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American Foreign Relations Reconsidered: 1890-1993
by Gordon MartelThis major new textbook brings together twelve of the leading scholars of U.S. foreign relations. Each contributor provides a clear, concise summary of an important period or theme in US diplomatic and strategic affairs since the Spanish-American War. Michael Hunt and Joan Hoff provide an overview of the traditions behind US policy and a preview of things to come. Together, the contributors offer a succinct explanation of the controversies and questions that historians have grappled with throughout the twentieth century. Students will find these essays a reliable and useful guide to the various schools of thought which have emerged. Although each of the scholars is well known for their detailed and original work, these essays are new and have been specially commissioned for this book. The articles follow the chronological development of the emergence of the United States as a world power, but special themes such as the American policy process, economic interests, relations with the Third World, and the dynamics of the nuclear arms race have been singled out for separate treatment. American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890-1993 represents essential reading for upper level undergraduates studying modern American history. The book has been designed and written exclusively to meet the needs of students, either as a major course text, or as a set of supplementary readings to support other texts.
American Foreign Relations: A New Diplomatic History
by Walter L. HixsonAmerican Foreign Relations: A New Diplomatic History is a compelling narrative history of American foreign policy from the early settlement of North America to the present. In addition to economic and strategic motives, Walter L. Hixson integrates key cultural factors--including race, gender, and religion--into the story of American foreign policy. He demonstrates how these factors played a vital role in shaping the actions of the United States in world affairs. Beginning with the history of warfare and diplomacy between indigenous peoples and Europeans before the establishment of the United States, this book shows the formative influence of settler colonialism on the country's later foreign policy and the growth of American empire. Clearly written and comprehensive, the book features: Extensive illustrations, with over 100 images and maps Primary documents in each chapter, showcasing the perspectives of historical actors "Interpreting the Past" features that explore how historians' understanding of events has changed over time Selected bibliographies of key resources for further research in each chapter In one concise volume, American Foreign Relations covers the full sweep of American foreign policy from the colonial period to the present day. It is an essential introduction for anyone seeking to understand the history of America's role in the world.
American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment
by Gerard N. MaglioccaA history of the origins of the 14th Amendment and the the man who helped craft itJohn Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics.American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, the book traces Bingham’s life from his humble roots in Pennsylvania through his career as a leader of the Republican Party. Gerard N. Magliocca argues that Bingham and his congressional colleagues transformed the Constitution that the Founding Fathers created, and did so with the same ingenuity that their forbears used to create a more perfect union in the 1780s. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders.
American Fragments: The Political Aesthetic of Unfinished Forms in the Early Republic
by Daniel Diez CouchIn the years between the independence of the colonies from Britain and the start of the Jacksonian age, American readers consumed an enormous number of literary texts called "fragments." American Fragments recovers this archive of the romantic period to raise a set of pressing questions about the relationship between aesthetic and national realities: What kind of artistic creation was a fragment?, And how and why did deliberately unfinished writing emerge alongside a country that was itself still unfinished?Through discussions of eighteenth-century transatlantic aesthetics, the Revolutionary War, seduction novels, religious culture, and the construction of authorship, Daniel Diez Couch argues that the literary fragment was used as a means of representing individuals who did not fit neatly into the social fabric of the nation: beggars, prostitutes, veterans, and other ostracized figures. These individuals did not have a secure place in designs for the country's future, yet writers wielded the artistic form of the fragment as an apparatus for surveying their disputed positionality. Time and again, fragments asked what kind of identity marginalized individuals had, and how fictionalized versions of their life stories influenced the sociopolitical circumstances of the emergent nation. In their most progressive moments, the writers of fragments depicted their subjects as being "in process," opting for a fluid version of the self instead of the bounded and coherent one typically hailed as the liberal individual.Traversing aesthetics, political philosophy, material culture, and history, American Fragments gives new life to a literary form that at once played a significant role in the print ecology of the early republic, and that endures in the works of modernist and postmodernist writers and artists.
American Freemasonry: Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future
by Margaret C. Jacob Alain De Keghel Arturo De HoyosExplores the American Masonic system and its strengths and failings • Examines the history of Freemasonry in the United States from the colonial era and the Revolutionary War to the rise of the Scottish branch onward • Investigates the racial split in American Freemasonry between black lodges and white and how, unlike French lodges, women are ineligible to become Masons in the U.S. • Reveals the factors that have resulted in shrinking Masonic enrollment in America and explores the revitalization work done by the Grand Lodge of California Freemasonry bears the imprint of the society in which it exists, and Freemasonry in North America is no exception. While keeping close ties to French lodges until 1913, American Freemasonry was also deeply influenced by the experiences of many early American political leaders, leading to distinctive differences from European lodges. Offering an unobstructed view of the American system and its strengths and failings, Alain de Keghel, an elder of the Grand Orient de France and, since 1999, a lifetime member of the Scottish Rite Research Society (Southern U.S. jurisdiction), examines the history of Freemasonry in the United States from the colonial era to the Revolutionary War to the rise of the Scottish branch onward. He reveals the special relationship between the French Masonic hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, including French Freemasonry’s role in the American Revolution. He also explores Franklin’s Masonic membership, including how he was Elder of the lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris. The author investigates the racial split in American Freemasonry between black lodges and white and how, unlike French lodges, women are ineligible to become Masons in the U.S. He examines how American Freemasonry has remained deeply religious across the centuries and forbids discussion of religious or social issues in its lodges, unlike some branches of French Freemasonry, which removed belief in God as a prerequisite for membership in 1877 and whose lodges operate in some respects as philosophical debating societies. Revealing the factors that have resulted in shrinking Masonic enrollment in America, the author explores the revitalization work done by the Grand Lodge of California and sounds the call to make Freemasonry and its principles relevant to America once again.
American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation (Early American Studies)
by Kirsten FischerThe first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech.When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country.Although his publications and speaking tours made him one of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of thirty and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker. Even more intriguing is his encounter with a cosmology that envisioned the universe as interconnected, alive with sensation, and everywhere infused with a divine life force.Palmer's "heresy" tested the nation's recently proclaimed commitment to freedom of religion and of speech. In this he was not alone. Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation's protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.
American Fun
by John BeckmanHere is an animated and wonderfully engaging work of cultural history that lays out America's unruly past by describing the ways in which cutting loose has always been, and still is, an essential part of what it means to be an American. From the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Americans have defied their stodgy rules and hierarchies with pranks, dances, stunts, and wild parties, shaping the national character in profound and lasting ways. In the nation's earlier eras, revelers flouted Puritans, Patriots pranked Redcoats, slaves lampooned masters, and forty-niners bucked the saddles of an increasingly uptight middle class. In the twentieth century, fun-loving Americans celebrated this heritage and pushed it even further: flappers "barney-mugged" in "petting pantries," Yippies showered the New York Stock Exchange with dollar bills, and B-boys invented hip-hop in a war zone in the Bronx. This is the surprising and revelatory history that John Beckman recounts in American Fun. Tying together captivating stories of Americans' "pursuit of happiness"--and distinguishing between real, risky fun and the bland amusements that paved the way for Hollywood, Disneyland, and Xbox--Beckman redefines American culture with a delightful and provocative thesis. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)From the Hardcover edition.
American Furies: Crime, Punishment and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment
by Sasha Abramsky[Back cover] In this disturbing yet elegant expose of U.S. penitentiaries and their surrounding communities, Sasha Abramsky shows how American prisons have abandoned their long-held ideal of rehabilitation, often for political reasons. After surveying our current state of affairs--life sentences for nonviolent crimes, appalling conditions for inmates, the growth of private prisons, the treatment of juveniles--Abramsky argues that our punitive policies are not only inhuman but deeply counterproductive. Brilliantly researched and compellingly told, American Furies reveals the devastating consequences of a society that believes in "lock 'em up and throw away the key." 8:41 AM 12/22/2008
American Gandhi
by Leilah DanielsonWhen Abraham Johannes Muste died in 1967, newspapers throughout the world referred to him as the "American Gandhi." Best known for his role in the labor movement of the 1930s and his leadership of the peace movement in the postwar era, Muste was one of the most charismatic figures of the American left in his time. Had he written the story of his life, it would also have been the story of social and political struggles in the United States during the twentieth century.In American Gandhi, Leilah Danielson establishes Muste's distinctive activism as the work of a prophet and a pragmatist. Muste warned that the revolutionary dogmatism of the Communist Party would prove a dead end, understood the moral significance of racial equality, argued early in the Cold War that American pacifists should not pick a side, and presaged the spiritual alienation of the New Left from the liberal establishment. At the same time, Muste was committed to grounding theory in practice and the individual in community. His open, pragmatic approach fostered some of the most creative and remarkable innovations in progressive thought and practice in the twentieth century, including the adaptation of Gandhian nonviolence for American concerns and conditions.A biography of Muste's evolving political and religious views, American Gandhi also charts the rise and fall of American progressivism over the course of the twentieth century and offers the possibility of its renewal in the twenty-first.
American Gangsters: A True Crime Collection
by T. J. EnglishEnter a world where money, muscle, and murder reign with three true crime books from the New York Times–bestselling author and Edgar Award finalist. Whitey&’s Payback: In this collection of sixteen stories culled from his journalism career, author T. J. English reveals the violent world of crime with in-depth pieces on everything from old-school mobsters to corrupt federal agents—including the most feared gangster in Boston history (and secret FBI informant), James &“Whitey&” Bulger, who vanished for sixteen years before finally being brought to justice. &“Hard-hitting reporting.&” —Anthony Bruno, author of The Iceman The Westies: They were the gang even the Mafia thought twice about fighting—a gang of young, wild Irishmen led by cold-blooded Jimmy Coonan and his loyal gunman Mickey Featherstone who ruled Hell&’s Kitchen with a bloody fist. Their savagery gave them power, but their quick rise would eventually lead to betrayal and their ultimate downfall in this tale of vengeance, ambition, and the last of the Irish Mob in New York. &“A harrowing account of big city crime.&” —Library Journal Born to Kill: This Edgar Award finalist chronicles the rise and fall of the infamous Born to Kill gang, a group of young Vietnamese men raised in the wasteland left by American bombs and napalm who came to New York&’s Chinatown to make a new life, but instead brought death in their wake. Told from the perspective of one gang member who wanted more than a life of bloodshed and testified against his brethren, Born to Kill is a shocking account of the American Dream gone nightmarishly wrong. &“Hard-hitting . . .torrid and fascinating.&” —The Austin Chronicle
American Generals of World War II (Collective Biographies)
by Ron KnappForty to fifty million people died in World War II as the allied armies of the United States, Britain and the USSR battled the axis forces of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan. The American generals from the Army, the Army Air Forces, and the Marines who played indispensable roles in winning that war include: Henry Arnold, Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Curtis LeMay, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, George Patton, Matthew Ridgeway, Holland Smith, and Joseph Stilwell. Featured are accounts of their military training and accomplishments as well as many quotes and anecdotes from the battlefield.
American Generalship: Character Is Everything: The Art of Command
by Edgar PuryearAmerica's top military leaders are scrutinized as Puryear ponders what prepared our generals for the terrible responsibilities they bore during World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and on to today.
American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970
by Thomas P. HughesThe book that helped earn Thomas P. Hughes his reputation as one of the foremost historians of technology of our age and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, American Genesis tells the sweeping story of America's technological revolution. Unlike other histories of technology, which focus on particular inventions like the light bulb or the automobile, American Genesis makes these inventions characters in a broad chronicle, both shaped by and shaping a culture. By weaving scientific and technological advancement into other cultural trends, Hughes demonstrates here the myriad ways in which the two are inexorably linked, and in a new preface, he recounts his earlier missteps in predicting the future of technology and follows its move into the information age.
American Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land
by Sara M. Gregg Edwin C. Hagenstein Brian DonahueDrawing inspiration from Virgil's agrarian epic poem, Georgics, this collection presents a complex historical portrait of the American character through its relationship to the land.
American Ghost: A Family's Extraordinary History on the Desert Frontier
by Hannah NordhausAmerican Ghost is a “gripping mystery, moving family confessional, and chilling ghost story” (New York Times bestselling author Karen Abbott).“Journalist Hannah Nordhaus braids personal memoir with historical research and resolute ghost hunting in a narrative that investigates the restless spirit of her great-great-grandmother Julia Schuster Staab.” —Boston GlobeLa Posada—“place of rest”—was once a grand Santa Fe mansion. It belonged to Abraham and Julia Staab, who emigrated from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. After they died, the house became a hotel. And in the 1970s, the hotel acquired a resident ghost—a sad, dark-eyed woman in a long gown. Strange things began to happen there: vases moved, glasses flew, blankets were ripped from beds. Julia Staab died in 1896—but her ghost, they say, lives on.In American Ghost, Julia’s great-great-granddaughter, Hannah Nordhaus, traces her ancestor’s transfiguration from nineteenth-century Jewish bride to modern phantom. Family diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings take her on a riveting journey through three hundred years of German history and the American immigrant experience. With the help of historians, genealogists, family members, and ghost hunters, she weaves a masterful, moving story of fin-de-siècle Europe and pioneer life, villains and visionaries, medicine and spiritualism, imagination and truth, exploring how lives become legends, and what those legends tell us about who we are.“A haunting story about the long reach of the past.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’S Fresh Air“In this intriguing book, [Nordhaus] shares her journey to discover who her immigrant ancestor really was—and what strange alchemy made the idea of her linger long after she was gone.” —People
American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War
by Jennifer HelgrenAmerican Girls and Global Responsibility brings together insights from Cold War culture studies, girls’ studies, and the history of gender and militarization to shed new light on how age and gender work together to form categories of citizenship. Jennifer Helgren argues that a new internationalist girl citizenship took root in the country in the years following World War II in youth organizations such as Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, YWCA Y-Teens, schools, and even magazines like Seventeen. She shows the particular ways that girls’ identities and roles were configured, and reveals the links between internationalist youth culture, mainstream U.S. educational goals, and the U.S. government in creating and marketing that internationalist girl, thus shaping the girls’ sense of responsibilities as citizens.
American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream
by Julia L. MickenbergIf you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia L. Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the “Soviet experiment.” But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, others by horrifying truths. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia as they sought models for a revolutionary new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Soviet women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Even women from Soviet national minorities—many recently unveiled—became public figures, as African American and Jewish women noted. Yet as Mickenberg’s collective biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with economic, social, and sexual inequities. American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.
American Globalization, 1492–1850: Trans-Cultural Consumption in Spanish Latin America (Early Modern Iberian History in Global Contexts)
by Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla; Ilaria Berti; Omar Svriz-WuchererFollowing a study on the world flows of American products during early globalization, here the authors examine the reverse process. By analyzing the imperial political economy, the introduction, adaptation and rejection of new food products in America, as well as of other European, Asian and African goods, American Globalization, 1492–1850, addresses the history of consumerism and material culture in the New World, while also considering the perspective of the history of ecological globalization. This book shows how these changes triggered the formation of mixed imagined communities as well as of local and regional markets that gradually became part of a global economy. But it also highlights how these forces produced a multifaceted landscape full of contrasts and recognizes the plurality of the actors involved in cultural transfers, in which trade, persuasion and violence were entwined. The result is a model of the rise of consumerism that is very different from the ones normally used to understand the European cases, as well as a more nuanced vision of the effects of ecological imperialism, which was, moreover, the base for the development of unsustainable capitalism still present today in Latin America.
American Gold Digger: Marriage, Money, and the Law from the Ziegfeld Follies to Anna Nicole Smith (Gender and American Culture)
by Brian DonovanThe stereotype of the "gold digger" has had a fascinating trajectory in twentieth-century America, from tales of greedy flapper-era chorus girls to tabloid coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and her octogenarian tycoon husband. The term entered American vernacular in the 1910s as women began to assert greater power over courtship, marriage, and finances, threatening men's control of legal and economic structures. Over the course of the century, the gold digger stereotype reappeared as women pressed for further control over love, sex, and money while laws failed to keep pace with such realignments. The gold digger can be seen in silent films, vaudeville jokes, hip hop lyrics, and reality television. Whether feared, admired, or desired, the figure of the gold digger appears almost everywhere gender, sexuality, class, and race collide.This fascinating interdisciplinary work reveals the assumptions and disputes around women's sexual agency in American life, shedding new light on the cultural and legal forces underpinning romantic, sexual, and marital relationships.
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
by Jon MeachamThe American Gospel–literally, the good news about America–is that religion shapes our public life without controlling it. In this vivid book, New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham tells the human story of how the Founding Fathers viewed faith, and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice.At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well.Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward.
American Gothic: The Story of America's Legendary Theatrical Family—Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth
by Gene SmithA New York Times–bestselling author&’s &“lively&” account of a family of famous actors—who became notorious after the assassination of President Lincoln (The New Yorker). Junius Booth and his sons, Edwin and John Wilkes, were nineteenth-century America&’s most famous theatrical family. Yet the Booth name is forever etched in the history books for one terrible reason: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford&’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. In American Gothic, bestselling historian Gene Smith vividly chronicles the triumphs, scandals, and tragedies of this infamous family. The preeminent English tragedian of his day, Junius Booth was a madman and an alcoholic who abandoned his wife and young son to move to America and start a new family. His son Edwin became the most renowned Shakespearean actor in America, famously playing Hamlet for one hundred consecutive nights, but he suffered from depression and a crippling fear of inheriting his father&’s insanity. Blessed with extraordinary good looks and a gregarious nature, John Wilkes Booth seemed destined for spectacular fame and fortune. However, his sympathy for the Confederate cause unleashed a dangerous instability that brought permanent disgrace to his family and forever changed the course of American history. Richly detailed and emotionally insightful, American Gothic is a &“ripping good tale&” that brings to life the true story behind a family tragedy of Shakespearean proportions (The New York Times).
American Government
by Mirya Holman Timothy O. LenzUniversity of West Georgia American Government book
American Government 2012
by McGraw-HillPublished annually at the start of each year,Am Govprovides unmatched currency and is the first student-centered American Government text. It provides instructors who normally choose a big, brief, or essentials text with scholarly, succinct, and conventionally organized core content. A magazine format engages students and motivates active participation in our democracy (all this, and at a price that students prefer). Painstaking student and instructor reviews, surveys, and focus groups; as well as ethnographic research into student study behaviors, preferences, and needs, makeAm Govthe product of serious scholarship. Am Govbrings serious fun to American Government through its quality, currency, features, and format.
American Government Pacemaker (3rd Edition)
by Jane PetlinksiThis book will give you a basic understanding of the system of government of the United States. First you will learn about the roots of the government. You will discover that the United States system reflects some principles of government that are thousands of years old. Then you will learn how federal, state, and local governments work, independently and cooperatively, for the good of all citizens. Perhaps most importantly, you will learn about the freedoms and rights guaranteed to all United States citizens.