Richard Holbrooke, who died in December 2010, was a pivotal player in U.S. diplomacy for more than forty years. Most recently special envoy for Iraq and Afghanistan under President Obama, Holbrooke also served as assistant secretary of state for both Asia and Europe, and as ambassador to both Germany and the United Nations. He had a key role in brokering a peace agreement among warring factions in Bosnia that led to the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. Widely regarded to possess one of the most penetrating minds of any modern diplomat of any nation, Holbrooke was also well known for his outsized personality, and his capacity to charm and offend in equally colossal measures. In this book, the friends and colleagues who knew him best survey his accomplishments as a diplomat, activist, and author. Excerpts from Holbrooke's own writings further illuminate each significant period of his career. The Unquiet American is both a tribute to an exceptional public servant and a backstage history of the last half-century of American foreign policy.
Our World This Century covers events up to 1995 in a simple and direct text, illustrated with cartoons, photographs, charts and diagrams which aid understanding.
Sir Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) is well known as a diarist, man of letters, diplomatic historian, gardener, and broadcaster. Nicolson's bestselling diaries and letters, his many biographies, including the highly acclaimed official life of King George V, and his numerous essays and broadcasts have made him, in the words of his friend and fellow MP Robert Bernays, an international figure of the 'second degree'. Yet there was more to this urbane man than his finely observed diary, stylish writing, and Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, the joint creation of Nicolson and his wife, the writer V. Sackville-West. He also produced a rich and ambitious corpus of writing on the theory and practice of international relations. Nicolson's aristocratic background and upbringing in a diplomatic household, followed by an Oxford classical education and twenty years in diplomacy, combined to forge his distinctive philosophy of international affairs. As a young attaché in Constantinople before the Great War, and in Whitehall during the conflict, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and en poste in Persia and Germany throughout the 1920s, Nicolson was ideally placed to observe the maelstrom of international politics. As an anti-appeasement and wartime MP (1935-1945), he became a highly regarded authority on international relations. During and after World War II, he turned his mind to the issues of European integration, world government, and the ultimate possibility of global peace. Nicolson has been the subject of two fine biographies. This is the first study of his contribution to international thought. He emerges from it as an important international thinker, alongside theorists as diverse as E. H. Carr and Leonard Woolf. Nicolson's international thought contains elements of realism and idealism, while retaining a distinctive character and a breadth and consistency that render it unique.
This study critically examines Woodrow Wilson's acceptance of the principle of national self-determination and his role in implementing it at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The assessment includes judgements by his contemporaries and historians of Wilson and the peace settlement. A survey of the manner in which national self-determination shaped the settlement leads to a discussion of the subsequent effects of the idea on the states and territories subject to the Versailles Treaty and related treaties.
Monumental in scope and vividly detailed, Chocolate City tells the tumultuous, four-century story of race and democracy in our nation's capital. Emblematic of the ongoing tensions between America's expansive democratic promises and its enduring racial realities, Washington often has served as a national battleground for contentious issues, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, the drug war, and gentrification. But D.C. is more than just a seat of government, and authors Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove also highlight the city's rich history of local activism as Washingtonians of all races have struggled to make their voices heard in an undemocratic city where residents lack full political rights. Tracing D.C.'s massive transformations--from a sparsely inhabited plantation society into a diverse metropolis, from a center of the slave trade to the nation's first black-majority city, from "Chocolate City" to "Latte City--Asch and Musgrove offer an engaging narrative peppered with unforgettable characters, a history of deep racial division but also one of hope, resilience, and interracial cooperation.
In the depths of the Great Depression, when foreclosure rates skyrocketed across the United States, more than two dozen states passed mortgage-extension or -adjustment laws to help farmers and homeowners keep their properties. One such statute in Minnesota led to the most important property law case of its time and still casts a long shadow upon constitutional debates and our own era's severe economic downturn. Fighting Foreclosure marks the first book-length study of the landmark 1934 Supreme Court decision in Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell, which, by a 5-4 vote, upheld the Minnesota Mortgage Moratorium Act. On the one hand, Blaisdell validated efforts by states to offer legislative relief to citizens struggling to keep their farms and homes. On the other, it caused an outcry among banking interests and conservative legal theorists, who argued that these laws violated the Contract Clause of the Constitution and interfered with our free market system. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes argued that the reasonable and limited nature of the law and the unusual severity of the emergency it addressed placed it firmly within the "police powers" of the states to protect the health and safety of the people. In a strongly worded dissent, Justice George Sutherland argued for a consistent and strict interpretation of the Contract Clause regardless of economic exigency. John Fliter and Derek Hoff provide a concise history and analysis of not only this landmark case and the reasoning behind its sharply divided decision but also of the entire history of the Contract Clause. They trace closely the agricultural crisis, political pressures, and farmer-protest movement that produced the Minnesota law. And their study contributes to scholarly debate about the origins of the Constitutional Revolution of 1937, by which the Supreme Court accepted the New Deal, as well as to public debates about constitutional interpretation and the role that government should play in providing relief to distressed citizens. In the midst of our nation's ongoing suffering from massive foreclosures and bankruptcies, Fighting Foreclosure also offers a potent reminder that the High Court's decisions often revolve around lives at risk as much as abstract legal debates.
Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work on common pool property rights has implications for some of the most pressing sustainability issues of the twenty-first century — from tackling climate change to maintaining cyberspace. In this book, Derek Wall critically examines Ostrom’s work, while also exploring the following questions: is it possible to combine insights rooted in methodological individualism with a theory that stresses collectivist solutions? Is Ostrom’s emphasis on largely local solutions to climate change relevant to a crisis propelled by global factors? This volume situates her ideas in terms of the constitutional analysis of her partner Vincent Ostrom and wider institutional economics. It outlines her key concerns, including a radical research methodology, commitment to indigenous people and the concept of social-ecological systems. Ostrom is recognised for producing a body of work which demonstrates how people can construct rules that allow them to exploit the environment in an ecologically sustainable way, without the need for governmental regulation, and this book argues that in a world where ecological realities increasingly threaten material prosperity, such scholarship provides a way of thinking about how humanity can create truly sustainable development. Given the inter-disciplinary nature of Ostrom’s work, this book will be relevant to those working in the areas of environmental economics, political economy, political science and ecology.
This work analyzes the strategic underpinnings of US defense strategy and foreign policy since 1945. Primarily intended to be a supplemental textbook, it explains how the United States became a superpower, examines the formation of the national security establishment, and explores the inter-relationship between foreign policy, defense strategy, and commercial interests. It differs from most of the existing teaching texts because its emphasis is not on narrating the history of US foreign policy or explaining the policymaking process. Instead, the emphasis is on identifying drivers and continuities in US national security interests and policy, and it has a special emphasis on developing a greater understanding of the intertwined nature of foreign and defense policies. The book will conclude by examining how the legacy of the last sixty-five years impacts future developments, the prospect for change, and what US national security policy may look like in the future.
The second edition of this introductory textbook on foreign policy analysis focuses on the key explanatory factors that underlie the foreign policies of states and other actors to show how theory can illuminate practice. Genuinely international in scope and drawing on a wide range of examples, it provides an accessible introduction to the key elements of foreign policy analysis to explain, predict and evaluate what states and other collective actors want, how they make decisions, and key determinants of state security, diplomatic, and economic foreign policies. Providing a broad set of theoretical tools for analysing foreign policy, and including increased coverage of methodology, this new edition provides students with the skills to undertake their own foreign policy analysis.
Founded in March 1912, DC branch of the NAACP quickly became the leading organization advocating for the city's Black community. President Woodrow Wilson's institution of Jim Crow segregation in the federal government in the spring of 1913 galvanized the African American community of DC and the NAACP launched a formidable crusade against Wilson's racist policies. As the preeminent civil rights organization of the nation's capital, it also developed a dual role as a watchdog body to prevent the passage of legislation in Congress that negatively affected African Americans. Archivist and historian Derek Gray chronicles and analyzes the work of the DC NAACP through the civil rights era to the achievement of Home Rule in the District.
Masterful.” —The Guardian "Propulsive." —The Wall Street Journal "Leebaert has done the near impossible—crafted a fresh and challenging portrait of the man and his inner circle.”— Richard Norton Smith, author of An Uncommon Man, former director of the Hoover, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Ford presidential libraries. “A fascinating and absorbing analysis of FDR’s brilliantly chosen team of four courageous and creative men and women.”—Susan Dunn, author of 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm, Massachusetts Professor of Humanities, Williams College. Drawing on new materials, Unlikely Heroes constructs an entirely fresh understanding of FDR and his presidency by spotlighting the powerful, equally wounded figures whom he raised up to confront the Depression, then to beat the Axis. Only four people served at the top echelon of President Franklin Roosevelt's Administration from the frightening early months of spring 1933 until he died in April 1945, on the cusp of wartime victory. These lieutenants composed the tough, constrictive, long-term core of government. They built the great institutions being raised against the Depression, implemented the New Deal, and they were pivotal to winning World War II. Yet, in their different ways, each was as wounded as the polio-stricken titan. Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, and Henry Wallace were also strange outsiders. Up to 1933, none would ever have been considered for high office. Still, each became a world figure, and it would have been exceedingly difficult for Roosevelt to transform the nation without them. By examining the lives of these four, a very different picture emerges of how Americans saved their democracy and rescued civilization overseas. Many of the dangers that they all overcame are troublingly like those America faces today.
The Purpose of this work is to document the Williams family history. The Book is split into two books: one book to cover the Williams, Quillman, Siegfried, and Long surnames. Book two covers the Prutzman, Keiser, Redline, and Williams surnames. As an appendix to each book, there is a list supporting documents, Veterans of war, as well as a list of famous relatives. This book is intended to serve as a family history, and while there was great care in researching the facts presented in the book, there is always the chance a mistake has been made. I have tried to find all the veterans to give the honor due to the heroes who have served, however due to the vast amount of people in our family tree and limited records of the time, some people may have been omitted by mistake. I started this project as a gift for my Children, that is why I split the book into two mini books, book one is for his fathers' side of the family, and book two is his mothers' side of the family.
A sweeping history of a twentieth-century Prague torn between fascism, communism, and democracy—with lessons for a world again threatened by dictatorship Postcards from Absurdistan is a cultural and political history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia’s artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the country’s socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of communist dictatorship. Derek Sayer shows that Prague’s twentieth century, far from being a story of inexorable progress toward some “end of history,” whether fascist, communist, or democratic, was a tragicomedy of recurring nightmares played out in a land Czech dissidents dubbed Absurdistan. Situated in the eye of the storms that shaped the modern world, Prague holds up an unsettling mirror to the absurdities and dangers of our own times. In a brilliant narrative, Sayer weaves a vivid montage of the lives of individual Praguers—poets and politicians, architects and athletes, journalists and filmmakers, artists, musicians, and comedians—caught up in the crosscurrents of the turbulent half century following the Nazi invasion. This is the territory of the ideologist, the collaborator, the informer, the apparatchik, the dissident, the outsider, the torturer, and the refugee—not to mention the innocent bystander who is always looking the other way and Václav Havel’s greengrocer whose knowing complicity allows the show to go on. Over and over, Prague exposes modernity’s dreamworlds of progress as confections of kitsch. In a time when democracy is once again under global assault, Postcards from Absurdistan is an unforgettable portrait of a city that illuminates the predicaments of the modern world.
The Battle of Nashville was a two-day battle fought on December 15-16, 1864; this is a spellbinding account of the Confederates' retreat after their crushing defeat, with Union forces in hot pursuit, during one of the worst winters on record.
This thoroughly revised edition of "Baseball's Best 1,000" includes updated listings plus new players, rankings, and photographs, all in a handier format that makes it a terrific pocket reference. A must-have book for baseball fans obsessed with stats, quick facts, and the age-old debates over who the best players are and why, "Baseball's Best 1,000" showcases the lives, legends, and lore of the game's top players, ranked in order. Sportswriter Derek Gentile has pared down the total list of players--tens of thousands of them--to an elite ranking of the thousand greatest, based on criteria including lifetime stats; player durability and consistency; All-Star participation; MVP, Gold Glove, and Cy Young awards; individual statistical championships; personal and professional contributions to the game; sportsmanship; and election to the Hall of Fame. Each entry includes positions played, teams played for, years played, lifetime stats, and a biography of the player featuring his great moments and little-known facts. *New players include Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, and Manny Ramirez. *Barry Bonds has moved up from Number 19 to Number 6. *Roger Clemens has moved from Number 33 into the top 20. *Dozens of Negro League players are here, as well as rankings of the best Japanese players, women players, and "prehistoric" players (from the time before stats were formally recorded).
For long-time residents of Washington, DC’s Shaw/U Street, the neighborhood has become almost unrecognizable in recent years. Where the city’s most infamous open-air drug market once stood, a farmers’ market now sells grass-fed beef and homemade duck egg ravioli. On the corner where AM.PM carryout used to dish out soul food, a new establishment markets its $28 foie gras burger. Shaw is experiencing a dramatic transformation, from “ghetto” to “gilded ghetto,” where white newcomers are rehabbing homes, developing dog parks, and paving the way for a third wave coffee shop on nearly every block. Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City is an in-depth ethnography of this gilded ghetto. Derek S. Hyra captures here a quickly gentrifying space in which long-time black residents are joined, and variously displaced, by an influx of young, white, relatively wealthy, and/or gay professionals who, in part as a result of global economic forces and the recent development of central business districts, have returned to the cities earlier generations fled decades ago. As a result, America is witnessing the emergence of what Hyra calls “cappuccino cities.” A cappuccino has essentially the same ingredients as a cup of coffee with milk, but is considered upscale, and is double the price. In Hyra’s cappuccino city, the black inner-city neighborhood undergoes enormous transformations and becomes racially “lighter” and more expensive by the year.
In 1955, Clyde Kennard, a decorated army veteran, was forced to cut short the final year of his studies at the University of Chicago and return home to Mississippi due to family circumstances, where Kennard made the decision to complete his education. Yet still on the eve of the civil rights movement in America, Kennard's decision would be one of the first serious attempts to integrate any public school at the college level in the state. The Life and Times of Clyde Kennard tells the true story of Kennard's efforts to complete his further education at Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) against the backdrop of the institutionalized social order of the times and the prevailing winds of change attempting to blow that social order away. As Meredith's admission to "Ole Miss" became more widely known at the time, Kennard became the forgotten man. Author Derek R. King shares his extensive research into Kennard's life, and touches on key events that shaped those times.
Copublished with History Colorado Colorado Day by Day is an engaging, this-day-in-history approach to the key figures and forces that have shaped Colorado from ancient times to the present. Historian Derek R. Everett presents a vignette for each day of the calendar year, exploring Colorado’s many facets through distilled tales of people, places, events, and trends. Entries incorporate tales from each of the state’s sixty-four counties and feature both well-known and obscure cultural moments, including events in Native American, African American, Asian American, Hispano, and women’s history. Allowing the reader to explore the state’s heritage as individual threads or as part of the greater tapestry, Colorado Day by Day recovers much lost history and will be an entertaining and useful source of lore for anyone who enjoys or is curious about Colorado history.
With bustling cities like Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey is best known as an economic center. Yet the Garden State boasts something for everyone. The state's pristine beaches draw visitors from all over, while the Pine Barrens yield famous Jersey sweet corn. New Jersey's emphasis on local governance inspires residents to come together to make their home great. In fact, New Jersey is a leader in education and innovation. Treat your readers to the richness of the Garden State.
A significant examination of how athletes have fought for inclusion and equality on and off the playing field, despite calls for them to “stick to sports.” The claim that sports are—or ought to be—apolitical has itself never been an apolitical position. Rather, it is a veiled attempt to control which politics are acceptable in the athletic realm, a designation intricately linked to issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and more. In Don't Stick to Sports: The American Athlete’s Fight against Injustice, Derek Charles Catsam carefully explores this disparity. He looks at how, throughout recent sports history in the United States, minority athletes have had to fight every step of the way for their right to compete, and how they continue to fight for equity today. From African Americans and women to LGBTQ+ and religious minorities, Catsam shows how these athletes have taken a stand to address the underlying injustices in sports and society despite being told it’s not their place to do so. While it’s impossible for a single book to tell the entire history of exclusion in the sporting world, Don’t Stick to Sports looks at key moments from the World War I era to the present to shatter the myth of sports as a meritocracy, of sports-as-equalizer, highlighting the reality as something far more complicated—of sports as a malleable world where exclusion and inclusion are rarely straight-forward.
When news of the war broke out in 1914, nothing could prepare the citizens of Edinburgh for the changes that would envelop their city over the next four years. The story of Edinburgh in the Great War is both an interesting and intriguing one. This book covers this historic city's involvement from the commencement of the Great War in July 1914, to the Armistice in November 1918, describing in great detail what happened to the city and its people, including their everyday lives, entertainment, spies and the internment of aliens living within the city. Edinburgh played a key role in the deployment of troops to Northern Europe as well as supplying vital munitions. Local men responded keenly to recruitment drives, and thousands of soldiers were billeted in the city before being sent off to fight the enemy overseas. The city also played a vital role in caring for the many wounded soldiers who returned home from the Front. The effect of the war on Edinburgh was great. By the end of the conflict, there wasn't a family in the city who hadn't lost a son, father, nephew, uncle or brother. There were tremendous celebrations in the streets as the end of the war was announced, but the effects of the conflict lasted for years to come. Edinburgh in the Great War features many forgotten news stories of the day and includes a considerable collection of rare photographs, which were last seen in newspapers nearly 100 years ago.
Boundaries—lines imposed on the landscape—shape our lives, dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what schools our children attend to the communities with which we identify. In Creating the American West, historian Derek R. Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed a specific form of political organization that made the West truly American. Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic, sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history. A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines—in other words, lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a host of issues including water rights, taxes, political representation, and immigration. Creating the American West shows how the past continues to shape the present.
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, as well as the first major Soviet composer. In the fourth edition of Dmitri Shostakovich Catalogue: The First Hundred Years and Beyond, Derek C. Hulme names and describes all known musical compositions of the Russian composer. More than 175 major works are annotated and discussed, including such comprehensive details as titles and subtitles, dates of composition, instrumentation, and duration; information on dedications and premieres; arrangements by the composer and others; publication details; notes on bibliographical references and the location of the autograph score; and comprehensive chronological lists of vinyl, compact disc, and visual recordings. The entries are presented chronologically and by opus number, while indexes of names and compositions provide full accessibility. Several appendixes supplement the volume, guiding readers to further information in published sources and providing information on the composer's film, radio, television, and theatre productions; his abandoned projects and obscure works; and his recordings, including box sets and special USSR recordings. An appendix also discusses the monogram DSCH, a musical motif based on his name that permeates his compositions. This new edition also includes a comprehensive chronological chart of Shostakovich's works and historical events and several plates of memorabilia.
Citizenship describes, analyzes and interprets the topic of citizenship in a global context as it has developed historically, in its variations as a political concept and status, and the ways in which citizens have been and are being educated for that status. The book provides a historical survey which ranges from the Ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, and reveals the legacies which each era passed on to later centuries. It explains the meaning of citizenship, what political citizenship entails and the nature of citizenship as a status, and also tackles the issue of whether there can be a generally accepted, holistic understanding of the idea. For this new edition an epilogue has been written which demonstrates the intense nature of the academic and pedagogical debates on the subject as well as the practical matters relating to the status since 1990.
Examines the way in which poetry in English makes use of rhythm. The author argues that there are three major influences which determine the verse-forms used in any language: the natural rhythm of the spoken language itself; the properties of rhythmic form; and the metrical conventions which have grown up within the literary tradition. He investigates these in order to explain the forms of English verse, and to show how rhythm and metre work as an essential part of the reader's experience of poetry.
A sweeping assessment of the state of higher education today from former Harvard president Derek Bok Higher Education in America is a landmark work--a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the current condition of our colleges and universities from former Harvard president Derek Bok, one of the nation's most respected education experts. Sweepingly ambitious in scope, this is a deeply informed and balanced assessment of the many strengths as well as the weaknesses of American higher education today. At a time when colleges and universities have never been more important to the lives and opportunities of students or to the progress and prosperity of the nation, Bok provides a thorough examination of the entire system, public and private, from community colleges and small liberal arts colleges to great universities with their research programs and their medical, law, and business schools. Drawing on the most reliable studies and data, he determines which criticisms of higher education are unfounded or exaggerated, which are issues of genuine concern, and what can be done to improve matters. Some of the subjects considered are long-standing, such as debates over the undergraduate curriculum and concerns over rising college costs. Others are more recent, such as the rise of for-profit institutions and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Additional topics include the quality of undergraduate education, the stagnating levels of college graduation, the problems of university governance, the strengths and weaknesses of graduate and professional education, the environment for research, and the benefits and drawbacks of the pervasive competition among American colleges and universities. Offering a rare survey and evaluation of American higher education as a whole, this book provides a solid basis for a fresh public discussion about what the system is doing right, what it needs to do better, and how the next quarter century could be made a period of progress rather than decline.
The story of modernity told through a cultural history of twentieth-century Prague Setting out to recover the roots of modernity in the boulevards, interiors, and arcades of the "city of light," Walter Benjamin dubbed Paris "the capital of the nineteenth century." In this eagerly anticipated sequel to his acclaimed Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, Derek Sayer argues that Prague could well be seen as the capital of the much darker twentieth century. Ranging across twentieth-century Prague's astonishingly vibrant and always surprising human landscape, this richly illustrated cultural history describes how the city has experienced (and suffered) more ways of being modern than perhaps any other metropolis. Located at the crossroads of struggles between democratic, communist, and fascist visions of the modern world, twentieth-century Prague witnessed revolutions and invasions, national liberation and ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust, show trials, and snuffed-out dreams of "socialism with a human face." Yet between the wars, when Prague was the capital of Europe's most easterly parliamentary democracy, it was also a hotbed of artistic and architectural modernism, and a center of surrealism second only to Paris. Focusing on these years, Sayer explores Prague's spectacular modern buildings, monuments, paintings, books, films, operas, exhibitions, and much more. A place where the utopian fantasies of the century repeatedly unraveled, Prague was tailor-made for surrealist André Breton's "black humor," and Sayer discusses the way the city produced unrivaled connoisseurs of grim comedy, from Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek to Milan Kundera and Václav Havel. A masterful and unforgettable account of a city where an idling flaneur could just as easily be a secret policeman, this book vividly shows why Prague can teach us so much about the twentieth century and what made us who we are.
While historians have devoted an enormous amount of attention to documenting how African Americans gained access to formal politics in the mid-1960s, very few have scrutinized what happened next, and the small body of work that does consider the aftermath of the civil rights movement is almost entirely limited to the Black Power era. In Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, Derek Musgrove pushes much further, presenting a powerful new historical framework for understanding race and politics between 1965 and 1996. He argues that in order to make sense of this recent period, we need to examine the harassment of black elected officials - the ways black politicians were denied access to seats they'd won in elections or, after taking office, were targeted in corruption probes. Musgrove's aim is not to evaluate whether individual allegations of corruption had merit, but to establish what the pervasive harassment of black politicians has meant, politically and culturally, over the course of recent American history. It's a story that takes him from California to Michigan to Alabama, and along the way covers a fascinating range of topics: Watergate, the surveillance state, the power of conspiracy theories, the plunge in voter turnout, and even the strange political campaigns of Lyndon LaRouche"--Provided by publisher.
A new understanding of the post World War II era, showing what occurred when the British Empire wouldn’t step aside for the rising American superpower—with global insights for today. An enduring myth of the twentieth century is that the United States rapidly became a superpower in the years after World War II, when the British Empire—the greatest in history—was too wounded to maintain a global presence. In fact, Derek Leebaert argues in Grand Improvisation, the idea that a traditionally insular United States suddenly transformed itself into the leader of the free world is illusory, as is the notion that the British colossus was compelled to retreat. The United States and the U.K. had a dozen abrasive years until Washington issued a “declaration of independence” from British influence. Only then did America explicitly assume leadership of the world order just taking shape. Leebaert’s character-driven narrative shows such figures as Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennan in an entirely new light, while unveiling players of at least equal weight on pivotal events. Little unfolded as historians believe: the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; the Korean War; America’s descent into Vietnam. Instead, we see nonstop U.S. improvisation until America finally lost all caution and embraced obligations worldwide, a burden we bear today. Understanding all of this properly is vital to understanding the rise and fall of superpowers, why we’re now skeptical of commitments overseas, how the Middle East plunged into disorder, why Europe is fracturing, what China intends—and the ongoing perils to the U.S. world role.
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed, taking the Cold War down with it. The next twelve years passed in a haze of self-congratulation, Republican confusion, and angst, and economic prosperity -- until they ended abruptly with a stunning catastrophe on September 11, 2001. In America Between The Wars, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier blend deep expertise with broad access to both parties' political and policy establishments to find out how -- and why -- America failed to recognize that when we became the sole superpower with responsibility for the world's oversight, we overlooked how the new world actually worked.
This book argues for a greater specification of how international law influences relevant actors to improve human rights. It argues that states are influenced via general social processes such as cultural contagion, identification, and mimicry. These processes occasion a rethinking of fundamental regime design problems in human rights law.
No country grows or changes in isolation, and the history of the United States demonstrates the interdependence of countries around the world. The United States' Role in the World explores how government policy and military intervention have influenced daily life, economics, culture, and more. The book analyzes major conflicts and policy changes from the earliest days of America until present day, including the American Revolution, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In doing so, The United States' Role in the World stimulates critical thinking about how foreign and domestic policy can change the trajectory of the nation.
July 1, 1863. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee advanced across the Pennsylvania countryside toward the small town of Gettysburg--less than 90 miles from Washington, D.C.--on a collision course with the Union Army of the Potomac. In Lee's ranks were 5,000 South Carolina troops destined to play critical roles in the three days of fighting ahead. From generals to privates, the Palmetto State soldiers were hurled into the Civil War's most famous battle--hundreds were killed, wounded or later suffered as prisoners of war. The life-and-death stories of these South Carolinians are here woven together here with official wartime reports, previously unpublished letters, newspaper accounts, diaries and the author's personal observations from walking the battlefield.
The title of Beyond the Line refers to the imaginary "Line" drawn between North and South, a division established by the Peace Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. This is an early modern time and Eurocentric construction, according to which the southern oceanic world has long been taken as symbol of expansionist philosophies and practices. An obvious motivation for changing this "Line" division is the growing influence of the "Global South" in the contemporary economic and political setting. However, another motivation for changing opinions in regard to the "Line" is equally important. We observe an emergent consciousness of the pivotal role of the oceanic world for human life. This requires the reformulation of former views and raises numerous questions. A diversity of connections comes to the mind, which demands the composition of a catalogue of case studies with an oceanic horizon. Through this operation, different problems are being linked together. Which problems encounter historians with their research on fishes in the archives? How to trace records about pirates of non-European descent in the Indian Ocean? Which role play the Oceans as mediators for labor migrations, not only of the Black Atlantic but also of people moving from Asia to Africa and vice versa? What do we know about workers on the oceans and their routes? When considering oceans as "contact zones," with which criteria can their influence in different literary texts be analyzed? Is it possible to study nationalisms taking into account these transoceanic relationships? And how do artists address these questions in their use of the media? Against the background of this catalogue of oceanic questions, "old" stories are told anew. Sometimes, their cultural stereotypes are recycled to criticize political and social situations. Or, in other cases, they are adopted for elaborating alternative options. In this sense, the contributions concentrate on countries like India, Kenya, Angola, or Brazil and cover different academic fields. A variety of objects and situations are explored, which have been and still are determinant for the construction of cultural narratives in view of the modified relationship with the geographically southern oceanic regions.
Remembering Enslavement explores plantation museums as sites for contesting and reforming public interpretations of slavery in the American South. Emerging out of a three-year National Science Foundation grant (2014–17), the book turns a critical eye toward the growing inclusion of the formerly enslaved within these museums, specifically examining advances but also continuing inequalities in how they narrate and memorialize the formerly enslaved. Using assemblage theory as a framework, Remembering Enslavement offers an innovative approach for studying heritage sites, retelling and remapping the ways that slavery and the enslaved are included in southern plantation museums. It examines multiple plantation sites across geographic areas, considering the experiences of a diversity of actors: tourists, museum managers/owners, and tour guides/interpreters. This approach allows for an understanding of regional variations among plantation museums, narratives, and performances, as well as more in-depth study of the plantation tour experience and public interpretations. The authors conclude the book with a set of questions designed to help professionals reassemble plantation museum narratives and landscapes to more justly position the formerly enslaved at their center.
Starting with a brief account of the history of previous attempts to build a fixed cross-Channel link, this is the story of the building of the Channel Tunnel. The political, financial and technical challenges are explored and the author explains how the solution of three linked tunnels built with the aid of laser technology and massive boring machinery was arrived at. He talked to many involved with the Tunnel from men at the workface to those in the boardrooms and gives a description of what life is like in the Tunnel. It also covers the measures taken to minimize disturbance of the Tunnel in a new phase of Europe's story with its impact on transport, increased benefits for leisure travel and commercial, financial and trading opportunities opened up by the single Internal Market from 1992.
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