Search results for ""Author Edward K. Spann""

Gotham at War is an accessible, entertaining account of America's biggest and most powerful urban center during the Civil War. New York City mobilized an enthusiastic but poorly trained military force during the first month of the war that helped protect Washington, D.C., from Confederate capture. Its strong financial support for the national government may well have saved the Union. New York served as a center for manpower, military supplies, and shipbuilding. And medically, New York became a center for efforts to provide for sick and wounded soldiers. Yet, despite being a major Northern city, New York also had strong sympathy for the South. Parts of the city were strongly racist, hostile to the abolition of slavery and to any real freedom for black Americans. The hostility of many New Yorkers to the military draft culminated in one of the greatest of all urban upheavals, the draft riots of July 1863. Edward K. Spann brings his experience as an urban historian to provide insights on both the varied ways in which the war affected the city and the ways in which the city's people and industry influenced the divided nation. This is the first book to assess the city's contributions to the Civil War. Gotham at War examines the different sides of the city as some fought to sustain the Union while others opposed the war effort and sided with the South. This unique book will entertain all readers interested in the Civil War and New York City. About the Author Edward K. Spann is professor emeritus of history at Indiana State University. He is a specialist in nineteenth-century history and urban history. Spann has authored a number of books, including The New Metropolis: New York City 1840-1857 and Ideals and Politics: New York Intellectuals and Liberal Democracy, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

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They burned bras, draft cards, and even the American flag. In acts of civil disobedience, they defied the police, the military, and the government as they battled to change American society. But what drove a group of young Americans to democratic revolution in the tumultuous years of the 1960s, and what made them think they could win? They were a generation brought up to expect fairness and equality. Born in the 1940s, a time of strong democratic idealism influenced by the political Left and remnants of the New Deal, they grew up in families where parents treated their children as equals in a sort of mini-democracy. They attended progressive schools that stressed individuality and the importance of students. They were part of the Baby Boom, but a separate and discrete subsection who grew up in the idealistic decade from 1940 to 1950. They were Democracy's Children. In this new book, Edward K. Spann looks at the motivations and values of the young rebels of the 1960s. He links their fight for equality for African Americans, women, and other marginalized groups to the democratic values of their World War II-era parents. Unlike other books which explore the revolutionary movements of the era, Democracy's Children looks at the individuals who comprised the movements. Spann provides a cultural portrait of who the rebels were, what they thought, what they did, and what became of them after they crossed that magical divide of age thirty. He gives due consideration to the wide spectrum of youth opinion from radical to conservative to apolitical. Democracy's Children will fascinate readers with its colorful depictions of the individuals, events, and drama of the 1960s.

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They burned bras, draft cards, and even the American flag. In acts of civil disobedience, they defied the police, the military, and the government as they battled to change American society. But what drove a group of young Americans to democratic revolution in the tumultuous years of the 1960s, and what made them think they could win? They were a generation brought up to expect fairness and equality. Born in the 1940s, a time of strong democratic idealism influenced by the political Left and remnants of the New Deal, they grew up in families where parents treated their children as equals in a sort of mini-democracy. They attended progressive schools that stressed individuality and the importance of students. They were part of the Baby Boom, but a separate and discrete subsection who grew up in the idealistic decade from 1940 to 1950. They were Democracy's Children. In this new book, Edward K. Spann looks at the motivations and values of the young rebels of the 1960s. He links their fight for equality for African Americans, women, and other marginalized groups to the democratic values of their World War II-era parents. Unlike other books which explore the revolutionary movements of the era, Democracy's Children looks at the individuals who comprised the movements. Spann provides a cultural portrait of who the rebels were, what they thought, what they did, and what became of them after they crossed that magical divide of age thirty. He gives due consideration to the wide spectrum of youth opinion from radical to conservative to apolitical. Democracy's Children will fascinate readers with its colorful depictions of the individuals, events, and drama of the 1960s.

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