Specific wars and military campaigns Books

Book SynopsisIn Beyond the Quagmire, thirteen scholars from across disciplines provide a series of provocative, important, and timely essays on the politics, combatants, and memory of the Vietnam War. The essays pose new questions, offer new answers, and establish important lines of debate regarding social, political, military, and memory studies. Part 1 contains four chapters by scholars who explore the politics of war in the Vietnam era. In Part 2, five contributors offer chapters on Vietnam combatants with analyses of race, gender, environment, and Chinese intervention. Part 3 provides four innovative and timely essays on Vietnam in history and memory.Trade ReviewThis will be a valuable and significant addition to the historiography of the war."" - James Willbanks, author of Abandoning Vietnam and The Tet Offensive

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Book SynopsisPhantom in the Sky is the story of a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the back seat of the supersonic Phantom jet during the Vietnam War—a unique, tactical perspective of the ""guy in back,"" or GIB, absent from other published aviation accounts. During the time of Terry L. Thorsen's service from 1966 to 1970, the RIO played an integral part in enemy aircraft interception and ordnance delivery. In Navy and Marine F-4 Phantom jets, the RIO was a second pair of eyes for the pilot, in charge of communications and navigation, and great to have during emergencies. Thorsen endured the tough Platoon Leaders Course at Quantico and barely earned a commission. He underwent aviation and intercept training while suffering airsickness issues—and still earned his wings. Thorsen joined the oldest and most decorated squadron in the Marine Corps, the VMFA-232 Red Devils in southern California, as it prepared for deployment to Vietnam. In combat, Thorsen felt angst when he saw the sky darken around him from anti-aircraft artillery explosions high above the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On his first close air support mission in support of ground troops (the majority of his Marine aviation missions), he witnessed tracers whiz by his canopy. On one harrowing sortie, he and his pilot purposely became the target to save an Army unit battling an enemy just a hundred feet away. On secret missions with secret weapons, they dove at anti-aircraft artillery muzzle flashes and flew as a low as fifty feet off the deck during close air support sorties, ""scraping"" the napalm off their plane. For one mission a friend survived a crash landing, but a training instructor vanished without a trace.

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Book SynopsisMuch of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical ability of the North Vietnamese Army.War in the Villages helps to explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered. Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult circumstances. Most of these Marines believed they were helping the people of South Vietnam, and they served superbly. The failure to end the war more favorably was no fault of theirs.

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Book SynopsisAsia Booth Clarke's memoir is an indispensable resource for perceiving the complexities of her ill-fated brother. Indeed, as has been said, she ""turns on the light in the Booth family living room."" Certainly no outsider could give such insights into the turbulent Booth's childhood or share such unique personal knowledge of the gifted actor. Asia portrays him as an enigmatic figure, at once gentle and romantic while passionate and fanatical. She writes with a sister's affection and even with indulgence, but she mingles these with horror as she confronts the calamitous aftermath the assassination of Lincoln brought to Booth and to his family.

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Book SynopsisIn my year in Vietnam, I walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Delta, searching for the elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted my way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting the North Vietnamese Regulars...I sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. Somewhere in all my experiences, I overlapped the situations of nearly every infantryman and many others who served. Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field - the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran. Subsequent volumes in his ""Vietnam Trilogy"" will detail Lanning's tour as a company commander and his postwar investigation into the mind of the enemy. Through his eyes, readers see the reality of a war that did not always receive glory but was, in his words, ""the only war we had.

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Book Synopsis'I was not willing, but finally agreed...' So wrote Texas pioneer cattle drover William Berry Duncan in his March 1862 diary entry, the day he joined the Confederate Army. Despite his misgivings, Duncan left his prosperous business to lead neighbors and fellow volunteers as commanding officer of cavalry Company F of Spaight's Eleventh Battalion which later became the 21st Texas Infantry in America's Civil War. Philip Caudill's rich account - drawn from Duncan's previously untapped diaries and letters, written by candlelight on the Gulf Coast cattle trail to New Orleans, in Confederate Army camps, and on his southeast Texas farm after the war - reveals the personable Duncan as a man of steadfast integrity and extraordinary leadership. After the war, he returned to his home in Liberty County and battled for survival on the chaotic Reconstruction-era Texas frontier. Supplemented by archival records and complementary accounts, Moss Bluff Rebel paints a picture of everyday life for the Anglo-Texans who settled the Mexican land grants in the early nineteenth century and subsequently became citizens of the proudly independent Texas Republic. "Moss Bluff Rebel" will appeal to history lovers of all ages who are attracted to the drama of the Civil War period and interested in the stories of the men and women who shaped the Texas frontier.

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Book SynopsisA maverick, unionist district in the heart of the Old South? A notorious county that seceded from the Confederacy? This is how Jones County, Mississippi, is known in myth and legend.Since 1864, the legend has persisted. Differing versions give the name of this new nation as Republic of Jones, Jones County Confederacy, and Free State of Jones. Over the years this story has captured the imaginations of journalists, historians, essayists, novelists, short story writers, and Hollywood filmmakers, although serious scholars long ago questioned the accuracy of local history accounts about a secessionist county led by Newt Knight and a band of renegades.Legend of the Free State of Jones was the first authoritative explanation of just what did happen in Jones County in 1864 to give rise to the legend. This book surveys the facts, the records, and the history of the ""Free State of Jones"" and well may provide the whole story.

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Book SynopsisFor sixty years the journal Civil War History has presented the best original scholarship in the study of America’s greatest struggle. The Kent State University Press is pleased to present this third volume in its multivolume series, reintroducing the most influential of more than 500 articles published in the journal. From military command, strategy, and tactics to political leadership, race, abolitionism, the draft, and women’s issues, and from the war’s causes to its aftermath and Reconstruction, Civil War History has published pioneering and provocative analyses of the determining aspects of the Middle Period.In this third volume of the Civil War History Readers, John T. Hubbell has selected ground-breaking essays by Douglas L. Wilson, Mark Neely Jr., Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, Ludwell Johnson, Allen Guelzo, and other scholars who examine Lincoln’s assertive idealism, leadership, views on slavery, abolitionism, emancipation, and Lincoln as a war president. Hubbell’s introduction assesses the contribution of each article to our understanding of Lincoln and the Civil War era.

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Book SynopsisA scrupulous analysis of Rodes's conduct during the Battle of Gettysburg Over the years, many top historians have cited Major General Robert E. Rodes as the best division commander in Robert E. Lee's vaunted army. Despite those accolades, Rodes faltered badly at Gettysburg, which stands as the only major blemish on his otherwise sterling record. Although his subordinates were guilty of significant blunders, Rodes shared the blame for the disjointed attack that led to the destruction of Alfred Iverson's brigade on the first day of the battle. His lack of initiative on the following day was regarded by some in the army as much worse. Whether justified or not, they directly faulted him for not supporting Jubal Early's division in a night attack on Cemetery Hill that nearly succeeded in decisively turning the enemy's flank.The reasons behind Rodes's flawed performance at Gettysburg have long proven difficult to decipher with any certainty. Because his personal papers were destroyed, primary sources on his role in battle remain sparse. Other than the official reports on the battle, the record of what occurred there is mostly limited to the letters and diaries of his subordinates. In this new study, however, Robert J. Wynstra draws on sources heretofore unexamined, including rare soldiers' letters published in local newspapers and other firsthand accounts located in small historical societies, to shed light on the reasons behind Rodes's missteps.As a result of this new research and analysis, we are finally able to come to a more detailed understanding of Rodes's division's activities at Gettysburg, an enduring subject of study and interest.Trade ReviewAt the moment of Gettysburg's sesquicentennial, it was estimated that nearly half of the approximately 65,000 books published about the Civil War in some way focused on the war's bloodiest battle. Because such a vast literature already exists about the Gettysburg Campaign, one might easily surmise that it would be impossible for anyone to produce anything original about it. Robert J. Wynstra successfully challenges that assumption with his recent volume, one destined to become a staple for anyone seeking a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the campaign's opening weeks. There is little to criticize about Wynstra's exhaustively researched, skillfully written, and nuanced history. While this book is certainly a necessity for students of the Gettysburg Campaign, those who seek a deeper understanding of the interactions between Confederate soldiers and white civilians, Confederates and African Americans, or how soldiers justified bringing war to people's doorsteps will find Wynstra's volume inestimably valuable."- The Civil War Monitor

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book exclusively devoted to the Civil War writings of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, arguably the most important poets of the war. The essays brought together in this volume add significantly to recent critical appreciation of the skill and sophistication of these poets; growing recognition of the complexity of their views of the war; and heightened appreciation for the anxieties they harbored about its aftermath. Both in the ways they come together and seem mutually influenced, and in the ways they disagree, Whitman and Melville grapple with the casualties, complications, and anxieties of the war while highlighting its irresolution. This collection makes clear that rather than simply and straightforwardly memorializing the events of the war, the poetry of Whitman and Melville weighs carefully all sorts of vexing questions and considerations, even as it engages a cultural politics that is never pat. Contributors: Kyle Barton, Peter Bellis, Adam Bradford, Jonathan A. Cook, Ian Faith, Ed Folsom, Timothy Marr, Cody Marrs, Christopher Ohge, Vanessa Steinroetter, Sarah L. Thwaites, Brian Yothers

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Book SynopsisIn Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861–1893, the second of three volumes on the history of Beaufort County, Stephen R. Wise and Lawrence S. Rowland offer details about the district from 1861 to 1893, which influenced the development of the South Carolina and the nation. During a span of thirty years the region was transformed by the crucible of war from a wealthy, slave-based white oligarchy to a county where former slaves dominated a new, radically democratic political economy.This volume begins where volume I concluded, the November 1861 Union capture and occupation of the Sea Islands clustered around Port Royal Sound, and the Confederate retreat and re-entrenchment on Beaufort District’s mainland, where they fended off federal attacks for three and a half years and vainly attempted to maintain their pre-war life. In addition to chronicling numerous military actions that revolutionized warfare, Wise and Rowland offer an original, sophisticated study of the famous Port Royal Experiment in which United States military officers, government officials, civilian northerners, African American soldiers, and liberated slaves transformed the Union-occupied corner of the Palmetto State into a laboratory for liberty and a working model of the post-Civil War New South.The revolution wrought by Union victory and the political and social Reconstruction of South Carolina was followed by a counterrevolution called Redemption, the organized campaign of Southern whites, defeated in the war, to regain supremacy over African Americans. While former slave-owning, anti-black “Redeemers” took control of mainland Beaufort County, they were thwarted on the Sea Islands, where African Americans retained power and kept reaction at bay. By 1893, elements of both the New and Old South coexisted uneasily side by side as the old Beaufort District was divided into Beaufort and Hampton counties. The Democratic mainland reverted to an agricultural-based economy while the Republican Sea Islands and the town of Beaufort underwent an economic boom based on the phosphate mining industry and the new commercial port in the lowcountry town of Port Royal.

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Book SynopsisA historical figure's attempts to secure freedom for America and her slaves winning a reputation for reckless bravery in a succession of major battles and sieges, John Laurens distinguished himself as one of the most zealous, self-sacrificing participants in the American Revolution. A native of South Carolina and son of Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress, John devoted his life to securing American independence. In this comprehensive biography, Gregory D. Massey recounts the young Laurens's wartime record --a riveting tale in its own right --and finds that even more remarkable than his military escapades were his revolutionary ideas concerning the rights of African Americans.Massey relates Laurens's desperation to fight for his country once revolution had begun. A law student in England, he joined the war effort in 1777, leaving behind his English wife and an unborn child he would never see. Massey tells of the young officer's devoted service as General George Washington's aide-de-camp, interaction with prominent military and political figures, and conspicuous military efforts at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Newport, Charleston, Savannah, and Yorktown. Massey also recounts Laurens's survival of four battle wounds and six months as a prisoner of war, his controversial diplomatic mission to France, and his close friendship with Alexander Hamilton. Laurens's death in a minor battle in August 1782 was a tragic loss for the new state and nation. Unlike other prominent southerners, Laurens believed blacks shared a similar nature with whites, and he formulated a plan to free slaves in return for their service in the Continental Army. Massey explores the personal, social, and cultural factors that prompted Laurens to diverge so radically from his peers and to raise vital questions about the role African Americans would play in the new republic.

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Book SynopsisThe American Revolution was a vicious civil war fought between families and neighbors. Nowhere was this truer than in South Carolina. Yet, after the Revolution, South Carolina’s victorious Patriots offered vanquished Loyalists a prompt and generous legal and social reintegration. From Revolution to Reunion investigates the way in which South Carolinians, Patriot and Loyalist, managed to reconcile their bitter differences and reunite to heal South Carolina and create a stable foundation for the new United States to become a political and economic leader.Rebecca Brannon considers rituals and emotions, as well as historical memory, to produce a complex and nuanced interpretation of the reconciliation process in post-Revolutionary South Carolina, detailing how Loyalists and Patriots worked together to heal their society. She frames the process in a larger historical context by comparing South Carolina’s experience with that of other states.Brannon highlights how Loyalists apologized but also went out of their way to serve their neighbors and to make themselves useful, even vital, members of the new experiment in self-government and liberty ushered in by the Revolution. Loyalists built on existing social ties to establish themselves in the new Republic, and they did it successfully.By 1784 the state government reinstated almost all the Loyalists who had stayed, as the majority of Loyalists had reinscribed themselves into the postwar nation. Brannon argues that South Carolinians went on to manipulate the way they talked about Loyalism in public to guarantee that memories would not be allowed to disturb the peaceful reconciliation they had created. South Carolinians succeeded in creating a generous and lasting reconciliation between former enemies, but in the process they unfortunately downplayed the dangers of civil war—which may have made it easier for South Carolinians to choose another civil war.

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Book SynopsisIn 1781 South Carolina patriot militiamen played an integral role in helping the Continental army reclaim their state from its British conquerors. Martyr of the American Revolution is the only book-length treatment that examines the events that set an American militia colonel on a disastrous collision course with two British officers, his execution in Charleston, and the repercussions that extended from the battle lines of South Carolina to the Continental Congress and across the Atlantic to the halls of British Parliament.On August 4, 1781, in Charleston, South Carolina, the British army hanged Col. Isaac Hayne for treason. Rather than a strict chronological retelling of the events, which led to his execution during the British occupation of Charleston, what is offered instead is a consideration of factors, independently set in motion that culminated in the demise of a loving father and devout patriot.Hayne was the most prominent American executed by the British for treason. He and his two principal antagonists, Lt. Col. Nisbet Balfour and Lt. Col. Francis Lord Rawdon, were unwittingly set on a collision course that climaxed in an act that sparked perhaps the most notable controversy of the war. Martyr of the American Revolution sheds light on why two professional soldiers were driven to commit a seemingly wrongheaded and arbitrary deed that halted prisoner exchange and nearly brought disastrous consequences to captive British officers.The death of a patriot in the cause of liberty was not a unique occurrence, but the unusually well-documented events surrounding the execution of Hayne and the involvement of his friends and family makes his story compelling and poignant. Unlike young Capt. Nathan Hale, who suffered a similar fate in 1776, Hayne did not become a folk hero. What began as local incident, however, became an international affair that was debated in Parliament and the Continental Congress.

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Book SynopsisThe Battle of Eutaw Springs took place on September 8, 1781, and was among the last in the War of Independence. It was brutal in its combat and reprisals, with Continental and Whig militia fighting British regulars and Loyalist regiments. Although its outcome was seemingly inconclusive, the battle, fought near present-day Eutawville, South Carolina, contained all the elements that defined the war in the South. In Eutaw Springs: The Final Battle of the American Revolution’s Southern Campaign, Robert M. Dunkerly and Irene B. Boland tell the story of this lesser known and under-studied battle of the Revolutionary War’s Southern Campaign. Shrouded in myth and misconception, the battle has also been overshadowed by the surrender of Yorktown.Eutaw Springs represented lost opportunities for both armies. The American forces were desperate for a victory in 1781, and Gen. Nathanael Greene finally had the ground of his own choosing. British forces under Col. Alexander Stewart were equally determined to keep a solid grip on the territory they still held in the South Carolina lowcountry.In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, both armies sustained heavy casualties with each side losing nearly 20 percent of its soldiers. Neither side won the hard-fought battle, and controversies plagued both sides in the aftermath. Dunkerly and Boland analyze the engagement and its significance within the context of the war’s closing months, study the area’s geology and setting, and recount the action using primary sources, aided by recent archaeology.

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Book SynopsisIntended for a general readership, Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign introduces readers to critical decisions made by both Union and Confederate commanders who faced harrowing situations and attempted to achieve strategic and tactical victories. Like four similar books by Matt Spruill, Dave Powell, and Peterson's own Decisions at Chattanooga, this contribution to the Command Decisions in America's Civil War series contains maps, photographs, and a guided tour of the battlefields. It will be the first in the series to tackle an entire campaign

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Book SynopsisBorn to an affluent family in 1836, Hylan B. Lyon claimed ancestors among Irish rebels, patriots of the American Revolution, and slaveowners in his native Kentucky. Biographer Dan Lee chronicles Lyon’s military career, which began with service in the Third US Artillery after his graduation from West Point in 1856. Lyon first saw action in the Third Seminole War. Later stationed at Fort Yuma in California, he went on to fight in the Coeur d’Alene War. Witnessing the execution of Yakima chief Qualchan during this last conflict nearly made Lyon leave the army. Yet the young lieutenant persevered. After serving with troops building the Mullan Road between Washington and Montana, Lyon returned to Kentucky just as Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. Though his home state never seceded from the Union, Lyon cast his lot with the Confederacy. He served with the Third Kentucky Infantry Regiment (CSA), led the Eighth Kentucky Infantry, and later commanded the Kentucky Brigade under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Lyon saw action in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, spending several months as a prisoner of war and winning special commendation for his performances at the Battles of Coffeeville and Brice’s Crossroads. He ultimately earned the rank of brigadier general. After the Civil War, Lyon sought refuge with other ex-Confederates in Mexico, working as a railroad surveyor. He requested and received a presidential pardon and returned to Kentucky by mid-1866. Lyon remained there until his death in 1907, devoting himself to farming and prison reform, as well as serving in the state house of representatives. He was the mayor of Eddyville, Kentucky, when he died in 1907. Trade Review“Hylan Lyon blazed a path across the latter part of the Civil War under Nathan Bedford Forrest. Dan Lee has uncovered new material on this unjustly neglected general, and readers of Civil War history, especially the Western Theater, should celebrate.” — Brian Wills, director, Center for the Study of the Civil War Era, Kennesaw State University

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Book SynopsisThe Battle of Gettysburg has inspired scrutiny from virtually every angle, but until the first publication of Matt Spruill’s Decisions at Gettysburg in 2011 investigations of critical decisions made by Union and Confederate commanders were not heavily scrutinized. The success of Decisions at Gettysburg launched a series of books exploring critical decisions in various battles and campaigns during the Civil War. In this revised second edition, Spruill updates the nineteen critical decisions, adding a twentieth decision, and aligns the book with others in the Command Decisions in America’s Civil War series.Decisions at Gettysburg, second edition, further defines the critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout the battle. Matt Spruill examines the decisions that prefigured the action and shaped the course of battle as it unfolded. Rather than a linear history of the battles, Spruill’s discussion of the critical decisions presents readers with a vivid blueprint of the battle’s development. Exploring the critical decisions in this way allows the reader to progress from a sense of what happened in these battles to why they happened as they did. Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions at Gettysburg is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for concise introduction to the battle can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the battle and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.

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Book SynopsisBorn near Guntersville, Alabama, Catherine (Cassie) Fennell was nineteen when the Civil War began. Starting with her time at a female academy in Washington, DC, the diaries continue through the war’s end and discuss civilian experiences in Alabama and the Tennessee Valley. Fennell believed that by keeping a diary she made a small contribution to the war effort and history itself.Fennell was fairly well off and highly educated, moving easily in very elite social circles. Most of her relatives were staunch Confederates, and the war took its toll, with multiple members of her family killed or captured. As Fennell recounts the consequences of war—the downward spiral of the family fortune, the withering of hope at news from the battlefront, and the general uncertainty of civilian life in the South—her diaries constitute one of the few contemporaneous records of north Alabama, including the shelling and burning of Guntersville, which has been poorly documented in the historiography of the Civil War. While the first diary is written as a private reflection, the war journals are well researched and rely on extensive familiarity with local newspapers and seem like they are intended for the eyes of later generations.Ultimately, these diaries amount to a social history of the war years, in a specific region where scholars have recovered relatively few firsthand accounts, and editor Whitney Snow’s compilation adds to the now growing genre of women’s Civil War diaries. Insightful and engrossing, The Civil War Diaries of Cassie Fennell is a compelling portrait of a privileged young woman who suffered devastating losses for her ardent support of a Confederate nation.

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Book SynopsisToward the end of the American Civil War, the Confederacy faced manpower shortages, and the Confederate Army, following practices the Union had already adopted, began to recruit soldiers from their prison ranks. They targeted foreign-born soldiers whom they thought might not have strong allegiances to the North. Key battalions included the Brooks Battalion, a unit composed entirely of Union soldiers who wished to join the Confederacy and were not formally recruited; Tucker’s Regiment and the 8th Battalion Confederate Infantry recruited mainly among Irish, German, and French immigrants.Though the scholarship on the Civil War is vast, Changing Sides represents the first entry to investigate Union POWs who fought for the Confederacy, filling a significant gap in the historiography of Civil War incarceration. To provide context, Patrick Garrow traces the history of the practice of recruiting troops from enemy POWs, noting the influence of the mostly immigrant San Patricios in the Mexican-American War. The author goes on to describe Confederate prisons, where conditions often provided ample incentive to change sides. Garrow’s original archival research in an array of archival records, along with his archaeological excavation of the Confederate guard camp at Florence, South Carolina, in 2006, provide a wealth of data on the lives of these POWs, not only as they experienced imprisonment and being “galvanized” to the other side, but also what happened to them after the war was over.

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Book SynopsisConfederate historiography of the Civil War is rich with stories of leaders and decision makers-oft-repeated names immortalized by their association with America's great trial of the 1860s. But while scholarship exploring the roles of Confederate generals and politicians abounds, a major part of the story remains untold: that of the ordinary people who became soldiers and turned the very pages of Civil War history.Part of the Voices of the Civil War series, Suffering in the Army of Tennessee doesn't just draw upon one single diary or letter collection, and it does not use brief quotations as a way to fill out a larger narrative. Rather, across eight chapters spanning the Atlanta Campaign to the Battle of Nashville in 1864, Thrasher draws upon a remarkably broad set of primary sources-newspapers, manuscripts, archives, diaries, and official documents-to tell a story that knits together accounts of senior officers, the final campaigns of the Western Theater, and the experiences of the civilians and rebel soldiers who found themselves deep in the trenches of a national reckoning. While volumes have been written on the Atlanta Campaign or the Battles of Nashville and Franklin, no previous historian has constructed what amounts to a sweeping social history of the Army of Tennessee-the daily details of soldiering and the toll it took on the men and boys who mustered into service foreseeing only a small skirmish among the states.While this volume will appeal to Civil War buffs and military history scholars, its accessible structure and engaging narrative style will likewise captivate American history enthusiasts, students, and general readers.Trade ReviewWhat sets Suffering in the Army of Tennessee apart is how thoroughly and seamlessly the author is able to interweave a comprehensive narrative that includes civilians, senior officers, as well as historiography of the Western Theater to the accounts of the Rebel soldiers. The end result is a well-written book that expertly contextualizes the soldiers' trials and tribulations with their values of duty, loyalty, and courage in the maelstrom of war." - Alex Mendoza, author of Chickamauga 1863: Rebel Breakthrough

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Book SynopsisBorn in early 1812 in Crawfordville, Georgia, Alexander Stephens grew up in an antebellum South that would one day inform the themes of his famous Cornerstone Speech. While Stephens made many speeches throughout his lifetime, the Cornerstone Speech is the discourse for which he is best remembered. Stephens delivered it on March 21, 1861—one month after his appointment as vice president of the Confederacy—asserting that slavery and white supremacy comprised the cornerstone of the Confederate States of America. Within a few short weeks, more than two hundred newspapers worldwide had reprinted Stephens’s words.Following the war and the defeat of the Confederacy, Stephens claimed that his assertions in the Cornerstone Speech had been misrepresented, his meaning misunderstood, as he sought to breathe new and different life into an oration that may have otherwise been forgotten. His intentionally ambiguous rhetoric throughout the postwar years obscured his true antebellum position on slavery and its centrality to the Confederate Nation and lent itself to early constructions of Lost Cause mythology.In Cornerstone of the Confederacy, Keith HÉbert examines how Alexander Stephens originally constructed, and then reinterpreted, his well-known Cornerstone Speech. HÉbert illustrates the complexity of Stephens’s legacy across eight chronological chapters, meticulously tracing how this speech, still widely cited in the age of Black Lives Matter, reverberated in the nation’s consciousness during Reconstruction, through the early twentieth century, and in debates about commemoration of the Civil War that live on in the headlines today.Audiences both inside and outside of academia will quickly discover that the book’s implications span far beyond the memorialization of Confederate symbols, grappling with the animating ideas of the past and discovering how these ideas continue to inform the present.Trade ReviewIn 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens proclaimed with pride that white supremacy was the "cornerstone" of his new nation. That candid admission haunted Stephens to his grave, and even today echoes discordantly from crowded streets and empty pedestals. In this pioneering study, Keith Hebert locates Stephens and his speech in deep context, and follows their torturous path though American culture from the Fort Sumter to the digital age. Nuanced and often courageous, this will be a central text for readers who hope to better understand the Civil War and comprehend its knotty legacy." - Kenneth W. Noe, author of The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War.

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Book SynopsisThe Maryland Campaign represented Gen. Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North. Opposing Lee was Gen. George B. McClellan, who had just retreated from Lee’s onslaught during the Seven Days Battles. While Lee and McClellan fought a preliminary battle at South Mountain, and a final engagement with Lee’s rearguard at Shepherdstown as the Confederate Army withdrew across the Potomac, the full force of both armies would meet at Antietam, and the subsequent battle would prove to be the bloodiest single-day battle of the war.Decisions of the Maryland Campaign introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout the campaign. Michael S. Lang examines the decisions that prefigured the action and shaped the contest as it unfolded. Rather than a linear history of the campaign, Lang’s discussion of the critical decisions presents readers with a vivid blueprint of the campaign’s developments. Exploring the critical decisions in this way allows the reader to progress from a sense of what happened in this campaign to why they happened as they did.Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions of the Maryland Campaign is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a concise introduction to the campaign can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.Decisions of the Maryland Campaign is Lang’s second contribution and the thirteenth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.

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Book SynopsisCelia Sandys goes ‘in grandfather’s footsteps’ to retrace young Winston Churchill’s adventures during nine months of the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa – where Churchill served as war correspondent, combatant (at Spion Kop and Ladysmith), prisoner-of-war and escapee. Celia Sandys has uncovered a hitherto neglected part of Churchill’s life using many previously untapped sources and giving many hitherto unknown facts and anecdotes. In 1899, within two weeks of his arrival in South Africa to cover the Boer War as a journalist for London’s Morning Post, the twenty-four-year-old Churchill was taken prisoner when his train was ambushed by a Boer patrol. Churchill first enabled most of his companions to escape to safety before he himself was captured and taken to Pretoria, his daring escape prompting a massive manhunt. Evading recapture by taking refuge in a coalmine, then hiding in a goods wagon, his exploits propelled him overnight on to the international stage. One hundred years after these events Celia Sandys followed in her grandfather’s footsteps, visiting campsites, battlefields, the site of his incarceration in Pretoria, and the route of his escape, uncovering a host of fascinating details about this tumultuous period in his early life. Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive is both a thrilling adventure story and a unique insight into the life of a young man who went on to become one of his country’s greatest leaders.

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Book SynopsisFrom its inception, graduates of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A&M University, have marched off to fight in every conflict in which the United States has been involved. Th e Vietnam War was no different. Th e Corps of Cadets produced more officers for the conflict in Southeast Asia than any institution other than the US service academies. Michael Lee Lanning, Texas A&M University class of 1968, has now gathered over three dozen recollections from those who served.As Lanning points out, “anytime Aggie Vietnam veterans get together—whether it is two or two hundred of them—war stories begin.” Th e tales they relate about the paddies, the jungles, the highlands, the waterways, and the airways provide these veterans with an even greater understanding of the war they survived. They also allow glimpses into the frequent dangers of fi refights, the camaraderie of patrol, and oft en humorous responses to inexplicable situations.These revelations provide insight not only into the realities of war but also speak to the character of the graduates of Texas A&M University. As Lanning concludes, “these war stories are as much a part of service as is that old green duffle bag, a few rows of colorful ribbons, and a pride that does not diminish. In reality, there is only one story about the Vietnam War. We all just tell it differently.”

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Book SynopsisCombat Talons in Vietnam is a personal account of the first use of C-130s in the Vietnam War. It provides an insider’s view of crew training and classified missions for this technologically advanced aircraft. Many covert missions over North Vietnam were sucessful, but one night, John Gargus, a mission planner, oversaw an operation in which the aircraft—carrying eleven crewmembers—failed to return from a nighttime mission. For thirty years, a search for the missing aircraft remained in progress. In the late 1990s, the Combat Talon veteran community at Hurlburt Field in Florida, still uncertain of the full story, decided to dedicate a memorial to the lost crew. When wartime mission records were declassified, Gargus embarked on a long journey of inquiry, research, and puzzle-solving to reconstruct the events of that mission and the fate of its crew. He discovered that the wreckage of the plane had been found in 1992 and that the remains of the crew were being held in Hawaii. Through numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews, and site visits, Gargus sought to answer the question of why it took so long to find the wreckage and, more importantly, why the special operations command units and crewmember families were left uninformed. By 2000, the remains were relocated to a common grave at Arlington National Cemetery at last providing a measure of closure to family, friends, and comrades.

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Book SynopsisSince the end of the draft in the United States, the nation's wars have been fought by all-volunteer forces, creating an enormous divide between the civilian public and its military. Recent wars have taken place during the information age, allowing cable news and the ""new media"" of the internet to change, sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis, the way wars are understood. As a result, a multitude of competing and often flawed narratives have emerged that, ultimately, merely explain events in terms of self-serving political and cultural perspectives. Author Caleb S. Cage, a veteran of the war in Iraq, brings a unique perspective to the understanding of how we talk about war. Why does the American public believe that those who served are somehow both heroes and victims, while the typical service member rarely embraces either identity? How does what happens on the front line get communicated to those back home, and what happens to that information as it travels? Is it possible that works of fiction are telling the most ""real"" versions of what is happening ""over there""?War Narratives is a tightly packed and provocative book containing a series of connected essays on the many competing narratives—both fiction and nonfiction—that are used to explain recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, how those narratives are perceived through preexisting social, political, and literary lenses, and how they often fall short. As Cage points out, narratives are not merely the stories shared or even how they are told; these expressions reflect choices.

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Book SynopsisFrom the defeat of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam at Ap Bac to the battles of the Ia Drang Valley, Khe Sanh, and more, Storms over the Mekong offers a reassessment of key turning points in the Vietnam War. Award-winning historian William P. Head not only reexamines these pivotal battles but also provides a new interpretation on the course of the war in Southeast Asia. In considering Operation Rolling Thunder, for example-which Head dubs as "too much rolling and not enough thunder"-readers will grasp the full scope of the campaign, from specifically targeted bridges in North Vietnam to the challenges of measuring success or failure, the domestic political situation, and how over time, Head argues, "slowly, but surely, Rolling Thunder dug itself into a hole." Likewise, Head shows how the battles for Saigon and Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1968 were tactical defeats for the Communist forces with as many as 40,000 killed and no real gains. At the same time, however, Tet made it clear to many in Washington that victory in Vietnam would require a still greater commitment of men and resources, far more than the American people were willing to invest.Storms over the Mekong is a blow-by-blow account of the key military events, to be sure. But beyond that, it is also a measured reconsideration of the battles and moments that Americans thought they already knew, adding up to a new history of the Vietnam War.

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Book SynopsisFrom the bitter disputes over secession to the ways in which the conflict would be remembered, Texas and Texans were caught up in the momentous struggles of the American Civil War. Tens of thousands of Texans joined military units, and scarcely a household in the state was unaffected as mothers and wives assumed new roles in managing farms and plantations. Still others grappled with the massive social, political, and economic changes wrought by the bloodiest conflict in American history.The sixteen essays from some of the leading historians in the field (eleven of them new) in the second edition of Lone Star Blue and Gray illustrate the rich traditions and continuing vitality of Texas Civil War scholarship. Along with these articles, editors Ralph A. and Robert Wooster provide a succinct introduction to the war and Texas and recommended readings for those seeking further investigations of virtually every aspect of the war as experienced in the Lone Star State.

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Book SynopsisFew battles in world history provide a cleaner dividing line than Waterloo: before, there was Napoleon; after, there was the Pax Britannica. While Waterloo marked France’s defeat and Britain’s ascendance as an imperial power, the war was far from over for many soldiers and sailors, who were forced to contend with the lasting effects of battlefield trauma, the realities of an impossibly tight labor market, and growing social unrest. The Horrible Peace details a story of distress and discontent, of victory complicated by volcanism, and of the challenges facing Britain at the beginning of its victorious century.Examining the process of demobilization and its consequences for British society, Evan Wilson draws on archival research and veterans’ memoirs to tell the story of this period through the experiences of veterans who struggled to reintegrate and soldiers and sailors who remained in service as Britain attempted to defend and expand the empire. Veterans were indeed central to Britain’s experience of peace, as they took to the streets to protest the government’s indifference to widespread unemployment and misery. The fighting did not stop at Waterloo.Trade Review “The Horrible Peace makes novel arguments, and its focus on demobilization offers a truly original take on the Napoleonic era. This is a vital book and represents a crucial contribution to our understanding of warfare, politics, and society in early nineteenth-century Britain.”—James Davey, author of In Nelson’s Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars “The Horrible Peace is a seminal work. Broad ranging but sharply focused, it is the first history of British demobilization at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and its consequences. It fills a major gap in the existing literature and raises broader questions about the nature of early nineteenth-century Britain.”—Martin Wilcox, lecturer in history at the University of Hull

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Book SynopsisIn the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Algerian piracy in the Mediterranean loomed large in the American imagination. An estimated seven hundred American citizens, sailors, and naval officers were taken captive over the course of the Barbary Crises (1784–1815), and this overseas danger threatened to grow and irreparably harm the young republic. Blood and Ink reconstructs the largely forgotten influence of these early American conflicts with North Africa on notions of publicity, print culture, and racial and national identity from independence to the Civil War. Exploring the extensive archive of texts inspired by the conflicts—from captivity narratives, novels, plays, and poems to broadsides, travel narratives, children’s literature, newspaper articles, and visual ephemera—Jacob Crane connects anxieties surrounding North African piracy and white slavery to both the development of American abolitionism and representations of transatlantic African and Jewish identities in the early national and antebellum periods.Trade ReviewCrane’s book makes a very clear case for why writing about Barbary piracy matters to the development of American ideas and ideas of race, freedom, and citizenship. He recovers several different early American works that can be used as the basis for further scholarship while also adding to the extant scholarship on the transatlantic and transnational origins of US literature." - Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, author of Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves: Piracy and Personhood in American Literature"Blood and Ink draws attention to a significant but critically neglected area of focus in early US print culture concerning Barbary discourse. It will have a major impact within early American studies of print culture and its relationship to race, nation, and global perceptions in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries." - Keri Holt, author of Reading These United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776–1830Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Appealing to the Nation Part One: Of Pirates and Print Chapter One The Patriot and the Sable Bard Chapter Two Barbary(an) Invasions Part Two: The Barbary and the Jewish Atlantic Chapter Three “A Vague Resemblance to Something Seen Elsewhere” Chapter Four Performing Diaspora in Noah’s Travels Part Three: The Long Shadow of the Barbary Chapter Five “The Advantage of a Whip-Lecture” Chapter Six Peter Parley in Tripoli Coda: Selim’s Archive Fever Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Algerian piracy in the Mediterranean loomed large in the American imagination. An estimated seven hundred American citizens, sailors, and naval officers were taken captive over the course of the Barbary Crises (1784–1815), and this overseas danger threatened to grow and irreparably harm the young republic. Blood and Ink reconstructs the largely forgotten influence of these early American conflicts with North Africa on notions of publicity, print culture, and racial and national identity from independence to the Civil War. Exploring the extensive archive of texts inspired by the conflicts—from captivity narratives, novels, plays, and poems to broadsides, travel narratives, children’s literature, newspaper articles, and visual ephemera—Jacob Crane connects anxieties surrounding North African piracy and white slavery to both the development of American abolitionism and representations of transatlantic African and Jewish identities in the early national and antebellum periods.Trade ReviewCrane’s book makes a very clear case for why writing about Barbary piracy matters to the development of American ideas and ideas of race, freedom, and citizenship. He recovers several different early American works that can be used as the basis for further scholarship while also adding to the extant scholarship on the transatlantic and transnational origins of US literature." - Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, author of Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves: Piracy and Personhood in American Literature"Blood and Ink draws attention to a significant but critically neglected area of focus in early US print culture concerning Barbary discourse. It will have a major impact within early American studies of print culture and its relationship to race, nation, and global perceptions in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries." - Keri Holt, author of Reading These United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776–1830

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Book SynopsisFrom the first Union attack on Vicksburg in the spring of 1862 through Benjamin Grierson's last raid through Mississippi in late 1864 and early 1865, this book traces the campaigns, fighting, and causes and effects of armed conflict in central and North Mississippi, where major campaigns were waged and fighting occurred.The Civil War in Mississippi: Major Campaigns and Battles will be a must-read for any Mississippian or Civil War buff who wants the complete story of the Civil War in Mississippi. It discusses the key military engagements in chronological order. It begins with a prologue covering mobilization and other events leading up to the first military action within the state's borders. The book then covers all of the major military operations, including the campaign for and siege of Vicksburg, and battles at Iuka and Corinth, Meridian, Brice's Crossroads, and Tupelo. The colorful cast of characters includes such household names as Sherman, Grant, Pemberton, and Forrest, as well as a host of other commanders and soldiers. Author Michael B. Ballard discusses at length minority troops and others glossed over or lost in studies of the Mississippi military during the war.

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Book SynopsisIndependence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York’s frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has, almost unbelievably, been lost to history. Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. Desperate for good news, the North was soon riveted by reports of an incident that occurred a few hundred miles off the coast of New York, where the Waring had been overtaken by a marauding crew of Confederate privateers. While the white sailors became chummy with their Southern captors, free black man William Tillman was perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him in the ruthless, slave-filled ports south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stealthily biding his time until a moonlit night nine days after the capture, Tillman single-handedly killed three officers of the privateer crew, then took the wheel and pointed it home. Yet, with no experience as a navigator, only one other helper, and a war-torn Atlantic seaboard to contend with, his struggle had just begun. It took five perilous days at sea—all thrillingly recounted here—before the Waring returned to New York Harbor, where the story of Tillman's shipboard courage became such a tabloid sensation that he was not only put on the bill of Barnum’s American Museum but also proclaimed to be the "first hero" of the Civil War. As McGinty evocatively shows, however, in the horrors of the war then engulfing the nation, memories of his heroism—even of his identity—were all but lost to history. As such, The Rest I Will Kill becomes a thrilling and historically significant work, as well as an extraordinary journey that recounts how a free black man was able to defy efforts to make him a slave and become an unlikely glimmer of hope for a disheartened Union army in the war-battered North.Trade Review"Spectacular. . . . [A] carefully researched and expertly crafted book . . . . The Rest I Will Kill should enchant a wide audience: history buffs, Civil War enthusiasts, pirate junkies, readers who love action and adventure, and those interested in the seemingly unending quest for liberty. It’s difficult to imagine the person who can’t find something to admire in these pages" -- Michael Kleber-Diggs - Minneapolis Star Tribune"Vivid writing creates an exciting read, and McGinty’s use of primary sources such as newspapers and government documents is exceptional. . . . McGinty dubs Tillman a hero and a patriot, one of the first during the Civil War. An important contribution to the shelf of Civil War histories, this story will transfix readers." -- Patricia Ann Owens - Library Journal (Starred Review)

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Book SynopsisIn the months following the May 1780 capture of Charleston, South Carolina, by combined British and loyalist forces, British soldiers arrested sixty-three paroled American prisoners and transported them to the borderland town of St. Augustine, East Florida--territory under British control since the French and Indian War. In Patriots in Exile, James Waring McCrady and C. L. Bragg chronicle the banishment of these elite southerners, the hardships endured by their families, and the plight of the enslaved men and women who accompanied them, as well as the motives of their British captors. McCrady and Bragg thoroughly examine the exile from the standpoint of the British who governed occupied Charleston, the families left behind, the armies in the field, the Continental Congress, and finally the Jacksonboro Assembly of January and February 1782. Using primary sources and archival materials, the authors develop biographical sketches of each exile and illuminate important facets of the American Revolution's southern theater. While they shared a common fate, the exiles were a diverse lot of tradesmen, artisans, prominent civilians, and military officers--among them three signers of the Declaration of Independence. Although they had clear socioeconomic differences, most were unrepentant patriots. In this first comprehensive examination and narrative history of these patriots, McCrady and Bragg reveal how the exiles navigated their new surroundings within the context of a revolutionary conflict that involved various imperial powers of the Old World--Britain, France, and Spain--and American colonists seeking to create an independent nation.Trade ReviewA detailed, fascinating account of a neglected facet of the history of the American Revolution in South Carolina." —Walter Edgar, author of South Carolina: A History"Patriots in Exile fills a significant gap in the history of the American Revolution and broadens the perspective by exploring events that took place outside the limits of the thirteen colonies. This book will appeal to both academic and general readers, particularly those whose interests are focused on the South." —Jim Piecuch, author of Three Peoples, One King"Bragg and McCrady have highlighted a frequently neglected topic of the Revolutionary War in the South: the travails of men who were torn from families and familiar surroundings, often not knowing what awaited them in this forced removal from South Carolina. Engaging and original." —Carl Borick, Charleston Museum"McCrady and Bragg shed new light on how in 1780 the patriot elite of Charleston, South Carolina, came to be exiled to one of the most isolated corners of the British empire. While not quite a gulag or Guantanamo Bay, St. Augustine served a similar function as a place where the British could make disappear individuals deemed to be dangerous enemies of the state." —David K. Wilson, author of The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780

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Book SynopsisWith words and photographs, Rain in Our Hearts takes readers into Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th LIB, Americal Division in 1969–1970. Jim Logue, a professional photographer, was drafted and served as an infantryman; he also carried a camera. "In order to take my mind off the war," he would say, "I took pictures." Logue's photos showcase the daily lives of infantrymen: setting up a night laager, chatting with local children, making supply drops, and "humping" rucksacks miles each day in search of the enemy. His camera records the individual experiences and daily lives of the men who fought the war. Accompanying Logue's over 100 photographs is the narrative written by Gary D. Ford. Wanting to reconstruct the story of Alpha Company during the time in which Logue served, Ford and Logue trekked across America to meet with and interview every surviving member whom they could locate and contact. Each chapter of Rain in Our Hearts focuses on the viewpoint and life of one member of Alpha Company, including aspects of life before and after Vietnam. The story of the Company's movements and missions over the year unfold as readers are introduced to one soldier at a time. Taken together, Rain in Our Hearts offers readers a window into the words and sights of Alpha Company's Vietnam War.

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Book SynopsisThe contemporary perspectives – fiction, first-hand accounts, reportage and photographs - found in the pages of this collection give a unique insight into the experiences and suffering of those affected by the American Civil War. The essays and recollections detail some of the earliest attempts by medical professionals to understand and help the wounded, and look at how writers and poets were influenced by their own involvement as nurses, combatants and observers. So alongside the medical observations of figures such as Silas Weir Mitchell and William Keen, you’ll find memoirs of writers including Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce and Walt Whitman. By presenting the wide range of frequently traumatic experiences by writers, medical staff, and of course the often ignored common foot soldiers on both sides, this volume will complement the older emphasis on military history and will appeal to readers of the evolution of medicine, of the literature the time, of social anthropology, and of the whole complex issue of how the war was represented and debated from many different perspectives. While a century and a half of developments in medicine, social care and science mean that the level of support and technology available to amputees is now incomparable to that in the mid-nineteenth century, the insights into the lives and thoughts of those devastated by psychological traumas, complex emotions and difficulties in adjusting to life after limb loss remain just as relevant today. Phenomena explored in the book, such as ‘Phantom Limb Syndrome’, continue to be the subject of medical and academic research in the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewReviews 'The book is nicely presented and handsomely illustrated with both figures and plates. It bears similarities in form with David Seed’s earlier edited anthology onAmerican Travellers in Liverpool (Liverpool University Press, 2008) with which local readers may already be familiar. Life and Limb may find a welcome niche in the library of anyone with an interest in medical history and of the Civil War in particular.A. J. Larner, Medical Historian, Issue 26'This volume should prove a very good classroom companion for teaching the Civil War’s medical history at ground level, and for understanding how the war took shape in written word and visual image, as suffering morphed into memory.' Steven M. Stowe, Social History of Medicine'A short and accessible primary source reader on the medical history of the American Civil War.'Handley-Cousins, H-DisabilityTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Civil War Voices and Views David SeedMEDICAL AND SURGICAL MEMOIRSEarly Experiences in the Field: ‘Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil War’ William Williams KeenCase 275: The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the RebellionACCOUNTS OF NURSINGWith the US Sanitary Commission: On the Hospital Boat Wilson Small: The Other Side of War Katherine Prescott WormeleyEvacuation from Virginia, 1862: Hospital Transports Frederick Law OlmstedHospital Routine Jane WoolseyA Death in the Ward: Hospital Sketches Louisa May AlcottNurse and Spy: Nurse and Spy in the Union Army Sarah Emma EdmondsFront-line Nursing: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp Susie King Taylor‘The Mute Look that Rolls and Moves’: Walt Whitman’s Civil War Robert Leigh DavisSpecimen Days & Collect Walt WhitmanMEDICAL FACILITIES AND PATHOLOGYJonathan Letterman on the Medical Corps: Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac Jonathan LettermanThe Confederate Military Prison Hospital at Andersonville, Georgia: Contributions Relating to the Causes and Prevention of Disease Austin FlintField Hospitals: A Glimpse: Hardtack and Coffee John B. BillingsField Hospitals: The Need: A Manual of Military Surgery Samuel David GrossPlea for an Ambulance Service: A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System Henry Ingersoll BowditchHospital Broadside: North Carolina Hospital Broadside, 1863Hospitals in Richmond, Virginia: A Diary from Dixie Mary ChestnutMalingering: ‘Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil War’ and A Rebel’s Recollections William Williams Keen and George Cary EgglestonRoberts Bartholomew on Nostalgia: Contributions Relating to the Causes and Prevention of Disease Roberts BartholomewMedical Welfare Begins: ‘Debut and Prospectus (The Crutch) and ‘Wounded’ (poem by ‘Sanatosia’)(Dis)embodied Identities: Civil War Soldiers, Surgeons, and the Medical Memories of Combat Susan-Mary GrantPHOTOGRAPHYPainful Looks: Reading Civil War Photographs Mick GidleyMathew Brady’s Photographs: Pictures of the Dead at Antietam (New York Times)AMPUTATIONS AND PROSTHETIC LIMBS‘The Invalid Corps’ (song)The Case of Napoleon Perkins Dillon Jackson CarrollThe First Amputee: ‘Record of Services’ James Edward HangerTestimonial Letter Lieutenant George WarnerThe Salem Leg (brochure)Testimony of Wearers (The Salem Leg: Under the Patronage of the United States Government for the Use of the Army and the Navy)The Human Wheel: ‘The Human Wheel, Its Spokes and Felloes’ Oliver Wendell Holmes‘The Case of George Dedlow’ Silas Weir Mitchell‘Phantom Limbs’ Silas Weir MitchellIN THE FIELD OF BATTLEDiary: October 29, 1862: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Sergeant Henry W. Tisdale Henry TisdaleThe Battle of Shiloh: Aftermath: ‘The Battle of Shiloh’ from Annals of the War Willis De HassThe Battle of Ellyson’s Mills: A Confederate Surgeon’s Letters to His Wife Spencer Glasgow WelchAftermath of Battle, Cedar Mountain, Virginia: ‘Personal Recollections of the War’ David Hunter StrotherAfter the Battle of Winchester: A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War David Hunter StrotherThe Negro as a Soldier Christian FleetwoodArmy Life in a Black Regiment Thomas Wentworth HigginsonPOST-WAR NARRATIVES‘What I Saw of Shiloh’ Ambrose Bierce‘The Coup de Grace’ Ambrose Bierce‘A Resumed Identity’ Ambrose Bierce‘Recollections of a Private’ Warren Lee GossThe Red Badge of Courage Stephen CraneThe Aftermath Stephen C. KennyContributorsSelect BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThose on Crusade needed their interests at home to be protected; this volume looks at how this could be achieved, in both theory and practice. On taking the cross, crusaders received a diverse set of privileges designed to appeal to both spiritual and more temporal concerns. Among these was the papal protection granted to them and extended over their families and possessions at home. This book is the first full length investigation of this protection. It begins by examining the privilege from its inception in around 1095, and its development and consolidation through to 1222. It then moves on to illustrate how this privilege operated in practice through the appointments of regency governments and close communication with both the papacy and local ecclesiastical officials, centring on the rich crusading evidence fromFlanders, Champagne and the Kingdom of France. While the protection privilege has been seen as unwieldy and over ambitious, close analysis of particular cases and individuals reveals that not only were regents well aware of theirprivileged status, but that the papacy could directly intervene when its protection was contravened. DANIELLE PARK is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of York.Trade Review[An] illuminating study [that makes] an important contribution in presenting regency, for a crusade or otherwise, as an integral part of the aristocratic family's experience. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *Makes a substantial contribution to our understanding on major themes.It is well discussed and very closely argued, o?ering many insightful observations and conclusions. * JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, LITERATURE AND CULTURE *Refreshingly, Park's book is not a story of triumphalism or apocalypticism, but one of pragmatism and worry, which serves to humanize the traditional crusade history. * H-FRANCE *Table of ContentsIntroduction From Pilgrimage Privileges to Protecting the First Crusaders Defending Flanders and Champagne during the First Crusade Developing and Consolidating Protection, 1123-1222 The Second Crusade and the Royal Regency Crusade Regencies in Flanders and Champagne, 1145-77 Crusade Regencies from the Third Crusade to the Fifth Crusade, 1189-1222 Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn examination into two of the most important activities undertaken by the Normans. The reputation of the Normans is rooted in warfare, faith and mobility. They were simultaneously famed as warriors, noted for their religious devotion, and celebrated as fearless travellers. In the Middle Ages few activities offered a better conduit to combine warfare, religiosity, and movement than crusading and pilgrimage. However, while scholarship is abundant on many facets of the Norman world, it is a surprise that the Norman relationship with crusading and pilgrimage, so central in many ways to Norman identity, has hitherto not received extensive treatment. The collection here seeks to fill this gap. It aims to identify what was unique or different about the Normans andtheir relationship with crusading and pilgrimage, as well as how and why crusade and pilgrimage were important to the Normans. Particular focus is given to Norman participation in the First Crusade, to Norman interaction in latercrusading initiatives, to the significance of pilgrimage in diverse parts of the Norman world, and finally to the ways in which crusading and pilgrimage were recorded in Norman narrative. Ultimately, this volume aims to assess, insome cases to confirm, and in others to revise the established paradigm of the Normans as crusaders par excellence and as opportunists who used religion to serve other agendas. Dr KATHRYN HURLOCK is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Manchester Metropolitan University; Dr PAUL OLDFIELD is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Andrew Abram, William M. Aird, Emily Albu, Joanna Drell, Leonie Hicks, Natasha Hodgson, Kathryn Hurlock, Alan V. Murray, Paul Oldfield, David S. Spear, Lucas Villegas-Aristizábal.Trade ReviewA lively group of essays. * HISTORY *A very useful collection that has been compiled intelligently and edited carefully. * NOTTINGHAM MEDIEVAL STUDIES *[T]his well-presented volume provides a wealth of information for the expert and the inexpert. . . . [T]he chapters and bibliographical materials ensure that anyone coming to this will be given an excellent stepping-stone from which to embark on further research into the interplay between crusading, pilgrimage, and the Norman World. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield 'Many others, whose names I do not know, fled with them': Norman Courage and Cowardice on the First Crusade - William M. Aird The Enemy Within: Bohemond, Byzantium and the Subversion of the First Crusade - Alan Murray / The Editor Norman Italy and the Crusades: Thoughts on the 'Homefront' - Joanna Drell The Norman Influence on Crusading from England and Wales - Kathryn Hurlock The Secular Clergy of Normandy and the Crusades - David S Spear Norman and Anglo-Norman Intervention in the Iberian Wars of Reconquest Before and After the First Crusade - Lucas Villegas-Aristizábal The Pilgrimage and Crusading activities of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester - Andrew Abram The Use and Abuse of Pilgrims in Norman Italy - Paul Oldfield Antioch and the Normans - Emily Albu The Landscape of Pilgrimage and Miracles in Norman Narrative Sources - Leonie V. Hicks Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade - Natasha R. Hodgson Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe idea of what an "eyewitness" account is here scrutinised through examination of key Crusading texts. Eyewitness is a familiar label that historians apply to numerous pieces of evidence. It carries compelling connotations of trustworthiness and particular proximity to the lived experience of historical actors. But it has received surprisingly little critical attention. This book seeks to open up discussion of what we mean when we label a historical source in this way. Through a close analysis of accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades, aswell as an in-depth discussion of recent research by cognitive and social psychologists into perception and memory, this book challenges historians of the Middle Ages to revisit their often unexamined assumptions about the place of eyewitness narratives within the taxonomies of historical evidence. It is for the most part impossible to situate the authors of the texts studied here, viewed as historical actors, in precise spatial and temporal relation to the action that they purport to describe. Nor can we ever be truly certain what they actually saw. In what, therefore, does the authors' eyewitness status reside, and is this, indeed, a valid category of analysis? This book argues that the most productive way in which to approach the figure of the autoptic author is not as some floating presence close to historical events, validating our knowledge of them, but as an artefact of the text's meaning-makingoperations, in particular as these are opened up to scrutiny by narratological concepts such as the narrator, focalization and storyworld. The conclusion that emerges is that there is no single understanding of eyewitness runningthrough the texts, for all their substantive and thematic similarities; each fashions its narratorial voice in different ways as a function of its particular story-telling strategies. MARCUS BULL is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel HillTrade ReviewA stimulating book. * WAR IN HISTORY *This book is an undoubted academic tour de force, furthering modern understanding of several canonical 'crusade' narratives and challenging the prominence of the eyewitness in historical analysis. -- Andrew Buck University College Dublin * SPECULUM *This richly interdisciplinary book should benefit anyone teaching or researching historiography, memory, literature, or the crusades. * SEHEPUNKTE *This well-researched study examines the problems of human memory and perception, and includes a lengthy chapter on recent psychological research into the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Medieval and Modern Approaches to Eyewitnessing and Narratology as an Analytical Tool Memory and Psychological Research into Eyewitnessing The Second Crusade: The De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi and Odo of Deuil's De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem The Third Crusade: Ambroise's Estoire de la Guerre Sainte and Points of Comparison and Contrast Geoffrey of Villehardouin's and Robert of Clari's Narratives of the Fourth Crusade Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe five-year period following the proclamation of the Republic in April 1931 was marked by physical assaults upon the property and public ritual of the Spanish Catholic Church. These attacks were generally carried out by rural and urban anticlerical workers who were frustrated by the Republic's practical inability to tackle the Church's vast power. On 17- 18 July 1936, a right-wing military rebellion divided Spain geographically, provoking the radical fragmentation of power in territory which remained under Republican authority. The coup marked the beginning of a conflict which developed into a full-scale civil war. Anticlerical protagonists, with the reconfigured structure of political opportunities working in their favour, participated in an unprecedented wave of iconoclasm and violence against the clergy. During the first six months of the conflict, innumerable religious buildings were destroyed and almost 7,000 religious personnel were killed. To date, scholarly interpretations of these violent acts were linked to irrationality, criminality and primitiveness. However, the reasons for these outbursts are more complex and deep-rooted: Spanish popular anti-clericalism was undergoing a radical process of reconfiguration during the first three decades of the twentieth century. During a period of rapid social, cultural and political change, anticlerical acts took on new -- explicitly political -- meanings, becoming both a catalyst and a symptom of social change. After 17--18 July 1936, anticlerical violence became a constructive force for many of its protagonists: an instrument with which to build a new society. This book explores the motives, mentalities and collective identities of the groups involved in anti-clericalism during the pre-war Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, and is essential reading for all those interested in twentieth-century Spanish history. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisDespite over 20,000 published books on the Spanish civil war, it remains the case that the social and cultural dimensions of the conflict have been relatively under-researched. Ruptura focuses on how nationalism, and extremist conceptions and projects, defined daily life experiences in both the battlefield and civilian cities and towns. A principal objective is to demonstrate that the civil war was not a struggle waged between ideologies disconnected from the preoccupations and daily lives of the Spanish people. A tripartite division of the chapter contributions -- Construction of the war; Wartime experiences; Memory and legacies -- brings to light the climate of violence, the social and symbolic transformations resulting from political divergence, and the widespread uncertainty that shaped the behavior, attitudes, lifestyles, practices and experiences of both combatants and civilians. New theoretical approaches on so-called war studies are addressed and engaged with. Several contributions frame their analyses within the international context of radicalization and political violence of interwar Europe. However, attention to the European frame does not diminish the importance accorded throughout the volume to the events that occurred in Spain. Without an understanding of the development of extremist projects, ideologies and attitudes in their particular and international dimensions it is impossible to explain the atmosphere of severe social radicalization and the unprecedented levels of violence reached during and after the civil war. In present times, when the relationship of extremism and nationalism to civil war is once again at the heart of public discourse and a preoccupation of media and governments, an historical perspective on these questions could not be more timely or necessary. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisWhen a failed right-wing military coup provoked civil war in Spain, in July 1936, the Spanish government made a worldwide plea for help. In Britain, Aid Spanish Committees sprang up nationwide. Nowhere was empathy more keenly felt for the working people of Spain than among the people of Glasgow, which became the hub of the Scottish Aid for Spain movement. Glasgow was also home to an enterprise which was to make a significant contribution to the Spanish Republic the Scottish Ambulance Unit (SAU). The Unit was the brainchild of a wealthy Glaswegian philanthropist, Sir Daniel Macaulay Stevenson (18511944). The Units valiant and tireless work soon earned it an excellent reputation among Republican forces and as news of its remarkable work spread, volunteers became affectionately known as Los Brujos The Wizards. However, the off-duty activities of some of the SAUs members earned it an altogether different kind of reputation, and the Unit was soon to become immersed in scandal which tarnished its good name. Donald Gallie was a member of the first SAU team to arrive in Madrid (there would be three successive expeditions). He was 24 years old when Civil War broke out. His family shared a strong sense of commitment, and this, together with Donalds love of travel and adventure, is what impelled him to volunteer for service. His skills as mechanic would prove invaluable in the aid and transport given to casualties. His Diary is a remarkable document, and its publication a significant event in the historiography of the Spanish Civil War.

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Book SynopsisAt the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April 1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Doña, have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García-Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the women's response to the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence them.

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Book SynopsisOn the day in 1936 that Franco invaded Spain, a fifteen-year-old girl from Madrid was on vacation in the Sierra de Gredos, a mountain range popular for hikers. Isa (Conchita) Reyes fled Spain for Paris with her mother and sister, taking only what they could carry in their suitcases. Her father stayed behind to fight on the Loyalist side. It was not long before the last piece of jewelry had been sold, and ways had to be found to make a living. Working as a model, she was discovered and given the stage name Isa. A renowned Flamenco dancer, she performed in Paris and in the capitals and resorts of Europe. In 1938 she was crowned Miss Spain in Exile. In Venice, she was courted by Count Ciano, Mussolinis son-in-law, and used an imaginative lie to avoid his affections. In Berlin, in 1939, she performed (unwillingly) at Hitlers fiftieth birthday celebrations organized by Joseph Goebbels. Later in the year, whilst on a dancing tour in Athens, she met the man she would marry my father. Together, they escaped Europe for the New World. This is Isas story, from the nightclubs and ateliers of Paris, to the performance halls of Europe, to the harrowing inspections by the Gestapo while transiting Germany. This is a story of a young girl who had to grow up quickly when war turned her world upside down. Isa fulfilled her dream of becoming a dancer, albeit in ways she could not have imagined when growing up. Her story is told against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and Europes inexorable march to conflict. Isa never lost her optimism or her sense of humor. Her dream came true, but the circumstances were tragic and tumultuous.

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Book SynopsisAt the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April 1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Doña, have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García-Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the women's response to the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence them.

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Book SynopsisA new investigation into the twelfth-century accounts of the First Crusade, showing their complex relationship with the Bible. The Bible exerted an enormous influence on the crusading movement: it provided medieval Christians with language to describe holy war, spiritual models for crusaders, and justifications for conquests in the East. This book adds tothe growing body of scholarship on the biblical underpinnings of crusading, offering a reappraisal of the early twelfth-century narratives of the First Crusade as works of biblical exegesis rather than simply historical texts. Itrestores these works and their authors to the context of the monastic and cathedral schools where the curricula centred on biblical study, and demonstrates how the crusade's narrators applied familiar methods of scriptural commentary to the crusade, treating it as a text which could, like the Bible, be understood through historical, allegorical, and mystical lenses. These glosses of the First Crusade, which collectively constitute one of the greatintellectual achievements of their age, drew upon the Scriptures and earlier Christian theology, pilgrimage guides, and polemic to construct the crusade as a new chapter of sacred history. Within this story, the first crusaders played various biblically inspired roles: as new Israelites, they wrested the promised land from Muslims cast as new Canaanites and Babylonians; as new apostles, they reenacted some of the greatest miracles of the Gospels. By reconstructing the interpretive processes that made such readings possible, this study allows us to better appreciate the crusading movement's relationship to church reform, the apostolic revival, and the growth of anti-Jewish sentiment in twelfth-century Europe. KATHERINE ALLEN SMITH is professor of history at the University of Puget Sound.Trade ReviewAs Katherine Allen Smith convincingly demonstrates in this thorough and fascinating book, we stand to learn a significant amount about the authors of crusade texts, their audiences, and what it meant to write crusade narrative, if we take the time to tap into this rich seam. This book should be required reading for any student or scholar of the medieval historiography of crusading, or of medieval Latin Christian historiography in general. -- SPECULUM[A] highly interesting work that should be essential reading for anyone who teaches or studies the crusades. -- JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS CULTURES[This] rich study opens the door to further investigations of the relationships between different literary genres and between exegesis, theology, and history. * SEHEPUNKTE *Table of ContentsIntroduction History and Biblical Exegesis in the Latin West The Bible in the Chronicles of the First Crusade Into the Promised Land Babylon and Jerusalem Conclusion Appendix 1: Tables and Charts of Biblical References Appendix 2: List of Biblical References in the Texts Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement.The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understandin

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