Best of
American-History
1998
Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
John Lewis - 1998
The son of an Alabama sharecropper, and now a sixth-term United States Congressman, John Lewis has led an extraordinary life, one that found him at the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the late '50s and '60s. As Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was present at all the major battlefields of the movement. Arrested more than forty times and severely beaten on several occasions, he was one of the youngest yet most courageous leaders. Written with charm, warmth, and honesty, Walking with the Wind offers rare insight into the movement and the personalities of all the civil rights leaders-what was happening behind the scenes, the infighting, struggles, and triumphs. Lewis takes us from the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he led more than five hundred marchers on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." While there have been exceptional books on the movement, there has never been a front-line account by a man like John Lewis. A true American hero, his story is "destined to become a classic in civil rights literature." (Los Angeles Times)
The Children
David Halberstam - 1998
Magisterial in scope, with a strong you-are-there quality, The Children is a story one of America's preeminent journalists has waited years to write, a powerful book about one of the most dramatic movements in American history. They came together as part of Rev. James Lawson's workshops on nonviolence, eight idealistic black students whose families had sacrificed much so that they could go to college. They risked it all, & their lives besides, when they joined the growing civil rights movement. Halberstam shows how Martin Luther King Jr recruited Lawson to come to Nashville to train students in Gandhian techniques of nonviolence. We see the strength of the families the Children came from, moving portraits of several generations of the black experience in America. We feel Diane Nash's fear before the first sit-in to protest segregation of Nashville lunch counters. Then we see how Diane Nash & others--John Lewis, Gloria Johnson, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, Curtis Murphy, James Bevel, Rodney Powell--persevered until they ultimately accomplished that goal. After the sit-ins, when the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate buses were in danger of being stopped because of violence, it was these same young people who led the bitter battle into the Deep South. Halberstam takes us into those buses, lets us witness the violence the students encountered in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma. He shows what has happened to the Children since the 60s, as they have gone on with their lives.
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
Edwin G. Burrows - 1998
Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe.In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city.The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.
Make Gentle the Life of This World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy - 1998
Reprint.
Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom
Ira Berlin - 1998
Using excerpts from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writers’ Project, the astonishing audiotapes made available the only known recordings of people who actually experienced enslavement—recordings that had gathered dust in the Library of Congress until they were rendered audible for the first time specifically for this set.Remembering Slavery received the kind of commercial attention seldom accorded projects of this nature—nationwide critical and review coverage as well as extensive coverage on prime-time television, including Good Morning America, Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, and CNN. Reviewers called the set “chilling … [and] riveting” (Publishers Weekly) and “something, truly, truly new” (The Village Voice).Now the groundbreaking book component of the set is available for a new generation of readers.
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Ron Chernow - 1998
Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America. Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay. While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light. John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.From the Hardcover edition.
The U.S. Constitution: And Fascinating Facts about It
Terry L. Jordan - 1998
This book also presents insights into the men who wrote the Constitution, how it was created, and how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution in the two centuries since its creation.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America
James Wilson - 1998
Combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition, and years of his original research, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures. The Earth Shall Weep charts the collision course between Euro-Americans and the indigenous people of the continent, from the early interactions at English settlements on the Atlantic coast, through successive centuries of encroachment and outright warfare, to the new political force of the Native American activists of today. It is a clash that would ultimately result in the reduction of the Native American population from an estimated seven to ten million to 250,000 over a span of four hundred years, and change the face of the continent forever. A tour de force of narrative history, The Earth Shall Weep is a powerful, moving telling of the story of Native Americans that has become the new standard for future work in the field.
Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
Leon F. Litwack - 1998
. . . Its effects remain the nation's most pressing business. Trouble in Mind is an absolutely essential account of its dreadful history and calamitous legacy." --The Washington Post"The most complete and moving account we have had of what the victims of the Jim Crow South suffered and somehow endured."--C. Vann WoodwardIn April 1899, black laborer Sam Hose killed his white boss in self-defense. Wrongly accused of raping the man's wife, Hose was mutilated, stabbed, and burned alive in front of 2,000 cheering whites. His body was sold piecemeal to souvenir seekers; an Atlanta grocery displayed his knuckles in its front window for a week.With the same narrative skill he brought to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Been in the Storm So Long, Leon Litwack constructs a searing history of life under Jim Crow. Drawing on new documentation and first-person accounts by blacks and whites, he describes the injustices--both institutional and personal--inflicted against a people. Here, too, are the black men and women whose activism, literature, and music preserved the genius of their human spirit. Painstakingly researched, important, and timely, Trouble in Mind recalls the bloodiest and most repressive period in the history of race relations in the United States--and the painful record of discrimination that haunts us to this day."Moving, elegant, earthy and pointed. . . . It forces us to reckon with the tragic legacies of freedom as well as of slavery. And it reminds us of the resilience and creativity of the human spirit." --Steven Hahn, The San Diego Union-Tribune"A chilling reminder of how simple it has been for Americans to delude themselves about the power of race." --The Raleigh News & Observer
Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
Sylviane A. Diouf - 1998
Most assume that what Muslim faith any Africans did bring with them was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu. But, surprisingly, as Sylviane Diouf shows in this new, meticulously researched volume, Islam flourished during slavery on a large scale.Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslim slaves, following them from Africa to the Americas. It details how, even while enslaved many Black Muslims managed to follow most of the precepts of their religion. Literate, urban, and well traveled, Black Muslims drew on their organization and the strength of their beliefs to play a major part in the most well known slave uprisings. Though Islam did not survive in the Americas in its orthodox form, its mark can be found in certain religions, traditions, and artistic creations of people of African descent.But for all their accomplishments and contributions to the cultures of the African Diaspora, the Muslim slaves have been largely ignored. Servants of Allah is the first book to examine the role of Islam in the lives of both individual practitioners and in the American slave community as a whole, while also shedding light on the legacy of Islam in today's American and Caribbean cultures.Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 1999.
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
Tony Horwitz - 1998
But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.
Helen Keller: A Life
Dorothy Herrmann - 1998
Herrmann also chronicles Helen's doomed love affair, her struggles to earn a living, her triumphs at Radcliffe College, and her work as an advocate for the disabled. Helen Keller has been venerated as a saint or damned as a fraud, but Herrmann shows her to have been a beautiful, intelligent, high-strung, and passionate woman whose life was transformed not only by her disabilities but also by the remarkable people on whose help and friendship she relied."Fascinating. . . . Stripping away decades of well-meaning sentimentality, Herrmann presents a pair of strong-willed women, who struggled to build their own lives while never forgetting their dependence on each other."—Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor"We meet an entirely unexpected Helen Keller—a woman with deep if concealed ambivalence toward her self-sacrificing teacher; a political radical; and a woman longing for romantic love and the fulfilled sexual life of a woman."—Joan Mellen, Philadelphia Inquirer"Herrmann's portrait of Keller is both fully embodied and unflinchingly candid."—Mary Loeffelholz, Boston Sunday Globe"This well-proportioned biography of the deaf and blind girl who became a great American crusader rescues its subject from the shackles of sainthood without destroying her as an American hero."—Dennis Drabelle, Cleveland Plain Dealer"Herrmann's engrossing biography helps us see beyond the public's fascination with how Keller dealt with her disabilities to discover the woman Keller strived to be."—Nancy Seidman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution"Perhaps the most intimate biography [of Helen Keller]. [Herrmann] gives her back her sexuality [and] imbues her with a true humanity. . . . Helen Keller: A Life has some of the texture and the dramatic arc of a good novel."—Dinitia Smith, New York Times
Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
Juan Williams - 1998
This New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1998, is now in trade paper.From the bestselling author of Eyes on the Prize, here is the definitive biography of the great lawyer and Supreme Court justice.
Mama Flora's Family
Alex Haley - 1998
Mama Flora, born to poor sharecroppers in Tennessee, is forced to raise her children alone after the murder of her husband. But it will not be Willie, her son, who fulfills her ambitions, but Ruthana, the niece she raises as her own. Inspired by her love for the radical poet Ben, Ruthana seeks her soul in Africa even as Willie's son and daughter embrace Black Power and drugs in their embattled coming-of-age. Throughout all the seasons of their lives, it is Mama Flora who prevails, whose quiet determination and love bring them back, as she leads her own quest for justice in tumultuous times.From the Paperback edition.
Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery
Charles R. Johnson - 1998
A riveting narrative history of America, from the 1607 landing in Jamestown to the brink of the Civil War, Africans in America tells the shared history of Africans and Europeans as seen through the lens of slavery. It is told from the point of view of the Africans who arrived in shackles and endured the terrible dichotomy of this new land founded on the ideal of liberty but dedicated to the perpetuation of slavery. Meticulously researched, this book weaves together the experiences of the colonists, slaves, free and fugitive blacks, and abolitionists to present an utterly original document, a startling and moving drama of the effects of slavery and racism on our conflicted national identity. The result transcends history as we were taught it and transforms the way we see our past.
Lewis & Clark
Stephen E. Ambrose - 1998
Between each of the eight chapters is a visual essay of National Geographic photographer Sam Abell's modern images.
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
Ira Berlin - 1998
But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution. In telling their story, Ira Berlin, a leading historian of southern and African-American life, reintegrates slaves into the history of the American working class and into the tapestry of our nation.Laboring as field hands on tobacco and rice plantations, as skilled artisans in port cities, or soldiers along the frontier, generation after generation of African Americans struggled to create a world of their own in circumstances not of their own making. In a panoramic view that stretches from the North to the Chesapeake Bay and Carolina lowcountry to the Mississippi Valley, Many Thousands Gone reveals the diverse forms that slavery and freedom assumed before cotton was king. We witness the transformation that occurred as the first generations of creole slaves--who worked alongside their owners, free blacks, and indentured whites--gave way to the plantation generations, whose back-breaking labor was the sole engine of their society and whose physical and linguistic isolation sustained African traditions on American soil.As the nature of the slaves' labor changed with place and time, so did the relationship between slave and master, and between slave and society. In this fresh and vivid interpretation, Berlin demonstrates that the meaning of slavery and of race itself was continually renegotiated and redefined, as the nation lurched toward political and economic independence and grappled with the Enlightenment ideals that had inspired its birth.
Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West
Timothy Egan - 1998
In a unique blend of travel writing, historical reflection, and passionate polemic, Egan has produced a moving study of the West: how it became what it is, and where it is going.Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award
Battle Cry of Freedom, Vol 2: The Civil War Era
James M. McPherson - 1998
McPherson, professor emeritus of U.S. history at Princeton, is one of the foremost scholars of the Civil War. In this informative and meticulously researched masterpiece, he clarifies the differing ways of life and philosophy that led to this shattering conflict. Abraham Lincoln wondered whether "in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government." Jefferson Davis felt "forced to take up arms" to guarantee his states' rights. McPherson merges the words of these men and other political luminaries, housewives, and soldiers from both armies with his own concise analysis of the war to create a story as compelling as any novel. Battle Cry of Freedom vividly traces how a new nation was forged when a war both sides were sure would amount to little dragged for four years and cost more American lives than all other wars combined."... of the 50,000 books written on the Civil War, the finest compression of that national paroxysm ever fitted between two covers."-Los Angeles Times Book Review
South Carolina a History
Walter Edgar - 1998
He describes in very human terms 475 years of recorded history in the Palmetto State, including the experiences of all South Carolinians--those with roots in Africa and in Europe as well as Native Americans; male and female; rich and poor. In an eminently readable presentation, Edgar uses letters, diaries, and other writings to let voices from the past take part in telling the state's fascinating story.Recounting the period from the first Spanish exploration to the end of the Civil War, Edgar charts South Carolina's rising national and international prominence and its parallel economic ascendancy. He dispels myths about the state's early history--including the notion that the colony was inhabited by a homogeneous white population--and tells how South Carolina developed an agricultural economy that relied heavily on African American slave labor. Edgar examines, among other topics, the impact of the American revolution, Charleston's significance as a metropolis and major seaport, and the state's leadership in the Secession movement.With changes wrought by the Civil War, South Carolina slipped from national prominence into a period marked by economic, social, civil, and political strife. Edgar details the everyday life of blacks and whites during Reconstruction, the state's mixed efforts to join the New South, and Benjamin Ryan Tillman's rise to power. He also chronicles South Carolina's changing politics in the once-solid South, the state's reawakening after World War II, the casualties and victories of an extended civil rights struggle, and the Palmetto State's present economic, educational, and political challenges.
The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections
Tom Brokaw - 1998
it was my way of saying thank you. I was not prepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off by that book."I had written a book about America, and now America was writing back."Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1 bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those who gave the world so much -- and who left an enduring legacy of heroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out of the vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager to share their personal memories and experiences of a momentous time in America's history.These letters and reflections cross time, distance, and generations as they give voice to lives forever changed by war: eighty-year-old Clarence M. Graham, who recounts his harrowing experience as a soldier captured by the Japanese -- and provides a gripping eyewitness account of the dropping of the atomic bomb; Patricia Matthews Dorph, a soldier's daughter who shares the love letters her parents exchanged during the war, a lasting legacy of passion, devotion, and enduring love; Rabbi Judah Nadich, the first Jewish chaplain to serve in the war; Lorraine Davis, a civilian who helped form the Club of '44, a group of wartime wives who still meet today.From the front lines of battle to the back porches of beloved hometowns, The Greatest Generation Speaks brings to life the hopes and dreams of a generation who fought our most hard-won victories, and whose struggles and sacrifices made our future possible.
Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973
Stuart I. Rochester - 1998
James Bond StockdaleNominated for a Pulitzer PrizeHonor Bound, a collaborative effort researched and written over the course of more than a decade by historian Stuart Rochester and Air Force Academy professor and POW specialist Frederick Kiley, combines rigorous scholarly analysis with a moving narrative to record in unprecedented detail the triumphs and tragedies of the several hundred servicemen (and civilians) who fought their own special war in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia between 1961 and 1973.The authors address a gamut of subjects from the physical ordeal of torture and deprivation that required clarification of the Code of Conduct to the sometimes more onerous psychological challenges of indoctrination, adjustments to new routines and relationships, and mere coping and passing time under the most monotonous, inhospitable conditions. The volume weaves a winding trail through scores of prison camps, from large concrete compounds in the North to isolated jungle stockades in the South to mountain caves in Laos, while tracing political developments in Hanoi and Washington and the evolution of the “psywar” that placed the prisoners at the center of the conflict even as they were removed from the battlefield.From courageous resistance and ingenious methods of organization and communication to failed escapes and questionable conduct —“warts and all”— Honor Bound examines in depth the longest and perhaps most remarkable prisoner-of-war captivity in U.S. history.
The Century
Peter Jennings - 1998
Sharpe James, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, recalls the sense of excitement and possibility he felt when Jackie Robinson became the first black ballplayer in the major leagues. Gilles Ryan remembers what it was like to be a high-school student in Dayton, Tennessee, during the Scopes Trial. Connie Chang talks about emigrating to the United States from Korea and establishing a liquor store in Los Angeles, only to have it destroyed in the civil unrest. Comparisons to Harold Evans's The American Century are, perhaps, inevitable, but in addition to the emphasis on ordinary lives, The Century is further distinguished by the effective use of color photography (as well as several black-and-white shots). The book's sweeping narrative, shaped by Jennings and Brewster's comprehensive text, also flows a bit more smoothly than Evans's telegraphic prose; one can almost imagine Jennings reciting from these pages as he hosts the ABC/History Channel documentaries to which this book is a companion piece.
All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery
Henry Mayer - 1998
Mayer's consequential biography will be read for generations to come.
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press
Alexander Cockburn - 1998
Hitz told?the US Reps that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and?individuals the Agency knew to be involved in the drug business. Even more?astonishingly, Hitz revealed that back in 1982 the CIA had requested and?received from Reagan’s Justice Department clearance not to report any knowledge?it might have of drug-dealing by CIA assets. With these two admisstions, Hitz definitively sank decades of CIA denials,?many of them under oath to Congress. Hitz’s admissions also made fools of?some of the most prominent names in US journalism, and vindicated investigators?and critics of the Agency, ranging from Al McCoy to Senator John Kerry. The involvement of the CIA with drug traffickers is a story that has?slouched into the limelight every decade or so since the creation of the?Agency. Most recently, in 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published a sensational?series on the topic, “Dark Alliance”, and then helped destroy?its own reporter, Gary Webb. In Whiteout, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair?finally put the whole story together from the earliest days, when the CIA’s?institutional ancestors, the OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence, cut?a deal with America’s premier gangster and drug trafficker, Lucky Luciano. They show that many of even the most seemingly outlandish charges leveled?against the Agency have basis in truth. After the San Jose Mercury News?series, for example, outraged black communities charged that the CIA had?undertaken a program, stretching across many years, of experiments on minorities.?Cockburn and St. Clair show how the CIA imported Nazi scientists straight?from their labs at Dachau and Buchenwald and set them to work developing?chemical and biological weapons, tested on black Americans, some of them?in mental hospitals. Cockburn and St. Clair show how the CIA’s complicity with drug-dealing?criminal gangs was part and parcel of its attacks on labor organizers, whether?on the docks of New York, or of Marseilles and Shanghai. They trace how?the Cold War and counterinsurgency led to an alliance between the Agency?and the vilest of war criminals such as Klaus Barbie, or fanatic heroin?traders like the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Whiteout is a thrilling history that stretches from Sicily in 1944 to?the killing fields of South-East Asia, to CIA safe houses in Greenwich Village?and San Francisco where CIA men watched Agency-paid prostitutes feed LSD?to unsuspecting clients. We meet Oliver North as he plotted with Manuel?Noriega and Central American gangsters. We travel to little-known airports?in Costa Rica and Arkansas. We hear from drug pilots and accountants from?the Medillin Cocaine Cartel. We learn of DEA agents whose careers were ruined?because they tried to tell the truth. The CIA, drugs… and the press. Cockburn and St. Clair dissect the shameful?way many American journalists have not only turned a blind eye on the Agency’s?misdeeds, but helped plunge the knife into those who told the real story. Here at last is the full saga. Fact-packed and fast-paced, Whiteout is? a richly detailed excavation of the CIA’s dirtiest secrets. For all who ?want to know the truth about the Agency this is the book to start with.
Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment on the Simpson Saga
Peter Knobler - 1998
Simpson civil trial, he was one of the few people in America who had paid little attention to the Simpson criminal trial. His first inclination was to turn down the case. But as friends and clients urged him to accept, as he got to know not only the Goldmans but the facts of the case and the human tragedy lurking behind it, Petrocelli realized this was something he had to tackle head on.Never having tried a murder case, putting his firm's considerable reputation at risk, confronting a media swarm for which he was totally unprepared, and facing an overwhelming financial disadvantage, Petrocelli nonetheless went on a personal and increasingly passionate mission to bring about justice. Triumph of Justice is a chronicle of that mission. Petrocelli's insights, observations, and inside information not only show us how he convinced a jury to find O.J. Simpson liable for $33.5 million in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman--proving to the American people that their legal system does indeed work--he also makes the story a compelling and exciting legal read.Among the revelations detailed in these pages:Petrocelli's ten-day, no-holds-barred deposition of O.J. SimpsonWhat Petrocelli learned from the incendiary depositions and interviews of Kato Kaelin, Faye Resnick, Marcus Allen, A.C. Cowlings, and othersThe surprising realizations that emerged from a mock jury trial, which Petrocelli lostHis dramatic face-to-face courtroom confrontation with O.J. Simpson on the witness standWhat happened that night in BrentwoodPetrocelli also offers insight into the larger issues--of race, wealth, celebrity, and police competence--surrounding the case. He places the trial in its proper context and, in so doing, examines legal questions and issues about our justice system that affect and reflect upon every one of us.Triumph of Justice proves, conclusively, that O.J. Simpson told lie after lie and that he did indeed kill his ex-wife and an innocent man. It is the story you haven't heard about the trial you didn't see and is the closest, most in-depth look at an important murder case since Helter Skelter.
The Children's Book of America
William J. Bennett - 1998
Where did American come from? What does it mean to be an American? What makes America great? No volume will provide moer compelling and inspiring answers to our children's questions than William Bennett and Michael Hague's marvelous new treasury, The Children's Book of America.
The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of Fiction and Nonfiction on the War
Stewart O'Nan - 1998
Also included are incisive reader's questions--useful for educators and book clubs--in a volume that makes an essential contribution to a wider understanding of the Vietnam War.An indispensable and provocative read for anyone who wants to know more about the war that changed the face of late-twentieth-century America.
Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994
Deborah Gray White - 1998
Wells to Anita Hill. Although most prominently a history of the century-long struggle against racism and male chauvinism, Deborah Gray White also movingly illuminates black women's painful struggle to hold their racial and gender identities intact while feeling the inexorable pull of the agendas of white women and black men. Finally, it tells the larger and lamentable story of how Americans began this century measuring racial progress by the status of black women but gradually came to focus on the status of black men-the masculinization of America's racial consciousness. Writing with the same magisterial eye for historical detail as in her best-selling Ar'n't I a Woman, Deborah Gray White has given us a moving and definitive history of struggle and freedom. "Splendid . . . a broad and sweeping history that becomes an intensely personal experience for the reader. . . . An inspiring showcase of scholarship and sistership." - Nell Irvin Painter, Raleigh News & Observer
Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln
Douglas L. Wilson - 1998
But as Douglas L. Wilson shows us in Honor's Voice, Lincoln's transformation was not one long triumphal march, but a process that was more than once seriously derailed. There were times, in his journey from storekeeper and mill operator to lawyer and member of the Illinois state legislature, when Lincoln lost his nerve and self-confidence - on at least two occasions he became so despondent as to appear suicidal - and when his acute emotional vulnerabilities were exposed.Focusing on the crucial years between 1831 and 1842, Wilson's skillful analysis of the testimonies and writings of Lincoln's contemporaries reveals the individual behind the legends. We see Lincoln as a boy: not the dutiful son studying by firelight, but the stubborn rebel determined to make something of himself. We see him as a young man: not the ascendant statesman, but the canny local politician who was renowned for his talents in wrestling and storytelling (as well as for his extensive store of off-color jokes). Wilson also reconstructs Lincoln's frequently anguished personal life: his religious skepticism, recurrent bouts of depression, and difficult relationships with women - from Ann Rutledge to Mary Owens to Mary Todd.Meticulously researched and well written, this is a fascinating book that makes us reexamine our ideas about one of the icons of American history.From the Hardcover edition.
The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction
Akhil Reed Amar - 1998
Constitution in this incisive new account of our most basic charter of liberty. Akhil Reed Amar brilliantly illuminates in rich detail not simply the text, structure, and history of individual clauses of the 1789 Bill, but their intended relationships to each other and to other constitutional provisions. Amar’s corrective does not end there, however, for as his powerful narrative proves, a later generation of antislavery activists profoundly changed the meaning of the Bill in the Reconstruction era. With the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans underwent a new birth of freedom that transformed the old Bill of Rights. We have as a result a complex historical document originally designed to protect the people against self-interested government and revised by the Fourteenth Amendment to guard minority against majority. In our continuing battles over freedom of religion and expression, arms bearing, privacy, states’ rights, and popular sovereignty, Amar concludes, we must hearken to both the Founding Fathers who created the Bill and their sons and daughters who reconstructed it. Amar’s landmark work invites citizens to a deeper understanding of their Bill of Rights and will set the basic terms of debate about it for modern lawyers, jurists, and historians for years to come.
This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury (Annotated and Illustrated)
Loyd S. Swenson Jr. - 1998
When the Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958, it charged NASA with the responsibility "to contribute materially to . . . the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space" and "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." NASA wisely interpreted this mandate to include responsibility for documenting the epochal progress of which it is the focus. The result has been the development of a historical program by NASA as unprecedented as the task of extending man's mobility beyond his planet. This volume is not only NASA's accounting of its obligation to disseminate information to our current generation of Americans. It also fulfills, as do all of NASA's future-oriented scientific-technological activities, the further obligation to document the present as the heritage of the future. The wide-ranging NASA history program includes chronicles of day-to-day space activities; specialized studies of particular fields within space science and technology; accounts of NASA's efforts in organization and management, where its innovations, while less known to the public than its more spectacular space shots, have also been of great significance; narratives of the growth and expansion of the space centers throughout the country, which represent in microcosm many aspects of NASA's total effort; program histories, tracing the successes - and failures - of the various projects that mark man's progress into the Space Age; and a history of NASA itself, incorporating in general terms the major problems and challenges, and the responses thereto, of our entire civilian space effort. The volume presented here is a program history, the first in a series telling of NASA's pioneering steps into the Space Age. It deals with the first American manned-spaceflight program: Project Mercury. Although some academicians might protest that this is "official" history, it is official only in the fact that it has been prepared and published with the support and cooperation of NASA. It is not "official" history in the sense of presenting a point of view supposedly that of NASA officialdom - if anyone could determine what the "point of view" of such a complex organism might be. Certainly, the authors were allowed to pursue their task with the fullest freedom and in accordance with the highest scholarly standards of the history profession. They [vi] were permitted unrestricted access to source materials and participants. Furthermore, they have with humility and some courage attempted to document what emerges as a complex accounting of the purposes of science, technology, and public funding in a challenging new area of human endeavor. Some classical historians may deplore the short lapse of time between the actual events and the historical narration of them. Others may boggle at the mass of full documentary sources with which the Project Mercury historians have had to cope. There are offsetting advantages, however. The very freshness of the events and accessibility of their participants have made possible the writing of a most useful treatise of lasting historical value. Future historians may rewrite this history of Project Mercury for their own age, but they will indeed be thankful to their predecessors of the NASA historical program for providing them with the basic data as well as the view of what this pioneering venture in the Space Age meant to its participants and to contemporary historians. 558 pages and over 40 photos and illustrations. Hyperlinked contents for easy navigation. Includes a Project Mercury introduction and overview by John A. Greene.
Reporting Vietnam- Part Two: American Journalism 1969-1975
Milton J. Bates - 1998
military learned from Vietnam, it was: Never again. Never again let the media run around the theater of war, reporting whatever they wanted from wherever they wanted. It was a lesson the Pentagon acted on in the Gulf War, severely limiting media access. It was also a lesson hard learned.As was happening on college campuses, on concert stages, and at political rallies across the country, journalism underwent a revolution in the '60s and early '70s. Though led by patrician families that were firmly entrenched in the political and cultural elite of the nation, newspapers and magazines were being written by young reporters who came of age with Elvis, the Beatles, and the civil rights movement. All previous generations of journalists had accepted that an American war was a good war. The Vietnam press corps held no such belief.Reporting Vietnam collects the best writing and reportage from the war into two volumes of gripping, painful reading. Part one covers the war from 1959 to 1969 -- from the first American deaths to the bloody battle of Hamburger Hill. Along the way, reporters fan out to uncover the military blunders, the political minefields, and the cultural changes spreading from America to Vietnam: from the Tet Offensive to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, from a violent Christmas in Saigon to Black Power in the U.S. armed forces.Part two, covering 1969 through 1975, begins with My Lai and ends with the fall of Saigon and the evacuation of the U.S. embassy. This was the war at its most chaotic, its mostlawless, its most tragic. Concluding this volume, and summarizing the complete experience of reporting on Vietnam, is Michael Herr's Dispatches, a stunning book-length memoir of his experience of the war.The two volumes compile the works of the best and boldest writers who covered the war: David Halberstam, Russell Baker, Stanley Karnow, Peter Arnett, Walter Cronkite, Wallace Terry, Sydney Schanberg, Neil Sheehan, Gloria Emerson, Philip Caputo, and Michael Herr, to name just some of the more than 80 writers whose work appears in the collection.Reporting Vietnam is a valuable collection of primary-source narratives from reporters in the field. It is also a comprehensive document of the pain America went through in Vietnam. Greg Sewel, barnesandnoble.com
A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America
Darlene Clark Hine - 1998
At the greatest moments and in the cruelest times, black women have been a crucial part of America's history. Now, the inspiring history of black women in America is explored in vivid detail by two leaders in the fields of African American and women's history.A Shining Thread of Hope chronicles the lives of black women from indentured servitude in the early American colonies to the cruelty of antebellum plantations, from the reign of lynch law in the Jim Crow South to the triumphs of the Civil Rights era, and it illustrates how the story of black women in America is as much a tale of courage and hope as it is a history of struggle. On both an individual and a collective level, A Shining Thread of Hope reveals the strength and spirit of black women and brings their stories from the fringes of American history to a central position in our understanding of the forces and events that have shaped this country.
The American Century
Harold Evans - 1998
A riveting, panoramic sweep of the forces of the last century that shaped America. A book every family should have.--Colin Powell. 900 photos.
Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth
Beth Venn - 1998
This fully illustrated volume accompanies the first major exhibition to focus exclusively on Wyeth's exquisite landscape paintings, on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, from May 28 to August 30,1998. Organized by Adam D. Weinberg and Beth Venn, Permanent Collection curators at the Museum, both book and exhibition span Wyeth's entire career, from his formative years in the late 1930s to the present.Andrew Wyeth, born in 1917, became associated with the group of artists known as the American Scene painters, among them Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Reginald Marsh, and Edward Hopper. Rejecting the extremes of European modernism, and propelled by a nationwide impulse to create a modern idiom that expressed the uniqueness of contemporary American life, these artists worked in a variety of realist modes, largely inspired by pre-20th-century painting.Based on experience and close observation of his immediate environment, Wyeth began making paintings inspired by the landscape, architecture, and people in two locales: Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine. He developed a highly subjective art that still represents a distinctly American voice.Focusing on Wyeth as a painter rather than as a storyteller, Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth reveals the artist's love of painting as process and material, underscores his technical prowess, and examines the abstract modernist underpinnings of his landscape compositions. In the process of selecting the more than 125 works -- in watercolor, tempera, drybrush, and oil -- allbeautifully reproduced in color, Weinberg and Venn have uncovered a large number of previously unknown watercolors. These fluid, expressionistic works perfectly capture the intensity and emotionalism of Wyeth's painting over the last 60 years.Despite Wyeth's enormous appeal, there has been little critical or art historical consideration of his career during the past quarter century. Now, this book brings together essays by a new generation of curators who investigate Wyeth's work both within the tradition of landscape painting and from a broader art historical perspective. They also explore Wyeth's career as a whole, his relationship to other abstract and realist painters, discuss why he continues to be of great interest today, and how he fits into the greater context of 20th-century art.
The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms
Kai Bird - 1998
Kai Bird brilliantly captures this ambiguity in his revelatory look at Bundy and his brother William, two of the most influential policymakers of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It is a portrait of fiercely patriotic, brilliant and brazenly self-confident men who directed a steady escalation of a war they did not believe could be won. Bird draws on seven years of research, nearly one hundred interviews, and scores of still-classified top secret documents in a masterful reevaluation of America's actions throughout the Cold War and Vietnam.
Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy
David S. Cecelski - 1998
Frustrated by decades of African American self-assertion and threatened by an interracial coalition advocating democratic reforms, white conservatives used violence, demagoguery, and fraud to seize political power and disenfranchise black citizens. The most notorious episode of the campaign was the Wilmington race riot of 1898, which claimed the lives of many black residents and rolled back decades of progress for African Americans in the state.Published on the centennial of the Wilmington race riot, Democracy Betrayed draws together the best new scholarship on the events of 1898 and their aftermath. Contributors to this important book hope to draw public attention to the tragedy, to honor its victims, and to bring a clear and timely historical voice to the debate over its legacy.The contributors are David S. Cecelski, William H. Chafe, Laura F. Edwards, Raymond Gavins, Glenda E. Gilmore, John Haley, Michael Honey, Stephen Kantrowitz, H. Leon Prather Sr., Timothy B. Tyson, LeeAnn Whites, and Richard Yarborough.
A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America
Shelby Steele - 1998
In A Dream Deferred Shelby Steele argues that a second betrayal of black freedom in the United States--the first one being segregation--emerged from the civil rights era when the country was overtaken by a powerful impulse to redeem itself from racial shame. According to Steele, 1960s liberalism had as its first and all-consuming goal the expiation of America guilt rather than the careful development of true equality between the races. This "culture of preference" betrayed America's best principles in order to give whites and America institutions an iconography of racial virtue they could use against the stigma of racial shame. In four densely argued essays, Steele takes on the familiar questions of affirmative action, multiculturalism, diversity, Afro-centrism, group preferences, victimization--and what he deems to be the atavistic powers of race, ethnicity, and gender, the original causes of oppression. A Dream Deferred is an honest, courageous look at the perplexing dilemma of race and democracy in the United States--and what we might do to resolve it.
Why America Is Free: A History Of The Founding Of The American Republic, 1750 1800
Kenneth Earl Hamburger - 1998
Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold's French Collection and Other Story Quilts
Ann Gibson - 1998
Since the facts don't do that too often, I decided to make it up. . . . That is the real power and joy of being an artist. We can make it come true. Or look true."—Faith Ringgold, in a 1992 interviewThis catalog is the first book-length publication devoted to the exquisite story quilts of contemporary artist Faith Ringgold. Combining painted images, handwritten texts, and quilting techniques, Ringgold weaves together modernist painting; feminist critique; postmodernist strategies of appropriation, parody, and montage; and personal memoir in a remarkable synthesis that takes on European modernism, African American folk art, and the "black aesthetic" of the 1960s and 1970s. The catalog accompanies an exhibition of The French Collection and The American Collection, a series of story quilts Ringgold has produced since 1990. Catalog essays include an examination of Ringgold's stylistic development through the 1960s and 1970s, an exploration of the social and political aspects of the story quilts, and a recollection by the artist's daughter, writer Michele Wallace.Ringgold has adapted the tradition of the American slave quilt to create a world in which African Americans and women dominate, where history is not only questioned but also reinvented. The titles of the quilts in Ringgold's French Collection and American Collection suggest her subject range and daring: Jo Baker's Birthday Party; Dinner at Gertrude Stein's; A Portrait of Aunt Jemima; Tubman, Douglass, and Truth: Wanted Dead or Alive are examples. Faith Ringgold's broad audience of admirers (her books for children have won Caldecott and New York Times book illustration honors) will welcome Dancing at the Louvre. Finally there is a book that displays her artistic achievements and provides a full discussion of her importance within contemporary art.
John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty
C. Bradley Thompson - 1998
By the time he became our second president, no American had written more about our government and not even Jefferson or Madison had read as widely about questions of human nature, natural right, political organization, and constitutional construction. Yet this staunch constitutionalist is perceived by many as having become reactionary in his later years and his ideas have been largely disregarded.In the first major work on Adams's political thought in over thirty years, C. Bradley Thompson takes issue with the notion that Adams's thought is irrelevant to the development of American ideas. Focusing on Adams's major writings, Thompson elucidates and reevaluates his political and constitutional thought by interpreting it within the tradition of political philosophy stretching from Plato to Montesquieu.This major revisionist study shows that the distinction Adams drew between "principles of liberty" and "principles of political architecture" is central to his entire political philosophy. Thompson first chronicles Adams's conceptualization of moral and political liberty during his confrontation with American Loyalists and British imperial officers over the true nature of justice and the British Constitution, illuminating Adams's two most important pre-Revolutionary essays, "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" and "The Letters of Novanglus." He then presents Adams's debate with French philosophers over the best form of government and provides an extended analysis of his Defense of the Constitutions of Government and Discourses on Davila to demonstrate his theory of political architecture.From these pages emerges a new John Adams. In reexamining his political thought, Thompson reconstructs the contours and influences of Adams's mental universe, the ideas he challenged, the problems he considered central to constitution-making, and the methods of his reasoning. Skillfully blending history and political science, Thompson's work shows how the spirit of liberty animated Adams's life and reestablishes this forgotten Revolutionary as an independent and important thinker.
The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery, and Destructive Economics
Michael Rowbotham - 1998
It explodes more myths than any other book this century, yet it's all about subjects very close to home: mortgages, building societies and banks, agriculture, transport, global poverty, and what's on the supermarket shelf. The author proposes a new mechanism for the supply of money, creating a supportive financial environment and a decreasing reliance on debt.
The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II
John C. McManus - 1998
L. A.] Marshall asserted that only 15 to 25 percent of American soldiers ever fired their weapons in combat in World War II. . . .Shooting at the enemy made a man part of the “team,” or “brotherhood.” There were, of course, many times when soldiers did not want to shoot, such as at night when they did not want to give away a position or on reconnaissance patrols. But, in the main, no combat soldier in his right mind would have deliberately sought to go through the entire ear without ever firing his weapon, because he would have been excluded from the brotherhood but also because it would have been detrimental to his own survival. One of [rifle company commander Harold] Leinbaugh’s NCOs summed it up best when discussing Marshall: “Did the SOB think we clubbed the Germans to death?”
Diary of Martha Ballard, 1785-1812
Martha Ballard - 1998
No. 10. Transcribed by Robert R. McCausland and Cynthia MacAlman McCausland. Introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. 992 pp. 38,000 entry Every Name Index, plus added indexes of places and subjects and a medical glossary. 1998 (1992) Martha Ballard made almost ten thousand daily entries during her three decades as a midwife. She reported on all 814 deliveries she attended in the Kennebec River Valley towns of Hallowell, Augusta, and vicinity; on numerous marriages and deaths; on the multitude of daily joys and cares, gossip and crops, meetings with strangers and acquaintances; and the activities of her large extended family. This is one of the few 18th century diaries by an American woman, and one of the most interesting diaries ever. If you are interested in colonial Maine, in colonial women, in diaries in general, or in women's rights and activities in particular, this book is for you! The story of Martha Ballard has been chronicled on television through the PBS stations. If you have seen this movie, you will surely want to read the diary.
The Declaration of Independence/The Constitution of the United States
Pauline Maier - 1998
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration set forth the terms of a new form of government with the following words: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."Framed in 1787 and in effect since March 1789, the Constitution of the United States of America fulfilled the promise of the Declaration by establishing a republican form of government with separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791. Among the rights guaranteed by these amendments are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to trial by jury. Written so that it could be adapted to endure for years to come, the Constitution has been amended only seventeen times since 1791 and has lasted longer than any other written form of government.From the Paperback edition.
Spirit of the Cedar People
Chief Lelooska - 1998
He was as big as an island, with a huge twisted jaw and two bulging eyes strangely located on the same side of his head. This giant fish took control of the tides. He pushed the seawater in so high that the animal people could not dig for clams or shellfish." According to these Northwest Indian legends, some animals, such as the raven, had special powers, called dlugwee. This power can be acquired by small but worthy animals or taken from the undeserving. Therefore, it is no accident that these stories appeal so readily to youngsters. Children, who often struggle to find and hold their own power, easily identify with the moral lessons learned in the animal kingdom--finding themselves in the spirited puffins, the vulnerable mice, and sometimes even the terrifyingly angry bears. Like his first illustrated book of Northwest folktales, Echoes of the Elders, this gorgeous collection comes with a CD featuring the deep, soulful voice of Chief Lelooska as he tells each story aloud. (Ages 7 and older) --Gail Hudson
Just and Holy Principles: Latter-Day Saint Readings on America and the Constitution
Ralph C. Hancock - 1998
Text often used in Brigham Young University's American Heritage class.
Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality
Luana Ross - 1998
People from my reservation appeared to simply vanish and magically return. [As a child] I did not realize what a 'real' prison was and did not give it any thought. I imagined this as normal; that all families had relatives who went away and then returned."In this pathfinding study, Ross draws upon the life histories of imprisoned Native American women to demonstrate how race/ethnicity, gender, and class contribute to the criminalizing of various behaviors and subsequent incarceration rates. Drawing on the Native women's own words, she reveals the violence in their lives prior to incarceration, their respective responses to it, and how those responses affect their eventual criminalization and imprisonment. Comparisons with the experiences of white women in the same prison underline the significant role of race in determining women's experiences within the criminal justice system.
For This Land
Vine Deloria Jr. - 1998
Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant
Al Kaltman - 1998
Grant never sought fame of glory, nor did he try to tie his performance to personal reward. Instead, he concentrated on contribution and service. He looked upon being given increased responsibility not as increasing his power, but as increasing his ability to get the job done. "The great thing about Grant...is his perfect correctness and persistency of purpose." (Abraham Lincoln)In this masterful retelling of Grant's story, Al Kaltman draws on Grant's writings and life experiences to present a series of practical lessons on how to get superior performance from the troops.Going beyond mere "how-to's", Cigars, Whiskey & Winning deals with character traits, core beliefs, and fundamental values to reveal the secrets to becoming a winning leader that are as much about "who to be" as "what to do". And there isn't a chart, table, or checklist in sight-just a handy index of lessons for ready inspiration on demand.
Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake & Fire
Malcolm E. Barker - 1998
Dozens of first-hand accounts by people who endured the catastrophe. Stories of watching the quake approach and rip open the streets. Fighting the fire from inside the mint. Being trapped in the basement as City Hall collapsed.
The Greatest Generation
Tom Brokaw - 1998
There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with the American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced." In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today."At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world. They came home to joyous and short-lived celebrations and immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. A grateful nation made it possible for more of them to attend college than any society had ever educated, anywhere. They gave the world new science, literature, art, industry, and economic strength unparalleled in the long curve of history. As they now reach the twilight of their adventurous and productive lives, they remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. They have so many stories to tell, stories that in many cases they have never told before, because in a deep sense they didn't think that what they were doing was that special, because everyone else was doing it too. "This book, I hope, will in some small way pay tribute to those men and women who have given us the lives we have today--an American family portrait album of the greatest generation." In this book you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised. And so, Bush says, "I learned about life." You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war. You'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. And you'll meet the members of the Romeo Club (Retired Old Men Eating Out), friends for life. Through these and other stories in The Greatest Generation, you'll relive with ordinary men and women, military heroes, famous people of great achievement, and community leaders how these extraordinary times forged the values and provided the training that made a people and a nation great.From the Hardcover edition.
The Life of Daniel Boone
Lyman Copeland Draper - 1998
The definitive biography of America's foremost frontersman, with little-known information on Boone's family, long hunting, the fur trade, and the trans-Allegheny West."No collection of Americana should be without this long-missing volume." --Booklist
Playing Indian
Philip J. Deloria - 1998
At the Boston Tea Party, colonial rebels played Indian in order to claim an aboriginal American identity. In the nineteenth century, Indian fraternal orders allowed men to rethink the idea of revolution, consolidate national power, and write nationalist literary epics. By the twentieth century, playing Indian helped nervous city dwellers deal with modernist concerns about nature, authenticity, Cold War anxiety, and various forms of relativism. Deloria points out, however, that throughout American history the creative uses of Indianness have been interwoven with conquest and dispossession of the Indians. Indian play has thus been fraught with ambivalence—for white Americans who idealized and villainized the Indian, and for Indians who were both humiliated and empowered by these cultural exercises. Deloria suggests that imagining Indians has helped generations of white Americans define, mask, and evade paradoxes stemming from simultaneous construction and destruction of these native peoples. In the process, Americans have created powerful identities that have never been fully secure.
Liberty!: How the Revolutionary War Began
Lucille Recht Penner - 1998
They refused to buy English goods. They formed a militia of tradesmen and farmers ready to fight at a moment's notice. Most importantly, they joined together. All 13 colonies sent representatives to decide whether they should form a new country. That group wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document that summed up a revolution.
The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West
Valerie Kuletz - 1998
Now, another nuclear crisis looms over this region: the storage of tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste. Tainted Desert maps the nuclear landscapes of the US inter-desert southwest, a land sacrificed to the Cold-War arms race and nuclear energy policy.
Man Corn
Christy G. Turner II - 1998
Christy and Jacqueline Turner’s study of prehistoric violence, homicide, and cannibalism explodes the myth that the Anasazi and other Southwest Indians were simple, peaceful farmers. Using detailed osteological analyses and other lines of evidence the Turners show that warfare, violence, and their concomitant horrors were as common in the ancient Southwest as anywhere else in the world.The special feature of this massively documented study is its multi-regional assessment of episodic human bones assemblages (scattered floor deposits or charnel pits) by taphonomic analysis, which considers what happens to bones from the time of death to the time of recovery. During the past thirty years, the authors and other analysts have identified a minimal perimortem taphonomic signature of burning, pot polishing, anvil abrasions, bone breakage, cut marks, and missing vertebrae that closely match the signatures of animal butchering and is frequently associated with additional evidence of violence. More than seventy-five archaeological sited containing several hundred individuals are carefully examined for the cannibalism signature. Because this signature has not been reported for any sites north of Mexico, other than those in the Southwest, the authors also present detailed comparisons with Mesoamerican skeletal collections where human sacrifice and cannibalism were known to have been practiced. The authors review several hypotheses for Southwest cannibalism: starvation, social pathology, and institutionalized violence and cannibalism. In the latter case, they present evidence for a potential Mexican connection and demonstrate that most of the known cannibalized series are located temporally and spatially near Chaco great houses.
The Farfarers: Before the Norse
Farley Mowat - 1998
1000? Farley Mowat advances a controversial new theory about the first visitors to North America.Mowat's Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America (1965) was highly influential in helping to establish the belief, now commonly held, that the Norse visited North America some 500 years before Columbus. And yet "a worm of unease" plagued Mowat even then, a vague feeling that he hadn't gotten it quite right. He spent the next 30 years in search of a theory that would explain inconsistencies in the archaeological evidence (such as carbon-dated ruins not left by the Inuit, but that predated the arrival of Vikings in Newfoundland by hundreds of years). Now in The Farfarers he asserts that another Indo-European people he calls the "Alban" preceded the Norse by several centuries.Throughout The Farfarers, Mowat skillfully weaves fictional vignettes of Alban life into his thoughtful reconstruction of a forgotten history. What emerges is a bold and dramatic panorama of a harsher age: an age of death-dealing warships and scanty food supply, of long, cold journeys across the night sea into unknown lands."A spellbinding story . . . told by a master storyteller at the top of his form."—The Globe and Mail"The book is a fascinating glimpse of yesteryear and offers brief histories on the Celts, Saxons, Vikings, Inuits, and other peoples of the northern hemisphere. Written in vigorous, picturesque prose."—The Edmonton Sun
African-American Philosophers: 17 Conversations
George Yancy - 1998
African-American Philosophers brings into conversation seventeen of the foremost thinkers of color to discuss issues such as Black existentialism, racism, Black women philosophers within the academy, affirmative action and the conceptual parameters of African-American philosophy.
Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gerald Posner - 1998
Now, based on explosive new interviews, confidential files, and previously undisclosed evidence, bestselling author Gerald Posner finally resolves the simple truth of the last great political murder mystery of the 1960s, definitively proving that Ray acted alone. Beginning with a straightforward narrative of the events before, during, and after the shooting, Posner untangles the case's leading puzzles: Was there a mysterious person named Raoul who directed Ray in the year leading up to the murder? Were the FBI, the CIA, or an arm of the Mafia involved? Did the military have a covert team of snipers in Memphis on the day King died? Was James Earl Ray a patsy, as the King family has publicly declared? At the heart of this book is an in-depth profile of Ray himself, a fascinating profile of a career criminal from one of the most forsaken parts of poor white America. Posner re-creates the memorable dramas of the case: Dr. King's rousing "mountaintop" speech the night before his death; the chilling moments of the assassination; Ray's frantic flight across four countries as he tried to escape justice; and the shock of the King family's embrace of Ray just before his own death in jail. A riveting search for justice, Killing the Dream finally thwarts James Earl Ray's efforts to take his secrets to the grave, and proves the identity of King's killer beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II
Stephen E. Ambrose - 1998
Ambrose, comes the definitive telling of the war in Europe, from D-Day, June 6, 1944, to the end, eleven months later, on May 7, 1945.This authoritative narrative account is drawn by the author himself from his five acclaimed books about that conflict, most particularly from the definitive and comprehensive D-Day and Citizen Soldiers, about which the great Civil War historian James McPherson wrote, “If there is a better book about the experience of GIs who fought in Europe during World War II, I have not read it. Citizen Soldiers captures the fear and exhilaration of combat, the hunger and cold and filth of the foxholes, the small intense world of the individual rifleman as well as the big picture of the European theater in a manner that grips the reader and will not let him go. No one who has not been there can understand what combat is like but Stephen Ambrose brings us closer to an understanding than any other historian has done.” The Victors also includes stories of individual battles, raids, acts of courage and suffering from Pegasus Bridge, an account of the first engagement of D-Day, when a detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion; and from Band of Brothers, an account of an American rifle company from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment who fought, died, and conquered, from Utah Beach through the Bulge and on to Hitter's Eagle’s Nest in Germany. Stephen Ambrose is also the author of Eisenhower, the greatest work on Dwight Eisenhower, and one of the editors of the Supreme Allied Commander's papers. He describes the momentous decisions about how and where the war was fought, and about the strategies and conduct of the generals and officers who led the invasion and the bloody drive across Europe to Berlin. But, as always with Stephen E. Ambrose, it is the ranks, the ordinary boys and men, who command his attention and his awe. The Victors tells their stories, how citizens became soldiers in the best army in the world. Ambrose draws on thousands of interviews and oral histories from government and private archives, from the high command—Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton—on down through officers and enlisted men, to re-create the last year of the Second World War when the Allied soldiers pushed the Germans out of France, chased them across Germany, and destroyed the Nazi regime.
Alone on Guadalcanal: A Coastwatcher's Story
Martin Clemens - 1998
A remarkable memoir by the near-mythic coastwatcher who helped shape the first great Allied counter-offensive in the Pacific war.
Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young
Ronald W. Walker - 1998
William S. Godbe and his associates revolted because they disliked Young's authoritarian community and resented what they perceived as the church's intrusion into matters of personal choice. Expelled from the church, they established the "New Movement," which eventually faltered. Both a study in intellectual history and an investigation of religious dissent, Wayward Saints explores nineteenth-century American spiritualism as well as the ideas and institutional structure of first- and second-generation Mormonism.
Ancient Hawai'i
Herb Kawainui Kane - 1998
Herb Kane's fantastically detailed, colorful paintings grace nearly every page. Sections on navigators, chiefs, kahuna, mana, makahiki, warfare, commoners, kapa, performing arts, games, food, planting, tools, etc.
Florences Glassware Pattern Identification Guide
Gene Florence - 1998
This book includes every pattern featured in his "Collector's Encyclopedia of Depression Glass, Collectible Glassware from the 40s, 50s, and 60s" and "Collector's Encyclopedia of Elegant Glassware", as well as many more--nearly 400 patterns in all. With every pattern, Florence provides the names, the company which made the glass, dates of production, colors available, and photos.
Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox
J. Tracy Power - 1998
Based on research in more than 1,200 wartime letters and diaries by more than 400 Confederate officers and enlisted men, this book offers a compelling social history of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during its final year, from May 1864 to April 1865. Organized in a chronological framework, the book uses the words of the soldiers themselves to provide a view of the army's experiences in camp, on the march, in combat, and under siege--from the battles in the Wilderness to the final retreat to Appomattox. It sheds new light on such questions as the state of morale in the army, the causes of desertion, ties between the army and the home front, the debate over arming black men in the Confederacy, and the causes of Confederate defeat. Remarkablyrich and detailed, Lee's Miserables offers a fresh look at one of the most-studied Civil War armies. A landmark book. . . . When the end came, the men of the Army of Northern Virginia passed into legend. Power's important study brings a large measure of reality back to their story.--Edward D. C. Campbell, Jr., American HistoryPower's research is voluminous and his conclusions sensible and thought-provoking. The result is a major and welcome addition to the literature of how armies are made and how they die.--Steven E. Woodworth, Blue & Gray Education Society NewsletterA classic Civil War study--immensely useful to the historian, vigorous and enlightening to the common reader. It is a glimpse into the American soul: what is best and worst about us, our riches and griefs, discontents, yearnings, murderous urges, and abiding faith.--Donald McCaig, Washington Post Book WorldOne of the finest works ever written on the Army of Northern Virginia.--Keith Bohannon, Civil War HistoryBased on research in more than 1,200 wartime letters and diaries by more than 400 Confederate officers and enlisted men, Lee's Miserables offers a compelling social history of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during its final year, from May 1864 to April 1865. The book uses the words of the soldiers themselves to provide a richly detailed view of the army's experiences in camp, on the march, in combat, and under siege--from the battles in the Wilderness to the final retreat to Appomattox.
The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America
Daniel Belgrad - 1998
Daniel Belgrad shows how a startling variety of artistic movements actually had one unifying theme: spontaneous improvisation."A compelling narrative, putting living flesh on shorthand intuitions that connect North Beach to Black Mountain College, Fenollosa to Pollock, Jackson Lears's No Place of Grace to Todd Gitlin's The Sixties."—Joel Smith, Boston Review"An invaluable introduction to postwar modernism across the arts."—Thomas Augst, Boston Book Review"Belgrad's extensive probing of the artists and movements with their profound sociological roots is timely as well as comprehensive....A major contribution for serious scholars."—Choice
Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896
David L. Bigler - 1998
This volume tells of the Mormon church leaders' struggle to establish in Utah an independent, theocratic Kingdom of God.
Slaves in the Family
Edward Ball - 1998
It is an unprecedented family record that reveals how the painful legacy of slavery continues to endure in America's collective memory and experience. Ball, a descendant of one of the largest slave-owning families in the South, discovered that his ancestors owned 25 plantations, worked by nearly 4,000 slaves. Through meticulous research and by interviewing scattered relatives, Ball contacted some 100,000 African-Americans who are all descendants of Ball slaves. In intimate conversations with them, he garnered information, hard words, and devastating family stories of precisely what it means to be enslaved. He found that the family plantation owners were far from benevolent patriarchs; instead there is a dark history of exploitation, interbreeding, and extreme violence.
The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey to the Nobel Peace Prize
Douglas Brinkley - 1998
Outside the Oval Office, with a commitment rarely seen in an ex-president, he was more determined than ever to complete his life's mission: the achievement of world peace.With unique access to the Carter archives and to the man himself, award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley brings us this unprecedented biography of the former President. Here are penetrating observations of Carter's complex relationships with such world figures as Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, and Yasir Arafat, as well as his associations with the presidents who have succeeded him. Brinkley also reassesses the achievements of Carter's underrated White House tenure -- the Camp David accords, Panama Canal treaties, and his championing of human rights. The Unfinished Presidency is the definitive portrait of this formidable world statesman.
Amelia Earhart's Daughters: The Wild And Glorious Story Of American Women Aviators From World War II To The Dawn Of The Space Age
Leslie Haynsworth - 1998
Army Air Force enlisted a handful of skilled female aviators to deliver military planes from factories to air bases--expanding the successful program to include more than one thousand women. These superb pilots flew every aircraft in the U.S. Army Air Force--including B-26s when men were afraid to--logging more than siz million miles in all kinds of weather. yet when World War II ended, their wartime heroism was left unheralded.In 1961, with the dawn of the space age, a handful of top female pilots took part in a new program termed "Women in Space." Subjected to the same rigorous tests as the Mercury astronauts, thirteen women--top-notch pilots--were admitted to the program. Once again women had reason to dream...that at least oneof them would be the first of their sex in space. The matter went as far as Congress, where dramatic hearings included testimony from astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. But their hopes were dashed. These skilled aviators had the "right stuff" at the wrong time, and again women were denied their place in history. This is their story, one of courage, ferocity, adn patriotism.
Flight of the Forgotten - A True Story of Heroism and Betrayal
Mark Vance - 1998
It is intriguing, controversial and thought-provoking. The story traverses 50 years, two generations and the realities of our physical world.The triggering event is the tragic loss of an American Eighth Air Force bomber crew in 1945 under mysterious circumstances while enroute home after the end of World War II.The loss represents a 50-year-old aviation mystery, officially "forgotten" by the United States Government. Details described and amplified within the story remain permanently "buried" inside a top-secret O.S.S. file to this day. This book is a public counter to official efforts by the United States Government to have the events permanently erased from the public record. The author's extensive research indicates that those events involve murder, conspiracy and sabotage by the O.S.S., the forerunner to the modern CIA.
The New Encyclopedia of the American West
Howard R. Lamar - 1998
In addition, the West encompasses not only the past and present of the area west of the Mississippi but also the frontier as it moved across each of the fifty American states, offering the promise of freedom and a better life to pioneers and settlers in every era. This authoritative, comprehensive, and lavishly illustrated single-volume encyclopedia is a rich source of information about these many American West, real and imaginary, old and new, stretching from coast to coast and throughout the country’s history and culture.The encyclopedia, a thoroughly revised and expanded version of Howard Lamar’s acclaimed twenty-year-old Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West, consists of more than 2,400 entries in alphabetical order by more than 300 contributors, along with over 600 illustrations and maps (four times more than in the original edition). The book includes articles by such authorities as Leonard J. Arrington on Mormonism, Anne Butler on prisons and prostitutes, John Mack Faragher on the fur trade, California, and television and radio westerns, Martha Sandweiss on photography, and Ron Tyler on western prints. Among the other topics covered are:the formative period of each state;the diplomacy of American expansion;important discoverers and mountain men;major Native American tribes, their leaders, and culture;pivotal women such as Sacagawea, Annie Oakley, and Willa Cather;African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans on the western frontier;novelists, artists, and filmmakers and the real and fictional people they turned into mythic heroes or villains;politicians from Benjamin Franklin to Ronald Reagan;major cities and landmarks;and conservation and wildlife issues.The West continues to be a symbol of both America’s frontier past and its troubled future. This book is an indispensable introduction to its endlessly fascinating story.
Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975
Thomas W. Hanchett - 1998
In this book, Thomas Hanchett traces the city's spatial evolution over the course of a century, exploring the interplay of national trends and local forces that shaped Charlotte, and, by extension, other New South urban centers.Hanchett argues that racial and economic segregation are not age-old givens, but products of a decades-long process. Well after the Civil War, Charlotte's whites and blacks, workers and business owners, all lived intermingled in a salt-and-pepper pattern. The rise of large manufacturing enterprises in the 1880s and 1890s brought social and political upheaval, however, and the city began to sort out into a checkerboard of distinct neighborhoods segregated by both race and class. When urban renewal and other federal funds became available in the mid- twentieth century, local leaders used the money to complete the sorting out process, creating a sector pattern in which wealthy whites increasingly lived on one side of town and blacks on the other.
Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier's Life
Donald C. Pfanz - 1998
For four months Ewell was Stonewall Jackson's most trusted subordinate; when Jackson died, Ewell took command of the Second Corps, leading it at Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. In this biography, Donald Pfanz presents the most detailed portrait yet of the man sometimes referred to as Stonewall Jackson's right arm. Drawing on a rich array of previously untapped original source materials, Pfanz concludes that Ewell was a highly competent general, whose successes on the battlefield far outweighed his failures. But Pfanz's book is more than a military biography. It also examines Ewell's life before and after the Civil War, including his years at West Point, his service in the Mexican War, his experiences as a dragoon officer in Arizona and New Mexico, and his postwar career as a planter in Mississippi and Tennessee. In all, Pfanz offers an exceptionally detailed portrait of one of the South's most important leaders.General Richard Stoddert Ewell holds a unique place in the history of the Army of Northern Virginia. For four months Ewell was Stonewall Jackson's most trusted subordinate; when Jackson died, Ewell took command of the Second Corps, leading it at Gettysburg, the Wilderness Campaign, and Spotsylvania Court House. By the end of the war he was in charge of the defense of Richmond. With this book, Donald Pfanz provides more than just a military biography. He also examines Ewell's life before and after the Civil War, offering an exceptionally detailed portrait of one of the South's most important leaders.
American Heritage History of the United States
Douglas Brinkley - 1998
This is a first-rate book: fair, clear, and enormously welcome." - David McCullough "Douglas Brinkley's one-volume history is a riveting narrative of unique people who have come to call themselves American. There is no dust on these pages as the author brilliantly tells our national story with skill and brevity." In this rich and inspiring book, acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley takes us on the incredible journey of the United States - a nation formed from a vast countryside on whose fringes thirteen small British colonies fought for their freedom, then established a democratic nation that spanned the continent, and went on to become a world power. This book will be treasured by anyone interested in the story of America.
Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane
Linda Davis - 1998
His most famous work, THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, is a classic antiwar novel. Yet Crane longed for military honors of his own and pursued a career as a war correspondent that took him to battlefields in Greece and Cuba.
The D.L. Moody Collection: The Highlights of His Writings, Sermons, Anecdotes, and Life Story
James Stuart Bell - 1998
Experience the life and ministry of Moody, a man fully surrendered to God.
For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health
Jacob Sullum - 1998
In For Your Own Good, award-winning journalist Jacob Sullum argues that such a view conceals the true nature of the crusade for a smoke-free society. As Sullum demonstrates, this struggle is not about the behavior of corporations; it's about the behavior of individuals. It is an attempt by one group of people to impose their tastes and preferences on another. For Your Own Good shows that long before Philip Morris or R. J. Reynolds existed, tobacco's opponents condemned smoking as disgusting, immoral, addictive, unhealthy, and inconsiderate. In recent decades, they have used scientific evidence that smoking is hazardous to enlist the state in their crusade, arguing that the government has an obligation to discourage behavior that might lead to disease or injury. Given this country's tradition of limited government, however, Americans tend to be skeptical of this argument. Sullum justifies their misgivings, noting that achieving a "smoke-free society" in a nation where tens of millions choose to smoke is necessarily an exercise in tyranny. It therefore comes as no surprise that tobacco's opponents resort to censorship, punitive taxes, violations of property rights, and other coercive tactics. Sullum argues that such uses of state power are illegitimate and dangerous, threatening the freedom of anyone who dares to trade longevity for pleasure.In response to this charge, tobacco's opponents have offered various rationales designed to overcome suspicions of paternalism. They have portrayed tobacco advertising as an insidious force that seduces people into acting against their interests. They have said that smoking imposes costs on society that need to be recouped through special taxes. They have claimed that secondhand smoke poses a grave threat to bystanders, so smoking should be confined to the home. They have accused the tobacco companies of hiding the truth about the hazards and addictiveness of smoking, preventing their customers from making informed decisions. They have described nicotine addiction as a compulsive and possibly contagious illness, fitting nicely with the public health mission to control disease. Often these arguments are combined with appeals to protect children, as when former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler called smoking "a pediatric disease."Sullum refutes each of these claims and shows that the anti-smoking crusade in fact rests on two complementary beliefs: that the government should stamp out the use of hazardous drugs and that it should deter activities that impair "the public health." He argues that the dangerous implications of these ideas extend far beyond tobacco.
Florida's Hurricane History
Jay Barnes - 1998
Vulnerable to storms that arise in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, Florida has been hit by far more hurricanes than any other state. In many ways, hurricanes have helped shape Florida's history. Early efforts by the French, Spanish, and English to claim the territory as their own were often thwarted by hurricanes. More recently, storms have affected such massive projects as Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad and efforts to manage water in South Florida. In this book, Jay Barnes offers a fascinating and informative look at Florida's hurricane history. Drawing on meteorological research, news reports, first-person accounts, maps, and historical photographs, he traces all of the notable hurricanes that have affected the state over the last four-and-a-half centuries, from the great storms of the early colonial period to the devastating hurricanes of 2004 and 2005--Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Dennis, Katrina, and Wilma. In addition to providing a comprehensive chronology of more than one hundred individual storms, Florida's Hurricane History includes information on the basics of hurricane dynamics, formation, naming, and forecasting. It explores the origins of the U.S. Weather Bureau and government efforts to study and track hurricanes in Florida, home of the National Hurricane Center. But the book does more than examine how hurricanes have shaped Florida's past; it also looks toward the future, discussing the serious threat that hurricanes continue to pose to both lives and property in the state. Filled with more than 200 photographs and maps, the book also features a foreword by Steve Lyons, tropical weather expert for the Weather Channel. It will serve as both an essential reference on hurricanes in Florida and a remarkable source of the stories--of tragedy and destruction, rescue and survival--that foster our fascination with these powerful storms.Vulnerable to storms that arise in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, Florida has been hit by far more hurricanes than any other state. In this updated edition of Florida's Hurricane History, Jay Barnes draws on meteorological research, news reports, first-person accounts, maps, and historical photographs to trace all of the notable hurricanes that have affected the state over the last four-and-a-half centuries, from the early colonial period to the devastating hurricanes of 2004 and 2005--Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Dennis, Katrina, and Wilma. Illustrated with more than 200 photographs and maps, the book is filled with fascinating stories of tragedy and survival.
Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima
M.M. Manring - 1998
In the early twentieth century, the mammy became immortalized as Aunt Jemima, the spokesperson for a line of ready-mixed breakfast products. Although Aunt Jemima has undergone many makeovers over the years, she apparently has not lost her commercial appeal; her face graces more than forty food products nationwide and she still resonates in some form for millions of Americans.In Slave in a Box, M.M. Manring addresses the vexing question of why the troubling figure of Aunt Jemima has endured in American culture. Manring traces the evolution of the mammy from her roots in the Old South slave reality and mythology, through reinterpretations during Reconstruction and in minstrel shows and turn-of-the-century advertisements, to Aunt Jemima's symbolic role in the Civil Rights movement and her present incarnation as a "working grandmother." We learn how advertising entrepreneur James Webb Young, aided by celebrated illustrator N.C. Wyeth, skillfully tapped into nostalgic 1920s perceptions of the South as a culture of white leisure and black labor. Aunt Jemima's ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a "slave in a box" that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.The initial success of the Aunt Jemima brand, Manring reveals, was based on a variety of factors, from lingering attempts to reunite the country after the Civil War to marketing strategies around World War I. Her continued appeal in the late twentieth century is a more complex and disturbing phenomenon we may never fully understand. Manring suggests that by documenting Aunt Jemima's fascinating evolution, however, we can learn important lessons about our collective cultural identity.
National Geographic Eyewitness to the 20th Century
National Geographic Society - 1998
Organized conveniently by decade, each section begins by highlighting a prevailing issue of the day--America and Big Business, Women's Suffrage, the 1924 Immigrations Restriction Act, the Great Depression, the Atomic Age, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, the Explosion of Mass Culture, the Rise of Conservatism, and the End of the Cold War. The 20th century brought forth the most dramatic advances ever made in a single century. No one tells it better than National Geographic Society.
Making Sense of the Molly Maguires
Kevin Kenny - 1998
Ever since, there has been enormous disagreement over who the Molly Maguires were, what they did, and why they did it, as virtually everything we now know about the Molly Maguires is based on the hostile descriptions of their contemporaries.Arguing that such sources are inadequate to serve as the basis for a factual narrative, author Kevin Kenny examines the ideology behind contemporary evidence to explain how and why a particular meaning came to be associated with the Molly Maguires in Ireland and Pennsylvania. At the same time, this work examines new archival evidence from Ireland that establishes that the American Molly Maguires were a rare transatlantic strand of the violent protest endemic in the Irish countryside.Combining social and cultural history, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires offers a new explanation of who the Molly Maguires were, as well as why people wrote and believed such curious things about them. In the process, it vividly retells one of the classic stories of American labor and immigration.
Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867-1944
Adrienne Fried Block - 1998
Her Gaelic Symphony, given its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first work of its kind by an American woman to be performed by an American orchestra. Almost all of her more than 300 works were published soon after they were composed and performed, and today her music is finding new advocates and audiences for its energy, intensity, and sheer beauty. Yet, until now, no full-length critical biography of Beach's life or comprehensive critical overview of her music existed. This biography admirably fills that gap, fully examining the connections between Beach's life and work in light of social currents and dominant ideologies.Born into a musical family in Victorian times, Amy Beach started composing as a child of four and was equally gifted as a pianist. Her talent was recognized early by Boston's leading musicians, who gave her unqualified support. Although Beach believed that the life of a professional musician was the only life for her, her parents had raised her for marriage and a career of amateur music-making. Her response to this parental (and later spousal) opposition was to find creative ways of reaching her goal without direct confrontation. Discouraged from a full-scale concert career, she instead found her m�tier in composition.Success as a composer of art songs came early for Beach: indeed, her songs outsold those of her contemporaries. Nevertheless, she was determined to separate her work from the genteel parlor music women were writing in her day by creating large-scale works--a Mass, a symphony, and chamber music--that challenged the accepted notion that women were incapable of creating high art. She won the respect of colleagues and the allegiance of audiences. Many who praised her work, however, considered her an exception among women. Beach's reaction to this was to join with other women composers of serious music by promoting their works along with her own.Adrienne Fried Block has written a biography that takes full account of issues of gender and musical modernism, considering Beach in the contexts of her time and of her composer contemporaries, both male and female. Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian will be of great interest to students and scholars of American music, and to music lovers in general.
Great Deception
Mark Curtis - 1998
Focusing on three major areas - the UN, development and the Middle East - he details the extent to which Britain and the US, to different degrees, share considerable responsibility for human rights abuse, poverty and insecurity in the Third World. Curtis frames an understanding of British and US foreign policies in the 1990s by tracing the development of those policies since the end of World War II, demonstrating that the priorities have remained virtually unchanged over the last 50 years, particularly in terms of military and economic policy. The US, with Britain clinging at times unceremoniously to its coat-tails, has systematically manipulated the international foreign policy agenda in its own interests. By blocking UK intitiatives, impoverishing and destabilizing Third World countries under the guise of development and democratization, and protecting corrupt client regimes it has acted to ensure its own continued access to strategically important resources - particularly oil.
Plantation Row Slave Cabin Cooking: The Roots of Soul Food
Patricia B. Mitchell - 1998
Published 1998. 23 recipes, 109 research notes, 12,747 words. This eBook file correlates to the twentieth printing, September 2010.In "Plantation Row Slave Cabin Cooking" Patricia B. Mitchell explores the topic of slave food on Southern plantations. She also touches on the overall lifestyle of slaves, briefly discussing housing, amusements, religion, and clothing.The superior talent of black cooks is lauded. Whether making humble dishes in the slave cabin, or elegant fare for the mansion table, dark-skinned cooks welded the “kitchen scepter” with skill and creativity. Recipes for such fare as “Hog Maw Salad,” “Limping Susan,” “Plantation Shortcake,” and “Molasses Taffy” pepper the book. — “De eats wuz good…” as Aron Carter remembered. Such “eats” are “The Roots of Soul Food.”109 endnotes will assist those who wish to learn more about the subject, and the first-person accounts in the text will be remembered and even read out loud to others. Created as a resource for museums, Plantation Row Slave Cabin Cooking is a follow-up to the author's earlier popular book Soul on Rice: African Influences on American Cooking.
Samuel Adams: The Father of American Independence
Dennis Brindell Fradin - 1998
The man who would later be called the Father of the American Revolution, however, worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve the goal of American independence, uniting his genius for words and his passion for politics to urge countless numbers toward revolution. In this insightful biography, Dennis Brindell Fradin traces Adams's life from boyhood to his two terms as one of Massachusetts's most senior senators, for a thoughtful and dramatic account of the pioneer whose indomitable spirit shaped the national character of what would become the United States. Author's note, bibliography, index.
The Irish Brigade in the Civil War: The 69th New York and Other Irish Regiments of the Army of the Potomac
Joseph G. Bilby - 1998
Despite its distinguished record and key role in the war, no detailed history of the brigade has been written in 130 years. Made up largely of New York Irishmen, the Brigade made a decisive contribution to the Union victory at Antietam, suffered fearfully in a gallant charge at Fredericksburg, and made a famous stand in the Wheatfield on the second day at Gettysburg, as depicted in the recent film. The full co-operation of the present-day 69th New York National Guard helped make possible the compilation of this detailed account, which includes 13 period maps and 270 illustrations, many of them rare photos from private collections. The original hardcover limited edition of Bilby's book quickly sold out to re-enactors, veteran and active members of the 69th Regiment, and hard-core Civil War collectors; the Combined Publishing trade paperback is the first edition made available directly to the general public. Joseph G. Bilby is a popular columnist for the Civil War News and a veteran of the current 69th Regiment. He is also the author of Civil War Firearms.
When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870
William J. Ryczek - 1998
Their newfound interest in the sport, combined with the postwar economic boom and the resultant growth of many cities, took the game from one practiced by a few amateur clubs in New York City before the war to a professional sport covering almost the entire northeastern United States. Researched from primary sources, the game of the late 1860s is described season-by-season: the fields, the crowds, the strategy, the rules, the style of play, and the confusing struggles to crown a national champion, with all the chicanery and machinations of the contenders. Such landmark events as the Washington Nationals pioneering 1867 tour and the Cincinnati Red Stockings undefeated 1869 season are covered.
Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905-1941
Dwight D. Eisenhower - 1998
It covers his duties in Western Europe with the American Battle Monuments Commission, his assignment to the office of the Assistant Secretary of War, his service in the War Department with Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and his role as Assistant Military Advisor to the American Mission to the Philippines under General MacArthur. The five diaries, personal and family letters, official military correspondence, speeches, published writings, and reports that constitute this volume offer the most compelling evidence yet of the impressive range of Eisenhower's experiences between the wars.
The New York Public Library Amazing Women in American History: A Book of Answers for Kids
New York Public Library - 1998
Anthony's fight for voting rights. Follow Sandra DayO'Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court and Sally Ride into space. Findthe answers to your questions about the amazing women in Americanhistory...Who were the Daughters of Liberty? See page 19.Who was the first woman to run for president? See page 79.Who were early leaders of the women's movement? See page 38.Who was Sojourner Truth, and how did she get her name? See page32.What were flappers? See page 115.Who was Mother Jones? See page 107.How did the National Organization for Women (NOW) begin? See page138.What is The Feminine Mystique, and why is it so significant? Seepage 139.Also in this series . . . * The New York Public Library Incredible Earth * The New York Public Library Amazing Space * The New York Public Library Amazing African American History
Savage Whisper
Earl Murray - 1998
With a few supplies and no friends, Wells is forced to work with his uncle, a hired bushwhacker, who burns out competing traders for "The Company."Their first raid is foiled by Eagle's Shadow Woman, whose power as a warrior is feared and respected by all Indians in the region. Wells escapes with his life, but he cannot forget the beauty and ferocity of the woman who almost killed him--or figure out a way to see her again.
Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing
Ved Mehta - 1998
Shawn's New Yorker, Mr. Mehta gives us the closest, most careful, and most refined description that has yet been written of Shawn's editorship of the magazine. He portrays in detail the peculiar, nurturing atmosphere at the New Yorker. And he recounts the series of tremors that shook the magazine in the last years of Shawn's editorship and ended in his dismissal by the magazine's new owners. This memoir is at once a tribute to William Shawn, a close look at the relationship between writer and editor, and a joyful homage to the inextricably linked arts of editing, writing, and reading.
Extra Titanic
Eric Caren - 1998
Each article is complete from the first shipping notice to the final courtroom drama.
View of the Constitution of the United States: With Selected Writings
St. George Tucker - 1998
George Tucker’s
View of the Constitution
, published in 1803, was the first extended, systematic commentary on the United States Constitution after its ratification. Generations learned their Blackstone and their understanding of the Constitution through Tucker.Clyde N. Wilson is Professor of History and editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun at the University of South Carolina.Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.
Rolling Stone: The Seventies
Rolling Stone Magazine - 1998
Lavish, powerfully written, gloriously designed, The Seventies recaptures everything wonderful about the excess of the decade.
The History of the American Sailing Navy: The Ships and Their Development
Howard Irving Chapelle - 1998
His crowning achievement, The History of the American Sailing Navy, has long been out-of-print, but its treatment of the subject remains unparallelled. Accompanying the authoritative text are detailed plans of over 50 sailing vessels as well reproductions of contemporary paintings and drawings. Lincoln Colcord said: "Chapelle, in my opinion, has the soundest ideas on the history of naval architecture and the development of American ship types of any man writing on the subject...HIs work will be of permanent historical value."
A Common Good: The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O'Donnell
Helen O'Donnell - 1998
In this intimate, revealing memoir of his long friendship with Bobby Kennedy, his daughter, Helen, honors his wish that RFK be remembered as the man Ken O'Donnell knew him to be.Kenny and Bobby met at Harvard in 1947, where they were both members of the football and debate teams. It was the beginning of a relationship that would end only with Bobby's death. The two friends spent years at the epicenter of American politics, sharing highs and lows: JFK's ascent to the presidency; Bobby's stormy tenure as chairman of several congressional committees exploring controversial issues and later as Attorney General, locking horns with J. Edgar Hoover and Jimmy Hoffa; and JFK's assassination.Much of the material in this poignant, illuminating memoir has never before been told. The Kennedys granted Helen O'Donnell complete access to the family archives, and encouraged many people who have never before spoken out to cooperate with her.The result is A Common Good, an intimate look at a unique relationship. Ken O'Donnell was there when Camelot began -- and when it ended in violence. In honoring her father's request, Helen O'Donnell has shared with us her profound insights into the emotional relationship of two men at the center of American history in the twentieth century.
White Women's Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States
Louise Michele Newman - 1998
At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for "primitives" while calling for its elimination among the "civilized." By exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Louise Michele Newman speaks directly to contemporary debates about the effect of race on current feminist scholarship.