Search results for ""University of Oklahoma Press""

Student radicals and hippies - in Oklahoma? Though most scholarship about 1960s-era student activism and the counterculture focuses on the East and West Coasts, Oklahoma's college campuses did see significant activism and ""dropping out."" In Prairie Power, Sarah Eppler Janda fills a gap in the historical record by connecting the activism of Oklahoma students and the experience of hippies to a state and a national history from which they have been absent. Janda shows that participants in both student activism and retreat from conformist society sought connections to Oklahoma's past while forging new paths for themselves. She shows that Oklahoma students linked their activism with the grassroots socialist radicalism and World War I-era anti-draft protest of their grandparents' generation, citing Woody Guthrie, Oscar Ameringer, and the Wobblies as role models. Many movement organizers in Oklahoma, especially those in the University of Oklahoma's chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and the anti-war movement, fit into a larger midwestern and southwestern activist mentality of ""prairie power"": a blend of free-speech advocacy, countercultural expression, and anarchist tendencies that set them apart from most East Coast student activists. Janda also reveals the vehemence with which state officials sought to repress campus ""agitators,"" and discusses Oklahomans who chose to retreat from the mainstream rather than fight to change it. Like their student activist counterparts, Oklahoma hippies sought inspiration from older precedents, including the back-to-the-land movement and the search for authenticity, but also Christian evangelicalism and traditional gender roles. Drawing on underground newspapers and declassified FBI documents, as well as interviews the author conducted with former activists and government officials, Prairie Power will appeal to those interested in Oklahoma's history and the counterculture and political dissent in the 1960s.

Read more less

Despite centuries of suppression and oppression, American Indian music survives today as a profound cultural force. Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow celebrates in depth the vibrant soundscape of Native North America, from the ""heartbeat"" of intertribal drums and ""warble"" of Native flutes to contemporary rock, hip-hop, and electronic music. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with musicians, producers, ethnographers, and record-label owners, author and musician Craig Harris conjures an aural tapestry in which powwow drums and end-blown woodwinds resound alongside operatic and symphonic strains, jazz and reggae, country music, and blues. Harris begins with an exploration of the powwow, from sacred ceremonies to intertribal gatherings. He examines the traditions of the Native American flute and its revival with artists such as two-time Grammy winners R. Carlos Nakai and Mary Youngblood. Singers and songwriters, including Buffy Sainte-Marie, Keith Secola, and Joanne Shenandoah, provide insights into their music and their lives as American Indians. Harris also traces American Indian rock, reggae, punk, and pop over four decades, punctuating his survey with commentary from such artists as Tom Bee, founder of Native America's first rock band, XIT. Grammy-winner Taj Mahal recalls influential guitarist Jesse Ed Davis; ex-bandmates reflect on Rock Hall of Fame inductee Redbone; Robbie Robertson, Pura Fe, and Rita Coolidge describe how their groundbreaking 1993 album, Music for the Native Americans, evolved; and DJs A Tribe Called Red discuss their melding of archival powwow recordings into fiery dance music. The many voices and sounds that weave throughout Harris's engaging, accessible account portray a sonic landscape that defies stereotyping and continues to expand. Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow is the story - told by those who live it - of resisting a half-millennium of cultural suppression to create new sounds while preserving old roots.Listen in! Visit this book's page on the oupress.com website for a link to the book's Spotify playlist.

Read more less

Few who appreciate the visual arts or the American Southwest can behold the masterpieces Sangre de Cristo Mountains or Haystack, Taos Valley, 1927 or Bend in the River, 1941 and come away without a vivid image burned into memory. The creator of these and many other depictions of the Southwest and its people was Ernest L. Blumenschein, cofounder of the famous Taos art colony. This insightful, comprehensive biography examines the character and life experiences that made Blumenschein one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century.Robert W. Larson and Carole B. Larson begin their life of ""Blumy"" with his Ohio childhood and trace his development as an artist from early study in Cincinnati, New York City, and Paris through his first career as a book and magazine illustrator. Blumenschein and artist Bert G. Phillips discovered the budding art community of Taos, New Mexico, in 1898. In 1915 the two along with Joseph Henry Sharp, E. Irving Couse, and other like-minded artists organized the Taos Society of Artists, famous for preferring American subjects over European themes popular at the time.Leaving illustration work behind, Blumenschein sought a distinctive place in his American homeland and in fine-art painting. He moved with his family to Taos in 1919 and began his long career as a figurative and landscape painter, becoming prominent among American artists for his Pueblo Indian figures and stunning southwestern landscapes.Robert Larson calls Blumenschein a ""transformational artist,"" trained classically but drawing to a limited degree on abstract representation. Placing Blumy's life in the context of World War I, the Great Depression, and other national and world events, the authors show how an artistic genius turned a fascination with the people, light, and color of New Mexico into a body of work of lasting significance to the international art world.

Read more less

Rising above the northern Michigan landscape, prehistoric burial mounds and impressive circular earthen enclosures bear witness to the deep history of the region's ancient indigenous peoples. These mounds and earthworks have long been treated as isolated finds and have never been connected to the social dynamics of the time in which they were constructed, a period called Late Prehistory.In Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600, Meghan C. L. Howey uses archaeology to make this connection. She shows how indigenous communities of the northern Great Lakes used earthen structures as gathering places for ritual and social interaction, which maintained connected egalitarian societies in the process.Examining ""every available ceramic sherd from every northern earthwork,"" Howey combines regional archaeological investigations with ethnohistory, analysis of spatial relationships, and collaboration with tribal communities to explore changes in the area's social setting from 1200 to 1600. During this time, cultural shifts, such as the adoption of maize horticulture, led to the creation of the earthen constructions. Burial mounds were erected, marking claims to resources and defining areas for local ritual gatherings, while massive circular enclosures were constructed as intersocietal ceremonial centers. Together, Howey shows, these structures made up part of an interconnected, purposefully designed cultural landscape. When societies incorporated the earthworks into their egalitarian social and ritual behaviors, the structures became something more: ceremonial monuments.The first systematic examination of earthen constructions in what is today Michigan, Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600 reveals complicated indigenous histories that played out in the area before European contact. Howey's richly illustrated investigation increases our understanding of the diverse cultures and dynamic histories of the pre-Columbian ancestors of today's Great Lake tribes.

Read more less

Oklahoma is well known as prime hunting and fishing territory, but red-dirt country also offers many opportunities for hiking, running, and off-road biking. Though trail guides for neighboring states abound, outdoorsmen Kent F. Frates and Larry Floyd found no such book for Oklahoma. The outcome of their collaboration, Oklahoma Hiking Trails, fills that void as the first comprehensive guidebook for the state.A welcome addition to the travel library of both locals and visitors, this illustrated guide extends a hearty welcome to hikers, bikers, runners, birders, campers, and photographers. For the amateur and expert alike, Oklahoma Hiking Trails covers trails accessible to the public across the state.This handy reference will take outdoor adventurers from Tulsa to Lawton and from Broken Bow to Boise City - and all points between. It includes such familiar sites as the Ouachita National Forest and the Wichita Mountains as well as lesser-known gems such as Black Mesa and the Oxley Nature Center. The authors also provide tips on how to prepare for any hiking adventure.Color photographs of trail sites identify landmarks to look for and highlight the natural diversity to be found along the state's hundreds of miles of public trails. Detailed maps, GPS coordinates, and clear directions ensure that the runner, biker, or hiker will get to the trail and stay on it. Each trail is rated easy, moderate, or strenuous. Providing a wealth of information to help you navigate your Oklahoma adventure, Oklahoma Hiking Trails offers big returns in a small, light-weight package ideal for your backpack.

Read more less

Burton K. Wheeler (1882-1975) may have been the most powerful politician Montana ever produced, and he was one of the most influential - and controversial - members of the United States Senate during three of the most eventful decades in American history. A New Deal Democrat and lifelong opponent of concentrated power - whether economic, military, or executive - he consistently acted with a righteous personal and political independence that has all but disappeared from the public sphere. Political Hell-Raiser is the first book to tell the full story of Wheeler, a genuine maverick whose successes and failures were woven into the political fabric of twentieth-century America. Wheeler came of political age amid antiwar and labor unrest in Butte, Montana, during World War I. As a crusading United States attorney, he battled Montana's powerful economic interests, championed farmers and miners, and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1922. There he made his name as one of the ""Montana scandalmongers,"" uncovering corruption in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. Drawing on extensive research and new archival sources, Marc C. Johnson follows Wheeler from his early backing of Franklin D. Roosevelt and ardent support of the New Deal to his forceful opposition to Roosevelt's plan to expand the Supreme Court and, in a move widely viewed as political suicide, his emergence as the most prominent spokesman against U.S. involvement in World War II right up to three days before Pearl Harbor. Johnson provides the most thorough telling of Wheeler's entire career, including all its accomplishments and contradictions, as well as the political storms that the senator both encouraged and endured. The book convincingly establishes the place and importance of this principled hell-raiser in American political history.

Read more less

The history of the Rio Grande since the late nineteenth century reflects the evolution of water-resource management in the West. It was here that the earliest interstate and international water-allocation problems pitted irrigators in southern New Mexico against farmers downstream in El Paso and Juarez, with the voluntary resolution of that conflict setting important precedents for national and international water law.In this first scholarly treatment of the politics of water law along the Rio Grande, Douglas R. Littlefield describes those early interstate and international water- apportionment conflicts and explains how they relate to the development of western water law and policy and to international relations with Mexico. Littlefield embraces environmental, legal, and social history to offer clear analyses of appropriation and riparian water rights doctrines, along with lucid accounts of court cases and laws. Examining events that led up to the 1904 settlement among U.S. and Mexican communities and the formation of the Rio Grande Compact in 1938, Littlefield describes how communities grappled over water issues as much with one another as with governmental authorities.Conflict on the Rio Grande reveals the transformation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century law, traces changing attitudes about the role of government, and examines the ways these changes affected the use and eventual protection of natural resources. Rio Grande water policy, Littlefield shows, represents federalism at work - and shows the West, in one locale at least, coming to grips with its unique problems through negotiation and compromise.

Read more less

Social classes collide over morality and social propriety in a brand-new stateWell before the Volstead (or National Prohibition) Act of 1919, Oklahoma was dry. Oklahomans banned liquor at their state's inception in 1907 and maintained the ban even after the repeal of national prohibition. In this book, James E. Klein examines the social and cultural conflicts that led Oklahomans to outlaw liquor and discusses the economic and political consequences of the ban.Grappling with Demon Rum identifies who favored and who opposed prohibition, showing that its proponents were largely middle-class citizens who disdained public drinking establishments and who sought respectability for a young state still considered a frontier society. Klein tells how the Oklahoma Anti-Saloon League orchestrated a dry campaign to raise moral standards, reduce crime, and improve the quality of life, twice convincing voters to support prohibition.Going beyond the usual evangelical-versus-ritualist, rural-versus-urban, and ethnocultural oppositions used by other historians to explain prohibition, Klein shows that Oklahoma's immigrant and Catholic populations were too small to account for those voting against the measure - or for the large customer base that supported bootleggers. He points instead to the large number of working-class Oklahomans who patronized saloons, whether legal or not, and focuses on class conflict in early efforts to control alcohol. He also describes the trials of enforcement officers who worked to plug leaks in statewide and later national prohibition.A cultural and social history of liquor in early Oklahoma, Grappling with Demon Rum provides a fresh look at crusaders against vice at the regional level. In portraying this conflict between middle- and working-class definitions of social propriety, Klein provides new insight into forces at work throughout America during the Progressive Era.

Read more less

War is hell, and the return to civilian life afterwards can be a minefield as well, especially for veterans of a ""bad war."" Soldiers coming home from Vietnam faced unique challenges as veterans of a controversial war whose divisiveness permeated every step of the re-entry and readjustment process. In his balanced and highly readable account, Vietnam Veterans since the War, sociologist Wilbur J. Scott tells the story of how the veterans and their allies organized to articulate their concerns and to win concessions from a reluctant Congress, federal agencies, and courts.Scott draws on published records, hours of personal interviews with veterans, and his experience as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam to explore the major social movements among his fellow veterans in the crucial years from 1967 to 1990, including the antiwar movement, the successful effort to win recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by the American Psychiatric Association, the establishment of veterans' outreach centers, the controversy over the defoliant Agent Orange and its long-term effects, and the struggle to create the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. His new afterword brings the story up to date and demonstrates that while the United States' involvement in Vietnam continues to be controversial, many of the tensions engendered by the war have been overcome.

Read more less

Butterflies of Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Texas focuses on one hundred butterfly species common to the southern plains, a crucial crossroads region of the central United States. Each species is illustrated with one to four color photographs of butterflies in free flight and other natural settings. These candid shots are a welcome departure from the dried-and-pinned specimen photographs of some field guides. Photographs are placed alongside each butterfly's physical description and natural history, eliminating the need to flip between galleries and text. Other unique features include:modern terminology that general readers will understanddescriptions of twenty prime butterfly spotting sites in the tri-state region information on how to raise butterflies from larval to adult stages an extensive bibliography of additional resources.With increasing interest in butterfly gardening, many readers will appreciate practical how-to chapters for planning, installing, and maintaining a custom butterfly sanctuary in their own yards.More conservationists are recognizing the importance of butterflies to the ecosystem - as plant pollinators and examples of natural mimicry and coloration. The authors of this guidebook hope that a deeper understanding of these intriguing insects will lead to their protection and to preservation of their habitat.

Read more less

For many people, ""western art"" immediately conjures images by Frederic Remington or Georgia O'Keeffe - but there's so much more. From early explorers' first sketches of the Rockies to the modern earth sculptures of Michael Heizer, images of the American West are as multifaceted as its cultures. This remarkable book embraces them all.A landmark overview of western American art, the original edition of The West of the Imagination brought the region to wide public attention as a companion to a popular PBS series of the same name. This book, significantly expanded and updated, shows that the West is a vibrant mirror of American cultural diversity. Through 450 illustrations - more than 300 in color - the authors trace the visual evolution of the myth of the American West, from unknown frontier to repository of American values, covering popular and high arts alike.An unrivaled survey, The West of the Imagination is an immensely informative and pleasurable volume for anyone with an interest in the region's creative legacy.

Read more less

Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This global democratic revolution is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington analyzes the causes and nature of these democratic transitions, evaluates the prospects for stability of the new democracies, and explores the possibility of more countries becoming democratic. The recent transitions, he argues, are the third major wave of democratization in the modem world. Each of the two previous waves was followed by a reverse wave in which some countries shifted back to authoritarian government. Using concrete examples, empirical evidence, and insightful analysis, Huntington provides neither a theory nor a history of the third wave, but an explanation of why and how it occurred.Factors responsible for the democratic trend include the legitimacy dilemmas of authoritarian regimes; economic and social development; the changed role of the Catholic Church; the impact of the United States, the European Community, and the Soviet Union; and the ""snowballing"" phenomenon: change in one country stimulating change in others. Five key elite groups within and outside the nondemocratic regime played roles in shaping the various ways democratization occurred. Compromise was key to all democratizations, and elections and nonviolent tactics also were central. New democracies must deal with the ""torturer problem"" and the ""praetorian problem"" and attempt to develop democratic values and processes. Disillusionment with democracy, Huntington argues, is necessary to consolidating democracy. He concludes the book with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural factors that will decide whether or not the third wave continues.Several ""Guidelines for Democratizers"" offer specific, practical suggestions for initiating and carrying out reform. Huntington's emphasis on practical application makes this book a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the democratization process. At this volatile time in history, Huntington's assessment of the processes of democratization is indispensable to understanding the future of democracy in the world.

Read more less

This superbly illustrated volume traces the evolution of the art of warfare in the Greek and Roman worlds between 1600 B.C. and A.D. 800, from the rise of Mycenaean civilization to the fall of Ravenna and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. John Warry tells of an age of great military commanders such as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar - men whose feats of generalship still provide material for discussion and admiration in the military academies of the world.The text is complemented by a running chronology, 16 maps, 50 newly researched battle plans and tactical diagrams, and 125 photographs, 65 of them in color.

Read more less

In 1854, a Cherokee Indian called Yellow Bird (better known as John Rollin Ridge) launched in this book the myth of Joaquin Murieta, based on the California criminal career of a 19th century Mexican bandit. Today this folk hero has been written into state histories, sensationalized in books, poems, and articles throughout America, Spain, France, Chile, and Mexico, and made into a motion picture. The Ridge account is here reproduced from the only known copy of the first edition, owned by Thomas W. Streeter, of Morristown, New Jersey. According to it, the passionate, wronged Murieta organized an outlaw company numbering over 2,000 men, who for two years terrorized gold-rush Californians by kidnapping, bank robberies, cattle thefts, and murders. So bloodthirsty as to be considered five men, Joaquin was aided by several hardy subordinates, including the sadistic cutthroat, -Three-Fingered Jack.- Finally, the state legislature authorized organization of the Mounted Rangers to capture the outlaws. The drama is fittingly climaxed by the ensuing chase, -good, gory- battle, and the shocking fate of the badmen.

Read more less

In the wake of the violent labor disputes in Colorado's two-year Coalfield War, a young woman and single mother resolved in 1916 to change the status quo for 'girls,' as well-to-do women in Denver referred to their hired help. Her name was Jane Street, and this compelling biography is the first to chronicle her defiant efforts - and devastating misfortunes - as a leader of the so-called housemaid rebellion. A native of Indiana, Jane Street (1887 - 1966) began her activist endeavors as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In riveting detail, author Jane Little Botkin recounts Street's attempts to orchestrate a domestic mutiny against Denver's elitist Capitol Hill women, including wives of the state's national guard officers and Colorado Fuel and Iron operators. It did not take long for the housemaid rebellion to make local and national news. Despite the IWW's initial support of the housemaids' fight for fairness and better pay, Street soon found herself engaged in a gender war, the target of sexism within the very organization she worked so hard to support. The abuses she suffered ranged from sabotage and betrayal to arrests and abandonment. After the United States entered World War I and the first Red Scare arose, Street's battle to balance motherhood and labor organizing began to take its toll. Legal troubles, broken relationships, and poverty threatened her very existence. In previous western labor and women's studies accounts, Jane Street has figured only marginally, credited in passing as the founder of a housemaids' union. To unearth the rich detail of her story, Botkin has combed through case histories, family archives, and - perhaps most significant - Street's own writings, which express her greatest joys, her deepest sorrows, and her unfortunate dealings with systematic injustice. Setting Jane's story within the wider context of early-twentieth-century class struggles and the women's suffrage movement, The Girl Who Dared to Defy paints a fascinating - and ultimately heartbreaking - portrait of one woman's courageous fight for equality.

Read more less

Beginning Creek provides a basic introduction to the language and culture of the Mvskoke-speaking peoples, Muskogee (Creek) and Seminole Indians. Written by linguistic anthropologist Pamela Innes and native speakers Linda Alexander and Bertha Tilkens, the text is accessible to general readers and students and is accompanied by two compact discs.The volume begins with an introduction to Creek history and language, and then each chapter introduces readers to a new grammatical feature, vocabulary set, and series of conversational sentences. Translation exercises from English to Mvskoke and Mvskoke to English reinforce new words and concepts. The chapters conclude with brief essays by Linda Alexander and Bertha Tilkens on Creek culture and history and suggestions for further reading.The two audio CDs present examples of ceremonial speech, songs, and storytelling and include pronunciations of Mvskoke language keyed to exercises and vocabulary lists in the book. The combination of recorded and written material gives students a chance to learn and practice Mvskoke as an oral and written language.Although Mvskoke speakers include the Muskogee (Creek) and Seminole Nations of Oklahoma, the Poarche Band of Creek Indians in Alabama, and some Florida Seminoles, the number of native speakers of Mvskoke has declined. Because the authors believe that language and culture are inextricably linked, they have combined their years of experience speaking and teaching Mvskoke to design an introductory textbook to help Creek speakers preserve their traditional language and way of life.

Read more less

A first-rate ornithologist, Margaret Morse Nice pioneered field studies on song sparrows and advocated for women's active role in the sciences. In this engaging first book-length biography, Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie sheds light on Nice's intellectual journey.

Read more less

Walking the Stations of the Cross, the Christian faithful re-create the Passion, following the sorrowful path of Jesus Christ from condemnation to crucifixion. While this devotion, now so popular in the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations, first emerged in Jerusalem and began spreading through Western Europe in the fourteenth century, it did not assume its current form, and earn the Church’s formal recognition, until almost three centuries later. It was at this time, in the last decades of the seventeenth century, that a Franciscan friar in colonial Mexico translated a devotional guide to the Stations of the Cross into the native Nahuatl. This little handbook, Fray Agustin de Vetancurt’s Via crucis en mexicano, proved immensely popular, going through two editions, but survives today only in a copy made by a native scribe from Central Mexico. Reproduced here in Nahuatl and English, Vetancurt’s handbook offers unique insight into the history, the practice, and the meaning of the Stations of the Cross in the New World and the Old. With the Via crucis en mexicano as a starting point, John F. Schwaller explores the history of the development and spread of the Stations of the Cross, placing the devotion in the context of the Catholic Reformation and the Baroque, the two trends that exalted this type of religious expression. He describes how the devotion, exported to New Spain in the sixteenth century, was embraced by Spanish and natives alike. For the native Americans, Schwaller suggests, the Via crucis resonated because of its performative aspects, reminiscent of rituals and observances from before the arrival of the Spanish. And for missionaries, the devotion offered a means of deepening the faith of the newly converted. In Schwaller’s deft analysis—which extends from the origins of the devotion, to the processions and public rituals of the Mexica (Aztecs), to the text and illustrations of the Vetancurt manuscript—the Via crucis en mexicano opens a window on the practice and significance of the Stations of the Cross—and of private devotions generally—in Mexico, Hispanic America, and around the world.

Read more less

In this historical novel by Max Crawford, the U.S. 2nd Cavalry rolls into Texas in the 1870s with orders to keep the peace and persuade the fierce Comanches to move quietly onto the reservation. Captain Philip Chapman tells a tale of high adventure: the hardships of a forced cavalry march, an ambush by the Comanches, an idyllic summer camp at the Caballo Ranch, the epic trek made by Chapman and his K Troop across the Ilano estacado, and defeat of Tehana Storm, legendary half-white Comanche chieftain, in the decisive battle at Palo Duro Canyon.

Read more less

In the decades bracketing the turn of the twentieth century, Charles M. Russell depicted the American West in a fresh, personal, and deeply moving way. To this day, Russell is celebrated for his paintings and sculptures of cowboys at work and play, his sensitive portrayals of American Indians, and his superlative representations of landscape and wildlife. This handsome book - a companion volume to the acclaimed Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonné, edited by B. Byron Price - showcases many of the artist's best-known works and chronicles the sources and evolution of his style.Here are iconic images that have defined the West in the popular imagination for more than a century. The volume boasts reproductions, most in full color, of more than 150 of Russell's finest works in oil, bronze, and mixed media. Select examples of his drawings, watercolors, and illustrated letters as well as archival photographs place Russell's paintings and sculpture in historic and artistic context.This sumptuous volume is an essential addition to the library of every aficionado of American western art. In its pages readers will discover the work of a man whose ideal vision of the American experience continues to stir the spirit nearly a century after his death.

Read more less

On August 19, 1958, Clara Luper and thirteen Black youth walked into Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City and sat down at the lunch counter. When they tried to order, they were denied service. As they sat in silence, refusing to leave, the surrounding white customers unleashed a torrent of threats and racial slurs. This first organized sit-in in Oklahoma—almost two years before the more famous sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina—sparked other demonstrations in Oklahoma and other states. Behold the Walls is Luper’s engrossing firsthand account of how the movement she helped launch ended legal racial segregation. First published in 1979, Behold the Walls now features a new introduction and 33 newly selected historical photos. Luper’s direct, unvarnished account captures the immediacy of the events she witnessed. As a Black woman, Luper refused to let either her race or her gender deter her from stepping forth as a leader. Born in 1923, Clara Luper taught history in Oklahoma public schools and led the NAACP Youth Council. The students who sat in at Katz Drug and other businesses belonged to that organization. Luper highlights the contributions of others, especially young people, in breaking down the walls of segregation in Oklahoma through numerous demonstrations, marches, and voter registration campaigns. This commemorative edition of Luper’s eye-opening autobiography, published near what would have been her 100th birthday, as well as the 65th anniversary of the sit-ins, offers invaluable insight into the history of protest in the early years of the civil rights movement. With racial inequality still at the forefront of national debate, Behold the Walls places Luper’s efforts in the larger national context of the struggle to resist injustice and inspire positive change.

Read more less

The Lakȟóta are among the best-known Native American peoples. In popular culture and even many scholarly works, they were once lumped together with others and called the Sioux. This book tells the full story of Lakȟóta culture and society, from their origins to the twenty-first century, drawing on Lakȟóta voices and perspectives. In Lakȟóta culture, “listening” is a cardinal virtue, connoting respect, and here authors Rani-Henrik Andersson and David C. Posthumus listen to the Lakȟóta, both past and present. The history of Lakȟóta culture unfolds in this narrative as the people lived it. Fittingly, Lakhota: An Indigenous History opens with an origin story, that of White Buffalo Calf Woman (Ptesanwin) and her gift of the sacred pipe to the Lakȟóta people. Drawing on winter counts, oral traditions and histories, and Lakȟóta letters and speeches, the narrative proceeds through such periods and events as early Lakȟóta-European trading, the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation, Christian missionization, the Plains Indian Wars, the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee (1890), the Indian New Deal, and self-determination, as well as recent challenges like the #NoDAPL movement and management of Covid-19 on reservations. This book centers Lakȟóta experience, as when it shifts the focus of the Battle of Little Bighorn from Custer to fifteen-year-old Black Elk, or puts American Horse at the heart of the negotiations with the Crook Commission, or explains the Lakȟóta agenda in negotiating the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1851. The picture that emerges—of continuity and change in Lakȟóta culture from its distant beginnings to issues in our day—is as sweeping and intimate, and as deeply complex, as the lived history it encompasses.

Read more less

George Crook was one of the most prominent military figures of the late-nineteenth-century Indian Wars. Yet today his name is largely unrecognized despite the important role he played in such pivotal events in western history as the Custer fight at the Little Big Horn, the death of Crazy Horse, and the Geronimo campaigns. As Paul Magid portrays Crook in this highly readable second volume of a projected three-volume biography, the general was an innovative and eccentric soldier, with a complex and often contradictory personality, whose activities often generated intense controversy. Though known for his uncompromising ferocity in battle, he nevertheless respected his enemies and grew to know and feel compassion for them. Describing campaigns against the Paiutes, Apaches, Sioux, and Cheyennes, Magid's vivid narrative explores Crook's abilities as an Indian fighter. The Apaches, among the fiercest peoples in the West, called Crook the Gray Fox after an animal viewed in their culture as a herald of impending death. Generals Grant and Sherman both regarded him as indispensable to their efforts to subjugate the western tribes. Though noted for his aggressiveness in combat, Crook was a reticent officer who rarely raised his voice, habitually dressed in shabby civilian attire, and often rode a mule in the field. He was also self-confident to the point of arrogance, harbored fierce grudges, and because he marched to his own beat, got along poorly with his superiors. He had many enduring friendships both in- and outside the army, though he divulged little of his inner self to others and some of his closest comrades knew he could be cold and insensitive. As Magid relates these crucial episodes of Crook's life, a dominant contradiction emerges: while he was an unforgiving warrior in the field, he not infrequently risked his career to do battle with his military superiors and with politicians in Washington to obtain fair treatment for the very people against whom he fought. Upon hearing of the general's death in 1890, Chief Red Cloud spoke for his Sioux people: ""He, at least, never lied to us. His words gave the people hope.

Read more less

In August 1862, nineteen-year-old Edward G. Granger joined the 5th Michigan Cavalry Regiment as a second lieutenant. On August 20, 1863, the newly promoted Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer appointed Granger as one of his aides, a position Granger would hold until his death in August 1864. Many of the forty-four letters the young lieutenant wrote home during those two years, introduced and annotated here by leading Custer scholar Sandy Barnard, provide a unique look into the words and actions of his legendary commander. At the same time, Granger's correspondence offers an intimate picture of life on the picket lines of the Army of the Potomac and a staff officer's experiences in the field. As Custer's aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Granger was in an ideal position to record the inner workings of the Michigan Brigade's command echelon. Riding at Custer's side, he could closely observe one of America's most celebrated and controversial military figures during the very days that cemented his fame. With a keen eye and occasional humor, Granger describes the brigade's operations, including numerous battles and skirmishes. His letters also show the evolution of the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Corps from the laughingstock of the Eastern Theater to an increasingly potent, well-led force. By the time of Granger's death at the Battle of Crooked Run, he and his comrades were on the verge of wresting mounted supremacy from their Confederate opponents. Amply illustrated with maps and photographs, An Aide to Custer gives readers an unprecedented view of the Civil War and one of its most important commanders, and unusual insight into the experience of a staff officer who served alongside him.

Read more less

Generations of Americans have seen the West as beyond federal control and direction. But the national government's presence in the West dates to before Lewis and Clark, and since 1789 a number of U.S. presidents have had a penetrating and long-lasting impact on the region. In Presidents Who Shaped the American West, noted historians Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain present startling analyses of chief executives and their policies, illuminating the long reach of presidential power. The authors begin each chapter by sketching a particular president's biography and explaining the political context in which he operated while in office. They then consider overarching actions and policies that affected both the nation and the region during the president's administration, such as Thomas Jefferson's augmentation of the West via the Louisiana Purchase, and Andrew Jackson's removal of American Indians from the Southeast to ""Indian Country"" in the West. Abraham Lincoln's promotion of the Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad, and western territories and states free of slavery marked further extensions of presidential power in the region. Theodore Roosevelt's conservation efforts and Jimmy Carter's expansion of earlier policies reflected growing public concern with the West's finite natural resources and fragile natural environment. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Dwight D. Eisenhower's highway program, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society funneled federal funding into the West. In return for this largesse, some argued, the West paid the price of increased federal hegemony, and Ronald Reagan's presidency arguably curbed that power. Riley and Etulain also discuss the most recent presidential terms and the region's growing political power in Congress and the federal bureaucracy. With an accessible approach, Presidents Who Shaped the American West establishes the crucial and formative nature of the relationship between the White House and the West - and will encourage readers to continue examining this relationship.

Read more less

A gem of historical scholarship!"" - Vicki L. Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America How do intimate relationships reveal, reflect, enable, or enact the social and political dimensions of imperial projects? In particular, how did colonial relations in late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century southern California implicate sexuality, marriage, and kinship ties? In Colonial Intimacies, Erika Pérez probes everyday relationships, encounters, and interactions to show how intimate choices about marriage, social networks, and godparentage were embedded in larger geopolitical concerns. Her work reveals, through the lens of social and familial intimacy, subtle tools of conquest and acts of resistance and accommodation among indigenous peoples, Spanish-Mexican settlers, Franciscan missionaries, and European and Anglo-American merchants. Concentrating on Catholic conversion, compadrazgo (baptismal sponsorship that often forged interethnic relations), and intermarriage, Pérez examines the ways indigenous and Spanish-Mexican women helped shape communities and sustained their culture. She uncovers an unexpected fluidity in Californian society - shaped by race, class, gender, religion, and kinship - that persisted through the colony's transition from Spanish to American rule.Colonial Intimacies focuses on the offspring of interethnic couples and their strategies for coping with colonial rule and negotiating racial and cultural identities. Pérez argues that these sons and daughters experienced conquest in different ways tied directly to their gender, and in turn faced different options in terms of marriage partners, economic status, social networks, and expressions of biculturality. Offering a more nuanced understanding of the colonial experience, Colonial Intimacies exposes the personal ties that undergirded imperial relationships in Spanish, Mexican, and early American California.

Read more less

In 1903 the famed ""Cowboy Artist,"" Charles M. Russell, presented his nephew Austin with a copy of the boy's adventure book Frank on the Prairie with some extraordinary enhancements. Actually, the volume already belonged to Austin, and his Uncle Charlie had borrowed it to add to its pages a series of original illustrations. This new facsimile edition of that copy, among the rarest of rare books, features little-known works of art by the artist. The prolific author of the novel Frank on the Prairie, Charles Austin Fosdick (1842-1915), who went by the pen name Harry Castlemon, was one of Russell's favorite storytellers. Castlemon's book, which first appeared in 1868 as part of the Gunboat Series of Books for Boys, recounts the adventures of young Frank and his friend Archie as they travel across the Old West. Clearly inspired by the story line, Russell produced eleven watercolors for his nephew's 1893 copy. They are beautifully reproduced here in full color, along with a single pencil sketch of mounted horsemen departing a fort. As Montana art collector Thomas Minckler explains in his essay, the extra-illustrated Frank on the Prairie displays the full range of Russell's signature subjects and themes: the regal American Indian, a pitched Indian battle of counting coup, the fur trader, an iconic buffalo hunt, the outlaw, a nighttime camp scene, a tomahawk peace pipe, and a herd of wild horses. All of these images, meticulously drawn and painted, are replicated in this facsimile version exactly as they first appeared in Austin's personal copy of the book.Frank on the Prairie was only one of a handful of books to which Russell added illustrations during his career. It is one of even fewer to contain watercolors. Showcasing Russell's artistry and his perspective on the American West, the volume is, in Minckler's words, ""one of Russell's most personalized works of art.

Read more less

For the past 180 years, the inherent power of indigenous tribes to govern themselves has been a central tenet of federal Indian law. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's repeated confirmation of Native sovereignty since the early 1830s, it has, in the past half-century, incrementally curtailed the power of tribes to govern non-Indians on Indian reservations. The result, Dewi Ioan Ball argues, has been a ""silent revolution,"" mounted by particular justices so gradually and quietly that the significance of the Court's rulings has largely evaded public scrutiny. Ball begins his examination of the erosion of tribal sovereignty by reviewing the so-called Marshall trilogy, the three cases that established two fundamental principles: tribal sovereignty and the power of Congress to protect Indian tribes from the encroachment of state law. Neither the Supreme Court nor Congress has remained faithful to these principles, Ball shows. Beginning with Williams v. Lee, a 1959 case that highlighted the tenuous position of Native legal authority over reservation lands and their residents, Ball analyzes multiple key cases, demonstrating how the Supreme Court's decisions weakened the criminal, civil, and taxation authority of tribal nations. During an era when many tribes were strengthening their economies and preserving their cultural identities, the high court was undermining sovereignty. In Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley (2001) and Nevada v. Hicks (2001), for example, the Court all but obliterated tribal authority over non-Indians on Native land. By drawing on the private papers of Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justices Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, William O. Douglas, Lewis F. Powell Jr., and Hugo L. Black, Ball offers crucial insight into federal Indian law from the perspective of the justices themselves. The Erosion of Tribal Power shines much-needed light on crucial changes to federal Indian law between 1959 and 2001 and discusses how tribes have dealt with the political and economic consequences of the Court's decisions.

Read more less

Oklahoma was in the throes of the Great Depression when Preston George acquired a cheap Kodak folding camera and took his first photographs of steam locomotives. As depression gave way to world war, George kept taking pictures, now with a Graflex camera that could capture moving trains. In this first book devoted solely to George's work, his black-and-white photographs constitute a striking visual documentary of steam-driven railroading in its brief but glorious heyday in the American Southwest. The pictures also form a remarkable artistic accomplishment in their own right. Prominent among the magnificent action images collected here are the engines that were George's passion - steam locomotives pulling long freights or strings of gleaming passenger cars through open country. But along with the fireworks of the heavier steam engines slogging through the mountains near the Arkansas border on the Kansas City Southern or climbing Raton Pass in New Mexico on the Santa Fe, George's photographs also record humbler fare, such as the short trains of the Frisco and Katy piloted by ancient light steamers, and the final years of that state's interurban lines. Augustus J. Veenendaal Jr.'s brief history of railroads in the Sooner State puts these images into perspective, as does a reminiscence by George's daughter Burnis on his life and his pursuit of railroad photography. With over 150 images and a wealth of historical and biographical information, this volume makes accessible to an audience beyond the most avid railfans the extent of Preston George's extraordinary achievement.

Read more less

In two decades of traveling throughout Mexico, Central America, and Europe, French priest Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814-1874) amassed hundreds of indigenous manuscripts and printed books, including grammars and vocabularies that brought to light languages and cultures little known at the time. Although his efforts yielded many of the foundational texts of Mesoamerican studies - the pre-Columbian Codex Troana, the only known copies of the Popol Vuh and the indigenous dance drama Rabinal-Achi, and Diego De Landa's Relacián de la cosas de Yucatán - Brasseur earned disdain among scholars for his theories linking Maya writings to the mythical continent of Atlantis. In The Manuscript Hunter, translator Katia Sainson reasserts his standing as the founder of modern Maya studies, presenting three of his travel writings in English for the first time. While civil wars raged throughout Mexico and Central America and foreign interests sought access to the region's rich resources, Brasseur focused on uncovering Mesoamerica's mysterious past by examining its ancient manuscripts and living oral traditions. His ""Notes from a Voyage in Central America,"" ""From Guatemala City to Rabinal,"" and Voyage across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec document his travels in search of these texts and traditions. Brasseur's writings weave vivid geographical descriptions of Central America and Mexico during the mid-1800s with keen social and political analysis, all steeped in vast knowledge of the region's history and interest in its indigenous cultures. Coupled with Sainson's thoughtful introduction and annotations, these captivating, accessible accounts reveal Brasseur de Bourbourg's true accomplishments and offer an unrivaled view of the birth of Mesoamerican studies in the nineteenth century. Brasseur's writings not only depict Central America and Mexico through the eyes of a European traveler at a key moment, but also illuminate the remarkable efforts of one man to understand and preserve Mesoamerica's cultural traditions for all time.

Read more less

A graduate of West Point, General Hugh Lenox Scott (1853-1934) belonged to the same regiment as George Armstrong Custer. As a member of the Seventh Cavalry, Scott actually began his career at the Little Big Horn when in 1877 he helped rebury Custer's fallen soldiers. Yet Scott was no Custer. His lifelong aversion to violence in resolving disputes and abiding respect for American Indians earned him the reputation as one of the most adept peacemakers ever to serve in the U.S. Army. Sign Talker, an annotated edition of Scott's memoirs, gives new insight into this soldier-diplomat's experiences and accomplishments. Scott's original autobiography, first published in 1928, has remained out of print for decades. In that memoir, he recounted the many phases of his distinguished military career, beginning with his education at West Point and ending with World War I, when, as army chief of staff, he gathered the U.S. forces that saw ultimate victory in Europe. Sign Talker reproduces the first - and arguably most compelling - portion of the memoir, including Scott's involvement with Plains Indians and his service at western forts. In his in-depth introduction to this volume, editor R. Eli Paul places Scott's autobiography in a larger historical context. According to Paul, Scott stood apart from his fellow officers because of his enlightened views and forward-looking actions. Through Scott's own words, we learn how he became an expert in Plains Indian Sign Language so that he could communicate directly with Indians and bypass intermediaries. Possessing deep empathy for the plight of Native peoples and concern for the wrongs they had suffered, he played an important role in helping them achieve small, yet significant victories in the aftermath of the brutal Indian wars. As historians continue to debate the details of the Indian wars, and as we critically examine our nation's current foreign policy, the unique legacy of General Scott provides a model of military leadership. Sign Talker restores an undervalued diplomat to well-deserved prominence in the story of U.S.-Indian relations.

Read more less

In 1598, at the height of the Spanish Inquisition, New Mexico became Spain's northernmost New World colony. The censures of the Catholic Church reached all the way to Santa Fe, where in the mid-1660s, Doña Teresa Aguilera y Roche, the wife of New Mexico governor Bernardo López de Mendizábal, came under the Inquisition's scrutiny. She and her husband were tried in Mexico City for the crime of judaizante, the practice of Jewish rituals. Using the handwritten briefs that Doña Teresa prepared for her defense, as well as depositions by servants, ethnohistorian Frances Levine paints a remarkable portrait of daily life in seventeenth-century New Mexico. Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition also offers a rare glimpse into the intellectual and emotional life of an educated European woman at a particularly dangerous time in Spanish colonial history. New Mexico's remoteness attracted crypto-Jews and conversos, Jews who practiced their faith behind a front of Roman Catholicism. But were Doña Teresa and her husband truly conversos? Or were the charges against them simply their enemies' means of silencing political opposition? Doña Teresa had grown up in Italy and had lived in Colombia as the daughter of the governor of Cartagena. She was far better educated than most of the men in New Mexico. But education and prestige were no protection against persecution. The fine furnishings, fabrics, and tableware that Doña Teresa installed in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe made her an object of suspicion and jealousy, and her ability to read and write in several languages made her the target of outlandish claims.Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition uncovers issues that resonate today: conflicts between religious and secular authority; the weight of evidence versus hearsay in court. Doña Teresa's voice - set in the context of the history of the Inquisition - is a powerful addition to the memory of that time.

Read more less

The largest by far of the fifty states, Alaska is also the state of greatest mystery and diversity. And, as Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick show in this comprehensive survey, the history of Alaska's peoples and the development of its economy have matched the diversity of its land- and seascapes.Alaska: A History begins by examining the region's geography and the Native peoples who inhabited it for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived. The Russians claimed northern North America by right of discovery in 1741. During their occupation of ""Russian America"" the region was little more than an outpost for fur hunters and traders. When the czar sold the territory to the United States in 1867, nobody knew what to do with ""Seward's Folly."" Mainland America paid little attention to the new acquisition until a rush of gold seekers flooded into the Yukon Territory. In 1906 Congress granted Alaska Territory a voteless delegate and in 1912 gave it a territorial legislature. Not until 1959, however, was Alaska's long-sought goal of statehood realized. During World War II, Alaska's place along the great circle route from the United States to Asia firmly established its military importance, which was underscored during the Cold War. The developing military garrison brought federal money and many new residents. Then the discovery of huge oil and natural-gas deposits gave a measure of economic security to the state. Alaska: A History provides a full chronological survey of the region's and state's history, including the precedent-setting Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which compensated Native Americans for their losses; the effect of the oil industry and the trans-Alaska pipeline on the economy; the Exxon Valdez oil spill; and Alaska politics through the early 2000s.

Read more less

On the morning of July 30, 1883, President Chester A. Arthur embarked on a trip of historic proportions. His destination was Yellowstone National Park, established by an act of Congress only eleven years earlier. No sitting president had ever traveled this far west. Arthur's host and primary guide would be Philip H. Sheridan, the famed Union general. Also slated to join the expedition was a young photographer, Frank Jay Haynes. This elegant - and fascinating - book showcases Haynes's remarkable photographic album from their six-week journey. A premier nineteenth-century landscape photographer, F. Jay Haynes, as he was known professionally, originally compiled the leather-bound album as a commemorative piece. As only six copies are known to exist, it has rarely been seen. The album's 104 images are accompanied by captions written by General Sheridan's brother, Colonel Michael V. Sheridan, who wrote daily dispatches that were distributed by the Associated Press.In his informative introduction, historian Frank H. Goodyear III provides background about the excursion and explains the historic and aesthetic significance of Haynes's photographs. He then re-creates Arthur's journey by reintroducing Haynes's stunning images - along with Sheridan's original captions - including views of the Tetons and other landmarks; portraits of President Arthur, General Sheridan, and fellow travelers engaged in activities along the route; and images of the Shoshone and Arapaho leaders who gathered to greet the visiting party.Published on the occasion of the reopening of the Haynes Photography Shop in Yellowstone, A President in Yellowstone offers a unique entry into the park's storied past.

Read more less

Who counts as an American Indian? Which groups qualify as Indian tribes? These questions have become increasingly complex in the past several decades, and federal legislation and the rise of tribal-owned casinos have raised the stakes in the ongoing debate. In this revealing study, historian Mark Edwin Miller describes how and why dozens of previously unrecognized tribal groups in the southeastern states have sought, and sometimes won, recognition, often to the dismay of the Five Tribes - the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. Miller explains how politics, economics, and such slippery issues as tribal and racial identity drive the conflicts between federally recognized tribal entities like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and other groups such as the Southeastern Cherokee Confederacy that also seek sovereignty. Battles over which groups can claim authentic Indian identity are fought both within the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Federal Acknowledgment Process and in Atlanta, Montgomery, and other capitals where legislators grant state recognition to Indian-identifying enclaves without consulting federally recognized tribes with similar names. Miller's analysis recognizes the arguments on all sides - both the scholars and activists who see tribal affiliation as an individual choice, and the tribal governments that view unrecognized tribes as fraudulent. Groups such as the Lumbees, the Lower Muscogee Creeks, and the Mowa Choctaws, inspired by the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, have evolved in surprising ways, as have traditional tribal governments. Describing the significance of casino gambling, the leader of one unrecognized group said, ""It's no longer a matter of red; it's a matter of green."" Either a positive or a negative development, depending on who is telling the story, the casinos' economic impact has clouded what were previously issues purely of law, ethics, and justice. Drawing on both documents and personal interviews, Miller unravels the tangled politics of Indian identity and sovereignty. His lively, clearly argued book will be vital reading for tribal leaders, policy makers, and scholars.

Read more less

For twenty years the Historical Atlas of Texas stood as a trusted resource for students and aficionados of the state. Now this key reference has been thoroughly updated and expanded - and even rechristened. Texas: A Historical Atlas more accurately reflects the Lone Star State at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Its 86 entries feature 175 newly designed maps - more than twice the number in the original volume - illustrating the most significant aspects of the state's history, geography, and current affairs. The heart of the book is its wealth of historical information. Sections devoted to indigenous peoples of Texas and its exploration and settlement offer more than 45 entries with visual depictions of everything from the routes of Spanish explorers to empresario grants to cattle trails. In another 31 articles, coverage of modern and contemporary Texas takes in hurricanes and highways, power plants and population trends. Practically everything about this atlas is new. All of the essays have been updated to reflect recent scholarship, while more than 30 appear for the first time, addressing such subjects as the Texas Declaration of Independence, early roads, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Texas-Oklahoma boundary disputes, and the tideland oil controversy. A dozen new entries for ""Contemporary Texas"" alone chart aspects of industry, agriculture, and minority demographics. Nearly all of the expanded essays are accompanied by multiple maps - everyone in full color. The most comprehensive, state-of-the-art work of its kind, Texas: A Historical Atlas is more than just a reference. It is a striking visual introduction to the Lone Star State.

Read more less

Mountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith casts a heroic shadow. He was the first Anglo-American to travel overland to California via the Southwest, and he roamed through more of the West than anyone else of his era. His adventures quickly became the stuff of legend. Using new information and sifting fact from folklore, Barton H. Barbour now offers a fresh look at this dynamic figure.Barbour tells how a youthful Smith was influenced by notable men who were his family's neighbors, including a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. When he was twenty-three, hard times leavened with wanderlust set him on the road west. Barbour delves into Smith's journals to a greater extent than previous scholars and teases out compelling insights into the trader's itineraries and personality. Use of an important letter Smith wrote late in life deepens the author's perspective on the legendary trapper. Through Smith's own voice, this larger-than-life hero is shown to be a man concerned with business obligations and his comrades' welfare, and even a person who yearned for his childhood. Barbour also takes a hard look at Smith's views of American Indians, Mexicans in California, and Hudson's Bay Company competitors and evaluates his dealings with these groups in the fur trade.Dozens of monuments commemorate Smith today. This readable book is another, giving modern readers new insight into the character and remarkable achievements of one of the West's most complex characters.

Read more less

For many years, Homeric Greek has been a standard textbook for first-year Greek courses in college and preparatory schools. It offers students the exciting experience of learning to read a Homeric poem in the original language, while introducing them to the fundamentals of ancient Greek. This fourth edition addresses the needs of today's teachers and students, while retaining those elements of the original book responsible for its longevity. Written and subsequently revised by Clyde Pharr, Homeric Greek was further revised by John Wright in 1985. Paula Debnar has revised the book once again by significantly expanding the introductory material in its first forty lessons. Notable features of this new edition include: · Clear definitions of grammatical terms and explanations of forms and syntax · Easy-to-read charts of grammatical paradigms · A new reference map of the Aegean region, including sites mentioned in the first book of the Iliad · An index of the book's section on grammar · A larger, more attractive format for the entire text, including more legible Greek characters Ideally suited for classroom use but also accessible to independent learners, this fourth edition of Homeric Greek ensures continued life for a book that has stood the test of time.

Read more less

The image is indelible: densely packed lines of slow-moving Redcoats picked off by American sharpshooters. Now Matthew H. Spring reveals how British infantry in the American Revolutionary War really fought.This groundbreaking book offers a new analysis of the British Army during the ""American rebellion"" at both operational and tactical levels. Presenting fresh insights into the speed of British tactical movements, Spring discloses how the system for training the army prior to 1775 was overhauled and adapted to the peculiar conditions confronting it in North America.First scrutinizing such operational problems as logistics, manpower shortages, and poor intelligence, Spring then focuses on battlefield tactics to examine how troops marched to the battlefield, deployed, advanced, and fought. In particular, he documents the use of turning movements, the loosening of formations, and a reliance on bayonet-oriented shock tactics, and he also highlights the army's ability to tailor its tactical methods to local conditions.Written with flair and a wealth of details that will engage scholars and history enthusiasts alike, With Zeal and with Bayonets Only offers a thorough reinterpretation of how the British Army's North American campaign progressed and invites serious reassessment of most of its battles.

Read more less

For those who have progressed beyond introductory lessons, Intermediate Creek offers an expanded understanding of the language and culture of the Muskogee (Creek) and Seminole Indians. The first advanced textbook for the language, this book builds on the grammatical principles set forth in the authors' earlier book, Beginning Creek: Mvskoke Emponvkv, providing students with knowledge crucial to mastering more-complex linguistic constructions.Here are clear, comprehensive explanations of linguistic features such as the use of plural subject and object noun phrases; future tense and intentive mood; commands and causatives; postpositions and compound noun phrases; locatives; and sentences with multiple clauses. Linguistic anthropologist Pamela Innes and native speakers Linda Alexander and Bertha Tilkens have organized the book much as they did Beginning Creek. Each chapter begins with a presentation of the grammatical points to be learned, followed by new vocabulary, exercises, an essay relating the material to Muskogee and Seminole life, and suggested readings. Numerous diagrams and tables aid understanding, while an audio CD contains examples of spoken Mvskoke - conversations, a story, and a lullaby - and demonstrates the cadence and intonations of the language.Given resurgent interest in the Mvskoke language but a paucity of classroom resources for advanced study, Intermediate Creek not only offers a practical means for learning but also marks a significant step in preserving and revitalizing an important Native language.

Read more less

William K. Emerson's Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms is the first comprehensive, well-illustrated, fully researched, and completely documented history of U.S. Army branch insignia and the uniforms on which those insignia were worn. More than two thousand photographs illustrate the actual branch insignia used by men and women of the U.S. Army during war and peace from American independence to the present. This book tells the story of the major army branches - infantry, artillery, cavalry, and engineers - as well as the service and support branches comprising doctors and nurses, chaplains, musicians, quartermasters, military police, and the many others whom have made up the U.S. Army.

Read more less

U.S. Highway 66 was always different from other roads. During the decades it served American travelers, Route 66 became the subject of a world-famous novel, an Oscar-winning film, a hit song, and a long running television program. The 2,000 mile concrete slab also became a seven-year obsession for Susan Croce Kelly and Quinta Scott. They traveled Route 66, photographing buildings, knocking on doors, and interviewing the people who had built the buildings and run the businesses along the highway. Drawing on the oral tradition of those rural Americans who populated the edge of old Route 66, Scott and Kelly have pieced together the story of a highway that was conceived in Tulsa, Oklahoma; linked Chicago to Los Angeles; and played a role in the great social changes of the early twentieth century.Using the words of the people themselves and documents they left behind, Kelly describes the life changes of Route 66 from the dirt-and-gravel days until the time when new technology and different life-styles decreed that it be abandoned to the small towns it had nurtured over the course of thirty years.Scott's photographic essay shows the faces of those 66 people and gives a feeling of what can be seen along the old highway today, from the seminal highway architecture to the grainfields of the Illinois prairie, the windbent trees of western Oklahoma, the emptiness of New Mexico, and the bustling pier where the highway ends on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.Route 66 uses oral history and photography as the basis for a human study of this country's most famous road. Historic times, dates, places, and events are described in the words of men and women who were there: driving the highway, cooking hamburgers, creating pottery, and pumping gas. As much as the concrete, gravel, and tar spread in a sweeping arc from Chicago to Santa Monica, those people are Route 66. Their stories and portraits are the biography of the highway.

Read more less

In the Fall of 1857, some 120 California-bound emigrants were killed in lonely Mountain Meadows in southern Utah; only eighteen young children were spared. The men on the ground after the bloody deed took an oath that they would never mention the event again, either in public or in private. The leaders of the Mormon church also counseled silence. The first report, soon after the massacre, described it as an Indian onslaught at which a few white men were present, only one of whom, John D. Lee, was actually named.With admirable scholarship, Mrs. Brooks has traced the background of conflict, analyzed the emotional climate at the time, pointed up the social and military organization in Utah, and revealed the forces which culminated in the great tragedy at Mountain Meadows. The result is a near-classic treatment which neither smears nor clears the participants as individuals. It portrays an atmosphere of war hysteria, whipped up by recitals of past persecutions and the vision of an approaching ""army"" coming to drive the Mormons from their homes.

Read more less