William Gaddis's Books

The Letters of William Gaddis

Revised Edition

By: William Gaddis

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A revelatory collection of correspondence by the lauded author of titanic American classics such as The Recognitions and J R, shedding light on his staunchly private life. UPDATED WITH OVER TWO DOZEN NEW LETTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a revelation. Beginning in 1930 when Gaddis was at boarding school and ending in September 1998, a few months before his death, these letters function as a kind of autobiography, and also reveal the extent to which he drew upon events in his life for his fiction. Here we see him forging his first novel, The Recognitions (1955), while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award–winning J R (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter’s Gothic (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to produce A Frolic of His Own (1994). Resuming his lifelong obsession with mechanization and the arts, he finishes a last novel, Agapē Agape (published in 2002), as he lies dying. This newly revised edition includes clarifying notes by Gaddis scholar Steven Moore, as well as an afterword by the author’s daughter, Sarah Gaddis.

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705

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New York Review of Books

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ISBN 10

1681375842

ISBN 13

9781681375847

The Letters of William Gaddis

Revised Edition

By: William Gaddis

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The Letters of William Gaddis

Revised Edition

By: William Gaddis

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705

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New York Review of Books

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ISBN 10

1681375842

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9781681375847

Frolic of His Own

By: William Gaddis

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Frolic of His Own

By: William Gaddis

A dazzling fourth novel by the author of The Recognitions, Carpenter’s Gothic, and JR uses his considerable powers of observation and satirical sensibilities to take on the American legal system.

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709

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Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439125473

ISBN 13

9781439125472

The Rush for Second Place

Essays and Occasional Writings

By: William Gaddis

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The Rush for Second Place

Essays and Occasional Writings

By: William Gaddis

An essential collection of nonfiction essays by the National Book Award winning author of J R and A Frolic of His Own William Gaddis published only four novels during his lifetime, but with those works he earned himself a reputation as one of America's greatest novelists. Less well known is Gaddis's body of excellent critical writings. Here is a wide range of his original essays, some published for the first time. From "'Stop Player. Joke No. 4,'" Gaddis's first national publication and the basis for his projected history of the player piano, to the title essay about missed opportunities in America during the past fifty years, to "Old Foes with New Faces," an examination of the relationship between the writer and the problem of religion-this diverse collection displays the power of an autonomous literary intelligence in an age increasingly dominated by political and religious conservatism.

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209

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Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101176970

ISBN 13

9781101176979

The Rush for Second Place

Essays and Occasional Writings

By: William Gaddis

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The Rush for Second Place

Essays and Occasional Writings

By: William Gaddis

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209

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Penguin

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1101176970

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9781101176979

Carpenter's Gothic

By: William Gaddis

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Carpenter's Gothic

By: William Gaddis

This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission. At the still center of the breakneck action--revealed in Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialoge—is Paul's wife, Liz, and over it all looms the shadowy figure of McCandless, a geologist from whom Paul and Liz rent their house. As Paul mishandles the situation, his wife takes the geologist to her bed and a fire and aborted assassination occur; Ude issues a call to arms as harrowing as any Jeremiad--and Armageddon comes rapidly closer. Displaying Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialogue, and his startling treatments of violence and sexuality, Carpenter's Gothic "shows again that Gaddis is among the first rank of contemporary American writers" (Malcolm Bradbury, The Washington Post Book World).

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273

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Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0141182229

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9780141182223

Agape Agape

By: William Gaddis

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Agape Agape

By: William Gaddis

William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts, Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.

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145

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Penguin

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ISBN 10

1440650039

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9781440650031

The Rise and Decline of the American Century

By: William O. Walker III

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The Rise and Decline of the American Century

By: William O. Walker III

In 1941 the magazine publishing titan Henry R. Luce urged the nation’s leaders to create an American Century. But in the post-World-War-II era proponents of the American Century faced a daunting task. Even so, Luce had articulated an animating idea that, as William O. Walker III skillfully shows in The Rise and Decline of the American Century, would guide United States foreign policy through the years of hot and cold war. The American Century was, Walker argues, the counter-balance to defensive war during World War II and the containment of communism during the Cold War. American policymakers pursued an aggressive agenda to extend U.S. influence around the globe through control of economic markets, reliance on nation-building, and, where necessary, provision of arms to allied forces. This positive program for the expansion of American power, Walker deftly demonstrates, came in for widespread criticism by the late 1950s. A changing world, epitomized by the nonaligned movement, challenged U.S. leadership and denigrated the market democracy at the heart of the ideal of the American Century. Walker analyzes the international crises and monetary troubles that further curtailed the reach of the American Century in the early 1960s and brought it to a halt by the end of that decade. By 1968, it seemed that all the United States had to offer to allies and non-hostile nations was convenient military might, nuclear deterrence, and the uncertainty of détente. Once the dust had fallen on Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and Richard M. Nixon had taken office, what remained was, The Rise and Decline of the American Century shows, an adulterated, strategically-based version of Luce’s American Century.

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212

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Cornell University Press

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ISBN 10

1501726153

ISBN 13

9781501726156

A Temple of Texts

By: William H. Gass

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A Temple of Texts

By: William H. Gass

From one of the most admired essayists and novelists at work today: a new collection of essays—his first since Tests of Time, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. These twenty-five essays speak to the nature and value of writing and to the books that result from a deep commitment to the word. Here is Gass on Rilke and Gertrude Stein; on friends such as Stanley Elkin, Robert Coover, and William Gaddis; and on a company of “healthy dissidents,” among them Rabelais, Elias Canetti, John Hawkes, and Gabriel García Márquez. In the title essay, Gass offers an annotated list of the fifty books that have most influenced his thinking and his work and writes about his first reaction to reading each. Among the books: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (“A lightning bolt,” Gass writes. “Philosophy was not dead after all. Philosophical ambitions were not extinguished. Philosophical beauty had not fled prose.”) . . . Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (“A man after my own heart. He is capable of the simplest lyrical stroke, as bold and direct as a line by Matisse, but he can be complex in a manner that could cast Nabokov in the shade . . . Shakespeare may have been smarter, but he did not know as much.”) . . . Gustave Flaubert’s letters (“Here I learned—and learned—and learned.”) And after reading Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Gass writes “I began to eat books like an alien worm.” In the concluding essay, “Evil,” Gass enlarges upon the themes of artistic quality and cultural values that are central to the books he has considered, many of which seek to reveal the worst in people while admiring what they do best. As Gass writes, “The true alchemists do not change lead into gold, they change the world into words.” A Temple of Texts is Gass at his most alchemical.

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434

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Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307498247

ISBN 13

9780307498243

The Irony of Manifest Destiny

The Tragedy of America's Foreign Policy

By: William Pfaff

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The Irony of Manifest Destiny

The Tragedy of America's Foreign Policy

By: William Pfaff

For years there has been little or no critical reexamination of how and why the ultimately successful postwar American policy of 'patient but firm and vigilant containment of Soviet expansionist tendencies...and pressure against the free institutions of the western world' (as George Kennan formulated it at the time) has over six decades turned into a vast project for ending tyranny in the world. We defend this position by making the claim that the United States possesses an exceptional status among nations that confers upon it special international responsibilities, and exceptional privileges in meeting those responsibilities. This is where the problem lies. It has become somewhat of a national heresy to suggest the U.S. does not have a unique moral status and role to play in the history of nations and therefore in the affairs of the contemporary world. In fact it does not." Cogently, thoughtfully, powerfully, William Pfaff--whose columns and commentary over the past 40-odd years have given him the widest international influence of any American commentator--lays out the historical roots behind the American exceptionalism that has animated our politics and foreign relations for decades, and makes clear why it is flawed and bound to fail. Those roots lie in the secularization of western society brought about by the Enlightenment. "My proposition in this book is that the United States' spearation from 1800 to 1941 from the common history of the west has disqualified it from the mandate it has assumed as the society that embodies the future"...and in many ways is responsible for the impasse in which it finds itself at the end of the disastrous events of the last 8 years. "It has failed to learn from experience because it lacks the indispensable experience Europeans have acquired of modern ideological folly and national tragedy.

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237

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802719678

ISBN 13

9780802719676

The American President

From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton

By: William E. Leuchtenburg

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The American President

From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton

By: William E. Leuchtenburg

The American President is an enthralling account of American presidential actions from the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 to Bill Clinton's last night in office in January 2001. William Leuchtenburg, one of the great presidential historians of the century, portrays each of the presidents in a chronicle sparkling with anecdote and wit. Leuchtenburg offers a nuanced assessment of their conduct in office, preoccupations, and temperament. His book presents countless moments of high drama: FDR hurling defiance at the "economic royalists" who exploited the poor; ratcheting tension for JFK as Soviet vessels approach an American naval blockade; a grievously wounded Reagan joking with nurses while fighting for his life. This book charts the enormous growth of presidential power from its lowly state in the late nineteenth century to the imperial presidency of the twentieth. That striking change was manifested both at home in periods of progressive reform and abroad, notably in two world wars, Vietnam, and the war on terror. Leuchtenburg sheds light on presidents battling with contradictory forces. Caught between maintaining their reputation and executing their goals, many practiced deceits that shape their image today. But he also reveals how the country's leaders pulled off magnificent achievements worthy of the nation's pride.

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903

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199721106

ISBN 13

9780199721108

America in the Cold War

A Reference Guide

By: William T. Walker

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America in the Cold War

A Reference Guide

By: William T. Walker

Including extensive, balanced information, keen insights, and helpful research tools, this book provides a valuable resource for students or general readers interested in American policy, diplomacy, and conduct during the Cold War. The Cold War not only comprised the dominant theme in American foreign policy during the second half of the 20th century; its influence was also imbedded into American culture. The half-century duration of the Cold War was an extended learning period during which the United States found that it could no longer remain an isolationist nation in a complex, quickly evolving, and dangerous world. This book covers the entire scope of the Cold War, from its background and origins before and after World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, providing coverage of key events and concepts, such as the containment policy, McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, détente, and nuclear arms policies. The single-volume work also provides an annotated bibliography, primary documents, and biographies of key personalities during the Cold War, such as John Foster Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover, George F. Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Edward R. Murrow, and Ronald Reagan.

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350

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1610692071

ISBN 13

9781610692076

Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice

The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy

By: William C. Martel

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Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice

The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy

By: William C. Martel

This book explores fundamental questions about grand strategy, as it has evolved across generations and countries. It provides an overview of the ancient era of grand strategy and a detailed discussion of its philosophical, military, and economic foundations in the modern era. The author investigates these aspects through the lenses of four approaches - those of historians, social scientists, practitioners, and military strategists. The main goal is to provide contemporary policy makers and scholars with a historic and analytic framework in which to evaluate and conduct grand strategy. By providing greater analytical clarity about grand strategy and describing its nature and its utility for the state, this book presents a comprehensive theory on the practice of grand strategy in order to articulate the United States' past, present, and future purpose and position on the world stage.

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549

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Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1107082064

ISBN 13

9781107082069

Progressive Pioneer

Alexander James Inglis (1879-1924) and American Secondary Education

By: William G. Wraga

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Progressive Pioneer

Alexander James Inglis (1879-1924) and American Secondary Education

By: William G. Wraga

Alexander James Inglis's (1879-1924) transformation from an academic traditionalist devoted to Latin pedagogy to an influential progressive-experimentalist and advocate of the comprehensive high school has received insufficient attention from educational and curriculum historians. Inglis's career manifests important characteristics of the progressive era in American history. As an attempt to generate organizing principles upon which to construct a new, responsive social institution, his book, Principles of Secondary Education, stands as a quintessential manifestation of progressive values. This fine-grained profile of Inglis's work reveals nuances in the historic record that are otherwise obscured by high-level historical interpretations. An assessment of the utility of these interpretations for explaining Inglis's career leads to a discussion of the implications of the record of Inglis's work for understanding the progressive period and its prevailing interpretations, as well as to a consideration of the role of biography in historical research.

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180

Publisher

Peter Lang

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820481165

ISBN 13

9780820481166

Lincoln's Autocrat

The Life of Edwin Stanton

By: William Marvel

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Lincoln's Autocrat

The Life of Edwin Stanton

By: William Marvel

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Lincoln's secretary of war during most of the Civil War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power, Stanton used his authority--and the public coffers--to pursue political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with a cavalier disregard for civil liberties. Though Lincoln's ability to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and personal preservation.

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632

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469622505

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9781469622507

Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement

By: William Kostlevy,Gari-Anne Patzwald,Wallace Thornton

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Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement

By: William Kostlevy,Gari-Anne Patzwald,Wallace Thornton

Emerging as a spiritual renewal movement in Antebellum America with ties to Methodism and the reform ethos of the era, it grew rapidly and spread internationally during the last three decades of the 19th century. Women including the increasingly well-known Phoebe Palmer were central actors in the Movement and from its origins Blacks were prominent in all aspects of the Movement. Although its most familiar expression is found in the Salvation Army, the movement established a thriving international network of periodicals, camp meetings, rescue missions, and congregations birthing new denominations such as the Church of God (Anderson), the Church of the Nazarene, and the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church while continuing to profoundly shape older Protestant denominations. In the process playing a crucial role emergence of Pentecostalism and even shaping the piety of popular evangelicalism. Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement, Third Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on leaders, personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Holiness Movement. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Holiness Movement.

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471

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 13

9798881803438

The A to Z of the Holiness Movement

By: William Kostlevy

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The A to Z of the Holiness Movement

By: William Kostlevy

It is much harder to define a religious movement than it is to define a religion or denomination. That applies especially when that movement almost defies definition as the Holiness Movement does. The Holiness Movement is a Methodist religious renewal movement that has over 12 million adherents worldwide. Perhaps the most familiar public manifestation of the holiness movement has been its urban holiness missions, and the Salvation Army-noted for its service ministries among poor and people suffering the dislocations that accompany war and disaster-is the most notable example. The A to Z of the Holiness Movement relates important new developments in the Holiness Movement--such as the widely discussed "Holiness Manifesto"--are thoroughly discussed, and the content has also been expanded to include information on figures from Asia and Africa to reflect the continued growth of the Holiness Movement. With a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries, this reference has information that cannot be found elsewhere.

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410

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Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810875918

ISBN 13

9780810875913

World of War

A History of American Warfare from Jamestown to the War on Terror

By: William Nester

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World of War

A History of American Warfare from Jamestown to the War on Terror

By: William Nester

World of War is an epic journey through America’s array of wars for diverse reasons with diverse results over the course of its existence. It reveals the crucial effects of brilliant, mediocre, and dismal military and civilian leaders; the dynamic among America’s expanding economic power, changing technologies, and the types and settings of its wars; and the human, financial, and moral costs to the nation, its allies, and its enemies. Nester explores the violent conflicts of the United States—on land, at sea, and in the air—with meticulous scholarship, thought-provoking analysis, and vivid prose.

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473

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811773795

ISBN 13

9780811773799

Growing up and Getting Old Behind the Wheel:

An American Auto Biography

By: William Schiff

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Growing up and Getting Old Behind the Wheel:

An American Auto Biography

By: William Schiff

Witty and softly sardonic, William Schiffs autobiographical romp describes his lifelong travels from early childhood to the Golden Years. Growing Up and Getting Old Behind the Wheel: An American Auto Biography is framed in a web of Americana, including cars he has ridden in, driven, modified, and even stolen. The span of his story is peppered with allusions to the locales, books, films, music, and social politics of the times he has experienced. He describes his youthful descent with friends into light criminalityhis incarceration, and his ultimate salvation and redemption through America's universities, rather than through its Churches. He sketches his menial jobs as a youth, as well as his later roles as student, university professor, parent, behavioral scientist, and retiree. If youve lived in America between 1940 and today, youll want to come along on the engrossing scenic drive through his vivid memories.

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271

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Trafford Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1426955286

ISBN 13

9781426955280

Piecing Together the Peaces

The Agricultural-Industrial Transition and the Rise of Zones of Peace

By: Alexander K. Antony,Director of Data Science and Analytics Alexander K Antony,William R. Thompson,Distinguished Professor and Donald a Rogers Professor of Political Science Emeritus William R Thompson

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Piecing Together the Peaces

The Agricultural-Industrial Transition and the Rise of Zones of Peace

In Piecing Together the Peaces, Alexander K. Antony and William R. Thompson provide a novel explanation for how peace took hold in the international system and why state behavior drastically changed. According to the standard line of reasoning, states need only democratize, liberalize their trade, modernize their economic culture, or choose to forego territorial pursuits to reach peace with another state. A bold challenge to the conventional wisdom that dominates interstate peace research, Antony and Thompson make the case that industrialization provides the starting point from which we can begin to unpack the transformation in conflict propensities among certain states.

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305

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0197782221

ISBN 13

9780197782224

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Art of Leadership

Battling the Great Depression and the Axis Powers

By: William Nester

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Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Art of Leadership

Battling the Great Depression and the Axis Powers

By: William Nester

Scholar William Nester explores Franklin D. Roosevelt’s character, personality, and presidential power. After their independence and civil wars, Americans never faced a greater threat than the sixteen years of global depression followed by global war from 1929 to 1945. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the president for the last dozen of those years, during which he led the nation first to alleviate the Great Depression then led an international alliance that vanquished the fascist powers during the Second World War. Along the way, he established the modern presidency with centralized powers to make and implement domestic and foreign policies. He was naturally a master politician who eventually, through daunting trials and errors, became an accomplished statesman. For all that, historians regularly rank Roosevelt among the top three presidents. Yet, most historians and countless others criticize Roosevelt for an array of things that he did or failed to do. Conservatives lambast him for creating a welfare state and trying to pack federal courts with liberal judges while liberals condemn him for interning 120,000 Japanese-Americans during the war and doing little to advance civil rights for African Americans. Critics blister war commander Roosevelt for caving into strategies demanded by powerful leaders that squandered countless lives and treasure in literal and figurative dead ends. These include Prime Minister Churchill’s push to invade the Italian peninsula and General MacArthur’s determination to recapture the Philippines. At times, his policies violated his principles. Like President Wilson during the Second World War, Roosevelt championed self-determination but not for every nation. He badgered Churchill to break up Britain’s empire while bowing to Stalin’s brutal communist conquest of eastern Europe. And those are just the opening barrages against Roosevelt. Although he won four presidential elections with overwhelming majorities, nearly as many people reviled him as they adored him. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Art of Leadership explores the dynamic among Roosevelt’s character, personality, and presidential power with which he asserted policies that overcame first the Great Depression and then the Axis powers during the Second World War. Along the way, the book raises and answers key questions. What were Roosevelt’s leadership skills and how did he develop them over time? Which New Deal policies succeeded, which failed, and what explains those results? Which war strategies succeeded, which failed, and what explains those results? What policies rooted in Roosevelt’s instincts proved to be superior to alternatives grounded in thick official reports advocated by his advisors? Finally, how does Roosevelt rank as an American and global leader?

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427

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Frontline Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1036110923

ISBN 13

9781036110925

The Limits of Empire: European Imperial Formations in Early Modern World History

Essays in Honor of Geoffrey Parker

By: William Reger

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The Limits of Empire: European Imperial Formations in Early Modern World History

Essays in Honor of Geoffrey Parker

By: William Reger

This volume, published in honor of historian Geoffrey Parker, explores the working of European empires in a global perspective, focusing on one of the most important themes of Parker’s work: the limits of empire, which is to say, the centrifugal forces - sacral, dynastic, military, diplomatic, geographical, informational - that plagued imperial formations in the early modern period (1500-1800). During this time of wrenching technological, demographic, climatic, and economic change, empires had to struggle with new religious movements, incipient nationalisms, new sea routes, new military technologies, and an evolving state system with complex new rules of diplomacy. Engaging with a host of current debates, the chapters in this book break away from conventional historical conceptions of empire as an essentially western phenomenon with clear demarcation lines between the colonizer and the colonized. These are replaced here by much more fluid and subtle conceptions that highlight complex interplays between coalitions of rulers and ruled. In so doing, the volume builds upon recent work that increasingly suggests that empires simply could not exist without the consent of their imperial subjects, or at least significant groups of them. This was as true for the British Raj as it was for imperial China or Russia. Whilst the thirteen chapters in this book focus on a number of geographic regions and adopt different approaches, each shares a focus on, and interest in, the working of empires and the ways that imperial formations dealt with - or failed to deal with - the challenges that beset them. Taken together, they reflect a new phase in the evolving historiography of empire. They also reflect the scholarly contributions of the dedicatee, Geoffrey Parker, whose life and work are discussed in the introductory chapters and, we’re proud to say, in a delightful chapter by Parker himself, an autobiographical reflection that closes the book.

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415

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317025334

ISBN 13

9781317025337

Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience

From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy

By: William F. Williams

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Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience

From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy

By: William F. Williams

The Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience is the first one-volume, A-to-Z reference that identifies, defines, and explains all of the terms and ideas dealing with the somewhat murky world of the "almost sciences". Truly interdisciplinary and multicultural in scope, the Encyclopedia examines how fringe or marginal sciences have affected people throughout history, as well as how they continue to exert an influence on our lives today. This comprehensive reference brings together: superstitions and fads that are part of popular culture, such as fortune telling; healing practices once thought marginal that are now become increasingly accepted, such as homeopathy and acupuncture; frauds and hoaxes that have occurred throughout history, such as UFOs; mistaken theories first put forward as serious science, but later discarded as false, such as phrenology and racial typing, etc. More than 2000 extensively cross-referenced and illustrated entries cover prominent phenomena, major figures, events topics, places and associations.

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445

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Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1135955220

ISBN 13

9781135955229

America - The Last Best Hope

From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom, 1914-1989

By: William J. Bennett

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America - The Last Best Hope

From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom, 1914-1989

By: William J. Bennett

Respected scholar Bennett reacquaints America with its heritage in this engaging narrative that slices through the cobwebs of time, memory, and prevailing cynicism to reinvigorate America with an informed patriotism.

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1331

Publisher

Thomas Nelson Inc

Published Date

ISBN 10

1595550879

ISBN 13

9781595550873

Land of War

A History of European Warfare from Achilles to Putin

By: William Nester

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Land of War

A History of European Warfare from Achilles to Putin

By: William Nester

War in Europe began with the first human migrants. Rival bands fought for thousands of years before the Greeks and Romans began writing about their military history, first as legend—for instance, the hero Achilles battling the Trojans—and then as fact. War developed from sticks and stones to bronze, iron, and steel, including armor and edged weapons. Then came gunpowder, guns, and cannons, which eventually replaced edged weapons. Finally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, technology exploded: railroads, steamships, telegraphs, machine guns, automobiles, airplanes, and tanks enabled European states to muster, equip, arm, transport, and command more men than ever before, with more firepower than ever before. In the past seventy-five years, atomic weapons changed the military landscape of Europe—as have the internet and cyber warfare. In this colorful new telling of European warfare—and indeed European history through the continent’s all too numerous wars and conflicts—William Nester describes millennia of armed conflict. He covers the “greatest hits” of military history both ancient and current: Thermopylae, the Peloponnesian War, the wars of the Roman Empire across the continent, the Battle of Hastings, the Crusades, Agincourt, Waterloo, Napoleon and Wellington, the Somme, the Spanish Civil War, Stalingrad and Normandy, Churchill, Hitler, and Stalin, Bosnia, and up through Putin’s attempts to redraw the map of Europe. Nester highlights how warfare has been deeply entwined with European statesmanship and undergirds modern institutions such as NATO and the European Union. Europe’s sense of itself is bound up in its military history. Land of War is an epic odyssey from Europe’s mythic origins through its latest violent conflicts.

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521

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811772497

ISBN 13

9780811772495

Won Over

Reflections of a Federal Judge on His Journey from Jim Crow Mississippi

By: William Alsup

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Won Over

Reflections of a Federal Judge on His Journey from Jim Crow Mississippi

By: William Alsup

What was it like growing up white in Mississippi as the Civil Rights Movement exploded in the 1950s and '60s. How did white children reconciled the decency and fairness taught by their parents with the indecency and unfairness of the Mississippi Way of Life, the euphemism applied to the pervasive Jim Crow. How did the Civil Rights Movement influence white kids coming of age in the most segregated place in America? Won Over, a memoir, examines these questions as it traces the journey of United States District Judge William Alsup, born white in 1945 to hard-working parents in Mississippi. They believed in segregation. But they also taught their children fairness and decency and therein lay the conflict, a struggle at the core of the human predicament in the South. As Won Over recalls near its outset, the author's earliest doubt about the system came at age twelve when what he'd thought stood as an abandoned shack at the bottom of a sand quarry turned out to be a school for black kids, whom we saw playing in the mud outside its door. At the end, Won Over reflects on a 1966 challenge by the author and his college roommate to the Mississippi Speaker Ban, an official rule against any "controversial" speaker coming onto a college campus in Mississippi, a rule used to quash their invitation to the state president of the NAACP to speak at their college, Mississippi State University. After a tense showdown, the roommates won that challenge. In January 1967, Aaron Henry became the first black ever to speak on a white college campus in Mississippi, receiving a standing ovation. The memoir traces the influences that drew the author from traditional Southern attitudes toward a color-blind ideal. Those influences included his older sister, Willanna, his closest circle of friends, a charismatic mentor in college, and the moral force of the Civil Rights Movement. Won Over recounts their steps along that journey — a counter protest to a John Birch Society billboard calling for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren; meeting personally with the brother of slain leader Medgar Evers to convey condolences; a letter to the editor of the statewide paper on behalf of his circle of friends declaring "We are for civil rights for Negroes"; joining his college roommate in a rally at Tougaloo College to support the Meredith March Against Racism; and going to the Liberty Baptist Church in Chicago to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. exhort the faithful in their summer-long protest against housing and employment discrimination. In 1967, William Alsup went on to Harvard Law School, then to clerk for Justice William O. Douglas. He briefly practiced civil rights law in Mississippi before moving to San Francisco, where he became a trial attorney and, in 1999, received an appointment as United States District Judge.

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200

Publisher

NewSouth Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1603064524

ISBN 13

9781603064521

British Grand Strategy in the Age of American Hegemony

By: William D James,Research Fellow in the Centre for Grand Strategy William D James

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British Grand Strategy in the Age of American Hegemony

By: William D James,Research Fellow in the Centre for Grand Strategy William D James

Employing several historical case studies between 1940-2003 and marshalling a host of primary sources, William D. James argues that British politicians and officials have thought in grand strategic terms under American hegemony - even if they do not realise or admit to this.

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273

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198896603

ISBN 13

9780198896609

Beyond the Texts

An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah

By: William G. Dever

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Beyond the Texts

An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah

By: William G. Dever

A handbook for biblical scholars and historians of the Ancient Near East William G. Dever offers a welcome perspective on ancient Israel and Judah that prioritizes the archaeological remains to render history as it was—not as the biblical writers argue it should have been. Drawing from the most recent archaeological data as interpreted from a nontheological point of view and supplementing that data with biblical material only when it converges with the archaeological record, Dever analyzes all the evidence at hand to provide a new history of ancient Israel and Judah that is accessible to all interested readers. Features A new approach to the history of ancient Israel Extensive bibliography More than eighty maps and illustrations

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773

Publisher

SBL Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0884142175

ISBN 13

9780884142171

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