Specific wars and military campaigns Books

Book SynopsisIn this never before published diary, 29-year-old surgeon James Fulton transports readers into the harsh and deadly conditions of the Civil War, as he struggles to save the lives of the wounded and diseased under his care.Trade Review"This is not only a fascinating firsthand look at the experiences of a Civil War Surgeon who participated in some of the most notable actions of the war, it is also a deep and unique meditation on the meaning of Dr. Fulton's work and the broader medical, military, and cultural significance of his Civil War experience."—Daryl Black, Executive Director of Seminary Ridge Museum"Civil War Medicine tells the story of Assistant Surgeon James Fulton of the 143rd Penn. Inf. Well written and detailed, this book is a must for any Civil War medical enthusiast."—Peter J. D'Onofrio, President of the Society of Civil War Surgeons, Inc."In Civil War Medicine: A Surgeon's Diary, Robert D. Hicks has produced an imminently useful book that includes the transcribed and annotated diary of Dr. James Fulton, who served as assistant surgeon with the Pennsylvania's Bucktail Brigade; an introduction that clearly and concisely situates Fulton, who hailed from Chester County, Pennsylvania, in his social, political, and medical milieu; and a collection of essays by prominent experts in the field who find in the diary all sorts of opportunities to look at Civil War through Fulton's eyes—and his hands."—Judith Giesberg, author of Sex and the Civil War"This book is an incredible resource for anyone interested in the human experience of the Civil War—as recorded by a medical professional tasked with saving lives in America's bloodiest conflict. Dr. Fulton's diary and the essays by preeminent experts in the field of Civil War Medicine reveal the story of the birth of our modern health care system. Thankfully this diary landed in the able hands of Robert D. Hicks, an equally great storyteller, scholar, and historian."—David Price, Executive Director of the National Museum of Civil War MedicineTable of ContentsAcknowledgementIntroduction: Becoming a DoctorPart IChapter 1: To Virginia, Measles and Typhoid (Diary, August 18, 1862 to February 19, 1863)Chapter 2: Chancellorsville and "a Spiteful Morose Scamp" (Diary, February 22, 1863 to June 28, 1863)Chapter 3: Searching for Flour at Gettysburg (Diary, June 29, 1863 to July 4, 1863)Chapter 4: Return to Virginia and Christmas with Secesh (Diary, July 5, 1863 to December 25, 1863)Chapter 5: "To bring man in communion with his God" (Diary, December 26, 1863 to January 29, 1864)Chapter 6: Dr. Fulton after 1864Chapter 7: CommentaryPart IIChapter 8: "Examined at the University of Pennsylvania": Dr. Fulton, his Professional Milieu, and Military Medicine 1862-64, by Shauna DevineChapter 9: "We Got Up and Began to Pack our Medicines": What Dr. Fulton Prescribed, by Guy R. Hasegawa Chapter 10: "We Soon Concluded to Operate": Dr. Fulton's Tools and Methods, by James M. EdmonsonChapter 11: "The Christian Commission also Brought in a Wagon Today": Dr. Fulton, Voluntary Relief Associations, and Women in Hospitals, by Barbra Mann WallChapter 12: "We Made Up Soup as Fast as Possible": Nutrition and the 19th Century Male Body, by Margaret HumphreysChapter 13: "Such is the Character of Many Men": Dr. Fulton's Politics and the Moral and Political Consciousness of Soldiers, by Randall M. MillerAppendicesBibliography ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis is a rich study that makes important contributions to the historiography of the Russian Empire, sharpening our picture of an empire in which lines between colonizer and colonized were far from clear. * The Middle Ground Journal *Ross offers a fascinating, well-researched narrative that fills an important lacuna in our understanding of Russia's engagement with Islam. As her clearly clearly shows, Ross engages not only with topics related to the study of Islam but also with some of the key themes of Russian history: Empire and Nation, Islam and Modernity, and the way empire worked by mutual relations and not by a unidirectional vector of power and control. Her study of the Machkaran network of scholars provides an important corrective to an image of Islamic reform dominated by Central Asian and Crimean Jadidism; it is bound tostimulate further research. -- Orel Beilinson * Euraian Geography and Economics *Danielle Ross' monograph, Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia, offers a substantive and thought-provoking addition to the historiography of both the Russian Empire in general and its relationship with its subject Muslim peoples in particular. . . . Tatar Empire is a fascinating and well-written contribution to the field. It is recommended not only to scholars interested in the history of Russian-Muslim relations, but also to a wider audience of experts interested in questions of empire, religion, and the emergence of nationalism. -- John M. Romero * Canadian-American Slavic Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Empire that Tatars Built1. The Age of the Settler Ulamā2. The Art of Accruing Scholarly Prestige3. Colonial Trade and Religious Revival4. A Shaykhly Rural Gentry5. Knowledge, History-Writing, and Becoming Colonial6. Muslim Cultural Reform and Kazan Tatar Cultural Imperialism7. Fundamentalism, Nationalism, and Social Conflict8. At War with the Tatar Kingdom9. An Empire without RussiansConclusionGlossaryBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisDavid L. Ransel is Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History and Director of the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University.Bozena Shallcross is Associate Professor of Polish Literature at the University of Chicago.Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Russian Identity in Its Encounter with Poland David L. Ransel and Bożena Shallcross1. The Irreparable Church Schism: Russian Orthodox Identity and Its Historical Encounter with Catholicism Barbara Skinner2. Imitation of Life: A Russian Guest in the Polish Regimental Family Beth Holmgren3. Repositioning Pushkin and the Poems of the Polish Uprising Megan Dixon4. Appropriating Poland: Glinka, Polish Dance, and Russian National Identity Halina Goldberg5. The Slavophile Thinkers and the Polish Question in 1863 Andrzej Walicki6. Dostoevsky and His Polish Fellow Prisoners from the House of the Dead Nina Perlina7. Vladimir Solov'ëv's Views on the Polish Question: Poland and Reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches Manon de Courten8. The Geopolitical Dimension of Russian-Polish Confrontation in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Leonid Gorizontov9. Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii, the Staszic Palace, and Nineteenth-Century Russian Politics in Warsaw Robert L. Przygrodzki10. At Home with Pani Eliza: Isaac Babel and His Polish Encounters Judith Deutsch Kornblatt11. Soviet Polonophobia and the Formulation of Nationalities Policy in the Ukrainian SSR, 1927-1934 Matthew D. Pauly12. Under the Influence? Joseph Brodsky and Poland Irena Grudziska GrossSelected ReadingsContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The White Lotus War: Rebellion and Suppression in Late Imperial China is a seminal work of outstanding scholarship and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Chinese History collections and supplemental studies lists." * Midwest Book Review *"Yingcong Dai provides the definitive history of a key juncture in the trajectory of the Qing dynasty...[D]etails with clarity the complicated interface of moving parts, from emperors and metropolitan officials to impe‐rial kinsmen and Mongols in the banner armies, Green Standard Army fighters, and locally raised troops deployed outside their own region, down to the provincial and county officials charged with provisioning the soldiers." * H-Net *"In her impressive new book, Dai Yingcong sets out to entirely change our understanding of the 1796 White Lotus rebellion." * Journal of Asian Studies *"Yingcong Dai is an expert on the nexus between military, economy, and soci-ety in the high Qing period...While the large wars of conquest of the Qing Dynasty in Central Asia and Tibet are the subject of numerous studies by now, and the turmoil of the nineteenth century is understood quite well as seen from multiple aspects, the watershed between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries remained hitherto a blank area. Yingcong Dai filled this gap with her book on the White Lotus Rebellion (1796–1804)." * Journal of Military History *"[T]he first in-depth, comprehensive study of the White Lotus War...Integrating rigorous research with vivid storytelling, this book is an indispensable addition to the studies of Qing history and the military history of China." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisA sweeping story of how Northerners, Southerners, and Westerners together created modern America in the years from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt.Trade ReviewIncluded in the Washington Post Book World's Holiday Guide (2007)Selected as a 2008 AAUP University Press Book for Public and Secondary School Libraries.“Richardson tells a different story about the United States as a whole during a reconceptualized period of ‘Reconstruction’ after the Civil War.”—Sheldon Hackney, University of Pennsylvania “Highly original, deeply researched, and important, West from Appomattox has the added advantage of being extremely well written: Heather Cox Richardson’s prose is clear, accessible, and compelling.”—Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago"With a marvelous sense of scope, narrative lucidity, and thorough research, Heather Richardson makes the convincing case that Americans still live in the world that Reconstruction built—or left partly unbuilt. A skilled historian of political economy, Richardson has here written a new and important synthesis of late-nineteenth-century American society enmeshed in a great struggle to determine just what kind of country the Civil War had wrought. This book is deeply informed and a good read; it spurs our effort to help Americans realize that their reading must not stop with Appomattox."—David W. Blight, Yale University, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory"A truly fresh reconsideration—and a smart and wonderfully written one—of Reconstruction. Richardson pulls back to a genuinely national perspective, and in doing so gives us a strikingly original view of this vitally important time in the national story."—Elliott West, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

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Book SynopsisThe first complete biography of a little-known but fascinating figure in the history of espionage and the American RevolutionTrade ReviewSelected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 in the North America category.Won Honorable Mention in the 2012 New York Book Festival Biography/Autobiography category, sponsored by the New York Book Festival "This is the first full-length treatment of the life of Edward Bancroft. It corrects a great many mistakes and misinterpretations, and for that reason is a valuable contribution to the historical record. In particular, the account of Bancroft's work as a spy in Paris is terrific; I enjoyed it a great deal."—Alan Houston, author of Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement"Schaeper in the first scholar to explore Bancroft's life in detail and to treat his activities as a spy in a sober, intelligent fashion. He explodes the myths and conspiracy theories of many modern authors who have traduced Bancroft's reputation and with it the reputations of all those associated with him."—Harry Dickinson, University of Edinburgh“A wonderful book which fills a major gap in the history of the American Revolution. Through exhaustive research, Schaeper has uncovered much information about the widely misunderstood master spy Bancroft. His book is as entertaining as it is scholarly. Highly recommended not only to academics but also to general readers.”—Jonathan R. Dull, author of A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution “Thomas Schaeper presents an intriguing, full biography of one of the eighteenth century’s most brilliant and multifaceted figures: scientist, author, speculator, entrepreneur, and double agent Edward Bancroft. He offers a thoroughly researched, fair and balanced reappraisal of both Bancroft and British espionage in Europe during the American Revolution, and in doing so rescues Bancroft from melodramatic OSS and Cold War-infused spy narratives.”— Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, Editor, The Papers of John Jay, Columbia University“[E]ngaging . . . By providing a wealth of detail about the life and times of this much-execrated man, Schaeper balances and softens what has conventionally been seen as Bancroft’s harsh character.”—Edmund S. Morgan, The New York Review of Books -- Edmund Morgan * The New York Review of Books *"A must for any lover of American Colonial history."—M.A. Byron, Choice -- M.A. Byron * Choice *"Well researched and well paced. Recommended to undergraduates and general readers with an interest in espionage or American history."—Library Journal * Library Journal *"This is the first full-length treatment of the life of Edward Bancroft. It corrects a great many mistakes and misinterpretations, and for that reason is a valuable contribution to the historical record. In particular, the account of Bancroft's work as a spy in Paris is terrific; I enjoyed it a great deal."—Alan Houston, author of Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement -- Alan Houston"Schaeper in the first scholar to explore Bancroft's life in detail and to treat his activities as a spy in a sober, intelligent fashion. He explodes the myths and conspiracy theories of many modern authors who have traduced Bancroft's reputation and with it the reputations of all those associated with him."—Harry Dickinson, University of Edinburgh -- Harry Dickinson“A wonderful book which fills a major gap in the history of the American Revolution. Through exhaustive research, Schaeper has uncovered much information about the widely misunderstood master spy Bancroft. His book is as entertaining as it is scholarly. Highly recommended not only to academics but also to general readers.”—Jonathan R. Dull, author of A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution -- Jonathan R. Dull“Thomas Schaeper presents an intriguing, full biography of one of the eighteenth century’s most brilliant and multifaceted figures: scientist, author, speculator, entrepreneur, and double agent Edward Bancroft. He offers a thoroughly researched, fair and balanced reappraisal of both Bancroft and British espionage in Europe during the American Revolution, and in doing so rescues Bancroft from melodramatic OSS and Cold War-infused spy narratives.”— Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, Editor, The Papers of John Jay, Columbia University -- Elizabeth M. NuxollSelected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 in the North America category. -- Choice Outstanding Academic Title * Choice *Won Honorable Mention in the 2012 New York Book Festival Biography/Autobiography category, sponsored by the New York Book Festival -- Biography/Autobiography Honorable Mention * New York Book Festival *

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Book SynopsisThe American Revolution's progress shown in 60 spectacular contemporary maps.Trade Review"This glorious collection-ravishingly beautiful, exquisitely curated, brilliantly annotated-is one of the most graphic and illuminating treatments of the American Revolution ever brought to press. Here is the road to revolution and the war itself, from the opening of the French and Indian War in 1755 to the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 and the Treaty of Paris two years later. Combining the virtues of an historical atlas, a luscious exhibition, and a detailed but concise history of the wars, it is a GPS to the American Revolution." -- Ric Burns, documentary filmmaker, Steeplechase Films "Revolution is a dazzling achievement that casts new light on the imperial wars of the late eighteenth century. These maps-many of them rare manuscripts, reproduced here for the first time-remind us that the battle for (and against) American independence unfolded in space as well as in time. Here the long road to revolution becomes visible as a hard-fought contest over territory as well as clash of ideals. A feast for the eye, Revolution also invites fresh thinking about the founding of the United States and Britain's American War." -- Jane Kamensky, Mary Ann Lippitt Professor of American History, Brown University "This beautiful book, with its superbly reproduced images, brings to life the decades leading to the birth of the U.S.A. The authors have given a highly skilled analysis of the background, contents and significance of the images. The readable style and brilliant use of little-known cartographical works has created a book that anyone with an interest in the interplay between maps and history should buy-and read." -- Peter Barber, head of Map Collections, the British Library

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Book SynopsisFrom the author of the acclaimed history The Island at the Center of the World, an intimate new epic of the American Revolution that reinforces its meaning for today.Trade Review"Shorto’s achievement is a remarkable one. The intertwined stories of Revolution Song give a sense of how far-reaching a phenomenon the War of Independence was. It leaves to readers the pleasure of judging what each of the figures in the book—or perhaps the combination of them all—contributed to an event that changed the world." -- New York Times Book Review"An engaging piece of historical detective work and narrative craft." -- Chicago Tribune"Russell Shorto’s engaging new book appears at a moment when basic concepts of rights and equality are routinely disparaged. As if in response to our troubled political culture, he invites readers to return to the American Revolution to understand better how an 18th-century commitment to freedom took root and became a fundamental, unifying value in our nation’s history. . . . [Shorto has] produced a compelling work that reads almost like a good detective story. . . . Shorto deserves praise for reminding us of the complexity of freedom’s claims." -- Brian Greer - American Scholar"How did the teenaged daughter of a British officer view the American Revolution, from behind enemy lines in New York? What did that contest mean to a shrewd, contemplative Iroquois warrior? Russell Shorto has emerged from the archives with a bold, largely neglected cast. He has set them free in a rich, prismatic narrative, as intensely vivid as it is seamlessly constructed." -- Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Witches: Salem, 1692"Brilliant, captivating and fast-paced, Revolution Song is a wonderfully original take on the American Revolution that reads like a thriller. I couldn’t put this book down." -- Amy Chua, Yale Law School professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother"With symphonic sweep, cinematic detail and compelling, superbly researched real-life characters, Shorto shows how our struggle for freedom began and why it remains so sadly unfinished. If Spielberg wrote history, this is how it would read." -- Howard Fineman, NBC News analyst and author of The Thirteen American Arguments"Amazing: Russell Shorto shows us what a diverse, fascinating, cosmopolitan place this country has been since its founding." -- Charles C. Mann, author of 1491"An engaging, readable and surprisingly complete account of the American Revolution. A tour de force." -- Gordon S. Wood, author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution"Russell Shorto has long had an astonishing talent for adjusting the focus in ways that make familiar swaths of history seem intriguingly foreign and fresh. With Revolution Song, he’s worked his magic again. Through his vigorous language, his mastery of archival sources and the pleasing interweave of his six carefully chosen characters, Shorto has composed a powerful polyphonic story, simultaneously grand and intimate, that makes us hear (and see and feel) the tumult of our nation’s founding as never before." -- Hampton Sides, New York Times best-selling author of In the Kingdom of Ice

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Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the discovery of unmarked mass graves revealed Europe's worst atrocity since World War II: the genocide in the UN safe area of Srebrenica. This title provides an account of the genetic technology developed to identify the eight thousand Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys found in those graves.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Note on Pronunciation Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina Introduction 1. The Fall of Srebrenica 2. The People and Place of Postwar Srebrenica 3. A Technological Innovation 4. Memory at Work 5. Where Memory and Imagination Meet 6. Return to Potocari 7. "That you see, that you know, that you remember" 8. Technology of Repair Epilogue Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisA study of the Vietnamese conflict, examined through the lens of the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements in the rural province of Long An up until American intervention in the area.Trade Review"Timeless." Asia Times "The work's success in bringing clarity to its analysis of that attack owes much to its long neglected social science, to Jeffrey Race." New Mandala; Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Group "I've gotten more out of re-reading War Comes to Long An ... than just about anything other than Robert Warburton's classic memoir, Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879-98 (1900)." The American Interest

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Book SynopsisOffers a personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Based on interviews with each of the six, this book relates why they enlisted, their experiences in training and in early missions, their tours of combat, and what has happened to them since returning home.Trade Review"The book is noteworthy for capturing the multifaceted nature of veterans' experiences and performs a valuable service by providing a vehicle for the circulation of dissenting voices within the military." -- JoonHyun Michael Choi * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsContents Introduction A Different Kind of War Story Part I Innocence 1 Recruiting Volunteers 2 Training 3 First Missions Part II War's Crucible 4 Inside Iraq, on the Outskirts of Reality 5 Face to Face with Iraqi Civilians 6 Awakenings Part III Aftermath and Activism 7 Homecoming Traumas 8 Speaking Out Conclusion Six Soldiers Acknowledgments Notes Glossary

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Book SynopsisIn agreeing to the accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. This title explores the communist path to war.Trade Review"Highly recommended." CHOICE "Excellent new [work] on the Vietnam War." -- Geoffrey C. Stewart Cross-Currents "Outstanding... Illuminating." Proceedings "A valuable contribution to any discussion of North Vietnam's road to war, and the origins of the American stage in the Vietnam War." -- Tal Tovy H-Net "Asselin's excellent study ... will remain an indispensible source for students of Vietnam, the Cold War, and twentieth-century world history for many years to come." -- Jessica Elkind The Journal of American History "This authoritative and compelling book fills a long-felt need for a scholarly treatment of policy making in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Pierre Asselin has conducted careful and exhaustive research into available Vietnamese and Western archival sources and consulted widely secondary writings on his topic. The result is a meticulously researched, lucidly written, and highly revealing volume on a previously obscure aspect of the Indochina conflict... Asselin pushes the frontier of our knowledge about Hanoi's strategic thinking and diplomatic maneuver during the Indochina conflict further than anyone else." Journal of American-East Asian RelationsTable of ContentsForeword by the series editors Acknowledgments Glossary of Terms and Acronyms Introduction 1. Choosing Peace, 1954--1956 2. Changing Course, 1957--1959 3. Treading Cautiously, 1960 4. Buying Time, 1961 5. Exploring Neutralization, 1962 6. Choosing War, 1963 7. Waging War, 1964 Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBrings together two subjects in American history: the story of the struggle to end slavery that reached a violent climax in the Civil War, and the story of the westward expansion of the US. This work embraces East and West, as well as North and South, as the US observes the 2015 sesquicentennial commemoration of the end of the Civil War.Trade Review"A wide-ranging, valuable addition to the literature on the American West that reveals the truly continental nature of one of America's most defining struggles." Publishers Weekly "A signal contribution to the understanding of some central themes in US history ... An important model for a new, broader use of material objects in understanding the country's past." -- D. Steeples CHOICETable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction - Virginia Scharff 1. The Price of Slavery across Empire: Family, Community, and Loss in Texas - Brenda E. Stevenson 2. The Fremonts: Agents of Empire, Legends of Liberty - John Mack Faragher 3. Beecher's Bibles and Broadswords: Paving the Way for the Civil War in the West, 1854--1859 - Jonathan Earle 4. Liberty, Empire, and Civil War in the American West - Durwood Ball 5. When the Stars Fell from the Sky: The Cherokee Nation and Autonomy in the Civil War - Kent Blansett 6. On the Edge of Empires, Republics, and Identities: De la Guerra's Sword of the War and the California Native Cavalry - Daniel Lynch 7. John Gast's American Progress: Using Manifest Destiny to Forget the Civil War and Reconstruction - Adam Arenson 8. Empire and Liberty in the Middle of Nowhere - Virginia Scharff 9. The Not-So-Free Labor in the American Southwest - Maria E. Montoya 10. After Antietam: Memory and Memorabilia in the Far West - William Deverell 11. "You Brought History Alive for Us": Reflections on the Lives of Nineteenth-Century Dine Women - Jennifer Denetdale List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisPresents an integrated view of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the history of the western United States. This book includes essays on lives, choices, and legacies in the American West, discussing the consequences for American Indian nations, the link between reconstruction and suffrage movements, and cross-border interactions with Canada.Trade Review"Excellent in every respect, from superbly qualified writers." -- D. Steeples CHOICE "Timely ... Civil War Wests very effectively extends Reconstruction into the West... The volume makes clear the value of dramatically reframing our understanding of both the Civil War and the American West," The Journal of American History "This excellent collection expands our understanding of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era... This is that rare collection of essays that engage one another; are of uniformly high quality and accessibility; add a new dimension to two related, though disparate, histories and historiographies; and offer scholars multiple points of departure for integrating western history in this period into a larger national and international context." -- Michael A. Morrison Western Historical QuarterlyTable of ContentsIntroduction (Adam Arenson) Part One: Borderlands in Conflict 1. Thwarting Southern Schemes and British Bluster in the Pacific Northwest (James Robbins Jewell) 2. Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861--1862 (Megan Kate Nelson) 3. Kit Carson and the War for the Southwest: Separation and Survival along the Rio Grande, 1862--1868 (Lance R. Blyth) 4.Scattered People: The Long History of Forced Eviction in the Kansas-Missouri Borderlands (Diane Mutti Burke) Part Two: The Civil War Is Not Over 5. "The Future Empire of Our Freedmen": Republican Colonization Schemes in Texas and Mexico, 1861-1865 (Nicholas Guyatt) 6. Three Faces of Sovereignty: Governing Confederate, Mexican, and Indian Texas in the Civil War Era (Gregory P. Downs) 7. Redemption Falls Short: Soldier and Surgeon in the Post--Civil War Far West (William Deverell) 8. Still Picture, Moving Stories: Reconstruction Comes to Indian Country (Martha A. Sandweiss) Part Three: Borders of Citizenship 9. Race, Religion, and Naturalization: How the West Shaped Citizenship Debates in the Reconstruction Congress (Joshua Paddison) 10. Broadening the Battlefield: Conflict, Contingency, and the Mystery of Woman Suffrage in Wyoming, 1869 (Virginia Scharff) 11. "Dis Land Which Jines Dat of Ole Master's": The Meaning of Citizenship for the Choctaw Freedpeople (Fay A. Yarbrough) 12. "Citizen's Clothing": Reconstruction, Ho-Chunk Persistence, and the Politics of Dress (Stephen Kantrowitz) Epilogue (Steven Hahn) Acknowledgments Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisPresents an integrated view of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the history of the western United States. This book includes, essays on lives, choices, and legacies in the American West, discussing the consequences for American Indian nations, the link between Reconstruction and suffrage movements, and cross-border interactions with Canada.Trade Review"Excellent in every respect, from superbly qualified writers." -- D. Steeples CHOICE "Timely ... Civil War Wests very effectively extends Reconstruction into the West... The volume makes clear the value of dramatically reframing our understanding of both the Civil War and the American West," The Journal of American History "This excellent collection expands our understanding of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era... This is that rare collection of essays that engage one another; are of uniformly high quality and accessibility; add a new dimension to two related, though disparate, histories and historiographies; and offer scholars multiple points of departure for integrating western history in this period into a larger national and international context." -- Michael A. Morrison Western Historical QuarterlyTable of ContentsIntroduction (Adam Arenson) Part One: Borderlands in Conflict 1. Thwarting Southern Schemes and British Bluster in the Pacific Northwest (James Robbins Jewell) 2. Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861--1862 (Megan Kate Nelson) 3. Kit Carson and the War for the Southwest: Separation and Survival along the Rio Grande, 1862--1868 (Lance R. Blyth) 4.Scattered People: The Long History of Forced Eviction in the Kansas-Missouri Borderlands (Diane Mutti Burke) Part Two: The Civil War Is Not Over 5. "The Future Empire of Our Freedmen": Republican Colonization Schemes in Texas and Mexico, 1861-1865 (Nicholas Guyatt) 6. Three Faces of Sovereignty: Governing Confederate, Mexican, and Indian Texas in the Civil War Era (Gregory P. Downs) 7. Redemption Falls Short: Soldier and Surgeon in the Post--Civil War Far West (William Deverell) 8. Still Picture, Moving Stories: Reconstruction Comes to Indian Country (Martha A. Sandweiss) Part Three: Borders of Citizenship 9. Race, Religion, and Naturalization: How the West Shaped Citizenship Debates in the Reconstruction Congress (Joshua Paddison) 10. Broadening the Battlefield: Conflict, Contingency, and the Mystery of Woman Suffrage in Wyoming, 1869 (Virginia Scharff) 11. "Dis Land Which Jines Dat of Ole Master's": The Meaning of Citizenship for the Choctaw Freedpeople (Fay A. Yarbrough) 12. "Citizen's Clothing": Reconstruction, Ho-Chunk Persistence, and the Politics of Dress (Stephen Kantrowitz) Epilogue (Steven Hahn) Acknowledgments Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFor the French in Indochina, the stunning defeat at Dien Bien Phu ushered in the violent process of decolonization and a fraught reckoning with a colonial past. This is an in-depth study of the competing and intertwined narratives of the Indochina War.Trade Review"There is little to criticize in this well-researched and carefully worded monograph... an insightful and important addition to the growing field of history and memory." H Net

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Book SynopsisIn what will become the classic account, based on newly opened archival sources, David Kaiser rewrites what we know about the Vietnam War. Reviving and expanding a venerable tradition of political, diplomatic, and military history, he shows not only why we entered the war, but also why our efforts were doomed to fail.Trade ReviewKaiser has worked his way through the archives and emerged with an impressive account of what he terms 'the greatest policy miscalculation in the history of American foreign relations.' The book is a detailed narrative of the war-related decisions of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations, tracing American involvement from the late 1950's to the dispatch of ground troops in 1965. All the familiar elements of the story are here--the early crisis in Laos , the hapless military advisory mission, the choices of 1964-65 that Americanized the war--along with some new tidbits as well, like a transcript of John F. Kennedy's private post-mortem on the 1963 coup against the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. -- Gideon Rose * New York Times Book Review *American Tragedy is a superb analysis of the debate within the United States government thirty-five years ago over what we should do about South Vietnam. David Kaiser shows in impressive and meticulous detail how we stumbled into an unnecessary war. -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.It's been a long time since we had a 'big' book on the war in Vietnam. American Tragedy is that book. -- Shimshon Arad * Jerusalem Post *As revisionists continue their hallucinatory attempts to re-write Vietnam as another WWII--if only we had had the will to win--careful scholarship is deepening our understanding of very different, painful story, from which wisdom to shape a better future still might come, giving belated meaning and significance to the lives of those who died there for other men's folly. American Tragedy is a landmark of such scholarship, and of the struggle to redeem something of value from the most wantonly destructive episode of our history in the past 50 years. -- Paul Rosenberg * Denver Post *Kaiser's grasp of the broader sweep of the flow of history enables him to analyse how the lessons of the history of the 1930s were misapplied by the G. I. Generation to Vietnam in the 1960s. Moreover, Kaiser's military background leads him to discuss in more detail and with greater authority than in most accounts the military aspects of the conflict. -- Peter Boyle * Times Higher Education Supplement *[Kaiser's] Vietnam book is strongest on the Kennedy period...[He] persuasively argues that Kennedy would have avoided a major American war in Vietnam had he lived. * Foreign Affairs *[Kaiser] presents an excellent, comprehensive chronological accounting of Vietnam War policymaking in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The book's strongest point is Kaiser's extensive use of newly released primary materials. Along with his narrative, the author also offers an opinionated analysis of what he calls 'the greatest policy miscalculation in the history of American foreign relations.' -- Marc Leepson * Dallas Morning News *David Kaiser has written a remarkably thorough, detached, yet sensitive book about the U.S. war in Vietnam. His previous scholarship has ranted over the whole history of modern warfare, and he sets the Vietnam War in that context. -- Ernest R. May, co-author of The Kennedy Tapes (Harvard)With newly declassified cables and high-level memoranda and policy instructions, good supporting research and clear prose, David Kaiser has written a very important book on Vietnam and the movement to disaster. Not before has there been such a compelling account of the pressures to which Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were subject from the military and its civilian acolytes, whose terrifying irresponsibility extended on to the proposed use of nuclear weapons. To repeat: a most important book, still relevant as to warriors advising on war. -- John Kenneth GalbraithIn the vast literature on American intervention in Vietnam, David Kaiser has added an indispensable and revelatory new book. Based on exhaustive research and profound scholarly insight, Kaiser makes clear that the nation's tragic involvement in Vietnam was neither arbitrary nor inevitable. No other study presents a fuller or more persuasive picture of this critical moment in our nation's history. -- Alan Brinkley, author of Liberalism and Its Discontents (Harvard)American Tragedy is a splendid reinterpretation of U. S. Involvement in Vietnam. David Kaiser has unearthed fascinating new archival material which helps us better understand why this remote Asian peninsula was such a contested Cold War prize. You cannot properly comprehend the Vietnam War without reading this first-rate book. -- Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center, University of New OrleansDavid Kaiser's book on the origins of the American tragedy in Vietnam is now the finest study on this much discussed subject. Kaiser's prodigious research and keen analysis gives us persuasive answers to the many questions journalists and historians have been asking for years about the roots of our involvement in the conflict. Kaiser's book will stand as the principal work on this compelling subject for years to come. Every one interested in the recent history of the United States will want to read this book. -- Robert Dallek, author of Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His TimesIn American Tragedy, David Kaiser examines the origins of the war and the fateful decisions that resulted in issues that haunted the country in subsequent decades. With new evidence from the State and Defense Departments, Kaiser documents Kennedy's wariness of intervention Kaiser writes very good history; he deserves a wide serious audience. -- Stanley I. Kutler * Chicago Tribune *His historiographical argument is sure to antagonize the military establishment, the CIA, surviving key policymakers like William Bundy and McNamara, anti-war critics on the left, defenders of the American commitment to fight Asian communism--and even some of his fellow historians...Kaiser is spectacularly persuasive in placing nuclear weapons at the pregnant center of the Joint Chiefs' assumptions in Vietnam. There were indeed 'wild men waiting in the wings,' as McGeorge Bundy later put it, ready to invade North Vietnam with tactical nuclear weapons. And that would have even been an even greater disaster than what happened. It is in this light that Kaiser's book is an invaluable contribution to the on-going task of peeling back further layers of the history. -- Kai Bird * Washington Post Book World *What Professor Kaiser exposes fully is the early American preparation for nuclear war in Southeast Asia and, if necessary, with China. Skeptics may dismiss this as mere contingency planning, but the Joint Chiefs went beyond preparing for a contingency to advocacy; and Kaiser shows how superiors were willing to go along with them...Kaiser's theme throughout his fascinating but depressing study is that the main actors, defying expert knowledge, could not see that their project was doomed and never defined their ultimate objectives apart from keeping Hanoi from winning. -- Jonathan Mirsky * New York Review of Books *Kaiser, a professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College, bases his account of Vietnam policy-making not on the abstractions of international relations theory but on an exhaustive examination of the documentary record. The portrait he paints of Cold War liberalism is a frightening one. -- Bill Boisvert * In These Times *The Vietnam war has been studied exhaustively but never, in many minds, satisfactorily...That makes American Tragedy a valuable, even indispensable, addition to the long, groaning shelf of books examining the path the United States took when it stumbled into its most disastrous foreign war. David Kaiser has done prodigious documentary research, studying material that had not been previously available, and has arrived at a thesis that is sure to be controversial and to open, once again, the old and painful wounds. -- Geoffrey Norman * American Way *This masterpiece of governmental history locates the roots of the Vietnam War not in the Johnson era or even Kennedy administration, but back in the military policies of the Eisenhower era...Drawing on a host of documents from recently opened government archives and tape recordings of White House meetings, Kaiser offers voluminous and meticulous evidence that Kennedy repeatedly rejected, deferred or at least modified recommendations for military actions--most notably in Laos...President Johnson, less skilled than Kennedy in foreign affairs, readily reverted to Eisenhower's narrow policy framework, despite the emergence of critics among his advisers whose thinking echoed Kennedy's. Kaiser repeatedly says they ignored problems they couldn't solve and failed to heed clear evidence that their assumptions were flawed, making defeat a foregone conclusion. This is a commanding work that sheds bright light on questions of responsibility for the Vietnam debacle. * Publishers Weekly *An important addition to the sad--and growing--library devoted to the Vietnam war. Kaiser is a longtime professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College--an important qualification, given the provocative news he brings in his heavily documented tome...Highly useful to scholars, and certain to excite discussion and even controversy, Kaiser's book is a valuable contribution. * Kirkus Reviews *[An] excellent investigation of the roots of the Vietnam War...Having spent nine years researching recently declassified documents, the author describes in exacting detail the evolution of Vietnam policies from 1961 to 1965, the year that Johnson committed the United States to a war it couldn't win...The first-rate research is complemented by an intriguing model of intergenerational policy-making, whereby Kaiser attributes much of the failure to the heavy-handed actions of the 'GI generation,' the successful leaders of World War II. Highly recommended. -- Karl Helicher * Library Journal *Kaiser [attempts] to shift a significant share of the responsibility [for the Vietnam War] to those military and foreign-policy specialists in the Eisenhower administration who believed that Communist 'aggression' has to be resisted everywhere at all times. In Kaiser's scenario, a cautious President Kennedy consistently resisted the entreaties of State and Defense Department professionals (many of them Eisenhower holdovers) to dramatically expand our commitment in Vietnam. Unfortunately, Kaiser asserts, President Johnson was far more willing to accept the advice of those same men. Kaiser, utilizing substantial and newly available source material, deftly organizes a vast amount of data into a provocative and important contribution to the controversy. -- Jay Freeman * Booklist *The question of the [Vietnam] war's nobility will be debated for years, but Kaiser's deeply researched, thoughtful and fresh look at the origin of America's stumble into war sets the standard for all future books. Kaiser invokes 'tragedy' in its classical sense: good men, devoted to a worthy cause, putting in motion actions that would bring unplanned, dreadful consequences. -- Bruce Clayton * Plain Dealer [Cleveland, Ohio *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Eisenhower Administration and Indochina: 1954-1960 2. No War in Laos: January-June 1961 3. A New Effort in Vietnam: January-August 1961 4. War or Peace? September-November 1961 5. Limiting the Commitment: November 1961-November 1962 6. The War in Vietnam: 1962 7. A Gathering Storm: January-July 1963 8. The Buddhist Crisis and the Cable of August 24: 1963 9. The Coup: August-November 1963 10. A Decision for War: November 1963-April 1964 11. To the Tonkin Gulf: April-August 1964 12. Planning for War: September-December 1964 13. Over the Edge: December 1964-March 1965 14. War in Secret: March-June 1965 15. War in Public: June-July 1965 16. Bad History, Wrong War Epilogue: Tragedy and History Dedication Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Index

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Book SynopsisOn the night of the 1876 presidential election, a gang of counterfeiters attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. This rousing story of hapless con men, intrepid federal agents, and ordinary Springfield citizens offers an unusual glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America.Trade ReviewWith charm and authority, Thomas Craughwell offers an illuminating portrait of nineteenth-century America as he writes of the origins of the Secret Service, counterfeiting in America, the rambunctious growth of Chicago, and the assassination of the beloved president. At the heart of this book is the attempt to steal Old Abe's bones, a surprising story of ludicrous crooks, determined government agents, and loyal guardians devoted to the memory of their native son. -- R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., founder and editor-in-chief, American SpectatorThomas Craughwell has written a definitive and fascinating book about the hapless gang of counterfeiters who attempted to snatch Lincoln's body and hold it for ransom. This is history writing at its best. -- Wayne C. Temple, author of Abraham Lincoln: From Skeptic to ProphetWhile the field of Lincoln studies appears to have been exhaustively mined, Thomas Craughwell has found a gold nugget in the bizarre story of Stealing Lincoln's Body. In a well-researched and beautifully written book, he takes readers through the intriguing Irish underworld of counterfeiting that led to the plot to hold Lincoln's body for ransom. -- Edward Steers, Jr., author of Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham LincolnThomas Craughwell offers the first full-length account of the aborted attempt to steal the body of the nation's icon. Ian Fleming could not have done better than this fast-paced, well-written thriller. The story demonstrates yet again how good intelligence and police work can be so effective in preventing a national catastrophe. -- Frank J. Williams, Chief Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court, and chairman of The Lincoln ForumPropelled by its true-crime format, Craughwell's history of Lincoln's several reburials and their strange-but-true details is irresistible. -- Gilbert Taylor * Booklist *Craughwell provides an intriguing glimpse at a macabre but interesting footnote to the story of Abraham Lincoln: the tale of how, on election night of 1876, several Chicago counterfeiters attempted to abduct and hold for ransom the 16th president's corpse...In telling this story, Craughwell also provides something of a biography of Lincoln's cadaver, chronicling its long voyage to final rest...Craughwell offers an entertaining account of one of the stranger incidents in American history. * Publishers Weekly *Thomas J. Craughwell has given us a richly detailed, highly entertaining, and broad slice of our history. -- John Corry * American Spectator *Stealing Lincoln's Body is worth reading for its account of the president's funeral cortege alone...[A] quirky, diverting book. -- Philip Hoare * Sunday Telegraph *[A] spirited narrative...Craughwell brings off the entire enterprise by making readers feel, hear and smell the atmosphere of the fetid Chicago taverns where the crooks hatched their demonic plot--not to mention the creepy interior of the shoddy Lincoln tomb, crumbling all around the family corpses as an aging guard of honor struggles both to conceal Lincoln's body in the dank cellar and to rescue the cheaply made temple for posterity...Summoning the raw spirit of crime novels and horror stories, as well as the forensic detail of a coroner's inquest, Thomas J. Craughwell has turned the eerie final chapter of the Lincoln story into a guilty pleasure. -- Harold Holzer * Washington Post Book World *Thomas J. Craughwell has rescued this bizarre episode from the dustbin of history...It does more than simply retell a forgotten story; it sheds new light on the incident, thanks to the long-neglected original handwritten reports of Patrick Tyrrell, the Secret Service agent who handled the case...Thomas Craughwell tells the story in a work that is sometimes morbid and creepy, but never less than fascinating. -- Eric Fettmann * New York Post *Stealing Lincoln's Body tracks an unlikely series of events, reminiscent of a silent, black-and-white, cops-and-robbers movie, with passion and erudition. -- John McBratney * Irish Times *The plot that gives Stealing Lincoln's Body its title, hatched by a crew of hapless Irish publicans and counterfeiters in Chicago, unfolds with equal doses of Martin Scorsese and the Three Stooges, the fecklessness of the robbers nearly trumped by that of the cops, on election night 1876, more than a decade after the President's assassination...It is a marvelous look into Gilded Age America and the wellsprings of many of our modern vexations. Immigrant and urban culture, robber barons and financial hoodlums, the bread-and-circuses numbing of the electorate, political scandal and presidential intrigues, the war between the ridiculous and the sublime that seems to infect our nations are all subtexts to this readable book. -- Thomas Lynch * The Times *A fascinating [tale] that is well told. -- James Srodes * Washington Times *Stealing Lincoln's Body is a fascinating thriller, and it provides a macabre footnote to American history, but the real strength lies in the way the context--the dynamic but turbulent society of America in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War--is so skillfully described. -- A. W. Purdue * Times Higher Education Supplement *Thomas Craughwell's Stealing Lincoln's Body abounds with information about the amazingly goof-ball plot and about such things as the transformation of the Secret Service into being the presidential body guard. * Frontpage Online *There is no end of fascinating context and detail in this engrossing, often zany, yet poignant tale. -- Michael Kammen * Chicago Tribune *Craughwell brings together counterfeiters, lawyers, corpse-stealers, Lincoln’s Guard of Honor, and Abraham Lincoln himself in this intriguing novel that brings to light a little-known historical incident. -- Kathy Ward * Juneauempire.com *This is a terrific read. -- Owen Richardson * The Age *By turns macabre and gruesome, dumbfounding and farcical, the extraordinary true story of the Chicago gang who attempted to kidnap Lincoln's corpse is a fascinating episode in 19th-century crime. Craughwell constructs a sweeping picture of the characters from every walk of life who were embroiled in this bizarre "horrible history." -- Richard Hand * Times Higher Education *Table of Contents* Prologue: "Lay My Remains in Some Quiet Place" * The World of the Counter feiters * Big Jim's Kennally's Big Idea * The Boss Body Snatchers of Chicago *"The Devils Are Up Here" * The Body in the Basement *"The Tools of Smarter Men" * The Lincoln Guard of Honor * A Pullman-Style Burial * Epilogue: Safe and Secure at Last * Notes * Bibliography

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Book SynopsisSupported by a “provisional army” of 21 men, Brown hoped to rouse the slaves in Virginia to rebellion. But he was quickly captured and, after a short but stormy trial, hanged on December 2, 1859. McGinty provides the first comprehensive account of the trial, which raised important questions about jurisdiction, judicial fairness, and treason.Trade ReviewJohn Brown's Trial is an important book on an important subject. Brian McGinty's impressive research sheds much new light on a crucial--and previously underappreciated--event in American legal history. -- Steven Lubet, author of Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt EarpThere have been many books about John Brown, but none provides as comprehensive an account of the famous trial as does McGinty's. His well-written narrative is compelling and lucid. I especially appreciated his analysis of whether Brown received a fair trial. Here is another winner from the author of Lincoln and the Court. -- Frank J. Williams, former Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and founding chair of The Lincoln ForumMcGinty casts the spotlight on one of the great courtroom dramas of the nineteenth century, the trial of John Brown. This is Brown as we have never seen him before--not the martyr, nor the fanatic, but a man in complete control, who manages to transform his treason trial into a searing indictment of slavery in America. -- Thomas J. Craughwell, author of Stealing Lincoln's BodyYou'd think little new could be said about one of the most famous trials in American history. But McGinty comes to his work as attorney as well as historian. The result is a fresh perspective on the trial of John Brown, a work that adds appreciably to our understanding of the coming of the Civil War. Brown's trial, after his 1859 attack on the federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Va., caused a sensation for its bold challenge to slavery...The author's legal knowledge illuminates the proceedings' intricacies and shortcomings, and reveals how Brown's brief closing statement, considered among the most eloquent words in the nation's history, had a more lasting impact than his armed raid. * Publishers Weekly *McGinty has written an important account emphasizing Brown's trial rather than the raid itself as a significant turning point in the struggle between North and South prior to the Civil War. Recommended for all readers interested in the Civil War. -- Stephen L. Hupp * Library Journal *[McGinty] so judiciously arrays the facts and law of the four-day trial in a Western Virginia courtroom, we are given a fresh perspective on the meaning of John Brown...McGinty's narrative is not confined to the trial and the legal issues of his argument. All the fascinating details are here, from Brown's background to the poetic legacy...Worth reading. -- Doug Cumming * Roanoke Times *Table of Contents* Introduction * To Free the Slaves * Carrying the War into Africa * Framing the Charges * The Indictment * The Jury Is Summoned * The Testimony Begins * The Name and the Shadow of a Fair Trial * The Quiet Was Deceptive * The Verdict * The Sentence * The Execution * Marching On * Notes * Bibliography * Index

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Book SynopsisThe admired American painter Winslow Homer rose to national attention during the Civil War. But one of his most important early images remained unknown for a century. Near Andersonville (1865-66) is the earliest and least known of these impressive images. This title reveals the long-hidden story of this remarkable Civil War painting.Trade ReviewIn Near Andersonville, Wood tells the captivating story of an abandoned painting with the meticulousness of a historian and the panache of a novelist. More than just an enigmatic painting, Near Andersonville is a testament to the passions of white abolitionists, and the halting confusion of the freed slaves they cared for. This short book is a quick, learned, and touching read. -- Leah Triplett * Art New England *In his engrossing book by the same name, Wood argues that [Winslow Homer’s] Near Andersonville ‘explores the question’ of ‘What happens…if any part of the Civil War drama is viewed explicitly from the vantage point of the enslaved.’ Wood offers an illuminating, if at times speculative, reading of the image… His careful reconstruction of the painting’s provenance, and his account of the discovery of the painting’s title, are every bit as rewarding as his careful analysis of the visual symbolism of the painting itself. -- Lauren Winner * Books & Culture *[A] jewel of a book… This study began as a series of Nathan Huggins Lectures at Harvard, and it reads just like a really good lecture: engaging, informative, easy to listen to, and fully thought provoking. Wood, no stranger to Homer, having coauthored a study of the painter’s images of African Americans in 1988, accomplishes the deceptively difficult task of making a subject about which he knows a great deal entirely accessible to anyone who wants to pick up this book. -- Steven Conn * New England Quarterly *What a wonderful book Peter Wood has written. He has taken one of Winslow Homer’s most rarely studied paintings and, literally and metaphorically, given it back its story. In the process Near Andersonville becomes both a window opening onto the past and a mirror reflecting our own time. -- Marc Simpson, Associate Director, Graduate Program in the History of Art, Williams CollegeAn enormously creative and insightful new perspective on one of the most important and tragic episodes in American history. Wood’s sensitive and intelligent reading of Homer’s works shows that there are indeed many ways to illuminate the past. -- Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard UniversityWood has unraveled the deep and subtle meanings expressed in Near Andersonville. The ambiguities of slavery and freedom, of the past and future framed by war, are brilliantly analyzed in this powerful and compelling book. -- James M. McPherson, Princeton UniversityA magnificently focused meditation that arrives at a completely fresh perspective on the painting and its precise Civil War background. Readers will see Homer’s Near Andersonville anew after engaging with Peter Wood’s literally eye-opening work. -- Werner Sollors, Harvard UniversityWood’s detective work and his interpretive conclusions persuade us that Homer understood and was affected by the moral ramifications of the Civil War and that he felt deep empathy toward the African Americans caught up in the conflict. -- Patricia Hills, Boston UniversityPeter Wood is one of the most curious, original, and rewarding historians of our time and in Near Andersonville all his talents are on full display. Part detective story, part history, and part art criticism, this book is a masterpiece. -- John Stauffer, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisAbolitionists have been painted in extremes—vilified as reckless zealots who provoked the bloodletting of the Civil War, or praised as daring reformers who hastened the end of slavery. Delbanco sees them as the embodiment of a driving force in American history: the recurrent impulse of an adamant minority to rid the world of outrageous evil.Trade ReviewA brilliant, risky, provocative account of the changing historical reputation of abolitionists in America. Delbanco offers a timely take on just why this prototypical American reform movement never goes away as a template, as a useable past, as a story that can be appropriated by all ends of the political spectrum. -- David Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights EraWith his characteristic eloquence, Andrew Delbanco provides an interpretation of abolitionism, in history and literature, which challenges the received wisdom--and his four critics are up to the challenge. This splendid book demonstrates that the most successful radical movement in American history still retains its power to provoke and enlighten. -- Michael Kazin, author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a NationThe lucidity of the prose and the relevance of the topic to today's cultural divides may attract broader audiences. -- Brendan Driscoll * Booklist *

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Book SynopsisConsigned to illiteracy, American slaves left little record of their thoughts and feelings—or so we have believed. But a few learned to use pen and paper to make sense of their experiences, despite prohibitions. These authors’ perspectives rewrite the history of emancipation and force us to rethink the relationship between literacy and freedom.Trade ReviewThrough a series of bold, imaginative and insightful case studies, Christopher Hager uncovers the intellectual world of U.S. slavery and charts the hopes, expectations and fears of enslaved writers… By understanding emancipation as a slow process rather than a rapid transformation, Word by Word shows how literacy was an incomplete and sometimes flawed instrument of black self-determination. The idea of emancipation as an unfinished revolution is not new, nor is the attention to subterranean networks of enslaved information and exchange particularly novel in slavery studies. By rendering legible and audible the writings of the literate minority, however, Hager reveals the desperate and creative measures taken by former slaves to assert their communal and individual voices. Most of course continued unlettered, but the striking improvement in black literacy during the two decades after emancipation (from 10 to 30 per cent) is testimony to the enduring importance attached to the written word and the empowering potential of African-American writing. -- Richard Follett * Times Higher Education *Christopher Hager does a fascinating job of sifting through these letters [written by slaves], fleshing out as much as possible the stories of their authors, and casting it all as black America’s first attempts at forging a voice in this strange land, in Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing. -- Mark Reynolds * PopMatters *While Frederick Douglass invigorated abolitionists with his eloquent prose, many of his contemporaries, still enslaved or recently freed, scrawled barely legible letters to friends and family sold to distant masters. In this revelatory hybrid of history and textual analysis, Hager argues that the act of writing—often in defiance of states’ antiliteracy laws—was an exceedingly potent form of self-empowerment for these oppressed men and women, never mind their poor spelling and unorthodox methods (one potter carved poetry into his work, another ‘composed at the handle of the plough’ and kept the lines memorized till he learned to write). Primary documents, intensely scrutinized, reveal powerful emotions and common hardships, bear witness to racial struggles across the country, and provide unalloyed insight into the stark yet hopeful reality after the Emancipation Proclamation. Particularly fascinating is the evolution of writing as a form of power: a former slave protests, via letter, to a Union general about Union soldiers attacking his neighbor’s wife, while another journals his integration into the U.S. Navy with perfunctory but increasingly assured entries. This thoughtful examination of the artifacts of a too-long-silenced population is made all the more eloquent by accompanying facsimiles of the arduously penned missives. * Publishers Weekly *Hager provides an informed and informative view of writings produced by formerly enslaved African Americans, often overlooked as an illiterate group. Hager reminds readers to attend to those texts that have the power to give scholars a broader perspective of particular moments… By paying attention to these authors, Hager aims to develop new models for the interpretation of historical sources and give voice to both the unknown and the underappreciated. -- T. T. Green * Choice *[An] always engaging account of how the path to freedom was paved, in part, with written words. * Kirkus Reviews *Hager seeks to craft an intellectual history of a people too often dismissed as illiterate and lacking a culture of letters. His focus is not on stars who are well known from fugitive slave narratives, but on a handful of more or less literate blacks whose previously unpublished letters provide pieces of a complex and rich narrative of liberation. Hager discusses the mental process of writing, exploring the inner lives, secrecy, and subversion shown in black initiatives to learn how to write and how to use writing to end enslavement and to embrace emancipation. -- Thomas J. Davis * Library Journal *From its first pages, where a stumbling black writer in Civil War New Orleans picks up the U.S. Constitution, Word by Word focuses on the initial tremors of freedom for ordinary people amid wartime turmoil and the process of emancipation. This is original work of the highest order. -- Kathleen Diffley, editor of To Live and Die: Collected Stories of the Civil War, 1861–1876Hager brilliantly imagines scenes of writing among freed people in the decades immediately following emancipation, showing how former slaves turned to writing as a way of taking control of their world. Word by Word is a major and revelatory act of historical recovery done with imaginative sympathy and critical verve. -- Robert S. Levine, author of Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary NationalismA penetrating and revealing portrait of people in the process of defining freedom, Word by Word is a stirring, important work that reshapes our understanding of slavery and emancipation. -- Louis P. Masur, author of Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union

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Book SynopsisThe Civil War thrust millions of men and women—rich and poor, soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free—onto the roads of the South. During four years of war, Southerners lived on the move. In the hands of Sternhell, movement becomes a radically new means to perceive the full trajectory of the Confederacy’s rise, struggle, and ultimate defeat.Trade ReviewThe author’s incisive analysis leads to a number of fresh and fascinating ways to understand the history of the Civil War and its discontents… Routes of War is a grand achievement because it raises…important questions that have not been examined in the many thousands of books and articles published on the Civil War. Sternhell deserves accolades not only for this, but also for demonstrating quite efficaciously how motion constitutes a fundamental aspect of war in general. The most brilliant aspect of the book is her willingness to analyze motion both as a physical act and as a symbol of meaning. -- Jim Downs * American Historical Review *It’s not easy to say something fresh about the American Civil War; truly pioneering studies are few and far between. But Sternhell provides a decidedly new vantage point from which to view the war and to understand what it meant to Southerners—soldiers, slaves, and civilians. -- James L. Roark * Civil War Book Review *Sternhell writes beautifully and convincingly, arguing that the road can be a place of liberty, of opportunity—but also of failure and fear. -- Megan Kate Nelson * Civil War Monitor *

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Book SynopsisGallagher argues that we should not ask why the Confederacy collapsed so soon but rather how it lasted so long. He examines the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it to show how the home front responded to the war, endured its hardships, and assembled armies that fought with great spirit and determination.Trade Review[Gallagher's] perceptive and engaging new book maintains that historians have got off track in recent years by attributing Confederate defeat to weakness on the home front rather than to performance on the battlefield. War-weariness, lack of will and ambivalence toward the cause of independence, they say, doomed the South… Gallagher addresses the right issues, asks probing questions and suggests intriguing alternatives. -- Daniel E. Sutherland * New York Times Book Review *Gallagher's work, a perceptive, well-written, and strongly argued series of essays concerning Confederate morale, nationalism, and military strategy, raises serious questions about the prevalent interpretation of why the South lost the Civil War. * Virginia Quarterly Review *The Confederate War is a significant and thought-provoking addition to the current body of Civil War literature. Gallagher has returned the focus of the war to the theater in which it was decided—military operations. In doing do, he demonstrates the enormous human, financial and material investment that white Southerners put into the struggle for independence. Solidly researched and sharply argued, The Confederate War cannot easily be dismissed by the 'internal causes' historians. Consequently, it is likely to rekindle debate among both academics and popularizers, which is all to the good, particularly in the current stifling climate of political. -- Richard F. Welch * America's Civil War *One of the most attractive and ennobling portrayals of the white Confederacy in recent memory. The lavish illustrations (numbering a full forty) and coffee-table 'feel' assures that this beautifully produced and competitively priced volume will have a wide readership outside of the historical profession. Gallagher's own swift prose, clear argument, and richly documented account of white southerners at war can only bolster sales further… It is also safe to say that it will have a major impact on how historians will hereafter frame research on the slaveholding South's suicidal effort to establish its independence… In a growing corpus of work on the wartime South, Gallagher has explored the interactions of war and society and given new legitimacy to a field of military history that will always need to be a part of any general understanding of the 1860s. This work has achieved a substantial measure of authority. -- Robert E. Bonner * Reviews in American History *Everyone involved in the continuing debate over the factors behind the South's defeat must read Gallagher's book, and anyone wanting a helpful introduction to it should as well. -- Gaines M. Foster * Louisiana History *An important book… The Confederate War is certain to cause controversy. For Gallagher dares to suggest that, despite, 'moral disapprobation' prevalent in many histories about the conflict over the past half-century, the stark fact remains that 'a majority of white southerners steadfastly supported their nascent republic, and that Confederate arms more than once almost persuaded the North that the price of subduing the rebellious states would be too high'… Using published evidence from Confederate diarists, soldiers, statesmen, and newspapers—evidence which by omission or intent seldom seems to find its way into recent Civil War histories—Gallagher makes a compelling case for Confederate unity. The Confederacy did not fall to pieces after Gettysburg; a 'mass of testimony' suggests that Southerners thought the war winnable until virtually the end… Thorough reassessments of the Confederacy and of the interpretations of it have long been overdue, and Gary W. Gallagher succeeds in his initial attempt to rebalance historical portrayals of the Civil War South. -- B. Anthony Gannon * Register of the Kentucky Historical Society *The Confederate War is an impressive volume. The arguments which Gallagher employs to support his central thesis are well constructed and quite persuasive. Gallagher also relies on a wide array of Confederate voices from the past to substantiate his case and this makes for an interesting study. Moreover, Gallagher's extensive review of the literature is incisive and most informative. The Confederate War should provide good reading for all students of Confederate nationalism and will generate lively debate among historians of the American Civil War for years to come. -- Bruce Cauthen * Nation and Nationalism *Gallagher's book challenges the non-military historians to come out from behind the barricades once again. -- Russell Duncan * American Studies in Europe *The author makes a fine case for a new look at an old argument. * Library Journal *Gallagher's effort will have serious students rejoicing in its persuasive argumentation for believing that battles and armies who indeed have some bearing on the outcomes of war. * Booklist *The best interpretive study of the Civil War, or at least of the Confederacy, to have appeared in a good many years. Gallagher has an almost unparalleled command of sources, both primary and secondary. His sound common sense, incisive analysis, and forceful and lucid literary style have produced a superb book. -- James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of FreedomThe Confederate War is vintage Gary Gallagher. Drawing on vast research, careful reasoning, and a perceptive understanding of the use of evidence, Gallagher deftly slays some of the Civil War's most lasting interpretations. It is one of the best books on the Confederacy in this decade and is a must read for anyone interested in the Civil War. -- Joseph T. Glatthaar, author of Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White OfficersIn this bold, high spirited, well argued—and indispensable—book, Gary Gallagher does justice to the extraordinary courage and tenacity with which the white people of the South fought to establish their claims to national self-determination. And in so doing, he respectfully refutes prevalent but wrong-headed judgments. -- Eugene Genovese, author of The Southern TraditionStarting with meticulous research and proceeding with careful analysis, Gallagher presents a convincing argument that Confederate fortunes collapsed primarily from military defeats rather than an internal loss of will. This is must reading for anyone seeking a basic explanation of the causes and outcome of the Civil War. -- James I. Robertson, Jr., author of Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDowns persuasively argues that a long and persistent ‘occupation’ occurred for at least three years, and perhaps as long as six years, after the end of actual hostilities in spring, 1865. Downs also demonstrates that, although a massive demobilization of Union troops occurred in 1865–66, the United States Army has been far too neglected as a player—a force—in the history of Reconstruction… Downs wants his work to speak to the present, and indeed it should. -- David W. Blight * The Atlantic *[Downs] makes a persuasive…case that virtually none of the achievements of Reconstruction—there were more than is generally supposed—could have taken place without the use or at least the threat of military force. He challenges the view that defeated Confederates in 1865 were ready to acquiesce in whatever reorganization the federal government imposed on them, including the bestowal of civil rights on blacks… Downs rightly regards the appalling white-on-black violence of the late 1860s and early 1870s as systemic terrorism… In Downs’s telling, Reconstruction was also one of the finest hours of the U.S. Army. -- Fergus M. Bordewich * Wall Street Journal *In After Appomattox, Downs makes the case that the final end to slavery, and the establishment of basic civil and voting rights for all Americans, was ‘born in the face of bayonets.’ Put simply, the military occupation created democracy as we know it. Downs’ book couldn’t come at a more opportune time, as American forces once again face the difficult question of how long, and to what ends, an occupying army must stay in conquered territory. After more than a decade of fighting abroad, we may be too war-weary to see that military occupations are sometimes a good, even necessary thing… The brilliance of Downs’ argument is that he steals the central complaint of the apologists, yet reverses the conclusion: The federal government was overzealous—and that was a good thing. Congress had to impose martial law in order for blacks to gain basic freedoms. If military officers sometimes vacated racist local laws, if they removed ruthless sheriffs and judges, if they tried white supremacists in unfair military tribunals—all of which they did—they did so for necessary ends. Equality would come to the South no other way… Downs has produced a remarkable, necessary book. -- Eric Herschthal * Slate *In a striking new book, After Appomattox, historian Gregory Downs chronicles the years of military occupation that followed Lee’s surrender to Grant in 1865—a military occupation that was indispensable to the uprooting of slavery and the political empowerment of freed slaves. In the face of Southern white supremacist hostility, it was only the continuing presence of federal troops in the South that could break up remaining pockets of rebellion, establish the right of blacks to vote and seek election, void discriminatory laws, and unilaterally remove disloyal or racist sheriffs and judges from office. -- Jeff Jacoby * Boston Globe *Downs resets our sights on the military occupation that did occur, and he argues for its centrality in helping to fashion whatever gains African-Americans managed to achieve. In talking about military occupation, numbers matter, and his research has fixed them with a precision previously lacking… After Appomattox is a timely, important book that casts new light on the meaning of occupation during Reconstruction, and raises challenging questions about the relationship between military power and civil rights in today’s climate of never-e​nding war. -- Louis P. Masur * Chronicle of Higher Education *Downs has written an important book challenging assumptions about the post–Civil War era and the ways in which historians define ‘wartime’ and ‘peacetime.’ He contends that Lee’s surrender at Appomattox did not bring peace, but rather a second phase of war—an insurgency and war of occupation that did not ‘end’ until 1871. Downs problematizes the idea of ‘reconstruction.’ Whatever accomplishments came in that era—civil rights, a national definition of citizenship—came as a result of military force rather than deliberative politics. Challenging scholars who argue that too few Union troops for a meaningful occupation remained in the postwar South, Downs demonstrates through impressive research that there was actually a significant military presence, both numerically and geographically. But even this presence had its limits, and outside the pale, terrorists and violence plagued the South. By framing the period as an occupation and insurgency, the author has done much to reveal the violent, contested, and contingent nature of the post–Civil War US. Required reading for scholars of the Civil War era. -- K. M. Gannon * Choice *Downs examines Reconstruction as primarily a military operation. In order to secure civil rights for freed slaves, Northern republicans had to rely on additional constitutional war powers. From a legal standpoint, the Civil War did not end with the surrender of Confederate armies but lasted until 1871 when Georgia’s senator was seated. While many opponents of Reconstruction were motivated by racism, others were compelled by a fear of unchecked military power. How to approach Reconstruction even divided radical Republicans. Downs convincingly argues that the U.S. government should have expanded and extended the use of war powers in the South in order to secure justice and freedom for freed slaves… This work will appeal to general readers as well as specialists interested in a fresh understanding of Reconstruction. -- Michael Farrell * Library Journal *After Appomattox demonstrates how a long and ambitious military occupation aimed to secure freedom for the newly emancipated in the violent, lawless, and chaotic South. Original and revelatory, it has tremendous potential to change our understanding of American Reconstruction. -- David W. Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights EraMoving brilliantly between the lived experience of the Civil War’s forgotten final six years and the fierce legal debates in Washington, After Appomattox is the definitive work on a great paradox of American democracy: the post–Civil War expansion of rights arose out of and depended upon the awesome powers of the wartime state. Downs masterfully reveals how controversies over war powers shaped the course of American freedom. A fundamental rethinking of what we can now call America’s Ten Years’ War. -- John Fabian Witt, author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American HistoryDowns demonstrates that the end of the Civil War marked the beginning of another war: the violent struggle for the rights of African Americans that resulted from military occupation of the South and political battles in Washington. After Appomattox is a landmark account of the death throes of slavery and the stormy rise of Reconstruction. -- David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown, Abolitionist and Walt Whitman’s America

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Book SynopsisWinner of the PEN OaklandJosephine Miles AwardA stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women.David W. Blight, author of Frederick DouglassReaders expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers' brows will not find them hereExplodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines.Washington PostThe idea that women are outside of war is a powerful myth, one that shaped the Civil War and still determines how we write about it today. Through three dramatic stories that span the war, Stephanie McCurry invites us to see America's bloodiest conflict for what it was: not just a brothers' war but a women's war. When Union soldiers faced the unexpected threat of female partisans, saboteurs, and spies, long held assumptions about the innocence of enemy women were suddenly thrown into question. McCurry shows how the case of Clara Judd, imprisoned for treason, transformed the writing of Lieber's Code, leading to lasting changes in the laws of war. Black women's fight for freedom had no place in the Union military's emancipation plans. Facing a massive problem of governance as former slaves fled to their ranks, officers reclassified black women as soldiers' wivesplacing new obstacles on their path to freedom. Finally, McCurry offers a new perspective on the epic human drama of Reconstruction through the story of one slaveholding woman, whose losses went well beyond the material to intimate matters of family, love, and belonging, mixing grief with rage and recasting white supremacy in new, still relevant terms. As McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a people's war' nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people.James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of FreedomIn this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war's elemental impact.Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of SufferingTrade ReviewReaders expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers’ brows will not find them here…It explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines. * Washington Post *Traces three narratives to argue that ‘there is no Civil War history without women in it.’ Women waged grassroots campaigns that informed the new concept of ‘Civilian as Enemy’—the trial of the Confederate spy Cara Judd altered martial law—and shaped the Union’s refugee policy and the terms of the peace. McCurry scrutinizes legal archives compiled by men, seeking glimpses of women they overlooked, whose voices enliven the book. * New Yorker *Correcting histories that erase women’s share in wartime work, McCurry reminds us that ‘Women are never just witnesses to war.’ * Wall Street Journal *As [McCurry] argues, women don’t just watch history from the sidelines; they make it, they act in it, they are very much part of it. To see women as innocent wallflowers in need of protection could prove a deadly mistake when women were serving as smugglers, scouts, decoys, insurgents, and combatants; ignore them at your peril. * New Republic *Identifies a durable commitment to patriarchy that outlasted slavery and sustained white supremacy through the Civil War and beyond…McCurry sets out to view the South’s ordeal in the Civil War ‘through women’s eyes,’ a perspective too often ignored in histories of warfare. * Times Literary Supplement *Stephanie McCurry challenges us once again to look at the Civil War through a different lens. She demonstrates how women’s participation changed not only their lives but the very understanding of war itself—its laws, its mechanisms of violence, its legacies and aftermath. In this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war’s elemental impact. -- Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of SufferingAs Stephanie McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a ‘people’s war’ nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people. Her account of Southern white women’s participation in rebel resistance, black women’s roles in their own emancipation, and the prostrated condition of the women as well as men of the planter class after the war paves the way to a better integration of women into the story of this era. -- James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of FreedomWith uncommon comparative sizzle and a deep grounding in gender, legal, and racial history, McCurry has written a stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women. Horror and hardship in this case have inspirited beautiful writing. Women’s War gives the legions of Civil War era readers a unique, unsettling, and enriching understanding of the conflict. Women were not mere witnesses to war; McCurry is our witness to how they died and lived through this cataclysm. -- David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of FreedomEloquently refutes the idea that ‘women are outside of war.’ Building on a generation of scholarship, she reminds us that women’s stories both shaped and were shaped by the American Civil War. -- Brian Neumann * North Carolina Historical Review *

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Book SynopsisAbraham Lincoln projects a larger-than-life image across American history owing to his role as the Great Emancipator. Yet this noble aspect of Lincoln’s identity is the dimension that some historians have cast into doubt. The award-winning historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo offers a vigorous defense of America’s sixteenth president.Trade Review[A] brief, hard-hitting, and clear-eyed book. -- John Wilson * Christianity Today *Lincoln scholar Guelzo explores race in America as an element of African‐American history as affected by Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Declaration… A clear, concise look at one aspect of Lincoln, the man and the president. * Kirkus Reviews *Guelzo’s exploration of Lincoln’s reputation is both accessible and thought provoking. * Publishers Weekly *Guelzo delivers original and tautly argued insights into Lincoln’s antislavery thought and the feral persistence of American racism. No one who reads this superb, provocative book will be tempted to dismiss the depth or sincerity of Lincoln’s personal commitment to emancipation. -- Fergus M. Bordewich, author of America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the UnionIn this penetrating work, Guelzo recovers Lincoln’s reputation as the Great Emancipator and invites us to think anew about the legacies of slavery and freedom in America. The result is an important, timely meditation on issues that continue to haunt the nation. -- Louis P. Masur, author of Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for Union

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Book SynopsisAfter 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them deep into the Atlantic world. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal tells the story of how their efforts created the first national, racially inclusive model of U.S. citizenship.Trade ReviewCitizen Sailors is a useful reminder that Revolutionary America was more inclusive than the republic would become in the 19th century and than some might wish to make it today. By skillfully coaxing narratives out of previously unorganized troves of documents, Perl-Rosenthal lets us see that the Custom House certificates ‘offered a glimmer of a far more inclusive model of the American nation than existed in any other official quarter.’ He also ably describes the complicated national identities of sailors and the human suffering of Americans wrongfully impressed. -- Mark Spencer * Wall Street Journal *Citizen Sailors is the first book to explore how sailors were crucial to definitions of U.S. citizenship during and after the War for Independence because of their central role in national politics and because of the peculiar problems in ascertaining their nationality. Engagingly written and marshaling terrific new evidence, this important book will alter our understanding of the American Revolution, the Atlantic world, and the dynamics of national identity. -- Joyce E. Chaplin, author of Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to OrbitWith erudition and eloquence, Citizen Sailors tells the remarkable story of the federal government’s efforts to protect the welfare of seafaring Americans, doing so without regard to region, class or, surprisingly, race. Showcasing maritime history at its best, the result is a tour de force that will appeal to general readers and specialists alike. -- Eliga Gould, author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire

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Book SynopsisAfter Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862, Rose Herera’s owners fled to Havana, taking her three children with them. Adam Rothman tells the story of Herera’s quest to rescue her children from bondage after the war. As the kidnapping case made its way through the courts, it revealed the prospects and limits of justice during Reconstruction.Trade Review[A] riveting narrative… Rothman’s theme is the moral logic of slavery as embedded in law and social custom. -- Jason Berry * Daily Beast *The book’s major novelty is its focus on individual personal suffering as opposed to a typical slavery history which is concerned with the quantity of suffering… The informal and engaging tone succeeds in lending Beyond Freedom’s Reach an accessibility to introduce non-specialists to the field of study, whilst aptly adding a human touch to an emotional subject. -- Michael Warren * LSE Review of Books *Meticulously researched, well-written and thoughtfully argued, this work should attract not only students of African-American history; those who study southern and Civil War history will enhance their knowledge of 1850–1860s Deep South culture. -- Carol Wilson * Civil War Book Review *The extraordinary odyssey of Rose Herera to recover her kidnapped children from slavery illuminates the impact of the Civil War on the enslavers and the enslaved and reminds us of the precariousness of freedom during the Reconstruction era. An impressive and compelling history. -- Randy J. Sparks, author of Where the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave TradeAmidst slavery’s unraveling in New Orleans, Rose Herera fought to prevent her owner from taking her children to Havana, ‘beyond freedom’s reach.’ Rothman’s recovery of Herera’s remarkable story, her incarceration and journey through the legal system to rescue her children, marks an important contribution to the history of emancipation and the contingency of wartime freedom. -- Thavolia Glymph, author of Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation HouseholdAdam Rothman weaves together an incisive narrative of slavery, freedom, and family in wartime Louisiana. -- Karen Cook Bell * Journal of Southern History *Adam Rothman has contributed a gem to our understanding of the end of slavery. -- Minoa Uffleman * Arkansas Review *A riveting chronicle. -- Wilma King * American Historical Review *This is microhistory at its best. -- Lawrence N. Powell * Journal of American History *In this gem of social history, Rothman recovers the lives of Rose Herera and her family. -- Alfred L. Brophy * The Historian *Ideally suited to the undergraduate classroom. -- Richard Bell * Journal of the Civil War Era *Besides being a truly engaging story, Rothman’s work is a model of how the historian sleuth can imaginatively explore large issues by following clues and tracing leads at the personal and local level, cues often unseen at first glance. -- Joyce Broussard * Civil War History *I have said before that we are in a renaissance of excellent historical writing for a general public that wants to read something more than hagiographic narratives. Add Adam Rothman’s Beyond Freedom’s Reach to the list. Rothman tells the story of Rose Herera, a New Orleans slave whose children were spirited away to Cuba by her master during the Civil War. Centering kidnapping in the slave experience, Rothman takes what could be a fairly slender story based upon a relative paucity of evidence to build a tale of great bravery and persistence within a rapidly changing world where African-Americans had relatively little power even in the immediate aftermath of the war. -- Erik Loomis * Lawyers, Guns, and Money *Rothman’s narrative is punctuated by expert analysis, and as such is a useful work for students, scholars, and a general public alike. It is particularly valuable as a book that seeks to shed light on kidnapping, a difficult phenomenon for historians to study given that its scope (in any era) is never accurately reflected in the records. For this reason alone, one could call Rothman’s study masterful, because he demonstrates how historians can bring a variety of research techniques to bear on an elusive topic. It stands as a model for how we might reconstruct the subaltern history of kidnapping and connect it with the world of military might and political intrigue within the legal thicket inhabited by both kidnappers and their victims. -- H. Robert Baker * American Nineteenth Century History *

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Book SynopsisFor men in the Union and Confederate armies and their families at home, letter writing was the sole means to communicate. Taking pen to paper was a new and daunting task, but Christopher Hager shows how ordinary people made writing their own, and how they in turn transformed the culture of letters into a popular, democratic mode of communication.Trade ReviewChristopher Hager uncovers the worlds of battlefront and home front for ordinary people in one of the most important books ever written on the history of emotions. He finds in the tortured grammar of soldiers and their loved ones the shocks, trauma, fear, and the deadening mundane of war's upheaval. This book is a profound portrait of humanity undisguised, unconventional, and under pressure—a truly original work of literary history. -- David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: American ProphetA deeply researched, imaginatively structured, and eloquently written study of the letter-writing practices of soldiers and family members during the U.S. Civil War. It is the rare scholarly work with a narrative momentum that makes it hard to put down. I have no doubt that it will take its place as the defining book in its field. -- William Merrill Decker, author of Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before TelecommunicationsHager brings alive the personal letters of ordinary soldiers and their families, people who had neither traveled nor written much before the war came calling. With astounding interpretive skill, and in gorgeous prose, he weaves deeply personal stories, gleaning rich and resonant details from words, phrases, and even blank spaces on a page. I Remain Yours is a book for those who study the Civil War or just love to read about it. There is simply no other book like it. -- Martha Hodes, author of Mourning LincolnChristopher Hager has recovered the voices of ordinary soldiers who struggled into literacy during the Civil War. Their letters home are poignant and sometimes heartbreaking. I Remain Yours is an extraordinary addition to the documentary history of the Civil War. -- Joan D. Hedrick, author of Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

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Book SynopsisThe Battle of Waterloo was just the beginning of a long transition to peace. Christine Haynes offers the first comprehensive history of the post-Napoleonic occupation of France. Transforming former European enemies into allies, the mission established Paris as a cosmopolitan capital and foreshadowed postwar reconstruction in the twentieth century.Trade ReviewWhile warfare tends to get more attention, how wars end and how societies are rebuilt afterwards is often just as important. In this deeply researched, elegantly written book, Haynes offers a compelling and insightful account of the Allied occupation of France after the wars against Napoleon. She gives a visceral sense of what the experience was like for all parties and shows how the occupation enabled the making of a lasting peace and the reconstruction of French society and politics. -- Brian E. Vick, author of The Congress of ViennaA very good book, written with verve and attention to archival detail, in a manner reminiscent of the great historian of France Richard Cobb. In addition to being the first serious English-language treatment of an important subject, it is an exemplary blend of social, cultural, financial, and economic (as well as military and diplomatic) history. -- Rafe Blaufarb, author of The Great DemarcationHaynes draws on a wealth of evidence to weave a rich history of the occupation that provided a key moment of reflection over the political idea of ‘Europe.’ This is an impressive contribution to the literature on the French Restoration, liberalism in nineteenth-century Europe, occupation and peacemaking. -- Rachel Chrastil, author of The Siege of Strasbourg

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Book SynopsisIn their famous debates, Lincoln and Douglas struggled with how to behave when an ethical conflict like slavery strained democracy's commitment to rule by both consent and principle. What conscience demands and what it can persuade others to agree to are not always the same. Ultimately, this tragic limitation of liberalism led Lincoln to war.

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Book SynopsisDiscarding tidy abstractions about the conduct of war, Aaron Sheehan-Dean shows that the notoriously bloody US Civil War could have been much worse. Despite agonizing debates over Just War and careful differentiation among victims, Americans could not avoid living with the contradictions inherent in a conflict that was both violent and restrained.Trade ReviewAssessing the potential for the escalation of violence in the course of the war, Sheehan-Dean concludes that at many junctures both North and South ‘chose restraint’; he rejects the widespread argument that the conflict evolved from limited to total war… For Sheehan-Dean, exceptions to this pattern prove the rule and illustrate his contention that the conflict ‘could have been much worse.’ -- Drew Gilpin Faust * Wall Street Journal *Sheehan-Dean has written a remarkable book, with a fresh take on how the Civil War was fought, why it was fought the way it was fought, and how, theoretically, it could have become a much more violent conflict than it was, had each side not been bent on presenting themselves as taking the moral high ground in an effort to curtail any great escalation in violence. -- Michael Pierce * Midwest Rewind *Perhaps the best thing this reviewer has read about the Civil War in ages. An expertly researched and written history, it examines the dark side of the American Civil War, namely war against civilians, partisan/guerrilla war, and the nasty issues that developed about prisoners of war on both sides. * Choice *Sweeping and yet also delicately measured, this book promises to resolve longstanding debates about the nature of the Civil War. With its publication, we should be able to put aside old debates about total war or hard war and instead seek to understand the forces that produced a war that could at once seem hard and soft, unbridled and constrained. A work of deep intellectual seriousness. -- Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of WarThe Calculus of Violence is the rare work that compels us to reconsider the Civil War by embracing the history of the conflict in all its complexity. -- Wayne Hsieh, coauthor of A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil WarConfronting some of the most persistent and contentious arguments over the American Civil War, Aaron Sheehan-Dean offers a remarkable breadth of vision and depth of humanity. His unflinching account separates myth from truth, hyperbole from honesty. It is a brave, welcome, and necessary book. -- Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History""Winner of the James B. Palais Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies""Winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize for Best First Book, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations""Winner of the Distinguished Book Award in U.S. History, Society for Military History""Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies""Compelling. . . . A specific, targeted, and nuanced exploration of how the Korean War and Cold War-era battlefield moved inside and became a new ‘struggle of political legitimacy waged within human psyches, souls, and desires.’" * Kirkus *"Breaks interesting new ground."---Julian Ryall, South China Morning Post"Kim’s book opens the door on private battles that make war an intimate encounter."---Sandra Fahy, European Journal of Korean Studies

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of a Catalogue Curatorial Award for Excellence, Association of Art Museum Curators""An outstanding catalog."---Sebastian Smee"[An] exceptional, you gotta own it, exhibition catalog." * Modern Art Notes Podcast *

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Book SynopsisMuch that has been written about the Tet Offensive has been misleading. Edwin Moïse shows that the Communist campaign shocked the American public not because the American media exaggerated its success, but because it was a bigger campaign - larger in scale, much longer in duration, and resulting in more American casualties - than most authors have acknowledged.Trade ReviewEdwin Moise reminds us anew in The Myths of Tet why he is so highly regarded as a scholar of the Vietnam War. Moise gathers together the primary arguments and disputes that have raged over the 1968 Tet Offensive, teases out the evidence about each, and confronts all of them directly. His arguments are powerful and this book is a must read for everyone interested in the Vietnam War."" - John Prados, author of Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975 ""The product of prodigious research using both American and Vietnamese sources, Professor Moise’s book clearly and in extraordinary detail exposes some of the most widely-accepted myths about what was arguably the seminal event of the Vietnam War—the 1968 Tet Offensive. This balanced and voluminously-sourced volume provides convincing evidence that the communist Tet Offensive was neither the superbly coordinated strategic surprise that some have claimed, nor was it the total and abject defeat of the Viet Cong that is so often described by others. Professor Moise’s book describes how and why wildly over-optimistic assessments of the situation by leaders on both sides, American and North Vietnamese, often in the face of clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, led to chaos, confusion, and the loss of so many lives on both sides."" - Merle Pribbenow, translator of Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975

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Book SynopsisWar breeds myths, especially those made up by the vanquished to explain their loss. Occasionally the myths of the defeated centre on prisoners of war (POWs) and those missing in action (MIAs). Traumatic Defeat takes a close, comparative look at two cases of this kind of mythmaking - in West Germany in the wake of World War II and in the US after the Vietnam War.Trade ReviewThis bold and exciting book gives us an entirely new view of the myth that Vietnam retained large numbers of American POWs after the war. By comparing this myth with a similar myth in Germany after World War II, Gallagher provides important insights into the significance of these postwar myths, which claim that many missing soldiers are still being held by an enemy nation in secret prison camps."" - H. Bruce Franklin, author of Vietnam and Other American Fantasies""This intriguing study examines the development of the public myth that thousands of German war prisoners were held by the Russian government in secret camps during World War II, a myth promoted by war fever, anticommunist ideology, and Germany's need to picture its missing prisoners as victims rather than war criminals. The Soviet-German model is compared with the more contemporary public myth of unreturned American POWs following America’s lengthy involvement in the Vietnam War, providing an important contribution to our understanding of postwar trauma and public grief."" - Arnold Krammer, author of Nazi Prisoners of War in America

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewImpressively documented with primary source material, this book is a significant addition to the historiography of the Medal of Honor and how and to whom it has been awarded. The author helps the reader understand how the award nomination and selection process has changed over time and why some acts are recognized as worthy and why some others are not. Highly recommended."" - James H. Willbanks, author of Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War ""Dwight Mears’s strength is objectivity combined with solid scholarship. His treatment of the Medal of Honor involves not only stirring events but the often blatantly political process, affording military students a rare look at America’s most prestigious decoration."" - Barrett Tillman, author of Enterprise: America’s Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win World War IITable of Contents Preface Introduction Part One: Legal and Policy History 1. From the Revolution through the Civil War: Background and Inception 2. Filling the Army's Policy Vacuum: 1876-1897 3. The Spanish-American War, Veracruz, and Navy Officers: 1898-1915 4. The Purge of 1917: The army Rewrites Its Award History 5. World War I: The Birth of the Pyramid of Honor 6. The Interwar Period: A Bifurcated Medal of Honor and New Decorations 7. World War II: Growing Pains and the End of Noncombat Awards 8. The Korean and Vietnam Wars: New Combat Thresholds 9. Post-Vietnam: Modern Concern over the Decline in Award Frequency Part Two: Exceptions to the Rule: Legislative Administrative, and Judicial Relief 10. Early bills of Relief and Extralegislative Awards 11. Modern Bills of Relief: 10 U.S.C. §1130 12. Administrative Remedies Boards for Correction 13. Administrative Restorations: Mary Walker and William Cody 14. Judicial Remedies: The Administrative Procedure Act 15. Correction of Discrimination or Impropriety Conclusions Appendix: Summary of Medal of Honor Legislation (Excluding Bills of Relief) Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisLeonidas Polk was one of the more notable, yet controversial, generals of the US Civil War. Recognising his indispensable familiarity with the Mississippi Valley, Confederate president Jefferson Davis commissioned his elevation to a high military position regardless of his lack of prior combat experience.Trade ReviewThere are those who have maintained that General Leonidas Polk did more to bring about Confederate defeat than any other single man. Certainly he stood at the center of the toxic command culture of the Army of Tennessee from 1862 until his death. We have long needed a modern biography of this contradictory man, and Hudson Horn has delivered that and more. His research is stunning in its breadth, and his treatment of Polk is reasoned, mature, and balanced. This is the best Confederate military biography of recent years."" - William C. Davis, author of Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged""A long-overdue reevaluation of the Civil War's most recognizable soldier-cleric. Huston Horn's meticulous research and balanced presentation reveal the complexities, strengths, and weaknesses of Leonidas Polk: churchman, plantation farmer, Southern nationalist, and soldier. Horn's study does much to dispel the almost caricatured image of Polk that frequently appears in modern Civil War history."" - Sam Davis Elliott, author of Soldier of Tennessee: General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West

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Book SynopsisIf you have heard of Charles A. Dana, it was probably from his classic Recollections of the Civil War (1898), which was ghostwritten by muckraker Ida Tarbell and riddled with errors. Lincoln's Informer at long last sets the record straight, giving Charles A. Dana his due in a story that rivals the best historical fiction.Trade ReviewLincoln's Informer is a genuine contribution to both Civil War studies and the history of nineteenth-century journalism. In the story of Charles A. Dana, Lincoln's Informer reclaims exciting and underreported aspects of American political, literary, and military history." - Harold Holzer, winner of the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize"This highly readable, thoroughly researched account of Charles A. Dana's role in the Civil War era is a welcome addition to the literature, for it sheds new light not only on Dana but also on such important players as Abraham Lincoln, U. S. Grant, and Horace Greeley." - Michael Burlingame, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life"Brimming with fascinating details and drawing on an array of new sources, Lincoln's Informer provides the definitive portrait of newspaper editor Charles A. Dana's controversial career as an informant, investigator, and advisor for the War Department. Both on the field and in Washington, DC, Guarneri's cogent narrative reveals how Dana's reports on commanders, campaigns, and fraud not only earned the respect of President Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton but also impacted vital military and political policy." - Joan Waugh, coauthor of The American War: A History of the Civil War Era"Charles A. Dana, though little known today, was one of the major figures of the Civil War, an informant for Secretary of War Stanton and President Lincoln. Lincoln's Informer is well written and full of insights for all Civil War scholars and buffs." - John F. Marszalek, executive director and managing editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University

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Book SynopsisFocusing on 1972, Darrel Whitcomb combines stories of soldiers cut off from their units, advisors trapped with allied forces, and airmen downed in enemy territory, with the narratives of the US Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, contract pilots, and special operations teams ready to conduct rescues in Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam.Trade ReviewThis book does an outstanding job in addressing the search and rescue (SAR) efforts of the US Air Force and US Navy during the last year of the war in which US forces were still engaged in combat. This was a period that has not been covered extensively in other histories of the war, and the author puts the SAR story in the larger context of what was happening on the ground, particularly during the 1972 North Vietnamese Easter Offensive. Impressively documented, this book is strongly recommended." —James H. Willbanks, professor emeritus, US Army Command and General Staff College, Vietnam veteran, and author of Abandoning Vietnam"American combat pilots live with the possibility of being shot down over enemy territory, but this comes with the understanding that every possible attempt will be made to secure their rescue. In Moral Imperative: 1972, Combat Rescue, and the End of America's War in Vietnam, Darrel Whitcomb deftly demonstrates the ends to which rescue crews were willing to go to save a downed airman or aviator. Whitcomb shows the almost daily struggle of the men who flew the Sandys, Jolly Greens, Big Mothers, and a host of others who were willing to put it all on the line to bring their comrades out of harm's way. Whitcomb has written the definitive work on search and rescue during the Vietnam War. Moral Imperative is comprehensive and well researched but also an amazing tale of gallantry and sacrifice." —Brian Laslie, author of The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam"Only one who was there could ever have captured the epic story of rescue operations in Vietnam as Darrel Whitcomb has done. It is a story of technology and organization, but mostly a story of courage and unflinching commitment to duty. In presenting this comprehensive account of rescue operations at the height of Nixon's war, Whitcomb has added immensely to our understanding of the air war, both north and south, and of those who fought it." —Stephen P. Randolph, Rokke-Fox Chair, Center for Character and Leadership Development, US Air Force Academy"Combat rescue is combat! Darrel Whitcomb proves that in describing combat rescue during the final full year of the war in Southeast Asia, arguably the high-water mark of the one hundred years of combat rescue. If you ever wanted to know more about the exhilarations and heartbreaks of combat rescue, this is the read for you. None better." —Thomas Phillips, coauthor of Leave No Man Behind: The Saga of Combat Search and Rescue"A meticulously researched and eye-opening account of brothers in arms. Whitcomb unearths fascinating stories of downed airmen and the men who went after them against steep odds. An inspiring read." —Stephan Talty, author of Saving Bravo: The Greatest Rescue Mission in Navy SEAL History

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Book SynopsisTells the story of how, in Hall v. Decuir, the post-Civil War US Supreme Court took its first step toward perpetuating the subjugation of the non-White population of the United States by actively preventing a Southern state from prohibiting segregation on a riverboat in the coasting trade on the Mississippi River.Trade ReviewRacism in the United States dismantled the Civil War's legal achievements and built the world of continuing and expanding racialized segregation, deprivations, and indignities-but how did this come to pass? It took the particularly effective combination of White resentment, judicial activism, legal abstractions, and political backlash to strip free people of color of rights, wealth, and status as shown in this detailed yet vivid and accessible account by Jack Beermann. Thanks to this book, the little-remembered Supreme Court rejection of state antidiscrimination laws and the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of Josephine Decuir and her lawyers take their rightful place in the crucial reckoning with vigorous federal destruction of equal treatment in the United States. Read this book to understand how 'technicalities' of inheritance law practice, the 'dormant Commerce Clause,' and Southern transportation policies mixed with White status desires to block equal treatment laws and create the 'separate but equal' regime." - Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor and former dean of Harvard Law School and author of In Brown's Wake: Legacies of America's Constitutional Landmark"It's about time the much-neglected US Supreme Court ruling Hall v. Decuir (1878) received serious book-length attention, for this 'long-forgotten' decision is more than an ironic milestone on the road to Plessy. In Jack Beermann's telling, it is no less a poignant turning point in the decisive marginalization of nineteenth-century Louisiana's mixed-race community. We owe him a huge debt for wresting this maddeningly tragic story from history's hidden shadows." - Lawrence N. Powell, professor emeritus of history, Tulane University, and author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans

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Book SynopsisUnder the blazing Iraqi sun in the summer of 2007, Shannon Meehan, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, ordered a strike that would take the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was protecting his men.Trade Review"An articulate and devastating memoir." Military Writers Society of America "The book resonates because Meehan speaks not for sympathy but for understanding, and because - sadly - his personal story is one the other service members know well."Army Times "Highly recommended ... This work serves as a reminder of some of the costs of war in modern times and leaves readers 'dazed and confused' over how to respond and what to think about the situation in Iraq."Central European Journal of International and Security Studies "An exceptional book. It takes the reader to Iraq, to feel all sides of a deployed soldiers life, from the boredom, the bullshit to the battles and the searing heat inside the tank. This is a book that every American should read in order to get a full accounting of what it means to send men and women off to war. You may finish, but you won't forget Beyond Duty. I can't recommend this one highly enough." Pundit Review "A straightforward, succint and insightful report of one man's experience at war ... The book resonates because Meehan speaks not for sympathy, but for understanding, and because - sadly - his personal story is one that other service members know well."Air Force Times "Beyond Duty is a powerful and heartbreaking account of Lieutenant Shannon Meehan's tour of duty in Iraq, and of his decision in 2007 to call in a missile strike that claimed the lives of innocent civilians. Remorse, shame, self-doubt, depression - these were among the war's emotional aftershocks for Lieutenant Meehan. This honest and painfully intense narrative is a reminder of the terrible costs of warfare, not just as measured by blood or treasure, but also in terms of damage to the human psyche. I will return to this book often." Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried and winner of the National Book Award "This memoir is a descent into war's difficult terrain, a landscape which continues on within the veteran as he or she returns home. The archetype of the classic hero is nearly completely destroyed through the personal narrative which chronicles a series of harrowing events in order to reveal a deeper sense of the heroic. Meehan's voice reminds us that the bleeding continues on after the guns have gone silent, even if we don't realize it." Brian Turner, award-winning author of Here, Bullet, and veteran of the Iraq War "Meehan explores the complicated anxieties of battle and command with precision and intelligence. He treats colossally horrific situations with admirable emotional restraint, and his strong, taut narrative has a visceral impact. This is a book that ranks among the very best writing that is being done today about events on the frontline in Iraq." James Hutchisson, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina "For better or for worse, this memoir documents what the war in Iraq has been: young soldiers doing their heartbreaking best to do the right thing amid confusion, chaos and collateral damage." Mary Russell, award-winning author of A Thread of Grace and The SparrowTable of ContentsAcknowledgements. Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve. Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Fourteen. Chapter Fifteen. Chapter Sixteen. Chapter Seventeen. Chapter Eighteen. Chapter Nineteen. Chapter Twenty. Chapter Twenty-One. Chapter Twenty-Two. Chapter Twenty-Three. Chapter Twenty-Four. Chapter Twenty-Five. Chapter Twenty-Six. Chapter Twenty-Seven. Epilogue.

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Book SynopsisUnder the blazing Iraqi sun in the summer of 2007, Shannon Meehan, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, ordered a strike that would take the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was protecting his men.Trade Review"An articulate and devastating memoir." Military Writers Society of America "The book resonates because Meehan speaks not for sympathy but for understanding, and because - sadly - his personal story is one the other service members know well."Army Times "Highly recommended ... This work serves as a reminder of some of the costs of war in modern times and leaves readers 'dazed and confused' over how to respond and what to think about the situation in Iraq."Central European Journal of International and Security Studies "An exceptional book. It takes the reader to Iraq, to feel all sides of a deployed soldiers life, from the boredom, the bullshit to the battles and the searing heat inside the tank. This is a book that every American should read in order to get a full accounting of what it means to send men and women off to war. You may finish, but you won't forget Beyond Duty. I can't recommend this one highly enough." Pundit Review "A straightforward, succint and insightful report of one man's experience at war ... The book resonates because Meehan speaks not for sympathy, but for understanding, and because - sadly - his personal story is one that other service members know well."Air Force Times "Beyond Duty is a powerful and heartbreaking account of Lieutenant Shannon Meehan's tour of duty in Iraq, and of his decision in 2007 to call in a missile strike that claimed the lives of innocent civilians. Remorse, shame, self-doubt, depression - these were among the war's emotional aftershocks for Lieutenant Meehan. This honest and painfully intense narrative is a reminder of the terrible costs of warfare, not just as measured by blood or treasure, but also in terms of damage to the human psyche. I will return to this book often." Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried and winner of the National Book Award "This memoir is a descent into war's difficult terrain, a landscape which continues on within the veteran as he or she returns home. The archetype of the classic hero is nearly completely destroyed through the personal narrative which chronicles a series of harrowing events in order to reveal a deeper sense of the heroic. Meehan's voice reminds us that the bleeding continues on after the guns have gone silent, even if we don't realize it." Brian Turner, award-winning author of Here, Bullet, and veteran of the Iraq War "Meehan explores the complicated anxieties of battle and command with precision and intelligence. He treats colossally horrific situations with admirable emotional restraint, and his strong, taut narrative has a visceral impact. This is a book that ranks among the very best writing that is being done today about events on the frontline in Iraq." James Hutchisson, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina "For better or for worse, this memoir documents what the war in Iraq has been: young soldiers doing their heartbreaking best to do the right thing amid confusion, chaos and collateral damage." Mary Russell, award-winning author of A Thread of Grace and The SparrowTable of ContentsAcknowledgements. Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve. Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Fourteen. Chapter Fifteen. Chapter Sixteen. Chapter Seventeen. Chapter Eighteen. Chapter Nineteen. Chapter Twenty. Chapter Twenty-One. Chapter Twenty-Two. Chapter Twenty-Three. Chapter Twenty-Four. Chapter Twenty-Five. Chapter Twenty-Six. Chapter Twenty-Seven. Epilogue.

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Book SynopsisFew countries can claim to have endured such a difficult and tortuous history as that of Iraq. Its varied peoples have had to contend with externally imposed state-building at the end of the First World War, through to the rise of authoritarian military regimes, to the all-encompassing power of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Artificiality, Identity, Dictatorship, and State-Building Chapter 1: Legacies of Civilizations and Empires Chapter 2: State Formation, Monarchy, and Mandate, 1918-1932 Chapter 3: Conceptualizing Iraqi Society Chapter 4: From Authoritarian to Totalitarian State, 1933-1979 Chapter 5: Iraq at War, 1979-1989 Chapter 6: The Pariah State, 1989-2003 Chapter 7: Regime Change, 2003- Chapter 8: From the Brink, to the Brink Chapter 9: The Disintegration of Iraq Chapter 10: The Rise of the Islamic State Conclusion

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAs the national love feast with Oliver North reminded us, Americans have an abiding attraction to war and warriors... The Republic Reborn probes the historical roots of this attraction. William and Mary QuarterlyTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I. The Birth of the Liberal Republic, 1790—1820Chapter 1. "A New Era Has Commenced in the United States"Chapter 2. John Taylor: "The Family of the Earth"Chapter 3. John Adams: "Our Country Is in Masquerade!"Chapter 4. Hugh Henry Brackenridge: Modern Chivalry and the Search for SelfChapter 5. War and the Wages of ChangePart II. Ambition and Civism: War and Social RegenerationChapter 6. Society and Self-Made Men: Dreams and DisquietudeChapter 7. Philip Freneau: "Besotted by Prosperity, Corrupted by Avarice, Abject from Luxury"Chapter 8. Henry Clay: "The Tranquil, Putrescent Pool of Ignominious Peace"Chapter 9. Charles J. Ingersoll: "Deep in the Slough of Faction"Chapter 10. War as Social Crusade: Civism and RenewalPart III. Religion and Repression: War and Early Capitalist CultureChapter 11. Con Men and Character: The Burden of Moral Free-AgencyChapter 12. Spencer Houghton Cone: "I Will Be a Living Worker in the World—I Will Play No More"Chapter 13. Benjamin Rush: "I Consider It as Possible to Convert Men into Republican Machines"Chapter 14. Mason Locke Weems: "Sacrificing Their Gold to Gamblers, Their Health to Harlots, and Their Glory to Grog"Chapter 15. War as Cultural Crusade: Self-Control and Civil ReligionPart IV. Founding Fathers and Wandering Sons: War and the Masks of PersonaeChapter 16. The Quiet Desperation of the Liberal SelfChapter 17. Charles Brockden Brown: "I am Conscious of a Double Mental Existence"Chapter 18. Alfred Brunson: "Either Rise to Distinction or Fall in the Attempt"Chapter 19. John Quincy Adams: "Two Objects the Nearest to my Heart, My Country and My Father"Chapter 20. War as Personal Quest: The Inner Healing of the Liberal IndividualPart V. Politics and Productivity: War and the Emergence of LiberalismChapter 21. The Crisis of RepublicanismChapter 22. Tensions in Political Economy: Producers and Home MarketsChapter 23. Strategies for Survival: From Enlightened to Energized RepublicanismChapter 24. The Liberal Republications: "Our New Era in our Politics"Chapter 25. The Liberal Impulse to War Part VI. The Republic Reordered, 1812—1815Chapter 26. The Crucible of WarChapter 27. The Vindication of God's RepublicChapter 28. The Triumph of Self-Made MenChapter 29. The Victory of LiberalismChapter 30. Into the FutureNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTourists can step back in time as they travel the same roads and waterways that American and British troops did two centuries ago.Trade ReviewEshelman offers context, directions, maps and other pertinent details for those with a taste for exploring sites related to the war. Richmond Times-Dispatch An exceptional companion volume to the previous book that allows readers an unrivaled view or all the battles and campaigns... If you like your history both immediate and personal, this is the book for you! -- Blaine Taylor Sea Classics A Travel Guide to the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake is a first-rate tool for those exploring the Chesapeake Theater. -- Command Sergeant Major James H. Clifford, USA-Ret. On PointTable of ContentsList of AbbreviationOverviewPart I: Historic Route ToursBritish Invasion Tour (Maryland)Battle of Bladensburg Tour (Maryland)Saving the Declaration of Independence Tour (District of Columbia, Virginia)First Family Flight Tour (District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland)Battle of North Point Tour (Maryland)Part II: Historic City, Town, and Regional ToursMarylandAnnapolis and U.S. Naval Academy TourBaltimore TourSouthern Maryland TourMaryland Eastern Shore TourHead of the Chesapeake TourFrederick TourVirginiaAlexandria TourGreater Norfolk TourRichmond and Petersburg TourTappahannock TourCentral Virginia TourOther Tidewater Virginia SitesDistrict of ColumbiaWashington, D.C., TourAcknowledgmentsAppendixesA. Suggested WalksB. Suggested Bicycling AreasC. Canoe, Kayak, and Small Boating AreaD. Boat ExcursionsSuggested ReadingIndex

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Book SynopsisTourists can step back in time as they travel the same roads and waterways that American and British troops did two centuries ago.Trade ReviewEshelman offers context, directions, maps and other pertinent details for those with a taste for exploring sites related to the war. Richmond Times-Dispatch An exceptional companion volume to the previous book that allows readers an unrivaled view or all the battles and campaigns... If you like your history both immediate and personal, this is the book for you! -- Blaine Taylor Sea Classics A Travel Guide to the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake is a first-rate tool for those exploring the Chesapeake Theater. -- Command Sergeant Major James H. Clifford, USA-Ret. On PointTable of ContentsList of AbbreviationOverviewPart I: Historic Route ToursBritish Invasion Tour (Maryland)Battle of Bladensburg Tour (Maryland)Saving the Declaration of Independence Tour (District of Columbia, Virginia)First Family Flight Tour (District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland)Battle of North Point Tour (Maryland)Part II: Historic City, Town, and Regional ToursMarylandAnnapolis and U.S. Naval Academy TourBaltimore TourSouthern Maryland TourMaryland Eastern Shore TourHead of the Chesapeake TourFrederick TourVirginiaAlexandria TourGreater Norfolk TourRichmond and Petersburg TourTappahannock TourCentral Virginia TourOther Tidewater Virginia SitesDistrict of ColumbiaWashington, D.C., TourAcknowledgmentsAppendixesA. Suggested WalksB. Suggested Bicycling AreasC. Canoe, Kayak, and Small Boating AreaD. Boat ExcursionsSuggested ReadingIndex

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