The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wines." And when the English settlers found grapes growing so thickly that they covered the ground down to the very seashore, they concluded that "in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." Thus, from the very beginning the promise of America was, in part, the alluring promise of wine. How that promise was repeatedly baffled, how its realization was gradually begun, and how at last it has been triumphantly fulfilled is the story told in this book.
It is a story that touches on nearly every section of the United States and includes the whole range of American society from the founders to the latest immigrants. Germans in Pennsylvania, Swiss in Georgia, Minorcans in Florida, Italians in Arkansas, French in Kansas, Chinese in California--all contributed to the domestication of Bacchus in the New World. So too did innumerable individuals, institutions, and organizations. Prominent politicians, obscure farmers, eager amateurs, sober scientists: these and all the other kinds and conditions of American men and women figure in the story. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of American origins and of American enterprise in microcosm.
While much of that history has been lost to sight, especially after Prohibition, the recovery of the record has been the goal of many investigators over the years, and the results are here brought together for the first time.

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Thomas Pinney - A History of Wine in America, From the Beginnings to Prohibition (1989).rar

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Mark B. Brown - Science in Democracy, Expertise, I nstitutions, and Representation (2009).jpg

Public controversies over issues ranging from global warming to biotechnology have politicized scientific expertise and research. Some respond with calls for restoring a golden age of value-free science. More promising efforts seek to democratize science. But what does that mean? Can it go beyond the typical focus on public participation? How does the politics of science challenge prevailing views of democracy? In Science in Democracy, Mark Brown draws on science and technology studies, democratic theory, and the history of political thought to show why an adequate response to politicized science depends on rethinking both science and democracy.

Brown enlists such canonical and contemporary thinkers as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Dewey, and Latour to argue that the familiar dichotomy between politics and science reinforces a similar dichotomy between direct democracy and representative government. He then develops an alternative perspective based on the mutual shaping of participation and representation in both science and politics. Political representation requires scientific expertise, and scientific institutions may become sites of political representation. Brown illustrates his argument with examples from expert advisory committees, bioethics councils, and lay forums. Different institutional venues, he shows, mediate different elements of democratic representation. If we understand democracy as an institutionally distributed process of collective representation, Brown argues, it becomes easier to see the politicization of science not as a threat to democracy but as an opportunity for it.

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Mark B. Brown - Science in Democracy, Expertise, I nstitutions, and Representation (2009).pdf

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Tim McNeese - The St. Lawrence River (2005).jpg

A major North American river, the St. Lawrence river is the chief outlet for shipping on the Great Lakes. It also forms 120 miles of the United States-Canadian border.

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Tim McNeese - The St. Lawrence River (2005).pdf

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Asaf Siniver - Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy Making, The Machinery of Crisis (2008).jpg

The Machinery of Crisis examines for the first time the important role of crisis management in the making of U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon-Kissinger years. Notorious for their tight grip on the machinery of U.S. foreign policy, the book offers a critical account of the manner in which the president and his national security advisor dominated the structures and processes of foreign policy making. By drawing on a wealth of previously classified documents, Siniver reveals the story of the Washington Special Action Group, which managed foreign policy crises in the Nixon administration. In this thoroughly researched account of the performance of Nixon, Kissinger and the Washington Special Actions group in four international crises, Siniver provides a fresh analysis of the important relationship between individuals and the advisory system in the making of U.S. foreign policy during international crisis.

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Asaf Siniver - Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy Making, The Machinery of Crisis (2008).pdf

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Edward J., Jr. Renehan - The Monroe Doctrine, The Cornerstone of American Foreign Policy (2007).jpg

In 1823, President James Monroe expressed his opinion to Congress that European powers should not be permitted to interfere in the affairs of the sovereign states of the Americas. However, in a bit of a twist, the United States did not follow the terms of its own policy. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which effectively allowed the United States to intervene in Latin American affairs and made the region part of its sphere of influence. Students seeking to learn about the specific details behind this influential policy should look no further than "The Monroe Doctrine", one of the insightful titles from the new "Milestones in American History" series.

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Edward J., Jr. Renehan - The Monroe Doctrine, The Cornerstone of American Foreign Policy (2007).pdf

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Emily K. Abel - Tuberculosis and the Politics of E xclusion, A History of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles (2007).jpg

USA Books - Emily K. Abel - Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclu...ry of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles 2007.jpg

Though notorious for its polluted air today, the city of Los Angeles once touted itself as a health resort. After the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1876, publicists launched a campaign to portray the city as the promised land, circulating countless stories of miraculous cures for the sick and debilitated. As more and more migrants poured in, however, a gap emerged between the city's glittering image and its dark reality. In "Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclusion", Emily K. Abel shows how the association of the disease with "tramps" during the 1880s and 1890s and Dust Bowl refugees during the 1930s provoked exclusionary measures against both groups. In addition, public health officials sought not only to restrict the entry of Mexicans (the majority of immigrants) during the 1920s but also to expel them during the 1930s. Abel's revealing account provides a critical lens through which to view both the contemporary debate about immigration and the U.S. response to the emergent global tuberculosis epidemic.

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Emily K. Abel - Tuberculosis and the Politics of E xclusion, A History of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles (2007).pdf

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Tim McNeese - The Yukon River (2005).jpg

A detailed look at a major river of northwest North America, the Yukon River is navigable by river boats for only 3 month of the year.

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Tim McNeese - The Yukon River (2005).pdf

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Derek Kompare - Rerun Nation, How Repeats Invented American Television (2004).jpg

Long before TV Land, the Game Show Network, and Cartoon Network cornered the market, reruns had been a staple of American television for decades. The economics of broadcasting made recycling programs a standard practice as early as the 1950s, but it was not until the mid 1970s that reruns were singled out as a significant contribution to American culture in general-a window into the American past and TV's "Golden Age." In Rerun Nation, Derek Kompare looks at how the long tradition of rerun syndication has come to determine television's place in American history and culture, and framed our understanding of what defines "American television." Rerun Nation is a fascinating approach to television history and theory through the ubiquitous yet overlooked phenomenon of reruns. Kompare covers both historical and conceptual ground, weaving together a refresher course in the history of television with a critical analysis of how reruns have shaped the cultural, economic, and legal terrains of American television. Given the expanding use of past media texts not only in the United States, but also in virtually every media-rich society, this book addresses a critical facet of everyday life.

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Derek Kompare - Rerun Nation, How Repeats Invented American Television (2004).pdf

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F. Kagan - Leaders in War, West Point Remembers th e 1991 Gulf War (2005).jpg

Leaders in War provides first-person perspectives across the spectrum of American combat operations during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. From division commanders to platoon leaders, the authors offer an insider's view of tough leadership challenges, tragic failures, and triumphant victories. Leaders in War captures the essence of the post-Cold War US Army: how an all-volunteer army, equipped with new weapons systems and adjusting to new battle doctrine, mounted one of history's most successful military campaigns. Described here are the details of the tremendous logistical challenges, innovations in intelligence, ground combat operations from platoon to division, and a wide range of combat support operations. Leaders in War focuses not just on the successes, but on the failures as well, in operations ranging from violent tank battles against the vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard to train-and-fill operations thousands of miles away. Leaders in War illustrates how US Army leaders adapted to the psychological strains of combat, the fog of war, unforeseeable challenges, and the fury of tank warfare during the Persian Gulf War.

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F. Kagan - Leaders in War, West Point Remembers th e 1991 Gulf War (2005).pdf

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Tim McNeese - The Rio Grande (2005).jpg

Featuring the history and geography of the river, documenting how the river was used for exploration, cultural exchange, trade and economic development. The Rio Grande forms the boundary between the United States and Mexico and is an important source of irrigation.

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Tim McNeese - The Rio Grande (2005).pdf

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Gaye Tuchman - Wannabe U, Inside the Corporate Uni versity (2009).jpg

In most debates over its future, the university is represented—by both its critics and its champions—as a secular temple for learning, a sacred space freed from the more mundane concerns that trouble other institutions. But lately this lofty image looks increasingly tarnished, especially with regard to public research universities. There, a new class of administrative professionals has been busy working to make colleges as much like businesses as possible. In this eye-opening exposé of the modern university, Gaye Tuchman paints a candid portrait of these wannabe corporate managers and the new regime of revenue streams, mission statements, and five-year plans they’ve ushered in.

Based on years of observation at a state school, Wannabe U tracks the dispiriting consequences of trading in traditional educational values for loyalty to the market. Aping their boardroom idols, the new corporate administrators wander from job to job and reductively view the students as future workers in need of training. Obsessed with measurable successes, they stress auditing and accountability, which leads, Tuchman reveals, to policies of surveillance and control dubiously cloaked in the guise of scientific administration. Following the big money to be made from the discoveries of Wannabe U’s researchers, Tuchman probes the cozy relationships that the administration forms with industry and the government.

Like the best campus novelists, Tuchman entertains with her acidly witty observations of backstage power dynamics and faculty politics, but ultimately Wannabe U is a hard-hitting account of how higher education’s misguided pursuit of success fails us all.

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Dale Brown - Rogue Forces (2009).jpg

The clash of civilizations will be won . . . by thte highest bidder
What happens when America's most lethal military contractor becomes uncontrollably powerful?
His election promised a new day for America . . . but dangerous storm clouds are on the horizon. The newly inaugurated president, Joseph Gardner, pledged to start pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq on his first day in office—no questions asked. Meanwhile, former president Kevin Martindale and retired Air Force lieutenant-general Patrick McLanahan have left government behind for the lucrative world of military contracting. Their private firm, Scion Aviation International, has been hired by the Pentagon to take over aerial patrols in northern Iraq as the U.S. military begins to downsize its presence there.
Yet Iraq quickly reemerges as a hot zone: Kurdish nationalist attacks have led the Republic of Turkey to invade northern Iraq. The new American presi dent needs to regain control of the situation—immediately—but he's reluctant to send U.S. forces back into harm's way, leaving Scion the only credible force in the region capable of blunting the Turks' advances.
But when Patrick McLanahan makes the decision to take the fight to the Turks, can the president rein him in? And just where does McLanahan's loyalty ultimately lie: with his country, his commander in chief, his fellow warriors . . . or with his company's shareholders?
In Rogue Forces, Dale Brown, the New York Times bestselling master of thrilling action, explores the frightening possibility that the corporations we now rely on to fight our battles are becoming too powerful for America's good.

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Benis M. Frank - U.S. Marines in Lebanon 1982-1984 (1987).jpg

This book is a straightforward account of the deployment of Marines to Lebanon in the period 1982-1984 . The story begins with the landing of the 32d Marine Amphibious Unit (32d MAU) in Beirut in August 1982 at the request of the Lebanese Governmen to assist, together with French and Italian military units, in supervising the evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It ends in February 1984 with the withdrawal of the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit following the effective end of its mission and the nearly complete breakdown of order in Lebanon. In between is an ambiguous Marine mission of presence of 18 months' duration. Together with the British, French, and Italian members of the Multi-National Force, the Marines attempted, as "peacekeepers," to assist the Lebanese Government in achieving stability and ending the factional fighting which has all but destroyed Lebanon as a viable political entity.

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Benis M. Frank - U.S. Marines in Lebanon 1982-1984 (1987).pdf

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Mark D. Mandeles - Military Transformation Past an d Present, Historic Lessons for the 21st Century ( 2007).jpg

Transformation has become a buzz word in today's military, but what are its historical precursors--those large scale changes that were once called Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA)? Who has gotten it right, and who has not? The Department of Defense must learn from history. Most studies of innovation focus on the actions, choices, and problems faced by individuals in a particular organization. Few place these individuals and organizations within the complex context where they operate. Yet, it is this very context that is a powerful determinant of how actions are conceived, examined, and implemented, and of how errors are identified and corrected. The historical cases that Mandeles examines reveal how different military services organized to learn, accumulate, and retrieve knowledge; and how their particular organization affected everything from the equipment they acquired to the quality of doctrine and concepts used in combat.

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Mark D. Mandeles - Military Transformation Past an d Present, Historic Lessons for the 21st Century ( 2007).pdf

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Michael L. Tate - The Frontier Army in the Settlem ent of the West (1999).jpg

In reading Western military history, it is so easy to just focus on battles and campaigns, forgetting that most of the time the various infantry and cavalry companies stationed on the frontier were engaged in other pursuits. Tate presents a balanced view of the multifacted frontier army and its various activities, including raising crops to help feed enlisted men, meteorological observations, improving Western transport and communications, protecting National Parks, guarding Indians from white civilains and each other, accompanying exploreers and scientists, the impact of post chapels, schools and libraries, the list goes on as browsing the table of contents will show. Each chapter in the book deals with a differnet aspect of what the frontier army did beyond military campaigns and how that worked, intentionally or not, towards the settlement of the West. In fact, you can almost approach this book as a collection of essays on the fronier army. One thing you won't find is the worn out and untruthful profile of the frontier army as heartless killers of Indians.

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Michael L. Tate - The Frontier Army in the Settlem ent of the West (1999).rar

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Walter S. Dunn - Choosing Sides on the Frontier in the American Revolution (2007).jpg

Contrary to common understanding, in the backcountry at least, the American Revolution was fought over land rather than democratic ideals. In this book, historian Walter Dunn reveals the true nature of the conflicting interests on the frontier, demonstrating that the primary issues there, land and the fur trade, were, in fact, the basis of the conflict between the local colonists and Britain. Diverse Indian groups, wealthy land speculators, humbler settlers, fur traders, and the British government all had conflicting designs on the rich lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. The conflict on the frontier during the Revolution has been described as one of heroic settlers defending their farms against attacks by the British army, the Tories, and the Indians. In truth, the situation was far more complex. For many on the frontier, the primary motive for fighting was not defending farms, but acquiring vast tracts of land for later resale at enormous profit. Native Americans, in contrast, were motivated by the desire to retain control of their homeland, for without their hunting grounds and cornfields, they would starve. Going beyond accepted theory, Dunn explores why those on the frontier reacted to the conflict as they did. He demonstrates how the various economic groups were forced to decide whether they should side with Britain or the colonists or if possible remain neutral, and the forces that governed those choices. Finally, he reveals how the decisions made on the frontier during the Revolution had a lasting impact on the post-war situation in the West, delaying western expansion by nearly two decades.

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