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A definitive study of strategy, river warfare, and Union triumph in the Mississippi Valley.

Island No. 10: Struggle for the Mississippi Valley is a deeply researched, narrative-driven history of the Civil War New Madrid–Island No. 10 campaign in 1862—an episode overshadowed by Fort Donelson and Shiloh yet vital to Union mastery of the Mississippi River. The authors argue that the campaign was far more consequential than its marginalization in traditional Civil War histories suggests, demonstrating that the fall of Island No. 10 consolidated Union control of the upper Mississippi, accelerated the collapse of Confederate fortunes in the West, and highlighted the transformative power of joint Army–Navy operations. 

The book’s strengths lie in its rich use of diaries, letters, official military records, and contemporary press accounts, weaving together strategy, engineering, naval innovation, politics, and the lived experience of soldiers. Vivid descriptions of fortification design, the ironclad flotilla, the dramatic night battery runs, and the grueling canal‑cutting operation offer readers a ground‑level and command‑level view of the campaign. Larry J. Daniel, an acclaimed Civil War historian and award‑winning author of Cannoneers in Gray and Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee, together with Lynn N. Bock, a historian, attorney, and longtime steward of New Madrid’s local history, bring scholarly authority and regional expertise to the subject. 

This book will captivate readers interested in Civil War military history, riverine warfare, engineering feats, and the Western theater. It is especially valuable for scholars, buffs seeking a fresh perspective on neglected campaigns, students of joint operations, and anyone exploring how geography, logistics, and technology shaped the course of the war.

Award-winning author David J. Park argues that the battle against global warming is also a fight for media reform. With his new book Media Reform and the Climate Emergency: Rethinking Communication in the Struggle for a Sustainable Future, he critically examines how advertising, the digital infrastructure, and journalism advance the climate emergency and lays out a path of reform to help create a more sustainable world. The production and consumption of goods and services within consumer societies lead to unsustainable greenhouse gas emissions, and Park finds that much of mass communication is either dependent upon or closely tied to the success of this social organization. As a result, he suggests successful environmental movements creatively dismantle or reform institutional infrastructures that extend the planetary global warming crisis and the unsustainable consumption of nature.

Communication policies and industries are part of these infrastructures. Advertising evolved to propel a new consumer society that would encourage the over-consumption of goods and services with harmful and unsustainable production processes. Our digital infrastructure is largely premised upon the surveillance of online consumer habits and preferences, with the goal to create individualized messages to more effectively persuade people to increase their consumption habits. Much of commercial journalism resists the drastic and immediate regulatory changes necessary to address the worst aspects of this crisis. This is because so many of the needed changes challenge the media’s source of income, their libertarian philosophy, and the general status quo, which is preferred by elites. Bound to foster conversations among scholars, activists, politicians, and those who work in the communication industries, this book rethinks mass communication and highlights how immediate reform is needed in the struggle for a sustainable planet.

Honorable Mention, Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 2025

Honorable Mention, Women’s Forum Book Prize, British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, 2024

As the predominant form of birth control in Soviet society, abortion reflected key paradoxes of state socialism: women held formal equality but lacked basic needs such as contraceptives. With market reforms, Russians enjoyed new access to Western contraceptives and new pressures to postpone childbearing until economically self-sufficient. But habits of family planning did not emerge automatically—they required extensive physician retraining, public education, and cultural transformation. In Unmaking Russia’s Abortion Culture, author Michele Rivkin-Fish examines the creative strategies of Russians who promoted family planning in place of routine abortion. Rather than emphasizing individual rights, they explained family planning’s benefits to the nation—its potential to strengthen families and prevent the secondary sterility that resulted when women underwent repeat, poor-quality abortions. Still, fierce debates about abortion and contraceptives erupted as declining fertility was framed as threatening Russia’s demographic sovereignty.

Although Russian family planners embraced a culturally meaningful liberalism that would rationalize public policy and reenchant relations, nationalist opponents cast family planning as suspicious for its association with the individualistic, “child-free” West. This book tells the story of how Russian family planners developed culturally salient frameworks to promote the acceptability of contraceptives and help end routine abortion. It also documents how nationalist campaigns for higher fertility denounced family planning and ultimately dismantled its institutions. By tracing these processes, Unmaking Russia’s Abortion Culture demonstrates the central importance of reproductive politics in the struggle for liberalizing social change that preceded Russia’s 2022 descent into war, repression, and global marginalization.