Search results for ""University Press of Kansas""

Blessings on Uncle Sam's soldiers! They have done their job well, and every pine tree is waving its arms for joy." John MuirMuir's words and this book both celebrate a crucial but largely forgotten episode in our nation's history - how a generation prior to the creation of a National Park Service, the US Army ran Yosemite National Park in an unusual alliance with the fabled preservationist John Muir and his Sierra Club. Harvey Meyerson brings that largely forgotten episode in our nation's history to life and uses it as a touchstone for a reconsideration of a century of civilian-military cooperation in environmental protection and infrastructure construction whose impact and relevance still resonate.Despite the worldwide renown and popularity of Yosemite National Park, few people know that its first stewards were drawn from the so-called Old Army. From 1890 until the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, these soldiers proved to be extremely competent and farsighted wilderness managers. Meyerson recaptures the forgotten history of these early environmentalists and how they set significant standards for the future oversight of our national parks.The army, Meyerson suggests, had actually been well prepared to assume this stewardship. During its first hundred years - and despite the interruptions of warfare - its soldiers had crisscrossed the American landscape, preparing maps and writing detailed reports describing climate, weather, physical terrain, ecosystems, and the diverse flora and fauna populating the lands they explored and often protected during an era of wide-open exploitation of natural resources. Such experience made the army better suited than any other federal agency to oversee the early national parks system.Combining environmental, military, political, and cultural history, Meyerson's study is especially timely in light of Yosemite's enormous popularity (four million visitors annually) and recent controversies pitting conservation forces against dam builders and proponents of expanded public access.

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In 1990, NASA began developing Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE), an initiative aimed at using satellites to study the planet’s environment from space. With the Earth Observing System (EOS) as its technological cornerstone, MTPE’s main goal was to better understand fundamental processes such as climate change. The View from Space tells the remarkable story of this unprecedented convergence of science, technology, and policy in one of the most significant “Big Science” programs in human history.Richard B. Leshner and Thor Hogan offer an engrossing behind-the-scenes look at how and why NASA managed to make an aggressive earth science research program part of the national agenda—an accomplishment made possible by the pragmatic and assertive efforts of the earth science community. This is the first book to focus on describing and analyzing the historical evolution of the MPTE/EOS initiative from its formative years in the 1980s to its political and technical struggles in the 1990s to its scientific successes in the 2000s. Though detailed in its coverage of science and technology, The View from Space is primarily concerned with questions of policy—specifically, how MTPE/EOS came to be, how it developed, and how its proponents navigated the fraught politics of the time. Compelling in its own right, this in-depth history of the initiative is also a valuable object lesson in how political, technical, and scientific infighting can shape a project of such national and global consequence—particularly in the age of climate change.

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We aren't home yet, Major Paul Darling reminds his team at the end of a sixteen-hour day. “Two more miles and we are done. We have pissed off a lot of Taliban today, and they are going to want payback.” Shortly, the major will find himself sitting on a concrete basketball court next to the bunker where the day started so long ago, talking by satellite phone to his wife on the other side of the world. When she asks, “What happened?” there is too much to say. But one day, he promises himself, he will put into words what it was like–one day in the life of a combat soldier in Afghanistan in 2009.This is the story of that day. In crisp prose and sharp detail Darling offers a moment-by-moment account of a one-day mission to track down and kill Taliban insurgents in the Zabul Province of southeastern Afghanistan. A rare day-in-the-life narrative that is also a page-turner, his story captures the mundane realities of deployment—the waiting, the heat, the heavy gear, the 0345 wake-up—along with the high-octane experience of crossing foreign terrain where every turn, every decision might have life or death consequences. The living accommodations, reporting up the chain of command, the bureaucracy, and the almost insurmountable challenges of functioning effectively in two cultures—all become intimately real in Darling's telling as he balances the imperatives of his mission and the skills of his men against the ever-multiplying unknowns, the unpredictable and dangerous Afghan “allies,” and the elusive enemy: the unseen IED and the possibility of fatal miscalculation.In the midst of the soldier's everyday drama of never quite knowing what comes next, Darling's moments of humor and reflection put the chaos and uncertainties of combat into a larger perspective. The story is about one man and the ethical choices and compromises he has to make as a leader—a man who has promises to keep: to family; to country; to his soldiers, both Afghan and American; and, ultimately, to himself.

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In the landscape of the American imagination the Kansas farmer looms large, an icon of midwestern diligence and bounty. But just as the state’s seemingly flat horizon denotes earthly riches, the Kansas farmer contains multitudes. The photographs by Larry Schwarm capture this world in all its depth and diversity, conveying in breadth and detail the grit and mystery, the art and science, of farming in Kansas. The outgrowth of a collaborative study of crop production, farming practices, and land use in Kansas, this volume looks into the larger questions the study raised: why farmers choose to farm and what that life entails.Larry Schwarm, distinguished professor of photography in the School of Art, Design, and Creative Industries at Wichita State University, hails from a farming family with a century-long relationship to the land, and his photographs reflect a keen sense of both the beauty and hardship of the farmer’s life. Taken in the midst of a record-long drought, they picture the age-old industry caught up in the drama of the changing climate—Kansas farmers and ranchers tending crops and animals while working the earth in an ever-shifting balance with nature. As documentary and fine art, these exquisite photographs and accompanying commentary speak to the ageless nature of farming and the pressing questions confronting the present-day farmer in Kansas.

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Arthur Fletcher (1924–2005) was the most important civil rights leader you've (probably) never heard of. The first black player for the Baltimore Colts, the father of affirmative action and adviser to four presidents, he coined the United Negro College Fund's motto: “A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Modern readers might be surprised to learn that Fletcher was also a Republican. Fletcher's story, told in full for the first time in this book, embodies the conundrum of the post-World War II black Republican—the civil rights leader who remained loyal to the party even as it abandoned the principles he espoused.The upward arc of Fletcher's political narrative begins with his first youthful protest—a boycott of his high school yearbook—and culminates with his appointment as assistant secretary of Labor under Richard Nixon. The Republican Party he embraced after returning from the war was “the Party of Lincoln”—a big tent, truly welcoming African Americans. A Terrible Thing to Waste shows us those heady days, from Brown v. Board of Education to Fletcher's implementing of the Philadelphia Plan, the first major national affirmative action initiative. Though successes and accomplishments followed through successive Republican administrations—as chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights under George H. W. Bush, for example, Fletcher's ability to promote civil rights policy eroded along with the GOP's engagement, as New Movement Conservatism and Nixon's Southern Strategy steadily alienated black voters. The book follows Fletcher to the bitter end, his ideals and party in direct conflict and his signature achievement under threat.In telling Fletcher's story, A Terrible Thing to Waste brings to light a little known chapter in the history of the civil rights movement—and with it, insights especially timely for a nation so dramatically divided over issues of race and party.

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Alexander Hamilton is commonly seen as the standard-bearer of an ideology-turned-political party, the Federalists, engaged in a struggle for the soul of the young United States against the Anti-Federalists, and later, the Jeffersonian Republicans. Alexander Hamilton and the Development of American Law counters such conventional wisdom with a new, more nuanced view of Hamilton as a true federalist, rather than a one-dimensional nationalist, whose most important influence on the American founding is his legal legacy.In this analytical biography, Kate Elizabeth Brown recasts our understanding of Hamilton’s political career, his policy achievements, and his significant role in the American founding by considering him first and foremost as a preeminent lawyer who applied law and legal arguments to accomplish his statecraft. In particular, Brown shows how Hamilton used inherited English legal principles to accomplish his policy goals, and how state and federal jurists adapted these Hamiltonian principles into a distinct, republican jurisprudence throughout the nineteenth century. When writing his authoritative commentary on the nature of federal constitutional power in The Federalist, Hamilton juxtaposed the British constitution with the new American one he helped to create; when proposing commercial, monetary, banking, administrative, or foreign policy in Washington’s cabinet, he used legal arguments to justify his desired course of action. In short, lawyering, legal innovation, and common law permeated Alexander Hamilton’s professional career. Re-examining Hamilton’s post-war accomplishments through the lens of law, Brown demonstrates that Hamilton’s much-studied political career, as well as his contributions to republican political science, cannot be fully understood without recognizing and investigating how Hamilton used Anglo-American legal principles to achieve these ends. A critical re-evaluation of Hamilton’s legacy, as well as his place in the founding era, Brown’s work also enhances and refines our understanding of the nature and history of American jurisprudence.

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Raised on Gunsmoke, Bat Masterson, and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, we know what it means to “get outta Dodge”—to make a hasty escape from a dangerous place, like the Dodge City of Wild West lore. But why, of all the notorious, violent cities of old, did Dodge win this distinction? And what does this tenacious cultural metaphor have to do with the real Dodge City?In a book as much about the making of cultural myths as it is about Dodge City itself, authors Robert Dykstra and Jo Ann Manfra take us back into the history of Dodge to trace the growth of the city and its legend side-by-side. An exploration of murder statistics, court cases, and contemporary accounts reveals the historical Dodge to be neither as violent nor as lawless as legend has it—but every bit as intriguing. In a style that captures the charm and chicanery of storytelling in the Old West, Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West finds a culprit in a local attorney, Harry Gryden, who fed sensational accounts to the national media during the so-called “Dodge City War” of 1883. Once launched, the legend leads the authors through the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America, as Dodge City became a useful metaphor in more and more television series and movies. Meanwhile, back in the actual Dodge, struggling on a lost frontier, a mirror image of the mythical city began to emerge, as residents increasingly embraced tourism as an economic necessity. Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West maps a metaphor for belligerent individualism and social freedom through the cultural imagination, from a historical starting point to its mythical reflection. In this, the book restores both the reality of Dodge and its legend to their rightful place in the continuum of American culture.

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In his introduction to Dan Dancer’s The Four Seasons of Kansas, bestselling author William Least Heat-Moon reflects upon the Great Kansas Passage of those who race their cars westward across Interstate 70 without trying to understand the truth of the place. Ted Cable and Wayne Maley come to the rescue of those travelers with a new guide that will expand and enrich their understanding of a state whose history, in Heat-Moon’s words, is “a tumbling of guns, torches, hatchets, and knives.”Guided by Cable and Maley, the historical landscapes of I-70 come back to life, recalling landmarks and legacies relating to pioneer movements and Indian dispossession, army outposts and great bison hunts, cowboys and cattle trails, the struggles over slavery and womens rights, and the emergence of major wheat, beef, oil, and water industries.Their guide parcels out information, mile-marker by mile-marker (in boldface), in a way that’s equally accessible to westbound and eastbound users alike. ,br>In this second edition the authors have updated the information throughout, including new sites and new stories. Driving across Kansas, 2nd edition will reward the observant traveler with a treasure trove of details sure to increase his or her appreciation for the great Sunflower State.

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By the summer of 1944, the war in Europe had reached a critical point. Both the western Allies and the Soviets possessed the initiative and forces capable of mounting strategic offensives against the German enemy. Writing a study of operations on first the Western then Eastern Front, respected military analyst C. J. Dick offers rare insight into the strengths and weaknesses of generalship on both fronts, especially the judgments, choices, and compromises made by senior commanders. At the same time, he clarifies the constraints imposed upon leadership-and upon operations-by doctrinal shortcomings, by logistics, and, not least, by the nature of coalition war.From Victory to Stalemate focuses on the Western Front, specifically American, British, and Canadian operations in France and the Low Countries. Dick's lens throughout is operational art, which links individual tactical battles to broader strategic aims. Beginning with the D-Day landings in Normandy and the strengths and weaknesses of the armies, including their military doctrines, Dick goes on to analyze the offensives launched in the high summer of 1944. He considers the strategic factors and plans that provide the context for his main concern: the Allied commanders' handling of army, army group, and theatre offensive operations. Dick's analysis shows us an Allied command limited by thinking that is firmly rooted in the experience of small wars and the World War I. The resulting incremental approach was further complicated by a divergence in the ideas and interests of the Allied forces. The man responsible for pulling it all together, Dwight D. Eisenhower, proved remarkably capable in his role as statesman; he was to be less effective as a military technician who could govern such difficult subordinates as Bradley and Montgomery. As a result, the Allied offensive faltered and became a war of attrition, in contrast to the Soviet effort on the Eastern Front.

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As the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, the birthplace of a presidential dynasty, and the gateway to western growth in the nation's early years, Virginia can rightfully be called the ""cradle of America."" Peter Wallenstein traces major themes across four centuries in a brisk narrative that recalls the people and events that have shaped the Old Dominion. The second edition is updated with new material throughout, including a new chapter on Virginia and world affairs from the Korean War through 9/11 and beyond, and, an expanded bibliography.Historical accounts of Virginia have often emphasized harmony and tradition, but Wallenstein focuses on the impact of conflict and change. From the beginning, Virginians have debated and challenged each other's visions of Virginia, and Wallenstein shows how these differences have influenced its sometimes turbulent development. Casting an eye on blacks as well as whites, and on people from both east and west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he traces such key themes as political power, racial identity, and education.Bringing to bear his long experience teaching Virginia history, Wallenstein takes readers back, even before Jamestown, to the Elizabethan settlers at Roanoke Island and the inhabitants they encountered, as well as to Virginia's leaders of the American Revolution. He chronicles the state's dramatic journey through the Civil War era, a time that revealed how the nation's evolution sometimes took shape in opposition to the vision of many leading Virginians. He also examines the impact of the civil rights movement and considers controversies that accompany Virginia into its fifth century. The text is copiously illustrated to depict not only such iconic figures as Pocahontas, George Washington, and Robert E. Lee, but also such other prominent native Virginians as Edgar Allan Poe, Carter G. Woodson, and Patsy Cline. Sidebars throughout the book offer further insight, while maps and appendixes of reference data make the volume a complete resource on Virginia's history.

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The Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy . . . was instantly implausible because the authors hid the secrets they knew (and ignored the ones they didn’t). —David Ignatius, Washington Post Book WorldThat recent appraisal reflects a growing consensus that the Warren Commission largely failed in its duty to our nation. Echoing that sentiment, the Gallup organisation has reported that 75 percent of Americans polled do not believe the Commission’s major conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “lone assassin.” Gerald McKnight now gives profound substance to that view in the most meticulous and devastating dissection of the Commission’s work to date. The Warren Commission produced 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, more than 17,000 pages of testimony, and a 912-page report. Surely a definitive effort. Not at all, McKnight argues. The Warren Report itself, he contends, was little more than the capstone to a deceptive and shoddily improvised exercise in public relations designed to “prove” that Oswald had acted alone. McKnight argues that the Commission’s own documents and collected testimony—as well as thousands of other items it never saw, refused to see, or actively suppressed—reveal two conspiracies: the still very murky one surrounding the assassination itself and the official one that covered it up. The cover-up actually began, he reveals, within days of Kennedy’s death, when President Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach all agreed that any official investigation must reach only one conclusion: Oswald was the assassin. While McKnight does not uncover any “smoking gun” that identifies the real conspirators, he nevertheless provides the strongest case yet that the Commission was wrong—and knew it. Oswald might have knowingly or unwittingly been involved, but the Commission’s own evidence proves he could not have acted alone. Based on more than a quarter-million pages of government documents and, for the first time ever, the 50,000 file cards in the Dallas FBI’s “Special Index,” McKnight’s book must now be the starting point for future debate on the assassination. It should also inspire readers to echo the Journal of American History’s praise for his previous book: “McKnight’s insistence upon remaining within the bounds of the evidence inspires confidence in his judgment.”

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The encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad in mid-November 1942 and its final collapse in February 1943 was a signature defeat for Hitler, as more than 100,000 of his soldiers were marched off into captivity. Frank Ellis tackles this oft-told tale from the unique perspective of the German officers and men trapped inside the Red Army's ever-closing ring of forces. This approach makes palpable the growing desperation of an army that began its campaign confident of victory but that long before the end could see how hopeless their situation had become.Highlighting these pages are three previously unpublished German army division accounts, translated here for the first time by Ellis. Each of these translations follows the combat experiences of a specific division—the 76th Infantry, the 94th Infantry, and the 16th Panzer—and take readers into the cauldron (or Kessel) that was Stalingrad. Together they provide a ground-level view of the horrific fighting and yield insights into everything from tactics and weapons to internal disputes, the debilitating effects of extreme cold and hunger, and the Germans' astonishing sense of duty and the abilities of their junior leaders.Along with these first-hand accounts, Ellis himself takes a new and closer look at a number of fascinating but somewhat neglected or misunderstood aspects of the Stalingrad cauldron including sniping, desertion, spying, and the fate of German prisoners. His coverage of sniping is especially notable for new insights concerning the duel that allegedly took place between Soviet sniper Vasilii Zaitsev and a German sniper, Major Konings, a story told in the film Enemy at the Gates (2001). Ellis also includes an incisive reading of Oberst Arthur Boje's published account of his capture, interrogation, and conviction for war crimes, and explores the theme of reconciliation in the works of two Stalingrad veterans, Kurt Reuber and Vasilii Grossman.Rich in anecdotal detail and revealing moments, Ellis's historical mosaic showcases an army that managed to display a vital resilience and professionalism in the face of inevitable defeat brought on by its leaders. It makes for compelling reading for anyone interested in one of the Eastern Front's monumental battles.

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From Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, the man best known as Malcolm X restlessly redefined himself throughout a controversial life. His transformations have appeared repeatedly in books, photographs, paintings, and films, while his murder set in motion a series of tugs-of-war among journalists, biographers, artists, and his ideological champions over the interpretation of his cultural meaning. This book marks the first systematic examination of the images generated by this iconic cultural figure—images readily found on everything from T-shirts and hip-hop album covers to coffee mugs. Graeme Abernethy captures both the multiplicity and global import of a person who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as “the most feared man in American history,” and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity. As Abernethy shows, the resulting iconography of Malcolm X has shifted as profoundly as the American racial landscape itself. Abernethy explores Malcolm’s visual prominence in the eras of civil rights, Black Power, and hip-hop. He analyses this enigmatic figure’s representation across a variety of media from 1960s magazines to urban murals, tracking the evolution of Malcolm’s iconography from his auto-biography and its radical milieu through the appearance of Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic and beyond. Its remarkable gallery of illustrations includes reproductions of iconic photographs by Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and John Launois. Abernethy reveals that Malcolm X himself was keenly aware of the power of imagery to redefine identity and worked tirelessly to shape how he was represented to the public. His theoretical grasp of what he termed “the science of imagery” enabled him both to analyse the role of representation in ideological control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. This provocative work marks a startling shift from the biographical focus that has dominated Malcolm X studies, providing an up-to-date—and comprehensively illustrated—account of Malcolm’s cultural afterlife, and addressing his iconography in relation to images of other major African American figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Kanye West, and Barack Obama. Analysing the competing interpretations behind so many images, Abernethy reveals what our lasting obsession with Malcolm X says about American culture over the last five decades.

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Throughout 1943, the German army, heirs to a military tradition that demanded and perfected relentless offensive operations, succumbed to the realities of its own overreach and the demands of twentieth-century industrialized warfare. In his new study, prizewinning author Robert Citino chronicles this weakening Wehrmacht, now fighting desperately on the defensive but still remarkably dangerous and lethal.Drawing on his impeccable command of German-language sources, Citino offers fresh, vivid, and detailed treatments of key campaigns during this fateful year: the Allied landings in North Africa, General von Manstein's great counterstroke in front of Kharkov, the German attack at Kasserine Pass, the titanic engagement of tanks and men at Kursk, the Soviet counteroffensives at Orel and Belgorod, and the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy. Through these events, he reveals how a military establishment historically configured for violent aggression reacted when the tables were turned; how German commanders viewed their newest enemy, the U.S. Army, after brutal fighting against the British and Soviets; and why, despite their superiority in materiel and manpower, the Allies were unable to turn 1943 into a much more decisive year.Applying the keen operational analysis for which he is so highly regarded, Citino contends that virtually every flawed German decision—to defend Tunis, to attack at Kursk and then call off the offensive, to abandon Sicily, to defend Italy high up the boot and then down much closer to the toe—had strong supporters among the army's officer corps. He looks at all of these engagements from the perspective of each combatant nation and also establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt the synergistic interplay between the fronts.Ultimately, Citino produces a grim portrait of the German officer corps, dispelling the longstanding tendency to blame every bad decision on Hitler. Filled with telling vignettes and sharp portraits and copiously documented, The Wehrmacht Retreats is a dramatic and fast-paced narrative that will engage military historians and general readers alike.

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In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, racial equality in American public education appeared to have a bright future. But, for many, that brightness dimmed considerably following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Milliken v. Bradley (1974). While the literature on Brown is voluminous, Joyce Baugh’s measured and insightful study offers the only available book-length analysis of Milliken, the first major desegregation case to originate outside the South. As Baugh chronicles, when the city of Detroit sought to address school segregation by busing white students to black schools, a Michigan statute signed by Gov. William Milliken overruled the plan. In response, the NAACP sued the state on behalf of Ronald Bradley and other affected parents. The federal district court sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the city and state to devise a “metropolitan” plan that crossed city lines into the suburbs and encompassed a total of fifty-four school districts. The state, however, appealed that decision all the way to the Supreme Court. In its controversial 5-4 decision, the Court’s new conservative majority ruled that, since there was no evidence that the suburban school districts had deliberately engaged in a policy of segregation, the lower court’s remedy was “wholly impermissible” and not justified by Brown—which the Court said could only address de jure, not de facto segregation. While the Court’s majority expressed concern that the district court’s remedy threatened the sanctity of local control over schools, the minority contended that the decision would allow residential segregation to be used as a valid excuse for school segregation. To reconstruct the proceedings and give all claims a fair hearing, Baugh interviewed lawyers representing both sides in the case, as well as the federal district judge who eventually closed the litigation; plumbed the papers of Justices Blackmun, Brennan, Douglas, and Marshall; talked with the main reporter who covered the case; and researched the NAACP files on Milliken. What emerges is a detailed account of how and why Milliken came about, as well as its impact on the Court’s school-desegregation jurisprudence and on public education in American cities.

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It was only a forty-minute foreign film, but it sparked a legal confrontation that has left its mark on America for more than half a century. Roberto Rossellini's ""Il Miracolo"" (""The Miracle"") is deceptively simple: a demented peasant woman is seduced by a stranger she believes to be Saint Joseph, is socially ostracized for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, but is finally redeemed through motherhood.Although initially approved by state censors for screening in New York, the film was attacked as sacrilegious by the Catholic establishment, which convinced state officials to revoke distributor Joseph Burstyn's license. In response, Burstyn fought back through the courts and won.Laura Wittern-Keller and Raymond Haberski show how the Supreme Court's unanimous 1952 ruling in Burstyn's favor sparked a chain of litigation that eventually brought filmmaking under the protective umbrella of the First Amendment, overturning its long-outdated decision in Mutual v. Ohio (1915). Their story features a more formidable cast than did the film itself, with the charismatic Francis Cardinal Spellman decrying the film as a Communist plot, while outspoken film critic Bosley Crowther vigorously advocated ""freedom of the screen."" Meanwhile, movie producers stood by silently for fear of alienating the Church and its large movie-going membership, leaving Burstyn to muster his own defense.More than the inside story of one case, this book explores the unique place that the movies occupy in American culture and the way that culture continues to be shaped by anxiety over the social power of movies. The Burstyn decision weakened the ability of state censorship boards and the Catholic Church to influence the types of films Americans were allowed to see. Consequently, the case signaled the rise of a new era in which films would be more mature and more controversial than ever before.Focusing on this single most important case in the jurisprudence surrounding motion picture expression, Wittern-Keller and Haberski add a significant new dimension to the story of cinema, censorship, and the history of First Amendment protections.

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Kansas is a bird-watcher's paradise, with its key location at the hub of the hemisphere's migration corridors and exceptional habitat diversity; 470 avian species have been documented within its borders. From spectacularly beautiful birds like Painted Buntings to elegant migrants like Hudsonian Godwits, birders can find abundant rewards every time they take to the field.""The Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots"" focuses on 295 species that are most likely to be encountered in the state. It helps occasional day-trippers or backyard observers identify and learn about birds that regularly occur in Kansas, with stunning color photos that enable those new to the hobby to identify their discoveries, plus tips on where to search for these species with the greatest likelihood of success.Gress and Janzen have produced an exceptionally well-organized guide that divides birds into 18 groups based on similarity in appearance, habitat, or behavior, following taxonomic order only partially to make identification easier for the beginner. The entry for each bird gives its size, identifying features (including sexual and seasonal distinctions), and where and when it can be found. And each account includes a brilliant color photo of an adult of the species, with additional views of selected birds to illustrate male, female, or juvenile plumages.The authors point out the best birding locations in the state - more than two dozen hot spots of which they have intimate knowledge - that reflect utterly different bird communities thriving only a few hours apart. They also provide a checklist for all state birds, a calendar of Kansas bird activity, and recommendations for binoculars and other field guides.

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Travelers in Kansas in search of fine art needn't restrict themselves to the state's many excellent museums. They need look no further than the walls of their own communities to discover a remarkable array of murals - artistic creations that are striking, democratic, and easily accessible. Depicting Civil War history, the fruits of agriculture, Kansas' diverse cultural roots, and much more, these long-neglected works are now the subject of Lora Jost and Dave Loewenstein's fine new book. Jost and Loewenstein, artists themselves, have crisscrossed Kansas researching and documenting over 600 murals to promote, preserve, and celebrate this vibrant public art. Theirs is the first and only book devoted exclusively to Kansas murals - a striking visual travelogue that offers a new perspective on the state's culture and history. From unique small-town creations like Dennis Burghart's ""The Saga of the Santa Fe outside the Offerle Cafe"" to the world-famous John Steuart Curry painting of John Brown in the state capitol, murals constitute an enormous public art gallery. Some are socially compelling or were once the focus of intense controversy. Many are group projects in which artists have served as coordinators; these murals represent true expressions of their communities. All show the state as it has been seen through the eyes of Kansas artists over the past hundred years. The authors focus on ninety exemplary murals - including mosaics and friezes - organized by region and featuring full-color photographs, brief descriptions, and notes on the artists. From Sacred Heart Cathedral to the Early Childhood Center on the Potawatomi Prairie Band Reservation, the artworks selected represent some of the most enduring and powerful images to be found throughout the state. The book also provides regional locator maps for travelers and a list of all 600-plus murals with their locations. A unique resource that attests to the rich diversity of the mural tradition, this book is an open invitation to visit the open-air museum of Kansas murals and appreciate the stories they tell and their place in public life. They may be tucked into urban landscapes or require travel to out-of-the way locales; some may even be stained by years of exposure to the elements; but these expressions of public art are there for the viewing - and now, thanks to this book, there for the finding.

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It was common knowledge among American soldiers in Vietnam that women were sometimes brave and even ferocious fighters for the North. This text provides vivid accounts of training, deployment, strategy and tactics, propaganda, support services and torture involving women.

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Deeply moved by his mother's memories of a waning era and rapidly disappearing lifestyle, John Ise records the adventures and adversities of his family and boyhood neighbours, the early homesteaders of Osborne County, Kansas, presented here in this work.

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Examines the demise of the North American Indian and the effect of U.S. policy towards Indians from the beginning of the nation's history to the Indian New Deal of the 1930s.

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The heyday of American Indian activism is generally seen as bracketed by the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Longest Walk in 1978; yet Native Americans had long struggled against federal policies that threatened to undermine tribal sovereignty and self-determination. This is the first book-length study of American Indian political activism during its seminal years, focusing on the movement's largely neglected early efforts before Alcatraz or Wounded Knee captured national attention.Ranging from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, Daniel Cobb uncovers the groundwork laid by earlier activists. He draws on dozens of interviews with key players to relate untold stories of both seemingly well-known events such as the American Indian Chicago Conference and little-known ones such as Native participation in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Along the way, he introduces readers to a host of previously neglected but critically important activists: Mel Thom, Tillie Walker, Forrest Gerard, Dr. Jim Wilson, Martha Grass, and many others.Cobb takes readers inside the early movement - from D'Arcy McNickle's founding of American Indian Development, Inc. and Vine Deloria Jr.'s tenure as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians to Clyde Warrior's leadership in the National Indian Youth Council - and describes how early activists forged connections between their struggle and anticolonialist movements in the developing world. He also describes how the War on Poverty's Community Action Programs transformed Indian Country by training bureaucrats and tribal leaders alike in new political skills and providing activists with the leverage they needed to advance the movement toward self-determination.This book shows how Native people who never embraced militancy - and others who did - made vital contributions as activists well before the American Indian Movement burst onto the scene. By highlighting the role of early intellectuals and activists like Sol Tax, Nancy Lurie, Robert K. Thomas, Helen Peterson, and Robert V. Dumont, Cobb situates AIM's efforts within a much broader context and reveals how Native people translated the politics of Cold War civil rights into the language of tribal sovereignty.

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Midway through 1942, Japanese and Allied forces found themselves fighting on two fronts—in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. These concurrent campaigns, conducted between July 1942 and February 1943, proved a critical turning point in the war being waged in the Pacific, as the advantage definitively shifted from the Japanese to the Americans. Key to this shift was the Allies seizing of the strategic initiative—a concept that Sean Judge examines in this book, particularly in the context of the Pacific War.The concept of strategic initiative, in this analysis, helps to explain why and how contending powers design campaigns and use military forces to alter the trajectory of war. Judge identifies five factors that come into play in capturing and maintaining the initiative: resources, intelligence, strategic acumen, combat effectiveness, and chance, all of which are affected by political will. His book uses the dual campaigns in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a case study in strategic initiative by reconstructing the organizations, decisions, and events that influenced the shift of initiative from one adversary to the other. Perhaps the most critical factor in this case is strategic acumen, without which the other advantages are easily squandered. Specifically, Judge details how General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, in designing and executing these campaigns, provided the strategic leadership essential to reversing the tide of war—whose outcome, Judge contends, was not as inevitable as conventional wisdom tells us.The strategic initiative, once passed to American and Allied forces in the Pacific, would never be relinquished. In its explanation of how and why this happened, The Turn of the Tide in the Pacific War holds important lessons for students of military history and for future strategic leaders.

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The Last Liberal Republican is a memoir from one of Nixon's senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price-a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller's campaigns-joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and later John D. Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health. Based on those policies, and the internal White House struggles around them, Price places Nixon firmly in the liberal Republican tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, and President Eisenhower.Price makes a valuable contribution to our evolving scholarship and understanding of the Nixon presidency. Nixon himself lamented that he would be remembered only for Watergate and China. The Last Liberal Republican provides firsthand insight into key moments regarding Nixon's political and policy challenges in the domestic social policy arena. Price offers rich detail on the extent to which Nixon and his staff straddled a precarious balance between a Democratic-controlled Congress and an increasingly powerful conservative tide in Republican politics.The Last Liberal Republican provides a blow-by-blow inside view of how Nixon surprised the Democrats and shocked conservatives with his ambitious proposal for a guaranteed family income. Beyond Nixon's surprising embrace of what we today call universal basic income, the thirty-seventh president reordered and vastly expanded the patchy food stamp program he inherited and built nutrition education and children's food services into schools. Richard Nixon even almost achieved a national health insurance program: fifty years ago, with a private sector framework as part of his generous benefits insurance coverage for all, Nixon included coverage of preexisting conditions, prescription drug coverage for all, and federal subsidies for those who could not afford the premiums.The Last Liberal Republican will be a valuable resource for presidency scholars who are studying Nixon, his policies, the state of the Republican Party, and how the Nixon years relate to the rise of the modern conservative movement.

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Postwar Journeys: American and Vietnamese Transnational Peace Efforts since 1975 tells the story of the dynamic roles played by ordinary American and Vietnamese citizens in their postwar quest for peace-an effort to transform their lives and their societies. Hang Thi Thu Le-Tormala deepens our understanding of the Vietnam War and its aftermath by taking a closer look at postwar Vietnam and offering a fresh analysis of the effects of the war and what postwar reconstruction meant for ordinary citizens. This thoughtful exploration of US-Vietnam postwar relations through the work of US and Vietnamese civilians expands diplomatic history beyond its rigid conventional emphasis on national interests and political calculations as well as highlights the possibilities of transforming traumatic experiences or hostile attitudes into positive social change. Le-Tormala's research reveals a wealth of boundary-crossing interactions between US and Vietnamese citizens, even during the times of extremely restricted diplomatic relations between the two nation-states. She brings to center stage citizens' efforts to solve postwar individual and social problems and bridges a gap in the scholarship on the US-Vietnam relations. Peace efforts are defined in their broadest sense, ranging from searching for missing family members or friends, helping people overcome the ordeals resulting from the war, and meeting or working with former opponents for the betterment of their societies.Le-Tormala's research reveals how ordinary US and Vietnamese citizens were active historical actors who vigorously developed cultural ties and promoted mutual understanding in imaginative ways, even and especially during periods of governmental hostility. Through nonprofit organizations as well as cultural and academic exchange programs, trailblazers from diverse backgrounds promoted mutual understanding and acted as catalytic forces between the two governments. Postwar Journeys presents the powerful stories of love and compassion among former adversaries; their shared experiences of a brutal war and desire for peace connected strangers, even opponents, of two different worlds, laying the groundwork for US-Vietnam diplomatic normalization.

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Gathering its waters from the plains of Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, the Kaw is truly America's prairie river. James Locklear's In the Country of the Kaw is a joyous exploration of the realm of the Kaw River, which stretches from the High Plains of Colorado to the Kansas City metropolitan area.

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Goldwater v. Carter tells the story of the Supreme Court ruling that upheld President James Earl Carter’s unilateral decision to nullify the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (Taiwan), thereby enabling the United States to establish relations with the People’s Republic of China. Senator Barry Goldwater and other members of Congress brought a lawsuit against Carter, arguing that the president needed Senate approval to take this action. President Carter’s actions in recognizing the Peoples’ Republic of China were both a continuation of a process begun by President Richard Nixon, and a milestone in foreign policy that survived legal and political intervention. In their decision, the Supreme Court placed the removal of the United States from treaties squarely in the political, rather than the constitutional, arena.Goldwater contended that if Carter could withdraw from the treaty with Taiwan, then another president could theoretically withdraw from NATO and thereby endanger the global political order. Ironically, years later President Donald Trump, who stood in the mold of Goldwater’s brand of conservatism, posed this very threat.Joshua Kastenberg places the case of Goldwater v. Carter in the larger context of executive power. While presidential power had increased in the wake of FDR’s New Deal, Congress curbed this expansion during the Vietnam conflict, placing restrictions on the presidency in areas of foreign policy and national security that had not been seen since the defeat of the League of Nations in the Senate in 1919. The Court’s decision in favor of Carter, however, marked a return to the growth of the “imperial presidency,” which has only continued to expand.

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Founded amid the urban commotion of Washington, DC, before the dawn of the twentieth century, the National Zoological Park opened to “preserve, teach, and conduct research about the animal world.” Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo is a study of this important cultural landmark from 1887 to 1920. Centered on the animals themselves, each chapter looks from a different angle at the influential science of popular zoology in order to shed new light on the complex, entangled relationships between humans and animals.Daniel Vandersommers’s goal is twofold. First, through narrative, he shows how zoo animals always ran away from the zoo. This is meant literally—animals escaped frequently—but even more so, figuratively. Living, breathing, historical zoo animals ran away from their cultural constructions, and these constructions ran away from the living bodies they were made to represent. The author shows that the resulting gaps produced by runaway animals contain concealed, distorted, and erased histories worthy of uncovering.Second, Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo demonstrates how the popular zoology fostered by the National Zoo shaped every aspect of American science, culture, and conservation during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Between the 1880s and World War I, as intellectuals debated Darwinism and scientists institutionalized the laboratory, zoological parks suddenly appeared at the heart of nearly every major American city, captivating tens of millions of visitors. Vandersommers follows stories previously hidden within the National Zoo in order to help us reconsider the place of zoos and their inhabitants in the twenty-first century.

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In the current legal climate where “everyone is an originalist,” conventional wisdom suggests that judges merely find law, rather than make it. Orthodox common-law jurisprudence makes fidelity to the past the central goal and criterion. By contrast, the alternative approach, “reading the law forward”—what some call judicial pragmatism or consequentialism—is viewed as heretical. Rather than mount a theoretical defense of a forward-thinking jurisprudence, legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer offers an empirical study of how this approach to constitutional interpretation actually leads to better law. Reading Law Forward looks at seven judges who exemplify this alternative jurisprudence: John Marshall, Joseph Story, Lemuel Shaw, Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, and Stephen G. Breyer.“In the hands of America’s leading judges, a jurisprudence of reading law forward enabled courts to respond to the challenges of changing conditions. It kept law fresh. It promoted and still promotes the growth of a democratic society,” Hoffer convincingly argues.

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Winner: Paul Birdsall PrizeWinner: Society for Military History book AwardWhen Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively.Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India's blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War.Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility—especially mobilized armor—in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms.Brimming with new insights, Citino's study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post-9/11 era.

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The Civil War and Reconstruction periods in United States history are widely viewed as a “second founding” of the nation, one that sought to bring the American regime into better alignment with the aspirations articulated at the first founding. Among the figures involved in shaping this new start for the American republic, Lyman Trumbull played an instrumental role.As the chairman of the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, Trumbull advanced the most important legislation of both the Civil War and Reconstruction, including the First and Second Confiscation Acts, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, the 1866 Freedmen’s Bureau Act, and the Military Reconstruction Acts. Most significantly, he was the principal author and driver of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery permanently throughout the United States. On the basis of the Thirteenth Amendment, he also authored the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the nation’s first civil rights law, which protected the fundamental rights of all Americans, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.Despite being arguably the greatest legislative architect of America’s second founding, Trumbull later turned his back on the Reconstruction that he helped initiate. Worried that Reconstruction was going too far and lasting too long, he eventually embraced a rigid and uncompromising view of states’ rights, rejecting his own previous defense of the national government’s ultimate power and responsibility to secure the privileges and immunities of US citizenship.Paul Rego’s study of Trumbull’s political and constitutional thought is a much-needed exploration of this key figure in Civil War and Reconstruction history. Like the framers of the first founding, Trumbull was complex and contradictory—a symbol of both the nation’s rebirth and its lost promise, as responsible for the period's disappointments as he was for its triumphs. This is a long overdue book on one of the forgotten framers of the United States.Lyman Trumbull and the Second Founding of the United States examines the political and constitutional thought of Trumbull. Understanding Trumbull is essential to a comprehensive understanding of American political and legal development, especially during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

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Arthur Goodzeit AwardFor seven weeks in 1929, the Republic of China and the Soviet Union battled in Manchuria over control of the Chinese Eastern Railroad. It was the largest military clash between China and a Western power ever fought on Chinese soil, involving more that a quarter million combatants. Michael M. Walker's The 1929 SinoSoviet War is the first full account of what UPI's Moscow correspondent called 'the war nobody knew' a 'limited modern war' that destabilized the region's balance of power, altered East Asian history, and sent grim reverberations through a global community giving lip service to demilitarizing in the wake of World War I.Walker locates the roots of the conflict in miscalculations by Chiang Kaishek and Chang Hsuehliang about the Soviets' political and military power-flawed assessments that prompted China's attempt to reassert full authority over the CER. The Soviets, on the other hand, were dominated by a Stalin eager to flex some military muscle and thoroughly convinced that war would win much more than petty negotiations. This was in fact, Walker shows, a watershed moment for Stalin, his regime, and his still young and untested military, disproving the assumption that the Red Army was incapable of fighting a modern war. By contrast, the outcome revealed how unprepared the Chinese military forces were to fight either the Red Army or the Imperial Japanese Army, their other primary regional competitor. And yet, while the Chinese commanders proved weak, Walker sees in the toughness of the overmatched infantry a hint of the rising nationalism that would transform China's troops from a mercenary army into a formidable professional force, with powerful implications for an overconfident Japanese Imperial Army in 1937.Using Russian, Chinese, and Japanese sources, as well as declassified US military reports, Walker deftly details the war from its onset through major military operations to its aftermath, giving the first clear and complete account of a little known but profoundly consequential clash of great powers between the World Wars.

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Southern Strategies is the first-ever analysis of Confederate defeat using the lenses of classical strategic and leadership theory. The contributors bring over one hundred years of experience in the field at the junior and senior levels of military leadership and over forty years of teaching in professional military education. Well-aware that the nature of war is immutable and unchanging, they combine their firsthand experience of this truth with solid scholarship to offer new theoretical and historical perspectives about why the South failed in its bid for independence.The contributors identify and analyze the mistakes made by the Confederate political and strategic leadership that handicapped the prospects for independence and placed immense pressure on Confederate military commanders to compensate on the battlefield for what should have been achieved by other instruments of national power. These instruments are the diplomatic, informational (including intelligence and public morale), and economic aspects of a nation's capability to exert its will internationally. When combined with military power, the acronym DIME emerges, a theoretical tool that offers historians and national security professionals alike a useful method to analyze how a state, such as the Union, the Confederacy, or the modern United States, wielded or currently wields its power at the strategic level. Each essay examines how well rebel strategic leaders employed and integrated these instruments, given that the seceded South possessed enough diplomatic, informational, military, and economic power to theoretically win its independence. The essayists also apply the ends-ways-means model of analysis to each topic to offer readers greater insight into the Confederate leadership's challenges.Southern Strategies confirms the reality that the outcome of the American Civil War cannot be boiled down to one or two simple reasons. It offers fresh and theoretically novel interpretations at the strategic level that open new doors for future research and will increase public interest in the big questions surrounding Confederate defeat.

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Winner: Richard Barksdale Harwell AwardOn a cold day in early January 1864, Robert E. Lee wrote to Confederate president Jefferson Davis “The time is at hand when, if an attempt can be made to capture the enemy’s forces at New Berne, it should be done.” Over the next few months, Lee’s dispatch would precipitate a momentous series of events as the Confederates, threatened by a supply crisis and an emerging peace movement, sought to seize Federal bases in eastern North Carolina. This book tells the story of these operations—the late war Confederate resurgence in the Old North State.Using rail lines to rapidly consolidate their forces, the Confederates would attack the main Federal position at New Bern in February, raid the northeastern counties in March, hit the Union garrisons at Plymouth and Washington in late April, and conclude with another attempt at New Bern in early May. The expeditions would involve joint-service operations, as the Confederates looked to support their attacks with powerful, homegrown ironclad gunboats. These offensives in early 1864 would witness the failures and successes of southern commanders including George Pickett, James Cooke, and a young, aggressive North Carolinian named Robert Hoke. Likewise they would challenge the leadership of Union army and naval officers such as Benjamin Butler, John Peck, and Charles Flusser. Newsome does not neglect the broader context, revealing how these military events related to a contested gubernatorial election; the social transformations in the state brought on by the war; the execution of Union prisoners at Kinston; and the activities of North Carolina Unionists.Lee’s January proposal triggered one of the last successful Confederate offensives. The Fight for the Old North State captures the full scope, as well as the dramatic details of this struggle for North Carolina.

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In a time of great national division, a time of threats of resistance and counterthreats of suppression, a controversial president takes drastic measures to rein in his critics, citing national interest, national security, and his obligations as chief executive. If this seems familiar in our current moment of intense political agitation, that is all the more reason to attend to Thomas Mackey's gripping, learned, and eminently readable account of the Civil War-era case of Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio congressman arrested for campaigning against the war and President Lincoln's policies. In Mackey's telling, the story of this prominent 'Copperhead,' or Southern sympathizer, illuminates the problem of internal security, loyalty, and disloyalty faced by the Lincoln administration during wartime - and, more generally, the problem of determining the balance between executive power and tyranny, and between dissent and treason.Opposing Lincoln explores Vallandigham's opposition not only to Lincoln and his administration but also to Lincoln's use of force and his executive orders suspending habeas corpus. In addition to tracing Vallandigham's experiences of being arrested, tried, convicted by military commission instead of civilian courts, and then banished from the United States, this historical narrative introduces readers to Lincoln's most important statements on presidential powers in wartime, while also providing a primer on the wealth of detail involved in such legal and military controversies. Examining the long-standing issue of the limits of political dissent in wartime, the book asks the critical historical question of what reasonable lengths a legitimate government can go to in order to protect itself and its citizens from threats, whether external or internal.The case of Clement Vallandigham is, Mackey suggests, a quintessentially American story. Testing the limits of dissent in a political democracy in wartime, and of the scope and power of constitutional government, it clarifies a critical aspect of the American experience from afar.

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I have an Article II,' Donald Trump has announced, citing the US Constitution, 'where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.' Though this statement would have come as a shock to the framers of the Constitution, it fairly sums up the essence of 'the unitary executive theory.' This theory, which emerged during the Reagan administration and gathered strength with every subsequent presidency, counters the system of checks and balances that constrains a president's executive impulses. It also, the authors of this book contend, counters the letter and spirit of the Constitution.In their account of the rise of unitary executive theory over the last several decades, the authors refute the notion that this overweening view of executive power has been a common feature of the presidency from the beginning of the Republic. Rather, they show, it was invented under the Reagan Administration, got a boost during the George W. Bush administration, and has found its logical extension in the Trump administration. This critique of the unitary executive theory reveals it as a misguided model for understanding presidential powers. While its adherents argue that greater presidential power makes government more efficient, the results have shown otherwise. Dismantling the myth that presidents enjoy unchecked plenary powers, the authors advocate for principles of separation of powers - of checks and balances - that honor the Constitution and support the republican government its framers envisioned.A much-needed primer on presidential power, from the nation's founding through Donald Trump's impeachment, The Unitary Executive Theory: A Danger to Constitutional Government makes a robust and persuasive case for a return to our constitutional limits.

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In this long-awaited follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1967 classic, Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson reveals major new forensic discoveries since the year 2000 that overturn previously accepted 'facts' about the Kennedy assassination. Together they provide what no previous book on the assassination has done - incontrovertible proof that JFK was killed in a crossfire.Last Second in Dallas is not a conspiracy book. No theory of who did it is offered or discussed. Among the discoveries: The test showing that all recovered bullet fragments came from Oswald's rifle was mistaken. Several fragments could have come from bullets of any manufacturer and any caliber. The sudden two-inch forward movement of the president's head in the Zapruder film just before his head explodes is revealed to be an optical illusion caused by the movement of Zapruder's camera. This leaves without further challenge clear evidence that this shot came from a specific location to the right front of the limousine. Detailed analysis of film frames matched by the newly validated acoustic evidence show a second shot struck the president's head from behind less than a second later. Result: two killing shots to the head from opposite directions in the final second of the shooting - hence the book's title.At once a historical detective story and a deeply personal narrative by a major figure in the field, Last Second in Dallas captures the drama and sweep of events, detailing government missteps and political bias as well as the junk science, hubris, and controversy that have dogged the investigation from the beginning. Into this account Thompson weaves his own eventful journey, that of a Yale-educated scholar who in 1976 resigned his tenured professorship in philosophy to become a private investigator in San Francisco, developing a national reputation.Profusely illustrated, Last Second in Dallas features dozens of archive photographs, including Zapruder film frames reproduced at the highest clarity ever published.

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In a recent poll of leading historians, Charles A. Dana was Named among the “Twenty-Five Most Influential Civil War Figures You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” If you have heard of Dana, it was probably from his classic Recollections of the Civil War (1898), which was ghostwritten by muckraker Ida Tarbell and riddled with errors cited by unsuspecting historians ever since. Lincoln’s Informer at long last Sets the record straight, giving Charles A. Dana his due in a story that rivals the best historical fiction.Dana didn’t just record history, Carl J. Guarneri notes: he made it. Starting out as managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, he led the newspaper’s charge against proslavery forces in Congress and the Kansas territory. When his criticism of the Union’s prosecution of the war became too much for Greeley, Dana was drafted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be a special agent—and it was in this capacity that he truly made his mark. Drawing on Dana’s reports, letters, and telegrams—“the most remarkable, interesting, and instructive collection of official documents relating to the Rebellion,” according to the custodian of the Union war records—Guarneri reconstructs the Civil War as Dana experienced and observed it: as a journalist, a confidential informant to Stanton and Lincoln, and, most controversially, an administration insider with surprising influence. While reporting most of the war’s major events, Dana also had a hand in military investigations, the cotton trade, Lincoln’s reelection, passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and, most notably, the making of Ulysses S. Grant and the breaking of other generals.Dana’s reporting and Guarneri’s lively narrative provide fresh impressions of Lincoln, Stanton, Grant, and other Union war leaders. Lincoln’s Informer shows us the unlikely role of a little-known confidant and informant in the Lincoln administration’s military and political successes. A remarkable inside look at history unfolding, this book draws the first complete picture of a fascinating character writing his chapter in the story of the Civil War.

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Some presidents throw out baseball’s first pitch of the season. Some post picks for college basketball’s March Madness. One might tweet about a football player kneeling. President Richard M. Nixon phoned Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula to suggest plays for the Super Bowl. He hosted players in the 1969 Major League All-Star game for a party deemed the strangest since the mob scene during Andrew Jackson’s inauguration. He attended a Washington Redskins practice to boost moral; altered the NFL’s policy for televising home games; introduced the practice of calling teams after Super Bowl or World Series wins. The list goes on, but the point is clear: Richard Nixon was the nation’s first sports super fan to occupy the Oval Office. And this, Nicholas Evan Sarantakes suggests, may explain why Nixon, so despised for all his faults and failings, was nonetheless also widely loved by the American public.In Fan in Chief Sarantakes Sets out to show how Richard Nixon’s passion for sports, more than policy positions or partisan politics, engaged the American people—and how Nixon used this passion to his political advantage. Fan in Chief takes place in the realm of political theater, a theater in which the president’s role was perfectly genuine. A true fan, Nixon exposed core elements of his personality, character, and values in the world of sports; through sport he could connect and communicate with the character and values of his fellow Americans. Fan in Chief is thus a story of both personality and politics; but more than that, it is an in-depth exploration of what Richard Nixon’s love of sport can tell us about the man and his times.

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Every day, in natural history museums all across the country, colonies of dermestid beetles diligently devour the decaying flesh off of animal skeletons that are destined for the museum's specimen collection. That time-saving process was developed and perfected at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum by Charles D. Bunker, a lowly assistant taxidermist who would rise to become the curator of recent vertebrates and who made an indelible mark on his field. That innovative breakthrough serves as a testament to the tenacity of a quietly determined naturalist.Bunker was part of the small team of men who constructed and installed the famous Panorama of North American Mammals, the centerpiece exhibit of the KU Natural History Museum located in Dyche Hall. That iconic building on the KU campus was expressly built to house the collection of mounted animals that impressed the world a decade earlier at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and World's Fair.Once the panorama was completed, Bunker turned his attention to field collecting. Bunker's field notes provide an accurate, authentic account of several expeditions to collect such specimens as well as a rare view of the extreme hardships of fieldwork in those early days. Perhaps most notable is “Bunk's” 1911 expedition to western Kansas, where he discovered the fossil remains of a forty-five-foot-long sea serpent—later identified as Tylosaurus proriger, an aquatic reptile from the mosasaur genus and the largest example of the species found in North America. In 2014, Tylosaurus was named the marine fossil of the state of Kansas.Birds, Bones, and Beetles tells the story of a man whose passion for learning led to remarkable discoveries, extraordinary exhibits, and the prestigious careers of many students he mentored in the natural sciences.

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Why should we listen to celebrities like Bono or Angelina Jolie when they endorse a politician or take a position on an issue? Do we listen to them? Despite their lack of public policy experience, celebrities are certainly everywhere in the media, appealing on behalf of the oppressed, advocating policy change—even, in one spectacular case, leading the birther movement all the way to the White House. In this book Mark Harvey takes a close look into the phenomenon of celebrity advocacy in an attempt to determine the nature of celebrity influence, and the source and extent of its power.Focusing on two specific kinds of power—the ability to “spotlight” issues in the media and to persuade audiences—Harvey searches out the sources of celebrity influence and compares them directly to the sources of politicians’ influence. In a number of case studies—such as Jolie and Ben Affleck drawing media attention to the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Bob Marley uniting warring factions in Jamaica; John Lennon networking with the new left to oppose Richard Nixon’s re-election; Elvis Presley working with Nixon to counter anti-war activism—he details the role of celebrities working with advocacy groups and lobbying politicians to affect public opinion and influence policy. A series of psychological experiments demonstrate that celebrities can persuade people to accept their policy positions, even on national security issues.Harvey’s analysis of news sources reveals that when celebrities speak about issues of public importance, they get disproportionately more coverage than politicians. Further, his reading of surveys tells us that people find politicians no more or less credible than celebrities—except politicians from the opposing party, who are judged less credible. At a time when the distinctions between politicians and celebrities are increasingly blurred, the insights into celebrity influence presented in this volume are as relevant as they are compelling.

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Dr. Jonathan Mayhew (1720–1766) was, according to John Adams, a “transcendental genius . . . who threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of the country in 1761, and maintained it there with zeal and ardor till his death.” He was also, J. Patrick Mullins contends, the most politically influential clergyman in eighteenth-century America and the intellectual progenitor of the American Revolution in New England. Father of Liberty is the first book to fully explore Mayhew’s political thought and activism, understood within the context of his personal experiences and intellectual influences, and of the cultural developments and political events of his time. Analyzing and assessing his contributions to eighteenth-century New England political culture, the book demonstrates Mayhew’s critical contribution to the intellectual origins of the American Revolution.

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Reverdy Johnson (1796–1876), Maryland senator, and Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York, were two influential opponents of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans during the Civil War. But unlike the Copperheads, they staunchly supported the war to suppress the rebellion. The story of these two figures of the loyal opposition by Lincoln Prizewinning author William C. Harris provides a new way of understanding critical controversies relating to the purpose of the Civil War, its conduct, emancipation, white racial opinion, loyalty, military conscription, and civil liberties.

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The Civil War's single-shot, muzzle-loading musket revolutionized warfare-or so we've been told for years. Noted historian Earl J. Hess forcefully challenges that claim, offering a new, clear-eyed, and convincing assessment of the rifle musket's actual performance on the battlefield and its impact on the course of the Civil War. Many contemporaries were impressed with the new weapon's increased range of 500 yards, compared to the smoothbore musket's range of 100 yards, and assumed that the rifle was a major factor in prolonging the Civil War. Historians have also assumed that the weapon dramatically increased casualty rates, made decisive victories rare, and relegated cavalry and artillery to far lesser roles than they played in smoothbore battles. Hess presents a completely new assessment of the rifle musket, contending that its impact was much more limited than previously supposed and was confined primarily to marginal operations such as skirmishing and sniping. He argues further that its potential to alter battle line operations was virtually nullified by inadequate training, soldiers' preference for short-range firing, and the difficulty of seeing the enemy at a distance. He notes that bullets fired from the new musket followed a parabolic trajectory unlike those fired from smoothbores; at mid-range, those rifle balls flew well above the enemy, creating two killing zones between which troops could operate untouched. He also presents the most complete discussion to date of the development of skirmishing and sniping in the Civil War. Drawing upon the observations and reflections of the soldiers themselves, Hess offers the most compelling argument yet made regarding the actual use of the rifle musket and its influence on Civil War combat. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, his book will be of special interest to Civil War scholars, buffs, re-enactors, and gun enthusiasts alike.

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Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award and McLemore PrizeIn the spring of 1862, there was no more important place in the western Confederacy-perhaps in all the South-than the tiny town of Corinth, Mississippi.Major General Henry W. Halleck, commander of Union forces in the Western Theater, reported to Washington that ""Richmond and Corinth are now the great strategical points of war, and our success at these points should be insured at all hazards."" In the same vein, Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard declared to Richmond that ""If defeated at Corinth, we lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause."" Those were odd sentiments concerning a town scarcely a decade old. By this time, however, it sat at the junction of the South's two most important rail lines and had become a major strategic locale. Despite its significance, Corinth has received comparatively little attention from Civil War historians and has been largely overshadowed by events at Shiloh, Antietam, and Perryville. Timothy Smith's panoramic and vividly detailed new look at Corinth corrects that neglect, focusing on the nearly year-long campaign that opened the way to Vicksburg and presaged the Confederacy's defeat in the West.Combining big-picture strategic and operational analysis with ground-level views, Smith covers the spring siege, the vicious attacks and counterattacks of the October battle, and the subsequent occupation. He has drawn extensively on hundreds of eyewitness accounts to capture the sights, sounds, and smells of battle and highlight the command decisions of Halleck, Beauregard, Ulysses S. Grant, Sterling Price, William S. Rosecrans, and Earl Van Dorn.This is also the first in-depth examination of Corinth following the creation of a new National Park Service center located at the site. Weaving together an immensely compelling tale that places the reader in the midst of war's maelstrom, it substantially revises and enlarges our understanding of Corinth and its crucial importance in the Civil War.

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America’s Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghornantelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed insuch abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write, “it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudesof these animals.” In a work that is at once a lyricalevocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veterannaturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchersand ultimately a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Great Plains with its wildlife intact dazzled Americans and Europeans alike, prompting numerous literary tributes. American Serengeti takes its place alongside these celebratory works, showing us the grazers and predators of the plains against the vast opalescent distances, the blue mountains shimmering on the horizon, the great rippling tracts of yellowed grasslands. Far from the empty “flyover country” of recent times, this landscape is alive with a complex ecology at least 20,000 years old—a continental patrimony whose wonders may not be entirely lost, as recent efforts hold out hope of partial restoration of these historic species.Written by an author who has done breakthrough work on the histories of several of these animals—including bison, wild horses, and coyotes—American Serengeti is as rigorous in its research as it isintimate in its sense of wonder—the most deeply informed, closely observed view we have of the Great Plains’ wild heritage.

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For most Americans, Cambodia was a sideshow to the war in Vietnam, but by the time of the Vietnam invasion of Democratic Kampuchea in 1978 and the subsequent war, it had finally moved to centre stage. Kenneth Conboy chronicles the violence that plagued Cambodia from World War II until the end of the twentieth century and peels back the layers of secrecy that surrounded the CIA’s covert assistance to anticommunist forces in Cambodia during that span.Conboy’s path-breaking study provides the first complete assessment of CIA ops in two key periods—during the Khmer Republic’s existence (1970–1975), in support of American military action in Vietnam, and during the Reagan and first Bush presidencies (1981–1991), when the CIA challenged Soviet expansion by supporting exiled royalists, Republicans, and even former Communists trying to expel the Vietnamese from their country. Through interviews with dozens of CIA Cambodia veterans—as well as special forces officers from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Australia—he sheds new light on the contributions made by foreign intelligence services. Through information gleaned from the U.S. Defense Attache’s Office in Phnom Penh, he offers a detailed look at the development of the Khmer Rouge military structure, while his use of Vietnamese-language histories released by the People’s Army of Vietnam helps more fully illuminate the PAVN’s participation in the Cambodian wars. More than a simple exposé of CIA activities, however, The Cambodian Wars is also an authoritative history of that country’s struggles over half a century. Conboy examines Cambodia as kingdom, colony, republic, revolutionary state, and Vietnamese satellite, and offers fresh insight into the actions of key players—Norodom Sihanouk, Lon Nol, Sisowath Sirik Matak, Son Ngoc Thanh, and others—that will enlighten even those who think they know that country’s history.Three decades in the making, The Cambodian Wars tells a little known chapter in the Cold War in which non-communists pulled off a surprising victory. Featuring dozens of photos covering events from 1970 to the trial of Pol Pot in 1997, it is must reading for anyone interested in contemporary Southeast Asian history, CIA covert operations, and the Vietnam War.

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A classic and bestselling work by one of America’s top Constitutional scholars, Presidential War Power garnered the lead review in the New York Times Book Review and raised essential issues that have only become more timely, relevant, and controversial in our post-9/11 era. In this third edition, Louis Fisher updates his arguments throughout, critiques the presidential actions of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and challenges what he views as their dangerous expansion of executive power. Spanning the life of the Republic from the Revolutionary Era to the War on Terror, the new edition covers for the first time: Indefinite detention of civilians and non-civilians without trial President Obama’s failed effort to close Guantánamo NSA wiretapping and Fourth Amendment violations Presidential decision-making relating to the wind-down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan U.S. military operations against Libya in 2011 Continued abuse of the state secrets privilege in national security court cases Secret legal memos justifying the use of UAVs or drones for targeted killings overseas Extended comparison of the expansion of executive power under George W. Bush and Barack Obama

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