Browse

The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love

Fritz Oehlschlaeger

Arguably one of the most important American writers working today, Wendell Berry, is the author of more than fifty books, including novels and collections of poems, short stories, and essays. A ... More

Arguably one of the most important American writers working today, Wendell Berry, is the author of more than fifty books, including novels and collections of poems, short stories, and essays. A prominent spokesman for agrarian values, Berry frequently defends such practices and ideas as sustainable agriculture, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of work, and the interconnectedness of life. This book provides a sweeping engagement with Berry's entire corpus. It introduces the reader to Berry's general philosophy and aesthetic through careful consideration of his essays. It also pays particular attention to Berry as an agrarian, citizen, and patriot, and examines the influence of Christianity on Berry's writings. Much of the book is devoted to lively close readings of Berry's short stories, novels, and poetry.Less

Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War

Burrus M. Carnahan

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would “have no lawful right” to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a ... More

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would “have no lawful right” to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln asserted that he was endowed “with the law of war in time of war”. This book contends Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the intellectual warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Less

After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965

Timothy J. Minchin and John A. Salmond

Martin Luther King's 1965 address from Montgomery, Alabama, the center of much racial conflict at the time and the location of the well-publicized bus boycott a decade earlier, is often considered by ... More

Martin Luther King's 1965 address from Montgomery, Alabama, the center of much racial conflict at the time and the location of the well-publicized bus boycott a decade earlier, is often considered by historians to be the culmination of the civil rights era in American history. In his momentous speech, King declared that segregation was “on its deathbed” and that the movement had already achieved significant milestones. Although the civil rights movement had won many battles in the struggle for racial equality by the mid-1960s, including legislation to guarantee black voting rights and to desegregate public accommodations, the fight to implement the new laws was just starting. In reality, King's speech in Montgomery represented a new beginning rather than a conclusion to the movement, a fact that King acknowledged in the address. This book begins where many histories of the civil rights movement end, with King's triumphant march from the iconic battleground of Selma to Montgomery. The book focuses on events in the South following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It examines the social, economic, and political implications of these laws in the decades following their passage, discussing the empowerment of black southerners, white resistance, accommodation and acceptance, and the nation's political will. The book also provides a fascinating history of the often-overlooked period of race relations during the presidential administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, and both George H. W. and George W. Bush.Less

The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics

Paul B. Thompson

As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the ... More

As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the earth's ability to provide for its inhabitants grows increasingly precarious as we attempt to achieve sustainable development. This book articulates a new agrarian philosophy, emphasizing the vital role of agrarianism in modern agricultural practices. It unites concepts of agrarian philosophy, political theory, and environmental ethics to illustrate the importance of creating and maintaining environmentally conscious communities. The book describes the evolution of agrarian values in America following the path blazed by Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck, and Wendell Berry.Less

Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War

Jessica Elkind

Aid Under Fire explores American nation building and modernization efforts in South Vietnam during the decade leading up to the full-scale ground war.Beginning in the mid-1950s, American nation ... More

Aid Under Fire explores American nation building and modernization efforts in South Vietnam during the decade leading up to the full-scale ground war.Beginning in the mid-1950s, American nation builders traveled to southern Vietnam, eager to help establish a permanent non-Communist state that would advance US interests in Asia.Ignoring the political concerns of the majority of the Vietnamese people, they supported the South Vietnamese government through a massive program of military, economic, and technical assistance.Based on American and Vietnamese archival sources, this book tells the story of how nation-building efforts were carried out and reveals in stark terms the limits on American power and influence in the period widely considered the apex of US supremacy in the world. This bookfocuses on the activities of the civilian aid workers who spearheaded US policies in South Vietnam.Confident in the transformative power of American models, these men and women were developmental enthusiasts who sought to reform Vietnamese institutions and garner support for the government in Saigon.However, like the government officials who recruited them, most aid workers lacked a basic knowledge and understanding of Vietnamese culture, history, and politics.As a result, they attempted to replicate political, economic, and military systems on the basis oftheir own experiences while displaying a willful blindness to the conditions and attitudes in Vietnam. By examining civilian aid workers’ role in implementing and shaping American modernization efforts in Vietnam, this book shows how nation building functioned—and ultimately failed—at the ground level.Less

The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam

Brian D. Laslie

This work traces the creation and evolution of air combat training exercises within the U.S. Air Force from Vietnam through Operation Desert Storm and Operation Allied Force. After Vietnam, the USAF ... More

This work traces the creation and evolution of air combat training exercises within the U.S. Air Force from Vietnam through Operation Desert Storm and Operation Allied Force. After Vietnam, the USAF fundamentally changed the way it prepared its combat pilots for air warfare. The creation of the realistic training exercise Red Flag altered the way the air force trained for and executed combat operations. Along the way, the importance of tactical aircraft greatly increased as the importance and contributions of the Strategic Air Command began to wane.Less

Alben Barkley: A Life in Politics

James K. Libbey

Born in humble, rural surroundings in the Jackson Purchase, Barkley grew into a sturdy youth who received an education through parental sacrifices. He graduated from Marvin College as an ... More

Born in humble, rural surroundings in the Jackson Purchase, Barkley grew into a sturdy youth who received an education through parental sacrifices. He graduated from Marvin College as an award-winning speaker and soon moved with his parents to Paducah, where he read law and became an attorney. Barkley entered politics winning elections as county attorney and then county judge: he gained victory through his farmer constituents. In 1913 he moved from courthouse to Congress as a progressive who championed President Wilson’s New Freedom program. During World War I, he favored freedom of the seas to promote agricultural exports and gained national attention by advocating prohibition. In wartime he visited US soldiers on the front lines and in peacetime became a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which enhanced his understanding of international relations. His only electoral loss occurred when he campaigned for governor, but his Kentucky canvass enabled him to win a US Senate seat in 1926. Furious over Republican administrations for their support of high tariffs that hurt agricultural exports and their inability to assist impoverished Americans during the Great Depression, Barkley became a strong supporter and national spokesman for the New Deal. World War II found Senate majority leader Barkley playing a key role in wartime legislation, but he lost favor with President Roosevelt by opposing the president’s expensive revenue bill of 1944. Meanwhile, the senator had maintained close and supportive relations with Truman and joined him as his vice presidential candidate on the 1948 presidential ticket. Barkley became the one and only Veep who turned the vice presidency into an important office. The Paducah politician failed to get his party’s nomination for president in 1952, so he temporarily retired, appearing on his own national television show, and preparing (with help) his autobiography. In 1954 he won election and returned to the US Senate as a junior member.Less

America's First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark

Nikki M. Taylor

America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark is a political and intellectual biography of one of the foremost activists, intellectuals, orators, and politicians in 19th century ... More

America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark is a political and intellectual biography of one of the foremost activists, intellectuals, orators, and politicians in 19th century African-American history whose life is a testament to the black radical intellectual and political traditions. As a black radical intellectual, Peter H. Clark (1829-1925) used education, oratory, and editorials to confront the American conscience, critique the hypocrisies in the national discourse, and articulate a radical, more inclusive, democratic, and egalitarian vision of America. As a pioneer of the black radical political tradition, he used radical political ideas to forge a path to full and equal citizenship for his people. He embraced everything from radical abolitionism to revolutionary armed violence to socialism. As the first known black socialist, Clark was just one of a few native-born American leaders in a movement dominated by German immigrants. He became one of the most influential of the American socialists and his socialist lectures between 1876 and 1879 stand as the foundation of early black socialist thought. Although he never held a formal political position, Clark proved to be an astute politician who used both parties as tools to get what he wanted for African Americans and himself: political power. He exerted great influence on legislators, Ohio governors, Presidents, and Supreme Court Justices-- all of whom knew him personally and sought his help in courting the African-American vote. In his quest for power, he employed every strategy imaginable, including critiquing his party from within, joining factional and third parties, playing machine politics, advocating political realignment and political independence, and bribery. This book ultimately chronicles the rise and fall of a man who became corrupted by an unrelenting quest for political power.Less

The American South and the Vietnam War: Belligerence, Protest, and Agony in Dixie

Joseph A. Fry

Place matters in how Americans have responded to and sought to influence US foreign policy. The dynamic of domestic regional influence on US foreign relations was especially apparent in the American ... More

Place matters in how Americans have responded to and sought to influence US foreign policy. The dynamic of domestic regional influence on US foreign relations was especially apparent in the American South’s role in the Vietnam War. From the general public to soldiers, college students, and crucially placed political leaders, Dixie supported the war more strongly and longer than any other section of the country. As had been the southern practice since the 1780s, the South’s bellicose foreign policy stance was grounded in distinctly regional political and economic interests, racial views, ideological and historical assumptions, and religious values. Although Dixie’s support helped to sustain an increasingly unpopular war under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon, many of these same regional interests and values spawned an articulate minority opposition to the war. These antiwar protests, together with the war’s mounting agony, led even the South and its prowar leaders to tire of the conflict by the early 1970s.Less

Appalachian Travels: The Diary of Olive Dame Campbell

Olive Dame Campbell

Elizabeth M. Williams (ed.)

Olive Dame Campbell is best known as a ballad collector, but she was also a social reformer in Appalachia. Her diary is a the record of a trip that she and her husband, John C. Campbell, made in the ... More

Olive Dame Campbell is best known as a ballad collector, but she was also a social reformer in Appalachia. Her diary is a the record of a trip that she and her husband, John C. Campbell, made in the early part of the 20th century to gather data for the Russell Sage Foundation about the true social, religious, and economic conditions in the Southern Highlands. Visiting eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, they interviewed missionaries, teachers, and settlement school workers, going to out-of-the-way villages and towns on roads that were often nothing more than creek beds. After John Campbell's death in 1919, she continued his work, finishing his book, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, the first comprehensive history of Appalachia. All the while, she maintained her interest in folk songs, acquired on their fact-finding trip. She studied the educational principles of Scandinavian folk schools and established the John C. Campbell Folk School near Brasstown, North Carolina, to encourage the local population to continue the tradition of creating native crafts and was instrumental in the establishment of the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild. Olive Dame Campbell's diary of their investigative trip to gather information is an entertaining and enlightening account of the places the Campbells visited and the people they met, revealing captivating details of everyday life in Appalachia at the turn of the century.Less

Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity

Nora Rose Moosnick

Arabs and Jews are thought to inhabit the Middle East or urban areas in the United States, not Kentucky or other out of the way locales. Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation ... More

Arabs and Jews are thought to inhabit the Middle East or urban areas in the United States, not Kentucky or other out of the way locales. Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity explores the untold accounts of ten Arab and Jewish women who managed in the past and currently their unique identities tending to both their religious/ethnic traditions and acculturating to Kentucky ways. In the details of women's stories, ties between Arabs and Jews not in the Middle East, but middle America, emerge. Common ground surfaces displaying Arab and Jewish women with similar tales of women openly and publicly serving their communities, of mother-daughter relations, of the agility necessitated to work, mother, and be an active community member, and of what it meant to be an Arab and Jewish mother nearly a century ago. Associations materialize in the women's tales, underscoring that lives evolve relationally between generations, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, aunts and nephews, grandmothers and granddaughters, and within and between communities. Narratives about immigrant groups becoming American traditionally spotlight one group at a time, and not in correspondence to other groups. Through the lens of women's lives, the relational links between Arabs and Jews, individuals and communities, and generations become apparent.Less

Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the US Air Force

Brian D. Laslie

Only the most ardent of air power historians know the name of General Laurence S. Kuter, despite the fact he welded a B-17 group into a cohesive fighting force, was the deputy commander of allied ... More

Only the most ardent of air power historians know the name of General Laurence S. Kuter, despite the fact he welded a B-17 group into a cohesive fighting force, was the deputy commander of allied tactical air forces in North Africa, and later served as commander of the Military Air Transport Service, Air University, Far East Air Forces—later Pacific Air Forces—and finally as a Commander-in-Chief of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). The biography of Larry Kuter is the biography of the United States Air Corps, Army Air Forces and U.S. Air ForceLess

Army Diplomacy: American Military Occupation and Foreign Policy after World War II

Walter M. Hudson

Army Diplomacy demonstrates how, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States Army became the principal agent of American foreign policy. The army designed, implemented, and ... More

Army Diplomacy demonstrates how, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States Army became the principal agent of American foreign policy. The army designed, implemented, and administered the occupations of the defeated Axis powers Germany and Japan, as well as many other nations. Generals such as Lucius Clay in Germany, Mark Clark in Austria, and John Hodge in Korea presided over these territories as proconsuls, and at the beginning of the Cold War more than 300 million people lived under some form of US military authority. This massive occupation effort had roots in a century of army practice, especially influenced by the army’s Rhineland occupation. The army policies in the occupied nations also represented the culmination of more than a century of military doctrine. Army Diplomacy relies upon institutional history, military sociology, and international relations theory to show how the army’s institutional history and doctrine led to development of post–World War II occupation governance that reflected the particular imperatives of the US Army, especially the army’s requirement that all matters of governance be subordinate to requirements of military necessity. Army Diplomacy further shows the army’s bureaucratic skill in winning the intergovernmental debate over postwar governance against other US government rivals. Finally, Army Diplomacy reveals how the implementation of military government in postwar Germany, Austria, and Korea not only informed but also profoundly influenced early US Cold War policy.Less

Art for Equality: The NAACPs Cultural Campaign for Civil Rights

Jenny Woodley

This book explores what James Weldon Johnson called the “art approach to the Negro problem.” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) developed a strategy that attempted ... More

This book explores what James Weldon Johnson called the “art approach to the Negro problem.” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) developed a strategy that attempted to eradicate racial prejudice through altering the way African Americans were portrayed in a wide range of media and through the development and promotion of black literary and artistic talent. It launched a number of cultural campaigns during its first half century, which included publishing art and literature in its magazine and encouraging the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, using the arts to change white attitudes toward lynching, protesting against racial stereotypes in film and television, and lobbying for more positive depictions of African Americans. The book asks what this work reveals about the NAACP as an organization and how it approached questions of assimilation, cultural pluralism, class bias, cultural elitism, censorship, and propaganda. Finally, Art for Equality examines the relationship between culture and civil rights. It argues that the NAACP's cultural strategy was designed to complement its other work by changing white attitudes toward the race and by forging a black identity. As such its cultural campaigns should be evaluated as one front in the battle for racial equality.Less

The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell

Harry S. Laver and Jeffrey J. Matthews (eds)

The Art of Command provides biographical and topical portraits of exceptional leaders from all four branches of the United States armed forces. Laver and Matthews have identified eleven core ... More

The Art of Command provides biographical and topical portraits of exceptional leaders from all four branches of the United States armed forces. Laver and Matthews have identified eleven core characteristics of effective leadership, such as vision, charisma, determination, and integrity, and apply them to significant figures in American military history. In doing so, they argue that leadership is a learned and practiced skill, developed through conscious effort and mentoring by superiors. Tracing the careers, traits, and behaviors of eleven legendary leaders, including Ulysses Grant, George Marshall, Henry Arnold, and David Shoup, each chapter provides detailed critical analysis of a leader's personal development and leadership style. This historically grounded exploration delivers an insightful examination of various military command styles that transcend time, place, rank, and branch of service.Less

The Arthurdale Community School: Education and Reform in Depression Era Appalachia

Sam F. Jr. Stack

The book examines the Arthurdale School, which was created during the Great Depression and dedicated to the purpose of building community and preparing students for participation in democratic ... More

The book examines the Arthurdale School, which was created during the Great Depression and dedicated to the purpose of building community and preparing students for participation in democratic society. In an effort to relieve the suffering resulting from the Depression, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, and, as part of the act, $25 million was given to President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to build subsistence homestead communities. Subsistence homesteads were designed to give people enough land to farm and provide for their food for their own use. These New Deal reformers also believed that the subsistence homestead could build a sense of community, alleviating the alienation resulting from economic displacement. Seeking sites for the social experiment to begin, Eleanor Roosevelt visited the coal camps in north central West Virginia. Feeling sympathy for the plight of these Appalachian people, and aware of the political unrest in the area, she returned to Washington and convinced her husband that these devastated coal families needed to be chosen to develop the first subsistence homestead community, Arthurdale. She also believed that the children of the displaced miners needed a special kind of education, one grounded in the philosophy of progressive education. Education was to serve as the center of community life, a process that brought people together in a sense of ownership and a restored sense of human dignity.Less

At the Decisive Point in the Sinai: Generalship in the Yom Kippur War

Jacob Even and Simcha B. Maoz

The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War or the October War, was fought by Israel against a coalition of Arab nations, led by Syria and Egypt. The war lasted nineteen days, with the pivotal ... More

The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War or the October War, was fought by Israel against a coalition of Arab nations, led by Syria and Egypt. The war lasted nineteen days, with the pivotal moment being Major General Ariel Sharon’s crossing of the Suez Canal, which is known as the crossing battle In this narrative Jacob Even and Simcha B. Maoz consider the war and Sharon’s leadership as a case study of generalship for the benefit of new generations of senior field commanders. By focusing on the divisional command, Even and Maoz balance the macro view of the war (in the context of the political atmosphere of the time) with the micro view (as a cascade of individual decisions made by each commanding officer).Less

Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865

Frank J. Byrne

This book focuses on what historians have come to call the “middling sort”, the economic group falling between yeoman farmers and the planter class that dominated the antebellum South. At a time when ... More

This book focuses on what historians have come to call the “middling sort”, the economic group falling between yeoman farmers and the planter class that dominated the antebellum South. At a time when Southerners rarely traveled far from their homes, these merchants annually ventured forth on buying junkets to northern cities. The southern merchant community promoted the kind of aggressive business practices that proponents of the “New South” would later claim as their own. This book reveals the peculiar strains of modern liberal-capitalist and conservative thought that permeated the culture of southern merchants. By exploring the values men and women in merchant families espoused, the book not only offers new insight into southern history but also deepens our understanding of the mutable ties between regional identity and the marketplace in nineteenth-century America.Less

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

Troy Jackson

Without question, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the face of the civil rights revolution that reshaped the social and political landscape of the United States. Although many biographers and historians ... More

Without question, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the face of the civil rights revolution that reshaped the social and political landscape of the United States. Although many biographers and historians have examined Dr. King's activism, few have recognized the pivotal role that the people of Montgomery, Alabama, played in preparing him for leadership. King arrived in Montgomery as a virtually unknown doctoral student, but his activities there—from organizing the Montgomery bus boycott to building relationships with local activists such as Rufus Lewis, E. D. Nixon, and Virginia Durr—established him as the movement's most visible leader. This book illustrates how the people of Montgomery influenced King as much as he influenced them. In Montgomery, brave citizens, both black and white, spearheaded a protest movement that also launched King's public ministry. It demonstrates that spending his formative years in the city of Montgomery gave King the skills and experience to become a hero to generations of Americans.Less

Before the Quagmire: American Intervention in Laos, 1954-1961

William Rust

This book discusses the formulation and execution of U.S. foreign policy in Laos from 1954, when the Geneva Accords ended the First Indochina War, until January 1961, when John F. Kennedy became ... More

This book discusses the formulation and execution of U.S. foreign policy in Laos from 1954, when the Geneva Accords ended the First Indochina War, until January 1961, when John F. Kennedy became president. A key initial misstep on the U.S. road to war in Southeast Asia, the American experience in Laos during the Eisenhower administration is a case study in transforming a small foreign policy problem into a large one. Based on documents from the U.S. National Archives, the Eisenhower Library, and other public and private collections of primary sources, the book shows how the administration's efforts to thwart communism in Laos were undermined by ignorance of the country's history and culture; by contradictory policies proposed, and actions pursued, by the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA; and by a lack of unity among the Western allies. A key failure of U.S. policymaking was a lack of awareness that covert intervention in the kingdom's political life had a destabilizing impact on the fragile non-communist base the United States sought to strengthen and unify. Compared to the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, and to the major cold war battlefields in Europe and Asia, Laos often seemed a small-scale skirmish in the fight against communism. In the last six months of Eisenhower's second term, however, Laos became a priority after a coup d'état, led by an obscure U.S.-trained paratroop captain, evolved into a superpower confrontation that threatened to become another Korean War or worse.Less