White

University of Michigan Press, 1968

Anta Montet-White analyzes chipped stone tools from more than 30 Woodland and Hopewell sites in the Illinois Valley, including Steuben, Weaver, Havana, Klunk, and Snyders. Contains more than 65 drawings and photographs of various tools, including preforms, projectile points, celts, and hoes.
[more]
cover of The Little Lead Soldier

The Little Lead Soldier

Hugh D. Wise III

Westholme Publishing, 2017

An Extraordinary Account from the Front Lines of World War I, Written at the Request of an American Officer’s Young Son
Arriving in France in April 1918, Col. Hugh D. Wise, commander of the U.S. 61st Infantry Division, held a precious object. It was a toy soldier given to him by his six-year-old son, Hugh, Jr. The boy had asked the little lead soldier to write him with news of his father. The colonel saw action in two of the most important campaigns the Americans fought, St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne, and the little lead soldier dutifully assured a boy thousands of miles away that his father was safe: “The men had been shelled, gassed, and raked by machine guns constantly: and undergone several intense bombardments; and made a difficult though successful attack; and had resisted a fierce counter-attack. They had dug trenches, moved, and dug again. All this time they had been without shelter, exposed to a cold driving rain and without warm food—They were wet, chilled, and tired when called upon for even greater ef­forts but they responded with the energy and spirit of fresh troops.” A treasured family heirloom, these wartime letters are presented for the first time along with letter from Colonel Wise to his wife, and engrossing historical context provided by his grandson, Hugh D. Wise, III. The Little Lead Soldier: World War I Letters from a Father to His Son is a remarkable story of how a father performed his dangerous duty while keeping a promise to his boy. 
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cover of The Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life Of Manuel Antonio Chaves

The Little Lion of the Southwest

A Life Of Manuel Antonio Chaves

Marc Simmons

Ohio University Press, 1974

Manuel Antonio Chaves’ life straddled three eras of New Mexican history: he was born (1818) at the tag end of the Spanish colonial period, he grew to manhood in the rough and heady days of the Santa Fe trade during the quarter century of Mexican rule (1821–1846), and he spent his mature years under the territorial regime established by the United States. Manuel Chaves’ long career (died 1889) was interwoven with almost every major historical event which occurred during his adult life—the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition, the Mexican War, the Civil War, skirmishes with Utes, Navajos, and Apaches. He was called El Leoncito, The Little Lion, having earned the name as an Indian fighter. He lived for two years in St. Louis and was a well-travelled man, doing business in New Orleans, New York, and Cuba.

A hundred years ago when men still gathered around campfires and storytelling was a well-developed art, Chaves’ exploits were known to all New Mexicans. But history has a capricious memory and his name became virtually forgotten. Around the turn of the century, Charles F. Lummis’ flowery pen recalled brief attention to Chaves’ life, and in 1927 he appeared as a minor character in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop—but otherwise was virtually forgotten. Alas. Too few of our Spanish frontiersmen have been studied in depth. Manuel Chaves and his life should not be lost. He was one of the legendary but real men who pioneered and built the 19th century Southwest. Howard R. Lamar laments: “The Spanish-American population of New Mexico still lacks a historian.” Marc Simmons’ biography of Manuel Chaves helps fill that gap.

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cover of The Little Magazine in Contemporary America

The Little Magazine in Contemporary America

Edited by Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Little magazines have often showcased the best new writing in America. Historically, these idiosyncratic, small-circulation outlets have served the dual functions of representing the avant-garde of literary expression while also helping many emerging writers become established authors. Although changing technology and the increasingly harsh financial realities of publishing over the past three decades would seem to have pushed little magazines to the brink of extinction, their story is far more complicated.

In this collection, Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz gather the reflections of twenty-three prominent editors whose little magazines have flourished over the past thirty-five years. Highlighting the creativity and innovation driving this diverse and still vital medium, contributors offer insights into how their publications sometimes succeeded, sometimes reluctantly folded, but mostly how they evolved and persevered. Other topics discussed include the role of little magazines in promoting the work and concerns of minority and women writers, the place of universities in supporting and shaping little magazines, and the online and offline future of these publications.

Selected contributors
Betsy Sussler, BOMB; Lee Gutkind, Creative Nonfiction; Bruce Andrews, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E; Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s; Keith Gessen, n+1; Don Share, Poetry; Jane Friedman, VQR; Amy Hoffman, Women’s Review of Books; and more.
 
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cover of The Little Mans Big Friend: James E. Folsom in Alabama Politics, 1946-1958

The Little Mans Big Friend

James E. Folsom in Alabama Politics, 1946-1958

George E. Sims

University of Alabama Press, 1985

Examines the political career of Alabama’s “Big Jim” Folsom
 
At the end of World War II changing economic and social forces transformed the lives of Alabamians, whose political leaders had built careers on localistic politics shaped by established economic and governmental interests. Into this context strolled “Big Jim”—six feet eight inches tall—with his corn-shuck mop, wooden suds bucket, and a promise to scrub out the Capitol. Ridiculed by his opponents, Folsom advertised his progressive program in every crossroads community.
 
As governor, Folsom faced a legislature dominated by local politicians whom he had bypassed during the campaign, and although he won approval of some bills, legislative opposition made his administration a four-year filibuster.
 
Not until 1955, after his election to a second term, did Folsom become an effective leader. Tying programs for expanded services to the local interests of the legislators, he won approval for road construction, “old-age pensions,” industrial development, and reorganization of the state docks. But the lawmakers balked at constitutional reform.
 
As his reform efforts met defeat during 1956, Folsom was losing his ability to lead. He refused to exploit racial tensions, and the rise of the civil rights movement undermined his popularity among whites. Unwilling to discipline his aides and supporters, his administration became notorious for petty graft. By 1958 aspiring candidates kept their distance from Folsom. “Big Jim” attempted a comeback in the 1962 campaign, but he was never again to hold public office.
 
 
[more]
cover of The Lives of Dillon Ripley: Natural Scientist, Wartime Spy, and Pioneering Leader of the Smithsonian Institution

The Lives of Dillon Ripley

Natural Scientist, Wartime Spy, and Pioneering Leader of the Smithsonian Institution

Roger D. Stone

University Press of New England, 2017

A Yale-educated Renaissance man, S. Dillon Ripley was a “courtly, determined, hugely ambitious, energetic, funny, and colorful ornithologist, conservationist, and cultural standard-bearer” who led the Smithsonian Institution for twenty years, during its greatest period of growth. During his watch, from 1964 to 1984, the SI added eight new museums and seven new research centers and began publication of the Smithsonian magazine. It was Ripley’s vision that transformed “the nation’s attic” from a dusty archive to a vibrant educational and cultural institution, just as he had transformed Yale’s Peabody museum before it. Prior to his career at the SI, and running parallel with it for the rest of his life, was Ripley’s work as an ornithologist, begun in New Guinea in the 1930s, continued through his PhD from Harvard in 1943, and culminating in his landmark thirty-year project documenting the bird life of India. His lifelong passion for ornithology led him to positions of leadership in worldwide nature conservation. In the midst of these endeavors he was recruited in 1944 to the Office of Strategic Services, a Yalie club at the outset that became the forerunner of the modern CIA. Posted to Ceylon, he recruited and ran agents who reported from and infiltrated Japanese-held Southeast Asia. Roger D. Stone worked with Ripley on the board of the World Wildlife Fund. He has access to the Ripley family’s archives and photos, as well as to the voluminous archives at the Smithsonian and the National Archives, and to over forty hours of transcribed interviews, conducted with Ripley at the Smithsonian.
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cover of The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist

The Lives of Jessie Sampter

Queer, Disabled, Zionist

Sarah Imhoff

Duke University Press, 2022

In The Lives of Jessie Sampter, Sarah Imhoff tells the story of an individual full of contradictions. Jessie Sampter (1883–1938) was best known for her Course in Zionism (1915), an American primer for understanding support of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1919, Sampter packed a trousseau, declared herself “married to Palestine,” and immigrated there. Yet Sampter’s own life and body hardly matched typical Zionist ideals. Although she identified with Judaism, Sampter took up and experimented with spiritual practices from various religions. While Zionism celebrated the strong and healthy body, she spoke of herself as “crippled” from polio and plagued by sickness her whole life. While Zionism applauded reproductive women’s bodies, Sampter never married or bore children; in fact, she wrote of homoerotic longings and had same-sex relationships. By charting how Sampter’s life did not neatly line up with her own religious and political ideals, Imhoff highlights the complicated and at times conflicting connections between the body, queerness, disability, religion, and nationalism.
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cover of The Living Lincoln

The Living Lincoln

Edited by Thomas A. Horrocks, Harold Holzer, and Frank J. Williams

Southern Illinois University Press, 2011

The Living Lincoln gives new voice to several aspects of Abraham Lincoln's career as seen through the lens of recent scholarship, in essays that show how the sixteenth president's appeal continues to endure and expand. Featuring eleven essays from major historians, the book offers thoughtful, provocative, and highly original examinations of Lincoln's role as commander-in-chief, his use of the press to shape public opinion, his position as a politician and party leader, and the changing interpretations of his legacy as a result of cultural and social changes over the century and a half since his death. 

In an opening section focusing largely on Lincoln's formative years, insightful explorations into his early self-education and the era before his presidency come from editors Frank J. Williams and Harold Holzer, respectively. Readers will also glimpse a Lincoln rarely discerned in books: calculating politician, revealed in Matthew Pinsker's illuminating essay, and shrewd military strategist, as demonstrated by Craig L. Symonds. Stimulating discussions from Edna Greene Medford, John Stauffer, and Michael Vorenberg tell of Lincoln's friendship with Frederick Douglass, his gradualism on abolition, and his evolving thoughts on race and the Constitution to round out part two. Part three features reflections on his martyrdom and memory, including a counterfactual history from Gerald J. Prokopowicz that imagines a hypothetical second term for the president, emphasizing the differences between Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson. Barry Schwartz's contribution presents original research that yields fresh insight into Lincoln's evolving legacy in the South, while Richard Wightman Fox dissects Lincoln's 1865 visit to Richmond, and Orville Vernon Burton surveys and analyzes recent Lincoln scholarship. 

This thought-provoking new anthology, introduced at a major bicentennial symposium at Harvard University, offers a wide range of ideas and interpretations by some of the best-known and most widely respected historians of our time. The Living Lincoln is essential reading for those seeking a better understanding of this nation's greatest president and how his actions resonate today.
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cover of The Living Line: Modern Art and the Economy of Energy

The Living Line

Modern Art and the Economy of Energy

Robin Veder

Dartmouth College Press, 2015

Robin Veder’s The Living Line is a radical reconceptualization of the development of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American modernism. The author illuminates connections among the histories of modern art, body cultures, and physiological aesthetics in early-twentieth-century American culture, fundamentally altering our perceptions about art and the physical, and the degree of cross-pollination in the arts. The Living Line shows that American producers and consumers of modernist visual art repeatedly characterized their aesthetic experience in terms of kinesthesia, the sense of bodily movement. They explored abstraction with kinesthetic sensibilities and used abstraction to achieve kinesthetic goals. In fact, the formalist approach to art was galvanized by theories of bodily response derived from experimental physiological psychology and facilitated by contemporary body cultures such as modern dance, rhythmic gymnastics, physical education, and physical therapy. Situating these complementary ideas and exercises in relation to enduring fears of neurasthenia, Veder contends that aesthetic modernism shared industrial modernity’s objective of efficiently managing neuromuscular energy. In a series of finely grained and interconnected case studies, Veder demonstrates that diverse modernists associated with the Armory Show, the Société Anonyme, the Stieglitz circle (especially O’Keeffe), and the Barnes Foundation participated in these discourses and practices and that “kin-aesthetic modernism” greatly influenced the formation of modern art in America and beyond. This daring and completely original work will appeal to a broad audience of art historians, historians of the body, and American culture in general.
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cover of The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography

The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

An Autobiography

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

University of Wisconsin Press, 1991

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1869-1935) was one of the leading intellectuals of the American women's movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century.  Moving beyond the struggle for suffrage, Gilman confronted an even larger problem—economic and social discrimination against women.  Her book, Women and Economics, published in 1898, was repeatedly printed and translated into seven languages.  She was a tireless traveler, lecturer, and writer and is perhaps best known for her dramatic short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper."  Gilman's autobiography gives us access to the life of a remarkable and courageous woman.
    Originally published in 1935, soon after Gilman's death, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been out of print for several years.  This edition includes a new introduction by Gilman's noted biographer, Anne J. Lane.

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cover of The Lizard Man Speaks

The Lizard Man Speaks

By Eric R. Pianka

University of Texas Press, 1994

Alone on the endless red-sand desert in the Australian outback, tracking Varanus giganteus, the perentie lizard that grows to be more than six feet long...for desert rat Eric Pianka, such adventures have led to a satisfying, if unusual, way of life, as well as a distinguished career as a field biologist.

In The Lizard Man Speaks, Pianka recounts more than thirty years of adventures in reptile studies. He tells of "lizarding" in the North American deserts, the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, and the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia. His vivid imagery draws the reader into a world where lions lurk in the darkness beyond a gecko hunter's lights, where being stranded by car trouble miles from the last outpost is a constant danger, and where the wilderness still deserves to be called wild.

Along the way, Pianka provides much general information about lizard ecology, the fire succession cycle, and the interaction of humans with the landscape. And he reveals the springs of his own determined spirit and love of solitude, describing a near-fatal boyhood accident and its shaping and character-building effect on the life that followed.

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cover of The Lofts of SoHo: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950–1980

The Lofts of SoHo

Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950–1980

Aaron Shkuda

University of Chicago Press, 2016

A groundbreaking look at the transformation of SoHo.

American cities entered a new phase when, beginning in the 1950s, artists and developers looked upon a decaying industrial zone in Lower Manhattan and saw, not blight, but opportunity: cheap rents, lax regulation, and wide open spaces. Thus, SoHo was born. From 1960 to 1980, residents transformed the industrial neighborhood into an artist district, creating the conditions under which it evolved into an upper-income, gentrified area. Introducing the idea—still potent in city planning today—that art could be harnessed to drive municipal prosperity, SoHo was the forerunner of gentrified districts in cities nationwide, spawning the notion of the creative class.

In The Lofts of SoHo, Aaron Shkuda studies the transition of the district from industrial space to artists’ enclave to affluent residential area, focusing on the legacy of urban renewal in and around SoHo and the growth of artist-led redevelopment. Shkuda explores conflicts between residents and property owners and analyzes the city’s embrace of the once-illegal loft conversion as an urban development strategy. As Shkuda explains, artists eventually lost control of SoHo’s development, but over several decades they nonetheless forced scholars, policymakers, and the general public to take them seriously as critical actors in the twentieth-century American city.
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cover of The Logic of Delegation

The Logic of Delegation

D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins

University of Chicago Press, 1991

Why do majority congressional parties seem unable to act as an effective policy-making force? They routinely delegate their power to others—internally to standing committees and subcommittees within each chamber, externally to the president and to the bureaucracy. Conventional wisdom in political science insists that such delegation leads inevitably to abdication—usually by degrees, sometimes precipitously, but always completely.

In The Logic of Delegation, however, D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins persuasively argue that political scientists have paid far too much attention to what congressional parties can't do. The authors draw on economic and management theory to demonstrate that the effectiveness of delegation is determined not by how much authority is delegated but rather by how well it is delegated.

In the context of the appropriations process, the authors show how congressional parties employ committees, subcommittees, and executive agencies to accomplish policy goals. This innovative study will force a complete rethinking of classic issues in American politics: the "autonomy" of congressional committees; the reality of runaway federal bureaucracy; and the supposed dominance of the presidency in legislative-executive relations.
[more]
cover of The Logic of Women on Trial: Case Studies of Popular American Trials

The Logic of Women on Trial

Case Studies of Popular American Trials

Janice Schuetz

Southern Illinois University Press, 1994

Janice Schuetz investigates the felony trials of nine American women from colonial Salem to the present: Rebecca Nurse, tried for witchcraft in 1692; Mary E. Surratt, tried in 1865 for assisting John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; Lizzie Andrew Borden, tried in 1892 for the ax murder of her father and stepmother; Margaret Sanger, tried in 1915, 1917, and 1929 for her actions in support of birth control; Ethel Rosenberg, tried in 1951 for aiding the disclosure of secrets of the atom bomb to the Soviets; Yvonne Wanrow, tried in 1974 for killing a man who molested her neighbor’s daughter; Patricia Campbell Hearst, tried in 1975 for bank robbery as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army; Jean Harris, tried in 1982 for killing Herman Tarnower, the Diet Doctor; and Darci Kayleen Pierce, tried in 1988 for kidnapping and brutally murdering a pregnant woman, then removing the baby from the woman’s womb.

In her analysis, Schuetz is careful to define these trials as popular trials. Characteristically, popular trials involve persons, issues, or crimes of social interest that attract extensive public interest and involvement. Such trials make a contribution to the ongoing historical dialogue about the meaning of justice and the legal system, while reflecting the values of the time and place in which they occur.

Schuetz examines the kinds of communication that transpired and the importance of gender in the trials by applying a different current rhetorical theory to each trial text. In every chapter, she explains her chosen interpretive theory, compares that framework with the discourse of the trial, and makes judgments about the meaning of the trial texts based on the interpretive theory.

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cover of The Lonely Veteran's Guide to Companionship

The Lonely Veteran's Guide to Companionship

Bronson Lemer

University of Wisconsin Press, 2025

In this collection of interrelated essays, Bronson Lemer explores companionship through the lens of a queer veteran, focusing on the difficulty of forming true connections with others, including a “battle buddy” during basic training, the people he meets while teaching in China, and the spirit of a long-dead older sister. Lemer uses lessons from popular culture and literature—the globe-trotting exploits of fictional criminal Carmen Sandiego, the sexual exploration in Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the expatriate longing in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, just to name a few—as a means to think more broadly about the role of the outsider and how we navigate aimlessness while searching for stability and meaning. 

Lemer’s distinct take on the veteran’s story boldly engages the intersection of military narratives and queer culture, including examinations into the role of thirst traps in contemporary dating culture, the fears of long-term health damage caused by military service, and the ways in which intimate relationships can lead to a loss of self. Taken together, his essays illustrate how one queer veteran managed to carve out a path that led him, however awkwardly at times, closer to the person he wanted to be.
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cover of The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800

The Long Affair

Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800

Conor Cruise O'Brien

University of Chicago Press, 1996

As controversial and explosive as it is elegant and learned, The Long Affair is Conor Cruise O'Brien's examination of Thomas Jefferson, as man and icon, through the critical lens of the French Revolution. O'Brien offers a provocative analysis of the supreme symbol of American history and political culture and challenges the traditional perceptions of both Jeffersonian history and the Jeffersonian legacy.

"The book is an attack on America's long affair with Jeffersonian ideology of radical individualism: an ideology that, by confusing Jefferson with a secular prophet, will destroy the United States from within."—David C. Ward, Boston Book Review

"With his background as a politician and a diplomat, O'Brien brings a broad perspective to his effort to define Jefferson's beliefs through the prism of his attitudes toward France. . . . This is an important work that makes an essential contribution to the overall picture of Jefferson."—Booklist

"O'Brien traces the roots of Jefferson's admiration for the revolution in France but notes that Jefferson's enthusiasm for France cooled in the 1790s, when French egalitarian ideals came to threaten the slave-based Southern economy that Jefferson supported."—Library Journal

"In O'Brien's opinion, it's time that Americans face the fact that Jefferson, long seen as a champion of the 'wronged masses,' was a racist who should not be placed on a pedestal in an increasingly multicultural United States."—Boston Phoenix

"O'Brien makes a well-argued revisionist contribution to the literature on Jefferson."—Kirkus Reviews

"O'Brien is right on target . . . determined not to let the evasions and cover-ups continue."—Forrest McDonald, National Review

"The Long Affair should be read by anyone interested in Jefferson—or in a good fight."—Richard Brookhiser, New York Times Book Review


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cover of The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom

The Long Emancipation

Moving toward Black Freedom

Rinaldo Walcott

Duke University Press, 2021

In The Long Emancipation Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom. Taking examples from across the globe, he argues that wherever Black people have been emancipated from slavery and colonization, a potential freedom has been thwarted. Walcott names this condition the long emancipation—the ongoing interdiction of potential Black freedom and the continuation of the juridical and legislative status of Black nonbeing. Stating that Black people have yet to experience freedom, Walcott shows that being Black in the world is to exist in the time of emancipation in which Black people must constantly fashion alternate conceptions of freedom and reality through expressive culture. Given that Black unfreedom lies at the center of the making of the modern world, the attainment of freedom for Black people, Walcott contends, will transform the human experience worldwide. With The Long Emancipation, Walcott offers a new humanism that begins by acknowledging that present conceptions of what it means to be human do not currently include Black people.
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cover of The Long March of Coxey’s Army: The Path of Protest from Populism to the New Deal

The Long March of Coxey’s Army

The Path of Protest from Populism to the New Deal

Wesley R. Bishop

University of Illinois Press, 2027

In 1894, hundreds of unemployed workers demonstrated in Washington, D.C., to demand jobs and relief. This march, by what came to be called Coxey’s Army, took inspiration from the ideas of businessman and activist Jacob Coxey and redefined how Americans argued about jobs and the power of government.

Wesley R. Bishop explores how Coxey and his allies organized the first national protest to bring citizens to Washington, D.C. Though the march failed in its immediate goals, for the next forty years its ideas influenced America’s political parties. The demonstration pioneered marching for economic justice while its push for federal public works projects and government responsibility for unemployment helped shaped the New Deal. But in the years after the march, racism and other types of exclusion muddied hopes and tainted demands for democratic and economic fairness.

Eye-opening and insightful, The Long March of Coxey’s Army examines the influence and aftermath of an important historical event.
[more]
cover of The Long Night

The Long Night

Andrew Lytle

University of Alabama Press, 1988

Provides vivid descriptions of Alabama during an important period in the state’s history
 
A first-rate novel that provides vivid descriptions of Alabama during an important period in the state’s history, The Long Night is set in the vicinity of Montgomery, Alabama, between 1850 and 1865. Originally published in 1936, the book is based on a true story related to Lytle by one of his close friends and colleagues at Vanderbilt University, Frank L. Owsley, who later became the chairman of The University of Alabama Department of History. In fact, the novel opens with a letter to Professor Owsley from the author, and Owsley’s son has written the introduction to this edition.

As described by George B. Tindall, The Long Night is “the episodic story of a young Alabamian beset by the moral dilemma of desire for revenge against the persecutors of his father and his larger duty in the war, a story that rose to its climax in the Battle of Shiloh.” The work is rich in its description of the land and people of Black-Belt Alabama during the mid-19th century.

 
[more]