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A Hero Perished tells Nile Kinnick's story. This grandson of an Iowa governor, the son of parents who disciplined him to strive for his measure of greatness, became a Heisman Trophy winner and national celebrity through a combination of talent and circumstance. Following his college successes, Kinnick began legal study to prepare for a political career, but with the approach of war he entered the Navy Air Corps to refashion himself as a fighter pilot. Assigned to the carrier USS Lexington on its premier cruise, he took off in a defective plane—and his death shocked a nation grown almost used to tragic loss.

For the first time, Kinnick tells his own tale through his engaging letters—all but one previously unpublished—and his diary, printed in its entirety for the first time. The result is a human, intimate look at the true person behind the myth, revealing both his foibles and his essential principles. A Hero Perished also includes a definitive text of Kinnick's moving Heisman Award acceptance speech and his impassioned commencement supper address, calling on the new Iowa graduates to achieve moral courage in a time of depression and war.

An illuminating comment on a time and attitude that have passed, A Hero Perished is of and about a football player, but it is not a football book—it is far more. This volume displays Kinnick—who was, despite his great gifts and achievements, a vulnerable and decent young man—in a time of great change and peril when a phase of our culture was passing away.

From The Things They Carried and Platoon to today’s documentaries of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ordeals of wartime soldiers are gripping, morally complex narratives of human strength and frailty. A Month at the Front offers another fresh and personal perspective on war. Recently acquired by the Bodleian Library, it is a first-hand account of a young and anonymous British soldier fighting in the frontline trenches of the First World War.

A Month at the Front chronicles one month in the life of a soldier from the 12th East Surrey regiment, and the economical yet powerful narrative vividly brings to life the sights, sounds, and horrors of war. “The first night passed uneventfully, except that we were shelled”—so begins the young man in spare prose, and the quiet drama unfolds from there. Constant bombings and the sobering landscape of war—“It was nothing unusual to come across . . . a dead comrade lying waiting for burial”—are occasionally relieved by humorous events such as the discovery that a troop of advancing Germans was “nothing more than few short willow shrubs waving about in the breeze.” The young soldier describes how his comrades gradually fall one by one, until he and three remaining fellow soldiers are captured by the enemy, an event that abruptly ends the narrative.

A Month at the Front is not penned by a famous author, nor does it claim to offer any broad perspective. Rather, it is the lone voice of an unknown young man thrust into fatal circumstances.

In July 1917, a young man in the 12th East Surrey Regiment kept a journal of his experiences at the front. This account is narrated with a keen sense of observation, bringing to life the sights, sounds, smells, and horrors of war. The anonymous author candidly describes his daily life: dodging shells to fetch meals from the rations cart; his regiment lost on a march, straying perilously near enemy lines; the selfishness of his commanding officer; the daily distribution of rum; the soar of shells above his head; communicating by sign language with a captured German soldier living in his trench; catching sleep in snatches of ten or fifteen minutes; and always, the endless mud. The young soldier describes how his comrades gradually fall one by one, until he and three remaining fellow soldiers are captured by the enemy, an event that abruptly ends the narrative.A Month at the Front offers a fresh and personal perspective on war. The manuscript, acquired by the Bodleian Library, is an authentic firsthand account from a young, anonymous soldier. It is a poignant and moving story of a young man thrust into fatal circumstances.

Hardworking actor, playwright, and stage manager Harry Watkins (1825–94) was also a prolific diarist. For fifteen years Watkins regularly recorded the plays he saw, the roles he performed, the books he read, and his impressions of current events. Performing across the U.S., Watkins collaborated with preeminent performers and producers, recording his successes and failures as well as his encounters with celebrities such as P. T. Barnum, Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Forrest, Anna Cora Mowatt, and Lucy Stone. His is the only known diary of substantial length and scope written by a U.S. actor before the Civil War—making Watkins, essentially, the antebellum equivalent of Samuel Pepys. Theater historians Amy E. Hughes and Naomi J. Stubbs have selected, edited, and annotated excerpts from the diary in an edition that offers a vivid glimpse of how ordinary people like Watkins lived, loved, struggled, and triumphed during one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history. The selections in A Player and a Gentleman are drawn from a more expansive digital archive of the complete diary. The book, like its digital counterpart, will richly enhance our knowledge of antebellum theater culture and daily life in the U.S. during this period.

     On the night of March 11, 1862, as the heavy tramp of Confederate marching troops died away in the distance—her husband’s regiment among them—Cornelia Peake McDonald began her diary of events in war-torn Winchester, Virginia.
     McDonald’s story of the Civil War records a personal and distinctly female battle of her own—a southern woman’s lonely struggle in the midst of chaos to provide safety and shelter for herself and her children. For McDonald, history is what happens “inside the house.” She relates the trauma that occurs when the safety of the home is disrupted and destroyed by the forces of war—when women and children are put out of their houses and have nowhere to go.
     Whether she is describing a Union soldier’s theft of her Christmas cakes, the discovery of a human foot in her garden, or the death of her baby daughter, McDonald’s story of the Civil War at home is compelling and disturbing. Her tremendous determination and unyielding spirit in the face of the final collapse of her world is testimony to a woman’s will to preserve her family and her own sense of purpose as a “rebel” against all that she regarded as tyrannical and brutal in war itself.

Sarah Gillespie Huftalen led an unconventional life for a rural midwestern woman of her time. Born in 1865 near Manchester, Iowa, she was a farm girl who became a highly regarded country school and college teacher; she married a man older than either of her parents, received a college degree later in life, and was committed to both family and career. A gifted writer, she crafted essays, teacher-training guides, and poetry while continuing to write lengthy, introspective entries in her diary, which spans the years from 1873 to 1952. In addition, she gathered extensive information about the quietly tragic life of her mother, Emily, and worked to preserve Emily's own detailed diary.

In more than 3,500 pages, Sarah writes about her multiple roles as daughter, sister, wife, teacher, family historian, and public figure. Her diary reflects the process by which she was socialized into these roles and her growing consciousness of the ways in which these roles intersected. Not only does her diary embody the diverse strategies used by one woman to chart her life's course and to preserve her life's story for future generations, it also offers ample evidence of the diary as a primary form of private autobiography for individuals whose lives do not lend themselves to traditional definitions of autobiography.

Taken together, Emily's and Sarah's extraordinary diaries span nearly a century and thus form a unique mother/daughter chronicle of daily work and thoughts, interactions with neighbors and friends and colleagues, and the destructive family dynamics that dominated the Gillespies. Sarah's consciousness of the abusive relationship between her mother and father haunts her diary, and this dramatic relationship is duplicated in Sarah's relationship with her brother, Henry, Suzanne Bunkers' skillful editing and analysis of Sarah's diary reveal the legacy of a caring, loving mother reflected in her daughter's work as family member, teacher, and citizen.

The rich entries in Sarah Gillespie Huftalen's diary offer us brilliant insights into the importance of female kinship networks in American life, the valued status of many women as family chroniclers, and the fine art of selecting, piecing, stitching, and quilting that characterizes the many shapes of women's autobiographies. Read Sarah's dairy to discover why "all will yet be well."