The period from 1850 to 1876 was the most transformative era in American history. During the course of this tumultuous quarter century Americans fought a bloody civil war, tried to settle the issue of state versus central government power, recognized the dominance of the new industrial economy over the older agricultural one, and ended slavery, long the shame of the nation. At the same time, a major political realignment occurred with the collapse of the "second American party system" and the emergence of a new party, the Republicans.
But the defeat of slavery—the chief catalyst for the birth of the Republican party—was at best a limited success. The Constitution had been rewritten to abolish slavery and guarantee equal protection under the law, but social equality for African Americans and expanding freedom for others remained elusive throughout the nation. For these triumphs and enduring tragedy, the Republican party, which became in time and memory the party of Abraham Lincoln, bore primary responsibility.
This collection of six original essays by some of America's most distinguished historians of the Civil War era examines the origins and evolution of the Republican party over the course of its first generation. The essays consider the party in terms of its identity, interests, ideology, images, and individuals, always with an eye to the ways the Republican party influenced midnineteenth-century concerns over national character, political power, race, and civil rights.
The authors collectively extend their inquiries from the 1850s through the 1870s to understand the processes whereby the second American party system broke down, a new party and politics emerged, the Civil War came, and a new political and social order developed. They especially consider how ideas about freedom in the 1850s coalesced during war and Reconstruction to produce both an expanded call for political and civil rights for the ex-slaves and a concern over expanded federal involvement in the protection of those rights. By observing the transformation of a sectional party born in the 1850s into the "Grand Old Party" by the 1870s, the authors demonstrate that no modern political party, even the one that claims descent from Lincoln, has surpassed the accomplishments of the first generation of Republicans.

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Robert F. Engs - The Birth of the Grand Old Party, The Republicans' First Generation (2002).pdf

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Robert J. McMahon - The Cold War, A Very Short Int roduction (2003).jpg

The massive disorder and economic ruin following the Second World War inevitably predetermined the scope and intensity of the Cold War. But why did it last so long? And what impact did it have on the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, and the Third World? Finally, how did it affect the broader history of the second half of the twentieth century--what were the human and financial costs? This Very Short Introduction provides a clear and stimulating interpretive overview of the Cold War, one that will both invite debate and encourage deeper investigation.

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Thomas H. Kreneck - Mexican American Odyssey, Feli x Tijerina, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905-19 65 (2001).jpg

USA Books1 - Thomas H. Kreneck - Mexican American Odyssey, Felix T...jerina, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905-1965 2001.jpg

“ . . . the writing is crisp, meticulous, and emotionally touching . . . we learn much about the diversity of the ‘Mexican American Generation’ from the discussion of philosophical stands that competed with [Felix] Tijerina’s own conservative brand.”--Arnoldo De León, author, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston
(Arnoldo De Le�n, author, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of )

About the Author
Thomas H. Kreneck is head of Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. A specialist in developing local research resources, Kreneck founded the Mexican American archival component at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

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Thomas H. Kreneck - Mexican American Odyssey, Feli x Tijerina, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905-19 65 (2001).pdf

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Peter Dale Scott - Drugs, Oil, and War, The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (2 003).jpg

Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through al liances with drug-trafficking proxies. The result has been a staggering increase in global drug traffic. Thus, the author argues, the exercise of power by cover t means, or parapolitics, often metastasizes into deep politics - the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy ini tiators. Scott contends that we must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded n ot just in military and economic superiority but also in so-called soft power. W e need a soft politics of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is e mbroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

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Peter Dale Scott - Drugs, Oil, and War, The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (2 003).pdf

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John A. Salmond - The General Textile Strike of 19 34, From Maine to Alabama (2002).jpg

In January 1933, the United Textile Workers of America was in danger of collapse. Its membership was no larger than 15,000; its attempts to organize southern workers had failed disastrously; and it was constantly under attack from rival organizations. Yet, barely eighteen months later, with 300,000 dues-paying members, with newly established or revived branches covering southern cotton textile workers, as well as northern woolen and worsted workers, silk and jacquard weavers, dyers and finishers, even rayon workers, and with locals in 208 cities, towns, and mill villages, UTW was about to embark on what one historian has termed "the greatest single industrial conflict in the history of American labor." The General Textile Strike of 1934 is the story of that conflict. The few historians who have concerned themselves at all with the 1934 textile strike have all concentrated on its southern aspect, presenting it as a southern event, a cotton textile event. No one argues that the South and cotton were not crucial to the strike's story. It was cotton mill workers' anger over broken promises of the National Industrial Recovery Act that had forced a reluctant UTW leadership into supporting a strike vote. No industry leader was more devious in his dealings with the UTW leaders than George Sloan, the chair of the Cotton Code Authority and head of the Cotton Textile Institute. Nevertheless, the 1934 strike was a nationwide one, involving hundreds of thousands of silk, woolen, and rayon workers, all represented by the UTW and mostly living in states outside the South. Moreover, Peter Van Horn and Arthur Besse, head of the Silk and Woolen Code Authorities, respectively, lost little to Sloan in their intransigence toward labor's demands. And, though the great transfer of the cotton industry from New England to the South was almost complete, there were still little pockets left in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine. In The General Textile Strike of 1934, John Salmond tells everyone's story. Looking at the strike from a national and an industrywide perspective, Salmond explains why workers were willing to risk protesting and describes the differences and similarities between southern and northern workers. Setting the strike within a New Deal context and focusing on its impact on the future of labor relations in the industry and the lives of those who participated in it, The General Textile Strike of 1934 fills an important gap in American labor history.

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John A. Salmond - The General Textile Strike of 19 34, From Maine to Alabama (2002).pdf

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Jeffrey W. Hunt - Last Battle of the Civil War, Pa lmetto Ranch (2002).jpg

More than two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, the "New York Times" reported a most surprising piece of news. On May 12-13, the last battle of the Civil War had been fought at the southernmost tip of Texas - resulting in a Confederate victory. Although Palmetto Ranch did nothing to change the war's outcome, it added the final irony to a conflict replete with ironies, unexpected successes, and lost opportunities. For these reasons, it has become both one of the most forgotten and most mythologised battles of the Civil War.In this book, Jeffrey Hunt draws on previously unstudied letters and court martial records to offer a full and accurate account of the battle of Palmetto Ranch. As he recreates the events of the fighting that pitted the United States' 62nd Colored Troops and the 34th Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry against Texas cavalry and artillery battalions commanded by Colonel John S. 'Rip' Ford, Hunt lays to rest many misconceptions about the battle. In particular, he reveals that the Texans were fully aware of events in the East - and still willing to fight for Southern independence. He also demonstrates that, far from fleeing the battle in a panic as some have asserted, the African American troops played a vital role in preventing the Union defeat from becoming a rout.

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Mark Voss-Hubbard - Beyond Party, Cultures of Anti partisanship in Northern Politics before the Civil War (2002).jpg

USA Books1 - Mark Voss-Hubbard - Beyond Party, Cultures of Antipar...anship in Northern Politics before the Civil War 2002.jpg

Captivating disgruntled voters, third parties have often complicated the American political scene. In the years before the Civil War, third-party politics took the form of the Know Nothings, who mistrusted established parties and gave voice to anti-government sentiment.
Originating about 1850 as a nativist fraternal order, the Know Nothing movement soon spread throughout the industrial North. In Beyond Party, Mark Voss-Hubbard draws on local sources in three different states where the movement was especially strong to uncover its social roots and establish its relationship to actual public policy issues. Focusing on the 1852 ten hour movement in Essex County, Massachusetts, the pro-temperance and anti-Catholic agitation in and around Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and the movement to restrict immigrants' voting rights and overthrow "corrupt parties and politicians" in New London County, Connecticut, he shows that these places shared many of the social problems that occurred throughout the North--the consolidation of capitalist agriculture and industry, the arrival of Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and the changing fortunes of many established political leaders.
Voss-Hubbard applies the insights of social history and social movement theory to politics in arguing that we need to understand Know Nothing rhetoric and activism as part of a wider tradition of American suspicion of "politics as usual"--even though, of course, this antipartyism served agendas that included those of self-interested figures seeking to accumulate power.

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Theda Skocpol - Diminished Democracy, From Members hip to Management in American Civic Life (2004).jpg

Pundits and social observers have voiced alarm each year as fewer Americans involve themselves in voluntary groups that meet regularly. Thousands of nonprofit groups have been launched in recent times, but most are run by professionals who lobby Congress or deliver social services to clients. What will happen to U.S. democracy if participatory groups and social movements wither, while civic involvement becomes one more occupation rather than every citizen's right and duty? In Diminished Democracy, Theda Skocpol shows that this decline in public involvement has not always been the case in this country-and how, by understanding the causes of this change, we might reverse it. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life is Volume 8 in the Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series.

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Theda Skocpol - Diminished Democracy, From Members hip to Management in American Civic Life (2004).pdf

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Michael Baughman, Charlotte Hadella - Warm Springs Millennium. Voices from the Reservation (2000).jpg

Established in 1855 on an area one-fifteenth the size of the lands relinquished in return for it, the Warm Springs Reservation in north central Oregon is home to some 3,600 Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute Indians, half of whom are under twenty. This book seeks to understand the reservation's inhabitants as a 'viable people' who are both visible and vocal as they reflect on their daily lives, their struggles and successes, and their hopes for the future. Michael Baughman and Charlotte Hadella present extended interviews with seven Indian and two non-Indian members of the community.They discuss issues such as the difficulty of maintaining traditional lifeways centered around hunting, fishing, and gathering; the disruptions caused by alcoholism and diseases such as diabetes; and the need for culturally appropriate education for the young. The authors frame the interviews with explanatory material that covers the reservation's history and relations with white society and its efforts to transmit native languages and cultural traditions to its children. Michael Baughman and Charlotte Hadella are affiliated with Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where Baughman is Emeritus Professor and Hadella is Associate Professor of English.

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Michael Baughman, Charlotte Hadella - Warm Springs Millennium. Voices from the Reservation (2000).pdf

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Paul A. Shackel - Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape (2001).jpg

The authors in this collection show how the creation of a collective memory of highly visible objects and landscapes is an ongoing struggle, their meanings always being constructed, changed, and challenged. The sites and symbols the authors address are nationally recognized and include a balance of places that illuminate class, ethnic, racial, and historical experiences. Focusing on material culture, they explore the tensions that exist among various groups--elite landowners, the National Park Service, preservationists, minority groups--who compete for control over the interpretation of American public history.

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Paul A. Shackel - Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape (2001).pdf

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Peter J. Westwick - Into the Black, JPL and the Am erican Space Program, 1976-2004 (2006).jpg

In the decades since the mid-1970s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has led the quest to explore the farthest reaches of the solar system. JPL spacecraft—Voyager, Magellan, Galileo, the Mars rovers, and others—have brought the planets into close view. JPL satellites and instruments also shed new light on the structure and dynamics of earth itself, while their orbiting observatories opened new vistas on the cosmos. This comprehensive book recounts the extraordinary story of the lab's accomplishments, failures, and evolution from 1976 to the present day.
This history of JPL encompasses far more than the story of the events and individuals that have shaped the institution. It also engages wider questions about relations between civilian and military space programs, the place of science and technology in American politics, and the impact of the work at JPL on the way we imagine the place of humankind in the universe.

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Peter J. Westwick - Into the Black, JPL and the Am erican Space Program, 1976-2004 (2006).pdf

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Peter Maquire - Law and War (2001).jpg

An important and fascinating study, marked by impressive research and moral passion, of war atrocities and legal guilt -- from Wounded Knee to Nuremberg" -- Ronald Steel, Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California

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Thomas John Blumer - Catawba Indian Pottery, The S urvival of a Folk Tradition (2003).jpg

When Europeans encountered them, the Catawba Indians were living along the river and throughout the valley that carries their name near the present North Carolina-South Carolina border. Archaeologists later collected and identified categories of pottery types belonging to the historic Catawba and extrapolated an association with their protohistoric and prehistoric predecessors. In this volume, Thomas Blumer traces the construction techniques of those documented ceramics to the lineage of their probable present-day master potters - or, in other words, he traces the Catawba pottery traditions. By mining data from archives and the oral traditions of contemporary potters, Blumer reconstructs sales circuits regularly traveled by Catawba peddlers and thereby illuminates unresolved questions regarding trade routes in the protohistoric period. In addition, the author details particular techniques of the representative potters - factors such as clay selection, tool use, decoration, and firing techniques - which influence their styles. In assessing the work, David G. Moore, of Warren Wilson College, states, "This book represents an enormous body of work concerned with a significant topic - the persistence of the Catawba Indian pottery tradition. Using his extensive fieldwork and a narrative presentation, the author juxtaposes the evolving ceramic technology with a fascinating discussion of the role of pottery in changing Catawba economy from the 18th and continuing into the 21st century.

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Thomas John Blumer - Catawba Indian Pottery, The S urvival of a Folk Tradition (2003).pdf

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Nick Heffernan - Capital, Class and Technology in Contemporary American Culture, Projecting Post-For dism (2001).jpg

USA Books1 - Nick Heffernan - Capital, Class and Technology in Con...porary American Culture, Projecting Post-Fordism 2001.jpg

Postmodernism and postmodernity have become key terms through which contemporary cultural change is theorized. In this original and stimulating study, Nick Heffernan demonstrates that the postmodern is not only a cultural matter: it bears on the transformations wrought by and within contemporary capitalism itself. To ask the postmodern question, according to Heffernan, is necessarily to inquire into the nature of Western capitalist societies as they have developed in the second half of the twentieth century, and in the process to engage in a series of complex meditations on capital, class, and technology.
In a stimulating reading of the relationship between cultural forms of social, economic, and political change in postwar America, Heffernan uses a range of cultural texts--film, literature, reportage--to illuminate the processes and modes by which crisis and social, economic, and cultural changes are registered. Using the links between narrative cultural forms and the process of historical understanding, he brings together debates that have so far been conducted largely within the separate domains of political economy, social theory, and cultural criticism to pre a compelling analysis of contemporary cultural change. By relocating postmodernism in the context of changing modes of capitalism, Heffernan puts the question of class and class agency back at the center of the critical agenda.

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Nick Heffernan - Capital, Class and Technology in Contemporary American Culture, Projecting Post-For dism (2001).pdf

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Adriane Lentz- Smith - Freedom Struggles, African Americans and World War I (2009).jpg

For many of the 200,000 black soldiers sent to Europe with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, encounters with French civilians and colonial African troops led them to imagine a world beyond Jim Crow. They returned home to join activists working to make that world real. In narrating the efforts of African American soldiers and activists to gain full citizenship rights as recompense for military service, Adriane Lentz-Smith illuminates how World War I mobilized a generation.

Black and white soldiers clashed as much with one another as they did with external enemies. Race wars within the military and riots across the United States demonstrated the lengths to which white Americans would go to protect a carefully constructed caste system. Inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of self-determination but battered by the harsh realities of segregation, African Americans fought their own “war for democracy,” from the rebellions of black draftees in French and American ports to the mutiny of Army Regulars in Houston, and from the lonely stances of stubborn individuals to organized national campaigns. African Americans abroad and at home reworked notions of nation and belonging, empire and diaspora, manhood and citizenship. By war’s end, they ceased trying to earn equal rights and resolved to demand them.

This beautifully written book reclaims World War I as a critical moment in the freedom struggle and places African Americans at the crossroads of social, military, and international history.

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Adriane Lentz- Smith - Freedom Struggles, African Americans and World War I (2009).pdf

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Mary A. Renda - Taking Haiti, Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (20 01).jpg

The U.S. invasion of Haiti in July 1915 marked the start of a military occupation that lasted for nineteen years--and fed an American fascination with Haiti that flourished even longer. Exploring the cultural dimensions of U.S. contact with Haiti during the occupation and its aftermath, Mary Renda shows that what Americans thought and wrote about Haiti during those years contributed in crucial and unexpected ways to an emerging culture of U.S. imperialism.
At the heart of this emerging culture, Renda argues, was American paternalism, which saw Haitians as wards of the United States. She explores the ways in which diverse Americans--including activists, intellectuals, artists, missionaries, marines, and politicians--responded to paternalist constructs, shaping new versions of American culture along the way. Her analysis draws on a rich record of U.S. discourses on Haiti, including the writings of policymakers; the diaries, letters, songs, and memoirs of marines stationed in Haiti; and literary works by such writers as Eugene O'Neill, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston.

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Mary A. Renda - Taking Haiti, Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (20 01).pdf

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Thaddeus C Brown, Samuel J Murphy, William G Putne y - Behind the Guns, The History of Battery I, 2nd Regiment, Illinois Light Artillery (2002).jpg

USA Books1 - Thaddeus C Brown, Samuel J Murphy, William G Putney - ...attery I, 2nd Regiment, Illinois Light Artillery 2002.jpg

Much has been written of the infantry and the cavalry during the Civil War, but little attention has been paid the artillery. Through the battles of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge in 1863 and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 and with General Sherman's forces on the famous March to the Sea, the acts of a courageous fighting group are vividly recounted in Behind the Guns: The History of Battery I, 2nd Regiment, Illinois Light Artillery. Originally published in 1965 in a limited edition, this regimental history of a light artillery unit was written by three of its soldiers, including the bugler.
Battery I was formed in 1861 by Charles W. Keith of Joliet and Henry B. Plant of Peoria. More than a hundred men were mustered into service in December near Springfield and left for Cairo in February 1862. The battery trained at Camp Paine across the Ohio River in Kentucky until March, when the men were dispatched to the South. During the war, the Battery was attached to three different armies: the Army of the Mississippi, the Army of the Ohio, and the Army of the Cumberland.
Clyde C. Walton's foreword and the narrative discuss the variety of weapons used by the unit, including James, Parrott, and Rodman guns and the bronze, muzzle-loading Napoleons that fired twelve-pound projectiles. The book also includes an account of the prisoner-of-war experience of Battery I lieutenant Charles McDonald, biographical sketches of the battery soldiers, and eighteen maps and five line drawings.

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